800 to 1000 years BEFORE Jesus you mean.
Absent a death, there’s also no “dying for our sins”.
I don’t think this is accepted by serious historians. You need to quote some sources if you want to claim this.
The use of similar phrases, events, etc. is easily understandable when you realise that the writers of the New Testament were actively looking for old Biblical prophesies and then claiming that the events of Jesus’ life fulfilled them.
You’re confusing earthly death with spiritual death. Everyone suffers an end to their mortal life. It’s the Christian belief that the eternal soul survives mortal death and lives in eternal glory. Then there’s the resurrection thing where the body and the soul are reunited. So, “dying for our sins” is the method whereby the old law (sacrifice, etc.) was replaced by the new law (Christian view) by the suffering on the cross. No Christian believes Christ is dead.
I was responding with a question to this quote:
“there is no prophecy listed in the Bible which is generally accepted by scholars to have been written previous to the events prophesied”
At least once they didn’t even bother being subtle about it.
Sorry, but a bad S&M session you’ve agreed to beforehand, using “DAD” as a safe-word, when you know that it’s only temporary and there’s a payoff that big in the end isn’t a “sacrifice”-it’s the big finish to a magic act. I think there are untold thousands(if not millions) who suffered much more and much longer then died for real that would have nailed themselves up on a cross for a guaranteed payoff like that, where neither your spirit or your body actually stays dead.
how about…
Messiah would be born in Bethlehem. Micah 5:2
Messiah would be born of a virgin. Isaiah 7:14
These clearly precede the events prophesied.
Even in Zechariah 11:12-13
New International Version (NIV)
12 I told them, “If you think it best, give me my pay; but if not, keep it.” So they paid me thirty pieces of silver.
13 And the Lord said to me, “Throw it to the potter”—the handsome price at which they valued me! So I took the thirty pieces of silver and threw them to the potter at the house of the Lord.
Written some 518 years before it happened.
I am not a Biblical (or other relevant kind of) historian and confess to extrapolating a lot from the little I do know, but my impression has always been that J of N intended to put the relevant officials in a position where they’d have to choose between either condemning him to death on a bullshit charge or else conceding his point about the spirit versus the letter of the law.
I don’t think he anticipated that they would punt the matter to the Romans. I don’t think he was trying to get his ass killed.
Gah! I’m not the one saying they weren’t!
About those prophesies he supposedly fulfilled.
Yeah, but don’t you think there is a difference between “Jesus didn’t fulfill any prophesies” and “No prophesies were written until after the events the prophesied” ?
Anyway, I am not arguing fulfillment or whatever, I was just surprised to read that since I hadn’t heard that before.
Sorry then, I’m not catching your point.
It all depends on whether you can call it a prophesy if it never comes true, and whether some of them were really prophesies at all. in post #39 I wrote
Also, if one prophesy is supposedly fulfilled and another is obviously not, does one cancel out the other…or does a flood of prophesies thrown at a dartboard make you a prophet?
Yes, there were prophesies written before Jesus did his thing, but did they pertain to him? It’s the ones that people claim are accurate that are in question.
Czar, that’s a Jewish source. They don’t believe Christ was the messiah.
Well, from Isiah 7:14
…13Then he said, "Listen now, O house of David! Is it too slight a thing for you to try the patience of men, that you will try the patience of my God as well? 14"Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign: Behold, a virgin will be with child and bear a son, and she will call His name Immanuel. 15"He will eat curds and honey at the time He knows enough to refuse evil and choose good.…
That virgin with child thing. That’s a pretty tough order. Especially when it was written in the 8th century BCE (BC)
See section (3)A of my link.
This was the original post to which I was responding:
So MY question was, were all the prophesies that are written in the Old Testament written AFTER Jesus?
As a response question to the post.
I didn’t have a point. I had a question, based on reading something that I hadn’t heard before.
If it was a Christian source you would accept it? I think having a prequalification to believe that the prophesies were fulfilled before you could analyze them seems rather silly, myself.
It is only a “tough order” if you assume the origin myth built around Jesus to be historically accurate and you assume that “virgin” is an accurate translation.