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Alan Rhoda
Registered Member
Date Joined May 2002
Total Posts : 680
| Posted 10/20/2003 8:59 AM (GMT -6) |   | Dear philalethian,
Welcome to the discussion. I enjoyed your informative post and your direct and cordial tone. I am not an expert on OT textual issues, so I will leave commentary on those issues to others. What I want to consider is whether the issues you raise, granting the accuracy of your claims, constitute a decisive refutation of Christianity. I will argue that they do not, though they might require that Christians put less apologetic weight on fulfilled prophecy and possibly (worst-case scenario) give up strict Biblical inerrancy. But neither concession, if indeed necessary, would require a rejection of Christianity's core doctrines.
You argue that Isaiah was composed in three parts over an extended span of time and that the so-called messianic passages were in context not messianic in nature. Instead, the messianic message was read into the passages by NT writers looking for prophetic references to Jesus in the OT.
I think there is merit in your factual claims, though again I will leave commentary on the details to those who know better than I. Many of the Gospel references to OT prophecies that Jesus is supposed to have fulfilled do seem to be reading into the OT an interpretation that is not supported by the OT itself when read in the OT context. (Just look up the OT passage quoted by Matthew for examples.)
Now there are at least three ways of accommodating this observation. One is to suppose that the OT passages cited in the NT as messianic prophecies were in fact messianic in nature and predictive of Jesus despite the fact that many of them do not appear to be so when read in their OT context because they had a double meaning: a surface-level non-messianic meaning, and a deeper-level messianic meaning--This may be the case with passages like Isaiah 7:14--and that the NT authors, under the inspiration of the same Holy Spirit who inspired the OT, were able to identify the deeper messianic meaning of the passages, passages that, moreover, were generally recognized by the Jewish leaders as messianic. Something like this, I take it, is the standard conservative explanation.
A second approach is to suppose that our modern notion of prophetic fulfillment is different from that employed by the NT writers. Perhaps when they said that Jesus "fulfilled" a certain OT prophecy they did not mean that the OT made a specific messianic prediction that later came true in the life of Jesus, but something else--perhaps that the life of Jesus was a kind of recapitulation of the events described in the OT. Of course, if the NT writers thought of prophetic fulfillment in some sense other than predictive fulfillment, then the NT authors pointing to Jesus' "fulfillment" of OT prophecies would carry much less apologetic weight than it would on the more conservative approach. Nevertheless, it wouldn't imply that Christianity is false, but only that we have less scriptural evidence to think it true than is often supposed.
A third approach is to suppose that the NT writers did in many cases simply misinterpret the OT. This may require abandoning strong claims to biblical inerrancy in favor of the weaker claim of general biblical reliability. Still, this would not imply that Christianity is false, provided that the Bible is specifically reliable with respect to what it has to say concerning core Christian doctrines: that man is created in God's image, that humans are fallen in sin and therefore estranged from God, that Christ is God incarnate who through his life and death has made possible our reconciliation with God, etc. In other words, Christianity can be true, and we can have good reason to think it true, even if many things recorded in the Bible are false, as long as the Bible is accurate where it matters most. If it turns out that some of the OT prophecies that Jesus is alleged to have fulfulled were not in fact predictive prophecies pointing to Jesus, then that weakens our prophetic apologetic for Christianity, but it would not imply that the Gospels are not reliable accounts of the words and deeds of Jesus. As long as they are reliable in that respect we can argue based on the events surrounding his death and resurrection that Jesus is who he claimed to be--the Son of God and mankind's only hope of salvation from the wages of sin.
In sum, I think you raise an extremely good question, one that may require Christians to temper their claims regarding prophetic fulfillment or biblical inerrancy, but I do not see that Christianity either stands or falls on the possibility of answering your objection.
Sincerely,
Alan | | Back to Top | | |
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philalethian
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Date Joined Oct 2003
Total Posts : 37
| Posted 10/20/2003 3:27 PM (GMT -6) | | I generally reject any apeal to faith. Faith and logic seem to be connected in some sort of interweaving web. Neither can exist without the other. One must have some sort of faith in a certain methodology and a certain set of assumptions for anything to be logically deduced. i.e. If one were a strict logical positivist nothing could be known because every conclusion depends on reliable premises, well for those premises to be reliable they must also be logically shown to be true and you end up with an infinite regress of premesies. Faith too depends on a certain level of logic. If there is no logic in faith then there would be no difference between a more consistant religion such as hinduism, judaism, islam or christianity, and a much less consitant religion like new age cults Koresh etc... What i'm saying is if there isn't logic what seperates you from those who kill themselves in order to go to the hale bob comet? That is why i can not accept any sort of appeal to faith. I hope i'm not reading into your word too much but i took your first attempt to escape this problem as basically an apeal to faith.
The second attempt to get around this problem can not be the case because of the frequent used of citation formulas such as "as it was written", or "as it was written in Isaiah" etc... Therefore, while the New Testament authors sometimes refer to a larger interpretative tradition rather than the specific passage, most are direct allusions or even verbatim citations of verses. It seems that the New Testament authors were definately refering to specific fulfillments of specific prophecies. It was a nice try but for it to work i think you would need to provide more substantial evidence that this was the methodology used. Do you have any examples of this view of the fulfillment of prophecy being used in contemporary literature to the new testament?
Your third statement falls in the simple apeal to faith. You seem to be grappling for anything to hold on to. I am sure that the bible can not be innerant. And if you want to accept the theological points you can. However, what i have suggested is that my research has lead me to believe that the comming of Jesus was never prophecied. Deutero-Isaiah was just an example, because it is the most frequent. However, this problem extends to every so called prophecy used to speak of Jesus. When any "prophecy is closely examined i think most will be able to see that the old testament passage is taken out of its original context. Therefore, Jesus loses almost all credibility because he claimed the Old Testament predicted his comming, and yet it did not.
Dana
Capitalism is organized Crime!!! | | Back to Top | | |
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honorman
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Date Joined Oct 2002
Total Posts : 1137
| Posted 10/20/2003 3:36 PM (GMT -6) | | I believe Sanders goes into the second way of interpreting prophecy in his book "The God WHo Risks." I find that view most compelling. I actually I think the recapiulation idea works very well...I wouldn't go along with your idea that the authors were viewing their citations as fulfillmemnt of prophecies. It seems it could easily work both ways. The way the authors wrote one would have to assume they were meant to be prophetic. They could just as easily mean that a passage which had occurred in certain way as an example of how the current event was going to happen. For it to be wrong, you would have to prove without doubt that your interpretation is correct.
If Capitalism is organized crime, then organized crime is godly. | | Back to Top | | |
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Blood Washed Heretic
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2003
Total Posts : 167
| Posted 10/21/2003 8:04 AM (GMT -6) | | quote:
Originally posted by honorman
If Capitalism is organized crime, then organized crime is godly.
Is this necessary in an apologetic thread? I mean, come on...
Anyway, thanks for the input, newcomers. The challenge of modern literary criticism is challenging to be sure, but there are several ways to answer it directly, not simply "get around it"...
As Alan said, I'll leave it to those more versed in such things for the specifics.
Those who truly seek will find, if they keep an open mind...
In essentials, unity; In matters of opinion, liberty; In all things, love. | | Back to Top | | |
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honorman
Registered Member
Date Joined Oct 2002
Total Posts : 1137
| Posted 10/21/2003 9:28 AM (GMT -6) | | | Blood: only if you enjoy censorship. You object not because it isn't on the subject, but because you disagree with it. I notice you didn't mind the quote I was responding to. What a hypocrite! | | Back to Top | | |
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Blood Washed Heretic
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2003
Total Posts : 167
| Posted 10/21/2003 10:51 AM (GMT -6) | | No, I mind because it was unnecessary, inconsiderate, and could invalidate anything you have to say to our guests now. I'm sorry, clear, UNCLUTTERED exchange of these important ideas is important to me...
Honorman, what is it between us? I'd like to fix it, if possible. However, I do not wish to abuse this thread any longer, so if you are "honorable" enough to try and reconcile, please email me at holer99@yahoo.com, so we can talk this out like adults...
There should not be emnity in the Body of Christ. Let's take care of this, brother...
Please.
In essentials, unity; In matters of opinion, liberty; In all things, love. | | Back to Top | | |
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honorman
Registered Member
Date Joined Oct 2002
Total Posts : 1137
| Posted 10/21/2003 7:10 PM (GMT -6) | | I made the statement because someone made a statement that I take offense with. I believe capitalism is a very biblical concept. For you to take ONLY offense and be critical ONLY of my statement shows the double standard you exhibit. Hence the words. If you wanted to be consistant you would have criticised BOTH views. Obviously, your own view would not allow you to do that.
I have no problem with you personally, though I have come down hard on some of your views. But I haven't addressed you in many moons, so I see no reason to pursue the issue. I do try to not make things personal, however, it would seem to me that one should be consistant. If one person is allowed to make a statement, another should be allowed to comment on it, EVEN if it is only their quote at the bottom. | | Back to Top | | |
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rossfadeinout
Registered Member
Date Joined Oct 2002
Total Posts : 428
| Posted 10/22/2003 7:51 AM (GMT -6) | | Hey Dana,
Like I said earlier, good to see you here. I'm sure you'll add greatly to the discussion around here. Sorry, but I've gotta disagree with what you said here
quote:
What does all this mean? I means that deutero-Isaiah is specifically about the Bablylonian exile and the messianic ideology applied to deutero-Isaiah only came from later writers. This process i called (by Donald Juel) "Messianic Exegesis" which means the disciples and new testament authors had to re read the Old Testament in order to fit it into their obviously amazing and life changing experience with the rabbi from gallilee, Yeshua ben yoseph (refered too by the latinized form, "Jesus"). Therefore there is no gospel message.
Seems to me the gospel message is NOT that Christ fulfilled all the specific prophecies that some conservative scholars have said He did. The gospel message is that "the Word became flesh and dwelt among us." It is the life, death, and RESURRECTION of jesus the Christ.
I'm sure you've heard C S Lewis' "liar, lunatic, or Lord" argument concening the claims of Jesus. What is your take on this argument? For Doc's version check out his sermon from 3-31-2002 called "Jesus Was Not a Good Guy." www.whchurch.org/content/page_162.htm
I'd love to hear back from you on this,
Ross
"Let us remember how common the folly is of going from one faulty extreme into the opposite." -Thomas Reid | | Back to Top | | |
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philalethian
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Date Joined Oct 2003
Total Posts : 37
| Posted 10/22/2003 4:22 PM (GMT -6) | | I find that argument far too reductionistic, and it also does not fit into the person of Jesus in the gospels, which usually fits into the the salvation history of Israel and not the pauline version of christianity (I should not that i think Paul was dead wrong about who Jesus was and have little to no respect for any of the Pauline writings. I need to admit my biases). Look at Bar Kochba, jesus ben gamaliel, jesus ben ananias. Were they all Lord? liar? lunatic? or did they really Believe that they were chosen by God to have a speical role in the salvation history of Israel (otherwise known as the deuteronomistic view of Israel's salvation history).
I understand the argument but i see it as i see almost all apologetics as a grasp for something to hold on to and not as an emperical and rigourous evaluation of the text. What that evaluation shows is that Mark's Jesus is not divine but simply an important player in Israel's salvation history. He is always shown as subservient to God. Matthew and Luke are later traditions and John is much later. I go with Mark as being much closer to the historical Jesus, in not having claimed divinity but simply being the son of God in the way that all of us can be sons of God.
Therefore, Jesus was neither Lord, Liar, or Lunatic. He truly believed that he was an integral part of God's salvation plan for Israel. This does not make him a lunatic at all. Such an argument relies on reading our modern perspective of Christianity back on the text, however, when understood in light of Israel's salvation history Jesus simply claimed to be the messiah, but he very radically redefined messiah.
In conclusion i fully reject that argument as being far too simplistic and having not dealt with the situation in the Jewish world at the time to see all the other possibilities and messianic ideas. In short you are trying to shove me into a trychotmy which doesn't really exist.
Now i don't think you are understanding my problem here. Jesus never was predicted to come. He never fulfilled prophecy. Therefore he was not the messiah expected by Judaism. He may have been a bit off, or stretched the scriptures a bit (however, i usually attribute this to the gospel writers more than Jesus), but he obviously was something special because those who witnessed his events felt the need to reread all the scriptures to explain their experience with him.
p.s. No one has yet adressed my original problem.
Dana
Capitalism is organized Crime!!! | | Back to Top | | |
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DLW
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Date Joined Apr 2003
Total Posts : 2457
| Posted 10/22/2003 4:52 PM (GMT -6) | | Okay Dana, you also are making a leap of faith in identifying the second book of Isaiah as being only about Jews wanting to be freed from Bablyon.
Jewish people did in fact have messianic expectations, otherwise there wouldn't be so many pretenders in this regard.
I doubt that they bifurcated political from religion then like we do.
So here's my story. G-d chose the Israelites to have a relationship with him that would serve as an example for the rest of the world. This relationship included them being in the promised land, where they would have land, right relationships with others and G-d most of all.
They had strayed from that relationship with G-d and now found themselves removed from the promised land, just as they were removed from a right relationship with G-d. So their desires for a political messiah to deliver them back to their promised land were intertwined with a desire to have a right-relationship with G-d. They got back to the promised land and it wasn't all it had been cracked out to be and so they had yet to truly be delivered into a right relationship with G-d.
But that is what Christianity claims Yeshua's life, death and resurrection were all about, making it possible for both Jews and Gentiles to have a right relationship with G-d.
And so, I think you are way to literally interpreting the text and not displaying much of an appreciation for the vaunted Jewish creativity. Why must a one-to-one correspondence between the text and events be presumed?
Were not the Jewish follower's of Yeshua's day in a better position than we to infer the nuances of what was meant by second part of Isaiah?
dlw
Niebuhr thought that sustained moral energy in politics depended on religion's power to mobilize reason along with self-transcending love. The prophetic tradition, meanwhile, gave Jews and Christians some protection against the temptation to identify their social causes with God's will. Lincoln's second inaugural address expressed the prophetic insight, "The almighty has His own purposes." | | Back to Top | | |
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DLW
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2003
Total Posts : 2457
| Posted 10/23/2003 3:13 AM (GMT -6) | | quote:
Originally posted by philalethian
The fact remains that there is strong opposition to christianity among Jews. In fact strong antagonism to the point where jews were killing christians and vice versa.
The Fact also remains that Judaism and Christianity have rather long, sordid histories with each other, which helps to explain a good deal of said opposition.
quote:
According to your logic, since the mainstream of Judaism was that Jesus couldn't have been the messiah, wouldn't it be more logical to say that they would be in a better position to know the same text? Since they are by far the majority withing Judaism why would you not go with their interpretation.
Um, this is an ahistorical statement. At the time, the majority of the early church was Jewish. And, of course, it worked out that there were more gentile than jewish converts outside of Jerusalem. The Church in Jerusalem went broke thanks to their socialism, which was not followed in any other churches anywhere else. And, then, the Roman's sacking of Jerusalem put an end to the prevalence of Jewish leadership/membership among the Christians. Then, unfortunately, when Christians were being persecuted by Rome, they appealed to the Jews to acknowledge their historical connection, since the Jews were protected on account of their being an older religion. They chose not to do so and the seeds of antisemitism that would flourish within th Church were planted.
But, Antisemitism is by no means a foregone conclusion within Christianity and, theoretically from an Open View standpoint, it could have been avoided.
quote:
Yes you are right to say that a text can have more than one meaning. You raise a good point. You are quite right in saying that the messianic hope of an exilic Israel is that God will restore them politically, socially, religiously etc... and when the exile was not even close to as glorious as is was written by Deutero-Isaiah that hope was converted into an eschatological or apocolyptic hope. However, the idea of messiah was not yet developed. This also means that messiah was part of a later interpretive tradition that Jesus associated himself with, but it is not a theme from the Hebrew Bible. It comes more from pseudepigraphal works.
Well, I don't suppose you'd go for a progressive revelational interpretation? The notion of a messiah had its precursor in the role of Moses, who supposedly played both prophet and priest roles for Israel, moving it out of its current situation w/ Egypt & providing the law and pointing to the need for a tabernacle/sacrifice.
quote:
I am not at all convinced by your argument, while it is the most compelling yet on this board. It simply doesn't adress the problem that Jesus as messiah was never predicted, but after the fact his disciples read their experience with jesus back into the text.
Well, others than Yeshua also interpreted the text as predicting a messiah. Unfortunately, we have little on record from the first century common era. Presumably, they would not have been expecting a messiah if there wasn't an agreement that scripture predicted a messiah. And so, we can't say that the followers of Yeshua post-hoc read the whole messiah thing into their scriptures...
dlw
Niebuhr thought that sustained moral energy in politics depended on religion's power to mobilize reason along with self-transcending love. The prophetic tradition, meanwhile, gave Jews and Christians some protection against the temptation to identify their social causes with God's will. Lincoln's second inaugural address expressed the prophetic insight, "The almighty has His own purposes." | | Back to Top | | |
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rossfadeinout
Registered Member
Date Joined Oct 2002
Total Posts : 428
| Posted 10/23/2003 5:16 AM (GMT -6) | | Dana,
Just a couple of quick thoughts... First, I think Alan has already very thoroughly addressed your question. And I think that you seem pretty dogmatic about your interpretation of Isaiah which could be challenged. But the point is that fulfillment of prophesy is not the gospel message (like many have already said)
Here is what the Apostle John says
quote:
1In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was with God in the beginning.
3 Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. 4In him was life, and that life was the light of men. 5 The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it.
6 There came a man who was sent from God; his name was John. 7He came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all men might believe. 8 He himself was not the light; he came only as a witness to the light. 9 The true light that gives light to every man was coming into the world.
10 He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. 11 He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. 12 Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God-- 13 children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband's will, but born of God.
14 The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.
15 John testifies concerning him. He cries out, saying, "This was he of whom I said, 'He who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me.' " 16 From the fullness of his grace we have all received one blessing after another. 17 For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. 18No one has ever seen God, but God the One and Only, who is at the Father's side, has made him known.
So here John claims that Jesus was the very Word of God -- that he WAS GOD. He also claims to be an eyewitness to his glory.
So was John a) a liar b) a lunatic or c) true in what he said concerning Jesus the Christ?
Ross
BTW, what do you believe about the Resurrection? Just wondering...
"Let us remember how common the folly is of going from one faulty extreme into the opposite." -Thomas Reid | | Back to Top | | |
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Alan Rhoda
Registered Member
Date Joined May 2002
Total Posts : 680
| Posted 10/23/2003 8:15 AM (GMT -6) | | This is in response to philalethian's second post on this thread.
quote:
I generally reject any appeal to faith. Faith and logic seem to be connected in some sort of interweaving web. Neither can exist without the other. One must have some sort of faith in a certain methodology and a certain set of assumptions for anything to be logically deduced. ... I can not accept any sort of appeal to faith.
I agree with you that faith and logic are interconnected, but then isn't it illogical to reject appeals to faith tout court? Any rejection of an appeal to faith must itself rest upon another faith committment.
quote:
I hope i'm not reading into your word too much but i took your first attempt to escape this problem as basically an appeal to faith.
You seem to misunderstand the logic of my argument. I did not engage in a mere appeal to faith. Instead, I argued that one could accept the basic textual facts that you allege and still consistently accept a robust Christianity. One way of doing this is to posit a double level of meaning in the text. Now such a posit may be ad hoc, but if a person has good independent reason to think that Christianity is true or that the Bible is inerrant, then such a posit may nevertheless be rational. That being said, however, I think my second proposal is better, as it does not posit meanings that are undetectable by normal hermeneutical methods.
quote:
The second attempt to get around this problem can not be the case because of the frequent used of citation formulas such as "as it was written", or "as it was written in Isaiah" etc... Therefore, while the New Testament authors sometimes refer to a larger interpretative tradition rather than the specific passage, most are direct allusions or even verbatim citations of verses. It seems that the New Testament authors were definately refering to specific fulfillments of specific prophecies.
Again, I think you miss my point. I argued that one could conjecture that the ancient Jews had a different or rather a broader understanding of prophetic fulfillment than that of predictive fulfillment. If this is so, then it is beside the point that the NT writers quote directly from the OT, the issue is what did they intend to claim about Jesus in doing so. Now I will grant that many of the OT passages cited by NT authors as fulfilled in Jesus do not even appear to be messianic prophecies when read in their OT context. Some examples from the opening chapters of Matthew include his citations of Isaiah 7:14, Hosea 11:1, and Jer. 31:15. Now if we reject the double meaning hypothesis (my first proposal), then we have to suppose EITHER that Matthew was guilty of hermeneutical ineptitude of the highest magnitude, shamelessly importing meanings into texts that no fair-minded interpreter could endorse--meanings, moreover, that Christianity's detractors would certainly have pounced on--OR that he sometimes meant something different than "predictive fulfillment" when saying that a certain OT prophecy or passage was "fulfilled" in Jesus. Frankly, I find the first option far more plausible and charitable than your dismissive claim that this "cannot" be the case. In fact, Matthew's citations make good sense if we suppose that he meant something more like "recapitulative fulfillment".
quote:
Do you have any examples of this view of the fulfillment of prophecy being used in contemporary literature to the new testament?
John Sanders explicity defends such a view in his book "The God Who Risks", and he cites several other scholars who take a similar position. The only one I remember off the top of my head is a scholar named Adrio Konig.
quote:
Your third statement falls in the simple appeal to faith. You seem to be grappling for anything to hold on to.
I don't see how you arrive at that. I'm not "grappling" for anything, but just trying to lay out some options for the Christian in dealing with your objection. Nor is this a simple appeal to faith. While I didn't cite any evidence to support the general reliability of the Gospels (because that wasn't relevant to the point I was trying to make), I nowhere implied that the Christian should take their confidence in the Gospels "simply" on faith.
quote:
However, what i have suggested is that my research has lead me to believe that the coming of Jesus was never prophecied.
Here it seems to me that you are simply mistaken. I grant that many of the OT references described in the NT as "fulfilled" in Jesus do not seem to be messianic predictions. Nevertheless, it seems to me that several are. Micah 5:2 (cited in Matt. 2:6) seems clearly to be a messianic prediction, one that Jesus's birth in Bethlehem partially fulfills (the complete fulfillment of vv.4-5 may be yet future). And Isaiah 9:1-7 looks clearly messianic and, again, seems plausibly (though partially, at least for now) fulfilled in Matt. 4:12-16. These are just a couple examples.
Lastly, I'm not convinced that your take on the writing of Isaiah is correct, though admittedly this is something I still need to look into. I'll get back to you after I do.
Alan | | Back to Top | | |
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