Author Archives: Clarke Morledge

About Clarke Morledge

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Clarke Morledge -- Computer Network Engineer, College of William and Mary... I hiked the Mount of the Holy Cross, one of the famous Colorado Fourteeners, with some friends in July, 2012. My buddy, Mike Scott, snapped this photo of me on the summit.
April 4, 2025

Notes on Leviticus: By Michael Heiser. Part Two

By Clarke Morledge

A popular online video makes the rounds every now and then with a clip from The West Wing, a political drama television series broadcast from 1999 to 2006. It features a scene where the President of the United States, played by the actor Martin Sheen, has an interaction with either a Jewish or Christian call-in show host, with a PhD, where they have some back and forth regarding the interpretation of the Book of Leviticus, and a few other passages describing particulars of Old Testament Law.

The scene dramatizes a heightened conflict, concerning the instruction in Leviticus 18:22 prohibiting same-sex relations. The President challenges the doctor by quoting select verses, such as Exodus 35:2, which prescribes the death penalty for those who violate the Sabbath. Then there is Leviticus 11:7-8, which forbids an Israelite from touching the dead skin of a pig. Would someone playing football be required to wear gloves to avoid becoming unclean? What about Leviticus 19:19, which forbids planting two different kinds of crops within the same field, and wearing different kinds of fabric in their clothing?

The message of The West Wing video connects with many in our culture today, appealing to both non-believers and progressive Christians alike, who find the regulations described in the Book of Leviticus to be baffling, to say the least, if not overly harsh and rigid. At least on an emotional level, it is difficult to parse out why a prohibition against same-sex relations would be mixed in with odd requirements about not wearing two types of clothing (Leviticus 19:19). If historically-orthodox Christians seem so adamant about defending a definition of marriage restricted to one man and one woman for one lifetime, why is it that they seem so casual about wearing clothing made up of both cotton and polyester, when Leviticus addresses both subjects with disapproval?

Such a posture comes across to many critics today as needlessly judgmental, hypocritical, and not very loving. As a result, many progressive Christians (though not all) would rather lump the Levitical prohibition against same-sex acts in with instructions about not planting two different kinds of crops within the same field: Dismiss both of them!

The non-believer would go further and dismiss the whole Bible as a muddle of contradictions, an outdated moral system stuck in the Late Bronze age. Either way, the conclusion drawn by such critics and skeptics is the same: the regulations in Leviticus as a whole are a bunch of nonsense and no longer apply in today’s world. Get your morality from somewhere else other than Leviticus.

On the late Michael Heiser’s Naked Bible Podcast, this Old Testament scholar brings out important highlights, accessible to everyday Christians, who want to have a better grasp on Leviticus, one of the least studied, least understood, and least read books in the Old Testament.

 

Leviticus: An Outdated Relic from the Late Bronze Age?

Frankly, there are many conservative Christians, who while not being persuaded by such an impactful rhetorical argument, simply would not know how to respond to this kind of message. Disagreements between such progressive Christians and non-believers on the one side, and conservative and even moderate Christians on the other, are indeed very difficult to resolve. Is there any way to make sense of Leviticus? What would it have meant to an ancient Israelite many hundreds of years ago? Is there any kind of sensible application to make today for Christians? Or to put it bluntly: Are historically orthodox Christians really hopeless bigots?

I took the time to listen to Dr. Michael Heiser‘s Naked Bible Podcast series, covering the Book of Leviticus. I was surprised to learn that there are indeed ways in which scholars have been able to parse through such difficult texts, and make sense of them. Heiser’s teaching, where the transcripts of these podcasts have been put into book form, Notes on Leviticus: from the Naked Bible Podcast, while not a full-blown verse-by-verse analysis of every sentence in Leviticus, it nevertheless is an in-depth treatment of the Levitical system, exploring the logic of what is what in Leviticus, and what continues to be applicable today (and how) in a New Testament context, and what does not. While not every question I had in mind was answered, I gained a much better perspective as to how the Bible can be read within its historical, cultural context.

 

The Difference Between Ritual Impurity and Moral Impurity, in the Old Testament Jewish Mindset

In the previous post in this series, I reflected on Heiser’s teaching regarding “sacred space,” and the distinction between ritual impurity and moral impurity, despite the fact that both concepts of impurity often share the same language of “clean versus unclean.” Ritual impurities are simply things that happen in the normal course of life, and therefore, are not sinful, whereas moral impurities do qualify as sin, in the New Testament sense. The tabernacle/temple idea in Old Testament Judaism is about defining an area of “sacred space,” where God dwells. For someone to enter this “sacred space,” one needs to be fit to enter it, cleansed from both ritual and moral impurity.

One may easily see that the prohibition against same-sex relations is an example of a moral purity regulation as it is associated with the language of “abomination” (Leviticus 18:22). But it is difficult to understand how this relates to commands about mixtures in Leviticus 19:19, just one chapter later:

“You shall keep my statutes. You shall not let your cattle breed with a different kind. You shall not sow your field with two kinds of seed, nor shall you wear a garment of cloth made of two kinds of material.”

A similar passage is found in Deuteronomy 22:9-11. The New Testament is silent about the Leviticus regulations on mixtures. Some scholars argue that since the prohibition against same-sex relations is repeated in the New Testament (1 Cor 6:9-10, Romans 1:26-27), and that the commands against mixtures are not repeated in the New Testament, that the prohibition against same-sex relations is applicable for Christians today but that the commands against mixtures are not. While there is strength to this argument, it does not help us much in understanding why these commands are different from one another. If the commands against mixtures are not related to moral impurity, what about them makes them related to ritual impurity? What is the logic behind both of these regulations: the one concerning homosexual practice and the commands against mixtures?

With respect to homosexuality, it can be easily established that male same-sex relations can imply a role and power imbalance, where one sexual partner dominates and penetrates the other. Outside of ancient Israel, same-sex relations were allowed, with caveats. Heiser notes that same-sex relations were still looked down, but in general, they were not severely punished, in comparison with what is described in the Old Testament. Outside of Israel, homosexual rape was condemned in certain cultures. However, pederasty, where Greek adult men would have sexual relations with younger men, was used as a method of training in the art of war. In this context, homosexual activity was not condemned. Israel was the exception in that all same-sex relations were condemned (Heiser, p. 231ff).

In citing the Jewish Old Testament scholar, Jacob Milgrom, Heiser concludes that homosexual practice goes against the creation order, in that it removes the possibility for procreation. While procreation is not the sole purpose of sex, as texts like the Song of Solomon celebrate human sexuality without reference to procreation, homosexual practice takes the procreative act out of sexual expression. Since the God of Israel is a God of life, to deny procreation from an Old Testament standpoint runs against God’s purposes for human sexuality.

The omission of any reference to lesbianism in the Old Testament is curious. Nevertheless, Paul’s inclusion of a prohibition against lesbian sexual expression in Romans 1:26-27 shows a parallel to male-male sexual relations. As Heiser summarizes:

“These passages are not written so that space is devoted to being mean. They’re written to reinforce a worldview that elevated the production of and care for human life” (Heiser, p. 237).1

The commands which restrict mixtures in Leviticus,about wearing different types of clothing, planting different types of seed in a field, etc., are even more perplexing. Centuries later, in the time of David, the Bible mentions mules, which are bred with a mixture of horse and donkey (1 Kings 1:45-47). But the Bible never has anything negative to say about mules. So, how does a student of Scripture make sense of all of this? Thankfully, recent scholarship, particularly from the eminent Jewish scholar, Jacob Milgrom, which Michael Heiser relates to the reader/listener, can help to sort things out.

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March 21, 2025

Notes On Leviticus: By Michael Heiser, Part One

By Clarke Morledge

It is said that the Book of Leviticus is where Bible reading plans typically die. You start off reading Genesis and then Exodus, as they are filled with compelling narratives. True, reading the genealogies can be slow going and the precise details about the tabernacle in Exodus can drag along. But the next book in order, Leviticus, is where people often get stuck and give up: Page after page of offering procedures and bloody sacrifices with bulls and goats. Not only does it seem repetitive, it sounds downright gross to modern readers.

Let us be honest. Leviticus can be a real sleeper….. ZZZZZZZZZ……

I have read through Leviticus several times, but I must confess that I have tended to skim read it. As a Christian, it is very easy to be dismissive of Leviticus, with all of its gory details, and multiple uncomfortable references to blood and semen. After all, the atoning work of Jesus on the cross has made the Levitical sacrificial system unnecessary. Jesus took care of everything. Next topic, please!

On the late Michael Heiser’s Naked Bible Podcast, this Old Testament scholar brings out important highlights, accessible to everyday Christians, who want to have a better grasp on Leviticus, one of the least studied, least understood, and least read books in the Old Testament.

 

Diving Into Leviticus…. and Really Learning Something!

Unfortunately, this all too common attitude towards Leviticus robs us from having a better understanding as to what the Levitical system was all about, according to the late Dr. Michael Heiser, an evangelical Old Testament scholar who has been very popular on YouTube, who sadly died of cancer in 2023. For Michael Heiser, it is very tempting to simply read Leviticus through the New Testament lens of Jesus’ atoning work on the cross, and conclude that Leviticus has no more relevance for the New Testament Christian. This would be a mistake.

Michael Heiser, on the other hand, wants us to get the ancient Israelite way of thinking into our heads. By understanding what Leviticus meant in its original context, we get a better sense of how the death of Jesus on the cross actually works for the Christian believer. Early on in his Naked Bible Podcast series, Heiser did a detailed study of Leviticus where the book simply came alive to me for the first time (A YouTube audio version is found here, in three parts: #1, #2, #3). This Naked Bible Podcast book study was transcribed and released in book form as Notes on Leviticus: From the Naked Bible Podcast.

Wow. Was I missing a lot of powerful stuff when I basically did a skim read of Leviticus!!

There is so much here, that I added two additional blog posts (the second, and the third) to this current exploration of Leviticus, following Michael Heiser’s Notes on Leviticus: From the Naked Bible Podcast.

One mistake that Christians often make about Leviticus is in thinking that the Levitical system is all about the atonement for sin, for the ancient Israelites. Unfortunately, this assumption is simply not true. While there is quite a bit in Leviticus about atoning for sin, there are a lot of details about offerings and sacrifices that have nothing to do with dealing with sin.

 

Atonement: Clean Versus Unclean?

If you are a bit skeptical, as I was when I first read Heiser, then consider Leviticus 8:15. There we have the altar being cleansed and “atoned” for. But it would be really odd to conclude that the altar had somehow “sinned” and that this required the altar to be atoned for in some way. Human beings sin but inanimate objects do not.

Heiser observes that the Hebrew word for “atonement” has a broad range of possible meanings, but that in general, atonement had to do with “purging,” or “decontamination.” Sin can indeed contaminate something, but ritual impurity could also contaminate, creating a situation which required a purging and/or decontamination, without necessarily implying some moral quality to it. This explains why inanimate objects, like an altar, or even walls on a house becoming infected with some type of mold or mildew (see Leviticus 14:33-53), can become ritually unclean, thereby requiring atonement in order to decontaminate the object.

Another set of verses right next to one another illustrates how confusing this can be:

“You shall not approach a woman to uncover her nakedness while she is in her menstrual uncleanness. And you shall not lie sexually with your neighbor’s wife and so make yourself unclean with her” (Leviticus 18:19-20 ESV)

 

The second verse seems pretty straight forward in condemning adultery as sin. But what about the first verse? If a husband has sexual relations with his wife, while she is having her period, is this really a sin? Both verses talk about being “unclean.” So, what on earth is going on here?

 

Unlocking Leviticus: The Concept of Sacred Space

Heiser brings out the best of modern scholarship to observe that Leviticus makes an important distinction between moral purity and ritual purity. The former addresses what we would call “sin.” The latter deals with what an Israelite needed to do before entering “sacred space.” But the latter was not meant to deal with any particular sin, or sin in general. The tabernacle in the wilderness, and later with the temple in Jerusalem, was considered to be the sacred space where God dwells with his people. Because God was a holy God, it would be a dangerous affair to try to enter sacred space if one possessed ritual impurity.

This concept of “sacred space” can be a difficult idea to grasp for many modern, evangelically-minded Christians. The idea that one needs to be fit in order to enter sacred space saturates the thought world presented in the Book of Leviticus. You can get a sense of this in certain liturgical, historically-conscious Christian traditions, such as when one visits some of the great Christian cathedrals in Europe. The awe inspiring architecture of these majestic buildings, which rise above the neighboring landscape in many European towns and cities, is meant to draw a distinction between that which is common, normal everyday space, and the sacred space of entering a house of prayer and worship. Men are encouraged to take off their hats when entering a great Christian cathedral and women are discouraged from wearing skirts that are too short. Why? Because entering a worship area like this was designed to mirror what it might have been like for an Israelite to approach the sacred space of the tabernacle or the temple.

This is quite a different feel from entering many contemporary evangelical churches today, where people typically think of a church building as not much different from any other ordinary building, where people feel the casual freedom to bring their mugs of coffee into the worship room, something which still seems awkward to do when entering a great European church cathedral. Granted, things like whether or not to wear shorts to a church worship service are more about cultural concerns and not Scriptural concerns.

Still, having a sense of how we present ourselves in a worship setting can help the Christian to somehow imagine how it might have felt for Moses to approach the burning bush, where a voice beckons from the bush: “Moses… Do not come near; take your sandals off your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground” (Exodus 3:4-6). If someone can capture this idea of “sacred space” in their mind, it can greatly aid in one’s understanding of something so foreign as the Book of Leviticus.

Like the concept of “sacred space,” ritual impurity is a conceptually intricate category which seems very foreign to modern peoples today, having to do with such things as reproductive fluids, like blood, which symbolizes life. So if a woman gave birth to a child, she would become ritually impure. For another example, in certain cases if you touched a dead person, that would make you ritually impure. Back to Leviticus 18:19, a woman in menstruation, as explained in further detail in Leviticus 15:19-24 where there is a release of blood, is in a ritually impure condition. Because the Old Testament taught respect for life, you could not bring death into God’s sacred space. In all of these examples, Leviticus provides a way of cleansing so that a person can become pure again, in the ritual sense.

But what is important to emphasize is that ritual impurity per se has nothing to do with a person’s sin. Giving birth to a child (Leviticus 12:1-8), a menstrual cycle, or touching a dead person (Numbers 19:10-22) are simply things that are part of normal human experience. Furthermore, having a certain kind of skin disease (Leviticus 13:1-14:32) can also make someone ritually unclean, but having a skin disease does not necessarily imply sin. None of these events describe any particular sin committed by a person at all. Nevertheless, one can not enter sacred space where God dwells without becoming ritually clean.

The closest thing relevant to contemporary life might be the taboo against eating food inside a restroom. Even modern people think that such activity would be regarded as unclean. In my mind at least, that does sound a bit gross. Likewise, the Levitical system in ancient Israel had serious concerns about ritual uncleanliness when someone sought to enter God’s presence, his sacred space, in the tabernacle (or later on in the Jerusalem temple).

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March 7, 2025

Did Jesus Keep Kosher?

By Clarke Morledge

Did Jesus keep kosher? Did he hold to all of the food laws observed by orthodox Jews today, or did he use his authority to declare that kosher regulations were no longer binding on his followers?

I had not thought of this before, but it does raise a number of questions that most Christians (like myself) have never thought about. Those familiar with Acts 10:9-16 will know that after Jesus’ ascension, Peter received a vision instructing him that the Jewish food laws were no longer binding on followers of Jesus…. At least, that is the traditional view (More on that below).1

What is “kosher” about, anyway? In Judaism, the concept of kosher is known from the Hebrew term: kashrut. One “Judaism 101” website defines kosher like this:

Kashrut is the body of Jewish law dealing with what foods we can and cannot eat and how those foods must be prepared and eaten. “Kashrut” comes from the Hebrew root Kaf-Shin-Reish, meaning fit, proper or correct. It is the same root as the more commonly known word “kosher,” which describes food that meets these standards. The word “kosher” can also be used, and often is used, to describe ritual objects that are made in accordance with Jewish law and are fit for ritual use.

As a young Christian, with no Jewish background, I had been taught from Acts 10:9-16 to think it was okay now for a believer such as Peter to eat shellfish. I love shrimp, crab, lobster, and oysters, so I am glad that the New Testament teaches us that such food is permissible to eat! I say this a bit “tongue in cheek,” as the purpose of the Old Testament food regulations originally was less about prescribing a particular diet and more about reminding the Israelites that they are a separate people, called out by God to fulfill a particular purpose and mission.

If they had actually had something like a cheeseburger in the first century, would Jesus of Nazareth ever eaten one? Probably not. The Old Testament has three passages that teach that “You shall not boil a young goat in its mother’s milk,” the rationale for why even Orthodox Jews today do not eat cheeseburgers, the most common interpretation for these Jewish food regulations  (Exodus 23:19, Exodus 34:26; Deuteronomy 14:21).

 

So How Jewish Was Jesus…. Really?

Nevertheless, Peter’s story creates a problem. Many Christians assume that Jesus dismissed kosher rules during his earthly ministry. Many of us just assume that if they had cheeseburgers back then, Jesus probably would have eaten them, even with a slice of bacon on top! (Eating meat products with dairy products is against kosher, and anything from a pig is strictly off the kosher list). After all, Jesus preached against the legalism of the scribes and the Pharisees, and the food laws sure sound legalistic, right? But if this is the case, and Peter was on-board with Jesus’ program, why did Peter initially resist the voice of the vision, after Jesus’ ascension?:

13 And there came a voice to him: “Rise, Peter; kill and eat.” 14 But Peter said, “By no means, Lord; for I have never eaten anything that is common or unclean.”

Wait a second. If Peter had never deviated from kosher until after this post-ascension vision, then what did he do with this claim that Jesus himself did not keep kosher during his earthly ministry? Was he not paying any attention to Jesus when our Lord gave Peter the new dietary instructions during Christ’s earthly ministry?

Some might push back and say that even though Jesus had abrogated the kosher food regulations, that he himself still kept to kosher food practices, as he did not want to upset the apple cart too much and cause any of his Jewish disciples to freak out over any blatant disregard for the food laws. But then this raises another problem: For Jesus was well known for creating controversy, so it would be difficult to explain why Jesus would blast away at the Pharisees for their legalism regarding the Law of Moses, while conforming to a “legalistic” practice regarding the food laws himself.

Furthermore, it is quite clear from Galatians 1-2, particularly in Galatians 2:11-24, that the conflict the Judaizers had with Paul was partly over the kosher food laws, which typically kept Jews from having table fellowship with non-Jews (Gentiles).  Certain followers of Jesus insisted that Jewish believers in Jesus must continue to keep kosher, and not eat with Gentile believers in Jesus, well into the early church period. Where would these Judaizers get the idea that the kosher food regulations were still in force? They would have known this from either Jesus’ own example, or from what they had learned from Jesus’ earliest disciples.

Nevertheless, Paul was pretty annoyed with these Judaizers. Had they not heard of what Jesus said in Mark 7, long before Jesus’ crucifixion? Was this not being effectively taught among the earliest followers of Jesus?

In Mark 7, Jesus is challenging certain practices of the Pharisees, including how they interpreted the purity laws of the Old Testament. After having this confrontation with the Pharisees, we find a parenthetical statement, perhaps a commentary by Mark, summarizing Jesus’ teaching with respect to the cleanliness of food:

“(Thus he declared all foods clean.)” (Mark 7:19b)

At the surface, it would appear that Jesus is concluding that the kosher regulations are no longer applicable to his followers. This happens several years before Peter experiences his vision of reptiles, birds, and other forbidden foods being let down in front of him on a sheet, with a voice saying,  “Get up, Peter. Kill and eat” (Acts 10:13), some time after Jesus’ ascension. This interpretation of Mark 7 is commonly taught in many evangelical churches.

But is this the right way to interpret this passage? A Jewish scholar, Daniel Boyarin, at the University of California Berkeley, takes a contrarian view in his The Jewish Gospels: The Story of the Jewish Christ. Boyarin contends that what Jesus is attacking in this passage is not the Jewish kosher food laws per se, but rather how the Pharisees had interpreted the application of the food laws.

Pardon the pun, but there is a lot of food for thought here.

The Jewish Gospels: The Story of the Jewish Christ, by Jewish scholar Daniel Boyarin, helps us to better understand the New Testament’s development regarding the Jewish food laws. Under apostolic authority, Paul taught that Gentile Christians were not required to keep kosher as believers in Jesus. However, Jesus in his earthly ministry, kept kosher regarding the Jewish food laws. Veracity explores the controversy.

 

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February 25, 2025

RESCHEDULED: Evening with Frank Turek at William & Mary

By Clarke Morledge

The William & Mary Apologetics Club has rescheduled Frank Turek’s speaking engagement with Q&A for next Wednesday, March 5th, 7pm – 9pm, at the Commonwealth Auditorium at the Sadler Center, on the College of William & Mary campus.

The snowstorm last week forced the event originally scheduled for February 20 to be postponed.  For more information, check the William & Mary events calendar or read more about Frank Turek here.

The event is open to the public.

UPDATE Monday, March 3, 2025:

The livestream will be posted here:

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February 21, 2025

The Young Messiah…. (and the Problem with Old Testament Prophecies about Jesus)

By Clarke Morledge

A couple of years ago, I finally got to see a fascinating movie, The Young Messiah. I do not claim to be a film critic, but I would recommend this film and here I want to explain why.

As a tribute to the late Dr. Michael Heiser (who died about two years ago), some of Dr. Heiser’s work is explained well in The Young Messiah. It all has to do with how Old Testament prophecies about the coming of the Messiah, up to 300 of them according to a number of Christian apologists, actually work in the New Testament.

The Young Messiah is a 2016 film based on a novel by Anne Rice, Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt . Anne Rice was a complex person, by her own admission.  Anne Rice was a vampire novelist, who had grown up Roman Catholic and dropped out of Christianity just prior to her career as a novelist. Later on in life, she came back to the Christian faith, when she began writing several novels that attempted to portray unexplored moments in the life of Jesus. Later again, Anne Rice pulled back again from Christianity, and sadly died in 2021.

I was never much of a fan of vampire novels, but Anne Rice has been praised as being one among the finest American authors in recent memory, by Christian and non-Christian critic alike. In her book, for which The Young Messiah is based on, Anne Rice explores a possible historical narrative of what Jesus’ life might have looked like between the ages of 7 and 12. Sure, the storyline has some quirky parts to it, but it also teaches a valuable lesson as to how we can better understand Scripture, particularly with respect to Old Testament prophecy about the messiah.

Anne Rice’s 2006 novel about the childhood of Jesus, Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt, which was made into a movie about ten years ago, gives the viewer a good lesson about how biblical prophecy works in predicting the coming of the Messiah Jesus.

 

Vampire Gothic Novel Story Telling Meets the New Testament

The New Testament gives us very little detail about the early life of Jesus. Aside from the Virgin Birth stories in Luke and Matthew, we only know about a visit Jesus’ family took to Jerusalem, where he got separated as a boy from his parents. The vacuum of knowledge about those “lost” years in Egypt and later Nazareth created a variety of speculative interest in the early church, as Christians wondered about what happened in those pivotal years of Jesus’ upbringing. A film blogger at Patheos has written a screen guide for The Young Messiah, but I will try not to give out too many spoilers here in this blog post

In one 2nd-century apocryphal text, the so-called Infancy Gospel of Thomas, Jesus as a young boy, unaware of his supernatural powers, surprisingly kills two other boys who were tormenting him. Yikes! The bizarre and jolting weirdness of that story explains why you will not find the Infancy Gospel of Thomas in our New Testament!

But The Young Messiah plays off on that story, describing a time when Joseph, Mary, and young Jesus were hiding out in Egypt, presumably in the great Greek port city of Alexandria, waiting for events to calm down after King Herod’s death, before making safe passage to Nazareth. There in Alexandria, the movie tells about a young boy who had bullied Jesus. However, in this telling of the story, the bully accidentally died. The dead boy is then brought back to life.

Also in the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, Jesus turns some clay birds into living birds. The Young Messiah retells this story by suggesting that Jesus brought a dead bird back to life, as a basis for Jesus bringing the boy who bullied Jesus back to life. All of this is quite fanciful, but it helps to set up the main theme of the movie, a theological idea worth pondering.

The accidental death of the boy who bullied Jesus was prompted by a Satanic figure who appears on and off again throughout the film. This Satanic figure is invisible to everyone, except the boy Jesus. At such a young age, Jesus really does not know what to make of this Satanic figure, but neither does the Satanic figure understand what Jesus is really doing. The climax of the film is a retelling of when Jesus got separated from his parents, while on pilgrimage to the Temple in Jerusalem, as told in Luke 2:41-50.

The Satanic figure in the story is all along trying to get Jesus killed. At one point, the Satanic figure appears before Jesus and asks him a simple question: “Who are you?” (SPOILER ALERT: This clip can be slightly scary)

The astounding reality behind this, that the film and Anne Rice’s novel picks up on, is that the demonic powers never fully grasped what the mission of Jesus was all about. The demonic powers knew something about the promise of the coming Messiah, and they believed that for God to be defeated, they would have to put a stop to Jesus. But since they never really understood God’s plan in the first place, they inevitably fell into the trap laid out before them. For it was precisely the death of Jesus that turned out to be the undoing and defeat of the demonic powers.

So, why is this so important?

 

Why the “300 Prophecies” in the Old Testament about the Coming of the Messiah Jesus Are Not So Obvious

For many Christians, it is supposedly “obvious” as to how the Old Testament prophecies point to Jesus. Christian apologists regularly talk about how at least 300 prophecies from the Old Testament were fulfilled by Jesus in the New Testament. So far, so good. But you have to slow down a bit to consider what is really going on. Just this past Christmas, I read an article in a Christian magazine which greatly oversimplifies the actual evidence we have in Scripture:

If I could produce a book that was written around 963 AD, prophesying that President John F. Kennedy would be assassinated in a country called the United States of America on November 22, 1963, people would flock to order the book and read it in amazement. However, we as believers have something far better than that. We often think of Christmas and its biblical events, but did you know that there are over 300 prophecies in the Bible concerning the first coming of Jesus Christ? According to statisticians, the probability of just eight of those coming true is 1 in 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. Now imagine what the odds are for the other 292 Bible prophecies coming true. The odds are astronomical, but they all happened precisely as written. That is overwhelming proof that the Bible is correct and that Jesus Christ is truly the Messiah, our Lord and Savior. Sadly, not many are flocking to examine the Bible as to its message and fulfilled prophecies.

Just look at some of the prophecies that were very precise and pointed and notice the differences with what generalities the prognosticators of our day predict. The Bible is always correct, and if we think we have found an error, just wait – with more investigation – you will find out that you were wrong and that the Bible is correct.

The Christian ministry which published this article is well-meaning. They have been faithfully upholding the Gospel of Jesus for decades. However, the above paragraph is quite a bold claim, if you stop and think about it. Is the failure to recognize that the Old Testament predicts the coming of Jesus as the Messiah simply a matter of people not doing the math? Is it really that simple, that these prophecies “were very precise and pointed” as the article claims?

Are those who have questions about Old Testament prophecies somehow incompetent when it comes to statistical probabilities?

Unfortunately, the above narrative suggests that understanding messianic prophecy in the Bible is but a matter of mathematics, “precisely as written.” It conjures up an image of Jesus walking around Israel, with a clipboard in hand, checking off Old Testament prophecies as he fulfills them.

Jesus, born of a virgin, as foretold in Isaiah 7:14….. CHECK!

Jesus, born in Bethlehem, as foretold in Micah 5:2… CHECK!

Jesus, rides a donkey into Jerusalem as King, as foretold in Zechariah 9:9 …. CHECK!

Is this really how it all works?

While some of these 300 prophecies do fit this characterization, anyone who has studied just a handful of these other 300 (or 300 PLUS) prophecies in-depth, and who has actually tried to have a conversation with a knowledgeable skeptic about messianic prophecy, will realize that the above narrative sets up inappropriate expectations. In reality, the story is much more complicated than that, and it is far more interesting to understand why.

For example, did Jesus ride one or two donkeys into Jerusalem? It depends on which Gospel you read, and how you interpret Zechariah 9:9. Trying to figure this out “precisely as written” is not so easy, so I wrote a Veracity article about a year ago showing why the donkey-episode associated with Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem is more complex than what a casual read indicates.

For another example, a purely mathematical, “precisely as written” perspective that the Old Testament predicts that the Messiah would be called a Nazarene (see Matthew 2:23), does not work very well, since the Old Testament never mentions the name of the town Nazareth.  If you do not believe me, just google “is nazareth in the Old Testament,” and AI will give you the answer.

But before anyone goes “Oops!,” thinking that Matthew somehow made a mistake, just hang in there.

Instead, Matthew’s prophecy fulfillment results from a subtle combination of several texts together, perhaps Psalm 22:6–7 and Isaiah 53:3, suggesting that Nazareth had the reputation of being a despised town, or possibly highlighting the ambiguity of Isaiah 11:1, playing off the Hebrew word for “branch,” which has the same consonants as the word for “Nazareth.” The point is that the prediction associated with this prophecy is far from obvious. Instead, it is ambiguous. It takes some work to figure out what Matthew was getting at. Matthew has a more nuanced approach to biblical prophecy than what the “1 in 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000” statistical narrative has in mind.

Christians are often taught that it is a “no-brainer” to believe that the Suffering Servant of Isaiah 53 and the promised Messianic king of Daniel 9, for example, are one and the same. But I can remember the first time I talked with a Jewish friend of mine about this, and I was dumbfounded by the response. I was told that a knowledgeable Jewish person will know that the Suffering Servant of Isaiah 53 is NOT the Messiah. Rather, the Suffering Servant of Isaiah 53 is the nation of Israel.

For my Jewish friend, identifying the Suffering Servant of Isaiah 53 with the nation of Israel was obvious!!

For many Jews in Jesus day, the idea of a Messiah who would have suffered a brutal death on the cross would not have made any sense. In other words, a dead Messiah was no Messiah at all. The famous first century Jewish historian, Josephus, tells his readers about a dozen different Jewish leaders who were claimed to be the Messiah around the time of Jesus, many of whom were met with untimely and violent deaths.

The most controversial and last of these messianic claimants around the time of Jesus was Simon bar Kokhba, the Judean military leader who resisted the Romans in 132 C.E. until he himself was killed. This bloody tragedy ultimately led to the death of nearly a million Jews, as estimated by some historians, the largest genocide of Jews, with the exception of the Nazi holocaust during World War 2. After the failed Bar Kokhba revolt, the Romans banned the Jews from entering Jerusalem and forbade them from trying to rebuild their temple.

The fact that so many Jews missed out on understanding who Jesus really was does not mean that these Jews were “stupid,” mathematically challenged, or something silly and insensitive like that. Rather, they did not see the full picture because it had not yet been revealed. It was the post-Easter community of Jesus followers who finally put all of the pieces together, when they encountered the Risen Jesus, and these revelations were recorded in the New Testament.

Many, if not most of the prophecies of the Messiah found in the Old Testament are like this. The fullest understanding of those prophecies remained undisclosed before Jesus’ day. According to the late Dr. Michael Heiser, there was a good reason for this. Not only were so many of the Jews unclear about God’s plan and purpose for the Messiah, many of the demonic powers were also in the dark about God’s true intentions. For if the prophecies about Jesus were truly “obvious,” as many Christians have assumed, then the powers of darkness would have responded differently to the coming of the Messiah, through the person of Jesus.

In Dr. Michael Heiser’s short work, What Does God Want?, an introduction to the Gospel, Dr. Heiser points out a passage of the Bible that somehow I had completely missed for decades…. mainly because I was never taught about it. Paul spells it out to the Corinthians, what he and his fellow apostles were trying to do in their preaching about Jesus:

‘“But we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory. None of the rulers of this age understood this, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.‘ (1 Corinthians 2:7-8)

The “rulers of this age” is shorthand for the Apostle Paul to talk about the supernatural powers of this world, who were created by God. These supernatural beings were members of the Divine Council, as described in numerous places in the Old Testament, and yet there was a rebellion against God among some of these divine beings. Throughout the period of Old Testament Israel, culminating in the days of Jesus, these rebellious supernatural powers were intent on undermining God’s true purposes.

However, God was always one step ahead of his opponents. But to keep that one step ahead, God had to cloak the prophecies about Jesus underneath the ambiguity of the Hebrew text of Scripture. In other words, it was clear that God had a plan to defeat the powers of darkness, but God was not about giving away the secret of those plans to anybody ahead of the time of their fulfillment. This is why Paul says that the “rulers of this age” never understood what was really going on. For if they did, they never would have crucified Jesus.

Michael Heiser puts it like this:

The point is simple: Satan, demons, and the rival sons of God didn’t know what God’s plan was….

The Old Testament made it pretty clear that God still wanted a human family to rule with him just like the original idea of Eden. Satan and his buddies could have guessed Jesus was here to get that ball rolling. But they had no idea how. The logical thing in their view was to kill him. But that was the key to everything. God played them like fools (Heiser, What Does God Want, p. 36).

In their efforts to try to stop God’s plan of salvation, the evil powers of this world did the very things that set God’s plan into action, leading to the defeat of those evil powers.

Game. Set. Match.

…. And this explains why the Satanic figure in The Young Messiah, asked the young boy Jesus, “Who are you?”

So, if you ever get stuck trying to make sense of how the New Testament makes use of the Old Testament, please keep that in mind. For more on how all of this works, make it a point to pick up a copy of Dr. Michael Heiser’s book The Unseen Realm, or the less academic version of the version of the same, Supernatural.

It is regretful that Anne Rice’s experience in the church turned out to be so negative for her. But in many ways, this film, The Young Messiah, is a gift to those who wrestle with understanding the nature of biblical prophecy. Rice’s work framed a narrative which can help a student of the Bible to navigate through tough questions that many Christians rarely think deeply through.

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