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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Unto Us a Child is Born
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
In the Jewish culture of Jesus’ day kids were taught the Torah (first 5 books of the Bible) in the local Synagogue (church) beginning at the age of 6. They had classes 5 days a week just like we do today. By the time they were about 10 years old, they had memorized all of those first five books
Steve Corn
One blog says this therefore it's gospel? Puhleeze. Give me some RESEARCH. This guy doesn't even have footnotes.
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Gamaliel
Shipmate
# 812
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Posted
The problem, of course, Eutychus, is that Jamat's tight-rope doesn't have a safety net. Anyone who tumbles off it breaks their necks.
FWIW I would suggest that your role as a preacher,should you choose to accept it, is to help people off that particular tight-rope without them braking any bones in the process.
That is easier said than done of course.
There is a rope but it's part of a rope bridge not a stand-alone strand arcing across the void.
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Let us with a gladsome mind
Praise the Lord for He is kind.
http://philthebard.blogspot.com
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
No Gamaliel, it's not commutative, it doesn't work both ways, only Jamat's modern unscholarly way. There is no risk to lambs. Not here. And we would NEVER shake the faith of lambs elsewhere; God bless you Eutychus.
I find it instructive that Matthew inspiredly used the Greek Septuagint Isaiah 7:14 with parthenos, virgin, rather than Masoretic Hebrew almah, childless young woman. The Holy Spirit would have to operate differently with today's scholars. And He does.
The Incarnation couldn't have happened in the modern world. Not without completely giving the game away.
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Love wins
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Gamaliel
Shipmate
# 812
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Posted
Hmmm ...
I'll let Mousethief respond to the Septuagint / Masoretic text issue ...
Whilst ensuring I have my irony-o-meter switched on as he does so.
Meanwhile, it strikes me that you've tumbled off a similar tight-rope to the one Jamat's teetering along. Whether you've broken any bones in the process isn't for me to say.
My point, I suppose, is that the rope isn't stand-alone but is part of a bridge held up by The Rope (as it were) and which consists of scripture, reason and tradition in good old Anglican terms ...
Or Big T Tradition if we're RC or Orthodox.
What we don't have is a single, unsupported rope stretching into space that we have to tip-toe along ...
Ok, I'll grant that broad is the gate and wide the path that leadeth to perdition and narrow is the gate that leads to eternal life ...
But that's a different issue to insisting on a single authorship for Isaiah ...
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Let us with a gladsome mind
Praise the Lord for He is kind.
http://philthebard.blogspot.com
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
I'm not on any tightrope and haven't fallen. There is no risk to faith from modern scholarship. It strikes me that you are clinging to a tightrope nailed to the top of a very low fence ![[Biased]](wink.gif)
The only risk for me is that the magic of the Incarnation, of the manifest emotional genius of the divine nature as a ground of Jesus' human being being rationalizable. I have no fear of that.
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Love wins
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Gamaliel
Shipmate
# 812
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Posted
![[Confused]](confused.gif)
I thought I was talking about other people's tightropes, not my own ... but I suppose it serves me right. I ought to take the rope from under my own feet, rather than the cotton-thread under other people's ...
Mind you, as far as I can tell, I'm not walking any tight-rope, whether high off the ground or way, way, way up at Blondin level.
You might see things differently.
I don't feel as if I'm teetering but then, 'let he who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall.'
http://biblehub.com/1_corinthians/10-12.htm
If I did fall off it wouldn't be because I think there may have been multiple Isaiah's over a lengthy period.
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Let us with a gladsome mind
Praise the Lord for He is kind.
http://philthebard.blogspot.com
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
AHHHHHHhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh....
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Love wins
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Gamaliel:
I'll let Mousethief respond to the Septuagint / Masoretic text issue ...
You will be waiting a long time.
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Gamaliel
Shipmate
# 812
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Posted
Is outrage!
But fair do's mind ...
I've never been able to get my head around the kerfuffle over the Septuagint or the Masoretic text ...
Seems on a par to me with proof-texting to insist that Isaiah has a single author or that we can work out a precise eschatological time-table from our favourite passages ...
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Let us with a gladsome mind
Praise the Lord for He is kind.
http://philthebard.blogspot.com
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
'e pushed me!
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
Gamaliel
I'd be more than happy for any further response by himself to the content of the thread.
What kerfuffle? In my almost compleat ignorance I'm not aware of any. To the postmodern there can't be any.
Isaiah 7 isn't a prophecy of Jesus in any translation. Matthew made it so. What does the Holy Spirit have to do with that? If you're an ancient Jewish tax collector (not a scribe or priest, a 2:1 at best, not a first) who knew Jesus, writing to Jews that's what you'd do.
Is there significance, statistical significance that is, in a 700 or 600 year old story setting - Ahaz-Hezekiah or Josiah - talking of a new mother in the context of a contemporary game of thrones being an actual occult, intended prophecy of the Incarnation?
Wouldn't work now could it?
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Love wins
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Jamat
Shipmate
# 11621
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Posted
quote:
Eutychus: How is "the bit of Malachi quoted in Mark is actually amplifying Isaiah" - which is emphatically not in the text - anything other than eisigesis
It probably is technically and would be if one of us did the adding but to say that ignores who wrote it. I assume the Holy Spirit inspires every part of scripture. I do not sit in judgement of it rather I try to let it judge me.
“The word of God is sharper than any two edged sword,dividing between soul and spirit”
The point is that Mark’s gospel made its way into the canon. Anything he writes is inspired. He is inspired to do the adding.
As to convincing you..not my problem.
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Gamaliel
Shipmate
# 812
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
quote:
Eutychus: How is "the bit of Malachi quoted in Mark is actually amplifying Isaiah" - which is emphatically not in the text - anything other than eisigesis
It probably is technically and would be if one of us did the adding but to say that ignores who wrote it. I assume the Holy Spirit inspires every part of scripture. I do not sit in judgement of it rather I try to let it judge me.
“The word of God is sharper than any two edged sword,dividing between soul and spirit”
The point is that Mark’s gospel made its way into the canon. Anything he writes is inspired. He is inspired to do the adding.
As to convincing you..not my problem.
But you DO sit in judgement on it, we all do.
It's a pious platitude to say, 'I do not sit in judgement on it, rather I try to let it judge me.'
You've made a judgement about it by deciding that the references to Isaiah in the Gospels indicate that there must have been one single authorial voice for the Book which bears his name.
That is a judgement you have made.
Just as much as someone who decides that those references to Isaiah do not necessarily imply that there was a single author.
Both readers have made a judgement.
The same applies to any conclusion we reach from the scriptures - be it over eschatology, Christology, the way we organise our churches or administer baptism or whatever else.
You still haven't demonstrated how it undermines the inspiration of the Holy Spirit if there were several authors or priestly redactors involved in the compiling of the writings attributed to Isaiah.
It's not the text which determines that in and of itself, but your interpretation of the text.
An interpretation that derives from a particular tradition (small t) which insists on understanding scriptural inspiration in a particular way.
I'm surprised you don't see that.
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Let us with a gladsome mind
Praise the Lord for He is kind.
http://philthebard.blogspot.com
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Jamat
Shipmate
# 11621
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Posted
The quotes here are from Nick Tamen’s post above.
My comments are also in response to Gamaliel who asked f quote:
As for things like analyzing the prophets or apocalyptic literature for signs of the End Times or for identifying how long is left before the next Big Thing, the value of that is totally lost on me, and I think it’s a misuse of Scripture. I believe Jesus would rather us put that energy into faithful discipleship and living into the kingdom now, right where we are
I can see the POV expressed here as an often stated one. It points out the futility of grappling with the unknowable. ISTM though that if the Holy Spirit took the same view then the Bible would not contain apocalyptic passages. To grapple with prophecy is not to ignore faithful discipleship..that would indeed be binary thinking huh Gamaliel?
quote:
As for the writings of the prophets, I think foretelling the future is a small and incidental part of what they were about. What they were about was calling Israel to be faithful to the covenant
It is nevertheless a significant part. The prophetic voices of Israel were certainly sent by God. Within their calls to repentance they predicted judgements which did occur viz the captivity, but Jesus himself said to the Pharisees:
‘You search the scriptures because you think in them you have life, and these speak of ME.’
quote:
Isaiah (whether he was one writer, three writers, or a community of writers—it makes no difference
As already stated in an earlier post it impugns the integrity of the NT which constantly quotes him as one voice, not more. The issue with Isaiah and Daniel only arises because they predict verifiable historical events. In Isaiah, the rise of Cyrus, in Daniel, the world rulers that follow Babylon which Daniel could not possibly have known about naturally if he wrote early.
quote:
But I can't ignore that the seeds of the Jewish understanding of an expected Messiah are in Isaiah, so it’s not totally a Christian gloss. And I can't ignore that both Jesus and the early church, drawing on pre-existing Jewish understandings, saw Isaiah (and others) as talking about Jesus. Jesus makes this clear.
Very true.
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Jamat ..in utmost longditude, where Heaven
with Earth and ocean meets, the setting sun slowly descended, and with right aspect
Against the eastern gate of Paradise. (Milton Paradise Lost Bk iv)
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Jamat
Shipmate
# 11621
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Posted
quote:
Gamaliel: You've made a judgement about it by deciding that the references to Isaiah in the Gospels indicate that there must have been one single authorial voice for the Book which bears his name
The issue is in your definition of the word judgement. There are several senses in which this word is used and you confuse them.
The kind of judgement I have made here is to assume that Isaiah is one person because he self identifies as this. I choose to believe it.
You suggest that what is a Prima facie reading of Isaiah is an interpretive judgement. That is really a different matter. To me an interpretive judgement pronounces on the significance of received text rather than questions what it says.
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Jamat ..in utmost longditude, where Heaven
with Earth and ocean meets, the setting sun slowly descended, and with right aspect
Against the eastern gate of Paradise. (Milton Paradise Lost Bk iv)
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Gamaliel
Shipmate
# 812
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
quote:
Gamaliel: You've made a judgement about it by deciding that the references to Isaiah in the Gospels indicate that there must have been one single authorial voice for the Book which bears his name
The issue is in your definition of the word judgement. There are several senses in which this word is used and you confuse them.
The kind of judgement I have made here is to assume that Isaiah is one person because he self identifies as this. I choose to believe it.
You suggest that what is a Prima facie reading of Isaiah is an interpretive judgement. That is really a different matter. To me an interpretive judgement pronounces on the significance of received text rather than questions what it says.
You choosing to believe that the entire book of Isaiah was written by the same person is a form of judgement. You have made that judgement in choosing to believe it.
I don't doubt that the Isaiah son of Amoz who self-identified in his writings as 'Isaiah son of Amoz' was who he said he was ... Isaiah son of Amoz.
I don't doubt that he was a real person living in a real place and at a real time, 800 years before the birth of Christ in ancient Israel.
That doesn't mean that the entire Book of Isaiah was written by the same chap.
There are arguments for and against. The vast majority of scholars take the view that the Book of Isaiah was written over a long period of time by several authors. One of them was probably, in my view, the original Isaiah son of Amoz.
Other writings were added later and pseudonymously it would seem, something that wasn't at all uncommon in those days.
Whether you are taking something written at face-value or whether you are questioning it, you are still exercising judgement.
Your choosing to take the claims of authorship in the opening verses of the Book of the Prophet Isaiah at face-value is itself an act of judgement.
If you see a 'Stop' sign at a road junction you exercise judgement by either choosing to obey the instruction or by ignoring it and carrying on driving.
Both are exercises of judgement.
I'm not the one who is confused here.
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Let us with a gladsome mind
Praise the Lord for He is kind.
http://philthebard.blogspot.com
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Jamat
Shipmate
# 11621
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Posted
) quote:
Whether you are taking something written at face-value or whether you are questioning it, you are still exercising judgement.
You still are using the word in 2 different ways.
The judgement I am exercising is to accept his presentation of himself as a single individual.
The judgement you say I am exercising is an interpretive reading that sees him as a single individual.
I say, I am judging so as to say the text means what it reads; you are SAYING I’m doing way more. You are saying that to read it like this is on a par with critical interpretation.
If you use the word like this then we cannot be on the same page as you and I will not agree that this or any text can make a plain unequivocal statement.
[ 20. December 2017, 19:54: Message edited by: Jamat ]
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
Perfick G. Perfick. But, "You still haven't demonstrated how it undermines the inspiration of the Holy Spirit if there were several authors or priestly redactors involved in the compiling of the writings attributed to Isaiah.":
It undermines Him two ways. One, it dilutes Him if He didn't do a perfick job first time. Despite Jesus needing a couple of goes to give a man born blind eyes fit for the purpose. That's how Jamat'll see it. All or nothing, like the entire universe on a Wednesday six thousand years ago. Two, if He didn't ... He's not really necessary any of the time. Not in any effable way. Despite the fact that He's there.
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Love wins
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
The point is that Mark’s gospel made its way into the canon. Anything he writes is inspired. He is inspired to do the adding.
Fair enough. But this inspiration clearly did not extend to pointing out that part of what Mark quoted as being from Isaiah is demonstrably from Malachi (even if Malachi was, as you allege, doing "nothing more than" amplifying Isaiah, the relevant part of the quote is from Malachi, not the book of Isaiah).
Without impugning the doctrine of inspiration in any way, it is safe to conclude from this that there's more to attribution of OT authorship by a Gospel writer than meets the eye.
And from this in turn it may be concluded, still without impugning the doctrine of inspiration, that how a Gospel refers to an OT author is not conclusive proof of original authorship.
In other developments, I've pulled out and skimmed through another of my IVP commentaries today, Alec Motyer on Isaiah. Motyer is certainly in favour of single authorship, although he provides a fair summary of the arguments either way. It is however hard to escape the impression that he approaches the text with the definite assumption that specific predictive prophecy is the only right way to understand it, and selects his arguments to defend that position.
On the particular issue of the naming of Cyrus, his killer argument amounts to "well, another specific name [Josiah] was predicted in 1 Kings 13:2 so there's a precedent". This strikes me as kicking the can down the road rather than an argument.
My two thoughts at this point are a) evangelical intransigence on such matters does look like an over-reaction to the excesses of 19th-century higher criticism b) a lot seems to hinge on how important specific predictive prophecy is in our individual faith journeys/theologies.
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
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Gamaliel
Shipmate
# 812
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Posted
Of course it's possible to make plain and unequivocal statements.
I'm not sold on Barthian semiotics and all that malarkey.
But I am saying that we need to understand how texts work, in this case ancient ones.
I don't see how the inspirational quality or status of the scriptures stand or fall on whether there was one Isaiah, two Isaiah's, three of them or 26 of them ...
You don't seem to take into account how prophetic or apocalyptic writings 'work' nor how ancient texts work in general.
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Let us with a gladsome mind
Praise the Lord for He is kind.
http://philthebard.blogspot.com
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
See 2 up G.
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Gamaliel
Shipmate
# 812
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Posted
Yes, I noticed that, Martin.
You made some good points.
Incidentally, I'm not out to change Jamat's mind in any of this. I'm simply exploring things.
For my money, Eutychus makes a strong case for how it's possible to hold to a high view of scriptural inspiration without engaging in the kind of special pleading and a priori assumptions that some conservative commentators engage in.
But then, we all of us take interpretive leaps and a priori jumps at times, whatever our perspective or tradition.
These days I'm a lot more comfortable with the approach Eutychus takes or that Nick Tamen takes - and they are close but not identical - than the kind of overly literal and fundamentalist approach that Jamat appears to apply to things.
There's a difference between a framework and a strait-jacket.
We need a net to play tennis, but it should be strung across the court not swathed around our arms and legs.
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Let us with a gladsome mind
Praise the Lord for He is kind.
http://philthebard.blogspot.com
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Jamat
Shipmate
# 11621
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Posted
quote:
Gamaliel: You don't seem to take into account how prophetic or apocalyptic writings 'work' nor how ancient texts work in general.
To finish the discussion on ‘Judgement’. With respect, you do assume a post modern view of language which says in effect there is no escape from tranferring your back story into how you read or view a text. To be fair, I reject that, since it is a proposition that assumes what it asserts a priori. That is why I reject Martin 60’s assumptions.
It is my assumption that texts can have a denotative function as well as a connotative one. Post modern readings seem to me to pretty well completely deny denotation. They would say the meaning of text is completely dependent upon the interaction of text and reader and is consequently ultra subjective. If you apply that to the Bible, it can only teach you what you let it teach you. You, the reader, are in complete control of your reading. To a greater or lesser extent, this approach to text has taken over.
On the way ancient texts work. I think they work like any text. They speak from a context into their current issues. But the Bible is IMV way more than a collection of ancient texts. It speaks beyond the current issues of its social settings. It speaks also to our current realities if one allows it to do so.
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Jamat ..in utmost longditude, where Heaven
with Earth and ocean meets, the setting sun slowly descended, and with right aspect
Against the eastern gate of Paradise. (Milton Paradise Lost Bk iv)
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
Yes, Reader.
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
And sorry Gamaliel. You had taken me on board. But, like us all, it changes you not. You cannot fall back to fundamentalism or fall for'ard off the fence down my abyss. I see that the fence appears to be a safe place, but it's thermodynamically unstable.
I dinnee think that either one or two had occurred to you before? And two is the only challenging proposition. Forgive my ignorant presumption.
Conservative evangelical scholarship is an oxymoron, no matter how otherwise liberal and incredibly intelligent. The argument in defense of foreknowing Cyrus, because of Josiah was it?, is risible. I'm old, stupid to start with, ill educated, nasty and consistent.
God could know neither without making it so. He didn't. Because He doesn't. And because He didn't. Nothing in the story of the texts needs make it otherwise. Nothing. Needs needlessly, absurdly proliferate entities.
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Love wins
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Jamat
Shipmate
# 11621
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Posted
quote:
Marti60: I am nasty and consistent
You are neither. If Isaiah foretelling Cyrus is denied, never mind about Josiah, then on what can you base belief in the incarnation which we are about to celebrate?
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Jamat ..in utmost longditude, where Heaven
with Earth and ocean meets, the setting sun slowly descended, and with right aspect
Against the eastern gate of Paradise. (Milton Paradise Lost Bk iv)
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Gamaliel
Shipmate
# 812
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Posted
It depends on more than a handful of proof-texts for a kick-off ...
FWIW, Jamat, I believe that texts function in both a denotive and connotative way. I'm the both/and not either/or guy, remember?
Yes,I'm influenced by post-modernism. I'm also influenced by modernism. So are you. We've been grown up in the 20th century and been exposed to the prevailing thought forms of our day.
On the ability of the scriptures to speak beyond their immediate context and to shape and mould us, I can't see how anything I've written has argued otherwise.
Nor do I see that as contingent on there being one Isaiah, two or three of him or 26.
@Martin60, I can see what you are driving at but simple soul that I am, I'm of the view that if God is God then surely he knows everything, including what might have been if things worked out differently.
He's not limited by anything.
Hence, I wouldn't rule out the possibility of predictive prophecy but that doesn't seem to be what we are dealing with here. At least not in the kind of direct way favoured by fundamentalist interpretations of these texts.
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Let us with a gladsome mind
Praise the Lord for He is kind.
http://philthebard.blogspot.com
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
It is my assumption that texts can have a denotative function as well as a connotative one. Post modern readings seem to me to pretty well completely deny denotation. They would say the meaning of text is completely dependent upon the interaction of text and reader and is consequently ultra subjective.
We seem to be back where we were almost a year ago (see especially this link in that post).
I think it's fair to say that you put the cursor between denotation and connotation far more towards denotation than anybody else in this discussion, in much the same way that you appear to take many biblical metaphors (e.g. about the bride of Christ) literally.
As a translator I can tell you that this is an even more perilous exercise when translation is involved, as it is here. Yesterday evening in our Bible study we were looking at Romans 12 and got stuck on ἁπλότητι in verse 8, which is translated in English and French by everything from "liberality" to "simplicity" - which carry with them fields of meaning that don't overlap at all. How can we decide what ἁπλότητι "denotes" on that basis
It's harder than you might think to be sure you're getting denotation right one language removed (even an apparently simple word, say, er, cherry, will carry with it different associations in different languages), and when considering OT prophecy referred to in the NT we're considering it two languages removed - the Hebrew (usually) and the Greek translation of the Hebrew, before we even get arouund to our own mother tongue.
In his commentary, Motyer spends a good while arguing that עַלְמָה (‘almāh) in Isaiah 7:14 must mean virgin (and to be sure there can be no ambiguity about what he means has to resort to the Latin (!) virgo intacta to do so). I'm no Hebrew scholar but I know how translators argue and I'm not wholly convinced by the case he puts.
Again, without knowing Hebrew, from what I understand of language, translation in general, and the discussion, I think a more honest, accurate, albeit antiquated translation in English would be "maiden", which is similarly ambiguous; its original meaning relates to "maidenhead" i.e. the hymen, but it also means simply "young girl". It might mean "technical virgin" but it doesn't have to. A good translation is one that carries over the same degree of ambiguity as the original word, for the same fields.
Does it necessarily follow that we must discount the virgin birth? No. Luke is far less ambiguous with regard to Mary's virginity than Isaiah is about the prophesied עַלְמָה - we have a whole, unambiguous conversation between Mary and the angel about it.
There is no doubt that the NT writers saw Christ as fulfilling OT prophecies. The argument is about how specifically predictive this or other similar prophecies are, and about how important their pinpoint accuracy is to the integrity of the faith.
In the case of Isaiah 7:14, I think the lingustic fact is this particular prophecy is not necessarily as specifically predictive as many conservative commentators would like to have you believe, and I suspect the same is true of many other similar prophecies.
This leaves us with really specific 'predictions' like Cyrus and bits of Daniel. To reject them out of hand simply because they appear irrational is, I agree, to bring too much of an assumption to the text.
But to establish them uncritically as predictions constituting a sort of hermeneutical gold standard which all other bits of the Bible qualified as "prophecy" must then made to fit, forcing them to be just as accurately predictive at the expense of doing violence to the text, doesn't strike me as being very satisfactory either.
Finally (for now, sorry this has become so long) an NT passage that has long informed my thinking on all this is 1 Peter 1:10-12: quote:
Concerning this salvation, the prophets, who spoke of the grace that was to come to you, searched intently and with the greatest care, trying to find out the time and circumstances to which the Spirit of Christ in them was pointing when he predicted the sufferings of the Messiah and the glories that would follow. It was revealed to them that they were not serving themselves but you, when they spoke of the things that have now been told you by those who have preached the gospel to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven. Even angels long to look into these things.
Peter's understanding is that the prophets had to "search intently" and "try to find out the time and circumstances". To me this suggests they did not have 20:20 predictive foresight - indeed, we are told not even the angels did - they had more of a sense of premonition, or assured hope, than they had an accurate roadmap.
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
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Martin60
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# 368
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
quote:
Marti60: I am nasty and consistent
You are neither. If Isaiah foretelling Cyrus is denied, never mind about Josiah, then on what can you base belief in the incarnation which we are about to celebrate?
You really are too kind Jamat. I'm 'orrible. And my case rests, unless the universe is 6020 (no year 0 remember) years old as of Wednesday 26th October, there was no Incarnation.
And Eutychus, there is every reason for dismissing the Cyrus and Daniel bits out of hand (bits? The 40 verse bits in the 11th chapter bit? Or the 45 verse bits in the 2nd chapter bit?). They don't stand up in court. Or would you jail an innocent man or free a serial killer using the same special pleading, exceptionalist, emm word criteria?
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Love wins
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:
there is every reason for dismissing the Cyrus and Daniel bits out of hand (...) They don't stand up in court. Or would you jail an innocent man or free a serial killer using the same special pleading, exceptionalist, emm word criteria?
Haha, I'm watching the mini-series Manhunt: Unabomber on Netflix right now. It's all about 'forensic linguistics' and I was just thinking how applying them to Isaiah might be a better test for multiple authorship than merely noting there's a difference in style between chapters 39 and 40, which as any fule kno any author can pull off.
That said, we're not in court. We're trying to make sense of a text we believe holds value. Trust me, courts and their procedures are not good places to try and do that (hmm, maybe we need "restorative theology" like we need Restorative Justice...)
It seems to me your dismissal of what appears to be very specific predictive prophecy (let's stick with the prophecy about Cyrus (cf Is 44:28)* for now) is informed by your rejection-of-supernatural intervention-outside-the-Incarnation hermeneutic rather than by the text itself. You can make a case for it, but frankly your proximate grounds for it don't seem much better to me than Motyer's for making the opposite case. The blinkered perspective in both cases is Ce qui ne doit pas être, ne peut pas être ("What must not be, cannot be allowed to be").
With my background, I'm going to want to start with the text and the arguments for dating and authorship. In my view, arguments for dating and authorship must be based on evidence other than simply dating any text after any apparently predictive element it contains, because the text as a whole - OT and NT - appears to concede there are at least some of these, even if only vaguely.
If, aside from predictive shibboleths, I find the arguments on dating and authorship overwhelmingly overrule a predictive element, then I'll look for other ways of understanding it. In that order.
For some people, including Jamat, this appears threatening because it seems their faith has been predicated first and foremost on the predictive elements being literally and precisely true. I think that's mistaken linguistically, as explained above, and I don't think that's what genuine faith is actually all about, but I can see that they'd find it threatening.
==
*It's also striking that the very constituency attached to literalistic predictive fulfilment of OT prophecy in Christ apparently has few qualms about reapplying it to contemporary events, cf the identification of Cyrus with Donald Trump. What that means requires further thought.
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
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Martin60
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# 368
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Posted
Thanks Eutychus. Most restrained of you. So we can't use legal, forensic, scientific, linguistic or philosophical, logical methods first - all the very the best we have - as they all invalidate Isaiah 7:14, 45, Daniel 2, 11 as Christian prophecy? We have to give second rate Christian exceptionalism the benefit of all doubt first?
Couldn't happen today could it?
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Love wins
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:
So we can't use legal, forensic, scientific, linguistic or philosophical, logical methods first - all the very the best we have - as they all invalidate Isaiah 7:14, 45, Daniel 2, 11 as Christian prophecy? We have to give second rate Christian exceptionalism the benefit of all doubt first?
That's not what I said at all.
If we believe in divine interventionism at all - as you stubbornly do, at least for the "Christ event" plus a few other ripples whose exact boundaries you define arbitrarily - than we should at least consider whether it offers the best explanation in certain other instances.
I don't think you've really made a legal, forensic, scientific, linguistic or philosophical, logical case for believing in the Incarnation. By your own admission you can't come up with anything better in this respect than mere undifferentiated rhetoric.
Why should I, a good, rational Athenian in Acts 17, dismiss on such grounds - as you do - an apparent prediction of Cyrus solely because "we all know that sort of thing never happens" - and not go on in the same breath (as many of them did) to dismiss the Resurrection just as readily?
I'm not sure I can resolve this conundrum any better than you. What I do try to do is bring legal, forensic, scientific, linguistic or philosophical, logical methods to inform my inner conviction that Christ is risen - and thus that the supernatural, while not the inevitable explanation, must be at least be seriously considered as a possibility, all the more so if the textual arguments, shorn of a priori assumptions, are inconclusive.
(I'm not saying they are in this instance. I just don't know. But that's the stance I'd be taking).
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
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Martin60
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# 368
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Posted
Sorry Eutychus. Really. Aye, all WE have, Christians, is different flavours of rhetoric to taste. Our dispositions are unbridgeable and that has to be that. For me there is no Christian necessity for easily rationally explicable apocalyptic to be prophecy. I would love to have other reasons to believe, prophecy, gifts of the Spirit, even personal. private untransferable ones, one!, I desperately need them, it's scary not having anything but Christ and Kalam as feeble back up after the event.
To me there's nothing arbitrary about the Christ event and its ripples, that is rationality applied to faith. Ripples from 750 years before are logarithmically, geometrically, homeopathically faint.
You consistently don't get - and why should you? - that for me it is utterly irrelevant that all OT prophecy not only fails but doesn't actually exist but that the claim of Incarnation works because it is geometrically more intense, more profound then any of those scant signals to another age garbled by centuries of noise.
If prophecy, the supernatural were demonstrable to the rational mind, we'd all be Christians. It's demonstrated to me qualitatively in the woman caught in adultery. And I don't care if that can't be proved. It is so good it speaks to me of the divine nature with a couple of handfuls of other instances of the fingerpost in Jesus at most. Nothing in these instances can be explained away for me unlike all prophetic claims for apocalyptic. Which still leaves a handful of haunting Psalm quotes. Anything else?
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Love wins
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:
For me there is no Christian necessity for easily rationally explicable apocalyptic to be prophecy.
I don't really know whether there is for me either, but there's a difference between necessity and possibility. I see no absolute need, but I think the possibility should not be discounted out of hand.
quote:
I would love to have other reasons to believe
But again, this is not necessarily about specific, tick-box reasons to believe. Making it about "reasons to believe (or disbelieve)" is really unhelpful when it comes to clear-headed understanding and analysis. It's about achieving a coherent explanation of what we believe to be revelation in Scripture as a whole (revelation of one form or another, everything from "story" to dictation).
quote:
To me there's nothing arbitrary about the Christ event and its ripples, that is rationality applied to faith. Ripples from 750 years before are logarithmically, geometrically, homeopathically faint.
Nah, don't buy it as rationality. It looks nice, it's aesthetically pleasing, and I've certainly integrated the idea, but it's hardly going to convince an Athenian, is it?
quote:
If prophecy, the supernatural were demonstrable to the rational mind, we'd all be Christians.
I disagree. "If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead", says Jesus in Luke 16:31, and this matches my experience.
Miracles don't convince anyone. Or more accurately, any faith built solely on miracles is not likely to stand the test of time (I think this is one of the big mistakes in Wimber's "power evangelism", and in "kingdom now" theology).
Along with Paul, I think true faith comes from the work of the Spirit enlightening our understanding and enlivening us to the presence of God, not from some sort of QED demonstration via a series of miracles.
[ 21. December 2017, 12:39: Message edited by: Eutychus ]
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
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Martin60
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# 368
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Posted
An excellent answer according to faith. I'm the Athenian who believes anyway. With no sense of the presence of God apart from what I invoke as immanent - unfelt, unseen, unheard, unknown - transcendence. Nothing in reality apart from reality itself, existence speaks of Him. A reality that only is because He makes it so, but looks as if He isn't, apart from in Christ. Nothing else.
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Love wins
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
Which is also an excellent answer according to faith.
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
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Jamat
Shipmate
# 11621
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Posted
quote:
In his commentary, Motyer spends a good while arguing that עַלְמָה (‘almāh) in Isaiah 7:14 must mean virgin
As you say, the entirety of scripture supports this reading. quote:
Concerning this salvation, the prophets, who spoke of the grace that was to come to you, searched intently and with the greatest care, trying to find out the time and circumstances to which the Spirit of Christ in them was pointing when he predicted the sufferings of the Messiah and the glories that would follow. It was revealed to them that they were not serving themselves but you, when they spoke of the things that have now been told you by those who have preached the gospel to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven. Even angels long to look into these things.
Peter's understanding is that the prophets had to "search intently" and "try to find out the time and circumstances". To me this suggests they did not have 20:20 predictive foresight - indeed, we are told not even the angels did - they had more of a sense of premonition, or assured hope, than they had an accurate roadmap
Indeed. No prophet of scripture had a design blueprint.
quote:
[For some people, including Jamat, this appears threatening because it seems their faith has been predicated first and foremost on the predictive elements being literally and precisely true/QUOTE]
Assuming my view is based on fear? Why not faith?
[QUOTE] Miracles don't convince anyone. Or more accurately, any faith built solely on miracles is not likely to stand the test of time (I think this is one of the big mistakes in Wimber's "power evangelism", and in "kingdom now" theology).
Also stated by the Lord in Luke 17..
“They have Moses and the prophets, let them hear them”
quote:
I'm the Athenian who believes anyway
Paradox or dissonance?
quote:
there is every reason for dismissing the Cyrus and Daniel bits out of hand (bits? The 40 verse bits in the 11th chapter bit? Or the 45 verse bits in the 2nd chapter bit?). They don't stand up in court.
If you are Dawkins, maybe. If you insist on a faith stance that rests on naturalistic standards of evidence it isn’t faith.
If you insist on the same despite naturalistic evidence then you deny rationality
If you acknowledge the shortcomings of naturalistic evidential standards and the difficulties of applying these to scripture, then you leave a door open for faith.
If the sower scatters his seeds on your ‘good ground’, then faith grows.
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Jamat ..in utmost longditude, where Heaven
with Earth and ocean meets, the setting sun slowly descended, and with right aspect
Against the eastern gate of Paradise. (Milton Paradise Lost Bk iv)
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
quote:
In his commentary, Motyer spends a good while arguing that עַלְמָה (‘almāh) in Isaiah 7:14 must mean virgin
As you say, the entirety of scripture supports this reading.
That's not what I said at all, as the part of my post you edited out makes clear. Interacting is fine, misrepresentation I object to.
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
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Jamat
Shipmate
# 11621
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Posted
quote:
Eutychus: we have a whole, unambiguous conversation between Mary and the angel about it.
Seemed to me that’s what you were saying. ie idea of virgin birth reinforced throughout scripture.
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
![[brick wall]](graemlins/brick_wall.gif)
What I very clearly said was quote:
Luke is far less ambiguous with regard to Mary's virginity than Isaiah is about the prophesied עַלְמָה - we have a whole, unambiguous conversation between Mary and the angel about it.
Whatever we make of it, the Gospels unequivocally present us with a virgin birth as evidenced by Mary's question to the angel in Luke 1:34. That is what the text says.
The same cannot be said, as far as I can see, about the meaning of עַלְמָה in Isaiah.
You can see the virgin birth as a fulfilment of Isaiah's prophecy (as Matt 1:22-23 does), without having to insist that עַלְמָה means virgo intacta.
As I said, Motyer's argument in that respect strikes me, admittedly not as a Hebrew scholar but avowedly as a linguist who translates for a living, as dependent more on what he needs to be true for his hermeneutic than on what עַלְמָה might actually mean. I think he's chosen the meaning that best suits his hermeneutic rather than the most accurate meaning linguistically, which I think, uneducatedly, would best be conveyed in English by "maiden".
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
quote:
Martin: I'm the Athenian who believes anyway
Jamat: Paradox or dissonance? quote:
Yes.
quote:
Martin:...there is every reason for dismissing the Cyrus and Daniel bits out of hand (bits? The 40 verse bits in the 11th chapter bit? Or the 45 verse bits in the 2nd chapter bit?). They don't stand up in court.
Jamat:If you are Dawkins, maybe. If you insist on a faith stance that rests on naturalistic standards of evidence it isn’t faith.
I'm not and I don't in the slightest.
quote:
If you insist on the same despite naturalistic evidence then you deny rationality
How? What naturalistic evidence?
quote:
If you acknowledge the shortcomings of naturalistic evidential standards and the difficulties of applying these to scripture, then you leave a door open for faith.
There are none. And naturalistic evidential standards have nothing to do with the claim of the Incarnation.
quote:
If the sower scatters his seeds on your ‘good ground’, then faith grows.
It's all that's left. He didn't sow Isaiah or Daniel. He sowed Himself.
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Love wins
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
The same cannot be said, as far as I can see, about the meaning of עַלְמָה in Isaiah.
OK, I'm really pissed with Motyer now.
The relevant bits are on pp 84-85 of The Prophecy of Isaiah.
He starts out by asserting quote:
Isaiah speaks of the virgin who will be with child. The translation virgin ('almâ) is widely disputed...
For starters, this is forcing the translation 'virgin' on us. He should have said "the translation of 'alma as virgin", not the other way around.
He boldly concludes this paragraph quote:
whenever the context allows a judgement, 'alma is not a general term meaning 'young woman' but a specific one meaning 'virgin'
so if you're skim reading, you come away with this idea firmly fixed in your IVP-compatible mind.
Delve into the paragraph and the footnotes, however, and things are far less obvious than that. The worst bit here is when he declares that the plural use of this term in Song of Solomon 6:8 means 'virgin' because, on no textual evidence that I can see, they are "unmarried and virgin" which is as neat an example of circular logic as one could hope for.
Worse still, in the light of all these breezy assertions that 'alma must mean "virgin", is his convoluted conclusion a few paragraphs later: quote:
Isaiah thus used the word which, among those available to him, came nearest to expressing 'virgin birth', and which, without linguistic impropriety, opens the door to such a meaning
In other words, after all that assertiveness, he suddenly climbs down to admit that 'alma allows for the meaning 'virgin', but absolutely does not dictate it.
Which, I submit, again means that 'maiden' would be a more honest translation, preserving the ambiguity.
And to crown it all, in a teeny tiny footnote to that conclusion, he quotes a theologian published by SCM, Ringgren: quote:
In Ugaritic cultic texts the words 'The young woman will bear a son' announces the birth of a divine/royal child
and says Ringgren takes this to mean the message is addressed to, and about, Ahaz and the mother of his child.
In other words, Isaiah appears to have borrowed and translated phraseology from a neighbouring culture for his own prophetic purposes. I'm happy to accept God could repurpose such utterances for his own ends ('why should the devil have all the good oracles?') but to obscure the fact that the phrase was apparently used of pagan natural royal births and try to argue a specific supernatural meaning back into one of the (translated) words on the basis of the NT understanding of the passage really takes the biscuit.
[ 21. December 2017, 19:09: Message edited by: Eutychus ]
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
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Honest Ron Bacardi
Shipmate
# 38
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Posted
(makes mental note not to buy Motyer's commentary)
That's a weird argument anyway, on a number of levels. Firstly, I don't understand why he is faffing about with almah, at least without mentioning the LXX text. As Matthew uses multiple sources for his citations including the LXX, I would have thought that that would make more sense as a starting point for his argument. You have to deal with almah en route certainly as it is isn't a later emendation, being in the Qumran Isaiah scroll.
Secondly, if other commentaries I have read are correct, the root of almah means to conceal, thus "the concealed one", i.e. a young marriageable woman. Not "virgin" in the sense of sexually inexperienced (how 20th century!) but how you map that understanding onto 21st century English isn't a totally trivial matter.
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Anglo-Cthulhic
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
This bespeaks desperate self-deception on Motyer's behalf. Despite having the intellectual compunction to tell the Ugarit truth, STILL deceiving himself that God has anything to do with this.
There's a huge issue here, in that the God who ordained the naming of Cyrus two hundred years in advance (rather than the utter meaninglessness of knowing it without making it so) is also the God the Killer bar none.
Another one of logic: I'm questioned for believing the claim of Incarnation without believing that it was hidden, occult in prophecy. I fail to see a necessary connection. And further, if I believe in the Incarnation I should believe in its prophecy even though it isn't there.
We have NOTHING to say to Dawkins and the postmodern world and even Islam if we aren't going to be intellectually and fully rhetorically honest.
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Love wins
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Honest Ron Bacardi:
Firstly, I don't understand why he is faffing about with almah, at least without mentioning the LXX text.
Yes, he doesn't mention the LXX at all at this point.
quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:
This bespeaks desperate self-deception on Motyer's behalf. Despite having the intellectual compunction to tell the Ugarit truth, STILL deceiving himself that God has anything to do with this.
I think that's unfair. I think he's intellectually dishonest in forcing the translation "virgin" when this is so clearly not the only or even the best option, even from what he himself writes.
I don't think it's necessarily self-deception simply not to topple into your narrative, though.
(I have to confess that once again, CS Lewis provides my basic take on the parallels between pagan religions and OT revelation, in Till We Have Faces. Which you should put on your Christmas reading list if you haven't. "I will accuse the gods...")
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
I put it on a list many years ago and my then wife wouldn't get it for me. That'll learn 'er.
You, Sir, in no way are deceiving yourself, obviously. Like me you have a disposition, but your intellectual integrity cannot be impugned. Nobody's here can, Jamat included.
I just don't understand the epistemologies of everyone to my 'right' here!
It evokes,
"I remember Dawkins talking about a savage believing that a stream in the forest worked because of a hamadryad (he should have said a naiad, but I'm - wrongly I'm sure - sure he said hamadryad, which is a forest spirit admittedly). The savage is given a full scientific education all the way up to fluid dynamics which he passes with honours. When asked if fluid dynamics now fully explained how a stream in the woods works, the savage replied yes, that's how the naiad did it."
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Love wins
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Gamaliel
Shipmate
# 812
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Posted
Ha ha ...
It reminds me of the old Les Dawson gag, 'There's a remote tribe that worships the number zero. Is nothing sacred?'
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Let us with a gladsome mind
Praise the Lord for He is kind.
http://philthebard.blogspot.com
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Jamat
Shipmate
# 11621
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Posted
quote:
Eutychus: I think he's intellectually dishonest in forcing the translation "virgin" when this is so clearly not the only or even the best option, even from what he himself writes.
Arnold F’s take
[ 22. December 2017, 18:59: Message edited by: Jamat ]
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:
It evokes
I must be a savage then.
Amongst other projects Mrs Eutychus and I have been immersed (ha ha) in translating material for this aquarium - not the mediocre stuff on that page I hasten to add, but the signs to go next to the aquariums.
The more I read about hermaphrodite fish and symbiotic molluscs the more it makes me appreciate the wonder of creation, and reinforces my conviction that there's a creator. There's no contradiction between the rational and the transcendent.
What I don't get in your position, Martin, is that this stance seems so risible to you except, apparently, when it concerns the Incarnation: as you say here: quote:
The only risk for me is that the magic of the Incarnation, of the manifest emotional genius of the divine nature as a ground of Jesus' human being being rationalizable. I have no fear of that.
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
Arnold F’s take
What that page says about double reference versus double fulfillment is everything I love to hate about dispensationalism, imposing a hideously complicated interpretive framework that is foreign to the text in order to make sense of it. I'm not having that debate again.
The discussion of the meaning of 'almâ ranks, mostly, somewhere below Motyer's in my view. "It means virgin because the person described here was a virgin". The most compelling part is the bit Motyer leaves out which is the LXX's use of parthenos to translate 'almâ. But a quick glance suggests that this, again, can best be translated as "maiden", i.e. it's ambiguous.
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
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