Peace for all
hope by now ,giving constant time to the board .............
I hope my next input would benefit the advanced readers and the beginners as well... my purpose of the thread is giving a humble effort ,revising ,updating the current muslim approach towards the bible and christianity ,understanding what others believe in and then giving the Islamic view on such believes .....
A suggestion for the new readers to the thread, plz read the previous posts in order to get the context , to get clear meaning of the next posts. ....
brief reminder
I tried to get the reader to know how significant understanding the item messiah to understand christianity with all of its problems...
we visited the term in the Quran in details supporting,elaborating every Quranic line with the scholary works ,also visiting the Jewish religious,historical context before and during the ministry of Jesus and how the terrible conflicting situation therin enhanced the hope for the paradise on Earth and the super hero who would turn the world into one religion ,bringing the ultimate neverending Joy and peace to the Jews and the rest of the world ,putting an end to illness,hunger suffering etc......we then passed by The Jewish reaction to the message of Jesus which was varied ,there were three attitudes ,those Jews who rejected his message, ascribed falsely to him illegitimate birth,Magic,Shameful death ,those who believed in his message as a prophet and reformer ,those who imposed on him a role he wasn't supposed to do , ..... then we passed by the term true and false christians according to the Quran ,then we visted the term (true Injeel).......
passing by the term (origin of christianity) which is strongly related with the term (Messiah) ,showing that the messianic hopes are the cornerstone of the work of the writers of the new testament...we first defined the term messiah as understood by the Jews before and during the 1st century.. and how the writers of the new testament redefined the term leading to the problem of (FROM MESSIANOLOGY TO CHRISTOLOGY).....
The way the writers of the New Testament redefined the concept of the messiah is the biggest sin they commited ,they distorted a huge number of Old testament passages claiming them as prophecies of Jesus while they weren't,proving themselves propagators of falsehoods .
we began putting such passages under scrutiny ,beginning with the passage of Isaiah 7 which been quoted by the writer(s) of Matthew , we provided enough clues that the linguestic issue of the passage (whether the word means virgin or young women not neccesarily virgin) is not the right way to understand the problem of the passage .....
then I showed the contextual problem of the passage and how it is concerned with a past historical situation , the christian reaction to my argument was to argue for a so called (double fulfillment) theory .......while I said and will always say, multiple fulfillment is nothing but arbitary theory .
Fulfillment or Typology ?
If a writer said nothing in the context of his original prophecy denotes it to be fulfilled more than once ,we are not going to multiple fulfilment but to the work of typology ....... there's a big difference between an event fulfilling a specific historical prediction and an event occurring in accordance with or with similarities to a figure or type.
as C. Briggs rightly said:
a "typical correspondence" is not a direct prediction, for if it can have a "multiple fulfillment" then it was never really a prediction as Matthew obviously regarded it.
Messianic Prophecy (New York: Sons, 1892), p. 197.
let's get clearly the difference by reading the following fulfilled Quranic prophecy:
the holy Quran 30:1-4 The Roman Empire has been defeated In the nearer land (or lowest land), and they, after their defeat will be victorious.
we have a specific historical prediction that been fulfilled in exactly the manner stated,The Romans soon Within a few years be victorious .
what if after the time of the fulfilment stated ,the Roman again been defeated and then in few years victorious?
IS that a double fulfilment ,or just a history repeated itself? it is certainly the second unless one provides a textual support from the orignial prophecy that its producer intended it to be a double sense.
If an event occurred in accordance with or with similarities to a past figure or type ,doesn't mean , that it is a fulfilment of a prediction but a simple cheap work of typology ,one can play with whatever text he may like ......
one can provide hundreds of cases of present events that similar in some manners to old ones .... but does that prove them to be predicted?! absolutely not.... only those with species of mental and religious delusion would think so.
some christian scholars criticised such random theory:
"If one read only the New Testament it would be safe to say that he would never suspect the possibility of dual-fulfillment because the New Testament indicates that the predictions refer directly to Christ.
"one of the most persistent hermeneuticalsins" is attempting to place two interpretations on one passage of Scripture, thereby breaking the force of the literal meaning and obscuring the picture intended.
if prophecies have many meanings, then "hermeneutics would be indeterinate."
Barton Payne of Wheaton College and Bernard Ramm of California Baptist Theological Seminary.
"For these and such-like reasons, the scheme of attaching a double sense to the Scriptures is inadmissible. It sets afloat all the fundamental principles of interpretation by which we arrive at established conviction and certainty and casts us on the boundless ocean of imagination and conjecture without rudder or compass."
(Moses Stuart on the Hebrews, Excurs. xx.)
now back to the so called virgin birth prophecy:
Either the writer of Mathew upheld the direct messianic applecation of Isaiah as the Christian church used to :
the Christian church had, from the time of the Church Fathers, upheld the direct messianic explanation of Isaiah 7:14. it was not until the mid-eighteenth century that writers began to turn from this view.Hengstenberg, A Christology of the Old Testament and a Commentary on Messianic Predictions, Vol. III (Grand Rapids: Kregal, 1956; reprint of 1829 ed.), p. 48.
or he practiced Typology,he believed that the birth of Jesus has similarity with the other child Emmanule of the past ,
if so it was typology at its worst we first ask
what similarity the events of Isaiah 7 and the events in Matthew 1
1- is it the act of a virgin birth?
if so then no similarity there at all ,just who was the virgin of that generation who gave birth to a son? That is a legitimate question, because if Isaiah meant virgin in the strictest sense with reference to a woman who would give birth 700 years later, then he had to mean virgin in the strictest sense for the woman of his time who would bear a son. ? typology (similarity )here needs a type, pattern (a virgin of the old times) and antitype (Mary) if so the type is missed right here.
2- Is it the physical situation surrounding Israel or Jesus?
there is hardly any similarity between the physical situation in the past and the present as, unlike the child Immanuel there was no besiege or any kind of military danger to the house of David immediately before the birth of Jesus etc....
3- Is it a so called spiritual prophecy?
or in other words according to the christian argument in the thread, is to show that God is still with israel even though he would soon punish her ,and this very prophecy was one of disaster for israel and not of peace ......
I have a better description to such prophecy than a spiritual one :
It was just one example of biblical failed prophecies
PROPHECIES: IMAGINARY AND UNFULFILLED by Farrel till
CONTEMPORARY FAILURE
On the subject of strange things, what could be stranger than this? Isaiah made the prophecy to assure King Ahaz that the Syrian-Israelite alliance would not prevail against him, yet the Bible record shows that the alliance not only succeeded but did so overwhelmingly. Second Chronicles 28 reports that Ahaz's idolatrous practices caused "Yahweh his God" to deliver him "into the hand of the king of Syria" (v:5). (This king was the Rezin of Isaiah 7:1.) The Syrians "carried away of his a great multitude of captives" and took them to Damascus (v:5). Simultaneously, the Israelites attacked Judah under the leadership of Pekah (the same Pekah of Isaiah 7:1), and in one day 120,000 "valiant men" in Judah were killed and 200,000 "women, sons, and daughters" were "carried away captive" (vv:6-8). The battle casualties included Maaseiah, Ahaz's son; Azrikam, the governor of the house; and Elkanah, who was "next to the king" (v:7). If these results were Isaiah's idea of Syrian and Samarian failure, one wonders what kind of drubbing the alliance would have inflicted had Isaiah prophesied its success.
Furthermore, Isaiah's assurance that Assyria would be Yahweh's instrument in defeating the alliance (Isaiah 8:4-8) failed to materialize too. When the Edomites (Samarians) struck Judah a second time and "carried away captives," Ahaz sent "to the kings of Assyria to help him" (2 Chron. 28:16-17). In response, Tilgath-Pilneser, king of Assyria, "came to him, and distressed him, but strengthened him not" (v:20). As a prophet, then, Isaiah seems to have struck out all the way around. In fairness to him, however, it should be noted that Assyria's role in the conflict was reported with different results in 2 Kings 16, where Ahaz also fared a little better than reported in 2 Chronicles 28. Nevertheless, these discrepancies in the two accounts are more of an embarrassment to bibliolaters than a benefit, because such variations in the Bible record place on inerrancy believers the added burden of trying to explain why "inspired writers" would give contradictory reports of the same events.
There is yet a final absurdity to notice in this wonderful Messianic prophecy. With the Syrian-Israelite alliance posing a threat to Judah, Isaiah was sent to Ahaz to prophesy that the alliance would fail. After doing so, he said in his very next breath that Yahweh would bring the king of Assyria against Judah and that he would desolate the land (7:17-25). Imagine, if you can, the absolute absurdity of this. The prophet came, in effect, to say, "Don't worry; Syria and Samaria will not defeat you. Assyria will." What kind of consolation was that supposed to be? It was as if in our day the people of our country, fearing an attack from Russia, should be told by a prophet, "Fear not; Russia will not defeat you. China will." Yet, despite this flaw and the many others noted, millions of people consider this "prophecy" a remarkable example of divine foresight. In reality, the only remarkable thing about it is that so many intelligent people could have been duped into believing that it was remarkable.
.............................................
let's for the sake of argument consider it to be spiritual prophecy, and believe in it as a prophecy of disaster for israel and not of peace ......If that is true then ,that is certainly not a messianic prophecy ,the promised king messiah is not the one coming to show Israeli that God with them spiritually and then say goodbye without putting the words (God is with us) into actions, neither the one that after his coming would be a disaster for israel but exactly the opposite...
to be continued
