God The Old Testament The New Testament Popular Books

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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 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. 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. 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. The story of Jesus' death, therefore, involved a profound shift in meaning from the Old Testament tradition. 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. Gospel of Matthew The Gospel of Matthew has the largest number of messianic quotations from the Old Testament. 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 word translated here as "maiden" is almah, meaning a young woman who is ripe for marriage (meaning aged less than 13, or between 12 and 14 years old, according to other sources) rather than a virgin. Matthew, however, used the Greek translation of Isaiah rather than the Hebrew original, and the word that appears there is parthenos, meaning virgin. Prophecies Christians consider fulfilled Daniel 9:24–27 Seventy weeks are decreed for your people and your holy city: to finish the transgression, to put an end to sin, and to atone for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal both vision and prophet, and to anoint a most holy place. Know therefore and understand: from the time that the word went out to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until the time of an anointed prince, there shall be seven weeks; and for sixty-two weeks it shall be built again with streets and moat, but in a troubled time. After the sixty-two weeks, an anointed one shall be cut off and shall have nothing, and the troops of the prince who is to come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary. Its end shall come with a flood, and to the end there shall be war. Desolations are decreed. He shall make a strong covenant with many for one week, and for half of the week he shall make sacrifice and offering cease; and in their place shall be an abomination that desolates, until the decreed end is poured out upon the desolator. 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 Deuteronomy 18 speaks of a prophet who would be raised up from among the Jewish nation: The LORD will raise up for you a prophet like me from among yourselves, from your own kinsmen. You are to pay attention to him ... 18 I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their kinsmen. I will put my words in his mouth, and he will tell them everything I order him. (CJB) 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 Acts 3:18–22, Peter said that Jesus was the fulfillment of this promise. Ezekiel 37:24, 25–27 And David my servant [shall be] king over them; and they all shall have one shepherd: they shall also walk in my judgments, and observe my statutes, and do them. 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 after 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 in the land I gave to Ya'akov my servant, where your ancestors lived; they will live there – they, their children, and their grandchildren, forever; and David my servant will be their leader forever. I will make a covenant of peace with them, an everlasting covenant. I will give to them.... Discover the God The Old Testament The New Testament popular books. Find the top 100 most popular God The Old Testament The New Testament books.