Most exJWs are familiar with the claims that the gospel accounts about Jesus "fulfills" around 300 prophecies in the Old Testament. This claim is taken verbatim from Christian fundamentalists.

Checking out these so-called prophecies will reveal that they do not stand up to scrutiny. First, most of the alleged prophecies weren't, but are freely misinterpreted by the gospel authors. Second, besides the gospel accounts themselves, there is no evidence any person named Jesus ever did any of those things that supposedly fulfilled prophecies. So, the question will have to be, can we trust the gospel authors?

We often find examples of gross distortions of Old Testament passages in many of the gospel accounts where the author claims certain events in Jesus' life fulfilled old prophecies. If we look up the actual quotations, we often find them taken totally out of context,

I will give two examples from Matthew, who was particularly often guilty of gross distortions. One shows that he took a quotation grossly out of context, The other proves conclusively that Matthew were willing to create events that were not historical to "fulfill" OT "prophecies".

1) Out of Egypt?
The first is a well-known passage from the birth account: This is a quotation and application of this OT verse: As we can easily see, Hosea were speaking agout the exodus and the "son" were Israel. Now, one can well talk about types and antitypes, but it's certainly not anything in the original that indicates it was a prophecy about anything or anyone. When Christians typically list "300" or any other number of OT "prophecies" that are fulfilled on Jesus, this is one of them, so the claim should be taken with a massive dose of skepticism.

What is worse is that it's more than a little likely that Matthew created the whole story about the holy family travelling to Egypt (and the historically unknown mass slaughter of the children of Bethlehem) simply to "fulfill" these words. In the account about Jesus' birth in Luke, we find no mention of it. Even worse, it is impossible to reconcile these accounts. Luke says that the family returned to Nazareth after visiting the temple and sacrificing, while Matthew claims they came there first after a return from Egypt.

2) Two donkeys
It's easy to be suspicious about many of Matthew's "fulfillments", since events are often extremely unlikely, and "fulfulls" prophecies that were never intended as such. But, all this would be speculation of it were not for the fact that Matthew did a fantastic blunder in Matthew chapter 21, one that clearly proves that he actually invented events to "fulfill" prophecies.

Other gospels also mention the event where Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey a few days before hos death, but Matthew is alone in stating that he indeed rode on two animals: The language leaves no doubt it is the author's serious intention to tell the audience that Jesus indeed rode two animals at the same time. That the scene is totally hilarious, unlikely and bizarre, has made Christian apologists generally ignore this fact. But to those of us who care about the truth, it gives us the final evidence that Matthew was dishonest, and also that he was quite incompetent. Matthew indeed explains why this bizarre event took place: Matthew indeed tries to quote the prophet Zechariah, that had made the following statement; Anyone familiar with Old Testament Hebrew would know that the word translated "and" in this passage does not mean there were two animals there, but is used in the sense of "even". The Old Testament poetic texts often uses such parallel phrases which refer to the same thing. Alas, Matthew was obviously ignorant about this fact. We can laugh at the resulting bizarre scenario, but it also demonstrates conclusively that Matthew created events in Jesus' life to fulfill OT "prophecies."

- Jan
--
Faith, n. Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel. [Ambrose Bierce, The Devil´s Dictionary, 1911]

TR,So true. Yes, I noticed sayings like Mt 21:4 myself. Even more likely, it indicates that the gospel authors set up stories to make their message more impressive to believing Jews.

It is amazing how many scriptures I read so many times as a dub, yet failed to understand the simplest meanings of those words. We still see it with the True Believers here. When facts are running counter to their beliefs, they seem to intentionally fail to grasp even the simplest argument or statement.

- Jan
--
Faith, n. Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel. [Ambrose Bierce, The Devil´s Dictionary, 1911]

Mishnah,

As I will demonstrate, your attempted rebuttal both misreads the evidence by failing to understand simple Bible texts (as I, no less prophetically than any Bible text, said above), and totally misunderstands the burden of evidence.
I have to do such thing, since nobody can know what a person living 2500+ years ago (or whatever) had "in mind" at the time of writing. What we have, is the text itself. This is why I actually use the text in my discussion, which you avoid carefully to do. This says it all, doesn't it?

Hosea writes,
"When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son"

As we can see, Hosea is talking past tense, not future, and he talked explicitly about Israel, not any Messiah. The text refers directly to the most important nation-bearing myth known to his audience.

Fact: Matthew misquoted Hosea.

Fact is that Matthew made a false claim about "what was spoken through the prophet" (and direct quote follows) not some mythical thought that may have existed in his brain at the time. Metthew told an untruth.

When you assert that both were inspired by God, you in fact presume what you want to prove, namely that the Bible is inspired. You commit a logical fallacy, a circular argument, and a pretty primitive one at that.

You are commiting another fallacy, by reversing the burden of evidence. Those who claim a supernatural source for the Bible, must meet the full burden of evidence.

And, as I show above, Matthew makes a false claim abotu a text we have in its entirity, so we can see that he 1) misrepresents it, and 2) quotes it out of context.

From where do you get this idea? To sit means to sit. I have some of my clothes on the chair behind me, and I sit in my office chair. I will not, and even you will not, assert that I sit on two chairs.

If you claim that this is standard usage of "sit" or "ride", I hereby challenge you to find documented examples of such usage.

As I showed above, this is an explanation without any merit. It does violence to language and lends support to the idea that Bible apologists can say anything to support their preconceived ideas.

There is also nothing in the text supporting the claim that Jesus had any property placed on the second animal. The text says "They brought the donkey and the colt, placed their cloaks on them, and Jesus sat on them." As we can see, it is the disciples who place their clothes on both animals, and then we have Jesus riding both.

Further evidence that Matthew is creating this fantasy to "fulfill" his faulty reading of the OT prophecy, we find when we look at parallell accounts in Mk 11:1-11, Lu 19:29-38 and Jn 12:12-16.

Look at the following links to read these accounts: http://bible.gospelcom.net/bible?passage=mk+11%3A1-11&version=NIV-IBS&showfn=yes&showxref=yes&language=englishhttp://bible.gospelcom.net/bible?passage=Lu+19%3A29-38+&version=NIV-IBS&showfn=yes&showxref=yes&language=englishhttp://bible.gospelcom.net/bible?passage=Jn+12%3A12-16&version=NIV-IBS&showfn=yes&showxref=yes&language=english

As you can see, John makes no mention of any animal (except in the quotation applied to the crowd). Both Mark and Luke tells us that there was only one colt. As Mk 11:4-7 says, "They went and found a colt outside in the street, tied at a doorway. As they untied it, some people standing there asked, "What are you doing, untying that colt?" They answered as Jesus had told them to, and the people let them go. When they brought the colt to Jesus and threw their cloaks over it, he sat on it. "

As we can easily see, this contradicts the over-eager and ridiculous account in Matthew. It also demonstrates that your own attempts to reconcile the account in Matthew with anything resembling a sane scenario is just wrong. Either Jesus rode on one animal, or he had two. Not both one and two simultanously.
You have either not read what I wrote, or you misunderstand it. I do not deny that a naive direct reading of Zechariah could make a reader assume it was two animals. Matthew obviously did this (probably he read it from the LXX). That is not the point. Translation is not mathematics. You cannot just randomly take synonyms our of dictionaries and apply them wherever you want. It is extremely obvious you didn't look up and actually read Zechariah, or you have never done any serious reading of any OT poetry.

The text Matthew misapplies, Zech 9:9, says "Rejoice greatly, O Daughter of Zion! Shout, Daughter of Jerusalem! See, your king[1] comes to you, righteous and having salvation, gentle and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey."

Are you seriously suggesting that the author here actually prophecied about the king riding on two animals? These parallell constructs can be found all over the OT, as any casual Bible reader knows. And I am very certain you would never interprete this text differently, were it not for a strong desire to save Matthew from being exposed as dishonest and incompetent. Which is something, I have to say, he has in common with most Bible inerrantist apologists to this day.

- Jan
--
Faith, n. Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel. [Ambrose Bierce, The Devil´s Dictionary, 1911]

As I understand it, modern sciense proves there was no exodus, no Moses or Abram, No temple of Salomon - and most of the OT just a construction made for a political reason. That seems to fit in nicely to other evidence within the books themselves.

Yakki Da

Kent

"The only difference between God and Adolf Hitler is that God is more proficient at genocide."

Daily News On The Watchtower and the Jehovah's Witnesses:
http://watchtower.observer.org

JanH, I think you are stretching this way too far.

Any casual reader, when reading the above statement, will not immediately picture Jesus riding on two animals at the same time. It does not make sense. If the author's intention is to tell audience that Jesus rode two animals at the same time, he would elaborate much more on this, giving specific details IN ORDER to highlight a bizzare situation. He would give descriptions like saying that they tied the two animals together, or that Jesus stretched one leg over one animal and the other leg over the other, etc.. But Matthew simply said "he sat thereon" giving the only logical impression that Jesus rode on ONE of them.

As to the second animal, we are talking about asses, and not arabian horses. Every decent resident of Jerusalem owned at least an ass, it was their trusty old "Fords", everone got them. It is not hard to imagine Jesus securing a colt and then someone lent him the other ass.

I think the issue is not that Matthew created the events, but rather Jesus himself created events to fulfill OT prophecies. Whether this counts as genuine fulfillment is a matter of personal faith.

Let's say that there is a glass of water on a table and I prophecy that in 10 seconds, the glass will fall to the floor. When the 10 seconds are up, I walk to the table and push the glass off. Was the prophecy fulfilled? Sure! I know, it would have been more melodramatic if I were to be invisible. But still the prophecy was fulfilled. If we have a personal faith that Jesus, in his pre-human existence, had a hand in inspiring the prophecies in the OT, then he could just as easily create events to fulfill them.

Uncle Onion:
I can't remember if your leaning is toward skepticism or not, but a couple of books I would recommend for non-fundamentalist believers were written by Fr. Bargil Pixner, a scholar in Biblical archeology and topography who lives and studies in Israel. I got mine in Israel, but I think you can order them through book distributors.
1. "With Jesus Through Galilee According to the Fifth Gospel."
Pixner's belief is that the topography of the area reveals
much for interpreting the teachings of Jesus in the Bible.

2. "With Jesus In Jerusalem."
Pixner reveals some fascinating information not found in the Bible itself, some of it revealed from the Dead Sea Scrolls and other sources, that lends to a greater understanding of some of the things thought to be contradictions in the Gospels.

I don't necessarily agree with all of Pixner's conclusions, but the information is excellent. He presents the material in a very scholarly way imo. He has a scientist's way of presenting information without drawing dogmatic conclusions, but offers his opinions and why. He reveals the thinking of up-to-date Biblical scholars, including non-Christian Jews, on these subjects that is very different from the dogmatic doctrinal stance of churchdom, even for his own denomination.

Regardless of what conclusions you may be drawn to regarding religion, its valuable information for your interest.

"Not only do those who claim the bible to be divinely inspired have a burden of proof, so do those who do NOT believe it to be so."

The logical fallacy here is that you cannot prove a negative. Some people believe that flying saucers from other planets have visited earth in the past. I disagree with this. Do I have to prove that there has NEVER been a flying saucer visiting earth? Do I have to prove that not even ONE has done this?

Do I have to prove that no flying saucer has EVER visited earth, including those who may have used technology unknown to us to hide themselves?

As you can see, proving a negative quickly gets absurd, and is impossible in many cases.

Rather, it makes more sense for the burden of proof to be on those claiming that flying saucers from other planets have visited earth.

Since I do not believe in the divine inspiration of any book, do I have to prove that the Bible, the Koran, the books of Vishua, and ALL holy books in the world are not inspired?

If I claimed that my personal diary was inspired by God, should you believe it? Do you have to prove me wrong? Or should you require that I prove it was written by God?

It makes more sense to require that those making a claim, especially a fantastic claim, provide the proof.

Richard

I once battled --- when still dubious --- with an orthodox jew. He challenged me to prove that the Messiah is of anything else than a human nature (i.e. a spirit, angel, divine) using the Old Testament only. I thought "piece of cake", then I tried and failed*.

* Unless you're willing to agree to the usual WTPC bible hopscotch accompanied by a fine amount of 'Hineininterpretierung'.

Francoise,
Well, I guess I mean "alleged prophecies allegedly fullfilled by Jesus" but that was a bit too cumbersome for a title.

What I wanted to concentrate on now was that many "prophecies" either were not prophecies at all, or not messianic in nature.

It is true that you can sometimes prove a negative. But Skeptic is generally correct. The situations where you CAN prove a negative is where you can demonstrate that observational consequences are absent. This is generally only true about localized claims. Ie. I can prove there is no huge "Flying Saucer" in the center of Bergen. I cannot prove no such thing exists anywhere on the planet.

For religious and other claims, the rule is simple: "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." This is a rule that most people apply in their daily lives, and to everybody elses religion. Consistency and intellectual honesty requires that you also apply it to your own belief system. That is the reason I am no longer a JW, no longer a Christian and no longer a theist.

Those who claim the Bible is an extraordinary book inspired by a superhuman source, will have to present the evidence. It is perfectly legitimate to reject the claim without specific evidence against its supernatural origin, since that would be the default position. Of course, skeptics have more than a few heavy arguments against Bible inspiration and in particular inerrancy.

- Jan
--
Faith, n. Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel. [Ambrose Bierce, The Devil´s Dictionary, 1911]

Francoise,

"And to you others, it is NOT impossible to prove a negative, it is merely difficult in most cases. However, consider how easy it is to prove it is NOT raining in any given face-to-face conversation. Or that the sky is not green. Or any number of negative propositions."

I stand corrected. My statement was dogmatic, and like most dogmatic statements I make, it ended up being proven wrong! Good work, I like it when people prove me wrong.

YERUSALYIM
"Not forgetting of course that the bible is a book of FAITH."

I understand. However, your original statement was about doubters having to prove that the Bible was not inspired. That was the issue I dealt with. Faith does not necessarily deal with proof.

Richard