Bear Wild
Well-Known Member
So we have copies of this writing 2000 years bce? Do we even have copies of the writing rom 600BCE The earliest actual writing I am aware of are only from 200 BCE and I do not know if they contain this prophecy.
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ONCE AGAIN! Facts in the Bible is supported by archaeology.
- Thread starter Kenny
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Subduction Zone
Veteran Member
Many of the so called prophecies that Christians rely on are not prophecies at all. They are verses taken out of context and reinterpreted after the fact.
PruePhillip
Well-Known Member
If we are speaking of the same thing - Genesis 49:10 "The scepter will not depart from Judah, nor the ruler's staff from between his feet, until he to whom it belongs shall come and the obedience of the nations shall be his."
This book was the central part of the cannon of Israel. After Babylon you couldn't even add a NEW book to this cannon, let alone tamper with the existing one. This is contrary to prevailing opinion BTW.
And Genesis 49 is not unique - the Old Testament is full of Messianic prophecies.
PruePhillip
Well-Known Member
That's the common view point. It doesn't stand up to scrutiny though.
If Jacob, Moses and Daniel say that the coming Messiah would end
the nation of Israel - how do you "interpret after fact" that this indeed
happened? Could you explain this to me?
ecco
Veteran Member
What is this prophecizing?
As far as I know, "the nations" have not and do not obey anyone. Therefore, it certainly cannot be considered to be a prophecy of any individual's arrival.
Also, I'm quite certain that Judah is no longer holding any staff.
I have been asking for days for you to actually show a prophecy instead of just talking about one. When you finally did, it was clearly nonsensical.
PruePhillip
Well-Known Member
No, the main prophecy concerning the Messiah for me is Isaiah 52:13 to 53. This
gives an intimate look at the Messiah as our suffering Redeemer.
Jacob's prophecy of Judah's descendants is a broad sweeping statement about
the rise and fall of a nation and its laws, and its relationship to the Messiah.
The brevity of its statement is breathtaking - reminds me how Shakespeare could
put together a few brief words that have depth and impact.
for instance
"the Scepter" means a monarchy, which implies a nation.
"until" means that nation will not last.
and so on.
How would YOU frame a prophecy?
ecco
Veteran Member
ecco:
I have been asking for days for you to actually show a prophecy instead of just talking about one. When you finally did, it was clearly nonsensical.
I have been asking for days for you to actually show a prophecy instead of just talking about one. When you finally did, it was clearly nonsensical.
If that is your main prophecy concerning the Messiah, you had ample opportunity to post and quote it.
"A broad sweeping statement about the rise and fall of a nation" is not how most rational prople would frame a prophecy.
Vague, broad sweeping statements are not precise enough to be considered predictions any more than "people are going to meet people in grocery stores" is not a prediction.
"Tom is going to Costco Tuesday afternoon where he will meet his future wife in the cheese aisle" is a prophecy
PruePhillip
Well-Known Member
I always thought prophecy was "seeing through a glass darkly"
like that guy on TV in 2010 who said he 'saw' something about New York next year
around September and involving planes and terror.
Okay. Let's say you are the Patriarch Jacob,
ca 2000 BC
Tribal leader
Living in northern Egypt
and you wish to convey thoughts about the future of your people and the Messiah.
How would YOU put these thoughts into words?
joelr
Well-Known Member
Myths are usually set among people and places that were real. David, no David, this had no bearing on the myths being real.
Scholarship is 100% clear on the mythic nature of the gospels. It was storytelling.
Allen D. Callahan:
Associate Professor of New Testament, Harvard Divinity School
If you take the gospels as a factual account of the life of Jesus, they're not all in sync...
Well, there are what we might identify as contradictions in the account. Some of this has to do with our methodology. If we want to read the gospels as eye witness accounts, historical records and so on, then not only are we in for some tough going, I think there's evidence within the material itself that it's not intended to be read that way. I mean that there are certain concerns that are being addressed in this literature. And we become theologically and even historically tone deaf to those concerns, if we don't give them due consideration. It's now consensus in the New Testament scholarship to some extent [that]... in the gospels we're dealing with theologians, people who are reflecting theologically on Jesus already. And there's all indication that what we now refer to as theological reflection was there at the very beginning of things....
Are you saying that the gospels are of little value as eye witness accounts of his life?
Well, they don't claim to be eye witness accounts of his life. I don't think that the people who are responsible for those documents were staying up at night worried about those kinds of things.
"Most of the people in the early Christian movement couldn't read so they wouldn't have been reading the gospels.... Probably the greatest contact they would have had is hearing these read or preached in connection with church services. Certainly what we think of today as literal interpretation of the scripture would not really have been available in quite the same way to people in the ancient world. I think it's important to understand that what contemporary Americans, for example, think of as a literal reading of scripture is really a product of the late 19th and early 20th century, as development or part of fundamentalism's reaction to Biblical scholarship and Biblical criticism as it had developed in the 19th century."
The Story Of The Storytellers - What Are The Gospels? | From Jesus To Christ | FRONTLINE | PBS
joelr
Well-Known Member
Zechariah 14:12-19
all nations shall worship the king and feast on the tabernacle and so on. Never happened. Along with hundreds of other promises.
The bible is not prophetic. A few predictions happened most didn't.
The NT obviously was fiction based on OT prophecies with no outside sources so there is only evidence of failed prophecy,
PruePhillip
Well-Known Member
Quote - "all nations shall worship the king"
Hasn't happened yet. Jesus said "And this gospel of the kingdom will
be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then
the end will come." Matt 24.
The rise of Christianity in China is of interest to me.
Jacob (ca 2000 BC) was the first I know of who spoke of the Messiah
as being to the Gentiles, not the Jews.
Isaiah (ca 750 BC) said "in whom the gentiles will trust"
Not sure how the Jews see this as they believe the Messiah will be
their king and conqueror. How can can the Gentiles therefor trust
in Him?
And this prophecy of the Gentile reigning Messiah would have been
fantastic to those 1st Century AD who saw these Christians as just
another tiny cult.
PruePhillip
Well-Known Member
That's quite a statement, considering the professor was not there.
It's like that old saying "All swans are white", but then they discovered black swans
in my country. You can't prove a negative. A good professor would say, "The Gospels
are set against an historic backdrop of Palestine 1st Century. We have no evidence
for some of the claims of the Gospels. They are mythic in nature but cannot be
disproven."
Re King David. Many, many, many atheists, skeptics and professors used to say that
"King David never existed." Until the evidence started emerging. Now they say "The
fact King David existed proves nothing." So they have shifted.
PruePhillip
Well-Known Member
Fact is the authors of the Gospels did not include their own name. That's the nature of
Christianity. But I have no trouble in seeing the men in the Gospels as being the authors
of some Gospels. John is "the one whom Jesus loved" but won't mention his own name.
He is the same author of the Epistles of John. You can read the same writer there.
And Luke wrote the Acts and compiled the Gospel of Luke, though he wasn't an eye
witness. He said he interviewed many people. Luke is one of the greatest historians of
the classical era - many won't accord him that honor because he wrote a religious book
in Acts and Luke.
With the Jewish kings it was the same modesty. Israel did not build monuments to its own
kings or its own nation like Egypt did, for instance. It's interesting, and the details are subtle.
joelr
Well-Known Member
The "end will come" prophecies were not in the OT until the Jews borrowed those concepts from Persia after the Persians invaded Judea.
At 5:17 you can see the Zoroastrian origins of Satan, good vs evil, end of days with fire and savior messiahs
joelr
Well-Known Member
Ha, that's funny, no one in scholarship says that. Just like they don't say "Romulus is mythical in nature but cannot be disproven"
No one adds that tag onto myths because we know they are just stories.
Can you imagine how annoying it would be if every time a professor mentioned some ancient myth they had to say "but it can't be disproven"....
The professor doesn't need to be there, we have writings that are histories by bronze age historians and the gospels are not that. They are written entirely as myths were written. But going one better we have all the exact same mythology from many other cultures that pre-date the gospels. So Jesus is the Jewish version of the popular dying/rising in 3 days and erasing your personal sins and getting you into the afterlife savior messiah that every culture had in those times.
Thanks to Rome and later the Roman Catholic Church and tight control on information and influence people still believe ancient stories as if they are real to this day.
But like the professor pointed out literal translations didn't even start until the 19th century. The church did a good job of keeping peoples attention off the fact that the messiah story isn't even a Christian creation. Every time I see a apologist scholar debate a historian they strongly deny the pagan myth connection or say those myths came later. Then they are shown source materials from stone tablets or pyramid walls and can barely contain their shock.
The "god" of all gods was a minor Egyptian deity who bronze age people decided to focus their worship on. But the idea wasn't even original to Yahweh, it was stolen from an Egyptain "god above all other gods".
In the oldest biblical literature, Yahweh is a typical ancient Near Eastern "divine warrior", who leads the heavenly army against Israel's enemies;[8] he later became the main god of the Kingdom of Israel (Samaria) and of Judah,[9] and over time the royal court and temple promoted Yahweh as the god of the entire cosmos, possessing all the positive qualities previously attributed to the other gods and goddesses.[10][11] By the end of the Babylonian exile (6th century BCE), the very existence of foreign gods was denied, and Yahweh was proclaimed as the creator of the cosmos and the true god of all the world.[11]
PruePhillip
Well-Known Member
IMO there are two "scholarship" positions.
1 - neutral scholarship - the agnostic who can't allow supernatural explanations in science
2 - the active atheist - who is selective in his study and his language to promote atheism.
So some scholars used to say "There was no such person as King David" which is an abuse
of science. But more importantly non-science people would misread this statement "There is
no evidence for King David" as saying there was no David.
So there remain subtle distinctions between King David, Solomon, Hezekiah, Isaiah etc. verses Romulus and Zeus for instance.
Another thing I love to point out. "Scholars" state that camels were not domesticated in Abrahams
day, therefore the camel train stories were later inventions. Just Google the subject of the earliest
domestic camel, and see for yourself that "scholarship" can be stuck in a mindset.
PruePhillip
Well-Known Member
The argument here is false one. It goes like this, "Because many religious stories are patently
false then they are all patently false." You can't prove that.
Yes, many church people don't like to show similar doctrines or beliefs to Judaeo Christian ones
because of the IMPLICATION. Implication is a standard tactic in politics for instance, ie America is
racist, homophobic, sexist, class ridden ... THEREFOR it's ideas, values, and nation are not worth defending.
It's the low hanging fruit argument IMO.
The main deficit in such arguments is they focus upon the similarities AND IGNORE THE DIFFERENCES.
joelr
Well-Known Member
No there is not. There are 2 things you must be making up in your mind. On 1 and 2 - Richard Carrier looked for evidence of miraculous events in other world histories. Like the 3 days of no sun, he searched for in Asian histories and other world histories from the related period. There were no coborrations at all.
Other scholars have looked for references, independent references to supernatural events but none have been found.
Some scholars in historicity are deists, they are open to some type of god existing. But copied pagan myths written as myths and all copied from one source is clearly not historical.
You clearly do not read historicity studies because you have a fantasy about these writers that does not match reality.
Archeologists used to say there is no "evidence" for a David. Now there is POSSIBLY a reference to David. Zeus was also written into history and gospels of Hercules his son is also placed among actual people who lived, kings and statesmen. Wars that were fought are incorporated into Greek myths. Yes now we see a possible mention of a King David but we also see Yahweh is just a rip-off of an Egyptain warrior deity worshipped along with a goddess and other gods. In other words, this is Egyptian fiction!
And Romulus is not a direct comparison to OT stories. Romulus is a dying/rising savior deity who's members were baptized into the cult for removal of sins and for entry into the afterlife. Romulus defeated death for his followers and is obviously a source for the Jesus myth.
Speaking of stuck in a mindset?
Who cares about camels? People ride camels in real life. What they also do is make up deities to worship and create histories from "revelations" about how great each god is. But they are always fiction. Just like Joe Smith and his golden tablets. Revelations = fiction.
PruePhillip
Well-Known Member
Ever thought that Romulus was copied and pasted from Hebrew text?
Remember - the Gospels did not appear in the 1st Century AD, but
going back to the Bronze Age.
And you need a miracle? The ability of those bible writers to foresee
not only the Messiah but the future of Israel is uncanny. You are living
in the age of the second return of the Jews to their homeland - as
spoken by writers such as Isaiah, Daniel and Ezekiel. Out of countries
which were their 'graves' of affliction and persecution for 1900 years.