The Light of Judaism

I received an inquiry from someone who is a devout Christian and was truly concerned for my soul. He expressed his beliefs to me and asked as to why I didn’t accept Jesus as the Passover lamb of which John the Baptist declared: “Behold the Lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world.”
I gave a brief response to answer his question and I thought it may ...be interesting to share this with some of you who are interested in comparative religious studies or simply curious as to why Jews don’t believe in Jesus.

It does baffle me as to why Christians assert that Jesus is an analogy of the Passover lamb as the Torah’s teachings concerning the Passover lamb directly undercut Christian theology. In brief Christian theology states that Jesus:

1.) “Was a lamb slain before the foundation of the world”- in other words, he was predestined to atone for humanity’s sins.

2.) Jesus as a sacrifice covers all sins and salvation is dependent upon the sinner confessing his sins and resultantly the confessing sinner will be redeemed.

There are some BIG problems here for Christian thought…

1.) The Passover lamb was not a sin offering and resultantly never atoned for any sins. Thus if Jesus is the Passover lamb then he cannot atone for sins as well. The true atonement sacrifices in the Torah were not lambs but were goats and bulls and the Torah also stipulates that they had to be a kid (calf) or a female…

* Leviticus 4:21: And he shall carry forth the bullock without the camp, and burn him as he burned the first bullock: is a sin offering for the congregation.
* Leviticus 4:23: “Or if his sin, wherein he hath sinned, come to his knowledge; he shall bring his offering, a kid of the goats, a male without blemish”

Only one time was a lamb mentioned as an atonement but it was NOT the Passover lamb and Jesus still does not qualify to represent this particular lamb neither…

Leviticus 4:32: And if he bring a lamb for a sin offering, he shall bring it a female without blemish. The key word here is “without.” The Christian Bible clearly says Jesus was whipped bloody, blood ran down his forehead from the Crown of Thorns, his beard was ripped out, etc. These alone would disqualify him, for he was NOT without blemish. Jesus was not a female neither thus he cannot qualify.

2.) The second point that Christian bring up is that Jesus is an atonement for all the sins of a confessing sinner. The problem here is that there aren’t any atonement offerings for intentional sin there are only offerings for unintentional sin (See Leviticus chapter 4). Therefore contrary to Christian claims, the sinner cannot actually be forgiven of all their sins.
In conclusion, it is clear that Jesus does not qualify as an atonement, the Passover lamb imagery is meaningless and the idea that any atonement can cover all the sins of the world is contrived outside of the Biblical narrative and is completely non-contextual.

Of course I must make mention that even the idea of human sacrifice is anathema in Judaism. All of the ancient pagan faiths around Israel were human-sacrificing cults but the children of Israel were commanded not to commit such abominations. Human sacrifice was prohibited by Judaism but later became accepted and necessary by Christianity.