Truth
Prophecies of the Messiah
Abstract
© Dr M D Magee
Contents Updated: Sunday, July 25, 1999
Predictions of a coming King
One of those internet evangelists that take up all the bandwidth with their silly mendacities purports to explain the evidence for the claims of Christianity. His answer is the old standby—prophecy:
One of the evidences of God’s action in the coming of Jesus Christ is the accurate foretelling of the future. Before the coming of Christ, men and women in Israel made relatively specific predictions of a coming King…
Evangelists depend upon their gullible flocks having an infantile belief in the supernatural. Never mind that the only evidence of the supernatural in the world are occasional assertions, by individuals or small groups, of phenomena that otherwise leave no trace and have no consequence—Christians believe it. Christians were being abducted into unknown places long before alien abductions became popular, and remain no less malleable in this hard nosed age.
Prophecy is among their favourite magic. Their magic book, the bible, is full of prophecy that evangelists insist to their flocks came true, though they know full well that often it did not, and when it seemed as though it did, it turns out that the prophecy was written after the event.
One of the most magical books in the Jewish scriptures, for Christians, is Daniel. The book pretends to have been written in about 550 BC, when Jews were supposed to have been living in exile in Babylon. There is not a biblical scholar who will not admit that the book was written about 165 BC, almost 400 years later. So, the wonderful prophecies it contains of Assyrian, Persian and Greek conquests are not prophecies—the writer knew about them because he was writing after they had happened!
A Garment Lottery
Our net-evangelist continues:
These predictions included some vague ones (things will be good someday) to some VERY specific ones (when the King was executed/crucified, people would play a game of chance to win his clothing—Ps 22). Many of these fall outside the range of statistical probability, due to the detail and the long time gaps.
“Things will be good someday” is hardly a prophecy. What of the prophecies of Psalms 22? Well, it is not beyond the bounds of possibility that Psalms 22 was written about Jesus! The first “Christians” were Jews, and the scriptures were still being composed in the first century BC and the first century AD. Surprisingly different books of psalms were found at Qumran, including biblical psalms and many psalms not found in the bible. It suggests that psalms were still being collected in the first century BC. Psalms 22 looks like two different psalms, the first 21 verses having been added to an earlier psalm beginning at verse 22. The effect is to have misery replaced by exultation, in a sort of call and response. So, it is possible that the Jerusalem Church, while still part of Judaism, in the first century, added the new section to Psalms 22, to commemorate their noble leader. That, then, is not prophecy.
Perhaps that is not likely so let us suppose that the psalm was written in 1000 BC, as nearly all these cooks believe—because they are supposed to have been written by David, a belief few specialists will uphold. Then it would have been an astonishing prophecy that Jesus’s garments were divided by lots, would it not? Doubtless it would if the people who wrote the gospels had never heard of the psalm.They had heard of it, they believed their crucified leader was the Messiah, and so they attributed the prophecy to the event.
The fact here is that whichever way you look at the dividing of the garments by lots, it is unlikely to have been a prophesy. If the psalm really was old, it was well known, so could have been made to come true by the gospel authors. But the history of this psalm is unknown, so it could even have been written to commemorate the actual event. However, Jesus was naked when he went to his crucifixion, having been stripped for a lashing by the Romans, and in any case was a Poor Man who would have had few and valueless garments.
We get another pitiful confusion in the eyes of Christians—Jesus repeatedly advocated poverty as the way to spirituality, but they convince themselves he was only kidding, and actually wore rich clothes worth arguing about. It suits modern evangelists who want to drive expensive limousines, have buxom wenches at their elbows and run TV stations, but it is the diametric opposite of their Lord’s teachings. Hypocrites!
Specific Predictions
Predictions included the details of Christ’s crucifixion (Ps 22), of his birthplace in Bethlehem (Micah 5.2), of His betrayal price (30 coins), of His entrance into Jerusalem on a donkey (the last week of His earthly life), and His being pierced and bruised for the salvation of the world (Is 53; Zech 12).
The Messiah was supposed to have been a son of David, and so would, like David, be born in Bethlehem. He is artificially made to be in Bethlehem in both birth narratives (in quite different ways) to suit his destiny as the Messiah. Christians think Jesus was born in Bethlehem because the gospels aim to identify him as a son of David and therefore the Messiah. Sad then that Christians never notice that Jesus himself, according to Mark (Mk 12:35-37), denied he was of the line of David, and that his whole career and even the appellation Christians give him, make him a native of Nazareth. The gospel writers were fulfilling prophecy all right, but in words for the consumption of gullible Christians.
The betrayal price of 30 pieces of silver is also a strange prophecy to fulfil for a Messiah because it was the price of a worthless shepherd. Is that the picture they want to paint of their god? Plainly it is but it has to be admitted that it can hardly be a prophecy, since the gospel writers knew it and therefore could fulfil it in their accounts.
In every respect the story of Judas is bogus. It has been added to the story to label Jews as traitors, Judas simply standing for Jews. Judas was supposedly the bursar of the Nazarenes. The Nazarenes gave all they had to the bursar when they joined as we know from Acts, where we also know that some of the people who joined were wealthy. It is evident that Judas, as the bursar, must have had access to more than 30 pieces of silver in the treasury of the Nazarenes. Thirty pieces of silver were only a month’s wage for a day labourer, not the huge sum that Christians, doubtless imagine when they think of bars of solid silver. Why should Judas have risked his own neck by approaching the authorities to betray his master for such a relatively trivial sum? The temple guards or Roman soldiers could have imprisoned him and tortured him into giving the evidence for nothing?
Why did Jesus have to be betrayed? He had been treaching in the temple quite openly for a week and was known to the whole priesthood, with whom he had debated face to face. Why would God need to have him betrayed when he could have had him giving himself up and looking even more noble? If it was God’s plan, why should Judas be villified for playing his role in it? Finally, why is the word “paradidoma” translated here as “betrayed” when most everywhere else it is “delivered” or “handed over,” much less emotive expressions? The story cries out FAKE! from beginning to end. Even if it were not a fraud, no decent God would have labelled millions of innocent human beings as deicides thus leading to murderous and thieving pogroms by saintly Christians for 2000 years, especially since this God supposedly had foresight and knew what the outcome would be for His Chosen People when He chose them! This is a remarkably devilish God for a god of love.
Entering Jerusalem on a donkey was certainly staged by Jesus himself to declare himself the Messiah. Are Christians trying to say that even Jesus did not know of the prophecy. Making a prophecy deliberately come true might be fulfilling it, but it invites us to consider all the other messianic pretenders who were not as well remembered as this most famous one. Who knows that they did not fulfil prophecy in the same way? Then again who knows that it was fulfilled. It too could easily have been entered into the gospels as an act of Jesus to make him into the Messiah.
The references in Isaiah 53 and Zechariah 12 could fall into a similar category to Psalms 22. Andre Dupont-Sommer thought they should be re-examined in the light of the discoveries in the Judaean desert because he saw them as Essene additions refering to the Essene Rightoues Teacher who might have suffered crucifixion, but certainly was harassed and murdered. They were, in any case, well known, and such details as the piercing of Jesus could then have been added by the writers deliberately to fulfil prophecy.
It is quite evident in Matthew that he set out to show that Jesus fulfilled as many prophecies as he could find, and even found some that were not meant as prophecies yet treated them as such. Does any Christian wonder why all the disciples, apostles and family of Jesus never called him Emanuel? According to prophecy, that was his name.
Dead Sea Scrolls
And we know from archeology that these predictions were made and recorded hundreds of years before Jesus was born into history, and that the Jews of Jesus’ time understood these predictions in the way the New Testament writers saw them fulfilled in the life of Christ. God has given us some strong assurances that the good news of His love for us in Christ is trustworthy.
Presumably our evangelist is talking about the Dead Sea Scrolls when he mentions archaeology. Typically Christian, they call on them when it suits them but otherwise ignore them. They refuse adamantly to concede that Jesus was a member of some type of Essene sect, yet much in the scrolls, combined with Josephus and the classic authors, show that he was, and so therefore were his first followers, the first Christians, if you like, though that was not their name for another quarter century.
If the Essenes, as seems possible, or even likely, honoured the memory of a man who had been murdered by the authorities, quite possibly by crucifixion, to judge by some fragments, and this man had even been written into some late verses of the Jewish scriptures, then when another Essene leader suffered a similar fate, it would have been particularly significant to them. They were expecting the end of the corrupt world, and this event could have impressed them greatly. This is called a historical hypothesis and will be called speculative by evangelists, but it is a speculation that removes the supernatural from the explanation. Rational people will prefer it for that reason, and for that reason Christians will reject it.
Resurrection
One of the more striking evidences He has provided is the resurrection of Jesus Christ from death. According to predictions made a thousand years before Christ, this promised King-Leader would be killed but would not stay dead for longer than three days. This is EXACTLY what happened to Jesus Christ. Resurrections (after three days!) are almost unheard of in history, and ones predicted far in advance don’t exist at all—EXCEPT FOR the resurrection of Jesus from the dead.
What the predictions were that were made a thousand years beforehand is hard to know. He must mean the psalms, falsely thought to have been written by David, but known by everyone except evangelists to have been mainly written much later, in some cases up to the first century BC, and only a few of which seem likely to have been pre-exilic. No psalm, though, prophesies a resurrection in three days. The evangelist is using God’s truth top fool his dupes. The only mention of resurrection of the just in the Jewish scriptures are late—Daniel 12:2 being the plainest and written only in the second century BC. Other apparent mentions in Isaiah, for example, are late insertions.
Certainly, the gospels suggest that none of the immediate followers of Jesus expected him to be crucified, so here is a prophecy that the disciples did not know of, or perhaps there was no prophecy. Or is it simply that because “resurrections (after three days) are almost unknown in history,” the apostles did not consider the possibility, despite the elusive prophesy? Only in Hosea 6:2 is there a “prophecy” of resurrection of the third day—it is a general promise of resurrection for all righteous people, and this expectation will certainly be the source of the Christianised personal resurrection prophecy of Jesus. Jesus will have been telling his followers, not that he would particularly be resurrected on the third day, but that they all would as righteous people, freed of sin by repentance and baptism, and thereafter committed to righteous acts. The main one was to free Zion from the Romans.
Trustworthy Accounts
We have quite a bit of evidence to support a belief that the New Testament accounts of the resurrection are trustworthy. First, they never found the body (which would have been used to EASILY REFUTE the early Christian preaching), and it would have been easy for the Roman and Jewish authorities to find if the resurrection had NOT occurred. The explosive growth of Christianity (as a part of 1st century Judaism) in the first five years simply could NOT have occurred if the resurrection were not historically demonstrable in Jerusalem at that time. [Remember, the early preaching of the apostles was not about “living good” or “the coming kingdom”—it was about the sacrifice of the Lamb of God on the Cross, and of God the Father’s raising His Son from the dead.]
This is typical evangelical nonsense. The evangelist assumes that the whole of Jerusalem were concerned that a corpse had disappeared. The Romans were interested in keeping order and the series of crucifixions that included Jesus evidently did the job, for the time being. Jesus was crucified as an insurrectionist—the king of the Jews. That is what concerned the Roman authorities and the Jewish authorities too. There had been an insurrection, as the gospels tell us. It is simply that they do not admit that Jesus had anything to do with it. Yet, curiously, the insurrectionist was called Barabbas! It means “Son of the Father!” Who was that, if it was not Jesus?
How does the evangelist know of the explosive growth of Christianity in the first five years? Because it says so in the New Testament. It was probably true in this instance, but again, the potential for exaggeration is not even considered by the Christian. Jesus had led an insurrection and his sudden popularity, even though he had failed, could only be because he had made a name for himself by succeeding in some momentous task.
It was that he had captured Jerusalem, the only explanation for the week long tarry in the temple lecturing the Sadducees and Pharisees. He controlled access to the temple apparently without let or hindrance. None of these dreamers stop to consider how this was possible in a country occupied by a nation deeply committed to keeping law and order (the pax Romana), when there was a fortress next to the temple full of Roman soldiers and when the temple authorities, the Jerusalem priests, had their own band of policemen called the temple guard to keep order in Jerusalem. If Jesus was free to do as he wished, he had defeated the Jerusalem garrison.
Such a deed alklowed Jesus to be called a wonder worker, a man who did miracles. Of course it could not last and soon after the Romans recaptured the city and crucified the man who to them was just a bandit. Remember, Jesus thought the kingdom of God was about to begin, and he had drawn attention to the expectation in Hosea of a general resurrection after three days. When the corpse disappeared, they took it that Jesus had been resurrected. He was the first one, and so he is called the first fruits of the dead, but others would follow and the world would be resurrected and cleansed of corruption. That is the sequence that led to a great exultation among Jews and a sudden popularity for the Jerusalem Church.
Secondly, the post-resurrection appearances to a wide variety of people, in a wide variety of settings, and with a wide variety of experiences argue for the truthfulness of the resurrection fact.
The evangelist really ought to read his gospels with his brain in gear. The first and least adulterated gospel says nothing about appearances except in verses agreed by everyone (except evangelists, no doubt) to have been added. It is obvious to any fool, except a Christian, that they had to be invented to counter the obvious charge that Jesus had not been resurrected at all—someone had stolen the corpse. The guards in Matthew were invented for the same reason. It is obvious that someone succeeded Jesus, and it evidently was James the Just. As a Nazirite he wore his hair long and would have looked like the conventional pictures of Jesus. Some simple folk might have misunderstood that this man was the brother of Jesus and taken him to be Jesus. But the appearance are more than likely inventions.
Third, the changes in the character of the apostles argues strongly that they actually saw a risen Christ. Their overnight change from fearful men to people making bold and outlandish claims about a Risen Messiah—in spite of threats, eventual death, persecution, and lack of overt motivations of status and wealth—simply cannot be explained by natural psychological phenomena.
The man is again being fooled by his own myths. Plainly, these were not fearful men. The whole gospel sequence shows that they were far from it, putting up with hostility even in the Christian interpretation of the tale. The names of the apostles sound anything but timid. Two were called sons of thunder. Jesus’s best mate was called “Rocky,” another was a zealot. They carried swords and in John’s gospel they are capable of defending themselves, if Jesus so instructed them. Peter fights with a guard and hacks off his ear.
Admittedly, Christian mythology depicts them as fools and cowards, but the clappies do not stop to think that if Jesus picked them, he must have been no less a fool. The evangelist is speaking from no sound information in his last sentence. He has no more idea than any of us what the motives of the apostles were, or might have become, but there is little evidence of any quality that any of the original twelve did anything afterwards, except Peter. We are told most about Paul, who was not an apostle chosen by Jesus, mainly from his own pen, but he does not sound a noble figure to anyone but a Christian.
Fourth, the agreement of the different resurrection accounts in the gospels—WITHOUT obvious attempts at harmonization—argues for a historically-accessible resurrection event in those days. All in all, there is some surprisingly strong historical data to support the claims of the New Testament that Jesus Christ rose from the dead.
The Christians always insist on having the best of all worlds. It stems from no less a figure than Paul himself. He is admitting that there are serious disagreements about the accounts of the resurrection and the appearances, but these prove that the accounts are good history. No law court would accept such an argument, but then Christian lawyers write books saying the opposite. God’s Truth!
The main point though is that no reasonable person could accept the resurrection story. It is set in a context of expectation, resurrection being the primitive hope of righteous and repentant Jews, and so they convinced themselves that it had happened. The fact that 2000 years on the promised kingdom is still far, does not deter any Christian. It is always soon but never arrives. They are like children chasing the end of a rainbow. They can never be disappointed because they will never get there. But will they ever stop seeking this pot of gold—or at least stop plaguing the rest of us?
