quote:

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Originally posted by Golden Key:
Possibly all of them?

The way the Bible is put together, whether you chalk that up to dictation by God; humans trying to make sense of both life and folklore; humans seeing patterns, and wanting to make them plain, or something else, has echoes, bounces, themes and variations, calls and responses. Kind of like a very well-constructed symphony.

So a mention of Elijah could also refer to John the Baptist. A mention of a child-bearing virgin could refer to Jesus, or another faith's/culture's similar story (e.g., Osiris) that the Children of Israel picked up in their travels, or both, or neither. Etc.

I don't know the truth of it. But, personally, I don't have a problem with it being about Mary and Jesus.

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Originally posted by Gramps49:
Another key point is the titles Isaiah gave to the king. We usually read them as "Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.", four titles. Yet the Hebrew seems to allow for five titles: Wonder(ful); Counselor: Mighty God; Everlasting Father; Prince of Peace. This is in line with many of the titles the kings of neighboring countries would claim.

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Originally posted by Martin60:
It was ignorantly, innocently arrogated by the NT writers. How could it not be? There is no prophecy, no foreshadowing except by chance as in any other long cultural narrative.

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Originally posted by Martin60:
The one where God reveals the future. That one.

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Originally posted by Honest Ron Bacardi:

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Originally posted by Martin60:
The one where God reveals the future. That one.

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OK Martin - I suspected that might be the case.

A person who does that is a seer, not a prophet. Which is not to discount the role of being a seer from prophecy entirely, though it does make it a very different sort of thing. (Which may also be a partial response to NP)

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Originally posted by BroJames:
I would say (subject to a clear exception being identified) that every prophecy will first and foremost be relevant to its own time and location. So the primary meaning of the prophecy outlined in the OP must be to events and circumstances in its own time.

Subsequently in the light of the coming of Christ, New Testament writers looked back and saw a greater fulfilment of the prophecy in the cosmically significant event of the incarnation.

That greater fulfilment was not (or at least not necessarily) seen by the original person who made the prophesy. Some have argued that it was a meaning intended by God to be seen in the light of the events of the incarnation.

Some interpreters are happy to make a distinction between what did Isaiah mean by this, and what greater meaning can we now see in these same words - a meaning intended by God.

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Originally posted by Martin60:
<snip>It's a meaning we interpolate. We make up. Including the meaning that God had an intended meaning.

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Originally posted by Martin60:
Not at all. The onus on the one making a fantastical claim.

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OK Honest Ron, that's a singular understanding that nobody else has. Unless you have a reference?

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Originally posted by Martin60:
How frightfully Wildean.

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Originally posted by Honest Ron Bacardi:
Yes, of course the dictionary will record the sort of Gypsy Rose Lee understanding.

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Somehow this didn't sink in when I read it yesterday. I assume you've never seen "Gypsy." Gypsy Rose Lee was a striptease artist, not a fortune teller.

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Originally posted by Martin60:
How? Where? It's not a matter of even minimally informed opinion that any supernatural agency is required. Nothing in Isaiah or Matthew. Show me.

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It was ignorantly, innocently arrogated by the NT writers. How could it not be? There is no prophecy, no foreshadowing except by chance as in any other long cultural narrative.

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It's a meaning we interpolate. We make up. Including the meaning that God had an intended meaning.

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Somehow this didn't sink in when I read it yesterday. I assume you've never seen "Gypsy." Gypsy Rose Lee was a striptease artist, not a fortune teller. [Big Grin]

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Originally posted by Martin60:
Don't worry, I know you can't possibly change your epistemology and magical thinking and are quite capable of defending it rhetorically here till Hell warms up.

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You have no idea whether I can change my epistemology or my “magical thinking” because you don’t know what my epistemology or my thinking are. All I have said is that the position you’re putting forward is as unprovable as the position you’re rejecting. You’re arguing against your own assumptions.

That my simple assertion prompts such assumptions on your part suggests to me that your response has more to do with your own biases and your own wrestling with what you were once taught and less to do with what I or others have actually said.

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It's necessary for you, but it isn't transferable, it isn't evangelical here. He is for sure. But all the derivative upon derivative stuff, stories, doctrines in and around Him isn't. None of it.

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Originally posted by Martin60:
Nick, I don't have to disprove magical thinking, the fallacious attribution of causal relationships between actions and events. I don't have to disprove cognitive bias referring to the systematic pattern of deviation from the norm or rationality in judgment, whereby inferences about other people and situations may be drawn in an illogical fashion. That's what's going on where a claim is being made that there is anything prophesied in the OT which came to pass. Anything. Anything that can be validated by rational means.

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that God reveals His truth in the Bible…

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invigorating discussion of Biblical passages

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to realize that there is the possibility of more significance to an Old Testament passage than was consciously apparent to the original author, and more than can be gained by strict grammatico-historical exegesis.

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This is quite often considered a Messianic prophecy. Early Christian theologians easily thought this was referring to the Christ.

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For in him every one of God’s promises is a ‘Yes.’

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Originally posted by Martin
And I realise poor Nick was coming from that neighbourhood.

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Originally posted by Martin60:
Dear me Pooks! Don't go! You're a civilizing influence on me!

Isaiah seems to be very much a prophet in the sense of telling forth rather than foretelling. He seems remarkably timeless in pursuit of true righteousness; social justice, from the first chapter. His grasp of governance and international relations is peerless. When I say his... proto-Isaiah for a start.

Sooo, I now find it very hard to believe that he was foretelling anything at all. Even though we don't know now who he was talking about, Hezekiah or Josiah, it was one of them! Who else?! Who else was he writing for?

Surely? Unless... as Jesus appeared to believe, Isaiah was at least unknowingly foretelling, or even knowingly, the Messiah and not just Cyrus.

I dunno.

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Civilizing? Ha! I know full well it's more like dumbing down. But thank you for saying so anyway.

With regard to what you have said above, I don't see foretelling and forth-telling as mutually exclusive because I don't think dates are the only marker for judging whether a prophecy is foretelling or not. Rather I prefer to think in terms of function and goal of a prophecy within a covenant relationship framework. To me, given there is a relationship based framework in the background, what's important about a prophecy is not so much whether all the details are right, but the goal of that prophecy. Did it achieve what it set out to achieve? - Which is different from did it come true or not. I was told that a biblical prophecy would often be based on the accumulated experiences from the past (looking back), it would speak to its immediate surrounding context and time (forth-telling), but it can also speak to future generations (foretelling). It may not be foretelling in the strictest sense that you have used, but functionally, I think there is an element of foretelling nevertheless. In a way I think prophets were theologians, so immersed in worship of God that they had a good grip on knowing how God had acted in the past, and knowing he acted in the same way consistently, so a forth telling (warning people that they were straying from the way) is also a foretelling (carry on like that and God will punish as he did in the past).

So, did Isaiah knowingly foretell with future generations in mind? Functionally, I think he did foretell as much as forth-tell because his message is still being received as being relevant today. Who was Isaiah referring to? I don't know that, but I would bet your bottom dollar that as God's mouth piece, whatever his message is, whether it's giving hope or social justice, it's all done with his understanding of the covenant prescribed behaviours between God and men in mind. I know this approach is a bit muddled, lacks nuance and details. - And - in the case of answering this OP, it is totally useless! lol But that's all I can offer. Not sure this makes any sense to you or just all nonsense, but it's my two pennies worth. Cheers!
 

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Posted by Honest Ron Bacardi (# 38) on :
 
Kwesi wrote:

quote:

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Would I ever have an interest in OT prophecies regarding Christ without first believing in the Resurrection?

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Martin 60: I used to believe all of them and more for decades. Now, how can I? I would if I could. I long to. But I can't. It's intellectually impossible.

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Originally posted by Jamat:

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Martin 60: I used to believe all of them and more for decades. Now, how can I? I would if I could. I long to. But I can't. It's intellectually impossible.

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Pride is what makes it impossible and pride is not intellect. And intellect is not inherently reasonable, it is the mere tool of moral choices. The issue of Daniel is not if he predicted..he certainly did Daniel 8:18 onwards for example. However, if you late-date him as liberals do, then you simply discount accurate predictions about world history. Similarly with Isaiah, (Is 45), he named and predicted Cyrus the great's actions many years in advance, so then the liberals have to say there was a 'late' Isaiah. They say there were in fact 3 Isaiahs. The reason? The real one, is that you can't have anything but a natural explanation for predictive prophecy.

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Originally posted by Martin60:
Where does Isaiah supernaturally predict the future? The Dead Sea scrolls are post-Exilic proving NOTHING, apart from the rational assertion that deutero-Isaiah was a contemporary of Cyrus. The intelligentsia of that period knew perfectly well who wrote the bible. They did. They re-wrote it. Redacted it. No magic can be demonstrated at all. That's the TRUTH. And I'm proud to know it.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Martin60:
Whatever. Our truths are different. And your epistemology is... different. Unbridgeably different. I wish you had something I wanted, needed. I wish somebody could see my game and raise it. It's not you. And that's not your fault.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Gamaliel:
Post-explicit?

If you are going to accept the Rabbis on the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, Jamat, why differ from in their interpretation of Isaiah?

Also, how does being open to the possibility of a late date for Isaiah or Daniel undermine the authority of scripture?

How does it demonstrate a closed mind?

One could equally argue that insistence on earlier dates represent a closed mind.

I'm perfectly happy to accept that the books of Daniel and Isaiah may be a lot earlier in date than some of the more radical and liberal scholars believe, but also that they may very well be later than fundamentalists insist.

I don't reduce the scriptures to some kind of join-the-dots almanac. They are a lot deeper and richer than that.

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Originally posted by Martin60:
No magic can be demonstrated at all.

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There's that word again

What you seem to mean by it here is "no agency at work beyond that which can be explained by rational, non-supernatural means."

No magic can be demonstrated? I don't think you are in fact looking for "magic". I think it's now your starting assumption that there is no "magic" (as defined above) to be found, anywhere.

If Jamat appears to you to seize on the "magical" interpretation too instinctively, you appear to me to seize on the "rational" interpretation too instinctively. It's not much wonder the two of you can't agree (and Gamaliel, as ever, is sitting on the fence!).

Applied to parts of the Bible like Isaiah and Daniel this means you can only - instinctively - accept the apparent explicit foretelling as being after-the-fact, and I wouldn't be surprised if, as Jamat suggests, this is a post-traumatic reaction on your part rather than the pure fruit of intellectual wrestling unaffected by your life trajectory.

As far as you're concerned, there are no "more things in heaven and earth... than are dreamt of in your philosophy", and while I have every sympathy for why I think you think that, I agree with Jamat that the danger of this view is intellectual pride.

I'm sympathetic to Anglican Brat's musings about prophecy above, but I'm not convinced all "foretelling" in Scripture can be explained away at no expense to the historic faith.

If (per the definition I offer above), there is no such thing as "magic", then I don't think there's any such thing as viable Christianity.
 

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Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on :
 
I'm sure you're right, but that doesn't change the fact that the oldest possible date for Isaiah is not even 400 BCE, therefore there is no reason, and that's the... magic word, to believe that the mention of Cyrus, in the past tense, born over 200 years before can in any sense be prophetic.

There's no half way with that. Or with anything else in the work of the Isaiah school. Forensic, historical, rational scholarship does the same for the school of Daniel, the final redaction of, by which was finished in 164 BCE and was not even included in the prophets before 200 or referred to as a prophet before 180.

If we cannot be intellectually honest, we have NOTHING to be so very 'umble about. We dilute 'faith' to insanely homeopathic proportions, making it necessary to twist reality. And no, I will never do that again. Armstrongism was not distinctive in the slightest in denying and distorting reality to preconceived superstitious dogma.

[ 10. December 2017, 10:33: Message edited by: Martin60 ]
 

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Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on :
 
If I'm sitting on a fence it's because there's one to sit on.

Do I believe in divine supernatural agency - such as predictive prophecy?

Yes, I do. I'm not sitting on a fence there.

If God is God he can do what he likes.

But I'm not an OT scholar. Neither is Jamat.

If someone comes along and says, 'Look, there is a rational basis for believing that the later dates for Isaiah and Daniel are correct,' then I'd be pretty stupid not to give that some consideration.

I am doing that.

That's not sitting on the fence. That's accepting that there are other possibilities out there than the purely literal and conservative interpretation of such things.

If it could be proven beyond any shadow of doubt that the early dates are right and that there is a supernaturally predictive element in the references to Cyrus and so on then we'd have no option but to accept that.

But there isn't any such incontrovertible proof.

Therefore a position of open-mindedness is required.

My main point, of course, is that the whole Judeo-Christian infrastructure doesn't come crashing to the ground if parts of Isaiah were written contemporaneously with Cyrus or after the event.

Equally, I'd suggest that the Messianic prophecies in Isaiah aren't at all undermined if we believe them to have applications to the times in which they were written but which subsequent early Jewish Christians saw as carrying Messianic significance and fulfilment in the person and work of Christ.

In that sense there is both a predictive element and a contemporaneous one. The predictive element, as is the nature of such things, is necessarily open to interpretation.

We're talking hermeneutics here, we're talking interpretation.

We are not talking a join-the-dots easy-peasy lemon squeezy thing.
 

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Posted by Honest Ron Bacardi (# 38) on :
 
Eutychus wrote:

quote:

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I'm sympathetic to Anglican Brat's musings about prophecy above, but I'm not convinced all "foretelling" in Scripture can be explained away at no expense to the historic faith.

If (per the definition I offer above), there is no such thing as "magic", then I don't think there's any such thing as viable Christianity.

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quote:

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.../but that doesn't change the fact that the oldest possible date for Isaiah is not even 400 BCE...

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Originally posted by Martin60:
The fact is that Jesus (...) was still right... That's all we've got. In whom there is "...agency at work beyond that which can be explained by rational, non-supernatural means.".

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Originally posted by Martin60:
As to the first question, what do you think? I mean, really.

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The historical and textual arguments are not that abstruse are they? Are you aware of great tomes discussing finely balanced minutiae of dating?

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I'm not dismissive of the latter in the slightest. Not one jot or tittle.

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He's right because He is the Messiah, He is the Christ, the chosen one, the Holy One of Israel, Immanuel, the Incarnation, the light, the hope of the world.

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It doesn't invalidate Jesus, the fully human vessel of the divine.

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I cannot see how using ones mind, all of it (such is it pathetically is), is not loving God, is not sound, is not faithful.

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Martin60: the oldest possible date for Isaiah is not even 400 BCE, therefore there is no reason, and that's the... magic word, to believe that the mention of Cyrus, in the past tense, born over 200 years before can in any sense be prophetic.

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My view is there was one Isaiah. He did dictate to scribes, notably one, Baruch but he probably ad several over his 40 or so years of prophetic activity.

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Originally posted by Martin60:
I can only accept forensic, historical, scientific dating of anonymously redacted texts – to which I give EVERY benefit of the doubt - by centuries long schools of priest-caste editors. So, despite this very probably being written by an Exilic or post-Exilic editor at least two to, extremely, four hundred years later, and almost certainly not by Isaiah, I accept it: 'Isaiah 1:1 The vision of Isaiah the son of Amoz, which he saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah.' (KJV).

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Can we discuss your problematic bits? My prostate...

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NT: There certainly are predictive aspects, but none require tomorrow to have happened and be known by omniscience or other magic by God in defiance of rationality.

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The starting point of my hermeneutic is that Jesus, Incarnate God, can't be explained by human agency alone. Everything else can be. Which is a point I've been transmitting for at least a year, badly, due to low signal to noise, as you don't appear to have received it?

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Even though the announcement for one is problematic: it was by an archangel in one gospel. A WHAT?!

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I've only just started staring in to the abyss proper in the past year. I recall engaging in intense magical thinking only five years before.

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I say, yes, starting with the “magic” of Jesus. A horse that needs no cart.

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Martin 60: I can only accept forensic, historical, scientific dating of anonymously redacted texts – to which I give EVERY benefit of the doubt

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Originally posted by Gamaliel:
I agree wholeheartedly with Eutychus's comments on IVP commentaries and the like. They seem quite scholarly and to take into account modern discoveries and textual criticism etc etc - but then they suddenly seem to switch a gear when it comes to sacred-cows such as the predictive aspects of OT prophecy.

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Gamaliel: your argument here is similar to that and holds about as much water.

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Originally posted by Gamaliel:
After all, if we quote Wisden,the cricketing almanac,we don't expect to be understood to refer to texts all written by one Mr Wisden.

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Is Outrage! You'll next be saying that Mr. Bradshaw didn't compile all those railway timetables, or that Mr. Hansard doesn't report on Parliament personally. Yet all are authoritative, it's a good point you make.
 

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Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :
 
I had thought of Hansard before Gamaliel posted. Although I agree with his overall point, I don't think the comparison quite works. Nobody refers to Hansard or Wisden as "he" rather than "it".

Besides, if one's interpretation of Scripture is "flat" - as Jamat's is - to the extent that "Moses" must always mean "the individual called Moses", "144,000" must mean 144,000 and not 143,999 or 144,001, and that the new Jerusalem will literally have "city dwellers, visitors, and there are still nations with kings on the earth" then I don't think this argument is going to wash with them anyway.
 

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Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on :
 
One can but try, Eutychus.

Mind you, reading some of Jamat's posts I do wonder whether he's actually ever listened to a single word anyone has ever said on these boards ...



But he wouldn't be the only Shipmate to which that applies, nor is his tradition the only one where it applies either.

I agree that Wisden, Hansard and Bradshaw aren't directly analogous, but you get my drift.

I don't read anywhere near as much scripture as I used to but I have to say my reading of it feels a lot richer now I tend to read it less 'flatly' than I used to ...
 

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Posted by Jamat (# 11621) on :
 

quote:

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Gamaliel: (my view).. is perfectly compatible with a belief in historic creedal Christianity and with a high Christology, a belief in the supernatural and a high view of scripture

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One does wonder if a belief in the supernatural and a high view of scripture would include the function of omniscience in matters of simple fact..

[ 12. December 2017, 14:07: Message edited by: Jamat ]
 

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Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on :
 




You don't get it do you?

Your approach to the scriptures reminds me of Gradgrind's approach to education in Dickens's Hard Times.

'Facts ... these are Facts ...'

If it were all about hard facts then our Lord might have said, 'Listen, you think that the mustard seed is the smallest of seeds but actually the smallest seeds in the world come from certain varieties of epiphytic orchids which grow in tropical rainforests ... which are in far away countries that you haven't discovered yet.'

The Apostle John referred to Isaiah in terms that implied a single authorship presumably because:

- That was the convention at the time.

- He may have believed that Isaiah was written by a single author.

- He may have been aware that there were several authors involved but simply adopted the convention of the times which was to exercise different views on authorship and historiography than those which apply today.

- There was one single author of the Book of Isaiah and he lived several hundred years before Cyrus as fundamentalists believe.

You seem to think that the Book of Isaiah HAS to have had a single author simply because the Apostle John appears to treat it as if it did.

What was supposed to happen?

As John sat down to write his Gospel, then the Holy Spirit would nudge him and say, 'Hey, you do know that there were actually two or three Isaiah's don't you?'

Or else, 'There was one single author because Isaiah names himself in the opening chapter ...'

I repeat, how does it possibly undermine the authority of John's Gospel if the writings of several prophets, writing at different times, had been put together in a single volume that bore the name of one of them?

It's this 'flat' view of scripture that Eutychus is referring to.

I would add the epithet 'wooden'.

Flat, wooden, overly literal.
 

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Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by Jamat:
One does wonder if a belief in the supernatural and a high view of scripture would include the function of omniscience in matters of simple fact..

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Gamaliel: you seem to think that the Book of Isaiah HAS to have had a single author simply because the Apostle John appears to treat it as if it did.

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Originally posted by Jamat:
To me, John 12 : 38-41 is textual confirmation that the book of Isaiah DOES have one author.

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Originally posted by Baptist Trainfan:

quote:

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Originally posted by Jamat:
To me, John 12 : 38-41 is textual confirmation that the book of Isaiah DOES have one author.

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No, I don't think it is - I think it's merely a confirmation that John (and the early Church leaders who "authorised" the Gospel for publication) believed that Isaiah wrote the whole book. And, in any case, both Scriptures quoted precede the time of Jesus and so can still be adduced as prophetic proof of Jesus' Messiahship, irrespective of the author. The focus of the passage in John is the content of the prophecies and what they say about Jesus, not the identity of their author which is very secondary.

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Gamaliel: It's intellectually honest to ask questions. That's what I'm doing, not falling back on the tired old tropes of US backwoods flavour fundamentalism that has somehow taken root in New Zealand.

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Originally posted by Jamat:
implying that somehow in this new age of understanding, that it is ok to fundamentally apply new criteria to make Christianity more inclusive.

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If you do not take a stand somewhere you will find it all, 'slip sliding away'.

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Originally posted by Jamat:
Eutychus : I would be interested to know, incidentally, where Daniel is a 'little' bit wrong.

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if one takes the view that the text is dealing with historical events, it is erroneous. But if... it is prophecy [of future end-time events], the problem disappears

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The church has lost its assurance about predictive prophecy. Christian thought has been so overrun by down-to-earth, rationalistic humanism that it tends to ridicule any assertion that sees in the Bible anything more than very vague references to future events... God, however... can certainly legitimately declare that he "long ago announced... things to come" (Is 44:7)"

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Hmmm ...

I don't want to get into a Process Theology tangent...

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...but if God is God then surely he 'knows the end from the beginning.'

So it sounds way off kilter to me to suggest that God couldn't have known of Cyrus (or anyone else) in advance.

As omniscient he surely knows what might have been as well as what has been and what will be or what might be...

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I get told off for speculating as to what other Shipmates might mean or what might motivate them, but I submit that what may be hacking people off from time to time is the way you use the M word - 'magic' - in a way that can sound a tad smug.

'You haven't caught up with me yet,' type of thing.

I do think that you and I are close and running on somewhat parallel tramlines, though.

However, where we differ is on the possibility of supernatural intervention and agency.

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quote:

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I agree wholeheartedly with Eutychus's comments on IVP commentaries and the like. They seem quite scholarly and to take into account modern discoveries and textual criticism etc etc - but then they suddenly seem to switch a gear when it comes to sacred-cows such as the predictive aspects of OT prophecy.

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quote:

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These days I tend to be comfortable with late dates for Isaiah and Daniel with the various Christological elements being things that the early Church 'discerned' or interpreted in a Christological way - if you like.

I don't see how that undermines the Church's claims, although if I were Jewish I'd obviously have a bone to pick ...

On the apparently future predictive elements such as are found in the whole Dispensationalist schema and the tendency to map these across to contemporary events, I gave up on all that a long time ago ...

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How the Parousia will pan out is beyond my pay-grade as they say.

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Sorry to double-post, but my point, of course is that as the Second Person of the Trinity, Very-God of Very-God, Jesus would have been well aware that there smaller seeds worldwide than the mustard seeds 1st century Jews were familiar with...

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Good luck with trying to determine the width of Martin's 'admissible field' ...

FWIW my reading of Martin's position is that it's not as far 'left' as Spong's or the more radical liberal theologians, rather it's a somewhat hyperbolic and very Martin-ish application of some ideas from Process Theology mixed up with some quirkiness of his own ...

But he does seem to have moved away from traditional ideas of an interventionist God.

That said, Martin's God still seems to be 'there' and uniquely revealed in Christ ... But beyond that it's difficult to pin anything down.

---

Nicely summated.

My admissable field includes the Gospels with caveats like yours: Matthew Christianized Jewish texts. It's Red Letter at core. But has ever decreasing circles of lesser orders of magnitude import.
 

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Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on :
 
Hang on a sec', I've yet to get my cricket pads and box in place (reaches between crotch in an ungainly and unseemly fashion ... ruffle, rustle, ruffle ...) ah ... that's better that's adjusted it ...



In the meantime, I've been hiding behind Eutychus's batting. He's a more experienced batsman than me.

He may have heard a polite ripple of applause run around the ground after his last innings.

Ok - my attempt to block Martin's spin.

I'll let the umpire decide on whether I do so or whether he sends the bails flying off the stumps.

I suppose my starting premise is that God knows everything, past, present and future - 'the end from the beginning' - and as has been quoted from Isaiah 44:7 - he can 'call forth' that which is to come:

http://biblehub.com/isaiah/44-7.htm

I don't see why we have to see that in 'micro-managerial' terms. If God is omniscient then he'd know Cyrus before he was born, just as he can work out what Martin60 is trying to say in some of his more obscure posts and also knows exactly why I can act like such a wally at times ...

He knows and understands it all.

That's my starting point.

Now, that doesn't mean I have to understand the apparently predictive elements in Isaiah, Daniel, the Gospels or - unlike Jamat - the Book of Revelations - in a fundamentalist kind of way.

If there are rational reasons for accepting late dates and redactions, I'm open to do so. Just as, even though I'm no expert, I know enough about apocalyptic literature not to take it as literally as Jamat appears to do. Rather, I take it in an allegorical and illustrative or aphoristic sense.

Again, that's another fundamental principle.

So, God knows everything. One principle.

Apocryphal and prophetic literature has to be handled differently to other types of writing and in keeping with its genre. Second principle.

Equally, when you look at the way the NT authors handled OT texts it's pretty obvious that they didn't do so according to the neat schemas deployed by the more conservative scholars with special pleading and acrobatic tricks they use to try and make things 'fit'.

Liberal and radical scholars bring other problems to the table. We can deal with them during another innings.

Jamat says that we should expect complete and utter dove-tailing and spot-on detail when it comes to inspired writings.

Why? Who says?

How on earth does it impugn the integrity of Isaiah or John's Apostleship if the book that bears Isaiah's name had multiple authors?

Sections of it may very well have been written by Isaiah the son of Amoz. That doesn't mean that other sections were written later or added by pseudonymous prophets in his 'school'.

I can remember being told as an earnest young evangelical that Isaiah was like a mini-bible and that its format and structure followed that of the Bible itself - with 39 opening chapters (like the 39 books of the Hebrew or OT scriptures) dealing with judgement on idolatrous humanity. Then the final 27 chapters (like the 27 books of the NT) brought a message of hope ...

All very nice, all very neat, but even as an earnest young evangelical I found this explanation rather bizarre. Like as if the actual number of chapters has significance in and of itself.

People like patterns. We like to make sense of things.

The 19th century wasn't the first to see people poring over the scriptures and making connections between this, that and the other that they then developed into interpretative grids and schemes.

But that's when this tendency flourished and we see its effects in certain strands of evangelicalism today.

Not to mention marginal groups like the JWs.

It's an approach that is fundamentally flawed, as well as fundamentalist.

Again, I'm no expert. I've read some liberal material, I've read plenty of conservative material, I've read some Jewish material. I hang around on these boards and I speak to people in real life.

And those are my conclusions so far.

So, have I hit the ball and blocked it? Knocked it for six? Knocked it outside the pavilion or has it sent my stumps and bails flying or is it LBW or a knock in the box?
 

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Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on :
 
And now a word from our sponsor.

Daniel 10 (KJV) Prologue to Daniel 11

1 In the third year of Cyrus king of Persia a thing was revealed unto Daniel...

536 BCE, the 3rd year of Cyrus being king of Babylon and Daniel from 539.

Daniel 11

1 Also I in the first year of Darius the Mede, even I, stood to confirm and to strengthen him.

Who? No such person. But it must be the same year or so. 536/5 BCE.

2 And now will I shew thee the truth. Behold, there shall stand up yet three kings in Persia; and the fourth shall be far richer than they all: and by his strength through his riches he shall stir up all against the realm of Grecia.

Cambyses II 530–522 BCE,
(pseudo-)Smerdis / Bardiya 522,
Darius I September 522 BCE to October 486 (36 years) and
Xerxes I / Ahaseurus 486-465 followed by eight more (a minor prophetic oversight?)

3 And a mighty king shall stand up, that shall rule with great dominion, and do according to his will.

Alexander the Great 336-323 BCE

4 And when he shall stand up, his kingdom shall be broken, and shall be divided toward the four winds of heaven; and not to his posterity, nor according to his dominion which he ruled: for his kingdom shall be plucked up, even for others beside those.

1. Ptolemy (Soter - Saviour), ruling Egypt, part of Syria and Judea (305-283/2 BCE)
2. Seleucus (Nicator - Victor), ruling Syria, Babylonia and territory east to India (305-281 BCE)
3. Lysimachus, ruling Asia Minor.
4. Cassander, ruling Greece and Macedonia.

5 And the king of the south shall be strong, and one of his princes; and he shall be strong above him, and have dominion; his dominion shall be a great dominion.

Ptolemies, and Seleucids. Seleucus I Nicator was Ptolemy I Soter's general who set himself up in Syria while Ptolemy was distracted.

6 And in the end of years they shall join themselves together; for the king's daughter of the south shall come to the king of the north to make an agreement: but she shall not retain the power of the arm; neither shall he stand, nor his arm: but she shall be given up, and they that brought her, and he that begat her, and he that strengthened her in these times.

'the king's daughter of the south' was Ptolemy II Philadelphus' (285-247/6 BCE) daughter Berenice I Phernophorus ("Dowry Bearer") / Syra (275-246 BCE)

'the king of the north' was Antiochus II Theos (286-246 BCE)

'an agreement': They married in 252 BCE, ending the war he began with the south in 260 BCE influenced by his first wife Laodice I.

Ptolemy II Philadelphus, 'he that begat her', died in 247/6 BCE: 'neither shall he stand, nor his arm'.

'she shall not retain the power': Rawlinson's Manual of Ancient History, 1869, pages 251 and 252: "On the death of Philadelphus [he that begat her], B.C. 247, Antiochus repudiated Bernice, and took back his former wife, Laodice, who, however, doubtful of his constancy, murdered him to secure the throne for her son Seleucus (II) B.C. 246 ... Bernice ... had been put to death by Laodice.".

7 But out of a branch of her roots shall one stand up in his estate, which shall come with an army, and shall enter into the fortress of the king of the north, and shall deal against them, and shall prevail:

Her immediate roots were her parents. A male branch from them was her brother: Ptolemy III Euergetes (Benefactor), eldest son of Philadelphus, invaded Syria in 245 BCE.

8 And shall also carry captives into Egypt their gods, with their princes, and with their precious vessels of silver and of gold; and he shall continue more years than the king of the north.

9 So the king of the south shall come into his kingdom, and shall return into his own land.

He dominated the north's king Seleucus II, whom he outlived, 'and he shall continue more years than the king of the north', who died in 226 BCE, until his death in 222 BCE.

10 But his sons shall be stirred up, and shall assemble a multitude of great forces: and one shall certainly come, and overflow, and pass through: then shall he return, and be stirred up, even to his fortress.

His being the king of the north, Seleucus II, as is obvious from v.11 His sons were Seleucus III, who ruled only three years, 226-223 BCE, and then his brother Antiochus III, called "the Great," ruled 223-187 BCE

11 And the king of the south shall be moved with choler, and shall come forth and fight with him, even with the king of the north: and he shall set forth a great multitude; but the multitude shall be given into his hand.

The KotS, Ptolemy IV Philopater (Beloved of His Father) defeated Antiochus III the Great, the KotN, 217 BCE

12 And when he hath taken away the multitude, his heart shall be lifted up; and he shall cast down many ten thousands: but he shall not be strengthened by it.

But he made a bad peace.

13 For the king of the north shall return, and shall set forth a multitude greater than the former, and shall certainly come after certain years with a great army and with much riches.

In 205 BCE the KotS died, leaving his infant heir Ptolemy V Epiphanes (The Illustrious) (204-181 BCE) and Antiochus III the Great, KotN, returned in force, allied with Philip V of Macedon, with Jewish assistance according to Josephus:

14 And in those times there shall many stand up against the king of the south: also the robbers of thy people shall exalt themselves to establish the vision; but they shall fall.

15 So the king of the north shall come, and cast up a mount, and take the most fenced cities: and the arms of the south shall not withstand, neither his chosen people, neither shall there be any strength to withstand.

16 But he that cometh against him shall do according to his own will, and none shall stand before him: and he shall stand in the glorious land, which by his hand shall be consumed.

Egypt lost Judea at the 200 BCE Battle of Panium (Caesrea Philippi).

17 He shall also set his face to enter with the strength of his whole kingdom, and upright ones with him; thus shall he do: and he shall give him the daughter of women, corrupting her: but she shall not stand on his side, neither be for him.

Apparently 'upright ones' mean 'equal conditions, or marriage' in Hebrew. Antiochus III, KotN, gave his daughter Cleopatra I in marriage to Ptolemy V, KotS, to possess the south. That failed: Coele-Syria and Palestine were promised as a dowry, but not delivered.

18 After this shall he turn his face unto the isles, and shall take many: but a prince for his own behalf shall cause the reproach offered by him to cease; without his own reproach he shall cause it to turn upon him.

The isles are those off Asia minor, which he invaded 197-6 BCE and on in to Thrace (Bulgaria) and Greece, absorbing Hannibal in to his court, before being defeated by Roman general Lucius Cornelius Scipio Asiaticus at the 190 BCE Battle of Magnesia.

19 Then he shall turn his face toward the fort of his own land: but he shall stumble and fall, and not be found.

“As a consequence of this blow to the Seleucid power, the outlying provinces of the empire, recovered by Antiochus, reasserted their independence. Antiochus mounted a fresh eastern expedition in Luristan, where he died while pillaging a temple of Bel at Elymaïs, Persia, in 187 BC.” Wiki

20 Then shall stand up in his estate a raiser of taxes in the glory of the kingdom: but within few days he shall be destroyed, neither in anger, nor in battle.

Seleucus IV Philopator (son of Antiochus III, ruled 187-175 BCE): he sent the tax collector Heliodorus to seize the Jewish temple treasury, who returned and assassinated him.

21 And in his estate shall stand up a vile person, to whom they shall not give the honour of the kingdom: but he shall come in peaceably, and obtain the kingdom by flatteries.

Antiochus IV Epiphanes (Selecus IV's younger brother, ruled 175-164 BCE) – da-DAH! - the true heir Demetrius I Soter's (Seleucus IV's son, a hostage in Rome) uncle, seized the kingdom. "Antiochus [Epiphanes]...drives out Heliodorus, and obtains the throne, B.C. 176. He astonishes his subjects by an affectation of Roman manners" and "good-natured profuseness [flattery]." [/I]

22 And with the arms of a flood shall they be overflown from before him, and shall be broken; yea, also the prince of the covenant.

He murdered the High Priest Onias III 175 BCE. This is NOT Messianic of Jesus.

23 And after the league made with him he shall work deceitfully: for he shall come up, and shall become strong with a small people.

He took out Galilee and Lower Egypt in 171 BCE, keeping the Romans onside.

24 He shall enter peaceably even upon the fattest places of the province; and he shall do that which his fathers have not done, nor his fathers' fathers; he shall scatter among them the prey, and spoil, and riches: yea, and he shall forecast his devices against the strong holds, even for a time.

25 And he shall stir up his power and his courage against the king of the south with a great army; and the king of the south shall be stirred up to battle with a very great and mighty army; but he shall not stand: for they shall forecast devices against him.

26 Yea, they that feed of the portion of his meat shall destroy him, and his army shall overflow: and many shall fall down slain.

27 And both of these kings' hearts shall be to do mischief, and they shall speak lies at one table; but it shall not prosper: for yet the end shall be at the time appointed.

28 Then shall he return into his land with great riches; and his heart shall be against the holy covenant; and he shall do exploits, and return to his own land.

168 BCE

29 At the time appointed he shall return, and come toward the south; but it shall not be as the former, or as the latter.

He met his match in a single elderly Roman ambassador named Gaius Popillius Laenas.

30 For the ships of Chittim shall come against him: therefore he shall be grieved, and return, and have indignation against the holy covenant: so shall he do; he shall even return, and have intelligence with them that forsake the holy covenant.

Chittim. Cypriot Larnaka. Under Roman control. He left Egypt and turned on the Jews.

31 And arms shall stand on his part, and they shall pollute the sanctuary of strength, and shall take away the daily sacrifice, and they shall place the abomination that maketh desolate.

167 BCE

32 And such as do wickedly against the covenant shall he corrupt by flatteries: but the people that do know their God shall be strong, and do exploits.

Provoking the Maccabees in 167/6 BCE -

33 And they that understand among the people shall instruct many: yet they shall fall by the sword, and by flame, by captivity, and by spoil, many days.

34 Now when they shall fall, they shall be holpen with a little help: but many shall cleave to them with flatteries.

35 And some of them of understanding shall fall, to try them, and to purge, and to make them white, even to the time of the end: because it is yet for a time appointed.

-and beyond until 161 BCE

36 And the king shall do according to his will; and he shall exalt himself, and magnify himself above every god, and shall speak marvellous things against the God of gods, and shall prosper till the indignation be accomplished: for that that is determined shall be done.

37 Neither shall he regard the God of his fathers, nor the desire of women, nor regard any god: for he shall magnify himself above all.

38 But in his estate shall he honour the God of forces: and a god whom his fathers knew not shall he honour with gold, and silver, and with precious stones, and pleasant things.

39 Thus shall he do in the most strong holds with a strange god, whom he shall acknowledge and increase with glory: and he shall cause them to rule over many, and shall divide the land for gain.

A reiteration of his blasphemious ways.

40 And at the time of the end shall the king of the south push at him: and the king of the north shall come against him like a whirlwind, with chariots, and with horsemen, and with many ships; and he shall enter into the countries, and shall overflow and pass over.

Never happened. A failed prophecy? Or one of the ultimate King of the North's modern Roman successor? Catholic Europe!! As per Adventist and Dispensationalist Protestant Millennialist interpretation of Revelation.

41 He shall enter also into the glorious land, and many countries shall be overthrown: but these shall escape out of his hand, even Edom, and Moab, and the chief of the children of Ammon.

42 He shall stretch forth his hand also upon the countries: and the land of Egypt shall not escape.

43 But he shall have power over the treasures of gold and of silver, and over all the precious things of Egypt: and the Libyans and the Ethiopians shall be at his steps.

44 But tidings out of the east and out of the north shall trouble him: therefore he shall go forth with great fury to destroy, and utterly to make away many.

45 And he shall plant the tabernacles of his palace between the seas in the glorious holy mountain; yet he shall come to his end, and none shall help him.

Logically it's a failed prophecy as the final edit ran out between 167 and 164 BCE, when Antiochus died, within 40 years of Qumran.

Or, God foreordained (because He couldn't possibly passively see what hadn't happened could He? That would take real magic. OR all the future eternity of infinity has actually happened) 400 odd years of future history, micromanaging kings, their children, marriages and battles.

[ 13. December 2017, 16:54: Message edited by: Martin60 ]
 

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Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on :
 
Signs of a misspent youth there, Martin?

I might be unusual but I've never felt inclined to speculate on the precise identities of the kings and powers listed in Daniel.

The statue with feet of clay and so on always struck me as a very general literary trope but was prepared to broadly go along with the traditional conservative theological take on it ...

With Daniel 11, I've never found the futurist interpretations particularly convincing.

More generally, I couldn't quite see the point of people living thousands of years ago predicting things that were supposed to happen thousands of years ahead and in our own time, say...

But that's the arbitrary way in which Dispensationalism works.

And yes, I know the proof-texta before anyone starts ...

I can go along with the 'telescoping' of prophecy to some extent and to some of them having a contemporary, mid-term and long-term application ... But that's more by way of 'application' or interpretation by the beholder as it were. The 'This is that ...' thing of Peter's Pentecost sermon, for instance.

Anyhow, how was my innings?
 

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Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by Martin60:
Daniel 2: I agree. It portrays history. It isn't necessarily a foretelling prophecy (...)

I'd LOVE it to be foretelling prophecy, for the seer Daniel to be real and not just a mythical folk hero for the Jews facing Antiochus IV Epiphanes around 170 BCE. How old would it have to be to be truly prophetic? To reveal things that could not have been known? The Greeks had been on the rise for nearly two centuries while Rome expanded next door to them. By 170 BCE Rome was an obvious contender in the wings.

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quote:

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Daniel 9 [lots of numbers]

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quote:

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all driven by Jeremiah's 70 year Exile prophecy (Jer. 25:12)

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Isn't that predictive (not the exact number of years, but a rough timespan)? Or are you going to tell me Jeremiah was edited after the fact too

quote:

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Agabus' prophecy of famine in Acts 11: Here again God does not have to do magic or be nasty. Merely be big and not even that clever. If the rains failed in Uganda, not just Ethiopia or just the latter for several years and also the Med, the Cura Annonae would eventually fail: There would be no wheat from Campania, Sicily, Tunisia, Algeria, Libya and Egypt. You can see the graph in God's den with a Note-It saying 'Tell Agabus'.

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quote:

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It is instructive to note that the corresponding section of Cambridge Ancient History volume VIII is entitled Rome and the Mediterranean 218-133 BC. Rome already overshadowed the Western Mediterranean before the end of the third century. No need for a supernatural prophet...

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quote:

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The reliability of the Incarnation and nowt else: As you've been saying for a year now, you don't understand why I accept the Incarnation and necessary intervention around it, including for the first and second circles of the Church and not the post-hoc claims made for the OT including by Jesus Himself.

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Ah, I remember now. You think (to borrow from Daniel and you ) that Jesus was a big rock of the supernatural that got dropped into our natural world with accompanying signs and wonders that spread out in decreasing circles across history like ripples in a pool. That's certainly pretty much how I see things going forward, I suppose my background means I have more trouble extending the same idea backwards into the OT.

quote:

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Originally posted by Martin60:
Aye, 'magic'

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quote:

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it's a shocking rock in the pond. For God to have known Cyrus was going to be born, by name, 200 years in advance, rationally means one of two things.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Gamaliel:
I got it, Martin60 and the cricketing metaphors were well played.

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And served, at least for some of us, to make many of the recent posts in this thread even more incomprehensible than those that came earlier.
 

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Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :
 
Seconded.
 

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Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on :
 
Swerve Eutychus!

The kingdom unlike all other kingdoms: If it isn't just wishful thinking then it's a platinum-iridium prophecy for sure. A prophecy of what God brought to pass in Christ and may yet bring to pass on Earth, if not, in heaven. Not a problem. Fits deism+ just fine.

Numerology: Aye, you can never be wrong with numerology as Dr. Matrix proved.

Jeremiah's 70 year Exile prophecy (Jer. 25:12) – Chapter 25 is said to be the last part of the authentic oracle by some, fine by me again. God revealing what He's going to do beyond just thinking stuff through (I know, I know*) is fine.

'sounds like 20-20 hindsight' p'tartoe: Simple foresight p'taytoe.

Baldwin: She ain't wrong. It was all obvious to big, big God to me. Rains failing in Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi mean Rome starves within a year. Not in the same category as the collapse of communism, which was obvious only with human hindsight. God would have worked it out to the day in a Spirit Planck tick I'm sure(*).

Ripples: As Genesis(!!!) said in '76, Sail away, away…ripples never come back. Or go back. A great sci-fi fantasy concept mind! The decision to throw The Rock in the pond is forward from the beginning.

Impractical magic: My last refuge of it will be where God's passively seeing a future that hasn't happened without working it out (I know, I know*) or intervening is invoked. That WOULD be magic. Meaninglessly irrationally supernatural. Everything else is magical thinking - the fallacious attribution – claims - of causal relationships between actions and events, for which my use 'magic' has been shorthand.

Quantum milestones: I LIKE it. I only have to have the One. But I accept lesser ones, like the 70 year Exile. Agabus' famine doesn't make the milestone grade. No intervention but telling Agabus was necessary. Any knowing an unknowable, without making it happen (and why would you?), like naming Cyrus 200 years in advance, is not even an instance of the fingerpost.

* God doesn't have to ratiocinate. The rational answer to all questions is instantaneous in Him.

(Sorry Nick, you're not from the Commonwealth then?)
 

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Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by Martin60:
Baldwin: She ain't wrong. It was all obvious to big, big God to me. Rains failing in Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi mean Rome starves within a year. Not in the same category as the collapse of communism, which was obvious only with human hindsight. God would have worked it out to the day in a Spirit Planck tick I'm sure(*).

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quote:

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Ripples: As Genesis(!!!) said in '76, Sail away, away…ripples never come back. Or go back.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Nick Tamen:

quote:

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Originally posted by Gamaliel:
I got it, Martin60 and the cricketing metaphors were well played.

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And served, at least for some of us, to make many of the recent posts in this thread even more incomprehensible than those that came earlier.

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Would you prefer us to frame them in basketball terms, or baseball?

Or, worse, American Football?



Cricket is incomprehensible. It's part of the point and part of its charm.
 

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Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on :
 
WOWWWWW!!! Fantastic Eutychus.

Aye, like numerology, I can never be wrong. Baldwin is trying to have her cake and eat it. I'm trying to eat it and have it.

Moments of Al Stewart there.

I won't stop smiling all day.

[ 14. December 2017, 14:24: Message edited by: Martin60 ]
 

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Posted by Nick Tamen (# 15164) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by Martin60:
(Sorry Nick, you're not from the Commonwealth then?)

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quote:

---

Originally posted by Gamaliel:
Would you prefer us to frame them in basketball terms, or baseball?

Or, worse, American Football?



Cricket is incomprehensible. It's part of the point and part of its charm.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Martin60:
Sorry Nick. From the beginning. Might I ask what your response to the OP is? Where you are on the spectrum? Me---Gamaliel-Eutychus-Yourself---Jamat ?

I'll rewind to your first responses to me, if I may.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Eutychus:
It is not ipso facto confirmation of the authorship of Isaiah - any more than Jude 14-15 proves that the First book of Enoch should be in the Christian canon, or that the fact that the NT writers quote the Septuagint prove that it is the definitive translation of the OT.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Gamaliel:
Whereas Jamat will seize on the apparent Johannine reference to Isaiah as a single author as proof positive that this was the case, 'because the Bible tells him so'.

This has to be case in his schema because the whole thing collapses if there are apparent discrepancies.

---

Presumably, by Jamat's reasoning, we're also required to believe that Malachi 3:1, which Mark quotes at the beginning of his gospel, is actually in Isaiah because Mark attributes it to Isaiah and not Malachi?


 

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Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :
 
Thanks for the clarification, Gamaliel. I had no idea I had, according to you, inadvertently taken in irony an Orthodox position on the LXX.

Stejjie: wait, what?

Waiting to see an inmate in the secure psychiatric unit just now I turned to Acts 8:30-35 to see how the text dealt with this "predictive prophecy". And as so often, it doesn't quite say what I might have imagined:

quote:

---

So Philip ran up to it and heard him reading the prophet Isaiah. He asked, ‘Do you understand what you are reading?’ He replied, ‘How can I, unless someone guides me?’ And he invited Philip to get in and sit beside him. (...)
The eunuch asked Philip, ‘About whom, may I ask you, does the prophet say this, about himself or about someone else?’ Then Philip began to speak, and starting with this scripture, he proclaimed to him the good news about Jesus.

---

I notice in particular that it is not recorded that Philip said anything about the authorship of Isaiah, neither that he confirmed or denied who the prophet was talking about, but simply that "starting with this scripture, he proclaimed to him the good news about Jesus".

That's the kind of pragmatism I can get behind.

(I'll leave it to Martin to explain how Philip was translated to Azotus )

[ 15. December 2017, 09:28: Message edited by: Eutychus ]
 

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Posted by Stejjie (# 13941) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by Eutychus:

Stejjie: wait, what?

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quote:

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Nick: ...Martin, your assertion that they “made it all up” is just as much an assertion of belief or faith as an assertion that they correctly perceived the will or word of God in the writings of the prophets. Both depend on assumptions about the nature of the divine and about divine revelation, and neither can be proven.

---

True Nick.

I'll endeavour to open up, differentiate the closed fist of my rhetoric as a psychotherapist does a feeling. I maintain, dispositionally I'm sure, but also logically, in the rhetorical perichoretic mix of logic, fairness and feeling on which we all operate, that the proposition that the NT writers “made it all up” where they perceived or report Jesus perceiving the will or word of God in the writings of the prophets, is a critical starting point, a dialectical synthesis, a rigorous posit to be worked from. The alternative faith position isn't equal to that. It has work to do to overcome that. An analogy for me would be taking the induction of four billion years of the entirely material evolution of life from its inevitable, deterministic origin as a starting point to be overcome in favour of theistic evolution and Intelligent Design.

Faith in science, in rationality is not on an equal footing or in any way comparable with faith in God. They are not the same kind of faith.

That's ratio.

Fides: They were right. They correctly perceived the will or word of God in the writings of the prophets. And wrong. They came to the sufficiently right conclusion, the sufficiently right faith DESPITE making it up, misperceiving what isn't there. Because it is. Beneath. Way beneath. Occasionally it breaks the surface of the dark, bloody, ignorant waters. I see us resonating, yearning to the passive will, the intent of God, the will actively expressed in creation including incarnation, in the OT.

I know I'm failing again, descending in to mere undifferentiated rhetoric; I want to fail you better. How do you feel so far?
 

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Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on :
 
Apologies, Eutychus, I'd assumed it was common knowledge that the Orthodox insist on the Septuagint as their only canonical text.

See: https://orthodoxwiki.org/Septuagint

Which might explain Mousethief's reaction.

You'd inadvertently prodded his tail, perhaps.
 

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Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :
 
Gamaliel: If I've understood that link correctly (and I'm prepared to be told otherwise), the content of the LXX and the manuscripts it was translated from is what the Orthodox accept as canon rather than the translation itself. My ironic point, as you correctly observed, was about the translation itself and in any case was not a swipe at the Orthodoxen.

Stejjie: I'm sorry. I had to go and look it up before catching your reference, so it was genuine surprise. Perhaps I should read my Bible (and actually read it) more.

[ 15. December 2017, 16:46: Message edited by: Eutychus ]
 

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Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on :
 
Interesting ... yes, I think you've got that right, Eutychus but no doubt Mousethief can put us straight if you haven't ...

I didn't take your comment as a dig at the Orthodox but perhaps Mousethief did, hence his accusations of 'crazy talk'.

Unless I've misunderstood him.

He may have meant that insisting on the Septuagint as the only accurate translation was 'crazy talk' and missed the irony ...

He lives near one of the coasts 'from shore to shining shore' so that ought to mean that his irony-o-meter actually functions ...



(Cheap wise-crack apology )

Anyhow, before he comes and puts us out of our misery one way or t'other, I'd echo your thanks to Stejjie for pointing out something I'd never noticed before.

You learn something new everyday.
 

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Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by Eutychus:
...Waiting to see an inmate in the secure psychiatric unit just now I turned to Acts 8:30-35 to see how the text dealt with this "predictive prophecy". And as so often, it doesn't quite say what I might have imagined:
...
That's the kind of pragmatism I can get behind.

(I'll leave it to Martin to explain how Philip was translated to Azotus )

---

Secure psychiatric units: They are fun places aren't they?

Acts 8 about Isaiah 53, aye, it says nowt one way or the other does it! As with all apologetics, they only work once you've made your mind up. Only a small minority of C1st Jews did and the rest couldn't see it, just like C21st ones.

I used to read it all with full conservative, historical-grammatical, sensus plenior; it was OBVIOUS it was about Jesus and if you couldn't see it, it was because the God of this world had blinded you.

Now I'm most intrigued as to what Isaiah thought he meant, although all previous references to a (suffering) servant are to Israel.

Any Jerusalem-Gaza road up, was Philip beamed up and down to Ashdod? Or did he, like Sir Robin in the Holy Grail, just bugger off? It all depends on how literal, how carried away one is disposed to be in translating 'herpasen' doesn't it?

(Summoning me from my lair, mutter, mutter)

[ 15. December 2017, 17:25: Message edited by: Martin60 ]
 

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Posted by Nick Tamen (# 15164) on :
 
Martin, my apologies for the delay in getting back to you. That pesky job-thing consumed the day yesterday, and some family needs consumed much of today.

Thanks for your post on "making it all up." That did help me understand where you’re coming from, and we may not be that far apart after all. Maybe.

Because it’s clear that our background and formation play a role in how we approach topics like this, maybe I should say something about mine. I have spent all of my 5 1/2 decades in the Reformed Tradition, specifically the American Presbyterian tribe of that Tradition. Particularly in my formative years, the influence of Barth and of Neo-orthodoxy was pronounced, and it still influences my thinking. This includes ideas of the transcendence of God (and being Reformed, the sovereignty of God as well, of course) and of a somewhat Christocentric approach to Scripture, both OT and NT—that the main thrust of Scripture is the self-revelation and redeeming action of the triune God, particularly in Christ. This is coupled with an understanding that Scripture is not static, but rather that God's self-revelation occurs as the church, the community of faith/Body of Christ, engages with Scripture through the action of the Holy Spirit.

To the extent I’ve explored and been influenced by traditions other than my own, it has almost always been in a Catholic, Anglican, Lutheran or Orthodox direction. Though I grew up and have lived surrounded by (American Southern) Baptists and Evangelicals, much of the perspective shared by those groups has been pretty foreign to me. I understand it, but it doesn't resonate with me. (I'll say, too, since you have raised it many times, post-modernism doesn’t resonate at all with me either. It's a framework I can't make work for me.)

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 and, in terms Jesus would use, announcing the kingdom of God. To the degree they spoke of what was to come, it was to speak of God's redemptive activity.

So all of that said: I have absolutely no problem with the assertion that when Isaiah (whether he was one writer, three writers, or a community of writers—it makes no difference to the strength of the writing) wrote what is quoted in the OP, he was thinking of Hezekiah, Josiah or some other fairly immediate leader rather than of a future messianic leader.

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 in a provocative way in his sermon in the Nazareth synagogue. And, as you say, they were right.

Where I’d part company with you is in saying they "made it up." If they did, then it's a miracle (magic? ) that they got it right.

Instead, I’d compare it to art of any kind—painting, music, literature, etc.— where the viewer/hearer/reader brings his or her own self to the artistic experience and sees or hears things that the artist didn't (consciously) intend, but that are nevertheless there. I've known of and had too many experiences of this to discount it; indeed, I’ve known many times that the artist him- or herself saw or heard things afterward that were never consciously intended.

So, rather than "made up," I’d say "recognized" or "discerned," through the power of the Holy Spirit.

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.

There’s my two cents.
 

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Posted by Nick Tamen (# 15164) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by Martin60:
Now I'm most intrigued as to what Isaiah thought he meant, although all previous references to a (suffering) servant are to Israel.

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quote:

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Eutychus: John 12:38-41..It is clearly not the intent of John to prove the authorship of Isaiah in that passage, and to insert significance where the author intended none is again, I would argue, more disrespectful of the text than it is respectful.

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quote:

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Originally posted by mousethief:
The conversation seems to have moved on, but I was attempting (clearly unsuccessfully) to make a joke feigning offense as an Orthodox at the idea that the LXX isn't the sole acceptable version of the OT.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Jamat:

quote:

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Eutychus: John 12:38-41..It is clearly not the intent of John to prove the authorship of Isaiah in that passage, and to insert significance where the author intended none is again, I would argue, more disrespectful of the text than it is respectful.

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So the Devil is in the detail..rather than the Holy Spirit?

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Originally posted by mousethief:
The conversation seems to have moved on, but I was attempting (clearly unsuccessfully) to make a joke feigning offense as an Orthodox at the idea that the LXX isn't the sole acceptable version of the OT.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Eutychus:

quote:

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Originally posted by Jamat:

quote:

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Eutychus: John 12:38-41..It is clearly not the intent of John to prove the authorship of Isaiah in that passage, and to insert significance where the author intended none is again, I would argue, more disrespectful of the text than it is respectful.

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So the Devil is in the detail..rather than the Holy Spirit?

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I learned a slightly different variation of the ditty to Gamaliel:

#wonderful things in the Bible I see
some of them put there by you and by me#

The devil is, amongst other things, in the personal biases we perspective mistakenly impose on the text - all of us. Which is why I think taking time to consider the author's intent is a worthwhile exercise.

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Originally posted by Gamaliel:
Perhaps we don't get irony on this side of the Pond ...

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Originally posted by Jamat:
Whatever you put there, you must account for yourself. My comment concerns what is plainly already there. The author's intent is not the issue here.

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Originally posted by mousethief:

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Originally posted by Gamaliel:
Perhaps we don't get irony on this side of the Pond ...

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Reports of Eastponders "getting" irony have been inflated of late, it's true.

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Eutychus: What do you make, for instance, of Mark's "plain" misattribution of Malachi to Isaiah in Mark 1:2-3 mentioned by Stejjie earlier?

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Originally posted by Jamat:

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Eutychus: What do you make, for instance, of Mark's "plain" misattribution of Malachi to Isaiah in Mark 1:2-3 mentioned by Stejjie earlier?

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He's wrong. There is no misattribution. The reference was originally from Isaiah 40:3, which Malachi amplified.

How is this relevant to What I posted regarding John 12?
To me it is very clear. Isaiah said two separate things which John refers to, that were said by the same bloke, not two blokes.

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Bro James: There is no meaningful sense in which Malachi 3 can be said to be an amplification of Isaiah 40.

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Originally posted by BroJames:
There is an interesting discussion of the Mark/Isaiah/Malachi question (from a more conservative perspective) by Rikk E. Watts who is professor of New Testament studies at Regent College in Vancouver. The case seems to me, prima facie, to be plausible.

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Well, sort of, but I got put off by the pop-up asking me to donate to support the work of the Gospel Coalition whose hermeneutics I flirted at one time with before deeming them intellectually dishonest.
 

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Posted by Jamat (# 11621) on :
 
Storm in a teacup. Grant that all writers are inspired and bounce off one another and no issue is evident. Relevant point for here is that Mark is not wrong. Interesting that KJV just says Prophet. That’s a nice splice.
It is evident in Jn 12 that 2 statements are attributed to ONE author. It is completely irrelevant to this that Mark chooses to cite Isaiah via Malachi.
 

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Posted by BroJames (# 9636) on :
 
Hmm. Having Googled a little, I guess I might feel the same, though I've not explored their hermeneutic in any depth. I was more going for the content than the source. At the level Rikk Watts is working with in that piece, I'm not sure that TGC's overall hermeneutic comes much into play.
 

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Posted by BroJames (# 9636) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by Jamat:
Storm in a teacup. Grant that all writers are inspired and bounce off one another and no issue is evident. Relevant point for here is that Mark is not wrong. Interesting that KJV just says Prophet. That’s a nice splice.
It is evident in Jn 12 that 2 statements are attributed to ONE author. It is completely irrelevant to this that Mark chooses to cite Isaiah via Malachi.

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Two early manuscripts and all the later Byzantine ones also saw the problem, rescuing (presumably) Mark’s credibility by changing “in Isaiah” to “in the prophets.” Interestingly, the most reliable and earliest manuscripts and their earliest translations did not make that adjustment. Although it is possible that no one else saw the difficulty, it seems more likely that they left “Isaiah” unchanged because they either felt it inappropriate to tamper with the text or did not in fact see a problem. And if the latter, why not?

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quote:

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Originally posted by Jamat:
Storm in a teacup. Grant that all writers are inspired and bounce off one another and no issue is evident.

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Except when you need a proof-text for the single authorship of the book of Isaiah, apparently, when it becomes the "evident", "plain meaning"

quote:

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Interesting that KJV just says Prophet. That’s a nice splice.

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Two early manuscripts and all the later Byzantine ones also saw the problem, rescuing (presumably) Mark’s credibility by changing “in Isaiah” to “in the prophets.”

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Eutychus: except when you need a proof-text for the single authorship of the book of Isaiah, apparently, when it becomes the "evident", "plain meaning

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To me, John 12 : 38-41 is textual confirmation that the book of Isaiah DOES have one author.

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Bro James: Put it this way - if Mark referring to Isaiah can mean Malachi and Isaiah, then John referring to Isaiah could mean another author and Isaiah.

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As it is written in Isaiah the prophet,
“Behold, I send my messenger before your face,
who will prepare your way, the voice of one crying in the wilderness:
‘Prepare the way of the Lord,
make his paths straight,’ ”

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quote:

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Originally posted by BroJames:
Mark says

quote:

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As it is written in Isaiah the prophet,
“Behold, I send my messenger before your face,
who will prepare your way, the voice of one crying in the wilderness:
‘Prepare the way of the Lord,
make his paths straight,’ ”

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The first part of what he quotes comes from Malachi 3.1 and is not found at all in Isaiah. The second part of what he quotes is from Isaiah 40.3. As far as Greek allows one to make the distinction, it is as much a direct quotation from a source as the John 12 usage. In neither case is the argument about the authorship of the OT passage quoted. If in Mark the citation of two authors as if they were one is possible and permissible, then it demonstrates that such citations are not necessarily evidence of single authorship.

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Originally posted by BroJames:
What are your sources, and what is your evidence that Malachi is here or elsewhere interpreting Isaiah. In what sense is Malachi 3.1 an interpretation of Isaiah at all, let alone Isaiah. 40.3

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Originally posted by Jamat:
The average educated Jew knew the Torah by heart from the age of 12.

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Originally posted by mousethief:

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Originally posted by Jamat:
The average educated Jew knew the Torah by heart from the age of 12.

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Total bullshit.

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Originally posted by Jamat:
Mark does not do cite 2 authors as if they are one.

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He cites Isaiah as interpreted by Malachi.

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It is about thinking Jewish.

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Originally posted by Jamat:
The fact remains there is exegesis, focusing,teaching, explaining on what’s there and eisigesis, sticking stuff in.

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In John 12, the author quotes Isaiah. Yes, really.

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To say there is is speculative, unproven and maintained only by commentators with an anti-supernaturalist agenda.

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To assume they’re correct

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and cause lambs to stumble is what concerns me.

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Originally posted by Eutychus:
Agreed: he quotes from the book of Isaiah. What he doesn't do, in my view, is settle the debate about how many authors that involved. I think it's doing violence to the text here to suppose that it could settle that debate.

I don't think he settles it a) because it was not his intent and b) because the Mark example quoting Isaiah is evidence that attribution of authorship by a gospel writer is no proof of all the authors involved - even you don't contest Malachi had a hand in what's quoted as being "Isaiah" in Mark.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Jamat:
In John 12, the author quotes Isaiah. Yes, really. There are not multi Isaiah redactors crawling through the pages. To say there is is speculative, unproven and maintained only by commentators with an anti-supernaturalist agenda. To assume they’re correct and cause lambs to stumble is what concerns
me.

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Aside from the anti-supernaturalist motive being a very large red herring—God can’t inspire more than one writer and compiler?—what you’ve yet to do is explain why it matters? How does it cause lambs to stumble if Isaiah really was written by more than one person? How does that change what (the book of) Isaiah says?
 

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Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on :
 
I've been trying to establish this throughout the thread and Jamat's not been answering.

Instead, he seems to take it as axiomatic that because the NT authors cite one name, Isaiah's, that this must self-evidently mean that there was only one author otherwise the Holy Spirit can't have inspired the sacred writings because they contain 'error'.



In other words, the integrity and reliability of scripture unravels if we consider the possibility of more than one author and the whole edifice of the Judeo-Christian tradition, the economy of salvation and the economy of faith comes crashing down ...

At every point, Jamat's overly literal approach teeters on a razor's edge.

A nanometer either side of his very fine line and we all tumble into unbelief or perdition.

He might find it reassuring to walk that particular tight-rope but to my mind he's setting himself an unnecessarily wobbly balancing act.
 

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Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on :
 
Just another thought, Jamat's idea of inspiration and of supernaturalism (as it were) is that it also requires a predictive element in a very concrete sense - that the Isaiah who prophesied about Cyrus, King of Persia, must have been the Isaiah son of Amoz who lived over 200 years before Cyrus's reign.

Otherwise the scriptures are 'unreliable' ...
 

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Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on :
 
So, his accusation that the Higher Critics 'require' a late date for passages in Isaiah in order to serve an 'anti-supernaturalist' agenda, could be turned around and pointed in his direction.

It could equally be argued that his schema requires an early, single-authored Isaiah in order to fit his particular definition of what a supernaturalist agenda involves.

Or to suit his particular frame of reference in terms of conservative / fundamentalist Protestant notions of scriptural inerrancy and infallibility.

So there's a lot at stake in Jamat's take.

The lambs could be lost unless they walk his particular tight-rope.
 

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Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :
 
Yes, I'd say that's all on the money.

The real challenge is to have a civilised (if at times lively...) discussion across that gulf, and pay due heed to any lambs that might fall into it along the way. I'm sure there are those in some of the constituencies I preach to who think along the same lines as Jamat and whose faith I could easily shipwreck through arrogance or carelessness.

As a preacher and teacher I have a responsibility to be a) honest with myself, especially about trying to force Scripture to fit my expectations b) honest in my preaching c) not setting out to create stumbling-blocks for my hearers

[ 19. December 2017, 12:10: Message edited by: Eutychus ]
 

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Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :
 

quote:

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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

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One blog says this therefore it's gospel? Puhleeze. Give me some RESEARCH. This guy doesn't even have footnotes.
 

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Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on :
 
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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Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on :
 
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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Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on :
 
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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Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on :
 
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

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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Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on :
 


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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Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on :
 
AHHHHHHhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh....
 

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Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by Gamaliel:
I'll let Mousethief respond to the Septuagint / Masoretic text issue ...

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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

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Originally posted by Jamat:

quote:

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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

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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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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

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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

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Isaiah (whether he was one writer, three writers, or a community of writers—it makes no difference

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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.

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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

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Originally posted by Jamat:

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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

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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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Whether you are taking something written at face-value or whether you are questioning it, you are still exercising judgement.

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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.

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Gamaliel: 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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Marti60: I am nasty and consistent

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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.

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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:

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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.

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Originally posted by Jamat:

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Marti60: I am nasty and consistent

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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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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?

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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?

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Originally posted by Martin60:
For me there is no Christian necessity for easily rationally explicable apocalyptic to be prophecy.

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I would love to have other reasons to believe

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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.

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If prophecy, the supernatural were demonstrable to the rational mind, we'd all be Christians.

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In his commentary, Motyer spends a good while arguing that עַלְמָה (‘almāh) in Isaiah 7:14 must mean virgin

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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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[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).

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I'm the Athenian who believes anyway

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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.

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Originally posted by Jamat:

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In his commentary, Motyer spends a good while arguing that עַלְמָה (‘almāh) in Isaiah 7:14 must mean virgin

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As you say, the entirety of scripture supports this reading.

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Eutychus: we have a whole, unambiguous conversation between Mary and the angel about it.

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Seemed to me that’s what you were saying. ie idea of virgin birth reinforced throughout scripture.
 

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Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :
 


What I very clearly said was

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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.

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Originally posted by Jamat:

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Martin: I'm the Athenian who believes anyway

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Jamat: Paradox or dissonance?

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Yes.

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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.

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Jamat:If you are Dawkins, maybe. If you insist on a faith stance that rests on naturalistic standards of evidence it isn’t faith.

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If you insist on the same despite naturalistic evidence then you deny rationality

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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.

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If the sower scatters his seeds on your ‘good ground’, then faith grows.

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Originally posted by Eutychus:
The same cannot be said, as far as I can see, about the meaning of עַלְמָה in Isaiah.

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Isaiah speaks of the virgin who will be with child. The translation virgin ('almâ) is widely disputed...

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whenever the context allows a judgement, 'alma is not a general term meaning 'young woman' but a specific one meaning 'virgin'

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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

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In Ugaritic cultic texts the words 'The young woman will bear a son' announces the birth of a divine/royal child

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Originally posted by Martin60:
It evokes

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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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Originally posted by Jamat:
Arnold F’s take

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Eurychus: A quick glance suggests that this, again, can best be translated as "maiden", i.e. it's ambiguous

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Originally posted by Jamat:
What about all the references that say the word is used for someone obviously virginal?

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Exodus 2:8. Used in reference to Moses' sister Miriam, who was a virgin.

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It may well be that Miriam was a virgin at this point, but the use of 'almâ there is in no way evidence of this, any more than it is evidence of what colour dress she was wearing at the time. It's only evidence of her virginity if you've decided it means "virgin".

This is so disingenuous it's hard to believe let alone explain... but you don't need to be a Hebrew scholar to see the logic fail.



3. Consider (again, if you will) the English word "maiden". It's a relative of "maidenhead", which is an old word for the hymen. So "maiden" strictly speaking can mean "technical virgin" (virgo intacta). But it has a looser (albeit archaic) meaning which is "young woman".

As far as I can see, 'almâ does not have any more of a "technical" sense than the common meaning of "maiden". In other words, when people write it, they are not seeking to emphasise whether somebody is virgo intacta or not. It's not their intent.*

Evidence that neither 'almâ nor parthenos are alone to decide on technical virginity this may be found in Scripture, because when it's really critical in the context that somebody is virgo intacta, this is spelled out.

OT: she knew no man (Judges 11:39, KJV) - and by the way, the word used for 'virginity' in this explicit sense in verse 38 derives from betulah not 'almâ.

NT: How shall this be, seeing I know not a man? Luke 1:34.

You're the one raising concerns about causing lambs to stumble. The level of deceit in these "authorities" and the consequences for those directed to them make me

==

* I am using exactly the same hermeneutical approach as I did to argue that it is impossible to tell from John whether Isaiah was more than one person: just as it is manifestly not John's intent in the passage in question, it is manifestly not the intent of the authors of these passage to comment on whether the maidens in question were virgo intacta (sorry, Latin plurals are beyond me).

[ 22. December 2017, 20:05: Message edited by: Eutychus ]
 

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Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by Eutychus:

quote:

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Originally posted by Martin60:
It evokes

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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:

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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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This is so disingenuous it's hard to believe let alone explain... but you don't need to be a Hebrew scholar to see the logic fail

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Originally posted by Jamat:
What you are [asserting] here is that on the basis of the way the same word is used elsewhere in the Bible, it is inconclusive that Isaiah 7 should be translated virgin.

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I think if the case comes to trial, you lose on the balance of probabilities. You know better than both of the sources cited here? ..Doubt it.

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Originally posted by Martin60:
The Incarnation is the most audacious claim of all. It makes groundless claims for Isaiah and Daniel risible by punching in to the stratosphere above them like a thermonuclear blast. There is no basis of comparison with scrabbling in their dirt for signs, auguries that we put there by the desperate, sad, faithless scrabbling. It's THE category error.

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Originally posted by Gamaliel:
...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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Please explain how, on the balance of probabilities, 'almâ in Exodus 2:8 (one of Fruchtenbaum's examples) means "virgin" and not "young girl". His argument consists of asserting "Myriam was a virgin at that time, therefore 'almâ must mean "virgin" here". That's like saying "Jamat is from New Zealand, therefore "Jamat" means "New Zealander"". You don't have to be a Hebrew scholar to assess the worthlessness of this argument

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Originally posted by Gee D:
Why should any of us treat Fructenbaum as an authority? his education and training, then subsequent career, suggest a very idiosyncratic approach.

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Gamaliel: I'm not saying that the reference to Cyrus is predictive. I'd suggest it very probably isn't and it's a contemporary reference that occurs in the writings of later prophets than Isaiah the son of Amoz and which were bundled together in a compendium of writings that bore his name

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Originally posted by Jamat:
This is silly and unreasonable. Fructenbaum builds a case over a number of examples, not JUST Ex2:8. He reasons inductively, building support through the scriptures, that the translators chose the right term for Almah in Isaiah 7. This is also supported by the Septuagint. If your demand was a for a case beyond reasonable doubt, it is amply met.

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Originally posted by Gamaliel:
The virgin birth doesn't stand or fall on that one reference.

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Eutychus: you say Fruchtenbaum's view is "supported by Scripture": go ahead, convince

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Originally posted by Gee D:
Jamat, I know exactly who Fructenbaum is. That does not mean that I must consider him someone whose opinion I automatically accept. He must make out his case and this is very much an instance where he does not.

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Originally posted by Jamat:
He cites a series of instances in the Bible where the Word Almah is denoting a virgin. He points out that the Septuagint agrees with the translation. .the sort of evidence a court would accept.

What more would he need to do?

ISTM that as this is a widely accepted translation that the burden of proof that it is wrong is on the naysayers.

So what would one need to do to make a case to your satisfaction or indeed Eutychus'?
I suspect it is impossible as neither of you is basing your conviction on the evidence of scripture. You demand scripture be buttressed by extra biblical scholarship which is in the end just some guy's opinion.

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quote:

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Just as what you base your case on is nought but some guy's opinion

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Originally posted by Jamat:
He cites a series of instances in the Bible where the Word Almah is denoting a virgin.

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quote:

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He points out that the Septuagint agrees with the translation.

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Originally posted by Jamat:

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Just as what you base your case on is nought but some guy's opinion

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No, I do not believe HIM. I believe he has correctly shown what scripture teaches.

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Originally posted by Gamaliel:
Keep your hair on, Martin60.

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I'm not saying that the reference to Cyrus is predictive. I'd suggest it very probably isn't and it's a contemporary reference that occurs in the writings of later prophets than Isaiah the son of Amoz and which were bundled together in a compendium of writings that bore his name.

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However ... as God is omnipotent as well as omnipresent and omniscience if it were an example of a predictive prophecy then it wouldn't be guess-work or anything of the kind.

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I 'get' all the fuss and bother over 'process-theology' and Open Theism and so on but simple soul as I am I'm quite happy to live with the idea that God knows everything without trying to work out how determinist or otherwise that may be.

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God can do whatever he wants.

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If he wanted to predict the reign of Cyrus 200 years in advance then he's perfectly capable of doing so.

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Whether he did is another matter.

There are other explanations for the reference to Cyrus in the Book of Isaiah, namely that it was written over a lengthy period by several authors. I really don't see any problem with that.

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Nor do I see any problem with God being able to foresee things in advance. Why shouldn't he?

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I find the whole predestination / free-will stuff to be an enormous turn-off, whether exposited by Calvinists, Arminians or Open Theists.

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At the risk of baling out of debates, I find it all a big non-issue. I'm happy to live with the Mystery of the whole thing. I'm never going to be able to work it out.

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In the meantime, Eutychus has come forward with where Fructenbaum's interpretation falls down.

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Gamaliel: my point, of course, is that we all of us bring our tradition (small t) into the equation. It's Jamat's tradition that requires the scriptures to 'behave' in the way he expects them t

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Originally posted by Martin60:
It just shows that their grasp of Greek wasn't 100%

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Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
Ah, yes, I am the servant of Satan, along with everyone else who doesn't go along with your naive Biblical literalism. You know it was this sort of thing that drove me away from evangelicalism?

I have stood in halls of triumph
And loudly sang its song
They threw me out when my song changed
To "how long, O Lord, how long?"
I have sat with the Lady of the Vine
Until I thought I'd drown
Peered through the curtain;
It was already torn down.

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Originally posted by Martin60:
The context of Exodus 2:8 includes young women, not virginity. And I wonder what the 70 thought Isaiah 7:14 was about?

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Originally posted by Jamat:

quote:

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Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
Ah, yes, I am the servant of Satan, along with everyone else who doesn't go along with your naive Biblical literalism. You know it was this sort of thing that drove me away from evangelicalism?

I have stood in halls of triumph
And loudly sang its song
They threw me out when my song changed
To "how long, O Lord, how long?"
I have sat with the Lady of the Vine
Until I thought I'd drown
Peered through the curtain;
It was already torn down.

---

Karl, liberal back slider: long time no see. Seasons greetings.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Jamat:

quote:

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Originally posted by Martin60:
The context of Exodus 2:8 includes young women, not virginity. And I wonder what the 70 thought Isaiah 7:14 was about?

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No one cares what they thought. They were the equivalents of today's software engineers.

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Originally posted by Jamat:
The fact that the collective here is dismissive of this simply proves only that it is dismissive of the Bible which is seen as a fallible compilation of ancient manuscripts rather than the word of God.

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Originally posted by Gamaliel:
Whoo-hoo good ha ha ha ...

'They were the equivalents of today's software engineers'.

Now that HAS to go in the quotes file!

No let's ask Eutychus who is a professional translator whether software engineering is an exact analogy for the process of translation ...

This is translation, not automatic writing ...

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quote:

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Originally posted by Nick Tamen:

quote:

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Originally posted by Jamat:
The fact that the collective here is dismissive of this simply proves only that it is dismissive of the Bible which is seen as a fallible compilation of ancient manuscripts rather than the word of God.

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It hardly proves that; you’d get nowhere with that in court. But the inadequacy and aburdity of your “proof” aside, you’re doing an excellent job of providing evidence to support Gamaliel’s assertions about your blindered approach to Scripture.

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Originally posted by Gamaliel:
I accept my tone has been sarcastic, Jamat but for a lawyer (if that's your profession) you can come across as highly literalistic and binary.

As if the integrity of the scriptures as the word of God is somehow compromised unless we take an overly literal approach such as that espoused by outfits like Dallas.

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originally posted by Jamat:
To me he picked one reference, the Miriam one, to criticise and simply dismissed the line of thinking on that basis.

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The argument put forward is very strong scripturally. It points out a number of places where the 'almah' word occurs in the Bible, explains the likelihood that the referents here were virgins

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Even if the referents were virgins, using the word ‘almâ does not ipso facto mean that ‘almâ means virgin.

Can you really not see the inconsistency here? They were also doubtless all “young women”. Why should ‘almâ mean “virgin” and not “young woman”?

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The objection is per se about predictive prophecy.

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I generally believe that scripture is inspired. If it contains errors of fact then this compromises it.

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Originally posted by Gamaliel:
In the case of Rebekah and Isaac, I'd have thought the balance of possibility would be that she was a virgin before marriage.

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That.is.not.the.point.

That is Jamat thinking.

Whether Rebekah was a virgin or not has no bearing whatsoever* on whether 'almâ means virgin and not simply "maiden", "young woman".

If the narrative said Rebekah was "flushed" would you conclude that "flushed" meant "virgin" just because she was one?

As far as I can see 'almâ need mean nothing more in the account of Rebekah than that she was a young woman. Certainly the case is not certain enough to translate it unambiguously as meaning "virgin".

==
*Motyer does compare how 'almâ and betulah are both used of Rebekah and tries to make a case for 'almâ having a more restricted meaning of "virgin", but I don't think it's conclusive.
 

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Posted by Jamat (# 11621) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by Gamaliel:
Then you've misunderstood my approach.

It isn't 'neither fish nor fowl'.

Rather it's one that is completely compatible with received orthodoxy.

You seem to think that there are only two choices available, a kind of 'milk and water' wooly liberalism on the one hand and a particular late 19th / early 20th century form of Protestant fundamentalism on the other.

The only tradition that insists on the kind of overly literal approach you seem to favour is US style fundamentalism.
All the others appear able to co-exist with nuance.

From your regular posts here it's pretty obvious that you don't understand the various genres and take apocalyptic literature far too literally and have very limited grasp of how any kind of literature actually 'works'.

---

quote:

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Originally posted by Jamat:
What is eschatological?

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quote:

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Originally posted by Jamat:
Well, the court reference?

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As a lawyer I'd like to hear your comments on that.
If the subject of a court hearing was the whether the translation of 'almah' in Isaiah 7 is ambiguous, would the case for the defence made by Fruchtenbaum be accepted?

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quote:

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Originally posted by Jamat:
It seems the modus operandi of entrenched positions is to defend them by accusing opposing views of not understanding, which is what you say. Anyone who disagrees with me is dumb.

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Originally posted by Jamat:
You don’t seem to be aware of the condescension you often convey.

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Nick Tamen: I haven’t read Fruchtenbaum; I hadn’t heard of him until this thread. All I have to go by is what you’ve said about his argument and what Eutychus has said.

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Originally posted by Jamat:
What [Fruchtenbaum] he says is simply that Miriam in Ex 2 was an unmarried young girl, as Rebecca was when she watered Abraham’s servant’s camels..and so on and so forth. Context and common sense would assume the girls are virgins.

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You talk about ‘justification’ in the text. Where does one find such justification apart from context? How is it possible otherwise to determine the exact meaning of such a word? You know that apart from it no one can.

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How probable is it that either of these girls was not a virgin. With Rebecca, as you say, it specifically states she was, in the narrative. This was a condition for the bride of the chosen one.

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So one can safely assume that the Holy Spirit guided the writer in his terminology here, to indicate who and what she was and how she qualified as a prospective bride.

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you wish to seek for higher linguistic proof for a precise definition? You are demanding the Impossible

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In Ps 68:25 the maidens referred to there are contextually defined as is pointed out. Once again the presumption must be that these ‘ almas‘ are virgins.

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The meaning in all these quoted texts is determined contextually as virgins so it is safe to assume the same regarding Isaiah 7.

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You are also demanding confirmatory evidence that the word as used in Song of Solomon 6:8 is defined as ‘technical virginity’ once again making demands of the text to go beyond itself and refusing to acknowledge the commonsense reading dictated by context.

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So no, I am not satisfied that anything you’ve said here suggests that the young women denoted in any of the contexts Fructenbaum cites could reasonably be expected to be non virgins.

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He makes his case not by specific definition but by expounding context. This is not proof positive perhaps

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Originally posted by Gamaliel:
I don't doubt that a form of Dispensationalist pre-millenialism helps you to make sense of the text and fit it into a nice, neat interpretative schema.

But that's exactly what it is,an interpretive framework, a tradition.

It's the apparent refusal to accept that and act as if it is the incontrovertible 'plain-meaning of scripture' that grates with me and why I've kept pressing the points I'm making.

What Dispensationalism does is remove one set of 'exegetical difficulties' and replace them with others.

It requires scripture to 'behave' in ways that conform with it, and not the only around.

The irony is that in setting out to defend the integrity of scripture against Modernism and liberalism, some of the more full-on conservative evangelicals (and not just fundies and Dispensationalists) end up engaging in special pleading and poor scholarship - which is where Eutychus's beef comes in.

There is a more excellent way. One which steers between the destructive Scylla of full-on theological liberalism on the one hand and the theological dead-end Charybdis of fundamentalism on the other.

Rather than being 'neither fish nor fowl' I'm actually steering a course between those equally destructive extremes.

---

quote:

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Originally posted by Martin60:
Eutychus' labour of love.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Martin60:
Is the Bible in the Bible?

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Eutychus: If Isaiah had felt it important to predict a specifically virgin birth (merry Christmas from me too), then on the basis of the wording in Genesis and Judges I would have expected him to say "and there shall be a sign, a young woman, who has known no man, shall be with child...

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We may assume he meant "virgin", but in my view he does not specifically say so and it would be wrong to overtranslate the text to suggest that he did, no matter how hard we want him to

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The commonsense message from the context is that this is poetry

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Originally posted by Jamat:
This betrays that you are judging the text. What gives anyone the authority to demand a higher definition than the text conveys.

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Well the 70 Rabbis who translated the Septuagint into Greek obviously did not agree with you. To them, out of the choice of terms they had, they used the one that to them best conveyed all of the aspects of such a girl as Mary including, youth, character,marriageability.

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So, ISTM, your view seems to come down to the fact that if Isaiah in Ch7 meant to convey ‘virgin’, he should have made it clearer through a clarifying phrase or a different term.

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However, these kinds of issues, (why one term was used not another etc,) are not knowable. One can only speculate.

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we have the Holy Spirit. It should be enough for us.

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Originally posted by Jamat:

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Nick Tamen: I haven’t read Fruchtenbaum; I hadn’t heard of him until this thread. All I have to go by is what you’ve said about his argument and what Eutychus has said.

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There was a link on P 5 of this thread about 3 up from the bottom.

Be interested in your take on it.

Merry Christmas.

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And Merry Christmas to you and yours, too!

Sorry that link slipped by me earlier on. Yes, I’ll take a look—after Christmas.

But in the meantime, since you’ve asked for my take, I’ll note that I and others have asked you variations on a question numerous times, but have received no answer: Why do you think it’s important, or perhaps even necessary, that Isaiah was written by one person only, or that Isaiah was consciously foretelling the Virgin Birth in Chapter 7 and used “almah" to specifically mean "virgin" rather than, say, "maiden"?
 

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Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on :
 
In fairness to Jamat, Eutychus, I took 'It' to refer to his statements about the translators of the Septuagint and and the working of the Holy Spirit. 'That (or those facts) should be enough for us ...'

I didn't take it as a depersonification of God the Holy Spirit.

I have to say though, that I am very surprised and indeed disappointed to learn that Jamat is some kind of English teacher and writes, reads and teaches poetry.

Poetry can indeed be very precise, but it deals in metaphor and suggestion, in figurative language. Which is why I find Jamat's reasoning so baffling when applied to apocalyptic and prophetic writings. It's almost as if he treats them as a mathematical equations rather than poetry.

It's almost as if he'd expect us to take Donne literally when he wrote, shockingly, of being 'ravished' by God.

A discussion about the interpretation of apocalyptic and prophetic texts will have to wait until I start a new thread on the topic.

For the time being, I'll register surprise ...

Although to be fair, I've been more conservative and literal in the past then I am now, despite being one of these arty, literary types.

I don't think I've ever been quite so literal though ...

But there we go. It's about the interpretation of texts and not about Jamat or me.
 

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Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on :
 
Jamat rarely answers direct questions in my experience, Nick Tamen. He tries to change the subject instead.

In fairness, he does get a lot of questions and challenges thrown his way so may miss some of them.

He appears to believe that it is axiomatic that Isaiah was necessarily written by a single author because it says so in chapter one.

If it wasn't, then from his perspective it means that God the Holy Spirit is unreliable and indeed a liar ...

Likewise, the reference in Isaiah 7:14 had to be taken in a direct, predictive sense because his model of dealing with scripture requires it to be.

Anything less, in his schema, opens the way towards what he calls 'naturalistic' approaches that diminish the supernatural element and under mine the status of the Bible as the word of God.

Which is, of course, what the rest of us here are doing ...

It's late and it's Christmas but get with the programme ...
 

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Posted by Gee D (# 13815) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by Gamaliel:

I have to say though, that I am very surprised and indeed disappointed to learn that Jamat is some kind of English teacher and writes, reads and teaches poetry.

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Nick Tamen: Why do you think it’s important, or perhaps even necessary, that Isaiah was written by one person only, or that Isaiah was consciously foretelling the Virgin Birth in Chapter 7 and used “almah" to specifically mean "virgin" rather than, say, "maiden

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Sounds like "maiden" to me.

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Originally posted by Jamat:

quote:

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Sounds like "maiden" to me.

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One with a Maidenhead.

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The chosen word implies virgin

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..really that’s beyond dispute contextually..as Fructenbaum has conclusively shown.

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Originally posted by Jamat:
The Bible needs to have structural and thematic integrity if God has inspired it. I believe he has. It cannot contain errors or he did not. It also has to be accessible to simple minds. (...) If only theologians and church authorities are able to access it, then God has failed to communicate to broader humanity.

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Christ was born by a virgin.
This event was prophetically signalled in advance.

Neither of these truths can be unequivocally affirmed if textual integrity is legitimately in question.

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Originally posted by Eutychus:
the translators are acting as an "authority" to make up readers' minds for them.

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quote:

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“Since all of the above six verses mean “a virgin,” what reason is there for making Isaiah 7:14 the only exception?”

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© Ship of Fools 2016


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