 the writers of the Christian Bible face an uphill battle trying to prove that Jesus was the Messiah because he died without fulfilling any of the things that the real Messiah was supposed to accomplish. What they end up doing is telling the story of Jesus' life and then scouring the Hebrew Scriptures, trying to find sound bites and snippets, and then drawing connections between these little pieces from the Hebrew Scriptures back to the life of Jesus in order to claim that the Tanakh, the Hebrew Bible, anticipated the Christian story. That is basically the modus apparandi of Christianity going back to the writing and the composing of the Christian Bible. The problem is that when the original sources, the original sources of these citations from the Hebrew Bible, when they're checked and analyzed, it's quickly discovered that the passages are terribly mangled, misquoted, mistranslated, and quoted out of context. I'm going to share two examples. So the second chapter in the Gospel of Matthew tries to show several times in the chapter that Jesus' life was anticipated by the Jewish Bible and the Jewish Bible prophesied the things that would take place in the times of Jesus. So number one we're told that Jesus and his family had to flee Israel and go to Egypt when he was an infant because King Herod was gunning for him. And in order to prove that the Jewish Bible anticipated that the Messiah would have to go down to Egypt, Matthew quotes from the prophet Hosea chapter 11 verse 1. And this is what Matthew quotes. Matthew says, out of Egypt I called my son trying to create the impression that the prophet Hosea predicted the Messiah would be someone who had to go down to Egypt. Now there are several problems with this citation. Number one, it's supposed to prove that the Messiah would go down to Egypt. And yet the passage that Matthew quotes speaks about the God's son coming out of Egypt. That's the smallest problem. The bigger problem is that Matthew only quoted one half of the verse from Hosea. The verse actually begins by saying the following. When Israel was a youth, I loved him, and then goes on to say, and out of Egypt I called my son. So this verse and actually the entire chapter in Hosea is speaking about the history of Israel, God's chosen people. And the Bible refers to Israel as God's son. You shouldn't be shocked by that. In Exodus chapter 4 verse 22, God says, Beni bechari Yisrael, my son, my firstborn is Israel. And we know obviously that God did take his son, Israel, out of Egypt. So if we try to really understand what is the prophet Hosea actually speaking about, he's speaking about God taking his son, the people of Israel, out of Egypt. And when Matthew tries to use this verse by first chopping it in half, leaving off the embarrassing first part which makes it clear it's speaking about Israel and then trying to pass off the rest of the citation as a prophecy about Jesus. So Matthew's tactic is exposed. The second example from Matthew chapter 2 is when King Herod ends up allegedly killing all the Jewish boys from the age of two and below in Bethlehem and in all the surrounding cities. Now this entire story is not historical, but that's not our issue for tonight. In order to show how this event, this massacre of these babies was again predicted by the prophets of the Hebrew scripture, Matthew quotes Jeremiah chapter 31 verse 14 where it says, a voice was heard in Rama, weeping and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children, and she refused to be comforted because they are gone. So it does seem that something terrible happened to these children that Rachel is weeping for. But the passage in Jeremiah makes it very clear that she was not crying for children who were massacred because God tells her in the very next verse, God says to Rachel, restrain your voice from weeping and your eyes from tears, for there is reward for your accomplishment and they will return from the enemy's land. So what we see is that Rachel was weeping for Jewish children who were taken captive and sent into exile. She was not weeping for children who were murdered. Obviously the dead children are not going to come back to Israel. God tells her, your children that you're crying for that were taken into captivity, they're going to return to the Holy Land. So we see that Matthew took great liberties in trying to repeal to the prophets Hosea and Jeremiah as proof texts. Numerous Christian commentaries to the Bible admit that Matthew took these passages entirely out of context. It's not rocket science. You don't need to be a rabbi to see that Matthew quoted these passages out of context. There are many Christian commentaries that basically have to admit that that was the case. Actually, neither passage was a prophecy about the Messiah and the context of both passages makes it entirely clear that they have nothing to do with Jesus. However, some Christian apologists have sought to prop up these interpretive disasters by insisting that Matthew handled these passages in ways that are consistent with the nature of rabbinic interpretation at the time in the Midrashim, in the rabbinic Midrashim. Now, it's interesting that the Gospels and later Christian writers viciously attacked the Jewish sages and the rabbis for everything, but they were very not reluctant to trot out the rabbinic teachings when the going gets rough. Now, it's important to understand what Midrash is and why it's not really helpful to the Christian cause. When we study the Bible, the simplest way of understanding a text is called pshutoshal mikra, the pshat. The pshat means the simple, surface, usually literal, explicit meaning of what the text actually says and what the text actually means. When we study a passage, we ask the question, what was Moses or what was Jeremiah actually saying? What is the simple straightforward meaning of the text? What is Midrash? Midrash is not trying to teach us what the prophet actually meant. That's not the agenda of Midrash. That's the agenda of the people that try to explain the pshut. Midrash is basically a symbolic, allegorical, homiletic reading into a text for what it might be alluding to. So, for example, if you say that someone had 10 sheep, so there's no question about what it means. We can all see with our eyes what it's talking about. There are 10 sheep. But someone might say, oh, the 10 sheep, it's really, it's the 10 commandments. So obviously, 10 sheep are not 10 commandments. The person is saying that the 10 sheep symbolize somehow, they stand for, they allude to the 10 commandments. That's what we refer to as Midrash. So the problem is that what has probative value, meaning if you're trying to prove something, what are you able to prove it with? If you're trying to show someone that your understanding of the Bible is correct and that it proves something, you can only do that when you appeal to the pshutoshal mikra. You can only do that when you appeal to the actual simple plain meaning of the text, the pshut. The pshut where people don't generally speaking argue about what it means. And there, it's pretty much black and white. What you see is what you get. And you can prove, right? In the story I just told you how many animals were there. There are 10 animals and I've proven it. I don't want to get into the discussion of evaluating the relative quality of rabbinic Midrash versus Christian Midrash. I don't need to impugn or attack Christian Midrash. They're certainly entitled to engaging in that kind of interpretation. But one thing is clear, which is that Midrash is useless as a tool to prove anything. Christians cannot insist that anyone who is not already predisposed to their point of view should be persuaded by their arguments, by their appeal to Midrashic interpretations of what they claim the scripture is alluding to. Because when you're dealing in the realm of Midrash, you're dealing with very subjective, interpretive, non-literal, figurative speculation about what the text might be alluding to. And when it comes to this kind of reading of scripture, it's very wide open. On a Midrashic level, a text can almost mean anything. And the reality is that a text that can mean anything really means nothing when it comes to proving a point of view. So the Christian attempt to buttress and support the mangled readings of the Gospel writers by saying, well, Matthew was just engaging in Midrash. Fine. If it makes them happy, then Gozunter Haydn, as we say. But they can't say that a Jew should read our Bible. And if we only read our Bible with our eyes open and our hearts open, we should see that it clearly teaches about Jesus. No. It never teaches about Jesus clearly. It's only if you accept the subjective, interpretive, speculative interpretation on a Midrashic level of what Christian apologists say the text is alluding to.