Subject: Christians before Jesus came |
Bible Note: Hi Steve, My statement about Jesus and others being first Century Jews ties in with #1 and #2 of your previous post. As you know, the hermeneutical methods used by the Jews of the first Century were four-fold: Literal, midrashic, pesher, and allegorical. For the most part, when dealing with OT prophesy, Jesus, his followers, and the NT writers often subscribed to the pesher method, which was very much focussed on contemporary application, often without ceoncern for the original OT context. There is nothing wrong with this approach in and of itself- it was just a common method...but the fact is that it did not take into account the OT context; it simply made a present-day application. #1) Mt.21 comes from Zechariah 9. In the context of Zechariah 9, we do have a prophesy, but it is not about Jesus. Yes, Jesus 'fulfilled' this verse by doing the same thing, but in the original context this was referring to someone else (most scholars would say Simon Maccabbees). #2) Mt.2:3-6 comes from Micah 5, which refers to the faithful remnant in Babylonian captivity who would 'give birth to' a new King of peace when they returned. (we see in Zechariah that this was to be Zerubabel...but others interpret this to be Joshua). And to answer your last question in a word, no. Most prophesies do not include the name of the person being referred to. I hope this clears up what I am trying to say. chesed |