Jesus Moral Authority recognized almost universally.
All over the world people recognize Jesus Chris as one of the greatest moral teachers in history, if not the greatest. Ghandi admired him, Hindus and Buddhists claim him as enlightened, Moslems claim him as prophet of God menitoned in the Koran, and even many prominant Jewish thinkers and Rabbis admire him as great techer and fine example of Judaism.
------------------------------------------------------------------------ Martin Buber
Philosopher
1878-1965
From my youth onwards I have found in Jesus my great brother. That Christianity has regarded and does regard him as God and Savior has always appeared to me a fact of the highest importance which, for his sake and my own, I must endeavor to understand...
I am more than ever certain that a great place belongs to him in Israel's history of faith and that this place cannot be described by any of the usual categories.
Two Types of Faith (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1961), pp. 12-13.
------------------------------------------------------------------------ J. Carmel
Israeli Teacher and Author
If the prophet Elijah has ridden in a fiery chariot into heaven, why should not Jesus rise and go to heaven?
Cited by Pinchas Lapide, p. 138 in The Resurrection of Jesus: A Jewish Perspective (Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1983).
------------------------------------------------------------------------ John Cournos
Novelist and Essayist
1881-1966
Jesus was a Jew -- the best of Jews....
Jesus was not only a Jew. He was the apex and the acme of Jewish teaching, which began with Moses and ran the entire evolving gamut of kings, teachers, prophets, and rabbis -- David and Isaiah and Daniel and Hillel -- until their pith and essence was crystallized in this greatest of all Jews....
For a Jew, therefore, to forget that Jesus was a Jew, and to deny him, is to forget and to deny all the Jewish teaching that was before Jesus: it is to reject the Jewish heritage, to betray what was best in Israel....
I know a number of Jews who believe as I do, who believe it is time that the Jews reclaimed Jesus, and that it is desirable that they should do so...To take three examples among them, one is a novelist, whose books are about Jews and read by Jews; one is an educator, whose work is among Jews and who knows Jews exceptionally well; and one is a scholar interested in Jewish Sunday schools--if he were permitted by the elders he would include among his readings of "gems" of Jewish literature the Sermon on the Mount.
In An Open Letter to Jews and Christians (New York: Oxford University Press, 1938).
------------------------------------------------------------------------ Norman Cousins
Former Editor of the Saturday Review
Born 1912
There is every reason for Judaism to lose its reluctance toward Jesus. His own towering spiritual presence is a projection of Judaism, not a repudiation of it. Jesus is not to be taxed for the un-Christian ideas and acts of those who have spoken in his name. Jesus never repudiated Judaism. He was proud to be a Jew, yet he did not confine himself to Judaism. He did not believe in spiritual exclusivity for either Jew or Gentile. He asserted the Jewish heritage and sought to preserve an exalt its values, but he did it within a universal context. No other figure -- spiritual, philosophical, political or intellectual -- has had a greater impact on human history. To belong to a people that produced Jesus is to share in a distinction of vast dimension and meaning....
The modern synagogue can live fully and openly with Jesus.
"The Jewishness of Jesus," American Judaism 10:1 (1960), p. 36.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Albert Einstein
Physicist and Professor, Princeton University
1879-1955
As a child I received instruction both in the Bible and in the Talmud. I am a Jew, but I am enthralled by the luminous figure of the Nazarene....No one can read the Gospels without feeling the actual presence of Jesus. His personality pulsates in every word. No myth is filled with such life.
Jesus is too colossal for the pen of phrase-mongers, however artful. No man can dispose of Christianity with a bon mot.
George Sylvester Viereck, "What Life Means to Einstein," The Saturday Evening Post, October 26, 1929.
------------------------------------------------------------------------ Hyman G. Enelow
President of the Central Conference of American Rabbis
and Rabbi of Temple Emanu-El, New York City (Reform)
1877-1934
Jesus was not only born a Jew, but conscious of his Jewish descent.
Jesus realized the spiritual distinction of the Jewish people, and regarded himself as sent to teach and help his people.
Jesus, like other teachers, severely criticized his people for their spiritual short-comings, seeking to correct them, but at the same time he loved and pitied them. His whole ministry was saturated with love for his people, and loyalty to it.
Jesus, like all other of the noblest type of Jewish teachers, taught the essential lessons of spiritual religion -- love, justice, goodness, purity, holiness -- subordinating the material and the political to the spiritual and the eternal.
Who can compute all that Jesus has meant to humanity? The love he has inspired, the solace he has given, the good he has engendered, the hope and joy he has kindled -- all that is unequaled in human history.
"A Jewish View of Jesus", pp.441-442, 509 in Selected Works of Hyman G. Enelow, Volume III: Collected Writings (privately printed, 1935).
------------------------------------------------------------------------ Solomon B. Freehof
Author and Professor at Hebrew Union College
1892-1990
All this vast diversity of opinion has not lessened the vividness of the personality of Jesus. The opposite opinions have not balanced each other into immobility. All the opinions are still staunchly held and ardently defended. The years have not diminished the urgency of the question: "What do you think of Jesus?"
...The significant fact is that time has not faded the vividness of his [Jesus'] image. Poetry still sings his praise. He is still the living comrade of countless lives. No Moslem ever sings, "Mohammed, lover of my soul," nor does any Jew say of Moses, the teacher, "I need thee every hour."
In Stormers of Heaven (New York: Harper and Row, 1931).
Paul Goodman
British Zionist and Author
1875-1949
The charm of his personality has sent its rays all over the world, and infused countless human hearts with the spirit of love and self-sacrifice....Yet the roots of the life and thought of Jesus lie entirely in Jewish soil. In The Synagogue and the Church (1908), quoted in Jewish Views of Jesus: An Introduction and Appreciation by Thomas T. Walker (New York: Arno Press, 1973 [reprint of 1931 ed.]), p. 25.
Samuel Hirsch German and American Reform Rabbi and Chief Rabbi of Luxembourg 1815-1899 In order that Jesus' power of hope and greatness of soul should not end with his death, God has raised in the group of his disciples the idea that he rose from death and continues living. Indeed, He continues living in all those who want to be true Jews. Cited by Pinchas Lapide, p. 137 in The Resurrection of Jesus: A Jewish Perspective (Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1983).
Moslems recognize Jesus moral authority and attribute to him status as messenger of the divine. Submission: Islamic Website:
http://www.submission.org/suras/app22.html "The Quran, informs us that Jesus was a human messenger of God whose sole mission was to deliver God's message; he never possessed any power, and is now dead (4:171, 5:75, 117). Those who consider Jesus to be God, or Son of God, or part of a trinity are "pagans" (5:17, 72, 73).
Outstanding Christian scholars have reached these same conclusions (THE MYTH OF GOD INCARNATE, John Hick, ed., The Westminster Press, Philadelphia, 1977 & THE MYTH MAKER, Hyam Maccoby,Harper & Row 1986). Christianity is the product of Nicene (AD 325). " [this argument dealt with below, but the point here is the Moslems recognize Jesus' greatness] Some Skeptical Philosophers. "The denial of that existence seems never to have occurred even to the bitterest gentile or Jewish opponents of nascent Christianity. That a few simple men should in one generation have invented so powerful and appealing a personality, so lofty an ethic and so inspiring a vision of human brotherhood, would be a miracle far more incredible than any recorded in the Gospels" (Ibid., p. 557). -
-Will Durant. (The Story of Civilization, vol. 3, p. 555).