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To: AnalogReigns
The statistical odds of any one person even fulfilling a handful of varied predictions listed from the Hebrew scriptures must be astronomically high.

The vast number of the passages you cite are not 'predictions' or prophecies at all. They are ordinary statements removed from context. Why are there so many? Because Christians have combed through the Hebrew scriptures looking for any passage at all that they could somehow link to Jesus. Are you familiar with modern literary theory? Christianity is a deconstruction of the text of the Tanakh. You do not read the Hebrew scriptures on its own terms; rather, you read it through Christian spectacles, and then find Jesus everywhere. You are adding meaning to it, not deriving meaning from it. Just as marxist literary theorists read Shakespeare and see class struggle, and feminist literary theorists read Shakespeare and find an oppressive male hierarchy.

From your easy dismissal of the evidence, I suspect you really haven't examined it. Sorry, that's just how it sounds.

You would be wrong. My father is Christian, and my mother is Jewish. I was raised as a Christian, and did not return to the religion of my ancestors until I was an adult. I am quite familiar with the works of Christian apologists from the early church fathers to modern writers such as C.S. Lewis, Peter Kreeft, Josh Macdowell, Lee Strobel, William Lane Craig, et. al. It was my reading of the Hebrew scriptures which convinced me that Jesus could not be the messiah.

86 posted on 01/17/2002 9:15:17 AM PST by malakhi
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To: angelo
My father is Christian, and my mother is Jewish.....and did not return to the religion of my ancestors until I was an adult.

But you also turned your back on the religion of your ancestors.

95 posted on 01/17/2002 9:30:29 AM PST by AshleyMontagu
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To: angelo
It was my reading of the Hebrew scriptures which convinced me that Jesus could not be the messiah.

Which passage of scripture was that? Every one of the 4 major prophesies of the Messiah are also understood by Christians as applying to the 2nd Coming.... Who was Jesus anyway?

Also, you have at least an equal possibility that multiple generations of rabbis have carefully interpreted every verse pointing to Jesus specifically as not pointing to Him. I think Judaism has almost a bigger stake in trying to disprove Jesus than Christianity does in trying to prove Him from prophesy.

Jesus proved Himself by ressurection...and nearly all His disciples maintained that fact through lives of great hardship, imprisonment, etc. up into torturous deaths... Why would these formerly cowardly guys act this way for a deception?

You must be familiar with C. S. Lewis's formula (restating Augustine I believe) of Liar, Lunatic or Lord... Given the statements of Jesus, He couldn't just be a good teacher or a prophet, if He wasn't Messiah, he MUST be either the world's greatest fraud.... or a blathering lunatic. And please don't try to say Jesus' early followers put words into his mouth by altering the New Testament--there is simply no evidence for that.

98 posted on 01/17/2002 9:36:14 AM PST by AnalogReigns
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