Atheist: How do you explain that Jesus's life, as told by the Bible, fulfilled so many Biblical prophecies?

Answer 1

Scene: A cave, Judea, 100AD.

"Okay then, what does it say about his mother..? Born of a VIRGIN, eh? Nice twist, nice twist. Well, here goes. "And his mother.... was a virgin... from Nazareth... impregnated by... the holy spirit".

(It's far fetched, but we'll see if they bite. These people will all be reading the Da Vinci Code in 2000 years, so there's no reason why they shouldn't swallow this)."

Answer 2

Well, I'm not Athesit - but I am a non-Christian theist.

Most of these so called fulfilled prophecies are minor ones. Such as riding into the holy city on a donkey. Others are mistranslated and misunderstood from the Jewish texts - such as Isiah 53. If one actually sits down, and reads the text as a whole, one will see that it isn't fulfilling Jesus.

And then we have the big problem of that Jesus didn't really do anything that the Messiah was supposed to do. We have the excuse that that's coming when he returns. But - the Messiah was carefully prophesied in the OT. It was laid out, and no where does it say that the Messiah will die and then come back to life, go to heaven and then return. Or that the Messiah is anything other then human.

Why is it, that this is ignored? That all these prophecies about the actual Messiah are put on the back burner in favor for so-called prophecies that don't really have anything to do with the Messiah?

Answer 3

That would only be amazing if the New Testament writers had no knowledge of Old Testament prophesy when they wrote the New Testament, but they clearly did. Matthew is a particularly bad offender. He rips small parts of verse from the Old Testament out of context and tries to apply them as prophesy of Jesus. The problem is when you put those verses back into context they either have nothing to do with the coming messiah, or are prophesies that were already fulfilled. A good example is the supposed prophesy of a virgin birth. The problem is that the original prophesy has nothing to do with a coming messiah, it was a sign to be given to King Azah, that Yahweh would be with him in his conflict with two other kings. The sign is fulfilled in the very next chapter. Besides, it makes no sense that Yahweh would give a sign to King Azah over 500 years AFTER his death! There is NO Old Testament prophesy of the coming messiah being born of a virgin. This is only one example, Matthew does this throughout his gospel.

I could just as easily write a story about a man who fulfills Old Testament prophesy, that doesn't make it true. Besides, Jesus doesn't fulfill the major prophesies that the messiah was expected to accomplish, so the New Testament writers made up the second coming to cover it up.

Answer 4

You've already had some good answers here.
I'll ask you one:
How do YOU explain the biblical prophecies of the messiah that jesus did NOT fulfill?
Yes, there are several that, even with the most convoluted reasoning, can't be made to fit jesus.

You'd think if jesus was the prophesied messiah, he'd fulfill ALL of the messianic prophecies, wouldn't you? How do you explain that he doesn't? Egads, could you (gasp!) be worshipping the wrong guy as messiah???!!!

Answer 5

The tales of Jesus' life were written by people who wished to create the impression that his life was the fulfilling of prophecy. The details were tweaked to fit in with the old testament fables.

Not too surprisiing, really.

Answer 6

Jesus never was specific and never to the point. He never prophesied directly to an issue like, "Behold, one day it will be discovered that the Earth is not flat but, it is round". Christianity is very good at taking vague statements and converting them to things that happen. I once had a Pastor who gave me a 5 min speech on the meaning of when Jesus said "I am". The Pastor said, "See it means this and it means this". That's the best that Christianity can do with what he said.

Answer 7

I don't know, try explaining why the "biographies" were written well over 100 year after his death and how they can be accurate. You could go on to explain how Jesus was mentioned in the Babylonian Talmud as being incarcerated for 40 days but no record in any source ever mentions the Temple curtain being damaged until the temple was destroyed. Then there is the nagging problem of neither genealogy matching or giving Jesus as from the Royal Line, granted it gives him heritage but definitely not of the Royal Line.

Grrr... remind me to check who posted the question!!!!

Answer 8

I don't try to explain it because it doesn't. It is easy enough to make a story that will fit the prophecies a hundred years after the fact. So get out of here with your silly fantasy prophecies.

Answer 9

The prophecy I like best is where Jesus said the stars will fall from heaven and the Son of Man will be seen coming in the clouds of glory, and all that will happen in the generation of the people who were listening to him at the time.

Well it didn't happen in their generation, or in a few hundred other generations. I guess Jesus' prophecy was off a little.

If you don't know what I'm talking about you really don't know your Bible.

Answer 10

1) because Jesus went out of his way to be that one "special" person to fulfill them (he cheated)
2) because we "really" were not there to know if the "prophecies" existed prior to or not (is it just written that way?)
3) nothing in the bible is "literal" ( history is written by the winners)
4) the bible in not entire...complete. (missing parts the church don't want us to have) FACT!!!!!!