Why Do Christians Think the Psalms Are Prophetic?

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Secret Alias
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Re: Why Do Christians Think the Psalms Are Prophetic?

Post by Secret Alias »

I wasn't attacking your interpretation. I was arguing that they were narcissistic
“Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote
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rakovsky
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Re: Why Do Christians Think the Psalms Are Prophetic?

Post by rakovsky »

Psalm 22 contains a blessed prediction reminiscient of apocalyptic "messianic age" predictions after describing the suffering - and IMO killing - of the narrator: The parts I see as openly referring to Messianic Age characteristics are in bold:
25 My praise shall be of thee in the great congregation: I will pay my vows before them that fear him.

26 The meek shall eat and be satisfied: they shall praise the Lord that seek him: your heart shall live for ever.

27 All the ends of the world shall remember and turn unto the Lord: and all the kindreds of the nations shall worship before thee.

28 For the kingdom is the Lord's: and he is the governor among the nations.

29 All they that be fat upon earth shall eat and worship: all they that go down to the dust shall bow before him: and none can keep alive his own soul.

30 A seed shall serve him; it shall be accounted to the Lord for a generation.

31 They shall come, and shall declare his righteousness unto a people that shall be born, that he hath done this.
For example, the "living of the heart for ever" I think is not something that was just happening in c.1000 BC when the Psalm was penned, but rather it was making a prediction about the future too: that the heart would continue to live on indefinitely into the future.

My research on the prophecies of the Messiah's resurrection: http://rakovskii.livejournal.com
Secret Alias
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Re: Why Do Christians Think the Psalms Are Prophetic?

Post by Secret Alias »

Psalm 22 is a prayer for the sin offering and so - given the nature of sacrifice - an act in the present has presumed effect on future events.
“Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote
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neilgodfrey
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Re: Why Do Christians Think the Psalms Are Prophetic?

Post by neilgodfrey »

Secret Alias wrote: Mon Jul 10, 2017 6:09 am I wasn't attacking your interpretation. I was arguing that they were narcissistic
No we cannot say they were narcissistic. Every person is the centre of their own universe and in that sense the universe does revolve around each of us. Ditto for groups with whom persons identify. It can't be any other way or there could be no survival. It's how we start out as babies and that self-centred perspective never changes or we would cease to be functioning integrated personalities. What changes is our awareness of others with the same self-centred perspectives as ourselves and our ability to negotiate with them, to work with others for mutual benefits. We continue, inevitably, to see the world from our own point of view and from the perspectives of our own personal interests and belief systems. Even the philanthropist is acting from his personal worldview, fulfilling his own desires and following his own interests (e.g. helping the homeless) that he considers most important in his world.

That's just normal everyday human perspective; it's not narcissism.

The narcissist causes pain and headaches for everyone because he cannot appreciate sufficiently that others have their own self-centred and self-interested worlds just as he does.

On the other hand narcissism is really a matter of degree, some far more extreme than others. In that case we can say everyone is by nature narcissistic, some manage to embrace a worldview and ethic that turns their narcissism into periodic acts that benefit others. But if we go that route then the word in effect has no meaning at all.

But on further thoughts, maybe the biblical Pslamists were narcissists. They believed that only they, the students ("taliban" in Pashtu) of God, deserved to live and everyone else deserved to go to hell.
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Secret Alias
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Re: Why Do Christians Think the Psalms Are Prophetic?

Post by Secret Alias »

That's just normal everyday human perspective; it's not narcissism.
It is readily apparent that you are very tolerant of self-centered and self-motivated behavior. You are to be admired for the manner in which you doggedly chase your own agenda in ancient sources. However for those of us who perhaps naively think that it is possible and desirable to know what ancients thought and believed outside of any modern and thoroughly reactionary post-fundamentalist agenda it does seem comical the manner in which remarkably little thought was given by ancient exegetes to the original context of literary works.

It seems to be a remarkably simple process - pen is put to papyrus. You'd think that the place to start the process of analysis would be 'what was going through the author's mind, what was going on in the contemporary world to prompt' literary composition X? Instead - owing to what I call a narcissistic mindset the ancient exegete turns that obvious framework around and asks the question 'why was this written for me?' This would seem at least to me to be narcissistic. I know this kind of an inversion of priorities is the necessary starting point for those who feel prompted to spend every free hour of the day mining every 'mythicist' possibility out of these same ancient texts, allowing us, assisting us to know for certain that religion is a dishonest, narcissistic distraction from reality. Nevertheless for those of us who aren't as develop to understand that some kinds of narcissism inherent tolerable practices in the study of antiquity, it seemed an appropriate conclusion.
“Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote
Secret Alias
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Re: Why Do Christians Think the Psalms Are Prophetic?

Post by Secret Alias »

Here is another example of what I deem ancient narcissism from Inowlocki's Eusebius and the Jewish Authors: His citation technique in an apologetic context regarding what I would argue is the ancient abuse of literary sources:
The changes brought by an author to the cited passage vary substantially. They generally consist in the omission or addition of words, in grammatical changes, in the combination of citations, and in the modification of the primary meaning of the quotation. These changes may be deliberate, which means that they are made by the citing author specifically in order to appropriate the content of the citation.52 They may also be accidental. If deliberate, the changes result from the author’s wish to adjust the citation to his own purposes, to ‘modernize’ the stylistic expression of a more ancient writer, or to adapt the grammar of the cited text to that of the citing text. It may be noted that deliberate changes do not always stem from the citing author’s eagerness to tamper with the primary meaning of a passage, as modern scholars often suspect and harshly condemn.

A passage from Porphyry, cited in the Praeparatio, is particularly revealing. It shows the methodology applied to the cited text, even by an author who was eager to preserve the primary meaning of that cited text:
To such you will impart information without any reserve. For I myself call the gods to witness, that I have neither added, nor taken away from the meaning of the responses, except where I have corrected an erroneous phrase, or made a change for greater clearness, or completed the metre where defective, or struck out anything that did not conduce to the purpose; so that I have preserved the sense of what was spoken untouched, guarding against the impiety of such changes, rather than against the avenging justice that follows from the sacrilege.(De philosophia ex oraculis I, p.109-110 (Wolff) = PE IV. 7. 1).
This passage emphasizes the prominence of the meaning of the text over its phrasing: The nous is clearly opposed to the lexis.54 Porphyry claims not to have tampered with the noemata of the oracles but he does not claim that he has not changed the terms and expressions of the cited text.55 Yet it should be noted that the respect shown to the meaning of the oracles is due to their sacredness. Similar attitudes are also found among Jewish and Christian authors regarding the modification of the Scriptures. Such changes are even more harshly condemned in the Jewish and Christian traditions.56[1] This was not the case with secular texts, as can be seen from Porphyry’s use of citations in his De abstinentia.57 Porphyry was especially gifted in manipulating texts, although the concept of manipulation hardly applies to antiquity. At any rate, the neo-platonic philosopher was not the only one to do so. Plutarch, who is well known for his extensive use of quotations, does not hesitate to transform the passages he cites by omitting, adding or modifying terms or expressions occurring in the quotation. Not even Plato was spared by him.

However, it should be emphasized that our scholarly criteria of citation are not relevant to the practice of ancient authors. Purpose and methodology differ dramatically. Actually, that which we might consider falsification was viewed by ancient writers as a methodology in explicating the true, authentic meaning of a text. In a sense, in the ancient authors’ view, modifying the text cited was meant to express its essence more clearly.59

In addition to the distinction between sacred and secular texts, the treatment of prose citations differs from that of poetic citations. Indeed, it was more difficult to modify poetic texts because of the metric rules. Moreover, in many cases, the readership knew them by heart. This was especially the case with Homer. As Stanley has pointed out in a study on Paul,60 the status of Homeric poems in Hellenism was to some extent comparable to that of the Scriptures in Judaism and Christianity. Both texts constituted the most authoritative text. Homer had been critically edited in the Hellenistic period and this ‘vulgate’ was in general faithfully copied by second-century C.E. authors. This observation may probably also apply to Euripides’ and Sophocles’ tragedies.

However, the poetic text cited by the ancient authors is not always identical to that which has reached us through direct transmission, i.e., in manuscripts. Several explanations other than the responsibility of the citing authors may be suggested. Firstly, the authors often cited passages from memory and therefore made mistakes;61 secondly, in the case of Homeric quotations, the authors could use a text other than the Alexandrian ‘vulgate;’ thirdly, most authors excerpted passages from florilegia rather than from the original text;62 finally, some differences may be due to the corruptions to which medieval manuscripts were subject.

As for prose texts, they could be more easily modified thanks to the flexibility of their form. They could easily be summarized, paraphrased and transformed. It is worth noting that the faithfulness to the text also depends on the feelings of the quoting author towards the quoted author. An author such as Strabo, whose faithfulness to the Homeric text has been shown by Stanley, proves to be rather loose in his citations from Herodotus.63 Likewise, Plutarch quotes Herodotus faithfully only in half of the cases64 whereas it is well known that he cites Homer faithfully.

The different methodologies in modifying a text may be presented as follows:65 …
I think we both agree that this is the way literary activity was carried out in antiquity. We may differ on whether this is narcissistic or whether it is possible or even desirable for human beings to 'un-self' themselves before carrying out research or reaching conclusions from research.

I think again that we see this sort of manipulation of scriptural source material in the fusing together of prophetic passages in the gospel in early writers like Justin Martyr and later the reorganization of the primitive gospel(s) into the canonical four.
“Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote
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