ABSTRACT
The Renaissance Christian scholar or his predecessor across the centuries, having piously collected all the places in the New Testament where Christ is laughed at, would have much to do. Certainty about the humiliation of Jesus was also to be sought from the Old Testament. The accounts of the mocking of Christ in the different Gospels take readers back to more ancient texts and to additional and deeper meanings. The New Testament writers cite their ancient Bible for specific prophecies duly fulfilled in Christ. Echoes of the Old Testament in the New are not simply literary ornaments. For the Renaissance Christian such echoes and veiled prophecies were God-given correspondences, not backdated prophecies. It was not a case - as a cynic might suppose - of Gospel writers manipulating evidence, arranging the details of the Saviour's death so as to turn it after the event into the fulfilment of ancient prophecies.
