Sisyphus Fragment alerted me to this blog post by a Christian who writes a “Spiritual Questions” blog. The post is titled “Why are they so many athiest bloggers?” and reads, in full:
Why are there so many atheism blogs? I saw recently how one guy collects them all in one place so you can “feed” on a life without God, literally hundreds of blog links, enough reading for several years.
My question is: Why? Why this persistent, diligent pursuit to prove or convince themselves and others that there is no God. Something I read some time ago seems to address this question.
Charles Colson tells about Irina Ratushinskaya, a young girl in the Soviet Union years ago. She was trained in Communist schools and indoctrinated in atheism. She said she could never figure out why her teachers all pitched such a furious battle against someone they said didn’t exist. “God doesn’t exist.” Irina began to question: “Can’t they tell they are giving themselves away? Adults tell you there are no gremlins or ghosts. They tell you once or twice, and that’s it. But with God, they tell you over and over again. So He must exist – and He must be very powerful for them to fear Him so greatly.”
You see, something inside is telling the atheistic bloggers – God really does exist. Rather than yield to his love, the atheist will convince himself/herself that God doesn’t exist and in so doing, proves that he in fact does exist, but that they are unwilling to acknowledge it. The sheer volume of atheistic blogs testify to the existence of one they refuse to acknowledge due to mulish pride.
The idiocy of this logic can be revealed (if it isn’t already painfully apparent) simply be reversing it. Why are there so many Christian blogs? You see, something inside is telling the Christian bloggers – God really does not exist. Rather than yield to the cold hard facts, the Christian will convince himself/herself that God does exist and in so doing, proves that He does in fact not exist, but that they are unwilling to acknowledge it.
Wow, that was easy!
Too bad this is one of the worst arguments against atheism – ever. Have you seen anything worse? Please share by dropping a comment!
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Believe it or not, atheists and other unbelievers are looking for love, too. That’s not always easy. Dating is not always easy. What do you do if you don’t want to end up with an individual that you like only to find out that he or she is religious and only wants to be with someone else who is religious? That’s a problem. Well, the internet can provide one solution. Problem is, you can never be quite sure with some dating sites how important religion is to somebody.
Neece from Heaving Dead Cats has helped with the launch of a new niche dating site called Religion Free Dating. Here you can be sure that for members, religion is not an important aspect in their lives. Without further ado, here is the official announcement from the site:
Welcome to Religion Free Dating! This site is about freedom. Mainly freedom from religion when it comes to dating.
Our founder, Gary, started RFD because he was tired of the way other dating sites handled the topic of religion. There was too much emphasis on it. He wanted a place where religion wasn’t an issue.
You don’t have to be an atheist to be a member here. You can be anything you like. It simply comes down to this:
Religion isn’t an issue here.
It’s all about what matters to you. Filling out your profile in as much detail as possible is what will help you find like-minded people.
The other thing that will make RFD successful is to spread the word! We’re brand new! Sign up today and tell others who might be interested. The more members we have, the better it will be for all of us.
Membership is free! So sign up today and let people know about it. You’re creating a great place where people from all over the world can come and relax, meet, and have fun.
If you’re searching and this interests you, then it doesn’t hurt to sign up.
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The following is a guest post by OpenDiary blogger Atheist Under Ur Bed. This is part of an ongoing series that will be posted each Monday. You can read the introduction to this series by clicking here.
Hey, it’s Monday! Time once again for Monday School – as always, “A Rational Corrective To All That Nonsense You Learned Yesterday.”
Today’s Lesson: Why Does Genesis Relate Two Different And Often Contradictory Creation Stories Within Its First Few Pages?
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Dedicated students may want to take a few minutes now and read those pages for themselves, just so they may be sure that there are, in fact, two different accounts, and that they do indeed contradict each other.
Here’s one on-line Bible site that will quickly and easily allow those interested to do so:
http://bible.gospelcom.net/bible?language=English&version=NIV
Others may be inclined to take my word for it, based on my own reading of the Bible, as well as of many common reference works like the Encyclopedia Britannica.
Still others may enjoy reading this dandy summary passage from Theodor H. Gaster’s Myth, Legend, and Custom in the Old Testament
Attentive readers of the Bible can hardly fail to remark a striking discrepancy between the two accounts of the creation of man recorded in the first and second chapters of Genesis. In the first chapter, we read how, on the fifth day of creation, God created the fishes and the birds, all the creatures that live in the water or in the air; and how on the sixth day he created all terrestrial animals, and last of all man, whom he fashioned in his own image, both male and female. From this narrative we infer that man was the last to be created of all living beings on earth, and that the human beings consisted of a man and a woman, produced to all appearance simultaneously, and each of them reflecting in equal measure the glory of their divine original. But when we proceed to the second chapter, we learn with surprise that God created man first, the lower animals next, and woman last of all, fashioning her as a mere afterthought out of a rib which he abstracted from the man’s body.
Granted that Genesis does indeed present two separate accounts, the question arises: Why?
Although there are many sources I could quote in response (all of which give pretty much the same answer), I think Gaster’s words are once again hard to beat:
The flagrant contradiction between the two accounts is explained by modern scholars on the theory that they are derived from two different documents, which were afterwards somewhat clumsily combined into a single book. The account of the creation in the first chapter is derived from what is called the Priestly Document [P], which was composed by priestly writers during or after the Babylonian captivity; that in the second chapter from what is called the Jehovistic Document [J], written several hundred years earlier, probably in the ninth or eighth century before our era. The difference between the religious standpoints of the two writers is manifest. The later or priestly writer conceives God in an abstract form as withdrawn from human sight, and creating all things by a simple fiat. The earlier or Jehovistic writer conceives God in a very concrete form as acting and speaking like a man, modelling a human being out of clay, planting a garden, walking in it at the cool of the day, calling to the man and woman to come out from among the trees behind which they have hidden themselves, and making coats of skin to replace the too scanty garments of fig-leaves which our abashed first parents sought to conceal their nakedness.
Scholars have spent a lot of time and effort analyzing the tone, language, style, and word choice of these writers, P and J (as well as others), and have been able to conclude much about them and about which parts of the Bible each one probably did and did not write. Details are readily available in almost any library. Here’s one interesting on-line site which conveys some of the pertinent details:
http://www.cesame-nm.org/Viewpoint/contributions/bible/authorship.html
Suffice it to say that there were at least two different writers involved with Genesis, and that they often contradict each other and work at cross-purposes.
The idea that Genesis is the flawless work or inspiration of an all-knowing God is thus rendered exceedingly difficult to maintain.
What’s more – as Gaster goes on to demonstrate at some length – these all-too-human writers of Genesis were not terribly original. The idea that God formed man out of clay or earth, for instance, pre-dates the Hebrew account and may be found in both Babylonian and Egyptian mythologies, among others. Similarly, the idea that God conveys life with His breath can be traced back to 14th century B.C. Egypt, where pharaohs (who were believed to be incarnations of deity) allegedly possessed the same power. The story about Eve being formed out of Adam’s rib seems to come from Sumeria, where the same cuneiform symbol was used for both “life” and “rib.” The Sumerians also were telling stories about an Eden-like place as long ago as 2000 B.C., and perhaps much earlier.
Although the precise details of how and why Genesis took on the shape it did may never be known, three things seem clear: In fact and tone, it is at odds with itself; it is not completely original; and, as such, it makes far more sense as the creation of very flawed, ancient writers than of a perfect God.
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In a StumbleUpon review of a post on this site, zackster89 gave the following description of atheism:
atheism, the believe that we come from nothing, are nothing and will go to nothing. pretty bleak once you look at it as a whole.
Let’s take a step back here for a minute. Zackster clearly believes that atheism is a bleak position to take, but what is his point? Obviously – or at least it should be obvious – that has nothing to do with the validity or reasonablness of atheism. It could be true that there are no gods and no afterlife and that could, in some people’s opinion, be the bleakest sort of reality they could imagine, but that doesn’t change the fact that it is true. It seems to me that, for whatever reason, some people just don’t get this. And these are probably the same people who put a lot of stock in the life-changing emotional experiences of converting to Christianity.
Here are some important points to remember, Zackster:
1) Whether or not something is true does not depend on whether or not you like it.
2) Reality does not necessarily conform to those beliefs that make you the most happy and comfortable.
Finally, of course, is atheism as bleak as Zackster characterizes it to be? Do we believe that we came from nothing? Of course not. We have a rich and fascinating evolutionary history. The universe itself has an even longer and even more fascinating history that we are only now beginning, since the last century, to fully comprehend. We did not come from nothing. On the contrary, many religious believers and creationists who do not accept evolution actually do believe that God literally created us from nothing.
Are we nothing? That doesn’t make any sense. Perhaps Zackster means that we have no purpose in the overal scheme of things. So what? Does that prevent us from making our own purpsose for ourselves?
And finally, do we go to nothing? Ultimately, perhaps, yes, as our species, our planet, and our solar system are only temporary fixtures. In the more immediate sense, however, while our bodies return to the dust of the ground (it seems that the second creation account in the Bible is at least a bit more sensible in this regards, claiming that we were made from the dust of the ground rather than by fiat), we do have a chance to leave something behind to benefit future generations that will live and die. How we wish to do that is entirely up to us.
Isn’t that more uplifting than being told that our lives are meant to worship and serve our Creator-God? And that after we die and go to heaven we get to – gasp – worship and praise Him for the rest of eternity? Count me out.
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I always enjoy finding new and interesting blogs. If you are reading this, then I am sure you will also enjoy what Ben is doing over at his blog Create Cognitive Dissonance. Cognitive dissonance occurs when a person holds or is faced with two contradictory ideas simultaneously. These are the kinds of situations in which critical thinking become especially important – and the kind of situations in which religious people seem to be exceptionally good and rationalizing away. Creating cognitive dissonance in the minds of believers is one way to combat religious beliefs. In his own writing, Ben is clear and forceful. But he takes this concept a step further by opening up his blog to authors with competing views to foster debate. This is a great idea, because often it seems that among atheist blogs we are just talking to ourselves. The concept appears to be working quite well, too, judging by the number of responses these guest posts have generated. See, for example, this post on homosexuality by a New Church theology student.
Enough of what I have to say. Go over to Ben’s blog and create some cognitive dissonance for yourself.
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I just finished reading a book on the role of women in organized hate movements (specifically racist organizations). The book is called Inside Organized Racism: Women in the Hate Movement. The author, Kathleen Blee, interviewed nearly 40 women who are involved in various capacities in different white supremacist groups. There are many shocking revelations in this book in terms of the way these people think about themselves and others. However, for the purpose of this blog I would simply like to highlight a single passage that is related to the problem of childhood indoctrination.
In a previous post I asked whether or not it is right for parents to indoctrinate their children into a particular religion without essentially giving them any choice. I quoted a Catholic mother who expressed the desire for her children to be capable of choosing their own religion but also insisted that her children must be raised as good Catholics – going to Mass and eventually being confirmed into the Church. I pointed out this essential tension between her desire to indoctrinate and her desire to uphold the American ideal of freedom of choice. For this mother, the choice is a future choice. As long as the child remains a child he or she has no choice but to be a Catholic.
In criticizing this logic I gave the following example:
Imagine that this women wasn’t talking about Catholicism but, rather, said:
“I am going to raise my child as a racist until she grows up, at which point she is free to make her own choices concerning which types of people she wants to hate.”
I then asked: How are these any different than saying, “I am going to raise my child as a Catholic until she grows up, at which point she is free to choose her own religion”?
One might be tempted to simply dismiss my example as ludicrous. No mother would ever do such a thing. Not so fast. The following is a direct quote from one of the racist mothers that Blee interviewed for her book:
[I took] them to the dedication of the white race. … We dressed the kids up in fatigues and little hats because I didn’t have time to make little robes, and we took them and we had them dedicated [to white supremacism. … It's my responsibility to train these two [but] they can make their own choice when they come of age.
I hope my children will be involved or at least understand why their father and I are involved but I will not force anything on my children.
I really can’t say whether or not my children will join [our Nazi group]. They will be raised National Socialist with racial pride, family values, and morals. (pg. 48)
It is obvious to me that we have here the same logic for two different forms of indoctrination. How much different is imagining children in little white Klan robes, really, from imagining children in little white church robes? Sure, the ideologies have vastly different moral implications but the effect here is the same and, at least to me, equally distasteful. What is distasteful is that the child is forced into a particular ideology beginning at a time in the child’s life when he or she is not mature enough to thoroughly understand and analyze the issues with these ideologies.
One can say that raising little racists is far worse in terms of the moral consequences than raising little Catholics. I agree. Being an extreme racist is socially more problematic than being a Catholic. However, the implications are the same and equally disturbing. Children all over the world are being raised to think a certain way (at least with regards to certain issues) rather than being raised how to think. In a world where religion is a polarizing force in which absurd and unprovable claims are the central issue, this is a problem. It is a problem for getting along in a global society fractured by competing and equally baseless religious claims.
As Bill Maher concludes in his film Religulous, we need more doubt and less indoctrination in this world.
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Two quick thoughts before I leave the subject of Adam and Eve – at least until I bring it up again.
First, I once heard an alternate version of their story – maybe a Hindu version – which went like this:
The Eve character eats the forbidden fruit. God pops up, yells “Bad woman! Bad!” as usual, but then decides to banish her – and her alone – from Paradise. The Adam character says, “Wait! Banish me, too. I love this woman. Paradise isn’t a place – it’s wherever we are together.” God obliges Adam and banishes them both.
Yes, this story is almost certainly as much of a lie as the Bible’s story. But if we simply must tell our children lies (or embrace them ourselves), isn’t it better to tell or embrace the lie that man is basically loving, self-sacrificing, and noble rather than the lie that his greater natural tendency is to avoid responsibility at all costs or to turn against his loved ones when the going gets tough?
Discuss.
~
Second point: It seems to me that Adam and Eve’s real sin was obedience.
Yeah, yeah – the disobedience they displayed when they ate that damn fruit is obviously unfortunate within the context that the Bible provides, BUT… that disobedience and the punishment it brought them was limited just to themselves. It may have been harsh – and as I hope I made clear on Monday, it all fails to make logical sense to me – but the bottom line is that they allegedly did wrong in God’s eyes, and they were punished as a result. If people want to believe this actually happened, well, it’s no skin off my nose.
What does bother me, however, is that Adam and Eve then obeyed God’s command to be fruitful and multiply – and thereby directly and indirectly engendered billions of souls which traditional Christian theology assures me shall be consigned to the flames of Hell forever. True, many additional souls may know the splendors of Heaven, BUT – as Jesus is quoted as saying – many are called and few are chosen. The Bible clearly says that one must know and accept Jesus to be saved from Hell, and the vast majority of mankind today and throughout history has rejected Jesus (or never heard of him in the first place). So: Adam and Eve’s obeying God’s command to be fruitful and multiply clearly led to a situation much worse than what would have come about had they, say, simply hanged themselves after their banishment. Sure, they might then themselves be trapped forever in Hell, but the vast majority of mankind would have remained mercifully unborn and free of eternal torment. Not to mention free of everything from the Black Death to the Holocaust and all the other evils of history.
Not a bad trade, if you ask me.
Indeed, I’d go so far as to say that such disobedience would qualify as the most moral – and even the most noble – post-Fall act on the part of Adam and Eve I can conceive of within the context of the Bible.
Do you agree or disagree? Why?
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The following is a guest post by OpenDiary blogger Atheist Under Ur Bed. This is part of an ongoing series that will be posted each Monday. You can read the introduction to this series by clicking here.
Welcome back to Monday School! Hope you enjoyed your week and are now ready for another rational analysis of that stuff they teach in Sunday School.
Today’s Lesson: Does The Biblical Story Of Adam & Eve Make Sense?
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According to a 1998 Gallop poll, 33% of adult Americans believe that the Bible is the actual word of God and that all its claims must be taken literally. The same poll indicates that an additional 47% of adult Americans consider the Bible divinely inspired but is not necessarily literally true in every detail.
It would seem that some 80% of adult Americans either believe in the literal truth of the story of Adam and Eve or that it contains some important truths that God wants us to know.
Are these Americans right? Is it even possible to reconcile a belief in God with a belief in the Bible’s story of the first two people on earth?
At least 10 significant problems must be overcome:
1.
If God is all-powerful, all-knowing, and everywhere all the time (as the Bible indicates He is), in what sense can the Bible also say that man shares His image (Gen. 1:26
)? What could man’s image (which seems to be the result of a slow evolution under the pressure of changing environmental conditions) possibly have in common with that of a being who seems to exist independently of physical reality and change? Of what possible use could hands, legs, a head, and all the other human body parts (which collectively result in our image) be to God? What purpose might male genitalia serve God? Yet without that genitalia, on what basis do the writers of the Bible consistently refer to God as “He” and “Him”? Would DNA testing reveal God to be male? Exactly what is the essence of maleness, and how does essence relate to image? Why does the Bible use the word “image” at all when that word seems best applied to superficial surface appearances? If the Bible meant to say that humans share some essential characteristic with God, shouldn’t it have said so? And shouldn’t it have done a much better job of spelling out what that shared essence might be?
2.
If God is all-powerful, all-knowing, and everywhere, why does the Bible say “Let us create man in our image”? Why would an all-powerful God refer to Himself in the plural? How could there be two or more all-powerful beings? Isn’t one enough? Isn’t it far more likely that this use of the plural form here grew out of the earlier, polytheistic religions of non-Hebrew cultures than that two or more Gods actually exist? Or that an all-powerful being might require the help or assistance of angels? (To learn more about the many words and ideas the writers of Genesis seem to have borrowed from other, older cultures, ask your favorite librarian to show you a copy of Myth, Legend, and Custom in the Old Testament
3.
According to the Bible, after God made Adam He discovered that Adam needed a helpmate. This prompts God to make all the animals and birds and bring them to Adam to name and, apparently, interview for the helpmate position that’s open. Not surprisingly to us (but apparently unforeseeable by God), no animal or bird is found to have the right qualifications. At this point, God tries a new approach: He puts Adam to sleep and forms Eve out of one of his ribs. (Why the rib was in Adam in the first place if it wasn’t necessary is not explained. Nor is there any explanation given for God’s not taking out Adam’s appendix while He was poking around in there.) The Bible gives no indication why an all-knowing God would need to go through this tedious trial and error process, nor why a being who could create an entire cosmos out of nothing needs a starter rib when it comes to the creation of a woman. Neither does the Bible do a very good job of conveying just how tedious this trial and error process must have been. There are, after all, at least 4000 species of mammals alone, and 8600 species of birds. Although the Bible says that God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam after all these creatures were named, interviewed, and found lacking, my hunch is that by this point Adam would only have needed divine assistance in continuing to stay awake. Especially if Adam had been naming each individual creature, as seems quite possible given that the Bible doesn’t mention his dealing with either species or types.
4.
The idea that Adam needed to name all these animals and birds as God brought them to him seems to make sense only as a primitive myth conjured up by unsophisticated ancient people trying to explain the etymology of words whose actual origins were lost in the mists of time (much as the Tower of Babel story seems a lame attempt to account for the existence of different languages). As a literal account, it seems nonsensical. Naming, after all, involves language, and language exists so that people can communicate with each other. If God and Adam were the only two thinking creatures in existence, and God is by definition omniscient, exactly who was Adam expected to use all these animal names with? The animals and birds were too stupid for language, and God was too smart. We are consequently left to imagine a Paradise in which animals ignored Adam’s names for them, God bypassed language by looking directly into Adam’s mind, and Adam wandered around muttering rather pointlessly to himself. It doesn’t take too much effort to imagine that a great deal of that muttering probably involved cursing as the poor guy struggled to keep those thousands of arbitrary names straight.
~
Does the Adam and Eve story make any more sense if we stop taking it literally and start approaching it from a symbolic or theological perspective? I don’t think so.
Consider:
5.
At the heart of this story is the claim that Adam and Eve were punished by God for disobeying His order not to eat of the tree which gave them knowledge of good and evil. If Adam and Eve didn’t know the difference between good and evil before eating of this tree, however, how could they know if disobedience was good or evil? And if they didn’t know disobedience was evil, how can God justly punish them for being disobedient? Wasn’t God really the one at fault for putting the tree within reach of these innocents, just as I would be at fault if I put the trigger for a nuclear bomb within reach of an infant? Would anyone excuse my behavior (let alone continue to worship me as all-good) if the infant detonated the bomb and all I could say in my defense was that I’d warned the kid not to do that?
6.
Why did God forbid Adam to learn about good and evil? Why was abstract knowledge so bad for Adam to acquire? Who did it hurt, and who did Adam’s ignorance help? Why is it good for God to have such knowledge but not creatures allegedly made in His image? If God was going to judge Adam for anything, why didn’t He judge Adam on his ability to resist doing evil rather than his merely learning about evil? (Some ethicists, after all, say it’s hardly to our credit if we don’t do evil merely because we don’t know how or are unable to.) And why did God punish Adam so severely for his mere acquisition of knowledge and Cain so mildly for his anger, his jealousy, his lying, his smarting off to God, and his murder of his brother? The Bible seems to be condemning knowledge and excusing hate and violence in its first few pages. In this, alas, Genesis sets a pattern that seems to carry through clear to the end of the New Testament.
7.
Do you still believe that Adam somehow sinned and deserved the punishment he received? How can this be reconciled with 1 John 3:9, which says “No one born of God commits sin; for God’s nature abides in him, and he cannot sin because he is born of God”? If Adam can’t be said to have been born of God, it seems that no one can be – or that words are being used by the Bible in too sloppy a fashion for us to make sense of them. Which of course is just another way of saying the Bible is nonsense.
8.
Supposedly Adam and Eve gained knowledge of good and evil after they ate the forbidden fruit. Their “enlightenment,” however, seems to have been a fraud. Instead of instantly seeing that they had sinned and that confession and repentance are good (or that the serpent had hoodwinked them and deserved to be hunted down and brought to justice), they seize upon their nakedness as the big evil to be dealt with. Can anyone really make the case that it would be evil for a man and his wife to be naked in New Jersey, let alone Paradise? Does anyone really believe that nakedness in front of God is something evil and to be ashamed of when it was God who created us naked? It seems that trying to hide God’s handiwork with fig leaves would more reasonably be considered evil. It also seems logically impossible to hide one’s nakedness from an omniscient being no matter what one wears. Adam and Eve, however, clearly didn’t realize this impossibility – yet unless they realized it, it seems that they couldn’t have really gained the knowledge of good and evil the Bible claims they did. Either the Bible is wrong when it says they did indeed acquire this knowledge or it is wrong when it describes the actions they took after they acquired that knowledge.
9.
Supposedly we are all still being punished for the sin of Adam. Where’s the justice in that? We didn’t disobey – Adam did. We haven’t even been able to keep what his “crime” allegedly got him – knowledge of good and evil (the very definitions of which vary from person to person, from culture to culture, and over time). Even God seems to recognize the basic injustice in this, for in Ezekiel 18:20 He says, “The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son….” It seems that God’s “perfect” justice is perfectly arbitrary and varies over time, or the Bible has once again grossly misrepresented Him and ought to be rejected as a very unreliable guide to the ways of the divine (not to mention the ways of the scientist, the historian, and the logician).
10.
Supposedly Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden of Eden before they got around to eating of the tree of life next and thereby obtained immortality. If God can – by definition – do anything, however, why would their eating of this tree have been a problem? Couldn’t God just blot it out and expunge it from history? Couldn’t He at least have pumped out their stomachs? Why is He depicted as being so afraid of the combination of two mere humans and a tree? (True to His madness, He also fears that mere humans with a common language and a tower in Genesis 11 will become irreversibly all-powerful themselves if they aren’t immediately stopped.) Why did He put this tree in the Garden to begin with if He didn’t want them eating it? Why didn’t He even warn them against eating it when He warned them against eating the fruit of the other tree? Why didn’t He just remove this silly tree instead of his allegedly beloved Adam and Eve? And if He didn’t want humans to live forever, why does the Bible say that He sent His son to earth so that humans might enjoy eternal life?
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The next article in the “Bible & History” series has now been posted in the Knowledge Center. This one concerns Joshua’s conquest of Canaan following the 40 wandering years:
The events of the Exodus are not genuinely historical. The conquest narratives rely on the Exodus as its context. Without it, it doesn’t nearly make as much sense. So, we must ask once again to what extent are the events in Joshua based on factual historical memories?
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This is the second in a series of responses to a post by Arthenor’s Ramblings. Arthenor’s post gives the context for this discussion. Here I will be addressing his comments concerning the idea that an “atoning messiah” can be found in the Old Testament – therefore foreshadowing Jesus.
Arthenor writes:
The Old Testament does include passages that suggest the Messiah would atone for sins. I have already mentioned two of them. In Daniel 9:26
What exactly Jewish expectations were for their messiah (‘annointed one’) is in and of itself a good topic but one that I will not spend any time on here. Rather, let’s just note that Jewish messianic expectations, like religion and culture in general, evolved over the centuries. The book of Daniel in particular is a rather late composition relative to other prophetic works in the Old Testament:
Daniel is one of the few OT books that can be given a fairly firm date. In the form in which we have it (perhaps without the additions of 12:11, 12), the book must have been given its final form some time in the years 167-164 B.C. This dating is based upon two assumptions: first, that the authors lived at the later end of the historical surveys that characterize Daniel 7-12
Now let’s take a look at Daniel 9:26. The full context of this passage is actually a response (well, a prediction) by the angel Gabriel:
24 ‘Seventy weeks are decreed for your people and your holy city: to finish the transgression, to put an end to sin, and to atone for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal both vision and prophet, and to anoint a most holy place.* 25Know therefore and understand: from the time that the word went out to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until the time of an anointed prince, there shall be seven weeks; and for sixty-two weeks it shall be built again with streets and moat, but in a troubled time. 26After the sixty-two weeks, an anointed one shall be cut off and shall have nothing, and the troops of the prince who is to come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary. Its* end shall come with a flood, and to the end there shall be war. Desolations are decreed. 27He shall make a strong covenant with many for one week, and for half of the week he shall make sacrifice and offering cease; and in their place* shall be an abomination that desolates, until the decreed end is poured out upon the desolator.’
Gabriel here gives a rather specific time frame. In verse 25 he mentions a time when the word went out to rebuild Jerusalem. This was the Edict of Cyrus and was issued in 538 BCE. The New Oxford Annotated Bible
notes that the anointed one in this passage “is likely Joshua the high priest” while the anointed one who shall be cut off “may be Onias III” who was murdered in 171 BCE – just a few years before this was composed. Verse 26 then also mentions a prince who is to come, who “is Antiochus IV Epiphanes.” Antiochus IV Epiphanes profaned the Temple of Jerusalem in 167 BCE.
The author here is retroactively writing a prediction and putting it in the angel Gabriel’s mouth. However, when he does actually try to predict the future he is incorrect: “When the author of Daniel himself attempted to predict the future specifically, he, on the whole, proved to be incorrect. Antiochus did not die as he said nor did his kingdom come to a sudden end” (Understanding the Old Testament, p. 316).
The conclusion is simple. Daniel here is not writing about a future messiah, let alone one who would atone for the sins of his people. Rather, the author wrote about specific political and historical events that took place in his own lifetime.
The “suffering servant” of Isaiah 53, however, is a bit of a mystery. The language of atonement, at least, is clear and unmistakable – the “suffering servant,” for example, is described as bearing the diseases and sins of others. The idea of atonement, of course, is well grounded in the Jewish scriptures. The problem, again, is that the servant of Isaiah 53 is anonymous. The passages are in the form of a song and are not in any way associated with the Messiah or presented in a prophetic way (scholars generally agree that Isaiah 40-66 was not written by Isaiah but rather is a later addition).
Furthermore, the suffering servant in Isaiah may not even be a man. Isaiah 42:18-24, 44:1-2, and 49:3 all identify the servant as the Jewish people. Whatever the case may be, Isaiah 53 does not seem to warrant the stronger conclusion that this is evidence for some divine foreknowledge of Jesus or Christianity. One might even argue, persausively I think, that the Christian notion of a sacrificial savior is a natural extension of some of these common ancient near eastern motifs, such as the sacrificial lamb, atonement, and the suffering servent. Nobody, of course, is suggesting that Christianity rose out of a cultural vacuum. But nowhere do the Jewish scriptures predict in any miraculous sort of way a messiah who would die and rise again as a means of atonining for the sins of all of humanity.
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