Summations Only

I think that there are a couple of problems with that.Firstly, the Torah has Moses writing things down in one or more books - with the implication that much of the law is drawn from those books (directly or indirectly). If Jesus said it, we cannot be sure that he meant that Moses wrote the Torah rather than the earlier works that the Torah claims.But did Jesus say it ? Unless it was quite obvious that these unidentified writings did refer to Jesus, surely it is simple (and not entirely truthful) boasting ? If a reasonable person could believe those writings and not believe that they referred to Jesus then Jesus is being clearly unfair. I think that GDR would be within his rights to reject this passage on those grounds, too.

I expect that ICANT just didn't think of it.An intellectually honest inerrantist would, I think have to admit that there is nothing in the Torah that really fits. Since they don't have the option of denying that Jesus said it, and probably wouldn't want to accept that Jesus was just being an arrogant prick, the only option I can think of is to declare that it refers to a writing known in NT times, but since lost to Jews and Christians alike. That isn't very good, but I can't see anything better.

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It appears that Jesus was referring to Deuteronomy chap 18 vs 15-19

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But how likely is it that the Pharisees rejected "Deuteronomy chap 18 vs 15-19" rather than rejecting Jesus' claim that it was about him ?It seems pretty obvious that they didn't think that Jesus was a prophet equal to Moses and what else is there to identify the person it's talking about ?

So you are saying that what Jesus said wasn't true. He was really attacking the Pharisees for disagreeing with his high opinion of himself. How does that fit with your image of him ?

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I don't understand how you came to that conclusion. Jesus was saying that He was the one referred to in Deuteronomy

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It is really very very simple.Jesus says that he is the one referred to in Deuteronomy.Deuteronomy doesn't say that it is talking about Jesus.The Pharisees don't accept that Deuteronomy is talking about Jesus.Therefore in this, they disagree with Jesus, not Deuteronomy.

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I don't disagree with that, but I don't see how that relates to what you said in your post 147. How is what Jesus said not true?

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Because - according to you - Jesus said they they disagreed with Deuteronomy. But they don't. They just disagree with Jesus.

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That is what I was querying. I can't see where I have said that anything that Jesus said wasn't true.

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But you've agreed that it WASN'T true.

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He is essentially saying that they are looking in the right places but they are not understanding it in the right way. He is saying that if they truly understood and believed what Moses was saying that they would believe Him, (Jesus), because Moses was referring to Him.

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For that to be true there would have to be something that - correctly interpreted - pointed to Jesus in those verses. But there isn't. The only thing that the Pharisees disagree with is Jesus' claim that it is about him - but that is not even hinted at in the text.

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We seem to be talking past each other because I don't know what it is that you are saying that I agreed wasn't true.

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That the Pharisees don't believe Moses, obviously.

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I siad that Jesus was saying that if they understood the verses in Deuteronomy correctly they would understand that it is about Him.

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If you are claiming that there is something in those verses that identifies Jesus then produce it. If you are not, then the Pharisees aren't disagreeing with anything in the text and Jesus is wrong to say that they are.

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Well I'm sure the Pharisees would argue that they believed Moses but Jesus is saying that they don't believe the truth of what Moses is saying.

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Unless there is something actually in those verses that the Pharisees don't believe then they would be right and Jesus would be wrong.

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Can I definitively say that this is about Jesus? No. It appears that Jesus believed that it was referring to him and so did Luke when he wrote Acts 3.

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The question is not whether it is definitively about Jesus, the question is whether there is any part of it that the Pharisees didn't believe. Apparently the answer is no - they just disagreed with Jesus' claim that it was about him. In that case Jesus is wrong - it's him they won't believe, not Moses.

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If you choose to say that it doesn't refer to Jesus then that's fine.

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It's not what I say that matters, it's what Deuteronomy says.

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It appears that the writers believed it was and so they may have been mistaken. It appears Jesus believed it if indeed He was even quoted correctly. I agree that this isn’t knowledge in the sense that there is any kind of objective proof. Objectively we know that The Bible exists and we don’t seem to disagree on what it says, however we subjectively come to our conclusions about what we believe and don’t believe about it and in this case it appears we have come to different conclusions.

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The question is whether it is true that the Pharisees rejected the words attributed to Moses, as Jesus (apparently) claimed. Nothing you say above gives any indication that they did at all. If they only disagreed with Jesus' subjective opinion rather than the text of Deuternomy then Jesus was wrong exactly as I have said.So I am going to ask you again to address the point rather than evading it. What part of Deuteronomy 18:15-19 did the Pharisees disbelieve ?

The problem with that explanation is that Jesus says that they don't believe what Moses says about HIM. Now since even the fundamentalists can't find anything in the Torah that specifically points at Jesus it really isn't very plausible that it's actually true.It's far more likely that - if Jesus actually said it (and I wouldn't be very confident on that point - if I shared your views I would probably say that he didn't) that the Pharisees believed but - but quite reasonably didn't think it was about Jesus.

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I don't think it is possible to refute Jesus arguments by noting that the Pharisees didn't find or wouldn't admit to finding Jesus in the scriptures. That would be entirely consistent with Jesus take on things.

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It's not about refuting Jesus' arguments, it's about this one claim. And the fact that there aren't any clear references to Jesus is rather a problem for it. As I said, how can we tell that the Pharisees actually disagree with the scripture, as Jesus (if he said it) says rather than the idea that it is about Jesus ?

Then you have agreed that Jesus was wrong, because he said that they disbelieved the passage.

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I don't believe there is any serious doubt that the Pharisees as a group did believe or profess to believe the scripture, but didn't believe the scripture was about Jesus. I'm at a loss to understand your position on this.

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I don't see that my position is the one that's hard to understand.1) Jesus is quoted as saying that the Pharisees disbelieved the scripture. You agree with that.2) the Pharisees did believe the scripture. You agree with that.3) Therefore, if Jesus was quoted accurately, he was wrong. You and GDR seem to disagree with that, yet it clearly follows from points that you agree with.

Then you are saying that Jesus wasn't accurately quoted. Because in this particular case Jesus' claim is that they don't BELIEVE a passage that is about him. Please stop ignoring his fact.

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There are other possibilities.

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Then please provide some. So far I haven't seen one valid objection.

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What I am saying is that the Pharisees believed in their own interpretation of the scripture but that their interpretation was wrong.

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So far that is not a valid option, since nobody has provided a scripture that Jesus could have meant where interpretation is an issue.

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My view is that Jesus words are completely understandable as a criticism of the Pharisees self-serving interpretation.

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Not for the one scripture that has been suggested. And in fact nobody seems able to find another possibility.

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In other words, Jesus is saying that he has performed enough miracles and satisfied enough prophetic scripture that the Pharisees ought to have seen what others apparently did see at the time.

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The problem there is that the alleged prophecies aren't attributed to Moses, some very important ones haven't been fulfilled even now, others aren't easy to identify even if they were true of Jesus (and probably aren't) and even if you are being very generous on the miracle stories, equality with Moses is still a very tall order