Goathead

No idea where to put this, so here it is.


Im often told tht jesus fulfilled like a million prophecies, but what ones can we actually agree he did (assuming jesus was real, existed and all that malarky).

as farr as i can tell, they are either stretched to appear authentic or just complete bullshit, but i dont know enough about the actual claims.

So, what did he fulfill?

Joan of Bark

According to practising Jews, who know the OT better than most Christians, he definitely did not fulfill enough prophesies to be the messiah.

Of course, Christians apologists will use long, convoluted logic to show that he did. Their arguments would not be convincing to an objective observer.

AthenaAwakened

I never was much for prophecy as fortune telling. Always involves some incident occurring and then some "wise" person going back through a ton of "prophecies" looking for something that vaguely fits the event. Would prophecy be, well, more prophetic if we started with the prediction worked forward that starting with the event and working back? What good is fortune-telling if I get blind-sided in the present and only know about the prediction after the fact?

Weltall

I can think of a lot more prophecies that he didn't fulfill (or were shoehorned or 'fulfilled' by the writers making stuff up and demonstrating a lack of how the prophecy was supposed to come to pass) than those he did.

ziffel

Does it matter? The NT text was written hundreds of years after the OT, and even 40 to 70 years after Christ allegedly was around. Like every other cult touting their hero, they were prone to simply writing him as they pleased.

Goathead

Interesting points so far


All the people that bring this tripe up to me (usually in an attempted conversion) insist that Jesus fulfilled prophecies that ive never heard of and that seem like one hell of a stretch.


So, we agree that

1.prophecy after the fact is redundant
2.Jesus ignored many other prophecies, without reason for us to understand why
3.Jewish people feel he did not fulfill enough to be the messiah.


This is where i get stuck normally, as i do not know, and have no desire to learn, all of these supposed "prophecies" - so how do i debate them?



I say again, religon is a hole in the head.

Biff the unclean

The prophecy that "A fool and his money are soon parted"

Pragmatista

The prophecy that "sooner or later someone will interpret this book as containing a bunch of fulfilled prophecies."

show_no_mercy

Being jewish.

ziffel

What I would do is this:

1) point out that the 'prophecies' Jesus supposedly fulfilled were written hundreds of years after the fact, and confirmed by not a single extra-biblical source, and rejected by the people who knew the OT best, the Jews.

2) turn the tables: show them the prophecies Jesus REALLY fulfilled! That is, show them how many facets of the Jesus story are actually direct copies of pagan god-men that preceded Christ by hundreds of years.

* born of a virgin, fathered by a god (mithra, Dionysus )
* stars appeared at their births
* visited by magi from the east
* turned water into wine (Dionysus)
* healed the sick
* cast out demons
* performed miracles
* transfigured before followers
* rode donkeys into the city
* betrayed for 30 pieces of silver
* celebrated communal meal with bread and wine (which represented the savior's flesh and blood)
* killed on a cross or tree
* descended into hell
* resurrected on the 3rd day (Dionysus)
* ascended into heaven to forever sit by the father

These facets of the Jesus story are ALL found in the stories of these pagan god-men: Dionysus, Osiris, Mithras. This is very clear evidence that the Jesus mythology is simply a blending of the paganism of his day.

Incidentally, the Greek god Pan is the inspiration for the NT's version, Satan.