I'm just wondering what the Jewish position on Jesus is? I know Judaism has many different directions, I'd like to hear any. If im not mistaken there is no Satan in Judaism but I would like to know if Jesus is considered negative in anyway?
Isn't Satan in the Old Testament? ie. Book of Job
It just doesn't have the idea of good vs. evil, good guy vs. bad guy, protagonist vs. antagonist as in Christianity.
While we're waiting for a response, I thought this page might put in perspective how Christianity emerged in the first century and how, from a Jewish perspective, Christianity may not sound so "ridiculous" after all in terms of how it may have emerged from the Jewish culture of the time. However, because it puts things in social and literary context, it is also a demonstration of how Christian beliefs and sentiments are often a sign of blindness on the part of Christians as to how much of their thinking is actually a literary and social construct, rather than a reflection of socio-political and human social reality.
My Jewish Learning: Christianity in Context
The difference between life driven by a literary/social construct and life driven by a socio-political and human social reality is that in the former, you see the world as driven by entities and agents described in a religious text but which don't exist physically or by the same name (or with the same underlying relationships) as in the real world. As in the case of Christianity, the world is seen in terms of the divine, angels, demons, Satan, Lucifer and otherworldly elements.
With the latter, you see the world as driven by agents and entities that are much the same as how others would see them (ie. whether they are Jews, atheists, Buddhists, Asian, African, etc.). The agents and entities you see in your reality are directly identifiable, physically, by name, politically and legally. You don't think in terms of angels, demons or Lucifer. You refer to the Supreme Court as "the Supreme Court," not an evil spirit, an archon or the Angel Prince of the Kingdom of Persia. You refer to things by the same terms as ordinary, normal people. You don't dramatise your reality unless it is absolutely necessary. A big problem in Christianity is how literary dramatisations are overused, often beyond expediency.
If Judaism was under the influence of a fad with Hellenistic heroics, then it means that Christianity, by definition, is a literary and social construct consisting largely of Hellenistic heroism. Hellenistic heroism is just a mental framework, but Christians have for much of their history been unable to detach or divorce themselves from this literary and social construct. Judaism, on the other hand, left it behind and discarded it as a mental framework.
Much of Christianity is attachment to a social and literary construct rather than an actual understanding of what "Christianity" really meant back then. It is a very strange way of trying to understand one's own religion.
. That is what interfaith dialogue is about !!
