Judaism's View of Jesus

Judaism's View Of Jesus

Jews have traditionally seen Jesus as one of a number of false messiahs who have appeared throughout history. Jesus is viewed as having been the most influential, and consequently the most damaging, of all false messiahs. However, since the mainstream Jewish belief is that the Messiah has not yet come and that the Messianic Age is not yet present, the total rejection of Jesus as either messiah or deity in Judaism has never been a central issue for Judaism. At the heart of Judaism are the Torah, its commandments, the Tanakh, and ethical monotheism such as in the Shema — all of which predated Jesus.

Judaism has never accepted any of the claimed fulfillments of prophecy that Christianity attributes to Jesus. Judaism also forbids the worship of a person as a form of idolatry, since the central belief of Judaism is the absolute unity and singularity of God. Jewish eschatology holds that the coming of the Messiah will be associated with a specific series of events that have not yet occurred, including the return of Jews to their homeland and the rebuilding of The Temple, a Messianic Age of peace and understanding during which "the knowledge of God" fills the earth, and since none of these events occurred during the lifetime of Jesus (nor have they occurred afterwards, except for the return of many Jews to their homeland in Israel), he is not a candidate for messiah.