pharoah

I think that he's referring to Psalms 22. That claim has already been thoroughly debunked here.

Mountain Man

The problem is that none of these explanations are going to have any effect on half-life. He will just shrug it all off as wrong and keep on believing whatever he wants to.

Jack the Bodiless

Also, the "fulfilment" of Micah 5:2 assumes that Jesus actually WAS born in Bethlehem.

Apparently, he wasn't. Both Nativity stories are quite obviously fictional, and Luke even invents a census as a plot device to MOVE Jesus to Bethlehem. John doesn't bother, and John 7 strongly implies that Jesus wasn't born in Bethlehem.

jayh

Wait... that is profoundly dishonest.

what are you considering the 30,000 copies? When you say 5 copies of Aristotle what do you mean? If you mean contemporary copies that may be true but if you're holding to contemporary copies you have zero contemporary copies of the Bible. Every copy of the Bible in extant is hundreds of years older than the alleged date of writing. Most numerous is the Septuigent, which is many hundreds of years late by people who had no connection with the supposed events.

Arguments like this are total crock.


BTW there are several million copies of Weekly World News available for comparison. How does that serve to validate its content?

Doug Shaver

There is nothing to explain. Nobody wrote about Jesus' crucifixion before it happened.

Johnny Skeptic

It is equally plausible that the only way Job could say that the earth was suspended in air is by an advanced alien revealing it to him. Why do you assume that advanced aliens do not exist anywhere in the universe, and that none of them are able to convert energy into matter?

Deuteronomy 13 says that bad people can predict the future too, so it is not a question of who can predict the future, but of who has good character. My position is that God does not have good character.

Where is that prophecy?

Notsri

For what it's worth, noah, I don't think your interpretation has much to commend it.

Ephratah, as you've mentioned, was Caleb's second wife, according to the biblical text (1Chron 2:19, 50; 4:4). Bethlehem was Caleb's grandson (1Chron 2:51, 54; 4:4). But, to my knowledge, the two names are never openly identified one with the other in connection with these individuals or a clan of their namesake; Micah 5:2 would be unique in that regard, if your interpretation were correct. On the other hand, the Bible does explicitly identify a place called Ephratah with the town of Bethlehem; see e.g. Gen 35:19: "So Rachel died and was buried on the way to Ephrath (that is, Bethlehem)." Micah 5:2 would therefore be just another example of the same phenomenon.

Also, the town was occasionally given the qualifier "in Judah" (e.g. 1Sam 17:12) as to distinguish it from the Bethlehem of Zebulun (Josh 19:15). This would of course account for Matthew's addition of "in the land of Judah" to the verse (and his deletion of Ephratah is immaterial, since "Bethlehem" is retained).

John 7:42 provides some evidence, as well, that such a reading of Micah was likely current even among some of the Jews: "Has not the scripture said that the Christ comes from the descendants of David, and from Bethlehem, the village where David was?" The Jerusalem Talmud also records a tradition from rabbinic Jews of the Messiah's birth in Bethlehem (with the same tradition repeated in Lamentations Rabbah).

Regards,
Notsri

mata leao

somettimes it hurts to laugh so much...to listen to the folks here, they are essentially saying that almost every detail about Jesus in the Bible is completely wrong, can you imagine the difficulty, effort, and enormous undertaking to orchestrate such a complicated conspiracy as that?

Viti

Almost no effort at all. Look at the stories that abound about King Arthur, Guinevere, Merlin, etc. in only 500 years.

mata leao

Jesus is the most influential human who ever lived, king arthur,guinevere, and merlin mostly remain as children's fables. LOng after Lady Shea is dead, followers of Jesus will still be building Christian hospitals, orhpahanges, feeding centers and places of charity.