Hey guys, one thing I forgot to mention that is important to note is Hebrew wordplay. The town name "Nazareth" need not actually be based on the word nzr, meaning branch in the Old Testament (though, for the sake of this argument, it could be). Rather, because of the similar sound in words, a simple Hebrew wordplay could be the only thing in play here. We see this in Amos 8:1-2, where the author shows Amos "a basket of summer fruit" before saying that "The end has come upon my people Israel." The words for "summer fruit" and "end" sound similar in Hebrew. And Matthew quotes Jesus doing this as well in 16:18. Jesus says to Peter, "You are Peter [Petros], and upon this rock [petra] I will build my church ..." Matthew, who wrote the most Jewish of the Gospels, was writing to a community that would have understood this wordplay. So he would simply be saying that Jesus is a Nazarene because the prophets foretold that he would be a "netser" (Isa 11:1 - "A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse; and from his roots a Branch will bear fruit." See also Jeremiah 23, 33, and Zechariah 3:8 and 6:12, which uses a different Hebrew word, but the same message; Matthew opted to do a wordplay with the more well-known Isaiah passage)
I actually commented on "Bart Ehrman Exposes New Testament Errors" shortly after it was posted (yes, I know this was a clip from the full episode) about a year ago and I don't want to pat myself on the back, but my response wasn't too far off from this one. I actually didn't pick up on the "prophets" versus "prophet" thing until now, but the passage is clear to me that it's speaking of a general theme in OT writings. Personally I like the etymological comparison to Nazarite which means set apart or consecrated. I also want to point out here something I mentioned in that comment. This passage from Matthew reminds me of Hebrews 7 wherein the author references the etymology of the proper name Melchizedek, and the name of his residence and occupation " king of Salem" as attributes to this figure. There are numerous passages in the OT speaking of a person or thing that will be set apart, these are Messianic descriptions. I think of all the mountain symbolism, and interestingly enough Nazareth itself was a mountain, see Luke 4:28-30. Here's a mountain passage from Isaiah 25:7-8, which. This passage is echoed in Revelation 21. Isaiah 25:7-8 NIV [7] On this mountain he will destroy the shroud that enfolds all peoples, the sheet that covers all nations; [8] he will swallow up death forever. The Sovereign Lord will wipe away the tears from all faces; he will remove his people’s disgrace from all the earth. The Lord has spoken.
Isaiah is all about Israel, not Jesus. The author literally says a dozen times that the suffering servant is Israel, but Christians don't believe him. That's the most hilarious part about Christian theology. The OT was written by Jews, about Jews and for Jews, in a language Christians didn't speak or read, in a land that they had never even visited. Yet Christian theologians say "Oh no, the Jews didn't understand their own books". LOL
Isaiah is also about looking forward in hope to the restoration of Israel. And God sending a redeemer to Israel. And the early Christians were Jews making these claims about Jesus being that redeemer from David. You can disagree with the Christian interpretation but you can't deny that they were acting in very Jewish ways if you understand early Judaisms.
@@beggarforbread No, none of the disciples of Jesus ever claimed divinity for him, which would have been blasphemy. That is the key difference. Jesus was one of many messiahs killed by the Romans during their rule. None of them ever claimed to be divine themselves, including Jesus. The Jewish messiah was God's anointed human earthly ruler. Christians created a very different Gentile version including things like divinity and being a savior from original sin which have no basis in Judaism at all.
@@ji8044 You are reading ancient Jewish beliefs in light of later Rabbinic Jewish revisionist beliefs. The only way to maintain that the claims here is to arbitrarily reject the volumes of statements made by Jesus and the disciples in the New Testament. I wouldn't argue that there was no surprise to what took place in the person of Jesus. It was surprising, but the disciples were convinced that some of the previous statements from the OT (like Ezekiel 34, God will be their shepherd, but also God will send David to be their shepherd) had been fulfilled in an incredible way by Jesus. Understanding the 2nd Temple milieu is crucial. Jesus claimed many things that if understood in context are clear claims to being something other than, and over, human beings.
@@beggarforbread "You are reading ancient Jewish beliefs in light of later Rabbinic Jewish revisionist beliefs." There is irony in your saying that since the entire basis of what you know about Jesus and the disciples comes from Gentile authors and Paul exclusively. We don't have ANY writings from the actual disciples of Jesus in existence. Most scholars (not all for sure) say the epistles supposedly authored by Peter and others are not in fact by them. I'm ok if you take the opinion they are genuine though, since there is no way to prove it either way. Good conversation.
@@ji8044 I guess I would say you don't have to prove they're all genuine. But the issue is that all we have as far as early documents are those documents of the New Testament which I think, at least for the majority of them, we can trust who they were and that they represented early beliefs (you could say this especially for Paul, with the only Gentile possibly being Luke). But, let's assume that isn't true. Either way, that is all we have. What we don't have is the hypothetical earlier group of believers who believed something completely different, yet a whole edifice has been built by critical scholars on these hypothetical people with their hypothetical beliefs (which just so happen to agree with the thesis the scholar is attempting to make). Stepping back it seems an odd interpretive move to make. But yes, good conversation, and I appreciate the cordiality. Be well
Hey guys, one thing I forgot to mention that is important to note is Hebrew wordplay. The town name "Nazareth" need not actually be based on the word nzr, meaning branch in the Old Testament (though, for the sake of this argument, it could be). Rather, because of the similar sound in words, a simple Hebrew wordplay could be the only thing in play here. We see this in Amos 8:1-2, where the author shows Amos "a basket of summer fruit" before saying that "The end has come upon my people Israel." The words for "summer fruit" and "end" sound similar in Hebrew. And Matthew quotes Jesus doing this as well in 16:18. Jesus says to Peter, "You are Peter [Petros], and upon this rock [petra] I will build my church ..." Matthew, who wrote the most Jewish of the Gospels, was writing to a community that would have understood this wordplay. So he would simply be saying that Jesus is a Nazarene because the prophets foretold that he would be a "netser" (Isa 11:1 - "A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse; and from his roots a Branch will bear fruit." See also Jeremiah 23, 33, and Zechariah 3:8 and 6:12, which uses a different Hebrew word, but the same message; Matthew opted to do a wordplay with the more well-known Isaiah passage)
I actually commented on "Bart Ehrman Exposes New Testament Errors" shortly after it was posted (yes, I know this was a clip from the full episode) about a year ago and I don't want to pat myself on the back, but my response wasn't too far off from this one. I actually didn't pick up on the "prophets" versus "prophet" thing until now, but the passage is clear to me that it's speaking of a general theme in OT writings. Personally I like the etymological comparison to Nazarite which means set apart or consecrated. I also want to point out here something I mentioned in that comment. This passage from Matthew reminds me of Hebrews 7 wherein the author references the etymology of the proper name Melchizedek, and the name of his residence and occupation " king of Salem" as attributes to this figure.
There are numerous passages in the OT speaking of a person or thing that will be set apart, these are Messianic descriptions. I think of all the mountain symbolism, and interestingly enough Nazareth itself was a mountain, see Luke 4:28-30.
Here's a mountain passage from Isaiah 25:7-8, which. This passage is echoed in Revelation 21.
Isaiah 25:7-8 NIV
[7] On this mountain he will destroy the shroud that enfolds all peoples, the sheet that covers all nations; [8] he will swallow up death forever. The Sovereign Lord will wipe away the tears from all faces; he will remove his people’s disgrace from all the earth. The Lord has spoken.
Isaiah is all about Israel, not Jesus. The author literally says a dozen times that the suffering servant is Israel, but Christians don't believe him. That's the most hilarious part about Christian theology. The OT was written by Jews, about Jews and for Jews, in a language Christians didn't speak or read, in a land that they had never even visited. Yet Christian theologians say "Oh no, the Jews didn't understand their own books". LOL
Isaiah is also about looking forward in hope to the restoration of Israel. And God sending a redeemer to Israel. And the early Christians were Jews making these claims about Jesus being that redeemer from David. You can disagree with the Christian interpretation but you can't deny that they were acting in very Jewish ways if you understand early Judaisms.
@@beggarforbread No, none of the disciples of Jesus ever claimed divinity for him, which would have been blasphemy. That is the key difference. Jesus was one of many messiahs killed by the Romans during their rule. None of them ever claimed to be divine themselves, including Jesus. The Jewish messiah was God's anointed human earthly ruler. Christians created a very different Gentile version including things like divinity and being a savior from original sin which have no basis in Judaism at all.
@@ji8044 You are reading ancient Jewish beliefs in light of later Rabbinic Jewish revisionist beliefs. The only way to maintain that the claims here is to arbitrarily reject the volumes of statements made by Jesus and the disciples in the New Testament. I wouldn't argue that there was no surprise to what took place in the person of Jesus. It was surprising, but the disciples were convinced that some of the previous statements from the OT (like Ezekiel 34, God will be their shepherd, but also God will send David to be their shepherd) had been fulfilled in an incredible way by Jesus. Understanding the 2nd Temple milieu is crucial. Jesus claimed many things that if understood in context are clear claims to being something other than, and over, human beings.
@@beggarforbread "You are reading ancient Jewish beliefs in light of later Rabbinic Jewish revisionist beliefs."
There is irony in your saying that since the entire basis of what you know about Jesus and the disciples comes from Gentile authors and Paul exclusively. We don't have ANY writings from the actual disciples of Jesus in existence. Most scholars (not all for sure) say the epistles supposedly authored by Peter and others are not in fact by them. I'm ok if you take the opinion they are genuine though, since there is no way to prove it either way.
Good conversation.
@@ji8044 I guess I would say you don't have to prove they're all genuine. But the issue is that all we have as far as early documents are those documents of the New Testament which I think, at least for the majority of them, we can trust who they were and that they represented early beliefs (you could say this especially for Paul, with the only Gentile possibly being Luke). But, let's assume that isn't true. Either way, that is all we have. What we don't have is the hypothetical earlier group of believers who believed something completely different, yet a whole edifice has been built by critical scholars on these hypothetical people with their hypothetical beliefs (which just so happen to agree with the thesis the scholar is attempting to make). Stepping back it seems an odd interpretive move to make.
But yes, good conversation, and I appreciate the cordiality. Be well