FAQ in dawah: Judaism
Last updated: 26 June 2025 From the section FAQ in dawah
What is the Tanakh (Old Testament)?
- It's a collection of books written by different people
- Bible is made up of Hebrew Bible (known as 'Tanakh' or 'Old Testament') and New Testament
- Tanakh made up of Torah, Nevi'im and Ketuvim. TaNaKh is an acronym of the 3
- Torah, also known as 'Five Books of Moses' or 'Pentateuch', revealed to Moses (born over 3,300 years ago in c.1393 BCE and died aged 120)
- Prophet Moses (Moshe in Hebrew, Musa in Arabic) given Torah by God in Mount Sinai, Egypt, along with two tablets containing the Ten Commandments
- According to Jewish tradition, people heard first two commandments from God, but then were unable to handle God's speech, so Moses repeated Ten Commandments to them
- We Muslims consider both Old and New Testament to be corrupted and not the original revelation sent to Moses and Jesus respectively
Oldest manuscript, Dead Sea Scrolls, written over 1,300 years after Moses
- Written by unknown sources. We don't know the authors
- Found over a period of 9 years, between 1947-1956, in eleven caves near Khirbet Qumran, Palestine
- Approximately 2,000 years old, dating from 3rd century BCE to 1st century CE (according to Israel Museum, Jerusalem)
- Most scrolls survived as fragments and later reconstructed by scholars into approximately 950 different manuscripts of various lengths
Preservation of Torah
- Jews don't accept all of Dead Sea Scrolls. There are things they reject (saying it's 'not canon')
- For oral tradition you need chain of narration. In Judaism there's only one chain, and this has long gaps of 200-300 years from one individual to another
- How can you trust Jewish canons if it's not preserved?
What do Jews think of Jesus (Yeshua) and Mary (Miriam)?
- Jesus is not (explicitly) mentioned in Torah
- They reject Jesus as a prophet of God or Messiah
- All Jewish prophets in Tanakh, such as Moses, Jeremiah, Isaiah, Micah, etc., never mentioned Messiah will be god incarnate or god was 3-in-1 (i.e. Trinity). They mentioned God is one, infinite, and non-material
- Messiah will come once, not twice, and he'll complete his mission of getting Jews back to Israel, rebuilding the temple, and establishing peace. But Jesus didn't do this and was murdered (crucified). So Jews are still waiting for the coming of the Messiah
- Mary was not a virgin
- Isaiah 7:14 does not mean Mary was a virgin. Hebrew word for virgin is 'betulah' whereas the verse uses 'alma' meaning young woman (it doesn't state whether she's a virgin or not)
- Isaiah 7:14 is not even a messianic prophecy. Instead it's referring to birth of Hezekiah (c. 8th century BCE), a dominant king at the time of Isaiah who successfully deflected Assyrian attack on Jerusalem
- Isaiah 53 is not about Jesus' crucifixion or suffering of an individual but instead about the suffering of the Jewish people, persecuted over centuries and bearing the sins of the world. The suffering servant is the nation of Israel itself (Isaiah 49:3)
- New Testament claims God abrogated his covenant with Israel and that God has replaced the Sinaitic Revelation with Justification by Faith - an innovation by Paul where a person gets redemption by faith not their action - is inconsistent with teaching of Torah
- In New Testament Jesus implies certain commandments are no longer binding, and Paul believed none of the commandments were binding. But Jews believe the Messiah will not abrogate or replace the Torah
- A lot of Jews throughout history have been killed in the name of Christ by Christians. As such some present-day Jews hate Jesus and also Mary for giving birth to him