I was wondering what the Christians here make of Paine’s critique of the prophecies of Jesus, as recounted in the Gospels. To choose a more or less representative sample:
My take? Simply that even inspired evangelists can overreach and, occasionally, get things wrong.
Look, it’s only AFTER the fact, sometimes LONG after the fact, that we can judge whether a statement was prophetic (in the commonly used sense of the word, in the sense of predicting the future). St. Matthew, like all other Christians, believed that Jesus was divine, that he had risen from the dead, and that he was the Messiah whose coming had been foretold long ago. Naturally, that belief affected the way the read the Old Testament. If you START with the belief that Jesus was the Messiah, then when you come across passages in the Scripture that seem to relate to things Jesus said or did, you’re inclined to say “Aha! There it is! The prophets were talking about Jesus!”
Now, this type of thing was more important to Matthew than to any other Gospel writer, because Matthew was a Jewish Christian, writing at a time when it was becoming increasingly clear that most Jews weren’t buying into Christianity, and that the Christian Church was evolving into a goyish cult. Matthew wanted desperately to convince his fellow Jews to accept Jesus, and tried to make his case in Jewish terms- that is, by showing that Jesus was the fulfillment of Old Testament prophesies.
I happen to think that Matthew made as good a case as possible… but while most of the Old Testament passages he cited DO seem to have legitimate parallels to the life of Jesus, some examples seem like a MAJOR reach. And in other cases, the connections to Jesus are purely superficial, and don’t hold up if you read the O.T. passage more carefully, and grasp what it’s really talking about.
I think Matthew betrays a certain (understandable) sense of desperation. He wanted to used Scripture to appeal to his fellow Jews, and may have found himself speed reading through the prophetic books and using almost ANYTHING that seemed to touch on something even vaguely connected to something in Jesus’ life (“let’s see… Samson was a Nazirite, Jesus was from Nazareth… BINGO! There must be a connection!”).
Then let’s hear it. Where did Matthew legitimately point to prophecy?
<< Look, it’s only AFTER the fact, sometimes LONG after the fact, that we can judge whether a statement was prophetic >>
Even then, it’s hard to tell. Most prophecies are not specific – rarely do you find a seer from the 1600s predicting that the American Civil War will end in April, 1865 and that President Lincoln will be shot in Ford’s theatre. Instead you get “two brothers shall struggle against each other, and the tall man will die.” AH, right on! Could mean bloody well anything.
Another possibility exists: Matthew was a poor reader of Scripture, and was using an inferior translation.
This is often said to be the case with the “two asses” bit, wherein Matthew has Jesus call for two asses (there is only one in Mark and Luke) and there is some suggestion that he actually rides on both of them at once (which seems a little goofy, if true, and doesn’t match Luke or Mark even if not).
Matthew 21:2-7
Jesus sent two disciples, saying to them, “Go into the village opposite you, and immediately you both shall find an ass tied, and a colt with her. Loose them, and bring them to me…” All of this was done so that it would be fulfilled that which was spoken by the prophet,
“Tell you all to the daughter of Zion,
‘Behold, your king comes to you
meek, and sitting upon an ass
and a colt the son of an ass.’”
And the disciples went, and did as Jesus commanded them, and brought the ass and the colt, and cast their garments on them, and they set him upon them.
The problem is that the original text didn’t use “and a colt…” but something more along the lines of “yea, a colt” meaning that it was an emphasis, not a plural. This means, according to some, that we’ve caught Matthew altering the story for the express purpose of fulfilling his own mistranslation of a phrophecy.
There’s also the “and he shall be called Emmanuel” bit. Who calls Jesus Emmanuel? Nobody… except our phrophecy-fulfilling narrator. That’s not even getting into how big a strech that entire phrophecy is in the first place.
Paine again:
Frankly, not very much. Sit down with an open mind and read the entire 11th chapter. Notice that only in the first verse are the singular noun and pronoun used. The entire rest of the chapter uses the plural tense, except when specifying name. Why is that? Now, it’s entirely possible that Jewish scholars right up to the time of Jesus understood the context in one, historical context only. It certainly does not mean that to be the only context. That would be a contradictory rationale, because it would then oblige us to ignore scriptural teachings as having any application other than in the historical context.
*All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness. * II Tim 3:16
If this is true, then Matthew is correct. If this is not true, the question is moot.
Fast forward to Matthew. Over the course of Jesus’ ministry, it would be reasonable to presume that the apostles would become familiar with Jesus’ family and upbringing. Jesus’ ministry takes place in the region in which his family lived, and his mother and brothers were involved in at least parts of his final years. I find it entirely reasonable that the apostles were told of Jesus’ family fleeing to Egypt and latter return and, putting two and two together, knowing scripture, recognized an hitherto unknown prophecy.
It is the glory of God to conceal a thing; but the honour of kings is to search out a matter. Prov 25:2
Do you have any reason to disbelieve Matthew, other than sheer pique?
Actually, I have two translations here, the King James and the NIV, and they’re both consistent with Zechariah 9:9. Perhaps you’d care to show in which translation you find this discrepancy.
Emmanuel means “God with us”, so it’s a perfectly reasonable choice to make. My Bible indicates that this was a characterization rather than a name, a descriptor if you like.
First of all, the “out of Egypt” bit was never intended as a prophesy of anything. It was written as history, pure and simplre. Second of all, the slaughter of the innocents and the subsequent flight to Egypt were completely invented by Matthew. Neither of these events occur anywhere else but Matthew, and there is no historical record at all of Herod ever slaughtering babies in Bethlehem. Even Jesus’ supposed birth in Bethlehem is another Matthean invention to try to force a correlation with the expectation that the Messiah would come from the birthplace of David.
As for the apostles and their knowledge of Jesus, that is of no consequence to the gospels because none of the apostles had anything to do with writing them. In fact, nothing in the New Testament is written by anyone who ever met Jesus. All ascriptions to apostles, (Matthew, John, letters of Peter, etc.) were 2nd and 3rd century traditions, and most of them were written much to long after the crucifixion to be any kind of living testimony.
Virtually every Hebrew name has a “God” in it somewhere and could be taken to apply to Jesus ifb one was so inclined. Even so, we are still stuck with the fact that the full context of the Isaiah quote is clearly and unambiguously a reference to a specific other kid who was present in that story.
BTW, it doesn’t say “virgin.” It says “young woman.” Virgin is a mistranslation.
Well, ultimately the problem is this:
Christianity is fundamentally based on the belief that the central, most important event of God’s plan is the fulfillment of prophecy. (After all, Jesus’ role as the messiah has no meaning if no messiah was never prophecied.)
Mysteriously, God never actually provided prophecies per se of Jesus. He never had a prophet sit down and say anything at all like, “One day the messiah will come, and his name will be Jesus. The king will be scared of him and try to kill all the children, so his family will flee to Egypt. As an adult, he will enter Jerusalem riding on an ass, and will be crucified as a sacrifice for your sins. Then he will be resurrected, and the covenant will be brought to fulfillment.” etc, etc.
Instead, he had all the prophecies of Jesus be hidden away in other verses so that they could only be discovered with the decoder ring of interpretation so tortuous as to be indistinguishable from the most shameful sort of sophistry. When God says, “I will bring my child out of Egypt, but they will sacrifice to the Baalim” you’re actually supposed to yank the first half of that sentence completely out of context, and ignore the second half about the Baalim. Using the exact same logic you can, as has been shown before, prove anyone to be the messiah, including Chewbacca. Thus God has cleverly contrived to see to it that the beliefs of the Christians are apparently no more valid than those of the Chewbacconists. Why? I don’t know. It’s particularly puzzling since he’s supposed to want everyone to become Christians, and many say that unbelievers will burn in hell.
Mind you, if it’s something markedly less important, like King Ahaz fighting Prince Blizblaz, then the prophets can speak quite clearly, describing who will win and what sequence of events will transpire before leading to their victory and so forth.
The galling part? All those Christians who cluck their tongues about how those silly Jews were expecting a political messiah, and still can’t accept that God gave them so much more! For Pete’s sake, people, they were clearly promised a political messiah! Don’t you realize that you’ve sacrificed every shred of a right to complain that Mormons and Christian Scientists are twisting the Bible around?
I mean, we’re not talking just fundamentalists here. Even the most respected Christians of the SDMB can sometimes be seen doing it. I recently saw one of them saying, with great humility, that of course Christians will reject Christ when He comes again. After all, despite all the clear ways in which Jesus fulfilled the prophecies of the messiah, the Jews still manage to come up with reasons not to believe it. Sigh… tsk tsk tsk.
:rolleyes:
I’ll restrain myself, since this isn’t the pit. If only you knew the pain your religion and my exit from it has caused me, you wouldn’t be so snarky.
Ben, I am not in the slightest bit interested in defending typological exegesis, but it would seem that what you’re looking for is an interpretation of how it works, so here goes, remembering that I’m distancing myself from any adherence to the view I’m trying to describe:
When God wants to provide foreshadowing of His future plans in a way that is both transparent after the fact and disguised before, what He does is to, by His Holy Spirit, inspire writers to use words and phrases that will strike a chord with later readers (who, being omniscient and timeless, he is aware will have that chord struck by those words and phrases). And so He causes a prophetic utterance to be given that will resonate later in a quite different way than it did at the time it was prophesied.
For example, the Emmanuel story, already brought up. The King of Judah is quaking in his boots at the idea that the Kings of Israel and Syria, both significantly larger countries, are going to attack him. Isaiah, already established as a prophet and hanging out at court at the moment, points to a young maiden* and says, “She’s going to (presumably marry and) conceive a boy child (in the normal way). By the time that kid’s reached the age where he knows good from evil, the two kings you’re messing your pants about are both going to be pushing up daisies. And she’ll name the kid ‘Emmanuel’ (which means “God with us”) in token of the fact that God is with us, and will rescue you from your peril.” (*Etymological note: IIRC almah meant at the time Isaiah used it a nubile girl of marriageable years who was not yet married, hence I use “maiden” as the translation.) And, in point of fact, within three years the two threatening kings were in fact dead.
Okay, so many years later, almah comes to mean specifically virgin – girl who hasn’t had sex yet. And the prophecy therefore can now be read “The virgin shall conceive and bear a child – and shall call him Emmanuel” – which is a singularly appropriate term to express the Incarnation, the concept that in the person of Jesus God is among us and with us in human form.
The later reading is typological. It does not contradict the first reading – that’s what Isaiah meant to say, for the strengthening of the spirit of the King of Judah, and that meaning stays in place and is sound. But, because almah shifted meaning, and because Jesus was and is, to Christians, indeed “God with us” in a very special way, it also carries that second meaning – and, according to exponents of typology, it does that because God intended it to at the time it was first uttered.
Does that help any in grasping what is going on?
to be, not so much, “This is a prediction of Messiah which was fulfilled by Jesus” as “This is an incident from the history of Israel or the teachings of our Prophets which is replicated in the life of Jesus- Who is God’s Individual Son & Anointed Prophet, Priest & King, even as Israel is God’s Collective Son & Anointed Prophetic, Priestly Kingdom.”
The two Hebrew Scriptures which I hold to be actual detailed predictions of Jesus’s life & death- the Suffering Servant passages of Isaiah and the Seventy Weeks of Daniel Chapter Nine (the one place where the term Messiah is used in a futuristic prediction & it says he will be cut off/killed before the City of Jerusalem is destroyed & the Temple desolated.)
the Hebrew “almah” indeed has the primary meaning of “young woman” but when the Septuagint translators rendered the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek, they chose the word “parthenos” which indeed means “virgin” (the male version is used in Revelation 14 of the 144000).
Polycarp, I’m already aware of how the decoder ring works. What’s problematic to me is that anyone could find it respectable. Why does God sometimes say things plainly, and at other times make his messages so garbled that they can, quite frankly, be used to legitimate whatever the interpreter wants to believe, with no way of sorting out which interpretation is correct? Like I said, if you’re going to take a half-sentence- not a full sentence, but a half sentence, because the second half clearly invalidates it as prophecy- out of a passage that isn’t even apparently prophetic, and claim that all along it was really talking about something else, then you can justify anything you want that way.
Some creationists say that God made the universe such-and-such a way, but scrambled the evidence so thoroughly that human reason is powerless to examine the results and figure out how he did it- and thus the creationists rely on faith in what they already believe. In the end, there is nothing to recommend Christian creationism over, say, Native American creationism, since both can say “God did it but made it look like evolution.”
You believe that God meant to say such-and-such thing, but scrambled the words so thoroughly that human reason is powerless to examine the results and figure out what it means- and thus you rely on faith in what you already believe. In the end, there is nothing to recommend Christianity over Chewbacconism, since both can say, “God said it, but he hid it in scattered fragments of scripture which don’t purport to be prophetic and which must be taken out of context in a manner so at variance to any normal exegesis as to be indistinguishable from the most shameless eisegesis.”
You look down your nose at fundamentalist Christians for being too lazy to believe in evolution, but it seems clear to me that you have a double standard.
And you base this thought on…what? If scripture is indeed inspired by God, and a prophecy is hidden until fulfillment, wouldn’t one at the latter time then make that connection? Although I don’t know why I’m arguing on this specific verse, as I haven’t had time to do any substantive research, so consider my argument generally, if you would. Your argument seems to be that because the Israelites didn’t recognize anything exceptional about this verse, that’s that. I find that puzzling.
Okay, there’s no extra-biblical proof. HOWEVER, there is no extra-biblical proof that such did NOT happen. What is known about King Herod does in fact make this event fully in keeping with his character, so your dismissal lacks weight.
Granted, the oldest copies we have of the NT are dated to the second century, but, historically speaking, the sheer number and variety of copies give great weight to the integrity of those copies. There are far more copies of the NT in something like a dozen languages, with a shorter time gap than many standard historical writings. When you then add in the early church fathers’ and historians’ quotations of the NT, it becomes clear the extent to which the apostolic writings had become available.
My apologies, Ben. I used that term because your previous post seemed to have so much anger in it. I regret the tone.
As to the OP in general: I find that many non-Christians raise what they perceive as errors or contradictions that, when dispelled, they simply resurrect another day. I’m sure that’s a criticism which cuts both ways, by the by. For example, the argument over the Hebrew word ‘almah’, primary meaning ‘young, unmarried woman’. As FriarTed noted already, when the LXX translated, they chose the Greek word ‘parthenos’, meaning specifically ‘virgin’. Now, it seems only logical to me that the Jews translating at least 100 years before Jesus’ birth had the more accurate translation than those re-learning the Hebrew language today after nearly 2000 years of disuse. Yet, I am sure that this will continue to be raised as a fundamental objection to prophecy concerning the Messiah’s birth.
I appreciate sincere questions even when I haven’t the answer, as it gives me food for thought and further research topics.
—Actually, I have two translations here, the King James and the NIV, and they’re both consistent with Zechariah 9:9. Perhaps you’d care to show in which translation you find this discrepancy.—
Well then, explain what they say, and how they are consistent. I’m not sure how far I’d take the NIV, seeing as part of it’s purpose is to “correct” errancy by creative translation.
—My Bible indicates that this was a characterization rather than a name, a descriptor if you like.—
And what evidence does it give for such a view? Regardless, this is inconsistent with what Isaiah says about the name, and who will call it.
Well, sir, I have a few things to comment in reply to this, and will then take my leave of your thread.
First, the final paragraph constitutes a condemnation of me as a person, as opposed to the content of my post, and therefore belongs in the Pit, not in Great Debates.
Second, it is quite clear that you ignored the first paragraph of my post, which I will quote here to make myself clear:
This is not the first time that you have insisted on bringing to my attention your ability to get belligerent at the presumed shortcomings and lack of integrity of others, myself included, when the fact of the matter is that you apparently have a selective inability to read and comprehend the contents of a post that contains something with which you disagree strongly.
In this case, I explained the thought processes behind the concept of typology as Biblical exegesis, making a point to emphasize that this was not in fact my own point of view, for what value the explanation might have to the question you originally raised. I might do the same thing with regard to Calvinist double predestination, Catholic transubstantiation, or LDS obliteration of the Nephites (if I understood clearly their explanation of it), in none of which I believe, should an explanation of the thought behind one of those topics appear useful to a given thread.
The next time you choose to impute foul motives to a poster, reread his or her post carefully and with comprehension before you get belligerent. I believe I am justified in insisting on this.
I base it on context. The context is clear and unambiguous. It is simply not a prediction but a description of history. It requires an absurd stretch of reason to apply it to Jesus. The author of that verse was talking about Israel only. I also base it on the fact that it’s frankly impossible to predict the future hundereds of years in advance. I know you believe in God. I don’t. I see no reason, therefore, to read the OT “prophesies” as predictions of Jesus without some clear and compelling evidence, especially since the passages in question fit quite nicely into their original context and are forced and awkward vis a vis Christian prophesy.
Specious reasoning at best. If Herod had committed such an act it would have been recorded by the Jews. It was not. It was not recorded by anyone but Matthew. Matthew goes to great pains to try to compare Jesus to both Moses and David. Occam’s razor makes it far more likely that Matthew was trying to force an anlaogy to Moses than that Herod had some supernatural knowledge of the future significance of a child born to peasants in backwater Galilee.
Specious again. There were a number of gospels, canonical and otherwise scattered about in the second and third centuries. There is nothing, however, that is contemporary, and there is not a word written that can be credibly attributed to an eyewitness. The earliest Christian writings are some letters of Paul, who never met Jesus and seems to have very little knowledge of his life. The earliest canonical gospel is Mark which was written about 60 CE. Mark contains neither a virgin birth nor a resurrection. Matthew cannot have been written before 70 CE (because it references the destruction of the temple by the Romans). Luke dates to about 90 CE and John is variously dated from 120-150 CE.
There are some “sayings” gospels such as Thomas which is contemporary with Mark, and the reconstructed “Q” gospel, which was a probable source for Mark and Matthew. These gospels do not contain any narratives or miracles, but only sayings attributed to Jesus. It is possible that these sayings were collected from apostles or from apostolic followers but it is interesting, in that case, that the earliest records of Jesus, and possibly the closest historical sources, would find only the sayings of Jesus recording and have no interest in miracles or a resurrection.