Victor Reppert

In the first place, Jesus's message flew in the face of messianic expectations of the time. Secondly, I don't know of any skeptical NT scholar who accepts the claim that Jesus predicted his resurrection but denies that the resurrection actually occurred. The evidence for the reliability of the appearance stories is stronger than the evidence for the prediction accounts.

Victor Reppert

Vorkosigan

What message, and what messianic expectations?

Most scholars deny the second (historically speaking) but hedge on the first. After all, many have predicted their own death and resurrection, but none have acheived the latter. A lot depends on how supernatural you consider the prophecy.

What do you mean by "reliability?" If you mean the evidence that Jesus was said to have appeared, yes, that seems correct.

Vorkosigan

Steven Carr

How could Jesus's messianic message fly in the face of the messianic expectations of the disciples of the Messiah? Did they have no idea what Jesus was teaching? They had been with him for 3 years after all.

Surely the disciples of the Messiah would have learned what a Messiah was.

Secondly. the Messianic expectations of the time were of a Messiah who must suffer, die and rise again on the third day. That is what the Old Testament prophesied...

Luke 24:25 He said to them, "How foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! 26Did not the Christ have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?" 27And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself.

There is not a single Messianic prophecy corresponding to what Victor claims were the Messianic expectations of the time. The scriptures clearly prophesy a suffering Messiah, who must die and then rise again (see 1 Cor. 15 for confirmation that all had happened 'according to scripture')

I challenge Victor to show that any reasonable person could read the OT and believe that it produced the Messianic expectations he claims it did produce, when the OT , in reality, has the Messianic expectations Jesus said it actually does contain.



If you are claiming that Jesus did not prophesy his resurrection , then why believe the Gospel claims of a resurrection. After all, the Gospels contain lies if those utterly clear prophecies of Jesus never happened, so why believe other Gospel claims?

spin

I have to agree with Victor. The notion of messiah comes from the act of being anointed and those people officially anointed were kings and high priests. These according to the Jews were the chosen servants of God.

Jewish messianic expectation is embodied in the movements of people like Judas the Galilean, Hezekiah, Menahem, who wanted to install themselves as king and herald in a new age. This is why Simeon bar Kochba attracted so many people. He was seen as the Jewish messiah, the champion of God who would restore Israel, just as the Hasmoneans had done over two centuries earlier.

The notion of messiah sold in the gospels is a hellenistic idea of the saviour god who suffers for us, after a long evolution from harvest gods. The suffering servant in Isaiah is not the messiah. This is just xianizing obfuscation. Israel was the servant of God and had to suffer before being given back what they had forfeited, the land of milk and honey.

Jewish messianism is what makes xian messianism look Greek.


spin

Steven Carr

Perhaps you are right, and this is indeed what the Old Testament taught, rather than what later Christians claimed it did.

I still don't see why the disciples of Jesus would take the Old Testament as their guide to their messianic expectations , rather than what the Messiah himself taught them.

spin

More intertestamental than Hebrew bible.

Are you assuming a kernel of historicity? I personally simply don't know about, can't see how others can know about such historicity either, and wonder when people are going to treat literature as literature and not history. I recently came across a church father who thought Ulysses did the right thing when he had Thersites beaten, but I don't think these Homerian characters have reached the status of historical either, but in ancient times, as tradition accepted them, so did those who accepted the tradition, ie most everybody. It's dangerous to join the club.


spin