Jesus?! The founder of a different religion? The one the Gentiles worship as God? The one who has brought antisemitism and misery to Jewish people? How could he be the second most influential Jewish person of all time?

Nevertheless, there is a certain logic to Jesus’s placement. His influence, identity, and messianic claims have been points of fascination to Jewish and non-Jewish people alike. Jesus was a Jewish man, had the Hebrew name Yeshua (which means “salvation”), lived in Judea, taught in Jerusalem, and claimed to be the Messiah (Christos in Greek). Billions have believed that he is the Messiah of Israel and the nations. Even so, hasn’t Judaism already spoken on this issue? Why should we give his messianic claims any weight?

Note: The following discussion is intended for a Jewish audience, but if you are not part of the tribe, feel free to listen in.

If we were to listen only to the majority voices within Judaism for the last 1,500 years, then it may be clear why we ought to disregard Jesus’s claims.

First off, Jewish people don’t believe in Jesus: only Christians do. Then there is the fact that Jesus didn’t end antisemitism around the world, but rather his followers perpetuated and expanded it. We could add his claims to be divine (a no-no in Judaism) and his teachings against the Torah. Simply put, Jesus did what the Messiah shouldn’t do, and omitted what the Messiah must do.

So go the common objections. But you aren’t reading this article to read what you already believe. You’re curious why so many people still believe, despite the common objections, Jesus is the Messiah of Israel and the nations. How can intelligent people believe in Jesus?

Let’s briefly handle these common objections before proceeding.

It’s a misunderstanding to claim only Gentile Christians believe in Jesus. Jesus’s earliest followers were Jewish. The only reason Gentiles started believing in Jesus was because of the success of his message among Jewish people in Judea. Scholars have traced ancient Jewish-Christian communities for centuries after Jesus.^[2] The Middle Ages and modern era contain examples of Jewish believers in Jesus.^[3] Hundreds of thousands of Jewish people came to believe in Jesus in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but many were murdered in the Holocaust.^[4] Today, Messianic Jewish communities are thriving throughout the world. So yes, Jewish people have believed and do believe in Jesus.

What about antisemitism? With great remorse, I must admit that those who claimed the name of Christ have too often been enemies of Jewish people.^[5] How irrational for someone to say he loves Jesus the Jewish man but hates Jewish people! Much more could be said on this subject, as indeed I have written elsewhere.^[6] However, I must insist that the New Testament does not promote antisemitism, but rather teaches that God loves the Jewish people. Neither does the New Testament teach that the Jewish people have been replaced or superseded in the plan of God, a theology called Supersessionism or Replacement Theology.^[7] Instead, by accurately reading the New Testament as a pro-Jewish work written by Jewish people, we may see that God’s promises and purposes for Jewish people remain intact (Rom 11:29).^[8] When a Christian believes these things, he is never tempted into coercing Jewish people against their will to believe in Jesus or, God forbid, using violence.

Admittedly, talk about the Trinity^[9] and Incarnation^[10] today sounds foreign and non-Jewish, but this strangeness is because the Jewish theological goalposts have been shifted.^[11] Today’s Jewish scholars recognize this shift and are revising old sensibilities about Jesus’s divine claims. In the first century CE, his claims were not so foreign. Back then, Jewish people spoke about messianic figures and divine intermediaries in remarkably Trinitarian ways. There is even evidence of quasi-Trinitarian theology in the Talmud and the Jewish mystical tradition.^[12] Many contemporary Jewish scholars have taken note, concluding that the idea of God coming to earth as a human and having a Holy Spirit manifestation is a Jewish idea.^[13]

Next up is Christianity and the Torah. Christians sure love their bacon cheeseburgers. Bacon love means Jesus is not the Messiah, right? But hold on a second: you’re thinking about bacon-loving Gentile Christians, right? Judaism has never said that Gentiles need to keep the Torah, so this objection has a false premise. If you’re Jewish and want to keep Torah to the best of your ability, the New Testament says go for it. Messianic Jewish people today, like the Jewish authors of the New Testament, happily celebrate the festivals, worship on Shabbat, circumcise their sons, and much else besides.^[14] And also: please don’t ignore how Jesus himself said, “Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish but to fulfill” (Matthew 5:17).

Finally, one last bit about what Jesus didn’t do. There are many prophecies he didn’t even attempt to fulfill: reversing the exile, reestablishing a Davidic kingdom, removing Israel’s enemies from the earth, stopping all wars, and so forth.^[15] Does this fact make him a failed Messiah? Not at all: the New Testament acknowledges Jesus has unfinished business that he will complete when he returns (Acts 3:21; Rev 19). All you hope for, and more, is coming. Jesus will fulfill everything spoken of the Messiah in the Scriptures.^[16]

So, there may be more going on here than meets the eye. Leaving these responses to common objections behind, let’s get to the good stuff: a positive case for why Jesus is the Messiah.

We get our idea of a Messiah from the Hebrew Scriptures, so as I make my case for Jesus as the Messiah of Israel, let’s begin there.

Already, you may be protesting. He’s just going to be presenting his biased, Christianity-infused interpretation of Israel’s holy texts—texts that were written by my people! Okay, I see your point. How about this: I’ll only bring up passages that Jewish people saw as messianic before Jesus rolled onto the scene around 30 CE. Then we can cut out those Christians altogether.

Let’s go back to first-century Judea. You’re living under Roman domination, yearning for freedom. Expectations for the Messiah are building (we’ll get to why later!). Amid this unrest, you hear that your fellow Jewish people keep going into the desert, following strange characters. Someone named Theudas goes out to the desert, amassing followers by telling them he will part the Jordan river.^[17] Several others persuade Jewish people that they will perform signs and wonders in the wilderness.^[18] Even across the Mediterranean in Cyrene, some Jonathan convinced the Jewish multitude to go out into the desert, where he would perform signs and wonders.^[19]

What was the common link among these strange events? It was God’s prophecy of the Messiah to Moses: “I will raise up a prophet from among their countrymen like you, and I will put My words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I command him” (Deuteronomy 18:18).^[20] In other words, God told the Jewish people to look for a Messiah who was like Moses himself.

When all these false messianic claimants came preaching, they convinced their audiences that they would do signs and wonders, parting rivers just like Moses in the desert. According to first-century Judaism, doing Moses-like miracles was a messianic requirement. These expectations continued into the rabbinic era, where the sages taught, “Like the first redeemer [Moses], so the last redeemer [Messiah].”^[21] One tradition goes even further: “As the first one appeared among Israel and then disappeared from among them, so the last redeemer will appear among Israel and then disappear from among them.”^[22] In other words, just as Moses had “two comings” to Israel (before and after his killing of the Egyptian, Exod 2:15), so the Messiah will have a first and a second coming.

But to be Messiah, one needed more than just charisma and miracle-working. Messianic claimants needed to show their heritage from King David, because the Messiah was prophesied to come from David’s descendants (2 Samuel 7). It is universally acknowledged that the Messiah must be “the Son of David.”^[23] Such lineage could be officially and historically demonstrated in the first century, as genealogical records were stored in the Temple archives.^[24]

These two initial messianic requirements—miracle-working like Moses and Davidic lineage—were widely recognized in the first century, and they filter out the vast majority of Jewish people from being the Messiah. And here’s my initial point: Jesus met both criteria.

The New Testament Gospel accounts, which are biographies of Jesus written by his Jewish followers, each claim that Jesus became popular in Judea because of his miracle-working and teaching. Jesus is famous for turning water into wine, multiplying loaves and fishes, restoring sight to the blind, walking on water, and teaching his incomparable Sermon on the Mount (Matt 5–7). Even the later rabbinic sages acknowledged that Jesus performed miracles and was a teacher.^[25] Of course, Moses himself is renowned for his teaching and miracle-working, but the similarity between Moses and Jesus goes much further:

Table 1 - Moses and Jesus Compared

The comparisons between Moses and Jesus can be continued much further than this brief list.^[26] My point is this: if Messiah is supposed to be like Moses, Jesus is nailing it.

The same goes for Jesus being a son of David. The New Testament includes detailed genealogies for both Jesus’s mother and his adopted father (Matt 1; Luke 3), each of which goes back to King David. As first-century Jewish accounts written before the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE, the credentials for Jesus’s Davidic lineage are more detailed and credible than is possible today. If someone claimed to be the Messiah today, saying he had Davidic ancestry, there would be no way to verify such a claim historically. The official genealogical records were destroyed by the Romans in 70 CE.^[27] In contrast, Jesus’s Davidic heritage was never in question during the first century, likely because accurate records confirming his lineage still existed in Jerusalem.

Already, it is no wonder why first-century Jewish people took notice of Jesus. He was a miracle-working rabbi with Davidic lineage who had a fondness for climbing mountains and teaching Israel the Torah. Could he be the Messiah?

Now let’s talk about a second set of messianic credentials Jesus meets. We’re still limiting ourselves to just those prophecies recognized as messianic by Jewish people in the first century.

According to Josephus, the first-century Jewish historian, in the 60s CE the Jewish populace was eagerly expecting the Messiah to come in their very own day because of a prophecy from Daniel in the Hebrew Scriptures (Daniel 9:24–27).^[28] Daniel’s prophecy begins,

Seventy weeks have been decreed for your people and your holy city, to finish the transgression, to make an end of sin, to make atonement for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal up vision and prophecy and to anoint the most holy place. (Daniel 9:24)

This prophecy states that “seventy weeks” would pass by, during which a series of magnificent events would be accomplished, including atonement for sin and the arrival of righteousness. Many Jewish interpreters understand these as “weeks of years,” referring to 490 years in total.^[29] Once the timeclock starts ticking,^[30] do the math: around 490 years later, everything written in verse 24 will be accomplished.^[31]

Astonishingly, the following verses say how it will be accomplished: the Messiah’s arrival and Jerusalem’s destruction. Daniel referred to “Messiah (מָשִׁיחַ), the Prince” who would arrive on the scene before the end of the seventy weeks (Dan 9:25).^[32] After his arrival, this anointed one—Messiah in Hebrew and Christ in Greek—would be “cut off.” Then another prince would come and “destroy the city and the sanctuary” (Dan 9:26).

Josephus referenced this passage in his historical account of the Roman war against Judea in the 60s and early 70s CE. He claimed Daniel 9 was the central motivator for the Zealots to garner support for their rebellion against Rome. Josephus summarized how Daniel prophesied the destruction of the Temple and Jerusalem, and then he wrote,

But now, what did most elevate [the Zealots] in undertaking this war [against Rome], was an ambiguous oracle that was also found in their sacred writings, how, about that time, one from their country should become governor of the habitable earth.^[33]

Such a governor would be the Messiah, the anointed one in the passage. According to Josephus, the Zealots expected a worldwide Jewish king to come “about that time”—meaning, in the first century CE. It’s clear that the Jewish people had read Daniel 9 and done the math, saying the “seventy weeks” culminated in the first century, with the corresponding arrival of the Messiah.

Were the Jewish people right or wrong on this issue? Reflecting on the Zealots’ failure against Rome, Josephus stated after 70 CE that he agreed with their calculations about the seventy weeks. However, he criticized his fellow Jewish people for failing to identify Roman emperor Vespasian as the “anointed prince” prophesied in the passage.

No one has followed Josephus in naming Vespasian as the fulfillment of Daniel 9. The Roman emperor was not Jewish, was not a descendant of David, and did not accomplish any of the deeds listed in Daniel 9:24, such as atonement and establishing “everlasting righteousness.” Also, Vespasian wasn’t “cut off” before the destruction of Jerusalem (Dan 9:26).

But another man in the first century was.

Before we get ahead of ourselves, let’s bring up another important passage to consider here.

Tucked into the extensive writings of the Prophet Isaiah (eighth century BCE) is a famous chapter called Isaiah 53, or the Suffering Servant passage. If you’ve never read it before, you might as well put this article away, pick up a Hebrew Bible, and start reading Isaiah 52:7—Isaiah 53:12 right now. This passage has brought more Jewish people to believe in Jesus than any other. A pivotal excerpt reads,

Surely our griefs He Himself bore, and our sorrows He carried; yet we ourselves esteemed Him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But He was pierced through for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; the chastening for our well-being fell upon Him, and by His scourging we are healed. All of us like sheep have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; but the Lord has caused the iniquity of us all to fall on Him. (Isaiah 53:4–6)

This seems to be talking about one unique, innocent individual who willingly lays down his life as a sacrifice for the forgiveness and shalom of others. Let’s examine this a bit further.

You’ve likely heard of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the magnificent treasure trove of Hebrew manuscripts discovered in 1947. The Dead Sea Scrolls community—likely the Essenes—originated centuries before Jesus, and their writings were untouched by Jesus’s followers. They hid their scrolls in caves before the Romans could get ahold of them in 70 CE. One surviving manuscript was the Great Isaiah Scroll, which preserved almost the entire book of Isaiah, including the passage about the Suffering Servant. They identified a major section beginning in Isaiah 52:7 by placing a distinctive symbol in the margin.^[34] That verse reads:

How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news, who publishes peace, who brings good news of happiness, who publishes salvation, who says to Zion, “Your God reigns.” (Isaiah 52:7)

The Hebrew word for “good news,” (mevaser, מְבַשֵּׂר) was translated by Greek-speaking Jewish people as euangelizo (εὐαγγελίζω), which is related to a key word in the New Testament (εὐαγγέλιον) often translated as “gospel” in English. Likewise, the Hebrew word for “salvation” in this passage is yeshuah (יְשׁוּעָה), which is the derivation of Jesus’s Hebrew name, Yeshua. Thus, we can paraphrase this verse: “A messenger announcing yeshuah will come to the Jewish people proclaiming the gospel of shalom and teaching in Jerusalem that the kingdom of God is happening now.”^[35] Elsewhere, the Dead Sea community identified the messenger in this verse as the Messiah.^[36]

The community resumed interpreting the Suffering Servant as the Messiah as we continue in the Great Isaiah Scroll. This is evident in Isaiah 52:14, where the Scroll differs from the much later Masoretic manuscripts by a single yud (י). The inclusion of the yud at the end of one of the words makes it say, “I have anointed” (mashachti, מָשַׁחְתִּי). Scholars Martin Hengel and Daniel Bailey translate the resulting verse:

Just as many were astonished at you, so have I anointed his appearance beyond that of any (other) man, and his form beyond that of the sons of humanity [lit., of the human].^[37] (Isaiah 52:14, 1QIsa^a)

By saying the Suffering Servant will be anointed more than any other human being, clearly the Messiah (the Anointed One) is intended. Hengel and Bailey note the Messianic reading helps make sense of the subsequent reference to the servant “sprinkling many nations” (Isa 52:15). The Levitical priests, who were also anointed (Exod 30:31–32; Lev 21:10), purified people and objects through sprinkling (Lev 4:6; Exod 29:21, cf. Exod 24:8). Thus, in this reading, the Suffering Servant of Isaiah 53 would be the Messiah who would act like a priest in purifying “many nations.”

Unfortunately, only a few other pre-Jesus allusions to Isaiah 53 are available to us today, and they are mostly unclear.^[38] So, please permit me to cheat a bit on my rule about only considering pre-Jesus Jewish interpretations: let’s look at post-Jesus Jewish interpretations of the Suffering Servant.

Few Jewish people today realize how many rabbinic commentators agree that Isaiah 53’s Suffering Servant is the Messiah.^[39] This interpretation is widespread across many Jewish communities and centuries.^[40] The messianic interpretation appears in the Talmud (b. Sanhedrin 98b), Targum Jonathan, various midrashim, and multiple medieval commentators, including the illustrious Maimonides. The great sage wrote in his Epistle to Yemen,

Isaiah referring to the arrival of the Messiah implies that neither his father nor mother, nor his kith nor kin will be known, “For he will shoot up right forth as a sapling, and as a root out of the dry ground.” (Isaiah 53:2). . . . Isaiah refers to the submission of the kings to the Messiah in the verse, “Kings shall shut their mouth because of him.” (Isaiah 52:15).^[41]

To sum this up, we have Jewish interpreters both before and after Jesus saying the Suffering Servant passage is a prophecy about the Messiah, and thus it contains details about what the Messiah would do. But what does the passage actually say? Here’s a summary:

The Messiah will be high and lifted up (Isa 52:13). He will cause Gentile kings to be speechless and believe what had not been revealed to Gentiles previously (52:15). As stated above by Maimonides, the Servant will have miraculous origins, growing up like a root out of dry ground (53:2). Isaiah’s people will mostly reject the Messiah, thinking that God wants the Servant dead (53:1–3). Yet the people are mistaken. God intends the Messiah to bear the sins of Israel, providing her with shalom and healing (53:5), righteousness and intercession (53:11–12), and the forgiveness of sins (53:6, 10–12). But Israel will not understand what is going on and will seek the Messiah’s death (53:1, 3–4). He will be led to his death after a false trial (Isa 53:8). Still, he won’t attempt to defend himself (53:7). He will be violently executed, even though he committed no sin (53:9). In response, the Lord God will consider him an asham (אָשָׁם), a guilt offering for the sins of Israel (53:10).^[42] Despite the Messiah’s death, he will come to life and prosper the Lord’s will, transforming many sinners into righteous men and women (53:11). He will end up victorious, not dead, sharing the bounty of his riches with the many he has made righteous (53:12). The Messiah will be vindicated because he was willing to die in place of sinners (53:12).

If this is what Messiah does for sinners like you and me, then it’s no surprise why Isaiah and the Jewish New Testament authors called this the “good news” or gospel! The New Testament liberally quotes Isaiah 53 in reference to Jesus’s fulfillment of the passage:^[43]

Table 2 - New Testament Quotations of Isaiah 53

The visage of the Nazarene haunts many who read this passage. Who could fit it better?

Now, let’s tie together the two strands of argument in this section: Daniel 9 and Isaiah 53. There is precedent to read both passages messianically according to Jewish people in the pre-Jesus era. The Daniel passage says the Messiah would come before the destruction of Jerusalem, an interpretation the Zealots and Josephus agreed with. Yet the passage said the seventy weeks would not be completed until atonement and everlasting righteousness would be brought to Israel.

In Isaiah 53 we see an expansion of the prophecy about atonement and righteousness. The Messiah himself would come and die, being cut off for the sins of the people, just as Daniel 9:25 says. Through the Messiah’s death, he will serve as a guilt offering (אָשָׁם) for the sins of Israel. But then he will rise from the dead, conquering death and providing healing, peace, intercession, and blessings to the many people he has made righteous (Isa 53:10–12).

In Jesus, we have an answer for both passages. He was executed for no crime of his own, claiming his death had the power to forgive sins (Matt 9:5–6), ultimately providing everlasting righteousness to those who believed in him (Rom 3:22; Phil 3:9). But he did not stay dead: he rose on the third day (more on this event in a bit). All this happened before the destruction of Jerusalem in the first century, meaning before Daniel’s seventy weeks had run out. Indeed, credible historical means indicate Daniel’s weeks of years prophesied the coming of the Messiah around 30 CE.^[44]

In other words, the Zealots’ math was off by about forty years, and the Suffering Servant Messiah came right on schedule.

Typically, when religious Jewish authors explain the credentials for the Messiah, they summarize them as follows: Messiah must be from the line of David, a powerful warrior-general, conqueror of Israel’s enemies, rebuilder of the (Third) Temple, and restorer of exiled Jewish people to the Holy Land. It’s not hard to conceptualize such a person coming in the future, and as admitted earlier, Jesus did not fulfill all these criteria—but he will when he returns.^[45]

The major problem with this typical list of criteria is that it only includes a subset of the prophecies about the Messiah, his identity, his actions, and the timing of his arrival. This subset makes it plausible that a new messianic claimant could arrive in the present or the future.

However, this openness to a new Messiah comes at the expense of ignoring many messianic prophecies, discarding previous Jewish opinions on the subject, and failing to consider what 70 CE has done to the discussion. It is hard to overstate how decisively the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple in 70 CE looms over the question of Messiah. The destruction has been a dividing line in many areas of Jewish thought, practice, and history, and it is a dividing line for the messianic arrival as well.

Daniel 9 explicitly prophesied the destruction of the Temple and the coming of “an anointed one” beforehand. He connected these events to the arrival of righteousness and atonement, placing these happenings on a timeline bracketed by 490 years. In addition, Daniel prophesied the messianic kingdom would begin during the time of the Roman Empire (Dan 2:44).^[46] First-century Jewish people did the math and believed it pointed to the arrival of Messiah in the first century, during the Roman reign. Followers of Jesus have concurred with similar calculations.

In response to these claims, many Jewish sages have resorted to barring all calculations of the Messiah’s arrival date in general and Daniel’s seventy weeks in particular.^[47] One Talmudic sage has said that the previously ordained time of the Messiah’s arrival has been lost due to Israel’s sin (b. Sanhedrin 97a–b). Another sage, Rav, declared, “All the predestined dates [for redemption] have passed and the matter [now] depends only on repentance and good deeds.”^[48] But these agnostic prohibitions against interpreting God’s word—even the nullification of Scripture’s accuracy—go too far. Instead of treating Daniel’s prophecy dismissively, a reasonable interpretation leads to Jesus.

Next, let’s discuss the impact of the Temple’s destruction on the genealogical requirements of the Messiah. The Hebrew Scriptures are adamant that the Messiah must come from the line of Judah (Gen 49:10) and the family of David (2 Sam 7). Throughout the time of the Hebrew Scriptures, from the time of David all the way to the destruction of the Second Temple, the Jewish people kept detailed and publicly accessible genealogical records. Those records were destroyed along with the Temple.^[49] Thus, there is no humanly verifiable way to ascertain this most basic messianic requirement.

One could respond that God knows which Jewish people are descended from David today—which is true—and he could just reveal the future Messiah’s lineage in a miraculously irrefutable way. But if this is the case, we ought to ignore evidence, reason, and study at this point and just wait for divine fiat. Does God really want us to turn off our brains? Does thinking about messianic credentials matter or not? It is much more reasonable to believe the Messiah would have come during a time when Israel had access to judge the Davidic heritage of a messianic claimant.

Finally, no messianic claimant today could live up to the standard laid out for him in the Torah. The Messiah is associated with righteousness (tzedakah, צְדָקָה) in the Scriptures,^[50] and righteousness is defined by how thoroughly and faithfully one observes the mitzvot of the Torah.^[51] The destruction of 70 CE complicates a future Messiah’s ability to be righteous. Many mitzvot require a functioning Temple and priesthood for cleansing and atonement. Nothing in the Torah hints at acceptable substitutes for the Temple and priesthood.^[52] Since the common Jewish opinion is that the Messiah will be a mere man (and not divine), it follows that the future Messiah will eventually sin (1 Kgs 8:46). When he sins, there is a Temple-based procedure laid out in the Torah for his atonement and forgiveness (Lev 4:22–26), but he will not be able to follow the procedure without a Temple and priesthood. His sin would thus remain unatoned for and unforgiven, compromising his claims to righteousness and ultimately his ability to be the righteous Messiah.

Such a messianic candidate would be caught in a catch-22: the claimant needs an already-established Temple and priesthood to provide him with the ritual cleansing and the ability to perform the commandments so he can be righteous, but he needs to be cleansed and righteous in order to be the Messiah and reestablish the Temple.

Since Jesus lived during the time of the Second Temple, with a functioning priesthood, he was capable of fulfilling all the requirements laid upon him by the Torah. Indeed, the New Testament declares he kept the Torah fully and never once sinned—something he could accomplish only because of his divine identity.^[53] No potential messianic claimant can reach the height of his righteousness.

I know—the idea of a Jewish person believing in Jesus’s divinity often makes as much sense as buying kosher ham on Shabbat to celebrate Christmas in your synagogue. It’s just so . . . goyishe, so foreign, so Christian. You may be thinking, how could anyone possibly argue otherwise? I get it. This one is a big deal.^[54]

Now, I can’t deny that Jesus made some grandiose claims for himself, such as when he said:

“All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth.” (Matt 28:18)

“Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was born, I am.” (John 8:58)^[55]

We also read,

[Jesus was] “making himself equal with God.” (John 5:18)

“For in [Jesus] all the fullness of Deity dwells in bodily form.” (Colossians 2:9)

Preposterous, you might say. It has been deeply ingrained in the modern Jewish mind that God cannot become human: it’s literally impossible for him to do it.^[56] Because it’s impossible, anyone who says Jesus is God in the flesh is fooling themselves and actually advocating idolatry.

Have you ever sat down and put this argument under the microscope? Can we really confine God regarding what he can and cannot do? While he may be transcendent and outside of the universe and time, does this mean he cannot simultaneously enter into the universe?

If you were to read the Hebrew Scriptures without this assumption in play, you might come to very different conclusions. There is evidence throughout the Torah, Prophets, and Writings that God not only can come to earth in physical form, but that he has done it in Israel’s history, and that he prophesied he would do it in the future through the Messiah.

Take spatial language, for example. Many passages in the Scriptures say God is “here” or “there” or located in some physical place or another. The Exodus narrative consistently portrays God as if he is located at the top of the mountain. For example:

Exodus 19:2–3: “There Israel camped in front of the mountain. Moses went up to God, and the Lord called to him from the mountain . . . .”

Exodus 19:20: “The Lord came down on Mount Sinai, to the top of the mountain; and the Lord called Moses to the top of the mountain, and Moses went up.”

Exodus 24:1: “Then he said to Moses, ‘Come up to the Lord, you and Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel, and you shall worship at a distance.’”

Likewise, when God spoke to Moses and told him he could see God’s “back,” he told Moses to go to “a place by Me” (מָקֹום אִתִּי, makom iti, Exod 33:21). Ezekiel spoke of the place (מָקֹום, makom) of the glory of the Lord (Ezek 3:12). What does this spatial language mean if God cannot be located in any physical place whatsoever?

Then there is the striking passage where God describes how he is sending an angel (messenger) who will have God’s name within him:

“Behold, I am going to send an angel before you to guard you along the way and to bring you into the place which I have prepared. Be on your guard before him and obey his voice; do not be rebellious toward him, for he will not pardon your transgression, since My name is in him [כִּי שְׁמִי בְּקִרְבֹּו, ki shmi bekirbo].” (Exod 23:20–21)

This angel or messenger has the name of the Lord “in him.” How can this be? According to Jewish mysticism scholar Moshe Idel, this is the most important passage leading Jewish mystics to speculate about God having a son who was united with him.^[57] Why? Because God gives his holy name (יהוה) and glory to no other (Isa 42:8) and because only God has the ability to pardon transgression (but choose not to). If the angel bears God’s name, then he is God in angelic form: he is simultaneously and mysteriously distinguished from God (because God is not innately physical) and united with God (because God inhabited the physical angel).

These examples illustrate how the relationship between God and the physical universe may overlap more than is commonly assumed. It would seem that God can show up in physical spaces and in physical forms whenever he decides to. And in some instances, he even came and spoke to Israelites in the form of a man.

In Genesis 18, we read “the Lord (יהוה) appeared to [Abraham].” The word for “appear” is the passive form of the verb “to see” (yera, יֵּרָא). Thus, flipping the passive verb to active, we read Abraham saw the Lord. The passage continues by narrating the arrival of three men to Abraham’s camp. His first reaction was to address one of the three men, saying, “O Lord (אֲדֹנָי), if I have found favor in your sight, do not pass by your servant” (Gen 18:3). Now, there are earthly lords and the one-and-only heavenly Lord in the Hebrew Scripture, and the latter is named Adonai (אֲדֹנָי). This is what Abraham called one of the three men: a holy title reserved for God alone.^[58]

In Genesis 32, Abraham’s grandson Jacob had a similar experience. It’s a famous scene: Jacob wrestles with a “man” who changes his name to Israel. Afterward, Jacob says, “I have seen God face to face” (Gen 32:24–30). Lest we think Jacob was mistaken, Scripture tells us in three other places that the “man” who wrestled with him was none other than Hashem (the Lord) in humanlike and angelic-like form (Gen 35:9–10; 2 Kings 17:34; Hosea 12:3–5).

Thus, God not only can show up in physical places, but he has shown up in the physical form of a man—even to Abraham and Jacob.

Since we now see that God can come to Israel in human form, we’ll be able to make sense of two other themes found in the Hebrew Scriptures: 1) God will one day come and walk with his people, and 2) Messiah will be divine.

In Leviticus 26:12, Moses recorded God as prophesying, “I will walk among you and will be your God, and you shall be my people.” What does it mean for God to walk among Israel? Writing in the eleventh century, the revered Jewish exegete Rashi commented: “I will, as it were, walk with you in the Garden of Eden as though I were one of yourselves and you will not be frightened of Me.”^[59] Rashi alluded here to Adam and Eve hearing God “walking” in Eden (Gen 3:8). This was a relational intimacy that had since been lost but would be regained in the world to come, the restored Eden. Rashi expected a future day when Israel would experience God “as though I [God] were one of yourselves”—that is, human. In fact, Rashi’s interpretation aligned with an earlier rabbinic tradition (circa third century CE), which stated, “Thus is the Holy One Blessed be He destined to walk with the righteous in the Garden of Eden in time to come. They will see Him and recoil before Him, (and He will say to them) ‘I am like you.’”^[60] This is the first prophetic theme: God will walk with his people.

The second prophetic theme is that Messiah will be God in the flesh. Evidence in favor of this idea is found in various places in the Hebrew Scriptures. First, consider Isaiah 9:5–6:^[61]

For a child will be born to us, a son will be given to us; and the government will rest on His shoulders; and His name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace [פֶּלֶא יֹועֵץ אֵל גִּבֹּור אֲבִיעַד שַׂר־שָׁלֹום]. There will be no end to the increase of His government or of peace, on the throne of David and over his kingdom, to establish it and to uphold it with justice and righteousness from then on and forevermore. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will accomplish this. (Isaiah 9:6–7 [5–6])

Given how this verse speaks of a Davidic king who will reign forever, it is no wonder why this passage has been interpreted concerning Messiah by Targum Isaiah and Maimonides.^[62] But look at the name given to this son of David: Mighty God? Everlasting Father? How can a mere human being have a name like that? And if the king is really described by his name . . . well . . . (I’ll let you finish the sentence).

Rabbinic commentaries and translations of this verse are a balagan (a chaotic mess). Rabbinic commentators have disagreed among themselves whether the names should be applied to the king.^[63] Likewise, Jewish translations of the verse into English differ in their handling of the passage.^[64] The 1917 JPS translation of the verse chose to avoid the issue by not translating the name of the child at all.^[65]

Why such difficulty? Theological preconceptions are complicating matters. If we follow the grammar of the Hebrew, the text unambiguously points to the name of the child himself. Messianic Jewish scholar Michael Brown, who earned a PhD in Semitic languages, comments on the common Jewish translations: “None of these translations does justice to the clear meaning of the original text, and one could easily argue that once the clear meaning is avoided, the verse becomes difficult to translate.”^[66]

Once one allows for the theological idea that the Messiah could be God in the flesh, the grammatical and interpretational problem vanishes.^[67] All the names apply to the child; no extra verbs or creative translations are needed. The child will be the Mighty God in human likeness.

Many other passages hint at the Messiah being divine or God one day dwelling among Israel in physical form.^[68] Thus, when we consider Jesus’s claims to be God in the flesh, we shouldn’t see this as some odd claim coming out of nowhere. Instead, it was the culmination of Israel’s hopes and prophetic dreams.

Jewish people in the first century were hot on the tail of prophecies of a divine Messiah. Talmud scholar Daniel Boyarin has written, “Jews came to believe that Jesus was God, because they already believed that the Messiah would be a divine redeemer incarnated in a human being; they just argued about who that human being was.”^[69] Likewise, Rabbi Phillip Sigal wrote, “The originators of Christianity were Jews, and they found their notion of a divine Messiah in their own heritage.”^[70] Jewish scholar Esther Hamori concurs: “The Christian concept of incarnation has its roots in Israelite thought.”^[71]

With this Jewish context, it makes more sense why the Gospel of Matthew proclaimed that the coming of Jesus was the fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy of Immanuel (עִמָּנוּ אֵל), “God with us” (Matt 1:23; cf. Isa 7:14). Rather than his divine claims being a reason why Jesus ought to be rejected, perhaps they are one more messianic credential to add to his collection.

But why, you may be asking, should we accept some grandiose divine claims from Jesus? Any odd person can claim they’re God—and if they do, it’s proof of mental problems.

Agreed—in all cases but one. You should probably ignore anyone who says they’re God.

But what if someone says they’re God’s Son, claims to have powers and attributes that only God has, does a bunch of miracles, says he’s fulfilling prophecy, starts telling people that he will soon be killed, but that he will rise from the dead on the third day?

Even then, despite the signs and wonders, your skepticism might remain justified. Moses warned Israel against miracle workers who would entice Israel to idolatry (Deut 13). Miracle-working is not sufficient to prove authority from God.^[72] Maybe this is the guy Moses warned about.

But what if this guy actually is killed, fulfilling his own predictions, and he actually does rise from the dead? He was dead—meaning he couldn’t work “miracles” on his own account—and then he was brought to life again. Well, in this case, perhaps your mental calculations should be readjusted. Why? Because only God raises the dead.

Part of God’s unique credentials, as given in the Torah, is that he alone has the power to give life (Deut 32:39). The Amidah declares: “Who is like you, Master of mighty deeds? . . . Blessed are You, O Lord, Who brings life to the dead.”^[73] The Talmud Yerushalmi also reports the prophet Elisha as saying, “There is none who raises the dead except for the Holy One, blessed be he, as it is written in Scripture concerning him, ‘The Lord kills and brings to life; he brings down to Sheol and raises up’” (1 Sam 2:6).^[74] These teachings about resurrection make sense: life is the gift of God, not able to be created by any other thing. Thus, life after death is only possible if God grants it by his own power.

So, what if God grants new life to a man who claimed he was the Son of God, the king of Israel, and the savior of the world? If God were to do so, he would vindicate those grandiose claims, providing a divine stamp of approval.

This sounds nice and all, you may be thinking, but too hypothetical and speculative. Is there actually any evidence that Jesus rose from the dead? I’m glad you asked.

The New Testament says the quickest way to disprove Jesus’s Messiahship is to prove he never rose from the dead (1 Cor 15:14–19). If he stayed dead, then he was a false Messiah, so says the New Testament. But if he rose from the dead, then he was who he claimed to be. Now, if a bodily resurrection occurred, it would have happened in time, place, and history. Thus, just like other fantastical claims about events in history, the resurrection of Jesus is open for historical investigation and disconfirmation.

We’re not talking about mere religion here but about history.

When historians wade through source material to reconstruct historical events, sometimes there are biased or conflicting reports, holes in the data, unanswered questions, or confusion about causes and effects. Because not everything is black-and-white in the historical record, historians often must provide hypotheses for how to account for the historical data. As with science, historical evidence sometimes gives rise to multiple explanatory hypotheses.^[75] In our case, we have two. Hypothesis 1: Jesus did not rise from the dead. Hypothesis 2: Jesus rose from the dead. How are we to determine which one is correct?

Historian C. Behan McCullagh lists multiple factors historians consider when judging hypotheses about historical events. The best hypotheses have greater explanatory scope, explanatory power, more plausibility, less made-up suppositions, and fewer disconfirmations from other accepted knowledge compared to rival hypotheses.^[76] In other words, historians go with theories accounting for the most evidence in the most elegant way.

What historical evidence must be accounted for concerning Jesus’s resurrection? No one in history has considered the historical data more than Gary Habermas, who earned his PhD on the subject in 1976 and then spent the next five decades focused on the same.^[77] In 2024, Habermas released a thousand-page initial volume of a four-volume series, a culmination of his life’s work.^[78]

Habermas has developed what he calls “The Minimal Facts Method” for investigating the resurrection of Jesus.^[79] This method has involved a meticulous survey of roughly 4,500 scholars’ publications on the resurrection, sorting through their opinions on the events relating to Jesus in the first century. Habermas’s survey of credentialed scholars includes believers, nonbelievers, Christians, Jewish people, conservatives, liberals, atheists, postmodernists, and everyone in between.^[80] After all this research, Habermas has determined the vast majority of credentialed scholars accept the following historical claims as facts due to the strong evidence in their favor:^[81]

• Fact 1: Jesus was a real historical person and was crucified by Roman authorities.
• Fact 2: Jesus had disciples who claimed to have experiences of him resurrected from the dead.
• Fact 3: The earliest (i.e. 30s CE) preaching message of Jesus’s Jewish followers was, “God raised Jesus from the dead.”
• Fact 4: The transformation of Jesus’s disciples from cowardice to boldness after their claimed resurrection experiences with Jesus.
• Fact 5: The transformation of James, Jesus’s brother, from a non-believer to a believer in Jesus after experiencing what he believed was an appearance of the risen Jesus.
• Fact 6: The transformation of Paul from a non-believer to a believer in Jesus after experiencing what he believed was an appearance of the risen Jesus.

Beyond these “minimal” six facts, Habermas has identified another six still accepted by the vast majority of credentialed scholars, just at a lower percentage. This second set of six includes Jesus’s burial in a tomb, the tomb being discovered as empty, the disciples being despondent after Jesus’s death, early resurrection preaching taking place in Jerusalem, early Jewish-Christian gatherings commemorating the day of Jesus’s resurrection (Sunday), and the centrality of the resurrection in early Jewish-Christian preaching.^[82]

These are the historical facts which the best hypothesis must explain better than any of its rivals. Let’s take a step back and consider what we are about to do. We’re still not talking about religion right now. Instead, we have our historians’ caps on, and we are sifting through the evidence at our disposal, trying to piece together the best explanation for the facts of the case. Come, my dear Watson, let’s see what we find.

It’s likely apparent that an elegant explanation accounting for all twelve of the facts is the following: Jesus of Nazareth rose from the dead and showed himself to his disciples (and others) after his resurrection. But what about the hypothesis that Jesus didn’t rise from the dead? Can this explain the facts better?

There are many variations of the “Jesus didn’t rise” hypothesis. A popular one is the conspiracy theory: after Jesus died, his disciples conspired to tell the world that they saw Jesus alive when they really hadn’t. Another one is similar but absolves the disciples of intentional deception: the disciples were so distraught that they tragically convinced themselves they saw Jesus, perhaps through hallucinations or mistaken person sightings.

When considering the six “minimal” facts, these theories account for a few of them. They accept and account for Jesus’s death (Fact 1), why the disciples claimed to see Jesus alive (Fact 2), and why they started preaching about his resurrection (Fact 3). But then we start running into problems. If the disciples hatched a deceptive conspiracy, why would this suddenly give them the boldness they previously lacked (Fact 4)? Isn’t it likely at least some of them would have recanted under pressure from Rome and Jewish authorities? But we have no reports of such recanting. Instead, we have many reports of Jesus’s disciples’ willingness to suffer and die for their eyewitness testimony of seeing the risen Jesus.^[83] Additionally, Facts 5 and 6 do not fit either of these theories: James and Paul were outside the circle of Jesus’s followers at his death, thus outside any possible conspiracy or mistaken appearance to the disciples. Yet somehow, James and Paul came to believe they had witnessed Jesus alive after his death. The theories fall short of the other facts as well, such as the hallucination hypothesis not accounting for why the tomb was found empty.

Thus, the conspiracy theory and the mistaken identity theory are inadequate explanations for all the minimal facts.

Other “Jesus didn’t rise” theories include the “swoon theory,” which says Jesus didn’t actually die during crucifixion; the person-swap hypothesis promoted by the Qur’an (Surah 4:157–158), which states some other person was crucified in Jesus’s place (with Jesus taken up to heaven); and the agnostic approach, which states that it’s impossible to know what happened (except that Jesus didn’t rise from the dead).

None of these theories do justice to the six minimal facts or the expanded list of twelve.^[84] They only explain a few of them poorly and implausibly, resulting in a historical void regarding the remainder.

No hypothesis can explain the historical facts better than the resurrection hypothesis. Thus, based on historical principles, it is reasonable to believe Jesus of Nazareth rose from the grave after his brutal death by Roman crucifixion. The evidence is so strong that it led Pinchas Lapide, an Orthodox Jewish scholar, to accept that Jesus rose from the dead.^[85] It is also reasonable to believe Jesus’s claims to be the Son of God, the King of Israel, and the savior of the world, because God chose to vindicate the authority and identity of Jesus by raising him from the dead. Jesus not only was Jewish; by rising from the dead and ascending bodily into heaven forty days later (Acts 1), he is Jewish yet today.

We began this article by mentioning Jesus as one of the most influential Jewish people the world has ever seen. This, too, is another credential to add to his list. The Hebrew Scriptures repeatedly prophesied about the Messiah’s influence over the nations of the world—and not just through conquest.

It was prophesied:

• Gentiles would inquire of the Messiah (Isa 11:10).
• Gentiles would come to the light of God (Isa 60:3).
• Egypt and Assyria would be adopted as God’s nations just as Israel had been (Isa 19:10–24).
• From east to west, God’s name would be great among the Gentiles, with incense offered to God at all places, not just in Jerusalem (Mal 1:11).
• Messiah would bring salvation to Israel and extend it to the Gentiles as well (Isa 49:6).

Each of these prophecies has been accomplished through the influence of Jesus of Nazareth, who commissioned his followers to take his message of forgiveness, atonement, and salvation to the ends of the earth (Matt 28:19–20). Along with his message came the repentance of the Gentiles from their ways of paganism and polytheism, instead choosing to follow the God of Israel alone. No mission has been as successful as his. Paul wrote:

For I say that Messiah has become a servant to the circumcision on behalf of the truth of God to confirm the promises given to the fathers, and for the Gentiles to glorify God for His mercy; as it is written, “Therefore I will give praise to You among the Gentiles, and I will sing to Your name.” (Romans 15:8–9)^[86]

But let’s not confine his successes to the Gentiles only. Yes, Jesus’s achievements with the Gentiles add to his credentials, but so too does his success among the Jewish people.^[87] As we discussed previously, Jewish people have believed in Jesus, and they still do today. Messianic Jewish people may be found all over the world, and they are eager to tell their stories (www.ifoundshalom.com). Jewish believers in Jesus have included rabbis, musicians, scientists, and even a British Prime Minister. No matter where you’re coming from, you can find your place, and your home, with your Messiah. There are multiple Messianic Jewish organizations available to help you process the ramifications of Jesus being the Jewish Messiah.^[88] Additionally, you may want to look up a Messianic Jewish congregation to visit on Shabbat in your area.^[89]

In conclusion, we have good reason to believe that Jesus is the prophet like Moses, the Son of David, the cut-off Anointed One, the messenger who brings good news about the kingdom of God, the Suffering Servant, the atonement for Israel and the nations, God with us, the unconquerable and King of Israel who was raised from the dead and is coming back to finish his job. Perhaps he deserves another look.

You are loved by the God of Israel, and he powerfully shows his love for you through Jesus. You have sin; Jesus offers forgiveness. He says, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me” (John 14:6).

This is a big decision, but Jesus is worth it.

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