Zeichman

Which of these do you believe is true?

1)The Suffering servant passage was a prophecy of the Christ
2)Whoever fulfilled the suffering servant passage was the messiah

I'm not quite sure which you're advocating. If you believe the first, you have to demonstrate that it was believed that the servant was the messiah, a word wholly absent from this alleged foresight. If you select the latter, you bear a burden of proof for showing that it had happened to none other, as numerous individuals probably suffered similarly between the exile and the turn of the era.

We Christians bear the burden of proof if we want to argue that these items are "foreknowlege." Personally, I oppose such an interpretation because it leads to supersessionist thinking, suspends the use of logical thought, not to mention I'm not convinced miracles happen.

Steven Carr

Perhaps they didn't think it was a Messianic prophecy , because it did not mention the Messiah.

Perhaps Orthodox Freethinker might have a try at answering questions that he has repeatedly ducked, probably because the books he parrots don't attempt to answer them.

What Biblical passages did the Jews take as supporting their theory of what a Messiah would be?

Hosea 6 says "Come, let us return to the LORD.
He has torn us to pieces
but he will heal us;
he has injured us
but he will bind up our wounds.

After two days he will revive us;
on the third day he will restore us,
that we may live in his presence.'

OF claims this is a prophecy of the Messiah. A claim that is an insult to the intelligence of first graders.

OF claims the disciples were baffled by Jesus prophecy of his death and resurrection.

Matthew 16:21 From that time on Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, chief priests and teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life.


What did the disciples think Jesus meant by 'he must be killed'?

OF thinks sceptics are utterly stupid if they are taken in by claims that the hand-picked disciples of the greatest teacher in the history of the world, people who had been given the secret of the kingdom of God in Mark 4, that all 12 of them could not understand plain words like 'he must be killed'.

Steven Carr

I think I understand. You don't have to be God to forgive sin.

Jesus was sent by the Father to forgive sin, so being able to forgive sin does not prove that you are God.

This might explain why Jesus had to ask the Father to forgive sin when Jesus was on the cross.

Of course, in Mark 2, sins are forgiven without any shedding of blood, which makes a mockery of the claim in Hebrews that without the shedding of blood, there is no remission of sin.

Roland

It seems highly improbable that the gospels could have fallen out the way the OP claims they did.

If Matthew was an eyewitness, and Mark was based on Peter's eyewitness accounts, and Luke was based on other eyewitness accounts, it becomes virtually impossible to believe that John could also have been written by an eyewitness. Why? Because four "eyewitness" versions of a person's life could never come out in the lopsided fashion these four have.

For instance, if Jesus really said all the things John claims he said, why did none of the other three pick up on those statements? And we're speaking here of some of Jesus' most compelling and self-revelatory declarations (all the powerful "I am" statements, John 3:16 etc.). If Jesus HAD said those things, how could Matthew, Peter (Mark), and Luke in his researches have failed to include even one of them, while somehow including many of the same, far lesser statements Jesus purportedly made?

If these were, indeed, based on eyewitness accounts, as the OP suggests, we would expect the four to be much more random in what the authors chose to include. Three would not be almost perfectly aligned with each other while the fourth goes off wildly in its own direction.

It's small wonder few people, other than apologists, still accept the notion that the gospels were written by the authors assigned to them.

guy_683930

So, by you're logic of the Jews reacting to Jesus saying that "Only God can forgive sins", Jesus is making the disciples God? If he isn't, then Mark 3 can't be used as proof of Jesus being God, since Jesus could have also been given authority to forgive sins from someone else (and that is also what the text seems to allude to)

Orthodox_Freethinker

Yes, only if God specifically gives you the authority. Jesus had the authority by being the Son of the Father.

Orthodox_Freethinker

John, with the other Gospels already available, wrote his in order to suppliment and complement what details they lacked.

FatherMithras

As a semi-regular attending, chruchgoing atheist who has heard the preachings, I'm inclined to disagree with you, specifically on the refusal to acknowledge the psychological refutation of demon posessions. While the Orthodox claim not ALL epileptics are posessed, some are. =)

RUmike

Excuse me? "Details"?

Oh, right. Like the "detail" that Jesus is one with the Father? Sounds pretty important to me.

More important than that "detail" though, is the "detail" that the entire mission of Christ was so that people can believe in him in order to inherit eternal life, and yet isn't it utterly amazing that Matt, Mark, and Luke were as "silent as empty tombs", as Robert Ingersoll said, about that necessity of belief? You call this a "detail" that the three evangelists left out and John had to fill in. Isn't it infinitely more likely that they never knew of such a belief, or knowing about it didn't believe it?

Steven Avery

Most Messianics do not at all like or use terms like 'fulfilled Jew' or 'completed Jew' - perhaps some of the Jews for Jesus and Chosen People type of evangelical groups have that in their vocabularly

Shalom,
Steven in newyawk
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Messianic_Apologetic