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Originally Posted by Yamah
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Isaiah 45 doesn't talk about The Messiah though... it talks about Cyrus, the king of Persia. Any King is called messiah but that is the process of becoming a king - being annointed. You may have room to say 'this is ALSO a prophecy for the coming of the messiah' but that would be a secondary interpretation which not everyone would agree with and it is precisely those types of prophecies I have attempted to avoid in my essay.
The verses I quoted above are all those which, through Pshat (the simplest reading using traditional vowelization) refer to The Messiah They all, in context, point to a righteous person existing in the future who will basically save the world. There are many other verses that can be used through manipulation of meaning and taking things out of context to refer to the messiah but their strength will never be anywhere close to that of a Pshat prophecy.
The argument about eating Kosher is not circular. It is straightforward. Read Leviticus 11. It is stated clearly, several times, what a Jew may or may not eat. You don't need interpretation. You don't to jump through hoops. The words are written right there and they are clear. I don't know how much more I can stress this point. After reading Leviticus 11 there should be two possible conclusions that can be arrive at: (1) The Torah is 100% true, therefore Jews are obligated to keep dietary restrictions, (2) The Torah is not 100% true, therefore Jews are not necessarily obligated to keep dietary restrictions.
Regarding revowelization to change the meaning - you know that argument is ruminent excrement, right? Let me deconstruct the argument:
1) You can place any vowelization into the Torah to arrive at a new meaning
2) Therefore, there is no set meaning to the Torah
3) Therefore, the Torah can mean anything you want
4) Therefore, the Torah cannot be used as proof for anything.
Every step of this argument is false. I will explain.
1) I don't know how familiar you are with the Hebrew language, but it isn't like English. Changing a vowel doesn't make a whole new word. The Hebrew Language is set up so that consonant roots already have a meaning while the vowels set up the context for that meaning. For example, the root CNS is 'gather'. 'Kenes' is a gathering, 'Lekanes' is 'to enter' (to gather one's self into something), 'Miknasaim' is pants (tool for gathering), k'neset is 'gathering place'.
Furthermore, given a set of consonants there are only a few different possible vowel structures to go along with it. Even using the same root, you can see that several additional consonants are placed around it to alter its meaning. The root itself, CNS, could be 'Kenes' (gathering), 'Kanas' (he gathered), and I believe that's it. Two possible interpretations. Given the context there is usually only one interpretation that fits any given word. Only very rarely can you find a word whose meaning is entirely uncertain due to lack of vowelization.
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You can't take the Pshat approach and ignore Cyrus as the only person referenced as God's appointed Messiah in the entire Torah. It has a very important purpose - please see my book at oracle of the phoenix dotcom and you will see why.
Using just the Pshat approach limits/restricts the ability to gain the hint, metaphor and actual foundational meaning that makes up the PaRDeS entirety. Perhaps you are superstitious and believe you need to wait until you are 40 years old to study Kabbalah but this is a misnomer and restriction put on due to a nasty experience in the past with a couple of messianic figures that misled their communities (Sabbatai Zevi being one of them). Luria died before he was 40.
The saving grace of having no vowels is that the torah can change with the times. Dr. Sanford Drob - see his site New Kabbalah which can find on my links page on my site. He said the following:
"According to the Kabbalists, it is the Torah which mediates the creative power of the holy letters, and the Torah itself is understood to be a changing organism whose very structure is transformed in response to alterations in the cosmos and the life of man.”
It is said that the worst thing ever done to the Jewish people was to have the torah translated into the Septuagint as it put it into a frozen narrative. The entire Zohar is put forth to unfreeze it and bring out the Kabbalistic meaning.
While your arguments may hold up in fundamentalist circles, they hold no water for those who approach its study with the entire PaRDes lens.
Fundamentalism is the scourge of our time imo. For those not familiar with the term Pshat - it is based on the letter Pei which mean Face - therefore this level only deals with the surface level of Torah. Google PaRDes.