Matthew 2:23 says that Jesus was raised in Nazareth "that what was spoken by the prophets might be fulfilled, 'He shall be called a Nazarene.'"
But this statement does not appear in anywhere in the Old Testament.
Does this mean that Matthew just invented the prophecy?
Recently a Muslim author responded to me by claiming just this.
Let's look into the matter . . .
The Background
Recently I made a video posing the question "Did the New Testament Authors Feel Free to Make Stuff Up?" (click here to watch it).
I looked at several lines of evidence showing that they did not feel free to simply invent material about Jesus, unlike the authors of the Gnostic gospels that were written in the second and third centuries.
The British blogger and convert to Islam Paul Williams posted a response on his blog, Exploring Life, the Universe, and Everything (he's also apparently a Douglas Adams fan, which I can appreciate), where he wrote:
Yes Jimmy, there is evidence they did [make stuff up] from time to time. Consider Matthew 2 for example:
“There he made his home in a town called Nazareth, so that what had been spoken through the prophets might be fulfilled, ‘He will be called a Nazorean.’”
There is no such prophecy anywhere in the Bible [emphasis in original].
Lost Prophecies?
I became aware of Matthew 2:23 when I read through the New Testament at age 20. The Bible I was reading had footnotes revealing where various quotations from the Old Testament could be found, and I was surprised to see that there was no Old Testament reference for the prophecy given here.
What did this mean?
What was Matthew quoting?
Was it a source that had been lost?
We know that there were many prophets in ancient Israel who genuinely spoke for God, even though their prophecies are not recorded in the Old Testament. 1 Kings even indicates that there were as many as a hundred prophets at once!
And Ahab called Obadi'ah, who was over the household. (Now Obadi'ah revered the LORD greatly; and when Jez'ebel cut off the prophets of the LORD, Obadi'ah took a hundred prophets and hid them by fifties in a cave, and fed them with bread and water) [1 Kings 18:3-4].
Could it be that some of this material was passed down in the form of oral tradition, and this is what Matthew was referring to?
Possibly, but there is another option . . .
Lost Books?
We even know that some of them wrote books, because the Old Testament refers to them. Consider these verses:
As for the events of King David’s reign, from beginning to end, they are written in the records of Samuel the seer, the records of Nathan the prophet and the records of Gad the seer [1 Chron. 29:29].
As for the other events of Solomon’s reign, from beginning to end, are they not written in the records of Nathan the prophet, in the prophecy of Ahijah the Shilonite and in the visions of Iddo the seer concerning Jeroboam son of Nebat? [2 Chron. 9:29].
As for the events of Rehoboam’s reign, from beginning to end, are they not written in the records of Shemaiah the prophet and of Iddo the seer that deal with genealogies? There was continual warfare between Rehoboam and Jeroboam [2 Chron. 12:15].
The other events of Abijah’s reign, what he did and what he said, are written in the annotations of the prophet Iddo [2 Chron. 13:22].
These books apparently were around at the time Chronicles was written, but under God's providence they did not become part of the canon of Scripture.
Why that was, and what the exact status of these books was, we cannot know. But the books apparently were known in antiquity.
Could Matthew have known them, or at least some of their contents, and could that have been the source he was referring to?
Possibly, but there is another, more likely explanation . . .
"Then Was Fulfilled"
Let's look at the way Matthew tends to talk about Jesus "fulfilling" a prophecy. Consider these verses:
Then was fulfilled what was spoken by the prophet Jeremiah [1:17].
And he went and dwelt in a city called Nazareth, that what was spoken by the prophets might be fulfilled, "He shall be called a Nazarene" [2:23].
that what was spoken by the prophet Isaiah might be fulfilled [4:14].
With them indeed is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah which says: `You shall indeed hear but never understand, and you shall indeed see but never perceive [13:14].
"But how then should the scriptures be fulfilled, that it must be so?" [26:54].
"But all this has taken place, that the scriptures of the prophets might be fulfilled." Then all the disciples forsook him and fled [26:56].
Then was fulfilled what had been spoken by the prophet Jeremiah, saying, "And they took the thirty pieces of silver, the price of him on whom a price had been set by some of the sons of Israel [27:9].
That's it. That's the entire collection of verses where Matthew refers to Old Testament prophecies being fulfilled.
Notice that in four of the seven instances, he names a specific prophet.
In the other three cases, he gives a more general reference. In 26:54, he refers to "the scriptures" being fulfilled, without citing a specific passage--thus indicating that there is not a single, specific passage under discussion.
The same thing happens in 26:56, where we have a general reference to "the scriptures of the prophets"--again indicating that there is not a single, specific passage in view but some combination of passages.
Which category does 2:23 fall into?
Is This a Quotation or Not?
You might think it falls into the first category, because there appears to be a quotation in many English translations: "He shall be called a Nazarene."
But this is less of an indicator than you might think. Ancient Greek didn't have quotation marks. There were other ways it indicated that someone was being quoted directly--what is known as "direct discourse"--but they're not as clear-cut as modern quotation marks, and translators have to decide whether to use quotation marks or not in an English translation.
That's why not all of them do. Consider these translations of the passage:
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 [KJV].
and came and dwelt in a city called Nazareth; that it might be fulfilled which was spoken through the prophets, that he should be called a Nazarene [ASV].
And coming he dwelt in a city called Nazareth: that it might be fulfilled which was said by prophets: That he shall be called a Nazarene [Douay-Rheims].
and came and dwelt in a city called Nazareth: that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophets, that he should be called a Nazarene [ERV].
The translations that use the word "that" in front of the statement are rendering the Greek in the most literal fashion--hoti Nazoraios klethesetai--"that he shall be called a Nazorean." The word hoti ("that") is sometimes used in Greek to signal the beginning of direct discourse (like an open quotation mark in English), but not always. Sometimes it just means "that."
Which does it mean in this case?
"Prophets" . . . Not "Prophet"
You'll note that Matthew doesn't attribute the statement about Jesus being called a Nazarene to a specific prophet. Instead, he says it was said "through the prophets" (Greek, dia ton propheton).
That suggests that he's thinking of it more as a general theme in the prophets, not a specific passage, and that suggests that it would be better not to render it as a quotation.
Thus Bible scholars tend to take the passage not as a quotation but as a summary expressing a prophetic theme that could be found in more than one place.
Is there such a theme?
"A Branch Shall Grow out of His Roots"
There is indeed. It is often pointed out that Matthew is making a play on words involving the name of the town where Jesus lived (Nazareth or Naṣrat in Hebrew) and the Hebrew word nēṣer, which means or "branch" and appears in the Messianic prophecyof Isaiah 11:1--"There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots."
Other prophets also spoke similarly of a messianic “branch” or “shoot,” although using different words (cf. Jer 23:5; 33:15; Zech 3:8; 6:12) [Donald Hagner, Word Biblical Commentary, vol. 33A, "Matthew 1-13"].
So the wordplay Matthew uses can be taken as a summary of what the prophets said regarding the Messiah.
This wordplay would have been even more obvious if, as the Church Fathers record, Matthew's Gospel was originally written in the language of the Hebrews, which would have been either Hebrew or Aramaic.
While it's possible that Matthew was drawing on an oral tradition from the Old Testament prophets or that he was quoting a book by a prophet which God chose not to have in the canon, it's more likely that he's just summarizing a theme found in multiple prophets and noting that Jesus' life story resonates with this theme and thus fulfills it.
What Matthew Wasn't Doing
Whichever of these explanations one prefers, though, it's clear that Matthew was not doing one thing in particular: He wasn't inventing this out of whole cloth (the subject of my previous video).
He's citing this fact as evidence for Jesus fulfilling divine prophecy--specifically, what was said "through the prophets"--and that makes no sense if he was simply inventing a prophecy.
If Matthew had said, "and thus Jesus fulfilled what was written through the prophet So-and-so, 'He would be born in the time of a king named Herod,'" then people would know that there was no such prophecy.
Matthew would damage his case by manufacturing a prophecy out of nothing.
As the other examples reveal, he's clearly concerned with showing his audience that the life of Jesus resonates with different Old Testament prophecies. It would be against his interests to invent a quotation that skeptical members of his audience would be sure to pounce on.
It is much more likely, given all that we've seen, that he is simply summarizing a prophetic trend that he was aware of and that his audience--who were in far closer touch with the Hebrew and Aramaic Scriptures than we are--would have been familiar with as well.
They were raised on Messianic prophecy, and the branch/shoot language--in Hebrew and Aramaic--would have been quite familiar to them.
So: Matthew didn't simply invent this. He didn't feel free to just make stuff up. What he was doing was either preserving an otherwise lost source or, more likely, summarizing and fleshing out the implications of sources we still have.
I do want to thank Paul Williams for raising the issue, though, and providing the opportunity to clarify this interesting passage.
What Now?
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In the meantime, what do you think?
Comments
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I like the oral tradition belief. To a Brit Muslim (who I assume was Z
Anglican/Protestant) anything not Scriptural makes no sense.
Could be another proof text to repudiate Sola Scriptura.
St. Matthew’s Gospel is the most decidedly Jewish. His audience would know what he meant. Even when he screwed up Jeremiah and Zechariah with the prophecy about Judas and the 30 pieces of silver.
Bill, F
FYI - I was received into the Roman Catholic Church as a theology undergraduate. I think if one is to be a Christian then Catholicism is more intellectually coherent that Protestantism….
“he screwed up Jeremiah and Zechariah with the prophecy about Judas and the 30 pieces of silver.”
Indeed. This is another made up prophecy!
Hmm. Muslims rely on hadiths, and so a pure reliance on scripture would not be from that source.
Well, well, well, Paul Williams: do you see the enormous gap between “he screwed up Jeremiah and Zechariah” and “another made up prophecy”? From someone that believes in the lies the Qura’n says about the Holy Bible, that can explain a lot…
Just an help to Paul Williams: do you know what was the traditional sequence of the OT prophetic books? It was Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Isaiah… so when someone wanted to say they were referring to some text by some OT text, they would name its source from the first book of the scrolls that had the text they wanted to refer. In this case: Jeremiah. But would you not agree that Jr. 18:2-3; 19:1-2.10f; 32:8f is what Matthew refers?
Eugenio Zolli, former chief rabbi of Rome, wrote a book called THE NAZARENE which links the title “Nazarene” to the style of speaking used by prophets. This might be a double play on words, since it had to do as much with HOW the prophets spoke as with WHAT they spoke. I suspect that this is one of the cases in which we lose out for no longer having the “Hebrew” (or Aramaic) version of St. Matthew’s Gospel. (Incidentally, if someone were to make up prophecies, shouldn’t it be Luke—a Gentile writing to Gentiles—rather than Matthew—a Jew writing to Jews?)
So maybe I’m wrong. A discussion of intellectual merit, and this was. Can be had with non believers. I have grown so bored with the silly little atheists try to get through an entire discourse of more than two exchanges without falling into a middle school temper tantrum. Personally, if I were in the cult of islam I probably wouldn’t bring up discrepancies, inconsistencies, double standards, hypocracies, outright lies and general evil under the guise of a faith in God. Those points might be a rock in a world of glass houses. But good job presenting an argument. I still am not sure, but I learned a lot.
Matthew was a meticulous observer and could have been a very excellent researcher. Take the case of the genealogy in the Gospel version he wrote. It’s a product of a well-researched item. He would have not invented anything to describe Jesus and His ministry.
In other words, the Bible has Turbo Puns. (It’s an old internet meme - search for PowerThirst if you’re not one of the 25 million people who have watched the YouTube video. WARNING: It has one [very] profane word.)
I have posted my reply on my blog. For some reason I have been unable to post it here (possibly because it was too long?)
‘My Response to: “Did Matthew *Invent* A Prophecy About Jesus?” by Jimmy Akin’
http://bloggingtheology.wordpress.com/2012/10/24/7142/
Jimmy Akins,
Excellent. I actually favor your option of the non canonical but probably partially inspired text not in our Bible. While Augustine valued the explicit prophecies, he held that the veiled prophecies were more confirming once found. The dead boy in 2 Kings4 is for me his most striking penetration. A woman’s only son has died and she implores Eliseus who sends his servant Gehazi with Eliseus’ staff to be placed on the boy. The boy remains dead. So Eliseus comes himself and descends on the boy but placing his eyes, mouth, and hands on those of the boy who then grows warm. Eliseus walks about the house and then descends on the boy again but this time there is no mention of the eyes, mouth, and hands and this time the boy sits up and coughs 7 times. Augustine’s penetration of the passage: the boy is mankind dead in sin; God first sends his law ( the staff) to be laid on him but the law does not make him good… hence the epistles say: “had there been a law that giveth life, salvation would be by the law”...“the law brought nothing to perfection”. So God
(Eliseus) must come Himself and descend on man ( the boy) first becoming flesh ( matching eyes, mouth, hands…as Christ) and then descending a second time as Holy Spirit (hence no eyes etc. and the boy coughs 7 times, the number of the gifts of the Holy Spirit).
Further we might note that this is a revelation of the Trinity by a prophet who need not have known what he was saying ( Fr. Karl Rahner) in the text nor need he have believed in the Trinity at that time…very much like Caiphas not knowing the deeper meaning of his ” do you not see that it is expedient that one man die rather than that the whole
people perish.”
Paul Williams should study the more veiled and frankly deeper prophecies rather than simply the obvious ones.
ps…Jude 1:9 is an example of a NT writer referring to an inspired prophecy that is not in the Bible:
” Yet the archangel Michael, when he argued with the devil in a dispute over the body of Moses, did not venture to pronounce a reviling judgment* upon him but said, “May the Lord rebuke you!”
Bill wrote :“Paul Williams should study the more veiled and frankly deeper prophecies rather than simply the obvious ones.’
Thanks but no thanks - I will stick to the more obvious prophesies. You express a preference for “the non canonical but probably partially inspired text not in our Bible. “
But as a strategy for explaining away this embarrassing verse: there is no evidence that Matthew or anyone else in the 1st century knew the contents of these long lost works. If they existed and were in circulation someone would have quoted from them or at least mentioned their existence. But maybe Matthew knew about them (but no one else) and then they disappeared from history once more?
This seems a very unlikely and somewhat strained conjecture.
Paul Williams,
Your retort is disproved by Jude 1:9 above whose source was obviously known at his time but is not known to us. You are now on your third belief system…correct? Could your rejection of the deeper prophecies for the denouncing of the more explicit ones be part of your problem of moving from one belief to another. Am I correct that there really are no deep multi layed passages in the Koran and no prophecies? That might mean that you have really an antipathy to prophecy or depth of any level. It would not surprise me if later you become Buddhist.
Bill, Jude 1:9 disproves nothing as we are talking about Matthew’s invented prophecy not Judes. The idea that it comes from a now lost book is pure speculation with no actual evidence to support it. Btw do you believe the Bible is inerrant?
As to your cheeky comments about my being on my ‘third belief system’ that is not correct. I was a conservative/orthodox Christian - now I am a Muslim. In both faiths (Islam & Christianity) the significance of Jesus and his teaching remain central. I am a better Christian now than I was when I was a evo/catholic. As Martin Luther said, ‘I did not learn my theology all at once, but have always had to dig deeper and deeper.’
I stopped worshiping a man (Jesus) and embraced the pure monotheism of all the prophets of God including the last prophet Muhammad. I’m sure Jesus would have approved…
Paul,
Well you were Protestant then Catholic then Islamic. And Jesus would have no use for your wasting time on Christian websites trying to undermine the Bible which has surface mistakes some of which are scribal ( the Catholic NAB fixed some of those but not all) and some other mistakes are surfacey and of no account as even Augustine had to admit in his Harmony of the Gospels when there was no way he could hamonized John the Baptist saying both “I am not worthy to carry his sandals” versus “I am not worthy to untie the thongs of his sandals.” Aquinas said the most telling thing on trivia of all kinds…“reason accounts little as nothing”.
But show us what you consider depth in the Koran. Show us a deep passage as I have shown you the multi layered in Caiphas’ inadvertent prophecy and in 2 Kings 4. I read many chapters of the Koran years ago besides canonical hadiths. I was struck by not seeing anything of meaning depth or layering or prophetic….inadvertent or not.
Bill I am not trying to undermine anything - but speak the truth about the Bible. Jesus cared about the truth too. Despite Catholic claims, he did not claim to be God either.
The Christology of the Quran bears a striking resemblance to recent biblical research that has concludes that neither Jesus’ family, nor the apostles, nor his Jewish disciples, believed that Jesus was God. They believed, like Muslims, that Jesus was the Davidic Messiah, but still a human being.
As the Lutheran biblical scholar Rev Professor Jeffrey J. Butz concludes in his significant work, ‘The Brother of Jesus and the Lost Teachings of Christianity’
“It is more than than intriguing that the Muslim understanding of Jesus is very much in conformity with the first Christian orthodoxy - the original Jewish Christian understanding of Jesus.” p186.
Butz laments:
“If Jewish Christianity had prevailed over Pauline Christianity, history would likely have been written quite differently. It is quite likely that such atrocities as the Crusades, the Inquisition, and the Holocaust would never have happened. If the Jewish Christian understanding of Jesus had prevailed, jews and Christians might never have pated ways, and Islam would have never have become Christianity’s perceived enemy.” p 187
Readers note. Nothing of a multi layered depth from the Koran has been supplied.
Let’s try and stay focused on the subject Bill. OK?
Matthew claims that the return of Jesus to Palestine was a fulfillment of prophecy. In Matthew 2:15 we read:
This was to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet, ‘Out of Egypt I have called my son.’
Matthew is here quoting from Hosea 11 verse 1, but he is quoting out of context and thus distorting the prophecy. The context in Hosea 11 clear:
When Israel was a child, I loved him,
and out of Egypt I called my son.
2 The more I called them,
the more they went from me;
they kept sacrificing to the Baals,
and offering incense to idols.
3 Yet it was I who taught Ephraim to walk,
I took them up in my arms;
but they did not know that I healed them.
4 I led them with cords of human kindness,
with bands of love.
I was to them like those
who lift infants to their cheeks.
I bent down to them and fed them.
5 They shall return to the land of Egypt,
and Assyria shall be their king,
because they have refused to return to me.
It is clear that the above passage has absolutely nothing to do with messianic prophecy. The “son” is the Israelites when they were lead out of captivity in Egypt. They showed a regrettable tendency to idolatry and apostasy, running after false and evil deities. This is not an appropriate allusion to Jesus. Also nowhere else in the entire NT is there any confirmation that Jesus spent any time in Egypt. So this is an invented prophecy created by ripping a few words out of their context and applying them to the life of Jesus. Why would Matthew do this? One convincing explanation would be his attempt to create a parallel between the life of Jesus and that of Moses.
But that is another story…
Readers note: nothing of multi layered depth from the Koran or the hadiths has been supplied.
Bill you win your point: I have not supplied the Quran texts as you demand.
Oh well.
Now back to the subject of this blog please..and Matthew’s invented prophecies about Jesus.
Readers note: nothing of multi layered depth from the Koran or the hadiths has been supplied by Paul as requested. I think…because there is none.
Readers not familiar with Biblical prophecy note that odd things or people can be used as prophecies of Christ….totally contradicting Paul’s point above.
A serpent ( repulsive to many of us ) is used primaily in most peoples’ minds in the Bible for Satan but a serpent is also counter intuitively used as a symbol of Christ…. and Christ tells you that in John 3:14-15 which Paul probably doesn’t believe in: John 3:14…Christ says:
” And just as Moses lifted up* the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up,
15 so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.”
Samson is a prophecy of Christ even when he went down into a town to sin with a prostitute. Aquinas explains that all prophecies have aspects in which they can be dissimilar simultaneous to their being similar to Christ. Samson was then surrounded by his enemies but he burst through and escaped carrying the town gate on his shoulders which he carried to a ridge top. In that position at the ridge top with his arms outstretched holding the city gates, Samson was double symbolizing Christ as crucified on Golgotha and as gate to Heaven…Christ who came down to visit His people ( called an unfaithful !@#$% in Osee) and went up to Golgotha as both cross and gate to Heaven.
David was an adulterer and murderer but was a prophecy of Christ in the psalms but also when he killed Goliath and cut off Goliath’s head with Goliath’s own sword.
What happens at Golgotha, the place of the skull,...Christ takes the sword of a giant, the devil, ( the crucifix even looks like a giant sword)... and begins the process of beheading the devil who is now bound in part only compared to before Christ…and will be finally defeated at the end time.
So can sinners and snakes predict or symbolize Christ? They sure can.
Readers not familiar with Biblical prophecy note that odd things or people can be used as prophecies of Christ….totally contradicting Paul’s point above.
A serpent ( repulsive to many of us ) is used primaily in most peoples’ minds in the Bible for Satan but a serpent is also counter intuitively used as a symbol of Christ…. and Christ tells you that in John 3:14-15 which Paul probably doesn’t believe in: John 3:14…Christ says:
” And just as Moses lifted up* the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up,
15 so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.”
Samson is a prophecy of Christ even when he went down into a town to sin with a prostitute. Aquinas explains that all prophecies have aspects in which they can be dissimilar simultaneous to their being similar to Christ. Samson was then surrounded by his enemies but he burst through and escaped carrying the town gate on his shoulders which he carried to a ridge top. In that position at the ridge top with his arms outstretched holding the city gates, Samson was double symbolizing Christ as crucified on Golgotha and as gate to Heaven…Christ who came down to visit His people ( called an unfaithful !@#$% in Osee) and went up to Golgotha as both cross and gate to Heaven.
David was an adulterer and murderer but was a prophecy of Christ in the psalms but also when he killed Goliath and cut off Goliath’s head with Goliath’s own sword.
What happens at Golgotha, the place of the skull,...Christ takes the sword of a giant, the devil, ( the crucifix even looks like a giant sword)... and begins the process of beheading the devil who is now bound in part only compared to before Christ…and will be finally defeated at the end time.
So can sinners and snakes predict or symbolize Christ? They sure can.
Bill, perhaps you can help me:
Matthew 2:23 says that Jesus was raised in Nazareth “that what was spoken by the prophets might be fulfilled, ‘He shall be called a Nazarene.’”
where does it say this?
Paul,
You’ve been answered several times but perfectly by Mr. Akin. You alone don’t know that. You are in my prayer knapsack til death but internet wise, we are done. No tears…no scenes… we’ll always have Nazareth.
Bill, I remain completely unconvinced by Jimmy’s response. Also I have received no reply whatsoever to all the points I made in my reply on my blog. There is much other invented stuff in the gospels that scholars have known about for generations including invented sayings of Jesus. This is no fringe liberal view, but the view of virtually all academics. I have had no reply to any of this here.
But I am glad there will be no tears and no scenes from you…
Mr. Williams
First of all thank you for being calm and courteous here, I haven’t seen any hateful remarks from you about Catholics, and I appreciate that. We should be able to dialogue peacefully, without pretending there are no differences between us of course.
Anyway, I’m not sure if there is anything I can say that will convince you that the apostles didn’t just “make stuff up” but I can at least tell you why I’m convinced they didn’t.
Number 1) If I was going to be starting a religion, and I was going to be telling about my escapades with this Jesus fellow - and I had no problem fabricating facts - I would have made myself look good. That’s just me. But in the gospels, we see over and over the apostles screwing up big time, and Jesus having to rebuke them constantly, they even abandoned him! Why would they make up all this stuff about Jesus, and then be brutally honest all of a sudden about themselves. They’re going to be the leaders of Christianity, might as well white wash over their faults so they can inspire confidence. But they didn’t, and one can’t help but ask why not.
Number 2) I can’t figure out WHY they would lie about Jesus. There was nothing in it for them. I know some might say power or fame, or maybe they didn’t want to look like fools, but that doesn’t satisfy. They of all people would know that preaching that Jesus was not only the messiah, but God, would get them killed. And it did. They had to endure immense sufferings and persecutions, they lost family and friends, and they all experienced gruesome martyrdoms….. for what? A lie? People might be willing to die for something they think is true, but nobody is willing to die for something they know is false.
Again, if it were me making this all up, the first millisecond I started being persecuted, I would recant. As soon as it stopped being beneficial, there would be no reason to keep up the charade. But none of them did. (By the way, the martyrdoms of the apostles is recorded by pagan historians as well as Christian)
And 3) the Apostles were devout Jews, they, like everyone else at the time, despised the Gentiles. So, why would they emphasize that Jesus came to die for all people, and now the gentiles can be part of the same covenant as them?!? That would be a huge scandal (and it was) and would serve no practical gain for them. It would have actually been detrimental, since that would entail losing their identity as God’s only people. Not something that would appeal very much to a Jew I would think.
The only viable options seems to be that they were reporting the truth. And were willing to suffer for it.
Also, doesn’t it seem kind of strange that the earliest documents we have of Plato and Aristotle date to hundreds of years after their death, and theres only about half a dozen extant copies left, yet no serious scholar doubts those are actually things that Plato taught. And we have literally hundreds of copies of the gospels, all dating to within a century of Jesus’ death, but those must be false.
Anyway, those are my thoughts. Maybe they’re not enough for you, but I think it’s worth thinking about them.
Peace!
-Robyn
Hi Mr. Williams!
First of all thank you for being calm and courteous here, I haven’t seen any hateful remarks from you about Catholics, and I appreciate that. We should be able to dialogue peacefully, without pretending there are no differences between us of course.
Anyway, I’m not sure if there is anything I can say that will convince you that the apostles didn’t just “make stuff up” but I can at least tell you why I’m convinced they didn’t.
Number 1) If I was going to be starting a religion, and I was going to be telling about my escapades with this Jesus fellow - and I had no problem fabricating facts - I would have made myself look good. That’s just me. But in the gospels, we see over and over the apostles screwing up big time, and Jesus having to rebuke them constantly, they even abandoned him! Why would they make up all this stuff about Jesus, and then be brutally honest all of a sudden about themselves. They’re going to be the leaders of Christianity, might as well white wash over their faults so they can inspire confidence. But they didn’t, and one can’t help but ask why not.
Number 2) I can’t figure out WHY they would lie about Jesus. There was nothing in it for them. I know some might say power or fame, or maybe they didn’t want to look like fools, but that doesn’t satisfy. They of all people would know that preaching that Jesus was not only the messiah, but God, would get them killed. And it did. They had to endure immense sufferings and persecutions, they lost family and friends, and they all experienced gruesome martyrdoms….. for what? A lie? People might be willing to die for something they think is true, but nobody is willing to die for something they know is false.
Again, if it were me making this all up, the first millisecond I started being persecuted, I would recant. As soon as it stopped being beneficial, there would be no reason to keep up the charade. But none of them did. (By the way, the martyrdoms of the apostles is recorded by pagan historians as well as Christian)
And 3) the Apostles were devout Jews, they, like everyone else at the time, despised the Gentiles. So, why would they emphasize that Jesus came to die for all people, and now the gentiles can be part of the same covenant as them?!? That would be a huge scandal (and it was) and would serve no practical gain for them. It would have actually been detrimental, since that would entail losing their identity as God’s only people. Not something that would appeal very much to a Jew I would think.
The only viable options seems to be that they were reporting the truth. And were willing to suffer for it.
Also, doesn’t it seem kind of strange that the earliest documents we have of Plato and Aristotle date to hundreds of years after their death, and theres only about half a dozen extant copies left, yet no serious scholar doubts those are actually things that Plato taught. And we have literally hundreds of copies of the gospels, all dating to within a century of Jesus’ death, but those must be false.
Anyway, those are my thoughts. I’m typing this on my phone so I hope it’s readable
Peace!
-Robyn
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