Sharing the gospel with practising Jewish people is difficult at the best of times. For a start, there is the complex and often shameful history of Christian–Jewish relations. However, Jewish evangelism is not as hard as some make it out to be. In this article I want to explore one important apologetic issue. For Rabbinic Judaism, one criticism of Christianity is our belief that the Messiah is God incarnate (for e.g. Jn 8:58, 10:30; Col 1:19). Rabbinic Judaism says that it is impossible for God to become a man, even in the person of the Messiah. Evidence is given from texts like Numbers 23:19, ‘God is not a man that he should lie,’ and 1 Samuel 15:29, ‘The Glory of Israel will not lie or have regret, for he is not a man that he should have regret.’
God Is Not a Man
A common Jewish argument against the church’s Christology is the Bible says that God is not a man. For example, it is claimed by Jewish anti-missionaries that, ‘The word “Immanuel” does not mean “God has become a man and walks among us”’ (emphasis original), citing Number 23:19 as proof.
The context in Numbers 23 is Israel’s journey from Egypt into the land God had promised to Abraham. The full verse is:
God is not man, that he should lie,
or a son of man, that he should change his mind.
Has he said, and will he not do it?
Or has he spoken, and will he not fulfil it?
This verse is about God’s faithfulness to his promises; he is not deceptive or unreliable like humans tend to be. The widely-used medieval commentary by Rashi similarly focuses on this:
He has already sworn to them that He will bring them thither and give them as a possession the land …
Read this in the form of a question: HATH HE SAID [AND SHALL HE NOT DO IT]?—The rendering … means, ‘[and not as the doings of mortals who decide to do things] and then reconsider.’
Rashi does not comment here on whether it is possible for God to take on human form.
Is the Incarnation Blasphemous?
A more general Jewish objection is that it is blasphemous to say that God can become human. God is holy and humans are sinful, God becoming human would somehow mean he would cease to be God. However, this assertion puts a limitation on the omnipotence of God. Gnostic tendencies in Rabbinic Judaism and reactions to Christian doctrine led Jewish thought to resist the idea of God becoming man.[1] But part of God’s character on display in the creation account is that he is all-powerful, creating all things simply by his word. Assuming, as Christians argue, that the all-powerful creator can add to himself a human nature without taking anything away from his divine attributes, to say that God could not take on human form is to limit his power.
The objection to a holy God taking human form is weakened if humanity is considered in its original state, before the Fall. Such a possibility is, in fact, more plausible in the framework of Rabbinic Judaism, which does not have a full-blown concept of ‘original sin’ that we find in Christianity.[2] The objection is further weakened by the teaching of the image of God (צלם אלהים, Gen 1:27), that shows a special connection between God and human beings.
God Appearing in Human Form
There are multiple instances in the Hebrew Bible where God appears in human form. The first of these is when Abraham receives the three visitors by the oaks of Mamre:
And the LORD appeared to him by the oaks of Mamre, as he sat at the door of his tent in the heat of the day. (Genesis 18:1)
The reader is perhaps expecting Abraham to look up and see a vision of the LORD. However, the text continues:
He lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, three men were standing in front of him. (18:2)
This is a key example from Scripture where God can at least appear as a human (or even three humans). The Jewish Publication Society commentary on Genesis concludes that these men are angelic visitors. The description that they eat food with Abraham bothered ancient Jewish writers (such as Josephus and Targum Jonathan) and so they supposed that Abraham’s visitors only appeared to eat, even though there is nothing in the Hebrew text to suggest this.[3] It is best to let the tension remain, that this was an appearance of a being that the author refers to as the LORD (יהוה). Throughout the Old Testament, this personal name is reserved for God alone.[4]
The Divinity of the Messiah
In several places in the Old Testament it is suggested that the Messiah will be divine. In Isaiah 9:6, the Messiah is called, ‘Mighty God, everlasting Father’. In Micah 5:2 he is said to be ‘from everlasting’ (מקדם). In Daniel 7 ‘one like a Son of Man’ receives worship as only God does. In all these verses we can see that the concept of the Messiah contained hints of divinity.
There is more than enough evidence from the Hebrew Bible that God can become human. There really is no obstacle in Scripture against Jesus’ incarnation. If God walked with Abraham, wrestled with Jacob, and spoke face-to-face with Moses, why stop there? Maybe he decided to visit for a bit longer, and worked a greater salvation in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ.
[1] I only have academic references to Gnosticism in Rabbinic Judaism (see articles on ‘Gnosticism’ in Encyclopedia Judaica; Oxford Dictionary of Jewish Religion)—not any popular level works. There probably aren’t any popular level writings on this because there was never a full-blown gnostic Judaism in the early centuries AD. However, early Gnostic tendencies became the seedbed for Jewish mysticism and Kabbalah in the medieval period.
[2] A person is thought to be able to perfectly keep the Law, just as Elijah is supposed to have done. Roy A. Steward. Rabbinic Theology: An introductory study. (Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1961). 78.
[3] Nahum M. Sarna, Genesis. (Philadelphia: JPS, 1989). 129.
[4] A similar example is found in Judges 6:14, where angel of the LORD is referred to simply as the LORD.
