Helen Young said
Dansanta

Helen Young said
In the Gospels, Jesus is reported to have gone to the synagogues a lot, and that it was his “custom”.
He talked and preached primarily to the Jewish people during his earthly ministry.
He seems to know good portions of the Jewish law and the Torah.
  

1. Correct, but that is simple because those were the gathering places. There was nowhere else to preach.
—————————————————————————
If Jesus wasn’t Jewish, why would he go around preaching and talking to only or mostly the Jews? Why wouldn’t he go somewhere else and start talking to other people?
Also, Paul stated that Jesus was born under the Law.
  

1. You actually make quite an important argument: almost all, if not all, jewish rabbis were teaching just jews.
Jesus broke that tradition and thought everyone else. He did not talked only to Jews, but the contrary, he were talking to non-Jews, eating with them and drinking water from them, which is not according to the jewish clean rituals. Jesus specifically broke tribalism and went beyond ethnicity.
Who is my Mother? Who are my brothers? Everyone who obey the Father (not just ethnically jews).

2. Paul said Jesus was born under the Law. The Hebraic Law. Jesus was an Israelite. The Law was Hebraic. Moses was a Hebrew. The Jews, that follow the same Mosaic Law, were just one tribe out of the 12 tribes of Israel. In fact, many of the polemics between Jesus and the Pharisees (the jews) were specifically because they were circumventing the Mosaic Law with their oral and elderly tradition; and that they were also practiced some sort of legalism, very monetarily beneficial for them. Jesus was speaking partly about a return to the ancient law of the Hebrews. About a cleansing of a Temple. About Jews being hypocritical that they misunderstood and misused the original message of the Hebrew Moses.

Helen Young said
Jesus is a Jewish name in its correct Hebrew spelling and pronouciation.
Jesus and his mother went through the Jewish rituals that were required after his birth.
  

3. Jesus is at the origin a Hebraic name; first, it was shortened by the Jews, from Yehoshuah; then the -us termination is added by Greeks, the J instead of I is added by the King James Bible, the English people.

The name Jesus comes from the Hebrew Yehoshua (יְהוֹשֻׁעַ) which later shortened to Yeshua (יֵשׁוּעַ).
In Greek it became Iēsous (Ἰησοῦς).
In Latin it became Iesus.
In English it became Jesus.

Here is the clean origin chain:

Yehoshua → Yeshua → Iēsous → Iesus → Jesus

That’s like you’re saying that the name of Matthew is American. Or Marcus is German.
At what step Jesus becomes a Greek name? A Latin name? An English name? A Mexican name? I don’t know of any nation in the entire world across history from the beginning of time that has the name of “Jesus” except for the Mexicans. Jesus is a Mexican name.
The origin of “Jesus” goes back in time before any Jew, synagogue or temple ever existed. You’re convoluting Hebrews with Jews.

Serene said
“We Jews”
John 4:22

Interestingly, in the New Testament, even though King Herod the Great is given the ʻKing of the Jews’ title by the Roman Senate historically, he is only show discomfited that a ‘King of the Jews’ has been declared by Eastern traditions in Matthew 2 and don’t give him that title; Eastern traditions imo presumably necessitates lineage.

Jesus’ Jewish lineage  isn’t contested by Jewish scholars either. Neither is his Davidic lineage. Pedigree collapse made it common anyway.

So you can be considered Jewish through conversion and have patrilineally foreign and matrilineally foreign lineage. 

• Herod the Great’s dad is Antipater the Edomite and his mother is Cypros the Nabataean, per Josephus.
Did Herod only practice Judaism? He built three temples to Caesar Augustus. His Herodium was designed in a divinizing architectural language (likely a part of why Epiphanius said the Herodians worshipped Herod the Great.) Herod had frescoes depicting humans inside, and statues depicting himself right outside Jewish borders. It’s safe to say thatbhe was multicultural, but no hard evidence exists of him tributing Augustus (though Herod Phillip put Augustus’ temple on his coins).

My hypothesis is that Jesus is patrilineally of the Nabataean kingdom, imo referred to as the Kingdom of God because indirect descriptors are how they utilize titles in certain situations. I think he considers it a more original religion to Abraham in Mesopotamian Ur as part of the Antiquarian Revival, which then picked up Canaanite and Egyptian commonalities.

There’s actually several people in the Hebrew Bible with patrilineally foreign fathers who are treated as normal Israelites and Jews in their own stories.
  

1. John 4:22 it’s actually a good counter-argument. The salvation is of the jews. I think with a bit of stretch this can be argued otherwise. Jesus doesn’t say “we jews” in the original text. The literal translation is:

You worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews.

Because Jesus was speaking to a Samaritan woman, the assumed blanks were filled with “You Samaritans” and “we Jews”. But Jesus doesn’t actually say he is a Jew. 

The entire pericope is about Jesus sitting at the Jacob’s well in Samaria and asking a woman to give him water, because he is thirsty; she is surprised that a Jew, who observes purity rituals and does not eat nor drink from and with others, like Samaritans, is asking her this. This should be considered an argument against Jesus’s jewishness; he was passing as a Jew, but because he was opened to non-Jews, he might’ve not be one. Jacob is called the “father” of the Samaritans; Jesus seems to connect with the Israelite/Hebrew ancestors. It seems also to be related with the place of worship:

²⁰ Our fathers worshipped on this mountain, but you all say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship.”

²¹ Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe Me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. ²² You worship what you do not know; we know what we worship, for salvation is of the Jews. ²³ Yet the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth. For the Father seeks such to worship Him.

So Jesus makes an inclusive move here, including Samaritans, disregarding the necessity of Jerusalem in order to worship God. Who ever wrote John must’ve been Jewish; I believe John is the most Jewish gospels of all. So yeah, John seems to portray a very Jewish Jesus.

2. If I’m not mistaken, Herod was a king over a norther region, that included jews and other people, thus a mixed people. Judea in itself was governed by the Romans. Not sure how Herod could call himself the “king of jews” in a mixed area and not even over Judea. Then again, Jesus or his disciples never insisted to be called the “king of jews”; it seems that only the Romans or the Jews themselves came with this false accusation so Jesus can be killed for rebellion. Also the episode with the killing of the babies seem not be historical. There is no evidence for it, but then again, what evidence is for everything?

3. We are talking about the “historical Jesus” here; otherwise, the biblical Jesus is literally everything, including a David descendant. But historians pretty much agree that David’s lineage was extinct centuries before Jesus was ever born. I might be wrong, but this is what I read a long time ago; not sure if this was updated. Jesus couldn’t be a real David descendant; it was later added in the gospel in order to fulfill the prophecies of the Messiah.

4. You are about half correct: you can claim membership to the ethnicity of the Jews through the rule of blood: if your mom is jewish, then so are you. This is not unheard of, Hungarians for example have the same rule, my son for example has Hungarian citizenship because his mom is Hungarian. Patriarchal lineages are not to be confused with “asking for citizenry” though; they prove a kingship request. For example, a descendant of David might claim the throne. However, all of these fail because Jesus never insisted to claim membership to the Jews ethnicity (and usually it’s claimed for benefits), and actually quite set himself apart, inviting Gentiles into his new religion. 

5. Herod the Great was not a Jew; neither by ethnicity nor by culture. Everybody knew this and thus there was a resentment against him. This is actually the rule in societies: the aristocracy is of the invaders, a different race of the locals that are their subjects. For example, the Normans in the British isles.

6. That is something that I very much agree: Jesus has to be coming from a mixed background. He wasn’t pure Jewish neither he insisted to be called such. He was probably referring to himself as an Israelite. He tried to conduct a revival of the older religion of the Hebrews, including a new theory of a Kingdom of God, probably taken from Daniel + the Greek myths. He had arguments with the Jewish priesthood class, Pharisees and Sadducees. For Levites, it seems that these were rather neutral, they were just some service providers. Jesus main nature of the polemic was that the Jews corrupted the ancient religion of the Hebrews. Even today Pharisee means hypocrite. What is something that I don’t agree is if you’ll ever try to make the Kingdom of God an earthly Kingdom; I think the gospels are very clear in that regard: Jesus was speaking of the Kingdom of God in the after-life, with people resurrecting in bodies. This is unheard of in the actual Jewish religion of that time (and actually Hebrew religion, if you except Daniel – but even Daniel might not be Hebraic, if it’s true it’s a forgery, it’s placed 150 AD, thus, centuries after the Hebrews). 

7. Correct; they are treated as Israelites. But I have high doubts that they were treated as Jews. Jews is one tribe that happened to be majoritarian after 500 years from the original Hebrews. Sure that some smaller tribes, given the fact that they worshiped and observed kind of the same thing, would might call themselves “jews” in front of the strangers like Greeks and Romans. Galileans for example can present themselves as “jews” or “other jews” in front of Greeks. It’s the same today for example in UK that a person would call himself “English” (the proper term is British) in foreign countries, despite he’s not actually English; he might be Scottish, Welsh, Irish, but these are the details for prolonged discussions, not for the meet and greet discussions. Sure a Scott would be upset to call him English; but not so in a foreign country by someone else. He will understand the ignorance and just smile. 

Helen Young said
Christians have been carrying around the Jewish Bible with them for close to 2000 years.
There are prophecies and references to Jesus in the Jewish Bible.
That is why Christians have been known to call the Jewish Bible the Old Testament; it’s because it’s a testament to Jesus.
If Jesus were not Jewish, why would Christians have been carrying around this enormous book with them for so many, many centuries and attaching it so completely and tightly to the New Testament/the Christian Bible?
I’d go so far as to say that the Christian Bible is both the New and Old Testaments, while the Jewish or Hebrew Bible is just the Old Testament.
It’s similar to the way Catholics include certain books in their Bible, while Protestants do not.
  

…the Hebraic Bible…

… in the Hebrew Bible. 

… the Hebraic Bible. 

… the Hebrew Bible. 

Catholics include all books in their Bible, including of Greek and Jewish origin, while Protestants do not include these, keeping only Hebrew books. 

Hebrews seem to appear roughly 1800–1500 BCE. Not sure when they went extinct, but surely they couldn’t last a millennia, but maybe several centuries.

The 2 kingdoms, Israel and Judah appeared around 931 BCE, which is 500+ years later than the Hebrews; it would make sense that at this point the actual Hebrews and whatever language they were speaking would’ve diluted already. 

The Babylonian exile took place in 586 BCE, about 500 years after these 2 kingdoms, which mark a collapse of these kingdoms.

About 500 years in the time, when Jesus was born, there were several smaller countries, like Judea (under the control of the Romans), Galilee (under the control of the non-jew Herod), Perea (same), Samaria (Romans), Decapolis (Greek colonies), Edumea. 

So the rule is that about 500 years, these people get changed, as well their language and culture and their genetics. Which makes sense. Look at literally any European country. Look at UK. In the times before Romans, they were celtic tribes. Then the Romans came. Then in 500 years the Saxons. Then for another 500 years the Angles and Iutes. In years 700 were invaded by the Norse. About 1000 AD they were invaded by the French Norse, the Normans. Calling all these people, over the course of 2 millennia, “English” makes no sense. They were celtic, germanic, norse and so on. You can call them “British”, given the fact that the name of the island is Britain, but in so manner calling Judea that doesn’t mean that it makes everybody there jewish; it’s just a geographical name. Modern British people can’t understand older English of the 1 millennia ago. Almost at all. They do seem to understand the medieval English, of Shakespeare, 500 years ago, but even that might sound uncanny. 

Calling all these people “jewish” for 2 millennia is not only stupid, but doing intentionally, it is ominous, because it carries an agenda, an ideology.  Scholars (very many jewish) try to inoculate this idea of membership to a millennar civilization that, in fact, never existed in reality, very likely for political reasons, i.e. a modern claim to today’s Israel territory. Modern Jews, genetically, lingvistically and religiously, have nothing to do with the ancient Jews of 2000 years ago, as well and the ancient jews of 2000 years ago did not have anything to do with the Hebrews of 3500 years ago.

Who were the Jews? The Jews, in Jesus’ times, were a group of people from the region of Judea, with a distinct religion of the others. That’s it. The other people in the area were mixed, some of them did hold sacred the Mosaic Law like the Jews, but that doesn’t make them Jews. Jesus himself, was not a Jew, he wasn’t from Judah, he was from Galilee, he was an Israelite, that had many arguments with the actual Jews, that he labeled them as corrupt, hypocrite, false teachers and so on.

DavidFord said 
Details?
If an individual converts to rabbinic Judaism, is that convert a Jew?
 

I don’t think I can deliver more details about a historical fact that is quite simple: the ethnicity of a people were equal to their religion.

If an individual converts to rabbinic Judaism… you should ask a rabbi about this. Probably it might be a valid Jew in some secular/liberal/progressive Jewish sects. In Chabad or Hassidic, very probably no and he will be considered “special” up until his death; I’m not sure if he will even find a jewish wife to marry to give offspring to considered 100% jewish children. Because the “jewish” in this case simply means the ethnicity. Can you become black if you live in a ghetto? Can you become Amish if you live nearby Amish people and go to their gatherings? I don’t think so. 

Did the people of Ireland’s ethnicity change when Ireland became Catholic?
In this scenario, did ethnicity change?:
 

Well, in that case, primitive pagan people were reaching civilization status by acquiring a well know civilizationary religion, Christianity. They didn’t quite changed their religion, because they didn’t had an organized religion in the first place, they just had some superstitions and village folk traditions. They remain the same people.

But you failed to mention the wars between Protestant Irish and the Catholic Irish, as well as between the Catholic Irish and Protestant English. Which, despite being of the same ethnicity in the first case, they acted as different tribes; in the second case, it just exacerbated tribal warfare.

Arthur Koestler, _The Thirteenth Tribe:  The Khazar Empire and its Heritage_ (1976)

…the Khazars… chose a surprising method of resisting both the Western pressure to become Christian and the Eastern to adopt Islam.
Rejecting both, they converted to Judaism.

And why were they pressured? You fail to mention the political background of this. 

Also the conversion of the Khazars were something to a medieval Judaism, not ancient nor modern. It’s like saying the French converted to gnosticism (Cathars). The French today are Atheist, with a history of being Catholic and Protestant. Medieval branches just failed or disappeared. There are Khazars today for example. 

“The episode when Jesus argues with the Sadducees… explicitly said that Sadducees do not believe in resurrection”
Did the Pharisees “believe in resurrection”? 

I do not know the answer of that question. Very probably no. They probably believed in life after death as a soul nearby God. Jesus was speaking about a resurrection in body.

I dunno what “the Highlander argument” is.
“Which John himself introduces” where?
When do you believe “the gospel authors were writing their gospels”?
 

It was just a joke about the existence of an immortal human, like in the movie Highlander. 

John, it seems, that he tries to address the “problem” of the first 3 gospels, that speak about second coming of Jesus in the life time of those people back then. By the times of John all those people were dead. So John speaks about in John 21:22–23. However, this is how John tries to explain a contradiction. I don’t know the original meaning of the saying in the synoptic gospels.  

Even “professionals in the field” make mistakes and overlook things.

Yes, but not rookie mistakes, my friend. Calling Jesus “jewish” is a lie part of a bigger propaganda. Calling Hebrews as Jews and the Mosaic Law, which is Hebrew, as well, jewish, is a severe distortion of the truth. Equating ancient Jews with modern Jews as well. These are not mistakes, these are intentional distortions in order to peddle an agenda.

These positions appear across his academic textbooks, popular books (especially the 1999 volume), blog (ehrmanblog.org), podcast, lectures, and interviews. They are not fringe claims of his; they align with mainstream critical New Testament scholarship on the historical Jesus and the dating/composition of the Gospels, though of course they remain debated by more conservative scholars who prefer earlier dates and non-failed readings of the eschatological sayings.  

Yes, I know very well of ** you do not have permission to see this link **, you don’t have to convince me of. My dislike, action to expose, name calling towards Bart is not based on ignorance. I did actually watched all of these.