Jesus; the Torah, Nevi'im, and Psalms (Part 2)

There is no doubt in the minds of Christians down the centuries. Your character assassination of the writers of the New Testament raises questions about your claim to be a Christian, jar. They are the ONLY source of information about Jesus Christ, whom you claim to follow, but if they can't be trusted about the prophecies, how can they be trusted about anything?This message has been edited by Faith, 12-28-2005 10:42 PM

the same reason i can trust my abnoxious anthro student friend to tell me about human bones but not about anything else. because she's hauty and self-righteous and thinks she knows everything... and she's usually wrong unless she's taken a class on it. anything about languages? wrong. anything about science (not including jared diamond quotes)? wrong. anything about health? wrong. anything about diets? wrong.we can trust jesus' contemporaries to tell us what he said, but not who his grandparents were or great grandparents or what role he fills in history. they're too short-sighted like everyone. no one who knew eugene atget could tell us he was going to become an amazing addition to the world of photography and practically invent and dominate his own field. but they could prolly tell us what he ate for breakfast and what he told that guy who called him names for carrying that hugeass camera around. and i'm sure none of the people he had coffee with every day knew who begat his great great great great granddad... especially in an unsavory area of paris.

one word:nostradamus.

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אָרַח

wow am i glad she doesn't post here. we get into fights because i dare to question her when she makes faulty statements about a subject she's not as familiar with as she thinks. and then i get accused of arrogance because i think i know better than her. -- it's happened here a few times too, but i won't name names. not, of course, when their texts are dictated to them directly from god himself. can we throw out assumptions that just don't work?

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אָרַח

Here is the one of your references to the Messiah Texts. Not sure if it is the one you were thinking of though.I looked through the discussion concerning this post, but you haven't really provided anything for us to research. The stories you quoted are late fiction after the Christian religion is well established.Do you have any nonfictional first century rabbi comments or at least nonfictional Jewish thoughts on interpretation?I have noticed in Jewish writings that what they expect for a messiah has changed over time mainly, IMO, because their circumstances have changed. They aren't in the same situation as they were in the time of Isaiah or Micah.

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There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it. -Edith Wharton

Exactly. It is the New Testament writers that are looking through the old testament, and writing about Jesus TO the old testament. Matthew and Luke did that independantly of each other, and that is why their two stories so much disagee with each other. They have different mutually exclusive events about the birth year, the geneologies are different, the curcumstances that Mary and Joseph are in Bethlaham are totally different. The descriptions of just about everything contradict each other.. although they do seem to be working from a common source that they were fleshing out.

Yes, they are the only source about information about Jesus. They disagree with each other. Matthew in particular seemed to be extremely interested in justifying Jesus in the most rediculous ways with 'miraculous' signs that are very close to satire. The earlier writings to the synoptic gospels are only letters of John, who of course gave no details, but merely referered to Jesus as 'out savior'. Those letters did not have any theology in them per say, but rather letters to individual congregations that John was giving advice to.Now, if you couple that with the way that the trial of Jesus violates both Roman and Jewish law at the time, in a big way, and you can see why skeptism about the books chosen for the cannon can arise.

Indeed. That parrell has often crossed my mind. I actually thought the same about Nostradamous before I became interested in how people view religion. When I learned about the 'prophecies' that Jesus was supposed to have fullfilled, that appeared to be combing an older text to find out of context phrases to make into a prophecy.It is also interesting to see how different the concept of prophecy is in Christianity, and in the Jewish religion from which a lot of it was based on. It is an entire different set of assumptions.

Anybody can claim their scripture is 'god breathed'. But, when it comes to the gospels, none of the gospels were written by people who knew Jesus in the flesh, so to speak. Even Paul, who is of the right age to
be contemporary, only saw Jesus in a vision.That means that none of the gospel writers who wrote about the words of Jesus were actually his contemporary.

My point was simple. You can't attack the character of the gospel writers and claim to be a Christian because that is pulling down the whole structure that supports the testimony of Jesus Christ.In your case you don't claim to be a Christian and gleefully pull it all down because you aren't one.

If rabbis at ANY time had ideas about the Old Testament portrait of the Messiah that are similar to the New Testament understanding of Jesus Christ, no matter what literary form they couched them in, that is evidence for the validity of the NT interpretation.This message has been edited by Faith, 12-29-2005 11:21 AM

Unlike the example of your anthro student friend, whose truthfulness about human bones is checkable from other sources, there is no way to check the testimony of the apostles of Christ from extrabiblical sources, so if you doubt one part of what they say, you are automatically calling into doubt everything they say and undermining the whole gospel of Christ. Jesus Himself said that not believing his disciples is not believing Him. You can't be a Christian and discredit his apostles.

IMO, your point does not stand. It would be correct from the concept of the 'inerrant, ' form of Christianity.. but most Christians doe not view the bible as inerrant, and literal... which is a very unbiblical way to view it. This becomes very apparent when the literalist trys to reconcile contradictions, or trys to take an out of context or mistranslated phrase in the Jewish scriptures to try to 'prove' it is a prophecy about Jesus.

It's a mere logical point. If you discredit your only source of information on one point, you have no backup, and nothing whatever to support your acceptance of other information from the same source. You've pulled the rug out from under yourself.

No, it is not. It would be evidence that some of the concepts about the Messiah were taken from a common source. It would not validate or invalidate the New Testament at all. It would not validate or invalidate the Rabbi's concepts at all. It would just say that on some issues, the idea is the same.However, the vast amount of difference between the expectations of what the Messiah is for Judaism, and what the Messiah is for Christianity makes those two concepts mutually exclusive.