Showing posts with label Typology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Typology. Show all posts

Sunday, October 17, 2021

Jerome On Isaiah 22 And Eliakim

Roman Catholics often claim that Matthew 16 should be interpreted in light of Isaiah 22, which supposedly should lead us to the papacy. I've discussed some of the problems with that sort of argument in the past, such as in the comments section of the thread here. It's often noted that there is no support for such a reading of Isaiah 22 in the earliest centuries of church history and that Revelation 3:7, a passage discussing Jesus, is more reminiscent of Isaiah 22 than Matthew 16 is. In his commentary on Isaiah, Jerome not only sees Jesus as the equivalent of Eliakim, but even cites Revelation 3:7 in the process of discussing the passage in Isaiah. He sees Peter in the passage, but as one of the cups of Isaiah 22:24, along with the other apostles:

Eliakim means "God rising again," or "resurrection of God." Therefore, that God rising again, who is the son of Hilkiah, that is, "of the Lord's portion," will take your [the Jewish law's] place, and will be clothed with your robe, and will be strengthened by your sash, so that what you had in the letter, he possesses in the Spirit; and he will be father of those who inhabit Jerusalem, that is, the "vision of peace," which means the church, and the house of Judah, where there is the true "confession" of faith. This is why he says to the apostles, "Little children, I am with you a little longer" [John 13:33]; and to another, "Son, your sins are forgiven" [Matt 9:2]; and to another, "Daughter, your faith has saved you" [Luke 7:50]. Also, I will give to him, he says, the key of the house of David, "who opens, and no one shuts, who shuts, and no one opens" [Rev 3:7]. And this very key will be upon his shoulder, that is, during the passion. This accords with what is written in another passage: "Whose sovereignty is on his shoulder" [Isa 9:6]. For that which he will have opened up by his passion cannot be closed, and what he will have enclosed in Jewish ceremonies, no other will open….

This is also why in the Gospel it is written, "All the people were hanging from him [like hanging from the peg in Isaiah 22:24]" [Luke 19:48]. Indeed, this happened not merely at that time, but it is fulfilled up to the present day, that they hang various kinds of vessels from him, as if from the word of God, wisdom, justice, and all things by which Christ is designated….I think that the cups [in Isaiah 22:24] are the apostles, filled with the life-giving waters, of which it is said, "Bless the Lord from the fountains of Israel" [Ps 68:26]. (Thomas Scheck, trans., St. Jerome: Commentary On Isaiah [Mahwah, New Jersey: The Newman Press, 2015], p. 376, section 7:41 in the commentary)

He goes on to say that verse 25, as it applies to Christ and the church, will be fulfilled in an eschatological falling away.

You don't have to agree with all of Jerome's comments in order to recognize that he makes no reference to papal implications in the passage and that his understanding illustrates how easily the passage can be interpreted differently than Roman Catholics interpret it once we head down the path of this sort of interpretation.

Sunday, August 08, 2021

The Widespread Absence Of A Papacy

One of the reasons for rejecting the papacy is the lack of justification for it. There are apparent contradictions of the concept of the papacy in some New Testament documents and other early sources, but the lack of evidence for the office would be enough reason to not accept it, even if such contradictions didn't exist.

However, Protestants often focus on too narrow a range of contexts in which the papacy is absent in the early sources. A lot of attention is given to passages about Peter in the gospels and Acts and material about church government in the early sources, for example, but we ought to think more broadly about where a papacy could have been mentioned if it existed. A papacy wouldn't have to be mentioned at every conceivable opportunity. But the larger the number and variety of contexts in which a papacy could have been mentioned, but wasn't, the more likely it is that the office didn't exist. What I want to do in this post is provide a few examples of contexts that are often neglected.

The apostles sometimes discussed their upcoming death, what was being done to preserve their teachings, and how Christians should conduct themselves going forward (e.g., Acts 20:17-38, 2 Timothy 3:10-4:8, 2 Peter 1:12-21). If the papacy was considered the foundation of the church, the infallible center of Christian unity throughout church history, the absence of any mention of such a resource in passages like these is significant.

Another group of relevant contexts is the imagery used to refer to relevant entities, such as what imagery is used to refer to the apostles or the church. We get twelve thrones without Peter's throne being differentiated (Matthew 19:28), three pillars without Peter's being differentiated (Galatians 2:9), twelve foundation stones without Peter's being differentiated (Ephesians 2:20, Revelation 21:14), etc.

The early Christians often interact with the objections of their opponents. The gospels respond to the charge that Jesus performed miracles by the power of Satan, Paul responds to his critics in his letters, Justin Martyr wrote a response to Jewish arguments against Christianity, Origen wrote a response to Celsus' anti-Christian treatise, and so on. See here regarding the lack of reference to a papacy in such contexts.

It's important for Protestants (and other opponents of the papacy) to bring up considerations like these, since the absence of early references to a papacy becomes more significant when the absence occurs across a broader range of contexts. If only two pages of early Christian literature were extant, the absence of a papacy (or whatever other concept) would be much less significant than its absence across two million pages. The number of pages matters (assuming the usual diversity of topics you'd get with an increase in such a page number).

One of the reasons why it's become so popular for Catholics to argue for the papacy by an appeal to something like typology or Old Testament precedent is that there's such a lack of evidence in the New Testament and the early patristic literature. So, there's a turn to other sources to try to find what isn't present where we'd most expect to see it.

Thursday, February 11, 2021

If The Type Gives Confidence

"The angel feared the blood [Exodus 12:23]; for he knew of what it was a Type; he shuddered, thinking on the Lord's death; therefore he did not touch the door-posts. Moses said, Smear, and they smeared, and were confident. And you, having the Blood of the Lamb Himself, are ye not confident?" (John Chrysostom, Homilies On Hebrews, 27:1)

Wednesday, December 23, 2020

Jesus' Inferiority To Samuel In Luke 2:52

The concepts and terminology in Luke 2:52 are taken largely from 1 Samuel 2:26. Yet, Luke is discussing Jesus' highly ordinary upbringing in a normal lower-class home in Nazareth, in contrast to Samuel's extraordinary upbringing in a sanctuary setting with Eli. Critics often allege that Matthew and Luke and/or their sources were making up stories to parallel Jesus to various Old Testament figures, like Samuel. But Luke refers to Jesus' upbringing in a setting that's substantially different than and inferior to Samuel's, even though he thought highly of Samuel and wanted to draw comparisons between him and Jesus. The desire to see Jesus in the Old Testament didn't prevent the early Christians from acknowledging differences between Jesus and those figures who came before him and even referring to ways in which Jesus was inferior.

Monday, May 18, 2020

Jesus' Fulfillment Of The Seventy Weeks Prophecy

One of the themes I've been emphasizing about prophecy fulfillment is that a fulfillment can be evidential for Christianity even if the fulfillment is thought to be of a secondary or typological nature. For example, though I've argued that the Servant Songs in Isaiah are about the Messiah in their original context, Jesus' alignment with the passages is evidentially significant in support of Christianity even if the passages are about the nation of Israel, a Jewish remnant, or some other entity instead. See the article just linked for a further discussion of that example.

The same is true of Daniel's Seventy Weeks prophecy. See the article on that prophecy here by Robert Newman. I consider his interpretation of the passage the best one I've seen. I take it as the original meaning of the passage. But even if I'm wrong, it still seems evidentially significant that Jesus' life lines up so well with the passage in the manner discussed by Newman. Even if you think the passage in its original context refers to some entity other than the Messiah, that Jesus fulfilled it in some significantly different way than how Newman proposes, or whatever, it's still significant that Jesus was crucified during the sixty-ninth sabbatical cycle after the 445 B.C. decree to rebuild Jerusalem. And there are other ways in which Jesus' life lines up well with the passage. See the second-to-last paragraph of the post here for further discussion.

The more Jesus' life lines up so well with passages like the Servant Songs and the Seventy Weeks prophecy, the more difficult it is to deny that something supernatural has occurred. It's noteworthy that you don't even have to grant a Christian understanding of the original meaning of these passages to reach the conclusion that there's been a supernatural fulfillment of the passages.

Monday, March 02, 2020

Literal and typological interpretation

This is a reality to which modern biblical scholarship has sometimes been blind, insisting on an atomistic style of reading that frequently proceeds as if the parts of any particular biblical book had little to do with the whole, and as if whole biblical books had little to do with others in the same canonical collection…This language emphasizes not just that there are "resemblances" in various prats of the Great Story, but that the Story itself moves ever onward…The literal and the typological (figurative) are best understood not as two different ways of reading, but as two aspects of the same way of reading. The latter comes into its own not so much at the level of a sentence or a paragraph, but at the same level of larger entities like whole books and even collections of books…We are not dealing in OT narrative with isolated texts, or even with isolated books. We are dealing with texts and books transmitted together by people who were already reflecting upon them together, as sections of a larger, unfolding Story–one reality, described in individual segments. I. Provan, The Reformation and the Right Reading of Scripture (Baylor 2017), 94,99-101.

i) That's a very insightful explanation of typology. It breaks new ground, demonstrating the essential continuity–indeed, identity–between "literal" interpretation and typological interpretation. They aren't different in kind but degree. Typology operates with the same principle, but extends it to large blocs of material. 

ii) That said, it would be easy for secularized Bible scholars to accommodate typology in the sense of claiming that the narrative books of Scripture were redacted and combined to generate a sense of thematic or messianic diachronic progression, but that's editorial legerdemain. It's just manipulating stories or texts. To take a supernatural view of typology requires a higher view of inspiration and providence than Provan's own position.

Sunday, December 15, 2019

Ruth 4 And Christmas

The last chapter of Ruth should get more attention than it does during the Christmas season. Notice the references to Gentile inclusion, building the house of Israel, fame related to Bethlehem, a supernatural conception, and Davidic ancestry, for example. Much of what's in the passage is somewhat reminiscent of Christmas themes, and some of what's anticipated has been fulfilled more by Jesus than by David:

"'I have acquired Ruth the Moabitess [a Gentile]'…'May the Lord make the woman who is coming into your home like Rachel and Leah, both of whom built the house of Israel; and may you achieve wealth in Ephrathah and become famous in Bethlehem.'…So Boaz took Ruth, and she became his wife, and he went in to her. And the Lord enabled her to conceive, and she gave birth to a son. Then the women said to Naomi, 'Blessed is the Lord who has not left you without a redeemer'…to Boaz [was born], Obed, and to Obed was born Jesse, and to Jesse, David." (Ruth 4:10-11, 4:13-14, 4:21-22)

"The stories of Jesus's birth are the foundation of the world's most widely observed holiday. Christmas is celebrated by the world's two billion Christians, a number about twice that of the next largest religion, Islam. Moreover, because of the cultural and commercial importance of Christmas in Western culture and beyond, it is observed by many non-Christians as well. Indeed, no other religious holiday is so widely commemorated by people who are outside of the tradition that originated it....Since Matthew and Luke agree independently on those two points about Jesus - that he was descended from David's lineage and born in David's city [Bethlehem] - those must come from an earlier tradition than either of their Christmas stories. And, in fact, we find both of those points elsewhere in the New Testament." (Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan, The First Christmas [New York, New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2007], vii, 130)

Monday, October 28, 2019

Ave Pachamama

L'Osservatore Romano

Last Friday, at The Pontifical Gregorian University, Scott Hahn and Brant Pitre gave a joint lecture on Pachamama to lay to rest the recent controversy and clarify Her true identity. In Andean Sacred Tradition, Pachamama is:

• Cosmic Mother

• Mother Earth

• Mother of the sun god

• Fertility Goddess

• Associated with harvest festivals

• Associated with mountains

• In Pythagorean numerology her numerical value is 3 

Pitre and Hahn then drew attention to many astounding typological adumbrations:

1. The New Eve

The man called his wife's name Eve, because she was the mother of all living (Gen 3:20)

As fertility goddess and Mother Earth, Pachamama is a type of Eve.

2. The New Jerusalem

In her association with mountains, Pachamama is a type of Mount Zion, the Temple Mount, and the New Jerusalem. 

3. Mother of God

I am the light of the world (Jn 8:12; 9:5). 

A great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head. 2 She was pregnant and cried out in pain as she was about to give birth…She gave birth to a son (Rev 12:1-2,5)

• Jesus is the light of the world (i.e. sunlight as a spiritual metaphor).

• Pachamama is mother of the sun god.  

• Pachamama is the Cosmic Mother clothed in the sun, with a starry crown and lunar slippers

4. Hostess of the Messianic banquet

The wedding at Cana (John 2) prefigures the Messianic banquet in the new age. Pachamama is hostess of the Messianic banquet by virtue of her association with harvest festivals as well as her role as the sun god's mother (see under #3).

5. Eschatological icon of the Trinity

In Pythagorean numerology, her name has the numerical value of 3.

6. Mother of the Church

26 When Jesus saw his mother there, and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to her, “Woman, here is your son,” 27 and to the disciple, “Here is your mother.” From that time on, this disciple took her into his home (Jn 19:26-27).

"Your mother"=Pachamama 

7. Queen of Heaven

A great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head (Rev 12:1).

As the Cosmic Mother, Pachamama is the Queen of Heaven

8. The Assumption of Pachamama

A great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head.(Rev 12:1)

St. John saw Pachamama in heaven. Mother Earth ascended. 

9. The Immaculate Preconception

As Cosmic Mother and Mother Earth, Pachamama was never conceived in sin inasmuch as she was never conceived at all. Rather, she is the source of all conception. 

10. Hyperdulia

16 He then brought me into the inner court of the house of the Lord, and there at the entrance to the temple, between the portico and the altar, were about twenty-five men. With their backs toward the temple of the Lord and their faces toward the east, they were bowing down to the sun in the east (Ezk 8:16)

Just as worshippers in the temple bowed down to the sun, Catholics should bow down to Pachamama, mother of the sun god. 

11. Vicar of the Queen

The reason there are so many queens in the Vatican is because the Vatican represents the Vicar of Pachamama, Queen of Heaven. 

Quoting from St. Alphonsus Liguori's The Glories of Pachamamma, Scott Hahn said "You can't have God as your Father unless you have Pachamama as your Mother. You can't have Jesus as your King unless you have Pachamama as your Queen."

Tuesday, August 20, 2019

Marian typology

1. I've been watching some Brant Pitre videos. He's a Catholic apologist with an emphasis on the (alleged) biblical evidence for Catholicism. He's popular and prolific, with a number of books and video series. As I said in another post, he's probably the best Bible scholar among Catholic apologists. 

I imagine his explanations would be a "revelation" to untutored evangelicals. "Why hasn't anyone told me this before?" 

In this post I'm going to make some methodological observations about his typology. Admittedly, my exposure to his material is pretty limited. However, from what I've seen thus far, there's a stereotypical quality to his arguments, so this seems to be a representative sample of his methodology or hermeneutical grid. Because NT Mariology is so thin, Catholic apologists who wish to demonstrate Catholic Mariology from Scripture must resort to layers of typological padding. In this post I'll focus on his Marian typology, in the following videos:




Thursday, August 16, 2018

Fiery angel

On this occasion [Exod 3:2-3] however, the "angel/messenger" does not appear in human form, but as a flame of fire...The "Angel of YHWH" appears in the form of "self-sustaining fire"...The use of fire to represent the presence of God in accounts of theophanies may be due to its nonmaterial, formless, mysterious and luminous characteristics. Later in Exodus the "Angel of God" is identified with the pillar of cloud that led the Israelites during the day. T. D. Alexander, Exodus (IVP 2017), 82-83. 

Which confirms my own view that the traditional interpretation is mistaken. It wasn't a burning bush. Seen from a distance, it looked like a burning bush. But that was an optical illusion, caused by the luminous angel standing behind it or inside it. The bush was never on fire. Still a supernatural event, though. 

Did the angel take the form of fire, or did the angel have a humanoid but incandescent appearance? 

The angel seems to be metamorphic. It can take the form of a dust devil or fire devil–as well as humanoid form. And this isn't just an angelophany but a theophany. 

And this may presage the Transfiguration. Which would also explain the presence of Moses and Elijah, since both men were associated with supernatural fire. 

Thursday, January 25, 2018

On Jordan's bank

A traditional crux is why Jesus underwent baptism. John's baptism symbolized repentance, yet Jesus had nothing to be penitent about.

1. There's an aspect of mutual attestation. Jesus is vouching for John's vocation, and John returns the favor. By the same token, it gives John a very public opportunity to bear witness to Christ.

2. Mt 2-4 is crisscrossed with new Exodus typology, so the baptism and temptation of Christ probably play on that theme. To some degree, he's recapitulating the history of Israel, only he succeeds where Israel fails.

3. In that regard, the location of the baptism is emblematic. Not just any body of water, but the Jordan river. That was a border of ancient Israel. Joshua and the Israelites had to cross the Jordan river to enter the promised land. By undergoing baptism, Jesus is situated on that evocative border–between Israel and the wilderness.

4. That's reinforced by the temptation, where he enters the wilderness. That triggers associations with the experience of the Exodus generation. The fact that Jesus quotes from Deuteronomy, three times in a row, bolsters allusions to the history of Israel in the Sinai desert. 

5. In addition, Christians must face trials and temptations, so Jesus is setting an example to emulate. 

6. The vicarious symbolism of his actions at the outset of his public ministry preps the reader for the vicarious atonement to come. Jesus is already acting in a representative capacity, by reprising the role of Israel. This involves the same general principle as vicarious atonement. Acting on behalf of and in lieu of another or others.  

7. Why did Satan tempt him?

i) For one thing, this indicates that Jesus got the attention of the dark side–like radar and satellite surveillance to detect inbound ICBMs. Jesus poses a threat to the dark side. His public baptism alerts the enemy to a mortal foe. 

ii) Apropos (i), the dark side sends its top gun to confront Jesus. Not a demon but the leader of the cosmic rebellion. The dark side can't afford to ignore Jesus. 

6. Mark mentions that Jesus was with wild animals. Some scholars think this foreshadows the experience of Christians who were martyred in the Colosseum. Torn apart by vicious beasts. 

Saturday, November 25, 2017

Skeptics Lose Either Way On Christmas Prophecy Fulfillment

Critics often argue that Old Testament passages that have been taken as prophecies fulfilled by Jesus were actually about Old Testament figures rather than about a messiah or Jesus in particular. But even if Jesus only fulfilled the passages in a secondary or typological sense, the close alignment between Jesus' life and those prophecies offers significant evidence for Christianity. It's highly unlikely that Jesus' life would naturalistically line up with all of the passages in question, which are so unusual and significant. I've made this point before, at Eastertime, with regard to passages like Isaiah's Suffering Servant prophecy. We need to keep the same principles in mind in the context of Christmas.

Even if passages like Isaiah 9 and Micah 5 weren't intended to be messianic, Jesus' alignment with the passages would need to be explained. Skeptics are wrong in what they often argue about the intention of those Old Testament passages. But even if we granted their reading for the sake of argument, Jesus' secondary fulfillment of the passages would provide substantial evidence for Christianity.

Saturday, February 25, 2017

Melchizedek

3 He is without father or mother or genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor end of life, but resembling the Son of God he continues a priest forever (Heb 7:3).

1. What's the relationship between Melchizedek and Jesus? Some interpreters think Melchizedek is an angelophany. Yet in Genesis he appears to be a human king.

2. Some interpreters think he's a Christophany. But there are some basic problems with that interpretation. Hebrews says Melchizedek is like Jesus, not that he is Jesus. A relation of analogy rather than identity. 

That's underscored by the fact that in the typology of Hebrews, the antitype is greater than the type. We wouldn't expect the author to abruptly break that pattern. 

3. By itself, the passage in Genesis might seem inadequate to sustain the inferences which the author of Hebrews draws from it. But that's combined with the bridging passage in Ps 110:4.

4. What makes Melchizedek such a significant figure? Or is he that significant? Some critics might object that Hebrews is milking the brief episode in Gen 14:17-20 for more than it's worth. Yet, on closer examination, the inferences in Hebrews are justifiable:

i) Melchizedek is significant in part because he's both a priest and king. That dovetails nicely with a Messiah who's both priestly and kingly.

ii) Melchizedek is the first priest mentioned in the Pentateuch. That would be highly significant to the original audience. A priesthood was central to the religious life of Israel. Yet here's a priest who antedates the Levitical priesthood by centuries.

iii) Moreover, this priest is contemporaneous with Abraham, who's the seminal figure in Judaism. And the Levitical priesthood descends from Abraham. 

iv) What about the business of his lacking parents or genealogy? A critic might object that that's an unwarranted argument from silence.

Again, though, this is a part of the Pentateuch where, under the Mosaic cultus, you must be a Levite to be a priest. Given the Mosaic stress on the genealogical qualifications or disqualifications to be a priest, the absence of any background in the case of Melchizedek is conspicuous and telling. 

v) In addition, this foreshadows the eternally preexisting Son. That's not literally true of Melchizedek, but again, the author is dealing with types and shadows, where the fulfillment exceeds the precedent. 

Thursday, December 01, 2016

Did Matthew Derive His Infancy Narrative From His Scripture Citations?

Since some critics still claim that Matthew's accounts in his infancy narrative were made up on the basis of the passages of scripture he cites, I want to quote what Raymond Brown wrote on the subject:

In this matter there have been two general lines of scholarly opinion, namely, that the citations gave rise to the infancy narrative, or that they are appended to a narrative that already existed….

Several factors favor the thesis that in chs. 1-2 Matthew added the citations to an already existing narrative. First, in a section like 2:13-23 it is extremely difficult to imagine how the narrative could ever have been made up by reflection on the three formula citations contained therein, since the citations deal with aspects that are only minor in the story line. The same may be said of the citation of Micah 5:1(2) in Matt 2:5b-6. Reflection on that citation might have caused a Christian to compose a story locating Jesus' birth at Bethlehem, but it could scarcely have led him to the narrative about the magi. Reflection on the LXX of Isa 7:14 (cited in Matt 1:22-23) might have caused a Christian to compose a story about Jesus' mother being a virgin, but it could scarcely have led him to compose a narrative wherein Joseph was the main figure.

Second, four of the five formula citations in the infancy narrative have a definite air of being appended. The reader should make the experiment of reading the stories in 1:18-25 and 2:13-23 omitting four of the formula citations (1:22-23; 2:15b; 2:17-18; 2:23b). The story line not only makes perfect sense without them but even flows more smoothly. The only citation that is woven into the plot is the one that is dubiously a formula citation (2:5b-6). This observation weakens even the more subtle form of the thesis that Matthew composed his narrative on the basis of the citations, for they are too tangentially related to the plot to have served as a nucleus in gathering fragmented traditions into a consecutive story.

Third, we have other instances of Matthew's appending formula citations to stories that already came to him. For instance, Mark 1:14 and Luke 4:14 agree that after his baptism Jesus went to Galilee, but only Matt 4:12-16 comments on this with a formula citation from Isa 8:23-9:1 (=RSV 9:1-2) which speaks of the land of Zebulun and Naphtali, toward the sea, Galilee of the Gentiles. Matthew prepared for the introduction of the citation by reporting not only that Jesus went to Galilee, but also that he went to Capernaum by the sea in the territory of Zebulun and Naphtali. The citation could not have caused Matthew to create the story of Jesus' going to Galilee - he had that in Mark - but it did cause him to color and adapt the Marcan narrative, so that the correspondence to the prophecy might be more obvious. We have a good analogy then for arguing that the same process occurred in the infancy narratives where we do not have a control coming from comparative Synoptic material….

We have a partial control in relation to the formula citation: "He will be called a Nazorean" (Matt 2:23). The citation did not cause Matthew to invent the information that Jesus' family dwelt "in a city called Nazareth." Such geographical information was part of the common Gospel tradition.

(The Birth Of The Messiah [New York, New York: Doubleday, 1999], 99-101, n. 8 on 101)

For more about the broader argument that the infancy narratives were derived from the Old Testament and ancient traditions about the Old Testament, see here.

Saturday, September 17, 2016

A Response To Annette Merz On The Infancy Narratives (Part 3)

(Part 1 is here, and part 2 can be found here.)

Merz raises a common objection to the infancy narratives, one that's frequently cited against other parts of the Bible as well. Supposedly, the accounts are too similar to what we find in other sources:

The whole infancy story bears numerous traces of legendary retelling of scripture, especially using elements of the Moses haggadah and texts dealing with messianic expectations of a renewed Davidic kingship….

Mark D. Smith has rightly emphasized that Herod the Great is an indispensable asset to the typological parallel between Jesus and Moses, which is the central theological theme of Matthew's infancy narrative. (470, 479)

Sunday, June 05, 2016

Psalm 22 As Evidence For Christianity

A couple of years ago, a group of Jewish scholars published the second edition of The Jewish Study Bible (New York, New York: Oxford University Press, 2014). It's worth noting how much Christianity is corroborated by an Old Testament translation and commentary that's so liberal and non-Christian. Take their treatment of Psalm 22, for example.