A question

Personally, I would think that if you are a student of religion, then you should go to the source of the belief. That does not mean you agree with that belief, or think it is correct, just that you want to be as authentic as possible.

And that is what I do.  I go to the source.  Just as I go to the source in Islam.

I thought that the Jews rejected Jesus as the Messiah because he didn't fit any of the criteria: (direct from some Jews)

This is correct and it is not correct.  There was no definitive view of what the Messiah would be in first century Judaism and there was a belief that the Messiah would be divine.

The Jews were looking for a warrior Messiah, someone who weilded a sword, but that was not the kind of Messiah that Jesus was or that God wanted.  Jesus was the direct opposite.  He did not have a bloody sword.  His message was one of peace, turning the other cheek, going the extra mile.  He defeated the Romans and all other pagan religions by claiming that there was only one God and that one God was the only God there is.  And that Jesus was God's Messiah, the one who was to come and defeat the world, which he did by dying on the cross for your sins and for mine.

I would never put my salvation in the hands of today's Jews.

Annie

Mishmish, one of my scholarly "hobbies" is studying Jewish antiquities.  I think you would enjoy reading some of Flavius Josephus' works.  He was Jewish, born just four years after the death of Jesus.  Josephus was born Joseph ben Mattathias in Jerusalem in 37CE.  Briefly, he was a priest, soldier, and scholar.  Here is a brief statement he made regarding Jesus (he first wrote in Aramaic, but later his more detailed works were written in Greek, the most well-known language of the day:)

    Do the Christian gospels record actual events during the First Century A.D./ C.E., or are they the ecstatic visions of a small religious group? 

    There are no surviving Roman records of the First Century that refer to, nor are there any Jewish records that support the accounts in the Christian gospels --- except one. 

    In Rome, in the year 93, Josephus published his lengthy history of the Jews. While discussing the period in which the Jews of Judaea were governed by the Roman procurator Pontius Pilate, Josephus included the following account: 
 

About this time there lived Jesus, a wise man, if indeed one ought to call him a man.  For he was one who performed surprising deeds and was a teacher of such people as accept the truth gladly. He won over many Jews and many of the Greeks. He was the Messiah. And when, upon the accusation of the principal men among us, Pilate had condemned him to a cross, those who had  first come to love him did not cease.  He appeared to them spending a third day restored to life, for the prophets of God had foretold these things and a thousand other marvels about him.  And the tribe of the Christians, so called after him, has still to this day not disappeared.                                    - Jewish Antiquities, 18.3.3 �63  

Josephus subsequently improved his language skills and undertook a massive work in Greek explaining the history of the Jews to the general non-Jewish audience. He emphasized that the Jewish culture and Bible were older than any other then existing, hence called his work the Jewish Antiquities. Approximately half the work is a rephrasing of the Hebrew Bible, while much of the rest draws on previous historians. This work was published in 93 or 94 CE, when he was about 56 years old. 

http://members.aol.com/FLJOSEPHUS/life.htm

It is quite interesting to study the very early writings.  Others may find it a bit boring, but if anyone has an interest in them, the link is posted above.

God's Peace.

"I would never put my salvation in the hands of today's Jews.'

The Jews might feel the same way...