@Jas3.1 which is why questions have multiple answers (and, in fact, SE expects that; it's one of the metrics).
@Anonymous actually no, according to Judaism. As you said, Judaism does not require that you be Jewish to merit a good outcome. A non-Jew need only follow the seven laws given to Noach after the flood. (Seven is Jewish tradition; they're not explicitly numbered in the text. But those laws, however you want to count them -- don't murder, don't commit adultery, don't do idolatry, etc -- are what is required.) Useful search term: "Noachide". [cont]
Now the status of Christianity is complicated (and a little controversial). According to some it is idolatry; according to others, it is for Jews but not for gentiles. The core issue is whether trinitarians are monotheists. But either way, Roman Catholicism is particularly messy that way because of the worship of Mary and saints; from what I understand, some practices there elevate them to a sort of semi-divine status, which is problematic.
@Anonymous Judaism accepts converts; it's not required but it is permitted.
@Jas3.1 It's been a while since I asked the question. If I were to ask it today, I think I'd have linked it to a New Testament text that illustrates the significance of "three days". It's a bit of a "stump-the-chumps", however. I'm personally convinced that it's an example of graded numerical parallelism:
In Hebrew poetry, especially proverbs, we see examples of monotonically increasing numbers that set up parallels. For instance Proverbs 30:15 (NJPS):
The leech has two daughters, “Give!” and “Give!”
Three things are insatiable;
Four never say, “Enough!”:
So the progression in this case...
@MonicaCellio I like the two top answers I got on this question even though they don't provide the answer I would give. The mention of the temple by Rashi is interesting. It shows how important numbers (two destroyed temples and the hope for a third) can be built into an interpretation of a text that mentions those numbers. (Did he know that Jesus made the destruction and rebuilding of the temple an analogy for his death and resurrection?)
@Anonymous that's interesting; I would think that a requirement for belief might be harder than one for specified actions. We have the capacity to do things we don't want to do (it all started with the spinach in childhood :-) ), but believing something you're not ready to believe? That's harder. I get that outsiders see the rules of Judaism as numerous and complicated, but you learn what to do.
OTOH, we don't have the "deathbed conversion gets you into heaven no matter how horrible you were your whole life" out... we require action, demonstration of commitment.
(Also, there are beliefs that our sages say are required, like that there is one God.)
@Anonymous oh, you mean some of the community/cultural aspects. Yes, they have that in common, and community -- not just special celebrations but the day-to-day, week-to-week-stuff -- is important in both.
@JonEricson the Temple is really important to Rashi (and more generally). I think everybody would have been happy if it didn't take three tries to get it to stick. :-) I see what you're saying about finding patterns in numbers; I think sometimes a number is just a number (hence the downvoted, unconvincing answer on your parallelism question), but sometimes they mean much more. Knowing which is which... ah, there's the challenge.
@JonEricson I don't know how much Rashi knew about Christian theology. He was quite learned Jewishly. I don't know if he read Latin or Greek. (In his commentary he sometimes brings up French, BTW.) He lived in France in the 12th century -- not a great time and place for Jewish-Christian dialogue but things have been worse. How nuanced an understanding of Christianity would be available to an outsider in that time and place, I wonder?
I saw relatively less participation here from Jewish members then the Christian members of this site , crowdsourcing Q\A from two highly incompatible religions would sound heretical to both. The only connection Christians have with Jews is the OT. The OT itself is mostly of sacramental value to ...
While this site is, in principle, solidly non-partisan in its religious affiliations, over time with a larger base of participation things have clearly gotten skewed a bit to the Christian side of things. Before any concrete actions can be taken to rectify this, I think it would be useful to actu...
In Hebrew poetry, especially proverbs, we see examples of monotonically increasing numbers that set up parallels. For instance Proverbs 30:15 (NJPS):
The leech has two daughters, “Give!” and “Give!”
Three things are insatiable;
Four never say, “Enough!”:
So the progression in this case...
