The Prophecies, Laid Out

There is a picture that goes round of a man at a desk with an empty tray labelled “evidence of God,” and a stack of boxes beside him marked miracles, prayer, prophecy, design, all pre-sorted as not evidence. The letter on fulfilled prophecy argues the case. This page does something plainer. It puts the objects in the tray, one at a time, with a date on each, and says nothing about them that the reader cannot check.

Three groups, by how much you have to grant. In the first, the text sits in a museum in a copy older than the event, and the event is recorded by people outside the church. In the second, the text is just as old, but the fulfilment rests on the Gospels alone, so a skeptic can say the story was shaped to fit. In the third, the ones apologists reach for that do not survive a careful reader, and the reason each does not.

1. The text is older than the event, and the event is recorded by outsiders

The suffering servant

Isaiah 53, complete, on the Great Isaiah Scroll, second century BC.

Isaiah 53:3 · KJV

He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not.

Isaiah 53:5 · KJV

But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.

Isaiah 53:7 · KJV

He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth: he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth.

Isaiah 53:9 · KJV

And he made his grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death; because he had done no violence, neither was any deceit in his mouth.

Isaiah 53:12 · KJV

Therefore will I divide him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong; because he hath poured out his soul unto death: and he was numbered with the transgressors; and he bare the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.

The execution of Jesus under Pontius Pilate is recorded by Tacitus, a Roman senator with no reason to help, and by Josephus. That a man was condemned, was silent at his trial, died between criminals and was buried in a rich man’s tomb is the Gospel account; that he was executed at all is not in dispute outside it. Whether the servant is Jesus, or Israel, or someone else, is the argument. That the text was there first is not.

The anointed one cut off, then the city destroyed

Daniel, in fragments from Qumran dated to the late second century BC.

Daniel 9:26 · KJV

And after threescore and two weeks shall Messiah be cut off, but not for himself: and the people of the prince that shall come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary; and the end thereof shall be with a flood, and unto the end of the war desolations are determined.

Jerusalem and the temple were destroyed by Titus in AD 70. Josephus, who was there, wrote the account. Critics date the book of Daniel to the 160s BC rather than the sixth century, and that argument is set out in the third group below. It does not touch this row. Whoever wrote the sentence, the copy is older than AD 70 by two centuries, and the order it gives is the order that happened: the anointed one cut off first, the city and the sanctuary after.

Tyre

Ezekiel 26:4 · KJV

And they shall destroy the walls of Tyrus, and break down her towers: I will also scrape her dust from her, and make her like the top of a rock.

Ezekiel 26:12 · KJV

And they shall make a spoil of thy riches, and make a prey of thy merchandise: and they shall break down thy walls, and destroy thy pleasant houses: and they shall lay thy stones and thy timber and thy dust in the midst of the water.

Ezekiel 26:14 · KJV

And I will make thee like the top of a rock: thou shalt be a place to spread nets upon; thou shalt be built no more: for I the LORD have spoken it, saith the Lord GOD.

Nebuchadnezzar besieged mainland Tyre for thirteen years. In 332 BC Alexander scraped the ruins of the mainland city into the sea to build a causeway to the island, which is the strangest detail in the prophecy and the one nobody would invent: “they shall lay thy stones and thy timber and thy dust in the midst of the water.” His historian Arrian recorded it. An honest note: there is a town called Tyre today, on what was the island and is now a peninsula because of that causeway. The mainland city whose stones went into the sea was not rebuilt. Read the verse and decide how much it claims.

2. The text is older than the event, but the fulfilment is recorded only by believers

Every text below is on a scroll older than Christ. The fulfilments are in the Gospels. A skeptic is entitled to say the writers knew the texts and shaped the story to them, and the rows are here so you can see exactly what that objection has to cover.

The town

Micah 5:2 · KJV

But thou, Bethlehem Ephratah, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel; whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting.

Matthew 2:1 · KJV

Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judaea in the days of Herod the king, behold, there came wise men from the east to Jerusalem,

The king on a donkey

Zechariah 9:9 · KJV

Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion; shout, O daughter of Jerusalem: behold, thy King cometh unto thee: he is just, and having salvation; lowly, and riding upon an ass, and upon a colt the foal of an ass.

Matthew 21:5 · KJV

Tell ye the daughter of Sion, Behold, thy King cometh unto thee, meek, and sitting upon an ass, and a colt the foal of an ass.

Thirty pieces of silver, and the potter

Zechariah 11:12 · KJV

And I said unto them, If ye think good, give me my price; and if not, forbear. So they weighed for my price thirty pieces of silver.

Zechariah 11:13 · KJV

And the LORD said unto me, Cast it unto the potter: a goodly price that I was prised at of them. And I took the thirty pieces of silver, and cast them to the potter in the house of the LORD.

Matthew 27:9 · KJV

Then was fulfilled that which was spoken by Jeremy the prophet, saying, And they took the thirty pieces of silver, the price of him that was valued, whom they of the children of Israel did value;

The garments

Psalms 22:18 · KJV

They part my garments among them, and cast lots upon my vesture.

Matthew 27:35 · KJV

And they crucified him, and parted his garments, casting lots: that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, They parted my garments among them, and upon my vesture did they cast lots.

Not a bone broken

Psalms 34:20 · KJV

He keepeth all his bones: not one of them is broken.

John 19:33 · KJV

But when they came to Jesus, and saw that he was dead already, they brake not his legs:

John 19:36 · KJV

For these things were done, that the scripture should be fulfilled, A bone of him shall not be broken.

The one they pierced

Zechariah 12:10 · KJV

And I will pour upon the house of David, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and of supplications: and they shall look upon me whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for him, as one mourneth for his only son, and shall be in bitterness for him, as one that is in bitterness for his firstborn.

John 19:37 · KJV

And again another scripture saith, They shall look on him whom they pierced.

Notice what the objection has to say for this group. Not that one detail was matched, but that a man was executed by a method that breaks the legs, and the writer who says his were not broken had to invent it against the normal practice, in a document circulated among people who were there. It is possible. It is worth seeing how much it costs.

3. Contested, and why

These are used constantly, and a reader who knows the texts will stop trusting the page the moment one is passed off as settled. So here they are, with the problem stated as plainly as the case.

“They pierced my hands and my feet”

Psalms 22:16 · KJV

For dogs have compassed me: the assembly of the wicked have inclosed me: they pierced my hands and my feet.

The Hebrew of the Masoretic text reads ka’ari, “like a lion,” not “they pierced.” The reading “pierced” comes from the Septuagint and from one fragment found at Nahal Hever, which has the verb form. Scholars divide, and the difference is one Hebrew letter. The verse may well say what the King James says. It cannot be laid in the tray as if that were beyond dispute, because it is not.

“A virgin shall conceive”

Isaiah 7:14 · KJV

Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.

Matthew 1:23 · KJV

Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us.

The Hebrew word is almah, a young woman of marriageable age, not the technical word for a virgin, which is betulah. The Septuagint translators, two centuries before Christ, chose parthenos, virgin, and Matthew follows them. The sign was also given to Ahaz about his own day. Christians read it as a near fulfilment and a far one. That is a reading, and it should be offered as one.

“Out of Egypt have I called my son”

Hosea 11:1 · KJV

When Israel was a child, then I loved him, and called my son out of Egypt.

Matthew 2:15 · KJV

And was there until the death of Herod: that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying, Out of Egypt have I called my son.

Hosea is talking about Israel coming out of Egypt in the Exodus. It is not a prediction of anything. Matthew reads Jesus as living out Israel’s story again, which is a way of reading the Old Testament that the apostles used constantly and that has a name, typology. It is not a fulfilled prediction, and a page for skeptics should not call it one.

When Daniel was written

The book presents itself as written in the sixth century BC. Most critical scholars date it to around 165 BC, during the persecution under Antiochus, on the ground that its account of the Greek kingdoms in chapter 11 is accurate up to that point and vague after it. Porphyry made the argument in the third century AD. If they are right, chapter 11 is history written as prophecy. That would still leave the row in the first group standing, because the Qumran copies predate AD 70 either way, but it should be said.

When Isaiah 40 to 55 was written, and Cyrus

Isaiah 44:28 · KJV

That saith of Cyrus, He is my shepherd, and shall perform all my pleasure: even saying to Jerusalem, Thou shalt be built; and to the temple, Thy foundation shall be laid.

Isaiah 45:1 · KJV

Thus saith the LORD to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have holden, to subdue nations before him; and I will loose the loins of kings, to open before him the two leaved gates; and the gates shall not be shut;

Cyrus is named, and Cyrus took Babylon in 539 BC and sent the exiles home. Isaiah of Jerusalem lived in the eighth century. Most critical scholars hold that chapters 40 to 55 were written in the exile, by someone who knew who Cyrus was. If so, this is not prediction. The site’s prophecy letter leans on this one; it is here because the lean should be visible.

Who the servant is

Isaiah 53 is in the first group because the text is physically old and the death is attested outside the church. What it does not settle is who the servant is. The oldest Jewish readings take him as Israel, suffering among the nations. Christians take him as Christ. The text says “he” throughout and describes a single death and burial, which is the Christian case; it also calls Israel “my servant” repeatedly in the surrounding chapters, which is the other. Both sides have the text in front of them. That is an argument, and the page leaves it as one.

Where this lands

God set the test Himself, and it is a test about prediction, not about feeling.

Isaiah 41:22 · KJV

Let them bring them forth, and shew us what shall happen: let them shew the former things, what they be, that we may consider them, and know the latter end of them; or declare us things for to come.

Isaiah 41:23 · KJV

Shew the things that are to come hereafter, that we may know that ye are gods: yea, do good, or do evil, that we may be dismayed, and behold it together.

Isaiah 46:10 · KJV

Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure:

So the tray is not empty. It has a scroll in it with a date on it, and a sentence about a man who was cut off before his city fell, and a pile of stones in the sea at Tyre. What a person does with those is his own business, and this page does not tell him. It only declines to pretend the tray was empty.

And the one who was written about read the same texts, and said whose they were.

Luke 24:27 · KJV

And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself.

John 5:39 · KJV

Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me.

Related: Fulfilled Prophecy, Daniel and Revelation, Faith Was Never Meant to Be Blind, and Josephus, and The Great Isaiah Scroll. Scripture from the King James Version, quoted whole and linked to the Study Bible. Manuscript dates are the published ones for the Qumran finds; where scholars divide on a date or a reading, the page says so in the row.