Just out of curiosity...
It seems many practices in Judaism come out of debate between Rabbi's over time. My questions, since it appears the former has been said by The Rabbi in previous posts, is that Judaism is fluid, depending on ongoing debate. If that is so, here are my questions:
1. Why hasn't the possibility of Jesus being the Messiah been debated with the vigor that other issues have been over the centuries? I have been told that great debates have gone on over nits. This claim is certainly not a nit. He claimed he was Messiah, so either he is a liar or was telling the truth. Or was insane or was telling the truth. Or he was truly a bad man, a demon, or was telling the truth. He cannot be a good prophet, a good man, a good teacher, a good anything if he is not who he says he is. Judaism, at the least, tolerates Christians and attempts to co-exist. If Jews think today that Jesus is a blashphemer, why not come out and say so and lay down the case for blasphemy. Why bother to get along with Christians at all? Or why not have a serious debate about the possibility that he is who he says rather than rejecting the possibility out of hand with no serious debate. Debate, it appears, is what the Rabbi's do. In the post modern world, I think that would be worthy of consideration. If Jesus is who he claims, it posts no threat to Judaism; it fulfills the promise. How could that be bad?
It was treated with about as much thought as the idea that Joseph Smith received the Book of Mormon from an angel in mainstream Christian denominations.
Really, we have a pretty good knowledge of what the messiah is supposed to do. And Jesus (again, assuming there was one historical person who matches what the Christian Bible says about him) didn't do any of those things.
As for claims, I read the book Jesus the Jew by Geza Vermes, an Oxford scholar. I think he maintains there that claims for messiahship are a later invention.
The only debate among the rabbis was the point at which someone claiming to be a Christian could be excluded wholly from the Jewish people. For example, let's say you had Jewish couple who had a son and they were Christians. The father cannot be counted in a minyan at a synagogue, cannot be called for any honors, cannot testify in a court etc etc. But if the son disavows Christianity when he grows up then he is a regular Jew like anyone else. So the question is, at what point do you stop assuming a Jewish lineage and say that anyone claiming to be a Christian, absent other information, is prima facie a non-Jew.
The answer is that it happened fairly late, when Christianity was made up mostly of non-Jews.
But that was the only debate. As for depictions of Jesus, there is an interesting passage in the Talmud in Gittin on this that I am not going to post.
