Introduction

The purpose of this project is to create a comprehensive, Tanakh-in-order examination and debunking of the passages used to support Christian claims about Jesus and Christian theology. Beginning with Genesis and proceeding through the Tanakh, each alleged proof text is presented in its Hebrew context, alongside Jewish and Christian translations, the Christian interpretation, and the Jewish response drawn from classical Jewish commentators, later authorities, Jewish polemical literature, modern scholarship, and contemporary counter-missionary sources.

The central thesis of this work is that, when these passages are read in their linguistic, literary, historical, and Jewish interpretive contexts, the christological readings imposed upon them do not represent their most natural meanings. Rather, they repeatedly depend upon decontextualization, selective translation, typological rereading, retrospective identification, or other polemical methods that are foreign to—and frequently contrary to—Jewish tradition and Jewish teachings. Taken together, the evidence presented here argues that these christological readings are among the least likely honest interpretations of the texts in their original context. The purpose of the citations, Hebrew texts, surrounding verses, classical commentaries, modern Jewish responses, and Christian sources is to demonstrate that conclusion rather than merely assert it. Readers are encouraged to examine the evidence for themselves.

This work does not pretend that “the Jewish interpretation” always consists of one answer. Rashi may disagree with Ibn Ezra; Abarbanel may offer a different historical identification from Radak; Malbim may explain a word differently from an earlier commentator. Those disagreements are acknowledged. What matters for the present inquiry is whether the Christian conclusion actually follows from the Tanakh. In many cases, several substantially different Jewish interpretations may all be possible while the later christological interpretation remains unsupported by the language and context.

The same standard is applied to Christian claims. Where a proof originates in the New Testament, the New Testament passage is cited. Where it is a later Christian apologetic argument, representative Christian sources should be identified. Christian interpretations are not intentionally weakened in order to make them easier to answer.

A Note to Non-Jewish Readers

Many Christians and gentiles are motivated toward religion because of a desire for spiritual salvation or some notion of everlasting reward. Jewish tradition provides such a guarantee to all gentiles who formally subscribe to the notion of Torah min haShamayim and live an ethical, monotheistic lifestyle, also called being a Noahide. The spiritual benefit or salvation such a person is seeking is guaranteed to all such gentiles, making subscriptions to any notions of Christian theology unnecessary and, from the Jewish perspective, contrary to true monotheism. [1–4]

Such a person ought to continue his or her religious journey as a Noahide, remaining a gentile and worshiping the One God, while continuing to live an ethical life according to the seven universal Noahide commandments of the Torah. Spiritual reward, often referred to by gentiles as salvation, is available and accessible to all gentiles of the world who follow the path of the righteous among the nations. Acceptance of Jesus or any other Christian theology is neither necessary nor part of this path. [1–4]

Sources: [1] Tosefta, Sanhedrin 13:2. [2] Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 105a. [3] Rambam, Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot Melakhim uMilchamot 8:10–11 and chapters 9–10. [4] Rambam, Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot Yesodei HaTorah 1:1–7.

A Personal Note

My backstory into this project: I became familiar with Jews for Judaism because I davened with my father in the same shul for many years as R. Bentzion Kravitz, and my father is an admirer of Kravitz’s work. I also had some familiarity with Singer, and I believe he had visited my school, and possibly my class, but was incurious about any differences between organizations and methodology, based on the parable of the Chofetz Chaim about firefighters in a city with an active fire.

Later, when I returned from yeshiva, I encountered a missionary on campus who insisted that my reading of a passage of Isaiah would certainly convince me that Isaiah predicted Christian history. I was eager to engage, so I went home and picked up my Koren Tanach and read that chapter. When I was unable to find the verse, I assumed I was a chapter off, so I read a chapter earlier, and then a chapter earlier, and then a chapter earlier, and then proceeded to search most of Deutero-Isaiah, assuming I was off by ten chapters.

Still unable to find the proof text, I, through happenstance, also called divine providence, switched from the original Hebrew MT and started to read it in English. Through a tour de force, I suspected that I would find the verse with a corrupted translation in the KJV, and finally, after hours of searching for the greatest proof of Christian texts in Tanach, I found a forced, poor, and dishonestly translated version in English that could have possibly supported a Christian polemic.

It turns out that my experience was not unique to that verse, but applies to every single verse in Tanach that is used by Christian polemicists to prove their points, every single text from Tanach is mistranslated and out of context.

Years later, I took some classes with Rabbi Dr. David Berger, and I remain immensely impressed with his erudition, thoroughness, and remarkable intellectual honesty. A chaver of his once made an offhand joke about the broken binding of R. Aharon Lichtenstein’s Mishneh Torah are broken like the binding of one of Berger’s books; but Berger objected that the Rav z”l would object if he got wind of this joke, so… ha’mayvin yavin.

I come from a family of bibliophiles. My father, Dr. Gershon Hepner, is a world-renowned Bible scholar and the author of Legal Friction: Law, Narrative, and Identity Politics in Biblical Israel. My late uncle, Prof. Moshe Goshen-Gottstein, worked on the Isaiah Scroll and produced the critical edition of Isaiah still relied upon today, among countless other accomplishments in biblical scholarship. I, too, care deeply about the integrity of the Tanach, and I take umbrage at interlocutors who promote dishonest interpretations of its texts in order to advance their own causes.

Christian scholars often use these stacked prophecies to argue that the mathematical odds of one person accidentally or intentionally fulfilling dozens of detailed, ancient predictions are impossibly high. These claims are so preposterous and counter to rational thought that it is worthwhile pushing back against thousands of years of bad-faith actors who have used the holy texts without any interest in intellectual honesty, and this dangerous polemic has led to additional persecution against Jews.

Of the 365 verses claimed to support Christian theology, there is not a single one that holds up to scholarly logic, and one ought to suppose that perhaps no such verse exists because no biblical author was engaging with any such notion, neither prophetically nor symbolically. Anyone truly interested in Tanach should start by learning to read and translate biblical Hebrew.