 Jewish Christians invariably emphasize the existence of proofs in the Hebrew Bible for everything they believe about Jesus. It is this claim that justifies the entire enterprise of Jewish Christianity. And although it's no longer as fashionable among other Christians as it once was, it really is central to the entire development of Christianity. After all, if the Hebrew Bible is the Word of God, it must refer to the most basic religious truths. And we've already seen that without the discovery of a correspondence between the career of Jesus and the biblical description of the Messiah, the new religion could not have gotten started. And so the Bible was subjected to the most intense scrutiny to make it yield references to beliefs that no one had found there before. We must of course examine the results of that effort in some detail. But before we do, some general observations need to be made. First of all, anyone who is exposure to the Hebrew Bible has been limited. Mainly to these proof texts may have been subjected to a serious distortion of perspective. It's terribly important to recognize that these verses are not typical examples of what a person would find by leafing through the Bible. The best of them are rare, isolated, difficult passages, and if their Christian interpretation were true, they would stick out like the proverbial sore thumb in the context of the Bible as a whole. This consideration is logically relevant to the interpretation of individual verses because it means that there is a heavy burden of proof on the defender of the Christological reading. Let's say that there is a verse that can reasonably be interpreted in two ways. One interpretation would make it fit smoothly into the entire pattern of biblical religion, while the other would make it say something altogether unexpected and peculiar in the context of the Bible as a whole. It certainly seems more reasonable to choose the first interpretation. As we proceed, we'll see that this consideration becomes relevant in only two or three cases. Most of the time, the Christological interpretation doesn't even work, even with an appeal to wider context. Still, this is one general point to keep in mind. There is a second related observation that is perhaps of even greater importance. When people say that the Hebrew Bible contains references to the Trinity, the Virgin birth, the divinity of the Messiah, the crucifixion of the Messiah, and other such doctrines, what precisely do they mean? Do they mean that God intended to teach these beliefs clearly and unambiguously to the Jews who lived before Jesus? If so, this is a very difficult position to defend. Not only do Jews fail to see these references, but many modern Christian scholars fail to see them as well. Now this point will become even more forceful after we discuss the major proof texts in some detail, but it really doesn't require too much documentation. It's unlikely that even representatives of Jewish Christianity will argue that there were Jews in the generation before Jesus who believed in the Trinity as a result of references in the Hebrew Bible. Now this leaves the possibility that the references that a Christian believes in the Hebrew Bible are more subtle and can be discerned only by someone who already knows them to be true. Now although Jews could not agree to such a claim, it's far more easily defensible than the first possibility and Christians can argue that the Hebrew Bible has hidden profound meanings which are accessible once certain truths are already known from other sources. But let's be clear about what this means. It means that the verses we're talking about have a more obvious meaning that does not have anything to do specifically with Christian ideas. It means that they cannot be used to prove these ideas to someone who does not already believe. Okay, this argument is a bit complicated, so let's try and rephrase it more briefly. No one would argue that the Gospels don't contain references to the idea of a virgin birth or the crucifixion of the Messiah, but many reasonable people including Christians don't see such references in the Hebrew Bible. If God wanted to teach such ideas clearly in the Hebrew Bible, he could have made them as clear as they are in the Gospels. It seems to follow that God wanted people to be able to read the Bible without seeing these beliefs. In that case, quoting verses to prove these doctrines to non-Christians doesn't appear to make sense. Now, this is a peculiar dilemma which some medieval Christians solved by saying that references are clear except that God has made the Jews blind. This blindness has now extended to many Christian scholars and few people today would take such an argument seriously. Now, a Christian might still maintain that the Hebrew Bible contains indications or hints of these doctrines, but it should be recognized that this is a much weaker claim than the one usually made in Jewish Christian pamphlets on this subject. After these preliminary remarks, let's turn to a selection of the central verses used to demonstrate the most important Christian beliefs. Now, since we can't discuss every single verse in the Hebrew Bible that has ever been quoted in support of Christianity, we are going to choose those passages that are quoted most often and appear most persuasive. In other words, this will be an honest effort to confront the best case that can be presented to demonstrate the truth of Christianity from the Hebrew Bible.