What did the Old Testament say about the birth of Jesus?

Answer 1

No Old Testament book literally refers to the birth of Jesus. But Burton L. Mack describes a trick that can be used to make any Old Testament book say what you want it to say. By this means, books such as Genesis, Isaiah and Daniel have been made to prophesy Jesus. Mack says in Who Wrote the New Testament that at first the study of a text may not seem to support a traditional Christian conviction, or the answer one hopes to find in The Bible. But with a little ingenuity, one can set up the comparison again with other emphases and make the answer come out right. This trick seems to come naturally when studying the Bible, and Mack sees it happen all the time in the classrooms of the School of Theology at Claremont.

The most famous use of the procedure Mack describes was nearly two thousand years ago, when Matthew, a Greek-speaking Jew, was looking for a biblical reference he could use to prove that Jesus was prophesied to be born of a virgin. The Septuagint (An early translation of the Hebrew Bible into the Greek language) incorrectly translated Isaiah 7:14 to say that a virgin would conceive and bear a child. The correct translation would have been "the young woman", and the young woman in question did have a child a few verses later in Isaiah. The author of the Gospel of Matthew relied on this mistranslation to show that it was prophesied that Jesus would be born of a virgin, although the name Jesus was not mentioned.

Answer 2

There are no real references in the Old Testament to the birth of Christ.

However, it is commonly accepted by Christians that the Book of Isaiah prophesied the birth of Jesus. A reference to a prophecy in the Book of Isaiah can be found in the Gospel According to St Matthew at 1:22-23. Matthew was looking for a biblical reference he could use to prove that Jesus was prophesied to be born of a virgin. However, he relied on the Septuagint, an early, flawed Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible. The Septuagint incorrectly translated Isaiah 7:14 to say that a virgin would conceive and bear a child. The correct translation would have been "the young woman", and the young woman in question did have a child a few verses later in Isaiah. The author of the Gospel of Matthew relied on this mistranslation to show that it was prophesied that Jesus would be born of a virgin.

Others see references to the birth of Jesus in Micah 5:2: "But thou, Bethlehem Ephratah, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel; whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting." However, this does not mention Jesus and it is hard to even identify a description of Jesus anywhere in the passage. In any case, Micah 5:5 tells us more about the man who Micah said will come out of Bethlehem: "And this man shall be the peace, when the Assyrian shall come into our land: and when he shall tread in our palaces, then shall we raise against him seven shepherds, and eight principal men. " Jesus was centuries too late to fit this profile.

We can be sure that there is no reference to the birth of Jesus Christ in the Old Testament, but pious Christians will continue to 'find' them. And in each case, close scrutiny shows that the Old Testament was merely writing about events in his own time.

Answer 3

there are a lot but the first one i found was luke chapter 2