CHAPTER 8: Were the prophecies written before Christ or after?

[Excerpt from Chapter 8: Objections to Prophecy]

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Some people wonder if these Old Testament prophecies were truly written before the time of Christ. However, as you’ll see, even critics of the Bible agree that the Old Testament was written long before Jesus ever walked the Earth.

The entire Old Testament

The Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible) was written sometime between 250 and 132 B.C.E. We even have existing portions of the Septuagint that date back to 150 B.C.E. Therefore, if a translation was being done at this time, then the original Hebrew text must date even earlier.

The Dead Sea Scrolls (a collection of fragments and full books of the Old Testament) are also dated before the time of Christ. Here, we have quotations of all the Old Testament books (except Esther), and the Jews viewed these books as divinely inspired. Moreover, when we reach the first century, Josephus (a Jewish historian) claimed that he had all of the Old Testament books that we have in our current Bible. He writes,

For we have not an innumerable multitude of books among us, disagreeing from and contradicting one another (as the Greeks have), but only twenty-two books, which contain the records of all the past times; which are justly believed to be divine… From Artexerxes to our own time the complete history has been written but has not been deemed worthy of equal credit with the earlier records because of the failure of the exact succession of the prophets. We have given practical proof of our reverence for our own scriptures. For, although such long ages have now passed, no one has ventured to add, or to remove, or to alter anything, and it is an instinct with every Jew, from the day of his birth, to regard them as decrees of God.

In addition to Josephus, the New Testament authors quote from the Old Testament roughly 600 times, which supports the notion that these books were written before then. Now that we have a concept for the overall dating of the entire Old Testament, let’s consider our manuscript evidence for each individual book.

Daniel 9

The Essenes had a commentary on Daniel 9, dating to 146 B.C.E.—found in the Testament of Levi and the Pseudo-Ezekiel Document. The Melchizedek Fragment (dated 50 B.C.E.) states, “And the messenger is [the ano]inted of the spirit about whom Dan[iel] spoke.” Critical scholar James VanderKam believes that this is a reference to the “anointed prince” of Daniel 9:25. Of course, both of these interpretations predate Christ.

In addition to these commentaries on Daniel 9, we also have eight manuscripts of the book of Daniel in the Dead Sea Scrolls, which date as early as 100 B.C.E. Scholar Peter Flint writes, “We may conclude that seven scrolls originally contained the entire book of Daniel in a form very much found in the received text.” Elsewhere, Flint and VanderKam write, “All eight scrolls reveal no major disagreements against the Masoretic Text.” In other words, these copies of the book of Daniel—though incomplete—are almost identical to the copies after the time of Christ. That is, they weren’t doctored or tampered with in any way. Since virtually all scholars admit that the Essenes didn’t write the book of Daniel, this means that the book must predate them. Therefore, Daniel 9 must predate the time of Christ by several hundred years.

Isaiah 53

The book of Isaiah was probably one of the best discoveries in the Dead Sea Scrolls. In Cave One of Qumran, archaeologists found a complete 24-foot-long scroll of Isaiah, which contained all 66 chapters of the book. Scholars date the scroll of Isaiah to at least 150 years before Jesus ever walked the face of the Earth.

Psalm 22

We have copies of Psalm 22 that predate the time of Christ, as well. In fact, there are two manuscripts of Psalm 22: one from the Dead Sea Scrolls (4Q88) and one from another site in the Judean Desert (Seiyal 4). Both of these documents date at least 50 years before the time of Christ.

For these reasons, even skeptic Jim Lippard admits, “Prophetic statements do not post-date the events being predicted. In the case of the Old Testament prophecies… we have documents (e.g., the Dead Sea Scrolls) which do predate the time at which the historical Jesus is believed to have lived.” Apologist Norman Geisler asks, “What difference does it make if a prophecy is given only two hundred years in advance rather than six hundred years? Can one with less than divine power make predictions like these four hundred years in advance but not six hundred years ahead?” Even if we accept the critical dating for these Old Testament books, they still predate Jesus by several hundred years.

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