You are starting from chapter 52 or 53. The problem is in order to identify the “suffering servant” you have to be acquainted with the book of Isaiah from chapter 1. These texts have a theme which begin from the very beginning. Quoting a passage from a book without understanding the underline theme or style of a book just doesn’t work.
You claim that the passage is referring to a single individual and cannot refer to the plurality of Israel. But this is wrong:
Isaiah 41:8-9 “But you, O Israel, My servant, Jacob, you whom I have chosen, offspring of Abraham who loved Me…and to whom I shall say: ‘You are my servant’ – I have chosen you and not rejected you.”1
Isaiah 44:1 “But hear now Jacob, My servant, and Israel whom I have chosen!”2
Isaiah 44: 21 “Remember these things, Jacob and Israel, for you are My servant: I fashioned you to be My servant: Israel do not forget Me!”
Isaiah 45:4 “..for the sake of My servant Jacob and Israel, My chosen one: I have proclaimed you by name…”
Isaiah 48:20 “…say, ‘Hashem (God) has redeemed His servant Jacob.”
Isaiah 49:3 “…You are my servant, Israel, in whom I take glory.”
For a Christian who reads the Bible I’m surprised you are not aware of how it refers to the entire nation of Israel repeatedly as a single person, or with singular pronouns. But now that we have established from the Book of Isaiah that “servant” in the singular is a reference to Israel, as it is from Isaiah 52:13.
Furthermore, if we were to assume for the sake of argument that Isaiah 52-53 is speaking of a single individual who is to come, it still does not prove Jesus. You can try to “plug” in Jesus into Isaiah 52-53, but you cannot derive him from it. Consider the following:
Isaiah 52:15 says the kings will shut their mouths at him
When did this ever happen in the case of Jesus? The Jewish Study Bible says: “the servant is probably the nation Israel, and the nations are stunned that such an insignificant and lowly group turns out to have been so important to the divine plan.” (p. 891)
Isaiah 53:2 says he is unattractive. Was Jesus known for being physically unattractive? On the contrary, he is universally depicted as being good looking by Christians themselves.
Isaiah 53:3 says he is despised and rejected by men and a man of sorrows.
Jesus was not known as being a man of sorrows. If you say he suffered on the cross, then this is not something unique to Jesus, practically everyone suffers sometime in their life. But this verse is describing someone who will be known for suffering and be despised.
Isaiah 53:7 is interesting, because some Gospel accounts say Jesus was silent at his trial, but others mention an entire dialogue between him and those who put him on trial, including his trial before Pilate.
Isaiah 53:10 is your biggest problem. You claim that the seed that is mentioned is not literal, and you quoted Galatians which is circular reasoning. Why should the Jews believe seed is not literal just because Galatians says it?
The fact of the matter is that you are don’t know Hebrew and this is the biggest problem with Christians. They don’t understand that the word Zera can never be used for children in a figurative sense.
If it is so easy to make up convenient interpretations and manipulate the text to make it mean what you want it to mean, then practically anyone can claim that he is the “suffering servant”. Even I can claim I am the suffering servant of Isaiah if it is that easy to play around with the words and the context.
As for your claim that Targum identified the servant with the Messiah, here’s what the Jewish Study Bible has to say: “Targum and various midrashim identify the servant as the Messiah, but this suggestion is unlikely, since nowhere else does Deutero-Isaiah refer to the Messiah” (p. 891).
Finally, please pardon me for my mistake of saying Herod ordered the census. What I meant is that the New Testament claims the census took place during the reign of King Herod (which is factually incorrect).
However my point is that the secular scholars do not consider the nativity story as historically accurate, specifically about the census ordering people to return to their ancestral villages. That is simply implausible: “Sanders considers Luke's census, for which everyone returned to their ancestral home, not historically credible, as this was contrary to Roman practice; they would not have uprooted everyone from their homes and farms in the Empire by forcing them to return to their ancestral cities. Moreover, people were not able to trace their own lineages back 42 generations.” (Sanders, E. P. The historical figure of Jesus. Penguin, 1993. Sanders discusses both birth narratives in detail, contrasts them, and judges them not historical on pp. 85–88)
One sees a recurring theme of the Gospel writers making up legendary accounts which are historically inaccurate and implausible in order to convince the reader that Jesus fulfilled various Messianic prophecies. This is definitely the conclusion of secular scholars, I’ve yet to see Christians give a compelling reply to it.
Archaeology is still catching up with the Bible. For example, there was no archaeological evidence for Pilate until 1961, and none for King David until 1992, but the Bible was right all along. So dismissing the historical accuracy of the Bible is really premature. On the census in particular I’ll let William Lane Craig comment: “We do have positive evidence that there was a census taken by Quirinius around AD 6 or 7. But it’s very interesting that Luke refers to this census when he talks about the revolt of Judas the Galilean. But when he talks about the census that drew Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem he says this was the first census, which suggests that Luke is differentiating this census from the later one taken by Quirinius. So he doesn’t seem to be confusing the two; he’s aware of the latter one, and he’s saying this is an earlier one.” And again, “We should note that he [Luke] doesn’t actually say that Quirinius was the governor at this time. The word he uses in the Greek is not the Greek word for “governor”, and it could have been that Quirinius, as a military commander, directed this census at the behest of the authority in power.” (quoted from reasonablefaith.org)
On identifying the Injil, the natural understanding when reading the Quran, which claims to be clear, is that the People of the Book have a book that they recognize, prior to and independently of Muslims. They are not the People of the books that Muslims identify for them. So when the Quran tells Jews to judge by the Torah and Christians to judge by the Gospel, the reference is clearly to books that Jews and Christians themselves recognize. Whether or not Muslims recognize the same books is irrelevant. This is of course poses the dilemma that leads Muslims to disparage the Bible. All the cavils by secular scholars, skeptics, and non-Messianic Jews that Muslim apologists put forward constitute a pretense for rejecting the Bible, but the basic reason why Muslims are forced to reject the Bible is clear: the discontinuity of doctrine between the Bible and Islam that Muhammad never suspected was there. As to the etymology of the word, Injil, “The Gospel in Islam” page on Wikipedia traces the word back, as Christians also do, to the New Testament Greek, “euangelion.” “The Arabic word Injil (إنجيل) as found in Islamic texts, and now used also by Muslim non-Arabs and Arab non-Muslims, is derived from the Syriac Aramaic word awongaleeyoon found in the Peshitta (Syriac translation of the Bible), which in turn derives from the Greek word euangelion (Εὐαγγέλιον) of the originally Greek language New Testament, where it means ‘good news’ (from Greek ‘Εὐαγγέλιον’; Old English ‘gōdspel’; Modern English "gospel", or "evangel" as an archaism, cf. e.g. Spanish ‘evangelio’).”
On the identity of “servant” in Isaiah, I agree that it can refer to the whole nation of Israel, but that alone does not limit the meaning of the word “servant” to that sole usage. It does not automatically decide the identity of the servant in Isaiah 52 & 53. The immediate context as well as the broader context must still be taken into account, and not only the preceding chapters. Indeed, the whole Bible is the context.
Now the Bible uses typology, which is not one-dimensional like speaking in code. Typology is richer, and the same word or passage may have more than one referent, each modified by its context. In the case of Jonah, for example, the immediate referent is Jonah and his experience with the whale. That is one level of meaning. But as typology, Jonah’s experience points to the Messiah’s experience. However, Jesus’ application of the sign of Jonah to Himself no more obliges Him to be rescued from death like Jonah than it obliges Him to be thrown overboard and swallowed by a fish. The point is that the experience is analogous and typological; it does not have to be an identical, one-for-one correspondence. And as Jesus came to fulfill all the Messianic prophecies in the Hebrew Scriptures, He surpasses the typology of Jonah’s experience by going farther, undergoing actual death and resurrection. Another similar type that the Messiah fulfills is Abraham’s near-sacrifice of Isaac. The surpassing, analogous message of that experience is set forth in the Gospel: the Father sacrifices His Son. This is the reality that the earlier type had pointed to all along. So too the Psalms frequently speak in the language of death and resurrection. It only remained for the Psalms’ figurative language to be surpassed and become real in the experience of the Messiah who died and rose again. Of course, some language can be applied only to the Messiah: “For Thou wilt not leave My soul in hell; neither wilt Thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption” (Psalm 16:10).
On 53:10, I already pointed out how the verse strongly confirms the ancient Jewish and Christian understanding that the Messiah is in view. The subject in verse 10 is said to be an “offering for sin,” but the only acceptable offering under the Mosaic Law had to be without blemish. Obviously the notion of a sinful offering for sin, such as the nation of Israel would have been, is absurd. The nation would have been a sacrifice in need of a sacrifice. Only the sinless Messiah was without blemish, and thus only He could be an acceptable offering. On “zera’” or “seed” in verse 10, the Hebrew literally says, “He seeth seed” (Young’s Literal Translation of the Holy Bible). There is no possessive pronoun “his” modifying the word “seed” in the original Hebrew, so the “seed” referred to does not have to be the Messiah’s own physical progeny.
On Hebrew zera’ again, you claimed the word was never used in a figurative sense. Happily, I studied both ancient Hebrew and Greek and can recognize the Hebrew word for “seed” in the text. Genesis 3 combines literal meaning with figurative meaning when it teaches that the “seed” of the woman would defeat the “seed” of the serpent. Obviously the Bible is not talking about literal descendents of a legless reptile. Significantly, this is the first explicit Messianic prophecy. The “seed of the woman” is an unusual, Biblical phrase, too, since “seed” ordinarily refers to the seed of men. This seed of the woman was fulfilled in the virgin birth of the Messiah, who destroys the works of “that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan” (Revelation 12).
