A surprising social experiment: Jews and rabbis recognize Jesus without knowing they are reading texts from the Old Testament. The surprise is great when the source is revealed.

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YouTube is full of social experiments of all kinds, but this one is unprecedented.

In the video we show you (translated by us into Italian), some Jews and rabbis were invited to read a series of passages from the Old Testament speaking of a Messiah, a child who will be born, and the passion he must endure.

What makes the experiment particularly intriguing is that the participants were not told the origin of the texts and were asked to guess from which source they came.

 

Jews see Jesus in the Old Testament

Interviewed Jews and rabbis reacted spontaneously and honestly, confidently identifying the passages as coming from the Gospels and referring to Jesus.

Too bad these were excerpts taken from the Old Testament, written 700 years before Christ, which many Christians consider prophecies about the Nazarene.

 

Watch the video published on our YouTube channel

 

For example, they were read the passage from Isaiah 53, where the prophet speaks of a Messiah who died for “the iniquity of us all”, who “was mistreated, let himself be humiliated, like a lamb led to the slaughter, like a mute sheep before its shearers, he did not open his mouth”.

Even more specifically, the biblical passage speaks of the arrest and condemnation of this individual, after which “he was taken away” and “they assigned him a burial among the wicked”. But he, Isaiah writes, “will see a offspring, prolong his days, and the work of the Lord will prosper in his hands”.

An impressive prophetic parallel with what will happen to Jesus of Nazareth centuries later.

For the sake of truth, it should be noted that part of the academic world believes that the prophet in this case refers not to the Messiah but to Israel itself.

While other scholars lean toward a Christian prophecy, emphasizing that the idea of the suffering of a man as atonement not for his own sins, but for those of others, is an absolute novelty in the Old Testament. So much so that it was taken up by Saint Paul to interpret the death of Jesus (Romans 4:25 and 2 Corinthians 5:21).

In any case, the Jews interviewed in the video immediately thought that the text spoke of Jesus and his suffering for humanity.

 

Prophecies of Jesus in the Book of Isaiah?

The same happened when reading Isaiah 9:6, which speaks of a child who will be born and will be called “Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace”. Even in this case, many participants immediately associated the passage with the New Testament and the figure of Jesus.

The bitter surprise, however, comes when the true source of the texts is revealed: all the passages read belong to the Old Testament, centuries before the birth of Christ.

The embarrassment of the participants is evident, their perplexed faces say a lot, and the fact that some did not sign the release form to show their faces is significant of how upset they were.

Some interviewees also admit that they have never read the New Testament and focus exclusively on the Tanakh, the Jewish Bible. Nevertheless, reading some biblical passages led them, unknowingly, to identify Jesus of Nazareth, revealing how some messianic descriptions are recognizable even without any Christian training.

A very interesting social experiment showing how even for Jews themselves, the biblical texts contain passages that they themselves link to Christian prophecies, demonstrating a surprising continuity between the Old and New Testaments.

 

Watch the video published on our YouTube channel