Never had a good response to this

[questioner22]

Hi - I was a believer for over 30 years, but since 3 years ago, I would no longer label myself as such. I think there are a lot of gray areas with respect to the debate about God and the Bible, but a few years back, I came across an article that I've yet to hear any of my Christian friends or family even pose a rebuttal to (let alone a well-thought-out response). It's an essay written by Thomas Paine titled "An Examination of the Prophecies", and it was written in the late 1700's I believe. Below is a link.

http://www.sacred-texts.com/aor/paine/proph.htm

I'd love to have someone actually take an hour or so and actually READ the article and provide a response. And by all means, please cross reference EVERYTHING he says in whatever version of the Bible you're fond of. I've had 3 different pastors as well as several family members look at this, and most read it and then never bring it up again. Those that have brought it up end up googling some apologetic response about 'dual prophecies' or something along those lines - mind you, I've never heard this mentioned in a Sunday sermon.

Thanks for reading this post! Please don't reply if you haven't taken the time to read the article - I promise it will be an interesting read, and will challenge your knowledge of well-accepted prophecies that you may have thought were 'bullet-proofe'...most notably the virgin birth prophecy.

Happy Monday.

[PaulSacramento]

SO, what exactly are YOUR issues with those prophesies?

By the way, that whole "virgin birth controversy" is very old and no scholar or even theology student pays attention to it anymore.
Matthew got the "virgin" translation from the Greek Septuagint that was done by 70 Hebrew scholars in about 200 BC.
In case you didn't know, the OT used at the time of Jesus and the writing of the Gospels was that one and those scholars translated "alma" to Parthenos, which means "virgin".

[questioner22]

Hi Paul,

I apologize if I'm off, but it doesn't sound like you read any of the Paine article. What I'm saying is that Paine's issue...is my issue, having read it. The reason it doesn't seem like you read it is that the 'alma' issue is the least of the issues with the virgin birth prophecy (though it is still very much an issue). There is a Hebrew word - bethulah I think -that means a girl who has not known a man. Why would Isaiah not have used this word? Even if you argue that alma mostly referred to virgins in the OT, that doesn't change its Hebrew definition, which is a young girl of marriageable age. In any event, the real problem with Isaiah 7 for Christians (not Jews of course) is that this prophecy is specific to Ahaz, and it's a prophecy to assure him that Aram, Ephraim and Remaliah's son - who had plotted Ahaz's ruin - would not successful, but rather the land of these kings would be laid waste. Are we to honestly believe that the sign to Ahaz was that a virgin would conceive 700 years later?

This. Makes. No. Sense...and can't be believed by a thinking person.

Thoughts?

[Furstentum Liechtenstein]

Hi - I was a believer for over 30 years, but since 3 years ago, I would no longer label myself as such. I think there are a lot of gray areas with respect to the debate about God and the Bible...

OK, then I have news for you: You were never a believer, you just played religion. Faith is a gift from God and He doesn't take it back. (1 Pe 1:21.) Religions, you can change. Faith, once given, is permanent.

FL

[Kurieuo]

@questioner22, I'm not clear on how it following anything from OT prophecies lead to the conclusion Christianity is right/wrong.

Can you please formulate the argument in a logical format. For example,

1. If OT prophecies are wrong or unclear, then Christianity is wrong.
2. OT prophecies are wrong or unclear.
3. Therefore, Christianity is wrong.

That's something of what I understand you as saying.
BUT, how is this argument sound?

[PaulSacramento]

Hi Paul,

I apologize if I'm off, but it doesn't sound like you read any of the Paine article. What I'm saying is that Paine's issue...is my issue, having read it. The reason it doesn't seem like you read it is that the 'alma' issue is the least of the issues with the virgin birth prophecy (though it is still very much an issue). There is a Hebrew word - bethulah I think -that means a girl who has not known a man. Why would Isaiah not have used this word? Even if you argue that alma mostly referred to virgins in the OT, that doesn't change its Hebrew definition, which is a young girl of marriageable age. In any event, the real problem with Isaiah 7 for Christians (not Jews of course) is that this prophecy is specific to Ahaz, and it's a prophecy to assure him that Aram, Ephraim and Remaliah's son - who had plotted Ahaz's ruin - would not successful, but rather the land of these kings would be laid waste. Are we to honestly believe that the sign to Ahaz was that a virgin would conceive 700 years later?

This. Makes. No. Sense...and can't be believed by a thinking person.

Thoughts?

You do realize that re-interpretation of ancient prophesies was very common in Judaism, yes?
It was very common in 2nd temple Judaism to re-interpret prophecies, especially about the Messiah.
Add to that, that Mathew was under the inspiration of the HS and if God revealed to Mathew that it was that way, then it was since, well, that was what happened.
It seems you need to study up on 2nd temple Judaism.
I don't blame Paine because this was something that simply wasn't done in his time.
We know better now.

My questions stands, why problem do YOU have with this?
Paines were obviously because he didn't understand 2nd temple Judaism, is that your issue also?
As for the virgin thing, I already addressed that, din't you read that part?

[PaulSacramento]

@questioner22, I'm not clear on how it following anything from OT prophecies lead to the conclusion Christianity is right/wrong.

Can you please formulate the argument in a logical format. For example,

1. If OT prophecies are wrong or unclear, then Christianity is wrong.
2. OT prophecies are wrong or unclear.
3. Therefore, Christianity is wrong.

That's something of what I understand you as saying.
BUT, how is this argument sound?

It seems that he believes that prophecies can't be re-interested, which I as pointed out, is not the case and was common in 2nd temple Judaism.

[questioner22]

I guess what I'm saying is that many of the alleged prophecies about Christ were no such thing, and therefore the NT authors who claim that these ARE in fact prophecies about Christ are flat out wrong. Let's take Hosea 11:1 - it's talking about God's love for Israel, and specifically about how God called the Israelites out of Egypt, where they were enslaved. It says "When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son." This was a look BACK, not a look FORWARD. It's the exact opposite of a prophecy. Yet Matthew takes this verse - the last half of it mind you - and tries to make it about Christ returning from Egypt with Joseph and Mary thousands of years later. This too makes no sense. If you can't see that a verse talking about a past event cannot possibly be a prophecy about a future event, then I can't help you see it.

Let me put it to you this way - if I said to you that my wife ate an apple last week in order that the Genesis 3:6 prophecy might be fulfilled ("when the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it"), you would say "NONSENSE. Genesis 3:6 is about something that happened thousands of years ago, not a prophecy about your wife!! Look at the context of the rest of Genesis 3!" And you'd be right of course. If we're to believe that Hosea 11:1 is also about Christ somehow, then let's continue reading to verse 2. "But the more they were called, the more they went away from me. They sacrificed to the Baals and they burned incense to images." Wow - I missed the part in the NT about Christ sacrificing to Baals and burning incense to images. Can anyone provide a reference to where this is mentioned? Matthew literally tears a half of a verse in Hosea out of context to make it sound like a prophecy, which it is not.

And Paul, as to your point about already addressing the virgin birth prophecy, I don't see how you saying that prophecies can be 're-interested' or re-interpreted' is any kind of answer. So are you agreeing that the prophecy to Ahaz had nothing to do with Christ in its initial iteration by Isaiah? And can you explain why after sitting in Bible believing churches for over 30 years I heard reference to Isaiah 7 being a re-interested prophecy exactly zero times? If I were a pastor, I wouldn't draw any attention to this either, as it can be very detrimental to one's faith to have them really dig into Isaiah 7.

[PaulSacramento]

Questioner22,
It was very common in the 2nd temple period to do what Matthew did with prophcies. He wasn't doing anything wrong and, in fact, he was keeping with Jewish tradition and his jewish audience would have know that.
You are not insinuating that his audience didn't realize what he was doing do you? that somehow only you and Paine saw that?
This argument is not new at all and, like so many of these arguments that have been addressed and put to sleep in the past, they only find "ears" with those that never heard them before.
What's next? Jesus is just a re-telling of Osiris? LMAO !

Again, in regards to the virgin birth, 70 Jewish scholars and translators working at it translated that passages as meaning "virgin" 200 before Christ was even born, when they wrote the Septuagint and THAT is the translation that Matthew's readers would have been familiar with.

[questioner22]

Paul,

Whenever any argument is made against the Bible or Christianity, I very often get that "Ohhh, not the old [Fill in the blank] argument...HA! That's the oldest trick in the book, and was debunked many many years ago...foolish boy!!" It sounds to me like an apologetic trick to get those that side with you and don't want to dig into a problem text to brush it aside and say "well, if Paul says this was debunked long ago, then I certainly don't have to waste my time looking into it...I'm sure he's right".

As a believer (and I don't care to defend the fact that I was a 'true believer' - couldn't be less interested in fact), I believed it when pastors would tell me that the Bible had stood the test of time, and it had never been disproven. That sounds GREAT! Only it's just not true. Paine wrote in the late 1700's, and he utterly annihilated the prophecies using reason, intellect, and a thorough reading of the OT context. And all you've done is brush them aside with the "you're not falling for THAT one, are ya? Ha!" rebuttal, which is no rebuttal at all.

So I'll ask again - and forget the whole of the article, because it's obvious you won't read it - just take the two texts I brought up...Isaiah 7, and Hosea 11. Read them. Read the whole chapter. Then come back and tell me how this is a prophecy about Jesus Christ in plain English. Resist any and all temptations to tell me that it's not a new argument, or that NT writers falsified prophecies like that all the time, common practice, blah blah. Pretend I'm not very smart (I'm not) and use small words, and tell me how these are prophecies. First Isaiah 7...then Hosea 11.

Thanks. I'd love to talk over a beer as email tone can be misinterpreted, but I truly love talking about this stuff, and can see you do as well. Just want you to address the issue at hand, and I feel like you're doing anything but.

[RickD]

Questioner,

Here's an article on Hosea 11:

http://www.gotquestions.org/Hosea-11-1-Messianic.html

[PaulSacramento]

Paul,

Whenever any argument is made against the Bible or Christianity, I very often get that "Ohhh, not the old [Fill in the blank] argument...HA! That's the oldest trick in the book, and was debunked many many years ago...foolish boy!!" It sounds to me like an apologetic trick to get those that side with you and don't want to dig into a problem text to brush it aside and say "well, if Paul says this was debunked long ago, then I certainly don't have to waste my time looking into it...I'm sure he's right".

As a believer (and I don't care to defend the fact that I was a 'true believer' - couldn't be less interested in fact), I believed it when pastors would tell me that the Bible had stood the test of time, and it had never been disproven. That sounds GREAT! Only it's just not true. Paine wrote in the late 1700's, and he utterly annihilated the prophecies using reason, intellect, and a thorough reading of the OT context. And all you've done is brush them aside with the "you're not falling for THAT one, are ya? Ha!" rebuttal, which is no rebuttal at all.

So I'll ask again - and forget the whole of the article, because it's obvious you won't read it - just take the two texts I brought up...Isaiah 7, and Hosea 11. Read them. Read the whole chapter. Then come back and tell me how this is a prophecy about Jesus Christ in plain English. Resist any and all temptations to tell me that it's not a new argument, or that NT writers falsified prophecies like that all the time, common practice, blah blah. Pretend I'm not very smart (I'm not) and use small words, and tell me how these are prophecies. First Isaiah 7...then Hosea 11.

Thanks. I'd love to talk over a beer as email tone can be misinterpreted, but I truly love talking about this stuff, and can see you do as well. Just want you to address the issue at hand, and I feel like you're doing anything but.

I read that article, and a few others liked it, years ago.
The fact that you don't get what I have repeated over and over simply means that you do not WANT to understand.
It does NOT MATTER what those prophesies were in the original context.
It is NOT a falsification of a prophecy to re-interpret it in a new context.
It was very common and acceptable during the 2nd temple era ( When Matthew wrote his Gospel)and, even after that ( arguably even more so after the fall of the Temple).

[PaulSacramento]

Questioner,

Here's an article on Hosea 11:

http://www.gotquestions.org/Hosea-11-1-Messianic.html

Dude, don't even bother because if he wanted to know, all that he would have had to do was a quick google search and he would have found tons of answer to his "questions".
Its' obvious that he doesn't want to understand, he simply wants to state that the Gospel writers, using his own words, "falsified prophecies".

[questioner22]

No no...but I do want to know. That's why I asked. You have proven (several times now) that you can't answer the question. I'm embarrassed to have ever called myself a question if this is what it means to be one. So intellectually disingenuous...really amazing.

[RickD]

No no...but I do want to know. That's why I asked. You have proven (several times now) that you can't answer the question. I'm embarrassed to have ever called myself a question if this is what it means to be one. So intellectually disingenuous...really amazing.

Then what's your reaction to the gotquestions link I posted?