I've been thinking about this for a while, and I think the answer I have is the idea that religion/theology/relationship-with-God is primarily about individual salvation and reward after death. https://twitter.com/calieber/status/1255300997620080647
The core beliefs of Christianity - that Jesus died for your sins, that salvation comes through accepting Jesus as a personal savior, that those who do so go to heaven and those who don't go to hell - all emphasize individualism.
It's about what individuals do in pursuit of their own spiritual safety and reward.

Judaism is primarily about the community, not the individual. The core belief is that if the *community*, as a whole, follows God's laws then the *community*, as a whole, will benefit.
So you end up with very different understandings of things like Isaiah 53:5. Christians really want this to be about predicting Jesus, and a lot of that is because of the first line. Christians read it as "He was wounded FOR our sins." But the Hebrew is FROM or BY our trespasses.
I have a whole other thing about the various ways the KJV translation of this verse sucks, but that's not what I want to focus on here. https://twitter.com/JustSayXtian/status/1254414522510569479
What I want to focus on here is the way in which Christians read this as a message of individual salvation through a savior-Messiah, and Jews read it as a consequence of communal failure to adhere to the ethical and spirtual system of Judaism.
If Jesus suffers FOR your sins then it's about God doing something for you, personally. You, personally, are saved from personal suffering. It's about what you get from God.
If the servant - maybe a messiah, as in an anointed king or priest, maybe a metaphor for Am Yisrael - suffers FROM our trespasses then it's about us, collectively, failing to do something for God. Even if some individuals are doing right, we, as a whole, aren't holding up our end
So then the last line of the verse changes - in the Christian interpretation "we are healed" means we each, individually, have an opportunity for salvation. In the Jewish interpretation it means we are healed as a community, we return to a state of wholeness and societal function
And that's what the whole thing is about, really. Judaism isn't about personal salvation, it's about upholding our end of the covenant in order to build a just and ethical *community* here on Earth. And that different focus leads to a very different theology.
By trying to view Judaism through a Christian understanding of what religion *is* - a system for personal salvation - a whole lot of Jewish practices and belief structures don't make sense. A lot of baggage that isn't ours gets loaded on. A lot is misinterpreted.
In before hashtag-not-all-etc.
I'm not saying Christianity is all selfishness. I'm not saying Judaism is all altruism. None of this is absolute. I'm saying the *focus* is different, and the difference in focus leads to extremely different understandings of religion as a concept.
You can follow @JustSayXtian.
Tip: mention @twtextapp on a Twitter thread with the keyword “unroll” to get a link to it.

Latest Threads Unrolled: