Why was Jesus important to the Jewish people?

Answer 1

Whether Jesus was important to the people of Palestine is unclear. The people of Palestine, both Jews and gentiles, had the opportunity to see Jesus at first hand, marvel at his miracles and know that the demons called him Son of God. They would have been familiar with his courage on the cross and known about the resurrection on the third day.

Jesus complains that the people of Nazareth, who had known him as a child, rejected him and his message. In his own country, he marvelled at their unbelief. In Jerusalem, it seems that the people sided with the priests against Jesus and called for his execution. There was no groundswell of conversions after his resurrection. Paul's epistles suggest that the Christian community in Palestine during the forties or fifties of the first century was centred around just a small group in Jerusalem. Even by the time of the Roman-Jewish War and the Jerusalem Civil War of the late sixties to early seventies, there is no mention of the Christians, either as participants or non-participants. Jesus had had little impact on the Palestinians.

On the other hand, Acts of the Apostles reports the apostle Peter converting huge numbers of Jews to Christianity, often thousands in one day. Yet by the end of the first century, there appear to have been few Palestinian Jews who had become Christians.

Answer 2

Jewish answer:

He was not important to the Jewish people. He set a new religion in motion which is not part of Judaism.

Judaism says very little about Jesus. According to our tradition, the vast majority of the Jews at the time didn't hear of him. The Sages of the Mishna (Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai, Rabbi Yonatan ben Uziel, Chanina ben Dosa, Bava ben Buta, Shimon ben Hillel, Rabbi Eliezer, Rabbi Yehoshua, Rabbi Akiva, and hundreds of others) were active at that time and their yeshivot (Torah-academies) were flourishing. Their tens of thousands of disciples and hundeds of thousands of sympathizers were active in the Jewish world in that generation; they were the leaders and the forefront of Judaism. As Josephus (Antiquities book 18) writes, "the cities give great attestations to them." The great majority of Jews loved their sages and their Torah.

The unlearned class of the Amei-haaretz (ignoramuses) was a small fringe of society, but even they would and did lay down their lives in order not to violate anything of the Torah. As one ancient historian famously wrote:

Hecateus declares again, "what regard we (Jews) have for our laws; and we resolve to endure anything rather than transgress them." And he adds: "They [Jews] may be stripped on this account, and have torments inflicted upon them, and be brought to the most terrible kinds of death, but they meet these tortures after an extraordinary manner, beyond all other people, and will not renounce the religion of their forefathers."

No one (even any who did hear of Jesus) - would have given heed to what was and is considered unacceptable for us. The few who came in contact with him soon lost interest, and the early Christians felt the need to turn to non-Jewish centers of population in order to gain adherents, while the Jews remained Jews.

Rather, you might prefer to ask "What does Judaism not say" about Jesus. And the answer is that we do not believe that he is or was anything other than a regular human being. We may also note that according to our tradition, prophecy ceased about 340 years before the birth of Jesus; and public miracles stopped even earlier.