With the wish to paint the Master, there was also the desire to explain him.

Many anecdotes were conceived to prove that in him the prophecies regarded as Messianic had had their accomplishment.

But this procedure, of which we must not deny the importance, would not suffice to explain everything.

No Jewish work of the time gives a series of prophecies exactly declaring what the Messiah should accomplish.

Many Messianic allusions quoted by the evangelists are so subtle, so indirect, that one cannot believe they all responded to a generally admitted doctrine.