The Hard Questions

ph1l · Jul 19, 2020

studentofthemarkets said:
Just want to point out that a little ways down in the comment section for the you tube video Caesar's Messiah: The Roman Conspiracy to Invent Jesus, posted by ph1l in the previous post, and based on the book with the same title by Joseph Atwell, there is a link to a "non- Christian take down of this ridiculous theory."

https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/4664
Richard Carrier's response begins as follows:

"Joseph Atwill is one of those crank mythers I often get conflated with. Mythicists like him make the job of serious scholars like me so much harder, because people see, hear, or read them and think their nonsense is what mythicism is. They make mythicism look ridiculous. So I have to waste time (oh by the gods, so much time) explaining how I am not arguing anything like their theories or using anything like their terrible methods, and unlike them I actually know what I am talking about, and have an actual Ph.D. in a relevant subject from a real university."
More...

Not surprisingly, Joseph Atwell disagrees.
http://www.caesarsmessiah.com/blog/richard-carrier-the-phd-that-drowned-at-gadara

Richard Carrier: The PhD That Drowned at Gadara
12/8/2016

23 Comments

Richard Carrier has written a recent critique of Caesar’s Messiah that can be viewed at his website freethoughtblogs.com. The article consists of little more than analytic blunders and outright inaccuracies.

The story began several years ago when I contacted Carrier (PhD) because he was publically criticizing Caesar’s Messiah in an incoherent manner that clearly indicated he had not read the book. I wrote:
“Dear Mr. Carrier: A friend passed along to me your posts concerning my work, Caesar’s Messiah. Your criticism suggests that I have not, evidentially, explained my thesis clearly enough. Please allow me to correct this.”

Carrier (PhD) admitted that he had not read Caesar’s Messiah, but demanded that I send him the ‘best example’ of my thesis before he would do so. Though this was, of course, not an appropriate request from someone who was already publically criticizing the work, I explained to him that there was no solitary example that would communicate the theory and that he needed to read the book, or least the parts of it that describe the overall pattern of prefiguration typology that links Jesus Christ to Titus Flavius. I wrote:

“If you wish to understand the thesis, however, there is no shortcut to reading the book, as the system that I maintain exists in the Gospels is both incrementally built and interrelated. Thus, as with the typology in Mathew, no single parallel is capable of even demonstrating the thesis, which can only be understood by viewing the overall mapping. As in Matthew, a number of the parallels between Jesus and Titus can only be seen within the overall mapping scheme.”

What followed was a long and comical email exchange where I repeatedly attempted to get Carrier (PhD) to look at the overall sequence of events that revealed the typological pattern. He time and again refused until he had seen the 'best' example, claiming that if a single example was not strong enough that this would relieve him of the need to read the book.

In Carrier’s (PhD) recent post he still insists that determining the existence of a typological system of parallels can be done from a single example (the logical fallacy of division) when in fact the correct methodology is to examine the data as a whole. In effect he insists on an approach that will never, ever disclose a pattern. Carrier wrote:

“…what am I to do? I can’t listen to every bozo who says this. My lifespan simply isn’t that long.So I will ask him to present me with one single piece of his case, the piece that is most ‘amazing’ or suggestive or whatever, and if that checks out and does indeed point where he claims, then I can ask for his next best piece of evidence, and so on, and if he keeps passing the bar eventually I will have examined his whole case and, by then, I should be convinced he’s right. But if he fails to present anything even remotely persuasive even on the first try, then I know it is a complete waste of my time to look at any of his other hundred pieces of ‘evidence.’

“Whether you appreciate this or not is irrelevant. You simply have a choice: meet my standards or walk away. If you walk away, then I remain where all other historians stand: with no warrant to give any credit to your theory. If you are fine with that, then so am I. Otherwise, your only recourse is to meet our terms of demonstration. Yet already you break the rules by barraging me with a dozen cases of mixed value. I told you to pick one—your best—and start with that.”

What Carrier (PhD) termed “barraging” was first simply asking him to read what he publically critiqued and pointing out that the only way a sequence could be judged was as a sequence. Faced with this myopia I sent him the passage citations of the first four parallels I discuss in Caesar’s Messiah and a one-line description of the parallelism.

My hope was that he would see the parallelism and thus read the full analysis. No luck, however. One of the farcical aspects of the exchange was that while he believed his methods would save him from wasting time on imaginary crackpot theories, he instead wasted copious amounts of time with criticizing his imaginary version of my thesis.

In his recent post Carrier (PhD) creatively edited our past correspondence into a biased version suggesting that he was the voice of reason and I was unwilling to provide evidence. He wrote:
“You might now be getting the idea of why I am sick of this and see no point in conversing with the man ever again. And mind you, I left out half the conversation...there was even more tedious stuff like this…to show what I mean, I will conclude here by pasting in key portions of the emails I sent him then.”

I would hope the reader bear in mind Carrier’s (PhD) admission above that he “left out half the conversation”. The “tedious” half he left out was my exposing his absurd efforts to criticize a work he’d never read and his fallacious attempt to judge a pattern by a single point of data. The half he left in was what he judged to be his best reasoning. As the reader will see below, even his best arguments are made up of little more than unremitting inaccuracies and analytic blunders.

In his recent post Carrier (PhD) begins by citing a number of general problems he sees with my thesis, which he claims sets up the requirement for it to be supported by exceptionally good evidence to be at all credible. He wrote:

“The Roman aristocracy was nowhere near as clever as Atwill’s theory requires. They certainly were not so masterfully educated in the Jewish scriptures and theology that they could compose hundreds of pages of elegant passages based on it. And it is very unlikely they would ever conceive of a scheme like this, much less think they could succeed at it (even less, actually do so).”

First, the idea that Carrier (PhD) knows how “clever” the Roman aristocracy was is, of course, nothing but a fantasy. Moreover, I never claimed the Caesars’ wrote the Gospels, an absurd notion, but rather that the Jewish intellectuals and employees within their inner circle did so. Both Titus’s mistress Bernice and his primary general during the Jewish war, Tiberius Alexander the nephew of Philo, were Jewish. Moreover, Josephus, a Jewish intellectual became an adopted member of the Flavian family. Together this group had the capacity and motivation to have written the Gospels.

The truth is exactly the reverse of Carrier’s (PhD) suggestion. In other words, the Flavian court was the only place where the capacity and motivation to produce the bizarre pro-Roman Gospels was known to have existed. The Flavians should be the first suspects, not the last.

Carrier (PhD) next cites the fact that there were different editions of the Gospels that circulated and that this shows that Roman aristocracy had not selected the canonical Gospels.

“We know there were over forty Gospels, yet the four chosen for the canon were not selected until well into the 2nd century, and not by anyone in the Roman aristocracy.”

In fact, from the very beginning the four canonical Gospels had a special status. Bernard Mutschle has shown that by 180 CE Clement of Alexandria’s (Titus Flavius Clement) writings cited the 4 canonical NT gospels a total of 1,672 times. He referred to the apocryphal gospels only 16 times. So the 100 to 1 ratio makes it clear that the four canonical gospels were linked together, and, for some reason, were more important than the others to those that produced them.

Moreover, Carrier’s (PhD) sense of probability is incorrect. If there were four thousand Gospels in circulation out of which the four selected as the canon were shown to have been typologically mapped onto Titus’s military victory, the great number they were chosen from would confirm that they had been deliberately selected, not put it in doubt.

Carrier (PhD)claimed that:

“The Gospels and the Epistles all contradict each other far too much to have been composed with a systematic aim in mind and that The Gospels and the Epistles differ far too much in style to have come from the same hand.”

His first concern is irrelevant in that he gives no example of where contradictions impact the Gospels’ prefiguration of Titus. His second concern is a straw man in that I maintain that many scribes worked on the project.

Carrier speculated that if pacifying Palestine Jews were a goal of the Gospels they would not have been written in Greek:

“If the Roman elite’s aim was to “pacify” Palestinian Jews by inventing new scriptures, they were certainly smart and informed enough to know that that wouldn’t succeed by using the language the Judean elite despised as foreign (Greek).”

The purpose for the Gospels was not to pacify Palestinian Jews. Josephus recorded the political purpose behind the religion, which was to slow down the missionary activity of the Judean zealots to Greek speaking diaspora living outside of Judea (see Jewish Wars, Preface, 2, 5).

Carrier (PhD)also stated that religious propaganda from the Flavians was unlikely because “The Romans knew one thing well: War. Social ideology they were never very good at.”

This is simply nonsense. All of the Caesars used religion as propaganda and the Flavians developed ‘Caesar miracle working’ to its highest level. Please readVespasian’s Wonders in Domitianic Rome by Luke for examples of how the Flavians took over the identities of local gods and claimed miraculous powers as propaganda devices.

Carrier (PhD)also claimed that since the Flavians had destroyed the militarized messianic movement that they would not have needed to develop a pacified Judaism. He wrote:

“The Jewish War was effectively over in just four years (any siege war was expected to take at least three, and Vespasian was actually busy conquering Rome in the fourth year of that War). So why would they think they needed any other solution?”

Carrier (PhD)commits the common blunder of assuming that the Flavians’ war of 66-73 had destroyed the Jews’ messianic rebellion. In fact, Josephus concluded the Wars of the Jews by describing a messianic rebellion that broke out in Cyrene after the fall of Masada. Moreover, the Gospels were written during the period leading up to the Kitos rebellion. In that war the messianic Jews slaughtered whole Gentile populations in Cyprus, Cyrene, and Egypt, with the rebellion spreading even into Asia Minor and Judea.

The 4th century Christian historian Paulus Orosius recorded that the violence so depopulated the province of Cyrenaica that new colonies had to be established by Hadrian:

"The Jews...waged war on the inhabitants throughout Libya in the most savage fashion, and to such an extent was the country wasted that, its cultivators having been slain, its land would have remained utterly depopulated, had not the Emperor Hadrian gathered settlers from other places and sent them thither, for the inhabitants had been wiped out."

Dio also described the carnage. He wrote:

"Meanwhile the Jews in the region of Cyrene had put one Andreas at their head and were destroying both the Romans and the Greeks. They would cook their flesh, make belts for themselves of their entrails, anoint themselves with their blood, and wear their skins for clothing. Many they sawed in two, from the head downwards. Others they would give to wild beasts and force still others to fight as gladiators. In all, consequently, two hundred and twenty thousand perished. In Egypt, also, they performed many similar deeds, and in Cyprus under the leadership of Artemio. There, likewise, two hundred and forty thousand perished.”

Throughout his critique, Carrier (PhD)constantly refers to what he calls my “best evidence”, which he not only invents but also keeps changing to suit his purposes. He is using a Non Sequitur intended to cast dispersion on everything else in my thesis. Bear in mind I never sent him anything that I claimed was my best evidence. I was not avoiding doing so but as those who have read Caesar’s Messiah know, there simply is not any one parallel that is the ‘best’. It is the entire system that is the evidence. Carrier wrote:

“His Best Evidence Is Just Offal. Here is a sample of what Atwill tried to present to me as his ‘best’ examples of evidence supporting his thesis, and why they demonstrate we need waste no further time with him…”

Carrier (PhD)and I actually only discussed four of the Jesus/Titus parallels that make up the prefiguration typology:

The demons of Gadara

The son of Mary who was a human Passover lamb

Three crucified one survives

The Simon condemned and John survives.

We spent the greatest amount of time with the ‘demons of Gadara.’ Carrier (PhD) did not believe that there was even a possible parallel because of the location of Gadara was too far from the Sea of Galilee to be a candidate for the location of the ‘swine miracle’ in the Gospels’ story.
During the exchange below take note of Carrier’s (PhD)first use of one of his many ‘absolutes’ – that I am opposed to ‘all’ contemporary scholarship in using the received text, which has Gadara as a site of the swine miracle. Also notice it is on the basis of my using Gadara within my analysis that Carrier brands me a ‘crank’.

He wrote:

“It’s also the wrong place. Atwill struggles against all contemporary scholarship to insist that Gadara was the original reading in the Gospels (because his theory requires it to be) when in fact it almost certainly was not. I’ll explain more on that fact below, since it’s one of the most telling examples of Atwill’s incompetence at a study like this, as well as of his inability to humbly admit being wrong, and his repeated resort to ad hoc attempts to deny or assert facts to save his theory, which only dig him deeper into a hill of bullshit, very much just like pretty much any Christian apologist you might ever have had the displeasure of arguing with. As you’ll see, it’s one of the best demonstrations of what it’s like to argue like a crank.”

Carrier (PhD)claimed that it was certain that Gadara was a mistranslation of another town, ‘Gergesa’. He claimed that this town, which was on the Sea of Galilee, had to have been the site of Jesus’s exorcism of the demoniac because Gadara was “more than a days” walk from the Sea of galilee.
This is the first of the many factual errors in Carrier’s (PhD)analysis. Six miles can be walked in under two hours. Pursued by Roman soldiers, any member of a high school cross-country team could travel the distance in under 40 minutes.

Carrier (PhD) attempted to use Origen’s comments on the textual confusion over the location of the swine miracle as a way to block my interpretation in its tracks. But Origen’s comments are inconclusive on their face in that he does not define what the ‘country’ of the Gadarenes means nor does he have any understanding of what the original text said. Origen wrote:

“But in a few copies we have found, "into the country of the Gadarenes;" and, on this reading, it is to be stated that Gadara is a town of Judaea, in the neighborhood of which are the well-known hot springs, and that there is no lake there with overhanging banks, nor any sea. But Gergesa, from which the name Gergesenes is taken, is an old town in the neighborhood of the lake now called Tiberias, and on the edge of it there is a steep place abutting on the lake, from which it is pointed out that the swine were cast down by the demons.” (Commentary on John Book VI, 24)

Carrier (PhD) wrote:

“You mean Gergesa (aka “Gerasa”). Gadara is a textual corruption. Earlier manuscripts of Matthew had Gerasa or Gergesa (variants of the same coastal-town’s name), not Gadara, as was already known by the time of Origen (early 3rd century) if not before, and has since been confirmed through manuscript textual analysis, and [this] is why Luke and Mark both correctly identify the town as Gerasa, not Gadara, while the geography of all three accounts obviously requires the town to be Gergesa, not Gadara–the latter being nowhere near the water (rather, more than a day’s walk from it)…the textual analysis of the manuscript tradition that we can reconstruct from texts all across the Mediterranean confirms that the Gadara reading must have arisen later in the tradition than either Gerasa or Gergesa…Origen also discusses a very different city called Gerasa, but we now know that Gerasa is a possible transliteration of Gergesa from local dialects into Greek, and so the original text could have had either, referring to what Origen identifies as Gergesa). That all the earliest mss. that survive of Mark, Matthew, and Luke have Gerasa or Gergesa, not Gadara, confirms this (including an actual papyrus from Luke dated to the very time of Origen)”

Carrier’s (PhD) claim that “all the earliest mss of Mark, Matthew and Luke have Gerasa or Gergesa not Gadara” is incorrect.

All of the four great ancient uncial codices record Gadara. In Matthew's gospel the location is Gadarenes in Vaticanus. In Mark's account, Vaticanus has “Gerasenes” but Alexandrinus and Ephraemi have "Gadarenes". Whereas in Luke's account, Alexandrinus has "Gadarenes" and Sinaiticus has "Gergesenes". All that can be determined from Origen and the earliest manuscripts is that by the fourth century no one was certain as to what the original text had read.

Carrier (PhD) eventually gave up on trying to use Origen as proving unequivocally that Gadara could not have been the site of Jesus’s swine miracle, but moved into an argument based upon the area’s geography. In other words, Carrier created a theory that Gadara was totally landlocked and therefore could not have been the place from which the demonized rushed into the sea. He wrote:

“Regardless of what Origen said, we now can determine ourselves from extant mss. [= manuscripts] that Gadara is the corruption (check any textual apparatus for the NT to see why). Origen was aware of there being a corruption, but lacked the data we now have, so he resolved it by appeal to his personal knowledge of geography (and the symbolic employment of the location by the Gospel author)–and his reasoning is entirely correct: Gadara is geographically impossible, whereas Gergesa is clearly the intended location.”

Alert readers will have already noticed that Carrier’s (PhD) entire approach to analyzing the story is ridiculous. A tale that describes someone with talking demons inside of them and possessed pigs Is not a literal history. Carrier nevertheless tries to apply reality-based criticism to a story that is either a fable or broadly symbolic and so loses the thread completely. He wrote:

“Neither Gadara nor Gerasa lies on the shore of the Galilean lake in any position from which a herd of pigs could rush down a bank into the water. Gadara stands about 5 miles from the sea of Galilee, Gerasa even further (more than thirty miles away).”

I was afraid to even ask Carrier (PhD) how he knew the capacities of demonized pigs, so I simply pointed out that none of the synoptic evangelists suggests that the encounter with the demoniac occurred at Gadara proper, but only in the country (χωραν) of the Gadarenes. In other words that Carrier’s (PhD) absolute certainty of the requirement for Gergesa was absurd as there is no way to know how far such a region went.

I wrote (quoting Bruce Metzger):

“Moreover, ‘Gadara’ is defined by Josephus as possessing territory ‘which lay on the frontiers of the Sea of Galilee’ (Life ix, 42)”

Carrier (PhD) realized that his ‘Landlocked Gadara Theory’ was kaput if the city held a territory with villages down to the shoreline of the Sea of Galilee, so after some geometric calculations he responded:

“Pardon me, but [Josephus] says no such thing there. The text says: ‘Then Justus through persuasion convinced the citizens [of Tiberias: Life 31] to take up arms, though forcing many against their will, and he went out with all of them and burned the villages of both the Gadarenes and the Hipposians, villages which happened to be lying on the border between the land of Tiberias and that of Scythopolis.’”

Carrier (PhD) went on to claim that the ‘country’ of the Gadarenes could not have bordered on the Sea of Galilee because villages possessed by the town of Hippos blocked such a territory (bear in mind that there is no archeology to support such an assertion). He wrote:

“Nowhere is there any mention of the “Sea of Galilee” here, nor geographically would that be possible. Hippos would certainly have had villages near the sea, but they would be between the sea and any villages held by Gadara. So there is no way to read Josephus as here saying there were villages of Gadara near the Sea of Galilee, much less on it.”

However, Carrier (PhD) realized that if Hippos and Gadara’s villages shared a border with the city of Tiberius, which lay on the shoreline, this could be problematic for his absolute position that Gadara was impossible as the location of the swine miracle and so he found a ‘solution’. I would ask the reader to pay close attention to Carrier’s disjointed train of thought below, as there is a reward later. He wrote:

“Hippos and Gadara had towns “on the border between” the cities of Tiberias and Scythopolis (which Josephus can only mean in rough terms, since neither could have had towns directly between those two cities, but could have held towns within five or ten miles of a point between Tiberias and Scythopolis, which could have sat on the border of lands held by Tiberias and Scythopolis).

“Indeed, elsewhere Josephus says Gadara is twice as far from Tiberias as Hippos (Life 336): Hippos, he says, is roughly 4 miles from Tiberias, Gadara roughly 8 miles, and Scythopolis roughly 15 miles (all his numbers are short of the actual distance by about 25% but are correct in proportion). Here again he places the sequence in geographic order as: Tiberias, Hippos, Gadara, and Scythopolis. Though these do not sit on a straight line, their relative position north to south is correct. It is roughly four miles from Tiberias to the end of the Sea, where the border of Hippos could have been (if Josephus is measuring to nearest border and not across the water to the actual city), and about six actual miles beyond that in a continuous line (as the coastline points) is Gadara.

“So Josephus was short by only a couple of miles, yet even his own short estimate places Gadara several hours away from the sea. Josephus likewise says (in Life 44) “some nearby peoples, Gadarenes and Gabarenes and Tyrians” joined an attack on Gischala–these tribes are all over Galilee, and none near the Sea of Galilee. Thus again “nearby” is clearly a relative term–certainly for any sentence that says both the Gadarenes and the Tyrians were “nearby” Gischala!

“All in all, there is zero support in Josephus for placing any Gadarenes near the Sea.”

Carrier (PhD) is claiming that as someone in Gadara looked out to the Sea of Galilee, the town of on its right, Hippos, had villages blocking Gadara’s villages from a presence of the shoreline. On its left the towns of Scythopolis were also blocking its villages and thus poor Gadara was landlocked. Of course there is no archeological evidence for such a fantasy, which is not even plausible as a conjecture in that the cities were part of a military alliance – the Decapolis - and allies would not ‘land lock’ one another.

There is even a bigger ‘hole’ in Carrier’s geometry, however. Since his landlocked theory requires Hippos’s villages to block Gadara villages access to the Sea from its right, and Scythopolis’ from its left, where is the area that Gadara had towns “on the border” of the cities of Tiberias and Scythopolis? Carrier has not only painted himself into a corner, but painted the corner out of existence as well.
To try and steer Carrier away from this silliness I sent him an example of a coin showing that Gadara was a town with a connection to the sea. I wrote:

“This understanding is supported by a number of coins bearing the name Gadara that portray a ship”
Carrier’s (PhD) response to the coin evidence is one of the low points in NT scholarship. Few paragraphs in the field contain so many blunders or unintended irony. He wrote:

“Did you actually bother to check the meaning of this? The coins in question were issued only once under Pompey and depict a war galley with the inscription “NAUMA[CHIA].” No Gadarene coins from any other era depict ships of any kind. A “Naumachia” was usually a mock naval battle held in an amphitheater, and may have been in this case, although the Sea of Galilee could have been the most convenient venue at the time. But all the cities of the Decapolis would have been invited to send teams to the competition, not just those on the coast. The Gadarene team probably won, and Pompey honored their victory by issuing a coin celebrating it. This in no way conveys the notion that Gadara was a naval town, much less a military base!

“I think your scholarship is alarmingly shallow here, in both your treatment of the text of Josephus and this coin. Do you even read Greek?”

To insist that a Gadarene coin depicting a ship is “in no way” evidence that Gadara was a town with a presence on the coastline is, of course, ridiculous. It is another one of Carrier’s (PhD) claims for an absolutism, which would be wrong under any circumstances, but are shown to be absurd by a review of the facts.

In this instance, lo and behold, other examples of Gadara Naumchia coins from other eras are not too hard to come by. Here’s one issued by Marcus Aureillius around 160 CE, over two centuries after Pompey.

And there are many others. Roman Emperors like Severus, Eglabalus, and Gordianus III all issued Gadarene coins with ships on them.

Readers wishing for a souvenir of Carrier’s ‘Landlocked Gadara Theory’ may buy a Gadarene coin with a boat on it at the link below:

Zev Radovan's Bible Land Pictures > Acheology > Coins

Thus my response to Carrier’s (PhD) question: “Do you even read Greek?” is “Can you even use Google?”

The reader may begin to realize that the tide is beginning to turn on Carrier’s claim regarding my “alarmingly shallow” scholarship. Let’s next consult Bruce Metzger, and expert on Greek Biblical manuscripts, and compare it to my understanding of Biblical geography and Josephus’s text:

“Note, however, that none of the synoptic evangelists suggests that the encounter with the Gadarene demoniac occurred at Gadara proper, but only in the country (χωραν) of the Gadarenes (but refer also to the textual variants in each). According to Josephus, Gadara had outlying villages bordering on Tiberias (id est, the sea of Galilee).” (A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, p23)

So when Carrier (PhD) claims that I am struggling against all contemporary scholarship he seems to be claiming that one of the most prominent Biblical scholars of the last century was a ‘crank’.

But the tide, literally, went out and exposed Carrier’s ‘Landlocked Gadara Theory’ as a fraud. An unusually low water level near Kibbutz Ha'on in the mid-eighties revealed an important archeological discovery. It is one that is now so well known among specialists and the public that I have been wondering if some alert reader has pointed this out to Carrier (PhD) already.

Gadara had a harbor.

Gordon Franz, adjunct instructor in the Talbot School of Theology's "Bible Lands Program," explained:
“Some textual critics have objected to the reading of Gadara, located at Umm Qeis, south of the Yarmuk River, because it is to far from the Sea of Galilee (10 Kilometers as the crow flies) and had no control over any part of the Lake. In 1985, however, as a result of the low water level, a harbor was discovered south of Tel Samra. This harbor is the largest harbor on the east side of the lake, larger than Hippos (Susita), the other Decapolis city bordering the lake. Its outer breakwater measures some 250 meters long and has a 5 meter wide base. The quay, or landing place for the boats, is some 200 meters long. There is also a 500 meter pier along the shore (Nun 1989a: 16-18). Mendel Nun, a fisherman from Kibbutz Ein Gev and a noted authority on the Sea of Galilee surmised: One can only assume that a splendid harbor such as this did not serve a small population. It is much more likely that it once had been the harbor of Gadara, located on the heights of Gilead above the Yarmuk River the largest and most magnificent of the Hellenistic towns that encircled the Sea of Galilee...

“Coins from Gadara were discovered which depict boats commemorating the Naumachia, or naval battles reenacted by the people of Gadara. Several scholars have suggested that these battles took place on the Yarmuk River…But along the shore of the Sea of Galilee is now a more defendable conclusion. The shore would allow for the comfortable seating of the spectators along the 500 meter pier as they watched the sea battles.”

Let us then recap the misstatements of ‘facts’ that Carrier’s (PhD) invented to make his ‘Landlocked Gadara Theory’ credible and to brand me as the “crank”. They provide the truth about the scholarship of the slanderer who claimed, “I actually know what I am talking about, and have an actual Ph.D. in a relevant subject from a real university.”

Gadara was more than a day’s journey from the Sea of Galilee.

No early manuscript has Gadara.

Hippos’s villages blocked it from the right.

Scythopolis villages blocked it from the left.

Gadara’s villages were not near the Sea of Galilee but, nevertheless, somehow shared a border with both Hippos and Scythopolis’ villages and therefore existed in ether.

Pompey’s Naumchia coin was the only Naumchia coin Gadara ever minted.

There were no other coins of any kind bearing a ship minted by Gadara other than Pompey’s coin.

A knowledge of Greek leads to the understanding that the Gadara Naumchia coin was a one-off, and sharing a border with Tiberius does not indicate being anywhere near the Sea of Galilee.

That my position on Gadara “struggles against all contemporary scholarship”.

In addition, Carrier (PhD) had not done the two minutes of research that would have informed him that his entire position was ridiculous because of the “country of Gadara” had a harbor on the Sea of Galilee.

Since Carrier (PhD) used his ‘Landlocked Gadara Theory’ to block any discussion of my actual analysis of the typological meaning of the Gospel’s Swine Miracle I want to include it at this point. In Caesar’s Messiah I simply lay out the texts side by side so that readers can determine for themselves if typological mapping is occurring.

Below is the analysis in Caesar’s Messiah of the “Demons of Gadara” parallel. The typological symbolism in the Gadara Swine Miracle uses broad strokes and can reasonably be contested if examined in isolation, though even in this context it is clear enough that other scholars have noticed it. For example, refer to Dr. Rod Blackhirst’s description of it in the Caesar’s Messiah documentary. The connections become clear when seen within the sequence and so I will provide the citations for the passages below.

The basic parallelism can be described as follows; an individual has numerous demons inside of him that are unleashed into the countryside around the Sea of Galilee. These demons in turn infect another group. This combined group rushes into the water. In the Gospels’ version Jesus drives out the demons, this ‘prefigures’ Titus’s driving the Jewish ‘demons’ into the Sea forty years later. The following is the full analysis of the passage from Caesar’s Messiah:

* * *

John possessed by a demon

Continuing with the Luke/Josephus typology, both authors describe a “John” with a demon. The passage in Luke is important in that it shows the basis for the Gospels’ character “John the Baptist”. Within the typological pattern, it is clear that “John the Baptist” – like the apostle “John” – is simply a “type” who “foresees” the rebel John of Gischala.

“For John the Baptist has come eating no bread and drinking no wine, and you say, `He has a demon!' (Luke 7:33-35)

Josephus also describes a “John” who is possessed by a demon.

By this time John was beginning to tyrannize,,,many there were that thought they should be safer themselves, if the causes of their past insolent actions should now be reduced to one head, and not to a great many…Now as it is in a human body, if the principal part be inflamed, all the members are subject to the same distemper… (Wars of the Jews, 4, 7, 389-391, 407)

Demons…are no other than the spirit of the wicked. (Wars of the Jews, 7, 6, 185)

John…filled the entire countryside with ten thousand instances of wickedness. (Wars of the Jews, 7, 8, 263)

The legion of demons

Luke begins the sequence of events in the “demoniac of Gadara/Geresa” story with a description of a man possessed by a legion of demons. (I address the confusion about the two different locations of the story given in the Gospels below.)

Then they sailed to the country of the Gerasenes, which is opposite Galilee.
And when He stepped out on the land, there met Him a certain man from the city who had demons for a long time. And he wore no clothes, nor did he live in a house but in the tombs. (Luke 8:26-29)

Luke then describes a “legion” of demons inside the infected man.

Jesus asked him, saying, "What is your name?" And he said, "Legion," because many demons had entered him. (Luke 8:30)

Josephus also identifies the size of the rebel force that had “left” John and ravaged the countryside as being a “legion”; that is to say it was a group larger than a “gang of thieves” but smaller than an army. Once again, the reader should note how transparent the parallel would be if Josephus had simply chosen to call the group a ‘legion of demons’ rather than have reader deduce this description.

…yet were these men that now got together, and joined in the conspiracy by parties, too small for an army, and too many for a gang of thieves… (Wars of the Jews, 4, 7, 408)

Demons infect another group

Luke then states that the “demons” that left the man infected another group.

And they begged Him that He would not command them to go out into the abyss.
Now a herd of many swine was feeding there on the mountain. So they begged Him that He would permit them to enter them. And He permitted them.
Then the demons went out of the man and entered the swine. (Luke 8:31-33)

Josephus then describes how the “demons” that left John had “filled the countryside” and infected another group.

And now Vespasian sent Placidus against those that had fled from Gadara, with five hundred horsemen, and three thousand footmen, while he returned himself to Cesarea, with the rest of the army.
But as soon as these fugitives saw the horsemen that pursued them just upon their backs, and before they came to a close fight, they ran together to a certain village, which was called Bethennabris, where finding a great multitude of young men, and arming them, partly by their own consent, partly by force, they rashly and suddenly assaulted Placidus and the troops that were with him. (Wars of the Jews, 4, 8, 419-421)

The herd ran violently

Luke next describes how the herd ran.

…and the herd rushed down the steep bank… (Luke 8:33)

Josephus next describes how the group ran.

…and, like the wildest of wild beasts, they rushed upon the point of others' swords; so some of them were… (Wars of the Jews, 4, 8, 425)

The herd drowned

Luke describes that the herd drowned.

… into the lake and drowned. (Luke 8:33)

Josephus describes that the “herd” drowned.

They then extended themselves a very great way along the banks of the river, and sustained the darts that were thrown at them, as well as the attacks of the horsemen, who beat many of them, and pushed them into the current. (Wars of the Jews, 4, 8, 434)

To digress, the reason that different Gospels refer to the location of the demoniac as Gadara and Geresa – and that one version has one and others two demoniacs – is that the demoniac tale “foresees” both rebel leaders, John – who battled the Romans around Gadara – and “Simon”, called “Simon of Geresa” (Wars of the Jews, 4, 9, 503). The different demoniac stories were not, as is often suggested, garbled traditions, but rather were written intertextually, which is to say that all the details within the parallel stories add to the information the authors wished to communicate.

* * *

Carrier (PhD) and I also discussed the ‘human Passover lamb’ parallel. Carrier (PhD) is not only a historian but also a literary analyst and actually came up with his own parallel to Josephus’ ‘Cannibal Mary’ passage, which he claimed was an improvement over mine. To his credit, Carrier was able to recognize that Mary’s cannibalized son in Josephus was, like Jesus in the Gospels, a human Passover lamb. This was the end of his clear mindedness because, incredibly, he did not see this as a meaningful connection.

He wrote:

“Even His Only Good Example Proves How Wrong He Is: The only good example Atwill sent me is his analysis of JW 6.201ff. Unfortunately, it is not a good example of his thesis, since it does not involve Jesus being mapped onto Titus (as Atwill’s thesis proposes) and the only distinct connection this story has with Jesus is the name “Mary” as the mother of an eaten child, and its connection to Passover.

“But “Mary” unfortunately was one of the most common Jewish female names (being, as it was, the name of the sister of Moses…one in four Jewish women had the name…you heard that right…one in four), and Passover is a ubiquitous theme throughout Jewish literature. So to have those two items alone as the link does not bode well.,,,by inverting the concept of the Passover in order to represent the inversion of Jewish society among those who remained rebels against Rome.

“What Josephus seems to have in mind is to communicate that Jewish society had been turned upside down by rebellion, and he does this by turning the Passover upside down. Hence we have here a Jew’s own poetic inversion of the Passover to make a contextual point about the state of society during the siege of Jerusalem.”

Carrier (PhD) then made a statement revealing only a very limited capacity to detect symbolism.

He wrote:

“Had the baby been called Jesus, then Atwill might have had something. Or if the Gospels identified the mother of Jesus as “Mary the daughter of Eleazar” or “from the town of Bethezob,” as the Mary in Josephus is. Or had any Gospel identified any other Mary as being the actual daughter of Lazarus (“Eleazar”), instead of his sister, as only one Gospel actually does (Jn. 11:2). But alas, no such connections are there.”

Note that Carrier (PhD) gives no evidence to support the methodology he uses below but simply sets up completely arbitrary standards to connect Josephus to the Bible. His standards permit him to range over the entire Old Testament searching for possible connections and parallels. I would ask the reader to compare his approach to my thesis that the authors of the Gospels were writing prefiguration typology linked to Josephus in sequence. My thesis requires that the connections must occur within small and precise areas of text. He continues:

“If the two authors (Josephus and “John”) were contriving parallels to make a joke or sell any deliberate point, they would have gotten their parallels straight, or at least done a much better job of it. For example, not only must we explain how the family relationship changed, and why Josephus meant to allude to Mary the mother of Jesus yet whoever wrote “John” (also Josephus?) got it wrong and made the corresponding Mary a different Mary not related to Jesus, but also why the names (Lazarus and Eleazar) aren’t even spelled the same, which usually indicates a lack of awareness of one writer by the other, not collusion.

“That the Passover is being turned upside down is given by the fact that those who ate the Passover were specifically avoiding the slaying of their own sons, and sacrifices like this were meant to replace a human (like Isaac) with an animal (Lamb), whereas in this story an animal is replaced with a human, and not just any human, but the very son whose death was supposed to be averted by the Passover.”
Carrier (PhD) then produced his basis for Josephus’s human Passover Lamb; a passage from the OT story in Numbers 12. He wrote:

“Josephus clearly chose the name Mary because this is the name of the sister of Moses, the only prominent woman in the Exodus (hence Passover) narrative, especially given the meaning of her name, as Atwill himself notes: “rebellion.” But this “Mary” (the sister of Moses) is “rebellious” due to the OT legend of Num. 12, not from anything in the NT–where the mother of Jesus is never portrayed as rebellious–whereas the OT Mary is rebellious, and was punished for it: she is the woman whom Aaron begged “Let her not be as one dead, of whom the flesh is half consumed when he cometh out of his mother’s womb” (Num. 12:12).

“A rebellious Mary from the days of the Passover, associated with a half-consumed baby.

Hmmmm. Might that sound like the source of Josephus’ story to you?”
Carrier’s (PhD) future as a literary analyst is perhaps even dimmer than his future as Gadara’s official historian.

His denouncement that “[Atwill] just cherry picks and interprets anything to fit, any way he wants” describes his methodology, not mine. As my thesis posits more than just parallels, but a sequence of parallels between two narratives I must follow very strict rules about where to find each parallel, and always within a narrow block of text. Within a sequence I need to not only find a parallel to the Gospels’ ‘human Passover lamb’ in the correct spot in the narration, but I must also find the next parallel using only the text that immediately follows. I cannot cherry pick, as Carrier (PhD) does, any similarity that might exist within the whole Bible.

Forever a source of irony, Carrier (PhD) falsely accuses me of the sins he repeatedly commits.

Furthermore, he fails to understand how the uniqueness of a concept has a special power in this type of literary analysis. The ‘human Passover lamb’ metaphor used in both Mary’s child in Josephus and Mary’s child in the Gospels is so rare that these are the only two examples in all of literature. To overlook such a unique connection would be impossible for most thinking humans and takes a special kind of perverse persistence that Carrier (PhD) has a special talent for.

His forced version of the ‘human Passover lamb’ parallel from Numbers 12 is a case in point. Carrier (PhD) claimed that someone merely from “the days of the Passover” is a parallel for something as unique as a ‘human Passover lamb.’ In fact, the OT character Miriam is not mentioned during any of the descriptions of the Passover in Exodus and she makes no statement about it. Miriam is no more “associated” to the Passover than any other unnamed Israelite or Egyptian from the story of Exodus. Moreover, the baby suggested to be eaten away by disease in Numbers 12 is not related to either cannibalism or to the Passover in any way and its only ‘connection’ is Carrier’s (PhD) spurious “association” that Miriam was alive during the Passover.

We can again apply Carrier’s (PhD) slander against me as a correct description of his scholarship:
“And once you have to start changing the text all over the place to get what you want, on the basis of no evidence whatever, you are in crank land.”

In Caesar’s Messiah I wrote the following in regards to the relationship between the two ‘human Passover lambs’:

“However, Josephus’s Cannibal Mary passage has a number of concepts and names that are truly parallel to those associated with the New Testament’s symbolic Passover lamb. These are a mother named Mary; a son of Mary; hyssop; one of the instructions regarding the preparation of the Passover lamb – that it be roasted; a son who is a sacrifice; cannibalism; a son who is to become a “myth to the world”; an individual named Lazarus (Eleazar); and Jerusalem as the location of the incident. Moreover, the child in Josephus is a human Passover lamb parallel to the one in the Gospels. It is unlikely that there is another passage in all of literature that contains, by chance, as many as half the number of parallels with a concept as singular a human Passover lamb.”

But Carrier (PhD) saw his parallel as superior: He wrote:

“Atwill tries to find many other parallels between this “myth” and the Gospels, but they all suffer from the same distorted interpretations as the others, and amount to the same tactics of forcing a fit employed by defenders of biblical literalism. In contrast, the links between the context of this myth in Josephus and the OT are much clearer and more obvious, and require no knowledge of Jesus or Christianity, much less imply any comment on them.”

And his coup de grâce: “There is no connection to Jesus here.”

Of course, no sensible person can claim that there is “no connection” between humans who are turned into Passover lambs and, in fact, I can demonstrate that they were deliberately linked. As mentioned above, my theory maintains that a sequence of deliberate parallels exists between two narratives. In this case this means that, if I’m correct, the likelihood that the Josephus’ Cannibal Mary story is connected to Jesus Christ is fortified if the next story in Josephus’ narrative is also parallel to what comes next in the Gospel story. In this case, after the Last Supper, which contains the ‘human Passover lamb’ theme, we of course have the story of Jesus’s crucifixion.

So the question becomes: Is there a parallel to the Gospels’ crucifixion story in Josephus that follows his recording of a human Passover lamb?

There is indeed. This crucifixion tale below and its location in Josephus’s narrative of the war are the ‘gold seal’ of proof that the Jesus/Titus typological mapping was deliberate.

“Moreover, when the city Jerusalem was taken by force…I was sent by Titus Caesar…to a certain village called Thecoa, in order to know whether it were a place fit for a camp; as I came back, I saw many captives crucified, and remembered three of them as my former acquaintance. I was very sorry at this in my mind, and went with tears in my eyes to Titus, and told him of them; so he immediately commanded them to be taken down, and to have the greatest care taken of them, in order to their recovery; yet two of them died under the physician’s hands, while the third recovered.” (Josephus, Life, 75, 417)

The fact that the story that is the closest parallel to the Gospels crucifixion story in literature occurs at exactly the correct place in Josephus’s narrative cannot be accidental. In other words, my thesis is proven and the story of Jesus was fiction created to prefigure Titus, QED.

I sent the parallel to Carrier (PhD) during our email discussion. I wrote:

“The linkage to Jesus’s crucifixion occurs in Josephus, Life, 75. The typology showing that the individual who survives is a messiah is complex and I will only mention here that it exists, but I would note that ‘Joseph of Arimathea’ is an obvious pun upon Joseph bar Mathias.”

Carrier (PhD), amusingly, first insisted that typological parallels must be verbatim:

“Again, why not simply say Barmathias? Why disguise the connection by spelling both names differently? The Gospels also make clear it is a place, not a person ([using the preposition] “from” Arimathaia). And Josephus’s Life says “Matthias” while the Gospels all say -mathaia, yet an intended parallel would employ the same spelling, don’t you think?”

But then, once again, he violated his own absurd principles, and posited a convoluted, and much weaker, replacement: He wrote:

“It is actually a more obvious pun on what the word Arimathea actually means: ‘Best Doctrinetown.’ ”

In a private correspondence with Peter Kirby, Carrier (PhD) explained his speculation: "Is the word a pun on 'best disciple,' ari[stos] mathe[tes]? Matheia means 'disciple town' in Greek; Ari- is a common prefix for superiority."(link)

Notice again how slack Carrier’s (PhD) methods are compared to mine. Like his alternative parallel to the ‘Cannibal Mary’ story where he searched the entire Old Testament for a link, here he scours the entire Greek language for a connection. My thesis, on the hand, cannot venture out of the Jesus/Titus sequence and am therefore confined to precise areas of text to find connections, a vastly more disciplined approach.

Notice that my parallel actually uses only the last name of someone who took a person down from a cross that survived. Carrier’s “Best Doctrinetown” had the entire Greek language to look for the “intended parallel.”

Carrier’s unconvincing ‘Arimathea’ connection actually provides further evidence for my thesis. With the entire Greek language at his disposal Carrier could only generate a very tenuous link to the Gospels. In contrast my methodology, which requires using only a tiny block of text, provided a much more concrete basis for the name Joseph of ‘Arimathea’. The overall pattern of parallels in the two stories shows that the name Joseph of Arimathea was a typological prefiguration of the last name of the ‘Joseph bar Mathias’, the individual who begged the Roman commander to take someone down from the cross who survived during the Jewish war.

It is telling that the author of the Gospel of Barnabas, the mysterious apocryphal Gospel from the 16th century, did not share Carrier’s spurious parallel. That author instead recorded a connection to Josephus.

He wrote: “but by means of Nicodemus and Joseph of Abarimathia; they obtained from the governor the body of Judas to bury it. Whereupon, they took him down from the cross with such weeping as assuredly no one would believe, and buried him in the new sepulchre of Joseph;” Gospel of Barnabas, chapter 217

Finally, Carrier (PhD) and I discussed the parallel that concludes the Gospels and the Jewish War which I call ‘Simon condemned, John spared’ at the end email exchange. I wrote:

“I am certain if you spend a just few minutes comparing the fates of the ‘two sets of leaders of messianic movements in Judea in the second half of the first century engaged in missionary activity’ I am sure you will come to same conclusion I did. Jesus’s prophecy foresees the rebel leaders’ fate.”

Below is the entire passage from the Book of John. Notice how the author of John goes to great lengths to avoid calling the Apostles by their real names, Simon and John.

“Truly, truly, I say to you, when you were young, you girded yourself and walked where you would; but when you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and another will gird you and carry you where you do not wish to go.
(This he said to show by what death he was to glorify God.) And after this he said to him, “Follow me.”
Peter turned and saw following them the disciple whom Jesus loved, who had lain close to his breast at the supper and had said, “Lord, who is it that is going to betray you?”
When Peter saw him, he said to Jesus, “Lord, what about this man?”
Jesus said to him, “If it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you? Follow me!”
The saying spread abroad among the brethren that this disciple was not to die; yet Jesus did not say to him that he was not to die, but, “If it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you?”
This is the disciple who is bearing witness to these things, and who has written these things; and we know that his testimony is true.” (John 21:18–24)

In Caesar’s Messiah I wrote:

* * *

This passage, which is the conclusion to Jesus’ ministry, is exactly parallel to Titus’ judgments concerning the rebel leaders Simon and John at the conclusion of his campaign through Judea. Thus, at the conclusion of the Gospel above, Jesus tells Simon “when you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and another will gird you and carry you where you do not wish to go.” Jesus tells Simon to “follow me” and that his death will “glorify God.” However, Jesus also states that it is his will that John is to “remain.”

At the conclusion of his campaign through Judea, Titus, after capturing “Simon,” girds him in “bonds” and sends him “where you do not wish to go,” this being Rome. During the parade of conquest at Rome, Simon follows, that is, is “led” to a “death, to glorify God,” the god “glorified” being Titus’ father, the diuus Vespasian. However, it is Titus’ will to spare the other leader of the rebellion, John.

Notice that in the following passage, Josephus records Simon’s fate before John’s, just as it occurs in John 21. A seemingly innocuous detail but one that I will show has great significance.

Simon…was forced to surrender himself, as we shall relate hereafter; so he was reserved for the triumph, and to be then slain; as was John condemned to perpetual imprisonment.

Josephus also records that Jesus’ vision of Simon “following” also comes to pass for the rebel leader Simon.

Simon…had then been led in this triumph among the captives; a rope had also been put upon his head, and he had been drawn into a proper place in the forum.

In the passage from the Gospel of John above, notice that the author does not call the Apostle John by his name but rather as “the disciple whom Jesus loved,” and as the individual who had said at the Last Supper, “Lord, who is it that is going to betray you?” Later in the chapter the author identifies this disciple with yet another epithet when he states, “This is the disciple who testifies of these things, and wrote these things”—even here not referring to John by name but requiring the reader to determine it by knowing the name of the author of the Gospel. The author’s use of epithets here, instead of simply referring to the disciple as “John,” seems clearly an attempt to keep the parallel conclusion of Jesus’ and Titus’ “ministries” from being too easily seen.80 The author also has Jesus call Simon by his nickname, “Peter,” for the same reason.

The same technique is used throughout the New Testament and Wars of the Jews. To learn the name of an unnamed character, the reader must be able to recall details from another, related passage. In effect, the New Testament is designed as a sort of intelligence test, whose true meaning can be understood only by those possessing sufficient memory, logic, and irreverent humor.

For clarification, I present the following list showing the parallels between the ends of Jesus’ ministry and Titus’ campaign:

1) Characters are named Simon and John
2) Both sets of characters are judged
3) Both sides of the parallel occur at the conclusion of a “campaign”
4) Jesus predicts and Titus fulfills Simon going to a martyr’s death after being placed in bonds and taken someplace he does not wish to go
5) In each, John is spared

* * *

Carrier (PhD) did not see any parallelism here, however. He was not even able to see the fact that name of the “beloved disciple” was John.

He wrote:

“I don’t follow you. There is no one named “John” in John 21, except Simon’s father, and that name is only there as a patronymic (it’s Simon’s last name, e.g. Simon Johnson). The “beloved disciple” is never named, but is most probably not someone named John, but Lazarus”

Actually, the author did identify the “beloved disciple” as someone named John. It is obvious to anyone that reads the last verse of the passage in a straightforward manner.
“This is the disciple who is bearing witness to these things, and who has written these things; and we know that his testimony is true.” (John 21:24)

In closing, I would point out that Carrier’s (PhD) chronic invention of ‘facts’ and insipid analysis shows that his claim to scholastic authority is a sham. Carrier’s analysis is so weak as to beg the question of whether or not he is an anomaly. Are his relentless misstatements of facts, weak literary analysis, outright slander and childish insults indicative of the standards of scholarship taught at Columbia University and other PhD programs?

If so, then academia is not protecting the public from ‘cranks’, rather it’s the public that needs protection from the ‘cranks’ that academic institutions produce.

Joe Atwill

Post Script

The publishing of this article was delayed as Ryan Gilmore, the organizer of the recent "Covert Messiah" conference in London, attempted to arrange a live debate with Carrier on the "Faith & Skepticism" podcast, which was scheduled for December 3rd 2013. Although my first instinct was not to honor someone who had slandered me, Mr. Gilmore persuaded me that it might be a teaching moment and I agreed to a debate that would cover Carrier’s criticisms point by point.

But the event was recently cancelled by the hosts after a long 6 week correspondence when we finally heard back that Carrier refused to debate his own arguments point-for-point. Why Carrier accepted the idea of a debate at first (especially after repeatedly telling his readers he didn't want to waste any more time on my theories), but then rejected my proposal to debate his own arguments is a mystery.

The hosts of "Faith & Skepticism" had dedicated a good portion of their October 13 2013 episode to criticizing my work from a position of ignorance. So, after they had cancelled the debate, I offered to come on the show alone to explain my thesis and answer any question they or their audience might have. They rejected this offer stating that they 'typically' used the debate format with their guests. This was another mystery as they have often interview single guests.
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I think everyone can agree Richard Carrier and Joseph Atwell write a lot of words.

expiated · Jul 19, 2020

Regarding there being any state that comes between death and heaven...

At death, the human spirit leaves the body and goes either to heaven or hell. There is immediate conscious existence after death, both in heaven and hell. There is no "soul sleep" or period of unawareness preceding heaven.

Some Old Testament passages do not reflect the fullness of New Testament revelation concerning immediate consciousness upon death. "Fallen asleep" and similar passages is a euphemism for death, describing the spirit's departure from the body, ending our conscious existence on earth. This "sleep" refers to the outward inanimate appearance of the body that is buried in the earth. The physical part of us "sleeps" until the resurrection, while the spiritual part of us relocates to a conscious existence in heaven. Every reference in Revelation to human beings talking and worshipping in heaven prior to the resurrection refutes the notion of soul sleep.

Regarding the notion that people become angels in heaven, angels and human beings are entirely different creatures. Jesus said after our resurrections we will be like angels in that we will not be married. But this was a specific limited comparison. It wasn't an indication we'll become angels, or a statement that we will in general be angel-like. Angels will always be angels and people will always be people. Humans are eternally human. Death involves relocation to a different place and transformation into better humans, not into nonhumans.

As for whether we will be disembodied spirits floating in the clouds, eventually all believers will have resurrection bodies. Jesus had a physical resurrection body which allowed him to walk, talk, and eat. We are told his body is the prototype, and our bodies will be like his. After his resurrection, Jesus invited the disciples to touch him and said, "A ghost [disembodied spirit] does not have flesh and bones, as you see I have."

Jesus was not recognized at first on a few occasions, suggesting some change in appearance. After being with him awhile, his disciples suddenly recognized him. This suggests that despite any outer appearance change, the inner identity of the person may shine through, especially to eyes enlightened by heaven.

We will have real "spiritual" bodies with physical substance. We will be capable of talking, walking, touching, and being touched. Christ's resurrection body had an ability to appear suddenly, apparently coming through a locked door to the apostles, and "disappearing" from the sight of the two at Emmaus. If our resurrection bodies have the same properties as his, this suggests an ability to transcend the present laws of physics and/or to move and travel in some way we are now incapable of.

Christ ate food in his resurrection body, and he and we will eat and drink in heaven. Yet there will be no hunger or thirst in heaven. It would seem the resurrection body does not need what is now essential-food, drink, oxygen, covering, etc.; but that it is nonetheless fully capable of enjoying some or all of these things (and no doubt many more).

stu · Jul 20, 2020

studentofthemarkets said:
Before I respond to your reply, it would help me out to understand your position better if you would explain what basis you have for your belief that:
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I think it a good idea for you to suggest we call our discussion down onto these main points.

studentofthemarkets said:
I showed 2 proofs that the prophets DID write in their time, and you did not provide any evidence whatsoever to contradict my evidences.
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Then please re-read the objections I've already made. Firstly, your points do not constitute proof and my objections do not in any way represent the non-provision of contradictory evidence to yours.

studentofthemarkets said:
My evidences were:
1. By using a Jewish, non Christian site, I showed that both the prophecy of Micah and the prophecy of Isaiah are contained in the historical documents that Jews accept as coming from before the period of time of Christ, generally accepted to be about 700 B.C.
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Jews do accept what is written in the Jewish Bible. They accept the Jewish Bible because it is the Jewish Bible.
To your point. Micah & Isaiah cannot reasonably be called historical documents which are historically true. They can be called historical documents, due to the fact they date back in time. They are not historical documents that can be confirmed to contain historically true events just because Jews believe they do.
Again your evidence here is only amounting to, it's in the Bible so it must be true.

studentofthemarkets said:
This is strong proof, just as strong as any proof can be that would hold up in a court of law, because of the amount of people, even the entire Israeli nation that held to these Scriptures before Jesus was born, while Jesus was on earth and up to the present time.
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It is nothing of the kind like strong proof. No court of law that deals in sound verdicts is going to accept such glaringly insufficient evidence based upon a logical fallacy as yours is. A proposition is not proven just because many people believe in it.
If things continue as they are, there could be more Muslims than Christians by 2070. So according to your line of argument, because of the amount of people who will then hold to the Quran, it will be proof of Allah. It's an absurd form of argument. You could call it a prophecy!

studentofthemarkets said:
2. By implication, this provides another strong PROOF, that the prophecies could not have been written after Jesus was born because the majority of the Jewish leaders and Jewish people have NOT been followers of Jesus during the time Jesus was alive on this earth and in the years between then and now and they would NOT have accepted tampering with their ancient Scriptures by Jesus, His disciples or the Christians that later came to follow Him.
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The Hebrew Bible doesn't prophesy a Jesus. As you say, it wouldn't would it!?
So then it follows, neither Micah nor Isiah which come from the Hebrew Bible, prophesy a Jesus. It is Christians who are interpreting Micah and Isiah as prophecy of a Jesus. How are you not contradicting your own argument here?

studentofthemarkets said:
3. If indeed those prophecies were written at the time that they are generally believed to be written in, the two I specifically mentioned were written around 700 B.C., then the evidences that there are specific events that apply directly to what happened to Jesus, both at His birth (a mere person can't dictate his own birthplace) and His death, as well as many other prophesies that show similar specific details that came to be fulfilled in Jesus, become proofs that are also MIRACULOUS in that God foretold details of the plan for Jesus to come to be our Savior.
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You've just said Jews wouldn't prophesy a Jesus now you say they did.
As the Hebrew Bible doesn't prophesy a Jesus, neither Micah nor Isiah prophesy a Jesus, then it is Christians who interpret Micah and Isiah as prophecy of a Jesus.
But none of this is proof of anything any more than DC comics will be proof of Batman in 700 years time.

To address your various points here directly, prophecies about a God , a divine birth and a sacrificial death that will all occur in the future if only we rise up and overthrow the corrupted evil doers who control these lands, is bog standard narrative in many religions predating those of Jewish and Christian types. So much so it isn't really prophecy at all, but just part of the political shtick going on throughout those ancient times.

To claim Micah and Isiah as prophecy of Jesus is based on nothing but a pretty shabby attempt by Christian authors to back date the Jesus story 700 years onto the Hebrew story line of a prophet called Mica, whose only declared God was a different one altogether called Yaweh, which most certainly did not claim to have a Jesus of any kind attached to it.

studentofthemarkets said:
Point number 3 is the crux of the matter. Evidences point to it. However, it becomes a heart issue as well, because if one believes point number 3 is correct simply based on evidences, then when one examines what Jesus taught, one finds that that there is the issue of personal reconciliation with God needed and that comes through faith in Jesus. Another way to put it is that "Whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved." Romans 10:13 To ignore such a great plan of salvation has severe consequences, because it is rejecting the sacrificial death of One who is described as being the Ruler and existing before, coming from ancient days. As shown in a previous post, Micah 5:2 says, “But you, O Bethlehem Ephrathah, who are too little to be among the clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for me one who is to be ruler in Israel, whose coming forth is from of old, from ancient days.” Micah 5:2
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Please don't thump the Bible at me dude. It doesn't help. Neither do those empty threats of consequences brought by imaginary sky monsters.

To give your point some context, Jews have been prophesying the destruction of Jerusalem forever in the Hebrew Bible. For them there was to be a Davidic ruler from Bethlehem who would be king under Yaweh in their version of Micah.
For Christians, obviously there was not going to be the same God. Their ruler would be God itself, not someone separate and that God would rule everything , manifesting itself as a human, on Earth. Christians change the main Jewish ethos while keeping in detail like Bethlehem.
It does not make it a prophesy from 700 years previous, when you write 700 years later, that a Jesus is then born in Bethlehem. If Micah had placed his imaginary king in Beirut 700 years before the Christian tale was written, guess where Jesus would have been said to have been born 700 years later to claim the 700 year old prophesy.

Some of these sayings attributed to Micah in the Hebrew Bible do refer to a deity appearing to us mere mortals. There are also offerings of hope and retribution in there for those who follow their rebellious war cause with Yaweh covering their backs.
But even the most cursory study shows religious authors of all stripes including of course Christian ones, were and still are, willing to bend a story and twist a tale (putting it mildly) to get a message across. Micah and Isiah are just two out of endless examples. Christians add a divine birth, a Jesus, a human sacrifice, where there were none, to claim such fabrications as prophesy

studentofthemarkets said:
Jurors can choose to believe or disregard a witnesses account, or any piece of evidence. They are supposed to make that choice by taking into consideration all the factors presented and discerning what is reliable and what is unreliable evidence.
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Well, if I'm a juror here, there is no way you can make your case stand like this. A Hebrew tale is interpreted, or should I say more accurately, mutilated, to provide a prophesied Christianity. It really takes little discerning to appreciate how your evidence is unreliable.

studentofthemarkets said:
In the same way, I have presented facts, even the same quality of evidences as would stand up in a court of law. However, you are dismissing them as unreliable evidences, yet you have not disproven points 1 or 2, or even addressed them other than to say: "by dating it hundreds of years prior to the prophesy."
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Your points 1 ,2 & 3 really can't stand in a court of law or anywhere else that will only accept evidence that's not unreliable, unsound, or unreasonable.

Nevertheless, thanks again for keeping it courteous.

studentofthemarkets · Jul 23, 2020

stu said:
I think it a good idea for you to suggest we call our discussion down onto these main points.

Then please re-read the objections I've already made. Firstly, your points do not constitute proof and my objections do not in any way represent the non-provision of contradictory evidence to yours.

Jews do accept what is written in the Jewish Bible. They accept the Jewish Bible because it is the Jewish Bible.
To your point. Micah & Isaiah cannot reasonably be called historical documents which are historically true. They can be called historical documents, due to the fact they date back in time. They are not historical documents that can be confirmed to contain historically true events just because Jews believe they do.
Again your evidence here is only amounting to, it's in the Bible so it must be true.

It is nothing of the kind like strong proof. No court of law that deals in sound verdicts is going to accept such glaringly insufficient evidence based upon a logical fallacy as yours is. A proposition is not proven just because many people believe in it.
If things continue as they are, there could be more Muslims than Christians by 2070. So according to your line of argument, because of the amount of people who will then hold to the Quran, it will be proof of Allah. It's an absurd form of argument. You could call it a prophecy!

The Hebrew Bible doesn't prophesy a Jesus. As you say, it wouldn't would it!?
So then it follows, neither Micah nor Isiah which come from the Hebrew Bible, prophesy a Jesus. It is Christians who are interpreting Micah and Isiah as prophecy of a Jesus. How are you not contradicting your own argument here?

You've just said Jews wouldn't prophesy a Jesus now you say they did.
As the Hebrew Bible doesn't prophesy a Jesus, neither Micah nor Isiah prophesy a Jesus, then it is Christians who interpret Micah and Isiah as prophecy of a Jesus.
But none of this is proof of anything any more than DC comics will be proof of Batman in 700 years time.

To address your various points here directly, prophecies about a God , a divine birth and a sacrificial death that will all occur in the future if only we rise up and overthrow the corrupted evil doers who control these lands, is bog standard narrative in many religions predating those of Jewish and Christian types. So much so it isn't really prophecy at all, but just part of the political shtick going on throughout those ancient times.

To claim Micah and Isiah as prophecy of Jesus is based on nothing but a pretty shabby attempt by Christian authors to back date the Jesus story 700 years onto the Hebrew story line of a prophet called Mica, whose only declared God was a different one altogether called Yaweh, which most certainly did not claim to have a Jesus of any kind attached to it.

Please don't thump the Bible at me dude. It doesn't help. Neither do those empty threats of consequences brought by imaginary sky monsters.

To give your point some context, Jews have been prophesying the destruction of Jerusalem forever in the Hebrew Bible. For them there was to be a Davidic ruler from Bethlehem who would be king under Yaweh in their version of Micah.
For Christians, obviously there was not going to be the same God. Their ruler would be God itself, not someone separate and that God would rule everything , manifesting itself as a human, on Earth. Christians change the main Jewish ethos while keeping in detail like Bethlehem.
It does not make it a prophesy from 700 years previous, when you write 700 years later, that a Jesus is then born in Bethlehem. If Micah had placed his imaginary king in Beirut 700 years before the Christian tale was written, guess where Jesus would have been said to have been born 700 years later to claim the 700 year old prophesy.

Some of these sayings attributed to Micah in the Hebrew Bible do refer to a deity appearing to us mere mortals. There are also offerings of hope and retribution in there for those who follow their rebellious war cause with Yaweh covering their backs.
But even the most cursory study shows religious authors of all stripes including of course Christian ones, were and still are, willing to bend a story and twist a tale (putting it mildly) to get a message across. Micah and Isiah are just two out of endless examples. Christians add a divine birth, a Jesus, a human sacrifice, where there were none, to claim such fabrications as prophesy

Well, if I'm a juror here, there is no way you can make your case stand like this. A Hebrew tale is interpreted, or should I say more accurately, mutilated, to provide a prophesied Christianity. It really takes little discerning to appreciate how your evidence is unreliable.

Your points 1 ,2 & 3 really can't stand in a court of law or anywhere else that will only accept evidence that's not unreliable, unsound, or unreasonable.

Nevertheless, thanks again for keeping it courteous.
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Hey, I thought I’d try to see if we can find some common ground on what exactly existed textually in the books of Micah and Isaiah before Jesus came along. I did carefully read your last reply, and I don’t mind responding in detail to all of it, but it would be kind of lengthy to respond at one time to and I feel like what I have here is the heart of the matter, for me anyhow.

Stu wrote, “Well, if I'm a juror here, there is no way you can make your case stand like this. A Hebrew tale is interpreted, or should I say more accurately, mutilated, to provide a prophesied Christianity. It really takes little discerning to appreciate how your evidence is unreliable.”

OK, I can understand that you believe that Christians have twisted the Hebrew Scriptures. However, what I'm not sure about is whether or not you accept the evidence that the books of Micah and Isaiah had been completed before Jesus came and are reasonably accurate to the text we have today.

It’s generally accepted that the prophet Micah lived and wrote in the 8th century B.C. However, some skeptics will date the last portions of the book to a few centuries later.

According to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, all of Micah had been completed by several centuries after Micah lived.

“The book is a compilation of materials some of which come from a period considerably later than Micah’s time. The threats in chapters 1–3 and 6–7:7 are usually attributed to Micah, but the promises in chapters 4–5 and 7:8–20 are generally dated several centuries later. Some of the promises seem to presuppose the fall of Jerusalem and the subsequent Babylonian Exile (6th century BC), but it is possible that some promises date from before the exile or from Micah himself. The exalted view of Zion in 4:1-4 and the messianic character of 5:2–4 reflect the ideology of the Zion cult in Jerusalem before the exile.” Written by the The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica,

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Book-of-Micah

Wikipedia says, “Some, but not all, scholars accept that only chapters 1–3 contain material from the late 8th century prophet Micah.[10] The latest material comes from the post-Exilic period after the Temple was rebuilt in 515 BC, so that the early 5th century BC seems to be the period when the book was completed.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Micah

There is one very old copy of the book of Isaiah, known as the “Isaiah Scroll,” also known as 1Qlsa. This was found in 1946 or 1947 in the Qumran caves and is part of the group of ancient documents known collectively as the “Dead Sea Scrolls.”

According to Wikipedia, “Pieces of the scroll have dated using both radiocarbon dating and palaeographic/scribal dating giving calibrated date ranges between 356–103 BCE and 150–100 BCE respectively.”

“The text of the Great Isaiah Scroll is generally consistent with the Masoretic version and preserves all sixty-six chapters of the Hebrew version in the same sequence.[2] There are small areas of damage where the leather has cracked off and a few words are missing.[4] While there is some debate among scholars, it is likely that the entire original scroll was copied by a single scribe, with the text displaying a scribal hand typical of the period of 125–100 BCE.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaiah_Scroll last edited June 28, 2020

Having this type of evidence that the contents of Micah and Isaiah were completed long before Jesus came to earth leads me and other Christians to be amazed when we see the prophecies that were fulfilled by Jesus.

I am listing them now. I added one more, Isaiah 9:6, because that is also amazing.

Isaiah 9:6 “For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counseller, the Mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.” KJV

4 Indeed, he bore our illnesses, and our pains-he carried them, yet we accounted him as plagued, smitten by God and oppressed.

5 But he was pained because of our transgressions, crushed because of our iniquities; the chastisement of our welfare was upon him, and with his wound we are healed.

6 We all went astray like sheep, we have turned, each one on his way, and the Lord accepted his prayers for the iniquity of us all. Isaiah 53:4-6

“Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son and will call him Immanuel.” Isaiah 7:14 Immanuel means “God with us.”

“But you, O Bethlehem Ephrathah, who are too little to be among the clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for me one who is to be ruler in Israel, whose coming forth is from of old, from ancient days.” Micah 5:2

I found a short video, it’s just under 6 minutes long. I hope you will watch it because it says exactly what I’m trying to say to you, only with more points and a better presentation.

Thanks for taking the time to listen to me on these issues. If you could let me know if our debate is over the timing of the writing of the documents before Jesus' birth or if we are in agreement with that, and our disagreement is only in the interpretation, I would really appreciate it. I plan to respond to the rest of your last reply after I understand where you are at with this. Thanks.

expiated · Jul 24, 2020

Does God send people to hell who have never heard of Jesus?
(The following is based on excerpts from josh.org)

Although the Scriptures never explicitly teach that someone who has never heard of Jesus can be saved, it does infer this—that every person will have an opportunity to repent, and that God will not exclude anyone because s/he happened to be born in the wrong place or at the wrong time.

In other words, no one will be condemned for not ever hearing of Jesus Christ. For one thing, the Bible says that God’s desire is that none should perish but that all should come to repentance. So then, does this mean everyone who knows nothing of the Gospel will go to heaven?

Romans 2:12-16 states that:

All who sin apart from the law will also perish apart from the law, and all who sin under the law will be judged by the law. For it is not those who hear the law who are righteous in God’s sight, but it is those who obey the law who will be declared righteous.

Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts sometimes accusing them and at other times even defending them.

This will take place on the day when God judges people’s secrets through Jesus Christ, as my gospel declares.

So regarding those who have not heard of Jesus, they will be condemned for violating their own moral standard(s), but note that even this will be “through Jesus Christ,” as stated in the last sentence above.

But again, there is reason to believe that God will not leave anyone who is truly seeking to find him "out in the cold." For example, Acts 7:26-31 reads…

Now an angel of the Lord said to Philip, "Rise and go toward the south to the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza." This is a desert place. And he rose and went. And there was an Ethiopian, a eunuch, a court official of Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, who was in charge of all her treasure. He had come to Jerusalem to worship and was returning, seated in his chariot, and he was reading the prophet Isaiah.

And the Spirit said to Philip, "Go over and join this chariot."

So, Philip ran to him and heard him reading Isaiah the prophet and asked, "Do you understand what you are reading?"

And he said, "How can I, unless someone guides me?" And he invited Philip to come up and sit with him…

Then Philip…told him the good news about Jesus.

Later, the Bible gives an example of a very religious man named Cornelius who was constantly praying to God. He had not heard of Jesus Christ, but he was honestly asking God to reveal Himself to him. God answered the prayer of Cornelius by sending the apostle Peter to him to give him the full story of Jesus. When Peter preached to him, Cornelius put his trust in Christ as his Savior. This is yet another example suggesting that anyone who is sincerely desiring to know God will be given the opportunity.

(In fact, though I have no firsthand knowledge of the following, I have heard of many individuals living in Islamic countries who have become believers in the Messiah after having been visited by him in a dream or vision.)

Indeed, in Revelation 5:9 the Bible itself testifies to the fact that there are those who will hear and respond out of every people on the earth. Moreover, the Scriptures contain other examples (in addition to Cornelius) of individuals who were accepted by God, even though their knowledge of Him was limited. Rahab, the prostitute, had only the smallest amount of knowledge of God, but the Bible refers to her as a woman of faith, and her actions were commended. Naaman, the Syrian, was granted peace with God because he exercised faith, even though he was living in the midst of a pagan culture.

The bottom line is that God is going to judge everyone fairly and righteously, "because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead."

Yet, this man whom God raised from the dead did say, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me."

stu · Jul 24, 2020

studentofthemarkets said:
Thanks for taking the time to listen to me on these issues. If you could let me know if our debate is over the timing of the writing of the documents before Jesus' birth or if we are in agreement with that, and our disagreement is only in the interpretation, I would really appreciate it. I plan to respond to the rest of your last reply after I understand where you are at with this. Thanks.
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Thank you for your response. It's indeed a pleasure to have this debate with you in such an unusually convivial tone, especially considering how religious discussion can so very quickly deteriorate. For my part I hope that won't happen to ours.

studentofthemarkets said:
OK, I can understand that you believe that Christians have twisted the Hebrew Scriptures. However, what I'm not sure about is whether or not you accept the evidence that the books of Micah and Isaiah had been completed before Jesus came and are reasonably accurate to the text we have today.
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I agree what we have here with Micha & Isiah is key in our debate. Accordingly at the center of this is your question on whether or not I accept the books of Micah & the Isiah Scrolls had been completed prior to Jesus's claimed birth in the Bible story. If we focus on the Dead Sea Scrolls specifically, then I have no objection in agreeing that the Isiah Scrolls had of course been written before Jesus was invented. On the question of accuracy to the Old and New Testament Bible text we have today, we should be specific.

In that light I'll try to distill my response down to avoid any need for lengthy replies, but I do think you raise so many issues in your posts, it might be a little difficult at times, but here goes.

Of course I accept the age of the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the Great Isiah Scrolls. However, it's hard to see why you think that by itself can be reliable support for what is being claimed by Christians.

I'm not particularly trying to be flippant here, but were you to ask in a thousand years time whether I accept the books of Marvel Comics had been completed and are reasonably accurate before a new Super Hero came along 1,000 years later based upon an interpretation of something written in Marvel, I'd give exactly the same answer. Yes, the Marvel Comics were completed before the new Super Hero came along.

But just like the NT Bible and the Jesus character in it, that in itself is not good or sound reason to say the new Super Hero was a prophecy or turn it into anything more than what it is. Imaginary.

So let's be specific. I do agree, this passage you submitted from the New Testament, almost word for word that makes no difference to meaning, matches the Isiah Dead Sea Scroll ....

Isaiah 9:6 "For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counseller, the Mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace."

I ask you to carefully consider how exactly is that a prophecy for the Jesus figure until the Christian one is overlaid onto it? Do you see, it is Christianity which assigns the Jesus figure to it and the so called prophecy, not Isiah?

In its own cultural and linguistic context including its own surrounding story, the Isiah Scroll is writing about Yaweh preserving the throne of David in the kingdom of Judah where a king is born as Yaweh's agent to triumph over all the land throughout eternity. (Turns out Isiah was not that good a prophet after all.)

How has "For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given" magically and conveniently changed itself from present tense to future tense, to claim Christian prophecy? The original Isiah Scroll is written in its own present tense!

The passage is set in Isiah's timeline, not a Christian timeline to come. A child is born, a son is given; not a child will be born, a son will be given.
Isiah is stating 'a son has been given unto them'. Later Christians want to say 'a son has be given unto them... and claim Isiah prophesied their son....when actually in the Isiah Dead Sea Scrolls, Isiah does no such thing!

As far as your "evidence for Jesus 48 prophesies" vid, well dude really, personally I'll be astonished to hear just one good one!

Without the smokescreen and deceit of blind religious faith to say otherwise, Micah books and the Isiah Scrolls do not present reliable, sound or reasonable evidence of a prophesy, or of much else for that matter, except a common religious superstition.

Thanks to you also for taking the trouble to reply. Unlike some, at least you have the balls to.

studentofthemarkets · Jul 28, 2020

stu said:
Thank you for your response. It's indeed a pleasure to have this debate with you in such an unusually convivial tone, especially considering how religious discussion can so very quickly deteriorate. For my part I hope that won't happen to ours.

I agree what we have here with Micha & Isiah is key in our debate. Accordingly at the center of this is your question on whether or not I accept the books of Micah & the Isiah Scrolls had been completed prior to Jesus's claimed birth in the Bible story. If we focus on the Dead Sea Scrolls specifically, then I have no objection in agreeing that the Isiah Scrolls had of course been written before Jesus was invented. On the question of accuracy to the Old and New Testament Bible text we have today, we should be specific.

In that light I'll try to distill my response down to avoid any need for lengthy replies, but I do think you raise so many issues in your posts, it might be a little difficult at times, but here goes.

Of course I accept the age of the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the Great Isiah Scrolls. However, it's hard to see why you think that by itself can be reliable support for what is being claimed by Christians.

I'm not particularly trying to be flippant here, but were you to ask in a thousand years time whether I accept the books of Marvel Comics had been completed and are reasonably accurate before a new Super Hero came along 1,000 years later based upon an interpretation of something written in Marvel, I'd give exactly the same answer. Yes, the Marvel Comics were completed before the new Super Hero came along.

But just like the NT Bible and the Jesus character in it, that in itself is not good or sound reason to say the new Super Hero was a prophecy or turn it into anything more than what it is. Imaginary.

So let's be specific. I do agree, this passage you submitted from the New Testament, almost word for word that makes no difference to meaning, matches the Isiah Dead Sea Scroll ....

Isaiah 9:6 "For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counseller, the Mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace."

I ask you to carefully consider how exactly is that a prophecy for the Jesus figure until the Christian one is overlaid onto it? Do you see, it is Christianity which assigns the Jesus figure to it and the so called prophecy, not Isiah?

In its own cultural and linguistic context including its own surrounding story, the Isiah Scroll is writing about Yaweh preserving the throne of David in the kingdom of Judah where a king is born as Yaweh's agent to triumph over all the land throughout eternity. (Turns out Isiah was not that good a prophet after all.)

How has "For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given" magically and conveniently changed itself from present tense to future tense, to claim Christian prophecy? The original Isiah Scroll is written in its own present tense!

The passage is set in Isiah's timeline, not a Christian timeline to come. A child is born, a son is given; not a child will be born, a son will be given.
Isiah is stating 'a son has been given unto them'. Later Christians want to say 'a son has be given unto them... and claim Isiah prophesied their son....when actually in the Isiah Dead Sea Scrolls, Isiah does no such thing!

As far as your "evidence for Jesus 48 prophesies" vid, well dude really, personally I'll be astonished to hear just one good one!

Without the smokescreen and deceit of blind religious faith to say otherwise, Micah books and the Isiah Scrolls do not present reliable, sound or reasonable evidence of a prophesy, or of much else for that matter, except a common religious superstition.

Thanks to you also for taking the trouble to reply. Unlike some, at least you have the balls to.
More...

Stu's word are in blue, my response is in black.

stu said:
Thank you for your response. It's indeed a pleasure to have this debate with you in such an unusually convivial tone, especially considering how religious discussion can so very quickly deteriorate. For my part I hope that won't happen to ours.

Thanks, and I hope so too!

I agree what we have here with Micha & Isiah is key in our debate. Accordingly at the center of this is your question on whether or not I accept the books of Micah & the Isiah Scrolls had been completed prior to Jesus's claimed birth in the Bible story. If we focus on the Dead Sea Scrolls specifically, then I have no objection in agreeing that the Isiah Scrolls had of course been written before Jesus was invented. On the question of accuracy to the Old and New Testament Bible text we have today, we should be specific.

In that light I'll try to distill my response down to avoid any need for lengthy replies, but I do think you raise so many issues in your posts, it might be a little difficult at times, but here goes.

Of course I accept the age of the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the Great Isiah Scrolls. However, it's hard to see why you think that by itself can be reliable support for what is being claimed by Christians.

Ok. Thanks for giving a very clear answer. I wasn’t sure if I was going to be stuck with trying to supply more evidence for the time in which they were written. You’ve made my job easier.

I'm not particularly trying to be flippant here, but were you to ask in a thousand years time whether I accept the books of Marvel Comics had been completed and are reasonably accurate before a new Super Hero came along 1,000 years later based upon an interpretation of something written in Marvel, I'd give exactly the same answer. Yes, the Marvel Comics were completed before the new Super Hero came along.

OK, I get your point. The new Super Heros can build upon the earlier comics.

But just like the NT Bible and the Jesus character in it, that in itself is not good or sound reason to say the new Super Hero was a prophecy or turn it into anything more than what it is. Imaginary.

Nope. Although I do understand the concept you’re trying to use to explain away the prophecies, there is a difference here because Marvel’s is imaginary, and the Old Testament is not.

They were real people who either said God told them what to say, or it came about as they were led by God’s Spirit in worship, such as the Messianic psalms that David wrote. To be more clear, some prophets said God spoke out loud directly to them, and other writers of Scriptures did not claim a direct voice from God, yet were directed by God’s Spirit to write.

Look, I know that means nothing to you, but I think it is important in this conversation for you to understand my view in this. The importance is in the fact that it wasn’t just one or two people here or there, but MANY, giving specific prophecies about the Messiah or revelation about God or testifying of God’s miraculous works they had personally seen. A similar subject of importance is that God many times showed Himself or performed miracles to a large number of people. That is unique to the history of the Israelite people, at least I have not heard of any other nation claiming that God had revealed Himself visibly to the entire nation, or provided miracles for the entire nation. But God did when leading the people from Egypt to the land of Israel.

So let's be specific. I do agree, this passage you submitted from the New Testament, almost word for word that makes no difference to meaning, matches the Isiah Dead Sea Scroll ....

Isaiah 9:6 "For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counseller, the Mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace."

I ask you to carefully consider how exactly is that a prophecy for the Jesus figure until the Christian one is overlaid onto it? Do you see, it is Christianity which assigns the Jesus figure to it and the so called prophecy, not Isiah?

Thanks for being very clear and polite when trying to get your points across.

You asked, “How is that a prophecy for the Jesus figure until the Christian one is overlaid onto it?” and “Do you see, it is Christianity which assigns the Jesus figure to it and the so called prophecy, not Isaiah?”

However, it is a prophesy for a Messiah figure, even before laying over it the Christian view, because of the other prophesies that add additional insight to the coming Messiah. I explain more, below. When Christians "assign" Jesus to this prophecy and the others, we find a very clear and amazing revelation of One to come and see it fulfilled in Jesus, and really, that is the heart of our argument.

In its own cultural and linguistic context including its own surrounding story, the Isiah Scroll is writing about Yaweh preserving the throne of David in the kingdom of Judah where a king is born as Yaweh's agent to triumph over all the land throughout eternity. (Turns out Isiah was not that good a prophet after all.)

How has "For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given" magically and conveniently changed itself from present tense to future tense, to claim Christian prophecy? The original Isiah Scroll is written in its own present tense!

As far as being written in the present tense, I see no issue with this. God exists in the past, present and future and in His mind, what will be already has been. There are other prophecies in the Bible are also written in the past tense, yet have a future fulfillment. I think, when reading the Isaiah 9:6 passage, that since no king had previously existed or currently existed that fulfilled those words, that it would have been understood, at the time written, to refer to the future. Also, because Isaiah was writing what God directed him to write, Isaiah did not need to have his own understanding of what the words meant in order for them to be legitimately from God. I'm open to more discussion on this, if it's of interest to you.

The passage is set in Isiah's timeline, not a Christian timeline to come. A child is born, a son is given; not a child will be born, a son will be given.

Isiah is stating 'a son has been given unto them'. Later Christians want to say 'a son has be given unto them... and claim Isiah prophesied their son....when actually in the Isiah Dead Sea Scrolls, Isiah does no such thing!

As far as your "evidence for Jesus 48 prophesies" vid, well dude really, personally I'll be astonished to hear just one good one!

Without the smokescreen and deceit of blind religious faith to say otherwise, Micah books and the Isiah Scrolls do not present reliable, sound or reasonable evidence of a prophesy, or of much else for that matter, except a common religious superstition.

Thanks to you also for taking the trouble to reply. Unlike some, at least you have the balls to.

Sure, all that you've presented sounds reasonable. Especially, if there is no God, then it would make sense that the writer was writing in his own time, predicted a kingdom that really didn’t work out too well. Sometimes there are many, many different ways a single verse could be interpreted that makes sense, and has some logic to it. The question then becomes, “which view is correct?”

So, IF indeed, God did intend for it to refer to a coming Messianic figure in the Isaiah passage, are there other scriptures that give insight to the Messianic figure. And the answer is, YES. This is important because:

They support the view that the Scriptures are in agreement of a coming Messiah.

In supporting the view that Scriptures are in agreement of a coming Messiah, one can reasonably assume that Isaiah was referring to this Messianic figure in his verse, and not simply a kingly child recently born.

Now, I understand your view that that this verse’s intended meaning could be a present king that was given/born, in Isaiah’s time, and I agree that it is one interpretation that seems logical. However, the problem with this being the logical interpretation of the passage is that the Messianic figure is prophesied as being not only the KING, and of King David’s descent, but also, the PROPHET, who was to come. None of the present day kings in Isaiah’s time fulfilled the role of being a prophet comparable to Moses.

Please consider: Could Isaiah have written this to mean there was One to come that would be Almighty God and Everlasting Father?

At the time of Isaiah, what had been already spoken of about the coming Messiah? I have listed a few of them.

1. The protoevangelium: One would be born of a woman who would have his heel bruised by the Serpent but who would crush the head of the Serpent. Evangelicals see this as the first prophecy by God that there would be One who would come who would defeat Satan.

2. King David spoke of his descendant to come as Ruler, and Priest. David is recorded as having written Psalm 110. In this Psalm, David addresses the Ruler who is to come as his own “Lord.” Now, why would he address his own descendant as “Lord” unless the one to come was going to be of a greater position of authority than King David’s authority. It also mentions his scepter was to come from Zion.

Psalm 110

Of David. A psalm.

1:The Lord says to my lord a

“Sit at my right hand

until I make your enemies

a footstool for your feet.”

2The Lord will extend your mighty scepter from Zion, saying,

“Rule in the midst of your enemies!”

3Your troops will be willing

on your day of battle.

Arrayed in holy splendor,

your young men will come to you

like dew from the morning’s womb. b

4The Lord has sworn

and will not change his mind:

“You are a priest forever,

in the order of Melchizedek.”

5The Lord is at your right hand c ;

he will crush kings on the day of his wrath.

6He will judge the nations, heaping up the dead

and crushing the rulers of the whole earth.

7He will drink from a brook along the way, d

and so he will lift his head high.

Verse 4 introduces a new idea….it says that the LORD has sworn and won’t change His mind, that this One would also be a priest, FOREVER, after the order of Melchizedek. Not much is mentioned in Genesis 14 about Melchizedek, but he was the priest of God Most High in Abraham’s time and Abraham gave him a tithe. The significance is that he was a priest that existed outside of Aaron’s line priests.

This idea that King David’s coming Ruler would be both a King and a Priest would have been a very unusual concept back then, because there the office of king and the office of priest weren’t combined. So, here you see a picture in Psalm 110 of God swearing that this coming King would also be a priest, forever.

3. The expected one to come was also to be a prophet. This is found in Deuteronomy 18:15 when Moses says, “The LORD your God will raise up for you prophet like me from among your brothers. You must listen to him.” BSB

Here’s an excerpt from a site that lists 21 ways Moses and Jesus were similar. I’ll list just a few:

14. Both were willing to sacrifice their own lives for the sake of those they were leading, and to pay for the sins of their people – Moses in Exodus 32, and Yeshua’s own readiness to die on our behalf is evident in the Garden of Gethsemene

15. Both miraculously provided the people with bread to eat – manna was sent from heaven for the Israelites and Yeshua famously fed the multitudes. Twice.

16. Both were accepted by Gentiles – Moses’ father in law, a Midianite, instantly believed (Exodus 18:10-11) The Egyptians too came to believe that the God of Israel was real and true. And the non-Jews readily accepted Yeshua’s message of salvation.

17. Under Moses, all those who believed him, those who followed the instructions and put the sacrificial blood on their doors, were saved from death. This means that all those who left Egypt had taken a step of faith and been saved. They were no longer just Hebrews ethnically, they had become a faith community. Similarly, under Yeshua, all those who appropriate his sacrificial blood, shed for us to save us from the power of death have entered into the faith community of those who follow Him.

https://www.oneforisrael.org/bible-...srael/21-ways-yeshua-is-a-prophet-like-moses/ written by One For Israel Staff

And what do we find in Jesus Christ? A descendant of King David, who, by His shed blood on the cross, made an everlasting covenant with those who will believe in Him. He made intercession for us by the sacrifice of Himself, and becomes our everlasting Priest and was a Prophet that fulfills Deuteronomy 18:15

So, in response to your interpretation that Isaiah was merely writing about a current day kingly child that was born, my response is that, even if such a child had been born at that time, that child did not fulfill the prophecy, but Jesus did.

Because there are other scriptures, written before Isaiah’s time, that definitely give a view of a King, a Ruler, who exists forever, who blesses and rules over the nations, was promised by God to crush Satan, and One who becomes a Priest for people, it would not be unreasonable at all to believe that Isaiah’s prophecy did mean the One to come would truly be "Almighty God, Everlasting Father."

These promises did exist before Jesus ever came to earth. Rather than seeing Jesus being overlaid on some vague ideas from the scriptures, Christians see Jesus as wonderfully fulfilling very specific ideas prophesied. For one who believes, it becomes very powerful to realize just how much the Old Testament confirms Jesus, who He is, what He did, and His future return to the earth.

You can excuse them away by saying there’s no way that it’s possible, the writers just invented things and twisted things and there wasn’t anything miraculous about it. You can see it like a comic book series, each building on the previous versions written.

But to do so, you have to say that all these people were lying, and there were many, who wrote parts of the Old Testament that said they were spoken to directly by God. Others did not claim to have heard God’s voice, but yet wrote with the filling of the Holy Spirit, as in the Psalms.

You would also have to discount the miraculous history of God intervening in the nation of Israel as shown in the Old Testament. Things like the parting of the Red Sea, manna from heaven that fed an entire nation, the visible revelation of God at Mt. Sinai to the entire nation.

And you become one of many who say that God has not revealed Himself, there is no way to find God, He doesn’t even exist.

But I agree with Hebrews 1:1 that states that God has revealed Himself. “God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets, has in these last days spoken to us by His Son, whom He has appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the worlds, who being the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person, and upholding all things by the word of His power, when He had by Himself purged our sins, sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on High.”

stu · Jul 30, 2020

Thanks for your reply. Just to be clear again, if what I write sounds a bit strong, it is intended to challenge your ideas not as any kind of a personal attack or disparagement.

studentofthemarkets said:
Nope. Although I do understand the concept you’re trying to use to explain away the prophecies, there is a difference here because Marvel’s is imaginary, and the Old Testament is not.
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What you describe as prophecies explain themselves away. Unless you can come up with something other than ‘it’s in the Bible’, then you’ve provided nothing to say they are any less imaginary than a Marvel comic book story.
The Bible contains a talking donkey, a talking snake, humans with 6 wings, bones and skeletons coming back to life. Creatures with the heads of lions and wings of eagles. Locusts with human faces and women’s hair, lions teeth and a scorpion's tail. 200 million horses with the heads of lions breathing fire and sulfur with the tails of serpents. Dragons, behemoths, and angels encased in rock. Fire breathing multi-headed sea monsters. Magical watchers, sentinels, and guardians and a pretend God.

You say Marvel’s imaginary, and the Old Testament is not !

studentofthemarkets said:
They were real people who either said God told them what to say, or it came about as they were led by God’s Spirit in worship, such as the Messianic psalms that David wrote. To be more clear, some prophets said God spoke out loud directly to them, and other writers of Scriptures did not claim a direct voice from God, yet were directed by God’s Spirit to write.
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People writing stories about an imaginary God talking to them and others directly, or a magical "spirit" making some sort of contact is not reliable evidence for anything except people writing make believe.

studentofthemarkets said:
Look, I know that means nothing to you, but I think it is important in this conversation for you to understand my view in this. The importance is in the fact that it wasn’t just one or two people here or there, but MANY, giving specific prophecies about the Messiah or revelation about God or testifying of God’s miraculous works they had personally seen. A similar subject of importance is that God many times showed Himself or performed miracles to a large number of people. That is unique to the history of the Israelite people, at least I have not heard of any other nation claiming that God had revealed Himself visibly to the entire nation, or provided miracles for the entire nation. But God did when leading the people from Egypt to the land of Israel.
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I think I do understand your view alright. You’ve presented it very clearly indeed. And before I continue I should say I’m not trying to stamp all over your beliefs, really I’m not.
This is about why you allow religious blind belief to interfere with your reasoning to such a degree, in our discussion you defend it into the realms of absurdity.
Unfortunately what you say are prophecy really very much don’t come with the 'evidences' you said were logical enough to stand in a court of law. I’m not even requesting them to, but they should at least be reasoned enough, which is manifestly not the case.

1.God is not made real in prophecy or otherwise just because many people say so. That’s just a fundamental logical fallacy .

2.God is not made any the more real or less imaginary than a Marvel Super Hero just because someone wrote or said they heard God speak to them or to a nation.

3.God is not made real just because those stories end up in religious writings called “Scripture” in a book called the Old Testament.

4.God or prophecies are not made any more real than imaginary because those same stories tell of magical deeds and stuff that’s known to be imaginary in a Marvel comic, but gets to be called a miracle just because it’s in a religious book.

studentofthemarkets said:
However, it is a prophesy for a Messiah figure, even before laying over it the Christian view, because of the other prophesies that add additional insight to the coming Messiah. I explain more, below. When Christians "assign" Jesus to this prophecy and the others, we find a very clear and amazing revelation of One to come and see it fulfilled in Jesus, and really, that is the heart of our argument.
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Dude come on, all you are saying is one tale of a prophecy is true because another tale of a prophecy is true.

studentofthemarkets said:
As far as being written in the present tense, I see no issue with this. God exists in the past, present and future and in His mind, what will be already has been.
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Well I think if you were being a little more rational here you certainly would have an issue with that.
But doesn’t your religious book state no one knows the mind of God anyway which kind of totally undermines what you say.

studentofthemarkets said:
There are other prophecies in the Bible are also written in the past tense, yet have a future fulfillment. I think, when reading the Isaiah 9:6 passage, that since no king had previously existed or currently existed that fulfilled those words, that it would have been understood, at the time written, to refer to the future. Also, because Isaiah was writing what God directed him to write, Isaiah did not need to have his own understanding of what the words meant in order for them to be legitimately from God. I'm open to more discussion on this, if it's of interest to you.
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It is of interest to me why you even consider using such irrational assertions to guide your argument.
Here you have to presuppose God exists and on that extremely unsound assumption, you base the whole of an absurd notion that the past, present and future are all the same in the mind of a presupposed God. which you can’t know the mind of according to the Bible you say is true.
That It seems is enough to convince you that what can reasonably only be described as an imaginary God, whispered a prophecy to the author of Isiah which is clearly written in the present tense for that time, but is somehow a prophecy for 700 years into the future! To then claim that more absurdities of the same kind back it up, is quite honestly, a bit much if not disingenuous.

studentofthemarkets said:
Sure, all that you've presented sounds reasonable. Especially, if there is no God, then it would make sense that the writer was writing in his own time, predicted a kingdom that really didn’t work out too well
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Indeed so. May I suggest the view likely to be correct would be the one not devoid of all rationality due to irrational interpretation. If what I’ve presented makes sense if there were no God, then why assume there is one?

studentofthemarkets said:
Sometimes there are many, many different ways a single verse could be interpreted that makes sense, and has some logic to it. The question then becomes, “which view is correct?”
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Yes, but when one is thinking the absurd makes sense, such as the past, the present and the future tenses are no different to each other, and with nothing in the way of logic, those interpretations becomes meaningless.

studentofthemarkets said:
So, IF indeed, God did intend for it to refer to a coming Messianic figure in the Isaiah passage, are there other scriptures that give insight to the Messianic figure. And the answer is, YES. This is important because:
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No dude, this is really not important in the way you say. It is important in the way that one tale of a prophecy in a religious book is not evidence that another tale of a prophecy in that religious book is true.

studentofthemarkets said:
However, the problem with this being the logical interpretation of the passage is that the Messianic figure is prophesied as being not only the KING, and of King David’s descent, but also, the PROPHET, who was to come. None of the present day kings in Isaiah’s time fulfilled the role of being a prophet comparable to Moses.
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The Dead Sea Scrolls - Isiah passage we are considering, mentions nothing of prophets or a messiah to come. It's illogical to state otherwise.

studentofthemarkets said:
Please consider: Could Isaiah have written this to mean there was One to come that would be Almighty God and Everlasting Father?
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I really can’t see how you can arrive at that. unless the Dead Sea Scroll Isiah passage's written words are twisted out of all recognition and meaning. The passage is in the context of a battle won with if anything Yahweh as their guide and savior, and how there is a child born and is a son given. Nothing about “One” to come.
If this Isiah is about anything it's about full on Yahwehism.

studentofthemarkets said:
At the time of Isaiah, what had been already spoken of about the coming Messiah? I have listed a few of them.
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I’m going to stop you here as it were.. As far as I can tell you are now making references to the Bible, not the Isiah Dead Sea Scrolls. Regurgitating Bible tales and fantasies derived edited and reconstituted from earlier stories over hundreds of years, is not evidence of what the author of Isiah actually wrote. What he actually wrote is!

The rest of your post is evidence only of some evangelical style proselytizing .

studentofthemarkets · Aug 1, 2020

stu said:
Thanks for your reply. Just to be clear again, if what I write sounds a bit strong, it is intended to challenge your ideas not as any kind of a personal attack or disparagement.

What you describe as prophecies explain themselves away. Unless you can come up with something other than ‘it’s in the Bible’, then you’ve provided nothing to say they are any less imaginary than a Marvel comic book story.
The Bible contains a talking donkey, a talking snake, humans with 6 wings, bones and skeletons coming back to life. Creatures with the heads of lions and wings of eagles. Locusts with human faces and women’s hair, lions teeth and a scorpion's tail. 200 million horses with the heads of lions breathing fire and sulfur with the tails of serpents. Dragons, behemoths, and angels encased in rock. Fire breathing multi-headed sea monsters. Magical watchers, sentinels, and guardians and a pretend God.

You say Marvel’s imaginary, and the Old Testament is not !

People writing stories about an imaginary God talking to them and others directly, or a magical "spirit" making some sort of contact is not reliable evidence for anything except people writing make believe.

I think I do understand your view alright. You’ve presented it very clearly indeed. And before I continue I should say I’m not trying to stamp all over your beliefs, really I’m not.
This is about why you allow religious blind belief to interfere with your reasoning to such a degree, in our discussion you defend it into the realms of absurdity.
Unfortunately what you say are prophecy really very much don’t come with the 'evidences' you said were logical enough to stand in a court of law. I’m not even requesting them to, but they should at least be reasoned enough, which is manifestly not the case.

1.God is not made real in prophecy or otherwise just because many people say so. That’s just a fundamental logical fallacy .

2.God is not made any the more real or less imaginary than a Marvel Super Hero just because someone wrote or said they heard God speak to them or to a nation.

3.God is not made real just because those stories end up in religious writings called “Scripture” in a book called the Old Testament.

4.God or prophecies are not made any more real than imaginary because those same stories tell of magical deeds and stuff that’s known to be imaginary in a Marvel comic, but gets to be called a miracle just because it’s in a religious book.

Dude come on, all you are saying is one tale of a prophecy is true because another tale of a prophecy is true.

Well I think if you were being a little more rational here you certainly would have an issue with that.
But doesn’t your religious book state no one knows the mind of God anyway which kind of totally undermines what you say.

It is of interest to me why you even consider using such irrational assertions to guide your argument.
Here you have to presuppose God exists and on that extremely unsound assumption, you base the whole of an absurd notion that the past, present and future are all the same in the mind of a presupposed God. which you can’t know the mind of according to the Bible you say is true.
That It seems is enough to convince you that what can reasonably only be described as an imaginary God, whispered a prophecy to the author of Isiah which is clearly written in the present tense for that time, but is somehow a prophecy for 700 years into the future! To then claim that more absurdities of the same kind back it up, is quite honestly, a bit much if not disingenuous.

Indeed so. May I suggest the view likely to be correct would be the one not devoid of all rationality due to irrational interpretation. If what I’ve presented makes sense if there were no God, then why assume there is one?

Yes, but when one is thinking the absurd makes sense, such as the past, the present and the future tenses are no different to each other, and with nothing in the way of logic, those interpretations becomes meaningless.

No dude, this is really not important in the way you say. It is important in the way that one tale of a prophecy in a religious book is not evidence that another tale of a prophecy in that religious book is true.

The Dead Sea Scrolls - Isiah passage we are considering, mentions nothing of prophets or a messiah to come. It's illogical to state otherwise.

I really can’t see how you can arrive at that. unless the Dead Sea Scroll Isiah passage's written words are twisted out of all recognition and meaning. The passage is in the context of a battle won with if anything Yahweh as their guide and savior, and how there is a child born and is a son given. Nothing about “One” to come.
If this Isiah is about anything it's about full on Yahwehism.

I’m going to stop you here as it were.. As far as I can tell you are now making references to the Bible, not the Isiah Dead Sea Scrolls. Regurgitating Bible tales and fantasies derived edited and reconstituted from earlier stories over hundreds of years, is not evidence of what the author of Isiah actually wrote. What he actually wrote is!

The rest of your post is evidence only of some evangelical style proselytizing .
More...

My response to Stu is in black:

Thanks for your reply. Just to be clear again, if what I write sounds a bit strong, it is intended to challenge your ideas not as any kind of a personal attack or disparagement.

Thanks, again, for being considerate in our discussion. I also might come across a bit strong, but I'm not trying to personally attack you either.

studentofthemarkets said: So, IF indeed, God did intend for it to refer to a coming Messianic figure in the Isaiah passage, are there other scriptures that give insight to the Messianic figure. And the answer is, YES. This is important because:

Stu replied: No dude, this is really not important in the way you say. It is important in the way that one tale of a prophecy in a religious book is not evidence that another tale of a prophecy in that religious book is true.

What I tried to show you in my last reply was that there are many prophecies that work together to portray the picture of One to come and that Jesus fulfills that picture. Because you are biased that there is no God and therefore there is not a possibility that there could be prophecies, you are not even willing to consider the evidence I presented, that yes, there are other scriptures that lend support to idea that the Messianic concept was prevalent in Isaiah's time, and then when you consider what those other prophecies state, the nature of the One to come, it then does become much clearer that the Isaiah 9:6 passage is indeed referring to One to come, in the future, who would be have all the names listed, specifically, "Mighty God" and "Everlasting Father." We are not talking about an average kingdom with just a scribe writing things. We are talking about the Hebrew people who God had spoken to many times previously about a Special One to come and a special role He was to fulfill. We are talking about Isaiah who in chapter 8 declared, "11 This is what the Lord says to me with his strong hand upon me..."

As far as your objection to the present tense being used in the Isaiah 9:6 passage, there is a scholarly view on the matter called the Prophetic Perfect Tense. This basically means the Hebrew prophets sometimes used past tense to refer to something that was to happen in the future.

An example is Isaiah 5:13 which uses the past tense to declare that Israel would go into exile in the future. By the way, this is also an example of a prophecy that was fulfilled. The exile did take place, at a future time. “Isaiah 5:13 "Therefore My people are gone into captivity, for want of knowledge; and their honourable men are famished, and their multitude are parched with thirst"(JPS)

Wikipedia has a short article explaining this view. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prophetic_perfect_tense

Unfortunately what you say are prophecy really very much don’t come with the 'evidences' you said were logical enough to stand in a court of law. I’m not even requesting them to, but they should at least be reasoned enough, which is manifestly not the case.

There are some who have written out their plans for crimes before committing crimes. Those writings can be used as evidence that the crime was indeed deliberate and if the writings can be linked to the suspect, they then become evidence capable of producing conviction.

Previously written plans and witnesses that knew about the plans beforehand can become primary pieces of evidences that could lead to a conviction.

You said I did not provide you with evidence that would stand up in court. But I have.

God spoke out loud to some telling them details of the One to come. These people wrote out that God had spoken out loud to them about His plans. They are witnesses. Others were led by God as they wrote scriptures which contain many details of those plans before they took place. These provide us with additional, written evidences of a plan.

Here is a link to Old Testament references for 351 old testament prophecies fulfilled in Jesus Christ:

https://www.newtestamentchristians....stament-prophecies-fulfilled-in-jesus-christ/

I counted 25 different books from which those prophecies were taken. I am not saying this is an exhaustive list, I think there may be more. Also, some of them are, admittedly, smaller pieces of evidence that are not primary, but nevertheless even they do lend support to the overall picture.

You said that you would not accept using the Bible as evidence for God. Well, that is just about the same as a Defense Attorney trying to discredit evidences of prewritten plans and many witnesses to a suspect verbally stating his intention to commit the crime. The Defense Attorney simply does not want his client to be convicted. He is not wanting the evidence to be examined because he is not seeking the truth of the matter.

Jesus Himself claimed that He was the fulfillment of the these prophecies.

After rising from the dead, Jesus met with his disciples. Luke 24:44-48 records their conversation:

"He said to them, “This is what I told you while I was still with you: Everything must be fulfilled that is written about me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms.”

Then he opened their minds so they could understand the Scriptures.

He told them, “This is what is written: The Messiah will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, and repentance for the forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. 48 You are witnesses of these things."

expiated · Aug 3, 2020

If the four Gospels are authentic, why don’t they all match up more closely?

The Bible was written via a process in which God inspired various human authors to record what they wrote, and since they all had different backgrounds and personalities, this was reflected in their writing. Furthermore, each of the Gospel authors had distinct reasons for choosing what they documented, and therefore emphasized different aspects of biblical events.

Thus, in having four idiosyncratic yet equally valid accounts of the Messiah, different aspects of His person and ministry are revealed. Each account becomes like a different-colored thread in a tapestry woven together to form a more complete picture.

Simon Greenleaf, a well-known and accepted authority on what constitutes reliable evidence in a court of law, examined the four Gospels from a legal perspective. He noted that the type of eyewitness accounts given in the four Gospels—accounts which agree, but with each writer choosing to omit or add details different from the others—is typical of reliable, independent sources that would be accepted in a court of law as strong evidence.

Had the Gospels contained exactly the same information with the same details written from the same perspective, it would indicate collusion (i.e., of the writers having gotten together beforehand to “get their stories straight” in order to make their writings seem credible).

The differences between the Gospels, even the apparent contradictions of details upon first examination, speak to the independent nature of the writings. Thus, the independent nature of the four Gospel accounts, agreeing in their information but differing in perspective, amount of detail, and which events were recorded, indicate that the record we have of Yeshua's life and ministry as presented in the Gospels is factual and reliable.

Moreover, the authors of the Gospel surely exercised the freedom ancient biographers had in rearranging their material. Biographies were written differently during the New Testament era than they are today. Biographers could write either in chronological or topical order, and this freedom enabled the Gospel writers, like pastors today, to preach Jesus as well as report about him.

Source Material: Why did God give us four Gospels? Gotquestions.org; The IVP Bible Background Commentary by Craig S. Keener