Was Jesus supposed to bring good news or was he the good news? ~ Cross reference of Luke 4:16 to Isaiah 61:1
The passage in Isaiah 61 is about Isaiah bringing good news to Judah and Jerusalem. Even if we assume that this was a prophecy by Isaiah that 700 years later Jesus will come into a synagogue and open Isaiah 61 and read it, it is still saying that Jesus is the messenger of good news. So how did the messenger of good news become the good news. I found this event in Luke 4 very similar to "Jesus's triumphant entry" in Matthew 21. Here Jesus takes the scroll given to him and zooms into Isaiah 61 [I assume he was given Isaiah scroll] reads these verses and then claims it is fulfilled. Same way in Matthew 21 he asks for 2 donkeys and then rides on them into Jerusalem to fulfill that which was written in Zechariah 9. Synagogues were setup as early as 5 BCE [5 years before Jesus was born assuming he was born in 1 CE]. These were in towns outside Jerusalem as in Jerusalem the people used the temple. Rabbis defined a structured way for the people to spend the time reading prescrib...