beastmaster

That's one translation. Other translations include "They pinned down my hands and feet," "tearing at my hands and feet," and "like a lion at my hands and feet." Note that none of these alternate translations bears any similarity whatsoever to a crucifixion.

Sure. For example, the psalmist might mention the presence of a cross. That might help.

Crucifixion does not involve the piercing of hands and feet. Rather, one nail is delivered through each forearm and a third nail through the heel.

Disrobement is not unique or peculiar to crucifixion.

Again, the division of spoils does not depend on the conduct of a crucifixion.

Jeremy Pallant

Well, I guess it depends on when the Psalms were written, but googling "history of crucifixion" found this snippet of information, which would seem to imply it's quite an ancient method of execution.

rlogan

dave - first, the passage does not say "crucify", now does it? it does not actually describe pounding nails through the hands and feet, does it? It does not say he will be hoisted in the air on a cross, now does it?

All it says is pierced hands and feet. And if you read the passages surrounding that one little quote-mine, you'll see dogs and lions. Those wold indeed make piercings in hands and feet. Especially as you try to ward them off.


But regardless, take the offensive in another respect. Yes, the odds of someone fuilfilling 300 bible prophesies or a thousand, or whatever they claim is zero.

That is more reason to suspect that the authors of the gospels went through the "old Testament" (Hebrew Bible) looking for things to write into the jesus story.

They didn't happen. The gospels were made up long, long after Jesus supposedly lived, and these authors merely mined the Hebrew Bible for things to say about jesus that "proved" he was the messiah.


In other words, instead of being proof that prophesies were flufilled by Jesus, it is proof of how dishonest Christianity is at the core.

DinoStoned

Ah, can't believe I forgot that. One of the proofs my fundy pastor showed to me, which I disagreed with on the grounds that if Psalm 22 was a depiction of crucifixion, then any furry, four-legged, tailed mammal is a cat.

Uh, bad analogy... me bad, me bad.

Jack the Bodiless

As previously mentioned, these verses appear to be describing dogs biting at the psalmist's hands and feet.

It's worth noting that the author of Matthew (who is guilty of several cases of blatant recycling of OT verses, such as the Immanuel "prophecy") was evidently well aware of Psalm 22 and not averse to modifying his gospel to fit it. He has Jesus quoting Psalms 22:1 as his last words (the theologically awkward part where "part of God" doesn't know why another "part of God" is forsaking him: the author failed to anticipate the Trinity doctrine).

FordMadoxBrown

The more one examines the New Testament the more it can be seen to be based on the Old, Luke and Deuteronomy being a good example. But I don't think this means only that Christianity is 'dishonest'; it may mean that modern Christian Fundamentalists are mistaken in their view of it. After all, as Alan Bennett says 'just because something turns out to be not what we thoght it was, it does not mean it is a fake'.

So often I find the truth lies between two extremes. If we discard the idea that the Gospel narratives are meant to be accurate history such as we expect from news reports today, and open our minds to the posibility that they were written for their day, to encourage discipleship by setting the Jesus legends in the context of the persecutions of 70AD onwards, then their retelling of the OT stories and prophecies in a 'Jesus' context becomes more credible as an accepted literary device of the day.

It is because we know so little about Jesus (the Gospels don't tell us what he looked like or what sort of personality he had) that Christians have felt the need to cling to the idea that the Gospels are accurate history. they do not need to be. Here is a vivid image of someone preaching new ideas, a new way of making sense of life and death. naturally, his followers, preserving his memory, and steeped as they were in Hebrew culture and legends , would tell it in that way. It might give Christianity a new relevance for us if we could rethink not only what it meant to them, but also what it means to us.

dado

this is not correct, there is evidence of crucifixions at least as far back as 6 centuries before the second temple was destroyed. the psalms were written over a very long period, the later ones as recently as 400 BCE.

Nectaris

You can look at the Jewish response to Psalm 22:16 and prophecy at:

No piercing here

The actual text of the JPS translation of Psalms 22:17 is:

It's also interesting that in the Christian Bible the verse is 22:16, while in the Hebrew text it is verse 22:17. Although I'm not so certain of how important it actually is.

Dave

DrJim

Jewish and Christian bible verse divisions are not always identical. Typically, Jewish tradition counts the introductory comments (which are not original to the psalm), e.g, in Ps. 22 "For the leader, on ayyeleth ha-shahar. A Psalm of David" as verse one (trns. from the New Jewish Publication Society Version), while "My God my God...." begins verse 2. Christian Bibles include the latter into verse 1. There is no fundamental difference in content.

As far as vs 17 (English vs. 16), it has been a 'bone' of contention for 2000 years. The contentious word is K'RY, which can be read as "Like a lion" ("lion" is also found back in v. 14 (Chr. v. 13), and again in v. 22 (21), but in both those other places the word is spelled differently (with a H at the end: both forms are attested elsewhere in the Bible).
Now, the problem with "lion" in 16/17 is that it really doesn't make a lot of sense in context. By the rules of Hebrew poetry, there should be a verb in the line:

Dogs surround me
A pack of evil ones encircle me,
like a lion my hands and my feet

Lots of people suppose K'RY is to be understood as an odd form of a verb, although there is no agreement as to which verb it should be: there is none in Hebrew that matches this spelling exactly. There are VERY many proposals based on somewhat similar words in Hebrew, Aramaic and Arabic adn by looking at how the verse is rendered in anicent translations, resulting in very many different readings. I can't remembver the details of the cognate terms exactly, but here are some of the solutions:

"Pierced" is a rationalization based on another term meaning more literally "to dig". The support for the "pro-crucifixtion" then, is based on 3 removes from the actual text. It requires a little juggling to get "dig" and an interpretative leap of sorts to get "pierced" and then another leap to say that this refers to crucifiction per se. Many Christian writers prefer this solution while many Jewish interperters reject it. There have been accusations that Jewish copyists in the early Christian centuries deliberately changed an explicit, and clearly spelled reference to "dug/pierced" (requireing only changing a letter or two) to combat the rise of Christianity.


"Bound". There is a very similar Arabic word which means "to bind", so one might read: "they bound my hands and feet". This has been defended by a few articles in JOurnal of Biblical Literature in the past hald dozen years or so.


"Picked Clean": A few others have proposed that a different word lies behind the current reading which means "picked clean", so the dogs and "evil doers" Pick clean even the bones of the hands and feet: a chilling metaphor for the suffering of the Psalmist.

Some medieval commentators (Rashi?) and at least one modern one, too, supposes that the text may been corrupted by accident: a verb like "to maul" being inadvertantly left out. This would have happened very early on, and all extant copies were made from that one errant one (this is not so fantastic as it sounds, there are some other examples that might be pointed to). So one would have "Like a lion they maul my hands and feet".

Anyway, this is a hotly contested verse: no one has an easy time of it. There is no simple solution. Everyone has to solve some kind of linguistic puzzle for any solution to work, even poorly.

Hope this helps.


JRL

Magus55

Well the Psalm in question was written by David, and he died around 1000 B.C, so this Psalm was written before His death. According to your link, crucifixion was invented in 600 B.C. At least 400 years after David died.