Why did the Christian messiah fail to fulfill the messianic prophecies?

What sense does that make? "Oh, he really was a real prophet after all." What's the point of confirming that somebody was a real prophet if his prophecies didn't do any good?

It was a case of redefining the prophesies but simply announcing one cohesive understanding of them.The prophesies weren't dictated word for word by God but had come through centuries of prophets and others trying to determine the nature of there one true God and how they were to respond. Some got it more right than others. Jesus was the fulfillment of the scriptures but not in the way that many had hoped.Edited by GDR, : No reason given.

There understanding was it seems largely in hind sight but that doesn't make them worthless. Sure. So what. Just because I hope the sun is going to come up tomorrow isn't an indicator that it won't. Once again though. The credibility for the return of Jesus when God renews all things, is all based on the resurrection. If God resurrected Jesus then there is a basis of hope for that renewal. If the resurrection is simply a metaphor then Christianity falls apart and there is no good reason to hope for the renewal of this world.Edited by GDR, : No reason given.

The idea I'm suggesting is not that hard to grasp.1. The prophecies regarding Jesus are helpful to folks today who are enabled to understand the Jesus did fulfill them.2. After the fact, Jesus was confirmed to be the promised Messiah and the Son of God. On that basis, Jesus own prophecies were sufficient to satisfy his peers who heard them.Neither of the above results require us to understand the prophecies at the time they were issued. It is not of much importance what credit those folk received at the time.

What I said was that a prophecy is worthless if it can only be understood correctly in hindsight. At best, the hindsight interpretation is a little extra something that can be learned from the prophecy. It is not in and of itself a fulfillment of the prophecy. Just because you hope to win the lottery tomorrow doesn't mean you will - and hope doesn't change the odds. Not at all. The basis for renewing things is Jesus' message, not His person. Unfortunately, that's all too true for some Christians because they've turned Christianity into a cult of personality where the medium is more important than the message. Jesus said that renewal of this world is our responsibility.

It isn't hard to grasp. It's hard to swallow. On the contrary, it isn't of much importance what credit the prophets receive today - or even at the time of Christ - because the time of the prophecy had already come and gone

But it isn't that there was only one prophesy that covered this. The understanding came after Jesus' resurrection which then had people like Paul combing through what Jesus had said and through the Jewish scriptures. Jesus wasn't primarily a fulfillment of a prophesy as He was the fulfillment of the whole Israel narrative. Sure, but there is no reason to give more credibility to Jesus than there is to anyone else you might want to name without the resurrection. For that matter, without the resurrection Jesus is a delusional failed messiah. I'm not sure what you mean by a cult of personality but we are somewhat on the same page. Jesus' message is critical and the message is that He is calling us to continue His Kingdom work of spreading God's love, peace, justice to the world as my signature says. We are called to live out our lives in that way and to, for lack of a better term, infect the world with God's love, ahead of the time when God completes the project.Resurrection is planned for all creation at the end of time,and God has resurrected the one man Jesus within time. (This at least is my understanding of that aspect of the Christian message.) I'm paraphrasing but the Bible tells us that God will unite His universe/dimension with our own. How that is going to look is well above my pay grade.

That makes it worse, not better. One prophecy that actually fits is better than a dozen that have to be twisted to fit. So full circle again: you need the resurrection to justify your twisting of prophecy. Only to you. It's the same as the creationists sayng that without a literal 6-day creation the whole Bible is worthless. It's your poor interpretation that causes the problem. None of which requires Jesus to be the Messiah or to be resurected. The mesage has the same value with or without the delivery boy.

That is not contrary to what I said. I agree that the importance of the prophets both before and after their predictions is a minor idea. The reputation of those prophets invariable comes from sources other than knowing that they are right about future events. In fact many prophets are disbelieved at the time of making their prophecies. The Messiah is way more important than are the prophets who presaged his coming. Confirmation after the fact is useful for establishing that. Jesus then made prophecies himself.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

Perhaps this should be in its own thread, but here was a recent discovery. This site had a positive spin on this discovery. A suffering and dying messiah? The Blaze site will cause computers to crash, so that is too bad. I still havnt been able to read the entire article text on the site due to the crashing it causes.

quote:

---

Author Explains Why Mysterious Archeological Find Blew Him Away and Sent an ‘Earthquake’ Through the Biblical Studies World
Oct. 26, 2015 12:16pm Billy Hallowell

​

An author and Bible expert who has spent a great deal of time analyzing recent archaeological discoveries said that he has been blown away by an ancient tablet that was discovered back in 2000 one that has caused an earthquake in the biblical studies field.

​

The one [find] that really blew me away was the Gabriel Revelation a first century stone tablet that was discovered around the year 2000 on the other side of the Jordan River, author Robert J. Hutchinson told The Church Boys podcast.

​

Hutchinson, who describes this find among many others in his new book, Searching for Jesus: New Discoveries in the Quest for Jesus of Nazareth and How They Confirm the Gospel Accounts, said that the tablet, which is dated to the first century B.C., is written in Hebrew and mentions the angel Gabriel.

​

[It] speaks about a messiah who would suffer, die and perhaps even rise again. This has just been kind of an earthquake, Hutchinson said. The implications of it haven’t really filtered down to ordinary scholars, and seminaries and so on and even, of course, into the media.

​

....
The author said that the discovery, which has attracted attention inside biblical and archaeological circles, is notable due to the fact that it basically shows that there were Jews in Jesus’ time who were expecting a suffering messiah.

​

Critics have spent a century questioning the New Testament narrative, Hutchinson said, based on the claim that the story surrounding Jesus’ divinity and the reason for his crucifixion were conjured up after the fact something that he believes the tablet dismisses.

​

Those opposed to the narrative in the gospels said that the Jews were expecting a conquering hero who would reestablish the Davidic kingdom and not a savior who would suffer, die and rise again, the author maintains.

​

This theme of a suffering messiah wasn’t just made up by the Christian community as an apologetic device after the fact to explain the scandal that Jesus was crucified, he said. For literally a century scholars have said that. It was one of the pillars for questioning the reliability of the New Testament.

​

Much of the Gabriel Revelation is indiscernible, though a portion of it was translated into English by the Shalom Hartman Institute, among others. And as the Associated Press reported in 2013, scholars continue to debate its meaning.

​

TheBlaze - 404 Not Found

---

Here is a direct link to a translation of text.Attention Required! | CloudflareAP story link.The Associated Press - Video, photo, text, audio, data news agencyI have been attempting a post for the last few days on this discovery, but the crashing computer keeps preventing me.One interesting issue to consider is that Jesus was in the tomb from Friday to Sunday, so that isn't 3 days and three nights. It was 3 different days (part of Friday, all of Saturday, and part of Sunday) but not 3 days and 3 nights. So the
interesting thing is that the crucifix event and its description did seem like it was possibly an attempted match-up with an precise prophecy floating around late 2nd Temple Jewish circles. Every now and then we learn, through discoveries, that there are prophecies that the New Testament authors reference, but which we simply don't have (or didn't have before)Look at Paul in 1 Corinthians 15. Nevermind. Computer won't let me quote it (sigh) as it is freezing and crashing.I give up.About the only thing i can do is type here, lets see if my message sends.

Matthew 12:40 has Jesus say that there will be 3 days and nights in the grave for the rising Messiah.1 Corinthians 15 (around verses 3-4) has a 3 day prophecy (without the 3 nights) referenced. It says "according to the scripture" (or close to that) and "scripture" always means the pre-New Testament (usually Old Testament though not always confined to what makes up the "Old Testament" today).One has to wonder if there are multiple Dead Dead Scroll type texts (if any) with different details.To make matters more confusing, the Gospels present the Apostles as ignorant of a dying & rising Messiah, while it has the Jewish leaders as aware.Apologist William Lane Craig says that the guard of the tomb in Matthew (absent the other 3 gospels) is irrelevant as an apologetic argument because modern scholars no longer propose that the Apostles stole the body. He says that modern scholarship rejects the guard as historical, so he doesn't use it while making his arguments. He feels that the guard is historical and that it was a Jewish, not a Roman, guard. That would raise even more questions about how many people were expecting a rising Messiah.The whole issue of scripture predicting a dying and rising Messiah has always been confusing, because Hosea 5 would have been a closer parallel than the Jonah story.Many confusing issues, but there have been discoveries this decade that cause one to hold the possibility that there were intertestamental texts that had the details. How widely held they were is another issue.

The text claims that it is the dying that was according to scripture and not the details of the resurrection. After all, the rest of the events described include things that were not predicted in pre New Testament scripture including Jesus appearance to Paul.

Read this scripture. What does it tell you? In other words, the truth is not going to be found by studying the scriptures themselves...no matter how many old books and scrolls you happen to examine.

Phat said this:

quote:

---

the truth is not going to be found by studying the scriptures themselves...no matter how many old books and scrolls you happen to examine.

---

But Paul seemed to be using this 3 day resurrection as an issue relevant to the resurrected spiritual body. He said that there was "scripture" (ie. pre-Jesus) that described this. The Gospel of Matthew has Jewish leaders instigating a need for guards to be placed over the tomb of Jesus in order to make sure that he didn't get his body snatched; which means that they had scripture telling of a rising messiah.

quote:

---

1 Corinthians 15
3For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, 5 and that he appeared to Cephas, and then to the Twelve. 6 After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. 7 Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, 8 and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born.

---

Apologists say that Paul is using living witnesses to back up an event they witnessed. But it is part of an overall "gospel" story that indicates an expectation of a dying and rising after 3 days (and nights in Matthew) as something prophetic.Hosea 6:1-4 has a national restoration.

quote:

---

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.

​

2
After two days he will revive us;
on the third day he will restore us,
that we may live in his presence.

​

3
Let us acknowledge the Lord;
let us press on to acknowledge him.
As surely as the sun rises,
he will appear;
he will come to us like the winter rains,
like the spring rains that water the earth.

​

4
What can I do with you, Ephraim?
What can I do with you, Judah?

---

Ezekiel 35-37 and the valley of dry bones is an interesting parallel.Here is a link that found a specific text (albeit not put into writing till about 900 A.D., though based on older material) that has a specific 3 day and 3 night body resurrection theme associated with the eschatology and the afterlife. It happens to be Zoroastrian. How far back it goes is a matter of debate.Academia.eduI put "3 days 3 nights resurrection afterlife Zoroastrian" into GoogleI look for whatever light I can find to help us learn what was going on.We have a different approach.

And what are you trying to find? He is as plain as the nose on your face.