Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

Jewish tradition also has ideas about the psalms being prophetic. Check out the medieval pesikta rabbati about the messiah son of david.

But the texts themselves aren't prophetic. Hard to argue they are about the distant future. Example of willful bad reading techniques

I think they were seen that way. It was a genre like the Greek oracles that were treated like a divine channeling, where some things could be about morals and other things could be "prefigurements" of future holy people. The Old Testament, and in particular David himself, claim that God's Spirit was on David's tongue or something like that.

I think there is some misunderstanding of what was meant by the term that we translate as "prophetic". (I once tried to address in some detail this misunderstanding in an earlier discussion.) Essentially a "prophet" was one who revealed the otherwise unknowable mind and will of God. That did not have to be limited to predictions of future events.

Midrashic techniques of interpretation (linking similar sounding words from diverse texts, etc) were one way that interpreters could discover the "true message" from God. The texts were not literally predicting the future. "Prophetic meanings" were drawn from them by "the spirit of understanding", we might say.

Allegorical interpretation was also commonly practised among Greeks in their interpretations of Homer and various myths of theirs. Philo and Paul likewise used allegory to find "prophetic" meaning in the Jewish Scriptures.

neilgodfrey wrote: ↑Sat Jul 08, 2017 3:25 pm I think there is some misunderstanding of what was meant by the term that we translate as "prophetic". (I once tried to address in some detail this misunderstanding in an earlier discussion.) Essentially a "prophet" was one who revealed the otherwise unknowable mind and will of God. That did not have to be limited to predictions of future events.

Exactly so. This is something that adherents to modern charismatic theology and Pentecostalism often realize, but the general public seems not to.

So to wit, it is not clear to me why the Psalms should be used to foretell the future or that David ever understood a descendant of his would be the messiah. It seems clear to me that the Psalms were set in the present not the distant future.

Ben C. Smith wrote: ↑Sat Jul 08, 2017 4:32 pm

neilgodfrey wrote: ↑Sat Jul 08, 2017 3:25 pmEssentially a "prophet" was one who revealed the otherwise unknowable mind and will of God. That did not have to be limited to predictions of future events.

Exactly so. This is something that adherents to modern charismatic theology and Pentecostalism often realize, but the general public seems not to.

Ditto for the non-Judean world. Homer, blind seers, the Delphic oracle -- they were also "prophets" by virtue of having access to divine inspiration, the Muses, Apollo's wisdom, etc. They knew the past (inaccessible to everyone else) as a result of revelation of the Muses; people consulted the oracles/"prophets" for advice on what course of action they should take in the here and now, of to learn who or what was responsible for some trouble they were facing.

Secret Alias wrote: ↑Sat Jul 08, 2017 4:53 pm So to wit, it is not clear to me why the Psalms should be used to foretell the future or that David ever understood a descendant of his would be the messiah. It seems clear to me that the Psalms were set in the present not the distant future.

Fulfilment is not prophetic fulfilment in the sense of X being predicted to happen in the future and then it does happen at the appointed time. Fulfilment of the scriptures is a realization of the full spiritual meaning of the scriptures. That's where analogy comes in. What did Homer or Moses really mean? Did God really care about oxen? Analogy was seen as the technique for a higher spiritual interpretation of the scriptures -- understanding their "true spiritual" meaning and "fulfilment".

The scriptures weren't predicting a future the way an astrologer or clairvoyant predicts an earthquake to happen on Christmas eve in 2017. The scriptures were read mantically, like tea-leaves, or sheep livers. That's where midrash comes in. Take a word here, find the same word in another passage, apply a bit of creative thinking and we have a "revelation" in Genesis that God told Abraham that his "seed" would be a son of David. There was no prediction, only creative revelation of the "true meanings" of the words in the mind of the interpreter.

Sarah and Isaac were not "prophecies" but they were shadow waiting to be understood "spiritually", by allegory -- as the "prophecy" of the New Covenant, according to Paul.

There was no "prophecy" that Jesus would be taken to Egypt, but the scripture "was fulfilled" when Jesus did go to Egypt and return again from there -- because that was the "spiritual fulfillment", the "true meaning" (by what we would call a simple allegorical reading).

Jesus "fulfilled the law" in the same way.

It seems to me that being a prophet has at least a little something to do with predicting future events (not to say that I think that the Psalms are prophetic), given Dt. 18:21-22.

You may say to yourselves, “How can we know when a message has not been spoken by the Lord?” If what a prophet proclaims in the name of the Lord does not take place or come true, that is a message the Lord has not spoken. That prophet has spoken presumptuously, so do not be alarmed.

But regarding the question of why do Christians think the Psalms are prophetic, the same can be asked of the Dead Sea Scrolls community given the Psalms Pesher, which sees Psalm 37 as a prediction of events that pertained to he community and the distant future, and the Damascus Document, which cites Ps. 94:21 as pertaining to the time of the community.

And Subramanian notes that:

The book of Psalms is represented [among the DSS] more than any other biblical book (36 copies), followed by Deuteronomy (29) and Isaiah (21). The large number of psalm manuscripts found at Qumran seems to suggest that the Qumran community used the Psalms for a variety of purposes: 'for worship, meditation, and proof texting' ... Here I will discuss psalm quotations that are explicitly used to interpret the life of the community, its beliefs and the events of the last days.

https://books.google.com/books?id=KgbUA ... cy&f=false

rakovsky wrote: ↑Sat Jul 08, 2017 2:25 pm I think they were seen that way. It was a genre like the Greek oracles that were treated like a divine channeling, where some things could be about morals and other things could be "prefigurements" of future holy people. The Old Testament, and in particular David himself, claim that God's Spirit was on David's tongue or something like that.

There are prophetic promises in the bible which create an expected event . This expected event is redemption .

In Judaism, in all its forms and manifestations, has always maintained a concept of redemption as an event that takes place publicly, on the stage of history and within the community. It is an occurrence that takes place in the visible world and which cannot be conceived apart from such a visible appearance.

Towards an understanding of the Messianic Idea in Judaism
Gershom Scholem

Christianity reinterpreted the promised redemption as an event in the invisible spiritual world .Christians have already been redeemed and need no longer wait. It is a very simple and pretty solution for those people who were expecting to be redeemed as promised .