I think you’re dodging.
We started this side-track with Scott_plaid’s statement:
I’m arguing against that statement.
I have not set out to prove that Jesus was the fuilfillment of those prophecies. I have set to show that it’s possoble for a sane, uncoerced person to find some statements in the words of Isaiah and Jeremiah that he may feel refers to Jesus - not as a divine being, but as a man.
If you’re referring to scholars of history and demonstrable evidence, NO. There simply is no evidence to support it. I’m sure there are conservative theologians who support this but they also believe 90 year old tentwives and 13 year old virgins conceive, dead people walked in the street when a carpenter was executed and yet no official account was made by contemporary Roman historians (even when the carpenter rose from the dead) and that a staff could turn a sea to blood, so I have a bit of trouble deeming them as scholars in anything save mythology.
But when I read every single word in an English translation, I am “taking the word” of translators. I’m trusting that they translated the original Greek correctly.
Right?
So now my question is: why is it INsufficient for a Christian to take the word of an interpreter now - someone who gives him the highlights, the important ideas, and not every single word? If it’s OK to take the word of a translator, who NECESSARILY must interpret to translate, why is it verboten to take the word of a modern-day interpreter?
Thanks! Never thought I’d be a spokesman for the Christians on the board 
Lord knows I’ve had my issues with Christianity in the past; for me, getting over these issues entailed recognizing just how varied a community called itself Christian. I hardly think the Bible qualifies as an instruction manual for all Christians, and while I think the book is mildly interesting, I’m not especially concerned with whether people have read it cover to cover.
I figure they really ought to butt out of my spiritual life, and I’ll afford them the same courtesy. Whatever it takes to make them happy as a Christian, as long as it doesn’t involve me, I’m happy for them.
Daniel
OK. I could argue the point, but I’ll pass it.
What about:
He will be well-versed in Jewish law, and observant of its commandments. (Isaiah 11:2-5).
He will be a great judge, who makes righteous decisions (Jeremiah 33:15).
Could a sane, uncoerced person believe THOSE references are fulfiulled by Jesus?
Now you get it! 
But really, having read the torah, they would have also read that there are three other requirements, and since jesus fails the last two, he can not have been the mesiah. That is too say, besides the proof that Sampiro has already raised. The jews can’t simply fall for the first charismatic person that comes along. He has not created world peace, unless something has happend in the last few minutes, he has not restored the Temple in Jerusalem, and he has not, as I have said before, returned the jews from diaspora. (Shamelessly cribbed from http://jewsforjudaism.com/jews-jesus/jews-jesus-index.html ) By the way, you can claim it will happen in the future till you are blue in the face, but that doesn’t mean it will, and all thiese things have to have happend to mean soomeone is a mesiah.
Also, in your above example, you point out that some scholars ahe willfully ignored the contrary lineage of jesus. Problem is, he has to be able to prove he is a desendant, not show two diffrent, contradictory histories.
Cults, sects even, have been born of single passages in the Bible. One person’s highlights or important ideas are extremely relative.
Example: I think that snakehandlers are misguided literalist fanatics and I’m guessing you do as well, but when we’re dealing with issues of faith and the supernatural, how can one person’s faith be proven to be any more or less legitimate than another person’s? Who can say definitively that they aren’t right, that it is necessary to follow the Biblical verse instructing one to “pick up snakes” and cast out demons, and that all others are heretical?
And how many second person “highlights” would include “it really is important that you handle a snake to prove your faith”? Approximately, none.
As for accepting the word of a translator, this is where secondary sources come into play: read the histories of the Bible and its translations, decide which is best. Unlike most things related to the Bible, this is pretty objective: some translations are better than others. Hell, why not teach some cursory Greek in Sunday school… again, this isn’t a manual for a can-opener according to its believers, it is the manual that will save you from or consign you to everlasting damnation, why is there even any question about whether anybody who can read it has an obligation to read it?
The point I was trying to make, which maybe I could have done a better job explaining, is that there could be laws anywhere in the book, and I personally would feel uncomfortable relying on other’s interpretations of what parts have the laws I need to follow, and which parts don’t. If I felt the Bible was the word of God, I’d probably feel uncomfortable not reading the whole thing myself just to make sure. But as Bricker points out, I’d be relying on the translators, so maybe I’d never be satisfied.
I have too much of an engineer’s mind’s I guess.
Isn’t that a little different from what you said, though?
I agree completely with what you’re saying above, now: Jesus does not fulfill ALL the prophetic requirements for a Jew to conclude that he, Jesus, was the messiah.
But you said earlier that he fulfilled NONE of the requirements. You see the difference?
I think we may be zeroing in on the source of the disagreement here.
I absolutely think it’s WISE for anyone who can read it to read it.
What I question is your apparent insistence that it’s REQUIRED to read it. A person that identifies as a believer in the Bible, but refuses to read it, is, in my view, unwise… but is he failing to follow any commands of the Bible? Is he doing anything that the Bible explictly condemns, or failing to do anything that the Bible explictly commands?
In other words – you used the word ‘obligation’ above. From where does this obligation derive? What power or source imposes this obligation?
Didn’t he specifically say that if your ox falls in a pit on a Sabbath, disregard the commandments and get it out of there? Certainly the Pharisees didn’t see him as observant of the law, and there were issues with the Zadokkim as well.
Here is where an understanding of Hebrew would come into play. I don’t speak or read Hebrew, but if I really believed in the complete truth of the Bible I would try and learn as much as possible. What was meant by “judge”? Did they mean “a person who makes judgments” in the sense of “I say that this is by far the best barbecue sauce on the planet”, or was the word they used literally the word for a judge (as in a magistrate or leader, certainly a concept with which the Hebrews were familiar). I honestly don’t know the answer, but I would learn, and it would make a major amount of difference with whether or not this could be said to apply to a man who did not sit in judgement (in fact said “do not judge”) but rather was sentenced to death. It would actually make more sense to apply it to Shimon bar Kosiva (aka bar Kokhba), who did judge trials and who was praised (acknowledged as the Messiah by Akiva himself, no less) for his knowledge and observance of the Jewish law.
It means a great deal to me to be affirmed by you. I think that part of my frustration in the past couple of days was the sheer frustration of wondering how it could be that with my every utterance, I am either nitpicking, hijacking, or being mean. There comes a time when you just give up, and you figure that if what you say doesn’t matter, then what you say doesn’t matter.
I can understand that frustration, and I don’t want to contribute to it; I’ll make more of an effort to point out when I find myself in agreement with you.
Daniel
Well, I’m with you. And I have indeed read it. I love reading it. Sometimes, I’ll read a passage over and over and over and over, hanging upon every delectible syllable like chewing a juicy red-ripe watermelon. (No damn salt!) But I also know that not every man is like me, and that other men might, by a very different journey, arrive at the same place.
I actually know one who does that. He’s severely dyslexic, and he listens to the tapes. But I think that there’s a difference between reading scripture because you believe it helps in your spiritual journey, and reading scripture to be an expert on the history. I don’t think you have to be a Christian at all to do the latter. In fact, I think I recall Scott_Plaid saying that he’s read the whole thing, and I wouldn’t consider him to be a Christian. He can correct me if I’m wrong.
Again: does this mean that NO SANE PERSON could reach the opposite conclusion?
(I just realized something. This is the rational basis test, as applied to Biblical scholarship conclusions… and people are having the same trouble understanding it in this context!)
You used Isiah as one example. So did I. Your hypothetical jew, reading only jeremiah, and Isaiah, would have read the following: “And he shall set up a banner for the nations, and shall assemble the outcasts of Israel, and gather together the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth.” (Isaiah 11:12) When he reads that, he would realize that has not been fullfilled. QED, despite my poor spelling skills today.( I have bad spelling days rather then bad hair days)
That’s nice. Too bad about how you feel about aids, the church and africa, as well as what the contitution actually says. Thus, while you sometimes conceide points, which I admire, I can not take any statement of yours at face value.
Well, assuming you are unwilling to conceide the spirit of what said, as opposed to what was meant, still, no.
"He will be a great leader, and from the House of King David (Jeremiah 23:5)."No, there is no proff he is from the house of David, since as I recall, besides all the points already made, Joseph was simply a foster dad. Thus, no genological link.
He will be well-versed in Jewish law, and observant of its commandments. (Isaiah 11:2-5). Yeah, suuuuuuree he is well vesed. How do we know? Because the christian bible tell us he was. How do we know it was true?
He will be a great judge, who makes righteous decisions (Jeremiah 33:15). Again, I have read the christian bible, and I completely doubt all of his rulings were great. To be a great judge, you have to have more good rullings then bad. You might believe that he did, but that doesn’t make it true, and to be the messiah, he has to undiputadley a great judge.
Now, this is a warning to any christians who want to contest me on matters of Judaism. Don’t challenge . As it says in my profile, I am an atheist of jewish desent. I could not just throw my hands up one day and decide I hated god. No, I had to poke wholes in judaism, and to do that, I had to study it one heck of a lot. Now, I might not know as much as a torah scholar, but I am willing to bet I know more then your average christian.
P.S. Liberal, I read the whole bible due to the fact that if you are not (religously) jewish, and you are white, you must be a christian. Since I am no longer a jew, I decided to read the christian bible to see if there was any worth to it. My conclusion was that there is none. Thus, while I am not christian, should I get hit on the head, and decide I am, I would be qualified to be one.
Why don’t (general) you read the Bible and decide for yourself?
How far are you willing to tread down this path of possible misinterpetation and mistranslation? It seems to me at least once you question one part of the Bible you must question all the other parts of the Bible. It is necessary that if you claim the Bible to be a Holy Book that you are claiming it is an accurate record and translation. That is in fact what the majority of Churches are doing with the Bible. Speaking from experience it is not read in Greek in a Catholic Church rather it is in English (or whatever local language).
If we agree that the Bible is the word of God why wouldn’t we expect a person to read that? Why wouldn’t we expect a person that claims their religion is against something to actually have read the text that supposedly justifys their claim.
You kept asking ** Sampiro ** a yes or no question that is in reality a sliding scale.
Best: Learn Greek and critically analysize the text and historic records.
Good: Read the text and critically analysize the text in English
Fair: Simply read the Bible
Bad: Read only parts of the Bible
Terrible: Read none of the Bible.
Certainly in all cases listening to and discussing with a person with great knowledge than you is helpful. However there is no reason you should simply accept that as the truth without verifying their opinion.
I absolutely concede a reasonable Jew, taking the Torah as a whole, could not reach the conclusion that Jesus was the prophesized moshiach. Such a reasonable Jew would have to consider ALL the messanic verses: Hosea 3:4-3:5, Micah 4, Zephaniah 3:9, and Zechariah 14:9. (Am I forgetting any?) What I objected to was the statement that there is NOTHING upon which that conclusion could rest. Since you’ve now cleared up that this was hyperbole - that you meant it to be taken in spirit, not literally - we have no disagreement.
I assume you agree that a reasonable Jew DOES believe that the prophesized moshiach will come, right? It is, after all, one of Maimonides’ principles.
Ad hominem. What does my position on the Roman Catholic Church and its dealings in Africa possibloy have to do with the subject under discussion?
I agree with the sliding scale.
Where on it is the line drawn that says, “Good Christian?” In other words, at what point does the failure to perform the action on the scale translate to being a good Christian… and on what authority do you rely in making that decision?
Are you reading the same post I am reading? It was almost on the level of hyperboal, but was also a statement of fact. Not only is every point in favor of jesus being the jewish savior false, (i.e. NOTHING) but just from reading the book of Isiah alone, (as per your examples of "things that support jsus in the ot) a person would conclude that jesus is not the one jewish people are looking for, if they ever thought to look around for a savior.Simply nowhere for a “mesianic jew” to hang their hat.
Yes, but “What does your or my position on thejewish faith have to do with the subject under discussion?” After all, as I have already shown, my answering yes, as I just did has no bearing on any case you might build.
Also, indeed, my last statement was an attack on you. It functions as more then a simple attack, but also as to warn you. Should I simply post that I was glad you agreed with my conclusion, you might expect intellectual respect from me, which I want you to know it not the case.