Who Is a Jew?

Biblically speaking, the Jewish people are a nation. Today we are a scattered nation but we are, nevertheless, a nation. We are a nation because we are the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The implication of this definition is that no matter what a Jew does, he can never become a non-Jew; no matter what the individual Jew may believe or disbelieve, he remains a Jew. A Negro who is a believer, Moslem, or Buddhist remains a Negro. A Chinaman who becomes a believer remains Chinese; a Chinaman who remains a Buddhist also remains Chinese. The same is true of the Jew, whether Orthodox, Reform, atheist, or communist. If a Jew chooses to believe that Yeshua (Jesus) is his Messiah, he, too, remains a Jew. Nothing, absolutely nothing, can change the fact that he is a descendant of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob!

At this point, the problem comes up of children of mixed marriages. These children are usually designated half-Jewish and half-Gentile. The theology of Judaism teaches that Jewishness is determined by the mother: if the mother is Jewish, then the children arc Jewish. But again, this is a departure from the biblical norm and is therefore rejected by Messianic Jewishness. In the Scriptures, it is not the mother who determines Jewishness but the father; consequently, the genealogies of both the Old and New Testaments list the names of the men and not of the women, except in cases where a mother was notable in Jewish history. Thus, if the father is Jewish, the children are Jewish. King David was definitely Jewish although his great-grandmother, Ruth, and his great-great-grandmother, Rahab, were both Gentiles.

Download Dr. Fruchtenbaum’s JEWS, GENTILES, CHRISTIANS here.