Another detail that may be disturbing to some fundamentalists is when the New Testament writers cite a prophecy that does not appear in modern Hebrew Bibles, or when they speak oracularly, but we seem to be missing details.
This article is taken from my book, When Humans Wrote Scripture.
One of the most important points of the gospels is that Jesus is the Messiah, and to prove this, they quote myriad passages from the Hebrew Bible. But one seems particularly odd, when Matthew 2:23 says that it was prophesied that Jesus would be a Nazarene, the term for someone from the town of Nazareth, Jesus’ home town. This term even came to be used for early followers of Christ.[1] All other quotes from Matthew are from well-known, canonical works. Why did Matthew think that a Nazarene prophecy was found in Scripture?
One explanation put forward is a description of Samson, [2] that he would be called a Nazarite, a word referring to the Nazarite vow, which scholars tell us has no etymological connection to the much later town of Nazareth.[3] Nor was Jesus ever said to be a Nazarite, although his cousin, John the Baptist, was one.[4] There is an intriguing argument that Samson was a Messianic figure, the explanation I’ll not go into here. Probably the most comforting explanation, at least to a fundamentalist, is that the name of the town derived from the Hebrew word neser, meaning branch; this is uncertain, but in such a case the name would in fact align with undeniably Messianic prophecies like Isaiah 14:19, which compare the seed of David to a branch.[5] There is another explanation that you don’t see often in the apologetic writings of fundamentalists: there is a reference to Galilee of the nations, where the people who walk in darkness have seen light, etc. etc., in Isaiah 9. Christians certainly claim this passage as about their Messiah. One might argue that Matthew had this in mind when he mentioned Nazareth, a town in Galilee.
Another interesting New Testament quote not found anywhere else is when Paul is said to cite a saying of Jesus, “it is more blessed to give than to receive.”[6] But who knows; maybe Jesus said it. Or maybe this is merely an example of paraphrase, or just interpretation of what Jesus taught more generally, which included a lot of giving of one’s self, even of one’s own life.
The Son Called out of Egypt
The New Testament writers often quote the Hebrew Bible to apply the prophetic message to the Messiah. However, many of these passages actually do not mention the Messiah specifically. See the appendix and chapter 8 for a brief discussion of Isaiah 53, one of the favorite Messianic prophecies for Christians, but which actually does not explicitly mention the Messiah. Another great example of vague or even contradictory context for the Messiah is Matthew’s reference to Jesus’ descent into—and return from—Egypt (2:15), and then ties it to a passage from Hosea 11:1; there’s just one issue: Hosea was talking about Israel, who are on several occasions called God’s “son”. It should also be noted that Matthew is the only biblical source that mentions Jesus’ family trip, causing many secular scholars to doubt its authenticity, as a story he made up to make prophecy fit better; we’ll pass over that question as a matter of faith for the moment. My point here is that western scholars can sometimes become just as laser focused on the context of a passage as fundamentalists, ignoring literary motifs that span the Scriptures: no biblical author wrote in a vacuum!
And one of the most important motifs of all Scripture is the redemption of God’s son/people, which stretches all the way back to the Torah, with the accounts of Abraham’s command to sacrifice Isaac in Genesis, the slaughter of the innocents by Pharoah when Moses was a baby (repeated in the New Testament with Herod and Jesus) and the Exodus, to which Hosea was referring, all the way to Israel’s fall to the Assyrians in the 8th century BCE and eventual future restoration, a prophecy to which Hosea was applying the Exodus story. The Exodus story, with the Passover slaughter of the firstborn, is clearly a riff on Abraham’s faith-test where he’s asked to slaughter his own “firstborn”,[7] and the following promise of multiplying his seed which would fill the whole Earth. The Law in fact tied the firstborn motif even to the sacrificial law of Israel in Exodus 13, before Sinai, telling them that God would accept animal sacrifice in place of their firstborn sons, and even required sacrifice for every firstborn animal; I would argue that the application of this principle to the Levites as a group that God sets apart (consecrates/makes holy) to himself is also key to understanding the theological point.[8]
Another clear and prolific motif of Hebrew scripture related to the redemption of God’s people/remnant is of course the Davidic Messiah, the “coming savior”, a prophecy that gave the Israelite’s hope even in their darkest times, when it seemed all the promises and even forgiveness of YHVH had been irrevocably lost.[9] And that motif is clearly tied to sonship of God![10] In fact, one could argue that the later prophets further linked the sonship of the Messiah to the people by the way the son was to be treated: with chastisement. “Chastised” was how the Israelites could have been described for virtually all of their history. It’s even possible that the story of the death of Bathsheba’s firstborn, and the subsequent son Solomon who would receive the covenant, was a riff on this motif of the firstborn who was to belong to (and be given to) God.[11] In fact, the New Testament writers, who did not invent this connection, understood it well, which is why we see, for instance, Luke tracing the Messiah’s lineage back to Adam, the son of God![12] This was the same lineage that produced the “children” of Israel, God’s chosen people, God’s offspring.
To say that Hosea only had in mind Israel as the son of God is to ignore virtually the whole Hebrew Bible from the moment that the Messiah is prefigured. And I think I’ve illustrated that all these motifs stretch back to the heart of the Torah: this is not merely a later Christian interpretation. For western readers to miss such motifs is understandable, since in the last century or so the push for universal literacy has only resulted in the widespread ability to read words, but not literature. For at least “semi-literarily literate” scholars who know such passages well to miss something so obvious seems a clear sign of bias. For more content, make sure to check out my book here: When Humans Wrote Scripture.
[1] Acts 24:5.
[2] The Gospel According to Matthew, by R.T. France.
[3] Cf. Judges 13:5. Tertullian (155-220 CE), however, curiously made both etymological connections. See Birkat haMinim: Jews and Christian in conflict in the ancient world, by Yaakov Yanki Teppler and Susan Weingarten, 2007, p.52.
[4] There is actually even ambiguity about this. A lifelong Nazarite, such as Samson and John the Baptist, was not a thing found in the Torah, which was only about the taking of a temporary vow (Numbers 6). And interestingly, John is actually not explicitly called a Nazarite in Scripture.
[5] Strong’s 5342.
[6] Acts 20:35
[7] The “first-born” is a very important related motif through all Scripture which begs more explanation, which I explore elsewhere. For Isaac was not the first to be born, any more than Jacob, Joseph, Ephraim, Perez…etc., all the way to David and Solomon. The pattern should be obvious, but is often missed. The connection is made by the New Testament writers to Jesus, but this is often missed even by theologians, when he is said to be the “only-begotten” in John 10. Yet these received the double portion/inheritance/blessing before an elder sibling. These were the “child” of promise, of blessing, of covenant, and in complete contradiction to the law!
[8] Numbers 3:12-13
[9] E.g., Zechariah 13:1; Amos 9:11; Hosea 3:5; Ezekiel 34:23, 24; 37:25; Daniel 7:27
[10] 2 Samuel 7:14
[11] I would also link the motif of Azazel to this account, which was not just found in the double goat and bird freeing/sacrifices (see Leviticus 16:5-10; 14:4-7, 49-53), but also to the stories of Joseph’s cellmates (Genesis 40), the Amnon/Tamar incident, Joab’s story of fratricide regarding that incident (2 Samuel 14), Cain and Abel, and of course Barabbas, whose name means “son of the father”! (Mark 15:7-15); note that in the last four examples the murderer is set free, just as the sins of Israel went with Azazel. So too would the ancients have recognized references to firstborn sacrifice as substitutionary, which the law states explicitly. They would not have blindly, like most modern Sunday school classes, read through the accounts, for example, that three of David’s sons were to die for the rightful son of David, the true prince of “peace” (for that is the meaning of “Solomon”) secured the throne and ostensibly ushered in the promised golden age, without catching all these details.
[12] Luke 3:38