Messianic Prophecy

The books of the New Testament frequently cite Jewish scripture to support the claim of the Early Christians that Jesus was the promised Jewish Messiah. Scholars have observed that few of these citations are actual predictions in context; the majority of these quotations and references are taken from the prophetic Book of Isaiah, but they range over the entire corpus of Jewish writings.

Jews do not regard any of these as having been fulfilled by Jesus, and in some cases do not regard them as messianic prophecies at all. Old Testament prophecies that were regarded as referring to the arrival of Christ are either not thought to be prophecies by critical biblical scholars, as the verses make no stated claim of being predictions, or are seen as having no correlation as they do not explicitly refer to the Messiah. Ehrman, Bart D. (2000). ''The Historical Jesus. Part I.'' The Teaching Company, p. 36. "Early Christians began searching their Scriptures to see how these things could be. 1. The Hebrew Bible did not discuss the messiah's suffering. Some passages refer to the suffering of a righteous man (cf. Isaiah 53), who feels abandoned by God, but whose suffering is accepted as a sacrifice for others. 2. Some passages, such as the Psalms of Lament (e.g., Pss. 22, 35, 69) and the songs of the Suffering Servant of the Lord in the book of Isaiah (Isaiah 53), were taken to refer not just to any person who was suffering, or even to Israel as a whole (cf. Isaiah 49:3), but to the future messiah of Israel. 4. Jews and Christians began to debate the meanings of these texts, and the debates continue to this day." Historical criticism has been agreed to be a field that is unable to argue for the evidential fulfillment of prophecy, or that Jesus was indeed the Messiah because he fulfilled messianic prophecies, as it cannot "construct such an argument" within that academic method, since it is a theological claim. Ancient Jews before the first century CE had a variety of views about the Messiah, but none included a Jesus-like Savior. Mainstream Bible scholars state that no view of the Messiah as based on the Old Testament predicted a Messiah who would suffer and die for the sins of all people, and that the story of Jesus' death, therefore, involved a profound shift in meaning from the Old Testament tradition.

While certain critical scholars have claimed that the Gospels misquoted the Hebrew Bible authors read the Bible through figural reading, where a meaning is realized only after a second event adds new significance to the first. Approaches include sensus plenior, where a text contains both a literal authorial meaning and deeper ones by God that the original writers did not realize.Raymond E. Brown, ''The ''Sensus Plenior'' of Sacred Scripture'' (Baltimore: St. Mary's University, 1955), 92.

Overview: prophecy and biblical scholarship

The Hebrew scriptures were an important source for the New Testament authors. There are 27 direct quotations in the Gospel of Mark, 54 in Matthew, 24 in Luke, and 14 in John, and the influence of the scriptures is vastly increased when allusions and echoes are included, with half of Mark's gospel being made up of allusions to and citations of the scriptures. Matthew contains all Mark's quotations and introduces around 30 more, sometimes in the mouth of Jesus, sometimes as his own commentary on the narrative, and Luke makes allusions to all but three of the Old Testament books.

An example of one is Matthew 1:23: "'Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel,' which means, 'God is with us.'". This references Isaiah 7:14: "therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign: the maiden is with child and she will bear a son, and will call his name Immanuel".

The Hebrew word translated here as "maiden" is ''almah'', meaning a young woman who is ripe for marriage, i.e. aged less than 13, or between 12 and 14 years old, according to other sources, rather than a virgin. Matthew, however, used the Septuagint text of Isaiah rather than the Masoretic Text, and the word that appears there is παρθένος (''parthenos''), meaning virgin.

Prophecies Christians consider fulfilled

Daniel 9:24–27

The general scholarly view is that the author of Daniel is writing a contemporaneous account of the Maccabean Revolt c. 167 BCE and the "an anointed one shall be cut off" refers to the murder of the high priest Onias III; the " abomination that desolates" refers to Antiochus IV Epiphanes erecting a statue of Zeus in the Temple.
References to "most holy", "anointed one" and "prince" have been interpreted by Christians as speaking of Jesus, and the phrase "anointed one shall be cut off" as pointing to his crucifixion, the "troops of the prince who is to come" being taken to refer to the Romans who destroyed Jerusalem and the Temple in 70 AD.

Deuteronomy 18:15

speaks of a prophet who would be raised up from among the Jewish nation:

By the time of Jesus, this promise of Moses was understood to refer to a special individual. In John 6:14, after the multiplication of the loaves, people are quoted as saying, "This is truly the Prophet, the one who is to come into the world." In John 7:40, On the last day of the feast (tabernacles/Booths), the great day...Many of the people, therefore, when they heard this saying, said, Of a truth this is the Prophet. In , Peter said that Jesus was the fulfillment of this promise.

Ezekiel 37:24, 25–27

Ezekiel 37:24 refers to a person coming from the House of David as the servant of God, unique Shepherd of Israel, which will rule over the House of Judah (v. 16) and over the Tribe of Joseph (v. 17) so that he will "make them one stick, and they shall be one in mine hand" (v. 19), in a unique nation of Israel.

Verses from to 15 to 24 cannot be referring to King David, since the united monarchy of Israel was divided in two reigns the death of his son Solomon (999–931 BCE), son of David. Furthermore, Ezekiel (622–570 BCE) wrote in the seventh century BCE, four centuries after this subject of the biblical narration, nevertheless adopting a prophecy that is by its nature usually referred to future happenings. Therefore, as the "stick of Judah" stands for the House of Judah, and the "stick of Joseph" stands for his tribe (verse 19), the expression "David my servant shall be king over them" (verse 24) may be read as a prophecy about a person of the House of David, which would have ruled over one nation in one land, gathered upon the mountains of Israel on every side of the earth.

The narration continues as follows:

They will "live" ('made for thee to dwell' JV/ESVin Song of The Sea Exodus 15:17) in the land. The "dwelling place" (Hebrew ''mishkan'' מִשְׁכָּן Exodus 25:9) recalls the wilderness tabernacle. The Sanctuary (Hebrew ''miqdash'' מִקְדָּשׁ Exodus 15:17) points rather to the Temple, in particular the renewed Temple, which will occupy Ezekiel's attention in the last chapters of 40 –48.

Christianity believes that Ezekiel's Temple is more glorious than the Tabernacle of Moses (Exodus 25–40) and the Temple of Solomon (), pointing forward to several beliefs:
*(1) the glory in which God dwells with man in the Messiah, John 1:14: "The Word became a human being and lived with us, and we saw his Sh'khinah" (שָׁכֵחַ Exodus 25:8) (CJB)
*(2) The Messiah's body is the Temple, : "Yeshua answered them, 'Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up again.' The Judeans said, 'It took 46 years to build this Temple, and you're going to raise it in three days?' But the 'temple' he had spoken of was his body." (CJB)
*(3) the messianic community as the Temple, : "Don't you know that you people are God's Temple and that God's Spirit lives in you?", "You have been built on the foundation of the emissaries and the prophets, with the cornerstone being Yeshua the Messiah himself. In union with him the whole building is held together, and it is growing into a holy temple in union with the Lord. Yes, in union with him, you yourselves are being built together into a spiritual dwelling-place for God!", "...you yourselves, as living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be cohanim set apart for God to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to him through Yeshua the Messiah." (CJB)
*(4) the body of the individual believer, : "Or don't you know that your body is a Temple for the Ruach HaKodesh who lives inside you, whom you received from God? The fact is, you don't belong to yourselves" (CJB)
*(5) the heavenly Jerusalem, Revelatio
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Judaism holds that the Messiah has not yet arrived namely because of the belief that the Messianic Age has not started yet. Jews believe that the Messiah will completely change life on earth and that pain and suffering will be conquered, thus initiating the Kingdom of God and the Messianic Age on earth. Christian belief varies, with one segment holding that the Kingdom of God is not worldly at all, while another believe that the Kingdom is both spiritual and will be of this world in a Messianic Age where Jesus will rule on the throne of David. Most Jews hold that the Kingdom of God will be on earth and the Messiah will occupy the throne of David. Christians (in particular Evangelicals) believe that it is both, and claim that it is spiritual (the historical Jesus completed salvation) and within right now, and physical and outward at the return of the Messiah (Second Coming of Jesus as "New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God" Revelation 21:1–4).

While Christians have cited the following as prophecies referencing the life, status, and legacy of Jesus, Jewish scholars maintain that these passages are not messianic prophecies and are based on mistranslations or misunderstanding of the Hebrew texts.

Hosea 11:1

In its original context, this text from Hosea referred to the deliverance of the people of Israel from bondage in Egypt. The Gospel of Matthew chapter 2 applies it to the return from Egypt of Jesus and his family as a messianic prophecy:

Isaiah

Isaiah 7:14

Early Christian tradition interpreted this verse as a reference to the mother of Jesus. The prophet Isaiah, addressing king Ahaz of Judah, promises the king that God will destroy his enemies, and as a sign that his oracle is a true one he predicts that a "young woman" ("''almah''") standing nearby will shortly give birth to a child whose name will be Immanuel, "God is with us", and that the threat from the enemy kings will be ended before the child grows up. The ''almah'' might be the mother of Hezekiah or a daughter of Isaiah, although there are problems with both candidatesHezekiah, for example, was apparently born nine years before the prophecy was given,but the biblical chronology for Hezekiah is confused, and his identity as the prophesied child is strongly suggested by the reference to Immanuel's "land" in 8.8 and 10.

The Gospel of Matthew references this verse to support its claim of the supernatural origins of Jesus. In the time of Jesus, however, the Jews of Judea no longer spoke Hebrew, and Isaiah had to be translated into Greek and Aramaic, the two commonly used languages. In the Masoretic Text, the word ''almah'' means a young woman of childbearing age or who is a mother, but the Greek translation of Isaiah 7:14 rendered ''almah'' as ''parthenos'', the Greek word for "virgin". Catholic scholar Brant Pitre argues that ''almah'' is close in meaning to the english word "maiden", meaning a young, unmarried woman, implied to be a virgin. Some conservative American Christians judge the acceptability of new Bible translations by the way they deal with Isaiah 7:14.

Isaiah 8:14

interprets the stone as Christ, quoting along with and , which mention a stone and a cornerstone.

Isaiah 8:22–9:1 (9:1–2)

According to both Jewish and Christian interpretation, the prophet Isaiah was commanded to inform the people of Israel in a prophecy that Sennacherib's plunder of the Ten Tribes was at hand, and that Nebuchadnezzar's spoil of Jerusalem, in later years, was coming nearer.

During the Syro-Ephraimite War, Isaiah opposed an alliance with Assyria, and counseled Ahaz to rely instead on the assurances of the Davidic covenant. This view was not well received at court. Assyria absorbed the lands of Zebulon and Naphtali to form the provinces of Galilee, Dor, and Gilead. Judah became a vassal kingdom of the Assyrians.

The reign of Hezekiah saw a notable increase in the power of the Judean state. Hezekiah was successful in his wars against the Philistines, driving them back in a series of victorious battles as far as Gaza. He thus not only retook all the cities that his father had lost, but even conquered others belonging to the Philistines. He also looked to attempting to reincorporate some of the desolate northern territories into the kingdom of Judah and thus restore the boundaries of the country as it was under David. At this time Judah was the strongest nation on the Assyrian-Egyptian frontier.Na'aman, Nadav
''Ancient Israel and Its Neighbors''
Eisenbrauns, 2005, The "messianic oracle" ("The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; Upon those living in the land of deep darkness a light has dawned.") may have coincided with the coronation of Hezekiah and looked toward the deliverance of the Israelites living in the northern provinces.

According to Jewish tradition, the salvation of which he speaks is the miraculous end of Sennacherib's siege of Jerusalem (see Isaiah 36 and 37) in the days of the Prince of Peace, King Hezekiah, a son of King Ahaz.

Matthew cites the messianic oracle, when Jesus began his ministry in Galilee:

The interpretation of by the author of the Gospel of Matthew has led Christian authors to hint at its messianic applications.

While the Gospel of Matthew modifies a Greek Septuagint interpretation of scripture (Isaiah 8:23–9:2), in the Masoretic text it refers to the "region of the nations".

Isaiah 9:6,7 (Masoretic 9:5,6)

In Jewish translations of the Hebrew Bible

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