Summations Only

I think that in order to understand what Jesus was all about you have to look at what He said in the Gospels that related to the OT, so that we can understand what His understanding was of what He was about. I suggest that if we want to consider the fulfilment of prophesy we have to first consider the question of Jesus' own understanding of the nature of His relationship with the Father.I think a good place to start is with Jesus with the two on the road to Emmaus. After listening to what the two had to say, Jesus said the following in Luke 24.

quote:

---

25 He said to them, "How foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! 26 Did not the Christ have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?" 27 And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself.

---

Jesus obviously saw that all that He was about came from the Hebrew Scriptures, so obviously Jesus believed that through Him God the Father had fulfilled the Scriptures. Jesus continuously refers back to those Scriptures in His teaching and it seems to me fairly obvious that a great deal of His self understanding came through those Scriptures as well as through prayer and the Holy Spirit.In Matthew 11 John the Baptist asks are you (Jesus) the Expected One or shall we look for someone else. John is referring to Malachi 3.

quote:

---

1 "See, I will send my messenger, who will prepare the way before me. Then suddenly the Lord you are seeking will come to his temple; the messenger of the covenant, whom you desire, will come," says the LORD Almighty.

---

Jesus refers John back to Isaiah 35:5-6 and possibly Isaiah 42:7 when He says in Matthew 11

quote:

---

4 Jesus replied, "Go back and report to John what you hear and see: 5 The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cured, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is preached to the poor.

---

He consistently referred to Himself as the Son of Man which obviously goes back to Daniel 7.I believe that He would have seen Yahweh’s time of visitation in what He was doing in the Righteous branch of David as the wise, righteous and just King who will be a shepherd gathering His flock in Jeremiah 23. Jesus often used the image of a Shepherd.I believe that He understood that His vocation was to fulfill the role of the Suffering Servant in Isaiah chaps 52 & 53. He often referred to His role as a servant and demonstrated it in the foot washing of the disciples. He understood that what He was about to do in Jerusalem was going to lead to suffering. He preached that His message of peace and love of enemy was not going to be a popular one in many circles and would result in suffering for both Him and His followers.Certainly the early apostles preached Jesus as the Jewish Messiah who was the one prophesied to be the Anointed One of God, as foretold in Isaiah 61:1 which again refers back to Jesus’ response to John the Baptist. Edited by GDR, : typo

It seems to me that when we cherry pick verses from the OT that foretell Jesus we are in some way missing the point, or maybe putting the cart before the horse.For the Christian faith to have any validity there is really only one question — is Jesus dead or alive. Was Jesus killed and then resurrected into a new bodily form? If this isn’t true then Jesus is at best a prophet along the lines of Mahatma Gandhi. He is just another failed messiah. It is only after determining what we believe is the answer to that question is it at all worthwhile to look at the OT in regards to Jesus.I suggest that there are many things to consider in finding the answer to that question. My first point would be that there were many would be messiahs during the second temple era and even beyond. When Jesus was about ten there was a rebellion lead by a messianic figure, (Judas of Galilee), that was brutally ended by the Romans. (Josephus gives a full account of this.) Messianic Claimants The linked article gives an account of other messianic claims by the descendents of Judas. There was Menahem who led the Jewish revolt in 66 AD. There was a major messianic claimant in 135 AD named Simon bar Kokhba who led a major revolt and had the support of leading Jewish Rabbi of the time named Rabbi Akiva . He even had coins minted in his name starting with year one. (They went to year three.) Some even considered the Maccabes to be messianic figures although they couldn’t claim to be descendants of David. There was considerable disagreement on just what the messiah was supposed to be and do.The point is that the movements of these individuals all died with them. They were put to death by the Romans and they were just added to the list of failed messiahs. If we look at the accounts of the crucifixion of Jesus we see the same pattern playing out. Jesus is taken by the Romans, put on trial, sentenced and what do we see happening to His followers? They have just gone back to their fishing. Jesus is another failed messiah who actually appeared to have accomplished much less than the others in that He held no power, took no militaristic position against the Romans and went quietly to His death. (Compare that to the heroic deaths of the Maccabean martyrs that can be found by reading about them in Josephus.)However, something happened that changed all that. The Gospel writers claim that as a result of the physical resurrection of Jesus they gain an understanding of what Jesus was about in His life time. The movement, as relatively short lived as it had been, took on a whole new life.As I’ve said before, I really think that there shouldn’t be much doubt about whether or not the Gospel writers meant for their accounts of the resurrection to be believed as factual. I can see there being an argument to be made that in the writing of the Gospels some things were written in such a way that there would be a connection to the Hebrew Scriptures that might have stretched the truth. However, even if some of the things they said may have been adjusted to conform to their Scriptures they all agree on the bodily resurrection of Jesus. I can see no motivation to be bothered recording any of it if they didn’t believe that the resurrection was an actual historic event.Obviously Paul, who was a contemporary of the disciples, and who also would have had contact with anyone who could have disputed the case, believed that Jesus was bodily resurrected, and this was after being violently opposed to the movement.The other thing that the accounts have in common is that they do not make the early leaders of the movement out to be strong heroic figures. In the Gospels they tell stories of how they kept getting it wrong and even denying their connection to Jesus. The Gospels just seem to be telling a very human story of people with all the weaknesses that we all have.We all can look at these stories and decide what we believe about them. They could have been lying but I see no motivation for that. It would have made more sense to do that after the death of other martyrs and in those cases it didn’t happen. It is possible that they were misinformed or wrong in some other way. I realize that the Gospel accounts were put in the form that we know now decades later, but they were obviously drawn from earlier written accounts and likely from oral history as well. The early writings would have easily been discredited by anyone who could have produced the body of Jesus. If any one of the disciples, or anyone else for that matter that was recorded as meeting with the resurrected Jesus, had just come out and said that what was written hadn’t actually happened it would have all come to a stop.Back to the prophesies. If we come to the conclusion that the crux of Christianity, namely that the resurrection actually happened and that Jesus is alive in a resurrected body that is no longer perceivable by us, then we can start looking at the prophesies, in a new light.Firstly, my concern about going down the road of trying to prove an inerrant Bible by using the prophesies in the OT, it appears to me that we are making the Christian faith dependent on an inerrant Bible. Christianity is about worshipping a risen Christ, it is not about worshipping the Bible. If there are errors in the Biblical prophesies so what? That does not mean that Jesus wasn’t resurrected to new life, and that His message, the message that we Christians are supposed to espouse and enact in our lives, isn’t based on truthI think that one case in point is the reference to Psalm 22. Jesus is to have reported to have said on the cross, My God, My God why have You forsaken Me?. That is a direct quote from the Psalm. In the first place I think we can safely assume that Jesus would be very familiar with that quote. It makes far more sense to me to understand Jesus as saying that in order to draw people’s attention to what He believed was happening. In other words, if it hadn’t been in the Psalm in the first place Jesus wouldn’t have uttered those words.The fact that He did say them though, does tell us that Jesus believed that what was happening to Him could be understood by referring to that psalm.I’m suggesting that if we believe that Jesus is not dead but alive, that he has been resurrected into a new life and that He is the forerunner of the resurrection of all creation, then instead of worrying about whether or not the OT prophesies are accurate we should be understanding Jesus, and the Scriptures by how He viewed what God the Father was doing through Him. It is only at that point that we should look at the words of Jesus and then go back to the OT, including the prophesies, so that we can more fully understand what it was He was telling His first century Jewish audience and then how that applies to us today. Jesus explained His mission and what God was doing through Him by referring back to the Hebrew Scriptures and I suggest that we should understand the message of the OT through the lens of the message of the NT.I know that the next thing to respond to is if the OT can’t be read as always being factual then why should we view the NT that way. There are minor inconsistencies in the NT as well but they are written differently than the OT stories. They aren’t written to glorify any of the main characters in the stories other than for Jesus. IMHO there is no political bias and nothing to be gained. It certainly can’t be proven but I don’t think that it is unreasonable to accept the fact that the Gospel writers intended what they wrote to be historically accurate, that they believed what they wrote and that mainly they got it right. There may be those on this forum with a dissenting POV. The question remains - did they get it right or not. When we come to a conclusion on that then we can start considering the prophesies, without having to try and make the case for a God dictated inerrant Bible.

Thus encouraged I’ll go further. If we accept as truth what I wrote in my last post as to the evidence for the bodily resurrection then we can go from there. I started in this vain in Message 15 of this thread. Considering that the writers of the gospels, (including the authors who wrote the original texts on which the Gospels were based be it Q or whatever), believed in the bodily resurrection of Jesus, then we should be able to fairly safely assume that they wanted to make what they recorded as accurate as possible. Through this I believe that it is possible to understand what it was that Jesus believed about Himself and about His mission.With a well annotated Bible it is easy to see that Jesus based these beliefs, or at least His way of trying to explain it to others, on the Hebrew Scriptures.In several places He straightforwardly claims the mantle of the Jewish Messiah. From Matthew 16.

quote:

---

15 "But what about you?" he asked. "Who do you say I am?" 16 Simon Peter answered, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God." 17 Jesus replied, "Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by man, but by my Father in heaven.

---

Of course the resurrection does not in itself make Jesus in any way divine. Presumably, God being God, He could resurrect anyone He wanted whenever He wanted. The same holds true for the miracles. In order to understand the Jesus’ belief of the incarnation I think we have to look elsewhere.The Jews in one sense always an example of the incarnation of God. Their view was that the Temple was the House of the Lord. The Temple was where they could go to bring sacrifices and to obtain forgiveness. Jesus said that He desired mercy not sacrifice and that He could forgive sin, something that only God could do.As I said in that other post Jesus often referred to Himself as the Son of Man. Here is the OT quote that He would be referring to.

quote:

---

13 "In my vision at night I looked, and there before me was one like a son of man, coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the Ancient of Days and was led into his presence. 14 He was given authority, glory and sovereign power; all peoples, nations and men of every language worshiped him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and his kingdom is one that will never be destroyed.

---

This is a heavenly vision that Jesus seems to believe applied to Him. (This is also one of the scriptures from which Jesus could draw on to justify His message that He had come to establish God’s Kingdom on Earth.)In Luke 19 Jesus tells the Pharisees that Jerusalem will be destroyed because they did not recognize the time of their visitation of God. This of course meant that the revolutions were allowed to proceed and the Romans did what the Romans always did and Jerusalem was destroyed. It didn’t even take any supernatural knowledge to come to the conclusion that Jesus did.I’ve tried to establish that Jesus believed that He was not only the Messiah but in some way He was also the embodiment of God the Father. There were those who understood and accepted His Messianic claims although it seems that even amongst His disciples there were still those that wanted Him to lead a rebellion against the Romans. From the Gospel accounts there doesn’t seem to be any of them who actually understood, let alone accepted His claim that He was embodying Yahweh’s return to Zion. As I said they pretty much deserted Him and the movement with His arrest and crucifixion.Now we come to the resurrection and as I have said, we have to assume that God could resurrect anyone at any time He might choose but it seems that He chose to resurrect this one man in all of human history. He chose to resurrect the one who made these outlandish claims. If all this is correct then it means that Jesus was fully vindicated and that He truly was the Messiah and truly was the embodiment of God the Father, or at least it is a reasonable assumption to make.From that point we can look at the prophesies while realizing that even if they are false it does not detract from who Jesus was/is or what His message was/is. The same holds true for all of the OT. If we understand from the OT, as many did, that it was prophesied that the Messiah would lead the Jews to military victory then we can understand that prophesy to be false. If we read that God sanctioned genocide or stoning we can understand through the teaching of God as incarnate in Jesus that this teaching was false. When we read about the commandment to love our neighbours we can accept that this was a true prophecy or revelation from God.I contend this is a Biblically sound and reasonably sound way to understand the Christian faith. Obviously there are those Christians who will think I'm right out to lunch, (let alone the atheists), but I'm open to being convinced that I'm wrong, as in spite of what the my dog thinks, I am not the source of all wisdom. I will say though that through all of the reading I do on the subject my views do continue to be modified. We aren't given certainty, at least not in this life.

I'll go back to the car accident analogy. The testimony of different witnesses to an accident will often testify quite honestly about what they saw but their accounts will differ on details. They will however agree on the salient points. I agree that the details differ. It is an open question as to where the disciples were over the 40 day period but it seems pretty clear that they didn't remain in Jerusalem the whole time. Even in Acts Luke has them returning to Jerusalem from Olivet, which has to lead you to understand that Luke is agreeing that they didn't stay in Jerusalem even though he had written in his gospel that they had been told to do so.The road to Emmaus story goes into the kind of detail that we might expect of a story that is accurate. It tells where they were going, it expresses their emotions, and it names Cleopas. The story also includes the very strange bit about them not recognizing them until Jesus breaks bread with them. I don't pretend to know what that's about but it isn't something that they would make up IMHO. Why would you make up a story that you want people to believe and then put that in there if there was no truth to it? In a sense they are saying, that I know this sounds really weird but this is what happened. We are talking about a 40 day period so it is absolutely conceivable that the events happened in different locations at different times. The Gospels agree that the initial events happened in Jerusalem but after that the consensus is that they left the city to return after the ascension. As I said also even Luke had the disciples returning from Olivet in Acts. Sure this is the theory as proposed by people like Crossan but frankly it makes no sense to me unless you start out with the idea that we know that it is impossible and so we have to find another explanation no matter how implausible. Why would the disciples devote their lives to a lie? Why would Paul, a well educated highly place Pharisee be so easily duped for something that required a life of virtually constant sacrifice? If Jesus’ body was still around surely someone amongst the Romans or Herodians would have produced it if they could have.If we accept the concept of an intelligent first cause then we have to believe that there is something that we would call a miracle required to bring our world, or at least its inhabitants into existence in the first place. If that is the case then I see no reason to totally reject the idea of the miracle of the resurrection.I think that I may have dragged this thread off topic, but it does seem to me that this issue has to be resolved in our own minds before we can form any conclusion concerning OT prophesies.AbE I just wanted to add that the message that the Jesus story could be understood through reference to the scriptures as told in the account told on the road to Emmaus is consistent with the teachings of Jesus throughout the Gospels. As I said previously Jesus was forever referencing the Scriptures to give meaning and context to what He was saying and doing. The point that I was making regarding the Emmaus story is a point in isolation.Edited by GDR, : No reason given.

Too late... I don’t see that last statement as implying that it was propaganda as such but I acknowledge that they were explaining Jesus as the fulfillment of their Scriptures so that might have pushed the envelope occasionally. Frankly though, as I said earlier the Gospels are written in a very human fashion and in a way that doesn’t talk about the disciples in a particularly positive manner. They do seem to be attempting to be as accurate as possible. That was an interesting link. It does however reinforce my point. When Simon of Peraea was killed his movement ended as did all other messianic movements. We don’t hear about his followers going around claiming that he had grown a new head. We don’t hear anymore about him at all.Aside from that obvious difference there is one other major difference. All of the other messianic movements saw the enemy as being human, and in this case the Romans. These would be messiahs all mounted military campaigns against the enemy. Jesus brought a different message which involved a different understanding of the Hebrew Scriptures. His message was that the enemy wasn’t human, (flesh and blood), but that the enemy was evil itself. Evil is not defeated by spears and swords, (or bombs for that matter), evil is defeated by love. You can win battles with human weapons but if you want to win the war you ultimately have to win the hearts of the enemy. Well ya... it would make a huge difference. Lets’ look at a quote from the wiki article you linked on Simon of Peraea.

quote:

---

This man was elevated at the disorderly state of things, and was so bold as to put a diadem on his head, while a certain number of the people stood by him, and by them he was declared to be a king, and he thought himself more worthy of that dignity than any one else."
"He burnt down the royal palace at Jericho, and plundered what was left in it. He also set fire to many other of the king's houses in several places of the country, utterly destroyed them, and permitted those that were with him to take what was left in them for a prey.

---

If God had resurrected Simon of Peraea or any of the other messianic claimants then we would understand that God was a god that countenanced war, plunder, and all sorts of other things that Jesus spoke out against. Instead we find that God, as embodied by Jesus is opposed to those things. We would see God as a King that relished power for its own sake as opposed to a servant King. The Christian God, as seen through Jesus, is a God that tells us that what He desires is mercy not sacrifice, love not hatred, forgiveness not revenge etc. To worship God as we see Him embodied by Jesus we are to emulate His character which simply put means that we are called to have hearts that find their joy in the love of God and neighbour. (I’m glad that God doesn’t hand it report cards for how I and His other followers are doing but that is another topic. )

Well actually it is pretty much agreed that there are shared sources with likely one of them being Mark. That does not mean that they all used the same sources all the time. Frankly if the accounts were all exactly the same then I would be suspicious as there would be probable collusion. As it is, the fact that differences exist IMHO, actually adds to their credibility. The accident is a metaphor for the resurrection and on that they all agree. It is again the details that differ. I agree the accounts don’t agree, but on the assumption they got the resurrection part on which they all agree right, does it really matter that they got the sequence of events as to what happened when and where afterwards right? I agree that there is at least one common source used for the synoptic but that doesn’t mean that all of one of the authors couldn’t have used a source that the others didn’t have. It seems to me that this event in the life of Cleopas would be something he would have told to many people many times and as a result even with an account written years later there would have been someone who could easily refute it if it was made up or exaggerated to any great degree. It is actually you who are siding with the inerrantists in that if the details don’t all line up then we have to discard what is the major thrust of the story. Yes, these books are written years later so some of the details will not be accurate but so what? Through all of the intervening years the story of a resurrected Jesus has been told and both within Israel and also in a much broader context. If anyone could have produced the body, if any of the disciples were to say it didn’t happen or any other way of disproving the accounts the whole movement would have died out. The big implausibility is that the movement was from a start a resurrection movement. It all depended on the resurrection being an historical event. As Paul says, if it didn’t happen then what they are doing is a waste time and are in fact to be pitied. IMHO there is no plausible explanation that this counter cultural movement would have grown the way it did if your theory on the basis of your theory. He was a contemporary and we know that he was familiar with the movement as he had been busily persecuting its followers. We also know that he had considerable contact with Peter. I did in my first post in this thread. Message 15

I hardly said that. I don't agree that they are horribly unreliable. I agree that the sequence of events and in a couple of occasions the location of events appear to be in disagreement, but the points that are fundamental to message of and for the early Christian movement are consistent. Actually a case can be made for the different accounts to be events that happened at different times in that 40 day span of time. Frankly, I'm not concerned one way or the other. If these stories were all the figment of someone's fertile imagination, it would not only involve a fairly large number of people to be involved in the conspiracy, but it would also require someone as well educated and bright as Paul to be gullible enough to buy the whole thing. It would also require everyone ignoring all those who would have been able to give credible evidence to refute the assertions made, if not in the Gospels but in the Gospel sources.I would also add that there is no discernible motivation for them to do this in the first place. Your take on this is similar to the 9/11 conspirators today. Things don’t line up perfectly so the suggestion is that there was a conspiracy but it requires a conspiracy involving a large number of people with no particular motive. Here is a quote from 2 Maccabees.

quote:

---

[1]It happened also that seven brothers and their mother were arrested and were being compelled by the king, under torture with whips and cords, to partake of unlawful swine's flesh.
[2] One of them, acting as their spokesman, said, "What do you intend to ask and learn from us? For we are ready to die rather than transgress the laws of our fathers."
[3]The king fell into a rage, and gave orders that pans and caldrons be heated.
[4] These were heated immediately, and he commanded that the tongue of their spokesman be cut out and that they scalp him and cut off his hands and feet, while the rest of the brothers and the mother
looked on.
[5] When he was utterly helpless, the king ordered them to take him to the fire, still breathing, and to fry him in a pan. The smoke from the pan spread widely, but the brothers and their mother encouraged one another to die nobly, saying,
[6] "The Lord God is watching over us and in truth has compassion on us, as Moses declared in his song which bore witness against the people to their faces, when he said, `And he will have compassion on his servants.'"
[7]After the first brother had died in this way, they brought forward the second for their sport. They tore off the skin of his head with the hair, and asked him, "Will you eat rather than have your body punished limb by limb?"
[8] He replied in the language of his fathers, and said to them, "No." Therefore he in turn underwent tortures as the first brother had done.
[9] And when he was at his last breath, he said, "You accursed wretch, you dismiss us from this present life, but the King of the universe will raise us up to an everlasting renewal of life, because we have died for his laws."
[10]After him, the third was the victim of their sport. When it was demanded, he quickly put out his tongue and courageously stretched forth his hands,
[11] and said nobly, "I got these from Heaven, and because of his laws I disdain them, and from him I hope to get them back again."
[12] As a result the king himself and those with him were astonished at the young man's spirit, for he regarded his sufferings as nothing.
[13]When he too had died, they maltreated and tortured the fourth in the same way.
[14] And when he was near death, he said, "One cannot but choose to die at the hands of men and to cherish the hope that God gives of being raised again by him. But for you there will be no resurrection to life!"
[15]Next they brought forward the fifth and maltreated him.
[16] But he looked at the king, and said, "Because you have authority among men, mortal though you are, you do what you please. But do not think that God has forsaken our people.
[17] Keep on, and see how his mighty power will torture you and your descendants!"
[18]After him they brought forward the sixth. And when he was about to die, he said, "Do not deceive yourself in vain. For we are suffering these things on our own account, because of our sins against our own God. Therefore astounding things have happened.
[19] But do not think that you will go unpunished for having tried to fight against God!"
[20]The mother was especially admirable and worthy of honorable memory. Though she saw her seven sons perish within a single day, she bore it with good courage because of her hope in the Lord.
[21] She encouraged each of them in the language of their fathers. Filled with a noble spirit, she fired her woman's reasoning with a man's courage, and said to them,
[22] "I do not know how you came into being in my womb. It was not I who gave you life and breath, nor I who set in order the elements within each of you.
[23] Therefore the Creator of the world, who shaped the beginning of man and devised the origin of all things, will in his mercy give life and breath back to you again, since you now forget yourselves for the sake of his laws."

---

As you can see in vs 14 they believed that they would be resurrected by the Father. The Maccabees had triumphed militarily over their enemies, they had ruled for decades and they had died heroically. The movement faded and died with their deaths. No one went around saying that they had seen and physically touched the brothers afterwards. From a human standpoint this has to be the logical place for a resurrection movement. It didn’t happen.Instead we have a quiet movement that was not revolutionary in the historical sense, whose followers were not members of the established elite and who went quietly to the cross without establishing an army let alone winning any battles. Yet, what happened afterwards has been the root of the largest religion in the world, as far from perfect as it is.Yes there are differences in the accounts, but they are differences that don’t alter the fundamental belief in the physical resurrection of Jesus by His followers. You come to that conclusion just because he didn’t specifically write about them. These beliefs were fundamental to the Christian church. They would be a given and certainly Paul would have seen and been aware of the early beliefs in this regard. He disagrees with Peter on how Gentile converts should be dealt with, and if he had any disagreements with Peter on the empty tomb and post-resurrection appearances I can’t see it not showing up in his writing. He obviously had to be in agreement with Peter’s testimony.The early Christian movement was a Kingdom of God movement based on the evidence that Jesus had been endorsed by the Father in His resurrection. The rapid rise of the movement is hardly likely to happen if it had been based on a lie. The first disciples plainly believed and there just as plainly we can see that there was not enough if any contrary information to shake those beliefs.

Sure, but again we can look at the conspiracy theories around 9/11. They have developed over time but they all agree that 9/11 happened. Yes the details of what happened between the Easter and the day of the Ascension differ, but they all agree that Jesus appeared a resurrected body. They tell different stories by different authors, even though some of it is probably drawn from common sources.I don't disagree that the narratives developed somewhat over time but that isn’t the point. It was the resurrection that was the catalyst around which the narratives were constructed. That’s my point. The Maccabees actually accomplished a great deal of what a Jews of that era expected of a Jewish messiah, but when they died while claiming that they would be resurrected their movement ended as did the movements of all of the other messianic claimants.As for the movement being spread to gentiles we have to ask ourselves why gentiles would all of a sudden start worshipping a Jewish messiah, based on some outlandish story as told by Paul. There would have to be substantial verification of what happened for anyone to accept the resurrection as historical. Paul may not have written about the details of the resurrection other than of his own experience by so what? The empty tomb is part of the resurrection story. This is from 1 Corinthians 15.

quote:

---

Now, brothers, I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand. 2 By this gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you. Otherwise, you have believed in vain. 3 For 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 Peter, and then to the Twelve. 6 After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers 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. 9 For I am the least of the apostles and do not even deserve to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. 10 But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect. No, I worked harder than all of them--yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me. 11 Whether, then, it was I or they, this is what we preach, and this is what you believed.

---

Matthew tells the story of the empty tomb and tells us that Peter went there. The gospel tells us that he wondered what had happened. Afterwards Peter preaches a resurrected Jesus. I think it is pretty safe to assume that Peter at that point had figured it out. Then we are in agreement. Welcome to the fold brother.....

That’s my point. The Maccabean revolt was very successful. They had overthrown their occupiers and they had ruled for decades. They suffered heroic deaths and claimed that God would resurrect them. If there ever was a time when it would seem obvious that someone would begin an ongoing resurrection movement, this would have been the time. It didn’t happen and the same is true of the rebellion in 135 AD.Instead it happens with a minor leader, one that told them to love their occupiers, one that had gone relatively quietly to a criminal’s death and with one whose followers consisted of relatively uneducated working class folk. Nonsense. Paul was a contemporary of the apostles. He knew very well what they meant when they talked about resurrection. Ok then, what idea of resurrection fits the evidence better?

The same can be said of Jesus as well. If somebody had some form of spiritual vision of Jesus after the resurrection people would have said isn't that nice, but they certainly wouldn't have started a movement around it. Without the bodily resurrection Jesus simply becomes another failed messiah just as His followers assumed when He went to the cross. Of course we know what the apostles thought. This is from Peter's sermon in Acts 2.

quote:

---

30 But he was a prophet and knew that God had promised him on oath that he would place one of his descendants on his throne. 31 Seeing what was ahead, he spoke of the resurrection of the Christ, that he was not abandoned to the grave, nor did his body see decay. 32 God has raised this Jesus to life, and we are all witnesses of the fact.

---

Since when do a number of people all have the same vision or dream at the same time? The disciples never did seem to get His message of love and peace until after the resurrection, but let's just say that you are right, even though I see no justification whatsoever for that view. The initial followers were all locals. Why on earth would anyone with any local knowledge of what happened sign on to the movement?Also the Gospels just don't read in the way they would if they were making it up. They show too many examples of ineptitude by the early leaders, (the disciples), and for that matter there was no precedence for a resurrection such as they described. If they were going to make it up it seems far more plausible that they would talk about Jesus reappearing in a similar fashion to what we see in the story of the transfiguration. Who says that a miracle is unlikely. If we accept the possibility that there is an intelligent first cause responsible for our existence then there is no reason to consider a miracle as unlikely.To admin: I'm not sure if you are referring to this discussion or not. The topic is, "Scriptural Evidence that Jesus is Messiah". It seems to me that we are right on topic.

What does it mean to be inspired by God? We often say that Beethoven was inspired, an athlete can play an inspired game, leaders can inspire their followers etc.When Paul writes what he does in 2nd Timothy 3:16 isn't he just suggesting that God inspired people to write down their experience and reflections of God. This in no way diminishes God's ability to be able to bring truth to us through the scriptures but IMHO it is important to understand the scriptures in the context in which they were written or we will wind up with a distorted view of God and of course prophesy.

Well we don’t know for sure one way or the other but the Pastoral Epistles are written with a different emphasis than other letters where there is a much stronger consensus. If the author is someone other than Paul, which is quite likely, they would be appealing to his teaching for the authority of what is being written. I’m not sure what it is specifically that you are referring to, but in my view it is, as far as I understand it, consistent with the OT context in the way in which it seems to me that Jesus understood the Hebrew Scriptures. Jesus seems to have re-interpreted the Hebrew Scriptures in a way that was out of sync with the vast majority of Jewish thinking at the time, which is of course a huge part of the context in which the Gospels have to be understood.I agree that Paul would not have considered his letters to be scriptural, but he did write his letters with the intent that they would be used to inform and establish orthodoxy within the various churches. That is hard to answer with a 21st century understanding of the world. Fortunately we have better access to historic artifacts and writings than we have had in the past. (The Dead Sea Scrolls for example.) As a result I believe that historians have a better grasp of the mindset of the ancient cultures than we have had in many centuries, and as a result I believe that the scholars have a better understanding of the context, as well as the intent of the writers, than ever before.A agree that if the Bible is considered to be ghost written by God then there is a problem. If however, the Bible was written by people, inspired by God to write down their histories and revelations while allowing for cultural and personal influence in what they wrote, then the problem is largely solved.It seems to me that parts of the Christian church want to worship something that is tangible and that becomes the Bible. The NT writers took a different approach. Their belief was that Jesus had come to establish His Kingdom, (the Kingdom of God in the synoptic, or the Kingdom of Heaven in Matthew), and that through His death and subsequent resurrection that message that He had preached had been vindicated or if you like confirmed by God.With this in mind then, IMHO, the NT authors would have been careful in what they wrote about Jesus and His message and personally that aside from details of things like the sequence of events I have confidence in what they wrote.Incidentally to change the topic for a second, I doubt very much that Jesus ever intended to see a separate religion established around Himself. I believe He saw Himself very much in a Jewish context, although He expected that His Jewishness as He understood it was for the world.The only real question that we have to decide, is whether Jesus is dead or alive. If Jesus was not resurrected to a new form of life, then Christianity is based on a lie. If we conclude, as I have, that the answer to that question is that He is alive then that would be the starting point to the understanding of Scripture. Christianity is about worshipping God as embodied by Jesus. It is not about worshipping the Bible.IMHO, I don’t think that understanding the Biblical message is that difficult when taken in that light unless you are determined to have answers to every question such as who is going to hell and who isn’t, or for that matter how to explain contextual differences between the OT and the NT.Incidentally I recently purchased a book called The Jewish Annotated New Testament. One of the editors is Amy-Jill Levine who is a noted Jewish scholar. All of the writers in the book are Jewish and it does provide a very interesting perspective on the NT.

If the author is someone other than Paul, which is quite likely, they would be appealing to his teaching for the authority of what is being written.I don’t see that much difference. The egalitarianism is primarily talked about in Acts and didn’t seem to last that long anyway. As the letters to Timothy are later they are dealing with different issues that are primarily intended to keep the church on track doctrinally. If we accept that they were only attributed to Paul they would have been attempting to be consistent with what Paul taught in dealing with the issues that were being faced by the church in the latter part of the first century. There is no doubt that Matthew is writing to Jews and explaining the Gospel of Jesus within a Jewish context and in reference to the Hebrew Scriptures. I agree that Matthew is more focused on that than the other Gospels but the quotes attributed to Jesus almost invariably refer back to the Hebrew Scriptures in all of the Gospels.Certainly Matthew understood Jesus in His Jewish context so I hardly find it surprising that what he wrote would reflect that. I don’t see him as wringing a suffering messiah out of the OT. It is there in Isaiah and I see Jesus as seeing Himself in that light. Actually, although many would disagree I don’t think I take a liberal approach to the Bible. I agree completely that the scriptures are not independent. I am personally convinced that God has chosen mankind to represent Him and be stewards over creation. IMHO He reveals Himself to us through revelation to human imagination. In terms of the OT we can see in my view a gradually clearing of the fogginess around what it was that God wanted of us and of the big picture of what He was doing in and for the world. Even when He returned to His people He did it through a man.C S Lewis writes this in Chap 15 of his book Miracles.

quote:

---

My present view--which is tentative and liable to any amount of correction--would be that just as, on the factual side, a long preparation culminates in God's becoming incarnate as Man, so, on the documentary side, the truth first appears in mythical form and then by a long process of condensing or focusing finally becomes incarnate as History. This involves the belief that Myth in general is not merely misunderstood history ... nor diabolical illusion ... nor priestly lying ... but, at its best, a real though unfocused gleam of divine truth falling on human imagination. The Hebrews, like other people, had mythology: but as they were the chosen people so their mythology was the chosen mythology--the mythology chosen by God to be the vehicle of the earliest sacred truth, the first step in that process which ends in the New Testament where truth has become completely historical. Whether we can say with certainty where, in this process of crystallization, any particular Old Testament story falls, is another matter. I take it that the memoirs of David's court come at one end of the scale and are scarcely less historical than St. Mark or Acts; and that the Book of Jonah is at the opposite end.

---

As far as the OT prophesies are concerned I don’t think that we should be trying to take a verse here and a verse there and trying to make it fit. I think that we should be taking the whole narrative in context and in doing that I contend that there is the concept of a serveant King and there is the concept of God returning to His people.I think that over time our understanding of revelation changes as well. When Ezekiel wrote about the dry bones I don’t think that there is much doubt that he thought that he was writing about the rebirth or resurrection of the nation of Israel. In Daniel 12 we can see where Daniel has now interpreted resurrection as being for the people of Israel. By the time we get to Jesus and Paul it is understood that at the end of time resurrection is for all of creation.I think that just as God has created in such a way that we evolve physically I also suggest that we are created in such a way that we evolve spiritually as well. I think that belief is completely consistent with my understanding of how we should understand divine revelation in the scriptures I think that there were early followers that expected Jesus to return in their lifetimes but I think that was from a misunderstanding of the texts that they had at the time. When Jesus was talking about events in that generation He was referring to what would happen to Jerusalem and the Jewish nation at the hands of the Romans if they continued along the revolutionary path that they seemed to be on. I would even suggest that it wouldn’t have taken supernatural ability to be able to predict that.Certainly when He didn’t return in their life time they had to go back and rethink what it was that Jesus had told them. Heck we still do that today. Just look at the variety of ways that Jesus is depicted and understood. We are still working it all out through revelation, through the scriptures, through reason and for that matter through scientific discovery.I enjoy reading books by Christian scholars and it is my view that we have today better Christian scholarship than has been available since the time of Paul. My personal favourite is N T Wright currently at the University of St. Andrews Scotland. He has previously taught at Oxford, Cambridge and McGill. I think our understanding continues to progress.

I'll start a new one but it may be a couple of days as I ruminate on it.

The trouble with your whole approach Jaywill is that your belief is based on an inerrant Bible. The faith is Christianity, which is based on the belief that Jesus was the incarnate Son of God. His resurrection essentially confirmed His message and so we should pay attention to what He had to say. What you are espousing would be better called Biblianity rather than Christianity.Jesus did not preach an inerrant Bible. Even in His teaching on divorce He says that Moses told you one thing, (He did not say that God said it or that the Father said it but that it came from Moses), and then He said but this is how it really is.I absolutely agree that God speaks to us through the scriptures but not in the way that you use it. He gave us reason for a reason. In Numbers we read that Yahweh commanded the Israelites to stone to death someone for picking up wood on the Sabbath. Prostitutes are also supposed to be stoned to death. In the Gospels we have Jesus debating with the Pharisees about the Sabbath and saying that the Sabbath was for man and not the other way around. He talked to prostitutes and others about repentance and forgiveness. Does this sound to you like the same god?As Christians we should understand the Bible as the imperfect story of an imperfect people through the lens of the teachings of Jesus. We should not be trying to understand the Bible as the perfect story of an imperfect god.So then you will say ask how we know to trust what the Bible tells us of what Jesus said and did. Firstly I would say that we have to use our God given gifts of prayer and reason. We should read a variety of Christian scholars and theologians who have in many cases devoted their lives to their work. However, in the end it is about faith. Do we have faith that God, the one who Jesus called Father is the God of love, mercy, forgiveness and justice that can be found throughout the entire Bible or do we have faith that God is sometimes that and sometimes vengeful, condemning, and manipulative that can be found primarily in the OT?The thing about being a Christian is that we don’t have all the answers by a long shot. I suggest that we are afraid to admit that, and as a result we often try to treat the Bible as book of absolute certainty rather than a book that gives us guidance.I suggest that Jesus knew His scriptures inside and out. Through His understanding of those scriptures and through revelation from the Father he saw Himself as the fulfillment of those scriptures. With that knowledge He would do things like ride a donkey into Jerusalem in order to make His point that He was the Messiah. Sure that was a fulfillment of prophesy but Jesus was awareof the prophesy and so He consciously fulfilled it. I just don’t see getting hung up on the point of always trying to justify the view of an inerrant Bible. I suggest that we should be paying attention to what the Bible has to tell us and get on with reflecting God’s love, mercy, forgiveness, peace and justice to a world that desperately needs it, in anticipation of the time when God will renew all of creation.