It
Just Doesn’t Say That!
(and
we need to stop saying that it does)
The Scripture quotations contained here are from the New
Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 by the Division of Christian
Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A., and
are used with permission. All rights reserved.
I’ve written on
this topic before, but I consider it to be so important, and it is such a pet
peeve of mine, that I’m going to write on it again. It just came up in a weekly
online lectionary study group in which I participate. It is the question of the
validity vel non of the New Testament’s repeated claim that Hebrew scripture
(the Christian Old Testament) predicts Jesus and in particular that it predicts
his suffering, death, and resurrection. It came up because we were discussing
the story of the two disciples on a walk to Emmaus on the day of Jesus’
resurrection, Luke 24:13-35. There are many New Testament passages I could cite
to show that the New Testament makes this claim; but it just came up for me in my
lectionary group’s discussion of that story, so I’ll use it as my example.
In this story two
disciples are walking to a village called Emmaus, which is not too far from
Jerusalem. Jesus, that is, the risen Christ, joins them, but they do not know
that this person is Jesus. The story then contains this passage:
Then he said to them, ‘Oh, how foolish you are and how slow
of heart to believe all that the prophets have declared! Was it not necessary
that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?’
Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the
things about himself in all the scriptures. Luke 24:25-26.
He spoke to them about the things
about himself that he says are in all the scriptures? We see what Luke claims
Hebrew scripture said about Jesus a few verses earlier in chapter 24. At Luke 24:6-7,
two angels say to women who have come to Jesus tomb, “Remember how he told you,
while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be handed over to the
hands of sinners and be crucified and on the third day rise again.” That’s why
Hebrew scripture is supposed to have predicted.
He spoke to them
about the things about himself that he says are in all the scriptures? If he
did, that would have been a very short conversation. That’s because, you see,
there is nothing in Hebrew scripture about Jesus. Zero. Zip. Zilch. Absolutely
nothing. If you doubt that, go look for a study Bible reference to a specific
Old Testament site that says that the Messiah must suffer, die, and rise again.
You won’t find one. No scholar gives one. The scholars can’t give one because
what the New Testament says is in Hebrew scripture about Jesus is, in fact, not
there. Yes, I’m denying the truth of something the New Testament says
repeatedly. So be it. I’ve done that before, and I suppose I’ll do it again. The
Old Testament simply does not predict Jesus. There is nothing in the Old
Testament about Jesus. Period. That truth, however, raises important questions
we must consider. I’ll turn now to a consideration of those questions.
There are
passages in the Old Testament that say things that do sound a good deal like
what the New Testament says about Jesus’ suffering. In particular, the so-called
Suffering Servant Songs from the book of Isaiah indeed sound as if they could
be predicting Jesus. I won’t cite all of them here. I’ll just use one of them
as an illustration. Chapter 53 of Isaiah contain these lines about someone
Isaiah calls only “my servant.” Isaiah 53:13. This Suffering Servant Song
includes these lines:
“He was despised and rejected by others; a man of suffering
and acquainted with infirmity.”
“Surely he has borne our infirmities and carried our
diseases.”
“But he was wounded for our transgression,
crushed for out iniquities, upon him as the punishment that made us whole, and
by his bruises we are healed.
“The Lord[1] has laid on him the iniquity of us all.”
“He was oppressed, and he was afflicted,
yet he did not open his mouth.”
“By a perversion of justice he was taken
away.”
“For he was cut off from the land of the
living, stricken for the transgression of my people.”
“Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him with pain.”
“He poured out himself to death and was
numbered with the transgressors.”
“Yet he bore the sin of many.”
Sure sounds like Jesus, doesn’t
it? The New Testament authors probably had verses like these in mind when they
insisted that Hebrew scripture predicts Jesus.
Well, these
verses may sound to us Christians like they are talking about Jesus, but they
aren’t. Several things about them tell us that they aren’t. First of all, scholars
have no idea who this Suffering Servant is supposed to have been. Some say the Suffering
Servant is the whole nation of Israel, but Isaiah never calls him anything
other than “my servant.” Respectable scholars do not believe that the Suffering
Servant is Jesus.
Next, these lines
were written in the mid-sixth century BCE, more than five hundred years before
Jesus. Are we to believe that a Jewish prophet writing during the Hebrew exile
in Babylon, for that’s who wrote these lines, knew about something that would
happen more than five hundred years later? Are we to believe that that prophet
cared one whit about what would happen five centuries later? I don’t believe
that. I can’t believe that. These lines are somehow about the suffering of the
Hebrew people in their being conquered by gentile empires and forced into
captivity far from home. They are not about Jesus.
Moreover, these
verses are obviously not a prediction of anything. Notice that they all speak
in the past tense. They speak of something that is supposed to have happened in
the past, not of something that is supposed to happen in the distant future.
The author of these lines, like all of the Hebrew prophets, was concerned about
what was going on with his people of his time and place. He couldn’t possibly
be concerned about something that would happen to other people centuries in the
future. Nor could he even have known about something that would happen five
centuries after his time. It just doesn’t make a lick of sense to say these
verses are about Jesus.
Which raises
another important question. If they aren’t about Jesus, why do they sound so
much like they’re talking about Jesus? The answer to that question is that in
the early years of the Christian movement Christians were searching for ways to
talk about what they had experienced in Jesus Christ either during his lifetime
or after his resurrection. Most of those Christians were Jews. The parts of
today’s Hebrew Bible that Jews call “the law” and “the prophets” were their
sacred scripture. There was as yet no specifically Christian sacred scripture.[2]
So these good folks went mining. They mined their Bible for images that would
convey to others what they believed to be true of Jesus. We have in the New
Testament’s claim that Hebrew scripture predicts Jesus not a reading into the
future, not a true prediction made more than five hundred years earlier. We
have rather people of faith going backwards in time, finding ancient texts that
they could use for their own purposes, and bringing those ancient texts into
their present reality. The authors of the New Testament texts told the story of
Jesus using images from their Bible, images like Isaiah’s images of the Suffering
Servant. That’s why the New Testament makes Jesus sound so much like the
Suffering Servant of Isaiah.
In addition, the
Hebrew Bible is Jewish not Christian. Yes, it is sacred scripture for us too;
but it is our sacred scripture because it was first of all Jewish sacred
scripture. Christianity developed out of Judaism. The great Jewish faith is
Christianity’s mother faith. Christianity is inconceivable without it. But Judaism
and Christianity developed into distinct, and distinctly different, religious
faiths. That’s not to say that either of them was wrong. It’s just to state a
fact about those two religions. The Jewish texts of the Old Testament speak of
ancient Jewish times and issues. The specifically Christian texts of the New
Testament speak to Christian times and issues—first century issues not
necessarily our issues today. Saying that Hebrew scripture predicts Jesus is
forcing Jewish texts into a Christian mold that they just don’t fit.
Why did those
early Christians use their scripture the way they did? It was the only place
they had to go to find images they could use to talk about scripture. Moreover,
the earliest Christians, including all of the New Testament authors other than the
author of the Gospel of Luke, were Jews. They were trying to convince other
Jews to accept their contention that Jesus was the Jewish Messiah. Those other
Jews would very probably have been more likely to do that if they believed that
accepting Jesus as the Messiah was not a break from their past but a
continuation of it. So they apparently convinced themselves and tried to
convince others that Hebrew scripture predicts Jesus. Which doesn’t mean that
it does. It doesn’t.
I am convinced
that it is way past time for Christians to stop trying to make Jewish texts
Christian by saying they predict Jesus. There is one reason why we must stop
doing that in addition to those I’ve already stated. That reason is Christian
anti-Judaism. Christianity has a horrific, sinful, violent history of
anti-Judaism. It shows up as early as the New Testament documents. The Gospels
of Matthew and John in particular are virulently anti-Jewish. They express an
ancient Christian anger at the Jews, very few of whom accepted the Christians’
claim that Jesus was the long-awaited Messiah. At least until very modern
times, Christianity never gave up that anger and the anti-Judaism it produced. There
is a direct line historically from Matthew 27:25, which has a Jewish crowd
saying about Jesus to Pilate “His blood be on us and on our children!” to the
Holocaust. Of course no Christians today participated in the Holocaust, but most
of those who committed the Holocaust, something anti-Christian if ever there
was one, considered themselves to be Christians.
As today’s
representatives of a faith tradition deeply tarnished by its history of
anti-Judaism, we have much for which to atone. We have much to overcome. We
have much to make up for. It simply is wildly inappropriate for a faith with
Christianity’s history of anti-Judaism to take Jewish scripture and try to make
it Christian. It was apparently important to the earliest Christians to tie
their faith in Jesus to their own Jewish faith. That’s an historical fact. It
does not mean that it is appropriate for us to keep doing it the way they did. We
see Christianity’s indebtedness to Judaism in, among other things, its
conception of one God who cares about God’s people and is active in human
history. We do not see that indebtedness in Old Testament predictions of Jesus.
There aren’t any. Even if there were we would have stop pointing to them out of
respect for our Jewish brothers and sisters and their great faith tradition out
of which our faith tradition grew. There is no valid justification for us to
continue insisting that there are such predictions. Hebrew scripture is Hebrew,
and it’s way past time for us Christians to let it be Hebrew without trying to
make it something it isn’t, namely, Christian. The New Testament says the Old
Testament predicts Jesus, but it doesn't, and it is an affront to Jewish people
to say that it does. So let’s stop doing it, OK?
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