DavidSMoore
Member
The following well known passage of Luke 2:8-11 announces the birth of Jesus and specifically calls him the Messiah:
The Greek word for Messiah is “Christ.” So whenever Christians call Jesus the Christ they are affirming that Jesus is indeed the Messiah. The Hebrew word “Messiah” means “Anointed One.” Many persons were anointed in the Old Testament. Kings were anointed. Priests were anointed. Even Cyrus the Great of Persia was anointed. (Isaiah 45:1.)
In the New Testament Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist. Baptism wasn’t the same as anointment. Baptism was done with water and was supposed to reflect repentance and a cleansing of the soul, whereas anointment was done with oil and was part of a ceremony bestowing authority. Jesus was anointed once, in Bethany, by an unnamed woman who poured a flask of nard over his head (Mark 14:3). But that was done in preparation for his burial, not for an ascent to power. So Jesus wasn’t really anointed-- at least, not in the formal sense of a ceremony conferring power and authority. In fact, according to John, Jesus actively avoided assuming temporal power (John 6:15). But Luke does say this:
The implication is that Jesus was anointed by the Holy Spirit, not by any earthly power, and not as part of a formal ceremony. (The relevant passage from Isaiah can be found in Chapter 61.)
Generally what Christians mean when they say Jesus is the Christ is that Jesus is the person whose coming was predicted by the Old Testament prophets. Here’s what the Catholic Catechism has to say about the Messiah:
But did the Old Testament authors predict the coming of Jesus specifically?
Curiously, the title “Messiah” doesn’t appear in the Old Testament. (At least not in the RSV or the NRSVue. It appears twice in the KJV, both times in the book of Daniel.) But the word “savior” does show up repeatedly. For example, in 2 Samuel 2-4, the author says that the LORD is his savior who saves him from violence and from his enemies. That’s a portrait of salvation in the here and now, not in an imagined afterlife. And the savior in this case is God, not a separate being. But there are a few passages that describe a savior who is to arrive at some time in the future, as in this passage:
That passage is part of a longer narrative in which Isaiah says that Judah will conquer Egypt. That didn’t happen. Judah was conquered by the Neo-Babylonian empire in 597 BCE. Not a very accurate prediction.
I argued in this posting: The Garden of Eden that the Old Testament authors-- with the exception of the author of the book of Daniel-- did not believe in the Christian concept of the afterlife, with the resurrection of the dead, the last judgment, eternal life, and paradise.
In this posting: Morality of the Old Testament I showed that the Old Testament morality was about knowing and following the law given to Moses by God, and that some of those laws make no sense in the modern world. And Leviticus Chapter 4 describes a process for forgiving sins that involves animal sacrifice.
In this posting: New Testament Morality I argued that Jesus taught that his followers should forgive all sins except blasphemy against the Holy Spirit and should not turn sinners over to the authorities for punishment. In fact, in the story of the adulteress of John 7:53 – 8:11, Jesus actively disrupted the normal Jewish legal proceedings which would have resulted in the stoning to death of the adulterous woman.
So was Jesus really the savior whose coming was predicted by the Old Testament prophets? As I see it, no. The Old Testament authors didn’t believe any of Jesus’s most important teachings. They didn’t believe in his narrative about the resurrection of the dead, the last judgment, eternal life, and paradise. They didn’t believe in his teachings about forgiveness. As noted above, they had a completely different process for forgiving sins that involves animal sacrifice. They didn’t believe in his morality. And they expected that at the end of time everyone on Earth would be converted to Judaism: they would be worshiping the Jewish God (Yahweh), they would be observing Jewish law to the letter, and they would be observing all Jewish religious rites and festivals. As I see it, that’s very different from the vision of the end of time described by the New Testament authors. Why would the Old Testament authors have predicted the coming of a savior whose teachings were the opposite of their own? In my view, the answer is simple: they wouldn’t have, and therefore Jesus could not have been the savior whose coming was predicted by the Old Testament authors.
We have clear proof of the fallibility of the biblical “prophets” in the Bible itself. I have already mentioned Isaiah’s false prophecy concerning the conquest of Egypt above. Now consider every Christian’s favorite New Testament passage-- John 3:16:
The key phrase “may not perish” is a tell. As I read the above passage, John wasn’t saying that the followers of Jesus of his time would die and would then be resurrected thousands of years later. He was saying that they would never die. And why would he say that? I think it’s because he believed that the resurrection of the dead would happen before his own generation had died out.
In fact all three of the other New Testament gospel authors believed exactly that. Matthew reports the following exchange between Jesus and his disciples:
Jesus answers the second part of the question first, and then says (in Matthew 24:33) that the end of the age will happen before his generation has passed away. This story is repeated in Chapter 13 of the book of Mark. There is a similar narrative in Luke 17:20 - 37 and Luke 21:20 - 32, though Luke’s version has several differences. (This story is not repeated in the book of John.) Even so, the narratives in Mark and in Luke both repeat the same prediction that the end of time would occur before the passing of the then present generation. So this is evidence that Jesus’s most important prediction was wrong.
I think the conclusion is inescapable: the Old Testament authors were not prophets, and neither were the New Testament authors; and Jesus could not have been the Messiah.
* NRSVue = New Revised Standard Version, Updated Edition, published in 2019 by the National Council of Churches of the United States of America.
[Note: This is a revised version of a post submitted on May 22 that has been reviewed and approved by the RF staff.]
The Greek word for Messiah is “Christ.” So whenever Christians call Jesus the Christ they are affirming that Jesus is indeed the Messiah. The Hebrew word “Messiah” means “Anointed One.” Many persons were anointed in the Old Testament. Kings were anointed. Priests were anointed. Even Cyrus the Great of Persia was anointed. (Isaiah 45:1.)
In the New Testament Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist. Baptism wasn’t the same as anointment. Baptism was done with water and was supposed to reflect repentance and a cleansing of the soul, whereas anointment was done with oil and was part of a ceremony bestowing authority. Jesus was anointed once, in Bethany, by an unnamed woman who poured a flask of nard over his head (Mark 14:3). But that was done in preparation for his burial, not for an ascent to power. So Jesus wasn’t really anointed-- at least, not in the formal sense of a ceremony conferring power and authority. In fact, according to John, Jesus actively avoided assuming temporal power (John 6:15). But Luke does say this:
The implication is that Jesus was anointed by the Holy Spirit, not by any earthly power, and not as part of a formal ceremony. (The relevant passage from Isaiah can be found in Chapter 61.)
Generally what Christians mean when they say Jesus is the Christ is that Jesus is the person whose coming was predicted by the Old Testament prophets. Here’s what the Catholic Catechism has to say about the Messiah:
But did the Old Testament authors predict the coming of Jesus specifically?
Curiously, the title “Messiah” doesn’t appear in the Old Testament. (At least not in the RSV or the NRSVue. It appears twice in the KJV, both times in the book of Daniel.) But the word “savior” does show up repeatedly. For example, in 2 Samuel 2-4, the author says that the LORD is his savior who saves him from violence and from his enemies. That’s a portrait of salvation in the here and now, not in an imagined afterlife. And the savior in this case is God, not a separate being. But there are a few passages that describe a savior who is to arrive at some time in the future, as in this passage:
That passage is part of a longer narrative in which Isaiah says that Judah will conquer Egypt. That didn’t happen. Judah was conquered by the Neo-Babylonian empire in 597 BCE. Not a very accurate prediction.
I argued in this posting: The Garden of Eden that the Old Testament authors-- with the exception of the author of the book of Daniel-- did not believe in the Christian concept of the afterlife, with the resurrection of the dead, the last judgment, eternal life, and paradise.
In this posting: Morality of the Old Testament I showed that the Old Testament morality was about knowing and following the law given to Moses by God, and that some of those laws make no sense in the modern world. And Leviticus Chapter 4 describes a process for forgiving sins that involves animal sacrifice.
In this posting: New Testament Morality I argued that Jesus taught that his followers should forgive all sins except blasphemy against the Holy Spirit and should not turn sinners over to the authorities for punishment. In fact, in the story of the adulteress of John 7:53 – 8:11, Jesus actively disrupted the normal Jewish legal proceedings which would have resulted in the stoning to death of the adulterous woman.
So was Jesus really the savior whose coming was predicted by the Old Testament prophets? As I see it, no. The Old Testament authors didn’t believe any of Jesus’s most important teachings. They didn’t believe in his narrative about the resurrection of the dead, the last judgment, eternal life, and paradise. They didn’t believe in his teachings about forgiveness. As noted above, they had a completely different process for forgiving sins that involves animal sacrifice. They didn’t believe in his morality. And they expected that at the end of time everyone on Earth would be converted to Judaism: they would be worshiping the Jewish God (Yahweh), they would be observing Jewish law to the letter, and they would be observing all Jewish religious rites and festivals. As I see it, that’s very different from the vision of the end of time described by the New Testament authors. Why would the Old Testament authors have predicted the coming of a savior whose teachings were the opposite of their own? In my view, the answer is simple: they wouldn’t have, and therefore Jesus could not have been the savior whose coming was predicted by the Old Testament authors.
We have clear proof of the fallibility of the biblical “prophets” in the Bible itself. I have already mentioned Isaiah’s false prophecy concerning the conquest of Egypt above. Now consider every Christian’s favorite New Testament passage-- John 3:16:
The key phrase “may not perish” is a tell. As I read the above passage, John wasn’t saying that the followers of Jesus of his time would die and would then be resurrected thousands of years later. He was saying that they would never die. And why would he say that? I think it’s because he believed that the resurrection of the dead would happen before his own generation had died out.
In fact all three of the other New Testament gospel authors believed exactly that. Matthew reports the following exchange between Jesus and his disciples:
Jesus answers the second part of the question first, and then says (in Matthew 24:33) that the end of the age will happen before his generation has passed away. This story is repeated in Chapter 13 of the book of Mark. There is a similar narrative in Luke 17:20 - 37 and Luke 21:20 - 32, though Luke’s version has several differences. (This story is not repeated in the book of John.) Even so, the narratives in Mark and in Luke both repeat the same prediction that the end of time would occur before the passing of the then present generation. So this is evidence that Jesus’s most important prediction was wrong.
I think the conclusion is inescapable: the Old Testament authors were not prophets, and neither were the New Testament authors; and Jesus could not have been the Messiah.
* NRSVue = New Revised Standard Version, Updated Edition, published in 2019 by the National Council of Churches of the United States of America.
[Note: This is a revised version of a post submitted on May 22 that has been reviewed and approved by the RF staff.]
