Wednesday, September 3, 2014

Chizuk Emunah (Pt 2) Under the Microscope: Chapter 36

Luke 4:17-21, "And there was delivered unto him (to Jesus) the book of the prophet Esaias, and when he had opened the book, he found the place where it was written, 'The Spirit of God is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the Gospel to the poor. He hath sent me to heal the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.' And he closed the book, and he gave it again to the minister, and sat down. And he said unto them, 'This day is this Scripture fulfilled in your ears.'" Isaiah 61 is here quoted in a garbled manner. In order to lay more stress on the healing, powers attributed to Jesus, the gift of restoring sight to the blind is added to the mission of the pretended Messiah. On the other hand, it is omitted to be quoted that this would be—"A day of vengeance to our God, to comfort all mourners, to give to the mourners of Zion glory instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the cloak of praise instead of a gloomy spirit." Jesus had no right to attribute to himself the glory of deeds he had not performed. Isaiah spoke here of himself. And by the words, "The Lord hath anointed me," he meant nothing more than that he had received the Divine unction as a prophet. It was he who was sent forth to offer consolation, in order that the Israelites, during their long sufferings, should not despair of the Divine aid, and of their future restoration. They, the exiled children of Israel, were addressed by the prophets "as the afflicted, the broken-hearted, the captives, the prisoners, the mourners of Zion." They alone stood in need of the prophetic consolatory promises, and to whom alone they had reference. 

Isaiah 61 reads like this:

The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me,
because the LORD has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor;
he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim liberty to the captives,
and the opening of the prison to those who are bound;
to proclaim the year of the LORD's favor, 
(Jesus finishes here and sits down) 
        and the day of vengeance of our God;
to comfort all who mourn;
to grant to those who mourn in Zion—
to give them a beautiful headdress instead of ashes,
the oil of gladness instead of mourning,
the garment of praise instead of a faint spirit;
that they may be called oaks of righteousness,
the planting of the LORD, that he may be glorified.
They shall build up the ancient ruins;
they shall raise up the former devastations;
they shall repair the ruined cities,
the devastations of many generations.

It seems that Jesus was very deliberate in quoting only half the passage. He said that this part of the passage is fulfilled, but does not say that the latter half is fulfilled. The whole point was that only part of the passage was going to be fulfilled, predicting two comings. For Troki to keep insisting that everything must be fulfilled within one lifetime is just for him to beg the question. There is no indication in Tanakh that everything will be fulfilled at once.

As A. Lukyn Williams writes:
Every Jew who has read even a few pages of Talmud or Midrash knows perfectly well that quotations in those writings from the Hebrew Bible are almost as often inaccurate as accurate, But he does not, for that reason, turn round and refuse to have any more to do with books and writers which can make such mistakes. On the contrary, he is well acquainted with the fact that the more accurately persons know their Bible, and the more directly they have in their minds, when they are writing or arguing, persons who know the Scriptures as well as they do themselves, the more easily they omit words, or add clauses from other contexts, if, by doing so, they can either make their argument more concise, or can express it more clearly. With Jewish writers mere verbal accuracy in a quotation is almost of no importance at all. When a Jew, in arguing with a Gentile, pretends that it is, he is presuming on the Gentile's ignorance of things Jewish.
Again, let me reiterate that fulfillment does not entail prediction. You fulfill the law when you love your neighbor as yourself, even though Moses was not predicting your actions.

Regarding Isaiah, indeed Isaiah may have seen himself as the subject of this passage, yet even rabbinic authorities like David Kimchi and Saadia Gaon believed that the language was too extreme to be fulfilled by Isaiah, so they too sought a different subject for this passage.

As far as the alleged inaccuracies, remember that what we call the Masoretic Text did not exist at the time of Jesus. So Jesus is likely quoting from a different text, possibly a Targum. Anyway, here is the textual history of the Tanakh. The red lines indicate what versions were used as sources for other versions. Versions lower in the chart are the older versions of the text. So, for example, Aquila was the source text for Onkelos, which was written later.

Tuesday, September 2, 2014

Chizuk Emunah (Pt 2) Under the Microscope: Chapter 35

Luke 3:23, The genealogy of Jesus, as treated in this and the subsequent verses, is contradictory to that in Matthew 1. For Luke commences thus: "The list of the descent of Jesus"—"And Jesus was the son of Joseph, the son of Heli, the son of Matthat, the son of Levi, the son of Malachi," etc. etc. In Matthew, where the origin of Joseph is traced back to Solomon, the Son of David, the enumeration of the ancestors of Joseph closes in the following manner:—"And Eliud begat Eleazar, and Eleazar begat Matthan, and Matthan begat Jacob, and Jacob begat Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus." We have already shown above that Matthew enumerates forty-two generations, from Abraham our father; but Luke counts only twenty-six. From these contrary statements one might fairly ask, which Joseph was the husband of Mary? Was it Joseph, the son of Heli, the son of Matthat, the son of Levi, as Luke supposes; or was it Joseph, the son of Jacob, the son of Matthan, the son of Eleazar, as Matthew supposes? If we are to believe the words of Luke, then the statement of Matthew must be incorrect, and vice versa. Luke, in tracing back the descent of Jesus to the first ancestor, says that Jesus was the son of Adam, the Son of God. Hence it would seem that Jesus has no better title to the designation of the Son of God, than every other descendant of Adam.

This is the common genealogy objection, which can be illustrated in this chart.
http://ap.lanexdev.com/user_images/image/bibbul/2003/bb-03-31-lg.png

One observation is that Matthew is using the practice of gematria in his genealogy. Gematria is the practice of assigning the numerical value of the letters in a word in order to derive some significance. The numerical value of David is 14.
 
Compare this to Matthew 1:17 which states "So all the generations from Abraham to David were fourteen generations, and from David to the deportation to Babylon fourteen generations, and from the deportation to Babylon to the Christ fourteen generations." Matthew is not saying that the lineage of each of these was exactly 14 people, but instead picks out the 14 most significant people in the lineage.

Risto Santala also has explanations of Matthew's use in terms of rabbinical writings. For example, tractate Avot states that there were 10 generations from Adam to Noah, and 10 from Noah to Abraham. Technically, this requires some trickery to get right.

The lineage of Noah is:
1. Adam
2. Seth
3. Enosh
4. Kenan
5. Mahalalel
6. Jerod
7. Enoch
8. Methuselah
9. Lamech
10. Noah

The lineage in Genesis 11 is:
1. Noah
2. Shem
3. Arphaxad
4. Shem
5. Salah
6. Eber
7. Peleg
8. Reu
9. Serug
10. Nahor
11. Terah
12. Abraham

So there are 10 generations from Adam to Noah if you count Adam and Noah. There are 10 generation from Noah to Abraham if you do not count Noah or Abraham.

As explained by Jewishroots.net "If the genealogies in Matthew and Luke were identical, then one of them would have been unnecessary. And since God is the ultimate economizer of space, logic dictates that the differences between the genealogies must be purposeful."

Monday, September 1, 2014

Chizuk Emunah (Pt 2) Under the Microscope: Chapter 34

Luke 2:33, "And Joseph and his mother marvelled at those things which were spoken of him."

"The child tarried behind in Jerusalem, and his parents knew not of it." "And when they saw him they were amazed, and his mother said unto him, Son, why hast thou thus dealt with us? Behold thy father and I have sought thee sorrowing?" ver. 43, 48. Ibid, 4:22, "And they said, Is not this Joseph's son?" See also John 1:45, "Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph"; and ibid. 6:42, "Is not this Jesus the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know?"

These passages afford a complete refutation of the doctrine of the miraculous conception of Jesus, and thereby undermine the groundwork of the Christian faith.
This objection is kind of silly if you have been reading along. Repeatedly, Troki asserts that Jesus cannot be Messiah since he did not descend biologically from Joseph. Here, Troki argues that Jesus did descend from Joseph. The New Testament has called Jesus the son of Joseph, and why would we reckon things any differently?

Parents of adopted children are generally considered the mother and father of that child. One rabbi that I know has an adopted daughter. People in the community still talk of the rabbi as her father, even though he is not her biological father.

Again, according to Jewish and Roman law, Joseph would have been legally considered the father. Mary had good reasons to keep her virgin conception a secret, particularly that few if any people would have believed her anyway.