III. On the Ministry of Christ

20. According to Christian opinion, Isaiah 40:3 prophesied that Jesus' coming would be heralded by a messenger:

This was supposedly fulfilled by John the Baptist in the gospels, who proclaimed the coming of Christ. You don't find anything clearly indicative of Jesus or John in the passage, however. A voice in the desert declaring the way of God is far more vague than Christians seem to believe, but once again there is also the strong possibility that the gospel authors knew of this verse in Isaiah and may have fudged some details to make events resemble it.

21. The next claim of prophecy is in Isaiah 9:1-2...

Isaiah 9:1-2 is portrayed as a prediction on Jesus' ministry in Galilee. This passage is not very specific, but it may be another case of the gospel authors embellishing events to resemble scriptures they would have been familiar with. We can suspect this by looking at the four gospels. They all place emphasis on Jesus beginning his ministry in Galilee, but not all of them agree on the circumstances that led him there. According to Mark (1:14-15) and Matthew (4:12-17), Jesus begins preaching in Galilee after John the Baptist is imprisoned. According to John, Jesus begins his ministry while John is still roaming free (3:22-30). According to Luke, Jesus' entry into ministry at Galilee has nothing to do with John, but comes right after his temptation in the desert (4:13-15). This prophecy is unimpressive in itself, but made even weaker by the discrepancies among the gospels that try to put it into fulfillment.

22. Prophecy claim number 22 alleges that Isaiah 35:5-6 predicted the miracles of Jesus:

What exactly does the last sentence have to do with Jesus' miracles? The following verse after this passage talks of how the "burning sand will become a pool, the thirsty ground bubbling springs" and in "the haunts where jackals once lay, grass and reeds and papyrus will grow." Isaiah 35 is simply talking about the redemption of God in a poetic fashion laced with imagery. Christians are taught to have a one-track mind that centers around Jesus, so it is not that surprising that they may project him into passages that have never been about him, based on the loosest and most coincidental resemblances to the gospels.

23. Psalm 78:1-4 prophesied that Jesus would speak in parables, according to Christian interpretation, at least.

I've already stated numerous times that the book of Psalms has never been considered prophecy under Jewish tradition, and it has an original context as the poetry of King David. Even so, there is an interesting irony to this suggested prophecy, since Jesus claims to have "spoken openly to the world" and "said nothing in secret" in John 18:20. Teaching in parables and uttering hidden things is not spreading an open message.

24. The twenty-fourth claim of prophecy deals with Malachi 3:1...

This supposedly predicted Jesus' entry into the temple, when he tosses out the money changers. There is surprisingly no tone of ambivalence here though. There is also no clear reference to anything related to Jesus. Another swing and a miss.

25. Finally, the 25th prophecy gets us back to another popular claim of fulfillment made by Christians.

Obviously, this is taken as a prophesy of Jesus' triumphal entry into Jerusalem on a donkey. Because of the way this passage reads, a humorous sort of slip up has made it into Matthew's telling of the triumphal entry. Zechariah 9:9 refers to a king riding into town on a colt, which is the offspring of a donkey. While Mark, Luke, and John only mention a colt that Jesus rides in on, Matthew actually places a colt and a donkey in the story. It says very clearly that the disciples "brought the donkey and the colt, placed their cloaks on them, and Jesus sat on them" (Matt. 21:7). Some apologists have contended that Jesus did not sit on both animals, that the "them" which it says he sat on were the plural "cloaks". Clever as this attempt at reconciliation may be, it seems to imply that each animal had multiple cloaks placed on it, which the passage does not provide any reason to assume.

Zechariah 9:10 also serves as further evidence against the passage's relation to Jesus:

Jesus did not usher in peace between nations and Christianity still does not dominate the entire globe. Zechariah 9:9 has been plucked out of its context by the gospel authors and by modern Christians.

26. The next prophecy claim proposed is that the Jews rejected Jesus as the messiah. The relevant verses are:

One interesting note to make with regard to Isaiah 28:16 is how the author of 1 Peter misquotes it. In the citation, instead of reading, "the one who trusts will never be dismayed", we find, "the one who trusts in him will never be put to shame" (1 Peter 3:6-8). Romans 9:33 makes the same addition, but also significantly changes the tone of the passage by referring to the cornerstone as one "that causes men to stumble and a rock that makes them fall". The stumbling block comes from a separate and unrelated portion of Isaiah, in chapter eight, verses 13-14, where God himself is called the stone that will cause the houses of Israel to stumble, as opposed to the foundational cornerstone planted in Zion by God in Isaiah 28:16. Does it seem like the New Testament authors were grasping at straws in order to find scriptural fulfillment for Jesus?

Neither of these passages provide us with any identifiable traits of Jesus. For people to recognize prophecy and for prophecy to be less open to dispute (thereby more miraculous), there need to be specifics involved, so that the predictions are not so incidental that they can be 'fulfilled' in numerous different ways. A prophecy that is applicable to anything is just as useless as a prophecy that is applicable to nothing.

27. Prophecy number twenty-seven is that Jesus would be "a light to the Gentiles":

Unfortunately for the Christian interpretation, this servant of God is identified as Israel in Isaiah 49:3 ("You are my servant, Israel, in whom I will display my splendor"). The idea of Israel being a light to the Gentiles will appear more in later discussion on Isaiah 53.

IV. On the Crucifixion of Christ

28. Was Judas' betrayal of Jesus predicted by Psalm 41:9? According to Christian apologists, yes, but let's look at the passage...

Although this may seem intriguingly like Christ's betrayal at the hands of Judas, as well as the last supper (with the mention of sharing bread), there is an original and much more relevant context. I've mentioned before that David is the supposed author of Psalms, and this passage is not unusual for him at all. David's own son turned against him and prepared to make war on his kingdom, and to add insult to injury, David's trusted counselor Ahithophel also betrayed him and joined the enemy. 2 Samuel 15-19 tells the full story of David's betrayal, and Psalm 55:11-15 describe just how close Ahithophel had been to the king, in David's own words. It's not hard to see that the counselor was a close friend who had undoubtedly shared bread with David at the king's table, but it's also interesting to note how the New Testament authors might have used this passage in constructing the gospel narratives.

29-31. The next three claims of prophecy revolve around Judas' betrayal of Jesus for 30 silver pieces, how he throws the pieces into the temple later, and then buys a potters field with them.

Matthew's gospel is the account most closely resembling this 'prophecy'. In Matt. 27:3-8, Judas experiences remorse upon seeing the condemnation of Christ, tries to return the thirty silver pieces to the priests and elders, throws them on the floor of the temple after they refuse, and then storms out to go and hang himself. Afterwards, the priests and elders use the money to buy a potter's field. The big problem arises in Matt. 27:9-10 though...

First of all, the quotation isn't even close to the original Old Testament passage, but Jeremiah is also not the prophet who delivered the prediction, Zechariah is. Christians have attempted to resolve this error by pointing to similar verses in Jeremiah, where the speaker is told to go to a potter's house (18:1-3) and commanded to buy a field (32:6-10). However, the payment for the field is 15 shekels in Jeremiah's story, not 30, and Jeremiah's purchase of the field is actually good, and not as sign of despair, since God tells him to buy. No matter how hard the gospel authors and modern Christians try to make Jesus fit Old Testament prophecy, there are still wide, gaping holes.

32. Another alleged prophecy on Jesus from the book of Zechariah has to do with the disciples abandoning him:

God will allow his shepherd to be struck and the sheep will scatter. Imaginative minds will have no trouble thinking this is about Jesus' crucifixion and how his followers forsook him, but does it really say anything about this? How many shepherds did God have? For the nomadic Israelites, a shepherd was a leader of the people, and that could be almost anyone. God even had several messiahs, or anointed ones, among the priests and kings. Anytime an authority figure is struck (dead or just with scandal), his/her followers will scatter for at least a short while, before new leadership can step in to regroup and reorganize. Even if this prophecy was incontrovertibly about Jesus, it would still not necessarily amount to anything beside basic common sense on how sects or cults operate.

33. Next prophecy claim on the list relates to Jesus being accused by false witnesses, allegedly found in Psalm 35:11 and verses 20-21.

We have already seen, from claim #23, that Jesus was rightly accused of at least one thing: teaching in secret. Though he denied it, his frequent use of parables stands to testify against him, and the author of Matthew even argued that hidden teachings were part of fulfilling prophecy (Matt. 13:34-35). Nonetheless, we are talking about Psalms, which, for the nth time now, is a book of poetry, not prophecy, and has continuously been found to have original context in David's life that makes far more sense than any application to Jesus.