Opinion of Messianic Jews

[RINO Tom]

Fascinating.

[RINO Tom]

     I guess technically Christian supposing they affirm the Trinity, though keeping the Law de facto denies the saving work of Christ's Crucifixion and Resurrection.

Not to hijack the thread, but I have recently become fascinated with how different people define "Christian."  Even more academically-minded or "neutral" definitions might call Mormonism or Jehovah's Witnesses or whatever a "different religion," and yet they'd have no problem labeling the early followers of Arius as "Arian Christians" and describing the Germanic tribes that came to adopt the teachings of Arius as "converting to Christianity."

It has really led me to believe that any definition of "Christian" should probably include groups that are heretical ... otherwise, you cannot be a heretical Christian.  Nobody calls a Buddhist a "heretic," because he is simply just of another religion.  "Heretic" should be reserved for someone who is in some sense Christian but rejects a fundamentally essential teaching of (lower case) orthodox Christianity.  In other words, while I definitely think anyone who rejects the Trinity is a heretic, I'm not sure it's the best cutoff for being a Christian.  If I were doing an academic study, I would probably place the cutoff at some vague definition of affirming the Resurrection and being a "follower of Jesus."  So, Messianic Jews would definitely count for me, as would Oneness Pentecostals, Unitarians and even Mormons (though all three should be labeled as heretical and fringe).

[RINO Tom]

Back on topic, though, I would like to say that I do think they'd do better to refer to themselves as like "Old Testament Christians" or something.  As the absolutely great YouTuber Matt Baker of Useful Charts (who is Jewish) said, Jewish identity has indeed developed to pretty clearly exclude a coexisting Christian identity.  In other words, in the world of the last 2,000 years, being a "Jew" carries with it the explicit denial that Jesus was the Messiah ... that's kind of a key point.

[RINO Tom]

Were Jesus himself and Paul and Peter and the other disciples not Jews because they believed Christ was the Messiah? Did Christianity not essentially start as a Jewish sect?

Today, and arguably even back then, Judaism is more defined as an ethnicity than as a religion. If secular Jews who are essentially atheists can be Jews, why can't those who profess to believe Christ was the Messiah?

After all, professing to have converted to Christianity did not save Jews from the Holocaust. Ultimately, it's clear that Jewish identity is something more than believing in certain religious ideas and certainly much more than just rejecting Christ.

There is a very good YouTube channel called Useful Charts that has covered religious groups/denominations and their family trees before, and he is a Jewish convert (i.e., not ethnically Jewish), but his wife is both ethnically and religiously Jewish.  He described this in a way that I think is very articulate, and I agree with it:

Judaism is still essentially a tribe at its core.  And whatever you want to say about the dynamics of Late Antiquity, it is pretty undeniable that over the last 2,000 years the "Jewish identity" has evolved to have a meaning that more or less necessitates NOT being Christian.  If you are Christian, you have - in the eyes of 99% of Jews - "left the tribe."