Psalm 14: Who was Jesus' grandpa?

**Kodos** · 07-17-2011, 07:55 PM

IIRC having a Jewish mother is necessary to be a Jew, but it is not sufficient to be a Jew.

EDIT: In the orthodox sense that is, of course.

Fenn · 07-17-2011, 09:02 PM

Somehow, "Jewish" can also refer to an ethnicity, meaning any descendant of Israel is Jewish. Have you heard the term "secular Jew?" I don't really buy it but some people abide by that logic.

**Kodos** · 07-19-2011, 11:01 AM

**bambi** · 07-19-2011, 12:38 PM

I think you can still call Jesus Jewish. He would be ethnically Jewish, of course. But I mean, Jewish people believe in a Messiah too.
There are always going to be topics that divide a religion. For example, there are some Hasidic Jews who believe that Menachem Schneerson was the Messiah, and believing this doesn't necessarily make them not Jewish, even though they broke off from most others from the Chabad community.

**Kodos** · 07-19-2011, 09:02 PM

But it makes them not part of the mainstream of that community and they would not be defined as being part of the same group. Again - see my definition. Jesus did not differ on only a few minor issues - he differed on many major ones.

**ClockHand** · 07-20-2011, 01:06 AM

Jewish is a culture?

I always tough the culture was Hebrew and the religion Jew.

Jesus was a hipster jew, end of the discussion.

**Kodos** · 07-20-2011, 09:21 AM

It's complex. I'd argue that Jewish-X (where X is an ethnicity) is a culture. I'd also argue that Jewish sort of is a bit of an ethnicity - not that ethnicity is really a thing - given how insular Jewish communities tend to be and how they tend to breed within their own and have a distinct gene pool and culture from whatever group they are living in.

That said, I also find it stupid a bit and really wish we had alternate words for these things. "Jew" and "Jewish" first and foremost refer to a religious ideology and to use the same term for secular group descriptors like culture and ethnicity seems a bit silly to me.