Messianic Prophecy 2 - Seeing Jesus In Genesis

Why begin with Genesis? Well, I suppose one could simply argue that one begins with Genesis because Genesis is the first book of the Bible, and therefore the logical place to begin. But if we’re actually talking about messianic prophecy, whether the Christian or Jewish understanding of it, then Genesis may actually not be the most lerwdogical place to start. Genesis is not normally considered by Jews to be a prophetic book – it’s a part of the Torah (which can be variously translated as the Law, or the teachings, or the instructions.) In Jewish faith, Genesis is largely seen as a book of allegory – which means that the real message of the Book of Genesis is deeper than simply what you read on the page; so Genesis is a Book that invites thought and speculation and debate – but it’s not prophecy. So, again, why start with Genesis? I wanted to follow up last week’s discussion about the nature of messianic prophecy, and how Jews and Christians have a different understanding of the very concept and role of the Messiah, with an example of how Christians read things into some Old Testament writings that most Jews don’t think are there, and Genesis gives us a few very good examples – and I asked you to read four of them for this week’s Bible study. But before we get to those four passages, let me talk a little bit about Genesis and how it’s used.

 

I’m going to begin with the Gospels. The Gospels do not make mention of Genesis as a prophetic book. There are no quotes from Genesis included in any of the Gospels that are used to try to argue that Jesus is the promised Messiah. As far as I’ve been able to find, Genesis is quoted 3 times in the Gospels. Two of those are general quotes that speak of God’s creation of humanity, and one is used in Jesus’ teaching about divorce. But none are used by the authors of the Gospels to demonstrate that Jesus is the Messiah – the reason being that even they didn’t believe that Genesis did that. Remember that the authors of the Gospels were Jews, with the exception of Luke – but Luke had obviously spent a lot of time in the company of Jewish people and Jesus’ disciples (who were Jews) - and so when they set out to prove that Jesus was the Messiah they did so in the way that any Jew would try to prove that anyone was the Messiah – they relied on accepted Jewish prophecies, and Genesis is not considered prophecy. I did a bit of research and came across a lot of largely fundamentalist Christian websites that deal with what they refer to as messianic prophecy. One of them identified what they say are 351 Old Testament prophecies fulfilled by Jesus – and 20 of them are cited from the Book of Genesis. But Jews (including the Jews who were Jesus’ first disciples) did not think of Jesus as the fulfilment of anything in Genesis, because they didn’t see Genesis as either messianic or as prophecy. Two thousand years later, you have Christians citing 20 so-called “prophecies” in Genesis that Jesus fulfilled. So how did we get from the earliest Jewish Christians (who saw nothing about Jesus in Genesis) to today’s fundamentalist Christians (who see Jesus all over Genesis)? That’s why I entitled this week’s study “Seeing Jesus in Genesis” as opposed to “Finding Jesus in Genesis.” To see Jesus in Genesis is something like an anachronism – a thing out of time. It’s to read back into ancient writings something that was never intended to be brought out of the ancient writings. I’m not arguing that one can’t find Jesus in Old Testament prophecy. I accept the witness of the authors of the New Testament, most of whom find Jesus in the Old Testament. If the original (and Jewish) disciples of Jesus saw Jesus as the fulfilment of certain messianic prophecies, then I believe them. But they don’t find Jesus in Genesis. So why did Christians start to see Jesus in Genesis?

 

I think the explanation for that is largely the result of the Christian faith spreading into the Gentile world and becoming predominantly a Gentile religion. Gentile Christians were certainly aware that those who had brought Christianity to them believed that Jesus was the Messiah. But Gentile Christians also had no real historical understanding of what “the Messiah” was or was supposed to do. “Messiah” is, after all, a strictly Jewish idea. So, over the course of time, Gentile Christians started to basically read Jesus into anything that could be even loosely related to him, without any consideration of the Jewish context of the texts. In other words, they started to simply “cherry-pick” anything they thought might buttress their belief that Jesus was the promised Messiah. This is something we all do from time to time – one great example is the biblical proverb that says “spare the rod and spoil the child,” which parents who believe in corporal punishment often cite as support for corporal punishment, even though when read in its broader context that’s not at all the lesson the proverb is teaching. So I think that while we need to honour the way the New Testament authors used Old Testament writings to support their belief that Jesus was the Messiah, we need to be careful with texts that are cited by others as prophecies of Jesus but aren’t actually cited in the New Testament.

 

Let’s look briefly at the texts I asked you to read for this week.

 

Genesis 3:14-15 is God’s judgement and punishment on the serpent for tricking Eve into eating the forbidden fruit: “The Lord God said to the serpent, ‘Because you have done this, cursed are you among all animals and among all wild creatures; upon your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life. I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will strike your head, and you will strike his heel.” What Christians have latched on to is the last sentence: “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will strike your head, and you will strike his heel.” In particular, it’s the singular pronouns in the last sentence – “he” and “his.” The argument becomes that the singular pronoun must mean that the “offspring” mentioned in the passage is a particular person, and since this particular person is going to destroy Satan (because Christians identify the serpent with Satan – and, importantly, Jews do not) then this person – this “he” – must be Jesus. So, to use a very technical term, some Christians refer to Genesis 3:15 as the “Protevagelium” – the “First Good News;” the first hint of the Gospel. Jesus will defeat Satan. But the word translated as “offspring” is “zera” – which is normally a collective word, so it’s a group who become offspring; a tribe or even a nation or all humanity, given the context of the story. But it’s not one person, it’s not Jesus and it’s not messianic. It’s worthwhile to note that the Tanakh (the Jewish Scriptures) translate the pronouns as plural – “they will strike your head, and you will strike their heel.” If there’s anything prophetic at all about this passage in a Jewish sense, it’s that Jews see it as a reference to future Israel collectively overcoming evil. But to argue that this is about Jesus is to take it out of context and to read into the text something that simply isn’t there.

 

Genesis 12:1-3 is fairly commonly cited in some Christian circles as a prophetic nod to Jesus: “Now the Lord said to Abram, ‘Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.’” Here, the idea is that Abram is going to become the father of a great nation, which ultimately happens through the establishment of Israel. Christians and Jews would be on the same page on that. But Christians take the promise that “all families of the earth shall be blessed” as a prophecy of Jesus. Jews would simply say that Israel has been given a special mission or purpose to bring knowledge of the one God to the world. Early Christians, having given up Judaism and become the dominant faith in the European world, chose to see themselves as the ones who were bringing blessing to the world, and this even becomes a justification for the ongoing efforts by many Christians to convert Jews to Christianity. It’s a form of what we call supercessionism – the idea that the church has replaced Israel as God’s chosen. So this passage is interpreted as: Israel gave birth to Jesus; Jesus gave birth to Christianity; Christians must bring Israel to Jesus. That’s how we become a blessing to all the earth. So Jesus is read into this passage as a kind of justification of a mission the church had already claimed.

 

Genesis 22:15-18 echoes some of the themes of the last passage: “The angel of the Lord called to Abraham a second time from heaven, and said, “By myself I have sworn, says the Lord: Because you have done this, and have not withheld your son, your only son, I will indeed bless you, and I will make your offspring as numerous as the stars of heaven and as the sand that is on the seashore. And your offspring shall possess the gate of their enemies, and by your offspring shall all the nations of the earth gain blessing for themselves, because you have obeyed my voice.” So you have the same idea of all the world being blessed by Abraham’s offspring. But this is the end of the passage in which Abraham is challenged by God to sacrifice Isaac and according to the story is willing to do so in obedience to God. So early Christians see the language in the passage (“… you … have not withheld your son, your only son”) as reminiscent of the theological idea that God would not withhold Jesus – God’s Son; God’s only Son. So the drama (for lack of a better word) played out between Abraham, Isaac and God is said to have foreshadowed the cross, when God’s Son would be sacrificed. But there isn’t even a hint that the  passage is intended to be read prophetically or as a foreshadowing of anything. It’s a story told to demonstrate the faith of Abraham. It’s nothing more and nothing less than that.

 

Finally, I asked you to read Genesis 49:8-12. On his deathbed, Jacob gives blessings to his 12 sons, who would become the 12 tribes of Israel and when he gets to his son Judah, he says this: “Judah, your brothers shall praise you; your hand shall be on the neck of your enemies; your father’s sons shall bow down before you. Judah is a lion’s whelp; from the prey, my son, you have gone up. He crouches down, he stretches out like a lion, like a lioness—who dares rouse him up? The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet,
until tribute comes to him; and the obedience of the peoples is his. Binding his foal to the vine and his donkey’s colt to the choice vine, he washes his garments in wine and his robe in the blood of grapes; his eyes are darker than wine, and his teeth whiter than milk.” You’ve probably heard of Jesus being called “the Lion of the Tribe of Judah.” It comes from the Christian belief that this blessing of Jacob to his son Judah is a prophecy of the coming of Christ. The genealogies of both Matthew and Luke identify Judah as one of Jesus’ ancestors; therefore they must be linking him to this passage, is the argument. But, if that was the intent, isn’t it strange that neither Matthew nor Luke mention this story or in any way try to link Jesus to Judah beyond his name appearing once in each of the genealogies? But still, the reference to the foal and the donkey brings up memories of Palm Sunday, and the idea of the robes being washed in “the blood of grapes” sounds enough like the crucifixion to establish a link in the minds of some early Christians. And, of course, this descendant of Judah is to be a future king – the sceptre (the sign of royalty) with stay with Judah “until tribute comes to him.” Since Jesus is identified as the king of kings, this must be Jesus, goes the thought. And, given that the church from very early on identified itself as the “Body of Christ,” and became a very powerful institution often ruled by leaders who weren’t necessarily the most faithful or honest men, this passage is also a prime example of a passage of Jewish Scripture being used to defend and promote the power of the Christian church, even though, really, if one wants to read this prophetically and in its proper context, it’s probably more likely fulfilled by the establishment of the Kingdom of Israel and the rise of David to the throne.

 

Those are four passages, all of which have been historically claimed by Christians as prophecies of Jesus; none of which are used by the New Testament authors to support the idea of Jesus as the Messiah and none of which are really seen by Jews as messianic in any way. I’m sharing them with you tonight as a way of pleading that you take claims of seeing Jesus in Genesis (or anywhere else in the Old Testament) with a grain of salt. I believe we can see Jesus in the passages the authors of the New Testament cite. But if the citation isn’t made in the New Testament, then I think we have to at least consider the possibility that the use of those citations is more about justifying the position of the church in society than it is about identifying Jesus as the Messiah.