At risk of getting shunned:
I read a list of predictions in the Old Testament/Tanakh about the Jewish messiah that are said to be fulfilled by Jesus. They’re… awfully specific. And numerous. On matters of common historical fact, that couldn’t be orchestrated by him or faked by his supporters.
...so now I have to reconsider my rejection of theism. :\
I was under the impression that there are no common historical facts that we have of Jesus. But I have never bothered to look deeply into the topic, so I might be incorrect.
The list I have is far from perfect, but there’s enough to not dismiss out of hand.
All the predictions are from the Hebrew Bible / Old Testament. The fulfillments are all in the New Testament. Many of them could be fictions added to the New Testament, but that looks doubtful for several of them—Jesus was a pretty public figure (we have Roman texts talking about the near-revolution of the Jews and the Christians), and a lot of the the fulfilments would be matters of public record / knowledge (like some specifics from his manner of death and burial). I still want to analyze each part, and I plan to compile a “short-list” of the ones that hold up (i.e. ones that would be improbable to be fictionalized or deliberately orchestrated by Jesus himself).
If you consider this a subject likely to reward time spent researching it in the first place, you might also consider working out what the criterion is to declare something in the Old Testament a prediction, then going back to the Old Testament and counting how many predictions there are. Satisfying 20 predictions out of 25 is presumably more significant than satisfying 20 predictions out of 2000, but a list of 20 satisfied predictions won’t tell you which condition you’re in.
A fair point! Some of those “predictions” only look like predictions in retrospect, i.e. the ones in Psalms. Others are blatantly prophetic, and I think constitute a falsifiable test IF the text was written before Jesus’ time and IF it appears to be a true historical fact and not fabricated by the New-Testament author. (The second one is the big “if” in the equation.)
I also wonder how trustworthy the New Testament is on these points, given that the writers probably knew about all of these predictions. Some of them are obviously a matter of historical record, but others seem like they might have been easy for the writers to just put in there for the sake of lining up with Old Testament predictions (30 pieces of silver, ‘suffered vicariously,’ thirsting on the cross and given vinegar...).
EDIT: OP mentioned this possibility. I should learn to read.
At risk of getting shunned: I read a list of predictions in the Old Testament/Tanakh about the Jewish messiah that are said to be fulfilled by Jesus. They’re… awfully specific. And numerous. On matters of common historical fact, that couldn’t be orchestrated by him or faked by his supporters.
...so now I have to reconsider my rejection of theism. :\
I was under the impression that there are no common historical facts that we have of Jesus. But I have never bothered to look deeply into the topic, so I might be incorrect.
I’d be very curious to know which predictions were made and where they come from, and how we know which ones were fulfilled or not fulfilled.
The list I have is far from perfect, but there’s enough to not dismiss out of hand.
All the predictions are from the Hebrew Bible / Old Testament. The fulfillments are all in the New Testament. Many of them could be fictions added to the New Testament, but that looks doubtful for several of them—Jesus was a pretty public figure (we have Roman texts talking about the near-revolution of the Jews and the Christians), and a lot of the the fulfilments would be matters of public record / knowledge (like some specifics from his manner of death and burial). I still want to analyze each part, and I plan to compile a “short-list” of the ones that hold up (i.e. ones that would be improbable to be fictionalized or deliberately orchestrated by Jesus himself).
If you consider this a subject likely to reward time spent researching it in the first place, you might also consider working out what the criterion is to declare something in the Old Testament a prediction, then going back to the Old Testament and counting how many predictions there are. Satisfying 20 predictions out of 25 is presumably more significant than satisfying 20 predictions out of 2000, but a list of 20 satisfied predictions won’t tell you which condition you’re in.
A fair point! Some of those “predictions” only look like predictions in retrospect, i.e. the ones in Psalms. Others are blatantly prophetic, and I think constitute a falsifiable test IF the text was written before Jesus’ time and IF it appears to be a true historical fact and not fabricated by the New-Testament author. (The second one is the big “if” in the equation.)
I also wonder how trustworthy the New Testament is on these points, given that the writers probably knew about all of these predictions. Some of them are obviously a matter of historical record, but others seem like they might have been easy for the writers to just put in there for the sake of lining up with Old Testament predictions (30 pieces of silver, ‘suffered vicariously,’ thirsting on the cross and given vinegar...).
EDIT: OP mentioned this possibility. I should learn to read.