Guno צְבִי
We fight, We win, Am Yisrael Chai
One problem with Christians using the Old Testament to “prove” that Jesus is the messiah. They are appealing to passages that do not appear to be about the messiah. The other is the flip side of the coin. Christians who think that Jesus fulfilled predictions of the Old Testament base their views, in no small measure, on what the Gospels say about Jesus’ life: He was born in Bethlehem. His mother was a virgin. He healed many people. He was rejected by his own people. He was silent at his trial. And so on – there are lots of these “facts” from Jesus’ life, it is thought, that fulfilled Scripture. But how do we know that these are facts from Jesus’ life?
The only way we know is (or think we know it) is because authors of the New Testament Gospels claim that these are the facts. But are they? How do we know that Jesus was actually born in Bethlehem? That his mother was actually a virgin? That he was actually silent at his trial? And so forth and so on? We only know because the Gospels indicate so. But the authors of the Gospels were themselves influenced in their telling of Jesus’ story by the passages of Scripture that they took to be messianic predictions, and they told their stories in the light of those passages.
Take Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem. A couple of times on the blog I’ve talked about how problematic it is to think that this is a historical datum. It’s true that both Matthew and Luke say that Jesus was born in that small village. But Mark and John do not assume that this is true, but rather that he came from Galilee, from the village of Nazareth. Moreover, Matthew and Luke *get* Jesus born in Bethlehem in radically different and contradictory ways, so that for both of them he is born there even though he comes from Nazareth. Why don’t they have a consistent account of the matter?
\https://ehrmanblog.org/jesus-and-the-messianic-prophecies/
The only way we know is (or think we know it) is because authors of the New Testament Gospels claim that these are the facts. But are they? How do we know that Jesus was actually born in Bethlehem? That his mother was actually a virgin? That he was actually silent at his trial? And so forth and so on? We only know because the Gospels indicate so. But the authors of the Gospels were themselves influenced in their telling of Jesus’ story by the passages of Scripture that they took to be messianic predictions, and they told their stories in the light of those passages.
Take Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem. A couple of times on the blog I’ve talked about how problematic it is to think that this is a historical datum. It’s true that both Matthew and Luke say that Jesus was born in that small village. But Mark and John do not assume that this is true, but rather that he came from Galilee, from the village of Nazareth. Moreover, Matthew and Luke *get* Jesus born in Bethlehem in radically different and contradictory ways, so that for both of them he is born there even though he comes from Nazareth. Why don’t they have a consistent account of the matter?
\https://ehrmanblog.org/jesus-and-the-messianic-prophecies/
