לתשובת המינים

Joel 3:1-4 (2:28-32)

Who is the "Holy Spirit" Poured Out On?

Acts 2:17-21

"And it will happen after this that I will pour out My spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and daughters will prophesy; your elders dream [prophetic] dreams, and your young men will see visions. Even also upon the slaves and upon the maidservants in those days I will pour out My spirit. I will set wonders in the heavens and on earth: blood and fire and pillars of smoke; the sun will turn to darkness and the moon to blood [red]."

As we have discussed, the intent of this section has been to analyze the various verses from the Hebrew Bible (T'nakh) which have been cited by the Christian Bible to demonstrate that the Nazarene is the Messiah. There is, however, a degree of subjectivity on what to include. It is not uncommon for verses to be alluded to without being directly cited. Similarly, it can be questionable whether to include a citation under the category of supporting the claim that the Nazarene was the Messiah. One verse which made the cut when I made my original listing a very long time ago was Joel 2:28. Peter cites this verse in a speech reported in Acts 2, but rather than a direct application to the Nazarene Peter applied it to the events of the day he spoke, what came to be known as Pentecost (after the Greek term for the holiday of Shavuot when it occurred). Peter argues that rather than being intoxicated so early in the morning, the "unusual" behavior of the believers speaking in "tongues" was "spoken by the prophet Joel" (Acts 2:16)citing our verse.

The events of the day of "Pentecost" were clearly not an actual fulfillment of Joel's prophecy. Even where we to concede that the one hundred and some odd believers in the Nazarene were filled with God's spirit, this would hardly constitute "all flesh". Nothing unusual was reported about the sun or the moon. Joel's passage is speaking of an event to take place at the end of times, and whether Peter himself in the end times, time has shown that not to be the case.

Frequently expositors and commentators have used such expressions as "initial fulfillment,"partial fulfillment,"near fulfillment," or something comparable to speak of Peter's use of Joel 2:28-32 in his Acts 2 sermon. That language gives the wrong impression because the Old Testament passage did not predict what happened on the Day of Pentecost. What happened on that day was an ISPA of Joel 2, whose authority was the Acts passage, not the Joel passage. The phenomena on the Day of Pentecost were in no sense a fulfillment of Joel's prophecy, a prophecy that pertained to the people of Israel, not the church. The relevance of the happenings on that day were an ISPA of the Joel passage to an entirely different situation by Peter and Luke who recorded his words. It is misleading to call them in any sense a fulfillment of Joel.(Evangelical Hermeneutics: The New Versus the Old, page 263)

For Thomas the meaning of this verse given by Peter in Act is on the sole authority of Peter. Although not everyone is as ready deny the predictive power of T'nakh passages which are cited by the Christian Bible beyond their contextual meaning, no one else presents clear and consistent hermeneutical techniques to illustrate how a reader of those verses could have anticipated that they carried an additional prophetic meaning.

Nor is it particularly easy to designate this as a "typological fulfillment" because on the one hand it has not yet occurred, while typology generally makes analogies to historical events:"When the fulfillment passages are typological the New Testament writers present the typology...as a contermporary event analogous to God's past action."(Hermeneutics: Principles and Processes of Biblical Interpretation, page 51). Perhaps being predicted by a true prophet makes it as good as done, but it still remains a little backwards to suggest a typological fulfillment of an event yet future. Additionally "biblical typology, as evidenced in the writings of the New Testament, always involves a heightening of the type in the antitype." (Hank Hanagraaff, The Complete Bible Answer Book, page 531). While one could argue that this is a counter example to that assertion, there is a certain reasonableness to the expectation that a typological significance would be of more importance that the antitype (at least if we are to ascribe any predictive/anticipatory aspect to the antitype). In our example however, the events described (prophetically) by Joel represent a much more widespread outpouring of God's spirit than the one described/asserted by the book of Acts.

In Joel the spirit of God is poured out upon all flesh, not only one hundred and twenty believers in the Nazarene. The only witness we have to its alleged "fulfillment" is the Christian Bible, to argue in support of Christian belief based on "facts" known only to the Christian Bible is circular. Furthermore, according to the events recorded in Acts even those present were not aware of the true nature of the events. Belief in "Pentecost" is a consequence of belief in the Christian Bible, not support for it. Accordingly Joel's verses cannot serve as evidence to support the claim that the Nazarene is Messiah, even indirectly.