Stephen van Eck is at it again. After hurling the elephant of Christianity getting Jewish opposition due to "pagan-derived innovations" (no specifics, and his Krishna attempt was a dismal failure), he refers to 1 Thess. 2:14-15: "For ye also have suffered like this of your countrymen, even as they have of the Jews; who both killed the Lord Jesus Christ and their own prophets, and have persecuted us; and they please not God, and are contrary to all men."

Van Eck weeps, "We can only imagine how such a harsh statement affected the mentality of Christendom and inspired, almost justified, the long history of Jewish oppression." I'm sure those who saw a need to baptize their predetermined hatred took whatever they needed -- for OT and NT -- to justify their stance, twisting it as they pleased; but they, like Van Eck, are simply ripping things from the social context as usual. As we showed here, 1 Thess. 2:14-16 is no more than the usual version of "playing the dozens" found in all ancient writers -- and which the Jews used even amongst themselves. Van Eck could use some training in ancient rhetoric before he hands out the hankies.

That said, what of the main charge -- that Paul's comment is "virtually unsupported by scriptural evidence"? I have a big fat answer to offer, but let me make some accessory points first: Van Eck asks a "uhhhhhhh" question of prophets who didn't leave writings: "Half have books in their names, some do not, and at least five (Shemiah, Iddo, Nathan, Gad, and Jehu) have books mentioned (2 Chron. 12:15; 1 Chron. 29:29; 20:34) that are nowhere to be found, a fact that raises the question of why God would allow his revelations to faithful prophets to vanish completely." News flash: Only 10% of the people at most in the ancient world could read and write; in ancient Israel and Judah and other ANE nations the figure was probably more like 2%. In all likelihood there were no writings to vanish, and the prophetic messages were transmitted orally -- and if we let that vanish, that's our problem, not God's. But now as to killing prophets, Van Eck can apparently find only deaths by natural causes (Moses), bodily ascension (Elijah), the killing of false prophets, and three "true" prophets: John the Baptist, Balaam, and Urijah, and none of these were killed by the Jewish establishment. The only kills he credits thusly are the unnumbered prophets in 1 Kings 19:10, 14. Thus Van Eck romps, "In the final analysis, there is insufficient basis to substantiate the charge that the Jews killed their own prophets..." But then he lets a cat out of the bag -- not the cat, but a kitty in particular that exposes his inadequate methodology:

The source of the notion in Hebrews is not even scriptural but derives from later Jewish traditions that Isaiah and Jeremiah had both been killed. Hebrews 11:37, without even mentioning his name, reflects a folk belief that Isaiah had been sawed in half. Another tradition had Jeremiah killed (method unknown) by exilic Jews who found him profoundly annoying, that part of the tradition being highly credible. However, since both of these traditions are noncanonical, no Bible literalist can accept them as evidence and must conclude that on the basis of scriptural information alone, Paul's accusation in 1 Thessalonians is unfounded.

What's this? Since when does a tradition being "noncanonical" mean it can't be accepted as evidence? This is no more than the same incompetent reasoning used by C. Dennis McKinsey, who refuses to allow Jewish literature to define the meaning of a Sabbath's day journey in Acts, or the literature of Maccabees to inform Hebrews, or others thinking "Biblicists" can't accept material recorded by Josephus. Who's the fundamentalist here?

All Van Eck can offer in reply is a quote of Jeremiah 1:8, which he says "seems to indicate that Jeremiah was under divine protection: 'Be not afraid of their faces; for I am with thee to deliver thee, saith the LORD.'" In his view:

It isn't recorded that this protection was withdrawn, which God could not have done anyway without being a fink. So any notion of Jeremiah's being killed would present a severe apologetic dilemma: either God is ineffectual or unreliable. Jeremiah 27:11-19, 24 provides additional support against this notion by relating how the false prophets and priests could not persuade the princes or (most important) the people that Jeremiah should die.

There's that fundy mindset again -- it doesn't have to record the withdrawal of protection. Nor does it say, for that matter, that the protection is permanent. Bottom line -- skeptics like Van Eck are the ones with the "fundamentalist, literalist" problem; taking the matter to the extreme would not even allow us to use a Strong's Concordance because it is "noncanonical". I say to such skeptics: Who do you think you're fooling?

On Elisha and the bears see here.

On Zecharaiah, see here.

But wait, just a bit, because we aren't done yet. I said I had a big fat answer for Van Eck, and here it is. Let's quote the passage again:

For ye also have suffered like this of your countrymen, even as they have of the Jews; who both killed the Lord Jesus Christ and their own prophets, and have persecuted us; and they please not God, and are contrary to all men. Forbidding us to speak to the Gentiles that they might be saved, to fill up their sins alway: for the wrath is come upon them to the uttermost.

Does something seem a little out of place here? This is a KJV rendering, and it's missing a boat here. Let's list those charges for clarity:

• who both killed the Lord Jesus Christ
• and their own prophets
• and have persecuted us
• and they please not God, and are contrary to all men
• Forbidding us to speak to the Gentiles that they might be saved

Items 1 and 3-5 are all charges against Jews who are alive at the time of Paul -- the problem here is that we are reading the KJV to take this as a broad span of history, when actually, Paul is referring to the period of time when the other 4 events happened -- in other words, his own time. He is after the Jews for killing their prophets today. Who? Stephen, James son of Zebedee; later James the Just would get on the list. That's just two by the time Paul wrote this, but it's not likely that these two were it -- nor that there were bundles more, but likely enough for Paul to use the plural form and make the accusation.