Did Jesus Fulfill the Messianic Prophecies?

Did Jesus Fulfill the Messianic Prophecies?

How many were even messianic prophecies to begin with?

Growing up I always heard about how Jesus had fulfilled basically all of the messianic prophecies of the Old Testament, or at times they’d recite off some huge number in the hundreds that they claimed he had fulfilled.

If you throw a large enough number out there no one, especially in the church congregation is going to fact-check you.

The reality isn’t as clear-cut as they make it out to be.

Often times it seems that due to mistranslation or bad understanding of the original Old Testament verses the authors of the New Testament try to shoe-horn a messianic prophecy into the book.

For instance:

Isaiah 7:14-NASB

14

This seems to align with what we all know right? But in reality, the word used in the original Hebrew was “alma” which just means young woman, whereas “bethulah” is the word used in other instances to specifically refer to a virgin.

This instance alone should raise a lot of questions since traditionally we are told that Matthew wrote this book. A man who was one of the disciples of Jesus and who was a learned Jewish tax collector. Wouldn’t he have known what this “prophecy” said and have been able to decipher the correct meaning behind the Hebrew original scriptures?