“The funny thing, Ursa, is that, even though all one has to do to "salvage" one's faith in the face of these inaccuracies is admit that the Bible is not inerrant, very few people will be willing to do that. It's such a tiny admission, really.”

It would depend on what proposition they are trying to salvage faith in.

For certain versions of what it means to be a christian, dropping inerrancy shouldn’t even be an inconvenience. If one wishes to follow the teachings attributed to Jesus, or engage in christian rituals, they could simply decide to do that. Inerrancy wouldn't really be necessary. It matters whether they believe these teachings because they like the teachings or because of the association with Jesus. If X is true because Jesus said so, then admitting the unreliability of scripture does bring up some troubling and ultimately unanswerable questions of which parts he really did or didn’t say.

Some of the statements attributed to Jesus are ethical concepts. Some are spiritual concepts. Some of the statements attributed to Jesus are meaningless if you don't believe Jesus is the son of god. So there's still a point there where trust in the reliability of the gospels comes into play. If you don't believe the bible is at least basically right, there's no particular reason you'd believe Jesus was the son of god, or that he rose from the dead, and if you didn't believe Jesus was the son of god, you probably wouldn't get much out of John 3:16.

But "turn the other cheek", "love your neighbor as yourself", "love your enemies", "do unto others as you would have them do unto you", "sell what you have and give to the poor", "love each other as I have loved you", "blessed are the peacemakers", to believe or practice these things, you don't really need to believe Jesus was anything more than a man, and you don't need to believe the book they're in is anything more than a book.

Of course the book often has Jesus assigning a religious justification to these ideas. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you for this is the law and the prophets. Love your neighbor as yourself because it's god's second greatest commandment. Once you accept supernatural authority for ideas, you're already putting the text in a special category. But I think a lot of Jesus' ideas could be reasonably separated from the attribution. And better justifications could be given than what is seen in the gospels (who the f*ck knows, maybe Jesus did give better justifications than are seen in the gospels). Many of the better or more well known ones are not even original to Jesus. Leaving that and the various contradictions aside, if one were to just read the statements attributed to Jesus in the synaptic gospels, a certain philosophy emerges. It is hardly a perfect one. But it does have its merits.

The bible would need to have no errors to qualify as inerrant (and if it somehow did, that alone would not be evidence of the supernatural claims within, just one less strike against it). The bible would not need to be inerrant to qualify as a collection of texts which can tell us some interesting things. I'd even say it is necessary to understand that it is not inerrant before you can get anything worthwhile out of it. When you realize the garden is not actually where our species originated, you may see it says something insightful about how our species thinks. When you can conceive that the Torah might not have been written by Moses, the narrative strands begin to separate and it becomes a very different book. When you dismiss the gospels as an accurate biography of Jesus, it becomes possible to read them as what various early christians were trying to say about Jesus. When you can read the words of Jesus without assuming that Jesus actually said all these things or that anything is true because Jesus said it, some jump out as meaningless or obviously false, and some jump out as clever stating of self evident truths (or as one gospel author described them 'as easily distinguished as diamonds in a dunghill').

Even the best parts are nothing better than anyone of reasonable intelligence should be able to figure out without biblical guidance. The high points are a little below where we should be by now. Holding it up as ultimate truth is a good way to leave our search for truth frozen in place two thousand years ago. But what if people could view the texts in the bible not as ultimate truth, but as part of the process of looking.

The idea that it is the uniform word of one god with one message forces a flat uniform reading. But the bible is not the word of one anything with one message. It is a commentary on itself. It is an argument with itself. To treat it as the big list of stuff god said separates it from the religious and political background that led to it, and the separate voices and agendas that speak within it. With the necessary implication that the bible is consistent with itself, the doctrine of inerrancy rules out the separate positions the authors/editors were arguing/prophesying/propagandizing for. As that seems to be the main point for which most of them wrote in the first place, it adds insult to error. In order to preserve their belief that the entire bible is one book, free of contradictions and errors, the inerrantist must ignore or pave over the plainly stated meaning of most of what's actually in the bible.

What I would consider the most worthwhile lesson of the bible is something which is only accessable to the critical reader and unthinkable to the inerrantist. It may not be an accurate account of the origins of humans or human morality or most of the topics it deals with. But taken as a whole it is illustrative of where we came from, at our first uninformed attempts at understanding our place in the Universe and how to deal with our fellow humans, how those ideas failed us, and how they developed (and one might say improved) as we began to learn more.

Once one can let go of their belief that the bible couldn't be wrong, and god's morality is perfect, the Torah is a graphic lesson in exactly why that kind of thinking doesn't work. Even within the Torah the differing strands show something like, if not exactly linear progression, certainly a marked difference of opinion about what god's will even is. It lays out the most primitive form of sin based tribal ethics, and immediately begins with the commentary. Layers of complexities and rationalizations are added to a one note god. Through the old testament, more authors and editors continually add their own interpretations of god. This pattern of Torah, Mishnah, and Gemara is visible throughout much of the bible (in the Talmud we can see this same pattern marked a little more visibly).

As god evolves, one of the major shifts is that god goes from a present and visible actor to the man behind the curtain. Earlier depictions of god have him (physically) hanging out on Earth, and constantly using his god powers to interfere in nature and smite people. Later depictions have him privately interacting with prophets who say plenty about what god is going to do, or what god did in the past, but there is a definite narrative trend against god actually doing anything.

One of the other major shifts is toward benevolence. In all parts of the bible "right" is defined as "god's will", but through the course of the book, god's will seems to transition from genocide and the sacrificing of livestock to something more like social justice. The Torah tells the israelites to deal honorably with each other in the context of telling them to slaughter and enslave other tribes. The next several books are primarily concerned with the israelites following god's orders (or sometimes not) and the various reported backs and forths of various stages of the conquest of Canaan. The next several after those are primarily concerned with the aftermath of the kingdom of Israel. Most of this is still yhvh will judge this city or that nation, but among the prophets there are some individual voices that exhort their readers to think outside the tribe. The Torah goes out of its way to call god merciful, but its portrayal of god's commandments and behavior in no way backs this up. In the later scriptures there are some passages which portray god (the same god from Exodus 12?) as loving or merciful, and passages which tell humans they should be the same.

A few years before Jesus, a rabbi named Hillel The Elder (see Talmud Shabbat 31a) is quoted as saying "That which is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow. That is the whole Torah; the rest is commentary. Go and learn it". Of course Hillel is wrong, as that is not the whole of the Torah. But the lesson he somehow extracts is a better moral guide than anything in the Torah. The ethic of reciprocity was not original to Hillel (or Jesus), and it is contrary to the letter and spirit of his stated source. But this is still a really good idea. Hillel's version of yhvh was better than the older version of yhvh that he was explicitly basing it on.

The whole thing that makes Jesus such a badass is that (whether portrayed accurately or not) the story portrays him directly challenging and expanding on previously established conceptions of god. Jesus' claims about what the Torah and prophets say are objectively wrong, in that the Torah and prophets don't say that. But he is part of the noble tradition of moral expansionism. He is wrong because his god is yhvh, and he is dramatically wrong about yhvh. But his version of yhvh is (mostly) an improved version of the barbaric god portrayed in the Torah. If things were a little different maybe he could have challenged his audience to drop the god thing altogether, but it's unlikely anyone (including Jesus) would have been ready for that idea yet.

There was a point in our path here where someone had to actually write down "an eye for an eye" as a preventative measure. And a point later where someone had to actually explain why that isn't a good solution (it makes the world blind).

There are several places in the gospels where we see Jesus broadening the moral subset of the Torah ("ye have heard it said X; but I say unto you Y"), or expanding traditional expressions of tribal empathy to include those outside the tribe or those classes that traditional judaism didn't really view as human. What I would consider the best example is Jesus' redefinition of neighbor. The phrase "love your neighbor as yourself" isn't original to Jesus either. It appears in Leviticus 19:18. The key difference of course is that there it quite literally means neighbor. Like the guy living right next to you. Jesus references this and builds on it in the sermon on the mount ("Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy.(Matthew 5:48)"). And in the gospel of Luke we get this scene.

Luke 10:25-37
25 And, behold, a certain lawyer stood up, and tempted him, saying, Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?
26 He said unto him, What is written in the law? how readest thou?
27 And he answering said, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbour as thyself.
28 And he said unto him, Thou hast answered right: this do, and thou shalt live.
29 But he, willing to justify himself, said unto Jesus, And who is my neighbour?
30 And Jesus answering said, A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among thieves, which stripped him of his raiment, and wounded him, and departed, leaving him half dead.
31 And by chance there came down a certain priest that way: and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side.
32 And likewise a Levite, when he was at the place, came and looked on him, and passed by on the other side.
33 But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where he was: and when he saw him, he had compassion on him,
34 And went to him, and bound up his wounds, pouring in oil and wine, and set him on his own beast, and brought him to an inn, and took care of him.
35 And on the morrow when he departed, he took out two pence, and gave them to the host, and said unto him, Take care of him; and whatsoever thou spendest more, when I come again, I will repay thee.
36 Which now of these three, thinkest thou, was neighbour unto him that fell among the thieves?
37 And he said, He that shewed mercy on him. Then said Jesus unto him, Go, and do thou likewise.

You know that guy who is not part of the in group, who your established moral tropes tell you to hate. Yeah that guy. That's your f*cking neighbor. That's who you're supposed to love as yourself. Go do that.

Like Jefferson said, diamonds in a dunghill.

But if you have to believe the whole thing, you have to file every statement attributed to Jesus (or his biographers) as perfect. Inerrancy leaves no way to separate out the diamonds from the untrue stories and bad advice. It leaves no reason to suppose a secular reason for feeding the poor. It drowns Jesus' moral philosophy in pronouncements of his divinity. It leaves no room to perceive that man alone (including some greeks before Jesus) could come up with anything better than what Jesus proposed. It forces one to believe that the books Jesus misquotes are themselves perfectly accurate, but that Jesus' conflicting version must also be accurate. It forces the reader to conflate the words of Jesus, Paul and Moses as one indistinguishable paste.

Belief in the inerrancy of the bible makes otherwise reasonable people believe things they would never believe, and defend things they would never defend.

If you have to believe the whole thing then you end up having to believe the whole thing. And there are some horrible ideas in there. In the thread leading to this we have a christian who has been entirely polite and deferential in his dealings with the enemies of yhvh here, but is literally defending genocide. I don't think Jus really approves of what he has called right here (no more than I think William Lane Craig would actually stone his own children). He just thinks he has to believe it's right. And in service of the thing they must believe, bibliolaters will say things they would never believe on their own.

And that is the problem with inerrancy. If all of it has to be right, none of it can be wrong. If you're stuck with inerrancy, you can't walk away from the bad ideas. The Earth has to be 6,000 years old. Everything god commands (even the obviously wrong stuff) has to be right. If you're committed to seeing the whole thing as the word of one god, the idea that the bible is an argument with itself is imperceptible. Inerrancy makes it impossible to separate the good ideas from the bad ideas. Judging the ideas separately on their own merits is impossible if you have prejudged them all to be perfect.

Where most atheists object to religion is the lack of evidence. It's a legitimate complaint. Those who don't interact with reality will make decisions not based on reality which often have consequences in the real world. But it's not my main objection. As I've said before, I'm not exactly an empiricist, and I don't lose much sleep over wiccans or horoscopes. The real danger of supernatural thinking isn't that someone might believe in fairies. If people aren't too attached to them, unevident beliefs will go away on their own as more evidence becomes available. The problem is with the codification of belief, with the thing you are required to believe. Belief with mandate is more troubling to me than belief without evidence.

For too long the dead hand has been allowed to sterilize living thought. By dictating what people must believe and what people can't believe, the christian church has kept humanity chained to obsolete unexamined beliefs. Some of which would have been rather progressive three thousand years ago. But dogma locks thought in place, and condemns its victims to always being a few hundred years behind. The highest priority is the wishes of some long dead men who knew nothing of the world we live in now. By carving these things in stone, what could have been an inspirational little bundle of zen koans, has become the thing which is crippling us as a species.

Most of the best ideas I've encountered came from books I read. And in every case yet, from books which are not inerrant. The only reason this should be a problem for those ideas is if the ideas themselves are tied to the alleged infallibility of the author. If even the most revered voices are only treated as a potentially good source of ideas which must then stand or fall on their own merits, we can get a lot more from them with less of the pitfalls that come from codifying belief.

The Age Of Reason is among the books which have most informed my personal philosophy (it's also the book that laid the original foundation for what is now known as atheism). And it is certainly not inerrant. It has given me access to some great ideas I wouldn't have thought of myself. But it has some ideas which are at best obsolete. It uses some arguments against the bible that have been discredited. It uses something very similar to Aquinas' "uncaused cause" to argue for deism (the most honest use of the argument I've seen, but still fallacious). And it makes statements about science that are the type of thing someone writing about science in the 1700s might say. Thomas Paine was wrong about a number of things. It makes the book less perfect. But no one has ever suggested Thomas Paine was infallible. For human authors, being wrong about one thing only means they're wrong about one thing.

The Communist Manifesto is the book I would most dogmatically like to believe is perfectly inerrant. It describes a way in which we could make a better world. It tells us what we're doing wrong, and what we could do better. It is profoundly right about many things that humanity still needs to learn. It is a clever response to a major problem. But inerrant? With some of the things we've seen in the past 164 years, there's no honest way I could call communism a perfect system. It's never been as bad as our Cold War propaganda implied, and most of the worst outcomes of "communist" systems were from countries which weren't using anything close to what Marx and Engels said. But there is a systemic problem in the idea itself. In any society based on the marxist maxim, someone has to do the taking and giving, and in most cases so far that will become a power structure unto itself with very different interests from the proletariat.

If there were one example I could hold up of a truly holy book, it would be Cosmos by Carl Sagan (yeah, it's a book too, the documentary is better but work with me here). Of every bound text in every library on Earth there is not a more perfect specimen. With transcendant prose and clear logic, it tells us where we came from and where we're going. This is as close as we've come yet to one book containing all of what a perfect all knowing being would tell humanity. Prophets of all ages speculated about the heavens. Carl Sagan took us there and laid bare their mysteries. But it does have the disadvantage of having been composed in 1981. It is as far as I know inerrant in the sense of containing nothing which could yet be called an error. But it is already out of date. If for nothing else because it was limited to artist's conceptions and grainy photos of things we have much better footage of now, and guesses about things we no longer need to guess about. Ten years after it was released Sagan filmed a series of updates for the documentary. And even those are now out of date. Even if the upcoming remake is everything I hope it will be. It too will eventually be out of date. And that is the best possible thing one could hope for it.

That is not to say all ancient wisdom is worthless. Plato still has much to tell us. As does Jesus. As does Socrates (whose existence is no more firmly established than Jesus', but who might have said "the unexamined life is not worth living"). But their great contribution was to point us in a useful direction and lay the foundation upon which better ideas could be erected. If we lock our minds into the limitations of the ancients and stare dumbly at their foundation without building on it, their work is worthless. Ancient philosophy, like ancient science, represents a good starting point for a species that starts by knowing nothing. We don't revere Newton for being right about everything. We revere him for updating our knowledge. The best thing a philosopher can do for mankind is to give them new ideas. The best way to repay philosophers is to improve on their ideas.

But for those who believe we left paradise in the garden and the best knowledge was the lack of knowledge, there's not really any interest in moving forward.

We're apparently still having the contraception debate in 2012 (not even abortion, contraception). We have congressmen saying global warming can't be real because it isn't in Genesis. There are well funded and popular movements entirely dedicated to protesting science. Our most powerful political party literally has a mission statement of moving backward and taking the world with it (listen to anything Rick Santorum says, and then ponder that this is an actual presidential candidate). The gap between what is known and what people know has never been broader, and we're well past the point where that has become an actual danger to the species. We've been to the moon and there are still geocentrists. We have nuclear weapons and stoning is still a thing.

We are living in a world where we can no longer afford such primitive thinking. There may have been a time when that foundation was necessary. Either way, the time for that foolishness is done.

It is time to put aside childish things.

We need to f*cking evolve faster.

Christianity has only ever been a force for good in that it has occasionally been a force for progress. But much of their progress has simply been against the oppressiveness of the faith itself. When christian abolitionists twisted the bible to justify banning slavery, they were wrong to see that message in that book, but more importantly they were right to see that their fellow humans deserved freedom. When liberal churches consecrate female bishops they are not reflecting biblical values, but more importantly they are reflecting much better values. When some churches accept gay congregants, it's encouraging to see them taking a stance against homophobia, but I always have to wonder if they even realize where most of that homophobia comes from in the first place. Post-Enlightenment christianity exists in a world informed by ideas so far advanced from those in the bible that many bible believers just assume those ideas must be biblical. At this point all the most progressive elements of christianity are merely responding to the regressive elements that are christianity. Their great reform is to create a slightly less bigoted version of a religion we don't need anyway.

I was raised christian and raised to believe that the bible was not only free of errors but by definition could never be in error. Now at this point it's been around ten years since I really considered myself christian in any sense, and awhile longer than that since I had to abandon inerrancy. And I still believe some of the teachings attributed to Jesus. Some are pretty high on the list of things I believe the most strongly. Not because Jesus said it. I don’t believe anything because Carlin or Nietzsche or Sagan or Jesus said it. That would be a bad reason to believe anything. I believe individual points which appear to me as true.

We don't need to accept what we hear by report. We need not accept tradition just because it is found in a book, or in accord with our beliefs, or because it is the saying of some teacher. We can be lamps unto ourselves. I am the ultimate arbiter of what I believe. And ultimately you are the arbiter of what you believe.

(Most of what I've said here is specifically in reference to the beliefs of the individual. For the beliefs of the institution (or the individual as subject to the institution), there is the matter of proof texts. And that whole concept absolutely does rely on the idea that the bible is proof of things (or at least authoritative), which kind of does rely on inerrancy. There are many things the various parts of the bible actually advocate or condemn (not always clearly delineated) (and a bad reason to believe anything). In addition to those things there are many things various churches would really have liked the bible to have actually advocated or condemned. In much the same way that the early christians drew on the jewish scriptures, most christian churches draw on the bible to justify what they want to do. Associating church policy decisions with the word of god gives church leaders an easy way to beat their flock into submission.)

"Also, as ever, I've learned a great deal. Thanks. I suspect the single most useful detail for me will be Matthew's simple substitution of Jeremiah for Zechariah."

Thank you JonJon. I usually don't know whether you'll get anything out of my criticizing a version of christianity you don't believe anyway. But if you got something helpful out of that, I'm glad. This next piece is partially a followup to our previous discussions. I'm not really sure how much there is to learn from it. This one is more of an opinion piece, and it is still mostly an appeal to things you already know. But I think you may find it a little more directly applicable.

“Why Pascal’s Wager was meant to be ironic”

The question of what Pascal's Wager was meant to be, is a somewhat fuzzy topic. It was written as part of what was going to be an apologetics book. As far as I can tell it was meant somewhat seriously, but it was definitely meant to be something considerably different from the argument we see so often today. Pascal's version was a math problem. The concept at its core is not heaven or hell, but the contrast between finite numbers and infinity. Most modern users leave the math out of it and opt for the simpler "you'll get your evidence in hell" argument that technically predates Pascal.

The section of The Pensees which Pascal’s Wager comes from was part of a larger dialogue. The surrounding passages somewhat suggest this wasn’t exactly an argument Pascal was using for belief in god, so much as an example he was using of one argument someone might use for belief in god. Also he wrote in The Pensees and Lettres Provinciales about his own reasons both for theism and catholicism. I won't speculate whether risk avoidance played some unstated subconscious role (except right here where I speculate that it very well may have), but it doesn't seem to be among his own stated reasons.

Blaise Pascal had many delusions common to the 1600s. But the inventor of the hydraulic press, the syringe, the roulette wheel, Pascal’s Triangle, and probability theory was not quite the dumbass that his association with this argument might suggest. We don't even know if Pascal ever intended to publish this section (it's a centerpiece of a large part of what book is there, so I'd guess yes anyway, just saying we don't exactly know). He never finished Apologie de la Religion Chrétienne. It was published posthumously from a collection of unfinished notes found in his study after he died.

I think in any discussion of what Pascal's Wager was meant to be, that one fact there should be included. It may even be the most important detail. F*ck, I've got gigs of random unfinished notes around here. If someone stole my hard drive after I died and crammed all the word documents in one folder into a book (replace "hard drive" and "word documents" in this sentence and this is basically how The Pensees was compiled) I'm quite sure there would be passages in the finished text that could give you the wrong impression of the author's intent.

As for the argument itself (a more pressing concern than original intent, as it isn't even Pascal's version that keeps showing up here), I wrote a piece on Pascal’s Wager about a year ago. And reposted a condensed version on the “About” page in response to a use of the wager from Stephen (groktruth) (the section of that post labelled 5).

If JonJon or anyone wanted to edit that for brevity, that would be cool. The main points I'd like to see included are (a) not everything which could possibly exist has a 50% chance of existing, and (b) even if you do assume that the odds for intelligent design are 50/50, there is no a priori reason why yhvh should automatically get the entirety of that 50%.

I have that same condition that Elemenope described. I'm not particularly good about brevity, and to be honest, it usually isn't my first goal anyway. Writing in a medium where extra letters don't cost extra (and anyone can scroll past them easily enough) allows me to take a little more time to delve into things. Don't get me wrong, I'm certainly not looking to waste anyone's time here. If I could make my intended points in 140 characters I'd f*cking do that. The points are often complex ones to begin with, and there is often more than one point that needs to be made. Even that last soliloquy (and this one coming up in a minute) represents the end of a week long internal debate about how much to include and how quickly those points could be effectively made.

"I'm tempted to add this latest wall to the essential reading for theists post."

Thanks Custador. I don’t know if I’d call this one essential reading. It’s more like supplemental material. The main point of that post was already made as briefly as I could manage within a previous post on the overall accuracy of the bible.

I would definitely approve and appreciate if a link to that one was incorporated into the “So you’re a theist...” post. Not just for the nox plug. My point in writing it was to answer an assertion (biblical inerrancy) which still comes up ten f*cking times a week (obviously I already knew Notashamedofchrist wasn’t going to get it). And while I don't like to positively review my own work, I think I can say it does answer that assertion, and I think I've demonstrated here (and in other threads) that my original points are solid and can be solidly defended.

A link to both would be awesome. As this one is all about clarifying context, and the most common response to part one (or really any list of errors in the bible) will be the claim that they must be taken out of context (which for some strange reason is never accompanied by any real explanation of how the context would fix the problem). Apparently that was the response to this as well (though I'm quite pleased to see Jus went with a slightly more original variation on this argument than I expected).

I'd also agree with JonJon and Elemenope about the table of contents. No rush of course. But if the point of the essential reading post is to have a set of already written responses to a set of frequently repeated arguments, having a direct link right to a specific response to the specific thing this person just said, would probably make it more effective.

One pretty bad error that I came across was the final part of Matthew 16. Most of that chapter, Jesus is talking to his disciples about judgement day and ends by saying "And everyone will be rewarded according to mwhat he has done. I tell you the truth. There are people standing here who shall not taste death until they see the Son of Man coming in his Kingdom." Which implies that Jesus believed the End of the World would be within the lifetime of his disciples!

Apologists have tried to explain it away as Jesus talking about the resurrection or the transfiguration (which it isn't). I have even spoken to Mormons about this and they believe that Saint John hasn't died yet and is safe and well and living in some mysterious location! Which explains why there hasn't been a Second Coming yet!

Maybe after I get done moving I'll try to figure out how to put lots of folds in that article. Not now though. Tad busy.

Inerrancy allows doubt.

And it is much simpler to indoctrinate people with, "Every word is the truth of God!" than it is to say, "Every word means something, we guess. Do a lot of study. Think about it. Remember to apply historical methods to get the context of the culture in which it was written. Also, keep in mind translation can change meanings. So, you know, some good stuff, but gotta dig to find it."

Half way through that your audience has switched back to Jerry Springer.

A table of contents would be very useful, not only for visitors, but also for those who would like to reference this stuff in other conversations. Seconded.

The funny thing, Ursa, is that, even though all one has to do to "salvage" one's faith in the face of these inaccuracies is admit that the Bible is not inerrant, very few people will be willing to do that. It's such a tiny admission, really. Damn fundamentalist Christianity. (And I use that damn in the biblical sense.) I really wish it would just go away. It makes me so unbelievably sad.

Nox, as ever, the amount of work you put into this is staggering. Also, as ever, I've learned a great deal. Thanks. I suspect the single most useful detail for me will be Matthew's simple substitution of Jeremiah for Zechariah.

Edit: It occurs to me that if anyone needs stuff edited, either your own or stuff already on the site, for reformatting purposes, I would be happy to help. I'm fairly good at that sort of thing.

The essential reading thread is getting awfully long. If you add Nox's wall of text, and I add an overview of deontology, consequentialism and standpoint ethics and a section on common criticisms of Christian morality (as I plan to), and someone does the anti-intellectualism, Pascal's wager, and thermodynamics take-downs that are in the hopper at the bottom of the post, the thing will achieve book length.

Normally that wouldn't be a problem for me, but the longer it goes, the more it guarantees that visitors will not read it, which kinda dings its purpose. I think it would be beneficial if we reorganized it a bit so there is at least a linkable table of contents and if each entry were pared down some; I know my contributions are already far longer and more detailed than they should be to serve the intended purpose. I am absolute shit at editing my own stuff for brevity, never mind anyone else's.

Ah, but it must be vetted first. It needs to be read and rejected out of hand by a fundamentalist.

I'm tempted to add this latest wall to the essential reading for theists post.

Thanks Mogg. Sorry it's a bit late. Was trying to have it done like five days ago (not even entirely sure if Jus is still here). Lots of interruptions this week.

Yay, it's a Wall of Nox! I find myself referring to them as a WON, as it seems appropriate. I just wish this had gone up a few hours earlier, I could have used a handy reference for why 'Jesus as fulfilment of OT prophecy' is complete crap when a guy from my old church randomly rang me and tried to talk my ear off using this tack when I told him I am not a Christian anymore.

Matthew 27:34-35
34 They gave him vinegar to drink mingled with gall: and when he had tasted thereof, he would not drink.
35 And they crucified him, and parted his garments, casting lots: that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, They parted my garments among them, and upon my vesture did they cast lots.

Once again Matthew tells us something was “spoken by the prophet”, and once again he doesn’t tell us which prophet.

Can you guess? Is it Isaiah? Is it Jeremiah? Possibly Elijah? Or Samuel? Or maybe Zechariah?

If for some f*cking insane reason you guessed the twenty second psalm, you are correct. At least as correct as any answer to that question could be.

Psalm 22:17-21
17 I may tell all my bones: they look and stare upon me.
18 They part my garments among them, and cast lots upon my vesture.
19 But be not thou far from me, O LORD: O my strength, haste thee to help me.
20 Deliver my soul from the sword; my darling from the power of the dog.
21 Save me from the lion's mouth: for thou hast heard me from the horns of the unicorns.

I'm not gonna give the psalmist sh*t over the unicorn thing. Clearly an example of poetic imagery. Besides, the twenty second psalm is not even a prediction. It is a poignant sorrowful verse, conveying the pain and confusion of a man who thought god would protect him, and is suddenly finding out otherwise. Interestingly Jesus' famous line from the cross comes from the opening line of this psalm.

Psalm 22:1
My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? why art thou so far from helping me, and from the words of my roaring?

If we take Psalm 22 as a prophecy of Jesus, the author's complete failure to mention Jesus makes this simply another failed prophecy. If we take Psalm 22 on it's own terms, for what it ostensibly appears to be, it is among the most beautifully evocative writing anywhere in the bible (and holds up decently against ancient literature in general). Human suffering described in epic exaggerated terms, but still something we can all relate to painfully well. Read back to back with the famously uplifting Psalm 23, it relates a tale of defeat and redemption considerably more interesting than anything hinted at in the gospels.

That is all fourteen examples in the book of Matthew. But we have not really talked about the central linchpin of the whole thing. Jesus dying on the cross. All these individual prophecies are merely spokes within the larger alleged prophecy. This larger alleged prophecy is that Jesus was going to die to redeem mankind. When people say the old testament points to Jesus, I suspect this is what most of them mean. The prophecies of Jesus speaking in parables or going to Capernaum are seen as garnish to the far more important prophecy. Jesus had to be born in Bethlehem so some minor prophecy could be fulfilled, but Jesus had to die at Golgotha so The Prophecy could be fulfilled.

Matthew 26:1-2
1 And it came to pass, when Jesus had finished all these sayings, he said unto his disciples,
2 Ye know that after two days is the feast of the passover, and the Son of man is betrayed to be crucified.

Matthew 26:52-56
52 Then said Jesus unto him, Put up again thy sword into his place: for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword.
53 Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to my Father, and he shall presently give me more than twelve legions of angels?
54 But how then shall the scriptures be fulfilled, that thus it must be?
55 In that same hour said Jesus to the multitudes, Are ye come out as against a thief with swords and staves for to take me? I sat daily with you teaching in the temple, and ye laid no hold on me.
56 But all this was done, that the scriptures of the prophets might be fulfilled. Then all the disciples forsook him, and fled.

This is not merely a misquote. It is a straight up fabrication. It is quite simply, not there at all.

There are certainly no shortage of passages in the new testament that read Jesus into the old testament, the quotes we just looked at and a couple others in the gospels, Stephen's retelling of the old testament in Acts, Paul's claim that the law of Moses was meant to show people they needed Jesus to acheive righteousness. I concede you would have no difficulty whatsoever finding me a passage in the new testament that says Jesus was in the old testament, but you can never find a passage in the old testament that legitimately backs this up.

The gospel authors and Paul speak as though god sending his son to die was god's preannounced plan from the beginning. But the concept is completely absent from the old testament. There is no quote to check this against. When Matthew says these scriptures needed to be fulfilled he is referring to scriptures that do not exist (we even see in the gospels that the apostles are shocked by the idea of christ dying). New testament authors and most christians see the entire point of the old testament as "Jesus is coming". They assert that the whole book is a set of portents building to christ. If you are foolish enough to believe them, or you simply have not read the old testament yourself, and you take their quotes as accurate without checking, you might come to the conclusion that Jesus is present throughout the entirety of the old testament, and that he did have to die to fulfill some grand scheme his father had announced a thousand years earlier.

But that is a conclusion no one would ever come to by actually reading the old testament.

Matthew 27:3-10
3 Then Judas, which had betrayed him, when he saw that he was condemned, repented himself, and brought again the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders,
4 Saying, I have sinned in that I have betrayed the innocent blood. And they said, What is that to us? see thou to that.
5 And he cast down the pieces of silver in the temple, and departed, and went and hanged himself.
6 And the chief priests took the silver pieces, and said, It is not lawful for to put them into the treasury, because it is the price of blood.
7 And they took counsel, and bought with them the potter's field, to bury strangers in.
8 Wherefore that field was called, The field of blood, unto this day.
9 Then was fulfilled that which was spoken by Jeremy the prophet, saying, And they took the thirty pieces of silver, the price of him that was valued, whom they of the children of Israel did value;
10 And gave them for the potter's field, as the Lord appointed me.

If it weren't completely unrelated to my point, I might mention that the phrase "unto this day" suggests a significant passage of time between the death of Judas and the writing of the gospel of Matthew. But our concern here is prophecy. As in previous passages we see the matthean formula “Then was fulfilled that which was spoken by the prophet”.

The fulfillment of the prophecy here is the purchase of a field with the thirty pieces of silver that the priests had paid Judas to betray Jesus. The prophecy said to be fulfilled is, “And they took the thirty pieces of silver, the price of him that was valued, whom they of the children of Israel did value; And gave them for the potter's field, as the Lord appointed me.” If you have been paying attention you might expect that when we turn to Jeremiah, we will find some random mention of “the potter’s field” or “thirty pieces of silver” that totally do not match the context in which they are being quoted.

A reasonable guess at this point. But if you thought that, you’d be wrong.

There is actually nothing in Jeremiah that even remotely resembles this quotation. There is a mention of a potter but it is obviously not what Matthew is referring to.

Jeremiah 18:1-3
1 The word which came to Jeremiah from the LORD, saying,
2 Arise, and go down to the potter's house, and there I will cause thee to hear my words.
3 Then I went down to the potter's house, and, behold, he wrought a work on the wheels.

The actual “prophecy” that the author of Matthew appears to be quoting is in Zechariah 11

Zechariah 11:12-13
 12 And I said unto them, If ye think good, give me my price; and if not, forbear. So they weighed for my price thirty pieces of silver.
 13 And the LORD said unto me, Cast it unto the potter: a goodly price that I was prised at of them. And I took the thirty pieces of silver, and cast them to the potter in the house of the LORD.

So in addition to misquoting this prophecy, Matthew misattributes it. Those who simply say the author of Matthew told the story of Jesus the best he could fifty to seventy years after the crucifixion, can openly say here that Matthew f*cked up and wrote the wrong name, which explains the whole thing pretty well. Those who claim inerrancy don't have such flexibility.

Matthew pretty clearly did f*ck up here. He probably remembered that Jeremy said something about a potter, and there was something with thirty pieces of silver and a potter. He probably didn't have a copy of Jeremiah right in front of him. He wrote from faulty memory and he made a mistake (perhaps an honest mistake, but again mistakes =/= inerrancy).

Also this "prophecy" is not actually about Judas. It is however partially about Judah.

Zechariah 11:13-14
13 And the LORD said unto me, Cast it unto the potter: a goodly price that I was prised at of them. And I took the thirty pieces of silver, and cast them to the potter in the house of the LORD.
14 Then I cut asunder mine other staff, even Bands, that I might break the brotherhood between Judah and Israel.

And that would be thirteen. With one prophecy and one phantom prophecy left, the author of Matthew is two for thirteen on quoting prophecies accurately, zero for thirteen on fulfilled prophecies, and zero for thirteen on fulfillments you'd need the son of god for.

In our next example, Jesus orders his followers to steal a donkey. The apostles obey, the author of Matthew misunderstands a common hebrew literary device, and in the ensuing confusion we get the story of Jesus riding two animals at the same time.

Matthew 21:1-7
1 And when they drew nigh unto Jerusalem, and were come to Bethphage, unto the mount of Olives, then sent Jesus two disciples,
 2 Saying unto them, Go into the village over against you, and straightway ye shall find an ass tied, and a colt with her: loose them, and bring them unto me.
 3 And if any man say ought unto you, ye shall say, The Lord hath need of them; and straightway he will send them.
 4 All this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, saying,
 5 Tell ye the daughter of Sion, Behold, thy King cometh unto thee, meek, and sitting upon an ass, and a colt the foal of an ass.
 6 And the disciples went, and did as Jesus commanded them,
 7 And brought the ass, and the colt, and put on them their clothes, and they set him thereon.

Zechariah 9:6-11
6 And a bastard shall dwell in Ashdod, and I will cut off the pride of the Philistines.
7 And I will take away his blood out of his mouth, and his abominations from between his teeth: but he that remaineth, even he, shall be for our God, and he shall be as a governor in Judah, and Ekron as a Jebusite.
8 And I will encamp about mine house because of the army, because of him that passeth by, and because of him that returneth: and no oppressor shall pass through them any more: for now have I seen with mine eyes.
9 Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion; shout, O daughter of Jerusalem: behold, thy King cometh unto thee: he is just, and having salvation; lowly, and riding upon an ass, and upon a colt the foal of an ass.
10 And I will cut off the chariot from Ephraim, and the horse from Jerusalem, and the battle bow shall be cut off: and he shall speak peace unto the heathen: and his dominion shall be from sea even to sea, and from the river even to the ends of the earth.
11 As for thee also, by the blood of thy covenant I have sent forth thy prisoners out of the pit wherein is no water.

Like the passage in Micah, and unlike our other twelve examples, this one is something like a messianic prophecy. Of course, Zechariah and Matthew portray very different concepts of the messiah. Matthew portrays the messiah riding two donkeys at the same time, and Zechariah portrays the messiah as Zerubbabel, the client king Cyrus set up in Israel at the end of the diaspora.

Zechariah 4:4-10
4 So I answered and spake to the angel that talked with me, saying, What are these, my lord?
5 Then the angel that talked with me answered and said unto me, Knowest thou not what these be? And I said, No, my lord.
6 Then he answered and spake unto me, saying, This is the word of the LORD unto Zerubbabel, saying, Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, saith the LORD of hosts.
7 Who art thou, O great mountain? before Zerubbabel thou shalt become a plain: and he shall bring forth the headstone thereof with shoutings, crying, Grace, grace unto it.
8 Moreover the word of the LORD came unto me, saying,
9 The hands of Zerubbabel have laid the foundation of this house; his hands shall also finish it; and thou shalt know that the LORD of hosts hath sent me unto you.
10 For who hath despised the day of small things? for they shall rejoice, and shall see the plummet in the hand of Zerubbabel with those seven; they are the eyes of the LORD, which run to and fro through the whole earth.

When Zechariah wrote "Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion; shout, O daughter of Jerusalem: behold, thy King cometh unto thee" this was not a prediction of some future redeemer. The temple was being rebuilt. A descendant of David was taking the throne. As far as Zechariah was concerned, the messiah had just arrived.

Even the bit with the donkey relates to this. Earlier predictions of the messiah had foretold a king who would come to power through war, driving out invaders with the sword. But Zechariah declared it would not be by might nor by power. His messiah (anointed by persian royal fiat) was to come to power in a time of peace, likely symbolized by the donkey that the king would ride in on. King James renders Zechariah's verse with the unfortunate "and" that we see in Matthew, but repeating couplets are a fairly common theme in the old testament. There is a very good chance that Zechariah's intended statement would be more like "riding upon an ass; upon a colt the foal of an ass". Matthew's account does not have such ambiguity as it definitely is talking about two separate animals.

Matthew 21:2
Saying unto them, Go into the village over against you, and straightway ye shall find an ass tied, and a colt with her: loose them, and bring them unto me.

So either Jesus rode two animals at the same time to fulfill a prophecy that was fulfilled before it was written, or Matthew wrote in Jesus riding two animals at the same time to fulfill a prophecy he imagined.

We'll call that a 50/50. But this next prophecy is completely imaginary.

Keeping in mind the thing we just read about how Jesus "charged them that they should not make him known" so as to fulfill a prophecy that "neither shall any man hear his voice in the streets", the next chapter of Matthew begins with this.

Matthew 13:1-3
1 The same day went Jesus out of the house, and sat by the sea side.
2 And great multitudes were gathered together unto him, so that he went into a ship, and sat; and the whole multitude stood on the shore.
3 And he spake many things unto them in parables, saying, Behold, a sower went forth to sow;

As you can see, Matthew 13 concerns parables. Jesus relates a series of parables in this chapter. At one point here, Jesus says that his speaking in parables is a fulfillment of a prophecy from Isaiah, and at a second point the narrator says that Jesus speaking in parables is a fulfillment of a different prophecy.

Matthew 13:10-15
10 And the disciples came, and said unto him, Why speakest thou unto them in parables?
11 He answered and said unto them, Because it is given unto you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not given.
12 For whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundance: but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that he hath.
13 Therefore speak I to them in parables: because they seeing see not; and hearing they hear not, neither do they understand.
14 And in them is fulfilled the prophecy of Esaias, which saith, By hearing ye shall hear, and shall not understand; and seeing ye shall see, and shall not perceive:
15 For this people's heart is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes they have closed; lest at any time they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears, and should understand with their heart, and should be converted, and I should heal them.

That actually sounds like a really f*cking good reason not to speak in meaningless riddles. Unless you're trying to not be understood. If Jesus' message is as important and helpful as he says, intentionally phrasing it in an indecipherable way is just cruel (read that again, that is Jesus essentially saying "I speak in riddles so people won't understand me so they won't be healed").

And once again the prophecy fulfillment here is incredibly lame. Isaiah predicted some guy would say some stuff that some people wouldn't understand, behold the messiah. I'm not even sure what we should be looking for in Isaiah 6. If Isaiah did say exactly this, he could easily have been talking about himself. The prophet Esaias probably never went two days without someone telling him they didn't understand what the f*ck he was talking about (as you've already seen here, Isaiah is already a pretty cryptic book before you cram Jesus into it).

Isaiah 6:1-9
1 In the year that king Uzziah died I saw also the LORD sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple.
2 Above it stood the seraphims: each one had six wings; with twain he covered his face, and with twain he covered his feet, and with twain he did fly.
3 And one cried unto another, and said, Holy, holy, holy, is the LORD of hosts: the whole earth is full of his glory.
4 And the posts of the door moved at the voice of him that cried, and the house was filled with smoke.
5 Then said I, Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts.
6 Then flew one of the seraphims unto me, having a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with the tongs from off the altar:
7 And he laid it upon my mouth, and said, Lo, this hath touched thy lips; and thine iniquity is taken away, and thy sin purged.
8 Also I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? Then said I, Here am I; send me.
9 And he said, Go, and tell this people, Hear ye indeed, but understand not; and see ye indeed, but perceive not.

Almost immediately after Jesus says he is fulfilling this prophecy by speaking in parables, the narrator tells us that Jesus speaking in parables is the fulfillment of some completely different prophecy.

Matthew 13:33-36
33 Another parable spake he unto them; The kingdom of heaven is like unto leaven, which a woman took, and hid in three measures of meal, till the whole was leavened.
34 All these things spake Jesus unto the multitude in parables; and without a parable spake he not unto them:
35 That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, saying, I will open my mouth in parables; I will utter things which have been kept secret from the foundation of the world.
36 Then Jesus sent the multitude away, and went into the house: and his disciples came unto him, saying, Declare unto us the parable of the tares of the field.

The prophet in this case is Psalm 78. If you know what "psalm" means I shouldn't have to explain why there's nothing to fulfill with this one. But I will anyway (hint: a psalm is sort of like a song or a poem).

Psalm 78:1-6
1 Give ear, O my people, to my law: incline your ears to the words of my mouth.
2 I will open my mouth in a parable: I will utter dark sayings of old:
3 Which we have heard and known, and our fathers have told us.
4 We will not hide them from their children, shewing to the generation to come the praises of the LORD, and his strength, and his wonderful works that he hath done.
5 For he established a testimony in Jacob, and appointed a law in Israel, which he commanded our fathers, that they should make them known to their children:
6 That the generation to come might know them, even the children which should be born; who should arise and declare them to their children:

"I will utter things which have been kept secret from the foundation of the world" isn't just a misquote of "I will utter dark sayings of old which we have heard and known, and our fathers have told us". It's actually the opposite sentiment. This prophecy is of the past instead of the future, and the passing on of stories instead of the keeping of secrets. Asaph is celebrating hebrew tradition. The author of this psalm is excited to be jewish, and what being jewish means to the author of this psalm is being connected to the past.

The "sayings of old" are the old sayings, stories passed from father to son. The author is not prophesying some future event where someone will speak in parables. He is referring entirely to past events. He is referring to stories his father told him. Not only is the entire psalm in past tense. Most of it is a retelling of events from Exodus.

Psalm 78:12-16
12 Marvellous things did he in the sight of their fathers, in the land of Egypt, in the field of Zoan.
13 He divided the sea, and caused them to pass through; and he made the waters to stand as an heap.
14 In the daytime also he led them with a cloud, and all the night with a light of fire.
15 He clave the rocks in the wilderness, and gave them drink as out of the great depths.
16 He brought streams also out of the rock, and caused waters to run down like rivers.

Literally every line there or anywhere for the next fourty verses is a direct reference to something from the Torah. The author of Psalm 78 recounts the story of god smiting Egypt and freeing the israelites, the parting of the sea, the israelites wandering in the wilderness, the water from the rock and the manna from the sky, the israelites who turned against god and built graven images, and how god punished them, the israelites arriving in the promised land, finishing his song with the rise of David. He gives us a good summary of the sayings of old that the jews had been passing through oral tradition, but he certainly doesn't mention Jesus speaking in parables.

What is spoken of by "the prophet" in Psalm 78 is not "Jesus will speak in parables". It is "These are our stories. They connect us with each other. They connect us with where we came from. They connect us with god. Our fathers told them to us. Their fathers told them and we will tell these stories to our children. We are god's special people. And our story is special."

Matthew 12:14-21
14 Then the Pharisees went out, and held a council against him, how they might destroy him.
15 But when Jesus knew it, he withdrew himself from thence: and great multitudes followed him, and he healed them all;
16 And charged them that they should not make him known:
17 That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Esaias the prophet, saying,
18 Behold my servant, whom I have chosen; my beloved, in whom my soul is well pleased: I will put my spirit upon him, and he shall shew judgment to the Gentiles.
19 He shall not strive, nor cry; neither shall any man hear his voice in the streets.
20 A bruised reed shall he not break, and smoking flax shall he not quench, till he send forth judgment unto victory.
21 And in his name shall the Gentiles trust.

Just reading this within Matthew this one is already illogical. The thing that Matthew just said Jesus did is not the same thing Matthew just said Jesus fulfilled by doing it.

The prophecy (as stated by Matthew): "Behold my servant, whom I have chosen; my beloved, in whom my soul is well pleased: I will put my spirit upon him, and he shall shew judgment to the Gentiles. He shall not strive, nor cry; neither shall any man hear his voice in the streets. A bruised reed shall he not break, and smoking flax shall he not quench, till he send forth judgment unto victory. And in his name shall the Gentiles trust."

The prophecy (as stated by Isaiah - KJV): "Behold my servant, whom I uphold; mine elect, in whom my soul delighteth; I have put my spirit upon him: he shall bring forth judgment to the Gentiles. He shall not cry, nor lift up, nor cause his voice to be heard in the street. A bruised reed shall he not break, and the smoking flax shall he not quench: he shall bring forth judgment unto truth. He shall not fail nor be discouraged, till he have set judgment in the earth: and the isles shall wait for his law."

The prophecy (as stated by Isaiah - LXX): "Jacob is my servant, I will help him: Israel is my chosen, my soul has accepted him; I have put my Spirit upon him; he shall bring forth judgment to the Gentiles. He shall not cry, nor lift up his voice, nor shall his voice be heard without. A bruised reed shall he not break, and smoking flax shall he not quench; but he shall bring forth judgment to truth. He shall shine out, and shall not be discouraged, until he have set judgment on the earth: and in his name shall the Gentiles trust."

The fulfillment (as stated by Matthew): Jesus telling people not to make him known.

The closest match you could extract here is the bit about not being heard in the street, which would be a weird assertion with the dozen scenes in this gospel alone where Jesus is heard by people in the streets.

Also, is anyone else noticing that compared with all the miraculous stuff Matthew has Jesus doing throughout the rest of his story, the stuff he does to fulfill prophecies is pretty mundane. Living in Nazareth, leaving Egypt, going to Capernaum, hiding from the pharisees. You keep expecting to see a verse saying something like "Jesus went unto them, walking on the sea, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet saying ye shall recognize the messiah cause he will have goddamn superpowers". But we never get that. Just a bunch of random events in Jesus' life tied to vague statements that wouldn't tell us anything about Jesus if they were about him.

This statement of course is not about Jesus. The subject once again is Israel. We see this a bit more clearly in the Septuagint's "Jacob is my servant, I will help him: Israel is my chosen". But even in the KJV there are plenty of clues in the surrounding text. Remember that this is right after our sixth example, and continues Isaiah's crying in the wilderness to prepare the way of the lord.

Isaiah 41:8-9
8 But thou, Israel, art my servant, Jacob whom I have chosen, the seed of Abraham my friend.
9 Thou whom I have taken from the ends of the earth, and called thee from the chief men thereof, and said unto thee, Thou art my servant; I have chosen thee, and not cast thee away.

Isaiah 41:14-15
14 Fear not, thou worm Jacob, and ye men of Israel; I will help thee, saith the LORD, and thy redeemer, the Holy One of Israel.
15 Behold, I will make thee a new sharp threshing instrument having teeth: thou shalt thresh the mountains, and beat them small, and shalt make the hills as chaff.

Isaiah 42:21-25
21 The LORD is well pleased for his righteousness' sake; he will magnify the law, and make it honourable.
22 But this is a people robbed and spoiled; they are all of them snared in holes, and they are hid in prison houses: they are for a prey, and none delivereth; for a spoil, and none saith, Restore.
23 Who among you will give ear to this? who will hearken and hear for the time to come?
24 Who gave Jacob for a spoil, and Israel to the robbers? did not the LORD, he against whom we have sinned? for they would not walk in his ways, neither were they obedient unto his law.
25 Therefore he hath poured upon him the fury of his anger, and the strength of battle: and it hath set him on fire round about, yet he knew not; and it burned him, yet he laid it not to heart.

Isaiah 44:1
Yet now hear, O Jacob my servant; and Israel, whom I have chosen

The next example is like this but even stranger. Here Matthew is about to quote a passage from Isaiah, that when you look at it, seems to be describing someone being punished for someone else's sins. The "suffering servant" passage contains many parallels with the passion narrative. Isaiah tells the reader that his subject was "wounded for our transgressions", "bruised for our iniquities", and "with his stripes we are healed" all of which match eerily well with things that would later be said about Jesus.

Isaiah 53:1-8
1 Who hath believed our report? and to whom is the arm of the LORD revealed?
2 For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground: he hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him.
3 He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not.
4 Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.
5 But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.
6 All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the LORD hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.
7 He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth: he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth.
8 He was taken from prison and from judgment: and who shall declare his generation? for he was cut off out of the land of the living: for the transgression of my people was he stricken.

Here we have the one passage in the entire old testament which most sounds like it actually should be talking about Jesus, and Matthew puts it in completely the wrong place.

Matthew 8:14-17
14 And when Jesus was come into Peter's house, he saw his wife's mother laid, and sick of a fever.
15 And he touched her hand, and the fever left her: and she arose, and ministered unto them.
16 When the even was come, they brought unto him many that were possessed with devils: and he cast out the spirits with his word, and healed all that were sick:
17 That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Esaias the prophet, saying, Himself took our infirmities, and bare our sicknesses.

Yeah, according to Matthew, the thing that Jesus did which fulfilled all that stuff about carrying our sorrows and being bruised for our iniquities, was not being crucified (or as John might say, being crucified for our sins). It was healing some random people at Peter's house. He doesn't mention this at all in his account of the crucifixion.

Since Matthew has cited this passage as being fulfilled by Jesus hanging out at Peter's house casting out spirits and healing people, and we can clearly see Isaiah 53 would not be fulfilled by Jesus doing that, we can just call this one wrong. So I'm not going to quote the three chapters of Isaiah I would need to include to really show you "who" the suffering servant here is, but if you turn to this verse...

Isaiah 52:2
Shake thyself from the dust; arise, and sit down, O Jerusalem: loose thyself from the bands of thy neck, O captive daughter of Zion.

...and then read straight through until you get to this verse...

Isaiah 54:12
And I will make thy windows of agates, and thy gates of carbuncles, and all thy borders of pleasant stones.

...it should be made pretty clear to you that the suffering servant Isaiah refers to is Israel (and this is not the only occasion where Isaiah anthopomorphizes Israel).

Matthew rounds out Chapter 3 with John baptizing Jesus, then the spirit leads Jesus out into the wilderness to fast and argue with Satan. Their discussion centers around old testament passages but none of it directly relates to our subtopic, so we can skip that part. Matthew's next Isaiah quote comes right after this scene.

Matthew 4:12-16
12 Now when Jesus had heard that John was cast into prison, he departed into Galilee;
13 And leaving Nazareth, he came and dwelt in Capernaum, which is upon the sea coast, in the borders of Zabulon and Nephthalim:
14 That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Esaias the prophet, saying,
15 The land of Zabulon, and the land of Nephthalim, by the way of the sea, beyond Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles;
16 The people which sat in darkness saw great light; and to them which sat in the region and shadow of death light is sprung up.

Matthew's prophecy fulfillment scheme here is already a non sequitor. Jesus going to Capernaum fulfilled "The people which sat in darkness saw great light"? Still let's take a look at the prophecy in question. It is from Isaiah 9. As you might suspect if you remember our reading of Isaiah 7 and 8 from a moment ago, this is a continuation of Isaiah’s predictions on the child that would be born as a sign to King Ahaz. Lest we forget, and think he is speaking of someone else, Isaiah reminds us in verses 11 and 12.

Isaiah 9:11-12
11 Therefore the LORD shall set up the adversaries of Rezin against him, and join his enemies together;
12 The Syrians before, and the Philistines behind; and they shall devour Israel with open mouth. For all this his anger is not turned away, but his hand is stretched out still.

That is why Matthew is wrong in saying this passage is about Jesus. Not because Matthew gets a couple words wrong. But because this passage is already about the same guy as Isaiah 7:14, who as we've previously established, is not Jesus. Before we get back to Jesus lighting up Capernaum, let me also remind you that the king referred to here, Rezin of Syria, actually defeated Ahaz of Judah, according to 2nd Chronicles 28. Thus casting into question anything that Isaiah foretold as a “sign” of King Ahaz’ impending victory over King Pekah and King Rezin.

It should be noted that there are some significant differences between the Septuagint's version of Isaiah 9, and the King James version. The objection has been raised that Matthew 4 is not exactly a misquote if compared to the Septuagint version of Isaiah 9. And to be fair, this is technically true, at least as far as the wording of this particular bit goes. In the LXX, a somewhat more dramatic misquote becomes a semantic difference. But it does not actually change the problem of Matthew claiming that Jesus fulfilled a prophecy which wasn't about Jesus. For the sake of accuracy I guess I should also mention, the part which would imply Jesus literally setting Capernaum on fire and defeating the armies of Syria in combat, also not exactly in the Septuagint.

Isaiah 9:1-5
1 Nevertheless the dimness shall not be such as was in her vexation, when at the first he lightly afflicted the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, and afterward did more grievously afflict her by the way of the sea, beyond Jordan, in Galilee of the nations.
2 The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light: they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined.
3 Thou hast multiplied the nation, and not increased the joy: they joy before thee according to the joy in harvest, and as men rejoice when they divide the spoil.
4 For thou hast broken the yoke of his burden, and the staff of his shoulder, the rod of his oppressor, as in the day of Midian.
5 For every battle of the warrior is with confused noise, and garments rolled in blood; but this shall be with burning and fuel of fire.

Like Jeremiah, Isaiah mixes thick metaphors with obscure regional references from his era. Reading it now a lot of it comes across as pure mome raths. But most of these cryptic phrases were probably meant as specific statements about specific things that were happening around the time this was written. Even now, many of them have specific interpretations which are clearly the most logical interpretation. And most of these specific interpretations tie in pretty well with each other and with what we just read in Isaiah 7 and 8.

It all comes down to that Immanuel bit. "God is with us". That is the prophecy! And while that is a recurring theme of Matthew as well, one of the few things Isaiah does state very clearly is "us"="Judah".

The thing you have to remember is that Isaiah was a professional prophet and worked for the king of Judah. This whole episode is about the prophecy that god is with Judah. "God is with us. God will defeat our enemies. God will protect his people. God is with us. Immanuel."

Even the part about god being born is consistent with this (it is also consistent with the general tone of royal birth announcements throughout history). Still it is odd that Matthew does not exactly claim this bit in relation to the birth of Jesus. It would make well more sense than some examples he's already used.

Only three verses into the next chapter, the anonymous author of Matthew makes another Isaiah related error, this one in reference to Jesus’ cousin John.

Matthew 3:3
For this is he that was spoken of by the prophet Esaias, saying, The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.

The verse referred to here is Isaiah 40:3.

In Mark's version of this quote, the lesser claim "as it is written in the prophets" is used instead of "this is he that was spoken of by the prophet". And Mark combines Isaiah 40:3 and Malachi 3:1 into one run-on sentence that it seems to consider one prophecy.

Mark 1:1-4
 1 The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God;
 2 As it is written in the prophets, Behold, I send my messenger before thy face, which shall prepare thy way before thee.
 3 The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.
 4 John did baptize in the wilderness, and preach the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins.

Malachi 3:1-2
1 Behold, I will send my messenger, and he shall prepare the way before me: and the LORD, whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to his temple, even the messenger of the covenant, whom ye delight in: behold, he shall come, saith the LORD of hosts.
2 But who may abide the day of his coming? and who shall stand when he appeareth? for he is like a refiner's fire, and like fullers' soap:

Isaiah 40:2-3
2 Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry unto her, that her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned: for she hath received of the LORD's hand double for all her sins.
3 The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the LORD, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.

If this was a prophecy, it would be a fittingly vague and nonsensical one for (Second) Isaiah and John the Baptist. But this line in itself does not even really appear to be of a predictive nature. Also it is obviously a sentence fragment. By adding a little context it becomes this.

Isaiah 40:1-6
1 Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God.
2 Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry unto her, that her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned: for she hath received of the LORD's hand double for all her sins.
3 The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the LORD, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.
4 Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low: and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain:
5 And the glory of the LORD shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together: for the mouth of the LORD hath spoken it.
6 The voice said, Cry. And he said, What shall I cry? All flesh is grass, and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field:

These verses mark the beginning of what has been identified as Second Isaiah. At this point the language changes, the message changes, and the narrative suddenly skips forward about one hundred and fifty years. By the end of Isaiah 44 the same guy who went to visit Ahaz is talking about Cyrus.

Isaiah 44:28-45:2
28 That saith of Cyrus, He is my shepherd, and shall perform all my pleasure: even saying to Jerusalem, Thou shalt be built; and to the temple, Thy foundation shall be laid.
1 Thus saith the LORD to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have holden, to subdue nations before him; and I will loose the loins of kings, to open before him the two leaved gates; and the gates shall not be shut;
2 I will go before thee, and make the crooked places straight: I will break in pieces the gates of brass, and cut in sunder the bars of iron:

And that right there would be a really really big clue that Isaiah was not entirely written by one person. And if scholars are right about the authorship break, the person speaking here would not be the prophet Esaias (if this is the case it would mean Jesus [via Matthew] is wrong in attributing it to Esaias).

Whatever the author is referring to by "the crooked shall be made straight" he repeats this in reference to Cyrus (we also see Cyrus referred to as god's "anointed"). If the author of Isaiah 40 was a jewish prophet who lived in the time of Cyrus, there would in fact be one huge event which happened around then and would definitely call for some prophecy. An event that you might see accompanied by a statement like "prepare the way of YHVH, make straight in the desert a highway for god" (an event that Jeremiah described with a very similar phrase in the passage we looked at earlier).

So, what happened in the time of Cyrus that Isaiah could have been talking about?

Ezra 1:1-5
1 Now in the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, that the word of the LORD by the mouth of Jeremiah might be fulfilled, the LORD stirred up the spirit of Cyrus king of Persia, that he made a proclamation throughout all his kingdom, and put it also in writing, saying,
2 Thus saith Cyrus king of Persia, The LORD God of heaven hath given me all the kingdoms of the earth; and he hath charged me to build him an house at Jerusalem, which is in Judah.
3 Who is there among you of all his people? his God be with him, and let him go up to Jerusalem, which is in Judah, and build the house of the LORD God of Israel, (he is the God,) which is in Jerusalem.
4 And whosoever remaineth in any place where he sojourneth, let the men of his place help him with silver, and with gold, and with goods, and with beasts, beside the freewill offering for the house of God that is in Jerusalem.
5 Then rose up the chief of the fathers of Judah and Benjamin, and the priests, and the Levites, with all them whose spirit God had raised, to go up to build the house of the LORD which is in Jerusalem.

Whichever Isaiah this is, it would appear that he is referring to the return from exile and the rebuilding of the temple (if Second Isaiah were counted as a separate book, most of it is about this). Whichever Isaiah this is, it would also appear that the voice he is referring to is himself, and not that of John the Baptist.

It is also worth noting that the hebrew word which would be translated as "anointed" in Isaiah 45:1 is "mashiach", as in "anointed", as in "thus saith the lord to his messiah, to Cyrus" (if that made no sense at all, look up what "messiah" literally means). Of course that in itself doesn't tell us anything. Any king or high priest in israeli history could be referred to as an anointed one. But it was the edict of Cyrus that put an end to the jewish exile, a significant part of what the messiah was supposed to do.

Admittedly this one is not the strongest example of a passage that clearly isn't talking about Jesus (well, John, but you get what I mean). It is however not any kind of example of a passage which clearly is talking about Jesus (or John). Not clear either way due to vague cryptic language is as close to fulfillment as we'll see in any of these prophecies. We will see no examples at all of things the old testament actually says Jesus would do that the new testament actually says Jesus did. The next couple examples are rather vague as well. "Matthew 4:14-16 misquotes Isaiah 9:1-2" is still true, but in retrospect it's not a sentence I should have just put out there without any explanation.

In closing his 2nd chapter, the author of Matthew tells us:

Matthew 2:23
And he came and dwelt in a city called Nazareth: that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophets, He shall be called a Nazarene.

There is one slight problem here. There is absolutely no statement, prophetic or otherwise, anywhere in the old testament that Jesus, or anyone for that matter “shall be called a Nazarene”. The passage the author of Matthew is attempting to quote here is Judges 13:5, which says that Samson will be a nazarite (not at all the same thing as a nazarene").

Judges 13:5
For, lo, thou shalt conceive, and bear a son; and no razor shall come on his head: for the child shall be a Nazarite unto God from the womb: and he shall begin to deliver Israel out of the hand of the Philistines.

In case it isn't clear from that verse, one does not become a nazarite when their dad moves them to Nazareth. One becomes a nazarite by among other things, being born into a specific line of the tribe of Levi, never cutting their hair, and of course never drinking wine. That last one seems to clash with some other anecdotes about Jesus, but let's check back with Judges 13 and see if this might still be referring to a nazarene.

Judges 13:24
And the woman bare a son, and called his name Samson: and the child grew, and the LORD blessed him.

Two chapters into the first gospel, and we've got zero right out of five. In apologetics circles, this phenomenon is known as inerrancy.

Next let's look at Matthew 2:15-18 which quotes Hosea 11:1 and Jeremiah 31:15.

Matthew 2:14-18
14 When he arose, he took the young child and his mother by night, and departed into Egypt:
15 And was there until the death of Herod: that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying, Out of Egypt have I called my son.
16 Then Herod, when he saw that he was mocked of the wise men, was exceeding wroth, and sent forth, and slew all the children that were in Bethlehem, and in all the coasts thereof, from two years old and under, according to the time which he had diligently inquired of the wise men.
17 Then was fulfilled that which was spoken by Jeremiah the prophet, saying,
18 In Rama was there a voice heard, lamentation, and weeping, and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be comforted, because they are not.

Let’s look at Jeremiah’s verse first.

Jeremiah 31:15
Thus saith the LORD; A voice was heard in Ramah, lamentation, and bitter weeping; Rachel weeping for her children refused to be comforted for her children, because they were not.

So Jeremiah predicted that Herod would kill all the children in Bethlehem? You’d think the people of Bethlehem, being mostly jewish might have gotten wind of this prophecy and chosen to settle elsewhere thus saving their children. Let’s see what useful details Jeremiah provided in his warning to the families of Bethlehem.

Jeremiah 31:16-17
16 Thus saith the LORD; Refrain thy voice from weeping, and thine eyes from tears: for thy work shall be rewarded, saith the LORD; and they shall come again from the land of the enemy.
17 And there is hope in thine end, saith the LORD, that thy children shall come again to their own border.

So...the dead children are going to come back?

Jeremiah 31:10-21
10 Hear the word of the LORD, O ye nations, and declare it in the isles afar off, and say, He that scattered Israel will gather him, and keep him, as a shepherd doth his flock.
11 For the LORD hath redeemed Jacob, and ransomed him from the hand of him that was stronger than he.
12 Therefore they shall come and sing in the height of Zion, and shall flow together to the goodness of the LORD, for wheat, and for wine, and for oil, and for the young of the flock and of the herd: and their soul shall be as a watered garden; and they shall not sorrow any more at all.
13 Then shall the virgin rejoice in the dance, both young men and old together: for I will turn their mourning into joy, and will comfort them, and make them rejoice from their sorrow.
14 And I will satiate the soul of the priests with fatness, and my people shall be satisfied with my goodness, saith the LORD.
15 Thus saith the LORD; A voice was heard in Ramah, lamentation, and bitter weeping; Rahel weeping for her children refused to be comforted for her children, because they were not.
16 Thus saith the LORD; Refrain thy voice from weeping, and thine eyes from tears: for thy work shall be rewarded, saith the LORD; and they shall come again from the land of the enemy.
17 And there is hope in thine end, saith the LORD, that thy children shall come again to their own border.
18 I have surely heard Ephraim bemoaning himself thus; Thou hast chastised me, and I was chastised, as a bullock unaccustomed to the yoke: turn thou me, and I shall be turned; for thou art the LORD my God.
19 Surely after that I was turned, I repented; and after that I was instructed, I smote upon my thigh: I was ashamed, yea, even confounded, because I did bear the reproach of my youth.
20 Is Ephraim my dear son? is he a pleasant child? for since I spake against him, I do earnestly remember him still: therefore my bowels are troubled for him; I will surely have mercy upon him, saith the LORD.
21 Set thee up waymarks, make thee high heaps: set thine heart toward the highway, even the way which thou wentest: turn again, O virgin of Israel, turn again to these thy cities.

As he tends to do, Jeremiah makes thick use of figurative language here. But I think we could reasonably conclude this passage makes absolutely no f*cking sense whatsoever if it is attempting to describe Herod killing all the children under two years old in Bethlehem, and a lot more sense if it is describing the jewish exile, which is one of the main topics Jeremiah talks about throughout the whole book.

It is is also the exact topic Jeremiah explicitly tells us he is talking about right before this.

Jeremiah 30:1-4
1 The word that came to Jeremiah from the LORD, saying,
2 Thus speaketh the LORD God of Israel, saying, Write thee all the words that I have spoken unto thee in a book.
3 For, lo, the days come, saith the LORD, that I will bring again the captivity of my people Israel and Judah, saith the LORD: and I will cause them to return to the land that I gave to their fathers, and they shall possess it.
4 And these are the words that the LORD spake concerning Israel and concerning Judah.

As for “that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying, Out of Egypt have I called my son”, this verse was not even a prophecy. In it’s original context, Hosea 11:1 is a past tense statement which specifically refers to the Israelites leaving Egypt in the book of Exodus.

Hosea 11:1
When Israel was a child, then I loved him, and called my son out of Egypt.

“When Israel was a child, then I loved him, and called my son out of Egypt”.

That is pretty self-evidently not a prophecy that Joseph would bring Jesus out of Egypt after the death of Herod. But let's check Hosea anyway.

Hosea 11:1-7
 1 When Israel was a child, then I loved him, and called my son out of Egypt.
 2 As they called them, so they went from them: they sacrificed unto Baalim, and burned incense to graven images.
3 I taught Ephraim also to go, taking them by their arms; but they knew not that I healed them.
4 I drew them with cords of a man, with bands of love: and I was to them as they that take off the yoke on their jaws, and I laid meat unto them.
5 He shall not return into the land of Egypt, and the Assyrian shall be his king, because they refused to return.
6 And the sword shall abide on his cities, and shall consume his branches, and devour them, because of their own counsels.
7 And my people are bent to backsliding from me: though they called them to the most High, none at all would exalt him.

So is Matthew telling us that Jesus “sacrificed unto Baalim” and “burned incense to graven images”? There were some israelites in the old testament who “sacrificed unto Baalim”, after god had called his son “Israel”, out of Egypt. As I recall, yhvh was quite upset about this. But there's absolutely nowhere in any of the gospels where we see Jesus doing anything similar.

If one was completely unaware of the concept of the jewish messiah, then read the new testament, and checked the new testament's quotes in the old testament, but had not read the rest of the old testament, the most reasonable conclusion they could come up with from that data is that the concept of messiah was made up whole cloth by the early christians and appears nowhere in the jewish scriptures. Of course this would be an entirely logical conclusion given that this concept doesn't appear in most of the places Matthew claims. But if someone did conclude this, they would be incorrect.

Here's an example of a old testament passage that for some reason none of the gospels mention, which clearly is intended in its original context to be a prediction of this messiah character. As we read these passages, ask yourself what sort of kingdom is being described and does any of this sound anything like Jesus.

Jeremiah 23:3-8
3 And I will gather the remnant of my flock out of all countries whither I have driven them, and will bring them again to their folds; and they shall be fruitful and increase.
4 And I will set up shepherds over them which shall feed them: and they shall fear no more, nor be dismayed, neither shall they be lacking, saith the LORD.
5 Behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that I will raise unto David a righteous Branch, and a King shall reign and prosper, and shall execute judgment and justice in the earth.
6 In his days Judah shall be saved, and Israel shall dwell safely: and this is his name whereby he shall be called, THE LORD OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS.
7 Therefore, behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that they shall no more say, The LORD liveth, which brought up the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt;
8 But, The LORD liveth, which brought up and which led the seed of the house of Israel out of the north country, and from all countries whither I had driven them; and they shall dwell in their own land.

Here's another one.

Ezekiel 34:23-30
23 And I will set up one shepherd over them, and he shall feed them, even my servant David; he shall feed them, and he shall be their shepherd.
24 And I the LORD will be their God, and my servant David a prince among them; I the LORD have spoken it.
25 And I will make with them a covenant of peace, and will cause the evil beasts to cease out of the land: and they shall dwell safely in the wilderness, and sleep in the woods.
26 And I will make them and the places round about my hill a blessing; and I will cause the shower to come down in his season; there shall be showers of blessing.
27 And the tree of the field shall yield her fruit, and the earth shall yield her increase, and they shall be safe in their land, and shall know that I am the LORD, when I have broken the bands of their yoke, and delivered them out of the hand of those that served themselves of them.
28 And they shall no more be a prey to the heathen, neither shall the beast of the land devour them; but they shall dwell safely, and none shall make them afraid.
29 And I will raise up for them a plant of renown, and they shall be no more consumed with hunger in the land, neither bear the shame of the heathen any more.
30 Thus shall they know that I the LORD their God am with them, and that they, even the house of Israel, are my people, saith the Lord GOD.

Are you starting to notice that recurring theme yet?

Isaiah 11:10-14
10 And in that day there shall be a root of Jesse, which shall stand for an ensign of the people; to it shall the Gentiles seek: and his rest shall be glorious.
11 And it shall come to pass in that day, that the Lord shall set his hand again the second time to recover the remnant of his people, which shall be left, from Assyria, and from Egypt, and from Pathros, and from Cush, and from Elam, and from Shinar, and from Hamath, and from the islands of the sea.
12 And he shall set up an ensign for the nations, and shall assemble the outcasts of Israel, and gather together the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth.
13 The envy also of Ephraim shall depart, and the adversaries of Judah shall be cut off: Ephraim shall not envy Judah, and Judah shall not vex Ephraim.
14 But they shall fly upon the shoulders of the Philistines toward the west; they shall spoil them of the east together: they shall lay their hand upon Edom and Moab; and the children of Ammon shall obey them.

How about now?

Jeremiah 30:7-10
7 Alas! for that day is great, so that none is like it: it is even the time of Jacob's trouble, but he shall be saved out of it.
8 For it shall come to pass in that day, saith the LORD of hosts, that I will break his yoke from off thy neck, and will burst thy bonds, and strangers shall no more serve themselves of him:
9 But they shall serve the LORD their God, and David their king, whom I will raise up unto them.
10 Therefore fear thou not, O my servant Jacob, saith the LORD; neither be dismayed, O Israel: for, lo, I will save thee from afar, and thy seed from the land of their captivity; and Jacob shall return, and shall be in rest, and be quiet, and none shall make him afraid.

Zephaniah:3:11-20
11 In that day shalt thou not be ashamed for all thy doings, wherein thou hast transgressed against me: for then I will take away out of the midst of thee them that rejoice in thy pride, and thou shalt no more be haughty because of my holy mountain.
12 I will also leave in the midst of thee an afflicted and poor people, and they shall trust in the name of the LORD.
13 The remnant of Israel shall not do iniquity, nor speak lies; neither shall a deceitful tongue be found in their mouth: for they shall feed and lie down, and none shall make them afraid.
14 Sing, O daughter of Zion; shout, O Israel; be glad and rejoice with all the heart, O daughter of Jerusalem.
15 The LORD hath taken away thy judgments, he hath cast out thine enemy: the king of Israel, even the LORD, is in the midst of thee: thou shalt not see evil any more.
16 In that day it shall be said to Jerusalem, Fear thou not: and to Zion, Let not thine hands be slack.
17 The LORD thy God in the midst of thee is mighty; he will save, he will rejoice over thee with joy; he will rest in his love, he will joy over thee with singing.
18 I will gather them that are sorrowful for the solemn assembly, who are of thee, to whom the reproach of it was a burden.
19 Behold, at that time I will undo all that afflict thee: and I will save her that halteth, and gather her that was driven out; and I will get them praise and fame in every land where they have been put to shame.
20 At that time will I bring you again, even in the time that I gather you: for I will make you a name and a praise among all people of the earth, when I turn back your captivity before your eyes, saith the LORD.

Hosea 3:4-5
4 For the children of Israel shall abide many days without a king, and without a prince, and without a sacrifice, and without an image, and without an ephod, and without teraphim:
5 Afterward shall the children of Israel return, and seek the LORD their God, and David their king; and shall fear the LORD and his goodness in the latter days.

Ezekiel 37:24-28
24 And David my servant shall be king over them; and they all shall have one shepherd: they shall also walk in my judgments, and observe my statutes, and do them.
25 And they shall dwell in the land that I have given unto Jacob my servant, wherein your fathers have dwelt; and they shall dwell therein, even they, and their children, and their children's children for ever: and my servant David shall be their prince for ever.
26 Moreover I will make a covenant of peace with them; it shall be an everlasting covenant with them: and I will place them, and multiply them, and will set my sanctuary in the midst of them for evermore.
27 My tabernacle also shall be with them: yea, I will be their God, and they shall be my people.
28 And the heathen shall know that I the LORD do sanctify Israel, when my sanctuary shall be in the midst of them for evermore.

The old testament prophets speak at length about this king from David and the earthly kingdom he will create. But one thing they make absolutely no mention of is the specifically (though not uniquely) christian idea of god sending his son to die as a sacrifice for the sin of mankind.

In turn, while the gospel authors attempt to turn many random phrases from the old testament into predictions about the messiah, they make absolutely no mention of any of these passages. Aside from the Micah quote we just saw, and the Zechariah quote coming up later, they make no mention of any of the twenty or so passages in the old testament that explicitly are predictions about the messiah figure who was already part of jewish mythology before Jesus entered the picture (possibly because most of them were concerned with the building or restoring of a physical kingdom of Israel which Jesus notably failed to fulfill).

The new testament authors do mention something which is eerily related.

Matthew 2:2
Saying, Where is he that is born King of the Jews? for we have seen his star in the east, and are come to worship him.

John 19:19-21
19 And Pilate wrote a title, and put it on the cross. And the writing was JESUS OF NAZARETH THE KING OF THE JEWS.
20 This title then read many of the Jews: for the place where Jesus was crucified was nigh to the city: and it was written in Hebrew, and Greek, and Latin.
21 Then said the chief priests of the Jews to Pilate, Write not, The King of the Jews; but that he said, I am King of the Jews.

If Jesus was not the king of the jews, then what would it even mean to say Jesus was the messiah?

On a quick side note here, Bethlehem Ephratah is probably not even referring to the city of Bethlehem, but the clan of Bethlehem Ephrath of the judeans.

1st Chronicles 2:3
The sons of Judah; Er, and Onan, and Shelah: which three were born unto him of the daughter of Shua the Canaanitess. And Er, the firstborn of Judah, was evil in the sight of the LORD; and he slew him.

1st Chronicles 2:19
And when Azubah was dead, Caleb took unto him Ephrath, which bare him Hur.

1st Chronicles 2:51
Salma the father of Bethlehem, Hareph the father of Bethgader.

1st Samuel 16:1
And the LORD said unto Samuel, How long wilt thou mourn for Saul, seeing I have rejected him from reigning over Israel? fill thine horn with oil, and go, I will send thee to Jesse the Bethlehemite: for I have provided me a king among his sons.

So when Micah says "thou, Bethlehem Ephratah, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth" it seems slightly more likely that he is saying this ruler will come from a small and seemingly insignificant clan than that he will be born in a specific location.

It would appear that the author of Matthew (who by the way, never identifies himself as the apostle Matthew and only refers to Matthew in the third person) is not particularly familiar with the passages he is quoting, or with the history of the region he is writing about. There are in fact, three more incorrect references to the old testament within this same chapter.

In the 2nd chapter of this gospel, Herod, the local ruler is trying to find out the location of christ. He consults the jewish scholars and they quote to him Micah 5:2. Let's first look at the passage in Matthew and then we will check out Micah 5.

Matthew 2:4-6
4 And when he had gathered all the chief priests and scribes of the people together, he demanded of them where Christ should be born.
5 And they said unto him, In Bethlehem of Judaea: for thus it is written by the prophet,
6 And thou Bethlehem, in the land of Juda, art not the least among the princes of Juda: for out of thee shall come a Governor, that shall rule my people Israel.

You may notice that in this example the Micah reference comes from a character and not the narrator. So the book of Matthew is not technically exactly saying that Micah was referring to Jesus, or that Jesus fulfilled this part. But it is the obvious implication. And for their part the chief priests are right. Micah does say the messiah will be of Bethlehem. The problem here is that Micah says a couple other things as well. You may also notice that of all the old testament passages the gospels claim as messianic prophecies, this is the only one that really reads like a messianic prophecy in it's proper context.

Micah 5:1-6
1 Now gather thyself in troops, O daughter of troops: he hath laid siege against us: they shall smite the judge of Israel with a rod upon the cheek.
 2 But thou, Bethlehem Ephratah, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel; whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting.
 3 Therefore will he give them up, until the time that she which travaileth hath brought forth: then the remnant of his brethren shall return unto the children of Israel.
 4 And he shall stand and feed in the strength of the LORD, in the majesty of the name of the LORD his God; and they shall abide: for now shall he be great unto the ends of the earth.
 5 And this man shall be the peace, when the Assyrian shall come into our land: and when he shall tread in our palaces, then shall we raise against him seven shepherds, and eight principal men.
 6 And they shall waste the land of Assyria with the sword, and the land of Nimrod in the entrances thereof: thus shall he deliver us from the Assyrian, when he cometh into our land, and when he treadeth within our borders.

So Jesus was supposed to deliver the jews from the assyrians? Weren’t the jews of Jesus’ time more concerned with the romans? It's hard to imagine how the Assyrians could really be much of a problem for anyone after about 600 BC.

Where in the new testament do Jesus and his disciples waste the land of Assyria with the sword? I don't remember that part at all.

It has been said by christians recently, by those who wrote the new testament, and possibly by Jesus that his kingdom is not of this world, and that the jews were in error to look for a literal king.

This is one of the reasons that Jews give for not believing Jesus was the messiah. It isn't just Micah that suggests the messiah was supposed to be a military leader. The entire point of the messiah concept in it's old testament form, is this is supposed to be a guy who restores the kingdom of David, and drives out Israel's enemies. It is true enough that christians and their book have stated it was the mistake of the jews to look for a messiah who would build a literal physical kingdom in the real world. But the jews were not wrong to look for a messiah who would build a physical kingdom in the real world. That's exactly what they were told to be looking for.

The concept of the messiah is mostly the product of a time when the jews were getting ruled by a series of foreign occupiers. They'd been getting their ass kicked for awhile now, but many of them still remembered the (probably vastly exaggerated) stories of the former glory of Israel. As at most times in their history, the jewish people comforted themselves with their silly tribal stories. Some prophets prophesied the kingdom would be restored. A king would sit on the throne of David, bring the people back to their land and restore the kingdom. That is where all this business about the messiah started in the first place. That is the basic premise of the messiah. After christianity got into the messiah business, many connotations of a son of god or a sacrifice for our sins were added to the concept of god's anointed. But the original jewish concept of the messiah can not be discussed meaningfully separate from a literal king of the jews.

Most of the passages we'll be looking at here are not actually prophecies about the messiah. Most are simply random phrases the gospel authors picked to sound like something about Jesus. But some old testament passages, are prophecies about the messiah. Different authors say different things about the anointed one. Some say he will be descended from David (ever wondered why the gospels go so far out of their way to claim Jesus' stepfather Joseph was descended from David). Some say he will end the exile and return the people to the land (Judas Maccabeus, Theodor Herzl, and David Ben-Gurion each have a better record than Jesus for fulfilling prophecies of the messiah). Some say he will drive out the enemies of yhvh. Some say he will rebuild the temple. But there is one common recurring theme tying together all these prophecies of the anointed.

Matthew 1:18-23
18 Now the birth of Jesus Christ was on this wise: When as his mother Mary was espoused to Joseph, before they came together, she was found with child of the Holy Ghost.
19 Then Joseph her husband, being a just man, and not willing to make her a public example, was minded to put her away privily.
20 But while he thought on these things, behold, the angel of the LORD appeared unto him in a dream, saying, Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife: for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost.
21 And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name JESUS: for he shall save his people from their sins.
22 Now all this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying,
23 Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us.

Now the most straightforward reading of this passage, is that Jesus was born of a virgin, and that this was done that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying 'Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel'. And in turning to the old testament, we see that a prophet does make a similar statement.

Isaiah 7:14
Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.

At first glance this would appear to be a match. Virgin conceiving. Immanuel. If we simply read this one verse out of context it would seem to probably be talking about whatever Matthew 1:23 is talking about, which based only on those details mentioned so far would seem to probably be Jesus.

But what was that part about a sign?

Isaiah 7:1-17
1 And it came to pass in the days of Ahaz the son of Jotham, the son of Uzziah, king of Judah, that Rezin the king of Syria, and Pekah the son of Remaliah, king of Israel, went up toward Jerusalem to war against it, but could not prevail against it.
2 And it was told the house of David, saying, Syria is confederate with Ephraim. And his heart was moved, and the heart of his people, as the trees of the wood are moved with the wind.
3 Then said the LORD unto Isaiah, Go forth now to meet Ahaz, thou, and Shearjashub thy son, at the end of the conduit of the upper pool in the highway of the fuller's field;
4 And say unto him, Take heed, and be quiet; fear not, neither be fainthearted for the two tails of these smoking firebrands, for the fierce anger of Rezin with Syria, and of the son of Remaliah.
5 Because Syria, Ephraim, and the son of Remaliah, have taken evil counsel against thee, saying,
6 Let us go up against Judah, and vex it, and let us make a breach therein for us, and set a king in the midst of it, even the son of Tabeal:
7 Thus saith the Lord GOD, It shall not stand, neither shall it come to pass.
8 For the head of Syria is Damascus, and the head of Damascus is Rezin; and within threescore and five years shall Ephraim be broken, that it be not a people.
9 And the head of Ephraim is Samaria, and the head of Samaria is Remaliah's son. If ye will not believe, surely ye shall not be established.
10 Moreover the LORD spake again unto Ahaz, saying,
11 Ask thee a sign of the LORD thy God; ask it either in the depth, or in the height above.
12 But Ahaz said, I will not ask, neither will I tempt the LORD.
13 And he said, Hear ye now, O house of David; Is it a small thing for you to weary men, but will ye weary my God also?
14 Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.
15 Butter and honey shall he eat, that he may know to refuse the evil, and choose the good.
16 For before the child shall know to refuse the evil, and choose the good, the land that thou abhorrest shall be forsaken of both her kings.
17 The LORD shall bring upon thee, and upon thy people, and upon thy father's house, days that have not come, from the day that Ephraim departed from Judah; even the king of Assyria.

Wait I thought this story was supposed to be about Jesus.

If I told you that I had a word from god, that the Seattle Mariners were going to win this year's World Series, and that I could prove to you that this message was not only true, but was an authentic message from the creator of the Universe, and that my proof to you about this outcome is that seven hundred years in the future a baby will be born with two heads, would you consider this a ‘sign’? I would think that despite the miraculous nature of the claim, a sign that you could never possibly see is not a sign to you.

If Isaiah is offering a sign to King Ahaz, Jesus can't be the sign.

The reason Jesus is disqualified from this prophecy is not because it can only apply one time to one person. Jesus is disqualified from this prophecy because it can only apply to someone born seven hundred years before Jesus.

There has been much debate for centuries about Isaiah 7:14. Most of it focused on the fact that the author of Isaiah used the hebrew word, “almah” which would more accurately be rendered as “young woman”, rather than “bethulah”, which specifically means “virgin”. This is irrelevant to whether Isaiah was talking about Mary, but a little further examination of context may shed some light on whether he meant "virgin".

Isaiah 8:1-6
1 Moreover the LORD said unto me, Take thee a great roll, and write in it with a man's pen concerning Mahershalalhashbaz.
 2 And I took unto me faithful witnesses to record, Uriah the priest, and Zechariah the son of Jeberechiah.
 3 And I went unto the prophetess; and she conceived, and bare a son. Then said the LORD to me, Call his name Mahershalalhashbaz.
 4 For before the child shall have knowledge to cry, My father, and my mother, the riches of Damascus and the spoil of Samaria shall be taken away before the king of Assyria.
 5 The LORD spake also unto me again, saying,
 6 Forasmuch as this people refuseth the waters of Shiloah that go softly, and rejoice in Rezin and Remaliah's son;

Verses 4 and 6 confirm that we're still talking about the child from Isaiah 7. And verse 3 basically tells us the narrator fathered this child himself. And that his name was not Jesus, but Mahershalalhashbaz. A fine jewish name to be sure, but where the f*ck is Jesus in this story?

But let's get back to the prophecy. The birth of the child is not the prophecy here. It is only meant to be a sign to verify that what is prophesied in Isaiah 7 is true. As you recall Isaiah told King Ahaz of Judah that he would be victorious against the two kings which came against him. Rezin the king of Syria, and Pekah the son of Remaliah, king of Israel. (For those of you who are confused by one of the tribes of Israel being at war with Israel, this was during the period when Judah was a separate kingdom. You can read about the Israeli civil war in more detail in the book of 2nd Chronicles).

The writer of Isaiah does not tell us whether Isaiah's prediction came true or not. But 2nd Chronicles 28 gives us an account of this battle which tells us among other things that:

2nd Chronicles 28:1-8
1 Ahaz was twenty years old when he began to reign, and he reigned sixteen years in Jerusalem: but he did not that which was right in the sight of the LORD, like David his father:
2 For he walked in the ways of the kings of Israel, and made also molten images for Baalim.
3 Moreover he burnt incense in the valley of the son of Hinnom, and burnt his children in the fire, after the abominations of the heathen whom the LORD had cast out before the children of Israel.
4 He sacrificed also and burnt incense in the high places, and on the hills, and under every green tree.
5 Wherefore the LORD his God delivered him into the hand of the king of Syria; and they smote him, and carried away a great multitude of them captives, and brought them to Damascus. And he was also delivered into the hand of the king of Israel, who smote him with a great slaughter.
6 For Pekah the son of Remaliah slew in Judah an hundred and twenty thousand in one day, which were all valiant men; because they had forsaken the LORD God of their fathers.
7 And Zichri, a mighty man of Ephraim, slew Maaseiah the king's son, and Azrikam the governor of the house, and Elkanah that was next to the king.
8 And the children of Israel carried away captive of their brethren two hundred thousand, women, sons, and daughters, and took also away much spoil from them, and brought the spoil to Samaria.

2nd Chronicles 28:27
And Ahaz slept with his fathers, and they buried him in the city, even in Jerusalem: but they brought him not into the sepulchres of the kings of Israel: and Hezekiah his son reigned in his stead.

The most straightforward reading of this passage is that Ahaz lost the sh*t out of this battle and was killed shortly afterward.

So, having already established that this passage was not intended to refer to Jesus, we have now also seen that it was not even accurate within the original context (if anyone wishes to argue for inerrancy by pointing out that 2nd Kings 16 gives a conflicting account of these events, you are of course free to do so, but I'm not sure it will help your case).

But hey, one failed prophecy and one gross mistranslation of the tanakh don’t disprove divine inspiration, right? I mean, the holy spirit is only human. Maybe it was some sort of copying error. I’m sure an all powerful god would totally let that happen to his word.

But of course, that would apply less if there were other prophecies the new testament incorrectly claims Jesus fulfilled. And each subsequent prophetic failure would give us cumulatively less reason to think the old testament is a book of prophecies pointing to Jesus (or that the new testament is accurate in general, but as I said that's not my immediate topic here).

It's only seven verses later when it happens again.

In this brief bible study I intend to demonstrate two points. First, that the new testament relies on the old testament to the point of being meaningless without it. And second, that the new testament gets the old testament completely wrong.

And by this I do not merely mean there are contradictions. There are many contradictions between the old and new testaments, but that is only tangentially related to this point. The new testament builds on the foundation of the old testament, quotes the old testament for precedent or proof, several times, and misquotes it nearly every time.

And when I say misquotes I do not merely mean one word or phrase is off (Jus' claim that these are not misquotes in the Septuagint seems to suggest that is what he thought I meant). I mean the new testament completely misrepresents the content of several old testament passages in a sloppy attempt to cram Jesus into them.

When the early christians created their god, they didn't create a god. They took the jewish god, reinvented him according to what was popular with the greeks, and claimed this is what that god had always been (this isn't the only time a new religion has attempted to gain legitimacy by claiming to represent a god people already believed in; see islam, mormonism).

In their attempt to draw legitimacy from the jewish scriptures, the four gospels (especially Matthew) make observably false claims about what other books in the bible say. If the whole book were written by one infallible unchanging superbeing as many suggest, we should not see him misquoting himself so much.

It is a central doxis of christianity that the life of Jesus was the fulfillment of several messianic prophesies in the old testament. Repeatedly throughout the four gospels we see Jesus say or do some thing, and then the narrator tells us Jesus said or did this thing so that something would be fulfilled which was spoken of by the prophets.

The problem here, is that we can actually look up the passages the new testament authors claim to be quoting from and see that not one of these passages is about what Matthew says it is about. Repeatedly the gospels tell us that some event in Jesus’ life was a fulfillment of some old testament prophecy. But when we read the actual ‘prophecies’ it becomes clear that most don't say what they're quoted as saying, none make any mention of Jesus at all, most are clearly about something besides Jesus, most are not even predictions, and the ones which are contain conditions which rule out Jesus.

If the gospels merely claimed some illustrative parallels between Jesus and the old testament, I wouldn't take issue with that at all (in fact I'd probably agree with them). But they go significantly further to actually telling us that Jesus is what Isaiah was originally talking about. This is a much bolder claim than some narrative similarities, and it is with this claim that their mangling of the source material becomes a real problem.

It is also this claim which is central to the idea of the old testament as a book of prophecies pointing to Jesus. There are many passages in the old testament that various christians have interpreted as referring to Jesus (the most ridiculous example I've seen being Genesis 3:15). I won't be covering them all here (except to mention there is not one statement anywhere in the old testament that actually mentions Jesus). Instead I'll be focusing specifically on the old testament passages that the new testament specifically says are about Jesus. I think it's entirely fair to say that if these examples don't hold up, the general concept of the old testament prophesying Jesus does not hold up.

I've not yet mentioned that we have no real evidence Jesus ever even existed let alone did any of the things the new testament says he did. I've also not yet mentioned that the new testament was written sometime after the old testament, and even if the new testament did have Jesus accurately fulfilling prophecies from the old testament, that still wouldn't exactly prove anything since the new testament authors might have had access to the old testament, and could have written those fulfillments in as they saw fit. Both of these points are important, but they are tangential to what I'm trying to illustrate with this post. Besides, I don't need to mention them since the new testament authors do not have Jesus accurately fulfilling prophecies from the old testament. So even though this isn't exactly what they are, for the duration of this exercise I will be treating the new testament as an accurate source of information about what Jesus said and did, and treating the old testament as an accurate source of information about what the old testament says.

To make this a little more concise I’m just going to cover the fourteen examples from Matthew here (fourteen doesn’t include all the misquotes, let alone all the logical contradictions, conflicting teachings and other errors, just misapplied prophecies). Most examples from Mark, Luke, or John (there are not many in John) would be repeats of the same old testament passages I’ll be including here anyway.

The fourteen places in the first gospel that contain this particular type of misquote are:

Matthew 1:22 - Isaiah 7:14

Matthew 2:5 - Micah 5:2 (partial exception - Matthew quotes Micah correctly, the problem is the prophecy itself)

Matthew 2:15 - Hosea 11:1

Matthew 2:18 - Jeremiah 31:15

Matthew 2:23 - Judges 13:5

Matthew 3:3 - Isaiah 40:3

Matthew 4:15 - Isaiah 9:1

Matthew 8:17 - Isaiah 53:5

Matthew 12:17 - Isaiah 42:1

Matthew 13:13 - Isaiah 6:9 (partial exception - a little too cryptic and vague to really be called wrong)

Matthew 13:35 - Psalm 78:2

Matthew 21:5 - Zechariah 9:9

Matthew 27:9 - Zechariah 11:12-14

Matthew 27:35 - Psalm 22:18

Unless specified otherwise all quotes here will be from the King James Bible (the 1769 version) (note to Jus: I know you wanted the Septuagint, and I'll be briefly addressing that, but this post is part of a larger thing I'm doing here, of which the King James Bible is sort of a running theme). I encourage anyone reading to check my quotes. If you check them against a more modern version you will find that cleaned up language aside the bible says what I quote it as saying. If you check my quotes with KJV you will see the exact words as they appear on this page.

I've been meaning to come back and respond to the point about Isaiah. Conveniently my internet went out for a few days around the time I was completely done trying to talk to Carlos anyway. But as luck would have it the idea of the old testament as a prophecy book pointing to Jesus appeared again last week. And again while I was writing this.

My topic for today is not the larger question of whether the bible is accurate. We've been over that. My topic here is specifically this:

"However, it had to happen in order to fulfill the Biblical prophesy and pay for the sin of all who believe."(Chris)

"Jesus Christ was a sign for all His people, the perfect fulfillment of prophecy of Isaiah."(Carlos)

"Because, even if the things written were “made up” by people, intentionally or not, God allowed it (you can substitute “chance” if you like) to be made up in such a way that it all points to Jesus. To me, this is one of the biggest miracles. All divine commands culminate in Jesus. He is the One Thing that “chance” made sure WOULD happen, written down hundreds of years before It Did Happen."(Jus)

This is more than just one pedantic subset of the question of the bible's accuracy.

This is one of many things the bible is wrong about that it would have to be right about to be inerrant. But it is something else as well. It is a point that has been repeatedly used by christians, to defend the accuracy of the bible, to show Jesus was the son of god, to show the bible couldn't have been written by man alone, to justify the atrocities in the old testament. It is one false claim which has been used to support many other false claims. The idea of Jesus as the promised savior is of course central to christian thought. I have no illusion that people will stop saying this because of some sh*t I wrote on the internet, but it is demonstrably wrong. And after today I'll be treating it not just as wrong, but as already proven wrong (some of these points have been mentioned previously by myself or others, but as far as I know this is the first time anyone has done the whole list).

I'll be writing sort of in defense of the old testament here. Those who know my opinions of the old testament may find this odd. I stand by previous arguments that the book is not accurate, original, ethical, divine, or particularly well written. But it is a book with it's own unique character. Within it are a cast of distinct voices with their own feelings, agendas, and beliefs. Shoehorning the entire jewish prophetic tradition into a sales pitch for christianity robs these voices of everything they said and everything they were trying to say.

The Tanakh is still not great literature. But it deserves slightly better than to be reduced to a f*cking fortune cookie.

NECRO-THREAD WARNING!

(also longwinded pedantic rant full of bold text and bible quotes incoming shortly)

NECRO-THREAD WARNING!

Hmm it's a close call. At least with that one, you know you've won and that's all they have left to say.

If they give you a prayer to say, either they think they won an argument and this is the next step towards your conversion, or they're just randomly posting that at non-religious people and assuming that we just haven't heard the good news before and give us a sweet child's prayer.