Were you misled about Jesus?

For the first decades after Yeshua, tens of thousands of Jews believed he was the Messiah (Acts 21:20). The movement was Jewish, led from Jerusalem.

Over the following centuries the gap widened: the Temple fell, gentile churches grew, church leaders began to speak against Jews, and Jewish communities, under pressure, defined themselves partly against Christianity. By the Middle Ages most Jews met "Jesus" only through people who persecuted them.

So most Jewish people today have never been shown the case for Yeshua from their own Scriptures. That's not a failing of theirs. It's the result of history, and it can be put right by reading the text.

Isaiah 52:13-53:12, the clearest picture of a suffering servant who dies for others, isn't part of the synagogue's haftarah cycle. The readings of consolation include Isaiah 51:12-52:12 (Shoftim) and 54:1-10 (Ki Tetze), but not the passage between them. The reason isn't recorded; the effect is that many Jewish people have never heard it read aloud.

The New Testament itself, a collection of Jewish writings about a Jewish Messiah, has long been treated as a forbidden book in many Jewish homes, for understandable reasons given the history below. Many Israelis who finally read it are surprised how Jewish it is.

Ancient Jewish sources read several passages as being about the Messiah: Targum Jonathan on Isaiah 52:13 ("my servant the Messiah"), the Talmud on Isaiah 53:4 (Sanhedrin 98b), Genesis 49:10 (Targum Onkelos, Sanhedrin 98b), Zechariah 12:10 (Sukkah 52a), Micah 5:1 (Targum Jonathan).

Some commentators later read them differently. Rashi (11th century) taught that the servant of Isaiah 53 is Israel, and that became the standard view. On Psalm 2 Rashi wrote that the rabbis had read it of the Messiah, but that he would read it of David, partly as an answer to Christian claims. These are honest readings with real arguments, and we present them fairly on every prophecy page. But many Jewish people have only heard the later reading, not that the messianic reading is old and Jewish.

Isaiah 7:14: almah means "young woman", and Jewish translations say so. But almah is used of unmarried young women, and the Jewish translators of the Septuagint wrote "virgin" before Jesus was born.

Psalm 22:17: the Masoretic text reads "like a lion, my hands and my feet". The pre-Christian Septuagint reads "they dug", and the Nahal Hever psalm scroll has a verb. Both readings are ancient.

Isaiah 9:5: "Mighty God" (El Gibbor). JPS 1917 keeps the whole title as one Hebrew name, which reads it as a statement about God rather than a description of the child.

We're not saying any translator acted in bad faith. We're saying the choices matter, and you deserve to see both.

In the Middle Ages, church authorities forced Jewish scholars into public "disputations": Paris (1240), after which cartloads of Talmud manuscripts were burned in 1242; Barcelona (1263), where Nachmanides was made to debate and later had to flee Aragon; and Tortosa (1413-14), which lasted nearly two years and was followed by forced conversions.

These weren't honest conversations. They were coercive, the rabbis couldn't speak freely, and the outcome was decided in advance. Of course Jewish communities learned to see "Christian arguments" as weapons. That, too, misled Jews about Jesus, who never forced anyone.

The Rhineland massacres of the First Crusade (1096). Blood libels. The badge laws. Expulsions from England (1290), France and Spain (1492). The Inquisition. Pogroms in Russia and Ukraine. The church's silence, and worse, during the Holocaust.

All of this was done by people claiming Jesus' name, and all of it went against his teaching: "Love your enemies" (Matthew 5:44). It taught generations of Jews that Jesus was the enemy of their people. That is the deepest way Jews were misled about him.

We name it, we grieve it, and we repent of it. Yeshua is a son of Israel. He wept over Jerusalem (Luke 19:41). His followers should be the last people on earth to hate Jews.

You don't have to trust us, your rabbi, or anyone else. The Hebrew text is here, with a Jewish translation beside it. Read Isaiah 53, Psalm 22, Daniel 9, Micah 5 and Zechariah 12. Then read the Gospel of Matthew.

Ask the question the Ethiopian official asked a Jewish man named Philip: "Who is the prophet talking about? About himself, or about someone else?" (Acts 8:34).