Shaun C. Kennedy - Author

One of my 2024 goals is to pull together my thoughts about why I think Matthew was written in Hebrew in hopes of trying to submit a paper to a scholarly journal in 2025. As I've been collecting my thoughts, there are side-points that keep coming up that don't really have any bearing on the original language of Matthew, but they're kind of important in their own right. One of these is the idea that Matthew misused the Old Testament.
The YouTube Channel What Your Pastor Didn't Tell You has been interviewing biblical scholar John Walton lately. I'm a big fan of Dr. Walton, and a little jealous that Zach Miller gets to interview him. That's the choices I made, though: I'm not set up to interview anyone because I'm generally not interested in interviewing people.

In a recent video, Dr. Walton discussed a little bit of what is going on with Matthew and Old Testament prophecy. He brings up that the futurist/skeptic understanding of a one-to-one correspondence between the event predicted and the event that happened isn't what's in the author's mind. They never really did get as far as saying what is in the author's mind, though.
One thing I'm going to put out right at the front is that there's a fair amount of discussion regarding this. If your pastor has told you that these fulfillments mean something in particular that's at odds with what I'm saying, it's not worth picking a fight over. If you find my explanation compelling and others in your church don't, just keep your head down. It's not worth losing friends over.

Another thing I need to say is that I once used the one-to-one correspondence understanding of fulfillment. I was raised in late twentieth century America. "Fulfill" is not a word that we use a lot in the here and now. I've never heard anyone say that they "fulfilled" a prediction. As someone not raised in church, the only reference I had to give me the usage were cartoons and sit-coms. It's not a surprise that I would have a wrong understanding of what it means to fulfill a text.

This was one of the problems that I had when I first started to examine the New Testament. Matthew has a lot of fulfilled Old Testament texts, and it's clear that he's not applying the grammatical-historical method to find these fulfillments. Many of them weren't even predictions in their own context. When I first looked into the text of the New Testament, this caused me to doubt the reliability of Matthew as a thinker. I still held it as a historical witness, but that's it. Then there's the quote wrongly attributed to Zachariah and the fact that the Hebrew original seemed to have been lost, and I was ready to put Matthew on the side as uninspired. When my prayers for guidance were answered by leading me to discover that the Hebrew text of Matthew might never have been lost, it caused me to reexamine everything else that I thought about Matthew.

That is probably the most important thing I have to say about seeking out the meaning of "fulfilled." There are a lot of people, like me, that have had an intuition that there's a problem with the understanding of "fulfilled" as one-to-one correspondence. For me, the deeper intuition was that a lost original text was a problem. I didn't just stop at the idea that there's a problem, though. I looked for the conversation about it among majority scholars, then minority scholars, and then went beyond them. Along the way, I learned things that were major challenges to my base understanding of scripture, inspiration, and preservation. None of these new things were controversial. I learned that I started with a naive understanding of these things, and the deeper understanding I grew into had much more support than I thought. So if you have an intuition about fulfillment, explore it. If you don't find what I say here compelling, keep exploring.

Coming back to the fact that exploring this issue caused me to rethink how I look at the history of the church and the relationship between the church and the Bible, it's definitely worth noting that the one-to-one correspondence understanding has been a dominant view in the church since very early on. In Justin the Martyr's dialog with Trypho, he repeatedly appeals to the virginity of Mary and the prophecy in Isaiah 7:14. The method that Justin used would be incompatible with what I've found. There is an idea floating in some circles that the first thought you have about what a Bible text means is what that text almost certainly means. There's another thought that the most common understanding of a text is what that text almost certainly means. I personally have never found these ideas to be helpful. Both of these need to be considered very deeply and heavily, but they're places to start your study, not where your study should end. It has been my experience that often the most nuanced examination of a topic is the more accurate. Not always, but often. And it's worth taking a moment to recognize the difference between nuance and complication. If you really feel that these are the problems that bother you the most, build a more nuanced case than any of those that say it's not a problem.

That's not really why you're here, though. You're here to get the answer to a pretty straightforward question: what does "fulfill" mean? I'm not the first one to notice that the Old Testament references in Matthew aren't strictly speaking predictions, and yet the idea of one-to-one correspondence is early and often in hermeneutics. This leads to a lot of speculation about what else "fulfill" could mean. That's the problem with language, though: any word "could" mean anything. So once I had the thought that I was approaching these sections wrongly, my quest was to find out what it does mean.

This is further complicated by the fact that there are at least a few places where the one-to-one correspondence of prediction to historical event does seem to be in view. For example, when describing his prediction of the fall of Jerusalem in Matthew 24:34. These are certainly the exception, but whatever I found had to be compatible with this. The Greek word is πληρόω and the Hebrew word is מָלָא. The most basic meaning of both of these words is to fill up. Like, they fill up the nets in Matthew 13:48. It's the same word. It can also be used to refer to running the course of time, like in Genesis 25:24 the time of the pregnancy is fulfilled when a woman gives birth, or in Genesis 50:3 when the mourning period is past.

Another thing that I found fascinating is that this word was never used for a prediction coming true in the Old Testament. In fact, the more common way to use "fulfill" in regard to God's words is to say that God has kept his promises. For example, 1 Kings 8:24 and and Psalm 20:5. I can easily see how that kind of "fulfillment" would morph into a correspondence between prediction and event, but that it very specifically didn't start there is interesting.

It's also interesting that some of the more obvious Old Testament predictions don't get mentioned in this way: the Protoevangelium in Genesis 3:15, for example. So instead of seeing these fulfilled passages as predictions, they're seen as something more akin to promises. The texts in question aren't always promises, though.

I think an example of what I think is going on might be helpful. When I was a kid, one of my favorite stories was The Three Little Pigs. When my wife and I were engaged and shopping for a house, there were a few houses on the list with brick portions. My Dad fully expected that to raise the status of those houses for me. It would have been predicted by my natural affinity for the story. Me buying a brick house would have been seen as an action filled with the story I enjoyed as a child.
Looking at fulfillment this way, a lot of the texts in the Gospels start to make much more sense. For example, in Matthew 2:15 Matthew quotes Hosea saying "Out of Egypt I have called my son." Hosea 11:1, if we apply the grammatical-historical method, is a reference to Israel leaving Egypt. However, if we think about fulfillment as events that feed on the emotion or structure of a text, this feels much closer.

There's more to this than just a theoretical understanding of the Gospel message, though. This isn't an apologetic to get the gospel authors "off the hook." If this were the only application, I'd just keep it to myself. There's something much deeper to this. This cuts exactly against the grain of the modern historical-grammatical method of hermeneutics. There is a certain value to the historical-grammatical method, and I wouldn't want to push against that unless I was offering something that I felt had equal or greater value.
When we see how Matthew used this passage from Hosea, we see that Matthew sees hope on Jesus's homecoming. The Exodus isn't just a moment in history. It's not just something that God did way back then way over there. It's something God is doing. It's who God is. So when I read about Moses being afraid to speak to Pharaoh, and someone else being chosen to be his voice, that's me and God. I don't speak well, my thoughts wander, and I'm not the one to stand up and say what I need to say. I've gotten very comfortable with the role of saying things that need to be said quietly to the people that can carry the message forward. When Elijah has to run away even after defending God and even after calling fire down from Heaven, I've seen that in people and had to take a step back and think whether this really is a person of God.

This has been the way that the scriptures have been approached most often through history and across continents. It wasn't until the enlightenment in the 1700's that people started looking for another way to interpret the scriptures. This might have had something to do with the advancement of physical sciences and an attempt to create the same kind of case for God and morality that we make for physical realities. I have always found it an interesting casual observation that the physical world is best described through mathematics and attempts to describe it poetically always fall short, but ethics is best described poetically and attempts to describe it mathematically always fall short. There's a certain mental rhyming between the Exodus and the Holy Family returning from Egypt. We should embrace that. I realize that it feels less certain than the way that some others try to approach the text, but as I've applied the text to my life this way it's surprised me how little controversy comes from this. There are vanishingly few cases where someone can honestly put themselves or those they interact with in both a heroic and a villainous role for the same set of actions. This is also why I don't have so much problem with the idea that the biblical authors played fast and loose with the historical details: I'm not primarily looking to them to tell me what happened, I'm primarily looking to them to tell me what I should do next. If they're willing to fudge the number of years someone lived or how far it is between cities or whatever to make that point better, that's the point I'm more interested in inspired scripture for.

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It's always interesting to see a chapter from a book expanded, filled in, and fully explored. There are some things about the way this particular expansion handled things that I'm not a fan of, but I appreciate the attempt at least.

Dracula is a very difficult character to "get right." Within the book, there are such conflicting and varied accounts of The Count that it's hard to know what to focus on. The whole time that Jonathan Harker is trapped at Castle Dracula, he's an elderly gentleman, polite and calm and reserved and projects himself as only concerned for the well-being of his guest. In London, he is a young, spry pl***oy aristocrat, seducing his way through the social elites. At night, as the subject of their hunts, he's a rabid beast. He is both intelligent and wise beyond understanding, and naive and unsure. Picking one moment as the center of the character's being is difficult.

This story focuses on the trip from Romania to England. Dracula is presented as an uncontrollable monster that initially intended to remain secure. When a box of his earth is broken, it frees him. Once free, he's unable to resist his base instincts to consume the crew. While this is definitely an interesting take on the events, it's not the impression that I got from the book. In the book, it definitely feels like Dracula has counted the crew, considered the time of the trip, and ration his stores to last until he could land on the English shore.
Another element of the book that I've never seen captured on screen is the idea that Dracula is a "child vampire." Not in the sense that he's particularly new, but especially in the sense that he's still learning his limitations and powers. One of my favorite scenes in the book is when Dracula learns that he's able to move his boxes of earth on his own. He had fifty boxes to move, and hired a small crew to move the first nine. Somewhere along the process, he tried lifting one side and discovered that he could. Van Helsing explains it like this:
Do you not see how, of late, this monster has been creeping into knowledge experimentally. How he has been making use of the zoöphagous patient to effect his entry into friend John’s home; for your Vampire, though in all afterwards he can come when and how he will, must at the first make entry only when asked thereto by an inmate. But these are not his most important experiments. Do we not see how at the first all these so great boxes were moved by others. He knew not then but that must be so. But all the time that so great child-brain of his was growing, and he began to consider whether he might not himself move the box. So he began to help; and then, when he found that this be all-right, he try to move them all alone. And so he progress, and he scatter these graves of him; and none but he know where they are hidden. He may have intend to bury them deep in the ground. So that he only use them in the night, or at such time as he can change his form, they do him equal well; and none may know these are his hiding-place!
I've always imagined Dracula hiring the first helper, then calling two people just laying around to help him, then when one of them tripped he reached out to steady the box out of instinct, and was surprised when it actually worked. Then he helped carry the next, then took one side of the next, and by the end of it might was lifting them and carrying them all on his own.

A series of questions come to mind: why did Dracula think that he would be unable to lift the dirt? Why didn't it ever occur to him to try lifting a box in Romania? Is there some sense in which he really couldn't lift the boxes? Like, did his strength disappear when he touched the earth within them directly? And at what point did he learn about his other powers?

I think it would have been an interesting movie if we had seen Dracula start the voyage unsure about how it would conclude. If he had no idea about his power to control mist and wind, and he was desperately trying to control himself and stay hidden as the crew slowly closed in on him. Then, in a flash, he realizes that he can control the wind, and then the crew is no longer necessary. He no longer needs the captain to get to London, he can get there all on his own.
What about you? Are there any movies that are "hidden scenes" from a book that you think could have or should have been handled differently?

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I never really got to know my paternal grandfather. It's okay, I ended up with two absolutely fantastic grandfathers on my mom's side as a result of my grandmother remarrying. I can't say that I missed my paternal grandfather. And by all accounts, there wasn't much to miss. I remember being in my early twenties, and an older gentleman was standing behind me in the checkout at the local Safeway. He heard the checker address me as "Mr. Kennedy," and asked if I knew "Old Tom." I almost told him that I didn't, until a flash reminded me that it was my grandfather. We talked for about five minutes outside the Safeway. He struggled not to speak ill of the dead. I wanted to tell him it was okay: there was very little he could tell me that would surprise me.

I only have two memories of him when he was alive. The first was an Independence Day celebration. I don't remember exactly how old I was. I'm pretty sure I was under seven. I was playing with a kid I had never met and would never see again at the local festivities. He had candy ci******es and bubblegum ci**rs. Both sides of my family were pretty down on to***co, and I had no idea why people would get that kind of candy for their kids. Still, it was candy, and I wasn't about to turn down candy. Then I noticed my father talking to someone. It looked deep and serious, the kind of conversation I knew better than to interrupt. A few minutes later, my dad came to me and introduced me very briefly to this man. He said it was my grandfather. I didn't want to challenge my dad in front of this stranger, but I knew this wasn't Grandpa Allen or Grandpa Francis. It wasn't my Great Grandpa Don, and Great Grandpa Clifton was dead. I wasn't sure who that left. When I asked my dad about it later, he explained that it was his father. That was the day that I realized that I had two grandfathers on my mom's side, and that this was a bit strange.

The other memory was when I was thirteen. We went to an old tractor show. My dad was beside himself looking at the old equipment. There was a blacksmith shop that kept me entertained most of the day, and a booth with a whole bunch of old McDonald's Happy Meal toys when the blacksmith took his breaks. Then my dad took me and my brother to meet one of the founders of the tractor show: his father, Tom Kennedy. We said hello, shook hands uncomfortably, then as soon as the stranger was making excuses to get out of there, I was eager to get back to the blacksmith shop.

The next fall, my grandfather was murdered. Any chance to get to know him was forever lost. I went through a brief period in my later twenties and early thirties that I wished I had access to him. I've struggled with emotional regulation my whole life. Tom Kennedy tore his family apart through his anger and drinking and getting into fights at bars. I wondered if he could give some insights that would help me. Then I discovered that I have a vitamin deficiency: 1500 mg of slow release niacin every day and I am a much more pleasant individual. My grandfather obviously never discovered that about himself, and there's no way to know if my problem was his problem. In either case, he probably had no wisdom to offer. Still, it would have been nice to hear that from the man himself, but I was robbed of that opportunity.

The man that killed my grandfather was tempted to fight the charges. The evidence was overwhelming, but what did he have to lose? Maybe his lawyer could find a technicality and get all the evidence thrown out. Then the prosecutor decided to go for the death penalty. That was when the plea bargaining began. Every time he's up for parole, my family gets a letter and is given a chance to contest it. Along with the letter from the prison, we also often get a letter from the man. I read the last one. He decided at the last minute not to seek parole. It was a change of heart based on a conversation with his minister.

My grandfather struggled to find peace in this life. I hope that he will find the peace in the next life that evaded him in this life. From the letter we got and what I've heard, the man that killed him has also struggled to find peace in this life. I similarly hope that he can find peace in the next life if he never finds it here. I think of myself as a hopeful universalist: there's no one actual person that you can point me to and I will say that I know for sure that I want them to end up in Hell for eternity. Even so, the scriptural and philosophical arguments in favor of Hell being necessary are compelling enough to me that I doubt Hell will actually be empty.
If my grandfather's murderer is going to find peace in this life, I'm glad he wasn't executed. He's dangerous, and I don't think we will ever have the kind of certainty it would take to release him into society. My grandfather wasn't his first violent act, and may not even have been his first murder. He's been denied parole a few times because he was involved in violence inside the prison that could have been fatal to others. It would take more than his say-so to convince me that he's all better and ready for society, and he's lost so much trust that it's even hard to find a safe way to test him to see if he's become trustworthy yet. Despite all that, if he can find peace in this life, I want that for him. It's better for all of society if we all remain open to helping each other find peace, truth, and community, no matter what they've done.
It's also worth thinking about all the people for whom new technology or procedures have ultimately proven to be innocent. In some cases, we've found this out before the ex*****on. In other cases, we don't find out until after they're dead.

Then there's Genesis 9:6 "Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made he man." (Corrected King James Version) The "for" in this is something I still believe very strongly: we are all made in the image of God. Yet there are interesting, compelling exceptions to this command. Cain killed his brother in cold blood out of jealousy, yet went free. (Genesis 4) Israel established cities of refuge for those who had committed manslaughter. (Numbers 35:22-28) So even in scripture, it's not as hard and fast as all that. God's heart seems bent towards reconciliation, even if there are practical concerns like the safety of the people and the attack on the image of God.

There's a point of difference between slaying and manslaughter. (Just to set a dichotomy.) When a manslaughterer kills another human, there's a sense in which the person is not the target, he's just collateral damage. The manslaughter was not the goal: it was criminally careless action or inaction that resulted in the death of another person. The example in Numbers 35:23 works well: someone is out laying stones for a building or road or whatever and toss some over a hill, then walk over and see that they've killed some guy that they've never met. Should he have checked to make sure there wasn't someone there before throwing rocks there? Absolutely. Did he wake up that morning saying, "I hope someone dies today?" Absolutely not.
When they slay someone, it's different. Then they really do wake up saying, "I hope this person dies today, and here's how I'm going to go about helping to ensure that this happens." Even within slaying someone, there are still two categories. There is what for these purposes, I will call "homicide" and "murder." These aren't used as legal terms, I just need words to make the distinctions I'm talking about. In a homicide, killing someone was the intent, but it's because they fail to see the image of God in them. In a murder, killing someone was the intent, and it's because they saw the image of God in them. For example, if someone was breaking into a home repeatedly, in order to protect their family and/or possession the homeowner might lay in wait and respond with deadly force. They see the intruder as dangerous, chaotic, and wrong. They don't want to kill another person, but this person is a threat. That's a homicide. It might be justified, or it might not, and we will come back to that.
In sharp contrast is the person who sees a debt collector coming. There's a lot to say about the culture of debt manufacturing as a means to power which will have to wait for another day, but laying all that to one side for now the debt collector either is or directly represents someone that helped at one point. The indebted needed them at one point. Now that it's time to pay back, the indebted wants to find a way out at any cost. They lay in wait and slay their debt collector. Even though this might be a moment of fear or anger analogous to the home invader, what is it that they fear? They fear someone who is trying to do right by their own family, someone who previously did right by the indebted, someone who seeks to be helped by someone they previously helped. What's more, the indebted doesn't act any differently when they are owed a debt. When they show up at a friend's doorstep and get turned away, they're just as quick to list off the dozens of times they've helped their friend and point out that it's time to give back. And if that friend doesn't, they break the friendship and walk away. And it's the right thing to do, because that friend is just using them. But now that it's revealed that they were just using their debt collector, they murder him.

Those of us that live in a post-industrial world have no reason to commit homicide unless we are under direct attack. Police exist for the express purpose of protecting us. (Among other things.) That is, unfortunately, why we need police. There are still people out there who lose sight of the fact that we are all made in God's image. A law without a punishment is really just a suggestion. The suggestion that they not break into their neighbor's house when they're cold, that they not take their neighbor's food when they're hungry, and that they not kill their neighbor when the neighbor tries to resist just isn't a compelling suggestion to some people. When you add, "Or you'll go to jail where you're locked down full time," it still isn't compelling to some people. And these people are a danger to their neighbors.

Have you ever wondered why we're able to afford police? It hasn't always been the case. In ancient times, only the fairly wealthy could afford to have guards for their lands and families. As societies would form, one thing that is pretty universal is that the more people you have the more excess time you have. This is straightforward algebra: if each farmer can produce enough food to feed three people in an average year and there are rolling famines every seven-ish years, then a society of three hundred needs pretty much everyone farming or the next famine will be really bad but a society of three thousand can afford to have a small cohort of military officers and administrators and entertainers dedicated to other things. The urban societies of ancient Egypt and Roman created police forces that were extensions of the military. They could be called into service when needed for either function.

Agricultural societies didn't have the spare manpower for these forces, though. If someone was going to be detained long term, it was at the personal expense of the one detaining them. And even the urban cultures didn't have the kind of leisure among the masses that we enjoy today. The vast majority of the pre-industrial workforce was engaged in food production or distribution. A person sitting in prison was both not producing anything, and consuming. Not only the person detained, but also the people detaining them. When a famine did hit it was less impactful on an urban society than an agricultural society, but only because they kept the vast majority of the population working most of the time.

In this kind of world, it's easy to see why the ancient world needed ex*****on. The ancients were facing a difficult choice. That meal that you feed to that murderer might be the meal you need when the next rolling famine comes along. The price of food is a matter of supply and demand, and we can kind of plot this in economic terms. When the famine hits, the price of food goes up. How steeply it goes up will depend on how much food is in the stores. In a pre-industrial society, there's maybe two years worth of stores. The price of food will climb very sharply. Feeding a non-productive murderer is going to cause that to climb even faster. They'll watch young children die because they run out of food in the stores. That store would have lasted longer if they just didn't feed so many murderers. They knew that there were going to be a small number of innocent people who ended up executed, but there were going to be a lot more innocent children that starve. That's why prisoners that could be rehabilitated in the ancient world were put to work by their jailers: as productive prisoners, there was less danger of them eating food that would later save another.

The industrial revolution changed everything, though. Food production started to employ so many fewer people that it disrupted the economics of the developing world for centuries. Some people think we're still trying to sort out what to do with the "excess population." On the one hand, now we can afford police. On the other hand, sometimes they're the problem rather than the solution. As much as we complain about the price of food at the grocery store, the number of people that are leaving their nine to five job to farm at home because it's less work for more production is vanishingly rare. Without getting into the discussion of how to fix it or who should fix it, starvation in the industrial world is the result of human factors, not rolling famines.

What that means (in hyperbolic terms) is that in the ancient world, feeding and housing the convicted but possibly innocent meant that the price of a meal's worth of vegetables would triple in price at the next rolling famine. Executing them meant that the price of those same vegetables only go up by half. In the modern industrial world, feeding and housing all of these potentially innocent victims causes our morning coffee to go up by ten cents.

I can respect the ancient emperor looking down at his people and saying, "I'm pretty sure he's guilty of murder, but I could be wrong. If I don't kill him and those like him, though, I could find myself watching children die in the next famine. One innocent might die today, but if I don't uphold these policies many innocents will die at the next famine. I wish it could be different." It's much harder to respect the modern voter that is saying, "I'm pretty sure most of the people this policy will kill are going to be innocent, but there are going to be a few innocent people that die for it. Unfortunately, the alternative is that I pay ten cents more for my morning coffee, so those innocent people are just going to have to accept that I'm sorry."

I would love to see someone that enjoys economics actually run the numbers for both the pre-industrial world and the modern world about how housing these people actually impacts our economy. For simplicity, ignore the legal, just stick to housing and food for the criminal and the guards. If we were to return to an attitude of either ex*****on or employment for all our criminals, what would that do to the economy? Let me know in the comments of my blog if you're aware of such an evaluation.

In the meantime, I'm going to continue to hope that our world can find better and better ways to help those who have been convicted. If they're innocent, I hope we can find them justice and set them free. If they're guilty, I hope we can help them to find peace and truth and stability in this life. If our efforts to that end fail, I hope they will find peace in the next world.

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To comment on this post, view it on my blog: https://shaunckennedy.wordpress.com/?p=1218

You can get more of my audio blog at https://youtube.com/

I also have books available on Amazon. If you like what I have to say, you can get more there. https://www.amazon.com/stores/Shaun%20C%20Kennedy/author/B07YBGLCH7

I also have merchandise on Zazzle related to my Corrected King James project. https://www.zazzle.com/store/correctedkingjames