Another question from an agnostic about the Jews

Hi, appreciate your thoughts. and for the rest about the Lord being realized beyond anything just to be sure of.

I get it now; the Lord brought the Slaves out of bondage. That's how choice is made, or at least was made a lot.

 

The Jews were "God's chosen people" in the sense that Yahweh entered into a special covenant with them and promised to give them His special protection, in return for their promise to worship Him exclusively. And they frequently failed to keep up their end of the bargain, and were punished for this. That's in the OT. The Jewish authors of the OT told us this. But God never abandoned them as His chosen ones, and history isn't over yet. As for John, he is saying that people who deny that Jesus is the Christ are liars and antichrists. Christ is the Greek word for Messiah, which means the annointed one. John is saying that to deny that Jesus was the annointed one is to be an antichrist, which seems almost tautological. I see no reason why Jews couldn't do this and still be God's chosen people.

John is obviously an advocate of the idea that Jesus was the Christ. He was also the most intemperate of the gospel writers in blaming Jews for Jesus' death, in language that contributed to anti-Semitism (although John was probably a Semite himself; some translators say he was talking about the Judeans instead of Jews as a whole). John was writing at a time when relations between Jews and Christians were at a low point, and his "christology" reflects Hellinistic influence in identifying Jesus with the Logos. Not being a fundamentalist, I have no problem with saying "That's John for you." I say similar things about Paul. Both were influential in transforming Christianity from the religion of Jesus to a religion about Jesus.

 

I've given you my answer on that, but since you have such an inquiring mind about Scripture, and are familiar with question asking, I wonder if you could help us out on these:

"Then they sent some of the Pharisees and Herodians to Him in order to trap Him in a statement. They came and said to Him, "Teacher, we know that You are truthful and defer to no one; for You are not partial to any, but teach the way of God in truth. Is it lawful to pay a poll-tax to Caesar, or not? "


"Then the Sadducees stepped forward-a group of Jews who say there is no resurrection after death. They posed this question: “Teacher, Moses gave us a law that if a man dies, leaving a wife without children, his brother should marry the widow and have a child who will be the brother’s heir?."


My question for you is this: Why do you think the Pharisees, Sadducees and Herodians asked these questions? Was it because they really were in doubt and wanted to know the answers? Just curious.
Peace.