“Jesus Was an Imposter Who Failed to Fulfill the Messianic Prophecies”
CHALLENGE #5
“JESUS WAS AN IMPOSTER WHO FAILED TO FULFILL THE MESSIANIC PROPHECIES”
There’s no such thing as a Jew for Jesus. It’s like saying a black man is for the, KKK. You can’t be, a table and a chair. You’re, either a Jew or a Gentile.
Comedian and rabbi Jackie Mason1
I have a special love for Jesus because he is the fulfillment of the, prophecies to my people,, the, Jews.
Christian scholar Paul Feinberg2
The response has been volcanic.”
For the leader of an organization with such an incendiary name, David Brickner of Jews for Jesus is soft-spoken and mild-mannered — and if anything, his assessment of what occurred in New York City during the summer of 2006 might actually be an understatement.
In a month-long evangelistic campaign, Brickner led two hundred missionaries through all five boroughs of the city that has the largest Jewish population outside of Israel. They mailed 80,000 Yiddish copies of the Jesus film to Hasidic homes, distributed a million tracts, and plastered advertisements in subway stations and newspapers.
“We’re saying Jesus is the Messiah of Israel,” said Brickner. “What could be more Jewish?”3
Volcanic? To say the least, the reaction was emotional for many. “Jews for Jesus Hit Town and Find a Tough Crowd,” said a headline in the New York Times.4 Letters to newspapers decried the group’s “insidiousness” and “invitation to betrayal.”5 Though much of the response came in the form of quiet indignation, one incensed commuter did punch an evangelist in the mouth, and copies of the Jesus film were publicly burned.6 Jewish comedian Jackie Mason sued over his image being used in a pamphlet.7 In opposing the campaign, a “counter-missionary” organization called Jews for Judaism stationed its own volunteers close to Brickner’s evangelists and even staffed a toll-free hotline for family members wanting to bring back a relative who decided to follow Jesus.
“Someone is trying to get you to betray not just your religion, but your parents and your grandparents,” warned David Berger, professor of religion at Brooklyn College.8 Scott Hillman, head of Jews for Judaism’s countereffort, said, “Judaism has been around for 3,500 years. Surely we have an answer for any question they could raise.”9 In his own understatement, Rabbi Joshua Waxman wrote: “Jews for Jesus push a lot of people’s buttons.” For him, the issues are straightforward: “Couldn’t you be Jewish and believe in Jesus? The answer is no.”10
One conviction that unites many Jewish and Christian scholars is that the Tanakh, known by Christians as the Old Testament, does foretell the coming of the Messiah. “Belief in the coming of the Messiah has always been a fundamental part of Judaism,” said Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan. “Thus, for example, [Jewish philosopher] Maimonides counts the belief in the Messiah as one of the thirteen cardinal principles of Judaism. It is a concept that is repeated again and again throughout the length and breadth of Jewish literature.”11
Maimonides, whose writings are foundational to Orthodox Judaism, said in the twelfth century, “I firmly believe, in complete faith, in the coming of the Messiah, and although he may tarry, I daily wait for his coming.”12 Today, Orthodox Jews, and among them especially Hasidic Jews, particularly emphasize messianism.13
The big controversy is whether Jesus of Nazareth is the one who fulfilled the ancient prophecies and thus fits the fingerprint of this much-anticipated Messiah, a word that means “anointed one.” The Greek word for Messiah is christos, or Christ, the term that has been firmly affixed to Jesus’ name throughout history. “To call Jesus the Christ, therefore, is to make a theological claim—that he is the Messiah long expected by the Jews,” said Stephen Prothero, chair of the religion department at Boston University.14
Since the Bible doesn’t explicitly label verses as being messianic, scholars must pore over the context of various passages to determine which ones deal with the coming of the Messiah. In his Encyclopedia of Biblical Prophecy, J. Barton Payne digs out 127 personal messianic predictions in 3,348 verses of the Old Testament.15 In addition, there are 456 Old Testament passages cited in some 558 rabbinic writings that refer to the Messiah and the messianic times.16
If these predictions really did come true in Jesus of Nazareth, the implications are enormous for everyone, not just those with a Jewish background. First, this would confirm the supernatural nature of the Bible, since the odds of fulfilling so many ancient prophecies by mere chance would be mathematically prohibitive. “The Bible is the only book in the world that has precise, specific predictions that were made hundreds of years in advance and that were literally fulfilled,” said eminent Christian apologist Norman Geisler.17 That would mean that the Bible has credentials that are absent from the Qur’an of Islam, the Upanishads and Bhagavad-Gita of Vedanta Hinduism, the Book of Mormon, and all other religious texts.
Second, if Jesus—and only Jesus—fulfilled these ancient forecasts, then this would be a definitive affirmation of his identity as the one sent by God to be the Savior of Israel and the world. Of course, the reverse is equally significant. Jesus said in Luke 24:44: “Everything must be fulfilled that is written about me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms.” When a Samaritan woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming,” Jesus replied: “I who speak to you am he.”18 Having made these unambiguous claims, if he then fails to match the prophetic portrait, Jesus would be an imposter worthy of rejection and disdain—a false prophet who should be rejected by Jews and Gentiles alike.
Obviously, these matters are critical to all spiritual seekers, regardless of their religious background. Nothing less than the trustworthiness of the Bible and the identity and credibility of Jesus are at issue. So it’s not surprising that disputes over the prophecies have raged for centuries from university classrooms to scholarly books — and to the sweltering subways of New York City, where dueling ads clashed over whether Jesus should be embraced by Jews searching for their Messiah.
Few religious topics engender as much passion. I once moderated a debate in which a respected rabbi angrily denounced Brickner as being “a spiritual Nazi” for trying to convince Jews to follow Jesus. And as the number of messianic Jews increases in both the U.S. and Israel—with estimates ranging from 120,000 to twice that figure and higher—the dispute continues to grow.19 Indeed, both sides seem to have become more adamant in the last few years.
Could Jesus really have been the Christ? What happens when emotions subside and the evidence is systematically examined?
How strong is the case for Jesus the Messiah—and can it withstand the most potent objections of those who deny that he was described in prophecies dating back hundreds of years before his birth in Bethlehem?
“EVERYTHING CHRISTIANS CLAIM . . . IS FALSE”
Attacks on the idea that the messianic prophecies culminated in Jesus have proliferated over the last three hundred years. By 1793 the German biblical scholar J. G. Eichhorn, considered the father of modern higher criticism, felt the confidence to declare: “The last three decades have erased the Messiah from the Old Testament.”20 Thus, said Old Testament professor Walter C. Kaiser Jr. of Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, “the eighteenth century began the long debate, which has continued to this very hour, about the apologetic ‘argument from prophecy’ for the Messiah.”21
The debate has been most vociferous on the popular level, particularly the Internet, often in response to evangelistic initiatives from Jewish followers of Jesus. “Everything Christians claim for Jesus as the Jewish Messiah is false,” insisted prominent Orthodox Rabbi Pin-chas Stolper in a book subtitled A Jewish Response to Missionaries.22
A “counter-missionary survival guide,” published by Jews for Judaism, said Christians “may claim that there are over three hundred biblical ‘proofs’ for their position. A careful examination of these passages—in context—will immediately refute their presentation.”23 As for the “proof texts” used by Christians to argue for Jesus’ messianic credentials, they are “based on circular reasoning, quoting verses out of context, and mistranslation.”24
Kaplan, another Orthodox rabbi, was especially blunt. “What can a Jew lose by embracing Christianity?” he asked. “The answer is: Everything.” He added:
The Jews had one major objection to the Christian Messiah, and that was the fact that he had been unsuccessful. Judaism had always taught that the Messiah would redeem Israel in a political sense, and Jesus had failed to accomplish this. Instead, he had been scourged and humiliated like a common rebel, and finally crucified along with two ordinary thieves.
How could the career of Jesus be reconciled with the glorious picture of the Messiah as taught by the Prophets of Israel? The early Christians faced this dilemma, and, in justifying Jesus as the Messiah, radically altered the entire concept.25
Amy-Jill Levine, a Jewish expert in Jesus and the New Testament at Vanderbilt Divinity School and author of The Misunderstood Jew, said there’s no “messianic checklist” that establishes Jesus as the one who was foretold. “The Messiah is someone who establishes justice throughout the world, and I look out my window and I know that hasn’t happened,” she said. “The Messiah is someone who conquers death, conquers disease. And I know that hasn’t happened. One might even say, for example, the death of the Messiah—his torture, his crucifixion—is predicted in the Old Testament. Well, in fact, it’s not.”26 Christians, of course, offer a radically different perspective. “Not all the prophecies in the Old Testament about the Messiah were fulfilled in Jesus’ lifetime,” said Edwin Yamauchi, now-retired professor of ancient history at Miami University of Ohio. “The Christians’ answer is that those prophecies will be fulfilled when Christ comes again.”27 Comes again? Jewish scholars point out that the terms “first coming” and “second coming” aren’t even mentioned in the Old Testament. They contend that Christians invented the idea of Jesus coming again out of embarrassment that he failed to usher in the universal peace that the Messiah is predicted to bring. In fact, they argue, anyone could claim to be the Messiah—and when someone points out he hasn’t brought peace to the world, he can merely use the excuse that this will be fulfilled at some unspecified future date. In short, they say, the second coming is nothing more than an escape clause for charlatans.
One thing’s for sure: history and logic either support the conclusion that Jesus is the Messiah or they don’t. How convincing is the affirmative case, and how deflating are the latest counterarguments raised by Jesus’ detractors? Those are the issues that prompted me to fly to North Carolina and to seek out one of the world’s leading authorities on the messianic prophecies. On a brisk morning, with the sun shining through fiery autumn leaves, I found his office in a nondescript white office building in a northern suburb of Charlotte.
INTERVIEW #4: MICHAEL L. BROWN, PH.D.
As a teenager growing up on Long Island, Michael Brown’s insatiable appetite for illicit drugs earned him the nicknames “Iron Man” and “Drug Bear.” By the age of fifteen, the aspiring rock and roll drummer was shooting heroin and had burglarized some homes and even a doctor’s office for amusement—an incongruous lifestyle for the son of the senior lawyer of the New York Supreme Court.
He grew up in a Jewish family but was uninterested in spiritual matters. When he was bar mitzvahed at the age of thirteen, he was given a Hebrew passage to memorize—but nobody ever translated it for him, and he never bothered to ask anyone what the words meant. For him, it was a meaningless ritual.
In 1971 the two other members of his band began attending a local church in pursuit of two girls related to the pastor. Little by little, they began to be influenced by the gospel. Upset at the changes in their lives, Brown decided to visit the church in an effort to extricate them. One of the girls, aware of his reputation, wrote in her diary that night: “Anti-Christ comes to church.”
Unexpectedly, in the months that followed, Brown discovered a new emotion: a gnawing sense of regret and conviction over his rebellious and drug-saturated behavior. He ended up in many discussions with Christians about spirituality. On November 12, 1971, when the pastor asked if anyone wanted to receive Jesus as their Savior, Brown walked the aisle—not because he really wanted to become a Christian, but so that he could give the congregation a thrill. After all, he was sure they regarded him as the worst of sinners.
Then something even more unexpected happened: as he repeated the words of the pastor in a prayer of repentance and faith, he found himself suddenly believing the message of Christ. “It was like a light went on,” he said. Instantly, he believed Jesus had died for his sins and had risen from the dead. “I knew it was real,” Brown said. “Now the challenge was: what was I going to do with it—because I wasn’t ready to change my lifestyle.” It wasn’t until five weeks later that he permanently abandoned drugs and yielded his life to Jesus.
His father liked the subsequent reform of Brown’s behavior, but he didn’t like the Jesus part. He brought his son to talk to the local rabbi, who eventually took him to a community of ultra-Orthodox Jews in Brooklyn. None of them, however, was able to dislodge his belief, now confirmed by his own deep study, that Jesus is the Messiah of Israel.
But they did raise some serious questions, challenging him on his lack of a working knowledge of Hebrew. To better understand and test the messianic promises, Brown then pursued years of education that ultimately led to a master’s degree as well as a doctorate in Near Eastern Languages and Literatures from New York University. His practice of tackling the most powerful arguments of critics has helped him develop into one of America’s best-known defenders of Jesus the Messiah. Over the past thirty years, he has debated and dialogued with rabbis and leaders of the Jewish community on radio, television, college campuses, and even in synagogues.
Brown has taught at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Fuller Theological Seminary, Regent University, and in twenty-five countries. He has authored eighteen books, including the widely acclaimed, multivolume series, Answering Jewish Objections to Jesus, which contains in-depth responses to the most common historical and theological issues regarding the messianic prophecies. His book Our Hands Are Stained with Blood examines anti-Semitism in church history.
He also has written a commentary on the book of Jeremiah for The Expositor’s Bible Commentary and contributed to the Oxford Dictionary of Jewish Religion, The Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament, The New International Dictionary of Old Testament Theology and Exegesis, as well as several Semitic linguistic journals.
Warm and gregarious, with a satisfying mix of a pastor’s heart and a scholar’s mind, Brown greeted me with an enthusiastic handshake as he ushered me into his office at the FIRE School of Ministry, where he serves as president and professor of practical theology.28 He was informally dressed, wearing a dark green shirt open at the collar. His wavy brown hair has almost totally surrendered to gray, while his graying mustache has now become nearly white.
He sat behind his desk, surrounded by bookshelves brimming with Jewish and Christian tomes. Over his shoulder, the shelf literally sagging under the weight, was the twenty volumes of the Babylonian Talmud, the 2.5-million-word foundational text for Jewish religious study, oversized and with its covers colored crimson.
Prior to the visit, I reviewed the most current objections to Jesus being the Messiah—an easy task since I had already overseen two debates on the topic. Frankly, I thought some of the arguments against Jesus’ fulfillment of the prophecies were weak, their answers so obvious that they weren’t worth bringing up, but I had to admit there were many others that raised significant and thorny issues. I wrote those down and then added the questions that had been troubling me personally.
I was anxious to see how Brown would try to answer them. But rather than cross-examining him right away, I decided to do what I had done in my earlier interview on the resurrection: I invited Brown to first set forth the affirmative case, promising to withhold substantive questions until he could establish why he believes Jesus is the Messiah.
“That sounds fair,” he said, removing his glasses and putting them on his desk. He cleared his throat. After gathering his thoughts, he decided to start with some background.
“The Jews are God’s chosen people,” he said, “but it’s important to understand that when God chose Abraham and his descendants, there was a divine purpose. It was not just to have a separated people who would be loyal to him: it was so that through Israel the entire world would be blessed and come to know the one true God. We need to keep that in mind as we proceed.”
I nodded in acknowledgment. Then, with virtually no interruption, Brown began to unfold the evidence for the messiahship of Jesus, fluidly moving from point to point, quoting scripture and rabbinic commentaries with equal ease, and weaving together a tapestry of facts and clues and arguments and history and implications. The pace of his impromptu presentation quickly outstripped my ability to take notes; instead, I sat back, crossed my legs to get comfortable, and let my tape recorder soak it in.
THE CASE FOR JESUS THE MESSIAH
“There are specific promises given to the tribe of Judah and to David, who was from the tribe of Judah and was the son of Jesse,” Brown said. “Genesis 49:10 says, ‘The scepter will not depart from Judah,’ while Isaiah 11:1 says, ‘A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse; from his roots a Branch will bear fruit.’ The term ‘Branch’ is commonly used to refer to the Messiah. It’s said there would be a lasting kingship through David. The Lord declares in Jeremiah 23:5 that he will raise up from David’s line ‘a righteous Branch, a King who will reign wisely.’ ”
So far, nothing controversial.
“When we get to Isaiah, we see references to the servant of the Lord. A number of these verses are also recognized as referring to the Messiah in some ancient Jewish traditions. Isaiah 42 says he will not falter until he brings justice to the earth.29 Isaiah 49 says the servant has the mission of regathering the tribes of Israel to bring them back to God. The servant feels as if he failed in his mission, but God says not only will he ultimately regather Israel, but he adds in Isaiah 49:6, ‘I will also make you a light for the Gentiles, that you may bring my salvation to the ends of the earth.’ ”
Then Brown brought up the most famous messianic passage of all—Isaiah 52:13 to 53:12. “These verses say the Messiah will be highly exalted but first will suffer terribly. He will actually be disfigured in his suffering,” Brown explained. “And the narrative says the people of Israel didn’t get it. They thought he was suffering for his own sins and wickedness; they didn’t realize he was bearing their sins, suffering on their behalf, and by his wounds there was healing for them. Then it speaks of his death and his continued life after that.
“Now we narrow things even more. In 2 Chronicles 7, God says if Israel’s sin reaches a certain level, he’ll destroy the temple, exile the people, and leave them in a state of judgment.30 Sure enough, this comes to pass. The prophet Daniel prays in Daniel 9 that God would have mercy. God gives him a revelation about the temple being rebuilt. Before this new temple is destroyed, Daniel is told, several things are going to take place, including the bringing of everlasting atonement — the final dealing with sin.31
“The prophet Haggai lives to see this second temple built, but it’s nothing like the first. The first one, Solomon’s temple, was not only a stunning physical structure far more imposing than the second temple, but it had the glory of God there. When sacrifices were offered, fire came down and consumed them. The second temple didn’t have the presence of God or the divine fire.
“Yet Haggai said the glory of the second temple would be greater than the glory of the first temple. God would fill the second temple with his glory.32 The Hebrew word for glory can sometimes refer to great wealth and abundance, but when God says he’ll fill the temple with glory, that can only apply to his presence. Then the prophet Mala-chi, who lived later, says the Lord will come to his temple, purifying some of his people and bringing judgment on others.33 He uses a Hebrew term that always refers to God himself: the Lord—he will come to that temple.
“Keep in mind the second temple was destroyed in AD 70. Atonement for sin had to be made and the divine visitation had to take place before the second temple was destroyed. There are even rabbinic traditions that put the Messiah’s coming around two thousand years ago—right when Jesus came. In fact, Rashi, the foremost Jewish commentator on the Tanakh, put the date at more than 1,750 years ago, but that was based on the most famous chronological error in the rabbinic literature. When the error is corrected, we find ourselves in the middle of the first century, within one generation of the time of Jesus!34
“So it’s not a matter of maybe there’s another one who’s the Messiah. If it’s not Yeshua, which is the Jewish name for Jesus, then throw out the Bible, because nobody except him accomplished what needed to be done prior to AD 70. What divine visitation did take place if not for Yeshua? When else did God visit the second temple in a personal way? Who else atoned for sin? How else was the glory of the second temple greater than the first? Either the Messiah came two thousand years ago or the prophets were wrong and we can discard the Bible. But they weren’t wrong. Yeshua is the Messiah—or nobody is.”
He paused for a moment to let the implications sink in. “Let’s keep going,” Brown continued. “The Talmud asks whether the Messiah will come ‘with the clouds of heaven,’ as written in Daniel 7:13, or ‘gentle and riding on a donkey,’ as in Zechariah 9:9.35 The rabbis said if we’re worthy, he’ll come with the clouds of heaven, meaning swiftly and powerfully; if we’re unworthy, he’ll come meek and lowly. They believed it’s ‘either/or.’ Actually, it’s ‘both/and.’ They’re both true—of the same person.
“Shortly before he died, Jesus rode on a donkey into Jerusalem, with the crowds hailing him as the Messiah. But then the people turned on him. Is it possible that he came ‘lowly and riding upon a donkey’ because we weren’t worthy of his coming, and in the future, when we recognize him as the Messiah, he will return with the clouds of heaven, as he himself specifically foretold in his trial before the high priest? ” Brown moved ahead without waiting for an answer. “Now let’s think about the roles of the Messiah,” he continued. “In addition to being a king, he would be a priestly figure.”
“How do you know?” I interrupted.
“Well, David is the prototype for the Messiah, and David performed certain priestly functions,” Brown said. “Second Samuel 24:25 says, ‘David built an altar to the LORD there and sacrificed burnt offerings and fellowship offerings.’ That’s what a priest does. According to
2 Samuel 8:18, David’s sons were priests.
“Then look at Psalm 110:4. It says, ‘The Lord has sworn and will not change his mind: You are a priest forever, in the order of Melchize-dek.’ Here we have the Lord making an emphatic oath that the king in Jerusalem was to be a priest forever in the order of the ancient priest-king of that city. Either this prophecy directly refers to the Messiah or it refers to David. If it refers to David, and he’s the prototype of the Messiah, it still means the Messiah will be priestly as well as royal.
“In Zechariah 3, we encounter Jeshua, who was the high priest. Incidentally, Jeshua is the short form of the name Joshua, which in English would be Jesus. Jeshua is said to be a sign and symbol of ‘the Branch.’ Remember, Jeremiah 23 and other passages tell us the Branch is the Messiah, because he’s the branch that comes out from the tree, the root of Jesse. In Zechariah 6:11 - 13, Jeshua is sitting on a throne. They put a crown on his head. So think about this: in the most overt passage in the Bible where a human being is explicitly identified with a Messianic figure, it’s a high priest sitting on a throne.”
Brown paused for emphasis. “Apriestly king!” he stressed. “Typically, priests don’t sit on thrones and priests don’t have crowns.”
“Why is this important?” I asked.
“Because priests dealt with sin. Priests bore the iniquities of the people on their shoulders. They were intercessors. In fact, according to Numbers 35, the death of the high priest could serve as atonement for certain sins for which there were no other earthly atonement.
“Now consider Psalm 22. This isn’t a prophecy; it’s a prayer of a righteous sufferer who comes to the jaws of death and is miraculously delivered. Yet Jesus said that everything written up to his lifetime finds its full meaning and expression in him. He even applied Psalm 22 to himself on the cross.36And in Psalm 22, as a result of the righteous sufferer’s deliverance from death, all the ends of the earth will worship God.37 That’s quite a significant deliverance from death!
“So let’s put all of this together. God’s intent was not to keep Israel as an isolated nation, but that through Israel the entire world will come to know the one true God. That has always been his heart. We see in the scriptures that this messianic figure will be both priestly and royal — he will deal with sin as well as rule and reign. He will first suffer before he is raised up and exalted; he will both come riding on a donkey meek and lowly, as well as come in clouds of glory.
“He will first be rejected by his people and will be a light to the nations. He will suffer terribly for our sins as a righteous substitute. The power of his deliverance from death will cause the ends of the earth to worship the one true God. We also see that redemption had to come and there had to be divine visitation before the second temple was destroyed in AD 70.”
Brown reached his hands toward me as if soliciting a response. “Who might that be?” he asked. “Is there any possible candidate? It’s not rocket science to say either the Bible is false — or it has to be Yeshua, also known as Jesus.”
Brown wasn’t finished. “Yeshua said he came to fulfill what had been written in the Law and the Prophets. He predicted the destruction of the second temple. No other significant Jewish leader did that,” he continued. “Deuteronomy 18 says to pay attention to the prophet who’s raised up in each generation.38 Yeshua is the last great prophet who speaks to Israel. He brings this prophetic word: The temple is going to be destroyed, but the fulfillment of what’s written in the scriptures points to him.
“In short, Yeshua fulfilled the essential prophecies that had a definite time frame and which had to be completed before the second temple was destroyed. This is not a matter of speculation; it’s historical fact. And since he fulfilled the past prophecies — coming as our great high priest and making atonement for our sins—we can be sure that he will fulfill the future prophecies, reigning as the worldwide king and bringing peace to the earth.
“In fact, he already rules and reigns as a royal king over the lives of countless tens of millions of people from every nation under the sun. They give him their total allegiance and loyalty. His reign is already far greater and more influential than the reign of David himself. And that’s only the beginning; he will reign over all when he returns.
“Think about this: for more than 1,900 years, traditional Jews have had no functioning temple. There has been no functioning priesthood with sacrifices. What happened? As you read through the Torah, or the first five books of the Bible, you find repeated references to sacrifices and offerings.39 Isn’t it significant that Isaiah 53 says the servant of the Lord will himself be a guilt offering?40
“Either God has left us completely bereft of the major atonement system, a functioning priesthood, and a functioning temple, or else everything that we’re speaking of finds its fulfillment in the One who came when he had to come.
“We’re not talking about things Yeshua could have arranged. How do you arrange being the most influential Jew who ever lived? How do you arrange bringing hundreds of millions of people into the worship of God? How do you arrange being rejected by your people and yet being accepted by the nations? How do you arrange being the only possible candidate who can fulfill the scriptures, prophesying the end of one system, and then bringing the reality of the new system?
“So I look at the broad strokes and then I begin to see how the New Testament authors saw that, even in the details, he is prefigured by the nation of Israel. For example, Israel in its infancy went into Egypt — Hosea 11:1 says when Israel was a child, God loved him and called his son out of Egypt. The Messiah as a child goes into Egypt and is called out of Egypt. As it happened to Israel, so it happens to him. David was betrayed by a close friend; the Messiah was betrayed by a close friend. As it happened to Moses, having to flee for his life from pharaoh, it happens to Messiah, who had to flee for his life from Herod.
“You begin to see these little details, which in themselves are not necessarily prophecies, but they prefigure him—they are types, shadows, and allusions. The rabbinic mind-set could extract from scripture things that we might not see. Actually, the New Testament is very conservative in its references to predictive scripture. It’s not wild or outlandish. The broad strokes can only apply to one possible candidate, and then we get to put in all the finishing details into a beautiful picture.
“And here’s something fascinating: there’s a rabbinic tradition preserved in the Talmud that says on the Day of Atonement there were three different signs that the animal sacrifices the high priest offered had been accepted by God and atonement given to the nation.41 In the years when the signs would come up negative, the people would be ashamed and mourn, because God had not accepted their sacrifice.
“Then it says that during the last forty years before the second temple was destroyed, all three signs were negative each and every time.42 Think about that: Jesus probably was crucified in AD 30, and the temple was destroyed in AD 70. So from the time of his death to the time of the destruction of the temple—a period of forty years — God signaled that he no longer accepted the sacrifices and offerings of the Jewish people. Why? ”
His answer was emphatic: “Because final atonement had been made through Yeshua, just as he had prophesied.”
Brown let his words linger. Then, apparently sensing the need for elaboration, he said, “Please, let me explain how Yeshua fulfilled the Jewish sacrificial system.”
My mind was racing to keep up with him. “Yes, go ahead,” I said.
“If you go through the first five books of the Bible, called the Written Torah, you’ll find several hundred references to animal sacrifices and offerings,” Brown said. “The fundamental concept was life for life, as recognized in some of the rabbinic commentaries. Why was it so important? Obviously, God was seeking to get something across —that sin required a penalty of death, and that God would receive a substitution on behalf of the guilty person. When an innocent lamb was slain and the blood drained out, that was quite a vivid lesson.
“Remember, it was foretold the Messiah would be a priestly figure. What did the priest do? He went between the people and God. He went into the holiest place of all. By his stature, position, and calling, he did what nobody else could do. Yeshua, as the great high priest, prays for us and then literally carries our sins on his shoulders as Peter expresses — ‘He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree.’43 He takes the guilt, the punishment, and the suffering that we all deserve and bears them himself.
“What sacrifice is great enough to cover the guilt of the entire world? Who’s pure enough? Who’s perfect enough? Only this one, the great Son of God, takes the sin and guilt of the entire world on his own shoulders and dies on behalf of our sins so we can now receive forgiveness, cleansing, and righteousness.
“Hebrews 9:22 says that without the shedding of blood, there’s no forgiveness of sins. Yes, there are secondary means of atonement other than blood, but the foundation of it all is blood atonement. On the holiest day of the Jewish calendar, the Day of Atonement, when the temple was purged, the people were purged, and atonement would come to the entire nation—all of that centered around blood. Take away the blood, and there’s no atonement.
“God gave blood atonement because life is in the blood: it’s life for life. Leviticus deals with the topics of sacrifice and atonement, and whenever atonement is mentioned — all forty-nine times — it’s always in conjunction with blood sacrifices. Leviticus 17:11 says, ‘For the life of a creature is in the blood, and I have given it to you to make atonement for yourselves on the altar; it is the blood that makes atonement for one’s life.’ An ancient midrash, or Jewish commentary, on Leviticus 1:12 says that when a sacrifice is killed, ‘I consider it as if you have offered your very selves.’44 In Leviticus 1:4, God says specifically, ‘He is to lay his hand on the head of the burnt offering, and it will be accepted on his behalf to make atonement for him.’
“It’s not just a matter of cutting your finger and putting a little blood on the altar. No, the sacrifice had to die. That’s the terribly ugly picture of the cost of sin—that it’s so serious to God that it requires death. The shedding of blood is our repayment of sin, but instead of us shedding our blood, Yeshua shed it for us as our substitute. As we know from John 1:29, Yeshua was called, ‘the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.’ ”
Brown had been sitting on the edge of his chair, pleading his case every bit as compellingly as his attorney father used to. Now, his presentation complete, he eased back.
“So add everything up,” he said. “All of these clues point to Yeshua and Yeshua alone. He fulfills the prophecies in the most incredible way. Since the Messiah had to come almost two thousand years ago, according to the testimony of the Jewish scriptures, then if Yeshua isn’t the Messiah, there will never be a Messiah. It’s too late for anyone else. It’s him or no one. If Yeshua didn’t come and do what had to be done in the first phase of things, when there was a definite deadline, then there’s no hope that the second phase will ever come, when he will come in the clouds of glory to rule and reign.”
He smiled. “We have the deposit,” he said. “We have the down payment. We can be confident he will return to accomplish the remainder.”
The room fell quiet except for the faint buzz of a distant lawn mower. For a few moments, I contemplated what Brown had said. From his sweep through the Old Testament, from Genesis to Malachi, he had marshaled powerful evidence in building a convincing case for Jesus—and only Jesus — having fulfilled the messianic prophecies. Standing alone, unchallenged by objections, his arguments seemed conclusive.
Still, my clipboard, which was brimming with questions, reminded me there was another side to the story. No verdict could be reached until Brown’s case could be tested by opposing views. With his permission, I began to probe potential soft spots in his presentation.
“Let’s be really honest,” I began. “The prophecies don’t foretell that the Messiah would be divine, do they?”
Brown leaned forward. “Actually, Lee, yes, they do,” he replied.
I glanced down at my clipboard. “Not according to the late rabbi Aryeh Kaplan,” I told him. “ ‘In no place do the Prophets say that he will be anything more than a remarkable leader and teacher,’ he said. ‘The Jewish Messiah is truly human in origin. He is born of ordinary human parents, and is of flesh and blood like all mortals.’ ”45
Moving to the edge of his chair again, Brown said, “Let’s look at the facts. There are definitely verses that point toward his divine nature. Bear in mind, however, that the Jews were staunch monotheists, and it would have been totally misunderstood if the claim of the Messiah’s divinity had been too explicit.”
“So what’s the evidence for his predicted divinity?” I asked.
“The Davidic king was described as being highly exalted and the one who will someday rule and reign. Several parallel descriptions are used of both God and this exalted king: people will praise God, and the people will praise the king; people will serve God, and the people will serve the king; people will bow down before God, and people will bow down before the king.
“Also, Psalm 110:1 says, ‘The Lord says to my Lord: “Sit at my right hand.” ’ That’s a position of great exaltation. The figure in Daniel 7—the Son of Man—is highly exalted; he comes before the throne of God, is worshiped, is given sovereign power and authority, and his kingdom is eternal. Being worshiped, having sovereignty, being eternal—those sound a lot like divine characteristics to me. And of course, Jesus’ favorite self-description was the Son of Man, and he applied Daniel 7 directly to himself.46
“Even more explicitly, Psalm 45 says of the Messiah-king, ‘Your throne, O God, will last for ever and ever.’ God is anointing this king, yet the king himself is called Elohim, a Hebrew name for God. That’s very significant. We know that sometimes Elohim can be a reference to earthly judges and angels, but to call an individual Elohim in this context is really stretching things.
“Isaiah 52:13 says the servant will be ‘raised’ and ‘lifted up.’ In Isaiah, those words only occur in reference to the Lord. And even more directly, in Isaiah 9:6-7, the king is given various names, including ‘Mighty God’ and ‘Everlasting Father.’ So you have the royal king, or the messianic figure, being described as divine.”
“Did the people of that day anticipate a divine Messiah? ”
“It wasn’t really until Yeshua came and they looked back at the Hebrew scriptures and said, ‘Oh, that explains it!’ In hindsight, it becomes much clearer.”
“But the Hebrew scriptures say God is one and incorporeal,” I protested.47 “The Bible says nobody can ever see God.48 So how could Jesus be God? ”
“It’s clear there’s only one God, yet it seems that he’s somehow complex in his unity,” Brown explained. “On the one hand, he’s ruling from his throne in heaven, and yet on the other hand he’s present on the earth. There are other times when he himself is seen, even though the Bible says no one can see God, who’s spirit. Let me give you a few examples. In Genesis 18, Yahweh and two angels appear to Abraham. Jacob saw God face to face.49 Isaiah says, ‘I saw the Lord.’50 Exodus 24:9-10 says, ‘Moses and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and the seventy elders of Israel went up and saw the God of Israel.’ ”
I jumped in. “Wasn’t that just a vision?”
“No, because verse 11 says, ‘God did not raise his hand against these leaders of the Israelites.’ That doesn’t sound like a vision to me,” Brown said, a chuckle in his voice. “So who is it that all these people saw if they can’t see God and yet they saw God? Could it have been the Son?”
Without waiting for a response, he said, “Yes, I believe it was. Then the New Testament begins to enlighten us — God is complex in his unity and this one God makes himself known as the Father, Son, and Spirit. The Father has never been seen; the Son is the one who reveals him and makes him known, and who now takes on flesh and blood. So in a sense God did not become a mere man, as the Hebrew scriptures emphatically say. But can he make himself known in flesh and blood? Can he, while remaining enthroned in heaven, come down among us?
“This explains how all these things can be said at the same time about God. Interestingly, the rabbis came up with different concepts about how God can be untouchable and invisible, yet touchable and known. One of the concepts was the Shekinah, which is the dwelling presence of God on earth. God said in Exodus 25:8, ‘Have them make a sanctuary for me, and I will dwell among them.’ One rabbi said to me, ‘So Jesus was like a walking Shekinah — that’s what you believe?’ I said, ‘Exactly.’’
“We also see references in the Hebrew scriptures to the Word of God. The Word is something that proceeds forth from him, yet is him. We see in Genesis that God created all things through his spoken word—in fact, Psalm 33:6 says: ‘By the word of the Lord were the heavens made.’ His Word is even worthy of praise: Psalm 56:4 says, ‘In God, whose word I praise, in God I trust.’ The Targums, which are Aramaic paraphrases of the Hebrew scriptures, use the expression Memra, which is ‘Word.’ For instance, instead of saying the Lord spoke to Moses, it says the Word of the Lord spoke to Moses.
“So now go to John 1 and merely substitute Memra for Word: ‘In the beginning was the Memra, the Memra was with God, the Memra was God and the Memra became flesh.’ This is God drawing near. He was in the tabernacle; now he’s in Yeshua, who combines deity and humanity. Though God remains invisible, though he remains God transcendent and not a man, yet he reveals himself fully in bodily form.
“If John had simply written, ‘God became a human being,’ it would have given the false impression that the Lord was no longer filling the universe or reigning in heaven, but that he had abandoned his throne to take up residence here, like one of the pagan deities. Instead, John tells us that it was the divine Word that became a human being, and through the Word, we can know God personally. As John said, ‘No one has ever seen God; the only Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has made him known.’51
“Think about Genesis 18 again, where God appeared to Abraham. This clearly teaches that God can come to earth in human form for a period of time if he wants to. If he could do this for a few hours, in a temporary human form, could he do it for a few years, in permanent human form? Of course. This is called the incarnation—God coming down to earth in the person of his Son. When we recognize the Son as the exact representation of God, yet God himself, then we can explain how God remained the Lord in heaven while also appearing as the Lord on earth in Genesis 18.
“Seeing Jesus was seeing God. Jesus said in John 14:9, ‘Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father.’ He said, ‘I and the Father are one.’52 Notice that Jesus didn’t call himself God; he called himself God’s Son53—the one in whom the fullness of God dwells in bodily form.54
“This doesn’t contradict anything in the Hebrew scriptures,” he said in conclusion. “In fact, this explains many verses in the Hebrew Bible that are otherwise unintelligible.”
Nevertheless, as I mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, one of the biggest objections brought up by critics is the fact that Jesus didn’t fulfill what they consider to be the main messianic prophecies: bringing about a world of peace and unity, and ending evil, idolatry, falsehood, and hatred. “In light of that,” I said after mentioning this to Brown, “how can you say that Jesus is the Messiah? ”
“Again, there are things that had to happen in a certain time frame before the second temple was destroyed,” Brown replied. “If those have not happened, then there can be no other potential candidate. Secondly, these critics have identified prophecies six through ten as messianic, but have left out prophecies one through five. I’m saying Yeshua will fulfill prophecies six through ten because he has already fulfilled one through five. He will both suffer and be exalted. He will be both priestly and royal. He will be both rejected and accepted. He will be a light to the nations before being received by the Jewish people. So looking at the larger picture points me back towards Yeshua.
“Also,” he added, “it’s not as if Yeshua did certain tactical things that had to happen and now has been absent for two thousand years. Instead, we see certain things unfolding just as expected, with his kingdom continuing to advance. Look at how many people came to worship the one true God in the twentieth century alone. This tells me the pace is accelerating. So the fulfillment of the first stage, as well as the ongoing fulfillment of those things that had to be ongoing, tells me that the final stage is clear.
“For instance, imagine that two people owe me a lot of money. One gives me a partial repayment of a hundred thousand dollars and says, ‘When I come back, I’ll give you the rest.’ The other person says that someday he’ll repay me, but he doesn’t even give me a deposit. Who am I more likely to believe? Especially when I get ongoing letters from the first one reassuring me that the remaining money will indeed be fully repaid soon.”
“But the term second coming isn’t found in the Hebrew scriptures,” I pointed out.
“The word trinity isn’t used anywhere in the entire Bible either, but the evidence is there supporting it,” he countered. “The prophecies require certain events to happen—like atonement and the visit to the temple—before other events can happen, like the Messiah bringing peace to the earth. The first act precedes the second act and prepares the way for it. First atonement for sin, then peace on the earth.”
I tried another tack. “Couldn’t the idea of a second coming be used by any false Messiah who failed to fulfill all the prophecies?” “Well, if Yeshua had done nothing to fulfill any of the prophecies and said he was going to do everything in the future, then, yes, I’d agree. But that’s not the case,” said Brown. “He did what needed to be done before AD 70, so we can have confidence he’ll do what needs to be done in the future.”
“Some say he fulfilled none of the provable prophecies,” I said. “Anyone could die, anyone could claim to have been born in Bethlehem, as Micah 5:2 foretold, and so forth.”
“One simple response: the story of his deliverance from death, according to Psalm 22, was supposed to have such an effect that people around the entire world turned to God,” Brown said. “That’s pretty provable. Rejected by your own people but being a light to the nations —that’s pretty provable. There’s the ongoing accreditation by God of who he is, through the extension of his kingdom around the world. It’s convincing enough to read the amazing accounts of Yeshua in the New Testament. It’s quite another to see how he continues, without break, to have worldwide impact.”
Critics also have attacked Christianity’s claim that Jesus’ atoning death is the culmination of the Old Testament practice of animal sacrifices. I pulled out a document from Jews for Judaism and read it to Brown:
None of the biblical prophets taught that animal or blood sacrifices were indispensable in order for the forgiveness of our sins. As a matter of fact, the prophets constantly berated people who mistakenly thought that sacrifices, in and of themselves, bring about forgiveness.55 The Bible clearly teaches that the only way of atoning for sins is through repentance — a process of transformation that includes acknowledging our wrongdoing and confessing it to G-d, feeling regret, making restitution if we harmed someone, resolving to improve our behavior, returning to G-d and praying for forgiveness.”56
I slipped the paper back into my briefcase and looked at Brown. “If repentance is all that’s needed,” I said, “doesn’t that negate the belief that Jesus was the fulfillment of the Jewish sacrificial system?”
“Let’s make something clear,” Brown began. “The new covenant writings—that is, the writings of the New Testament—consistently emphasize the importance of repentance as well. They don’t teach that Jesus died and therefore you’re automatically forgiven. Jesus said, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near.’57 He said, ‘I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.’58 In Mark 6, he sends out the Twelve—and what do they preach? That people should repent.59
“I don’t argue that. But repentance has never existed independently from the larger system of atonement that God made. Go back to Torah. Every time you find something barely resembling the concept of repentance, I’ll find fifty to a hundred that talk about blood sacrifice. God was trying to get something across, which was the foundational nature of the blood sacrifice. That system was pointing toward the one who would come. God never really wanted the blood of bulls and goats. The prophets repudiated sacrifices that were offered with an empty heart; they never repudiated sacrifices themselves—”
I cut in. “But doesn’t God say in Hosea 6:6, ‘For I desire mercy, not sacrifice, and acknowledgment of God rather than burnt offerings’?”60
“Jesus quoted that twice in the New Testament. I agree with that!” he declared. “The problem was not the sacrifice; it was the empty heart. First Samuel 15 says God prefers obedience to sacrifice. What he wants is an obedient heart.61Yet because we all fall short, he established the sacrificial system to ultimately point people toward the Messiah.”
Another objection popped into my mind. “When God forgave the sins of the Ninevites in the book of Jonah, no sacrifices were offered,” I observed.
Brown’s answer was direct. “God never called the Ninevites to offer sacrifices,” he said. “This was Israel’s role as a priestly nation, and that role finds its fulfillment in the work of the Messiah.”
I picked up my Bible, which was next to me on his desk, and opened it. “Leviticus 5:11 says if someone can’t afford the animal sacrifice, they can bring ‘a tenth of an ephah’—that would be a couple of quarts — ‘of fine flour for a sin offering.’ So there you have it—blood sacrifice wasn’t always required.”
Brown shook his head. “God didn’t build a theology on the atoning power of flour,” he said. “Have Jews through the ages just offered flour? If you read the next verse, it says a handful of the flour should be put on the fire offerings on the altar. So the flour is put on existing offerings, which is how poorer people would participate in the atonement system. The idea of just offering flour without offering blood sacrifices — they never did it. You needed repentance and you needed the blood. That’s the whole message of the new covenant to Jew and Gentile alike: turn in repentance toward God and put your trust in Jesus’ atoning sacrifice. He’s the ‘Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.’ ”
Though Brown had answered my basic questions about the atonement system, one last issue was hanging. “Sacrificing animals seems like such a barbaric practice,” I said. “These days the animal-rights folks would howl in protest.”
“In the culture of the day it was perfectly normal to offer sacrifices as part of worship,” came his response. “It was saying, ‘I’m taking something valuable that I have and offering it up to God,’ but ultimately God was not interested in that. He was interested in something of massive eternal value, which is showing us how ugly sin is and how he was going to send a substitute. So for centuries and centuries — because it takes people a while to get the point—he kept giving the same lesson, until he finally sent the one who brought an end to the necessity of blood sacrifices.”
A significant part of Brown’s case for Jesus being the Messiah hinges on the prophecies of Isaiah, who was so prolific in foreshadowing “the anointed one” that he has sometimes been called “the fifth evangelist,” adding him alongside Gospel authors Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
“According to some counts, the New Testament has over four hundred allusions to [the Book of Isaiah], and parts of forty-seven chapters of Isaiah’s sixty-six are either directly quoted or alluded to in the New Testament,” Walter Kaiser said. “This means that Isaiah is second only to the book of Psalms as the favorite Old Testament book from which the early church drew its predictions of what happened to Christ.”62 Of special interest is the description of the suffering servant in Isaiah 52:13 to 53:12, which has probably prompted more people to put their trust in Jesus as the Messiah than any other passage in scripture: 63
See, my servant will act wisely; he will be raised and lifted up and highly exalted.
Just as there were many who were appalled at him — his appearance was so disfigured beyond that of any man and his form marred beyond human likeness — so will he sprinkle many nations, and kings will shut their mouths because of him.
For what they were not told, they will see, And what they have not heard, they will understand.
Who has believed our message and to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed?
He grew up before him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of dry ground.
He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.
He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering.
Like one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not.
Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by him, and afflicted.
But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed.
We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.
He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth.
By oppression and judgment he was taken away.
And who can speak of his descendants?
For he was cut off from the land of the living; for the transgression of my people he was stricken.
He was assigned a grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death, though he had done no violence, nor was any deceit in his mouth.
Yet it was the Lord’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer, and though the LORD makes his life a guilt offering, he will see his offspring and prolong his days, and the will of the LORD will prosper in his hand.
After the suffering of his soul, he will see the light of life and be satisfied; by his knowledge my righteous servant will justify many, and he will bear their iniquities.
Therefore I will give him a portion among the great, and he will divide the spoils with the strong, because he poured out his life unto death, and was numbered with the transgressors.
For he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.
“Isaiah 52:13-53:12—how important is this passage?” I asked Brown.
“It’s almost as if God said, ‘I want to make it so absolutely clear Yeshua is the Messiah that it’s undeniable,’ ’’ Brown declared. “I almost feel as if God would have to apologize to the human race and to the Jewish people for putting this passage into the scriptures when it so clearly points to Yeshua if he didn’t really mean that.”
With so much depending on these verses, I decided to raise some of the most frequent objections to its fulfillment in Jesus and see how Brown would respond.
Some commentators, I pointed out, say this description of the suffering servant applies to the people of Israel as a nation, not to an individual who is the Messiah. “Doesn’t the passage actually deal with the return of the Jewish people from the Babylonian exile, which occurred more than five hundred years before Jesus was born?” I asked.
“That’s the backdrop of many of the messianic prophecies,” Brown said, quickly dismissing my comment about the exile.
“Early Jewish interpretations about Isaiah 53 are varied,” Brown went on. “But nowhere in the classical, foundational, authoritative Jewish writings do we find the interpretation that this passage refers to the nation of Israel. References to the servant as a people actually end with Isaiah 48:20.
“Many traditional Jewish interpreters, from the Targum to today, had no problem seeing this passage as referring to the Messiah,” he said. “They didn’t have any difficulty interpreting it independently of the preceding context of the return from the Babylonian exile. By the sixteenth century, Rabbi Moshe Alshech said, ‘Our rabbis with one voice accept and affirm the opinion that the prophet is speaking of the Messiah, and we shall ourselves also adhere to the same view.’ So he was saying all his contemporaries agreed with the messianic reading—even though it must have been very tempting to deny this because by that time Christians had been claiming for centuries that this passage describes Yeshua.”
“Why can’t this passage refer to Israel as a whole? ”
“Several reasons,” he said. “The servant of the Lord is righteous and without guile and yet suffers terribly. If this is the nation of Israel, it’s a complete violation of Torah. According to Torah, if the nation is righteous, then it will be blessed. If it’s wicked, it’ll be punished. The idea that the nation as a whole could be righteous and yet punished is completely unacceptable on a scriptural level.”
“But in another chapter,” I said, “the psalmist himself says Israel suffered at the hands of its enemies even though it was righteous.”64 “Not so,” he responded. “This is a prayer of the righteous remnant on behalf of the sinning nation. It’s the small group of the godly — the righteous — who are interceding on behalf of the unrighteous, ungodly, suffering majority.”
“Okay,” I said, conceding the point. “I interrupted you—you said there were several reasons why this passage doesn’t refer to the nation of Israel.”
“Yes, the second reason is because the text says the servant will be highly exalted, even to where kings stand in awe. That’s not true of Israel, but it is true of Yeshua, who’s worshiped by kings and leaders around the world. Third, the passage offers the picture of a totally righteous, guileless servant of God. But nobody can point to a time when
Israel, as a nation, had no deceit on its lips or was a righteous servant of God. And fourth, Isaiah says the servant’s sufferings brought healing to the people. Now, has Israel suffered through the ages? Yes, but our sufferings did not bring healing to the nations that afflicted us.” “All right, this passage might refer to an individual — but it can’t be Yeshua,” I said.
“Why not?”
“Let me give you several reasons.” I consulted the series of objections I had jotted on my clipboard. “First, the Isaiah passage says nobody was attracted to the servant of the Lord, but we know that Jesus attracted huge throngs to himself—thousands of people flocked to him at times.”
“Actually, Isaiah 53 first refers to his origins, which were very lowly and inauspicious — ‘He grew up before him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of dry ground.’ That’s a consistent theme in the New Testament — ‘Can anything good come out of Nazareth? The carpenter’s son? Him? How could this be?’ 65
“Isaiah says, ‘He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him,’ and certainly there’s nothing recorded about the appearance of Jesus that would contradict that. Besides, the crowds around Jesus were very fickle—they shouted, ‘Crown him!’ one day and “Crucify him!’ the next. But the primary thrust of Isaiah 53 is his rejection, suffering, and death—at that time, he’s utterly forsaken. Yeshua fulfills all of that very well.”
“His death?” I said. “Critics claim that the passage doesn’t specifically and unambiguously say the servant would die.”
“There’s an accumulation of words that are used,” Brown said. “He’s stricken by God, he’s smitten, he’s pierced, he’s crushed, he’s oppressed, he’s afflicted, he’s led like a lamb to the slaughter, he’s taken away, he’s cut off from the land of the living, he’s assigned a grave, he poured out his life unto death, he’s with the rich in his death — what are all those phrases referring to, if not the fact that he did truly die?”
“But what about the resurrection?” I pressed. “Show me where that word is used.”
“It’s not — but it’s plainly implied,” replied Brown. “How does someone die and yet ‘prolong his days’? Clearly, the passage speaks of the servant’s continued activities after his death. And there’s only one explanation for that—resurrection!”
Brown’s answers seemed persuasive enough, but there were still other reasons why critics reject Isaiah 53’s fulfillment in Jesus. For instance, while the Isaiah passage refers to the nonviolence of God’s servant, the Gospels describe Jesus as using a whip to drive moneychangers out of the temple.
“That sounds like a violent act that would get a person arrested today,” I said. “Wouldn’t that disqualify Jesus from being the Messiah?”
“When the Hebrew scriptures speak of violence, which in Hebrew is hamas, it’s describing illegal aggression like murder, bloodshed, and robbery — none of which Yeshua ever committed,” Brown said. “Jesus’ nonviolence was so well known that Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. modeled their nonviolent resistance after him. When Peter drew a sword and cut off the ear of one of the guards who came to arrest Jesus, he was rebuked by Jesus — who then healed the guard’s ear.”
While that was true, it seemed to me he was skirting the question. “Specifically, what about the temple cleansing?” I asked.
“As for the temple incident — or incidents, since there may have been two separate events—this was praiseworthy and motivated by zeal for God,” Brown replied. “If he wanted to hurt someone, he would have used a sword, but instead he made a whip out of cords, which was apparently used for the animals. The money-changers only got a verbal rebuke for making the temple ‘a den of robbers.’66 There’s no record of anyone being injured, and this incident wasn’t even brought up at Jesus’ trial, where nobody could accuse him of wrongdoing.”
I raised yet another issue. “Isaiah 53 says the Lord’s servant will not lift up his voice or cry out, yet Jesus cried out several times on the cross,” I said.
“Again, let’s look at the context,” Brown said. “The passage says he did not open his mouth but was led away like a lamb to the slaughter. Interestingly, the New Testament specifically applies this text to Jesus.67 All through his ordeal — his arrest, his trial, his flogging, his crucifixion — he doesn’t try to defend himself, he doesn’t protest, he doesn’t fight: just like a lamb being led to the slaughter. He truly turns the other cheek, as he taught in the Sermon on the Mount.68 Is he crying out when he says on the cross, ‘Father, into your hands I commit my spirit’? Is he crying out when he says, ‘Father, forgive them’? Or is that also being like a lamb? The point is, he never fought what was happening to him.”
I glanced down at my notes: only one significant objection remained. “Isaiah 53 says the servant of the Lord will have descendants — or ‘see seed’ in the Hebrew,” I said. “Jesus never married or had children, so he can’t be the Messiah, can he?”
Brown smiled at a memory. “A rabbi once told me in a debate that every single time the term ‘see seed’ exists in scripture, it specifically refers to physical progeny. The only hole in that argument is that this is the only time the idiom occurs!” Brown said with a laugh.
“The question is, can ‘seed’ be used metaphorically, in terms of spiritual offspring?” he asked. “Isaiah himself uses it that way in other chapters; for example, he calls Israel ‘a seed of evildoers.’69 If we follow a standard Hebrew lexicon, we see that ‘seed of evildoers’ would mean ‘a community of evildoers’ or ‘evildoers to the core.’70 In the context of Isaiah 53, ‘seed’ would mean the servant of the Lord would see godly, spiritual posterity, true disciples transformed by means of his labors on their behalf.
“Also, the Hebrew word for ‘seed’ can mean ‘a future generation’ without reference to specific descendants of one individual in particular. It’s used this way in Psalm 22. In the context of Isaiah 53, this would mean the servant of the Lord would see future generations of his people serving the Lord. One more point,” he added. “Isaiah 53 doesn’t say he’ll see his seed. That’s important. So I think it’s entirely appropriate to interpret this metaphorically.”
“Overall, then, you feel like Isaiah 53 remains the passage with the most clarity—,” I began, but Brown interrupted.
“With all due respect to those who come up with objections, they’re really swatting at flies,” he said. “Any time I can get someone to read this passage, I ask, ‘Of whom does this speak?’ If you can read it in Hebrew, all the better. You’d be amazed at the reaction. I remember one time showing it to a respectful Jewish man. He read it, got red in the face, and yelled out: ‘Jesus Christ! ’ It was an expression of anger, but I thought, ‘How ironic is that? ’
“Because who but Jesus could it be describing?”71
One of the most controversial prophecies is found elsewhere in Isaiah. In his Gospel, Matthew points to Isaiah 7:14 as being fulfilled in Jesus: “Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel,” which means “God with us.”72
But critics claim several flaws. First, they say the word Isaiah used to describe the mother, ‘almah, doesn’t mean “virgin”—and if he had wanted to convey the idea of virginity, he would have used a better word: betulah. Second, they deny this is a messianic prophecy at all, but it referred to a sign that God gave King Ahaz of Judah some seven hundred years before Jesus’ birth. Third, this prophecy can’t refer to Jesus because he wasn’t given the name Immanuel.
“Those are pretty tough issues,” I said to Brown after summarizing the objections. “Did Matthew misinterpret this?”
“It’s a tough passage,” Brown conceded. “I’ve analyzed Isaiah in general and this passage in particular for thirty years.”
“What’s your conclusion?” I asked.
“That it’s impossible to determine exactly what the prophecy meant to the original hearers when it was delivered.”
I was a little relieved that it was as murky to others as it was to me. “What’s the background of it? ” I asked.
“The people of Judah were being threatened by the Israelites in the north, who were joined by the Arameans,” Brown said. “Their intent was to seize Jerusalem and remove the reigning king, Ahaz, who was from the line of David. This was a frontal attack on the dynasty from which the Messiah would come.
“Unfortunately, Ahaz was a faithless ruler. The Lord sent the prophet Isaiah to reassure him that his enemies would be defeated if he would trust in God alone. He refused to stand firm in his faith. Isaiah told him to ask God for a sign to assure him, but Ahaz didn’t. So God unilaterally provides him a sign: the ‘almah will give birth to a son and he will be called Immanuel. And incidentally, Ahaz was being addressed not simply as the king but as a representative of the house of David, and in two verses he was referred to in the plural, so Azah was not being addressed alone.”
“How did Matthew see this promise?” I asked.
“I’m sure he didn’t see it in isolation. I believe he read it in the broader context of Isaiah 7-11, one of the key prophetic sections that point toward Jesus as Messiah. In Isaiah 7, he is about to be born; in Isaiah 9, he is already born and declared ‘mighty God,’ the divine king; and in Isaiah 11 he is ruling and reigning in the supernatural power of the Spirit.
“As Matthew looked back at these prophecies, it would have been apparent that these chapters were linked together and that the promises of a worldwide, glorious reign of the promised Messiah were not yet realized. In chapter 8, Maher-Slalal-Hash-Baz is born. It seems that for Isaiah’s contemporaries, this birth virtually took the place of the birth of Immanuel, leaving this important prophetic announcement without any record of fulfillment for more than seven hundred years.” Something didn’t seem right to me. “If Immanuel’s birth was supposed to be a sign for Ahaz,” I said, “then it wouldn’t make sense that it would refer to the birth of Jesus seven centuries later.”
“That fails to account for a few things,” said Brown. “First, this was a promise to the house of David as a whole, and promises to Davidic kings often had meaning beyond their own generations. Second, the birth of Maher-Slalal-Hash-Baz seems to take the place of the Immanuel prophecy in terms of the immediate historical context. Third, the prophecy is shrouded in obscurity, and so Matthew could legitimately examine it afresh and seek its deeper meaning.”
“So you think Matthew’s interpretation was legitimate?”
“Yes, I do,” he said. “He sees the supernatural birth, this Immanuel figure, as part of a larger messianic complex of passages, and he applies this difficult part of scripture with genuine insight to Yeshua.”
“What about Isaiah’s use of the Hebrew word ‘almah?” I asked. “Does it mean ‘virgin’?”
“To be precise, ‘almah really deals with youthfulness,” Brown said. “Four other times when the word is used elsewhere in the Old Testament, the New International Version doesn’t translate it as ‘virgin.’ However, the foremost Jewish commentator Rashi said, ‘And some interpret that this is the sign, that she was a young girl’—an ‘almah — ‘and incapable of giving birth.’ So he was acknowledging that some Jewish experts interpreted the text to mean that God’s sign to Ahaz had to do with the highly unusual nature of the birth.73Here was a young girl, an ‘almah, for whom giving birth would not be normal. The birth itself was unusual or perhaps even supernatural.
“Also, it’s significant that the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Jewish scriptures, translated ‘almah as parthenos, which is the primary Greek word for ‘virgin’ — and this was a couple of hundred years before Jesus was born. So it’s not misquoted or misused. We know sometimes Matthew used the Septuagint, so he’s just quoting from the Jewish translation of his day.”
“What about the word betulah, which critics say Isaiah would have used if he had truly meant virgin? ”
“Betulah can refer to a virgin, but more often than not it simply means a young woman or maiden. In fact, more than three out of every five times the word occurs in the Old Testament, the most widely used Jewish translation renders it ‘maiden.’ Joel 1:8 speaks of a betulah mourning for the husband of her youth. An ancient Aramaic inscription speaks of a betulah who struggled in labor to give birth. So neither ‘almah nor betulah, in and of themselves, would clearly and unequivocally mean virgin. They’re consistent with virginity, but there is no single word in biblical Hebrew that always and only means virgin.” “What about the argument that Jesus was never called Immanuel?” I asked.
“We know that Solomon was to be called Jedidiah, but he was never referred to by that name in the Old Testament,” Brown said.74 “And let’s face it, Jesus is acknowledged as Immanuel—or ‘God with us’—by millions of people around the earth to this day. He’s called Immanuel in hymns sung in churches around the world. Names were often symbolic. And in the deepest ultimate way, he is God with us.
“Again, I look at messianic prophecies and see some passages that are indisputable—they can be referring to no one but Jesus. Then you fill in the other details. This is an obscure prophecy in Isaiah 7:14. It’s amazing the amount of diversity in the rabbinic commentaries about it. Matthew comes up with a tremendous insight to rightly apply it to Jesus. The miraculous nature of the sign ultimately becomes clear in light of its fulfillment in Jesus—who was actually born of a virgin—whatever the original expectations and understanding might have been.”
“So it was not seen in its day as being a messianic prophecy?”
“I don’t believe many prophecies were seen in their day as messianic in the sense of a future, yet to come, Messianic King,” Brown said. “In other words, they were spoken with anticipation. In the ancient world, there was tremendous hope with each new king who came: the prophecies were going to be fulfilled. Then it failed to happen, but still the words were considered prophetic because the prophets were proven accurate in everything else. Now who’s going to fulfill the prophecies? So they looked with anticipation toward the future. You could look at any unfulfilled promise given to a descendant of David that has universal implications as messianic. Any Davidic promise that transcends the generation and that remains unfulfilled is messianic.”
I was looking for a way to wrap up this issue in my mind. “So is Isaiah 7:14 an explicit prophecy of the virgin birth seven hundred years in advance?” I asked.
“I don’t read it like that,” said Brown. “Is it a prophecy of a supernatural birth in the house of David of one called Immanuel, which was part of the larger complex of messianic prophecies that reach their fulfillment in the miraculous conception of Jesus? Absolutely.”
Psalm 22, the prayer of the righteous sufferer, has been cited by Christians for centuries as foreshadowing the crucifixion of Jesus. The description in the psalm, said one nineteenth-century Christian scholar, is even “more vivid” than the Gospels: it describes the piercing of the hands and feet, the stretching of the body until the “bones are out of joint,” the intensity of the thirst, and the dividing of the victim’s garments among his persecutors.75
The piercing of the hands and feet seems especially prescient, particularly since it was written hundreds of years before crucifixion was even implemented as a method of execution by the Romans.
Or was it?
Rabbi Tovia Singer has accused Christians of “deliberately mistranslating” this psalm to make it appear that it points toward Jesus on the cross. He said that while the King James Version renders the Hebrew as, “They pierced my hands and feet,” this is actually “a not-too-ingenious Christian interpolation.” The unadulterated Hebrew, he said, should be rendered, “Like a lion, they are at my hands and feet.”76
“This is a serious allegation,” I said to Brown. “Did Christians maliciously tamper with the text?”
Brown sat back. “It’s fascinating that this verse isn’t even quoted in the New Testament, even though other verses of Psalm 22 are,” he replied.
“But do you consider this psalm to be messianic?” I asked.
“When he was on the cross, Jesus quoted the opening line from Psalm 22: ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’” replied Brown. “By doing so, he was applying the psalm to himself. The psalm describes the righteous sufferer, publicly mocked and shamed, brought down to the jaws of death in the midst of terrible suffering and humiliation, and miraculously delivered by God, to the praise of his name. So it applies powerfully to Jesus, the ideal righteous sufferer.”
“The psalm,” I noted, “is written by David in the first person.” “Many events in David’s life were repeated in the life of the Messiah, since David was in many ways the prototype of the Messiah,” said Brown. “In fact, a famous rabbinic midrash, or commentary, that was written some twelve hundred years ago, makes the point that David was speaking of the Messiah’s sufferings.”77
Brown picked up a copy of his book from the desk and thumbed to a quote from Old Testament scholar James E. Smith, which he read to me:
No Old Testament person could have imagined that his personal deliverance from death could be the occasion for the world’s conversion. Such a hope must be restricted to the future Redeemer. Under inspiration of the Holy Spirit, David in Psalm 22 saw his descendant resembling, but far surpassing, himself in suffering. Furthermore, the deliverance of this descendant would have meaning for all mankind.78
“What other person’s terrible suffering and death was worthy of worldwide attention to the point that the nations actually turned to the God of Israel because of it?” Brown asked. “Applying this psalm to the Messiah is in keeping with the clear meaning of the text.”
I brought Brown back to my question about the alleged mistranslation. “Did Christians doctor the Hebrew to make it say ‘pierced my hands and feet’ instead of ‘like a lion, they are at my hands and feet’?”
“This is definitely not a Christian fabrication,” he said firmly. “The oldest Jewish translation—the Septuagint—translated it as, ‘they pierced.’ The oldest Hebrew copy of the Psalms we possess, from the Dead Sea Scrolls, dating back to the century before Jesus, uses the Hebrew verb ka’aru, which comes from the root meaning ‘to bore through’ — not ka’ari, which means ‘like a lion.’ The same with about a dozen medieval Masoretic manuscripts, which are the authoritative texts on traditional Jewish thought. But let me tell you why this really doesn’t matter.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Because let’s make the assumption that the correct translation is, ‘like a lion at my hands and feet.’ What is this lion doing with the victim’s hands and feet—licking them?” His voice was thick with sarcasm.
“Rashi says it means ‘as though they are crushed in a lion’s mouth.’ Another prominent Jewish commentator, Metsudat David, said, ‘They crush my hands and my feet as the lion crushes the bones of the prey in its mouth.’ So the imagery is clear: the metaphorical lions are tearing and ripping at the sufferer’s hands and feet. This mauling and biting graphically portray great physical agony.
“Would this contradict the picture of a crucifixion? In no way. It’s entirely consistent with what occurs in a crucifixion. So either translation could be said to foreshadow the suffering of the Messiah. But the bottom line is there’s no Christian tampering with the text, just honest efforts to accurately translate the Hebrew, where only one character determines the difference between ka’aru, or ‘pierced,’ and ka’ari, or ‘like a lion.’ ”
The stunning picture of the righteous sufferer in Psalm 22, the haunting portrait of the suffering servant in Isaiah 53, the prophecies that had to be fulfilled before the second temple’s demise, the bloody sacrificial system that presaged the lamb of God—all of it, down to the predicted details of the priestly king and his ancestry and his birthplace and his crucifixion and his ongoing worldwide influence, was too eerily accurate to be the product of happenstance or manipulation.
How else could I account for dozens of detailed predictions miraculously coming true in the life of only one individual in all of history? The facts forced me to conclude that the messianic prophecies are an incredible affirmation of the supernatural nature of the Bible and the identity of Jesus being the redeemer of Israel and the world. The most recent objections, propagated on the Internet and in “anti-missionary” literature, simply failed to overturn the powerful case for him having fulfilled the ancient predictions against all odds.
“I think it would be mathematically impossible for anyone else ever to fulfill all these parameters of prophecy in the Old Testament any better than Jesus did,” said noted ancient history professor Paul
Maier.79
Walter Kaiser, the prominent Old Testament expert and author of thirty books, including The Messiah in the. Old Testament, said that “a straightforward understanding and application” of the Hebrew text “leads one straight to the Messiah and to Jesus of Nazareth.”80 Declared Norman Geisler: “All the evidence points to Jesus as the divinely appointed fulfillment of the Messianic prophecies. He was God’s man, confirmed by God’s signs.”81
Since the facts inexorably lead to Jesus, one more topic begged to be addressed. I had to ask Brown: “Given the depth and breadth of the prophecies—given the compelling portrayal of Jesus in Isaiah 53 alone—why don’t more Jewish people come to faith in him?”
Brown had heard the question many times before. “There are several answers,” he began. “For the most part, many Jewish people simply don’t examine the issue. Religious Jews are engaged in the biblical text, but they don’t spend most of their time looking at the prophets; instead, they study the Talmud and rabbinic traditions. They’re not looking in the right place to find Yeshua. But many Jews today are not even following God in a devoted way. There’s a general lack of God-consciousness. Also, there’s a price to pay if a Jewish person decides to follow Jesus: they could be ostracized from their family and community. And another reason, unfortunately, is the barrier put up by anti-Semitism in the past.”
That remark stopped me cold. “Do you think Christians are generally oblivious to the history of anti-Semitism and Christianity?” I asked.
“Yes, often they are—for good reason: they haven’t seen it, and it isn’t in their hearts,” he replied. “With almost no exception, the Christians I’ve met around the world have a special attachment to Jewish people and Israel. So the history of anti-Semitism is very much unknown for that positive reason—but there’s also a bad reason.” “Which is ...?”
“Many Christians today, especially evangelicals, don’t have a sense of history. They’ll quote Martin Luther left and right, but they won’t talk about the horrific things he wrote that Adolph Hitler adopted, like his 1543 tractate Concerning the Jews and Their Lies, where he recommended, among other things, that synagogues be burned, Jewish homes destroyed, and rabbis forbidden to teach under the threat of death.82 They’ll quote the powerful preaching of John Chrysostom a thousand years before Luther, but they won’t mention his seven sermons against the Jews, where he said, ‘I hate the Jews,’ called them ‘possessed by the devil,’ and said the Jewish religion is ‘a disease.’83 “Someone once said that those pages of history that Jews have memorized, Christians have torn out of their history books. There’s no denying these things occurred, but they were a complete and horrible aberration that, unfortunately, have been used to keep many Jews away from Jesus.”
My heart sank at the prospect of anyone being repelled from seeking out the real Jesus because of atrocities perpetrated by those who claimed to follow him but who, by their repugnant behavior and attitudes, betrayed his most fundamental teachings.
“What can be done about it?” I asked.
“There was a Scottish Presbyterian conference 150 years ago where they were asking the question, ‘To reach out to the Jews, what’s the most pressing need? ’ ”
“What was the answer?”
“More tears,” Brown said somberly. “And I still believe that remains a pressing issue — more tears. It’s essential that, as followers of Jesus, we repudiate these aberrations of history and tell Jewish people, ‘Allow us to show you who Yeshua really is and what he really teaches.’ ”
I recalled a comment made by a mutual acquaintance, Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, who once told me Christianity is “a beautiful religion for Christians,” but it’s just not for Jews. “Can Jesus be the Messiah for Christians but not for others? ” I asked Brown.
“That would be a complete contradiction of all of Jesus’ claims,” he replied, shaking his head. “He’s either the Messiah of everyone or the Messiah of no one. To say the New Testament is beautiful but Jesus is not the Jewish Messiah —well, it’s filled with fabrications and fantasies then. Christians are deluded in believing he died for the sins of the world and rose from the dead. Either he did or he didn’t.
“Thankfully, over the last century there’s been a great recovery of Jews saying, ‘I worship the God of Israel, I worship the Messiah of Israel in light of the new covenant, and Torah is written on my heart.’ In fact, many Jews who were secular have become appreciative of their heritage and background because of faith in Jesus. That trite saying—‘Jesus made me kosher’—actually has a lot of truth to it.” “And what about for you, personally? ” I said. “Who’s the real Jesus to you?”
Brown glanced off to the side, collecting his thoughts, and then looked back at me. He was no longer methodically building a case; now, in a tone that blended gratitude with conviction, the words flowed almost poetically. I couldn’t think of a better way to cap our time together.
“Yeshua is the right continuation of my Jewish roots,” Brown said. “He’s the Messiah of Israel and the savior of the world. He’s the one to whom I owe my life, and through him I’ve come to know God. He is the one who provided me complete forgiveness of sins, who loved me when I was a miserable, ungrateful, rebellious, proud wretch. He put a new heart and a new spirit within me; he has turned my life around and given it meaning. He’s the fullness of God in bodily form. He’s the very expression and image of the Father—in seeing him, I see and know God.
“And he’s the only hope of the world. Outside of him, all we see is darkness. He’s the hope of Israel. Israel will run out of options and finally in the end recognize that the one that it thought was the source of all its pain and suffering through the years actually is its only hope.
“He’s the beginning and end, the all in all. I cannot imagine existence outside of him. I cannot imagine truth outside of him. I can’t imagine purpose in life outside of him. So really he is the ultimate expression of God to the human race. That’s why I’m spending my life talking to Jewish people—as compassionately and accurately as I can—about the reality of Jesus the Messiah.
“I just can’t withhold God’s very best from those he dearly loves.”
More Resources on This Topic
Brown, Michael L. Answering Jewish Objections to Jesus, vol. 1; General and Historical Objections. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker, 2000.
-. Answering Jewish Objections to Jesus, vol. 2; Theological Objections. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker, 2000.
-. Answering Jewish Objections to Jesus, vol. 3; Messianic
Prophecy Objections. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker, 2003.
-. Answering Jewish Objections to Jesus, vol. 4; New Testament Objections. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker, 2006.
Kaiser, Walter C., Jr. The Messiah in the Old Testament. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 1995.
Smith, James E. What the Bible Teaches about the Promised Messiah. Nashville: Nelson, 1993.
Wright, Christopher J. H. Knowing Jesus through the Old Testament. Downer’s Grove, 1ll.: InterVarsity, 1995.