Matthew’s gospel is a prime example of this behaviour. The author cherry picks lines from Jewish scriptures and uses them to argue that Jesus is fulfilling the prophecies even when the lines quoted obviously meant something different in their original context.
I watched a documentary that was made in 1988. On Nostradamus. After all the bollox about him predicting the rise of hitler , great fire of london ad nauseum…the “experts” used his quatrains to predict future events. Amongst these were that Jerusalem would be destroyed by a thermo-nuclear bomb in 1999 and the war of armageddon would start at that point….like I said bollox…
@M27 There was a similar doco in the 70s with a bunch of the same stuff – though I bet the 80s show would have skipped the bits the 70s show got wrong that were supposed to come true in the preceding decade. TBF to Nostro, he did get one or two right. The quattrain about Henri II is eery.
He predicted nish. He wrote loads of esoteric nonsense. It is then up to a subject to try and fit past events to any random quattrain that seems the best fit….Astrologists use the same trick. Write stuff that could apply to thousands of people…They never state that bill nobody, born xx.xx.xxxx who lives at Y, will get crushed by a fallingYamaha grand piano that was dropped by fred nogger a week next wednesday do they?
As soon as I saw this week’s cartoon, I knew that M27Holts would submit a comment referencing astrology and mentioning a Yamaha grand piano falling from a great height onto an innocent passer-by. I knew that without even knowing M27Holts’ star sign! Unfortunately, I did not manage to submit all that as a comment before M27Holts got his oar in first.
I remember a conversation with a woman who maintained that the Jesus figure was prophesied hundreds of times (I think she said 400) in what Christians call the Old Testament, esp. Isaiah. I pointed out that nowhere in the predictions and prophesies was Jesus actually named by name…but that makes no difference to a true believer.
One of the most famous OT “prophecies” is in Isaiah. Upon inspection it has nothing to do with a Messiah and is contradicted in the next chapter and further contradicted in the NT. But you are not supposed to notice that.
Isaiah 7:14 Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.
Isaiah 8:3 And I went unto the prophetess; and she conceived, and bare a son. Then said the LORD to me, Call his name Mahershalalhashbaz.
Matthew 1:21 And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name JESUS: for he shall save his people from their sins.
The Bible is no better than the Koran when it comes to prophesies. Two of the Gospels – Matthew and Luke – both claim that Jesus fulfils the prophesy that the long-awaited Messiah will be the heir of King David by giving a genealogy of Joseph , father-to-son stretching back to King David (Matthew 1 : 1-17, Luke 3 : 23-37.) So was Joseph’s father Jacob , or Heli?
Paul T Seed: As Jesus was allegedly virgin-conceived, the genealogy of his mother’s husband is surely irrelevant anyway! I don’t think the bible gives a genealogy of Mary, which would be more meaningful.
It gets worse. Matthew gives 26 generations between David and Joseph (via Solomon and Jacob) , but messes up the count and claim there are 28 generations. Luke gives 41 generations (via Nathan and Heli). And of course, Joseph is not Jesus’ father. So whichever account you choose to believe, the prophesy fails.
SoG, the relevance of foster dad’s genealogy is to ‘prove’ that the boy was born in the right, prophesied tribe (Juda) and the house of David. The jewish religion is inherited matrilinear, jewish tribal membership patrilinear.
Ah ref Nostradamus I had a book bought SH by Erika Cheetham the 1970s version as I recall cannot for the life of me think of a single one of the then unfulfilled prophecies that came to pass utter utter codswallop.
M27, there will come a time when our generation has gone, when there will be no more Monty Python references, and anyone looking back at old stuff won’t understand them without an AI explanation.
They’ll think we were all crazy. For other reasons, they will be right.
I could use a myriad of colloqualisms that even the majority of brits wouldn’t understand…at least Monty Python sort of resonates with people who share a similar sense of humour. ..and tend to be reasonably transatlantic…Anybody over there been watching Clarkson’s Farm?
M27, I haven’t seen Clarkson’s Farm. I just checked: two seasons are available free on Amazon prime, 2021 and 2023. I liked Top Gear years ago, especially the episode with the Salfa Romeab. I also enjoyed your recommendations before, particularly Father Ted. I’ll have a look at Clarkson’s Farm.
I’m awaiting the fifth and final season of “The Marvelous Mrs Maisel” coming in a few days. It’s an American show that I highly recommend.
After my earlier comment re M27Holts and grand pianos, I predicted (privately) that he would reveal his “star-sign” to us all, along with a sarky remark about astrology being a load of b******t anyway. As he has not yet done so, I conclude that my prediction was incorrect, and/or I am not very good at prediction, and/or astrology is indeed a load of b******t, or any combination of these.
BTW, my “star-sign” is “Leo”, which means that I am highly intelligent, stubborn-minded and allergic to b******t. Sorry, but that sounds kinda right to me.
And what the **** is “Centurion” all about?
Laripu: Father Ted is great, Clarkson’s Farm is rubbish, like anything connected with Clarkson.
I like Clarkson’s Farm, and would dispute that everything that Clarkson has done is “rubbish”. This is all subjective I know, and Clarkson is definately “marmite” so let Laripu make his own mind up…Starsign? Er, I was born with the spoon of fanny batter in the acendency in the house of labia majora…..
Clarkson was very amusing when he insulted Piers Morgan by during his name “big P, little organ”, and Top Gear was ok.
Clarkson is a professional ass. Sorry, in his case it’s arse. But he’s funny much of the time. By contrast, Piers Morgan seems like someone who was bullied as a child and wants to get back at everyone. He’s not only not funny, he’s annoying as hell. Since he worships the royal family, I nominate him for the job of Groom of the Stool
Both Morgan and Clarkson have diminished themselves by going after Meghan Markle, a target that is too trivial for either of them.
Clarkson and Morgan have an opportunity to mend their relationship: Clarkson should invite Morgan to his show, to work on the farm as a plowman.
I would get along with Clarkson. We both like drinking beer, (I have been in his local pub) and we both have the same album as our favourite of all time (Selling England by the Pound).a 1973 release by Gabriel era Genesis…
Jesus & Mo (the characters) are absurd, blinkered, and oddly very sweet. J&M (the cartoon) is brilliant: sharp, delicious, irresistible. Salman Rushdie
Jesus and Mo cartoons are wonderfully funny and true. Richard Dawkins
Jesus and Mo make the world a better place, bless their little hearts. Ophelia Benson
In a world defined by outrage and offence and liberal spinelessness, Jesus and Mo is a treasure, whose value we should never fail to recognize. Read them. Laugh. And think. Kenan Malik
The brilliant, celebrated, freaking hilarious atheist comic strip ... Greta Christina
...rays of sanity in a befuddled world. Keri Hulme
The liveliest depictions of Muhammad currently available... Malise Ruthven
J & Mo is the funniest and most consistently thought-provoking cartoon strip on the Net. In a saner world, it would run in a major newspaper. Nelson Jones, Heresy Corner
Consistently amusing, frequently thought-provoking and often heart-warming. New Humanist
Jesus & Mo is one of the most wonderful things on the internet.. JT Eberhard
Wittily captures much of the absurdity of religious apologetics. Mano Singham
I love jesusandmo.net cartoons - witty and sharp! Katha Pollitt
Often hilarious, frequently wry, these cartoons do what all the best cartoons do: they tell the truth through humour. Terry Sanderson, NSS President
...a wonderfully acid British cartoonist... Nick Cohen
I love the scrappy mockery of Jesus and Mo. Freedom of speech
includes the freedom to mock any person, any thing, any activity, and
any belief -- and J&M stands up for this unflinchingly Richard Stallman
...empowering, important and deeply progressive, not to mention hilarious... Council of Ex-Muslims
June 5, 2007
Very meta, author, bravo!
Matthew’s gospel is a prime example of this behaviour. The author cherry picks lines from Jewish scriptures and uses them to argue that Jesus is fulfilling the prophecies even when the lines quoted obviously meant something different in their original context.
The works of Nostradamus is another example…
I watched a documentary that was made in 1988. On Nostradamus. After all the bollox about him predicting the rise of hitler , great fire of london ad nauseum…the “experts” used his quatrains to predict future events. Amongst these were that Jerusalem would be destroyed by a thermo-nuclear bomb in 1999 and the war of armageddon would start at that point….like I said bollox…
@M27 There was a similar doco in the 70s with a bunch of the same stuff – though I bet the 80s show would have skipped the bits the 70s show got wrong that were supposed to come true in the preceding decade. TBF to Nostro, he did get one or two right. The quattrain about Henri II is eery.
He predicted nish. He wrote loads of esoteric nonsense. It is then up to a subject to try and fit past events to any random quattrain that seems the best fit….Astrologists use the same trick. Write stuff that could apply to thousands of people…They never state that bill nobody, born xx.xx.xxxx who lives at Y, will get crushed by a fallingYamaha grand piano that was dropped by fred nogger a week next wednesday do they?
As soon as I saw this week’s cartoon, I knew that M27Holts would submit a comment referencing astrology and mentioning a Yamaha grand piano falling from a great height onto an innocent passer-by. I knew that without even knowing M27Holts’ star sign! Unfortunately, I did not manage to submit all that as a comment before M27Holts got his oar in first.
I remember a conversation with a woman who maintained that the Jesus figure was prophesied hundreds of times (I think she said 400) in what Christians call the Old Testament, esp. Isaiah. I pointed out that nowhere in the predictions and prophesies was Jesus actually named by name…but that makes no difference to a true believer.
One of the most famous OT “prophecies” is in Isaiah. Upon inspection it has nothing to do with a Messiah and is contradicted in the next chapter and further contradicted in the NT. But you are not supposed to notice that.
Isaiah 7:14 Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.
Isaiah 8:3 And I went unto the prophetess; and she conceived, and bare a son. Then said the LORD to me, Call his name Mahershalalhashbaz.
Matthew 1:21 And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name JESUS: for he shall save his people from their sins.
The Bible is no better than the Koran when it comes to prophesies. Two of the Gospels – Matthew and Luke – both claim that Jesus fulfils the prophesy that the long-awaited Messiah will be the heir of King David by giving a genealogy of Joseph , father-to-son stretching back to King David (Matthew 1 : 1-17, Luke 3 : 23-37.) So was Joseph’s father Jacob , or Heli?
Paul T Seed: As Jesus was allegedly virgin-conceived, the genealogy of his mother’s husband is surely irrelevant anyway! I don’t think the bible gives a genealogy of Mary, which would be more meaningful.
It gets worse. Matthew gives 26 generations between David and Joseph (via Solomon and Jacob) , but messes up the count and claim there are 28 generations. Luke gives 41 generations (via Nathan and Heli). And of course, Joseph is not Jesus’ father. So whichever account you choose to believe, the prophesy fails.
SoG, the relevance of foster dad’s genealogy is to ‘prove’ that the boy was born in the right, prophesied tribe (Juda) and the house of David. The jewish religion is inherited matrilinear, jewish tribal membership patrilinear.
Ah ref Nostradamus I had a book bought SH by Erika Cheetham the 1970s version as I recall cannot for the life of me think of a single one of the then unfulfilled prophecies that came to pass utter utter codswallop.
My prophecy:
I predict that this prophecy will not be believed by anyone, not even one person.
Therefore it is true only if no-one believes it. However, if you believe it’s true, then it isn’t.
Thank you Bertrand Russell. 🙂
Nice one Centurion….
M27, there will come a time when our generation has gone, when there will be no more Monty Python references, and anyone looking back at old stuff won’t understand them without an AI explanation.
They’ll think we were all crazy. For other reasons, they will be right.
I could use a myriad of colloqualisms that even the majority of brits wouldn’t understand…at least Monty Python sort of resonates with people who share a similar sense of humour. ..and tend to be reasonably transatlantic…Anybody over there been watching Clarkson’s Farm?
I suspected it was a reference, but despite being in the apex generation and with a reasonably good Monty Python background, I didn’t catch that.
M27, I haven’t seen Clarkson’s Farm. I just checked: two seasons are available free on Amazon prime, 2021 and 2023. I liked Top Gear years ago, especially the episode with the Salfa Romeab. I also enjoyed your recommendations before, particularly Father Ted. I’ll have a look at Clarkson’s Farm.
I’m awaiting the fifth and final season of “The Marvelous Mrs Maisel” coming in a few days. It’s an American show that I highly recommend.
Ahhh Donn, Nobody expects….
After my earlier comment re M27Holts and grand pianos, I predicted (privately) that he would reveal his “star-sign” to us all, along with a sarky remark about astrology being a load of b******t anyway. As he has not yet done so, I conclude that my prediction was incorrect, and/or I am not very good at prediction, and/or astrology is indeed a load of b******t, or any combination of these.
BTW, my “star-sign” is “Leo”, which means that I am highly intelligent, stubborn-minded and allergic to b******t. Sorry, but that sounds kinda right to me.
And what the **** is “Centurion” all about?
Laripu: Father Ted is great, Clarkson’s Farm is rubbish, like anything connected with Clarkson.
I like Clarkson’s Farm, and would dispute that everything that Clarkson has done is “rubbish”. This is all subjective I know, and Clarkson is definately “marmite” so let Laripu make his own mind up…Starsign? Er, I was born with the spoon of fanny batter in the acendency in the house of labia majora…..
Clarkson was very amusing when he insulted Piers Morgan by during his name “big P, little organ”, and Top Gear was ok.
Clarkson is a professional ass. Sorry, in his case it’s arse. But he’s funny much of the time. By contrast, Piers Morgan seems like someone who was bullied as a child and wants to get back at everyone. He’s not only not funny, he’s annoying as hell. Since he worships the royal family, I nominate him for the job of Groom of the Stool
Both Morgan and Clarkson have diminished themselves by going after Meghan Markle, a target that is too trivial for either of them.
Clarkson and Morgan have an opportunity to mend their relationship: Clarkson should invite Morgan to his show, to work on the farm as a plowman.
I would get along with Clarkson. We both like drinking beer, (I have been in his local pub) and we both have the same album as our favourite of all time (Selling England by the Pound).a 1973 release by Gabriel era Genesis…