Considering Jesus from His Roots

In our modern, educated day, we sometimes wonder if traditional beliefs, especially ones about the Bible, are only out-dated superstitions.  The Bible recounts many miracles, but probably the most incredible is the Easter story of the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead after being crucified on a cross. 

Is there any logical evidence to take this account of Jesus rising from the dead seriously?  Surprising to many, a strong case can be made that the resurrection of Jesus happened and this evidence is based on historical data, not on religious belief.

This question is worth careful investigation since it directly impacts our own lives. After all, we all will die, no matter how much money, education, health and other goals we achieve in life. If Jesus has defeated death then it gives a real hope in the face of our own approaching death.  Let’s look at the main historical data and the evidence for his resurrection.

Historical Background to Jesus: Tacitus and Josephus

The fact that Jesus existed and died a public death that has altered the course of history is certain. One need not look to the Bible to verify that. Secular history records several references to Jesus and the impact he made on the world of his day. Let’s look at two. The Roman governor-historian Tacitus made a fascinating reference to Jesus when recording how the Roman Emperor Nero executed 1st century Christians (in AD 65), whom Nero blamed for the burning of Rome. Here is what Tacitus wrote in 112 AD:

‘Nero.. punished with the most exquisite tortures, the persons commonly called Christians, who were hated for their enormities. Christus, the founder of the name, was put to death by Pontius Pilate, procurator of Judea in the reign of Tiberius; but the pernicious superstition, repressed for a time broke out again, not only through Judea, where the mischief originated, but through the city of Rome also’ Tacitus.

Tacitus. Annals XV. 44 

Tacitus confirms that Jesus was: 1) a historical person; 2) executed by Pontius Pilate; 3) by 65 AD (the time of Nero) the Christian faith had spread across the Mediterranean from Judea to Rome with such a force that the emperor of Rome felt he had to deal with it. Notice that Tacitus is saying these things as a hostile witness since he considers the movement that Jesus started a ‘wicked superstition’.  He is against it, but does not deny its historicity.

Josephus was a Jewish military leader/historian writing to Romans in the First Century. He summarized the history of the Jews from their beginning up to his time. In so doing he covered the time and career of Jesus with these words: 

‘At this time there was a wise man … Jesus. … good, and … virtuous. And many people from among the Jews and the other nations became his disciples. Pilate condemned Him to be crucified and to die. And those who had become his disciples did not abandon his discipleship. They reported that He had appeared to them three days after his crucifixion and that He was alive’

Josephus. 90 AD. Antiquities xviii. 33 

Josephus confirms that: 1) Jesus existed, 2) He was a religious teacher, 3) His disciples publicly proclaimed the resurrection of Jesus from the dead.  So it seems from these glimpses back into the past that the death of Christ was a well-known event and the issue of his resurrection was being forced onto the Greco-Roman world by his disciples. 

Historical Background – from the Bible 

Luke, a physician and historian provides further details as to how this faith advanced in the ancient world. Here is his excerpt from Acts in the Bible: 

‘The priests and the captain … came up to Peter and John … They were greatly disturbed because the apostles were teaching the people and proclaiming in Jesus the resurrection of the dead…They seized Peter and John… put them in jail…When they saw the courage of Peter and John and realized that they were unschooled, ordinary men, they were astonished… “What are we going to do with these men?” they asked.’

Acts 4:1-16 (63 AD) 

‘Then the high priest and all his associates,… arrested the apostles and put them in the public jail. …they were furious and wanted to put them to death….They called the apostles in and had them flogged. Then they ordered them not to speak in the name of Jesus, and let them go.’

Acts 5:17-40 

We can see that the leaders went to great lengths to stop this new belief. These initial controversies occurred in Jerusalem – the same city where only a few weeks earlier Jesus had been publicly executed and buried. 

From this historical data we can investigate the resurrection by weighing all the possible alternatives and see which one makes the most sense – without prejudging by ‘faith’ any supernatural resurrection.

The body of Jesus and the tomb 

We have only two alternatives concerning the body of the dead Christ. Either the tomb was empty on that Easter Sunday morning or it still contained his body.  There are no other options. 

Let’s assume that his body remained in the tomb. As we reflect on the unfolding historical events, however, we quickly confront difficulties. Why would the Roman and Jewish leaders in Jerusalem have to take such extreme measures to stop stories of a resurrection if the body was still in the tomb, adjacent to the disciples’ public proclamations of his rising from the dead?  If the body of Jesus was still in the tomb it would have been a simple matter for the authorities to parade Christ’s body in front of everyone. This would have discredited the fledgling movement without having to imprison, torture and finally martyr them.  And consider – thousands were converted to believe in the physical resurrection of Jesus in Jerusalem at this time. If I had been one of those in the crowds listening to Peter, wondering if I could believe his incredible message (after all, it came with persecution) I would have at least taken my lunch break to go to the tomb and take a look for myself to see if the body was still there. If the body of Christ was still in the tomb this movement would not have gained any followers in such a hostile environment with such incriminating counter evidence on-hand. So Christ’s body remaining in the tomb leads to absurdities. It does not make sense. 

Did the disciples steal the body? 

Of course there are other possible explanations for an empty tomb apart from a resurrection. However, any explanation for the body’s disappearance must also account for these details:  the Roman seal over the tomb, the Roman patrol guarding the tomb, the large (1-2 ton) stone covering the tomb entrance, the 40 kg of embalming agent on the body. The list goes on. Space does not allow us to look at all factors and scenarios to explain the missing body, but the most contemplated explanation has always been that the disciples themselves stole the body from the tomb, hid it somewhere and were then able to mislead others. 

Assume this scenario, avoiding for the sake of argument some of the difficulties in explaining how the discouraged band of disciples who fled for their lives at his arrest, could re-group and come up with a plan to steal the body, totally outwitting the Roman guard. They then broke the seal, moved the massive rock, and made off with the embalmed body – all without suffering any casualties (since they all remained to become public witnesses).  Let us assume that they successfully managed this and then they all entered onto the world stage to start a religious faith based on their deception. Many of us today assume that what motivated the disciples was the need to proclaim brotherhood and love among men. But look back to the account from both Luke and Josephus and you will note that the contentious issue was “the apostles were teaching the people and proclaiming in Jesus the resurrection of the dead”. This theme is paramount in their writings. Notice how Paul, another apostle, rates the importance of Christ’s resurrection: 

For … I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died …buried, that he was raised on the third day… he appeared to Peter, and then to the Twelve.. If Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless … your faith is futile…If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men…. If I fought wild beasts in Ephesus for merely human reasons, what have I gained? If the dead are not raised – ‘Let us eat and drink for tomorrow we die’… .

I Corinthians 15: 3-32 (57 AD) 

Clearly, in their minds the disciples placed the importance and their witness of the resurrection of Christ at the center of their movement.  Assume that this was really false – that these disciples had really stolen the body so the counter-evidence to their message could not expose them. They may then successfully fooled the world, but they themselves would have known that what they were preaching, writing and creating great upheaval for was false. Yet they gave their lives (literally) for this mission. Why would they do it – IF they knew the basis for it was false? People give their lives to causes because they believe in the cause for which they fight or because they expect some benefit from the cause. If the disciples had stolen the body and hid it, they of all people would know that the resurrection was not true. Consider from their own words what price the disciples paid for the spreading of their message – and ask yourself if you would pay such a personal price for something that you knew to be false: 

We are hard pressed on every side… perplexed… persecuted, struck down… outwardly we are wasting away…in great endurance, in troubles, hardships, distresses, in beatings, imprisonments and riots, hard work, sleepless nights and hunger… beaten … sorrowful … poor … having nothing… ..Five times I received from the Jews the 39 lashes, three times I was beaten with rods, once I was stoned, three times I was shipwrecked, … , I have been in danger from rivers, from bandits, my own countrymen, from Gentiles, in the city, in the country, in the sea. I have labored and toiled and have often gone without sleep, I have known hunger and thirst… I have been cold and naked… Who is weak and I do not feel weak.

II Corinthians 4: 8– 6:10;11:24-29 

The more I consider the unshrinking heroism of all their lives (not one cracked at the bitter end and ‘confessed’), the more I find it impossible that they did not sincerely believe their message. But if they believed it they certainly could not have stolen and disposed of Christ’s body. A renowned criminal lawyer, who taught law students at Harvard how to probe for weaknesses in witnesses, had this remark to say about the disciples: 

“The annals of military warfare afford scarcely an example of the like heroic constancy, patience, and unflinching courage. They had every possible motive to review carefully the grounds of their faith, and the evidences of the great facts and truths which they asserted”

Greenleaf. 1874. An examination of the Testimony of the Four Evangelists by the Rules of Evidence Administered in the Courts of Justice. p.29 

Related to this is the silence of the enemies of the disciples – Jewish or Roman. These hostile witnesses never seriously attempted to tell the ‘real’ story, or show how the disciples were wrong. As Dr. Montgomery states, 

“This underscores the reliability of testimony to Christ’s resurrection which was presented contemporaneously in the synagogues – in the very teeth of opposition, among hostile cross-examiners who would certainly have destroyed the case … had the facts been otherwise”

Montgomery. 1975. Legal reasoning and Christian Apologetics. p.88-89

We do not have the space to consider every facet of this question. However, the unwavering boldness of the disciples and the silence of the contemporaneous hostile authorities speak volumes that there is a case for Christ having risen, and that it is worth taking a serious and thoughtful examination.  One way to do so is to understand it in its Biblical context. A great place to start are the Signs of Abraham and Moses. Though they lived over a thousand years before Jesus, their experiences were prophetic foretellings of the death and resurrection of Jesus. 

Moses wrote the first five books of the Bible which describes the birth of the Israelite nation thousands of years ago.  Moses’ mission was to birth this nation to become a light to surrounding nations.  Moses began by leading the Israelites (or Jews) out of slavery in Egypt through a rescue known as Passover – where God liberated the Israelites in a way that pointed to a future deliverance for all mankind.  But Moses’ call was not only to lead the Israelites out of Egyptian slavery, but also to lead them to a new way of living.  So fifty days after the Passover that rescued the Israelites, Moses led them to Mt. Sinai where they received the law.

So what commands did Moses receive?  Though the complete Law was quite long, Moses first received a set of specific moral commands written by God on tablets of stone, known as the Ten Commandments. These Ten formed the summary of the Law – the moral prerequisites before all the others.  The Ten Commandments is God’s active power to persuade us to repent.  This is what we examine in this article.

The Ten Commandments

Here are the Ten Commandments as written by God on stone and then recorded by Moses in the book of Exodus of the Bible.

And God spoke all these words:

The Standard of the Ten Commandments

Today we sometimes we forget that these were commands. They were not suggestions. They were not recommendations.  But to what extent are we to obey these commands? The following verse comes just before the giving of the Ten Commandments

Then Moses went up to God, and the Lord called to him from the mountain and said, “… ⁵ Now if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations you will be my treasured possession. (Exodus19:3,5)

This was given just after the Ten Commandments

Then he took the Book of the Covenant and read it to the people. They responded, “We will do everything the Lord has said; we will obey.” (Exodus24:7)

Let’s think about this. Sometimes in my school exams, the teacher gave us multiple questions (for example 20) but then required only some of the questions to be answered. We could, for example, choose any 15 questions out of the 20 to answer. Each student would pick the 15 easiest questions for him/her to answer. In this way the teacher made the exam easier.

Many people treat the Ten Commandments in the same way. They think that God, after giving the Ten Commandments, meant, “Attempt any six of your choice from these Ten”.  We think this way because we instinctively imagine God balancing our ‘good deeds’ against our ‘bad deeds’.  If our Good merits outweigh or cancel our Bad imperfections then we hope that this is sufficient to earn God’s favor or get a pass to heaven.  For this same reason many of us try to earn religious merit by religious activities like going to church, mosque or temple, praying, fasting and giving money to the poor.  These acts hopefully balance out the times we disobey one of the Ten Commandments.

However, an honest reading of the Ten Commandments shows that this was not how it was given. People are to obey and keep ALL the commands – all the time.  The sheer difficulty of accomplishing this has made many rebel against the Ten Commandments.  The well-known atheist Christopher Hitchens attacked the Ten Commandments for this reason:

 “… then comes the four famous ‘shalt nots’ which flatly prohibit killing, adultery, theft, and false witness.  Finally there is a ban on covetousness, forbidding the desire for ‘thy neighbours’… chattel.  …  Instead of the condemnation of evil actions, there is an oddly phrased condemnation of impure thoughts….  It demands the impossible….  One may be forcibly restrained from wicked actions…, but to forbid people from contemplating them is too much…. If god really wanted people to be free of such thoughts, he should have taken more care to invent a different species”  Christopher Hitchens.  2007.  God is not great: How religion spoils everything.  P.99-100

Why did God give the Ten Commandments?

But to think either that God can accommodate a 50% plus effort, or that God made a mistake in demanding the impossible is to misunderstand the purpose of the Ten Commandments.  The Ten Commandments were given to help us identify our problem.

Let’s illustrate with an example.  Suppose you had a hard fall onto the ground and your arm hurts badly – but you are unsure of the internal damage.  Is the bone in your arm broken or not?  You are unsure if it will just get better, or if you need a cast on your arm.  So you take an X-ray of your arm and the X-ray picture reveals that, yes indeed, the bone in your arm is broken.  Does the X-ray heal your arm?  Is your arm better because of the X-ray?  No, your arm is still broken, but now you know that it is indeed broken, and that you need to put a cast on it to heal.  The X-ray did not solve the problem, but rather it exposed the problem so that you would get proper treatment.

The Commands reveal Sin

In the same way the Ten Commandments were given so that a problem deep within us could be revealed – our sin.  Sin literally means ‘missing’ the target of what God expects from us in how we treat others, ourselves and God.  The Bible says that

The Lord looks down from heaven
on all mankind
to see if there are any who understand,
any who seek God.
All have turned away, all have become corrupt;
there is no one who does good,
not even one. (Psalm 14:2-3)

We all have this inner corrupting problem of sin.  This is so serious that God says of our ‘good deeds’ (which we hope will cancel out our sins) that

All of us have become like one who is unclean,
and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags;
we all shrivel up like a leaf,
and like the wind our sins sweep us away. (Isaiah 64:6)

Our righteous merit in religious observances or helping others counts only as ‘filthy rags’ when weighed against our sins.

But instead of recognizing our problem we tend either to compare ourselves with others (and so measure ourselves against the wrong standard), strive harder to obtain religious merit, or give up and just live for pleasure.  Therefore God instituted the Ten Commandments so that:

Therefore no one will be declared righteous in God’s sight by the works of the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of our sin. (Romans 3:20)

If we examine our lives and see our sin against the standard of the Ten Commandments it is like looking at an X-ray that shows the broken bone in our arm.  The Ten Commandments do not ‘fix’ our problem, but reveals the problem clearly so we will accept the remedy that God has provided.  Instead of continuing in self-deception, the Law allows us to see ourselves accurately.

God’s Gift given in repentance

The remedy that God has provided is the gift of forgiveness of sins through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ – explained more fully here.  This Gift of life is simply given to us if we trust or have faith in His work.

know that a person is not justified by the works of the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ. So we, too, have put our faith in Christ Jesus that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the law, because by the works of the law no one will be justified. (Galatians 2:16)

As Abraham was justified before God we too can be given righteousness.  But it does require that we repent.  Repent means to ‘change our minds’ involving a turning away from sin and a turning towards God and the Gift He offers.  As the Bible explains:

Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord, (Acts 3:19)

The promise for you and me is that if we repent, turning to God, that our sins will not be counted against us and we will receive Life.

Along with that first Passover and Abraham’s test which revealed God’s signature in His plan for us, the specific day when the Ten Commandments were given to Moses also point to the coming of the Spirit of God to indwell us – giving us the ability to follow God in a way that we cannot do on our own.

Textual Criticism and the Bible

In our scientific and educated age we question many of the non-scientific beliefs that earlier generations had.  This skepticism is especially true of the Bible.  Many of us question the reliability of the Bible.  It stems from what we know about the Bible.  After all, the Bible was written more than two thousand years ago.  For most of these millennia there has been no printing press, photocopy machines or publishing companies.  So the original manuscripts were copied by hand, generation after generation, as languages died out and new ones arose, as empires changed and new powers ascended.  Since the original manuscripts have long been lost, how do we know that what we read today in the Bible is what the original authors actually wrote?  Or has the Bible been changed or corrupted, perhaps by leaders in the church, or priests and monks who wished to change its message to suit their purposes?

Principles of Textual Criticism

Naturally this question is true of any ancient writing.  The timeline below illustrates the process by which any ancient writing has been preserved over time. It shows an example ancient document written 500 BC (this date picked randomly).  This original however does not last indefinitely, so before it decays, is lost, or destroyed, a manuscript copy of it is made (1^st copy).  A professional class of people called scribes did the copying work.  As the years advance, copies are made of the copy (2^nd copy & 3^rd copy).  At some point a copy is preserved so that it is in existence today (3^rd copy).  In our example this existing copy was written 500 AD.  This means that the earliest that we can know of the state of the document is only from 500 AD onwards.  Consequently the period from 500 BC to 500 AD (labeled x in the diagram) is the period where we cannot make any copy verifications since all manuscripts from this period have disappeared.  For example, if copying errors (intentional or otherwise) were made when the

2^nd copy was made from the 1^st copy, we would not be able to detect them as neither of these documents are available to compare against each other.  This time period predating the currently existing copies (the period x) is thus the interval of textual uncertainty.  Consequently, a principle used address questions about textual reliability is to look at the length of this time span.  The shorter this interval (‘x’ in the diagram) the more confidence we place in the accurate preservation of the document to our modern day, since the period of uncertainty is reduced.

Of course, usually more than one manuscript copy of a document is in existence today.  Suppose we have two such manuscript copies and in the same section of each of them we find the following phrase:

The original author had either been writing about Joan OR about John, and the other of these manuscripts contains a copy error.  The question is -Which one has the error?  From the available manuscripts it is very difficult to determine.

Now suppose we found two more manuscript copies of the same work, as shown below:

Now it is easier to deduce which manuscript has the error.  It is more likely that the error is made once, rather than the same error repeated three times, so it is likely that manuscript #2 has the copy error, and the author was writing about Joan, not John.

This simple example illustrates a second principle used to verify manuscript integrity – The more existing manuscripts that are available, the easier it is to detect & correct errors and to assess the content of the original.

Textual Criticism of Classical Greco-Roman writings compared to New Testament

Now we have two evidence-based indicators used to determine the textual reliability of ancient documents: 1) measuring the time between original composition and earliest existing manuscript copies, and 2) counting the number of existing manuscript copies.  Since these indicators pertain to any ancient writing we can proceed to apply them to accepted works of history, as done in the tables below (1).

* from any one work

These writers represent the major classical writers of antiquity – the writings that have shaped the development of Western civilization.  On average, they have been passed down to us by 10-100 manuscripts that are preserved starting only about 1000 years after the original was written.   From a scientific point-of-view this data can be considered our control experiment since it comprises data (classical history and philosophy) that are accepted and used by academics and universities world-wide.

The following table compares the New Testament writings along these criteria (2).  This can be considered our experimental data which will be compared to our control data, just like in any scientific investigation.

This table just gives a brief highlight of some of the existing manuscripts.  The number of New Testament manuscripts is so vast that it would be impossible to list them all in a table.  As one scholar (3) who spent years studying this issue states:

“We have more than 24000 MSS copies of portions of the New Testament in existence today… No other document of antiquity even begins to approach such numbers and attestation.  In comparison, the ILIAD by Homer is second with 643 MSS that still survive”

A leading scholar at the British Museum (4) corroborates this:

“Scholars are satisfied that they possess substantially the true text of the principal Greek and Roman writers … yet our knowledge of their writings depends on a mere handful of MSS whereas the MSS of the N.T. are counted by … thousands”

New Testament textual Criticism and Constantine

And a significant number of these manuscripts are extremely ancient.  I own a book about the earliest New Testament documents.  The Introduction starts with:

“This book provides transcriptions of 69 of the earliest New Testament manuscripts…dated from early 2^nd century to beginning of the 4^th (100-300AD) … containing about 2/3 of the new Testament text” (5)

This is significant since these manuscripts come before Roman Emperor Constantine (ca 325 AD) and the rise to power of the Catholic Church both of which are sometimes accused of altering the biblical text.  We can actually test this claim by comparing the texts from before Constantine (since we have them) with those coming later.  When we do we find that they are the same.  The message of the texts from 200 AD is the same as those from 1200 AD.  Neither the Catholic Church, nor Constantine changed the Bible.  That is not a religious statement, it is one based solely on scientific data.  The figure below illustrates the timeline of manuscripts from which the New Testament of the Bible is based.

Implications of Textual Criticism of the Bible

So what can we conclude from this?  Certainly at least in what we can objectively measure the New Testament is verified to a much higher degree than any other classical work.  The verdict to which the evidence pushes us is best summed up by the following (6):

“To be skeptical of the resultant text of the New Testament is to allow all of classical antiquity to slip into obscurity, for no other documents of the ancient period are as well attested bibliographically as the New Testament”

What this academic is saying is that to be consistent, if we decide to doubt the reliability of the preservation of the Bible we should discard all that we know about classical history in general – and this no informed historian has ever done.  We know that the Biblical texts have not been altered as eras, languages and empires have come and gone because the earliest existing MSSs pre-date these events.  For example, we know that no overly zealous medieval monk added in the miracles of Jesus to the Biblical account, since we have manuscripts that pre-date the medieval monks and all these pre-dated manuscripts also contain the miraculous accounts of Jesus.

What about translation of the Bible?

But what about the errors involved in translation, and the fact that there are so many different versions of the Bible today? Does this not show that it is impossible to accurately determine what the original authors actually wrote?

First we must clear up a common misconception.  Many people think that the Bible today has gone through a long series of translation steps, with each new language being translated from the previous one, a series something like this:  Greek -> Latin -> Medieval English -> Shakespeare English -> modern English -> other modern languages.  In fact, Bibles in all languages today are translated directly from the original language.  For the New Testament the translation goes:  Greek -> modern language, and for the Old Testament the translation goes Hebrew -> modern language.  The base Greek and Hebrew texts are standard.  So the differences in Bible versions come from how linguists choose to translate phrases into the receiver language.

Due to the vast classical literature that was written in Greek (original language of the New Testament), it has become possible to precisely translate the original thoughts and words of the original authors. In fact the different modern versions attest to this. For example, read this well-known verse in the most common versions, and note the slight variance in wording, but consistency in idea and meaning:

For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Romans 6:23

You can see that there is no disagreement between the translations – they say exactly the same thing with only slightly different word usage.

To summarize, neither time nor translation has corrupted the ideas and thoughts expressed in the original Biblical manuscripts to hide it from us today.  We can know that the Bible today accurately reads what the authors actually wrote back then.  It is textually reliable. It is important to realize what this study does and does not show.  This does not prove that the Bible is necessarily the Word of God.  It can be argued that though the original ideas of the Biblical authors have been accurately conveyed to us today that does not prove or indicate that these original ideas ever were correct to begin with (or even that they are from God).  True enough.  But understanding the textual reliability of the Bible provides a start-point from which one can start seriously investigating the Bible to see if some of these other questions can also be answered, and to become informed as to what its message is.  The Bible claims that its message is a blessing from God.  What if there is a chance this is true?  Take the time to learn some of the important events of the Bible explained in this website. 

1. Taken from McDowell, J. Evidence That Demands a Verdict. 1979. p. 42-48

2. Comfort, P.W. The Origin of  the Bible, 1992. p. 193

3.  McDowell, J. Evidence That Demands a Verdict. 1979. p. 40

4. Kenyon, F.G. (former director of British Museum) Our Bible and the Ancient Manuscripts. 1941 p.23

  5. Comfort, P.W. “The Text of the Earliest New Testament Greek Manuscripts”. p. 17. 2001

6. Montgomery, History and Christianity. 1971. p.29

Christ’s “cut off” Predicted in detail by the Old Testament Prophets

In our last post we saw that Daniel had predicted that the ‘Christ’ would be ‘cut off’ after a specified cycle of years. This prediction of Daniel’s was fulfilled in the triumphant entry of Jesus into Jerusalem – there presented as Israel’s Christ – exactly 173 880 days after the Persian Decree to restore Jerusalem was issued. The phrase ‘cut off’ referred to Isaiah’s imagery of the Branch shooting up from the seemingly dead stump. But what did he mean by it?

Isaiah is shown in historical timeline. He lived in the period of the Davidic Kings rule

Isaiah had also written other prophecies in his book, using other themes apart from that of the Branch. One such theme was about the coming Servant. Who was this ‘Servant’? What was he going to do? We look at one long passage in detail. I reproduce it exactly and in full here below, only inserting some comments of my own.

The Coming Servant. The complete passage from Isaiah 52:13-53:12

See, my servant will act wisely^[a];
    he will be raised and lifted up and highly exalted.
¹⁴ Just as there were many who were appalled at him^[b]—
    his appearance was so disfigured beyond that of any human being
    and his form marred beyond human likeness—
¹⁵ so he will sprinkle many nations,^[c]
    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.

Isaiah 52:13-15

We know that this Servant will be a human man, because Isaiah refers to the Servant as a ‘he’, ‘him’, ‘his’, and specifically describes future events (from the phrases ‘will act..’, ‘will be raised up…’ and so on), so this is an explicit prophecy. But what was the prophecy about?

When the Jewish priests offered sacrifices for the Israelites, they sprinkled them with blood from the sacrifice – symbolizing that their sins were covered and would not be held against them. But here it says that the Servant will sprinkle ‘many nations’, so Isaiah is saying that in a similar way this Servant will also provide non-Jews for their sins like the Old Testament priests did for the Jewish worshipers. This parallels the prediction of Zechariah that the Branch would be a priest, uniting the roles of King and Priest, because only the priests could sprinkle blood. This global scope of ‘many nations’ follows those historical and verifiable promises made centuries earlier to Abraham, that ‘all nations’ will be blessed through his offspring.

But in sprinkling the many nations the very ‘appearance’ and ‘form’ of the Servant is predicted to be ‘disfigured’ and ‘marred’. And though it is not readily clear what the Servant will do, one day the nations ‘will understand’.

Who has believed our message
    and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?
² 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.
³ He was despised and rejected by mankind,
    a man of suffering, and familiar with pain.
Like one from whom people hide their faces
    he was despised, and we held him in low esteem.

Isaiah 53:1-3

Though the Servant would sprinkle many nations, he would also be ‘despised’ and ‘rejected’, full of ‘suffering’ and ‘familiar with pain’.

Surely he took up our pain
    and bore our suffering,
yet we considered him punished by God,
    stricken by him, and afflicted.
⁵ But he was pierced for our transgressions,
    he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was on him,
    and by his wounds we are healed. 

Isaiah 53:4-5

The Servant will take ‘our’ pain. This Servant will also be ‘pierced’ and ‘crushed’ in ‘punishment’. This punishment will bring us (those in the many nations) ‘peace’ and heal us.

I write this on Good Friday. Secular as well as biblical sources tell us that on this day about 2000 years ago (but still 700+ years after Isaiah wrote this prediction) Jesus was crucified. In doing that he was literally pierced, as Isaiah predicted the Servant would be pierced, with the nails of the crucifixion.

We all, like sheep, have gone astray,
    each of us has turned to our own way;
and the Lord has laid on him
    the iniquity of us all. 

Isaiah 53:6

We saw in Corrupted … missing the target, that a biblical definition of sin is ‘missing the intended target’. Like a bent arrow we go our ‘own way’.  This Servant will carry that same sin (iniquity) that we have brought forth.

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 its shearers is silent,
    so he did not open his mouth. 

Isaiah 53:7

The Servant will be like a lamb going to the ‘slaughter’. But he will not protest or even ‘open his mouth’. We saw in the Sign of Abraham that a ram was substituted for Abraham’s son. That ram – a lamb – was slaughtered. And Jesus was slaughtered on the same spot (Mount Moriah = Jerusalem). We saw in the Passover that a lamb was slaughtered on Passover – and Jesus was also slaughtered on Passover.

By oppression and judgment he was taken away.
    Yet who of his generation protested?
For he was cut off from the land of the living;
    for the transgression of my people he was punished.

Isaiah 53:8

This Servant is ‘cut off’ from the ‘land of the living’. This is exactly the term Daniel used when he predicted what would happen to the Christ after he was presented to Israel as their Messiah. Isaiah predicts in more detail that ‘cut off’ means ‘cut off from the land of the living’ – that is, death!  So, on that fateful Good Friday Jesus died, being literally ‘cut off from the land of the living’, just a few days after being presented as the Messiah in his Triumphant entry.

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.

Isaiah 53:9

Though Jesus was executed and died as a criminal (‘assigned a grave with the wicked’), the gospel writers tell us that a rich man of the ruling Sanhedrin, Joseph of Arimathea, took the body of Jesus and buried him in his own tomb (Matthew 27:60). Jesus literally fulfilled both sides of the paradoxical prediction – though he was ‘assigned a grave with the wicked’, he was also ‘with the rich in his death’.

Yet it was the Lord’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer,
    and though the Lord makes his life an offering for sin,
he will see his offspring and prolong his days,
    and the will of the Lord will prosper in his hand.

Isaiah53:10

This whole cruel death was not some terrible accident or misfortune. It was explicitly “the LORD’s will” to crush him. But why? Just as lambs in the Moses’ sacrificial system were offerings for sin so that the person giving the sacrifice could be held blameless, here the ‘life’ of this Servant is also an ‘offering for sin’. For whose sin? Well considering that ‘many nations’ would be ‘sprinkled’ (above), it is the sin of the peoples in the ‘many nations’. Those ‘all’ who have ‘turned away’ and ‘gone astray’. Isaiah is talking about you and me.

After he has suffered,
    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.

Isaiah 53:11

Though the passage of the Servant is horrible, here it changes tone and becomes very optimistic and even triumphant. After this terrible suffering (of being ‘cut off from the land of the living’ and assigned ‘a grave’), this Servant will see ‘the light of life’. He will come back to life?! I have looked at the issue of the resurrection. Here it is predicted.

And in so ‘seeing the light of life’ this Servant will ‘justify’ many. To ‘justify’ is the same as giving ‘righteousness’. Remember that Abraham was ‘credited’ or given ‘righteousness’. In a similar way this Servant will justify, or credit, righteousness to ‘many’.

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 53:12

The passage of the Servant points so mysteriously to the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus that some critics say that the gospel narratives were made up specifically to ‘fit’ this Servant passage. But in his conclusion Isaiah defies these critics. The conclusion is not a prediction of the crucifixion and resurrection as such, but of the impact of this death many years after it. And what does Isaiah predict? This Servant, though he will die as a criminal, will one day be among the ‘great’. The gospel writers could not make this part ‘fit’ the gospel narratives, because the gospels were only written a few decades after Jesus’ crucifixion – when the impact of Jesus’ death was still in doubt.  In the eyes of the world, Jesus was still the executed leader of a rejected cult when the gospels were written.  We sit now 2000 years later and see the impact of his death and realize how through the course of history this has made him ‘great’. The gospel writers could not have foreseen that. But Isaiah did. The Servant, also known as the Branch, through his voluntary sacrifice would begin to draw people to him – to worship him even – just as Jesus predicted when he called himself the ‘Son of Man’ at his trial before the Sanhedrin.