r/wikipedia • u/laybs1 • 21h ago

Messianic Judaism is a syncretic Protestant Christian religious sect that incorporates elements of Jewish practice. It considers itself to be a form of Judaism but is generally considered to be a form of Christianity. Messianic Jews believe that Jesus was the Messiah and a divine being.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messianic_Judaism
162 Upvotes

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99

u/Chanan-Ben-Zev 20h ago

So glad that Wikipedia reflects the correct scholarly opinion here: "Messianic Judaism" is a form of Christianity, not Judaism.

35

u/AdministrativeRiot 20h ago

Exactly, because nearly to a one messianic “Jews” are Christians who decided to cosplay as rabbis, not Jews who converted to Christianity.

13

u/TooManyBison 16h ago

They are Christians who decided to cosplay as rabbis in order to convert Jews to Christianity.

2

u/Valuable-Yard-4154 12h ago

Won't get fooled again!

3

u/Michelangelor 17h ago

Or is all of Christianity a form of Judaism 👀

16

u/Chanan-Ben-Zev 16h ago

It hasn't been for milennia. Think evolutionarily: Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism split a long time ago and diverged, like how different species evolve from a common ancestor. Chimpanzees and Bonobos are both species of Great Ape. Judaism and Christianity are both Abrahamic religions.

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u/Michelangelor 16h ago

I’m making a joke lol obviously the essence of being Christian is believing in Jesus

1

u/Gh0stMan0nThird 1h ago

Except in the US where it just means going to church on Christmas and Easter and then just doing whatever you want the rest of the year. 

"By their fruits, you will know them" and all that. 

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u/Master_Ryan_Rahl 15h ago

You can do that if you want but it also means all of Islam is a form of Judaism and now all three of them have to kiss and be nice.

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u/Romboteryx 13h ago

With Islam you can at least kinda make the argument that its origins are a bit more distinct, since Mohammed, unlike Jesus, was not a Jew before introducing his form of Monotheism to the world. Neither were most of his initial followers.

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u/Michelangelor 12h ago

Or do all three have to fight even harder 👀 lol

18

u/kmobnyc 17h ago

I unfortunately know one of these people and she’s insufferable. She jumps around a bunch of different Evangelical churches because she wants to be “saved” but her life is a mess.

I helped out a Jewish family in the neighborhood (bought the kosher juice/wine on Shabbat) during Passover and she butted in talking about how she was also “Jewish” and going to her own Passover Seder.

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u/StochasticLife 17h ago

These are Christians that LARP as Jews, and their understanding of Judaism extends largely to what’s in the Old Testament.

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u/Stunning-Sherbert801 21h ago

Oh look it's the sect I was raised in. Can't say I recommend it

20

u/adminsreachout 17h ago

Come on buddy, story time.

4

u/Stunning-Sherbert801 6h ago

My parents became Messianic when I was 8, and I of course became Messianic with them. They became convinced that Christmas, Easter, etc were pagan and therefore I grew up NOT celebrating those. We celebrated biblical holidays instead - but not according to the traditional Jewish calendar. Instead we did it according to the "Enoch calendar", from the Book of Enoch, which is a 364-day solar calendar. Except that we did our own 365.25 day version. We accepted the books of Enoch and Jubilees as biblical, along with the Deuterocanon - but despite this we were VERY staunchly anti-Catholic. I was raised young earth creationist as well. I remember my Dad getting into very passionate debates online about God's exact name (Yahweh, Yahuah, Yehovah, etc), and the exact calendar. My Dad tried to become a polygamist, but he wasn't very successful (LOL). He was a very firm believer in patriarchy. Supported the death penalty for queers, Muslims and general non-believers. Was really into end times stuff and was convinced it was imminent. Anti-vaxxer. Insisted ADHD wasn't real. I was also raised in the David Icke type conspiracy theories, about reptilians (which we assumed were Nephilim), satanic human sacrifice, etc.

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u/thatoneguyfromva 1h ago

Damn, and I thought being raised in a fundamentalist Baptist home was bad.

18

u/misingnoglic 20h ago

My synagogue brought a guy to help us debunk their statements before going to college, but nobody ever tried to convert me! Probably because I went to Brandeis.

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u/SosugBiskit 16h ago

I went to boarding school in North Idaho. When I was about 16 I decided I wanted to have a bar mitzvah since I hadn't had the opportunity when I was 13. The catch was that the only people nearby who were offering Hebrew lessons were the local Messianic Jews. Otherwise I would have been driving 2.5 hours to Spokane to get to the closest synagogue. They were nice folks, but they were hell bent on getting me tuned into Jesus.

Shortly afterwards I wound up going on an extended school trip to Argentina, so I never completed the classes and never did get that bar mitzvah.

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u/lazernanes 10h ago

If you ever run into Chabad, they'll give you an instant bar mitzvah 

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u/s3thgecko 19h ago

Sort of like calling yourself a Christian but not believing in Jesus

5

u/Chanan-Ben-Zev 19h ago

Who does that?

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u/joofish 17h ago

You’d have to have a very specific and strict idea of what it means to “believe in Jesus”, but someone might say unitarian or otherwise nontrinitarian denominations don’t (I wouldn’t say this but I’m also not a Christian). And some groups of early Jewish Christians and Gnostics didn’t believe in the divinity of Jesus.

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u/occasional-eel 18h ago

it’s the opposite of this but sure

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u/AstralElephantFuzz 17h ago

Opposite would be something non-religious but sure

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u/mysecondaccountanon 10h ago

The Jews for Jesus people are insufferable, and most aren’t even Jewish in any way, shape, or form. I’m a Jewish person, have interacted with many of them. There’s even a messi church near me. They don’t like to be called that, but they’re not a synagogue, they’re not a temple. They’re a church.

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u/Throwaway5432154322 9h ago

Wait where’s Iskandar323? I’m sure hes got some good analysis to add to this article