Is Jesus the Jewish Messiah?

Modern day Christian apologists respond to many different refutations of Christianity that include issues like the existence of God, the reliability of the Bible, and much more. One thing we oftentimes forget are the claims made by Judaism against the identity of Jesus. Jesus is rejected by Judaism as being the Messiah prophesied in the Old Testament, and at most, Jews will say it's fine for Gentiles to follow Jesus, but not Jews.

In the video below, Dr. Michael Brown, a Jewish Christian and Old Testament scholar, walks through the reasons and evidence for Jesus being the Jewish Messiah. As he says at the end, either Jesus is the Messiah for everyone or He's the Messiah of no one.

ESV Study Bible - Good or Bad?

I enjoy using study Bibles in my Scripture reading, and routinely use my NASB Ryrie Study as my 'main' Bible and my NASB John MacArthur Study Bible as my second reference. I also have a Life Application Bible I turn to on occasion, but not nearly as much as my other two.

Lately, I've seen a huge amount of press and recommendations for the ESV Study Bible, including thumbs-up from theologians I really respect so I decided to go ahead and purchase one. I should say up front that I'm not a fan of paraphrases nor of the dynamic equivalence translation school, but prefer the literal/formal method of translation, which the ESV is supposed to belong. Let me first say that my critique and issues that follow are not so much a reflection of the 'study' part of the ESV Study Bible, but more of the text/translation itself. From what I can tell, the commentators and contributors to the ESV Study Bible have done a great job. As one example, I'm about to teach through Jude and found the commentary on the book in the ESV Study Bible very helpful and full of good information.

I showed my new ESV to a friend of mind last week and he began flipping through it. He landed on Eph. 4:8-9, which in the NASB reads:

"Therefore it says, “When He ascended on high, He led captive a host of captives, And He gave gifts to men.” (Now this expression, “He ascended,” what does it mean except that He also had descended into the lower parts of the earth?"(Ephesians 4:8-9, emphasis added)

But in the ESV, the text reads:

"Therefore it says, “When he ascended on high he led a host of captives, and he gave gifts to men.” (In saying, “He ascended,” what does it mean but that he had also descended into the lower regions, the earth?"(Ephesians 4:8-9, emphasis added)

"Hey", he said, "Seems to me that's more of an interpretation than a translation." And he's right. There are three ways of interpreting this verse: (1) “Into the lower parts, namely, the earth” (a genitive of apposition). This would refer to Christ’s incarnation, His “descent” to the earth. (2) “Into the parts lower than the earth” (a genitive of comparison). This would mean that Christ descended into hades between His death and resurrection. (3) “Into the lower parts which belong to the earth” (a genitive of possession). This would refer to Christ’s death and His burial in the grave. But if you're reading the ESV, you can see the translators clearly favor interpretation number one and telegraph that in the text. If you compare the ESV rendering with other literal/formals like the NASB, KJV, & NKJV, you'll see they don't have the ESV construction.

OK, I thought, maybe that's just a fluke. But the other night I was doing some of my Old Testament reading and came to 1 Samuel chapter 10. In the NASB (and other literal formal translations), it begins:

"Then Samuel took the flask of oil, poured it on his head, kissed him and said, “Has not the Lord anointed you a ruler over His inheritance?"(1 Samuel 10:1)

But when I read it in the ESV, this is what I found:

"Then Samuel took a flask of oil and poured it on his head and kissed him and said, “Has not the Lord anointed you to be prince over his people Israel? And you shall reign over the people of the Lord and you will save them from the hand of their surrounding enemies. And this shall be the sign to you that the Lord has anointed you to be prince over his heritage."(1 Samuel 10:1)

Now where did all the extra text come from? Some quick digging on my part uncovered that the ESV translators favored the LXX over the Hebrew texts for this section. That's somewhat concerning, but not as concerning as not speaking to this fact in the commentary or other notes. There's no mention of this fact at all so you really aren't made aware of what's occurred. In the NASB and other translations, suspect texts that are included are normally flagged with explanatory notes so the reader is fully informed.

Another small issue I have with the ESV is, unlike the NASB, the reader is not enlightened as to what words the translators have added to the inspired text. In the NASB, NKJV, etc., you have the words that translators have added in italics so you know what's what.

The point I've come to with the ESV is, I may use it for a reference, but for everyday reading, I plan on staying with the NASB. With the ESV, I find myself now wondering about every passage I go through, and I don't want to be skeptical about the Bible I read. Am I all wet in this approach? If you're a fan of the ESV or have solid scholarly answers for the issues I've noted above, please let me know.

Islam out from under the covers

A group committed to establishing an international Islamic empire and reportedly linked to Al Qaeda is stepping up its Western recruitment efforts by holding its first official conference in the U.S. Hizb ut-Tahrir is a global Sunni network with reported ties to confessed 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Al Qaeda in Iraq's onetime leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. It has operated discreetly in the U.S. for decades. Now, it is coming out of the shadows and openly hosting a July 19 conference entitled, "The Fall of Capitalism and the Rise of Islam," at an upscale Hilton hotel in a suburb of Chicago.

Hizb ut-Tahrir insists that it does not engage in terrorism, and it is not recognized by the State Department as a known terror group. Experts disagree. "Hizb ut-Tahrir is one of the oldest, largest indoctrinating organizations for the ideology known as jihadism," says Walid Phares, director of the Future of Terrorism Project at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Phares said that Hizb ut-Tahrir, rather than training members to carry out terrorist acts like Al Qaeda, focuses instead on indoctrinating youths between ages of 9 and 18 to absorb the ideology that calls for the formation of an empire — or "khilafah" — that will rule according to Islamic law and condones any means to achieve it, including militant jihad. "It's like a middle school that prepares them to be recruited by the high school, which is Al Qaeda," he said. "One would compare them to Hitler youth. ... It's an extremely dangerous organization."

Phares said Hizb ut-Tahrir has strongholds in Western countries, including Britain, France and Spain, and clearly is looking to strengthen its base in the U.S.

"The aim of this conference is to recruit within the Muslim community in America," he said. "The Middle East governments go after them, but in the U.S. they are protected, so having a base here is going to help their cells around the world."

Oren Segal, director of Islamic Affairs for the Anti-Defamation League, said the conference is cause for concern. "While they're not, for the most part, engaging in violent activities, and they publicly say that they're against violence, there have been examples around the world where people who have spun off of this group have engaged in violent activity," Segal said. "That's why they're banned in several Arab and Central Asian countries, as well as Germany and Russia."

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is one of the group's most famous alumni, New Statesman journalist Shiv Malik reported, citing intelligence sources. In addition to plotting the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, he also is implicated in the World Trade Center bombing of 1993, the Bali nightclub bombings and the murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. Malik's report, the public policy institute the Nixon Center and the counter-extremism think tank the Quilliam Foundation agree that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who was the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq until he was killed in June 2006, was also once a member of Hizb ut-Tahrir.

They say other former members include Asif Muhammad Hanif, a British man who blew himself up outside a bar in Tel Aviv, killing four people (including himself) and wounding more than 50; and Omar Bakri Mohammed, a radical cleric currently banned from Britain who praised the 9/11 attacks, raised funds for Hezbollah and Hamas and called for attacks on the Dublin airport because U.S. troops transfered there on their way to Iraq.

Hilton doesn't seem to mind hosting the group. Hilton Oak Lawn General Manager Rick Harmon said Hizb ut-Tahrir used its own name and was open about the nature of the event, which includes lectures entitled "Capitalism is Doomed to Fail," "The Global Rise of Islam," and the "Role of Muslims in America," when it reserved the room for the conference. "We're United States citizens and an American business — if it's legal, we're able to host it, as long as it's nothing that disrupts our other guests' privacy and security," Harmon told FOXNews.com.

But former member Ishtiaq Hussain said Hizb ut-Tahrir is repackaging itself as a moderate organization as a tactic, while in reality it is "extremist." "They don't recognize countries like Israel, for example; they don’t believe Israel should exist," Hussain, now a trainer for the Quilliam Foundation, says. "Some of their leaders have denied the Holocaust, and they believe homosexuals should be thrown off the highest building. ... It's actually a very dangerous group."

Hizb ut-Tahrir itself has also published writings that seem to contradict its tenet of non-violence. In his book, "How the Khilafah Was Destroyed," Sheikh Abdul Qadeem Zalloom, the former global leader of Hizb ut-Tahrir, says anyone who rules by a non-Islamic system should "either retract or be killed ... even if this led to several years of fighting and even if it led to the killing of millions of Muslims and to the martyrdom of millions of believers." Read the full excerpt here.

Hizb ut-Tahrir's official ruling on the permissibility of hijacking planes says, "If the plane belongs to a country at war with Muslims, like Israel, it is allowed to hijack it, for there is no sanctity for Israel nor for the Jews in it." Read full ruling here. And one of the organization's more recent leaflets, published in March, calls for the declaration of "a state of war against America." See this information here.

Full story from Foxnews here: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,533525,00.html.

The Ultimate Way of Determining if the Bible is the Word of God

In my prior post Can You Trust the Bible, I gave a lot of evidence for the historical reliability of the Scriptures and good reasons for why you can have confidence that what was written down thousands of years ago is what you hold in your hand today. But even with all those proofs, still one nagging question remains: How can we know the Bible is actually the Word of God? That's a different matter altogether.

Many years ago, Dr. R. C. Sproul gathered together some of the world's leading scholars, teachers, and theologians to discuss this very issue. He was amazed that each one of them, without having talked to the other, stated during the conference that the question of if the Bible is the Word of God comes down to one thing: Christology. In other words, was/is Jesus really the Son of God? If so, then what He says about the Bible is the sine qua non of answering the question.

In the presentation below, I look at the questions of Jesus' identity and then move into what He had to say about the Bible. I think after you look at the data, you'll see that Christ's true identity and high view of Scripture leads us to the only possible conclusion - The Bible is indeed God's Word.

View more documents from Robin Schumacher.

Can you Trust the Bible?

A while back, Penn and Teller's series on Showtime (entitled something I won't print here) did an episode on the Bible. Not surprisingly (Penn is an outspoken atheist), the 'expose' they did on the Bible was hugely critical and began with them saying, “If you believe that the Bible is real because of faith, we can't touch you … they [Christians] pride themselves on believing things that are hard to believe in. They think God will bless them for that. But if you want history or fact in your Bible, you are so screwed”

Really? History and fact are missing in the Bible? In truth, the historical facts recorded in the Bible have never been explicitly and convincingly proven false. Now make no mistake, folks have tried. Critics said Pontius Pilate never existed, but then archaeologists uncovered his name in 1961 and dated the finding to be A.D. 26-37. And then there were the writings of Josephus that mention Pilate, so the critics walked away with a black eye on that occasion.

Such a scenario has been repeated numerous times to the point now where even secular historians confirm that New Testament writers such as Luke were first-rate historians of antiquity (see C. Hemer's book on Acts). Even the resurrection has been cited by non-Christians as having occurred - for example, Gerd Ludemann, an atheist from Guttingen University in Germany, has stated: "It is historically certain that Peter and the other disciples had experiences after Jesus' death in which Jesus appeared to them as the risen Christ."

If you've wondered how you can trust the Bible, I would suggest you simply do this: apply the normal historical criteria to it as you would any other book and see what the outcome is. The presentation below does this very thing, so give it a look and see what conclusions you reach:

View more documents from Robin Schumacher.