Amaleq13

You have clearly missed the point. Does "shooting fish in a barrel" help? He is saying it is too easy to deny your claim.

You appear to tacitly acknowledge this by repeatedly changing that claim from the original.

From this:
You have moved the goalposts to this:
Your initial claim continues to be unsustainable while your revised versions say nothing requiring response.

Ben C Smith

Not so.

I have definitely shown this much.

When you add these qualifications, you are correct. I have not even attempted to show (A) that the messiah was expected to be filled with the holy spirit, or (B) that he would be baptized, or (C) that his baptizer would be John.

What I have attempted to show, namely that at least some Jews were expecting a messiah who would be called the son of God, I have indeed shown.

I will not show you anything relating to B and C above, since I completely agree with you (at least at present) that neither water baptism nor especially the name of the baptizer is predicted of any messianic figure in any Jewish text that predates Mark.

But let me give you a bit of data on A at this point (though I do not intend to pursue this further).

11Q13 has:

And the messenger i[s] the anointed of the spir[it] as Dan[iel] said [about him].

This almost certainly refers to the anointed one (messiah!) of Daniel 9.24-27. At any rate, here a messianic figure is said to be anointed by the spirit. Shades of Mark 1.10.

None of this is relevant to or rescues you from your gross misstatement that no Jew expected the messiah to be son of God. What has happened here is simple enough: You apparently did not even know enough about ancient Jewish texts to realize that the abbreviation 4Q246 pinpoints a text as one of the Dead Sea scrolls, dated to no later than the seventh decade of century I, yet you apparently felt qualified to offer us your pronouncement on what is and what is not found in ancient Jewish texts. A bold move; I can give you that much.

Ben.

aa5874

You must be a cherry-picker, then.

You have not shown whatsoever that the Jews were looking for a Messiah that was the son of God of Moses. I made reference to Josephus, Wars of Jews 6.5, and Josephus clearly gives an indication of the Messiah that the Jews were expecting. This Jewish Messiah was definitely not the son of the God of Moses, even Philo of Alexandria made no mention at all that the God of Moses had a son who was expected to come to to Judea and rule the "habitable earth".

All you have done is to cherry-pick a verse from gMark, out of context, from an unknown author, most likely not a Jew, and claim that this is sufficient to show convincingly that a single Jew expected the Messiah to be the son of the God of Moses.

Amaleq13

This is clearly false as Ben has, with very little effort, done precisely that.

What he has not done is address whatever it is you meant to claim as opposed to what you actually wrote. This has become clear as you have continually tried to change that initial claim.

What it appears you wanted to claim is that no Jew was looking for a Messiah who was the literal son of God as suggested by the nativity stories.

Your inability to accurately express yourself in writing is not anyone else's problem but your own.

Ben C Smith

Very little effort? Hey, I had to find those Qumran passages; you think I had their exact location memorized?

Ben.

aa5874

But this is Suetonius in "The life of the twelve Caesars", Even the highly regarded historian Suetonius wrote that the Jews expected a man from Judea to rule the world, and this expectation is an old established belief.

You seem not to know the difference between "will be called" and "will be".

"He will be called son of God, they will call him son of the most high.......".
I can call anyone anything but that does not determine who they actually are. Expecting the son of God of Moses and expecting a man and call him son of God are vastly different.

And who is "He" in your Qumran passage, what is the context surrounding your Qumran passage and was your passage written in 300 BCE? Your link claimed the Qumran Scrolls may have been written between 300BCE to the 1st century.

Your Qumran passage is very ambiguous, quite unlike those from Josephus or Suetonius.

GakuseiDon

I know it isn't quite the same, but Honi the Circle Drawer was called "like a son" to God:
http://members.aol.com/fljosephus/Ho...rcleDrawer.htm

"Once they said to Honi the Circle-Drawer, "Pray that rain may fall."

He answered, "Go out and bring in the Passover ovens [made of clay] that they be not softened."

He prayed, but the rain did not fall. What did he do? He drew a circle and stood within it and said before God, "O Lord of the world, your children have turned their faces to me, for I am like a son of the house before you. I swear by your great name that I will not stir from here until you have pity on your children."

Rain began falling drop by drop. He said, "Not for such rain have I prayed, but for rain that will fill the cisterns, pits, and caverns."

It began to rain with violence. He said, "Not for such rain have I prayed, but for rain of goodwill, blessing, and graciousness."

Then it rained in moderation, until the Israelites had to go up from Jerusalem to the Temple Mount because of the rain. They went to him and said, "Just as you prayed for the rain to come, so pray that it may go away!"

He replied, "Go and see if the Stone of the Strayers has disappeared."

Simeon ben Shetah sent to him, saying, "Had you not been Honi I would have pronounced a ban against you! But what shall I do to you? You importune God and he performs your will, like a son that importunes his father he performs his will. Of you the Scripture says, 'Let your father and your mother be glad, and let her that bore you rejoice.' " "

aa5874

Yes, you're right it isn't the same, "like a son" and "is a son" are not quite the same.

Amaleq13

At least not for those who arbitrarily restrict themselves to the most literal reading.

Amaleq13

I expect nothing less.

How are you enjoying your fundamentalist-mythicist experience?

I guess it could be considered reassuring to some that simplistic thinking, arbitrary literalism, disregard for logic, and willful ignorance are not exclusive characteristics to either atheists or believers.