Ash Wednesday and Lent

Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent, happens on Feb 18 this year. It is a church event that begins a forty-day season of penitence and fasting leading up to the celebration of Easter. On Ash Wednesday ashes are marked on worshipper's foreheads to symbolize they are beginning the Lenten journey. Lent (the word means Springtime) is one of those religious observances of the Christian Church worldwide that I did not experience in my youth.¹ Although some churches in the Anabaptist tradition do observe it,² the Baptist church of my youth did not (First Baptist Church, Greenville, Mississippi, 1940-52). On the other hand, the small Baptist church that I now attend (Grace Baptist, Gladstone, Missouri) does observe it—ashes and all.³

In the fourth century the church invented Lent institutionalizing it with prayer, fasting, and almsgiving as its basis and incorporating these religious acts into the Easter celebration of the resurrection of Jesus. Lent has been practiced as 40 days of self-denial, altruism, and spiritual renewal preceding Easter. The Lenten season is promoted as a time of religious renewal, incorporating, as it does, personal contemplation, simple living, and personal honesty. It begins on Ash Wednesday and extends 40 days to resurrection Sunday (this year April 5). The church modeled the 40-day period on Jesus' temptation by Satan in the Wilderness (Mark 1:12–13; compare Matt 4–11/Luke 4:1–13 from the Q tradition). Only Matthew describes it as a period of fasting, however. Luke says that Jesus did not eat during this period. Mark says nothing about food. The difference between dieting and fasting is that fasting is given a religious connotation.

The earliest date for the observance of Lent in Christianity is 325 CE, following the Council of Nicaea, although the custom of fasting in connection with Holy Week goes back to the second century.⁴ Thus, Lent, as such, was not a part of the religious practices of the earliest first-century Jesus-gatherings as reflected in the genuine Pauline letters, for example. Nevertheless, fasting and prayer as a religious exercise were part of the Israelite tradition and hence were practiced in Judea during the time of Jesus (Luke 2:37). In fact, "the practice of fasting is found in all religions" and was "spread across the whole of the ancient world."⁵

Matthew gives a litany of criticisms attributed to Jesus as to how some practiced praying and fasting in Matt 6:1–18. One of these criticisms can easily be applied to the modern Christian practice of Lent, specifically with respect to marking one's face with ashes to indicate that one is observing the Lenten practice of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving:

And whenever you fast do not look dismal, like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces so as to show others that they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, so that your fasting may be seen not by others but by your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you. (Matt 6:17–18 NRSV)

Do some make a parade of their almsgiving? Jesus criticized that practice, as well (Matt 6:1-4).⁶ It is a mystery to me why some churches continue the practice of Ash Wednesday and persist in its observance of ashes on the forehead in the light of these rather pertinent remarks attributed to Jesus.

Another aspect of Lent, mentioned earlier in this essay, is that of self-denial, likely derived from the idea of denying oneself food. The earliest Jesus-followers did practice a kind of self-denial, but it wasn't like the Lenten practice of denying oneself a few things one enjoys for a short period, like not drinking beer or not eating sweets during Lent, for example. Paul described his commitment to Christ as an all-consuming life-commitment; everything else by comparison he considered trash, loss, rubbish (Phil 3:7–11; Luke 9:23–24). Compared to Paul's idea of self-denial, the contemporary observance of Lent pales in comparison—the personal sacrifices are too little, the time frame too short.⁷

Charles W. Hedrick
Professor Emeritus
Missouri State University

¹en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lent

²https://www.britannica.com/topic/Anabaptists. Greenville First Baptist belonged to the Southern Baptist Convention.

³Grace Baptist Church belongs to the American Baptist Convention.

⁴https://groundworkonline.com/blog/a-short-version-of-the-long-history-of-lent

⁵J. Behm, "νῆστις" [nēstis, fasting], vol. 4.26 in G. Kittel, ed., Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (G. Bromiley, trans.; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1967).

⁶Hedrick, http://blog.charleshedrick.com/search?q=Alms

⁷This essay appeared first on March 24, 2025. It appears here again edited and expanded: http://blog.charleshedrick.com/search?q=Lent

Worship in the Ancient Christian Tradition

It has been common for Baptists to describe what the church does on Sunday mornings at the customary hour of eleven as "worship." The gathering of the church at this hour is referred to as the "morning worship service." Baptists regard this ritual as one hour in the week that the church formally and corporately revers or pays homage to the deity,¹ or as Gaines S. Dobbins, the imminent Baptist educator, said it is an hour the church recognizes the "worth-ship" of God. Be that as it may, whatever else this gathering is, it is clearly a Baptist ritual or rite. Ritual is defined as "any formal and customarily repeated act or series of acts." A rite is defined as "a prescribed form or manner governing the words or actions for a ceremony."² The word that describes such rituals in the New Testament is sebomai, which means the expressing in gestures, rites, or ceremonies an allegiance or devotion to deity; that is to say worship in a corporate sense.³

            In my experience virtually all protestant and catholic churches follow similar rituals (Quaker services, I have read, are more spontaneous⁴). Until recently the Baptist Church that I currently attend follows, in general, a basic ritual for Sunday morning worship that varies a bit depending on emphasis or the season. The following elements seem regularly standard, however:

Welcome; Call to worship; Hymn/Praise song; Opening prayer; Hymn/Praise song(s); Prayers of and for the people followed by the Lord's Prayer; Reading of the text for the day; Special Music; Preaching/Sermon/Lecture; Prayer; Song of Commitment/Dedication; Benediction, Postlude.

Ritualistic language introduces aspects of the various parts, particularly in the benediction. A short meditative video is generally used in various parts of the service.

Describing this Sunday morning ritual as "worship" led me to ponder two questions: (1) how does what Baptists do on Sunday morning compare to the earliest gatherings of Jesus followers? (2) how is it that corporate ritual can be construed as worship?

The early Jesus followers (not yet Christians) did gather together (1 Cor 11:17-33) for encouragement (Heb 10:25), to gather contributions for mission work (1 Cor 16:1-4) on the first day of the week (1 Cor 16:1-4; Acts 20:7). They also gathered to break bread (Acts 20:7; 1 Cor 11:17-22). Music, teaching, admonishing one another, and giving thanks to the Lord were also a part of their gatherings (Eph 5:19-20; Col 3:16). The only extended passage I know, describing a gathering of Jesus followers, is 1 Cor 14:1-40. This passage is unlike gatherings in the mainstream churches that emerged from the Protestant Reformation (Anabaptist, Anglicanism, Lutheran, Reformed, Catholic, Orthodox). It focuses on speaking in tongues, interpretation of tongues, and prophesying. None of which, in my experience, have been a part of Baptist gatherings for worship. Paul tried to order the confusion in the gathering with this comment: "When you come together, each one has a hymn, a lesson, a revelation, a tongue, or an interpretation. Let all things be done for edification" (1 Cor 14:26). Yet he concedes that prophecy and tongues should continue to be a part of the Corinthians' gatherings (1 Cor 14:39-40). But I do not find in any of the passages I mentioned that these early followers of Jesus described their gatherings as worship.⁵ The word worship is derived from Old English and Middle English rather than from Greek. In the writings of the earliest New Testament writer (Paul) five words have been translated as worship in modern translations: proskuneō (1 Cor 14:25); latreuō (has the sense of carrying out of religious duties of a cultic nature; Rom 1:9, 25; Phil 3:3); sēbazomai (Rom 1:25); latreia (Rom 12:1; 9:4); leitourgeia (2 Cor 9:12; Phil 2:17, 30). The lexicon Danker-Bauer translates only three of these words using the English word worship: proskuneō, sebazomai, and latreia. It appears to me that Paul uses two of these words to describe individual worshippers (1 Cor 14:25; Rom 12:1; 9:4). He uses latreia once (Rom 9:4) describing worship in a corporate sense when writing of the worship of the ancient Israelites (as does Heb 9:1).⁶ In Romans 12:1 he appears to address my question when he describes worship as an individual act rather than a corporate act:

I therefore appeal to you, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your reasonable worship (logikēn latreian).

            The heart of the issue seems to lie in the following question: are cultic acts to be considered worship or is worship only characterized by an inner attitude of awe? No doubt many Baptists on a Sunday morning only formally carry out cultic acts of a ritual nature, for who never dozes or finds their minds wandering during prayers or sermons. And if that is the case how can a corporate act be worship if all are not completely engaged?

Charles W. Hedrick
Professor Emeritus
Missouri State University

¹The deity that is the focus of the service is increasingly changing from God to Christ under the influence of the Trinitarian dogma, which is not reflected per se in the New Testament.

²Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary, s. v., ritual, rite.

³F. C. Danker and Walter Bauer, A Greek English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature (3rd ed.; Chicago and London: University of Chicago, 2000).

⁴https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meeting_for_worship#:~:text=A%20meet.ing%20for%20worship%20is,comparable%20to%20a%20church%20service.&text=Attenders%20are%20encouraged%20to%20speak,and%20beneficial%20to%20the%20meeting

⁵Except, perhaps, for Eph 5:19.

⁶It is worth mentioning that at least two of the prophets report that Yahweh was repulsed by the corporate worship of the ancient Israelites: Amos 5:21-24; Micah 6:6-8.

Did Jesus institute a Law?

In Baptist Bible study one Sunday Morning we stumbled across an unusual expression in Paul’s letter to the Galatians: “Bear one another’s burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ” (Gal 6:2 RSV). It is an unusual statement because Paul was of the opinion that “Christ is the end of the law”; under Christ people are justified by faith according to Paul (Rom 10:4). Did Jesus institute a law? Matthew quotes Jesus as saying that he had not come to abolish the law [the Mosaic covenant], but rather to fulfill it (Matt 5:17-18). Can that statement be read as suggesting a “Christian” law of some sort remaindered from the Mosaic Code?

According to the Baptist student quarterly, the “law of Christ” is found in a saying of Jesus in John 13:34: “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another." The writer said: “This law of love is the rule believers are to follow.” I raised my hand to suggest that John 13:34 could not be the “law” to which Paul referred. The saying has no parallels elsewhere and the Gospel of John was written at the end of the first century, while Paul lived in the middle first century. In any case Paul knew very little about the details of Jesus’ life, apart from a very few sayings and events that had already become liturgical by his day.

Paul claimed to be “under the law of Christ” (1 Cor 9:21), which Gordon Fee describes as an informal “Christian ethical imperative.” Nevertheless, (Fee adds) that does not mean followers of Jesus now have a new law to obey. According to Fee the expression “law of Christ” is roughly equivalent to the kind of informal ethical instructions Paul gave in Romans 12 and Gal 5-6.¹ Yet the use of the word “law” to describe an informal list of ethical behaviors does seem strange for a Paul who insisted that faith had replaced the law.

James also uses the word “law,” referring to the “royal law” (Jas 2:8), which he does not explain, except to say “If you really fulfill the royal law, “you shall love your neighbor as yourself” (RSV; Lev 19:18; Matt 22:39; Rom 12:8-10). In other words whatever the royal law is, the doing of it will include the loving of your neighbor. Or does James intend that the reader understand that the “royal law” is to be equated with Lev19:18? The royal law can be equated with the “perfect law,” that is to say, “the law of liberty” (Jas 1:22), under which people will be judged (Jas 2:12). The law of liberty is contrasted to the Mosaic covenant, which is a formal code (Jas 2:8-12). James is doubtless referring to this “law of liberty” when he calls for one to be a “doer of the law” (Jas 1:25). Are Paul and James referring to some kind of formal legal code in early Christianity?  That is likely not the case. In spite of the fact that Paul and James use the word “law” to describe certain prescribed Christian behaviors, there does not appear to be any such formal “law” preserved in the earliest canonical Christian texts. We modern readers are therefore left to ponder the unfortunate choice of legalistic language used by Paul and James.

One of the “Apostolic Fathers,” the Didache (dated 70-150), however, begins with a formal statement of acceptable Christian behavior called “The Way of Life.” The behaviors, while specific, are not described as a “code” or “law,” however. The following is a brief summary of the first two sections of the Way of Life in the Didache.

You shall:

Love God; love your neighbor as yourself; what you don’t want done to you, don’t do to another; bless those who curse you; pray for your enemies; fast for those who persecute you; love those who hate you; abstain from bodily and carnal lusts; if struck on the right cheek, turn the other; if pressed to go one mile, go two; if anyone takes your coat, give him your shirt; do not refuse what anyone will take from you; give to everyone who asks from you; let your alms sweat in your hand, until you know who you are giving them to.

You shall not:

Commit murder; commit adultery; commit fornication; use magic; use philtres [i.e., potions]; procure abortions; commit infanticide; covet your neighbor’s goods; commit perjury; bear false witness; speak evil; bear malice; be double-minded; be double-tongued; be covetous; commit extortion; be hypocritical; be malignant; be proud; make evil plans against a neighbor; hate anyone.

            The Way of Life in Didache (among the earliest parts of the Didache) suggests there is an element of legalism in early Christianity: here are certain acts that Christians do and others that they do not. The list finds a ready fit with the language of Paul and James. James was very outspoken that “faith by itself, if it have not works, is dead” (Jas 2:17), and what do you suppose Paul was thinking when he said that he was “under the law of Christ” (1 Cor 9:21). There are some modern Christian groups for whom this information would not be a surprise, but rest assured it does not play well among Baptists.

Charles W. Hedrick

Professor Emeritus

Missouri State University

¹Fee, First Epistle to the Corinthians (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1987), 430.

What lies behind Gospel Music?

As regular readers of this blog may have suspected, I am a recovering Southern Baptist; yet I still enjoy listening to gospel music. A great number of the older songs I learned by heart in my youth. It is not their words, however, that attract me today but rather the subliminal “message” behind the words—the existential attitude that evokes the words. Behind the song writer’s literary certainty and the singer's rapturous expressions, the gospel idiom, the pithy metaphors, vivid imagery, and sweeping idealistic visions of what lies beyond life in the world for the faithful, I am most struck by two real-world attitudes. On the one hand, the certainty masks the awful existential dread of oblivion that occasionally wells up in quiet moments for all of us; on the other, the music and its performance reflects a primal cry of hope. The songwriters and singers express confident hope that life is not an episode of three-score-and-ten years that ends in nothingness; rather the music holds forth the promise of a future on the other side of our terminal episodes.

            One can easily get lost in the emotional mythical expectations evoked by the words and miss the simple hope (nothing more or less) that lies behind the language of certainty. Behind the confident language of Zion lies a fragile ambiguous hope parading itself as confident expectation. The writers/singers may appear supremely confident in their expectations but hope reflects only uncertain prospects, and believing it so does not make it so!

Early Christian faith reflects this same dissonance between hope and confidence.

Paul: “We rejoice in our hope of sharing the glory of God” (Rom 5:2; see also Rom 8:24-25; 1 Thess 4:13-18; 5:8).

Acts: “Having a hope in God … that there will be a resurrection of both the just and the unjust” (Acts 24:15; 23:6).

Pauline School: “Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Col 1:27; 1:5); “In hope of eternal life which God, who never lies, promised” (Titus 1:2; 2:13; 3:7).

Others: “Make a defense… for the hope that is in you” (1 Pet 3:15); “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for” (Heb11:1).

Early Christian writers do not call it a “certain” hope. I found only a few modifiers describing the nature of hope in early Christian faith. Once it is called a “lively” hope (1 Pet 1:3), once it is called “a better hope” (Heb 7:19); and another word that is used to describe hope is “blessed” (Titus 2:13). Once hope is described as “a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul” (Heb 6:18-19). It seems that the early Christians were under no allusions about the substance of what their faith held out for them—it was merely hope: “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (Heb 11:1-2). Paul described the tenuous hope of faith in this way: “hope that is seen is not hope—for who hopes for what he sees”; we hope for what we do not see (Rom 8:24-25). In early Christian faith hope was therefore not equated with certainty—that is, hope was not equated with a “bird in the hand” but rather with the “two birds in the bush.”

            Paul described Abraham, the Patriarch, in the following way: in hope he believed against hope that in his old age he would become the father of many nations (Rom 4:18). The dictionary defines “hope against hope” as “hoping without any basis for expecting fulfillment.” That definition, it seems to me, best reflects the character of early Christian hope as a whole; it is also what lies behind gospel music. Hope is a primal cry of faith, reflecting the attitude: I trust God in spite of the obvious finality of death.

Charles W. Hedrick

Professor Emeritus

Missouri State University

Did John Baptize Jesus?

The clear consensus of contemporary scholarship is that the baptism of Jesus by John is historically certain!  The Jesus Seminar printed Mark 1:9 in dramatic red in The Acts of Jesus, with the comment that few Fellows of the Jesus Seminar doubted that John baptized Jesus.  Here are some comments by a few scholars expressing the confidence they feel in the baptism of Jesus by John as historical event: "historically certain" (Lars Hartman); "one should not doubt the baptism" (Dale Allison); "a fact that commands almost universal assent" (James Dunn); "one of the firmest elements of the Jesus story" (Craig Evans); "as historically certain as anything in the gospels" (Bart Ehrman); "almost beyond dispute" (E. P. Sanders); "a basic historical fact" (Gerd Theissen).  If you are interested in seeing the literature, I can send you the bibliographical data.

 

            Of course, not everyone agrees.  The baptism of Jesus by John is described as myth by Burton Mack and Martin Dibelius ("myth": stories about Gods in a time and place not recognizable as our own time; hence it is not critical history).  Rudolf Bultmann, probably the most influential New Testament scholar in the twentieth century, describes it as a Christian legend about Jesus that emerged in the later Hellenistic church ("a story about holy people and religious heroes intended to be read for inspiration, instruction, and spiritual edification"; hence it is not critical history).  One can understand their reluctance to regard the story as a historical event.  Mark 1:9-11 clearly has the trappings of myth and/or legend: Jesus saw the heavens split asunder, he saw the Spirit descending; and a voice came out of heaven addressing him, "you are my beloved son."  Was it a vision and only available to Jesus?  (Compare Matt 3:17 where the voice addresses the bystanders.)  Did such events actually occur?  In truth, these kinds of happenings are not part of our common everyday world.

            What is the evidence for John baptizing Jesus?  Those who regard the baptism as historically certain are most persuaded by the criterion of embarrassment, that is to say, since it would cause the church a great deal of embarrassment to admit that Jesus was once the disciple of John the Baptist, it is hardly something that the church would have invented.  Those who doubt that it is historically certain raise a number of objections to its historicity. The obvious mythical/legendary character of Mark 1:9-11 for one.  For another, the Baptism of Jesus appears indisputably in only one late source (i.e., after 70CE): Mark 1:9-11.  In Matthew John has discomfort with baptizing Jesus, and Matthew never in so many words describes John as baptizing Jesus (Matt 3:13-17); In Luke John is put in prison before Jesus is baptized (Luke 3:18-22), and the baptism is not described as a baptism by John; in the Gospel of John, the Baptist only observes a spirit baptism of Jesus (that is, it is not a water baptism, John 1:29-34).  The reluctance of Matthew, Luke and John to depict Jesus as being baptized by John upon the confession of his sins is seen as evidence for the criterion of embarrassment (Mark 1:4-5).  But that criterion works as easily for the church in the latter first century as it has been claimed for the early first century.

 

            There is no evidence, however, that Paul knew of the baptism of Jesus by John, and early Christian baptism is not linked to the baptism of Jesus.  The baptism of Jesus, according to Q scholars, is not found in Q (a sayings collection thought to have been used by Matthew and Mark as a source for their gospels), and Josephus does not know a tradition of John baptizing Jesus.  There is only one source in the latter half of the first century that attests to the event—Mark 1:9-11.

 

            Whence then comes the supreme confidence that contemporary scholars have that John's baptism of Jesus is historically certain?  Likely they must be assuming that an incipient oral pre-Pauline Palestinian tradition of Mark 1:9-11 must have existed in some form prior to 70CE.  That might possibly have been true, but there is no evidence of such a tradition, and hence such a "hail Mary" argument is not probable.

 

            Bultmann did not address whether or not a kernel of history lies behind the legend of Mark 1:9-11.  But in describing it as a Christian legend that arose in the Hellenistic church and ruling out any chance that the legend was already circulating in the Palestinian church Bultmann seems to have made a de facto decision, which is that the baptism of Jesus by John as Mark 1:9-11 presents it is clearly not historically certain—perhaps it never even happened.

 

What are your thoughts?

 

Charles W. Hedrick

Professor Emeritus

Missouri State University

Prophecy Fulfilled, or Simply Creative Reading?

Last Sunday morning in Baptist Bible study the lesson for the day was a part of John's account of the crucifixion.  In the student quarterly the lesson writer pointed out several "fulfilled prophecies" in John's crucifixion story.  A fulfilled prophecy is something a New Testament (NT) writer believed happened in order to fulfill a prediction by a Hebrew Bible/Old Testament (OT) writer.  In this case the writer of John believed that certain OT writers had "foretold" (predicted) that certain events would take place during the crucifixion of Jesus.  The "prophecies" are: Psalm 22:18 (John 19:24), Psalm 69:21 (John 19:28), Exodus 12:46/ Numbers 9:12 (John 19:36), Zechariah 12:10 (John 19:37).  The version of the Bible used by the writer of John is the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures (called the Septuagint).

            I checked the purported prophecies John identified in the OT, and surprisingly discovered there was no indication in the context that the OT writers were even aware of a future event—much less that what they wrote had to do with the crucifixion of Jesus.  Nevertheless John relates these statements to the OT with the formula "in order that the scriptures might be fulfilled…" or the like.  The specific "prophecies," which John cites, are neither marked out in the OT as prophecies nor is a crucifixion mentioned in connection with the statements.  There are even inconsistencies between the supposed prophecy and John's quoting of it: Psalm 22:18 mentions an outer garment, while John specifies an inner garment; Zechariah 12:10 reads, "they shall look upon me whom they mocked (or treated despitefully)," while John reads "they shall look upon him whom they pierced."

            The OT writers seem oblivious to the idea that their statements are to be applied to some distant future situation in the life of Jesus.  On objective grounds the statements in Hebrew Bible/OT do not describe events occurring in the future life of Jesus. John seems to have arbitrarily selected statements out of their context in the OT and applied them to the crucifixion story because they are similar in language to John's story (the synoptic accounts are different).  How can the similarity in language be explained?  Under the belief that the entire OT was a book of prophecy, John adapted his narrative of the crucifixion to fit the statements in the OT; or he searched out statements in OT having similar language to support his narrative; or John was using a traditional list of early Christian prophecies concerning the Christ from which he selected appropriate "prophecies."

            If any of these alternate explanations seems plausible, how then is it possible to claim the OT statements as deliberately intended prophecy on the part of the OT writer?  The writer of the Baptist quarterly had an answer for this question and explained Psalm 22:18 (John 19:24) as a prophecy this way:  The soldiers that divided up the garments of Christ were not aware they were fulfilling prophecy when they decided to cast lots for the inner garment of Jesus.  As John was writing his Gospel, however, John knew they were prophecies.  "The Spirit led John to include a reference to Psalm 22:18, where the Psalmist foretold these very events," says the Baptist lesson writer.  Thus, although the psalmist was apparently unaware that he was foretelling a future event, what he wrote becomes prophecy at a later time due to the "inspired" reading of the OT by John.  The lesson writer described the prophecy as a revelation to John, rather than a revelation to the OT writer.  Hence the "prophetic" statements only become prophecy after the crucifixion, when John wrote about it.

            Fulfilled prophecy is frequently used in contemporary conservative circles to demonstrate the inspiration of the Bible and the divinity of Jesus. The Baptist writer of last Sunday's lesson on the crucifixion, for example, argued that because of the fulfilled prophecies "we can be assured that He [Jesus] is the Savior and worthy of our devotion."  As early as the second century, Justin Martyr had argued that the fulfillment of prophecy proves that Jesus is "the first-born of the unbegotten God."

Apart from the assertion of John that they are prophecies, the OT statements used in the crucifixion story cannot be objectively demonstrated to have first occurred in the mind of the OT writer, for the OT writers do not identify their statements as prophetic utterances!  In order to see these passages as prophecy fulfilled one must have faith that the prophecy first occurs in John's mind by revelation, and John through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit is thereby enabled to see what is generally unavailable to others—perhaps not even the OT writer was aware that he had uttered a prophetic statement.  It appears to be simply a case of "creative reading" by John; that is to say, John reads prophecy back into a text where it never existed—except in John's mind.

An assertion whose proof is ultimately based on faith is not proven true by the belief of the one who makes the assertion; the faith statement only proves that one believes the assertion.  If other purported prophecies in OT fail to reflect the specific character of a deliberate prophecy, then the arguments that prophecy proves both the inspiration of the Bible and the divinity of Jesus are seriously undermined.  Similarity of language is not enough.

What are your thoughts?

Charles W. Hedrick

Professor Emeritus

Missouri State University