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| Author | Topic: Why did the Christian messiah fail to fulfill the messianic prophecies? | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Eliyahu Member (Idle past 281 days)  Posts: 286 From: Judah Joined: |
Bs'd The Christian messiah did not fulfill the messianic prophecies. I think this is a clear indication that he was not the messiah. Here some examples: Who and what is the messiah? Let us check according to the Holy Hebrew scriptures what the messiah is supposed to do. ....... Micha 5:2-9; "But thou Bethlehem Ephratah, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel; whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting. Therefore will he give them up, until the time that she which travaileth hath brought forth: then the remnant of his brethren shall return unto the children of Israel. And he shall stand and feed in the strength of the LORD, in the majesty of the name of the LORD his God; and they shall abide: for NOW shall he be great unto the ends of the earth. And this man shall be the peace, when the Assyrian shall come into our land: and when he shall tread in our palaces, then shall we raise against him seven shepherds, and eight principal men. And they shall waste the land of Assyria with the sword, and the land of Nimrod in the entrances thereof: thus shall he deliver us from the Assyrian, when he cometh into our land, and when he treadeth within our borders. And the remnant of Jacob shall be in the midst of many people as a dew from the LORD, as the showers upon the grass, that tarrieth not for man, nor waiteth for the sons of men. And the remnant of Jacob shall be among the Gentiles in the midst of many people as a lion among the beasts of the forest, as a young lion among the flocks of sheep: who, if he go through, both treadeth down, and teareth in pieces, and none can deliver. Thine hand shall be lifted up upon thine adversaries, and all thine enemies shall be cut off." Here we have very clearly physical redemption from earthly enemies: "And they shall waste the land of Assyria with the sword", "Thine hand shall be lifted up upon thine adversaries, and all thine enemies shall be cut off." These are very clear verses that can not be misinterpreted; when the messiah comes the Jewish enemies are going to be slaughtered. And the one coming forth from Bethlehem is to be a ruler in Israel, that is a king, or maybe nowadays a president, but not a wandering preacher and miracle healer. Zacheriah 9:9-10; "Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion; shout, O daughter of Jerusalem: behold, thy King cometh unto thee: he is just, and having salvation; lowly, and riding upon an ass, and upon a colt the foal of an ass. And I will cut off the chariot from Ephraim, and the horse from Jerusalem, and the battle bow shall be cut off: and he shall speak peace unto the heathen: and his dominion shall be from sea even to sea, and from the river even to the ends of the earth." They say that he did ride on a donkey, like the whole Middle East in those days, but that is where it stops. He did not bring any peace, the battle bow, the horses and the chariots, symbols of war, were not cut off from Jerusalem, and his dominion was not from sea to sea and to the ends of the earth; as a matter of fact, he did not have any dominion at all. In order to get around this problem, the Christian church invented the "second coming". However, nowhere in the Hebrew scriptures is it written that the messiah would come once, get himself killed, and come again in a second coming. This is a pure rationalization of Jesus' failure to function in any way as a messiah. Nowhere in any of the above prophecies does it indicate that there will be a gap of at least 2000 years between the birth of the messiah and the redemption. Nowhere does it speak about a messiah being tortured to death and coming back thousands of years later. Jeremiah 23:5-6; "Behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that I will raise unto David a righteous Branch, and a King shall reign and prosper, and shall execute judgment and justice in the earth. In his days Judah shall be saved, and Israel shall dwell safely: and this is his name whereby he shall be called, THE LORD OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS." Jeremiah 33:14-16: "IN THOSE DAYS AND AT THAT TIME, will I cause the Branch of righteousness to grow up unto David; and he shall execute judgment and righteousness in the land. IN THOSE DAYS shall Judah be saved, and Jerusalem shall dwell safely: and this is the name wherewith she shall be called, The LORD our righteousness." When the branch of righteousness springs forth to David, when the messiah comes, THEN, IN THOSE DAYS, Judah will be saved and Jerusalem shall dwell safely. That means that it is impossible to squeeze in two thousand or more years between the coming of the messiah and the redemption of Judah and Jerusalem. Out goes the 'second coming'. However, there wasn't any redemption in the days of Jesus. Forty years after his death, in 70 CE, Jerusalem was totally destroyed by the Romans, the second Temple was burned down, and the Jews exiled. No way that the above prophecy was fulfilled. . Isaiah 11; "And there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a Branch shall grow out of his roots: And the spirit of the LORD shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the LORD; And shall make him of quick understanding in the fear of the LORD: and he shall not judge after the sight of his eyes, neither reprove after the hearing of his ears: But with righteousness shall he judge the poor, and reprove with equity for the meek of the earth: and he shall smite the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips shall he slay the wicked. And righteousness shall be the girdle of his loins, and faithfulness the girdle of his reins. The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them. And the cow and the bear shall feed; their young ones shall lie down together: and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. And the sucking child shall play on the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the cockatrice' den. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain: for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea. And in that day there shall be a root of Jesse, which shall stand for an ensign of the people; to it shall the Gentiles seek: and his rest shall be glorious." Also here we have a messiah who is going to kill the evil people: "And he shall smite the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips shall he slay the wicked." And after that we get the better world, when it says: "The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them etc." This is what is supposed to happen, as soon as there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse (the father of King David) and a Branch shall grow out of his roots; that is as soon as the messiah comes. Nowhere here is mentioned that the messiah will be killed and that these prophecies will happen at least 2000 years later. On the contrary; when the messiah comes redemption comes. And also for this messianic prophecy you don't have to be a brain surgeon or a rocket scientist in order to see that it is not fulfilled. Nothing of this all was done by Jesus. Conclusion: He was not the messiah. Edited by Eliyahu, : No reason given.
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Adminnemooseus Director  Posts: 3810 Joined: Member Rating: 3.1 |
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Faith Member  Posts: 25606 From: Nevada, USA Joined: Member Rating: 1.0
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But nowhere is more than one Messiah ever hinted at in the scriptures. The best resolution of the different portraits is the one Christians teach, that rather than different Messiahs there is one Messiah who will come twice, first as the Suffering Servant who dies to pay for the sins of His people, and then at the end as the Warrior King who will take vengeance on His enemies and the enemies of His people. When Jesus read Isaiah 61:1-2a in the synagogue and claimed that He was its fulfillment He gave a strong indication of this understanding of His mission:
Note that He stopped reading right after the line "To preach the acceptable year of the Lord" but the passage in Isaiah from which He was reading goes on: "and the day of vengeance of our God." This is understood in Christian theology to mean that Jesus was claiming only to fulfill the mission of God's grace at that time, but that when He comes again it will be as the executor of God's vengeance when He will destroy God's enemies.
We are still in the time of grace, when people can still be saved by repentance and faith, but the time of vengeance can't be far off, when there is no more opportunity for salvation. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
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Eliyahu Member (Idle past 281 days) Posts: 286 From: Judah Joined: |
How can I reply here with quote of previous message?
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Stile Member  Posts: 2924 From: Ontario, Canada Joined: Member Rating: 3.8 |
I've stolen a nice thing one of the other posters here generally shows to new comers when he sees them:
(Stolen from RAZD) You can also click on the "peek" button in the bottom right of any message and it will show you exactly what the person typed in order to get the display you see. Welcome to EvC, it's a good time here. We don't have any lemonade to give you, though...
What does this mean? Blessed? "B.S." has different meaning where I'm from...
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New Cat's Eye Member  Posts: 11567 From: near St. Louis Joined: Member Rating: 2.6 |
Its Jewish: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Besiyata_Dishmaya
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New Cat's Eye Member Posts: 11567 From: near St. Louis Joined: Member Rating: 2.6 |
Maybe the prophecies were wrong, no?
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jar Member  Posts: 29146 From: Texas!! Joined: Member Rating: 2.7
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Jesus will be the Jewish Messiah once He returns, kicks ass and takes names. The Jews got the whole Messiah thing wrong. "Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster at your side, kid." Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!
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Eliyahu Member (Idle past 281 days) Posts: 286 From: Judah Joined: |
quote: Bs'd There is no "suffering and dying messiah" in the Tanach. quote: The scriptures are full of messiah's. You just have to know what is a messiah: Messiah comes from the Hebrew word 'meshiach' which means 'anointed one' It was the custom to anoint kings with oil before they came to power. There were already many anointed kings in Jewish history. Read for instance I Samuel 9:27 to10:1; Here Saul is anointed by Samuel the prophet. And thereby he became a messiah, an anointed one, See Samuel 11:13 up to 12:3: Here in verse 3 king Saul is called G.ds anointed, in the Hebrew 'meshiach'. So also king Saul was a messiah. Look in I Samuel 16:12-13, here the prophet Samuel anoints David, the Hebrew verb for anointing is 'mashach', and he becomes an anointed one, as we can read in II Samuel 23:1; "David the son of Jesse said, and the man who was raised up on high, the anointed (in the Hebrew 'meshiach') of the G.d of Jacob, and the sweet psalmist of Israel, said; …" I Kings 1:39; "And Zadok the priest took an horn of oil out of the tabernacle, and anointed (Hebrew verb 'mashach') Solomon. And they blew the trumpet, and all the people said; G.d save king Solomon." Also Solomon was an anointed one, or messiah: II Chronicles 6:42, here king Solomon prays: "O Lord turn not away the face of thine anointed, …" In the Hebrew: 'meshiach'. So now we know what is a messiah: An anointed king. And there were many of those in history. Eliyahu
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ringo Member  Posts: 13329 From: frozen wasteland Joined: Member Rating: 3.1 |
The scriptures also contain my phone number if you know how to read them properly (and if you already have the information that you want to "extract"). But if you actually read the scriptures, not so much.
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Faith Member Posts: 25606 From: Nevada, USA Joined: Member Rating: 1.0 |
Isaiah 52 and 53. And I'll have to see if I can find a Jewish commentary that views those passages as related to the Messiah but I won't be able to do that until later. Yes, I'm quite aware of how the term "Messiah" is derived, so that there are many "messiahs" in that small sense, but don't be so disingenuous as to try to deny that the Hebrew scriptures point to one particular Messiah, THE Anointed One of God. Orthodox Jews believe He is yet to come, no? We believe He came 2000 years ago and will come another time. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
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Eliyahu Member (Idle past 281 days) Posts: 286 From: Judah Joined: |
quote: Bs'd I don't want to see Jewish commentators who view those passages as speaking about the messiah. What I want is solid arguments based not on commentators, but on the Tanach, that Isaiah 53 speaks about the messiah. Giving comments is something we all can and do. The value of that hovers around zero. quote: Yes, we believe that THE messiah is still to come, and there will be only ONE of him. And we'll know he is the messiah, by the fact that he is going to fulfill the messianic prophecies, something in which JC failed. Eliyahu
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PaulK Member Posts: 12872 Joined: Member Rating: 3.4 |
Accordingly any claim that any other prophecy is Messianic needs to show that it applies to the same person. Even the title messiah is insufficient, since there are any number of messiahs (the Persian emperor Cyrus being a significant example - Isaiah 45:1) To answer the question in the OP, in my view the followers of Jesus started with the conviction that Jesus was The Messiah. When Jesus died some of them dealt with it by becoming more extreme and came up with the idea of the Second Coming to explain away Jesus' failure. This is not to say that they did not believe it - they did. But that doesn't make it anything more than a way of hiding from the truth.
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Eliyahu Member (Idle past 281 days) Posts: 286 From: Judah Joined: |
quote: Bs'd That's about it. quote: According to Christianity, the whole chapter of Isaiah 53 and the last verses of chapter 52, from verse 13, are talking about Jesus. Why do they think so? Because the NT says so, and because it fits so nicely with the Christian story about a suffering messiah. And what proof do the Christians have that the subject in Isaiah 53, the suffering servant, is the messiah? Nothing. There is not the slightest indication, let alone a proof, that the servant of God, mentioned in Isaiah 53, is the messiah. In the authentic messianic prophecies there is always a sign that it talks about the messiah, the anointed king. ("messiah" means "anointed one") In the real messianic prophecies it speaks about a king, or about a ruler, or about a descendend of David, or about a descendend of Isai, the father of David. But here in Isaiah 53 is nothing like that. Also the word "messiah" is not used in Isaiah 53. There is not the slightest hint toward a messiah. It just speaks about the servant of God. And NOWHERE in Isaiah, NOWHERE in the whole Hebrew Bible, is the messiah ever referred to as "the servant of God". So Christianity is making up fairy tales here. quote: That's probably the gist of it. Eliyahu
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Faith Member Posts: 25606 From: Nevada, USA Joined: Member Rating: 1.0 |
Possibly we can do both. You claim that Christians "made up" the Suffering Servant idea of the Messiah so it should be appropriate to point out that Jews have also regarded the Suffering Servant passages to be messianic. The book I mentioned by Raphael Patai, The Messiah Texts, is a scholarly study of Jewish writings on the messianic passages in scripture, including such sources as the Babylonian Talmud, the Zohar and later rabbis such as R. Nahman, and many others. Patai is not a believer but a scholar who follows the modernist views of the Bible and is simply interested in how the "myths" about the Messiah were understood in various Jewish writings. The Suffering Servant passages were definitely regarded as messianic in many of these sources. In his Introduction he writes of the "Deutero-Isaiah" passages about the Suffering Servant, as "describing the call, mission, sufferings, death and resurrection of this mysterious individual. ... the Aggada, the Talmudic legend, unhesitatingly identifies him with the Messiah and understands especially the descriptions of his sufferings as referring to Messiah ben Joseph..." [one of the two Messiahs that show up in the Jewish writings] Patai points out at the beginning of his first chapter that Jewish and some Christian scholars regard the Suffering Servant passages as referring to Israel as a whole. "Yet these same passages became in Talmudic times identified with the Messianic theme, and so they have remained in Jewish folk consciousness throughout the ages." He goes on to say the idea is developed from the Isaiah passages about the Suffering Servant in the Talmud, the Midrash and the Zohar. The point of all this of course, again, is simply to show that Christians did not make up the idea of the Messiah as the Suffering Servant, but that it was understood to be messianic by many Jewish sources as well. You say in your answer to PaulK above:
The writings of the various Jewish interpretations of the scriptures ought to go some way toward showing that it isn't only the New Testament (whose writers are almost all Jews anyway) but many nonChristian Jews who find those passages to be messianic. That may not be proof but then how do you prove something that's a matter of interpretation anyway? The fact that it is shared by many serious Jewish interpreters of the scriptures ought to carry a great deal of weight. For reference here are the Suffering Servant passages:
Hard NOT to see Jesus in this passage I would think. There are other passages in Isaiah that are understood to be messianic and are about the Suffering Servant:
In verse 3 of Isaiah 49 Israel is addressed, and as I pointed out above some think all these messianic passages refer to Israel as the Suffering Servant. That looks like quite a stretch to me of course. Some Christian theologies say that Jesus stands for Israel so that the verse is addressed to Him anyway. The rest of the passage certainly applies to Him. You also said that there is nothing about a dying Messiah in scripture, but there is, in Daniel 9:24-26, which Patai also references, and this passage speaks explicitly of the Messiah:
This is also the famous passage by which we can calculate the exact timing of Jesus' riding the donkey into Jerusalem from a particular decree to rebuild Jerusalem after the Babylonian Captivity. {By the way, you mention in your OP Jesus riding a donkey as if that means nothing, but that's the only time he rode a donkey that we know of and his riding that animal into Jerusalem was symbolic of a King announcing that He comes in peace, in the context of Middle Eastern customs.) Edited by Faith, : No reason given. Edited by Faith, : No reason given. Edited by Faith, : No reason given. Edited by Faith, : No reason given. Edited by Faith, : No reason given. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
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