Messianic Prophecies from the Old Testament: Today This Scripture Has Been Fulfilled in Your Hearing

Luke 4:16-28New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)

The Rejection of Jesus at Nazareth

16 When he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read, 17 and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written:

18 “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,

    because he has anointed me

        to bring good news to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives

    and recovery of sight to the blind,

        to let the oppressed go free,

19 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

20 And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. 21 Then he began to say to them, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” 22 All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth. They said, “Is not this Joseph’s son?” 23 He said to them, “Doubtless you will quote to me this proverb, ‘Doctor, cure yourself!’ And you will say, ‘Do here also in your hometown the things that we have heard you did at Capernaum.’” 24 And he said, “Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown. 25 But the truth is, there were many widows in Israel in the time of Elijah, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, and there was a severe famine over all the land; 26 yet Elijah was sent to none of them except to a widow at Zarephath in Sidon. 27 There were also many lepers[a] in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian.” 28 When they heard this, all in the synagogue were filled with rage.

Footnotes:

Luke 4:27 The terms leper and leprosy can refer to several diseases

New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)

New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

That the quoted text (from Isaiah 61:1-3) is a Messianic prophecy is evident because Jesus Himself used it in this way.

The scholars who insist that Jesus never identified Himself as the Messiah obviously never read this passage. Why else was the synagogue so quickly filled with rage? They understood exactly what He meant and they believed that He was speaking blasphemy.

Verse 28 says they “were fiiled” ἐπλήσθησαν  with rage. This is from the verb πλήθω I am filled (to the top; to full capacity. )  Strong categorizes the word ἐπλήσθησαν (e-plees-the-san) as V-AIP-3P (verb-aorist indicative passive- third person plural).

In English and many other languages, tense has primarily to do with time. In Koine Greek, tense has primarily to with the type of action. The aorist tense expresses action without any further definition. It carries the idea of sudden action. The people were suddenly filled with rage

The Lord's Prayer in Greek

Here is The Lord's Prayer, read in modern Greek pronunciation with a literal English translation below the Greek text.  The Koine (Common) Greek pronunciation would, of course, not be exactly the same as modern Greek.

Dr. James Blanton at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky (USA) demonstrated that the Koine was pronounced more similarly to modern Greek than to the Erasmian pronunciation which many academics use.  Dr. Blanton based this demonstration on misspellings in hand-copied Greek texts from the first few Christian centuries.

Since the texts were copied by men transcribing what was being read aloud from a master text, misspellings of words showed how many of the vowels had similar sounds and could be mistaken for one another by inexperienced scribes.  Since the pronunciation of some words was known for certain, the pronunciations of other words could be deduced.

Common Greek

In yesterday's post I mentioned the Koine or "common"Greek in which the New Testament was written.  The Koine dialect was the one commonly in use in the known world during the Hellenistic and Roman historical periods.  The word is a feminine form of the Greek word "koinos (κοινώς)," translated as "common."  It was the language of the common people and the lingua franca, the language used in common by the entire Mediterranean area, the language everyone understood and spoke even if their primary language was something else, similar to the status of Hindi in modern India.


Classical Greek had several dialects.  The dialect spoken in Athens was called Attic.  The Ionic dialect was spoken in the Greek city states across the Aegean Sea from Athens.  Koine Greek developed from the Attic and Ionic dialects.  Because it was the dialect spoken by Alexander the Great, Koine was spread throughout the known world.  Many Christians believe that this was in preparation for God's presentation of the Gospel to the world.

Carrying a Numbrella

My three year old granddaughter was playing with an umbrella recently and she asked me, "What is this called?"  She is very smart and inquisitive.

I told her it was an umbrella and she went around saying "Numbrella."

The reason she was saying this is that in English we add an "N" between ending and starting vowels in consecutive words so as to avoid what is called a hiatus.  (What she heard me say was "a numbrella.") To us the hiatus sounds almost like a hiccup.  So, properly, it is "an umbrella" rather than "a umbrella." But, of course, my granddaughter is three and doesn't yet know proper English grammar.

This made me think of the Koine (Common) Greek used in the New Testament.  The same device is used for two vowel sounds occurring consecutively.  I think that this device originated with the ancient Attic-Ionic versions of Greek.  Some of the linguists out there may know if it is found in earlier languages.

(Not all languages use this device.  In Samoan for example, every vowel is fully pronounced even when two vowels occur in succession; the surname Tuiasosopo is pronounced as "too-ee-AH-suh-so-po".  The name of the Hawaiian oo bird is pronounced "oh-oh.")