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A few weeks ago I would have argued with Waterrock over this, but I've been doing some research and I think he's right. I think he's more right than he knows. In fact, I think he's more right than he wants to be. The Jews had a type of literature known as Midrash. In it, allusions to past events were interwoven into the story to give it more meaning (pretty much the way allusions are still used in Western literature). As Bishop Spong has argued the Gospels were all written in the Midrash tradition. Events in Jesus' life were taken from OT events. Jesus healing people, feeding the masses, and raising the dead were all based on the stories of Elijah and Elisha. The Crucifixion was an allusion to the Passover sacrifice. First century Jews would have recognized this and so they wouldn't think that the Gospel stories were supposed to be history and fact. The Gospels were never intended to be historical; they were intended to be typological, to use Waterrock's terminology. Jesus wouldn't even need to be a real person. The important thing in the Gospels is the teachings. Jesus was just a convenient fiction about which the allusions were to be wrapped around.

It should also be pointed out that the word "prophecy" has picked up a connotation that it didn't have 2000 years ago. Anyone who spoke for God was a prophet. A prophecy was any pronouncement made by a prophet acting in his role as a prophet. It's only later that it came to mean a prediction of the future (though it can certainly include that). So when Matthew says that Jesus fulfilled such and such a prophecy there's no implication that the prophesy was supposed to be a prediction. In the case of Hosea 11:1 it obviously wasn't a prediction. Matthew was just borrowing the Out of Egypt motiff for Midrashic purposes.

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Matthew also claims fulfillment of predictive prophecies, even if the OT authors didn't intend them to be predictive prophecies, as evidenced by his use of "to fulfill" or similar phrases.

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And here a problem arises. If the Gospel writers were writing to Jewish audiences then why would they choose passages that Jews would realize weren't predictive prophecies?

The target audience of the gospel writers was not the educated Jewish religious leaders, but the common man. Most of these people would not have been well-versed in the OT, and wouldn't have been able to cross-reference the passages easily.

It would have been easy enough to ask a Rabbi.

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Even today, Christian preachers, teachers, and authors are proclaiming that Jesus fulfilled specific predictive prophecies even though the "flock" should know that that is not the case. Proof that it could have worked 2000 years ago is the fact that it actually is still working today.

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There's an important difference. Most Christians are Christians because they were brought up that way. It's not likely that they would seriously question their beliefs. By the same token, 2000 years ago most Jews were Jews because they were brought up that way. They'd also have the inclination not to question their beliefs. Thus it would be difficult to convert them to Christianity. And we see this historically. Christianity never made great inroads into Judaism. Christianity has only been successful amonst Gentiles, who, of course, had no attachment to the OT.

Still, even if Spong has overstated his case, there are still some pretty clear midrashic elements in the Gospels. Jesus as the Passover sacrifice is a good one.

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Either way, the Gospels are rendered false.

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I agree, though I still think there might be some grains of truth in there.