PROVE THAT
JESUS WAS NOT THE MESSIAH OF THE OLD TESTAMENT.

Most of our readers have, no doubt, heard from the pulpit, many
exclamations and declamations against the "blindness of the Jews,"
in not recognizing their Messiah in Jesus of Nazareth. The reasons
of this "blindness" are made, I think, by this time pretty
intelligible.

Nevertheless, for the further satisfaction of the reader, I will here
set down the principal reasons given by Rabbi Isaac, in his
"Munimen Fidei," which cause the Jews to deny the Messiahship
of Jesus.

"At a certain time, (says he,) a certain learned man of the wise men
of the Christians said unto me:--'Wherefore are you Jews
unwilling to believe Jesus of Nazareth to be the Messiah, when yet
your veritable prophets testified of him, whose words you profess
to have faith in.'

"I gave him this answer. 'How, I require, could we believe him to
be the Messiah, when you can produce no genuine proof from the
prophets in his favour, since all those things adduced by the
evangelists from them, to prove Jesus the Messiah, are nothing to
the purpose? And we have many and evident reasons to prove that
he was not the Messiah. And of these, I will bring forward a few,
arising, 1, From his genealogy. 2. From his works. 3. From the time
of his appearing. 4. From the prophecies of the things to take place
in the time of the Messiah not having seen fulfilled in his age. And
in these things are contained the genuine marks characteristic of
our Messiah.'

"1. As to what concerns his genealogy; it does not prove this
necessary thing, that Jesus was the son of David, because he was
not begotten by Joseph, as the Gospel of Matthew testifies; for in
the first chapter of it, it is written, that Jesus was born of Mary
when she was yet a virgin, and had not been known by Joseph;
which things being so, the genealogy of Joseph has nothing to do
with Jesus. The descent and origin of Mary, is still less known, but
it seems from Luke's calling Elizabeth, who was of Levi, her
cousin, that Mary was of the tribe of Levi, and not of Judah, and,
consequently, not of David; and, if she were, still Jesus is not the
more the son of David; descents being reckoned from the males
only. Neither is the genealogy of Joseph rightly deduced from
David, but labours under great difficulties. Matthew, and Luke
also, not only disagree, but irreconcilably and flatly contradict
each other, in their genealogies of Joseph. Now, it cannot