Duvduv

That's an interesting point.
But then why do they apply or rather misapply other verses when even Isaiah 53 could be as easily or more easily misinterpreted?

And if all the authors had the same Tanakh why didn't they maximize use of verses for referencing that Jesus was the fulfillment of the prophecies?
Otherwise what did they think such verses applied to? What didn't GJohn and GMark know about the birth of the Jewish Messiah that GMatt and gluke did know?

Duvduv

I mentioned that not all the references were prophecies but simply references found in psalms or the prophets that the gospel authors invoked. And yet they did not always invoke the more "invokable " references.

So why did GJohn not invoke fulfilment of a birth in Bethlehem or descent from David while invoking a few other themes from psalms?

Duvduv

It is interesting that these verses in GJohn 7 address the very issue that even GMatt claims, i.e. the genealogy of Jesus as the Davidic messiah. Notice that Jesus provides no answer. In fact, he provides no answer in the story not only to the Jews but to the story of GMatt. Or perhaps the nativity of GMatt was added because of controversy of GJohn 7:

40 On hearing his words, some of the people said, “Surely this man is the Prophet.”
41 Others said, “He is the Messiah.”
Still others asked, “How can the Messiah come from Galilee? 42 Does not Scripture say that the Messiah will come from David’s descendants and from Bethlehem, the town where David lived?” 43 Thus the people were divided because of Jesus. 44 Some wanted to seize him, but no one laid a hand on him.

Surprisingly in the one reference quoting Isaiah 53:1, John 12:38 ignores all the details referring to the rest of Isaiah 53. But states in John 15:23 regarding a relatively tangential issues alludes to Psalm 35:19 and 69:4 voiced by King David about himself:
"As it is, they have seen, and yet they have hated both me and my Father. 25 But this is to fulfill what is written in their Law: ‘They hated me without reason.’
So the author of GJohn knew how to allude to verses for his messiah, but not to the ones we would expect.

Here is a website that lists the allusions and references to the Tanakh in the NT text:
http://www.blueletterbible.org/study/misc/quotes02.cfm

Juststeve

Duvduv:

Why do you find this so mysterious? The author of John didn't say anything about the Bethlehem birth because he didn't think Jesus was born in Bethlehem. He like everyone else, including Luke and Matthew, thought Jesus was from Nazareth. True that Matthew and Luke contrived their own ways to have Jesus of Nazareth born in Bethlehem, but even they have him being from Nazareth.

Steve

Duvduv

Yes, I understand that. But the author believed Jesus to be the promised Messiah, so he ignores what his adversaries (including GMatt) knew from Micah 5 (or even Isaiah 7 or 11) about Bethelehem as the birth place of the messiah.

aa5874

Your Presumptions are Worthless. There is NO evidence the gJohn was written in the 1st century and NO evidence that the author of gJohn was a contemporary of the supposed Jesus.

Please, this is BC&H--Not Sunday School.

Let us do history.

gJohn is a 2nd century Myth Fable about Jesus the Logos, God the Creator, the Son of God that was made Flesh.

John 1:1 KJVJohn 10:30 KJV

Juststeve

Duvduv:

The problem is that the author of John does not think Jesus is the Jewish Messiah, he thinks Jesus was the pre-exitant word of God through who everything created was created, made flesh. This is not the Jewish Messiah. It isn't even a Jewish Concept. As my old Rabbi would say, God doesn't need any partners.

Given what John thinks of Jesus, why would he try to prove that he was a descendant of David? For Matthew that would matter. John has much larger, polytheistic fish to fry.

Steve

aa5874

gJohn is EVIDENCE of a Mythological Jesus. The author of gJohn wrote the Longest Post-Resurrection history of Jesus that consumed the last 2 chapters of the book.

Remarkably, Jesus was a COOK after he was Raised from the dead in gJohn.

It is clear that the author of gJohn was NOT writing history. There is a SMOOTH SEAMLESS transition from pre-resurrection to post-resurrection.

John 21 It is without any reasonable doubt that gJohn wrote a Myth Fable of a resurrected character called Jesus the Logos, God the Creator.

Duvduv

Could very well be, Steve. But then given the fact that ideas regarding the Davidic messiah appear in a number of places in the same books used by the author of GJohn, one can only imagine what he thought about them. He references or alludes to over 50 verses from the Tanakh. He was clearly familiar with these texts, including Malachi and Isaiah, and alluded to "fullfilment" of the Law in John 15. Check: http://www.blueletterbible.org/study...otes02.cfm#Jhn

What might affect this is that many of he citations refer to the Jews obeying the law, meaning that the author of GJohn could have held that once the Jews do not obey God, then the promise of the House of David is annuled and a new savior is to be provided and this would be diametrically opposed to the implication of both GMatt and GLuke who accepted the Davidic line. Thus, GJohn must have come from an entirely different source than the synoptics.

But where that leaves GMark is unclear since although he alludes to the messenger preceding the messiah in GMark 1 and GMark 9, GMark is ambiguous about the status of Jesus as the Jewish messiah.

Jesus is given to say that Elijah had already come, suggesting rather ambiguously that he Jesus was the messiah and yet the idea that Jesus has fulfilled requirements of the prophets for the Davidic messiah's birth are of no importance in GMark.

11 And they asked him, “Why do the teachers of the law say that Elijah must come first?”

12 Jesus replied, “To be sure, Elijah does come first, and restores all things. Why then is it written that the Son of Man must suffer much and be rejected? 13 But I tell you, Elijah has come, and they have done to him everything they wished, just as it is written about him.”

Duvduv

In reviewing the references to Tanakh verses in GMark as they relate to the Messiah, the only ones that are relevant are Mark 9:11-13. In context, however, it does seem that these three verses are out of context in the flow of the rest of the text.
The verses in Mark 3:1-3 may also be additions, though they do not necessarily invoke the issue of Elijah out of Malachi 3:1 or Isaiah 40:30.
Therefore, the implication from Mark 9 is that Elijah preceded the Son of Man who Jesus does not explicitly say was himself. However, one would be hard pressed to understand why a whole gospel story would involve someone who is not the actual messiah with so many allusions to the idea that he is.

Presumably it would have been more to the point to include additional allusions about his origins and birth as are found in GMatt to avoid any ambiguity IF the author did consider him the Davidic Messiah and successor to Elijah who had already come.

Otherwise, the reader is left wondering "Well, is he or isn't he?" Does he fulfill the requirements of being born in Bethlehem, etc. and merit succeeding Elijah who has come (implying the Baptist) or not??

It thus appears we have GJohn versus GMatt/GLuke with GMark somewhere in limbo in the middle since it appears that GJohn does not consider Jesus the Davidic messiah who had been canceled by God because of the sins of the Jews.

Any thoughts from folks about these issues?