Scope: Matthew.
I suggested that we look through Matthew for all verses indicating fulfillment of prophecy, then look up the context of those prophecies (if possible), see what they were talking about, and deciding if they were fulfilled as Matthew claimed, and what their fulfillment indicates.
My friend clarified the scope by suggesting that we use the answers to work towards answering a question like: Is Jesus the Son of God? I suggested breaking this down into a series of more specific questions, however:
Is Jesus (or does he claim to be) the(a?) Son of God? (and what does that mean?)
Is Jesus (or does he claim to be) the(a?) Messiah?
Is Jesus ... Divine?
Matthew Chapter 1
1:1 - "Jesus Christ, son of David, son of Abraham" - this statement makes a lot a couple of important claims. I take this verse to be basically a title that was prefixed onto the book (long before it came to be known as the Gospel According to Matthew.) Claim 1: Jesus is Messiah ("Christ") Claim 2: Jesus is a descendant of King David (lineage.)
GENEALOGY
1:11-12 - Jeconiah is part of the lineage. This is problematic because Jeremiah 22:30 places a curse upon his lineage:
"This is what Yahweh says: Write down this man as childless, as a man who will not have any success during his lifetime, for none of his descendants will succeed in sitting on David's throne and ruling again in Judah."
It's possible that God reversed the curse after Jeconiah repented. Zerubbabel seems to have a similar difficulty to Jesus in this way.
1:16 - This genealogy comes down to Joseph. But Joseph is not Jesus' biological father according to Christianity, and is thus unable to convey to him the royal patrilineal descent from David.
Summary of Difficulties: (1) Jeconiah's line is cursed. (2) Jesus isn't of the Davidic Line.
FIRST CLAIMED PROPHETIC FULFILLMENT
1:22-23 - All of this actually came about to fulfill what was spoken by the Lord through his prophet, saying: "Look! The virgin will become pregnant and will give birth to a son, and they will name him Immanuel, which means, when translate, 'God is with us.'"
The Hebrew word for virgin is betulah but Isaiah used almah here (young woman.) The scripture in Isaiah had nothing to do with the sexual purity of the woman. When Isaiah means to say virgin (betulah) he does. Five times, in fact, 23:4; 23:12; 37:22; 47:1; 62:5. Isaiah 7:14 is not one of them.
From Wikipedia, "In the original Hebrew of Isaiah 7:14 the word almah meant a young woman of childbearing age who had not yet given birth and who might or might not be a virgin, but the Greek translation rendered almah as parthenos, a word which means virgin. This gave the author of Matthew the opportunity to interpret Jesus as the fulfilment of the Immanuel prophecy..."
As further example, Proverbs 30:19-20 uses the same word almah to mean young woman and clearly not a virgin because there she is being demonstrated as having sex, then freshening up and saying "I've done no wrong" - the sense of the verse is that there is no physical evidence that anything had happened, but if it were a virgin, there would be evidence.
Matthew was merely going off the Greek Septuagint translation available in his day, which had imprecisely translated almah as parthenos (a greek term which usually does imply virginity)
But lets look at it another way. Maybe the prophecy is still fulfilled even though it is supposed to just say young woman.
So Isaiah 7:14 says "Therefore Yahweh himself will give you a sign: Look! The young woman will become pregnant and will give birth to a son and she will name him Immanuel."
I should note that this is the second in a series of three children in Isaiah who are used as signs ("Shear-jashub", "Immanuel", and "Maher-shalal-hash-baz" Isaiah 8:18 indicates that these children are signs.
The context of Isaiah 7 is not being taken into consideration. Isaiah 7 is in answer to Ahaz's prayer. See what Ahaz is asking for and what this answer meant to him?
So when Jesus was born to Mary, a young woman did give birth to a child. This had happened hundreds of thousands of times since Isaiah's prophecy. Did she name him Immanuel? (Notice she has to name them this. It's not they--Isaiah said she will name him, but Matthew changes it to *they* will name him) name him Immanuel? Well, Matthew doesn't indicate that she named him Immanuel. It actually says in Matthew 1:24, "... and he named him Jesus." (referring to Joseph.) And in verse 21 the angel had directed Joseph to do this, "She will give birth to a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins."
So I will admit that it is possible that Joseph named him Jesus (as directed by the Angel) but Mary named him Immanuel, although the text doesn't indicate that he was named or called Immanuel at any point after that.
Summary of Difficulties: (3) Matthew's idea that the prophecy specifies a "virgin" is a misunderstanding relating to translation issues. (4) If Jesus is a fulfillment, he is supposed to be part of a three child sequence, who is the child before and the child after him? (5) They seem to name him Jesus, contrary to the prophecy which says he should be named Immanuel.
Matthew Chapter 2
Verse 1 specifies that Jesus is born in Bethlehem of Judea. Verse 5-6 claims this to be in fulfillment of a prophecy:
They said to him: "In Bethlehem of Judea, for this is how it has been written through the prophet: 'And you, O Bethlehem of the land of Judah, are by no means the most insignificant city among the governors of Judah, for out of you will come a governing one, who will shepherd my people Israel.'"
If we look up Micah 5:2,
'And you, O Bethlehem Ephrathah, the one TOO LITTLE to be among the thousands of Judah, from you will come out for me the one to be ruler in Israel, whose origin is from ancient times, from the days of long ago.' (emphasis added)
You'll see Matthew reversed the meaning of this when he quoted it, saying that Bethlehem is "by no means the smallest" instead of the Prophet's own words that Bethlehem is "too little to be among the thousands of Judah" (other translations will say something like "one of the smallest clans of Judah") This is again due to Matthew relying on the Greek Septuagint translation, so is excusable, but yet proves to be a difficulty. It may not specifically have bearing on the prophecy, however...
The prophecy also reads "Bethlehem Ephratah" and Matthew's version says "Bethlehem of Judea." Perhaps these are two names for the same place, but we know for sure there are at least three Bethlehems, one is Bethlehem of Galilee - 6 miles northwest of Nazareth, which would have been a reasonable traveling distance for a pregnant woman on a donkey. Bethlehem of Judea is 69 miles from Nazareth... The other is Bethlehem of Zebulun which was mentioned in Joshua 19:15. (Micah was differentiating from this one.)
Micah is addressing the family of David which came out of Bethlehem. Micah isn't saying that the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem, he's saying that the Messiah will descend from King David who is from Beit Lechem (as described at the end of the Book of Ruth.)
Summary of Difficulties: (6) The quotation from Micah does not match the Prophecy. (7) By referencing this verse Matthew draws attention to the fact that the Messiah has to have Davidic Lineage. Jesus doesn't.
Micah 5, however, clearly is a Messianic prophecy. So we should study it in more depth to see what claims it makes about the Messianic figure.
That's it for now.
