DID JESUS HAVE LEPROSY

DID JESUS HAVE LEPROSY?

Hugh Fogelman

Christians have a “Jesus-intoxicated mentality” planted in their head by years of brain-washing. This has produced a strange preconceived notion that Jesus is mentioned in the Hebrew bible. These people already know the events in the life of their Jesus, and will read anything, even the novel War and Peace, and using those preconceived notions will say; “lookie right here, it tells of Jesus.”

Accordingly, Christians use some isolated sentences found in Isaiah 53 as their so-called proof text that these are prophecies of Jesus’ death. Unfortunately, Christians read the Hebrew bible (they called it the Old Testament) from the outside in, instead of correctly reading it from the inside out. Why? Because their “Jesus-intoxicated mentality” tells them their Jesus is found in there.

The truth is, the Hebrew does not contain a single reference to the Christian dead man-god Jesus!

With this in mind, let us examine just one verse in Isaiah’s Chapter 53 to see if it applies to Jesus. Verse 4, in the King James Version of the Christian Bible says:

“Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows, yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God and afflicted.”

Smitten? What exactly does this mean? The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines “smitten” as the past participle of smite; which means to inflict a heavy blow on, with or as if with the hand, a tool, or a weapon. In other words, to bring great harm or suffering – to torture, afflict, blight, curse, excruciate, plague, rack, scourge, smite, strike and torment. Christians say, reading all this in English, this is what happened to their Jesus. But does smitten/smite mean the same in Hebrew, the language God used to teach Moses??

The Jewish people have always known that Isaiah 53 referred to the Israelites as a whole, in the singular sense – the Jewish nation as a singular word. Isaiah himself felt the same way and wrote the same way. Isaiah chapter 1 through 52 tells of all the troubles of Israel – not one Israeli, but the whole nation and its people. Isaiah chapter 54 through 66 also is about Israel as a whole. If you accept the Christian notion that Isaiah 53 is about Jesus, you must answer for yourself; “Why all of a sudden, out of the blue, did Isaiah offer a prediction about Jesus, of all people? Why not Mohammad?” If any prediction were to have been made, Isaiah would have prophesied about the Jewish people in the future, of their pains and torture, afflictions, blights, curses, scourges, and torments.

However, if you still do not see the illogical Christian mindset let us then take a different “spin” on this one verse―verse 4. You know what “smitten” means in English and Christians reading the King James Version in English understand Webster’s meaning of the word, but what does the original Hebrew say it means and how is it used? Could God’s Holy language have been misinterpreted by Christians to deliberately “place” Jesus in their version of the Hebrew Bible?

In verse 4, the Hebrew word “nagua” does indeed mean, “stricken.” However, whenever the word nagua is used in the Hebrew Bible it always refers to one who is stricken with disease, like in leprosy as seen in 2 Kings 15:5.

“And the LORD smote the king, so that he was a leper unto the day of his death, and dwelt in a several house. And Jotham the king's son was over the house, judging the people of the land.” (2 Kings 15:5)

It is clear; the Hebrew in this verse refers to being smitten with leprosy. Scholars of Hebrew note that “stricken” is the appropriate word for continuing the leprosy metaphor found in this chapter.

A man with this disease, a leper, suffers in pain and feels humiliation by sickness, hiding his face from people and feels despised and rejected. Go back to verse 3 and see it explained in detail ― this man stricken with leprosy: “He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; and we hid our faces from him; he was despised and we esteemed him not.” There is no more appropriate language to describe such a disease.

The “Jesus-intoxicated mentality” prevents Christians from using a clear mind and logic; therefore they can never conclude that Isaiah was talking about a disease? Isaiah was written in Hebrew not English! So now, Mr or Ms Christian, do you think Jesus had leprosy? The Christian knee-jerk answer is “of course not!” Then exactly whom was Isaiah talking about? Who had this awful disease?!

Remember, Isaiah starts out in chapter 1:1 “in the days of Uzziah.” Isaiah was a contemporary with King Uzziah and lived through the time of the king's death. Isaiah was well acquainted with Uzziah's experience and health problems (6:1). Reading all of Isaiah writings, you will find that King Uzziah had leprosy.

King Uzzziah was a good king to his people, but he allowed the practice of worshipping strange gods within the land. Not only that, he took it upon himself to enter the temple and assuming the priestly office of burning the sacred incense in the Temple. For all this, allowing his people to worship idols and the brazen intrusion into holy orders of the Temple, he was smitten by God with the dreaded disease of leprosy. And he remained a leper isolated from his people unto the day of his death, as told in 2 Kings 15:5. Upon reading this chapter and verse, you will notice the name of the king to be Azariah. However, in ll Chronicles 26:16-21 Azariah is called Uzziah, both being the same king.

The lesson Isaiah is putting before his people is, “here is your leprous king, who is in type suffering under God's hand for you, the backslidden servant nation of Israel” (Isaiah 53:6). “He shot up as a sapling” because due to his father's death in battle, Uzziah had to take the throne at the early age of 16. “He was taken away” (53:8) because of his affliction as a leper. In other words, Uzziah was taken away from the royal palace, his court and people, to spend his life in a house of isolation unto the day of his death and “was cut off out of the land of the living for the transgression of his people to whom the stroke was due.” And so on.

If, by chance, the Christian reader still feels that this one chapter ― 53 ―, out of the sixty-six by Isaiah, is not talking about the nation of Israel and is, instead, describing an individual ― a dead man-god; he is being dishonest. An honest person would have to admit, the truth, Isaiah 53 could not be about Jesus.

Of course, if one had never read the New Testament, it would be perfectly clear that Isaiah was writing about the Jewish people as a whole, as each verse tells of their suffering. When Isaiah writes in the singular, he is writing about the Jewish people as a single unit.

But if Christians read the Hebrew Bible from the outside in, instead of the inside out as intended by our Creator, they can see/invent anything they want (and they did with the early church fathers and copyists)

Little children may even see Harry Potter in the Hebrew Scriptures after seeing Harry Potter movies over and over and over again.

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