What did Jews before Jesus think of Isaiah 53

[salvationfound]

Hey everyone,

During a previous thread people were talking about Isaiah 53. Someone
mentioned how Jewish websites told how they believe that it is speaking of
Israel as a nation. The Christians of course use Isaiah as a big prophecy
about the messiah. Skeptics don't. They say the Jews as a majority
believe it is speaking of Israel and it is only crackpot Christians like Matthew
who interpret it as something else.

So I had a theory. What if Jews in their attempts to prove Jesus isn't the
Messiah changed their views of who Isaiah 53 is talking about so they can
more easily reject Jesus. And in actually before Jesus came along they
did believe the passage spoke of a Messiah.

Now agreed that is just a theory but the question to be asked one way or
the other is what did the majority of Jews before Jesus believe Isaiah 53
was talking about? Are there writings of Judaism before Jesus that talk
about their beliefs about Isaiah 53?

[kendemyer]

TO: All

I did a study on this topic one day and here is what I found at a website:

"Isaiah 53: What Did the Rabbis Say?

Maybe you weren't told, but many ancient rabbinic sources understood Isaiah 53 as referring to the Messiah. Here are quotations from some of them:


Babylonian Talmud: "The Messiah --what is his name?...The Rabbis say, The Leper Scholar, as it is said, `surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him a leper, smitten of God and afflicted...'" (Sanhedrin 98b)


Midrash Ruth Rabbah: "Another explanation (of Ruth ii.14): -- He is speaking of king Messiah; `Come hither,' draw near to the throne; `and eat of the bread,' that is, the bread of the kingdom; `and dip thy morsel in the vinegar,' this refers to his chastisements, as it is said, `But he was wounded for our transgressions, bruised for our iniquities'"


Targum Jonathan: "Behold my servant Messiah shall prosper; he shall be high and increase and be exceedingly strong..."


Zohar: "`He was wounded for our transgressions,' etc....There is in the Garden of Eden a palace called the Palace of the Sons of Sickness; this palace the Messiah then enters, and summons every sickness, every pain, and every chastisement of Israel; they all come and rest upon him. And were it not that he had thus lightened them off Israel and taken them upon himself, there had been no man able to bear Israel's chastisements for the transgression of the law: and this is that which is written, `Surely our sicknesses he hath carried.'"


Rabbi Moses Maimonides: "What is the manner of Messiah's advent....there shall rise up one of whom none have known before, and signs and wonders which they shall see performed by him will be the proofs of his true origin; for the Almighty, where he declares to us his mind upon this matter, says, `Behold a man whose name is the Branch, and he shall branch forth out of his place' (Zech. 6:12). And Isaiah speaks similarly of the time when he shall appear, without father or mother or family being known, He came up as a sucker before him, and as a root out of dry earth, etc....in the words of Isaiah, when describing the manner in which kings will harken to him, At him kings will shut their mouth; for that which had not been told them have they seen, and that which they had not heard they have perceived." (From the Letter to the South (Yemen), quoted in The Fifty-third Chapter of Isaiah According to the Jewish Interpreters, Ktav Publishing House, 1969, Volume 2, pages 374-5)


Rabbi Mosheh Kohen Ibn Crispin: This rabbi described those who interpret Isaiah 53 as referring to Israel as those: "having forsaken the knowledge of our Teachers, and inclined after the `stubbornness of their own hearts,' and of their own opinion, I am pleased to interpret it, in accordance with the teaching of our Rabbis, of the King Messiah....This prophecy was delivered by Isaiah at the divine command for the purpose of making known to us something about the nature of the future Messiah, who is to come and deliver Israel, and his life from the day when he arrives at discretion until his advent as a redeemer, in order that if anyone should arise claiming to be himself the Messiah, we may reflect, and look to see whether we can observe in him any resemblance to the traits described here; if there is any such resemblance, then we may believe that he is the Messiah our righteousness; but if not, we cannot do so." (From his commentary on Isaiah, quoted in The Fifty-third Chapter of Isaiah According to the Jewish Interpreters, Ktav Publishing House, 1969, Volume 2, pages 99-114.)"

taken from: http://www.chaim.org/rabbis.htm

OTHER RABBINICAL CITATIONS

Please see: http://www.chaim.org/further.htm

Sincerely,

Ken

[salvationfound]

Thanks Ken that's exactly what I was asking for. Are there any writings
before the time of Christ that say Isaiah 53 is not speaking of Messiah?

[kendemyer]

TO: Author of string

I did my study over a year ago and I cannot answer your question further than I have. I would suggest going to www.google.com and acquanting yourself on how to do advanced searches via their tips regarding advanced searches (I do not make this suggestion in a snide way but in a manner to be helpful).

Sincerely,

Ken

[salvationfound]

sorry Ken I may have confused you.

I was mainly asking a rhetorical question. I made it thinking there probably
isn't such a writing. Sorry man I wasn't expecting an answer.

[Seasanctuary]

Maybe you weren't told, but many ancient rabbinic sources understood Isaiah 53 as referring to the Messiah. Here are quotations from some of them:

And how many of these "ancient rabbinic sources" are actually from the BC era? Just to get things straight.

It's still a legitimate point in favor of Messiah interpretation even if they're AD sources, of course.

[Robyn Banks]

What if Jews in their attempts to prove Jesus isn't the
Messiah changed their views of who Isaiah 53 is talking about so they can
more easily reject Jesus. And in actually before Jesus came along they
did believe the passage spoke of a Messiah.

Now agreed that is just a theory but the question to be asked one way or
the other is what did the majority of Jews before Jesus believe Isaiah 53
was talking about? Are there writings of Judaism before Jesus that talk
about their beliefs about Isaiah 53?

There is only one Jewish writing that can definitely be dated before Jesus that demonstrates Jewish belief about the 'servant' of Isaiah 53.

The very earliest Jewish interpretation of Isa 40-55 comes from the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, the 'Septuagint' or 'LXX'. The LXX considered the servant to be collective Israel.

LXX Isa 42.1 adds an interpretive gloss to Isa 42.1, to explicitly link the servant with the nation of Israel.

"As is well known the LXX sanctions a collective interpretation of the servant in the first servant song by inserting 'Jacob' in apposition to 'my servant', and 'Israel' in apposition to 'my chosen' in Isa 42.1. This is unambiguous testimony to the presence of a collective interpretation of the servant in Hellenistic Judaism."
- Sydney HT Page, "The Suffering Servant Between the Testaments" New Testament Studies 31 (1985) 481-497.

Apart from a few KJV-only loonies, everyone dates the LXX of Isaiah before Christ.

For your information, it is quite likely that the reinterpretation of the 'servant' as a 'Messiah' also occured before Jesus Christ. The foundation for this conclusion is that the idea of an end-times Messiah begins as early as c 100 BC, as the literature from that period testifies. Christianity was, of course, a part of Judaism for much of the first century. So Christianity's reinterpretation of Old Testament passages as 'Messianic' followed from earlier Jewish passages.

Although the 'collective' idea of the servant continued in Judaism, orthodox (Rabbinic) Judaism, say from c AD 100-300, settled on an consensus of interpretation that associated the servant as the Messiah, but the sufferings of the servant as the sufferings of the collective(!) I know that this does not make much sense from the perspective of a literal interpretation. But there you go.

In the Middle Ages, orthodox Jewish interpretation of the Messiah became much more 'scientific' and 'literal' in outlook. They weren't so enamoured with the strange, midrashic interpretations of earlier rabbis. So, you see less emphasis on the servant being reinterpreted as a Messiah, and his sufferings being transferred to a collective. Instead, from the Middle Ages, Jewish interpretation has largely returned to the collective interpretation of the Messiah, as referring to Israel.

"Since the twelfth century the collective interpretation has been usual… it should be recognized that with Rashi we enter upon a period of more literal and scientific, as opposed to 'allegorical and adventitious' expositions, together with a fuller recognition of the principle of the unity of the paragraph and its relation to its context."
- Christopher R North, The Suffering Servant in Deutero-Isaiah - An Historical and Critical Study (London: Oxford University Press, 1963, 2nd ed), p17.

I hope that overview helps.

Robyn Banks

[Robyn Banks]

And how many of these "ancient rabbinic sources" are actually from the BC era? Just to get things straight.

None.

Jonathan, to whom the Targum of Jonathan ben Uzziel is attributed, lived in the first century BC. But the words we have from him come from the fourth century AD, after many centuries of establishing orthodoxy, and were probably edited in the process. He identifies the servant in 52.13, 53.1 & 10 with the Messiah. But in a perverse hermeneutical twist, the sufferings of the servant are transferred elsewhere: to the nations and the wicked.

I would still rely on the Targum of Jonathan as a first-century BC source of a Jewish belief in the Servant as the Messiah, however, despite the probability of editing. Messianic beliefs had become rampant in first century Judaisms, and had developed in the literature for over 100 years, since c 100 BC.

The LXX interpretation of the Servant as Israel is not only earlier, it is secure as a collective interpretation. (I doubt if the Christians would have altered the LXX to support a collective interpretation of the servant!!).

Hope that helps.

Robyn Banks

[Seasanctuary]

Thanks, Robyn, that's what I thought.

I remember back in my private Christian high school they told us about how the "ancient Jewish scribes" did this and that to maintain accuracy of copying.

Then, I later found out they were talking about Masorite practises from nearly a millenium after Jesus' life.

[Robyn Banks]

Thanks, Robyn, that's what I thought.

I remember back in my private Christian high school they told us about how the "ancient Jewish scribes" did this and that to maintain accuracy of copying.

Then, I later found out they were talking about Masorite practises from nearly a millenium after Jesus' life.

That's a really good point, Seasanctuary - and one that you've probably seen misunderstood in the same way by almost every evangelical Christians.

The various techniques the Jewish scribes had - like counting all the consonants in each book, and marking the number of consonants in a certain section - all came after centuries, if not a millennium, of faulty transmission.

The Dead Sea Scrolls are dramatic evidence of the discrepancies between different versions of biblical books that were circulating amongst the Jews by c 200 BC. The books of Samuel are significantly different from the MT and LXX. Jeremiah, while not as bad, has something like 8% significant differences - that's one in every 12 words. Isaiah is quite close, suggesting only (because of the large differences in the other books) that Qumran used a fairly similar copy as the MT.

You'll only see the DSS of Isaiah cited in apologetic scholarship, which is dishonest and misleading.

I understand that there should be a lot of literature about the DSS of Samuel soon, because it's just been/being analysed. The huge discrepancies between manuscripts will become evident then.

Robyn Banks

[Seasanctuary]

The various techniques the Jewish scribes had - like counting all the consonants in each book, and marking the number of consonants in a certain section - all came after centuries, if not a millennium, of faulty transmission.

I was thinking a while ago what techniques I would use to maintain transcribed texts.

Did they ever come up with a standard X by Y count of text to put on each page where you could rather easily check the edge for consistancy as a cross-check with reading the text itself?

So instead of copies like this:

Original

OINAFIO
AASDLIWSD
AFIASDFIASF
SDKLF

Copied

OINAFIOAA
SDLIWSDA
FIASDFIASFSDK
LF

They'd be standardized like this:

Original

LKVAUSFKJFS
ALKFDJAOIAF
ASDOIFAFGOI
ASOIFJAGOID

Copy

LKVAUSFKJFS
ALKFDJAOIAF
ASDOIFAFGOI
ASOIFJAGOID

Heck, I'd really just build a printing press.

[Robyn Banks]

I was thinking a while ago what techniques I would use to maintain transcribed texts.

Did they ever come up with a standard X by Y count of text to put on each page where you could rather easily check the edge for consistancy as a cross-check with reading the text itself?

I dunno.

Heck, I'd really just build a printing press.
[/font]

Machines? Devil's handiwork!!

Robyn Banks

[kofh2u]

TO: All

I did a study on this topic one day and here is what I found at a website:

"Isaiah 53: What Did the Rabbis Say?

Maybe you weren't told, but many ancient rabbinic sources understood Isaiah 53 as referring to the Messiah. Here are quotations from some of them:


Babylonian Talmud: "The Messiah --what is his name?...The Rabbis say, The Leper Scholar, as it is said, `surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him a leper, smitten of God and afflicted...'" (Sanhedrin 98b)


Midrash Ruth Rabbah: "Another explanation (of Ruth ii.14): -- He is speaking of king Messiah; `Come hither,' draw near to the throne; `and eat of the bread,' that is, the bread of the kingdom; `and dip thy morsel in the vinegar,' this refers to his chastisements, as it is said, `But he was wounded for our transgressions, bruised for our iniquities'"


Targum Jonathan: "Behold my servant Messiah shall prosper; he shall be high and increase and be exceedingly strong..."


Zohar: "`He was wounded for our transgressions,' etc....There is in the Garden of Eden a palace called the Palace of the Sons of Sickness; this palace the Messiah then enters, and summons every sickness, every pain, and every chastisement of Israel; they all come and rest upon him. And were it not that he had thus lightened them off Israel and taken them upon himself, there had been no man able to bear Israel's chastisements for the transgression of the law: and this is that which is written, `Surely our sicknesses he hath carried.'"


Rabbi Moses Maimonides: "What is the manner of Messiah's advent....there shall rise up one of whom none have known before, and signs and wonders which they shall see performed by him will be the proofs of his true origin; for the Almighty, where he declares to us his mind upon this matter, says, `Behold a man whose name is the Branch, and he shall branch forth out of his place' (Zech. 6:12). And Isaiah speaks similarly of the time when he shall appear, without father or mother or family being known, He came up as a sucker before him, and as a root out of dry earth, etc....in the words of Isaiah, when describing the manner in which kings will harken to him, At him kings will shut their mouth; for that which had not been told them have they seen, and that which they had not heard they have perceived." (From the Letter to the South (Yemen), quoted in The Fifty-third Chapter of Isaiah According to the Jewish Interpreters, Ktav Publishing House, 1969, Volume 2, pages 374-5)


Rabbi Mosheh Kohen Ibn Crispin: This rabbi described those who interpret Isaiah 53 as referring to Israel as those: "having forsaken the knowledge of our Teachers, and inclined after the `stubbornness of their own hearts,' and of their own opinion, I am pleased to interpret it, in accordance with the teaching of our Rabbis, of the King Messiah....This prophecy was delivered by Isaiah at the divine command for the purpose of making known to us something about the nature of the future Messiah, who is to come and deliver Israel, and his life from the day when he arrives at discretion until his advent as a redeemer, in order that if anyone should arise claiming to be himself the Messiah, we may reflect, and look to see whether we can observe in him any resemblance to the traits described here; if there is any such resemblance, then we may believe that he is the Messiah our righteousness; but if not, we cannot do so." (From his commentary on Isaiah, quoted in The Fifty-third Chapter of Isaiah According to the Jewish Interpreters, Ktav Publishing House, 1969, Volume 2, pages 99-114.)"

taken from: http://www.chaim.org/rabbis.htm

OTHER RABBINICAL CITATIONS

Please see: http://www.chaim.org/further.htm

Sincerely,

Ken

That was very informativeand much needed.

The Jews have long been indoctrinated to misread Isaiah 53 because it so clearly supports Christ as the "suffering messiah," one they had long ago been told would come, messiah ben Joseph, as he was/is called.

But, the messiah ben David, the kingly messiah yet to come, is not clearly understood by Christians who mistakenly expect Christ to return in much the same form as he left.

Thespirit of Christ, the Holy Spirit of the messiah ben Joseph, resides within the heart of his Christians. That body boasts @ 2 billion in number, but the reality is that we can hope for little more than 144,000 to step up to the plate and pitch the winning game. Conversion of Israel by peaceful Christian spirit:

Isa. 60:3 And the Gentiles (of Western Culture) shall come to thy
enlightenment, and kings (of the Christian denominations) to the brightness of (the prophecy of) thy rising.

Isa. 60:4 Lift up thine eyes (you people of Israel) round about, and
see: all, (the two billion Christians, they) gather themselves together,
they come to thee (in the Promised Land): thy sons (of the diaspora) shall come from far, and thy daughters shall be nursed at thy side.

Isa. 60:5 Then thou shalt see (these hoards of Christianity), and flow
together (with them), and thine heart shall fear (the truth of Christ), and
be enlarged (in understanding); because the abundance of the sea (of Western nations) shall be converted unto thee, the forces of the Gentiles, (Christians, now two billions in number), shall come unto thee.

[kofh2u]

There is only one Jewish writing that can definitely be dated before Jesus that demonstrates Jewish belief about the 'servant' of Isaiah 53.

The very earliest Jewish interpretation of Isa 40-55 comes from the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, the 'Septuagint' or 'LXX'. The LXX considered the servant to be collective Israel.

LXX Isa 42.1 adds an interpretive gloss to Isa 42.1, to explicitly link the servant with the nation of Israel.

"As is well known the LXX sanctions a collective interpretation of the servant in the first servant song by inserting 'Jacob' in apposition to 'my servant', and 'Israel' in apposition to 'my chosen' in Isa 42.1. This is unambiguous testimony to the presence of a collective interpretation of the servant in Hellenistic Judaism."
- Sydney HT Page, "The Suffering Servant Between the Testaments" New Testament Studies 31 (1985) 481-497.

Apart from a few KJV-only loonies, everyone dates the LXX of Isaiah before Christ.

For your information, it is quite likely that the reinterpretation of the 'servant' as a 'Messiah' also occured before Jesus Christ. The foundation for this conclusion is that the idea of an end-times Messiah begins as early as c 100 BC, as the literature from that period testifies. Christianity was, of course, a part of Judaism for much of the first century. So Christianity's reinterpretation of Old Testament passages as 'Messianic' followed from earlier Jewish passages.

Although the 'collective' idea of the servant continued in Judaism, orthodox (Rabbinic) Judaism, say from c AD 100-300, settled on an consensus of interpretation that associated the servant as the Messiah, but the sufferings of the servant as the sufferings of the collective(!) I know that this does not make much sense from the perspective of a literal interpretation. But there you go.

In the Middle Ages, orthodox Jewish interpretation of the Messiah became much more 'scientific' and 'literal' in outlook. They weren't so enamoured with the strange, midrashic interpretations of earlier rabbis. So, you see less emphasis on the servant being reinterpreted as a Messiah, and his sufferings being transferred to a collective. Instead, from the Middle Ages, Jewish interpretation has largely returned to the collective interpretation of the Messiah, as referring to Israel.

"Since the twelfth century the collective interpretation has been usual… it should be recognized that with Rashi we enter upon a period of more literal and scientific, as opposed to 'allegorical and adventitious' expositions, together with a fuller recognition of the principle of the unity of the paragraph and its relation to its context."
- Christopher R North, The Suffering Servant in Deutero-Isaiah - An Historical and Critical Study (London: Oxford University Press, 1963, 2nd ed), p17.

I hope that overview helps.

Robyn Banks

True.
As we observe again and again, the scriptures speaks in redundancies. The suffering servant is also the Chosen people, themselves, as are they the people of the kingly messiah, the Lion of Judah, the root of David.

Crucified:
Rev. 11:8 And their dead bodies, (the House of Israel and the House of Judah), shall lie in the street (of Nazi paganism) of the great city (which is the tenth horn of Western empire), which spiritually (in its philosophical outlook) is (a system of sexual-economic exploitation) called Sodom and Egypt, (the Gentile culture), where also, (in Israel, in blindness from scriptural truth), our Lord was crucified.

[JoeWallack]

"TO: All
I did a study on this topic one day and here is what I found at a website:
"Isaiah 53: What Did the Rabbis Say?
Maybe you weren't told, but many ancient rabbinic sources understood Isaiah 53 as referring to the Messiah. Here are quotations from some of them:

Babylonian Talmud: "The Messiah --what is his name?...The Rabbis say, The Leper Scholar, as it is said, `surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him a leper, smitten of God and afflicted...'" (Sanhedrin 98b)"

JW:
Rabbi Moshe Schulman has written an article indicating the problems with taking the above quote as well as the other quotes you listed as evidence that "The Rabbis" thought 53 was Messianic. If anyone wants the link let me know (Robyn, you should have it). Here's the excerpt regarding the above:

"BABYLONIAN TALMUD FOLIO 98B

"The Messiah-what is his name?... The Rabbis say, `The leprous one`,
those of the house of Rabbi say, `The sick one,` as it is said,
`*Surely he hath borne our sicknesses*` etc.."
-----------------------------------------

The translation here is incorrect, and I will correct it below.
However irregardless of this error, we can still examine this text as
it usually appears in the missionary literature. The first question
we must ask is 'from the context is this meant literally' or is it
Midrashic? IS the Talmud saying that Isaiah 53 refers to the
Messiah. Is the Talmud telling us something about the Messiah, and
using a verse out of context as a proof? Let's examine the passage.

This quote appears at the end of a passage in the Talmud where
various schools brought proofs that the name of the Messiah and the
name of their Rabbi was actually the same. This is done by making
puns on various verses and applying them to the name of the Messiah.
(The Messiah is called Menachem, Chananiah etc). These verses are NOT
used in their literal context, as a simple examination shows. None of
them were taken from any of the messianic prophecies! We must
conclude that likewise here the verse is not used to show us that it
is a reference to the Messiah.

It is really strange that anyone would bring a literal interpretation
of this passage as a proof to any doctrine. You would be hard pressed
to find another source in either Jewish or Christian writings where
one of the qualifications of the Messiah was that he had to be a
leper, as the Talmud is saying here. (I have yet to find it). This
passage cannot be used as a proof that the Rabbis taught that Isaiah
53 literally referred to the Messiah.

In closing let me mention translate the real version of the text and
who it refers to. First the real translation:

"The Messiah-what is his name?... The Rabbis say, `The leprous one by
the house of Rebbi is his name' as it is said, 'Surely he hath borne our
griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him a leper, smitten of
God, and afflicted.' [Isaiah 53:4].

So who is this leper scholar? In the Talmud Yerushalmi Chagigah
chapter 2 Halacha 1 (9a in my edition): The talmud there says that a
person is not allowed to teach 'the work of the chariot' (a mystical
subject) without permission of his teacher (who has taught him.)
Rebbi Chiya said in the name of Rebbi Yehuda, 'Rebbi had an
exceptional student, who taught one chapter in the work of the
chariot, and Rebbi was not satisfied with what he taught and he was
stricken with leperacy.' This student was called the 'leper scholar'
because of that, and he is the person referred to in Sanhedrin."

Here's the online link to the source, Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin, Folio 98b:

http://www.come-and-hear.com/sanhedr...hedrin_98.html


Joseph