7.23. Appendix 1 - Were the Jews Justified in Rejecting Jesus of Nazareth?

Appendix 1 Were the Jews Justified in Rejecting Jesus of Nazareth? IN the elaborate work of over 500 pages (“Israel in Europe,” by G. F. Abbott) to which I have made several references in this book and which at the time of its publication (1907) attracted a good deal of attention, the writer, a professing Christian, says (p. 43):—

“The Founder of Christianity, Himself a Jew, had appeared to His own people as the Messiah whom they eagerly expected, and with all the Divine prophecies concerning whose advent they were thoroughly familiar. They investigated His credentials, and, as a nation, they were not satisfied that He was what his followers claimed Him to be. Instead of remembering that His Jewish fellow-countrymen were, after all, the most competent to form a judgment of their new Teacher, as they had done in the case of other inspired Rabbis and prophets, the Christians proceeded to insult and outrage them for having come to the conclusion that He failed to fulfil the conditions required by their Scriptures.”

I am far from condoning the insults and outrages which have been heaped upon the Jews by professing Christians, and more especially when it was done in the name of Christianity; on the contrary, I am ashamed of them and abhor them from the depths of my soul. Yet I cannot but protest against such shallow and misleading statements as the above, which only show how unfit those are to write on Jewish history who are not acquainted with the sad and tragic religious development of this peculiar people.

1. Alas! owing to Israel’s previous alienation from God and the spirit of the prophets, as I have shown above, and the long-continued process of self-hardening through which they had passed before His advent, the majority of the nation were far from being competent to for a right judgment of their new Teacher.

2. This is shown by their very attitude and dealings with the “other inspired Rabbis and prophets.” If the writer had only studied Jewish history a little deeper, he would have found that it has always been the misfortune of the Jewish nation, not only to follow false prophets, ad “Rabbis” who were far from being “inspired” by the Spirit of God, but to reject and to persecute even unto death God’s true prophets and messengers. On the very last page of the Jewish Scriptures (2 Chronicles being the last book of the Hebrew Bible) the sacred historian in summing up the chief causes of the calamities which ended in the destruction of the first Temple, says:

“Moreover all the chiefs of the priests, and the people, trespassed very greatly after all the abominations of the heathen; and they polluted the house of the Lord which He had allowed in Jerusalem. And the Lord, the God of their fathers, sent to them by His messengers, rising up early and sending; because He had compassion on His people, and on His dwelling-place: but they mocked the messengers of God, and despised His words, and scoffed at His prophets, until the wrath of the Lord arose against His people, till there was no remedy.” Did they not say of Jeremiah, “This man is worthy to die,” and actually seek again and again to compass his destruction because, as they said, “this man seeketh not the welfare of this people but the hurt”? (Jer_26:11; Jer_38:4) Did they not say to Isaiah, “See not; prophesy not. . . . get thee out of the way; turn aside out of the path; cause the Holy One of Israel to cease from before us”? (Isa_30:8-11) Is it any wonder therefore that they should have treated the greatest and the holiest of all the prophets in the same way? Of course, the Jews afterwards changed their minds and repented of their attitude to the true prophets, and so also will they yet most assuredly do of their attitude and conduct in relation to Christ.

3. It was not because Christ “failed to fulfil the conditions required by their Scriptures” that the majority of the Jewish nation, led by their blind leaders, rejected Christ; but because of their perversion of an alienation from the spirit of this scripture (as is borne witness to by the whole Talmudic system to which He went counter) and because He failed to correspond with their own invented carnal and fantastic ideas about the Messianic kingdom which have no real basis in the Hebrew Scriptures. If they had but “searched the Scriptures” as Christ wanted them to do (Joh_5:39, Joh_5:46-47) with a view honestly to “investigate His credentials” in their light, they would most certainly have come to the conclusion that “they testify of Him.”

4. The rejection of Christ by the majority of the Jewish nation—the sad and terrible consequence of centuries of progress in apostasy and self-hardening, for which they alone were responsible—was foreknown of God, and clearly and even minutely foretold in the Hebrew Scriptures centuries before His advent. Moreover it was the occasion of the fulfilment of the purpose of God in providing a perfect atonement, not only for Israel, but for men of all nations. The fact, therefore, of Israel’s rejection of Jesus of Nazareth, instead of being an argument against His Messiahship, must, under the peculiar circumstances, be regarded as an additional proof that he is indeed the one of whom “Moses in the law and the prophets did write.”

5. Lastly, let it be remembered that not all Israel rejected Christ. It is, alas! true that when “He came to His own”—where He had every right to expect a welcome—“they that were His received Him not”; but the “as many as received Him,” to whom He gave the right and power to “become sons of God” (Joh_1:12), were also in the first instance men of Israel; and it was through Jewish evangelists and disciples who had all sorts of “insults and outrages heaped upon them” by the majority of their people, and most of whom had to seal their testimony with their blood, that the faith of Christ became known among the Gentiles. Now, considering that hitherto throughout the past of their history the majority of the nation has always been in a condition of apostasy from God, and that it was only through a small remnant of Israel that the purposes of God in and through that people were carried on: we have every right to regard the minority, who did receive and follow Christ—the little “remnant according to the election of grace” as the apostle Paul calls them—as the true Israel, the link between the faithful in Israel in the past and the “all Israel” which after the great national repentance and conversion, when they shall look upon Him whom they have pierced and mourn, “shall be saved.”