originally posted by Islam_mulia
I am not astonished by the 'insignificant' errors, but am more concerned about twisting of scriptures to suit certain events.
It is your assertion that they are twisted. That would be premature to speak without personal study while looking for context. Context is always the key to understanding any passage. In case you have not thought more deeply, any two passages can be made to contradict if context is removed from them. Furthermore, if we don't consider the intention of the author, we can also mistakingly make the incorrect analysis.
It is a given that text copied over time, especially long sustained periods, will have errors in them. That is just as true today, even with printing presses and proofreaders. The question is what kind of errors are they. Do they effect the doctrine or theme of the book? Are they deliberate or accidental? Many learned men and women have already studied the Bible and understand the errors and other difficulties. It is not a real problem for a Christian if they too study the difficulties and try to verify the explanations as being plausible as long as the proper hermeneutics is applied.
I would like for you to name one text of length and quality of the Bible to be without errors. The errors themselves don't suddenly make the complete work become discredited. I don't think that your perspective has a very thorough analysis attached to it. You are not analyzing the passages for yourself and trying to see that plausible explanations do exist that will create a reasonable answer to the specific difficulty. I understand that that is not your job since you are a Muslim. You only look as deep as is needed to confirm your own beliefs. That is part of your own bias. It would defeat your POV to concede that the fulfillment of prophecy could be legitimate in Matthew's passage.
Let me give an example:
Take
Hosea 11:1 "When Israel was a child, then I loved him, and called my son out of Egypt."
and compare with
Matthew 2:15 "where he stayed until the death of Herod. And so was fulfilled what the Lord had said through the prophet: "Out of Egypt I called my son."
Hosea was talking about the Isrealites exodus from Egypt. How did the the writer of Matthew conveniently take Hosea as a prophecy of Jesus?
There are dozens of this kind of manipulation of text that I think Christians may want to take note.
There is NO WAY that Hosea was a prophecy of Jesus. Hosea was not a prophecy at all! Read Hosea again and tell me how that plain statement could be a prophecy.
Hosea himself may have not understood Jesus, but God did put the words in his mouth and then put them in Matthew's mouth to speak; so, that is all that really matters. If Matthew testifies that God revealed that to him, then we have to accept that this was a revelation that was hidden until the present time. Like all hidden meanings and prophecies, until they are manifested to the masses, we don't know that they are prophetic. Matthew is revealing them to us now. That is the very short response to you.
The long version ========>>
My approach is that since Matthew is the only one of the synoptic books that deals specifically with OT prophecies fulfilled in the NT, I then try to make the connection to why he does this. One point is that Matthew's audience was Jews, who we should expect to be well versed in OT scripture; therefore, when Matthew alludes to an OT prophecy, it should have enticed the Jews to make the connection of salvation of Israel with the Messiah. That would the overall reason that I believe that God would have constructed a prophecy in Hosea to have a fulfillment with Jesus in Matthew.
In dealing with all such difficulties relating Matthew with the OT prophecies will work in the same manner: as God spoke through Hosea, he also spoke through Matthew. The same spirit inspired both to speak God's words; therefore, Matthew's POV is just as valid as Hosea's.
Now to address the specific passages, let's look at it this way. God used a concpet of double fulfillment, which creates the circumstance where a more immediate prophecy will also have a more distant application. Thus, both are true, whereby Hosea may have no understanding of his prophecy beyond the more immediate application. He most likely would not have been able to foresee Jesus, but could have had a concept of Him. The other possibility is that he had no clue whatsoever concerrning Jesus. Either way, it would not create a problem for Matthew or Hosea.
Caution: double fulfillment only works with passages that are specifically stated as already being fulfilled but are specificaly mentioned again as being fulfilled. If they are not stated as such, then we have no authority to attempt to make them fit. We can't arbitrarily go and find two passages and then create a fit.
Another way to view this is via parallelism. God could have created two separate situations to bring about the same concept--one in Hosea's time and another in Matthew's time to bring further attention to His intervention into Israel and His plan to bring forth the culmination of prophecy with Jesus. I say this since God does not have to work in sequence of time as we do. God is not bound by time: for, He could have easily used Hosea as a platform for what He had already planned in advance: to unveil Jesus. It could be that God's plans to unveil Jesus at a later time by introducing the concept earlier as a sign pointing forward to Jesus. In that way, both Hosea and Matthew would be seen in a parallel light. That would make both Hosea and Matthew correct in their perspectives. In either case, whether parallelism or double fulfillment, the connection of OT to NT would serve as further proof of God working with Israel to bring them to understanding scripture and its fulfillment coming forth.
I said all of this to set the stage for the other difficulties to be addressed. My responses to them will be much shorter and to the point now that I have established my POV in discussion.
Comments are welcomed.
are but a Muftari! (forger, liar)." Nay, but most of them know not.
