Did Jesus Fulfill Prophecy?

by D.M. Murdock/Acharya S

Excerpted from

Who Was Jesus? Fingerprints of The Christ

Was Jesus Christ truly the divine Son of God who walked the earth 2,000 years ago? How can we be sure the gospel story is an accurate and infallibly related historical account? When the gospels are examined scientifically, can we truthfully uphold them as "inerrant?" Is it possible to assert honestly and ethically that the Bible is the inspired Word of God? The answers to these questions and many more may surprise and shock you!

Jesus as Fulfillment of Prophecy

"But all this has taken place, that the scriptures of the prophets might be fulfilled." Then all the disciples forsook him and fled.

Matthew 26:56

"Hide the prophecy, tell the narrative, and invent the history."

Dr. John D. Crossan, The Historical Jesus (372)

In addition to various Old Testamentcharacters serving to "prefigure" the person of Jesus Christ are the numerous Old Testament scriptures held up as "prophecies" of the messiah fulfilled in Christ. Over the centuries, in fact, since the story of Jesus began to be circulated, believers have appealed to these scriptures to demonstrate that Jesus was indeed the messiah. These prophetic scriptures number in the hundreds, depending on the apologetic text consulted, with upwards of 1,000 in some circles, the book of Psalms alone possessing almost 100 by some counts-all these have been cited as "fulfillment of prophecy" in the purported advent of Jesus Christ.

When these scriptures deemed prophetic of the coming messiah are placed side by side with the characteristics and sayings of Jesus, as well as the events of his life, a startling and convincing comparison is apparent. Many of these comparisons or "prophecies," however, are highly tenuous and in reality have little if anything to do with the coming messiah; nor are they truly "prophecies." Indeed, it is not just the Christian apologists but the gospel writers themselves, and perhaps interpolating later scribes, who have glommed onto OT scriptures that are not "prophecies," trying to make them appear to be predicting Jesus's advent. When the list is critically pared down, many fewer scriptures are possibly applicable.

It is important to note also that Jesus himself is reported to say that he did not come to "abolish the law or the prophets" but to fulfill them. (Mt 5:17) In Luke (24:25-27) the resurrected Jesus scolds the dimwitted disciples who are "slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken!" He then reminds them that "the Christ" needs to endure "these things" in order to "enter into his glory," and he proceeds to expound upon "Moses and all the prophets," interpreting the characteristics found in these scriptures as applicable to himself. At Luke 24:44, Jesus states that "everything written about me in the law of Moses and the prophets and the psalms must be fulfilled." At John 5:39, Christ mentions the scriptures about eternal life that "bear witness" to him, and at 5:46 he states that Moses wrote about him. Other books in the New Testament, such as Acts and certain of the epistles likewise testify to Christ's fulfillment of prophecy.

The following chart highlights some of the better-known and more obvious scriptures illustrating the Old Testament "messianic prophecies" and their relationship to the New Testament gospel of Jesus. Many of these purportedly prophetic fulfillments are included because of the specific mention in the New Testament of "prophets," "prophecy" or otherwise identified by such phrases as "in fulfillment of scripture" or "it is written." Also included here are other verses utilized in the creation of the gospels, such as those appearing in the Sermon on the Mount, previously discussed as having been strung together from Old Testament scriptures.

These numerous correlations and many others between the Old and New Testaments may be found in the footnotes of the RSVand other versions, and need not be reproduced in full here. Suffice it to say that the writers of the New Testament were very familiar with the Old Testament-the only "scriptures" of the time to which they could possibly refer-and that many of these scriptures were adapted from the Greek OT or Septuagint. In fact, almost all the Old Testament scriptures common to Matthew, Mark and Luke come from the Septuagint, rather than the Hebrew OT. As today, pious Jewsat the time when the gospel story supposedly occurred studied the scriptures intensely and knew them very well-including and especially those interpreted to apply to the coming messiah, for whom they were desperately waiting.

On the surface of it, if taken literally the New Testament seems to record the advent of the messiah, as prophesied in the Old Testament. However, there may be a different reason for this appearance. In scrutinizing all of the Old Testament "prophecies" that purportedly relate to the coming messiah, it is evident that the gospels were deliberately designed to show that these scriptures had been fulfilled in Jesus Christ. When these and other OT scriptures are studied and seriously considered, therefore, it is logical to ask if they constitute "prophecies" and "prefiguring" of the advent of a historical Jesus Christ-or if they were used as a blueprint in the creation of a fictional messiah.

The suggestion that the gospel story constitutes a patchwork of Old Testament scriptures used as a framework throws light upon some of the more illogical parts of the tale, such as at Matthew 27:12, when Jesus is being accused by the chief priests and elders yet says nothing. If we consider that this passage was written in order to "fulfill prophecy" at Isaiah 53:7, the pericope takes on greater sense.

The deliberate historicizing of "prophecies" by ancient writers is well known among biblical scholars, as reflected in the discussion by Dr. Crossan of a reconstructed text called the "Cross Gospel," the author of which, Crossan states, "attempts to write, from prophetic allusions, a first 'historical narrative' about the passion of Jesus." Concerning the Old Testamentscriptures purportedly prophesying Christ's passion, Crossanremarks that "historicized narratives were created out of those prophetic complexes, stories so good that their prophetic origins were almost totally obliterated."1 Hence, over the centuries stories have been created using "prophecies"; based on the evidence presented above, it is not unreasonable to aver that the gospel tale is one of them, with its prophetic origins obscured.

¹ Crossan, The Historical Jesus, 382.

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