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Please pay close attention to this important example:
On March 17, 1969 Golda Meir became the prime minister of Israel, an office she held for five years. On November 5, 1974 Ella Grasso was elected governor of the State of Connecticut and re-elected four years later. In 1979 Margaret Thatcher became prime minister of Great Britain a post she held for eleven years, one of the longest tenures of a British prime minister. In addition, since the 1960s, Sri Lanka, India, and the Philippines elected women to the highest positions of national leadership in their countries.
Answer for yourself: Were these women, and other female leaders like them, fulfilling a prophecy of Isaiah? Some might say yes while others say no. Who is correct?
In Isaiah 3:12 the prophet proclaimed:
As for my people a babe is their master and women rule over them.
It is as valid--or invalid--to extract Isaiah's phrase from its context and use it as proof of the ascent of women to power 2700 years later as it is to ascribe his verses to events in Yeshua's life 700 years later. Isaiah, like the other great Hebrew prophets, dealt primarily with contemporary problems. All the prophets harangued against social injustice, immorality, idolatry, and the ill-conceived alliances Israel made with other nations. Some of the prophecies are eschatological, such as those describing a Messianic Age in which the earth would be governed as the kingdom of G-d.
In the above-quoted verse Isaiah criticized women for their extravagance, which had a degenerating effect on men. The latter exploited the poor in order to satisfy their wives' wishes and demands. In this way the prophet saw women as indirectly setting public policy and thus being the real rulers. This has nothing to do with the premierships of Golda Meir in Israel, Indira Gandhi in India, Sirimavo Bandaranaike in Sri Lanka, Margaret Thatcher in Great Britain, or Corazon Aquino in the Philippines in the latter half of the twentieth century. The behavior which Isaiah denounced was no prophecy that women would rule the world 2700 years hence.
Answer for yourself: Does the New Testament take verses out of context and give them different meanings than which the original authors meant? You bet!
It is with these thoughts in mind that we shall proceed to discuss verses taken from the Hebrew Bible and quoted in the New Testament as predictions of events which occurred anywhere from 500 to 1400 years later.
While these Jewish passages, as seen in the above example about women, have strong relevance in their original context, they are arbitrarily ascribed to people and happenings to which they have little or no connection. The New Testament writers are guilty of the same mishandling and abuse of Jewish Scripture to create a new religion. Let me give you the mechanics involved in textual manipulation whereby we end up with something different in meaning that the original author intended.
Besides the quest for truth and an obedient life before G-d, there are numerous verses contained within the New Testament, which in and of themselves are not anti-Semite but are used to substantiate certain beliefs held by the early Gentile Church which have anti-Jewish implications. Carried out to the end-result these verses influence one’s beliefs and conduct. Let me remind you that these verses are directly attributable to the murder of 6 million Jews during our century alone.
One of these doctrines is that the Tanakh predicted the coming of Yeshua and the events in his life. The false contention which follows from this idea is that the New Testament has replaced and superseded its predecessor.
Since these assumptions are largely based on quotations from the Hebrew Bible, it is important to view the background of those verses within their context and in their original form. We can then judge whether the psalmists, prophets, judges, and kings were talking to their fellow Israelites about events in their time and place or predicting occurrences which were unknown or alien to both speakers and listeners.
The differences between verses as they appear in the Hebrew Bible and as they appear in Christian Greek Scriptures will be highlighted by italics. You must ultimately be the judge if the use of the Jewish Scriptures in the New Testament carries the truth expressed by them originally by the writer as seen in the Jewish Scriptures.
We need to deal with those verses and symbols in the Gospels and Book of Acts which are taken from the Tanakh and, by means of the previously described techniques, are used against Jews and Judaism.
It is important to bear in mind that any Gospel or collection which included Yeshua's acts and sayings was emended and eventually developed into four Gospels. These 4 Gospels are strewn with contradictions about even the most important events of Yeshua's life such as his birth, miracles, crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension. There are no Hebrew or Aramaic Gospels in existence from the first century. The extant Gospels are Greek and the quotations from the Hebrew Scriptures are taken from the Septuagint, a Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures to which only the Jews were responsible for translating the first five book of the Torah. The Gentile Church did the rest. Sadly, the translation of the Septuagint is often at variance with the verses originally in the Hebrew. The four Gospels developed by accretion until at least 130 C.E. Even then the text was not set, as can be seen in the numerous variations in the manuscripts of the Gospels. There are thousands of manuscripts of the New Testament between the second and the twelfth century and no two agree.
The first chapter of Matthew and the third chapter of Luke present genealogies which supposedly prove Yeshua's descent from King David. (There is a third genealogy found in some manuscripts of Luke which differs from the other two.) The importance of establishing the connection with David stems from the Jewish belief that the Messiah would be a descendant of David from whose dynasty came the kings of Judah for the next 425 years. Since the early Christians started out as Jews and based their Scriptures on Hebrew Biblical themes, they and their Gentile Christian successors built some of their theological concepts on Jewish ideas. Later these Jewish ideas were invested by the Gentile Church with a far different meaning than the prophets and other authors of the Tanakh attributed to them.
For example, Isaiah wrote about a Messianic Age. His prophecies did not mention a specific person who would fulfill the role of messiah. It has been said that 95% of all Messianic literature in the Jewish Scriptures deal with what the Messiah will do, but when we come to the Greek New Testament 95% of all Messianic literature deals with the identity of the Messiah. However, the concept and identification of a messiah developed great symbolic meaning in Christianity. That was the reason for the presentation of elaborate, if not accurate, genealogical tables in two of the Gospels to prove Yeshua's lineage from David.
The names listed from Abraham to Zerubabel in Matthew are easily traced in the Tanakh. From there on, however, there is no genealogical record in Scriptures or elsewhere of the next eight people (or generations) leading to Joseph, Yeshua's father. Interestingly, the genealogy given in Luke 3:23-37 is quite different from the one in the Gospel of Matthew. Luke’s has a whole set of other names equally untraceable in the Bible.
Answer for yourself: Why do both evangelists take pains to draw a genealogy of Yeshua through Joseph when the latter is not considered his biological father according to the virgin birth teaching?.
This reason is clearly stated immediately after Matthew's genealogical table. Demonstration of “fulfillment” of Messianic prophecy is the reason for the genealogies (even if they don't agree with each other). Matthew 1:18-22 tells us that Mary conceived Yeshua through the Holy Spirit as a virgin and "fulfilled what the Lord had said through the prophet." To demonstrate the Davidic descent of Yeshua, the evangelists would go to great lengths to demonstrate the Davidic pedigree of Yeshua, even going so far as to entangled themselves in a contradiction.
Answer for yourself: Have you ever compared the genealogies of Matthew and Luke for yourself, and compared them to the lineages in the Jewish Scriptures? Unless you do then you either have to accept what I say or discount what I say. Take the challenge….look it up for yourself.
Answer for yourself: If Joseph was not Yeshua's father, what is the point of the whole family tree?
Answer for yourself: How can you demonstrate Yeshua's bloodline through David if he did not have a human father?
Following this passage is one of the most blatant and well-known mistranslation of the Hebrew Bible. Matthew 1:23, in a seeming quotation of Isaiah 7:14 (or better said misquotation), states, "The virgin will be with child and give birth to a son and will call him Immanuel." Again this is a classic example of misquoting the Jewish Scriptures on purpose to further promote your own specific theological position.
Answer for yourself: What are the chances that a non-Jew would ever compare the Greek word used in Matthew with the original verse in Isaiah to verify if the concept from the Isaiah quote is the same or if it had been altered?
Answer for yourself: Was the misquotation accidental or was it on purpose to further pre-existing theologies of the early Gentiles who later took over direction of the Church?
The prophet Isaiah had come to King Ahaz with a divine message. The obstinate Ahaz wanted no part of it. In order to establish his credibility as a true messenger of G-d and to assure Ahaz of the fulfillment of his prophecy, Isaiah gave him a sign. He informed the king, "Behold the young woman will conceive and bear a son and will call his name Immanuel.'' This happened around 735 B.C.E, The name, Immanuel was rather unusual and carried a special meaning: G-d is with us. Perhaps the strangeness of the name--this is the only time it is used in the Hebrew Bible--would further convince Ahaz of Isaiah's credibility when he heard the name given spontaneously by his mother. The young woman was probably someone in the court whom the king knew.
There is a Hebrew word for virgin: betula, but that word does not appear in the verse. What is more astounding is that Isaiah is familiar with the word for “virgin” and uses it elsewhere in the book and could have chosen to uses this word if he desired to express the concept that a virgin was to conceive. Instead he used a different word. The word, alma, a young woman, is found. This verse has been taken out of context by Christians and used to prove that Isaiah predicted the birth of a boy named Joshua (Jesus in Greek), not Immanuel, 735 years after his prophecy to Ahaz.
Since Isaiah was trying to convince Ahaz to believe him and to heed his message by giving him proof, it stretches the imagination to understand how an event which would be delayed over 700 years would persuade the king who would be long dead by now or be used by the prophet. If such were the case then Isaiah's authority and prophetic power would not be validated in the eyes of Ahaz whom he wanted to influence.
In the first chapter of Luke the story of the virgin birth was related but without any reference to Isaiah or fulfilling his prophecy.
However, in Chapter 2 Luke told a story of Yeshua's birth which was meant to establish Yeshua's descent from David (who came from the tribe of Judah) and his birth in Bethlehem (in Judah). Luke told of Joseph leaving his home in Galilee with his wife who was in an advanced stage of pregnancy to register in Judea for a census because that was his ancestral home. This story contains 3 fatal flaws:
When Luke wrote this Gospel, he was unaware of the conditions in Israel at the time of Yeshua birth and childhood. This whole account of a census in Judea requiring the presence of Mary and Joseph there and coinciding with Yeshua's birth was contrived. The writer of the Gospel of Luke sought a way to prove Joseph's, and thereby, Yeshua's, descent from David and the birth of Yeshua in the same city in which the great Judean king was born.
But Joseph and Mary were Galileans. They had lived there before and after their son was born. All the facts of Yeshua's early life revolve around Galilee. As for the city of his birth, identified as Bethlehem, there is no reason to doubt that he was born in a city of that name. There is a Bethlehem in Galilee besides one in Judea. Bethlehem in Galilee is mentioned in Joshua 19:15 and Judges 12:10, which is about seven-and-a-half miles northwest of Nazareth. It is entirely possible that the Bethlehem in Galilee was Yeshua's birthplace.
Matthew sets out to prove otherwise. Matthew 2 offered quotations from the prophets Micah, Hosea, and Jeremiah as validation of the Gospel writer's contentions of connecting Yeshua with David’s birth city.
The story was told of Herod being informed that the future "king of the Jews" was to be born in Bethlehem. To confirm the assumption that Yeshua was that king, a verse from Micah was quoted, or rather, misquoted.
The verse, as written in Greek of Matthew 2:6 as found in the New Testament is:
And you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are now by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for out of you will come a ruler who will be the shepherd of my people Israel. But the verse, as written in the original Hebrew, in Micah 5:1, is: But you Bethlehem Efrata Which are little among the thousands of Judah; Out of you shall come forth unto Me that is to be the ruler in Israel Whose goings forth (lineage) are from of old, from ancient days.
Notice that the writer of Matthew changed both the wording and the meaning of the verse and weakened his case. He wanted to prove Yeshua's descent from Judah and, more specifically, from the house of David. But he left out the clincher, Efrata, which is tile branch of Judah from which David's family came. Also the Hebrew Bible showed David's humble origins with the words, "little among the thousands of Judah." Not appreciating the significance of the modest background of most of Israel's leaders, Matthew tried to aggrandize it.
More to the point is the matter of Yeshua's ancestry. There is little doubt that, as a Jew, Yeshua was a descendant of the tribe of Judah, as have been most Jews--or so they assume. Benjamin was a small tribe, adjacent to Judah. It was eventually absorbed into Judah as were the remnants of the Northern tribes of Israel. People intermarried. Judah was the dominant tribe and everyone considered himself a Judean or Jew. The question was whether Yeshua's ancestry could be established as stemming from the house of David. King David lived ten centuries before Yeshua. It is doubtful whether Yeshua or anyone else could pinpoint his descent from a specific family a thousand years and an exile later. Interestingly other claimants to messiahship before and after Yeshua did not labor to establish their familial lineage with David; nor did their supporters. It was taken for granted that the Messiah, who would be king and sit on David's throne, would be his descendant. His achievement of this position would be proof of his lineage.
Matthew's attempt to connect Micah's verse to Yeshua fails on all accounts.
The prediction at Yeshua's birth that he was the future king of the Jews was not born out by history. Yeshua was never anointed king, or recognized, for even one day, as a monarch of Judea. Nor could Matthew, or anyone else, demonstrate that Yeshua was David's descendant much less, his heir to the throne.
According to Jewish law and tradition, a person could be king if he were recognized and anointed by a divinely inspired prophet and acclaimed by the people.
According to the definition, John the Baptist was not a prophet. The Jewish sages teach that the Age of Prophecy had ended with Malachi and would return when Elijah returned. John the Baptist was not Elijah, by his own admission (John 1:21). Nor was the young woman in Bethany who poured perfume on Yeshua a prophet. There is no evidence in any Jewish literature that Yeshua was recognized by Jews as their sovereign.
Matthew's and Luke's narratives diverge and contradict each other. In Luke Yeshua was circumcised on the eighth day and was brought to the Temple.
In Matthew's Gospel Joseph was told by an angel to take his wife and son to Egypt until Herod died. Upon their return from Egypt the Gospel uses the ubiquitous phrase, "So was fulfilled what the Lord said through the prophet.'' This is the New Testament’s way of quoting a verse or referring to a passage in the Hebrew Bible. In this ease it is a quote from Hosea 11:1 which reads as follows:
When Israel was a child and I loved him And out of Egypt I called My son.
The reference in Hosea is obviously to the Exodus from Egypt of Israel the corporate nation. This occurred relatively early in the history of the nation; hence the expression "when Israel was a child." G-d’s relationship to Israel is couched in the tender image of a father’s love for his child. Hosea lived in the eighth century B.C.E. and was recalling the event which had happened several centuries earlier. He was reminding the Israelites of G-d's mercy to their ancestors. His message had meaning to the people he addressed and nothing to do with a family moving from Egypt to Judea 800 years later, just as it had nothing to do with many Jewish families that moved from Egypt to Israel 2700 years later in 1950.
Matthew 2:18 is another quotation from the Jewish Scriptures taken out of context. He quotes from the heart-rending dirge from Jeremiah 31:14.
A voice is heard in Ramah Lamentation and bitter weeping Rachel weeping for her children; She refuses to be comforted for her children Because they are not.
From the context of this verse in the chapter and the events through which Jeremiah lived, it is obvious that the prophet referred to Rachel weeping (metaphorically) over the exile of her descendants. Jeremiah lived and prophesied at the time of the fall of Judea and the exile of the Jews to Babylonia in 586 B.C.E. Rachel was an ancestress of part of the Israelite people. Her lament was for her slain and exiled descendants (children of Israel).
The Gospel of Matthew connects this verse to Herod's murder of all boys in Bethlehem two years old and under when he was outwitted by the Magi. Matthew 2:17 states, "Then what was said through the prophet was fulfilled." There is only one problem. Out of all those who chronicled the life of Herod because he was so despised by all the Jew, there is not one….not one reference at all to the killing of infants as Matthew records. Again we have an attempt by the gospel writer to inform his audience that one greater than Moses is here, for as this hideous event happened to Moses allegorically it was construed as if happened to Yeshua as well.
The question of the historicity of the alleged killing of children in Bethlehem and its similarity to the story in Exodus of Pharaoh's order to the midwives to kill all male Israelite children will not be dealt with here in detail. You can research that on your own. Suffice it to say that this is another example of a verse severed from its context and used to substantiate a story in the Gospel to which it has no relevance.
Matthew related that upon Herod's death, Joseph returned from Egypt with his family. He resided in Galilee, rather than in Judea, because he feared Herod's son, Archelaus, who ruled in Judea. Joseph settled in Nazareth and Matthew concluded, "So was fulfilled what was said through the prophets: 'He will be called a Nazarene."' (2:23).
Answer for yourself: Have you ever run across this Scripture in reading the Old Testament or even the inter-testamental literature?
The evangelist did not identify the prophets who spoke of a Nazarene. He couldn't. No one had ever prophesied that the Messiah would be called a Nazarene or would come from Nazareth.
There was mention of Nazirites in the Tanakh, but not Nazarenes. Comments in the Hebrew Bible about Nazirites referred to vows they took or, in the case of Samson, responsibilities imposed on him from birth. Nazarenes were people who came from Nazareth. Only many years after Yeshua's birth did the word take on another meaning--the name of Yeshua's followers. Neither Nazareth nor its residents played any role in the Hebrew Bible where the city is not even mentioned. Consequently, there was no prophetic message about a Nazarene to be fulfilled.
The words, Nazarene and Nazirite are spelled and pronounced differently and, of course, have diverse meanings. Matthew's confusion of the two words and his failure to distinguish between them points to his lack of the most elementary knowledge of Hebrew, a language with which any Jew growing up and living in the land of Israel would be familiar.
Let us continue searching for truth in the New Testament.
Shalom
Bennoah1@verizon.net