Genesis 49:10 - Tribe of Judah

 There are two point to this claim that are both interesting.

The first is that there is no Messiah mentioned in the Torah. There are some who claim that this vague statement by a dying old man hints at a messiah with the word "Shilo" which is unique in its spelling. However, the text not only doesn't say that the messiah will come from the tribe of Judah, but the first king of Israel was from a different tribe altogether, thus nullifying such a failed prophecy.

The verse in question is:

[Jacob said] "The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor the ruler's staff from between his feet; Until shilo will come to him and he/it will take the nations for himself."

 The verse is certainly about a leadership role, and whatever shilo is, Judah was supposed to keep it for himself, which didn't happen when God chose Saul for His king.

The other issue, though, is that for someone to be a member of a tribe, one inherits that from his birth father. There's a story in the Torah of a Hebrew woman who had an Egyptian lover, who was killed. And she returned to the tribe of Dan, perhaps to her father's house. Her son was rebuffed by the tribe when he tried to set up his tent within their territorial camps, with "You aren't of this tribe, go away", and when the son went to Moses to complain, Moses asked God who replied, "They are correct in their thinking". So the son cursed God and then he was executed.

While it was common for a person to be inserted into a Genealogy within Roman society, to make an adopted son a real member of a specific family, that wasn't part of the Torah-based definition of a son, or descendent. In fact, there's no biblical Hebrew word for "adoption" in reference to a fatherless son.

For the most part, Women were different in that they took on the tribal affiliation of their husband because they were his acquired property. So a woman from the tribe of Dan who married a man from the tribe of Levi, she would become a Levite who could eat freely of holy portions of food like any Levite, and her children would be Levites, not because of her, but because of their father.

This association seems to be difficult for many apologists to grasp, or to accept, because it invalidates so many of Jesus' supposed associations through "fulfilled prophecies".

Style: nullified prophecy, and a prophecy not fulfilled by Jesus.

Meme: