Psalm 22: an alternative explanation

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rakovsky
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Re: Psalm 22: an alternative explanation

Post by rakovsky »

kennethgreifer wrote: I did read the information on your page.

Kenneth Greifer
OK.

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rakovsky
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Re: Psalm 22: an alternative explanation

Post by rakovsky »

The three main passages I see narrating the Messiah's death are Ps. 22, Is. 52-53, and Zech 11-13. There is also another Psalm (IIRC 39 or 40) that does this, but shorter, and I think Dan 9 does too, but it's not as clear that it does. I think it's helpful to see how some don't see those three main passages as referring to Messiah's death.

Ps. 22 is an interesting issue, because I think it's clear the narrator gets killed. I guess you would try to argue that having your bones out of joint, beind in some weird state where you can see all your bones, where you are in the dust of death and poured out like water (ie. drained of blood), and have 0 strength and your enemies are already dividing your clothes does not mean you are dead. To me that sounds pretty weird.

The other thing you could do I guess is say it's just poetry, IOW just because it uses the metaphor of getting killed in detail doesn't mean it happens in real life. That seems logical to me, but with so much detail in the prophecy, it seems unlikely that it was meant purely allegorically. For example, what does the "dust of death" refer to only allegorically? It's kind of like the issue with Genesis 1 or Noah's flood. It seems hard to me to think they were meant only allegorically. People really believed those kinds of things were possible in those days, and they didn't know the concept of Evolution of Species yet.

I guess another thing they do is not really address the issue of whether Psalm 22 is Davidic Messianic or not. It's true Pesikta Rabati goes into detail at length talking about Messiah's sufferings for 2-4 chapters and talking about Psalm 22. But usually it doesn't show up in the Oral Tradition I think as Messianic. That's my impression. More often I heard Psalm 22 is related to Esther, who saved her people from genocide centuries after Psalm 22 was written. Esther though I think has been seen herself as a kind of Redeeming poetically Messianic figure though too.

The most common thing I have seen opponents of the Christian reading do is go after the translation in v. 15-18 about "piercing" the hands and feet of the narrator, which is really a secondary issue for the question. The overall issue is whether the narrator gets killed, resurrects, and is seen as Messianic. That is: Is the general, major concept in Christianity of a suffering, killed and resurrecting Messiah "scriptural"?

What the opponents say about "pierced" is that the text reads "like a lion my hands", because most Masoretic manuscripts say that. And they want to leave the issue at that. If you really get into the rabbinical reading of this passage, you find out that the rabbis teach enemies attack the hands of the narrator like a lion, which renders the objection moot, because lions attack by biting and clawing, piercing the flesh.

I guess the opponents' main strategy and underlying target message is: A guy being God from a virgin birth is ridiculous, so you already know other claims are easily wrong (like Jesus even existing), and so don't learn about other issues. And if you do learn about other issues, just know that Christians made the wrong translations like "pierced", and so don't think about the meaning that the opponents' proposed text variant fully entails, don't learn about the alternative textual variants. And if you are unsure about this stuff, go back to the beginning and remember that Christianity is wrong, so their Christian interpretations of the Psalms must be too. Rinse and repeat.

Why do I say this is their strategy? Because they think Christians are not going to use that in their apologetics anymore, they don't want it brought up. They don't tell people about how much textual variants there are. It's like the Reverse of the normal approach of the Early Writings database. The Early Writings database brings out all kinds of minority Christian texts like the gnostic gospels people have not heard of or were rejected by the mainstream Church. When it comes to the text of Psalm 22 that support Christian theology, the opponents say they don't think (ie. want) the alternative text variant and interpretations should be brought up by the Christian apologists.

My research on the prophecies of the Messiah's resurrection: http://rakovskii.livejournal.com
iskander
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Re: Psalm 22: an alternative explanation

Post by iskander »

rakovsky wrote:The three main passages I see narrating the Messiah's death are Ps. 22, Is. 52-53, and Zech 11-13. There is also another Psalm (IIRC 39 or 40) that does this, but shorter, and I think Dan 9 does too, but it's not as clear that it does. I think it's helpful to see how some don't see those three main passages as referring to Messiah's death.

Ps. 22 is an interesting issue, because I think it's clear the narrator gets killed. I guess you would try to argue that having your bones out of joint, beind in some weird state where you can see all your bones, where you are in the dust of death and poured out like water (ie. drained of blood), and have 0 strength and your enemies are already dividing your clothes does not mean you are dead. To me that sounds pretty weird.

The other thing you could do I guess is say it's just poetry, IOW just because it uses the metaphor of getting killed in detail doesn't mean it happens in real life. That seems logical to me, but with so much detail in the prophecy, it seems unlikely that it was meant purely allegorically. For example, what does the "dust of death" refer to only allegorically? It's kind of like the issue with Genesis 1 or Noah's flood. It seems hard to me to think they were meant only allegorically. People really believed those kinds of things were possible in those days, and they didn't know the concept of Evolution of Species yet.

I guess another thing they do is not really address the issue of whether Psalm 22 is Davidic Messianic or not. It's true Pesikta Rabati goes into detail at length talking about Messiah's sufferings for 2-4 chapters and talking about Psalm 22. But usually it doesn't show up in the Oral Tradition I think as Messianic. That's my impression. More often I heard Psalm 22 is related to Esther, who saved her people from genocide centuries after Psalm 22 was written. Esther though I think has been seen herself as a kind of Redeeming poetically Messianic figure though too.

The most common thing I have seen opponents of the Christian reading do is go after the translation in v. 15-18 about "piercing" the hands and feet of the narrator, which is really a secondary issue for the question. The overall issue is whether the narrator gets killed, resurrects, and is seen as Messianic. That is: Is the general, major concept in Christianity of a suffering, killed and resurrecting Messiah "scriptural"?

What the opponents say about "pierced" is that the text reads "like a lion my hands", because most Masoretic manuscripts say that. And they want to leave the issue at that. If you really get into the rabbinical reading of this passage, you find out that the rabbis teach enemies attack the hands of the narrator like a lion, which renders the objection moot, because lions attack by biting and clawing, piercing the flesh.

I guess the opponents' main strategy and underlying target message is: A guy being God from a virgin birth is ridiculous, so you already know other claims are easily wrong (like Jesus even existing), and so don't learn about other issues. And if you do learn about other issues, just know that Christians made the wrong translations like "pierced", and so don't think about the meaning that the opponents' proposed text variant fully entails, don't learn about the alternative textual variants. And if you are unsure about this stuff, go back to the beginning and remember that Christianity is wrong, so their Christian interpretations of the Psalms must be too. Rinse and repeat.

Why do I say this is their strategy? Because they think Christians are not going to use that in their apologetics anymore, they don't want it brought up. They don't tell people about how much textual variants there are. It's like the Reverse of the normal approach of the Early Writings database. The Early Writings database brings out all kinds of minority Christian texts like the gnostic gospels people have not heard of or were rejected by the mainstream Church. When it comes to the text of Psalm 22 that support Christian theology, the opponents say they don't think (ie. want) the alternative text variant and interpretations should be brought up by the Christian apologists.
There were "differing biblical texts" then. The Alexandrians may have had one text and the Palestinians may have had another one with a different wording.
Christians have one interpretation , may the good Hashem bless them. Amen
Different bibles , one for Palestinians and another one for emigrants. See attached file
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