8. The Miraculous Prophecies of Jesus's Life
Written on June 3, 2026
No contemporary evidence such as written eye-witness accounts exists concerning the life of Jesus and, restricting ourselves to the New Testament, we must rely primarily on the writings of the authors of the four Gospels and Paul. As well as claiming that Jesus performed a wide range of miracles and was resurrected, these writers also assert that certain details of his life correspond with those contained in the Messianic prophecies of the Old Testament.
Since no first-hand accounts of the events in question exist, the logical way of interrogating these extraordinary claims is not to question how Jesus managed to perform these miracles or whether the events of his life do indeed constitute the fulfilment of the prophesies, The way to proceed is to question the reliability of the available accounts. Specifically, we need to ask why these writers made these miraculous claims in the first place. And one obvious answer is 'because the miracles, including the fulfilment of the prophecies did indeed occur!'
This is not unreasonable, but extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and as was noted in the previous post, if there is at least one alternative explanation for the writers' claims that is consistent with our knowledge of the world, then we will not accept an explanation which is not. And there is such an explanation: the early Christians were keenly motivated to promote the divine nature of Jesus principally his being the son of God. Accrediting him with miraculous powers was the most potent way of doing this.
Similarly, there is a non-miraculous explanation for the apparent fulfilment of the Hebrew prophecies offered by historical-critical analysis. This suggests that, keen to convince the world that Jesus was the promised Messiah of the Jews, the Gospel writers intentionally composed and shaped their narratives in accordance with the Messianic prophecies in the earlier scriptures. (Scholars have also expressed the view that some of the Gospel claims are based on misinterpretations of the scriptures.)
So, there is at least one possible explanation for the apparent miraculous fulfilment of the prophecies, and I for one (and many others, including Jews) am not willing to accept that Jesus's life fulfilled the Messianic prophecies of the Old Testament (note 1).
Notes
1. As in my previous post, In terms of David Hume's criterion the possible 'alternative explanation' would not represent an even greater miracle than the Gospels' claims.
Enough on this topic for now.
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