“Prophecy historicized” means that early Christians searched Hebrew scripture for predictions about what would be true of the messiah and then created stories about Jesus based on those predictions.

The historical Jesus was from Nazareth, but Luke and Matthew placed him in Bethlehem at birth since Micah predicted a leader from Bethlehem.

This is “prophecy historicized.” What looks like history is a story based on old prophecy.

Another example involves Roman soldiers spitting at Jesus: “Then some began to spit at him…” (Mark 14:65). Was Mark a witness? Did he interview the Roman soldiers? No.

The gospel writer reports that Roman soldiers spit on Jesus because Isaiah 50:6 said it would happen: “I do not hide from shame, for they mock me and spit in my face.”

I first learned about “prophecy historicized" from John Dominic Crossan's book titled Who Killed Jesus.

Over the years, I have seen the idea developed in many scholarly books. Of course, this type of material is not covered by priests or ministers when they talk on Sundays, which is a shame.

The idea that early Christians come up with stories based on prophecy explains a lot! I always wondered how the gospel writers knew the details reported in the gospels.

I don't think the gospel writers themselves created the stories. Instead, I view them as professional writers who produced a coherent manuscript after patrons handed to them various earlier manuscripts. In the case of Matthew and Luke, one early manuscript was Mark's gospel. Others were the "Q" sources and various other sources lost to history.

Sources for John's gospel are completely unknown, but they differ wildly from sources used by the other three gospel writers.





“Prophecy historicized” = Mark 14:65 is from Isaiah 50:6 (“spit in my face") John Dominic Crossan