I am sure there is a thread here somewhere that covers this already. However I cannot find one.
In the interest of not making this a GD, can you list Old Testament prophesies Jesus did NOT fulfill?
Or perhaps yuo can give me a link to a web page that does this.
Thanks!
Well, for starters, his name ain’t Immanuel (Isaiah 7:14).
Wheres zev when we need him!?!?
Well maybe this should be moved to GD after all, cause my question is, are Immanuel and Jesus interchangeable? Because in Mtt. 1:23 it says his name will be called Immanuel, and it seems ok with the fact that his name is Jesus a few verses later.
Well, until Diogenes shows up, I’ll take a stab at it.
Matthew was really concerned that Jesus be legitimate in every way he could think of. So he did things like pull quotes from the prophets out of context. I believe the best example would be the term “Nazarene”, which is unique to Matthew. The term Nazarite appears in Numbers and also a couple times in Judges in the story of Samson. Also, note how Matthew starts off in the very beginning putting Jesus in a direct line of descent from David but that this line of descent differs from the geneaology Luke gives Jesus.
Basically, whenever you ask a question like that, you’re going to get two answers. The first is the scholarly answer, which would be that it was a well-educated Matthew stretching to fit Jesus into the prophets, either intentionally or unintentionally (imagine that Matthew is a devout Jew, knows the religious literature of his people, but is doing this from memory and doesn’t have all the scrolls at hand.) So, in other words, Immanuel and Jesus are not interchangeable because the basis for Immanuel is taken completely out of context and require a belief in two levels of prophecy, some of which won’t be fulfilled for 600 years. The second is the religious answer, which will be that Matthew was right, the prophets were doing double propheysing, and terms such as Immanuel are correct.
It’s kinda like the meaning of messiah. Messiah just means anointed one, so Saul was God’s messiah, David was God’s messiah, and so on. (Saul was anointed by Samuel, wasn’t he? It’s been a while since I’ve read those books.) It is a contextual and literary stretch to say that all references to a messiah in the prophets all point several hundred years down the line directly at Jesus.
I would say that it depends on your point of view. If you’re Christian, you believe he fulfilled all of them (by definition - any he didn’t fulfill are obviously false prohecies). If you’re Jewish, he fulfilled none of them. If you’re none of the above, you don’t care, as the question is meaningless for you.
That seems to me to be an oversimplification. One can be a Christian and also a critic and decide that there were no Old Testament prophecies for Jesus to fulfill.
I’m an atheist and I would be interested in such a discussion.
While I’m thinking about it, I’m going to recommend reading Born Divine by Robert J. Miller. Now, I will admit to some bias here, as Miller was my professor for the majority of my religion classes in college (my three academic interests are chemistry, religion, and business, in that order) but he always seemed to me to be a scholar first and foremost. Knowing Dr. Miller, he probably spends some time in the book talking about Hellenistic divine origin stories before getting down to textual criticism. I have not actually read the book–it was only brought up in a handout of one chapter in a class that didn’t have much of anything to do with this particular question–but now that I’m thinking about it, it’s back on the list while I’m waiting for a copy of The World is Flat to become available.
The sticking point is what you define as Messianic prophecy. By scholarly (and Jewish) standards. Jesus did not fulfill any of the OT expectations for the Messiah (which includes such things as rebuilding the Temple in Jerusalem, returning all Jews to Israel, bringing world peace and causing the world to worship one God. The OT Messiah was also NOT supposed to be God or to die and be resurrected or to save anybody from their sins. He was just supposed to be a human king- an heir to the throne of David- who would restore the kingdom and do all that stuff listed above.
Christians - starting with the authors of the New Testament- completely redefined the Messiah and mined the Tanakh for any verses and passages which they conceivably thought they could construe as being about Jesus. Most of what they cite as fulfilled prophecy does not have any Messianic intent in its original OT context. The “Immanuel” prophecy in Isaiah 7:14 cited above is a perfect example. That verse is simply not about the Messiah when read in context. It’s part of a larger story in which a Jewish king named Ahaz is worried about two other kings who he fears will invade him. He is considering making an alliance with Assyria but Isaiah convinces him not to by telling him that God will give him a sign.
"Behold the young woman [not a virgin] is with child, and she shall bear a son, and she shall call his name Immanuel. Cream and honey he shall eat when he knows to reject bad and choose good; for, when the lad does not yet know to reject bad and choose good, the land whose two kings you dread, shall be abandoned.”
Ahaz is being promised that a young woman will have a baby, and before that kid knows right from wrong (i.e. before puberty), his enemies will be dead. This is a prophecy which is intended to prove something to AHAZ in the near future, and it’s a prophecy which is fulfilled in the next chapter.
Matthew also mistranslated the Hebrew word almah (“young woman”) into Greek as parthenos (“virgin”). It’s a mistake which Matthew imported from the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible.
There are many other examples of this kind of thing in the New Testament. Another well known example would be the “Suffering Servant” passages from Isaiah which Christians take as being about Jesus but which, in their original context, are in no way Messianic but represent a poetic personification of Israel (and Isaiah explicitly identifies the image as such multiple times within the text).
Christians exegetes will typically apologize for the lack of Messianic context in these verses by the use of a device called “dual prophecy” in which they claim the text has one explicit meaning along with another more cryptic or implicit allusion to Jesus. This point of view relies on faith rather than analytical method and so cannot be falsified, but it is not something which is generally given much credence by serious scholars.
I saw this thread, but didn’t want to respond right away. I didn’t want it to seem like I was bashing Christianity.
In any event, Bryan, as Diogenes pointed out, Isaiah 7 is not a messianic prophecy. After all, how could Ahaz be comforted by a sign that would not appear for another 600 years.
I don’t have a comprehensive list of prophecies that Jesus did not fulfill. The most prominent ones that comes to mind, are the beating of swords to plowshares, world peace, etc and the ingathering of the exiles of Israel.
Zev Steinhardt
Note-The following is an attempt to answer the OP. It should in no way be read as a declaration that my religious beliefs are superior, or that I believe Judaism has a monopoly on truth, righteousness, or Baltic avenue.
The messiah is supposed to be a descendant of King David. Such descent would be traced through the father and would not be passed on to an adpoted son or stepchild. If Jesus had no human father, he cannot be David’s descendant.
The messiah is supposed to gather all the Jews to the Promised Land. Scuba Ben and I live in Philadelphia. Zev Steinhardt and CmKeller live in New York. When visiting my parents in Florida, I’m surrounded by Jews.
The messiah is supposed to bring peace to the world. If that happened, I missed it.
For more, Rabbi Joseph Telushkin’s Jewish Literacy has a section on the messiah.
You can read it here
Finally, the Jewish messiah has to do all this in one life. Judaism explicitly teaches that there is no Second Coming provision. Zev could be the messiah. But, if he dies without gathering all Jews to the Promised Land, ushering in world peace, and doing a few other required things, we’ll know he wasn’t. Many members of a Lubavitcher sect thought their leader rabbi Shmeerson could be the messiah. Then, he died. While still revering him as a great hero, all but a tiny fringe of the Lubavitcher accepted that Shmeerson wasn’t the messiah.
Re Nazarite
When you feel the need to atone for something, to feel closer to G-d, or because you feel like it, a Jew can make a pledge to G-d and become a Nazarite. This means- no alcohol, no sex, and no cutting your hair. On Yom Kippur, the day of atonement, Nazarites say a special prayer asking G-d to forgive them for not fully partaking in the world He created.
Re Almah
For once, I don’t have to defer to Diogenes’ authority. I’ve asked rabbis, teachers, and folks who speak fluent Hebrew about this. Diogenes has summed up their answer. Almah is better translated into English as “maiden”. It can be to imply virgin or unwed, but the dictionary meaning is “girl”.
Actually, Doc, a nazir is forbidden to three categories of items (and sex is not one of them). They are:
Nazirim didn’t have any special prayers or offering to give on Yom Kippur.
The term nazir has nothing to do with the term “Nazarene” (which simply indicates a person who comes from Nazareth.) I’m not sure of it’s place in this thread as Jesus was clearly not a nazir if he drank wine by the Last Supper.
Zev Steinhardt
I must have misremembered. Why grapes?
Rosh Hoshannah? Could the special prayer be a later tradition found only in certain sects and not commanded in the Torah or found in the Talmud? I’m sure I heard it from one of two people, both very learned.
Because that’s the commandment. Numbers 6.
A nazir brings sacrifices upon completion of his term. I’m positive that there are no other sacrifices required of a nazir who completes his term without coming into contact with the dead.
I’m not aware of any special prayers that they were supposed to recite on Yom Kippur or any other holiday. However, it is certainly possible that I’m just not aware of it.
Zev Steinhardt
That was my doing. In attempting to give an example of where Matthew screwed up and got, at the very least, his reference wrong, I brought up Nazarene and nazirite.
Hijack : is this a permanent or a temporary pledge and status?
Look, I know that this is treading on dangerous/emotional/upsetting ground and a bit of a highjack, but:
Were the vast majority of the Jewish Religious Intelligentsia around 30 AD actually looking for a Messiah to do all these things, or do we have the answers that make up this thread (i.e. Jesus didn’t do the things “the” Messiah was supposed to) based on 2000 years of reaction to Christian writings, apologia and the “high jacking” of the written traditions of Judaism?
Is it likely that, except for some subculture groups, there was no expectation of a Messiah and that mainstream Judaism wasn’t really all that invested in having a Messiah. Wouldn’t the vast majority of Jewish thought (then as now) be “Yeah you could read some passages that way, but really we are about the Law and the Temple – the Messiah may or may not be coming – but it isn’t what we are about.” Is that fair?
If so, then really wouldn’t the answer to the OP would be that the “Old Testament” doesn’t clearly talk about a single Messiah and that pointing to X or Y as pertaining or not pertaining to “the messiah” - or to/not to Jesus - is a bogus exercise.
Idunno. However, the vast majority of Jews were.
Nope.
Nope. Go back to my first post in this thread and read the link. One of the thirteen articles of faith Maimonides listed as necessary for Judaism was belief in the messiah.
A person who wants to become a nazir takes an oath to that effect. A person could specify a term of any length he desired, subject to the following provisions:
A person could, if he so wished, take a lifetime term or a term so long that it would naturally encompass his or her entire life (1000 years, for example).
Once his or her term was up, the nazir would go to the Temple, bring a set of sacrifices and have his/her head shaved. Once the nazir completed the rituals, s/he was free of the nazir prohibitions.
A person can also take a vow for multiple terms. IOW, he can vow to complete two terms. He would then bring his sacrifices/cut his hair on the 30th day, and then do so again on the 59th day (since day 30 counts toward both terms).
A person who does not bring the sacrifices to the Temple at the conclusion of his/her term is still bound by the nazir restrictions. Accordingly, if someone were to (for whatever reason) vow to become a nazir today, he would remain in the state of nezirus until the Temple is rebuilt and s/he can bring the sacrifices. (Of course, if the Temple is rebuilt within the initial term, s/he must wait until the term is concluded).
Zev Steinhardt