We continue, from part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6, part 7, part 8, part 9, considering pop-research on the issue of the historical Jesus and Jesus mythicism with regards to some Atheists who have taken to the utterly radical view that Jesus never even existed. I have been considering Michael Paulkovich and Raphael Lataster and, in this case, I got into a comment section discussion within an article written by YouTube celebrity Atheist AaronRa that was simply titled “Jesus never existed” November 3, 2015 AD.
See my article Historical Jesus – two centuries worth of citations wherein I chronicled 205 texts that reference Jesus dating from pre 70 AD to 200-250 AD.
Here is Rabbi Stuart Federow’s reply (a note a sic. on all the entire quotation):
Ken, i am trying to give materials to Jews with which they can respond to the efforts of Christian missionaries. I am trying to write a website that shows the errors of Christiantiy, including the ruse that one can be a Jew and a Christian at the same time. For my purpose, there is only one viewpoint.
You know there is no other group for which this lie is made, in order to obtain converts? There is no organization for ex-catholics called, “Baptist Catholics” where they would claim they remain catholics but are also now Baptists. There is no group called “Muslims With No Mohammad But Rather With Jesus” no one makes the claim that if one was a muslim but becomes a christian they can still be muslims. The Jews are not a race, one can convert To Judaism and become a Jew, and if one is a Jew and converts to another faith, they are no longer a Jew.
Furthermore, the rabbis, when the times required it, were much more strict. Those times are now. For any Jew who cares about Judaism, who cares about Jews, who cares about maintaining our distinctive Jewish values and faith in the face of hundreds of millions of dollars (by their own accounting!), spent to missionize the Jews, and with over a hundred messianic “synagogues” in Israel itself, yes, it is time now to be strict. These missionaries follow Paul’s dictum to be deceitful in order to make converts, by their understanding of I Corinthians 9! They change their christian names to something that sounds Jewish, like Tuvia Zaretsky of “jews” for Jesus Los Angeles, who was born with the name Lloyd Carson, to make themselves appear to have been Jewish! From my perspective this is a war for souls. And i will use whatever i can to win that fight.
In Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan’s book, The Real Messiah, which, also, was written to fight the efforts of Christian missionaries like the “Jews” for jesus, he states “”Even if he continues to keep all of the rituals, it is the same as if he abandoned Judaism completely…A Jew who accepts Christianity might want to call himself a ‘Jewish Christian,’ but he is no longer a Jew,”” Rabbi Kaplan references Maimonides to back up his statement. Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan was a very very well respected rabbi in the most orthodox of Jewish circles, and he referenced Maimonides, also very very well respected, and you can see the quotation from Maimonides:::
http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/912360/jewish/Avodat-Kocha… “”Halacha 5A Jew who serves false gods is considered like a gentile in all regards and is not comparable to a Jew who violated another transgression punishable by being stoned to death. An apostate who worships false gods is considered to be an apostate with regard to the entire Torah.””
Maimonides considered the worship of Jesus to have been idolatry. These two Orthodox rabbinic authorities are good enough for me and for my website. I have no intention of changing it.
Before dissecting his statement, here was my reply which seems to have ended our exchange as he did not write back:
Very well, I see your point. I was just thinking that if your purpose is to “give materials to Jews with which they can respond to the efforts of Christian missionaries” then, of course, Jews will use your materials to respond to the efforts of Christian missionaries.
However, I foresee the problem being that a Christian missionary or layperson could easily find information which contradicts your “one viewpoint,” such as just about any Jewish encyclopedia, and that could result in the Jew coming across as not very well informed. It could even lead to Jew to think that they have been misled by the Rabbis to whom they look for guidance.
In the next segment, I will dissect his statements.