From: Christopher <[address removed]>
To: [address removed]
Sent: Sunday, February 16,[masked]:11 PM
Subject: Re: [Provocateurs] resurrection story

"Rather, it seems that at certain critical junctures the early Christian community began with Jesus's biography, massaged the Old Testament to fit, and then claimed that Jesus fulfilled prophecy."

1.  I don't think this is substantially contrary to what I said.

2. Even if it is contrary to what I said, I don't think it matters much.  Either way, it shows that the Resurrection looks like something that is inferred from "fulfillment" interpretations rather than historical.  I surmise that the Jesus movement had to find a way to account for the fact that their supposed Messiah had unexpectedly died an ignominious death as a criminal and thus disappointed their hopes for him.  That was clearly an unacceptable ending according to Jesus's followers, so a Resurrection, which could be inferred from certain OT texts, had to be supplied to reinterpret Jesus's death as a victory, or rather the prelude to a victory.

Christopher M. Riels
1332 Crosswinds Court Apt. 2
Lawrence, KS 66046
Telephone: (785)[masked]

From: Eugene Curry <[address removed]>
To: [address removed]
Sent: Sunday, February 16,[masked]:00 PM
Subject: Re: [Provocateurs] resurrection story

Hi Chris,

You're right that the New Testament authors are eager to connect Jesus's life, death, and resurrection to passages in the Old Testament. But one needs to be careful here. In a number of points, it seems that the Old Testament passages put forward as prophecies fulfilled by Jesus were not originally understood by the Jewish people as prophecies concerning the messiah.

As a result, in at least some cases, it is highly unlikely that the early Christian community began with the Old Testament, massaged Jesus's biography to make it fit, and then claimed Jesus fulfilled a prophecy. Rather, it seems that at certain critical junctures the early Christian community began with Jesus's biography, massaged the Old Testament to fit, and then claimed that Jesus fulfilled prophecy.

This is most dramatically the case with the virgin-birth stories in Matthew and Luke. The Old Testament never really claimed that the messiah would be born of a virgin, and Jews looking for the advent of the messiah in Jesus's day didn't at all expect the messiah to be born of a virgin. So it is highly unlikely that Matthew or Luke made up the story of Jesus begin virgin-born to "fulfill" non-existent prophecies.

More germane to the topic at hand, though, is the matter of Jesus's crucifixion and subsequent resurrection. As with the virgin birth, 1st century Judaism had no concept of a messiah that would be executed by the very pagan powers they expected him to overthrow. A fortiori, the Jews had no notion of a messiah who not only died ignobly at the hands of Israel's enemies but was then raised to new life in the course of on-going history. As such, it's highly unlikely that the early Christian community massaged Jesus's biography to fulfill non-existent messianic expectations. Rather, it's more likely that something actually happened regarding Jesus (i.e. the crucifixion and then the resurrection), and the early Christians were so amazed by it that they then busily set about looking for analogues in the Old Testament to make sense of the events.

It doesn't always seem this way to us today because we tend to read the Old Testament through the lens of Jesus's experiences as recorded in the New Testament. In other words, we read it anachronistically. But what I've sketched out above is, apart from the mythicist crackpots and, I think, one serious scholar, the consensus view among experts.

Sincerely,

Eugene

From: Christopher <[address removed]>
To: [address removed]
Sent: Sunday, February 16,[masked]:16 PM
Subject: Re: [Provocateurs] resurrection story

In my remarks below, I failed to mention the obviously important point that the Resurrection itself seems to be based on a "fulfillment" claim.  In Acts 2, most starkly in v. 24 ("But God raised him up, having freed him from death, because it was impossible for him to be held in its power") Peter, as depicted by Luke, represents the Resurrection of Jesus as a fulfillment of Psalm [masked]: 

I keep the Lord always before me;

   because he is at my right hand, I shall not be moved. 

Therefore my heart is glad, and my soul rejoices;
   my body also rests secure. 
For you do not give me up to Sheol,

   or let your faithful one see the Pit.) 

(Bible quotations:  New Revised Standard Version; taken from bible.oremus.org.)

 

Christopher M. Riels
1332 Crosswinds Court Apt. 2
Lawrence, KS 66046
Telephone: (785)[masked]

From: eric <[address removed]>
To: [address removed]
Sent: Sunday, February 16,[masked]:38 AM
Subject: Re: [Provocateurs] resurrection story

Christopher, I basically agree with what you have written below.  The "suffering servant" song in Isaiah 52:13-53:12 is particularly intriguing, but a full discussion of the song would  be much too long for an email.  The identity of the servant has been debated for centuries among rabbis and scholars.

Eric

On 2/15/2014 6:43 PM, Christopher wrote:

Just one vague point about the Resurrection in general:  If the event did not occur, the  passages claiming it did were not "made up."  Repeatedly, the NT authors in general and the gospel authors in particular, interpret Jesus's life and actions as fulfillment of prophecies from the Hebrew Scriptures.  This does not mean that they deliberately fabricated the divine character of Jesus by simply appropriating passages of the "OT" in order to create narratives that they knew to be fictional. Instead, as it has long seemed to me, they sincerely and whole-heartedly believed that Jesus was the long-awaited Messiah: as a result, they believed that he must have done and experienced the things that the long-awaited Messiah, on their interpretation of the OT, would do and experience.  Thus, they filled in the blanks in their knowledge of Jesus's life and death by modeling him and his experiences on what they believed the OT said about him.  Probably the single most famous instance is the Christian interpretation of Jesus as the crucified "suffering servant" of Isaiah 53, who "was wounded for our transgressions" and on whom "the Lord has laid. . . the iniquity of us all."  In a verse from Psalm 24, "not one of [his bones] was broken; accordingly, the soldiers at his cross did not have to break Jesus's legs when they took him down from the cross.  Probably the most humorous example is Jesus's triumphal entry into Jerusalem on the back of a donkey; or, in Mark's account, two donkeys (which must have been strange to see as well as hard to do.  (Matthew's two donkeys come from his misreading of a literary device at Zechariah 9:9.)     

 

Christopher M. Riels
1332 Crosswinds Court Apt. 2
Lawrence, KS 66046
Telephone: (785)[masked]

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