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Rabbinical Judaism's Challenge:
Please explain the following discrepancy concerning the Last Supper: Matthew says it was Nissan 15, and John says it was Nissan 14. It would take a few tedious pages of explanation and quoting to offer the arguments as to why someone would make this claim, but surely you already know these arguments. Has anyone ever come up with a good answer to this? Are there any theological motivations on the Part of the writer of Gospel of John to have Jesus die before Passover started while Matthew claims Jesus lived for an extra 24 hours so that he would make it to the Passover Seder?
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Messianic Judaism's Response:
It is important to remember that the gospels were written decades after Yeshua died on the cross. So it's not surprising that not every date is accurately recollected by the disciples. After all, John is not alleging that Yeshua didn't enjoy Passover seder; he's alleging Yeshua was killed on a particular date. And this goes to a larger point. That is, the gospels are chalk full of discrepancies. Everything ranging from who discovered the empty tomb to whether there were guards by the cave. But the point is the discrepancies are exactly what give the gospels their credibility.
Professor Simon Greenleaf of Harvard Law School, an author of an influential treaties on evidence, studied the consistency among the four gospel writers. He offered this evaluation: "There is enough of a discrepancy to show that there could have been no previous concert among them; and at the same time such substantial agreement as to show that they all were independent narrators of the same great transaction." From the perspective of a classical historian, German scholar Hans Stier has concurred that agreement over basic data and divergence of details suggest credibility, because fabricated accounts tend to be fully consistent and harmonized. This is why we find four Gospels (with discrepancies), and not one.
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Rabbinical Judaism's Challenge:
Concerning Isaiah 53,which Hebrew words have been "allegedly" altered from the plural back into the singular to bolster a phony case that this passage is referring to a single individual rather than a collective entity as the Hebrew clearly indicates? Surely this argument is familiar and you have a ready counter.
Rabbinical Judaism's Challenge:
Your website asserts: "How can Yeshua have a genealogy without having a biological father? Very simply, in legal terms, Joseph was Yeshua's father (look at it as a step-son who has all the rights and privileges of an adopted son). Thus, the genealogy of Joseph was legally applied to Yeshua." How can that possibly be? The adoption custom is not valid as Jewish people don't recognize it!
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Messianic Judaism's Response:
According to the Bible, adoption in Biblical times WAS an accepted practice. Please read the following from The New Unger's Bible Dictionary:
ADOPTION:
Greek: huiothesia, the "placing" as a "son". The admission of a person to some or all of the privileges of natural kinship. As the practice of adoption was confined almost exclusively to sons - the case of Esther being an exception - it probably had its origin in the natural desire for male offspring. This would be especially true where force, rather than well-observed laws, decided the possession of estates.
Hebrew: Abraham speaks of Eliezer (Gen 15:3), a house-born slave, as his heir, having probably adopted him as his son. Jacob adopted his grandsons Ephraim and Manasseh, and counted them as his sons (48:6), thus enabling him to bestow through them a double portion upon his favorite son, Joseph. Sometimes a man without a son would marry his daughter to a freed slave, the children then being accounted her father's; or the husband himself would be adopted as a son (1 Chron 2:34). Most of the early instances of adoption mentioned in the Bible were the acts of women who, because of barrenness, gave their female slaves to their husbands with the intention of adopting any children they might have. Thus Sarah gave Hagar to Abraham, and the son (Ishmael) was considered the child of Abraham and Sarah (Gen 16:1-15). The childless Rachel gave her maid, Bilhah, to her husband (30:1-7) and was imitated by Leah (30:9-13). In such cases the sons were regarded as fully equal in the right of heritage with those by the legitimate wife. (From The New Unger's Bible Dictionary. Originally published by Moody Press of Chicago, Illinois. Copyright (c) 1988.)
ADOPTION: The taking of one as a son who is not so by birth. (I) Natural: As Pharaoh's daughter adopted Moses; Mordecai Esther; Abraham Eliezer (as a slave is often in the East adopted as son) (Gen 15:2-3); Sarai the son to be born by Hagar, whom she gave to her husband; Leah and Rachel the children to be born of Zilpah and Bilhah, their handmaids respectively, whom they gave to Jacob their husband. The handmaid at the birth brought forth the child on the knees of the adoptive mother (Gen 30:3); an act representative of the complete appropriation of the sons as equal in rights to those by the legitimate wife. Jacob adopted as his own Joseph's two sons, Ephraim and Manasseh, on the same footing as Reuben and Simeon, his two elder sons (Gen 48:5). Thereby he was able to give Joseph his favorite son more than his single share, with his brothers, of the paternal heritage. The tribes thus were 13, only that Levi had no land division; or Ephraim and Manasseh were regarded as two halves making up but one whole tribe. In 1 Chron 2 Machir gives his daughter to Hezron of Judah; she bore Segub, father of Jair. Jair inherited 23 cities of Gilead in right of his grandmother. Though of Judah by his grandfather, he is (Num 32:41) counted as of Manasseh on account of his inheritance through his grandmother. So Mary, being daughter of Heli, and Joseph her husband being adopted by him on marrying his daughter, an heiress (as appears from her going to Bethlehem to be registered in her pregnancy), Joseph is called in Luke's genealogy son of Heli. (From Fausset's Bible Dictionary, Electronic Database Copyright (c)1998 by Biblesoft)
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For an indepth study about this subject, please see former
anti-missionary Andrew Gabriel Roth's Ruach Qadim: The Gowra.
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Rabbinical Judaism's Challenge:
Complicating the problem created with the Luke genealogy leading to David through Nathan and not Solomon, is the dilemma for the Luke genealogy being that of Mary. According to Torah, Tribal lineage is determined exclusively by the biological (natural) father (e.g., Num 1:18). Consequently, female genealogies are irrelevant to bloodline and, in general, are not listed in the Hebrew Bible.
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Messianic Judaism's Response:
Mary should be disqualified to transfer the rights of her lineage to her son Yeshua - except for a little known exception to the rule....
In Matthew 1:1-16 and Luke 3:23-38 we are presented with two genealogies of Yeshua. On the surface these different listings would appear to be a contradiction in the scriptures. The genealogy found in Matthew's gospel is the lineage of Jesus' earthly father Joseph, while the genealogy found in Luke's gospel is the lineage of Yeshua's mother Mary. However, many of the people that teach on the genealogies fail to realize or address a major problem associated with the genealogical listing found in Luke's gospel, the lineage of Mary. Once you have established that the line is indeed Mary's you must deal with a second difficulty. The rights of the line are not passed through the mother, only the father. Even though Mary, through her lineage, was of the Davidic bloodline, she should be excluded from being able to pass those rights of the bloodline because of being a female (Deut 21:16). So it is not enough to prove that Mary was an unblemished descendant of David, she had to be a male to transfer the rights. Therefore she would be disqualified to transfer the rights to her son Yeshua, except for a little known exception to the rule.
HOWEVER - In Numbers 26 we are introduced to Zelophehad. Zelophehad, we are told, had no sons, only daughters. In Numbers 27, following the death of Zelophehad, the daughters of Zelophehad came before Moses and argued their plight. Because their father had died with no sons, all of their rights of inheritance were to be lost and they felt this was unfair. So Moses prayed to God and God gave Moses an exception to the rule. The Lord told Moses that the inheritance CAN flow through a female, IF they fulfill two requirements. There must be no male offspring in the family (Num 27:8) and if the female offspring should marry, they must marry within their own tribe (Num 36:6).
Now we come back to Mary. On the surface she should be unable to transfer the rights to her Son. But when you research you find that Mary had NO brothers, AND Mary did indeed marry within her own tribe to Joseph. What an awesome God we serve that set in order the requirements to allow the virgin birth to take place 1,400 years in advance! (From: The Lineage Loophole by Phil Luna.)
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Rabbinical Judaism's Challenge:
On the other hand, if Joseph was the natural father of Jesus, then the Curse of Jeconiah is passed on from Joseph to Jesus along with the tribal lineage and any other blood-rights.
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