What if...

[radhead]

I think when people start thinking about the biblical world as a web of intertextuality rather than a linear thread of events then the texts can make considerably more sense. Then one is able to look at Isaiah 7 and consider it part of the Jesus story as much as one can look at it in terms of stories about Ahaz and the child born of a young woman.

That is exactly why people need to understand the symbolism behind the stories. It's an insult to Judaism to suggest that everything in their scriptures was just a foreshadowing of the "one true religion" of Christianity. What is the fruit that would prove this? The world has been waiting for centuries.

 

[Aelred of Rievaulx]

That is exactly why people need to understand the symbolism behind the stories. It's an insult to Judaism to suggest that everything in their scriptures was just a foreshadowing of the "one true religion" of Christianity. What is the fruit that would prove this? The world has been waiting for centuries.

And it's an insult to a specific species of Judaism which developed in the Second Temple Period to suggest that Christianity was an aberration. The better way to think of Judaism and Christianity (in their myriad of relationships) is one in terms of sibling-hood. I'd throw Islam in the mix too but it's messy enough to think of the first few centuries CE.