When reading the Christian Bible, we have two distinct documents - the Old Testament (a selection of old Hebrew sacred writings) and the New Testament (a collection of writings intended to define the Christian Church). According to Christians, the New Testament is a continuation and completion of what the Old Testament started. There are quite a few reasons they have for saying this, and the writings in the New Testament make vigorous efforts to establish a link from their religion, gods and moral teachings to those of the Old Testament. In particular, these claims include:
1. Jesus, the central figure of the Christian religion, fulfilled
prophecies from the Old Testament
2. He also completely satisfied the requirements of the old Jewish
laws
3. He gave himself as a final sacrifice to end the requirement of
blood for removing sins
4. He established a new basis for a relationship between God and
humans.
Having looked at all the books of the Old Testament in detail, I can say without the least hesitation that all of these claims are false, and that there is no viable link between the Jewish religion and that of Christianity. Let's look at each item on the list in detail to see how valid my statement is.
Much of the New Testament is concerned with the fulfillment of prophecies from the Old Testament. In particular, the book of Matthew seems to go overboard in this respect, making over 300 such claims. While I don't have room on this page to look at all of them, I think a fair representation of the types of mistakes the writer of this book made can be seen.
1. Non-existent prophecies: I'm aware, at present, of only one of these. Matthew claims that Jesus was raised in the city of Nazareth, because of a prophecy that the Messiah would be a Nazarene. Unfortunately, there is no such prophecy in the Old Testament. In fact, performing a word search in the Blue Letter Bible, you'll find that there are no occurrences of the words "Nazarene" or "Nazareth" anywhere in the Old Testament. Doing further research, one finds that archeological evidence appears to indicate that Nazareth was built sometime after 200 CE, in order to cover the embarrassment Christians were experiencing over the town's non-existence. The confusion may result from a simple misunderstanding. The Old Testament did mention a religious order within the Hebrew religion, known as "nazirites," which meant "dedicated to God." This is probably what gave birth to this misunderstanding. Jesus could well have thought of himself as a nazirite, though there are no specific prophecies predicting that the Messiah would be one, and the life of a nazirite was ordered on specific grooming and dietary rules, including complete abstinence from wine, which Jesus did not observe.
2. Misrepresented prophecies: The most famous of these is the prophecy in Isaiah 7:11 Matthew and Luke both claim that this verse predicts that the Messiah will be born by a miraculous birth, being delivered by a virgin mother. However, there are some severe problems with this. The Hebrew word Isaiah used was "almah" which means "young woman" or "maiden." It can refer to a virginal woman, but it isn't necessarily the case. The ancient Hebrew language did have a word that referred exclusively and literally to a virginal girl - "bethulah." This is the word that was used in the Mosaic Laws when referring to women who had never had sexual intercourse. Another problem is that the verse was part of a passage in which Isaiah was talking with King Ahaz, and the sign being discussed was meant for Ahaz, to assure him that God was going to help in the military situation the king was facing at that time (which also utterly failed to happen, by the way). A third big problem is that in the next chapter, the claim is made that the prophecy was fulfilled, when Isaiah made a young priestess pregnant and she had a son. To try to link a claim of miraculous birth 700 years later with this passage is a major stretch at best, and completely ludicrous in my opinion.
3. Non-prophecies: Matthew has several references to Hebrew scripture that he claims were prophecies that Jesus fulfilled - but the passages he referred to do not appear to be predictions at all! Take, for instance, the story of Jesus being carried off to Egypt to avoid the murder of all the children in Bethlehem by Herod. Beside the fact that there is no confirmation of such an atrocity occurring during the reign of Herod (and Herod's real atrocities were well-documented by contemporary historians), there are problems with the claim Matthew makes concerning what prophecies this set of events fulfilled. First, he says that there was a prophecy that Jesus would come out of Egypt. The verses referred to in the Old Testament are:
|
Exd 4:22 - And thou shalt say unto Pharaoh, Thus saith the LORD, Israel [is] my son, [even] my firstborn. |
|
Num 24:8 - God brought him forth out of Egypt; he hath as it were the strength of an unicorn: he shall eat up the nations his enemies, and shall break their bones, and pierce [them] through with his arrows. |
and
|
Hsa 11:1- When Israel [was] a child, then I loved him, and called my son out of Egypt. |
Looking at the context of all these verses, it is clear that they are referring to God bringing the nation of Israel out of Egypt in the book of Exodus; referring to the past, not the future. Another verse quoted is supposed to be a prophecy foretelling the killing of babies:
|
Jer 31:15 - Thus saith the LORD; A voice was heard in Ramah, lamentation, [and] bitter weeping; Rachel weeping for her children refused to be comforted for her children, because they [were] not. |
My reading of Jeremiah 31 is that this is referring to the weeping in Jeremiah's day by the women of Israel when they were led away in captivity. The passage is quite vague, and it could be a prediction of the future; a lack of clarity and a lack of labeling this as a prediction make this very unlikely.
4. Actual messianic prophecies that weren't fulfilled: There are a pretty fair number of predictions made in the Jewish scriptures that were not really fulfilled by Jesus. For instance:
|
Isaiah 9:6-7 - For unto us a child is born; unto us a son is given, and the government shall be upon his shoulders and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace. |
Now, while Christians do call Jesus by these titles, this is not significant in my mind, as they have a vested interest in trying to fulfill this prophecy. The concept of Jesus as a "Prince of Peace" is also debatable, considering his instructions to his followers to buy swords, his rather easy prophecy that fathers and sons would fight because of him, and so forth. However, the really big problem with this passage is the prediction that "the government shall be upon his shoulders." Jesus never took any sort of political power in the time of his public ministry - the only way the government of human affairs can be said to be related to Jesus today is by name, and then only in the Christian church.
My understanding of this subject is that Jesus was supposedly in complete compliance with the Jewish laws, and could therefore be considered to be "sinless." However, this appears to be far from true. In fact, there are several stories in the Gospel books that implicitly and explicitly state that Jesus violated several Jewish laws.
Luke, the book that contains stories from the childhood years of Jesus, tells of a time when Jesus was 12 years old, and he went with his parents to Jerusalem. There, he left his parents in order to pick arguments with the rabbis at the temple. When his parents found him and told him that they were worried about him, he treated them like fools -
|
Luke 2:49 - And he said unto them, How is it that ye sought me? wist ye not that I must be about my Father's business? |
This is not giving honor to one's mother, regardless of who you consider to be Jesus' father. In the book of Matthew, we see even more rudeness toward his entire family:
|
Mat 12:46-49 - While he yet talked to the people, behold, [his] mother and his brethren stood without, desiring to speak with him. Then one said unto him, Behold, thy mother and thy brethren stand without, desiring to speak with thee. But he answered and said unto him that told him, Who is my mother? and who are my brethren? And he stretched forth his hand toward his disciples, and said, Behold my mother and my brethren! |
Not only was Jesus rude to his own family, but he ordered his followers to completely abandon theirs.
|
Mat 8:21,22 - And another of his disciples said unto him, Lord, suffer me first to go and bury my father. But Jesus said unto him, Follow me; and let the dead bury their dead. |
Jesus is also supposed to have ordered his followers to commit a crime:
|
Mar 11:2-4 - And saith unto them, Go your way into the village over against you: and as soon as ye be entered into it, ye shall find a colt tied, whereon never man sat; loose him, and bring [him]. And if any man say unto you, Why do ye this? say ye that the Lord hath need of him; and straightway he will send him hither. And they went their way, and found the colt tied by the door without in a place where two ways met; and they loose him. |
I think this qualifies legally as taking something that isn't yours without permission, otherwise known as stealing - there's a commandment concerning that. While following verses state that the owner caught them in the act and (for some reason) gave permission, this is a rather specious way of getting around the fact that Jesus intended his followers to steal.
In the book of John, Jesus made a remarkable promise:
|
Jhn 14:12 - Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father. |
I have yet to hear of anyone doing greater things than Jesus. He also said some interesting things about prayer:
|
Mat 18:19 - Again I say to you, that if two of you shall agree on earth regarding anything that they shall ask, it shall be done for them by my father who is in heaven. |
I think I'm pretty safe in saying that these statements are false, which means that Jesus lied. Most people will agree that this is condemned by the Bible.
Since we have seen that Jesus was far from being the perfect person by the standard of the Jewish Laws that the writers of the New Testament tried to portray him as, we really don't need to go further. However, there are still a few interesting points to be made. First, is the concept of satisfying the requirement of the Law that death must occur (and that blood be splattered on the altar) as the cost of sin. The New Testament says that this is the main reason Jesus was born, to suffer and pay the "ultimate price" so that humanity could live forever.
Of course, this "ultimate price" was in no way paid, according to the Bible, because Jesus only suffered a few hours and was dead less than 72 hours. But what of this claim that sacrifice was required by God?
|
Ps 40:6 - Sacrifice and offering you do not desire, but you have given me an open ear. Burnt offering and sin offering you have not required. |
|
Ps 50:8-13 - Not for your sacrifices do I rebuke you; your burnt offerings are continually before me. I will not accept a bull from your house, or goats from your folds. For every wild animal of the forest is mine, the cattle on a thousand hills. I know all the birds of the air, and all that moves in the field is mine. If I were hungry, I would not tell you, for the world and all that is in it is mine. Do I eat the flesh of bulls or drink the blood of goats? |
|
Ps 51:16,17 - For you have no delight in sacrifice; if I were to give a burnt offering, you would not be pleased. The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise. |
|
Jer 7:21-23 - Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel: Add your burnt offerings to your sacrifices, and eat the flesh. For in the day that I brought your ancestors out of the land of Egypt, I did not speak to them or command them concerning burnt offerings and sacrifices. But this command I gave them, "Obey my voice, and I will be your God, and you shall be my people; and walk only in the way that I command you, so that it may be well with you." |
These verses (along with several others) are all from the Old Testament, and clearly state that sacrifice was NOT required as a response to sin. Another very interesting set of verses show that even if a ceremony was required to "wash away" a sin, death wasn't necessary:
|
Is 6:6,7 - Then one of the seraphs flew to me, holding a live coal that had been taken from the altar with a pair of tongs. The seraph touched my mouth with it and said, "Now that this has touched your lips, your guilt has departed and your sin is blotted out." |
|
Lev 16:21,22 - Then Aaron shall lay both his hands on the head of the live goat, and confess over it all the inequities of the people of Israel, and all their transgressions, all their sins, putting them on the head of the goat, and sending it away into the wilderness by means of someone designated for the task. The goat shall bear on itself all their inequities to a barren region; and the goat will be set free in the wilderness. |
These verses show conclusively that the death of Jesus, far from being an unavoidable requirement, was not even desired by God as stated centuries before Jesus was born!
Much is made by Christians about the New Testament, which means a new contract or newly-defined relationship between God and humanity. There is a problem here, also, in that the Old Testament had several passages built into the laws that strictly forbids any such amendments or replacements. My favorite one is:
|
Deu 13:1-5 - If prophets or those who divine by dreams appear among you and promise you omens and portents, and the omens and portents declared by them take place, and they say, "Let us follow other gods" (whom you have not known) "and let us serve them," you must not heed the words of those prophets or those who divine by dreams; for the LORD your God is testing you, to know whether you indeed love the LORD your God with all your heart and soul. The LORD your God you shall follow, him alone shall you fear, his commandments you shall keep, his voice you shall obey, him you shall serve, and to him shall you hold fast. But those prophets or those who divine by dreams shall be put to death for having spoken treason against the LORD your God - who brought you out of the land of Egypt and redeemed you from the house of slavery - to turn you from the way the LORD your God commanded you to walk. So you shall purge evil from your midst. |
Jesus came to the Jews, telling them that he was God, when the Old Testament specifically states "the LORD is not a man." This means that the Jews were obliged to assume that Jesus was one of the people Deuteronomy warned of, and they were required to put such a person to death.
When looking over the claims made by Christians that their religion is a natural extension and completion of the Jewish religion, the evidence must be examined as clearly and objectively as possible. While many people are convinced of the truth of the claims made by Christianity, the evidence is far from rock-solid. There are many other indications that nearly all of Christianity, instead, was copied from other religions that were floating around the area of the Mediterranean Sea at the time.
Mind you, this is not to say that I have any reservations about the validity of the Jewish religion, any more than that of any other religion. After all, it also shows many signs of copying and long-term internal evolutionary changes. My only desire in writing this article was to point out the fatal problems with the very basis of the Christian religion. While it is true that the Jewish religion - with its morally reprehensible writings - would be a questionable base for any second religion at best, the fact is that Christianity has obviously been glued onto it in a most shoddy and transparent manner. The only way it could stand is through serious obfuscation by its leaders, and even more serious self-delusion of its followers.
