Sooda wrote…….."Fiddling" with the gospels?
Matthew shaped the stories pertaining to Jesus to “show” that Jesus’ life was a fulfillment of the stories of Moses (see Exodus 1-20).
The Anointed……. Exodus 1: 20; (
So God was kind to the midwives and the people increased and became even more numerous.) Oh yes, I can see where that shows that Jesus’ life was a fulfillment of the stories of Moses
Sooda wrote……. According to Matthew, the family of his Jesus flees to Egypt in order to escape the wrath of Herod “in order to fulfill what was spoken by the Lord through the prophet, saying, ‘Out of Egypt I have called my Son'” (2:15).
The Anointed……. So it does, so it does. Matthew reveals that the wise men arrived at the palace of Herod the Great, early in 4 B, C., looking for the future King of Israel, two years after witnessing the heavenly sign that had heralded the birth of Jesus,
After leaving the palace of Herod, who had told them that they might find the child in Bethlehem of Judea, but seeing again in the north-east, the hairy star that had led them from Persia to Israel, they travelled in that direction until they saw the star Standing over a
HOUSE in the small zealot commune named Nazareth, with it’s tail streaming up into the heavens,
Entering the ‘
HOUSE’ in Nazareth (
Not the Manger in Bethlehem of Judea) the wise men paid homage to the child Jesus, That very same night, the wise men, who would presumably have travelled to Jerusalem across the Kings Highway, were warned in a dream not to reveal to Herod the child’s whereabouts, and they returned home by a different route from which they had come, which would, more than likely, have been up through the northern route of Damascus, and Joseph was also warned to get out of bed immediately and take the child and his mother and flee into Egypt.
Herod’s secret police had eyes and ears throughout the entire land, and when he realised that he had been tricked and the wise men were not going to return and reveal the child’s location as promised, he was furious and gave the order to kill all the male children in the district that Herod's spies had confirmed that the wise men with their entourage had travelled to, which was around Bethlehem of Galilee, who were two years and below according to the time that he had learned from the wise men about when they had first sighted the star that had heralded the birth of the promised king and savour.
See Matthew 2:7, Then Herod called the Magi secretly and found out from them the ‘EXACT’ time the star had appeared
And Matthew 2: 16. ‘When Herod realized that he had been outwitted by the Magi, he was furious, and he gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under, in accordance with the time he had learned from the Magi.’.
According to Josephus the historian, Sepphoris, which was only about 4 miles from Bethlehem of Galilee, and a few kilometres from Nazareth, had a population of around thirty thousand and he called it, "The Ornament of Galilee."
Around the time of Herod’s death in the spring of 4BC, just after he had ordered the slaughter of the innocents around the district of Bethlehem of Galilee, who were two years and below, according to the time that the wise men had seen the heavenly sign that had heralded the birth of Jesus in 6 B.C. there were riots among the peasants of the area in Galilee of which Sepphoris was the centre. Judas, the son of Hezekias attacked the arsenal of Herod in the city of Sepphoris in order to arm the peasants.
The Romans under Quintillius Varus of Syria, attacked and burnt the city, putting down the uprising in which many families died and others were taken prisoner and transported to Rome, where they were sold as slaves. But Joseph, with his wife and her child had escaped the slaughter by fleeing into Egypt.
After a failed suicide attempt, which I believe may have been an option given to him by Caesar Augustus, in the spring of 4 BC, Herod the Great died, then in the spring of 3 B.C., after the death of Herod his father, when Antipas returned from Rome where his father’s will had been ratified by Augustus, he chose and rebuilt the magnificent city of Sepphoris as his capital city for ruling over Galilee.
After the death of Herod the Great in 4 B.C., in that same year after spending a few months in Egypt, the Lord called his son out of Egypt.
Sooda wrote……. The quotation comes from the book of Hosea 11:1 and refers to the Exodus of the children of Israel from their bondage in Egypt. Has NOTHING to do with Jesus.
The Anointed…….. You can say that again, Hosea was referring to the exodus of the Shepherd kings from Egypt, who then turned their backs on God, which has nothing to do with the man Jesus who remained loyal to OUR heavenly Father even to his cruel death on the stake.
Sooda wrote……. Matthew’s target market was the Jewish readers. Herod is made into a Pharoah like ruler, Jesus’s baptism is like Moses crossing the Red Sea, the forty days of temptation are like the forty years the children of Israel wandered in the wilderness, and the sermon on the mount is similar to the law of Moses delivered on Mount Sinai.
The Anointed…….. Yep! Most of the OT was but a shadow of the future redemption of man through the Son that would be born to the Great androgynous body of mankind, who EVE has become, ‘The Son of Man’ who filled his chosen prophet with his spirit/words, and who ceased to be an individual entity, when he abandoned his obedient earthly host body on the cross, and released all the righteous spirits who had been gathered to him in his ascension to the throne of the Most High in the creation, whose graves were opened, and who, three days later, entered the city and showed themselves to many.
See Matthew 27: 51-53; “At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth shook, the rocks split 52and the tombs broke open. The bodies of many holy people who had died were raised to life. 53They came out of the tombs after Jesus' resurrection (Three days later) and went into the holy city and appeared to many people.
Sooda wrote…….. Jesus is portrayed by Matthew as the “new” Moses, come to set his people free from their bondage and give them new law and teachings. To present this picture of Jesus, Matthew had to colour the traditions accordingly. Not everything in his gospel is historical.
The Anointed…….. No, not everything in his gospel is historical, that is, according to the doubters of God’s word, such as yourself. But I see Jesus more as the new Joseph, who was sold for thirty coins, placed into an empty well where he remained in the bowels of the earth for three days and three nights before being sent into the land of First Born, where he would prepare a place for his brothers.