Iesus Nazarenus Rex Iudaeorum

A Jewish co-worker recently directed a patron to an online article by “The Aish Rabbi” in which he answers the question, “why don’t the Jews believe in Jesus?” I will respond to his contentions point by point. Scripture is from the NAS, unless otherwise indicated.

The Aish Rabbi: For 2,000 years, Jews have rejected Christianity and the idea of Jesus as messiah. It is important to understand why Jews don't believe in Jesus. The purpose is not to disparage other religions, but rather to clarify the Jewish position. The more data that's available, the better-informed choices people can make about their spiritual path.

B. Douglass: Yes, unfortunately, the Jews in the main have rejected Jesus as the Messiah. “He came to His own, and those who were His own did not receive Him” (John 1:11). Scripture predicted this rejection, as St. Peter Damian proves:

[W]ho is the stone which the Lord promised to place in the foundation of Zion? Isaiah said of it: ‘See, I am laying in Zion a stone for a foundation, a tested stone, a precious cornerstone as a sure foundation’ (Is 28:16). Who, I say, is this stone but he of whom David sang: ‘The stone which the builders rejected has become the cornerstone’? (Psalm 117:22) ...This is certainly the stone which Daniel saw cut out of the mountain, made without hands (Dan 2:34), namely, Christ, who without human intervention was born of the unsullied Virgin.¹

Likewise, Malachi 1:10-11 predicted that God would reprobate the Jewish Temple worship of animal sacrifice, and institute in its place one pure oblation which would be offered all over the world by Gentiles, namely the Holy Mass. “I have no pleasure in you, saith the Lord of hosts: and I will not receive a gift of your hand. For from the rising of the sun even to the going down, my name shall be great among the Gentiles, and in every place there shall be sacrifice, and there shall be offered to my name a clean oblation: for my name shall be great among the Gentiles, saith the Lord of hosts” (DRV, edited to read in the future tense; cf. Zephaniah 2:11). This is the situation which obtains today. The kingdom of God has been taken from the nation of Israel and given to nations who will bear its fruit (Matthew 21:43).

The Aish Rabbi: What is the Messiah supposed to accomplish? The Bible says that he will:

A. Build the Third Temple (Ezekiel 37:26-28).
B. Gather all Jews back to the Land of Israel (Isaiah 43:5-6).
C. Usher in an era of world peace, and end all hatred, oppression, suffering and disease. As it says: ‘Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall man learn war anymore.’ (Isaiah 2:4)
D. Spread universal knowledge of the God of Israel, which will unite humanity as one. As it says: ‘God will be King over all the world -- on that day, God will be One and His Name will be One’ (Zechariah 14:9).

The historical fact is that Jesus fulfilled none of these messianic prophecies.

Christians counter that Jesus will fulfill these in the Second Coming, but Jewish sources show that the Messiah will fulfill the prophecies outright, and no concept of a second coming exists.

B. Douglass: Ezekiel 37 refers to a sanctuary, not necessarily the Third Temple with a capital T. Isaiah 43 is dealing immediately with the Jews’ release from captivity under the Persian King Cyrus, not a national restoration under the Messiah at the end of time (cf. v. 3). Finally, Isaiah 2:4 and Zechariah 14:9 are continually fulfilled as the Church conquers more and more of the world for Christ. They await perfect fulfillment at the second coming.

The Rabbi dismisses the idea of the second coming as unfounded in Jewish tradition, but this is simply not the case. Scripture portrays one “coming” of the Messiah as in a spirit of meekness and gentleness (e.g. “a bruised reed he will not break, etc.” (Isaiah 42:3)), and another as in terrible judgment (cf. Malachi 4:1-6). The Talmud sees the same apparent contradiction as Christianity, which is why it has to posit two messiahs: the humble suffering servant Messiah ben Joseph and the glorious Messiah ben David.² Incidentally, the Talmud applies some of the same Scriptures to Messiah ben Joseph as Christians apply to Christ (e.g. Zechariah 12:10). It is but a short step to unite the roles of the two Messiahs in one Person who comes twice. Finally, Moses Maimonides, basing himself on "the ancient sages," explicitly teaches that the prophecies which the Aish Rabbi mentions will not be fulfilled at the first coming of the Messiah, but will await fulfillment at the final redemption:

The ultimate or perfect reward, the final bliss which will suffer neither interruption nor dimunition is the life in the world to come. The Messianic era, on the other hand, will be realized in this world, which will continue in its normal course except that independent sovereignty will be restored to Israel. The ancient sages already said, "The only difference between the present era and the Messianic era is that political oppression will then cease."³

The Aish Rabbi: Jesus was not a prophet. Prophecy can only exist in Israel when the land is inhabited by a majority of world Jewry. During the time of Ezra (circa 300 BCE), when the majority of Jews refused to move from Babylon to Israel, prophecy ended upon the death of the last prophets -- Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi.

Jesus appeared on the scene approximately 350 years after prophecy had ended.

B. Douglass: Those who do not want Christ to be the Messiah have been using this type of argumentation for a long time now. For example, we see something very similar in the Gospel of St. John, chapter 7. Many of the Jews of Jerusalem did not want to believe that Christ was the Messiah; in fact they so viscerally hated him that they wanted to kill him (v. 19). So, in order to assuage their consciences and give themselves some sort of intellectual pretense for rejecting Him, they invented any cockamamie reason why He could not possibly be the anointed one. First, they claimed “we know where this man is from; but whenever the Christ may come, no one knows where He is from” (v. 27). Supposedly the Messiah was supposed to appear out of thin air like Melchizedek, “without father or mother, without genealogy, without beginning of days or end of life” (Hebrews 7:3). However, Scripture plainly testifies that the birthplace of the Messiah would be known: Bethlehem (Micah 5:2). A little further on, the Jews claim that Jesus cannot possibly be a prophet because He is a Galilean (John 7:52). But the prophet Jonah was a Galilean; he hailed from Gath-hepher, just about four miles north of Nazareth.

In like manner, though I’m sure he does not share the visceral hatred of the Jews in St. John, the Aish Rabbi seems to be just making up rules here. There is no indication in Scripture that prophecy can only exist in Israel when the land is inhabited by a majority of world Jewry. Prophecy can exist when and where God wants it to exist, in an ass (Numbers 22:28), in a Gentile (Numbers 22:12), in Babylon (Daniel 2:19), etc.

Incidentally, one can see the dangerous implications of the false premises which the Rabbi constructs if one considers its consequences for geopolitics. If, as he believes, in order for prophecy to return, the majority of world Jewry must be residing in Israel, it necessarily follows that the only way to usher in the Messiah is for all the millions of Jews living around the world in places like New York to move there, which will inevitably result in the indigenous Palestinian population being further displaced and deracinated. This will engender even more resentment and violence.

The Aish Rabbi: The Messiah must be descended on his father's side from King David (see Genesis 49:10 and Isaiah 11:1). According to the Christian claim that Jesus was the product of a virgin birth, he had no father -- and thus could not have possibly fulfilled the messianic requirement of being descended on his father's side from King David!

B. Douglass: The reader will note that while Scripture does in fact testify that the Messiah will be descended from King David, it never stipulates that it must be through his father’s side. Furthermore, St. Joseph was the legal father of Christ, and legal fatherhood confers the right of inheritance just as well as biological fatherhood.

The Aish Rabbi: The Messiah will lead the Jewish people to full Torah observance. The Torah states that all mitzvot remain binding forever, and anyone coming to change the Torah is immediately identified as a false prophet. (Deut. 13:1-4)

Throughout the New Testament, Jesus contradicts the Torah and states that its commandments are no longer applicable. (see John 1:45 and 9:16, Acts 3:22 and 7:37)

B. Douglass: Deuteronomy 13:1-4 says that any prophet who leads Israel after false gods is immediately identified as a false prophet. That is the primary thrust of this passage. The statement in v. 4 that “you shall keep His commandments” is teaching that a Jew may not forsake the Law of the Lord for another religion and a different god. It is not dealing with the question of whether God could ever revoke or change the Law. The Rabbi will need a more explicit Scripture if He wants to argue that “all mitzvot [commandments] remain binding forever.” He will also have to explain Exodus 40, which records commandments regarding tabernacle worship that were intended as provisional, i.e. binding for a specific period of time, in this case prior to the erection of the temple.

In reality, a great deal of the commandments of the Torah were intended only for a specific period of time, to serve as a pedagogue to lead us to Christ (Galatians 3:24). Indeed, the Jewish Bible records God’s expressed intention of establishing a less legalistic covenant, unlike the previous, in which men will obey Him from the heart: “‘Behold, days are coming,’ declares the LORD, ‘when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, not like the covenant which I made with their fathers in the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, although I was a husband to them,’ declares the LORD. ‘But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days,’ declares the LORD, ‘I will put My law within them and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people’” (Jeremiah 31:31-33). Even more damning for the rabbi’s position is Isaiah 66:21, in which God declares that in the New Covenant he will take priests and Levites from among Italian and Greek Gentile converts. Obviously, this requires the abrogation of the Old Covenant laws which restrict the priesthood to the house of Aaron, and the office of Levite to, well, the Levites.

The Aish Rabbi: Biblical verses can only be understood by studying the original Hebrew text -- which reveals many discrepancies in the Christian translation.

The Christian idea of a virgin birth is derived from the verse in Isaiah 7:14 describing an ‘alma’ as giving birth. The word ‘alma’ has always meant a young woman, but Christian theologians came centuries later and translated it as ‘virgin.’ This accords Jesus' birth with the first century pagan idea of mortals being impregnated by gods.

B. Douglass: First off, it is disingenuous of the Rabbi to refer to the Septuagint as “the Christian translation,” as it was translated by Jews hundreds of years antecedent to Christ. To claim that it was “Christian theologians [who] came centuries later” who arbitrarily decided to render alma as parthenos (virgin) must necessarily involve either ignorance or dishonesty.

Second, this translation is entirely defensible. The Jewish scholars who first rendered alma as parthenos well knew what they were doing when they made this decision. As Robert Sungenis demonstrated, in one of his moments of lucidity:

[T]he word almah appears only seven times in the Hebrew Old Testament (cf. Gn 24:43; Ex 2:8; Ps 68:25; Pr 30:19; Sg 1:3; 6:8; Is 7:14), thus the evidence upon which to base such conclusions is rather limited. None of the above passages suggest that almah refers to a woman who is married or has had sexual relations. Conversely, there are explicit indications that almah refers to an unmarried woman who has had no sexual relations. First, in Gn 24:43, almah is used to refer to Rebecca before she is married to Isaac. Yet in the same context (Gn 24:16), Rebecca is referred to as bethulah (‘An exceedingly beautiful maid, a virgin, and not known to man...’). This interchange of terms means that almah could certainly be interchanged with bethulah, and was understood to designate a virgin. In addition, Rebecca is called a ‘maid’ in the same passage (Gn 24:16), from the Hebrew naarah which, similar to almah, refers in Hebrew to a young woman, but also a virgin (see naarah in Dt 22:15-29 in which the husband suspects his wife was not a virgin when they married). Identical to the interchange of almah and bethulah contained in Gn 24:16, 43, again in Dt 22:23, 28; Jg 21:12; 1Kg 1:2; Es 2:3 naarah and bethulah are interchanged...

The use of almah in Pr 30:19 also refers to a virgin. In this passage, ‘the way of a man with a maid (almah)’ who is assumed to be a virgin because she is unmarried, is contrasted in the next verse, Pr 30:20, with ‘an adulterous woman (isha)’ who is understood as married but having sexual relations with other men.⁴

Moreover, the great recusant exegete Dr. Witham notes that “the very circumstances in the text of the prophet, are more than a sufficient confutation of this Jewish exposition; for there a sign, or miracle, is promised to Achaz; and what miracle would it be for a young woman to have a child, when she had ceased to be a virgin?” ⁵

Incidentally, Jewish apologists have often claimed that this prophecy refers to King Ahaz's wife conceiving Hezekiah, the heir to the throne. Yet, the great Jewish convert Petrus Alfonsi, with his immense knowledge of the Hebrew Bible, thoroughly demolished this argument over 900 years ago:

For at the time when these things were said to Ahaz, he was already king, but his son Hezekiah had already passed nine years of age. Moreover, on the first day of his reign, Ahaz was himself twenty years old, and he reigned sixteen years (Cf. 2 Kgs 16.2). His son Hezekiah, however, who succeeded to the kingdom next after him, was twenty-five years old when he began his reign (Cf. 2 Kgs 18.2). Accordingly, Hezekiah was nine years old when his father was made king. Therefore, this prophecy which concerns us was pronounced neither in regard to Ahaz's wife nor in regard to his son Hezekiah.⁶

Finally, the virgin birth of Jesus has no part with the pagan legends of women being impregnated by gods. Such legends, such as the copulation of Leda with Zeus under the guise of a swan, involve actual sex between women and divinities. Hence, their progeny comes forth half human and half divine. The true God did not imitate such depraved fantasies but “created a new thing in the earth” when He decreed that “a woman will encompass a man” (Jeremiah 31:22) in the Incarnation of His Son.

The Aish Rabbi: The verse in Psalms 22:17 reads: ‘Like a lion, they are at my hands and feet.’ The Hebrew word ki-ari (like a lion) is grammatically similar to the word ‘gouged.’ Thus Christianity reads the verse as a reference to crucifixion: ‘They pierced my hands and feet.’

B. Douglass: The Masoretic text is clearly corrupt here, as “like a lion” makes little sense. There isn’t even a verb in the sentence; “they are at” must be interpolated by the translator. Moreover, the Septuagint, the Syraic, and even a few manuscripts within the Masoretic family all read “they have pierced.” Most importantly, the Hebrew Psalms scroll found at Nahal Hever at Qumran, which is centuries older than the Masoretic, likewise reads “they have pierced.”⁷ The Rabbi ought to be a bit more thorough in his research before he accuses Christians of mistranslating the Bible, especially if, as he will do a little below, he is going to attribute these mistranslations to deliberate malfeasance on the part of the Holy Fathers of the Church.

Incidentally, I would be curious to know what the Rabbi does with Zechariah 12:10: "they will look on Me whom they have pierced; and they will mourn for Him, as one mourns for an only son, and they will weep bitterly over Him like the bitter weeping over a firstborn." The Talmud applies this to one of its messiahs.

The Aish Rabbi: Christianity claims that Isaiah chapter 53 refers to Jesus, as the suffering servant.

In actuality, Isaiah 53 directly follows the theme of chapter 52, describing the exile and redemption of the Jewish people. The prophecies are written in the singular form because the Jews (‘Israel’) are regarded as one unit. The Torah is filled with examples of the Jewish nation referred to with a singular pronoun.

Ironically, Isaiah's prophecies of persecution refer in part to the 11th century when Jews were tortured and killed by Crusaders who acted in the name of Jesus.

B. Douglass: Once again the Rabbi intimates that the Christian interpretation is indefensible, and stems from an ignorance of the Hebrew language, as if Christians could not comprehend the simple literary device of personification. In reality, even a cursory reading of Isaiah 53 reveals that it is the Rabbi's interpretation that is not defensible. Isaiah 53 contains several statements concerning the relation between the Jews/Israel (referred to by the prophet as “we” and “us”) and the servant, which make it impossible to equate them one with another. “He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him... We esteemed him not... Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows... But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed. We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all” (vv. 2-6). And as if that were not enough, verse eight renders the case absolutely closed: “for the transgression of my people he was stricken.” This would be absolutely nonsensical if “he” were “my people,” as the Rabbi claims.

The Aish Rabbi: From where did these mistranslations stem? St. Gregory, 4th century Bishop of Nazianzus, wrote [sic]: ‘A little jargon is all that is necessary to impose on the people. The less they comprehend, the more they admire.’

B. Douglass: The Rabbi does not give a reference for this scandalous quotation, most likely because he has copied it from one of the myriad atheist websites which reproduce it. He would do well to learn from the Christian doctrines of charity; one ought not to accuse another of dishonesty based on such flimsy, hearsay evidence. Actually, one finds this quotation in a book by a French revolutionary by the name of Volney, a blasphemer, by the Rabbi’s standards and mine. The full quotation, according to Volney, is as follows: “‘A little jargon,’ says Gregory Nazianzen to St. Jerome (Hieron. ad. Nep.) ‘is all that is necessary to impose on the people. The less they comprehend, the more they admire. Our forefathers and doctors of the church have often said not what they thought, but what circumstances and necessity dictated to them.’” ⁸

Now, to give the reader an idea of the kind of source we are dealing with here, I will note that Volney begins his book with an act of idolatry, praying to the ruins which teach him “the sacred dogma of Equality.” “Within your pale,” he continues, “in solitary adoration of Liberty, I saw her Genius arise from the mansions of the dead.” ⁹ He then describes how, as he was fighting a bout of depression while exploring a ruined, ancient Syrian city, a phantom appeared to him and told him not to blame God for all the world’s troubles. The upshot of this apparition is that he became a Deist, and a major intellectual and political leader of the French Revolution, the filthy harlot who would get “drunk with the blood of the saints” (Revelations 17:6), especially the spiritual progeny of St. Louis Marie de Montfort. It is rather ironic that the Rabbi would rely on such a source (though, as stated above, he most surely got it second hand). The following is the kind of filth Volney spews about Moses and Judaism in his book:

But in vain did he prescribe [sic] the worship of the symbols which prevailed in lower Egypt and in Phoenicia; for his god was nevertheless an Egyptian god, invented by those priests of whom Moses had been the disciple; and Yahouh, betrayed by its very name, essence (of beings), and by its symbol, the burning bush, is only the soul of the world, the moving principle which the Greeks soon adopted under the same denomination in their you-piter [doesn’t he know that Jupiter is the Roman name?], regenerating being, and under that of Ei, existence.¹⁰

Volney is no less a blasphemer and a calumniator when he deals with Christianity in his book, and the Rabbi has, unfortunately, regurgitated one of his blasphemous calumnies. In the passage in question St. Jerome is actually denouncing the very evil which Volney so blasphemously imputes to him. The full text, with context, is as follows. It comes from St. Jerome’s letter to Nepotian on the duties of the clergy:

When you are preaching in church try not to evoke applause but lamentation. Let the tears of your audience be your glory. A presbyter's discourse should be seasoned by his reading of Scripture. Be not a declaimer nor a ranter nor a gabbler, but show yourself skilled in God’s mysteries and well acquainted with the secret meaning of His words. Only ignorant men like to roll out phrases and to excite the admiration of the unlettered crowd by the quickness of their utterance. Effrontery often tries to explain things of which it knows nothing, and having persuaded others claims knowledge for itself. My former teacher, Gregory of Nazianzus, when I asked him to explain the meaning of St. Luke’s phrase deuteroproton, that is ‘second first’ sabbath, wittily evaded my request. ‘I will tell you about that in church,’ he said, ‘and there, when all the people applaud me, you will be compelled against your wish to know what you do not know, or else, if you alone remain silent, you will undoubtedly be put down by every one as a fool.’ There is nothing so easy as to decieve a cheap mob or an ignorant congregation by voluble talk; anything such people do not understand they admire all the more. ¹¹

St. Jerome next quotes a speech of the great pagan orator Cicero in which he too denounces those who make a show of erudition in order to impress the ignorant mob. The statement that follows in Volney’s “citation” about the Fathers and Doctors of the Church telling officious lies with impunity is simply not there. Volney is a liar, plain and simple, and it comes naturally to him because he is the son of his father the devil, the father of lies (John 8:44).

The Aish Rabbi: Of the 15,000 religions in human history, only Judaism bases its belief on national revelation -- i.e. God speaking to the entire nation. If God is going to start a religion, it makes sense He'll tell everyone, not just one person.

Judaism, unique among all of the world's major religions, does not rely on ‘claims of miracles’ as the basis for its religion. In fact, the Bible says that God sometimes grants the power of ‘miracles’ to charlatans, in order to test Jewish loyalty to the Torah (Deut. 13:4).

Maimonides states (Foundations of Torah, ch. 8):

The Jews did not believe in Moses, our teacher, because of the miracles he performed. Whenever anyone's belief is based on seeing miracles, he has lingering doubts, because it is possible the miracles were performed through magic or sorcery. All of the miracles performed by Moses in the desert were because they were necessary, and not as proof of his prophecy.

What then was the basis of [Jewish] belief? The Revelation at Mount Sinai, which we saw with our own eyes and heard with our own ears, not dependent on the testimony of others... as it says, ace to face, God spoke with you... The Torah also states: ‘God did not make this covenant with our fathers, but with us -- who are all here alive today.’ (Deut. 5:3)

Judaism is not miracles. It is the personal eyewitness experience of every man, woman and child, standing at Mount Sinai 3,300 years ago.

B. Douglass: There is quite a bit to respond to here. Firstly, while God may and has spoken simultaneously to large multitudes, Judaism began with the call of only one man: Abraham (Genesis 12:1). Second, whereas it may have been true 3,300 years ago that Jewish belief was not dependent on the testimony of others, but on personal experience, since then the Jews have had to rely on Scripture and Tradition, just like Catholics. The Jews who were at Mount Sinai are all long since dead. Thirdly, the Jews believed in Moses through his miracles and his holy life long before they had the direct “national revelation” at Mount Sinai recorded in Exodus 19-20. Prior to that point, and following as well, God spoke privately with Moses, and Moses would mediate His message to the people. Moreover, God clearly expected the Jews to believe in Him based on the testimony of His miracles. He says in the Psalms, “Do not harden your hearts, as at Meribah, as in the day of Massah in the wilderness, when your fathers tested Me, they tried Me, though they had seen My work” (Psalm 95:8-9). This passage refers to the events recorded in Exodus 17:2-7, when the Jews grumbled against Moses that they did not have enough water in the desert.

Finally, the Rabbi is being a bit pedantic here. What he calls “national revelation” is simply an extraordinarily large and impressive miracle which is witnesses by large numbers of people at the same time, accompanied by the audible voice of God. “All the people perceived the thunder and the lightning flashes and the sound of the trumpet and the mountain smoking; and when the people saw it, they trembled and stood at a distance” (Exodus 20:18). We have the same kind of thing in Christianity; God spoke to large crowds in an audible voice when He said “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well-pleased” (Matthew 3:17). He produced large, cataclysmic miracles when Jesus died: “And behold, the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom; and the earth shook and the rocks were split” (Matthew 27:51). Jesus miraculously fed thousands of people on a few loaves of bread and fish (it be impossible to produce such a miracle through sorcery or the demonic, since only God can create substance). Moreover, Our Lord proved that He was not a charlatan by teaching uncomfortable truths even when it cost Him a temporal kingdom (cf. John 6:15, 66) and ultimately enduring a horrible death for love of us.

The Rabbi makes a big deal of the fact that “Judaism is not miracles. It is the personal eyewitness experience of every man, woman and child, standing at Mount Sinai 3,300 years ago.” Well, to parallel his logic, Christianity is the personal, eyewitness experience of every man, woman, and child who walked with Christ 2,000 years ago as He healed the sick, drove out demons, gave us the most sublime moral teachings in the world, and finally gave Himself. “The things accomplished among us... were handed down to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the word” (Luke 1:1-2). And as if this were not enough, God has continually produced such widely and plainly visible miracles throughout Christian history. The first that comes to mind is the miracle of the sun at Fatima on October 13 1917, which was witnesses by 70,000 people, among whom were many atheists, socialists, and masons viscerally hostile to the supernatural. The miracle was reported in the secular press, for example in O Seculo. John Haffert documented this quite thoroughly.¹² Next, anyone who wishes may travel to Nevers, France and view the incorrupt body of St. Bernadette, who died in 1879. While St. Pio was still among us, anyone who wished could see the miraculous ways God worked through him.¹³ The Rabbi correctly notes that it is fitting that God should reveal Himself in front of multitudes; indeed he does, and just as it would be absurd to reject the combined testimony of every man, woman, and child at Mount Sinai, and deny the Jewish revelation, so too is it absurd to reject the testimony of every man, woman, and child in the early Christian community, at Cova de Ira, at Nevers, at San Giovanni Rotondo, at Ipswich, ¹⁴ etc.

The Aish Rabbi: The following theological points apply primarily to the Roman Catholic Church, the largest Christian denomination, and the one most familiar to the Western world.

The Catholic idea of Trinity breaks God into three separate beings: The Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost (Matthew 28:19).

Contrast this to the Shema, the basis of Jewish belief: ‘Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is ONE’ (Deut. 6:4). Jews declare the Shema every day, while writing it on doorposts (Mezuzah), and binding it to the hand and head (Tefillin). This statement of God's One-ness is the first words a Jewish child is taught to say, and the last words uttered before a Jew dies.

In Jewish law, worship of a three-part god is considered idolatry -- one of the three cardinal sins that a Jew should rather give up his life than transgress. This explains why during the Inquisitions and throughout history, Jews gave up their lives rather than convert.

B. Douglass: Just as it is a rare surprise when a Protestant accurately represents the Catholic doctrine of the Mass in his apologetics, so one ought not to be surprised when a Jew or a Muslim misrepresents the Trinity. The Catholic Church says a hearty amen to the Shema (cf. Mark 12:29); she does not “break God into three separate beings” or teach a “three-part god.” It is Catholic dogma that God is absolutely simple. There are no parts in God, there is no composition; God is pure and undivided. We acknowledge in God three Persons, but they are distinguished only by the relation of one to another. They are of one substance, and they mutually penetrate and indwell each other, and all their operations are common to all three. I would challenge any Jew to read Fr. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange’s book The Trinity and God the Creator and still deny that Christianity is strictly a monotheistic religion.

As a side note, it is disappointing that the man subscribes to that awful “dicta of the Rabbis... A man might, and should, save his life if the occasion demanded it by any means, murder, incest, or idolatry alone excepted. Only when the alternative [is] to commit one of these three offences against divine and human law, [is] death to be preferred.” ¹⁵ Daniel, Esther, and the Maccabees would throw a fit over the suggestion that a Jew might gulp down pork, fornicate, lie, cheat, steal, or extort in order to escape from martyrdom, so long as he doesn’t kill anyone or worship a false god, and there is not too much consanguinity between him and his partner in fornication. Rather, a true child of God should rather die than offer God the least venial offense, which is why the heroic Jews of the Maccabean rebellion allowed themselves to be slaughtered rather than risk profaning the Sabbath (1 Maccabees 2:36-38).

The rabbi has brought up the matter of the Spanish Inquisition. As a matter of fact, this idea that there are only three sins one must avoid on pain of death is exactly what led many Sephardic Jews to respond to coercive Christian proselytizing with false, sham conversions. These became known as the Marranos, and the Jewish historian Cecil Roth describes their duplicity:

Outwardly, they lived as Christians. They took their children to church to be baptized, though they hastened to wash off the traces of the ceremony as soon as they returned home. They would go to the priest to be married, though they were not content with the ceremony and, in the privacy of their houses, performed another to implement it. Occasionally, they would be shriven; but their confessions were so unreal that one priest is said to have begged a piece of the garment of one of them as a relic of so blameless a soul!

Behind this outward sham they remained at least as they had always been. Their disbelief in the dogmas of the Church was notorious, and not always concealed... In race, belief, and largely in practice, they remained as they had been before the conversion. They were Jews in all but name, and Christians in nothing but form. They were moreover able to transmit this disbelief to their children, who, though born in the dominant faith and baptized at birth, were as little sincere in their attachment to it as their fathers.¹⁶

The Marranos thus penetrated to the highest levels of Spanish social and economic life, some even sacrilegiously receiving Holy Orders.¹⁷ Cecil Roth further explains how they justified their behavior:

In the last chapter of the apocryphal [sic] book of Baruch, the Epistle of Jeremy, there occurs a passage in which the prophet exhorts his brethren of the Babylonian exile: ‘When ye see a multitude before you and behind bowing down ye shall say in your hearts: Thou alone art to be praised, O Lord.’ We are informed by an erudite contemporary that the Marranos of his generation applied the words ‘bowing down’ to the Jews instead of to their Babylonian enemies, interpreting the passage as a divine license to worship strange gods [i.e. go through the exterior motions of worship] in case of necessity, so long as the heart remains inclined to the God of Heaven.¹⁸

Hence the anusim, the forced ones, the false Christians, remained the brothers of their explicitly Jewish co-religionists; it was only the meshumadim, the sincere Christian converts won by the likes of St. Vincent Ferrer who would become aliens even to their mothers’ sons (Psalm 69:8). Incidentally, this hostility to sincere, genuine Christian converts has perdured to this day, which is why St. Edith Stein records in her autobiography that her relationship with her mother was devastated when she became a Catholic. Never mind that she had become an atheist many years before! No God is better than the Christian God, apparently. Even worse was the experience of the Lehmann brothers, two children of an aristocratic family in Lyons, France. When they converted to Catholicism, their uncles tried to beat them to death and they had to be rescued by the police.¹⁹

In any case, this has been a long digression. Back to the theological argument. The Jewish Scriptures themselves teach a multiplicity of persons within the Godhead. The most explicit evidence is in the Proverbs, which portrays the wisdom of God as a person in whom the Father delights and “through whom all things were made,” as the Nicene Creed says:

The LORD possessed me at the beginning of His way, before His works of old. From everlasting I was established, from the beginning, from the earliest times of the earth. When there were no depths I was brought forth, when there were no springs abounding with water. Before the mountains were settled, before the hills I was brought forth; while He had not yet made the earth and the fields, nor the first dust of the world. When He established the heavens, I was there, when He inscribed a circle on the face of the deep, when He made firm the skies above, when the springs of the deep became fixed, when He set for the sea its boundary so that the water would not transgress His command, when He marked out the foundations of the earth; then I was beside Him, as a master workman; and I was daily His delight, rejoicing always before Him, rejoicing in the world, His earth, and having my delight in the sons of men (Proverbs 8:22-31).

Dr. Ludwig Ott develops another line of argument:

The Angel of the Lord in the Theophanies of the Old Covenant is called Jahweh, El, and Elohim, and reveals Himself as Elohim and Jahweh. By this is indicated that there are two persons who are God: One, who sends, and One who is sent. Cf. Gn. 16, 7-13; Ex 3, 2-14.²⁰

Finally, God often refers to Himself in the plural, for example in Genesis 1:26: “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness.” The literary device of the royal we did not exist until centuries after this was written, so the most natural reading of these passages is to posit a distinction of persons within the Godhead. Of course, the Aish Rabbi will retort that, granted the noun elohim has a plural morphological form, it is nevertheless accompanied by the singular verb bara. But here once again Petrus Alfonsi will confute the Rabbi with the real Hebraica veritas:

"And he built an altar there and called the name of the place Bethel, that is, 'the house of God.' For there God appeared to him when he fled from his brother" (Gn 35.7). Here, however, "God" and "appeared" are indicated in the plural in the Hebrew. For indeed "elohym" and "niglu" are present there, which signify "they appeared" in the plural. Now, if it had wanted to say "he appeared" in the singular, it would have employed "nigla." It is the same in the book of Samuel when, praising God, David says: "And what nation is there upon the earth like your people, for whom God went forth so that he would redeem it as a people for himself?" (2 Sm 7.23) Here again "God" and "went forth" are plural in the Hebrew. For here again in the same way it contains "helohim" and "halchu" (which means "they went forth," whose singular is "halach"), whereas "he would redeem" and "for himself" are likewise singular. Once more one reads in Jeremiah: "The Lord, however, is the true God, the living God, and the everlasting king" (Jer 10.10). Here again both "God" and "living" are said in the plural in the Hebrew. Therefore, since in the Scriptures the name of God and [his] action are sometimes expressed in the singular, and sometimes in the plural, the two reveal both that God is one, and that he is several persons.²¹

I will present more evidence below dealing specifically with the divinity of the Messiah.

The Aish Rabbi: Christians believe that God came down to earth in human form, as Jesus said: ‘I and the Father are one’ (John 10:30).

Maimonides devotes most of the ‘Guide for the Perplexed’ to the fundamental idea that God is incorporeal, meaning that He assumes no physical form. God is Eternal, above time. He is Infinite, beyond space. He cannot be born, and cannot die. Saying that God assumes human form makes God small, diminishing both His unity and His divinity. As the Torah says: ‘God is not a mortal’ (Numbers 23:19).

B. Douglass: God did not cease to be infinite, omnipresent, and eternal in the Incarnation; He did not stuff His second Person into a finite body. The second Person in fact retained all the qualities mentioned by the Rabbi above when He joined Himself to a human nature in the man Jesus Christ. And so far from diminishing God, the Incarnation demonstrates His supreme virtue and love, that He would condescend so far, and suffer so much, for the good of creatures. As Chesterton pointed out, “Alone of all creeds, Christianity has added courage to the virtues of the Creator. For the only courage worth calling courage must necessarily mean that the soul passes a breaking point – and does not break.” ²² Hence we have a sympathetic High Priest, “One who has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin” (Hebrews 4:15).

The Aish Rabbi: Judaism says that the Messiah will be born of human parents, and possess normal physical attributes like other people. He will not be a demi-god, and will not possess supernatural qualities. In fact, an individual is alive in every generation with the capacity to step into the role of the Messiah. (see Maimonides - Laws of Kings 11:3)

B. Douglass: Regardless of what modern Rabbinic/Talmudic Judaism may teach, the canonical Scriptures indicated that the Messiah would be God. Let’s start with Psalm 45:6-7: “Your throne, O God, is forever and ever; a scepter of uprightness is the scepter of Your kingdom. You have loved righteousness and hated wickedness; therefore God, Your God, has anointed You with the oil of joy above Your fellows.” Clearly two Persons are named “God” in this passage. Again, Jeremiah 23:5-6: “‘Behold, the days are coming,’ declares the LORD, ‘when I will raise up for David a righteous Branch; and He will reign as king and act wisely and do justice and righteousness in the land. In His days Judah will be saved, and Israel will dwell securely; and this is His name by which He will be called, ‘The LORD our righteousness.’” The Messiah will be YHWH Himself. Likewise Isaiah 9:6: “For a child will be born to us, a son will be given to us; and the government will rest on His shoulders; and His name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace.” Finally, although all Jews save the Ethiopians have rejected Baruch as Scripture, it is worthwhile to note that it teaches the Incarnation of God as well: “This is our God, and there shall be no other accounted of in comparison of him. He found out all the way of knowledge, and gave it to Jacob, his servant, and to Israel, his beloved. Afterwards he was seen upon earth, and conversed with men” (Baruch 3:36-38, DRV).

Other Scriptures, if they do not explicitly call the Messiah God, at least indicate that He is pre-existent: “From [Bethlehem] One will go forth for Me to be ruler in Israel. His goings forth are from long ago, from the days of eternity” (Micah 5:2). Similarly Psalm 110:1-4; Daniel 7:13-14.

Moreover, there are other Scriptures whose time of fulfillment has passed, such that if they were not already fulfilled, they never could be. The first is Genesis 49:10: “The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor the ruler's staff from between his feet, until Shiloh comes, and to him shall be the obedience of the peoples.” St. Peter Damien notes that the scepter has in fact departed from Judah some centuries hence: “Since the day you cried out and said to Pilate: we have no king but Caesar, you have not had a king; and since you were unwilling to heed the King of Kings, you have lost your kingdom and your homeland.” ²³

Another is Malachi 3:1: “‘Behold, I am going to send My messenger, and he will clear the way before Me. And the Lord, whom you seek, will suddenly come to His temple; and the messenger of the covenant, in whom you delight, behold, He is coming,’ says the LORD of hosts.” That temple has long since been destroyed. Did the Lord come, or didn’t He?

Finally, Daniel 9:24-26 gives a time frame for the coming of the Messiah, His rejection and murder, and the subsequent destruction of Jerusalem, a time frame which has long since been exceeded. So, if the Scripture is true, the Messiah must have come already. Either that or the expositor will have to reinterpret the “weeks” as something other than periods of seven years, which is by far the most natural interpretation (cf. Leviticus 25:8). I dealt with this issue in my critique of the NAB.

Daniel 9:25 refers to Atraxerxes' decree to Nehemiah to rebuild the Holy City (Nehemiah 2:3-8), which took place on Nisan 1, 444 B.C.²⁴ This is when the 70 weeks (i.e. 490 years) begin. And if we convert the prophetic years of 360 days into precise solar years of 365.242 days, adding the 69 weeks which Gabriel tells us will pass between the decree of Atraxerxes and the coming of Messiah (anointed one) the Prince places us exactly on the date of Christ's triumphal entry into Jerusalem.²⁵

In sum, the Hebrew Scriptures point squarely to Christ.

The Aish Rabbi: The Catholic belief is that prayer must be directed through an intermediary -- i.e. confessing one's sins to a priest. Jesus himself is an intermediary, as Jesus said: ‘No man cometh unto the Father but by me.’

In Judaism, prayer is a totally private matter, between each individual and God. As the Bible says: ‘God is near to all who call unto Him’ (Psalms 145:18). Further, the Ten Commandments state: ‘You shall have no other gods BEFORE ME,’ meaning that it is forbidden to set up a mediator between God and man. (see Maimonides - Laws of Idolatry ch. 1)

B. Douglass: This is certainly one of the oddest arguments the Rabbi has put forth so far. Surely he has read his own Bible, wherein Moses quite frequently acts as a mediator between God and Israel? Has he not read the many Scriptures in which God expects the Jews to go to the priests, who will offer atoning sacrifices on their behalf, so that they can be forgiven (e.g. Leviticus 4:20)? How is this any different from the Catholic Church, when we require sinners to come to the priests in certain situations to obtain forgiveness?

The Aish Rabbi: Catholic doctrine often treats the physical world as an evil to be avoided. Mary, the holiest woman, is portrayed as a virgin. Priests and nuns are celibate. And monasteries are in remote, secluded locations.

By contrast, Judaism believes that God created the physical world not to frustrate us, but for our pleasure. Jewish spirituality comes through grappling with the mundane world in a way that uplifts and elevates. Intimacy in the proper context is one of the holiest acts we can perform.

The Talmud says if a person has the opportunity to taste a new fruit and refuses to do so, he will have to account for that in the World to Come. Jewish rabbinical schools teach how to live amidst the bustle of commercial activity. Jews don't retreat from life, we elevate it.

B. Douglass: I agree that “intimacy in the proper context is one of the holiest acts we can perform.” It is precisely because it is such a desirable good that it is so meritorious to renounce it for the sake of the Kingdom of Heaven. The Rabbi should understand this. Celibacy for the sake of the kingdom is not entirely foreign to Judaism, as Jewish tradition holds that Moses remained continent forever after receiving the command to abstain from sexual intercourse in Exodus 19:15. In any case, the Catholic Church is not a gnostic church; God created the material world “good,” and good it remains.

The Aish Rabbi: Judaism does not demand that everyone convert to the religion. The Torah of Moses is a truth for all humanity, whether Jewish or not. King Solomon asked God to heed the prayers of non-Jews who come to the Holy Temple (Kings I 8:41-43). The prophet Isaiah refers to the Temple as a ‘House for all nations.’

The Temple service during Sukkot featured 70 bull offerings, corresponding to the 70 nations of the world. The Talmud says that if the Romans would have realized how much benefit they were getting from the Temple, they’d never have destroyed it.

Jews have never actively sought converts to Judaism because the Torah prescribes a righteous path for gentiles to follow, known as the ‘Seven Laws of Noah.’ Maimonides explains that any human being who faithfully observes these basic moral laws earns a proper place in heaven.

Maimonides states that the popularity of Christianity (and Islam) is part of God's plan to spread the ideals of Torah throughout the world. This moves society closer to a perfected state of morality and toward a greater understanding of God. All this is in preparation for the Messianic age.

B. Douglass: While it is good that the Aish Rabbi takes such a magnanimous view of the Goyim, the Jewish holy books are far from monolithic on this point. A Jew who wanted to take an opposing view would have little trouble finding Talmudic support for his ideas. The 1903 Jewish Encyclopedia’s article on Gentiles documents the divergent opinions within the tradition.²⁶ For example, some rabbis say nice things about the Gentiles, such as that a Gentile who studies the Torah is like a High Priest. Others say that a Gentile who studies the Torah deserves to be stoned to death, because he has committed adultery with a Jewish bride (Sanhedrin 59a). Some rabbis are Jansenists, and teach that all the works of the gentiles are sins, while some allow that gentiles can do good works. Some rabbis teach that all gentiles go to hell, while some allow that gentiles may go to heaven. The Encyclopedia takes care to distance itself from the most extremely negative views. “Simon ben Yohai is preeminently the anti-Gentile teacher. In a collection of three sayings of his... is found the expression, often quoted by anti-Semites, ‘the best among the Gentiles deserves to be killed.’ This utterance has been felt by Jews to be due to an exaggerated antipathy on the part of a fanatic whose life experiences may furnish an explanation for his animosity.” ²⁷ The Talmud also contains many instances of discriminatory legal treatment of the Gentiles: “The law provides that if a man's ox gores and kills a neighbor’s ox, the carcass and the surviving ox shall be sold, and the proceeds divided between the respective owners (half-damages). If, however, the goring ox has been known to be dangerous and its owner has not kept watch over it, he shall pay full damages for the dead ox and take the carcass (Ex. xxi. 35-36, Hebr.). Here the Gentile is excepted, as he is not a ‘neighbor’ in the sense of reciprocating and being responsible for damages caused by negligence; nor does he keep watch over his cattle... The Mishnah... declares that if a Gentile sue an Israelite, the verdict is for the defendant; if the Israelite is the plaintiff, he obtains full damages (B. K. [Baba Kama] iv. 3).” ²⁸ There’s more where that came from. While the picture is perhaps not as ugly as some have painted it, it certainly is not pretty.

The Aish Rabbi: Indeed, the world is in desperate need of Messianic redemption. War and pollution threaten our planet; ego and confusion erode family life. To the extent we are aware of the problems of society, is the extent we will yearn for redemption. As the Talmud says, one of the first questions a Jew is asked on Judgment Day is: ‘Did you yearn for the arrival of the Messiah?’

How can we hasten the coming of the Messiah? The best way is to love all humanity generously, to keep the mitzvot of the Torah (as best we can), and to encourage others to do so as well.

Despite the gloom, the world does seem headed toward redemption. One apparent sign is that the Jewish people have returned to the Land of Israel and made it bloom again. Additionally, a major movement is afoot of young Jews returning to Torah tradition.

The Messiah can come at any moment, and it all depends on our actions. God is ready when we are. For as King David says: ‘Redemption will come today -- if you hearken to His voice.’

B. Douglass: Here the Rabbi confirms what I noted above, namely that he stakes much of his hope for the coming of the Messiah on Zionism. Supposedly, the more Jews move to Israel, the closer the world is to redemption. This idea has been a disaster, and it has led to one of the most intractable conflicts in modern history. Like all the false Jewish messiahs, from Bar Kokhba who brought wholesale slaughter and destruction down on his people, to Sabbatai Zevi who humiliated them by converting to Islam, it will cause the Jews people nothing but pain. Allow me to propose an alternative remedy for the woes of world Jewry. The Talmud records that:

During the last forty years before the destruction of the Temple the lot [‘For the Lord’] did not come up in the right hand; nor did the crimson-coloured strap become white; nor did the western most light shine; and the doors of the Hekal would open by themselves, until R. Johanan b. Zakkai rebuked them, saying: Hekal, Hekal, why wilt thou be the alarmer thyself? I know about thee that thou wilt be destroyed, for Zechariah ben Ido has already prophesied concerning thee: Open thy doors, O Lebanon, that the fire may devour thy cedars.” ²⁹

So, starting about 30 A.D., the crimson colored strap which was tied to the Temple door on Yom Kippur, and which was supposed to turn white to signify that God had accepted the sacrifice and forgiven the sins of the people, remained blood red. They had killed the righteous man (Wisdom 2:12-22) crying out “his Blood shall be on us and on our children” (Matthew 27:25), and thus they were under the wrath of God. In so far as their descendants culpably follow them in their rejection of Christ, they too abide in such a state.

The way out, as it happens, is through the selfsame Blood, the Blood of the Immaculate Lamb who takes away the sins of the world, and who is able to wash both Jew and Gentile whiter than snow. To adapt the words of Petrus Alfonsi³⁰: O Aish Rabbi, if it please God, the time will yet come when the descendants will acknowledge the iniquity of their fathers and will mourn and grieve while suffering for their sins, and they will be converted to the Lord. And may God omnipotent, I beseech him, grant that you be one of those who are converted.

St. Paul, pray for us

St. Alphonse Ratisbonne, pray for us

St. Edith Stein, pray for us

Mary, Mother of God, pray for us

Ben Douglass
March 24, Anno Domini MMVI

End Notes

[1] Owen J. Blum, O.F.M., trans., The Letters of Peter Damian 1-30 (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press) p. 52.

[2] Cf. Sukkah 52a.

[3] Maimonides, Mishneh Torah: The Book of Knowledge, trans. Moses Hyamson (New York: Bloch, 1938) p. 92a, cited in Roy Schoeman, Salvation is from the Jews (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 2003) p. 116.

[4] Robert Sungenis, The Catholic Apologetics Study Bible, Vol I, The Gospel According to Matthew (Goleta, CA: Queenship Publishing, 2003) pp. 189-190.

[5] In Fr. George Haydock, The Douay-Rheims New Testament (Monrovia, CA: Catholic Treasures, 1991) p. 1249.

[6] Petrus Alfonsi, Dialogue against the Jews, trans. Irven M. Resnick (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2006) p. 179.

[7] Abegg, Flint, and Ulrich, The Dead Sea Scrolls Bible: The Oldest Know Bible Translated for the First Time into English (San Francisco, CA: Harper Collins, 1999) p. 519.

[8] C. F. Volney, The Ruins (New York, NY: Truth Seeker Co., 1890) p. 169.

[9] Ibid., p. 1.

[10] Ibid., pp. 149-151.

[11] F. A. Wright, trans., Select Letters of St. Jerome (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991) pp. 211, 213.

[12] Cf. John Haffert, Meet the Witnesses (Asbury, NJ: The 101 Foundation, 2002)

[13] cf. Fr. Charles Carty, Padre Pio the Stigmatist (Rockford, IL: TAN Books, 1989); C. Bernard Ruffin, Padre Pio: The True Story (Huntington, IN: Our Sunday Visitor, 1991)

[14] “Being brought and laid before the image of our blessed lady [Sir Roger Wentworth’s daughter] was there in the sight of many worshipful people so grievously tormented, and in face, eyes, look, and countenance so grisly changed, with her mouth drawn aside and her eyes laid out upon her cheeks, that it was a terrible sight to behold. And after many marvelous things, perpetrated at the same time upon various persons by the devil through God’s sufferance, all the remnant as well as the maiden herself in the presence of all the company were restored to their good state perfectly and suddenly cured. And in this matter there is no pretext of begging, no suspicion of feigning, no possibility of counterfeiting, no simpleness in the witnesses, her father and mother right honorable and sorely abashed to see such changes in their children, the witnesses, great number, and many of great worship, wisdom, and good experience, the maid herself too young to feign, and the fashion itself too strange for any man to feign” (Lawler, Marc’Hadour, and Marius, eds., The Complete Works of St. Thomas More, Vol. 6, A Dialogue Concerning Heresies [New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1981] pp. 93-94, my “translation” from the Early Modern English).

[15] Cecil Roth, A History of the Marranos (Philadelphia, PA: The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1932) p. 1.

[16] Ibid. , pp. 19-20.

[17] Ibid. , pp. 21, 78-79.

[18] Ibid. , p. 170.

[19] Schoeman, op. cit., p. 32.

[20] Dr. Ludwig Ott, Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma (Rockford, IL: TAN Books, 1974) p. 54.

[21] Resnick, op. cit., p. 171.

[22] G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 1995) p. 145.

[23] Blum, op. cit., p. 47

[24] cf. Josh McDowell, The New Evidence That Demands a Verdict (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1999) p. 200.

[25] cf. Harold Hoehner, Chronological Aspects of the Life of Christ (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1977) p. 138, quoted in McDowell, op. cit., p. 200.

[26] Rabbi Dr. Isidore Singer, Ed., The Jewish Encyclopedia, Vol. 5 (New York and London: Funk and Wagnalls Co., 1903) pp. 615-626.

[27] Ibid., p. 617.

[28] Ibid. , p. 620.

[29] Rabbi Dr. Leo Jung, trans., The Talmud, Seder Mo’ed V, Yoma (London: The Soncino Press, 1938) p. 186. The first century Jewish historian Flavius Josephus likewise records many miraculous portents of divine wrath and judgment which occurred in the Temple between the death of Christ and its destruction in 70 A.D.

[30] Cf. Resnick, op. cit., p. 96.