Human Sacrifice and Messiah: Answering New2Torah
Watch Jono & Jason respond to Zachary Bauer’s “New2Torah” video in which he champions human sacrifice and perpetuates a sinister anti-Semitic lie. Hear what Rabbi Tovia Singer reveals about this dark portrait of the Jew that Zachary so desperately paints.
Join us for this year’s Tanakh Tour of Israel!
Regardless whether you try to fit “jesus” into any story, how can you say that simply “trying harder” is the only teaching that the Bible offers? None of us deny what was instructed to Cain but do we deny all the blood that was shed for atonement? And go a step further. Do we deny the words of YHVH when He says that sin requires the person to die in many cases and in many cases we read that person died?
if all of God’s word is true, then you have to deal with all of God’s word. There is no doubt that the Tanak teaches death as a result of sin, substitutionary atonement, the shedding of blood, trying harder, etc. And without demanding YHVH to write the Bible according to how we arrogantly claim, we should surrender to every word written.
I see no difference in you guys trying to fit words into your biased story just like you accuse others of doing. How about instead, we recognize what any person on the scene in the first century would automatically think of when they hear from the mouth of a Jew, “behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.”
I want to be very careful here. In Daniel, a beast always represents an empire, but you can’t go backwards and say that an empire represents, or is, a beast. I think a follower of Jesus would say, the sacrificial lamb represents Christ but you can’t go backwards and say Christ is the lamb sacrifice .
Jesus obviously was not a sacrifice, in the temple sense, since he was not offered on the alter.
The Passover lamb was a substitute so that the people within the dwelling were not killed but were passed-over. The life of the lamb substituted for the life of those within. The picture works because Jesus is also a substitute so that those he protects are not killed. Jesus doesn’t cover everyone, just those within the dwelling – those who choose to be under his protection. It’s a picture, but it doesn’t work in reverse.
The Passover lamb is a picture of what Jesus did for mankind, but I think it is very easy to take the picture too far. As far as I can tell, neither Jesus nor his disciples ever talk about Jesus’ death being a sacrifice. I suppose you could say that he voluntarily sacrificed himself a a substitute, but that’s not the same thing as being a Temple sacrifice. Greater love has no man than this, that he give his life for his friend.
Jesus talks about eating his body and drinking his blood which was too radical for most of his Jewish listeners. Jesus, however, was talking about a symbolic act, not the Catholic Mass idea of actually eating his body and drinking his blood. Jesus’ disciples did not eat his body or drink his blood. They did understand that Jesus was talking about participating in a Passover style event. This is the problem with symbolism, people take it too literally. Passover is a picture pointing to Jesus but you can’t take the picture too far, as Paul does.
I think there are some spectacular misconceptions surrounding this idea, starting even as early as the first and second century. Paul and his group got some of this very wrong. Jesus was not a human sacrifice. The Passover lamb sacrifice is a picture of Jesus, but Jesus is not a literal sacrifice. You can’t take symbology backwards.
David, you briefly mentioned Jesus talking about eating his body and drinking his blood, and brushed it off as being metaphoric. I have to ask–is it logical that what God declares to be a heinous sin, one that will result in being cut off from His people, can be turned into a positive metaphor?
I mean the dichotomy is extreme:
[Lev 17:10 NET] 10 “‘Any man from the house of Israel or from the foreigners who reside in their midst who eats any blood, I will set my face against that person who eats the blood, and I will cut him off from the midst of his people,
[Jhn 6:54 NET] 54 The one who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.
In the first case, the actual consumption of blood causes God to set his face against the consumer and cut him off, while in the second case, while metaphorical, the consumption of the blood grants immortality!
Troy, thanks for responding.
In Daniel when it talks about a Golden Lion with wings of an eagle, do you think there really was such a beast? Symbology cannot be taken literally.
The Jews of Jesus’ time balked at this saying in exactly the same way you are doing. In a way, Jesus may have been culling his true followers from followers of convenience. I hope you will notice that none of Jesus disciples actually ate his body or drank his blood? Jesus himself explain the symbology at the last supper. If you take what he told multitude out of context, it certainly sounds bad, but when taken in context with the last supper, his disciples understood this was symbolic.
I don’t want to brush this off, but I also don’t want to dwell on something that is obviously not intended to be taken literally. There’s lots of symbology in the Bible. You have to recognize symbology (prophecy, parables, dreams) and not take them literally. Surely you don’t actually think that seven lean cows ate up seven fat cows?
There’s another NT case of symbology taken too literally, Peter’s vision of the animals in the sheet. Many Christians try to use this vision as an excuse to eat pork. However, if you read what Peter says his vision means, it is quite different. Peter says that he is to call no Man unclean. Peter doesn’t take his vision as a change in God’s Law, even though that’s with many Christians do. In prophecy, a beast represents an empire. The beasts in Peter’s vision represent other nations.
Once again, you can’t take symbology literally.
David:
I acknowledged that the passage in John 6 is metaphoric. That’s not the point. The point is that despite that fact, it’s just not possible for sin to be made metaphorically positive. You are conditioned as a Christian to accept this metaphor, but replace consuming blood with any other sin, however metaphoric, and I dare you to make sense of it:
The one who commits adultery has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.
Let’s make it more metaphoric:
The one who loves me so much that he is willing to commit adultery with me, not physically but metaphorically, has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.
It’s laughable. You don’t see it because you are conditioned to find it acceptable. Same with Peter’s vision, it’s laughable to think that the creator of the universe chose to confuse Peter with a vision demanding he eat unclean animals (again in a metaphorical sense), causing Peter to thrice refuse, citing his history of clean eating, to convince him that gentiles aren’t unclean.
Troy, I think what you are saying is that you don’t want to believe because it doesn’t seem logical to you or you find it offensive. You don’t have any scriptures to back up your view? Where is the scripture that says YHVH can’t use anything offensive in a vision? I’m sorry, but that just isn’t a way I am willing to limit God.
Jesus told the multitude something they found offensive, perhaps to see who would follow and who would turn back? Most reacted in exactly the same way you do now. In the end, everyone abandon Yeshua, even his closest disciples, all because they were offended by what he said.
In Peter’s vision, this is the whole point. Peter is being asked to do and believe something he finds offensive. How else would you propose that YHVH get this point across to Peter? When Peter returned to Jerusalem, the other believers also found this offensive, yet they could not argue with God.
You asked if this made any sense? No, it really doesn’t, but then where is the requirement that YHVH has to make sense to us? Where was the sense when Abraham prayed for a son and then YHVH asked Abraham to sacrifice that same son? Did Abraham say “this is laughable, I won’t do it”? YHVH tested Abraham in exactly the same way, YHVH asked Abraham to obey, even though it didn’t make any sense.
What can I say? Now it’s a matter of faith, of what you think YHVH can or can’t do. Will you be offended?
BTW, Where was that scripture that says it is not possible for sin to be made metaphorically positive?
Jason, I just looked up Isa 53 in the Hebrew, and it can easily be translated “stripes”. The text does not say bruised, bruised, bruised. Please check again.
On the question of human sacrifice, where does anyone say that one man can die for another man’s sin? No Christian would ever say this is true. Christians would say all men have sinned and must die for their own sins, except for one. Jesus is a very special case, since Jesus is not exactly a man. The Christians would say that Jesus can die for the sins of another man because he has no sin of his own. If you are going to criticize the Christians, at least criticize for what they really say. If you don’t believe that Jesus is YHVH, then of course you would reject this premise, but you must start by arguing against the Axiom, not against the Conclusion. If you could prove that Jesus is not YHVH, then all Christians would agree with you. Can you?
Ezekiel 18 is not limiting God. Ezekiel is telling man not to kill a father for the sins of the sons or the sons for the sins of the father. Ezekiel is not telling God what he can or can’t do. Three times in Torah, YHVH says that he (God) visits the iniquities of the father’s onto the sons. This is the whole point of the virgin birth. If Ezekiel is saying we only have our own sins, then he would be changing Torah. Ezekiel cannot change Torah. Ezekiel is only talking to man, not to God. Since you start with a false premise, you reach a faulty conclusion.
David:
You are certainly correct that it is a matter of faith. It takes faith to believe in the the new testament, because it is so contradictory to the Tanakh that its claims lack any substantial support from it. The new testament is accurate that trusting it is “the substance of things HOPED for, the evidence of things NOT SEEN”.
I was where you are for decades, until I woke up and started actually reading scripture for myself, beginning with the Torah, and then examining everything that came later against what came first.
It’s dead simple to show how christianity doesn’t add up. The requirement to have some sort of “saving faith” in a future messiah is nowhere found in Torah. Thus it is not required under the covenant governed by the Torah.
Christianity sees this as a requirement of the new covenant instituted at Jesus’ death (and resurrection if you believe that happened.)
Does the Tanakh speak of a new covenant? Yes! Do we live under it today? No! This isn’t even something that the scriptures are vague or unclear about. Read the new covenant prophecy of Jeremiah 31:31-34 and you’ll see that when it comes, everyone from the least to the greatest will know God, and thus nobody will have to be taught about him any longer. This is a clear pointer to the future messianic age. You find confirmation of this idea of universal knowledge of God during the messianic age throughout the Tanakh (Isaiah 2:2-4, 11:9, 42:1, Jeremiah 33:9, Ezekiel 38:16, 23, Micah 4:1-3, Zephaniah 3:9, Zechariah 14:9, 16).
Even the author of Hebrews, writing 20-30 years after Jesus, after he quotes Jeremiah’s prophecy in Hebrews 8:8-12, summarizes by saying that what is “growing obsolete and aging is about to disappear” (speaking of the old covenant). He’s not talking about a new covenant that has been in place for 20-30 years, but a new covenant that is right around the corner, but not quite here yet. The old one is aging, and about to disappear, but it’s still in place. He refers to it in this manner because he believes Jesus is returning imminently to usher in the messianic age, just as promised when he indicated that some who were hearing him speak would still be alive at his return to establish his kingdom (Matthew 16:28).
So there you go, the new covenant is still in the future, since Jesus did not come back quickly as promised to usher in the messianic age. Therefore the Mount Sinai covenant is still in full effect, and nothing has been added to it. No requirement to believe in Jesus is required for righteousness or salvation.
Regarding the idea of punishing succeeding generations for the sins of the father, (from your response to Jason), this is not incompatible with Ezekiel’s description of forgiveness. The evil committed by one generation can certainly effect subsequent generations, particularly when they follow in the same footsteps. However, if the repent and turn back, and do righteousness, the chain can be broken. There is no tension between the Torah and Ezekiel 18.
Again, I was were you are for decades. I encourage you to keep seeking YHVH. I wish I had started much earlier in life. Now my steps are ordered by one of my favorite commandments:
[Deu 13:4 NET] 4 You must follow YHVH your God and revere ONLY him; and you must observe his commandments, obey him, serve him, and remain loyal to him.
Troy, wow you certainly wrote an epistle.
I think you have me mistaken with someone else. I don’t think you’ve ever been where I am now. I reject Paul and his Church, the Catholics, but I do not reject Jesus (or Yeshua or whatever his name really was? It’s not clear). Jesus was most definitely a Jew, not a Christian, as were all his disciples. So, I’m not going to respond to any of your comments in regards to false apostle Paul or his group.
It seems very plain in the book of Acts that God took Paul out, specifically for teaching against Torah. God didn’t kill Paul but rather threw him in prison for the rest of his life. Even from prison, Paul managed to stir the pot by writing nasty letters to his old churches who are now under the influence of the Jerusalem believers. Based on Paul’s tirades, Jesus’ disciples must have been teaching Paul’s churches to follow Torah. His nasty letters (Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, etc) continue his anti-Torah rhetoric all to no avail. Paul himself testifies to Timothy that all the churches of Asia abandoned him. It seems obvious that when the Galatians received their letter, they threw it in the trash. Why shouldn’t I do the same?
I can find no scriptural evidence for a new covenant. The Jeremiah reference actually says renewed covenant, with Israel and with Judah . I can find no evidence that Jesus was anything but a Jew, nor taught anything but Torah/Tanakh. Today we would probably call him a Karaite, not a Rabbinic. I’m pretty sure Jesus is appalled at what is taught and done in his name.
Jesus did set up a little ceremony, which is apparently supposed to happen every time we eat. The ceremony is not intended to replace or negate any previous covenant. YHVH makes lots of covenants in the Tanakh; Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Aaron, David… None replace any previous covenants, so why should this one? I’m not looking for any new covenant. I’m quite happy to follow Jesus and Moses under the current covenant.
When you say it is dead simple to show that Christianity doesn’t add up in light of the Torah, do you mean the teachings of Jesus or the teachings of Paul? Try it without Paul and see if things add up. I think I agree with you, but I’ll need some more specifics. Paul’s teachings certainly do not add up, but that doesn’t mean we have to reject Jesus and his disciples. The original 12 certainly disagreed with Paul in their time. In 2Corinthians, Paul calls them devils. In 2Peter, when describing Paul, Peter says don’t be led away with the error of the wicked! In the Revelation, the church of Ephesus is commended for rejecting false apostles (Paul and company).
I don’t think it’s at all fair to equate the teachings of Paul with the teachings of Jesus. In my case, I try to build my doctrine around Jesus and the 12 without the influence of Paul.
The author of Hebrews make so many mistakes that I can hardly stand to read it. Please don’t quote anything from that book to me. Remember, there were Christians for 300 years before there was a new testament.
I don’t think Ezekiel18 is wrong. I only object to the conclusion that we have only our own sins to deal with. Torah it is very clear that God visits the sins of the fathers on to the sons. I gladly accept that we can repent and YHVH will pardon us. I seriously doubt that anyone can manage to repent of every single sin before the moment of death. Therefore, I pray and beg for God’s mercy and I beg Him to forgive me before my sins are passed to my sons.
It sounds like you and I both reached a crisis of faith several decades ago, but we came up with different solutions. You reject all Christianity while I reject only Paulinism.