Instigator / Pro
36
1495
rating
9
debates
44.44%
won
Topic
#741

Is Jesus the Messiah?

Status
Finished

The debate is finished. The distribution of the voting points and the winner are presented below.

Winner & statistics
Better arguments
12
15
Better sources
12
12
Better legibility
6
6
Better conduct
6
6

After 6 votes and with 3 points ahead, the winner is...

David
Parameters
Publication date
Last updated date
Type
Standard
Number of rounds
4
Time for argument
Three days
Max argument characters
30,000
Voting period
Two weeks
Point system
Multiple criterions
Voting system
Open
Contender / Con
39
1485
rating
91
debates
46.15%
won
Description

Is Jesus the Messiah? Two ancient faiths, Christianity and Judaism hash it out

Criterion
Pro
Tie
Con
Points
Better arguments
3 point(s)
Better sources
2 point(s)
Better legibility
1 point(s)
Better conduct
1 point(s)
Reason:

Firstly, i hate hate hate hate hate this disjoint structure of debate. Where round 3 refutes round 1, everything gets our of step and messed up quickly; it ends up feeling detrimental and makes the understandability. Online debates end up as an adversarial clash - it’s best to format them as such. I doubt any voters will penalize anyone for it!

This debate seems to boil down to prophecy, and whether Jesus meets the criteria to be the Jewish Messiah.

Pros opening appeared very nonspecific, that he would be despised and rejected, vilified and stricken for the transgressions of his people. This doesn’t feel limiting - in that it feels as if it could be applied to, say, Martin Luther King, or others.

In cons opening he lays out a much better and more specific case: that Jesus didn’t have the right genealogy, that he didn’t match up with core prophecies and meets the criteria of the Torah of a false prophet.

These are all targeted and fairly specific; which I have to accept over and above pros more generic claims.

Pros objections to genealogy seem reasonable to accept (Joseph was descended from David) - though he doesn’t explain the contradicting lineage.

Pro goes on to basically reject that Jesus does not need to fulfill any prophecies; there is a bit of a double standard here, as pro himself asks me to believe the prophecies when they suit his position. It’s also tenuous at best - with pro basically arguing that an ancient sect believed in two messiahs, meaning that I should accept all Jews must necessarily believe there were too. Not enough evidence was provided for me to buy that.

Pro raised some issues relating to the categorization of Jesus as a false prophet. One point was to be clarified: con argues that Jesus effectively rejected the Torah from the laws replacing it with a new set, while there may be a valid Christian reason, pro needs to do more to show why this is inline with a Messiah - it seems that Jesus was to fulfill this law, not throw it away. I do however side with pro on the example of breaking sabbath law, it seems reasonable to expect a Messiah to violate the rules to save or heal individuals.

Con goes on to explain in detail issues with the method of atonement Jesus provided - showing its out of character with Jewish beliefs (for a number of reasons). These seem fairly reasonable, but will deal with the details when I get to pros rebuttals

Con goes on to explain that a key passage of issaiah was not to be taken literally, and outlines the metaphorical meaning of the passages. Given that I feel this was weak by pro in the first place, I feel like I can buy this.

Pros counter, specifically relating to human sacrifice was well explained, and the pointing out of the scapegoat example in Leviticus law I felt was very good. In my view this eradicated a lot of the issues con raised with the conceptual necessity for a Messiah.

Pros counter to cons issues with Isaiah, isn’t entirely clear to me - and I wasn’t fully able to extract the core of why this example can’t be figurative and must be literal. Saying that, it’s less of an issue as I don’t fully find this argument convincing on it’s own.

Con reiterates a couple of the core issues he has relating to Jesus claimed divinity, and that Jesus commanded someone to violate the law.

At the end, it seems pro mostly dropped what I felt were the most compelling arguments (prophecy + false prophet), to focus on the more fringe arguments.

I felt con outlined some pretty devestating reasons why Jesus could not be Messiah, and these sort of died out with any clean resolution to those points.

The debate Got very hard to follow and seemed more targeted at other biblical scholars rather than regular voters- so I can’t claim to have understood everything but my main issue here is that con laid out some pretty specific hurdles Jesus should pass but he does not, specific things Jesus should not do - but he does. Pros only argument to support comes from Isaiah, which felt fairly weak in comparison.

For this reason: arguments to con.

Kudos to Virt for not having work issues in round 3, and Kusos to Dust for the best worst false dilemma!

Criterion
Pro
Tie
Con
Points
Better arguments
3 point(s)
Better sources
2 point(s)
Better legibility
1 point(s)
Better conduct
1 point(s)
Reason:

This is a weird debate given that no one could even begin to consider the cases without knowing the basics of key related myths (a definition for Jesus and for Messiah should have been included in the description).

So here's the biggie, con was the only one who offered an IF THEN TRUE. Near the end of the debate pro even made a complaint that con's arguments did not absolutely prove Judaism, which was not was this resolution was about (If Judaism is wrong, that would not prove Jesus was anything).

By con's standard (which pro engaged with such that I think he bought in to said standard), Pro wins the debate if Jesus "come at the end of days, bring peace to the Earth, bring people close to God, rebuild the Temple, and restore the Davidic throne." These points were pretty well dropped, which as they were the issue I thought was most important gives con the debate (C3 was not absolutely proven or disproven, so ended up having almost no impact; C0 was just tied; C1 also went to con... this falls pretty strongly in con's favor)

C0 (tied): The messiah is named for disease, and the Rabbis accepted this (admittedly I really did not understand this, other than it might relate to the possibility (not certainty) that Jesus is the Messiah). ... Con's rejection of this corrected a minor cherry picking (not actually against conciseness, just know where people might expand to make holes in your case) via adding on the preceding line, and making a strong connection to the history of the land (instead of a dude) he believes the passage in question referred to. But first, it awesomely went into cow-Jesus worship (it was criticizing the sacrifice connection, with India today as a stand-in). Pro gave a rather long protest to this, but the protest itself did not prove that Jesus was the messiah, it was only really about if one line from the holy books could be about a man instead of a nation.

C1 (con): The genealogies of Jesus disqualify him (wrong father to be eligible), and that the 14 generations were a lie (I was unclear on what the lie was until a source was used later).
Pro asking "what historical evidence do you provide for that claim?" is a little off-putting, given that we're talking about mythologies. Con navigated the false dilemma in a long-winded manner, ultimately defending Mary's honor against pro's claims, while maintaining the biblical denial of Joseph being father to Jesus. Somehow this side tracked into there being no errors in the bible, and that's why they had to lie to add errors... This is continued with Luke lied about who he was talking about when listing Joseph's line (which was long ago pre-refuted with how they tracked these things making only the father's side matter).

C2 (con): Jesus failed to fulfill the prophecies.
To me the previous two are semantic issues, and this is the big one. Actions are more important than who your daddy is and other issues of racism.

The general counterpoint that he could not fulfill all prophies inside his life, fell flat to me, as someone can do various things and then die after being confirmed (at least my interpretation was not that he'd die in his early childhood, but that as messiah he'd die).

The sub contentions were of course dropped, so not going into great detail on them...

C2 A.: Temple
Destroyed.

C2 B.: Gather the Jews
Exile got worse.

C2 C.: World Peace
Sharp! (sorry, had to make the pun)

C3 (mixed): False Prophet
Okay this is a cool unexpected twist. If he's a false prophet, he certainly wouldn't be the messiah. A little C.S. Lewis could have twisted this into pro's favor, but such never came, so the impact of navigating it did not tilt the debate in pro's favor but just avoided losing the debate to it.

The first strike (con)... Claimed to be God. Pro did okay here by asking why that would automatically make him a liar, but when asked failed to show any reason we should ever believe someone making this claim.

The second strike (pro) I don't understand the importance of someone not carrying light things, and pro was able to explain why carrying light things was fine so long as it was not for business.

The third strike (con) was a good one, given that his promised return was supposed to have happened a couple thousand years ago. That counterpoint of insisting that that'd see him again before they died really meant after they died, was obviously unconvincing.

Criterion
Pro
Tie
Con
Points
Better arguments
3 point(s)
Better sources
2 point(s)
Better legibility
1 point(s)
Better conduct
1 point(s)
Reason:

Kiss my goddamn ass.

Criterion
Pro
Tie
Con
Points
Better arguments
3 point(s)
Better sources
2 point(s)
Better legibility
1 point(s)
Better conduct
1 point(s)
Reason:

Couldn't decide either way. It probably doesn't help that I don't have a horse in this race.... so to speak.

Criterion
Pro
Tie
Con
Points
Better arguments
3 point(s)
Better sources
2 point(s)
Better legibility
1 point(s)
Better conduct
1 point(s)
Reason:

Please see the comments. This turned out to be 1048 words (wow!).

Criterion
Pro
Tie
Con
Points
Better arguments
3 point(s)
Better sources
2 point(s)
Better legibility
1 point(s)
Better conduct
1 point(s)
Reason:

All tie cuz this debate hella long and i dont feel like analyzing it too complex