How many times was Christ's birth foretold?

Answer 1

A:

We have no evidence that the birth of Jesus was ever foretold. Any such prophecy could be expected to be found in the Old Testament, but objective scholars have so far failed to find any such prophecy. Certainly Matthew's Gospel says that Isaiah 7:14 was a prophecy that Jesus would be born of a virgin, relying on the Septuagint, a flawed early Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures. While not mentioning Jesus or his mother, Mary, the Septuagint does say: "Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel."

However, what the prophet Isaiah actually wrote in the original Hebrew was, "Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, the young woman shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel." The prophecy, if we call it that, was for a young woman about whom Isaiah was speaking and the young woman in question did have a child just a few verses later in Isaiah's book. Isaiah never wrote of a virgin or of the virgin Mary. And so each attempt to credibly show that the birth of Jesus was foretold in the Old Testament ends in failure.

Answer 2

Christ's birth was foretold several times in The Bible, such as in the book of Isaiah and in Micah. These prophecies spoke of a promised Messiah who would be born of a virgin in Bethlehem and bring salvation to humanity.