This year, like all the others, many have been celebrating Christmas. Apart from the obvious secularisation of the event, many will actually be celebrating the birth of Jesus, who is supposed to be the Christ and saviour of the world. Many of those who say that Jesus is the saviour point to the supposed Old Testament predictions that, they say, proved that Jesus is the saviour. However, an objective look at these Old Testament prophecies will show that they never predicted Jesus.

Perhaps one of the most quoted sections of the Old Testament that was supposed to have predicted the coming of Jesus comes from the book of Isaiah. In addition to the misinterpretations (deliberate or not) of the passages that have been credited with predicting the coming of Jesus, others that describe what sort of person Jesus was supposed to have been have been ignored.

Isaiah wrote quite a long time before Jesus was born. He predicted that the saviour would be born, not of a virgin, as some would want us to believe, but of a young woman. The fact that most children were born of young women, both during Isaiah’s and Jesus’s time should make this prediction unspectacular – even laughable. So, too, was Isaiah’s supposed prediction that Jesus would have been born in Bethlehem.

Then we are told that the saviour would have been called “Immanuel”. Of course, the child was actually named “Jesus”. Most of those who did eventually call Jesus “Immanuel” came many years later, and they did so in a vain attempt to fulfil Isaiah’s prophecy.

Now, while Isaiah may have been saying that he will suffer for our sake, he also predicted that Jesus would have lived a long life, albeit sickly, and see his children. Now, unless Isaiah was talking about another Jesus, the one that Christians celebrate each time this year could not have been the same one. For, in so far as everything that we know about him, he lived a very short life, was very healthy, and had no children.

Then there is the Old Testament prophet Micah, who was supposed to predict that the saviour Jesus would have been born in Bethlehem. Speaking about this saviour, Micah also said that this Jesus was supposed to have saved the Hebrews from the Assyrians. However, during Jesus’s time, it was the Romans who ruled Palestine and Jesus certainly did not do any sort of “saving” for the Hebrews from any foreign oppressor.

The supposed Old Testament prophet Hosea supposedly predicted that, after Joseph took Mary and the baby Jesus to Egypt, the family will again return to Israel — thus fulfilling another Jesus prophecy. However, Hosea also said that this supposed Jesus and his family were idol worshippers who sacrificed to false gods. Did Jesus or his family make any sacrifice to false gods? I don’t think so!

Jeremiah has also been credited with predicting Jesus. However, like so many of the other Old Testament supposed Jesus prophecies, the ones by Jeremiah were too general to apply to Jesus, or any specific person, or particular event.

In fact, if we were to seriously look for any Old Testament prediction concerning Jesus, we would be very disappointed indeed. Like the New Testament passages that speak to a miracle-working Jesus who not only raised the dead, but supposedly brought back some to life when he died, the Old Testament predictions of Jesus clearly had nothing to do with him.

Maybe those who want to find some prophecy about Jesus should have consulted Nostradamus!

michael_a_dingwall@hotmail.com