The authors believed that Jesus was not related to Joseph, and yet thought the genealogies were important, as did those who preserved the text. All Herring proves is that *he* doesn't know why. Modern arrogance to say we understand an ancient culture better than the writers who lived in it.
Bruh. Are you telling us the reason Joseph’s ancestry is important, isn’t because the messiah is supposed to be a direct descendant of David? It’s pretty plainly stated- Jeremiah 23:5, Isaiah 11:1, 2 Samuel 7:12-16.
Jeremiah 23:5 doesn’t talk about line of descent Isaiah 11:1 “a shoot from the stock of” - are you certain that must refer to biological descent? 2 Sam 7:12 might well refer to David’ son Solomon, not Jesus. The Hebrew Scriptures aren’t simple. Wise not to assume we know them better than they.
Yes it does. It’s symbolic, describing the Messiah as a branch, being raised up for David. We know this. They know this. Everyone knows this. Why do you lie? www.biblegateway.com/passage/?sea...
Please justify the assertion "Everyone knows" that "I will raise up for David a righteous Branch" can only possibly mean not just a legal descendant (which Jesus *was*) but a biological descendant. It's not lying to disagree with you, or to suggest that things are as simplistic as you think.
Oh and "It's symbolic" and "This is the only thing it can be understood to mean" are not ideas generally considered compatible.
You’re the Reverend Doctor. I assume you’ve read Rashi’s commentary on the Talmud. Plenty of others, but Rashi was one I studied at Bible college. In the first year. Words mean words. We know they mean, we know what was meant, and we know how it was interpreted pretty much throughout time.
I haven’t read Rashi, but I have read others. The thing that struck me was that the Jewish scholarly community was more open to debating meaning than most Christians… a good thing! But of course, there are clear dominant readings of many texts. I’m not denying that - as explained in my long 🧵
I feel like we’re talking at cross purposes. I 100% agree: you are describing the dominant understanding at the time. My point is that the gospel writers knew that, and yet they wrote as if a different understanding made sense for them. 🧵
So they described Jesus as Messiah even though he didn’t meet the criteria everyone had previously accepted. They claimed his descent from David while asserting he was not actual Joseph’s son. And they claimed Jesus’s acts to be “fulfillment” of prophecies that were clearly about other things. 🧵
This deviation from the accepted readings was blatant, obvious, undisguised. They didn’t do that out of ignorance; they were deliberately claiming there was a different way to read the Hebrew Scriptures than the way everyone had been taught. 🧵
They claimed a totally different reading of the idea of Messiah, by leaning into the symbols of the suffering servant, which obviously wasn’t original about Jesus. They rejected biological descent when they accepted gentiles. 🧵
You pretending like it’s so incomprehensible is disingenuous. It’s not. And like the authors of the gospel and NT at large, you need to ignore this and pretend like there’s something there that’s not there.
I’ve responded in another thread.
To suggest that the authors didn’t notice a problem which we modern people can spot in an instant is arrogant, and poor literary analysis. It makes more sense to assume they had good reason. Maybe their understanding of “descent” differed from ours? Or another factor?
Actually you’re superimposing a modern reading on it that jibes with your dogma, assuming of course there is no contradiction, it’s impossible that such a thing might occur.
The Gospels, as is the Torah, are riddled with contradictions. And Christians have wrestled with this one for millennia, trying to reconcile it with apologetics.
But apologetics are a product of dogma: this must make sense, this must harmonize. It’s okay if Jews point out that none of this fulfills the first century Jewish idea of a messiah, and in a Jewish context, doesn’t even make sense. We aren’t obligated to your dogma
Not sure what modern reading I’m superimposing - but I think I agree with everything else you just said 😀
The idea that the gospels must be consistent. The best case here seems to be that they are preserving two traditions side-by-side, an older one of Davidic (or Priestly, depending on the Gospel), and a newer one of divine birth, without reconciling.
Oh, I don’t think the gospels need to be consistent! OMG no! The tensions between the accounts is where the life is. My argument was much closer to what I think you said - if the gospel writers got things “wrong” (from the perspective of their tradition) it was for a reason (an agenda).
Gotcha. Yeah, I think we all mutually agree that the two genealogies were agendas driven, especially Matthew’s, which is almost a work of literature.
And recognising that opens so many doors that remain closed if you spend your energy fighting to reconcile them!
If that’s not what you are arguing, I apologize, but the urge to claim that the gospels are univocal and without contraction seems baked into a lot of discourse
Gotcha. Yes, it definitely is. But I have a doctorate in quantum mechanics, so I absolutely delight in seemingly irreconcilable accounts of reality.
* contradiction
The gospels have specific intent behind them, I’m not sure why people can’t grasp that writers have agendas (not derogatory)
The different strands in the Torah also have intent, we just have less contemporary literature to compare them to.
💯. We see some of that in the various documentary hypotheses (JEPD etc)
I like the fact that the Tanakh preserves multiple, contradictory traditions, sometimes seeming to argue with each other, sometimes making weird compromises. It feels very Jewish.
Very much agree. I think it’s an aspect of ancient and modern Judaism that the Christian traditions could really benefit from emulating! I’m rather glad that I’m part of a denomination which has several formal statements that start along the lines of “we do not have a single mind on this”
I can tell you right now that “of the line of David” is pretty clearly indicative of patriarchal descent. You can tell because they list all the fathers The only plausible explanation outside of intentional deceit is that they’re utterly incompetent. Either way, they’re blatantly wrong.
Jesus cannot be the messiah because he was never crowned a king nor ruled over Israel. And we know that didn’t happen because if it had, we’d have never had to create the state of Israel in the first place; and there would be peace in the Middle East- if not the world.
Exactly! The Christian authors (who knew what you just said) reinterpreted what messiah meant. Now Jews of course have every right to say they got it wrong. But you can’t understand the gospel writers without understanding that they believed that things “everyone knew” had to be rethought.
On the contrary. It is parsimonious to assume a mistake is a mistake unless evidence of a hidden meaning, a secret Bible code, a Vox Dei conspiracy or whatever presents itself.
Or "those who preserved the text" interpolated verses later to create the dogma of virgin birth, which was something Roman culture believed in as a marker of historically sigificant men. Or the text is damaged. Or ancient believers in the miraculous didn't prize consistency.
Yes, those are all better explanations than assuming the authors were incompetent.
Well, two of them include the authors being incompetent
Well the most plausible is that they’re straight up lying because they need to. Jesus fulfilled exactly zero messianic prophecies so they made shit up and throw it at the wall to see what stuck. Which is why he’s gone away… he’ll do the whole eternal kingdom thing when he’s done buying milk.
Yes, them just making shit up to suit their agenda is certainly plausible.