Why did the Christian messiah fail to fulfill the messianic prophecies?

But Jesus redefined the enemy with the enemy being evil itself with the ultimate evil being death. Jesus showed that being killed by the Romans was not the final answer when God resurrected Him.Jesus said that the way to defeat the Romans, or any other embodiment of evil, is through turning the other cheek, going the extra mile, loving your enemy etc. Ultimately it is about reflecting God's love into the world so that hearts are changed and turned away from evil.

The Jews were unsure of what the prophesies meant. There was uncertainty over how they would recognize a messiah and what they do. The majority believed in a warrior messiah who would drive the Romans out and physically rebuild the Temple. There were various views.Jesus' view varied quite dramatically from that majority view. He went as an act of faith to the cross contending that the Father would somehow vindicate His understanding. It is the Christian contention that God did just that by resurrecting Him.Then Paul and other early Christians, with this knowledge, went back to the scriptures to fully understand what it was that Jesus understood and meant by what He said and by what He did. The Christian contention, (including mine) is that the resurrection is affirmation of what John says in the first chapter of his gospel.

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14 The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.

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As I have said before there is no Christianity if there is no resurrection. Without that we can just as easily follow any other philosopher. However with the resurrection it is certainly reasonable to consider that if we want to see the true nature of God then we look to Jesus.The NT writers had the benefit then of either knowing Jesus personally or through gaining understanding by what those that did know Jesus wrote or said. Luke opens up his gospel this way:

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1 Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us, 2 just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the word. 3 With this in mind, since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, I too decided to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, 4 so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught.

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In other words, the NT writers had more information to work with. Edited by GDR, : typoEdited by GDR, : Another typo. I have to do a better job of proof reading

Hmmm. Good point. Redefined is the wrong word. Jesus fulfilled the prophesies in a way that was not consistent with the majority view way of they were understood at the time. It wasn't that He was saying the Romans weren't a problem. What He was in effect saying, was that the reason the Romans were a problem was due to the existence of evil. The way then to defeat the Romans and the evil that their system embodied was not to kill them but to change their hearts. This of course was intended to extend beyond the Romans to evil everywhere but it certainly would include the Romans.

Not really. The prophesies were ambiguous. There could be numerous understandings, and of course the one that was popular was the one that would benefit the Jews in their lifetime. After being beaten down for so many years by their more powerful neighbours they desparately wanted to be the powerful nation for a change and they desperately wanted Yahweh to do this for them. One way they hoped this would happen was by God sending an anointed one (a messiah) who would lead them in this mission. People have always wanted to control their deities.
We used to have a sign on the fridge that said:

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Most people want to serve God but only in an advisory capacity.

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However, within the ambiguity of the prophesies Jesus found a thread that led to a very different understanding of what the messiah was to do.
During the period between the Hasmonean dynasty in 63 BC and the Bar Kokhba revolt around 135 AD there were numerous messianic movements. (My understanding there were 16 that we know of.) The other movements were all military and all ended disastrously, with some more so than others. The leaders and their followers were executed and their movements were forgotten. The Jewish people just carried on looking for another messiah.
The point is that there were a number of prophesies and not all were fulfilled. Jesus came to a specific understanding of the entire Jewish scripture that was not what His countrymen wanted to hear. He said that they were to love their enemies including the Romans and that Yahweh was not just to be a Jewish God but a God for the whole world.So yes, it was after the resurrection that Jesus’ followers really understood what Jesus was talking about and how Jesus had sifted through the themes of their scriptures to understand Jesus’ message.
The resurrection was the evidence that Jesus had it right and then they began to sort what that was to mean to them and to figure out what that called them to do with their lives.
Without the resurrection Jesus would simply have been another failed messiah and he would have been quickly forgotten.

It was a case of redefining the prophesies but simply announcing one cohesive understanding of them.The prophesies weren't dictated word for word by God but had come through centuries of prophets and others trying to determine the nature of there one true God and how they were to respond. Some got it more right than others. Jesus was the fulfillment of the scriptures but not in the way that many had hoped.Edited by GDR, : No reason given.

There understanding was it seems largely in hind sight but that doesn't make them worthless. Sure. So what. Just because I hope the sun is going to come up tomorrow isn't an indicator that it won't. Once again though. The credibility for the return of Jesus when God renews all things, is all based on the resurrection. If God resurrected Jesus then there is a basis of hope for that renewal. If the resurrection is simply a metaphor then Christianity falls apart and there is no good reason to hope for the renewal of this world.Edited by GDR, : No reason given.

But it isn't that there was only one prophesy that covered this. The understanding came after Jesus' resurrection which then had people like Paul combing through what Jesus had said and through the Jewish scriptures. Jesus wasn't primarily a fulfillment of a prophesy as He was the fulfillment of the whole Israel narrative. Sure, but there is no reason to give more credibility to Jesus than there is to anyone else you might want to name without the resurrection. For that matter, without the resurrection Jesus is a delusional failed messiah. I'm not sure what you mean by a cult of personality but we are somewhat on the same page. Jesus' message is critical and the message is that He is calling us to continue His Kingdom work of spreading God's love, peace, justice to the world as my signature says. We are called to live out our lives in that way and to, for lack of a better term, infect the world with God's love, ahead of the time when God completes the project.Resurrection is planned for all creation at the end of time,and God has resurrected the one man Jesus within time. (This at least is my understanding of that aspect of the Christian message.) I'm paraphrasing but the Bible tells us that God will unite His universe/dimension with our own. How that is going to look is well above my pay grade.

You really can only tell after the fact. God resurrected Jesus confirming that Jesus' understanding was the correct one. If one doesn't accept that the resurrection of Jesus was an historical event then there is no reason to believe that Jesus got it right.

I don't see Jesus as being God as in having supernatural knowledge. I believe that He went into Jerusalem knowing what those in power do to people who did what He was about to do. He went into Jerusalem fully expecting to be crucified but through His understanding of the Jewish Scriptures and prayer He believed that somehow God the Father, even though He was suffering a humiliating criminal's death, would see Him through it. God did that by resurrecting Him.Jesus often referred to Himself as the "Son of Man" obviously referring to Daniel 7 where one like a "Son of Man' is enthroned and given dominion over the nations by the "Ancient of Days". It is after the resurrection that Jesus' followers saw Jesus as part of the Trinity through that same understanding.Also of course in understanding Jesus' divinity we can go to the 1st chapter of the Gospel of John where John talks about the "Word" that had existed since before time became flesh. Jesus perfectly embodied the wisdom and nature of God.The resurrection vindicates and affirms the message and life of Jesus.

But that misses the point entirely. His whole message was that the Romans weren't the real enemy. It was evil itself that was the enemy, and evil isn't defeated militarily but with sacrificial love.In Daniel 7 He is enthroned and given dominion over the Kingdom of those who embody His Spirit of sacrificial love in all of the world.

So what. That is my point. Jesus essentially said that they had misinterpreted the prophesies. Ok, but the credibility of what Jesus said and did is in the resurrection. I have said numerous times that I am a Christian as I believe that God resurrected Jesus. The whole NT is written by guys trying to get their head around that fact, and then figure from their scriptures, and from what Jesus said and did how that does, and how it should, and how it should affect out livesEven His followers didn't get it until after the resurrection. In all likelihood Judas thought that Jesus, with His love your enemy approach, was a traitor to the cause.
After the crucifixion his followers just saw Jesus as another failed messiah, that is until the Resurrection. There is no reason whatsoever to think that the movement would have continued if God hadn't resurrected Jesus.

Welll He did return in His resurrected body. Which prophesy are you referring to? First off it would take a pretty large group to start a myth like that. Nobody was able to produce the body which would have ended it. They were all Jews and if they were going to come up with something to start a movement that is not the story that they would have come up with, The stories are critical of the main characters other than Jesus, there are minor differences in the stories indicating that there was no collusion, there was no motive for them to do that and for that matter they wound up being persecuted even to death as Stephen was.As far as the second coming, or the end of times go Jesus was clear that He didn't know and that only the Father knew the time.

We went through that earlier in this thread. He did fulfill the prophesies but not in the way people expected. Actually in my view the prophesies are important in order to understand what Jesus was saying but that does not mean that the prophesies were necessarily divinely inspired. They may well have been something that prophets came up with in order to understand what they hoped Yahweh would do for them. In either case Jesus formed his mission around them to help people understand what He was about. Good luck pulling that off.

Martin Luther King was a leader in an pre-existing movement that had broad support among a large portion of the community.For that case nobody made any attempt to suggest such thing about KIng. They did about Jesus and we can believe them or choose to disbelieve them.