Talk:Messiah ben Joseph

Christian Views: Traditional

It says that "Traditional Christians do not believe in the concept of the Messiah ben Joseph or that Jesus Christ was descended from the tribe of Joseph. Instead, the Christian worldview holds that the Messiah ben Joseph is a rabbinic invention, composed in the Talmud centuries after Christ lived and after the New Testament of the Bible was formulated.": As a devout Christian myself (Catholic to be more precise), I would like to suggest a different idea as to how Our Lord Jesus fulfills Messianic Prophecy concerning Messiah ben Joseph: Simply put, let us remember who Our Lord's Guardian was? St. Joseph. --Splashen (talk) 00:04, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

Messiah ben Joseph text from Jewish Messiah article

The following text was removed from Jewish Messiah but could be helpful here, however, the sources should be checked:

The Messiah Son of Joseph is a personage mentioned in the Talmud and other Jewish sources. It is said that:

• He will be a forerunner of the Messiah Son of David.
• He will gather the Jews to the Land of Israel.
• He will restore the rituals of Temple worship.
• He will be slain in battle by Armilus, a Son of Satan.
• Messiah Son of David will raise him back to life.
• Will be from the Tribe of Ephraim.

Sources in the Talmud:

• Babylonian Talmud (Talmud Bavli), Tractate Sukot 52a.
• Jerusalem Talmud (Talmud Yerushalmi), Tractate Sukot 55b.
• Tractate Sanhedrin 98b.

Famous men who have been proposed as candidates to be identified as the Messiah Son of Joseph:

• Jesus
• Joseph Caro
• Haim Vital
• Joseph Smith Jr.
• Theodor Herzel
• All of the above, and many others. There is a school of thought in Judaism that the prophecies are to be fulfilled not by just one man, but by many - one or two in every generation.

Rwf5 20:45, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Please do not added Messianic Jewish interpretations here

Over the years this article became high corrupted with Messianic Jewish and or Christian interpretations. I have been working a while on it and have cleaned it up. But it remains something to watch. Since this article is related to Jewish religious beliefs it is important not to corrupt it again.

Messianic Jewish interpretations should get their own page and can link here. David C. Mitchell has written extensively on this topic. However, I don’t believe that he is widely accepted outside of Messianic Jewish circles. He takes a classic Christian evangelical approach. Jonney2000 (talk) 02:10, 7 February 2014 (UTC)

To say that Mitchell's work is a classic Christian evangelical approach is untrue. Mitchell argues that MbJ is derived from Gen. 49:24 and Deut. 33:17. Where is that view found in Christian evangelical circles? And to say his work is not widely accepted outside messianic Jewish circles is also untrue. He is a member of the Society of Old Testament/Tanakh Studies, and was invited to give a keynote address at the SOTS centenary conference in January. His work has been published by Sheffield Academic Press/Sage, Aramaic Studies, Biblica, Expository Times, JSOT, JSP, Review of Rabbinic Judaism, Revue Théologique de Louvain, Vetus Testamentum, and Oxford University Press. His book on Ben Joseph is the only one of its kind, and its proposals are too important to be dismissed in this easy fashion.Ronny Cohen (talk) 14:09, 21 July 2017 (UTC)

I don't know how David Mitchell's work is strictly evangelical Christian. It seems to me that his work presents Christians with some questions that could be difficult to answer such as: Why is Jesus never really presented as MbJ (The one potential mention in John 1 seems pretty weak)? What would an evangelical Christian make of the kingly promises to Joseph, and about Joseph's descendants and a royal Josephite House, considering Jesus is repeatedly presented by the NT authors as Messiah ben David? If Mitchell's suggestions are correct, and the idea of Messiah ben Joseph is rooted in the biblical text, then this presents some questions for evangelicals that could be rather difficult to explain. In any case, I don't think he should be dismissed outright, especially for claims that are well sourced and cited. Yekcidmij (talk) 15:04, 22 October 2018 (UTC)