WCH

If we assume the Christ story to be fictional, and to be made with the intent of fulfilling Messianic prophesy in such a way as to create a new religion which follows in the history of Judaism, the number one thing we should look for is the fulfillment of prophesy.

That is, we should reasonably expect that any Messianic prophesies made in Jewish tradition would be fulfilled in the fictional life of Jesus, if there truly were such prophesies and his life was truly fictional.

Yet, when we examine the text, why do we not find any solid prophesies fulfilled by Jesus at all? In several of Half-Life's threads over in GRD he was called to post an example of the hundreds of prophesies he alludes to, and the example he finally gave was absolutely ludicrous. This seems typical of most attempts, and is not surprising given the cognitive dissonance demonstrated by apologists of all persuasions.

What is surprising, however, is that there aren't any prophesies. It would do nothing to convince me of the validity of Christianity, as an atheist, if these prophesies were there -- after all, given the many revisions of the texts, it is virtually unthinkable that some prophesies would at least be editted in, yet this seems to not be the case.

Anyone have any ideas why? Does the fact that Jesus' life as recorded in the NT not have anything at all to do with OT prophesy prove that it was not entirely fictional, since we should have expected a better fabrication?

King Rat

Even further, wasn't the example from the Psalms? Basically an old hebrew pop song? It makes you wonder if her breasts were actually roes?

ETA: Sorry the above reponse was a little OT. As to your post, I haven't seen anything convincing yet. I think the prophecy road is a dangerous one for the apologist. It puts them on par with Nostradamus and The Psychic Friends Network.

No Robots

I'll answer for our mythicist friends:

Those guys who wrote the Gospels where so tricky that they made everything they wrote look stupid and incompetent in order to suck us in competely. It's like dirtying-up Charlize Theron so we really think she's some mall momma. I mean, nobody could really be as stupid as the Gospel writers, right? It has to be a put-on.

NZSkep

ah its the old 'it's so crazy it must be true' argument.

doesn't fly with me. Here is an analgy.
A man is found with a bloody knife in his hand, his wife's dead body at his feet. 20 witnesses testify that they saw him do it and then say "I glad I killed her"
His defence:
"My jurer, the doctors reports have shown I am not insane, do you really think I would be stupid enough to kill my wife in front of all these people and with all this evidence? No I would do it much better, and conceal it a lot more effectively. Therefore I can't be guilty."

would you, as the jury accept that argument?

Toto

My eyes tend to glaze over when I hear the word prophecy, but please ignore No Robots' unhelpful comments.

The gosple writers mined the Hebrew Scriptures for material, but they had their own special way of reading or reading into the scriptures.

This is clearest in Luke 24:

44 He said to them, "This is what I told you while I was still with you: Everything must be fulfilled that is written about me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms."

45 Then he opened their minds so they could understand the Scriptures.

This special fulfillment did not come from some vulgar literal reading, but from a special reading that only the initiated could get, after the Christ opened their minds.

The gospel writers were not stupid. If they indicated they were writing about fulfilled prophecy, that's what they meant. But they didn't necessarily mean what modern evangelical apologists mean.

Buster Daily

I still can't escape the thought that Matthew's gospel really is intentionally stupid...but that would mean that it didn't work as humor because no one caught the joke other than the author.

WCH

A couple people posted saying that its being stupid doesn't make it true. I agree, but you're missing the point.

That Jesus didn't actually fulfill prophesies proves that he cannot have been the Messiah, but what it does show is that the stories about him probably weren't completely fabricated.

NZSkep's example would only be fitting if the argument were "The book is badly written, therefore Jesus really is God."

Toto

This argument has been made before - that since the stories in the gospels do not appear to fit the mold of a Jewish Messiah exactly, that they must therefore be based on some real person. In particular, since a non-existant prophecy regarding Nazareth is mentioned, that this must relate to a real person who came from Nazareth.

I think that the gospel writers were more creative than you give them credit for.

WCH

Well, with Nazareth we have the whole problem of it not existing at the time...

I'm just puzzled by this, really. I keep expecting there to be some fulfilled prophesies but haven't been able to find any. Shouldn't there be at least a couple, if just by coincidence?

jjramsey

So far, the only place I have seen this claim is in atheist circles, as opposed to matters like the Lukan census, geographical problems, etc., which are taken seriously in scholarly circles. Richard Horsely in Archaeology, History and Society in Galilee, for example, discussed the claim of there being a "refounding" of Nazareth around the second or third century B.C.E. (before the first century) due to there being an increase in archaeological evidence dating from then. He dismisses the interpretation of the evidence as being a refounding, but not the evidence.

It's not just that there is a non-existent prophecy, but that Nazareth isn't even portrayed all that positively in the Gospels. It looks like an inconvenience. The closest thing I've seen to a refutation are attempts to argue that there was a pre-Christian Nazarene sect, but the evidence for this is slim.