“Yeshua could not have been Messiah—he touched leprous and unclean, dead bodies. In doing so, He became I pure under the Mosaic Law; therefore, He did not perfectly keep the Mosaic Law and cannot be the Messiah.”
Response: The fact that Yeshua touched lepers and unclean bodies does not disqualify Him from Messiahship. In fact, there is a rabbinic teaching concerning the “Leper Messiah,” based on Isaiah 53:4. According to Raphael Patai, an anthropologist specializing in the field of Hebrew myth and history, the name of the Messiah connected to Isaiah 53:4 is “The Leprous of the House of Study.”(The Messiah Texts, Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1979, p. 17) The Babylonian Talmud states in reference to this verse:
What is his [the Messiah’s] name? … The Rabbis said: His
name is ‘the leper scholar,’ as it is written, Surely he hath
born our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem
him a leper, smitten of God, and afflicted.” (Thomas Huckel,
The Rabbinic Messiah, Philadelphia: Hananeel House, 1998)
Consider the story of the Baal Shem Tov (Israel ben Eliezer, who is the founder of Hasidic Judaism) in which he and a young Talmudic scholar were on a journey. As Sabbath approached the Ba’al Shem rejoiced to see a nearby village in which they could spend the Sabbath. Much to the young lad’s amazement, the horse led them unguided through the village and stopped beside a ramshackle dwelling. As the Rabbi entered, an old man, leprous and full of skin lesions, hugged him with joy saying “Peace be unto you my Master and Teacher!” and the Ba’al Shem likewise was filled with joy and did not refuse the greeting. Later, the young man asked why there was such joy and the Ba’al Shem answered “. . . there is a Messiah in every generation in This World, in reality, clothed in a body. And if the generation is worthy, he is ready to reveal himself; and if, God forbid, they are not worthy, he departs. And behold, that old man was ready to be our True Messiah…” (The Messiah Texts, p. 31)
In this story, the Messianic candidate is a leper, and again it becomes evident that in Judaism, contact with leprosy is a qualification for Messiahship, not a disqualification.
Consider also that there is no record in the Hebrew Scriptures of a genuine leper having been healed by man. A number of lepers were healed (Moses in Ex. 4:6-7; Miriam in Num. 12:10-15; Naaman in 2 Kgs. 5:1-19), but they were all healed by the direct hand of God. Yeshua touched a leper, but it was the act of healing (Mt. 8:1-3, Mk. 1:40-42, Lk. 5:12-13). He also healed lepers without touch (Mt. 11:4-5; Lk. 17:12–19). Since there is no record of a leper having been healed by man (2 Kgs. 5:7) and since there is no biblical record of treatment or remedy for leprosy, the implication of these healing acts is that Yeshua is God in a human body. There is NO DISQUALIFICATION from the office of Messiahship here. Indeed, his touching and healing of lepers CONFIRMS his Messiahship.
Read the full article on “Answers to Thought-Provoking Charges” by Robert Morris in the Apologetics section of Ariel magazine athttps://www.ariel.org/pdfs/magazine/spring-2019.pdf