Did the New Testament fulfill Old Testament prophecies?

Answer 1

No. The New Testament does not really fulfil Old Testament prophecies. However, Burton L Mack (Who Wrote the New Testament) describes a trick wherein one can ask any question of the Bible and get some kind of answer, then if the first answer does not appear to be helpful, one looks for another answer to the same question, until the right answer appears. With a little ingenuity, one can set up the comparison again with other emphases and make the answer come out right. In this way, it really is possible to point to hundreds of 'prophecies' that are fulfilled in the New Testament.

Perhaps the best known traditional Christian prophecy is said to occur in Isaiah 7:14 says that a virgin would conceive and bear a child, because the Gospel of Matthew relies on this as evidence that the virginity of Mary had been prophesied. Isaiah 7:14, in the original Hebrew, actually says, "the young woman", and the young woman in question did have a child a few verses later in Isaiah. And since the fulfilment of this 'prophecy' took place before the time of writing, it can scarcely be called a prophecy at all. The author of Matthew relied on a mistranslation in the Septuagint, a flawed early Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures, to portray this passage as prophesying the birth of Jesus.

Even the place of Jesus' birth, identified in Matthew and Luke as Bethlehem, and his descent from King David can be said to be a fulfilment of Old Testament prophecies. However, the authors of Matthew and Luke knew of these expectations, and the author of John's Gospel suggests that he does not really believe that Jesus was either born in Bethlehem or descended from David ((7:41-42): "Others said, This is the Christ. But some said, Shall Christ come out of Galilee? Hath not the scripture said, That Christ cometh of the seed of David, and out of the town of Bethlehem, where David was?" Moreover, the genealogies that Matthew and Luke provide as evidence of the royal descent are entirely different and contradictory.