Let's looks at what Genesis 3:15 says:
"And I [God] will put enmity between thee [a talking serpent in the Garden of Eden] and the woman [Eve, allegedly the first female human who was magically created from the rib of the first man], and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel."
If this passage is to be taken literally, it is absurdly silly and obviously not a description of something real, much less to do with anything Jesus allegedly did. If this is some sort of metaphorical or "spiritual" prophecy, it is vague and any one of a myriad of events could be claimed to "fulfill" such a prophecy. Galatians 4:4 says that Jesus was "born of a woman." Is that what you think the amazing connection is between these passages? I'm not sure if you're aware of this but...pretty much everyone on Earth is "born of a woman."
So I'm unsure what you find so amazing here. If this is the caliber of the remainder of your laundry list that you pulled from some apologetics site, it's terribly unimpressive. Surely you can see that?
Perhaps pick your best one? What's the most amazingly convincing prophecy fulfillment you've got?
Yes, yes that's precisely what I'm suggesting. And many of the prophecies are so vague, like the one from Genesis we just reviewed, that any number of creative "fulfillments" could be devised to fit them.
Not a whole lot, to be blunt. Do you realize how many people have claimed this or that person or event fulfilled Biblical prophecy throughout history? And how diverse such claims have been for the past 2+ millenia? And the irony is, for all the ones you don't believe in, you see them exactly as I see your claims that Jesus fulfilled prophecy.
For the most part. Although unfortunately we know that Josephus' writings have been passed down through the hands of Christian copyists, who tampered with Josephus' original words (pretty much all mainstream historians of the time period acknowledge this). So one has to be discerning when reading Josephus on anything relating to Christianity.
I'm not an expert on the topic, although I'm aware he was a Roman historian in the 1st-2nd centuries. Assuming he was a basically reliable source, what do you think Tacitus proves? That Jesus was executed? Mkay. Let's grant that a guy named Jesus was executed in the 1st century. Now what?
First of all, we have no clue who "gave testimony to the events" reported in the Gospels. None. Zip. Zero. The Gospels do not name their sources. So that's one good reason not to trust them.
Second of all, from a purely common sense perspective, on near every page of their texts, the Gospels purport events to have occurred that are wildly absurd and at odds with everything we know about how the world works. So that's another really good reason not to trust them.
Third of all, the Gospels were written by Christians and are works of apologetics. Thus their ability to provide unbiased reports of the events of the life of a man they regard as their Lord and Savior is obviously suspect. So that's another reason not to trust them.
Fourth, from a literary perspective the Gospels look exactly like myth, and clearly were written by people who were familiar with other myths (both Jewish and Greek) and attempted to emulate them (a common motif of ancient writing was to take an existing myth and put a new spin on it from the perspective of one's own culture/religion). Read some secular scholarship on the parallels between the Gospels and the Odyssey, or the Gospels and the Elijah-Elisha narrative. This is not the way history is written. This is the way myth is written. So that's yet another reason not to trust them.
A narrative can be internally consistent/without contradiction and still be wrong. Now personally I don't think the Bible is internally consistent at all, but even if that were the case, that wouldn't demonstrate that the Biblical narrative(s) are true. That is why you must look outside the text to rationally determine what parts of the text are or aren't accurate.
Oy, RS.
The fact that Christianity exists is not evidence that Jesus is alive and well. That doesn't make any sense, RS. Is the existence of Islam evidence that Muhammad was a true prophet? Is the existence of Scientology evidence that L. Ron Hubbard's writings are true? Think through what you're saying. It's not rational, RS.
