Christian missionaries and apologists are very fond of using alleged bible prophecies to argue for the resurrection and divinity of Jesus Christ. The Christian website www.bible.ca lists 60 prophecies 'fulfilled' by Jesus [1]. Just how authentic are these claims to fulfillment? Followers of Nostradamus also claim that the 16th century author and purported seer predicted hundreds of real world events, and yet many Christians seem a bit reluctant to accept Nostradamus as any sort of divine prophet. Mark Hitchcock, a renowned Christian author who specifically writes on bible prophecy, called Nostradamus' predictions "very vague" and applicable "to all kinds of situations after the event" [2]. Ironically, the problem of vague and widely applicable prophecy will become a recurring theme throughout this article, as we examine and debunk 60 claims of prophetic fulfillment.

I. Claims on the Birth of Christ

1. The first so-called prophecy is that Jesus was born of a woman, and this is all based on Genesis 3:5, which reads:

In the passage, God speaks to the serpent in the garden of Eden, telling it of the punishment it will receive for tricking Eve into eating from the forbidden tree. Where does Jesus come in here? According to tradition, Gen. 3:5 foreshadows Jesus' triumph over Satan at the cross. The seed of woman is supposedly Jesus and the seed of the serpent is supposedly Satan or the antichrist. The problem here is that the serpent in the garden is never actually associated with the devil, despite Christian theology that states otherwise. Note the ambiguity of 'her offspring' representing Jesus too. No mention of a cross or a carpenter from Nazareth, instead what we get is the offspring of woman. This prophecy is unimpressive because even if it were legitimate, how miraculous is a prediction that someone would be born of a woman?

2. The second prophecy is the virgin birth of Jesus, as reportedly found in Isaiah 7:14...

Immediately, one issue with this passage would be that Mary obviously did not name her son Immanuel. As New Testament scholar Bart D. Ehrman has pointed out, the word usually rendered as virgin in Isaiah 7:14, alma, is actually translated as 'young woman' [3]. When the Hebrew bible was translated into Greek, alma was written as parthenos, which means 'virgin' in Greek. This would also explain the stories of the virgin birth that are recorded in Matthew and Luke, since the Greek Old Testament was the version of Hebrew scripture most cited by the gospel authors. Isaiah 7:14 is part of an historical narrative that describes the conflicts between the two kingdoms of Judah and Assyria and the concern it struck in King Ahaz and the House of David.

The verses in bold are important because they eviscerate any claim that this is a prophecy related to Jesus. They explain that by the time the child reaches the age of maturity ("...knows enough to reject the wrong and choose the right..."), the two kings of Judah and Assyria would be destroyed. 2 Kings 15:29-30 and 16:9 are the fulfillment of this prophecy, which tell of King Pekah and King Rezin being assassinated. Needless to say, Jesus was not even born yet at that time.

3. For prophecy number three, we have Jesus being identified as a descendant of Abraham, allegedly supported by Genesis 22:18...

Another startlingly vague prophecy being introduced in so specific a manner. God will bless all Abraham's descendants, and that's about all the information the text provides. To suggest that its author was attempting to prophesy Jesus' connection to Abraham is wishful thinking (or as some call it: faith) and nothing more. No amount of twisting and distorting Gen. 22:18 will make it say anything at all about Jesus anymore than it speaks of Adolf Hitler and Charles Manson - other blessed sons of Abraham.

4. Prophecy four is another ancestry claim, this one dealing with Isaac:

Once again, little needs to be said on this because it provides no connection to Jesus aside from an extremely generalized reference to the descendants of Isaac.

5. The fifth claim of prophecy is yet another dealing with ancestry, but focused on Jacob now:

Christians will note the mention of a star and scepter in Israel and think Jesus, but the rest of this prophecy has nothing to do with the life of Christ. According to the bible, it was David who crushed the Moabites (2 Samuel 8:2) and conquered the Edomites (2 Samuel 8:13-14). The star and scepter more appropriately fit David too, being that the symbol of his kingdom was a star (contrary to conspiracy theories, the oldest use of the star is not occult pentagrams, but goes back to 7th century BC artifacts [4]) and the scepter likely represented his position of regal authority. Why does it seem that the prophecies which aren't so vague usually correspond more with characters other than Jesus?

6. The sixth prophecy in the list is about Christ's connection to the line of David, found in Jeremiah 23:5...

Hebrew commentators have long recognized this passage as a prophecy of the messiah, but it is not therefore referring to Jesus. Note the overall ambiguity of the description again. The messiah will be a wise and just king, as well as a descendant of David. If God inspired or helped compose the bible, couldn't he have put more clarity into his prophecies? A remark on crucifixion, resurrection, Nazareth, or anything along those lines would surely be all the more persuasive than a vague and generic prediction open to different interpretations.

Jeremiah 23:5 has been considered messianic prophecy long enough that the New Testament authors undoubtedly knew of it. One problem with examining these so-called prophecies is that there is always the possibility that the authors of the New Testament simply used the Hebrew scriptures as a reference source in their writings. Might some of the details have been fudged in order to make Christ appear more messianic? Christians loathe to think it, but they believe similar things have happened with respect to Muhammad, Buddha, Krishna, and many others. There is certainly reason to suspect the gospel authors of motivational bias too, considering the conflicting genealogies of Jesus given in Matthew and Luke [5]. Both authors trace Jesus' lineage through David, but the generations from Jesus to David are different for each gospel. In short, there is no basis for assuming that Jesus fulfilled Jeremiah 23:5.

7. Prophecy claim number seven argues that Genesis 49:10 predicted Jesus to come from the tribe of Judah...

Modern scholarship believes the book of Genesis reflects traditions and stories dating back to at least the 7th-6th century BC, and even farther back in some cases. The irony of this prediction, then, would be that Judah was conquered by the Babylonians around 597 BC, as referenced in 2 Chronicles 36:9. The scepter and ruler's staff did indeed depart from Judah for a time, long before Jesus came onto the scene. However, this is really just another prophecy that has no logically identifiable connection to Christ. Vague as Nostradamus' predictions, yet again.

8. Claim eight is another ambiguous messianic prophecy that has no clear relation to Jesus:

9. The ninth prophecy is a favorite among Christian apologists, because it allegedly predicted Jesus' birth in Bethlehem:

Like the passage plainly states, Bethlehem Ephrathah is a clan, not a city. Further evidence of this is found in 1 Chronicles 2:50-51. The biggest blow to a Christian interpretation of this prophecy is seen in the surrounding context though, with Micah 5:6...

I don't recall any story of Jesus ever repelling an Assyrian invasion. As with so many of these prophecies we've looked at thus far, the predictions made here deal with kingdoms, clans, and characters relatively recent to the time period during which the prophecy is given. Prophets of the Old Testament era were not looking 600-700 years into the future, they were making statements on social disturbances related to their own time.

10. I might have to consider the tenth prophecy on the list to be the worst one yet:

This is supposedly a prediction of Herod's slaughter of the innocents told in Matthew 2:16-18. How Rachel and Ramah can be associated with Herod and Bethlehem is beyond me. The passage says nothing about a king commanding the murder of children, it says nothing about this event marking the birth of the messiah, or anything that would serve as a much more relevant clue to actual prophetic fulfillment. Matthew does link the slaughter of the innocents to Jeremiah 31:15, but this only goes to show that ancient Christians were just as willing to grasp at straws as modern ones are. Herod's slaughter of the innocents is a story exclusively found in Matthew, leading many to doubt its authenticity, including the majority of biographers on Herod the Great [6].

II. Claims on the Nature of Christ

11. Another use of Micah 5:2 is to argue that Jesus 'pre-existed creation'. This is allegedly represented by the phrase, "...whose origins are from old, from ancient times". Notice that this doesn't necessarily mean the time prior to creation, but being that this passage has already been sufficiently debunked in claim nine, I will not delve any deeper here.

12. Claim of prophecy number twelve involves the lordship of Jesus, citing Psalm 110:1...

Later on in the list of prophecies, we will see a lot more references to the book of Psalms. Although Christians consider it a prophetic book, Jewish tradition has never associated it with prophecy. The psalms are purportedly written by David, and so each has an original context that has nothing to do with Jesus. To make an argument that there are also secondary, prophetic meanings in certain passages requires some solid evidence. For this claim, there is no connection at all that can be drawn to Jesus. The statement about "my Lord" may indicate that David used a scribe to compose this psalm, and the scribe simply referred to David as his lord. Whatever the case, in the surrounding context we find this lord has troops ready to go into battle with him (Ps. 110:3), which certainly does not fit Jesus, though it would suit David.

13. The thirteenth claim goes back to Isaiah 7:14, arguing that Jesus was called Immanuel. As we saw in claim #2 though, the Christian interpretation of this passage greatly divorces it from its surrounding context. Aside from Matthew 1:22-23, which merely quotes Isaiah 7:14, Jesus is never called Immanuel by anyone in the New Testament.

14. For the fourteenth claim, we must take a look at Deuteronomy 18:18-19...

Christians believe this tells that Jesus would be an amazing prophet, while Muslims believe that it predicts their prophet Muhammad [7]. If we go looking at Jesus for evidence of prophetic powers, we will find an uneasy picture. In Matthew 16:27-28, Jesus predicts his second coming to be within the lifetime of his own followers. We all know how accurate that was. If a supposed prophet has even one prophecy fail, can he rightfully be called a prophet? The bible itself says no, in Deut. 18:22...

15. Prophecy claim 15 is again from Psalms, specifically chapter 110, verse 4:

As already mentioned for claim #12, the surrounding context of this passage involves a military leader, shown by Ps. 110:3 ("Your troops will be willing on your day of battle..."). Jesus never went through any of the priestly initiation rites given in the Old Testament, but Christians still maintain that he was a priest, usually meaning it in a more metaphorical or symbolic way. Things like the creation account, Noah's flood, and the resurrection can't be metaphor, but if Jesus doesn't exactly fit a particular prophecy, it's apparently okay to label it metaphor in order to squeeze him in.

16. This next prophecy claim is another terribly vague one:

According to the good folks at bible.ca, this prophesied Jesus to be a judge. No, I don't see any clues to identify Jesus in this passage either. In fact, all I see is a very generic and standard praise of the Hebrew god, which is quite often found throughout the Tanakh.

17. Psalm 2:6 reads, "I have installed my King on Zion, my holy hill." Somehow this is taken as prophecy of Jesus being a king. Not only is this another nebulous reference, but the issue of Jesus' regal status is a highly imaginative one, relying on lots of assumed metaphors. Psalms, as I mentioned before, has an original context as the poetry of David, and any further suggestions need to build a stronger case than apologists frequently make.

18. Jesus would be anointed by the Spirit, according to the Christian interpretation of Isaiah 11:2...

This is typically recognized as a messianic prophecy, but later on, in verse six, we find more signs of the power of this figure, as it says, the "wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat". These are symbols of peace, not necessarily just in the animal kingdom, but possibly between every living thing. Either way, Jesus definitely did not bring peace, which he states himself in Matthew 10:34. The Christian message has divided friends, families, loved ones, and nations for many centuries. It often made its way through Europe at the edge of a sword during the middle ages. If anything, Jesus should be prophesied by animals devouring one another, not their living in harmony.

19. I'm starting to wonder if the person who compiled this list of 60 prophecies intentionally saved the weakest ones for the last of every division. Number 19 is an alleged prophecy of Jesus' "zeal for God":

Once again, a closer look at the surrounding context will reveal major flaws in applying this passage to Jesus. In Psalm 69:5 we read, "You know my folly, O God; my guilt is not hidden from you." This can apply just fine to David, who had plenty of guilt and folly in his life to grapple with, but Jesus is portrayed as a sinless savior by virtually all Christians. So here we find yet another shining example of the cherry picking that missionaries and apologists will do when they attempt to prove that Jesus was prophesied by Hebrew scripture.

1. Bible.ca. 60 Genuine divine Bible prophecies fulfilled. Retrieved Apr. 14, 2010.
2. Jones, N. (2010) Mark Hitchcock on Nostradamus Talks 2012. Retrieved Apr. 14, 2010.
3. Ehrman, B.D. (2009) Jesus, Interrupted. p.74. HarperCollins: New York.
4. Statemaster. Star of David. Encyclopedia. Retrieved Apr. 14, 2010.
5. Tobin, P.N. The Genealogies in Matthew and Luke. Rejection of Pascal's Wager. Retrieved Apr. 14, 2010.
6. Maier, L.P. (1998) "Herod and the Infants of Bethlehem". Chronos, Kairos, Christos II. p.170. Mercer University Press.
7. Biblical Prophecies on the Advent of Muhammad, the Prophet of Islam. Islam Guide. Retrieved Apr. 14, 2010.