The Old Testament Archetypes of Christ

Christ as Babylon

Modern day evangelists like to point to various Old Testament passages as evidence of some sort of prophecy which Jesus fulfilled in the New Testament. This is absolutely critical to Christian apologetics, dating back to Augustine, in attempting to graft a relatively new way of thinking onto an ancient religion. The Jewish traditions were all that early Christians had to go on and so finding a reference, any reference, to something they believe Jesus did could only help in their endeavor to set him up as the ultimate messiah for the Jews and the world at large.

The problem with this line of thought rests in the ambiguity of the very passages from which they quote. The Bible is nearly infamous for being unclear, vague, or ludicrously general in the various verses and books which comprise the Old Testament. Small wonder, then, that Jesus’ life can also be foretold through certain other, less positive Scriptures, which have an even closer resemblence to his life.

These verses point to different archetypes of the life of Christ, which in themselves show why his Jewish contemporaries must have resisted his claim to godhood so mightily. This is especially true when contrasted against the “pick and choose” verses of apologists. The messianic prophecies which Christ supposedly fulfilled are pedestrian when compared to other verses which eerily portend exact moments from the life of Jesus, as described in the New Testament.

This essay is the first of three archetypes described in the Old Testament which can be said to divine the future life of Jesus Christ. The first is Babylon.
The archetype of Babylon is taken from the poetic taunting of its king by Isaiah in chapter 14, starting with verse 12:
(Isaiah 14:12)

How you have fallen from heaven,

O morning star, son of the dawn! You have been cast down to the earth, you who once laid low the nations!

Isaiah is calling the Babylonian king “heylel ben shachar”, meaning “morning star, son of the dawn” or “shining son of the dawn”. Most modern translation shorten this to just “Morning Star”. Many concordances and study Bibles will also cross reference this passage to others involving Satan, a similarly fallen celestial being, since the King James Version translates this word as “Lucifer”. A reference not usually discussed, however, is Revelation 22:16:

I, Jesus, have sent my angel to testify these things in the churches. I am the root and the spawn of David, and I am the bright Morning Star.

It is striking that Jesus, supposedly dictating this to John on Patmos, would choose to liken himself to a title already associated with not only a cursed Babylonian king, but of Satan himself! Peter similarly refers to Christ as the Morning Star in 2 Peter 1:19. This would make it clear that the title is one used for Jesus often enough that he took it for himself when supposedly speaking to John.

The similarities to Babylon do not end there. In Matthew 26:24 (along with John 3:13, John 6:22, and Luke 18:33), Jesus claims that he will ascend to Heaven, take his throne, and travel in the clouds back to Earth. Isaiah apparently heard this from the Babylonian king, however, and had this to say:
(Isaiah 14:13-15)

You said in your heart, “I will ascend to heaven,
above the stars of God, and will set my throne on High…
I will ascend above the heights of the Clouds,
I will be as the Most High.”
Yet you will be brought down to the grave, to the sides of the pit!

Given the easy access to Scriptures and the education levels of those the scribes and Pharisees who condemned Jesus as a heretic, it becomes easier to understand their position when comparing the words of their own prophet to what they were hearing from Jesus’ own mouth.
The next few verses in this chapter bring about the most damning indictment of all and bear further scrutiny. Therefore, moving down the chapter to verse 19:

You are removed away from your grave…
as the clothes of those that are slain,
as those who are pierced with a sword,
like those who go down to the stones of the pit;
like a carcass trodden under feet.

The piercing imagery here conjures another New Testament description of Jesus’ final hours, in John 19:34:

But one of the soldiers pierced his (Jesus’s) side with a spear, and out of it flowed blood and water.

While seemingly arbitrary and perhaps even coincidental, the punishment prescribed for Babylon and apparently Jesus was also predicted in Ezekiel 32:5-6:

I will spread your flesh on the mountains

and fill the valleys with your remains. I will drench the land with your flowing blood all the way to the mountains, and the ravines will be filled with your flesh.

Isaiah concludes his diatribe against Babylon, starting with verse 20:

You shall not join with them in burial,
because you have destroyed your land,
and slain your people.
The seed of evildoers shall never be honoured.

This final curse can easily be seen in Jesus’ own ending. He was not buried with his own people, but taken from the cross into the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea. In verse 19, it was predicted that Babylon would be removed from his grave, precisely what the authorities presiding over Jesus’ crucifiction also feared once he was buried. For this reason, armed guards were posted outside the tomb in order to prevent the disciples from carrying his body away and claiming he rose from the dead. Of course, his body did disappear and it was claimed by his followers he had risen on his own power.

Further still, as a result of Jesus’ teachings, his followers grew even more zealous in the days following his death. This finally resulted in a Roman crackdown on Jerusalem in 70 A.D., destroying the city and scattering his people. As the Christian church took root and grew, it then persecuted and killed Jews throughout history, starting with the First Crusade in 1096 A.D.. In his book on that subject, Robert Chazen describes massacres of the Jews at the hands of Christian crusaders, bent on forceful conversion or destruction.

Skipping backward to verse 19, Isaiah makes an interesting reference to the “rejected branch”, with the KJV calling it an “abominable branch”. Students of the Bible would most likely recognize this as being very similar to another passage in the Old Testament, found in Jeremiah 22:28-29:

Is this man Jehoiachin
a despised, broken pot, an object no one wants? Why will he and his children be hurled out, cast into a land they do not know? O land, land, land, hear the word of the LORD! This is what the LORD says: “Record this man as if childless, a man who will not prosper in his lifetime, for none of his offspring will prosper, none will sit on the throne of David or rule anymore in Judah.”

Jehoiachin, in Hebrew called Coniah, did something so bad that he is cursed from not only sitting on the throne, but his entire lineage is now disqualifed to do the same. His is a “rejected branch” of kings and none from their line would have ever be allowed to sit on the throne of David again. After Jehoiachin was carried away in exile, his grandson Zerub’babel returned but was not king, nor was any from that line ever after.

With that consideration, look to the genealogies of Jesus as contained in the first chapter of Matthew and third chapter of Luke:
(Matthew 1:11-12)

and Josiah the father of Jeconiah and his brothers at the time of the exile to Babylon. After the exile to Babylon: Jeconiah was the father of Shealtiel, Shealtiel the father of Zerubbabel,

(Luke 3:27)

the son of Joanan, the son of Rhesa,

the son of Zerubbabel, the son of Shealtiel, the son of Neri,

While the genealogies of Matthew and Luke contradict each other in places, such who Shealtiel’s father is, they both mention Jesus’ heritage running back through Jehoiachin’s line, rendering him ineligible to sit on the throne and therefore, ineligible to be the Messiah. Given Isaiah’s prophecy concerning one with a life so similar to Jesus’, is it any wonder he has been resisted so strongly by so many Jews as their Messiah through the thousands of years since?