"Who is the "son unto Me"?

2 Samuel 7:14, 1 Chronicles 17:13

--Hebrews 1:5

"I shall be a Father unto him and he shall be a son unto Me"

The first chapter of Hebrews is the only place in the Christian Scriptures which makes a serious attempt to prove the Nazarene is divine using the T’nakh.

In these parallel passages from Samuel and Chronicles, God is speaking to David telling him that he is not the one to build the Temple, his son is. Christians argue that this refers to David's "greater son", the Nazarene. However the reference is clearly to Solomon as you can tell by reading the passages.

"And Hashem informs you that Hashem will establish a dynasty for you. When your days are complete and you lie with your forefathers, I shall raise up after you your offspring who will issue from your loins, and I shall make his kingdom firm. He shall build a Temple for My sake, and I shall make firm the throne of his kingdom forever. I shall be a Father unto him and he shall be a son unto Me, so that when he sins I will chastise him with the rod of men and with afflictions of human beings." (2 Samuel 7:11-14, Stone Edition, emphasis added)

"I will raise up after you your offspring who will be from among your sons, and I shall make his kingdom firm. He shall build a Temple for Me, and I shall make his throne firm forever. I shall be a Father unto him and he shall be a son unto Me, and I shall never remove My kindness from him, as I removed it from the one who preceded you." (1 Chronicles 17:11-13)

Solomon is the one who built the Temple for Hashem. Nineteen of his descendants ruled over Judah on the throne of David. The true Mashiach will be a descendant of Solomon, the legitimate heir to David’s throne (notice that Luke records the Nazarene as having descended from Solomon's brother Nathan who was not the royal heir). If these passages referred to the Nazarene, why does it say, "when he sins"? Christianity can't even say, "if he sins" because it is impossible for the perfect Nazarene to sin. "In the famous prophecy of 2 Samuel 7 where Christ is prefigured in terms of Solomon, the expression "if he commit iniquity" cannot refer to Christ." (Protestant Biblical Interpretation, page 252).

The T’nakh itself tells us that these word were said regarding Solomon. David made many preparations for the building of the Temple and told Solomon. "My son, I had in mind to build a Temple for the Name of Hashem, my God, but the word of Hashem came to me, saying, You have shed much blood and have made great wars; you shall not build a Temple for My Name's sake, for you have shed much blood upon the ground before Me. Behold, a son will be born to you; he will be a man of rest, and I shall grant him rest from all his enemies all around. His name will be Solomon, and I will bestow peace and tranquility upon Israel in his days. He will build a Temple for My Name's sake; he will be a son to Me and I will be a Father to him. And I will establish the throne of his kingdom over Israel forever." (1 Chronicles 22:6-10)

These verses clearly identify Solomon as the "son of God", not the Nazarene. Many Christian apologists automatically suggest that this is a dual prophecy, referring to Solomon in its plain sense but alluding to the Messiah. But if the passage applies to the Messiah and Solomon equally then it cannot show it is appropriate to worship the Messiah unless it also shows it is appropriate to worship Solomon as well, they are the same words after all. "The interpreter should take the literal meaning of a prophetic passage as his limiting or controlling guide." (Protestant Biblical Interpretation, page 253). You do no more to demonstrate that you can worship Messiah, whom the passage refers to secondarily at best, than to show you can worship Solomon (חו״ש). Even if you wished to argue, ignoring the context, that it could be understood in such a manner it certainly doesn’t predict that the Messiah is divine. You can only infer such an idea if you already accepted it. It is the result of belief in the Nazarene, not it’s cause.

Solomon, like Israel in Hosea 11:1, is described as God's son because of the unique relationship they have. Israel is God’s chosen people and Solomon is the leader of that people. He is the one who reigned after David and it is he whom David himself identifies as the subject of the prophecy according to the T'nakh itself.

Here Gosse Nothing...

One particularly obnoxious objection against resolving the age of the universe is the attempt to "pasul" it as a Christian idea since this was the approach that the Christian Philip Henry Gosse put for in his work Omphalos.

This is 1000% disingenuous.

Omphalos was, for better or for worse, DOA. It had little or no influence. My experience may be anecdotal but as someone who had an interest in Christian apologetics let me state clearly that I not once did I run into this line of reasoning being utilized by Christians to reconcile the Biblical account of creation with science.

In addition to the obvious ad hominem overtones, it is a fallacy of post hoc ergo proper hoc. While one might argue that one should not (or that traditionalist who take this approach teach that one should not) adopt non-Jewish religious teachings, there is clearly no prohibition against believing something because non-Jews believe it as well. With that in mind there is there is very little reason to believe that Omphalos played a role in this approach being introduced into the Jewish community.

It is not uncommon for two independent, or even competing, people to introduce theories which are, or are nearly, identical. I will spare you the cliche, but when confronted with a problem and given the same body of evidence it is not a novel thing for people to reach the same conclusion independently.

While Judaism does not accept the sola scriptura stance of traditional protestant Christianity, we have noted that it normally requires that a verses plain meaning be retained. Confronted with the same problem, namely the scientific evidence for a much much older universe, there are only so many possible solutions. From liberal allegorization to radical scepticism of science, one can find manifestations of each approach among either Jews or Christians but by far the "Gosse Theory" is the one I have found least likely to be expressed by Christians. I could almost exclude the instances I have encountered of Christians taking this approach to Gosse himself. An independent origin for this approach at reconciliation is as plausible, if not more, than that of borrowing.

This is reflected in my own experience. I had written on the "Gosse Theory", privately at least, before ever having heard the term. While I probably had heard generic assertions that God could create an old looking world, I had never seen this developed into a theory. It was a mere afterthought of those Christians who took a much more dismissive view of scientific opinion. I certainly never saw it argued that apparent age is a logical necessity from the text nor that it meant that one need not dismiss the Science behind evolution or the Big Bang.

In short it is ridiculous to object to an argument which seeks to establish the truth of Torah because it is accepted by Christians as well, especially when there is no evidence to support that the argument was actually adopted from Christians.