Geddy Lee

I was just wondering what you guys think of how isaeh 53 supposedly predicts the messiah and as most christains believe its predidcting jesus...Would there be any merrit in this???

Looking forward to you guys answers...

Reason i ask, is i had a pastor tell me that it even talks about the vinegar they brushed on jesus...very detailed. I couldnt argue this since i wasnt aware...

Thanks

makerowner

First of all, the gospel accounts were written with Isaiah in hand, so any similarities can be attributed to literary dependence rather than prophecy fulfillment.
Secondly, Jesus fails to meet at least one of the requirements in Isaiah 53:

(my bolding)

The Jesus of the gospels had no offspring, so he doesn't fit.

Ben C Smith

The vinegar is not from Isaiah 53. It is from Psalm 69.21, where it is not a prediction of future suffering but rather a poetic way of saying I got screwed.

The usual response (and usually a sound one, IMHO, though it can be taken to extremes) is that the passion detail was invented on the basis of the OT text, not that the OT text accurately predicted the passion detail.

Ben.

Solitary Man

Ignoring the OP, were they written with the prophets in hand? Do you have any evidence for this? Were all of them, or just certain ones?

makerowner

Well I don't know for sure that the NT authors had Isaiah in front of them while they were writing, but they were Jewish, they specifically quote from Isaiah elsewhere, and a bunch of details just happen to match Isaiah, so I think that's pretty good evidence.

Solitary Man

I can quote the gospels now - do I have them in front of me?

"For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also."

Do I have James in front of me? How would you know?

makerowner

The point isn't whether they had a physical copy of the book sitting in front of them, it's that they were familiar with the text and used details from it in creating their story.

XKV8R

it's called 'inner-biblical allusion/discourse.' the idea is that one steeped in a certain culture of literary tradition (especially literature that is considered 'holy') tends to draw from accepted and known idiom and phrasing to describe the present. see michael fishbane's books. those describing the suffering would use terms of suffering they would have read/heard/known. others would immediately see parallels between the two. still others would read back into the earlier text the foreshadowing of the later event.

fundies call it 'saying bible things in bible ways.'

XKV8R

and no, it wasn't talking about jesus.

Geddy Lee

so what your saying is they were copycats...