The Others 2: Judaism and Other Religions

(1) These are the laws and rules that you must carefully observe in the land that the LORD, God of your fathers, is giving you to possess, as long as you live on earth.

(2) You must destroy all the sites at which the nations you are to dispossess worshiped their gods, whether on lofty mountains and on hills or under any luxuriant tree.

(3) Tear down their altars, smash their pillars, put their sacred posts to the fire, and cut down the images of their gods, obliterating their name from that site.

(10) Moses our Teacher did not bequeath the Torah and the Commandments to anyone but to Israel, as it says, “the Heritage of the Congregation of Jacob” (Deut. 33:4), and to anyone from the other nations who wishes to convert, as it says, “as you, as a convert” (Numbers 15:15). However, no one who does not want to convert is forced to accept the Torah and the Commandments. Moses our Teacher was commanded by the Almighty to compel the world to accept the Commandments of the Sons of Noah. Anyone who fails to accept them is executed. Anyone who does accept them upon himself is called a Convert Who May Reside Anywhere. He may live anywhere in the Land of Israel.. He must accept them in front of three wise and learned Jews...

(11) Anyone who accepts upon himself and carefully observes the Seven Commandments is of the Righteous of the Nations of the World and has a portion in the World to Come. This is as long as he accepts and performs them because (he truly believes that) it was the Holy One, Blessed Be He, Who commanded them in the Torah, and that is was through Moses our Teacher we were informed that the Sons of Noah had already been commanded to observe them. But if he observes them because he convinced himself logically then he is not considered a Resident Convert and is not of the Righteous of the Nations of the World, but merely one of their wise.

The Sages taught: The descendants of Noah were commanded to observe seven mitzvot: judgment; and blessing [i.e., cursing] the name of G-d; and the prohibition of idol worship; and the prohibition against forbidden sexual relations; and the prohibition of bloodshed; and the prohibition of robbery; and the prohibition against eating a limb from a living animal.

(6) Even Jesus the Nazarene who imagined he would be the Messiah and was killed by the Court¹²⁹Or, was handed over to the Romans who killed him as a revolutionary because he proclaimed himself the Messiah, King of Israel. was prophesized about by Daniel as it says, “and also the children of the violent among your people will lift themselves up to establish the vision, but they shall stumble” (Daniel 11:14). Was there ever a greater impediment than this one? All the Prophets spoke of the Messiah, Redeemer of Israel and Savior and Gatherer of the Exiles and Strengthener of the Commandments. But this one caused the ruin of Israel by the sword and the dispersal of its remnant and its humiliation and reversed¹³⁰Or, changed. the Torah, and caused most of the world to err and worship a god other than HaShem (G-d).

(7) Nonetheless, the Thoughts of the Creator of the World are beyond any man’s understanding. For our ways are not His Ways, and our thoughts are not His Thoughts. And all the doings of Jesus the Nazarene and that of that Ishmaelite¹³¹I.e. Mohammed. The Rambam labels him “Meshugah” in his Igeress Teiman. who came after him are nothing but to pave the way for the King Messiah and prepare the entire world to worship G-d together, as it says, “For then¹³²When they will realize that their Messiahs were false will they abandon them and turn to G-d’s true Messiah. I will turn to the peoples a pure language, that they may all call upon the Name of the Lord, to serve Him with one consent” (Zephania 3:9).

(8) How is this so? The world is now already filled with matters of the Messiah and matters of the Torah and matters of the Commandments. Knowledge of these matters have spread to the distant islands and to the many nations of those with uncircumcised hearts. They discuss these matters and the Commandments of the Torah. Some of them¹³³As did Jesus. say that these Commandments were once true, but have since been canceled for our times as they were not meant to be observed for all generations. Some of them say that these are secret matters and are not as simple as they would appear, and now the “Messiah”¹³⁴Mohammed. has come and revealed these secrets.

(9) But when the true King Messiah will rise and succeed, and he will be lifted up and raised aloft, they all will immediately return and will know that their fathers left them an erroneous legacy, and their fathers and prophets led them astray.