Was the Messiah's birth in Bethlehem fulfilled by David?

[Wertbag]

Hopefully those of you who are more deeply versed in the bible than myself can clarify a discussion I saw.  One person said they believed the prophecy of the Messiah being born in Bethlehem (Micah 5:2 "But you, Bethlehem, though you are too small to be among the army groups from Judah, from you will come one who will rule Israel for me.") was fulfilled by King David who was born there.  Micah's verse is believed to have been written ~700BC, while King David ruled ~1000BC, which would mean this wasn't even a prophecy so much as a report on a previous historical event.

Christians will point to later verses in the gospels saying Jesus was born there to fulfil prophecy, but the earliest gospels of Mark and John don't mention this at all, only referring to him being from Galilee or Nazareth.  So, while it seems clear this strange census to get Jesus to Bethlehem to fulfil a prophecy was later writers forcing the event to happen, if the line in Micah wasn't even meant as a prophecy then this whole attempt to move his birth is generating the prophecy not fulfilling it.

 

The Jewish commentators point to the lines that follow in Micah which say the new king was meant to cause Israel to have safety and he would bring peace, but Jesus was never a king and did not bring peace or safety, so the Jews say he failed.  However, if this verse was about King David, then potentially he did bring peace and safety, so perhaps he fits this verse better than later authors trying to make Jesus fit.

 

This all sounds quite plausible, but I have no idea if the timelines actually make this logical or if there are further verses that might conflict?

[pantheory]

Yes, mainstream Jews never accepted Jesus as the Messiah because many agnostic biblical scholars don't believe there ever was such a person as the Jesus of the Bible. King David, Solomon, Saul, Moses, etc. also have little or no historical or archaeological evidence that any of them ever existing outside the Bible other than scant inscriptions that have said Solomon street, and house of David -- in unspectacular surroundings of rubble centuries or millennia after their supposed existence.

 

IMO little or nothing in the bible can be trusted as being historical, especially not the life of Jesus. But of course some of the old testament is also based upon century and millennial old verbal stories like the stories of the life of Jesus. Many of these old testament stories were also passed down for countless generations before finally written down in Hebrew  by literate persons. To make the stories consistent as a whole I expect there were many talented rabbis, fiction writers and philosophers also that contributed to both testaments.

 

https://ehrmanblog.org/did-king-david-actually-exist/

 

 

[TABA]

In the very early stages of Christianity, as the first gospels were written, it was obviously considered important to establish continuity between Jesus and the God of the Old  Testament.  This reached its ultimate conclusion in the Gospel of John, where Jesus evolved from being a man, a prophet, favored and eventually elevated by God - as in the earliest writings - into being fully divine and having coexisted with God from the beginning.  
 

This was boosted by identifying Old Testament passages and repurposing them as pointers to Jesus.  Christians tend to think that passages from Isaiah, as well as this one from Micah, are clear and irrefutable pointers to Jesus.  They think this because they’ve been told so and because very few believers read these “prophetic” verses in the context of the books they appear in.  When that is done, these supposed no-brainers dissolve into mist.  
 

The incredible census story, by which Luke manipulates Jesus birth into happening in Bethlehem, given that there was at least a snippet of “prophesy” related to Bethlehem, is one of the more obvious and awkward attempts to retrofit Jesus onto the God of the Old Testament 

[mwc]

On 1/11/2024 at 6:08 PM, Wertbag said:

Hopefully those of you who are more deeply versed in the bible than myself can clarify a discussion I saw.  One person said they believed the prophecy of the Messiah being born in Bethlehem (Micah 5:2 "But you, Bethlehem, though you are too small to be among the army groups from Judah, from you will come one who will rule Israel for me.") was fulfilled by King David who was born there.  Micah's verse is believed to have been written ~700BC, while King David ruled ~1000BC, which would mean this wasn't even a prophecy so much as a report on a previous historical event.

Christians will point to later verses in the gospels saying Jesus was born there to fulfil prophecy, but the earliest gospels of Mark and John don't mention this at all, only referring to him being from Galilee or Nazareth.  So, while it seems clear this strange census to get Jesus to Bethlehem to fulfil a prophecy was later writers forcing the event to happen, if the line in Micah wasn't even meant as a prophecy then this whole attempt to move his birth is generating the prophecy not fulfilling it.

 

The Jewish commentators point to the lines that follow in Micah which say the new king was meant to cause Israel to have safety and he would bring peace, but Jesus was never a king and did not bring peace or safety, so the Jews say he failed.  However, if this verse was about King David, then potentially he did bring peace and safety, so perhaps he fits this verse better than later authors trying to make Jesus fit.

 

This all sounds quite plausible, but I have no idea if the timelines actually make this logical or if there are further verses that might conflict?

     The Jewish commentators that I've read actually say that Micah says that the messianic line is originated in Bethlehem with David but the messiah proper is not actually born there although it is possible for that to happen but Micah is not saying that.  Jews point to the proofs in Ezekiel as to what makes for a messiah and being born in a specific place is not one of them.

 

     Other verses are used to support jesus as the messiah (which I think we're largely familiar with) but Jews turn to the other prophecies that jesus didn't fulfill to argue he wasn't actually the messiah (the proofs in Ezekiel I mentioned such as bringing all the people to Israel, a new temple as well as everlasting peace).  The counter argument here is this will happen in the second coming, which gets countered further with the lack of support for this sort of messiah that dies and returns (or simply fulfills their tasks in more than one attempt).

 

     In short, the Jews deny jesus because he failed to do all the messianic tasks (without invoking the dubious "second coming" loophole).  Micah only allows for the origin of the messianic line, who is not David.  The messiah may or may not be born there but Micah doesn't speak to that and it really doesn't matter.

 

          mwc