A Servant is Not Above His Slave-Master (Paul Williams Imitates His "God")

Recently Paul Williams of the Muslim Debate Initiative, an implacable enemy of Christian "fundamentalists" and "fundamentalism," and in a spectacular display of bad scholarship, argued that the original Hebrew text of Psalm 22:16 did not say "they pierced." Apparently after being apprised of the truth, Paul decided he would delete the offending post. The problem is, he failed to inform his co-religionists about his horrendous gaffe, leaving them to labor under his egregious error and to potentially repeat it to others in the future. Unfortunately for Paul, who may now say after the fact that it only appeared to me that he ever wrote such a post, and that his "god" was the one who put the appearance of a bad argument on the MDI website, I saved a copy just in case. When interacting with those who follow a "god" who admits to being a colossal deceiver, a cosmic trickster that would make Loki blush, it pays to be prepared for such antics. As the Lord Jesus said: "Be wise as serpents, and as harmless as doves."

New post on Muslim Debate Initiative

Biblical ‘Prophesy’ of Jesus in Doubt by Paul Williams Yesterday was Easter Sunday and at Speakers Corner an enthusiastic Christian told me of the amazing prophesy to be found in Psalm 22 concerning Jesus’ death on the cross. He read the following to me from The King James Bible Psalm 22 16 For dogs have compassed me: the assembly of the wicked have inclosed me: they pierced my hands and my feet. My Christian friend drew my attention to the detailed prediction of verse 16 ‘they pierced my hands and my feet.’ This of course refers to Jesus’ crucifixion on the cross as told in the gospels. click pic I remarked that my Jewish Study Bible (published by Oxford University Press) has a different translation, which gives a rather different meaning. He looked at me very skeptically and said that “God’s Word was very clear in Psalm 22” and that I had not provided any proof of my claim. Of course I did not have The Jewish Study Bible with me at Speakers Corner. But I do now, and here is the translation of verse 16: Dogs surround me; a pack of evil ones closes in on me, like lions [they maul] my hands and feet I also checked a Christian translation of the Bible, the respected New Revised Standard Version, which renders the verse: For dogs are all around me; a company of evildoers encircles me. My hands and feet have shrivelled; So now we have three different translations of the same passage! But since the King James version was made over 400 years ago numerous manuscripts of the Hebrew bible have been discovered taking us ever closer to the original text. In a number of significant places our translations have been revised in light of these new discoveries, Psalm 22 being a good example. This has meant that a number of traditional proof texts employed by Christians as prophecies of Jesus are no longer credible. The traditional Christian translation of Isaiah 53 has also been called into question, but that is another story... Paul Williams | April 9, 2012 at 3:08 pm | Categories: articles by Paul Williams, The Bible | URL:http://wp.me/sKDXC-2150 Comment See all comments

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****Update**** In an attempt at damage control, Paul Williams has put the post back up, this time adding a couple of links, neither of which are at all helpful.

The first can be found here, and is supportive of what I wrote in my reply.

The second can be found here, and says nothing about the supporting evidence for the pre-Christian LXX reading found at Nahal Hever that goes clear back to the first century.

The other articles I linked to in my original post cover all other bases that Paul did not mention as of yet, but which he may try to latch onto in the future.

What a tangled web Paul weaves

When first he practices to deceive!