The Messiah Before Jesus

[T-Bone]

I find it amazing that a person would bring this trivial bit of "evidence" and then bang a drum as to how succinctly it discredits a belief system that spans every bit of 4000 years.

Christianity spans 4000 years? Judaism might, but it's clearly a different belief system than Christianity. In one not so minor difference, the Jewish system doesn't believe that Jesus was the messiah, or even a prophet.

Christianity stems from Judaism as Jesus was a JEW - u know this and are looking to argue a moot point. Judaism is the world's oldest known religion by far.

If only one man could change the religious perception of the entire population so utterly absolute - even under extreme duress - that influence must be of divine origin.

Divine origin is nothing more than speculation. Many men have changed the world.

Speculation such as a motive in a murder trial. It is compelling eveidence when combined with other facts and sound reasonings enough to enlighten a man seeking truth and not their own agenda.

There are many things in the Bible that cannot be proved but�there are many more that can.

The problem is that it's the important stuff that can't be proved, and the minor details that can. Just because 'Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea' mentions the sea, and the sea is a real place, it doesn't mean that the story is also true.

ALL THE IMPORTANT STUFF can be proved by noting that none of the stuff can be disproved. And the "stuff" the Bible gives is a lot of detailed specific information (more than ANY OTHER historical text religious or other wise) to allow carefull disection and scrutiny of which - a point you carefully overlooked.

The Bible � written by 40 authors in 66 books over a span of 2000+ years, all of it a cohesive collection of stories...

Cohesive? There are thousands of contradictions in the Bible - thousands.

Name one. People who search for truth look objectively for the TRUE answer - u have an agenda MR Liberal minded fool.

...and information that would not likely be possible for a group of people to replicate without divine guidance or intervention.

More speculation on the divine.

Again based on sound reason coupled with the trust given to the Bible as divine because of the other research criteria being met.

No verifiable evidence found to date has disproven anything in the Bible anywhere.

Yet here we are talking about exactly that thing.

A wasted sentence trying to make your post seem more substansive than it really is which is a disguised attempt to justify your denial of the Bible and Jesus as coming from God Jehovah.

It accounts for 14 generations of families from the husband�s side and the wife�s side to the birth of Jesus, so that even Jesus� enemies could not say he wasn�t a son of King David.

Jewish heritage is passed on through male children. And since Mary was a virgin, Jesus wasn't descended from Joseph. Which is actually fortunate since one of the men in that line was cursed by God so that "none of his offspring will prosper, none will sit on the throne of David."

He was Jesus' earthy father and in the record keeping tradition of Judaism is considered his father - though he was not the true father of Jesus.

Genesis also traces lineage from Adam, which is where the 6000 year old Earth theory comes from. Archeology has directly disproved this.

It does not even come close to disproving this. The world being created in 6 days could (should) have been translated into English from Hebrew as 6 time periods which could be as long as whatever.

It is far from reasonable that a group of fanatics bent on controlling the populace would freely give out so much information over countless years of historical data that one little overlooked piece might give away the plan and reduce it to the waste bin of ridiculous ideas.

And yet there have been many overlooked pieces, which contrary to your assertions of "giving away the plan and reducing it to the waste bin of ridiculous ideas," have done nothing but cause the true believers to cling more stubbornly and claim that the evidence is misinterpreted, or just ignore the evidence altogether.

None have approached the overwhelmingly grandness of the Christian faith - the religion boasting the most members of any faith  - by far. Even Catholism is bigger the Islam - and that's not even counting all Protestant faiths.

Proven Prophecy � the Dead Sea scrolls are a copy of a portion of the book of Isaiah found by Muslim boy who was throwing rocks in caves.

Oh, the Dead Sea scrolls are a lot more than that. They also contradict portions of the Bible that we use today, which were translated from Greek copies. These same scrolls, although extensive, make no mention of Jesus whatsoever. What they do say is that they are a doomsday cult waiting for the final battle where they will defeat the forces of darkness in the ultimate battle. And then the Romans came and wiped them out. So much for "proven prophecy."

Keep making stuff. My fingers grow tired continuing to have a debate with someone who loves the lie rather than relishes in finding truth. Jesus said anyone loving truth truth comes into the light so their works can be reproved - you very obviously love the darkness. You and Joe can sit around in the dark and bash Christianity all you want - but dont try to question the bibical truths as false while standing your little trivial piece of garbage information up on a pedestal as the information all non believers were looking for all along.

�after the scrolls were carbon 14 dated to have been written before the fall of Babylon many Jews converted to Christianity and many Christians had their faith cemented.

Would this be the same carbon-14 dating that so many Christians didn't believe in when archaeologists used it to disprove the 6000 year old Earth theory, or to prove that the Shroud of Turin was a fake, or that there weren't enough people in the late bronze age to support the Bible's claim of a mass exodus out of Egypt, or that the Philistines weren't in Palestine when the Bible says they were, or that Be'er Sheva didn't exist yet when biblical events took place there? Is that the carbon-14 dating that you're talking about?

The church has done many things that has nothing to do with God. You are blindly pushing an agenda at all costs - your argument lacks sufficient information and facts for me to discount the rooms filled with books of confiming data that supports the validity and truth of the divine origin of the Bible. Truth seekers know truth when they hear it - people not wanting to be held accountable to a God or pushing an agenda see what they want to see. - that is u.

But Joe is right, this is all just an attempt by you to not address the issue at hand - evidence that stories that existed before Jesus strongly resemble Paul's version of the story of Jesus.
 
Who cares what you have to say since you cant intelectually address one issue I have raised and continue to push your own agenda of atheism and condemning the Bible as false - against overwhelming compelling data that supports it to the roof!!

[John Galt?]

Ok, read the stories and I see 3 different possibilities/interpretations.

1. The idea of a Messiah suffering and rising from the dead after 3 days is NOT unique to Christianity and may have been borrowed by said religion.

2. This is an example of prophecy predicting Jesus and it further strengthens Christianity.  If some prophet predicted that the Messiah would suffer, die, and rise again after 3 days that would indicate that Jesus might have been the prophetsized Messiah.

3. It is a fake.  In which case, moot point.

This could just as much be a nail in the Christian "Jesus was the foretold Messiah" platform as a nail in the coffin.

Or it could be nothing.

IMO, it is potentially interesting but more info is needed.  Will be watching for updates.

[alldaway]

Actually I disagree.

This casts doubt on Judaism.

Care to expound?

Sure.

Judaism has always held the belief of a messiah coming one day way before Christianity even existed.  They have never embraced Jesus Christ though as THE messiah and is the cause of disagreement between Christians and followers of Judaism (Also the reason why each side goes to great lengths to prove/disprove Jesus as THE messiah).  If what is said is true that there was a messiah before Christ then we must ask the following questions...

1.  If a messiah existed that fulfilled the prophecy in the Torah then why didn't the followers of Judaism embrace this messiah?  By not embracing this messiah they are casting doubt on all what they stand for and believe.

2.  How is it possible that Christianity exists if a messiah came before Christ?  Wouldn't these doomsday Hellenists embrace the first one instead of Christ who came later on?  Christianity as we know it would not have even existed more than likely! 

3. Why do we have little evidence of this older messiah? Ancient Romans are considered excellent record keepers so why do we know so little about this messiah compared to Christ where we have a wealth of historical information?

If the practitioners of Judaism did not embrace the first messiah then it means they feel he wasn't THE messiah but they obviously do not embrace Jesus Christ either. 

What many people do not understand is Jesus Christ is not just about dying and rising in three days.  It is what he did while he lived and walked on this earth which sets him apart from the rest.

[ufojoe]

The latest from Tabor on the tablet...

http://www.jesusdynasty.com/blog/2008/07/05/knohls-gabriel-text-interpretation-makes-the-nytimes

July 5, 2008

Knohl's Gabriel Text Interpretation Makes the NYTimes

Filed under: Archaeology, Biblical Expositions, Jesus Dynasty News - James Tabor

I recently highlighted the fascinating interpretation of Prof. Israel Knohl of Hebrew University of a new "Dead Sea" style text, the so-called "Gabriel Revelation," inscribed in ink on a stone tablet. The New York Times (Sunday, July 6, 2008) offers a comprehensive discussion of the storm of controversy that Knohl's interpretation has sparked: "Tablet Ignites Debate on Messiah and Resurrection."

Several scholars, myself included, along with Michael Wise, Michael Fishbane, and Israel Knohl, have argued for some years now that the "Suffering Messiah" ideas, reflected in our Synoptic Gospels, were not creations of the Christian communities after Jesus' death, nor even unique to Jesus himself, but in fact were ideas current within messianic varieties of Judaism reaching back into the 2nd century BCE or earlier.

I develop this in a narrative way in my book The Jesus Dynasty (section titled "The Making of a Messiah" in chapter 10; and "Going Underground" in chapter 11). I also have published two academic articles that deal with this subject more technically, "Are You the One? The Textual Dynamics of Messianic Self-Identity," and "Patterns of the End: Textual Weaving from Qumran to Waco," both available for downloading.

[ufojoe]

Dear Christians,

I read a book that is supposed to be one of the better books (The Case for Christ) regarding the evidence that
Jesus was the Son of God. Now it's your turn to read a book. I'd love to recommend "The Jesus Dynasty" by
James Tabor or "How Jesus Became a Christian" by Barrie Wilson but I haven't read them yet. Maybe somebody
else has read a book on the historical Jesus that they can recommend.

Would I be wasting my time even recommending a book?

[bradentonian]

Bradentonian please read the links I posted ...especially
http://www.biblicaldefense.org/Writings/old_testament_reliability.htm and
http://www.clemson.edu/spurgeon/books/apology/Chapter8.html
Then please ask an intelligent question...thx.

I read the links and didn't find any support for this ludicrous claim:

There is more evidence supporting Jesus walking the face of this earth than Julius Cesar.

I find it amazing that a person would bring this trivial bit of "evidence" and then bang a drum as to how succinctly it discredits a belief system that spans every bit of 4000 years.

Christianity spans 4000 years? Judaism might, but it's clearly a different belief system than Christianity. In one not so minor difference, the Jewish system doesn't believe that Jesus was the messiah, or even a prophet.

If only one man could change the religious perception of the entire population so utterly absolute - even under extreme duress - that influence must be of divine origin.

Divine origin is nothing more than speculation. Many men have changed the world.

There are many things in the Bible that cannot be proved but�there are many more that can.

The problem is that it's the important stuff that can't be proved, and the minor details that can. Just because 'Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea' mentions the sea, and the sea is a real place, it doesn't mean that the story is also true.

The Bible � written by 40 authors in 66 books over a span of 2000+ years, all of it a cohesive collection of stories...

Cohesive? There are thousands of contradictions in the Bible - thousands.

...and information that would not likely be possible for a group of people to replicate without divine guidance or intervention.

More speculation on the divine.

No verifiable evidence found to date has disproven anything in the Bible anywhere.

Yet here we are talking about exactly that thing.

It accounts for 14 generations of families from the husband�s side and the wife�s side to the birth of Jesus, so that even Jesus� enemies could not say he wasn�t a son of King David.

Jewish heritage is passed on through male children. And since Mary was a virgin, Jesus wasn't descended from Joseph. Which is actually fortunate since one of the men in that line was cursed by God so that "none of his offspring will prosper, none will sit on the throne of David."

Genesis also traces lineage from Adam, which is where the 6000 year old Earth theory comes from. Archeology has directly disproved this.

It is far from reasonable that a group of fanatics bent on controlling the populace would freely give out so much information over countless years of historical data that one little overlooked piece might give away the plan and reduce it to the waste bin of ridiculous ideas.

And yet there have been many overlooked pieces, which contrary to your assertions of "giving away the plan and reducing it to the waste bin of ridiculous ideas," have done nothing but cause the true believers to cling more stubbornly and claim that the evidence is misinterpreted, or just ignore the evidence altogether.

Proven Prophecy � the Dead Sea scrolls are a copy of a portion of the book of Isaiah found by Muslim boy who was throwing rocks in caves.

Oh, the Dead Sea scrolls are a lot more than that. They also contradict portions of the Bible that we use today, which were translated from Greek copies. These same scrolls, although extensive, make no mention of Jesus whatsoever. What they do say is that they are a doomsday cult waiting for the final battle where they will defeat the forces of darkness in the ultimate battle. And then the Romans came and wiped them out. So much for "proven prophecy."

�after the scrolls were carbon 14 dated to have been written before the fall of Babylon many Jews converted to Christianity and many Christians had their faith cemented.

Would this be the same carbon-14 dating that so many Christians didn't believe in when archaeologists used it to disprove the 6000 year old Earth theory, or to prove that the Shroud of Turin was a fake, or that there weren't enough people in the late bronze age to support the Bible's claim of a mass exodus out of Egypt, or that the Philistines weren't in Palestine when the Bible says they were, or that Be'er Sheva didn't exist yet when biblical events took place there? Is that the carbon-14 dating that you're talking about?

But Joe is right, this is all just an attempt by you to not address the issue at hand - evidence that stories that existed before Jesus strongly resemble Paul's version of the story of Jesus.

[ufojoe]

Nothing Thomas posted has anything to do with the analysis of the "new" tablet and what it could mean to
Christianity. I'm looking forward to more info. on the Old Messiah tablet.

I'm also looking forward to the analysis of the tomb at Rennes-le-Chateau and the body or bodies that are
buried there. Exciting stuff.

BTW, Illuminator, you're right when you mention conflict of interest. That's why I hope they get some
experts in there who don't have a dog in this fight. Not that the ones involved now can't be fair and
balanced. But you never know.

[T-Bone]

Bradentonian please read the links I posted ...especially
http://www.biblicaldefense.org/Writings/old_testament_reliability.htm and
http://www.clemson.edu/spurgeon/books/apology/Chapter8.html
Then please ask an intelligent question...thx.

[bradentonian]

There is more evidence supporting Jesus walking the face of this earth than Julius Cesar.

ummm...  what?

[T-Bone]

I find it amazing that a person would bring this trivial bit of "evidence" and then bang a drum as to how succinctly it discredits a belief system that spans every bit of 4000 years. There is more evidence supporting Jesus walking the face of this earth than Julius Cesar. If only one man could change the religious perception of the entire population so utterly absolute - even under extreme duress - that influence must be of divine origin.
This is the bottom line for all the truth seekers. To arrive at a reasonable conclusion for an argument we should first begin with indisputable proven facts, sound analysis, and lastly followed by reasonable speculation. Just like in a murder trial we use motive as a key additional piece of proof. Even though a motive cannot be proven beyond a shadow of a doubt if it is combined with other convincing evidence it becomes the critical compelling evidence for a verdict. There are many things in the Bible that cannot be proved but…there are many more that can.
There are 3 main tenets for the Christian faith.
1.   The Bible – written by 40 authors in 66 books over a span of 2000+ years, all of it a cohesive collection of stories and information that would not likely be possible for a group of people to replicate without divine guidance or intervention. No other book anywhere covers that time frame by so many people.
2.   Archaeological Evidence – No verifiable evidence found to date has disproven anything in the Bible anywhere. Critics may say “so whatâ€Â� neither has the Quran or any other faith based book been discredited by science. However the Bible alone boasts a fantastic plethora of specific detailed information spanning 1000’s years of history that no other book in the world can match religious or otherwise. It contains names of kings and dates they ruled. It accounts wars identifying winners and losers, names of rivers, lands, even behaviors at the time of writing (certain sayings, eating methods, ways to greet friends etc.). It accounts for 14 generations of families from the husband’s side and the wife’s side to the birth of Jesus, so that even Jesus’ enemies could not say he wasn’t a son of King David. These historical texts have been scrutinized by experts comparing them to other historical texts including Egyptian hieroglyphics and Assyrian Cuneiform writing. Once it was contradicted by an Egyptian writing and once by an Assyrian. Since then both were proven true and the Bible as correct. It is far from reasonable that a group of fanatics bent on controlling the populace would freely give out so much information over countless years of historical data that one little overlooked piece might give away the plan and reduce it to the waste bin of ridiculous ideas.
3.   Proven Prophecy – the Dead Sea scrolls are a copy of a portion of the book of Isaiah found by Muslim boy who was throwing rocks in caves. These particular scrolls contain the prophecy of the fall of the Babylonian empire and the rise of the Persian nation led by King Cyrus. They also foretold the coming of the Messiah and the manner of his death. Many opponents said these writings MUST have occurred after the events foretold because they were just too accurate…after the scrolls were carbon 14 dated to have been written before the fall of Babylon many Jews converted to Christianity and many Christians had their faith cemented.
http://www.biblicaldefense.org/Writings/old_testament_reliability.htm
http://www.geocities.com/cobblestoneministries/2006/ProvingTheBibleIsTrue
http://www.clemson.edu/spurgeon/books/apology/Chapter8.html

[Biggs3535]

It's not just that. Jesus didn't just do any miracles. He did the ones that were already on the books
that previous Messiahs supposedly peformed.

I understand that line of thinking.

Why turn water into wine? Why not come up with a unique miracle that wasn't already done?
Turn water into a complete meal. If you're the SoG, what purpose would it serve to match all
of these older stories/miracles?

Even though you have heard of turning water into wine and walking on water, would it impress you to see it done in person?  I'm not saying it did, just staying with the debate.

Makes no sense to me. Unless they were added to his story afterwards.

Just for the record, those stories don't add or detract from my belief whatsoever.  I didn't decide to be a Christian based on water turning into wine or a boy beating a 9 foot tall giant.  I believe there are many literary elements to the Bible.

[Biggs3535]

BTW, Biggs, most of the Christians I encounter don't take the angle you are taking. They say the stories of previous resurrection don't exist and are misinterpretations.

I don't understand why stories of previous resurrections would bother them.� Actual resurrections?� That would be a problem...

Maybe this is too obvious but what's to differentiate those stories of previous resurrections from the story of Jesus's resurrection?

One is believed to have actually happened.

Thay all could have happened yet one just had a better PR department than the others ...... or, it could be, they are all just "stories".

Or only one happened.  I'm surprised you forgot that option...

[BucsBullsBolts]

BTW, Biggs, most of the Christians I encounter don't take the angle you are taking. They say the stories of previous resurrection don't exist and are misinterpretations.

I don't understand why stories of previous resurrections would bother them.� Actual resurrections?� That would be a problem...

Maybe this is too obvious but what's to differentiate those stories of previous resurrections from the story of Jesus's resurrection?

One is believed to have actually happened.

Thay all could have happened yet one just had a better PR department than the others ...... or, it could be, they are all just "stories".

[ufojoe]

It's not just that. Jesus didn't just do any miracles. He did the ones that were already on the books
that previous Messiahs supposedly peformed.

Why turn water into wine? Why not come up with a unique miracle that wasn't already done?
Turn water into a complete meal. If you're the SoG, what purpose would it serve to match all
of these older stories/miracles?

Makes no sense to me. Unless they were added to his story afterwards.