A display at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem may signal a shift slowly taking place in the country.

In his letter to the Romans, the Apostle Paul, citing Isaiah 59, saw a day coming when all of Israel would be saved (Romans 11:26). Essentially, one day the Jews, en masse, would recognize and accept Jesus Christ as the Jewish Messiah.

Though this has not yet happened, ministries in Israel are reporting a growing interest in Jesus among Jewish people, Charles Gardner writes in an article for Israel Today.

But what caught people’s attention recently is a display of the Great Isaiah Scroll at Jerusalem’s Israel Museum, which included a passage from the Gospel of Luke.

The Great Isaiah Scroll was discovered among the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1947. All 66 chapters of this book were found intact. The manuscript was dated to 125 BC, making it over a thousand years older than the manuscripts used for our modern Bible translations.

But despite the differences in age, researchers were amazed by how few differences there were between the older Isaiah manuscript and more recent ones that had been copied and recopied by hand over hundreds of years.

As part of its 60th anniversary celebrations, the museum displayed a full facsimile of the Great Isaiah Scroll. But surprisingly, this included a reference to the Book of Isaiah’s influence on Christianity.

It cited as a specific example Luke 4:16-21, when Jesus went into a synagogue in Nazareth and quoted from Isaiah 61:

“The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
    because he has anointed me
    to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
    and recovery of sight for the blind,
to set the oppressed free,
¹⁹ to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

After quoting the passage, Jesus then turned to the congregation, stating, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”

Jesus was using the Book of Isaiah to solidify His claim to be the Jewish Messiah. It was a remarkable passage for the museum to cite as an example.

The museum then added:

“The Book of Isaiah is cited 66 times in the New Testament. Christian tradition interprets many of Isaiah’s verses as prophetic foretellings of the coming of the Redeemer. Historically, these verses helped shape the conceptions of early Christians regarding the mission and destiny of Jesus as Saviour and Messiah.”

Christian ministries in Israel stated that including the Gospel of Luke as part of this display was not only surprising but significant.

“This was unexpected,” said CMJ Israel’s spokesperson Nick Syrup. “After all, this is Israel’s national museum, but the curators are making an important historical observation.“

“The Book of Isaiah became one of the foundational texts of the early church. It is impossible to tell the story of the Great Isaiah Scroll without also telling the story of its profound influence on Christianity.”

Founded in the early 1800s, CMJ Israel has been ministering in Israel since the 1820s to encourage Jews to recognize that Jesus is their Messiah. They are also working to reconnect Gentile Christians with their Jewish roots.