Messianic Prophecy: An Overview

"Hosea’s words are not a prediction, but an account of Israel’s origin." — R. T. France, evangelical commentator on Matthew, 1985¹

"This is also the only text of the five in the infancy narrative that can be viewed via a very straightforward scheme of prediction and fulfillment" — Craig Blomberg on Micah 5:2, 2007²

Summary

The New Testament says many times that events in Jesus's life "fulfilled" the Old Testament.  Popular apologetics goes further and counts "over 300" such prophecies.³  This page sorts the texts by how much weight each can bear as evidence that someone foresaw Jesus.  It does not argue any text afresh.  It collects the verdicts of the detailed articles in this section, scores the remaining texts briefly, and puts all of them in one table.

The sorting uses three of the eight tests set out in How to Test a Fulfilled Prophecy.  Test 1 asks whether the words were written before the event.  Every text here passes it.  Test 3 asks whether anyone read the text as a prediction of this kind before the event.  Test 4 asks whether the outcome lay beyond the reach of Jesus, his followers, his enemies and the writers who report it.  A text that fails Test 3 is a pattern seen afterwards.  A text that fails Test 4 is a match that someone could have supplied.

The result, for thirty texts.

1. Two survive as evidence a skeptic must weigh: Isaiah 53 and Daniel 9. Both were certainly written centuries before Jesus, and the central thing each is said to foretell, an innocent man's death for others and an anointed one cut off at a time that can be counted, was out of any follower's power to arrange. Neither was read before Jesus as a prophecy of a dying messiah in any dated text, and both are disputed on what exactly they commit to.
2. Nine were read as messianic before Christianity, but the match lay within reach or cannot be checked. Micah 5:2 and Genesis 49:10 carry a little weight. The others, such as descent from David, a prophet like Moses, a forerunner, or a king enthroned at God's right hand, show that Jesus was presented in the terms of an existing hope. That is a fact about Jewish expectation, not evidence of foreknowledge.
3. Seven were not read as messianic before Christianity, and the match depends on Jesus's own choices or on the Gospel writers' reports. Zechariah 9:9's king on a donkey is the clearest case: the Gospels say Jesus sent for the animal.
4. Seven are typology, a pattern seen afterwards. Hosea 11:1, "out of Egypt I called my son," is the standard example, and conservative commentators say plainly that it is not a prediction.
5. Five are not predictions in their own setting, or are not in the text at all. Isaiah 7:14 was a sign to King Ahaz with a deadline of a few years. Zechariah 11:12–13 is a past-tense account of the prophet's own wages. No manuscript of Psalm 22:16 says "pierced." No Old Testament text says the Messiah "would be called a Nazarene."

What the detailed articles found.

• Isaiah 53: real but inconclusive evidence. The text is pre-Christian and most naturally describes an individual, but it does not mention crucifixion, and most of its matching details could be shaped by the Gospel writers.
• Psalm 22: "pierced" is in no manuscript and the New Testament never quotes that verse. The rest of the psalm is the better argument, and turns on whether the Gospels told the crucifixion in the psalm's words because it happened that way.
• Messianic Birth Texts: Isaiah 7:14 carries no weight as a prediction; Micah 5:2 carries a little; Genesis 49:10 carries a little as an old hope and none as a clock.
• Second Temple Messianic Expectations: Jews before Jesus expected a conquering son of David, and sometimes a priest, a prophet or a heavenly judge. No pre-Christian text has a messiah who suffers, dies and atones.
• Daniel 9: that article argues that the seventy weeks predict the year and month of Jesus's death, counting 483 years of 360 days from 444 BC to the spring of AD 33.
• Daniel 2, 7, and 11: the empire visions offer no fulfilled prediction that passes Tests 2 and 3. It leaves Daniel 7's "one like a son of man" to another article, and this page scores it in Part 6.

Verdict.  The popular case counts hundreds of fulfilled prophecies.  Scored by the same tests a skeptic would apply to any other ancient oracle, two texts survive as serious evidence and two more add a little.  That is a far smaller case than the lists claim.  It is also not nothing, and it is not one a skeptic can dismiss by pointing at the weak items, because the two strongest texts do not depend on them.

Part 1: Which texts, and how they are sorted

The New Testament's own list

The Gospels and Acts say 29 times, in so many words, that scripture was fulfilled.  Eighteen of those verses quote or name a particular passage.  One more, John 19:28, points to a passage without quoting it.  The other ten speak of "the scriptures" in general.⁴  Matthew supplies ten of the eighteen, half of them in his first four chapters.  To these the table adds the passages the New Testament quotes "as it is written" of Jesus (Micah 5:2, Malachi 3:1, Zechariah 13:7), the psalms the apostles use as proofs in Acts (Psalms 2, 16, 110 and 118), and Deuteronomy 18's prophet like Moses.

The popular lists

Josh McDowell's Evidence That Demands a Verdict told its readers in 1972 that "THE OLD TESTAMENT CONTAINS OVER 300 REFERENCES TO THE MESSIAH THAT WERE FULFILLED IN JESUS."³  Peter Stoner, whose probability argument McDowell reproduced, wrote that "More than three hundred prophecies from the Old Testament which deal with the first advent of Christ have been listed."⁵  Stoner then priced eight of them.  The table includes all eight, and the texts popular books most often add that the New Testament does not quote as fulfilled:  Genesis 49:10, Isaiah 9:6, Daniel 9, Zechariah 13:6, and Psalm 22:16's "pierced."

So the table has thirty rows.  It is not every text anyone has called messianic.  It is every text the New Testament explicitly applies to Jesus's life, plus the ones popular apologetics leans on most.  A list of three hundred is built by adding allusions and repeated themes to these, and any text that fails here would fail there too.

The tests used to sort them

Every text in the table was written before Jesus, so all pass Test 1.  The sorting turns on two other tests from How to Test a Fulfilled Prophecy.

• Test 3, read that way before. Was the text read as a prediction of this kind of event before the event? The evidence must itself be dated before Christianity, or be independent of it. A reading that first appears in the Gospels, or in a Targum or Talmud written down later, does not count. The method article states the rule: a text "fails if its predictive reading first appears after the event," and "Typology, however illuminating, is a reading after the event and does not count as prediction."
• Test 4, out of reach. Could Jesus, his followers, his enemies or the writer who reports the fulfilment have brought it about or supplied it? A birthplace, a ride on a donkey, or a detail reported only by one Gospel all fall within someone's reach. An execution under Pontius Pilate, which a hostile Roman historian reports, does not.⁶

Tests 2 and 5 to 7 matter for the texts that survive, and the detailed articles apply them.  This page uses them only where a row's verdict turns on them.

The five bands are:

1. Written long before, and the central claim lay out of reach. Evidence a skeptic must weigh.
2. Read as messianic before Christianity, but within reach or uncheckable. Jesus fits an existing hope; the fit could be claimed.
3. Not read as messianic before Christianity, and within reach. The match depends on Jesus's own choices or on one Gospel's report.
4. Typology. A pattern seen afterwards, conceded as such by conservative scholars or plain from the text.
5. Not a prediction in its own setting, or not in the text.

Part 2: The table

"Read before" is Test 3:  a reading as a prophecy of a coming messianic figure, dated before Christianity or independent of it.  "Within reach" is Test 4.  "Typology" means the New Testament reads the text as a pattern, or conservative scholars say it does.  "n/a" means the question does not arise.

Part 3: Isaiah 53

Isaiah 53 is the strongest text in the table, and its article calls it "real but inconclusive."  The Great Isaiah Scroll from Qumran was copied between 180 and 100 BC, so the passage predates Jesus beyond dispute.⁷  Two Jewish scholars, Marc Brettler and Amy-Jill Levine, grant that the servant is most likely one person:  "'my servant' in 52:13 and 53:11 cannot refer to the collective Israel."⁸  But no dated text before Jesus reads the passage as a prophecy of the Messiah's death, and most of the details apologists lead with, such as the silence before accusers and the grave with the rich, could be shaped by a writer who knew the text or enacted by a man who did.

What survives is the shape of the fit.  The chapter does not mention crucifixion, and crucifixion was the one thing about Jesus that Jews found impossible to accept.  In Justin's dialogue of about AD 160, the Jew Trypho grants the suffering and balks only at the cross:  "prove to us whether He must be crucified and die so disgracefully and so dishonourably by the death cursed in the law.  For we cannot bring ourselves even to think of this."⁹  Nobody invents a crucified messiah from Isaiah 53.  The cross came first, and the text was recruited to explain it.  That is why the passage passes Test 4 at its centre while failing it in its details.

Part 4: Psalm 22

Psalm 22 supplies two rows.  The famous clause "they pierced my hands and my feet" goes in band 5.  The Hebrew of the standard text reads "like a lion," the Greek reads "they dug," and no manuscript in any language says "pierced."  The New Testament never quotes the verse, though it quotes the next one word for word.

The rest of the psalm is the better argument and goes in band 3.  Jesus cries its first verse from the cross, the priests mock him in the words of verses 7–8, and John quotes verse 18 with a fulfilment formula for the soldiers dividing his clothes.  No pre-Christian Jewish text reads the psalm as messianic, and the rabbis read it of Esther.¹⁰  So the case turns on the direction of dependence:  did the Gospel writers tell the crucifixion in the psalm's words because it happened that way, or did the psalm supply the story?  The Psalm 22 article finds that open.  John's garment scene is the clearest case of shaping, since John splits one line of Hebrew parallelism into two acts, while the other three Gospels keep it as one.

Part 5: The birth texts

Messianic Birth Texts scores three texts.  Isaiah 7:14 carries no weight as a prediction of Jesus.  In its chapter it is a sign to King Ahaz with a clock:  "Before the child knows how to reject evil and choose what is right, the land whose two kings you fear will be desolate."¹¹  The Hebrew word for the mother means a young woman, and the evangelical Craig Blomberg concedes that "there are no demonstrably pre-Christian Jewish texts that reflect on the meaning of Isa. 7:14."²

Micah 5:2 carries a little weight.  It is a real prediction, centuries old, of "a king ... who will rule over Israel" from "Bethlehem Ephrathah," David's town.¹¹  Blomberg calls it the only text in Matthew's birth story "that can be viewed via a very straightforward scheme of prediction and fulfillment."²  It fails Test 4, because a birthplace is within reach of a family and of a storyteller.  Matthew and Luke report the Bethlehem birth independently, as the critic Robert Miller grants.¹²

Genesis 49:10 carries a little weight as an old hope and none as a clock.  A Qumran commentary reads "Until the messiah of righteousness comes, the branch of David."¹³  But the verse names no date, and the popular claim that its scepter departed in AD 7 rests on a mistranslated year and a rabbinic cry that no rabbinic text contains.

Micah 5:2 and Test 3: pass or partly?

Two articles in this section grade Micah 5:2 differently on Test 3.  The scorecard in How to Test a Fulfilled Prophecy says "Pass," citing Matthew 2 and John 7.  Messianic Birth Texts says "Partly."

"Partly" is right, by the method article's own rule.  Test 3 asks for a reading made before the event, and a text "fails if its predictive reading first appears after the event."  The two witnesses are Matthew, where the chief priests answer Herod with the verse, and John, where a crowd objects that "the Christ is a descendant of David and comes from Bethlehem."¹¹  Both were written after Jesus's life by his followers.  Messianic Birth Texts searched the pre-Christian literature and found that no Qumran text, apocryphal book, Philo or Josephus cites Micah 5:2;  the Targum's "Messiah" there and the Jerusalem Talmud's Bethlehem story are later.  The table of pre-Christian messianic readings in Second Temple Messianic Expectations has no Micah row.  The method article's own prose agrees with "Partly":  it says Micah 5:2 passes "at least in part."

What lifts Micah above a plain fail is the shape of John's report.  John puts the Bethlehem expectation in the mouths of Jesus's opponents as an objection, and never answers it.  A writer inventing evidence would not do that.  So the expectation was probably real in Jesus's time.  But a report in a Christian Gospel is not a dated pre-Christian reading, and the grade should say so.

Part 6: Daniel 9 and Daniel 7

Daniel 9

Daniel 9 and the Seventy Weeks states its conclusion directly:  "Daniel 9:24-26 uniquely predicts the year and month of Jesus’ crucifixion, with no credible alternative explanation."  It dates Artaxerxes's order to rebuild Jerusalem, in Nehemiah 2, to March or April 444 BC, and counts 483 years of 360 days, which is 173,880 days, to the spring of AD 33.  It holds that the prophecy was written centuries before Jesus, and it assigns the last half of the seventieth week to the future.

Two other articles in this section bear on where Daniel 9 sits in the table.  How to Test a Fulfilled Prophecy passes it on Test 1 "even at 165 BC," the latest date any scholar gives the book, and scores its endpoints as open on Test 2:  each choice of decree, year length and endpoint gives a different landing, and the alternatives have to be counted.  It also grants that every Persian decree lands within about a century of Jesus, a real feature of a text that predates him by at least two centuries.  Second Temple Messianic Expectations finds no secure pre-Christian reading of 9:25 as a messianic prophecy, because the one Qumran text that seems to quote it, 11Q13, has only "Dan[" surviving and the rest is restored.  So Daniel 9 sits in band 1 for the same reason as Isaiah 53:  it was written long before, and the time of an execution under Pontius Pilate was out of anyone's reach.  How strongly it counts depends on whether its start and end points were fixed before the count was made, which is the argument of its own article.  The main rival reading makes the anointed one the high priest Onias III, murdered in 171 BC;  When Was the Book of Daniel Written? finds that on that reading the 483 years overshoot the real interval "by fifty to seventy years," so neither reading fits without choices.

Daniel 7's "son of man"

Daniel 2, 7, and 11 finds that Daniel's visions of four empires offer no fulfilled prediction that passes Tests 2 and 3.  Neither it nor Second Temple Messianic Expectations scores the "one like a son of man" of Daniel 7:13 as a prediction, so this page does so briefly.

Daniel sees "one like a son of man" coming "with the clouds of the sky" to receive an everlasting kingdom.¹¹  The chapter's own interpretation gives the kingdom to a people:  "The holy ones of the Most High will receive the kingdom and will take possession of the kingdom forever and ever."¹¹  The Similitudes of Enoch turn the figure into a heavenly judge and call him God's anointed:  "they have denied the Lord of Spirits and His Anointed."¹⁴  But their date is disputed.  John Collins puts them before AD 70;¹⁵ Daniel Boyarin dates them "from the mid-first century A.D.";¹⁶ and no copy survives from the period.  At his trial Jesus applies the figure to himself:  "you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Power and coming with the clouds of heaven."¹¹  That is a prediction of something that has not happened in any way a historian can check.  The Talmud later set Daniel 7:13 beside Zechariah 9:9 as two ways the Messiah might come:  "with the clouds of heaven" if Israel merits it, and "lowly and riding upon a donkey" if not.¹⁷  So Daniel 7:13 goes in band 2:  probably read as messianic near Jesus's time, and committed to nothing yet checkable.

Part 7: What Jews expected before Jesus

Second Temple Messianic Expectations supplies most of the Test 3 column.  Its finding is that the common hope was a conquering son of David.  John Collins, the leading specialist, counts "four basic messianic paradigms (king, priest, prophet, and heavenly messiah)" and says that "the expectation of a Davidic messiah was surely part of" the common Judaism of 100 BC to AD 100.¹⁵  Its table of pre-Christian messianic readings lists Numbers 24:17, Isaiah 11, 2 Samuel 7, Amos 9:11, Psalm 2, Genesis 49:10, Deuteronomy 18, Isaiah 61, Malachi's Elijah, the Greek of Psalm 110:3 and Daniel 7 through the Similitudes.  Isaiah 53, Psalm 22 and Zechariah 12:10 are not on it.

That is why band 2 is full and band 1 is nearly empty.  The texts Jews read as messianic before Jesus describe a king, a prophet, a forerunner or a heavenly judge, and the New Testament's use of them shows that Jesus was presented in those terms.  The texts that describe suffering and death were not read as messianic before him.  No pre-Christian text has a messiah who suffers, dies and atones, and Martin Hengel, the strongest defender of the opposite view, concedes that such an expectation "cannot therefore be proven to exist with absolute certainty and in a clearly outlined form in pre-Christian Judaism."¹⁸

This cuts both ways.  It is a problem for the apologist who says Jesus fulfilled what every Jew expected:  the death was not expected.  It is equally a problem for the skeptic who says the first Christians took a suffering-messiah story that was already to hand and wrote Jesus into it:  there was no such story to take.  The belief that the Messiah had to die first appears among the followers of a man who had just been crucified.

Part 8: Texts without their own article

These texts have no detailed article yet.  Each gets one short paragraph:  its own setting, any dated reading before Christianity, and the reason for its band.  Verses are quoted from the NET Bible, an evangelical translation.

Zechariah

Zechariah 9:9 promises:  "Look!  Your king is coming to you:  He is legitimate and victorious, humble and riding on a donkey."¹¹  No dated text before Christianity reads it of the Messiah;  the Talmud's reading, quoted above, is centuries later.  It fails Test 4 on the Gospels' own account.  Jesus tells two disciples, "you will find a colt tied there that has never been ridden."¹¹  E. P. Sanders, a critical historian, inclines "to the view that it was Jesus himself who read the prophecy and decided to fulfil it."¹⁹  The entry tells us what Jesus claimed, not that anyone foresaw him.

Zechariah 11:12–13 is told in the past tense, of the prophet's own wages:  "So they weighed out my payment—30 pieces of silver."  Then "I took the 30 pieces of silver and threw them to the potter at the temple of the LORD."¹¹  Matthew credits the words to Jeremiah:  "Then what was spoken by Jeremiah the prophet was fulfilled."¹¹  The passage is a prophet's sign-act about his own rejection, not a forecast, and the betrayal price is reported only by Matthew.

Zechariah 12:10 is the piercing text the New Testament actually uses.  God says that the royal house of David and the people of Jerusalem "will look to me, the one they have pierced.  They will lament for him as one laments for an only son."¹¹  John applies it to the soldier's spear:  "They will look on the one whom they have pierced."¹¹  This verse gives the Christian reading a real foothold, as Why Judaism Rejects Jesus finds.  The Talmud reads it of a slain messianic figure:  "this eulogy is for Messiah ben Yosef who was killed."¹⁷  The Jewish apologist Gerald Sigal also reads the one mourned as "the warrior Messiah who will die in battle."²⁰  But the Babylonian Talmud was compiled about AD 550,²¹ so it cannot show what Jews expected before Jesus, and the spear thrust is reported by John alone.  Band 3, with a stronger claim than its neighbours.

Zechariah 13:6 is on Stoner's list as "betrayed by a friend."  In context the speaker is a disgraced prophet who denies his calling:  "I am no prophet;  indeed, I am a farmer."  Asked about "these wounds on your chest," he answers, "Some that I received in the house of my friends."¹¹  It is not about the Messiah.

Zechariah 13:7, "Strike the shepherd that the flock may be scattered,"¹¹ is the one text in this group with a dated reading before Christianity.  The Damascus Document, a sectarian work from before Christianity, quotes it of the end time:  the "poor ones of the flock" escape, "but those that remain shall be delivered up to the sword when there comes the messiah of Aaron and Israel."¹³  The struck shepherd there is not the messiah.  Jesus applies the verse to his disciples' flight on the night of his arrest (Mark 14:27), which was within their reach.

Hosea, Jeremiah and the Nazarene

Matthew 2 has three fulfilments that conservative scholars treat as typology.  Hosea 11:1 is about the exodus.  France:  "Hosea’s words are not a prediction, but an account of Israel’s origin."¹  Walter Kaiser:  "it was not a prophecy as was Micah 5:2."²²  Blomberg:  "Hosea 11:1 is a reference to the exodus, pure and simple."²  Jeremiah 31:15, Rachel weeping for her children, is about the exile.  Blomberg:  "The text in Jeremiah is not a prediction, nor does it even use the future tense."²  And Matthew 2:23 says Jesus's move to Nazareth fulfilled the prophets' word that "Jesus would be called a Nazarene."¹¹  Blomberg again:  "But no OT text ever declares that anyone will be called a Nazarene!"²  None of these was a prediction, and Matthew did not need them to be.  The error belongs to the apologist who counts them.

The Psalms

Psalm 2:7, "You are my son.  This very day I have become your father,"¹¹ is a coronation psalm for a Davidic king.  It was read messianically before Christianity:  the Psalms of Solomon, about 50 BC, borrow its iron rod and potter's vessel for the coming son of David.  The New Testament applies it to Jesus's resurrection and sonship (Acts 13:33), which no event can check.  Psalm 110:1, "Sit down at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool,"¹¹ is applied to Jesus in Mark 12:35–37 and Acts 2:34–35.  Its Greek translation of verse 3, made before Christianity, has God say to the king "ἐκ γαστρὸς πρὸ ἑωσφόρου ἐξεγέννησά σε,"²³ which Collins reads as making the messiah "preexistent."²⁴  Enthronement in heaven cannot be checked either.

Psalm 16:10, "You will not abandon me to Sheol;  you will not allow your faithful follower to see the Pit,"¹¹ is a prayer of trust.  Peter argues in Acts 2 that David died and was buried, so "David by foreseeing this spoke about the resurrection of the Christ."¹¹  No dated Jewish reading before Christianity takes it that way, so it fails Test 3, and the claim it supports is the resurrection itself, which has to be argued on its own evidence.

Psalm 41:9, "Even my close friend whom I trusted, he who shared meals with me, has turned against me," is applied to Judas in John 13:18.  Five verses earlier the same speaker prays, "Heal me, for I have sinned against you."¹¹  Psalm 69 supplies "hated without cause" (John 15:25), "zeal for your house" (John 2:17), the vinegar at the cross (John 19:28–29) and the curse on Judas's homestead (Acts 1:20).  Its speaker confesses, "my guilt is not hidden from you."¹¹  A speaker who confesses his sins is not a prediction of a sinless Messiah.  The New Testament reads these psalms as the pattern of the righteous sufferer, which is typology.

Psalm 78:2, "I will make insightful observations about the past,"¹¹ introduces a history of Israel;  Matthew 13:35 applies it to Jesus's parables.  Psalm 118:22, "The stone that the builders discarded has become the cornerstone,"¹¹ is applied by Jesus to himself (Mark 12:10) and by Peter to his rejection (Acts 4:11).  Both are applications of a pattern, and neither commits to an event that could be checked.

Isaiah 9, 11, 42 and 61

Isaiah 9:1–2 promises that gloom will lift from "the land of Zebulun, and the land of Naphtali,"¹¹ and Matthew says it was fulfilled when Jesus "moved from Nazareth to make his home in Capernaum by the sea, in the region of Zebulun and Naphtali."¹¹  Where to live was Jesus's own choice.  Isaiah 9:6, "For a child has been born to us, a son has been given to us,"¹¹ is on most popular lists, though the New Testament does not quote it as fulfilled.  The earliest messianic reading is the Aramaic Targum's "the Messiah whose peace shall be great upon us in his days,"²⁵ and Kevin Cathcart and Robert Gordon, translators of the Targum of the Minor Prophets, accept that the Targum of the Prophets took shape "not later than the Bar-Kochba rebellion," about AD 135, while warning that claims for a date before AD 70 "can seldom, if ever, be demonstrated with anything approaching absolute certainty."²⁶  So the reading cannot be dated before Jesus.

Isaiah 11:1–10, the shoot from the stump of Jesse, and God's promise to David in 2 Samuel 7 were read as messianic long before Christianity, in 4Q161, 4Q174 and the Psalms of Solomon.  Paul already calls Jesus "a descendant of David with reference to the flesh."¹¹  Davidic descent is a claim a family and its followers make, and it cannot now be checked.  It shows that Jesus was presented as the hoped-for king, which is not evidence that anyone foresaw him.

Isaiah 42:1–4, "Here is my servant whom I support, my chosen one in whom I take pleasure,"¹¹ is applied in Matthew 12:17–21 to Jesus's quiet withdrawal and his order not to make him known.  The Greek translation, made before Christianity, names the servant:  "Ιακωβ ὁ παῖς μου … Ισραηλ ὁ ἐκλεκτός μου," "Jacob my servant ... Israel my chosen."²³  The Similitudes of Enoch call their Son of Man "the light of the nations," a phrase from the servant songs, but Collins notes he "is not a suffering figure."¹⁵

Isaiah 61:1–2, "The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is upon me, because the LORD has chosen me,"¹¹ was read of an end-time anointed figure before Christianity:  4Q521 expects one who "will heal the badly wounded and will make the dead live, he will proclaim good news to the poor."¹³  Jesus read the passage in the synagogue at Nazareth and said, "Today this scripture has been fulfilled even as you heard it being read."¹¹  That is a claim made by the claimant himself, which is the plainest case of Test 4.  It tells us how Jesus understood his mission.

The forerunner and the prophet

Malachi 3:1 promises, "I am about to send my messenger, who will clear the way before me,"¹¹ and Malachi 4:5 names him:  "Look, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and terrible day of the LORD arrives."¹¹  Ben Sira, about 180 BC, already expected Elijah "to restore the tribes of Iakob."²⁷  Mark 1:2–3 joins Malachi to Isaiah 40:3, the voice in the wilderness.  Before Christianity the Community Rule read that verse of its own members' move to the desert:  they are "to walk to the desert in order to open there His path."¹³  So the expectation was real.  But the identification of John the Baptist as the forerunner was made by John, Jesus and their followers, and it fails Test 4.

Deuteronomy 18:15, "The LORD your God will raise up for you a prophet like me,"¹¹ was read of an end-time prophet before Christianity, in 4Q175, which quotes the companion verse:  "I would raise up for them a prophet from among their brothers, like you."¹³  Acts 3:22 applies it to Jesus.  Any prophet could claim the role, so it commits to little and fails Test 4.

No bone broken

John says the soldiers did not break Jesus's legs:  "For these things happened so that the scripture would be fulfilled."¹¹  The texts are the Passover rule, "you must not break a bone of it,"¹¹ and a psalm of the righteous, "He protects all his bones;  not one of them is broken."¹¹  John's point is that Jesus died as the Passover lamb, which is typology, and the detail is reported only by him.

Objections and responses

1. "Matthew never offered a probability argument. Testing his typology as prediction is unfair to him." Agreed. The conservative commentators quoted above say the same, and the tests do not judge Matthew. They judge the apologetic claim that these texts are predictions whose fulfilment proves foreknowledge. Typology fails Test 3 by definition, because the pattern is seen afterwards. The error belongs to the list that counts Hosea 11:1 as a hit, not to the Gospel that used it as a pattern.
2. "Even weak items add up. Thirty matches are a cumulative case." Only items that pass Tests 1 to 5 can be added, and only if they are independent of each other. Band 3 and band 4 items are reported by the same few writers, who knew the texts, so they are not independent. A typological match adds nothing, however many there are. And a list chosen because it fits is not a sample. Stoner said more than three hundred prophecies had been listed and priced eight of them without saying how they were chosen.⁵ He also said of his estimates: "No attempt will be made, however, to defend these estimates."²⁸
3. "Jews before Jesus misread their own scriptures. Test 3 only measures their blindness." That may be a fair theological claim, and the New Testament makes it. But evidence of foreknowledge has to be visible before the event to someone who does not already believe. A reading first made after the event cannot show that the text foretold it. The claim does not touch band 1: Isaiah 53 and Daniel 9 are weighed on Test 4 and on what they commit to, not on who read them first.
4. "The rabbis themselves read Isaiah 53 and Zechariah 12:10 as messianic." Some did. The Targum opens Isaiah 53 with "my servant the messiah," and the Talmud mourns a slain Messiah son of Joseph at Zechariah 12:10.¹⁷ Those readings answer the charge that Christians invented a messianic reading of these texts. They cannot pass Test 3 for the prophecy, because they were written down after Jesus.
5. "This sorting assumes the Gospel writers invented things." It does not. Band 3 includes acts Jesus chose to perform, which a critical historian like Sanders accepts as historical.¹⁹ It includes John's report of a Jewish objection he never answers. And the strongest finding runs the other way: the crucifixion was the one fact nobody arranged and nobody wanted, and Isaiah 53 survives because of it. Test 4 only says that a match within someone's reach cannot count as evidence that someone foresaw it.
6. "Two texts are too few to matter." Two pre-Christian texts whose central claims lay outside anyone's reach are a real finding, and a skeptic has to explain them. Brettler and Levine, writing for Jews and Christians together, note of the Hebrew Bible that "nowhere else does it depict an individual punished for many."⁸ A crucified Galilean fits that individual well enough that his followers reached for the text at once. The weak items on the popular lists do not weaken these two, because the case for them does not use the weak items.
7. "Daniel 9 lands on the very year of the crucifixion." Daniel 9 and the Seventy Weeks argues that it does, counting from 444 BC to AD 33. The method article asks that the start, the length of the year and the end be fixed before counting, and that the alternatives be counted. It also grants that every Persian decree lands within about a century of Jesus. This page puts Daniel 9 in band 1 either way. How much it weighs is the question of its own article.
8. "Jesus did not do the Messiah's work: no rebuilt Temple, no ingathering of the exiles, no world peace." This is Judaism's strongest argument, and Why Judaism Rejects Jesus finds that the Christian answer, two comings, is ancient and has real footholds in Isaiah 53, Zechariah 12:10 and Daniel 9, but no text says "twice." The question then reduces to the resurrection. For this page the point is narrower. The band 2 texts that promise a reigning king are, on any reading, either unfulfilled or fulfilled in ways no historian can check.

Issues and unanswered questions

1. Texts that deserve their own article. In order of value: (a) Zechariah 12:10, the piercing text the New Testament actually uses, with its own textual question of "me" or "him," probably as part of an article on Zechariah 9–14 that would also take 9:9, 11:12–13, 13:6 and 13:7; (b) Psalms 2 and 110, the royal psalms that the apostles use most as proofs; (c) Daniel 7:13, the "son of man," which no article scores (Part 6); (d) Isaiah 9:1–7, whose titles in 9:6 Why Judaism Rejects Jesus finds turn on prior commitments; (e) Malachi 3 and Isaiah 40:3 with the career of John the Baptist; (f) Psalms 41 and 69 as psalms of the righteous sufferer.
2. The search for pre-Christian readings was not exhaustive for the texts without articles. Their Test 3 grades rest on the table in Second Temple Messianic Expectations and on what the other articles found. A dated reading of Zechariah 9:9, Psalm 118:22 or Isaiah 9 from Qumran or the Greek versions would move its row.
3. Whether a Qumran copy of the Damascus Document preserves the Zechariah 13:7 passage was not checked. The passage is in the document's second text, known from a copy found in the Cairo Genizah.
4. The count depends on the rule for including texts. The table has every passage the New Testament explicitly applies to Jesus's life and the texts popular lists lean on most. Lists of three hundred add allusions and repeated themes, such as "seed of the woman" in Genesis 3:15, which no article here scores. Adding them would not raise the number of texts in band 1.
5. "Cannot be checked" is not "false." Several band 2 texts promise things, such as divine sonship or enthronement, that no historical method can test. Their placement says only that they cannot serve as evidence.
6. Daniel 9's own open questions, such as whether the decree should be dated to 444 or 445 BC, are listed on that article's improvement card. This page summarises the article's conclusion and does not settle them.
7. Two articles disagree on Isaiah 53 and Test 3. Isaiah 53 counts the Targum's "my servant the messiah" as a partial early messianic reading; Second Temple Messianic Expectations dates the Targum's written form after Christianity and lists no pre-Christian messianic reading of the passage. This page follows the dated evidence, and the Isaiah 53 article's overall verdict does not depend on the point.

Verdict

Thirty Old Testament texts are applied to Jesus by the New Testament or by popular apologetics.  Scored by the tests a skeptic would apply to any ancient oracle, they sort like this.

1. Two must be weighed: Isaiah 53 and Daniel 9. Both were written centuries before Jesus, and the central thing each describes, an innocent man's death for others and an anointed one cut off at a countable time, lay beyond anyone's power to arrange. Neither was read before Jesus, in any dated text, as foretelling a dying messiah, and both are disputed on what they commit to. Their articles call Isaiah 53 "real but inconclusive" and argue that Daniel 9 fixes the year of the crucifixion.
2. Two add a little: Micah 5:2 and Genesis 49:10. Both were read as messianic hopes before Jesus. A birthplace can be supplied, and a scepter without a date cannot be timed.
3. Twenty-six cannot serve as evidence that anyone foresaw Jesus. Seven are typology, five are not predictions in their own setting, and fourteen are matches that Jesus, his followers or the Gospel writers could supply, or promises that no event can check. Some of these, such as Zechariah 12:10 and the rest of Psalm 22, are better than their band suggests and deserve their own study.

So the popular lists overcount badly.  "Over 300" fulfilled prophecies come down to two that a skeptic must weigh and two that add a little.  Of Stoner's eight, one, Micah 5:2, survives with a small weight.  What remains is the shape of the fit, and it runs against both popular stories.  Jesus was not the Messiah Jews expected, because no one expected a crucified one.  And the first Christians did not borrow a dying-messiah myth, because there was none to borrow.  They reached for Isaiah 53 and Psalm 22 after the cross, to explain an event they had not chosen.  Whether two old texts that fit that event so well are evidence of foreknowledge is a question a skeptic cannot settle by pointing to the hundreds of weak items, because the case does not rest on them.

Sources