Isaiah 40:3

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darinhouston
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Re: Isaiah 40:3

Post by darinhouston » Mon Mar 15, 2021 9:14 pm

Darrell wrote:
Mon Mar 15, 2021 12:46 pm
Greetings Darin,
If you'd like, I too will delete all my posts except the original and we can start again :)

Blessings - d
no need - I did go back and delete the quoted bit though.

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darinhouston
Posts: 3112
Joined: Tue Aug 26, 2008 7:45 am

Re: Isaiah 40:3

Post by darinhouston » Mon Mar 15, 2021 9:23 pm

Darrell wrote:
Mon Mar 15, 2021 4:54 pm
Regarding "fulfillment fallacy" and Isaiah 40:3

A Trinitarian or Modalist might proclaim "see this is proof!" while an Arian or Unitarian would of necessity declare "exegetical/ fulfillment fallacy".
It just depends on how it fits one's theological grid.

There is no doubt the prophecy was fulfilled but in what way? Is the focus / emphasis of the prophecy on the "voice crying" or "the One" coming?

John the Apostle has John the Baptist quoting Isaiah which begs the question did he quote the passage in Hebrew or in Greek/LXX.. personally I lean toward John quoting Isaiah in Hebrew which means he would have used YHWH (I doubt he used ădônây or hashêm because Isaiah didn't). On the other hand if he spoke in Greek he more than likely used κύριος.

Either way someone claiming to be "the voice crying" prophesied by Isaiah would definitely draw a crowd and get the attention of the religious leaders..because that would mean…. what?
I think that's right and it's sort of the point -- many if not most of these disputed texts (that aren't rife with translation or manuscript problems) depend greatly on the color of glasses you are wearing and some are frankly a challenge for either position. It's not at all different from many of the calvinist prooftext situations. When that happens, it usually suggests (to me anyway) that a doctrine shouldn't be built on them - no matter how many there are (and especially when the doctrine is an attempt not to understand them necessarily but to reconcile them).

In this case, it's entirely feasible that the "way for Yahweh" was in view here, but we just don't tend to think like ancient Hebrews. I think it's entirely possible that they had a number of concepts for how Yahweh might come, none of which would be literal coming and walking among them as a man. Sort of like "coming on the clouds" meant something to them - not that God literally was floating in the clouds when that type of language was used, but that it had a symbolic manner of coming (such as in judgment). Coming through a human messiah, perhaps, would have been consistent with that language even if they clearly had Yahweh in view. As an aside -- it's hard to know, but the lack of disputation among the early disciples on this subject who were strictly monotheistic (literally monotheistic, not the mysterious incoherent monotheism Trinitarians claim to have). Especially when councils formed to discuss things like changes to dietary laws and circumcision and that sort of thing. This is a large over-riding conceptual point for me in every one of these discussions, even though argument from silence is usually weak, for something like this -- if they REALLY had some idea of Jesus being the God of the OT or Yahweh himself, this would have been a huge issue.

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