aa5874

You seem to be living in the 1st century. The very first one, whenever it was.

100% WHAT!

bacht

Yes, especially the interpretation of prophecy

The unspoken assumption seems to be "Well God punished the Jews for their sins, therefore the Jews no longer have exclusive right to interpret the Hebrew scriptures" or something to that effect.

If Gerard Stafleu's approach to Mark is correct, there were Jews after the Revolt who rejected (with disgust?) the Messianic idea as misguided and dangerous. As double-a points out, apocalypticists don't care what happens to this world, they are focused on the next. Then as now such people aren't much use to those of us expecting the cosmos to survive for a few billion more years.

James Brown

We certainly are hitting all the well-worn highlights in this thread: the authority of scripture, the eyewitness testimony, and now the question of fulfilled prophecies.

Ask 100 Christian apologists about the fulfilled Messianic prophecies and you'll get 100 different answers. Josh McDowell finds over 300 prophecies referring to the Messiah in the Jewish scriptures, some of which are a huge stretch. Apparently, quoting an OT scripture is a fulfillment of a messianic prophecy, according to McDowell. He commits the same mistake that the author of Matthew did--find a parallel between Jesus' life and some OT event, then call it a fulfilled prophecy.

Other apologists claim that even prophecies that have yet to be fulfilled still count as a win, so long as their hero has said he will fulfill them in the future. Never mind that if a prophecy hasn't been fulfilled yet, then by definition it is an unfulfilled prophecy.

And what's the importance with prophecy anyway? Some people want prophecy to turn their scripture into a magic book--and yet prophecy is easy if you phrase it right. "I prophesy that the United States and China will have armed conflict." There. Now all we have to do is wait long enough.

If God were God and he really wanted us to enter into a relationship with him, there would be no need for prophecy at all. Prophecy is written to offer hope to the listeners: "Someday things will get better." Prophecy written hundreds of years ago is as dead as the people to whom it was given. Of what use is telling someone today that someday far in the future things will turn around? It would be like Rick Warren advising President Bush, "Don't worry, Mr. President, about the invading army on the horizon. Some day, Captain Kirk will save the Earth from Klingons." While that might be a valid prophecy and might even be fulfilled one day, I strongly doubt Bush would take any comfort in it.

As for the Jewish messianic prophecies, rather than have a Christian apologist 'explain' Jewish writings to me, I prefer to go to the source--namely the people who wrote the scriptures and their prophecies. After all, they are the ones who wrote them, right? They should be the best ones to tell me what is or is not a messianic prophecy and what needs to be happened for them to be fulfilled, right? Jews and Christians only disagree on whether Jesus actually fulfilled who-knows-how-many prophecies, right?

Well, according to Jews for Judaism, there are a bare eight messianic prophecies:

1. First of all, he must be Jewish
2. He must be a member of the tribe of Judah
3. He must be a direct male descendant of King David and King Solomon
4. He must gather the Jewish people from exile and return them to Israel
5. He must rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem
6. He will rule at a time of world-wide peace
7. He will rule at a time when the Jewish people will observe G-d's commandments
8. He will rule at a time when all people will come to acknowledge and serve one G-d

All these are spelled out in Ezekiel 37: 24-28. At best, Jesus "fulfilled" the first three, along with countless other Jewish males over the course of thousands of years.

So that should be that for Jesus, then. Any disagreement should be taken up with Jewish adherents, not with skeptics, who think that pinning your hopes on a Jewish military conqueror to rule the world in peace are as silly as expecting an empty hole in the ground means a corpse was revivified.

Amaleq13

I think you missed this question, Steve.

According to what law?

sschlichter

No, I saw it. I did not think you were serious.

So you need some sort of evidence that 1st century Jews respected the relationship and authority of a paternal parent and his child.

Are you sure that is necessary?

Amaleq13

That wasn't your claim, Steve, and you know it. Let's not play obtuse, ok?

You claimed that there was a legal basis for considering Jesus to be the descendant of David through Joseph and I am asking you to be specific.

What law do you understand to give Jesus Davidic descent through Joseph if he wasn't believed to be the physical father?

aa5874

Not even the first three can really be said to have been fulfilled by Jesus, if he existed, there is no genealogy for his REAL father and there is no genealogy for his assumed mother.

Toto

I think that Steve must be thinking of Lord Mansfield's Law, which holds that the child of a married woman is irrefutably presumed to be the child of the father. But this law was a product of 18th century British society and I don't think it was in effect in first century Palestine.

andrewcriddle

Some scholars would take passages like the Mishnah Baba Batra 8:6 (about inheritance) as indicating that acknowledgment by your putative father as his son was fully sufficient to establish ones legal right to inherit.

There may be dispute as to how good a parallel this is.

Andrew Criddle

Amaleq13

Thanks, Andrew