Jesus as the promised Messiah is surely central to the Gospels and to other classical formulations of Christian thinking, although he plays other important roles as well. Classical and medieval Christianity shared with Judaism belief in a messianic redeemer and the conviction that the appearance of this Messiah was clearly foretold by God's prophetic messengers. We have seen ample evidence of these views in both the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles. In these classical sources, the prophetic citations are not organized into a tight argument for Jesus' fulfillment of messianic prophecy; with the passage of time, Christian thinkers would make that argument with increasing fullness and rigor. The Christian case for Jesus' messianic role was composed of many elements. One of the simplest involved the claim that Jesus' appearance on earth corresponded precisely to the times predicted in Scripture. While not a sufficient proof in and of itself for Jesus as Messiah, this claim constituted a powerful element in the Christian case.

As Christians argued that Jesus appeared at exactly the historical juncture prophesied in Scripture, one book in the Hebrew Bible came necessarily to the fore – the book of Daniel. This strange and complicated book projects the most precise timings of the advent of the Messiah to be found in the biblical corpus. To be sure, the predictions of messianic appearance found in Daniel are extremely difficult to decipher; they are purposely couched in exceedingly opaque language and imagery.