It’s literally a curse against their enemies. Like it’s that simple
Psalms are prayers to God, it’s all just a book of poetry. They’re not laws, they’re not divine commands, they’re literally just feelings in flowery words
The claim that the Psalms are just poetry is going to be heartbreaking to anyone that cites them as prophecies about Jesus. There are, what, 25 different ones that people use that way? It’s the number one source of old testament retroactive bias confirmation that JC is the Messiah. Take away their predictive qualities by making them just prayers said by people and you destroy the best resources for people to justify their core beliefs.
In your attempt to back up one claim you have destroyed 25 others and the bulk of the reason for the new testament. That was not a good move.
The claim that the Psalms are just poetry is going to be heartbreaking to anyone that cites them as prophecies about Jesus
That’s completely fine. The early Christians went to great lengths to try to say “this bit here was prophecy, and here’s how our guy fulfilled it”. But nobody was viewing those passages as prophecies before then. It was all marketing for a weird little offshoot of Judaism on the fringes of the Roman empire which happened to take off centuries later.
That’s what I said. It was hindsight bias turning things into prophecy and not “it’s all happening like the prophecies foretold.”. They were so desperate for prophecies they even made up ones that never existed, I’m looking at you Matthew 2:23.
But the commenter said that they had no value other than poetry. They are just the prayers of men. And in doing so they ignore the completely made up but very real world necessity of the Psalms to justify people’s belief. For without the believers’ ability to use them as prophecies, even if they weren’t intended as that, the majority of the case for JC as the Messiah vanishes.
I genuinely see no conflict here, and I think anyone who does has gotten caught up in a narrative. I don’t really care if their picture falls apart, if it requires magic than show me how it works…But I think the book explains it already, indirectly
What is prophecy?
The US empire will collapse, and its not going to be spectacular, it will happen with agonizing slowness.
In a moment of enlightenment, I knew it was true. I’m having a lot of trouble accepting it, even years later - I still wait for people to take to the streets and take back our democracy, or for a solar flare to give us a reset. I’d rather be there to rebuild or have AI or aliens save us… But that’s not going to happen, is it?
Deep down I understand it’s cope, intellectually I see how it fits together. I know how this plays out in general terms, but I haven’t seen the future. I’ve just seen the full picture for a moment
Is that a prophecy? Because what I felt at that understanding was despair and resignation. I could write a poem about it, does that make it a prophecy?
You lost the thread and went into beep boop beep territory there.
In short prophecy is anything that people look back on and say “wow, they sure got that right” even if they didn’t get it right and it wasn’t until after the fact that anyone even saw something as having predictive pretenses.
I tend to think there’s more to it… Otherwise it’s just a prediction. And I don’t know wtf beep boop beep territory is supposed to mean
I don’t think prophecy is that stupid though. It’s genuine wisdom, it is a thing that can be done, when you empty your mind of desire and for a moment you can understand how the systems you know play out. It’s floating the stone for society if you will, letting go of yourself long enough to use your understanding objectively
And that’s my whole fucking point. The poetry is irrelevant. David or whoever could’ve looked at Jewish history, which is all about wise men rallying the people, and determining “this too shall end” and predicting it would come in the form of another wise man
It’s literally a curse against their enemies. Like it’s that simple
Psalms are prayers to God, it’s all just a book of poetry. They’re not laws, they’re not divine commands, they’re literally just feelings in flowery words
The slavery stuff isn’t in Psalms. What apologetics have you memorized for those?
That it’s history and you’re not supposed to go back. You’re supposed to learn from it
I’m not telling anyone to obey the Bible, I’m just encouraging people to actually read it
The claim that the Psalms are just poetry is going to be heartbreaking to anyone that cites them as prophecies about Jesus. There are, what, 25 different ones that people use that way? It’s the number one source of old testament retroactive bias confirmation that JC is the Messiah. Take away their predictive qualities by making them just prayers said by people and you destroy the best resources for people to justify their core beliefs.
In your attempt to back up one claim you have destroyed 25 others and the bulk of the reason for the new testament. That was not a good move.
That’s completely fine. The early Christians went to great lengths to try to say “this bit here was prophecy, and here’s how our guy fulfilled it”. But nobody was viewing those passages as prophecies before then. It was all marketing for a weird little offshoot of Judaism on the fringes of the Roman empire which happened to take off centuries later.
That’s what I said. It was hindsight bias turning things into prophecy and not “it’s all happening like the prophecies foretold.”. They were so desperate for prophecies they even made up ones that never existed, I’m looking at you Matthew 2:23.
But the commenter said that they had no value other than poetry. They are just the prayers of men. And in doing so they ignore the completely made up but very real world necessity of the Psalms to justify people’s belief. For without the believers’ ability to use them as prophecies, even if they weren’t intended as that, the majority of the case for JC as the Messiah vanishes.
I genuinely see no conflict here, and I think anyone who does has gotten caught up in a narrative. I don’t really care if their picture falls apart, if it requires magic than show me how it works…But I think the book explains it already, indirectly
What is prophecy?
The US empire will collapse, and its not going to be spectacular, it will happen with agonizing slowness.
In a moment of enlightenment, I knew it was true. I’m having a lot of trouble accepting it, even years later - I still wait for people to take to the streets and take back our democracy, or for a solar flare to give us a reset. I’d rather be there to rebuild or have AI or aliens save us… But that’s not going to happen, is it?
Deep down I understand it’s cope, intellectually I see how it fits together. I know how this plays out in general terms, but I haven’t seen the future. I’ve just seen the full picture for a moment
Is that a prophecy? Because what I felt at that understanding was despair and resignation. I could write a poem about it, does that make it a prophecy?
Yeah we can tell.
You lost the thread and went into beep boop beep territory there.
In short prophecy is anything that people look back on and say “wow, they sure got that right” even if they didn’t get it right and it wasn’t until after the fact that anyone even saw something as having predictive pretenses.
I tend to think there’s more to it… Otherwise it’s just a prediction. And I don’t know wtf beep boop beep territory is supposed to mean
I don’t think prophecy is that stupid though. It’s genuine wisdom, it is a thing that can be done, when you empty your mind of desire and for a moment you can understand how the systems you know play out. It’s floating the stone for society if you will, letting go of yourself long enough to use your understanding objectively
And that’s my whole fucking point. The poetry is irrelevant. David or whoever could’ve looked at Jewish history, which is all about wise men rallying the people, and determining “this too shall end” and predicting it would come in the form of another wise man
Actually a very accurate description of any religious text
They’re also philosophy, cultural identity, sometimes even manifestos for a better society
But Psalms is literally just poetry. Like, even in context… It’s just a poetry collection