Mining the Scriptures For
Jesus
A Simple Example With Huge
Implications for Literalists
I have pointed out many times in the
past that the Gospels are hardly harmonious. They are neither four
different views of the same events nor coherent in their presentation.
Simply put, they are contrived accounts copied by others, embellished a bit
along the way and even cleaned up of embarrassing accounts that detracted from
the ever evolving story of Jesus.
It is not inspiration for Matthew to
copy 90+% of Mark and Luke well over 50%. That's just
copying.
A short reminder here that the Four
Gospels were written AFTER the Apostle Paul had lived, written his views of
Jesus and died. For Paul, Jesus was just a Jew, born of a woman.
(Romans 1:3) There was no glorious birth story around yet for Paul to draw
on or care about. The Jesus of Paul was hallucinatory. He never met nor
does he quote any living Jesus and for Paul, Jesus was more the Cosmic Christ in
his head than any living human being. But Paul wrote first, so the first
Jesus was not of this earth and did not really live a life worth telling about
on earth.
THEN come the Gospels AFTER Paul.
So to have a better view of how it really was, it would at least have been nice
to realize that Paul wrote first, then the Gospels and finally Revelation.
The current order of things gives the opposite impression of reality in the
first century. To Paul, Jesus was Cosmic and in the heavens and then was
made human by the Gospels. But with Matthew, Mark, Luke and John first, it
gives the impression of first an earthly Jeusus and THEN the Theological and
Cosmic Christ of Paul. Wrong, Wrong.
At any rate, I'd like to show by a
major blunder made by the writer of Matthew, that to reach back into the Old
Testament and mine the scriptures, parts of them, phrases or whatever it took,
was how the story of Jesus was cobbled together. These men had no clue about
Jesus real birth, so they simply made it up and in doing so didn't even read
each other's stories to "all speak the same thing."
First, be reminded that in Matthew, he
tells the story of Jesus with his mining the OT for helpful stories that I call
the , "And thus it was fulfilled,"s. Every time Matthew tells us a detail
which we take as fact about Jesus birth, he gets it from the Old
Testament. This is WHY the story of Jesus birth SEEMS so prophetic.
The truth is the story was written to fit the Old Testament scriptures (and
badly so I will show), and not prophetic at all.
Here are three classic examples from
Matthew.
"1. The virgin birth (Isaiah 7:14)
This verse is part of a prophecy that Isaiah relates to King Ahaz
regarding the fate of the two kings threatening Judah at that time and the fate
of Judah itself. In the original Hebrew, the verse says that a "young woman"
will give birth, not a "virgin" which is an entirely different Hebrew word. The
young woman became a virgin only when the Hebrew word was mistranslated into
Greek.
This passage obviously has nothing to do with Jesus (who, if this
prophecy did apply to him, should have been named Immanuel instead of
Jesus).
(I might also add that Immanuel means "God IS with us" as in will
be on our side against the Assyrians, so don't fret, and NOT "God with us" as if
Jesus was God with us in the flesh--Dennis)
2. The "slaughter of the innocents" (Jeremiah 31:15)
Matthew says that Herod, in an attempt to kill the newborn
Messiah, had all the male children two years old and under put to death in
Bethlehem and its environs, and that this was in fulfillment of
prophecy.
This is a pure invention on Matthew's part. Herod was guilty of
many monstrous crimes, including the murder of several members of his own
family. However, ancient historians such as Josephus, who delighted in listing
Herod's crimes, do not mention what would have been Herod's greatest crime by
far. It simply didn't happen.
The context of Jeremiah 31:15 makes it clear that the weeping is
for the Israelites about to be taken into exile in Babylon, and has nothing to
do with slaughtered children hundreds of years later.
3. Called out of Egypt (Hosea 11:1)
Matthew has Mary, Joseph and Jesus fleeing to Egypt to escape
Herod, and says that the return of Jesus from Egypt was in fulfillment of
prophecy (Matthew 2:15). However, Matthew quotes only the second half of Hosea
11:1. The first half of the verse makes it very clear that the verse refers to
God calling the Israelites out of Egypt in the exodus led by Moses, and has
nothing to do with Jesus.
As further proof that the slaughter of the innocents and the
flight into Egypt never happened, one need only compare the Matthew and Luke
accounts of what happened between the time of Jesus' birth and the family's
arrival in Nazareth. According to Luke, forty days (the purification period)
after Jesus was born, his parents brought him to the temple, made the prescribed
sacrifice, and returned to Nazareth. Into this same time period Matthew somehow
manages to squeeze: the visit of the Magi to Herod, the slaughter of the
innocents and the flight into Egypt, the sojourn in Egypt, and the return from
Egypt. All of this action must occur in the forty day period because Matthew has
the Magi visit Jesus in Bethlehem before the slaughter of the
innocents."
(New Testament Contradictions: Paul Carlson)
This is commonly understood misuse and misapplication by Matthew.
It is a writing style called Midrash where you reach into the past to find
scripture to tell the story of the present, but it is not meant to be taken
literally.
But now comes the proof that Matthew was doing just that and was
mining the Old Testament for stories to tell about Jesus, when in fact he knew
precious little about him in the flesh.
"Since the prophecies mentioned above do not, in their original context,
refer to Jesus, why did Matthew include them in his gospel? There are two
possibilities:
1. The church says that the words had a hidden future context as well as the
original context, ie, God was keeping very important secrets from His chosen
people.
2. Matthew, in his zeal to prove that Jesus was the Messiah, searched the Old
Testament for passages (sometimes just phrases) that could be construed as
messianic prophecies and then created or modified events in Jesus' life to
fulfill those "prophecies."
Fortunately for those who really want to know the truth, Matthew made a
colossal blunder later in his gospel which leaves no doubt at all as to which of
the above possibilities is true.
His blunder involves what is known as Jesus' triumphant entry into Jerusalem
riding on a donkey (if you believe Mark, Luke or John) or riding on two donkeys
(if you believe Matthew). In Matthew 21:1-7, two animals are mentioned in three
of the verses, so this cannot be explained away as a copying error. And Matthew
has Jesus riding on both animals at the same time, for verse 7 literally says,
"on them he sat."
Why does Matthew have Jesus riding on two donkeys at the same time? Because
he MISREAD (emphasis mine) Zechariah 9:9 which reads in part,
"mounted on a donkey, and on a colt, the foal of a donkey."
Anyone familiar with Old Testament Hebrew would know that the word translated
"and" in this passage does not indicate another animal but is used in the sense
of "even" (which is used in many translations) for emphasis. The Old Testament
often uses parallel phrases which refer to the same thing for emphasis, but
Matthew was evidently not familiar with this usage. Although the result is
rather humorous, it is also very revealing. It demonstrates conclusively that
MATTHEW CREATED EVENTS (emphasis mine) in Jesus' life to fulfill Old
Testament prophecies, even if it meant creating an absurd event. Matthew's
gospel is full of fulfilled prophecies. Working the way Matthew did, and
believing as the church does in "future contexts," any phrase in the Bible could
be turned into a fulfilled prophecy!"
(New Testament Contradictions, Paul Carlson)
I just thought it would be fun and enlightening to share this.
Why is it important?
Because the leading Guru's of the COG's do the same thing and reach
into the Old Testament, even seeing themselves in it, and make it mean Sabbath
after Sabbath what it does not mean and cannot mean but will make shipwreck of
their followers faith and lives in a very short time.
Making the Bible mean what it never meant is a very old way of telling a
story. But it is nonetheless a story.
Maybe we should let it go as "An earthly story with a heavenly meaning,"
before many more sincere folk get burned.
