I guess if you read that off of Jews for Judaism you’d be partly correct in your assessment. However there is plenty of historical evidence of Jewish leaders reading and interpreting Isaiah 53 in terms of a suffering messiah. This website lists the various sources of Jewish literature, commentary, etc on this very thing: Jewish Messianic Interpretations of Isaiah 53 - Jews for Jesus
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Welcome, Mr Michael!
I was under the impression that this, like essentially all of the OT’s “Messianic” allusions, was originally written for an OT setting. Pete Enns’ contribution to “New Testament Use of the Old Testament” and this posting: The “Pete Ruins Christmas” Series: The Virgin Shall Conceive
It’s certainly true that Jews and Christians alike (Second Temple Judaism) interpreted many OT passages creatively, some of them for messianic purposes; but the original meaning still holds, I think. That doesn’t negate that we can consider them a prefiguration.
This is mainstream, I think. I am interested in your thoughts. Thanks.
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Bart became an agnostic because he could not reconcile the evil in the world with the love of God. Classic.
I learned a lot of him but the most important lesson was to stop listen to him any further 
Inconsistences –
- the Gospels aren’t inconsistent, they just provide different collections of partially overlapping eyewitness testimony
- early Christians like Papias recognized that Mark was not entirely in chronological order
- eyewitnesses never agree 100.000%, if they ever claim to it’s a clear & unambiguous proof that they’ve been coached to present canned statements – if the Gospels did agree 100.000%, everyone would likewise deny that they were independent witnesses and claim (correctly) that the authors had just gotten together to promulgate a canned “official truth” press release
[Jesus] Saying, The Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be slain, and be raised the third day. Luke 9:22
Dear Erik,
Don’t forget that the priests and scribes never agreed with Jesus, nor the Prophets. The priests interpreted the Word and scribes adjusted the text. This is a fact that few want to accept.
For the priest’s lips should keep knowledge, and they should seek the law at his mouth: for he is the messenger of the Lord of hosts. But ye are departed out of the way; ye have caused many to stumble at the law; ye have corrupted the covenant of Levi, saith the Lord of hosts. Therefore have I also made you contemptible and base before all the people, according as ye have not kept my ways, but have been partial in the law. Malachi 2:7-9
Unfortunately, the only way to prove this would be have the all the original texts, but we don’t anymore, and the scribes controlled them…
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Richard Elliott Friedman shows that Jeremiah called the P document “the lying pen of the scribes” Jeremiah 8:8
When he created the Hexapla, Origen discovered the many falsifications and omissions in this document also. It is disappointing that people today cannot see the devolution of the OT over time from the original J document that Origen demonstrated. No one would claim inerrancy today if they could.
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the surviving scriptures contain “echoes” of an ancient Mushite priesthood (line of Moses himself), before the “Aaronid” priests of the Jerusalem temple centralized worship around themselves, under Hezekiah, via the P document, circa 700 BC
Although certain passages of the Bible, which textual scholars ascribe to the Priestly Source, assert that it is only the descendants of Aaron known as Aaronim who were legitimate priests, biblical scholars believe that the priesthood was originally open to members of any tribe,[6] and that the restriction to Aaronim was purely an Aaronim invention, opposed by authors such as the Deuteronomist.[7] Aaronim claimed descent from Aaron – Moses’ brother, and hence any immediate descendant of Moses would not be an Aaronim.
The possibility that the story of Micah’s Idol refers to immediate descendants of Moses being priests is taken by biblical scholars as a demonstration that the Aaronim-only restriction was originally not present in the Israelite priesthood. One of the accounts of Micah’s idol refers to a priest as being a sojourner there (גר שם),[8] which could alternatively be taken as stating that the priest was indeed Gershom (גרשם). The accounts of Micah’s idol also include reference to a Jonathan son of Gershom as being a priest,[9] and although the masoretic text seems to avoid the implication that non-Aaronim could be priests by describing this particular Gershom as a son of Manasseh (מנשה), this appears to have been distorted; the letter nun (נ) appears here in superscript, suggesting that the text originally described this Gershom as the one that was a son of Moses [10] (משה). The rabbinic text known as the Seder Olam has Jonathan, the son of Gershom, the son of Moses when it quotes this verse.[11]
And you never asked yourself the question why Jesus did not want it to become public that He was the Messiah?
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It doesn’t matter. The point is, the people consider this man as a risen John the Baptist or one of other risen prophets. And Jesus says to not speak about him.
Messiah or not is not the issue, in my opinion.
Appears to be a very old thread here…otherwise I would join in. Ehrman himself admits that the earliest believers thought of Jesus as God and that this probably is a teaching they got from Jesus Himself…the “over time” argument may have been something Ehrman held but he has apparently since dropped it.
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cite your source, please ?
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Thanks, Erik. Will have to check but know he said it. Give me a moment here—not ignoring you!!
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If Jesus were not God incarnate, then Ehrman would be in the right: his thinking would be valid, perfectly reasonable. If Jesus were God incarnate then Ehrman would still be reasonable to a great extent, if not completely, even to the extent of his books ‘Jesus, Interrupted’ and Forged. Nothing that he says can overcome the claim of incarnation of course, it still stands.
In relation to Erham so clearly getting it wrong about Jesus allegedly being crucified on different days … maybe try and contact him somehow about this? Or publisher in a short letter. A lot of people can be contacted these days. Anyway, good work pointing this out
Well, Erik…did want to get back on this eventually.
Ehrman must love the publicity with a thread titled “Why Is Bart Ehrman Wrong?” Crying all the way to the bank…
I have heard him speak in a number of places, listened to him debate someone, read a couple books of his and/or watched taped lectures…He is great to listen to.
After looking in a “couple” places I will have to somewhat revise my earlier assertion to say that Ehrman has asserted a “virtually right away” belief in Jesus by his earliest followers…but he does not (that is, Ehrman) necessarily mean the same thing by terms like “Messiah” and “Son of Man” and “Son of God” as what you or I – or at least I and many others – believe. Thus, it is possible to think Ehrman has said something — which he has said – without him exactly meaning particularly the thing I thought he meant.
That is…unless I come across some other things Ehrman has said.
For the “virtually right away” aspect of it—see “so early—virtually right away–” page 235 How Jesus Became God
…or “before Paul…by virtually all scholars…soon after he [Paul] converted in 32-33 C.E.” — p 261 Did Jesus Exist
…or “prior to Jesus’ death some of his followers evidently thought he was the Messiah: this conviction shows up throughout the Gospels…” p 253 Jesus, Interrupted…
…and “The view of Jesus as divine …came into being remarkably early” in some communities, “evidently in Paul’s…” p. 254 Jesus, Interrupted.
And after this, you get into lots of arguments (that is, discussions you can have) over what exactly Jesus’ earliest followers and their non-believing Jewish counterparts actually meant by terms like “Son of God,” “Messiah,” “Lord,” and so forth.
Ehrman does not/did not mean what I presumed him to mean. That can be said.
Not everyone agrees with Ehrman’s perspectives on these terms…
As for what Ehrman believes on this — he seems to take an adoptionist view. But why he does that to begin with — that is, “Jesus began as a lowly human” in How Jesus Became God, p 230—and that God adopted Jesus as divine or “Son of God” (by which Ehrman does not mean God or part of a Trinity or Binitarian Godhead) – is another sort of discussion. He compares this with the adoption by Caesar of Octavian/Augustus. But I know of Roman historians who would argue with Ehrman’s interpretation of that detail of Caesarian history.
And what Ehrman bases any of this on is another point of discussion…In the opening pages of Jesus, Interrupted, for example, he (Ehrman) describes the biblical text — both testaments – as “chock full of discrepancies” some of which “have an enormous significance” for the interpretation of the life of Jesus (p. 19)… He further describes the gospels as told by people who had not met or heard Jesus and who had not met or heard anyone who had actually met or heard Jesus also — and , thus, “the telephone game” is his analogy for the sort of accounts that came to be entered into the text of the gospels.
With that, you would hardly expect Ehrman to have confidence even in an adoptionist philosophy. But then Ehrman elsewhere makes remarks like “These Gospels have historical information in them. There’s a lot of material in the Gospels that absolutely go back to the historical times…” said in a conversation with Peter J. Williams and found at www.premierchristianradio.com
In the 4th edition of Text of the New Testament, which he co-authored with Bruce Metzger, they both refer to “a high quality of textual transmission from the earliest times…” p 277-278.
So perhaps it is his (Ehrman’s) innate confidence in something that tumbled correctly down the wires of the telephone game into texts that are chockfull of discrepancies yet contain lots of historical material and have a high qualtiy of transmission— that enables Ehrman to note that an adoptionist perspective on the divinity of Jesus is what His earliest followers meant after all.
As I said, there is more here. But I did want to revise a bit my previous assertion.
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