Alleged Prophecies Fulfilled by Jesus

by JanH 31 Replies latest jw friends

JanH

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:
Mt 2:15 "This was to fulfil what the Lord had spoken by the prophet, "Out of Egypt have I called my son.""
This is a quotation and application of this OT verse:
Ho 11:1 "When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son."
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:
Mt 21:7 "they brought the ass and the colt, and put their garments on them, and he sat thereon."
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:
Mt 21:4, 5 "This took place to fulfil what was spoken by the prophet, saying,"Tell the daughter of Zion, Behold, your king is coming to you, humble, and mounted on an ass, and on a colt, the foal of an ass."
Matthew indeed tries to quote the prophet Zechariah, that had made the following statement;
Zec 9:9 "Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem! Lo, your king comes to you; triumphant and victorious is he, humble and riding on an ass, on a colt the foal of an ass"
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

Jan,
I find the words of Mat. 21:4 interesting from the New Catholic Edition of the Holy Bible:
"Now this was done that what was spoken through the prophet might be fulfilled,"
It sounds to me as if they certainly did fabricate the scene to fulfill the prophecy! It's amazing how we can see these scriptures now for what they say instead what religion wants them to say.
TR
"Kults Suk"
JanH

TR,
It's amazing how we can see these scriptures now for what they say instead what religion wants them to say.
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

Jan, you are missing several points.
HOSEA 11:1 - You mention types and antitypes but do nothing to demonstrate that Hosea did not have a second fulfillment in mind. Matthew believed that he did and if we accept the premise that they were both inspired by the same spirit, then there is no problem. You need to _prove_ that they were not inspired to know the secondary fulfillment and that you have not done.
TWO DONKEYS - To "sit" upon something could convey the idea that both he and his garments were placed upon the animals. So Jesus and his property sat on the two animals, and in effect that meant that Jesus was upon the two in terms of his person and his property. You have no idea what you are talking about when it comes to biblical Hebrew. So you make wild comments about what Zechariah 9:9 means. You, in effect, distort matters to fulfill your own speculative condemnation. This is just what you condemn Matthew for doing. The Hebrew text uses the conjunction waw which can mean "even" or "and." You limit its meaning self-servingly to skew the issue to your liking. That is dishonest. The LXX translates it using KAI which can also mean "even" or "and."
If this is the best you can do, and apparently it is since this is what you led with, then you have nothing legitimate to offer. All you do is state opinion as fact.
Mishnah
JanH

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.
HOSEA 11:1 - You mention types and antitypes but do nothing to demonstrate that Hosea did not have a second fulfillment in mind.
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.
Matthew believed that he did and if we accept the premise that they were both inspired by the same spirit, then there is no problem.

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 need to _prove_ that they were not inspired to know the secondary fulfillment and that you have not done.

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.
TWO DONKEYS - To "sit" upon something could convey the idea that both he and his garments were placed upon the animals.

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.
So Jesus and his property sat on the two animals, and in effect that meant that Jesus was upon the two in terms of his person and his property.

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=english http://bible.gospelcom.net/bible?passage=Lu+19%3A29-38+&version=NIV-IBS&showfn=yes&showxref=yes&language=english http://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 no idea what you are talking about when it comes to biblical Hebrew. So you make wild comments about what Zechariah 9:9 means. You, in effect, distort matters to fulfill your own speculative condemnation. This is just what you condemn Matthew for doing. The Hebrew text uses the conjunction waw which can mean "even" or "and." You limit its meaning self-servingly to skew the issue to your liking. That is dishonest. The LXX translates it using KAI which can also mean "even" or "and."
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]
AlanF

Nice exposition, Jan. I wasn't aware of how badly Matthew had screwed up there.
A great many of the so-called Messianic prophecies, when carefully examined in their original context, are easily seen not to be such at all. They clearly refer to the immediate future of whoever wrote the passages. A good but little-known book that goes into this in detail is The Historical Approach to the Bible by Howard Teeple. It's out of print, unfortunately, but can sometimes be found via online booksearch.
A particularly good example of a claimed Messianic prophecy that, when carefully examined, proves the opposite of what is claimed, is Isaiah 53. About a third of the things that the chapter claims would happen to the subject were not fulfilled at all, as can be seen by reading the Gospel accounts. For example, 53:3 says (NIV), "He was despised and forsaken of men, A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; And like one from whom men hide their face He was despised, and we did not esteem Him." Yet the Gospel accounts describe Jesus as having large crowds gather around him to hear him speak, and John 12 describes him as coming into Jerusalem to a large crowd that proclaimed him king of Israel. If the fulfillment of prophecy is demonstrated by looking at actual events, then Isaiah 53 doesn't hold up. So in this case the Bible, quite in contrast to the claims of Biblical Inerrantists, is internally inconsistent.
Another third of Isaiah 53 refers to things that are meaninglessly general, and the final third to things that are either a real stretch, and/or can be verified only through the Gospel accounts.
The supposed predictions in Isaiah 53 are like if I predicted that a blond-haired man two meters tall, weighing 250 kg. , would show up at your doorstep. Thirty years later a man two meters tall, weighing 100 kg., shows up. Did my prediction come true?
Of course some defenders like Mishnah will find any number of ways to get around the facts. But that's exactly what flat-earthers and JWs do.
AlanF
Kent

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."
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uncle_onion

This is what I am researching at the moment.Can anyone recomend any books that deal with the "prophecies" and whether they fulfilled or not?
UO
Defender

Mt 21:7 "they brought the ass and the colt, and put their garments on them, and he sat thereon."

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.
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.
but it also demonstrates conclusively that Matthew created events in Jesus' life to fulfill OT "prophecies."
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.
JanH

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

Not at all, Defender, as I have carefully explained earlier. You can try as you want, the Greek is just as strained as the English. You don't ried animals in plural, unless you actually are (as some circus and rodeo artists I have seen, but no others!).
You can see that very clearly by comparing the text in Luke and Mark with what Matthew says.
I have explained the case very carefully over, and I don't feel that you are doing anything but begging the question, ie "he can't have meant what he says, since it would be ridiculous."
Whatever the case, Mark and Luke does say there is one, and Matthew quotes the text in an odd way and explicitly declares that the apostles fetched two animals, and that Jesus rode "them" (plural).
- 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]

Alleged Prophecies Fulfilled by Jesus

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