This study grew out of investigations undertaken which were designed to form part of a more general work on the history of Biblical Interpretation. The subject chosen is a study of the problem of predictive Messianic prophecy as that is revealed in the history of biblical interpretation. The present essay seeks to show that the fact of predictive prophecy has been maintained only by means of a false principle of exegesis, that when a scientific principle of exegesis is adopted the theory of predictive prophecy must be abandoned, and that the scientific principle of exegesis has been formally and finally adopted by the Protestant churches because of a great religious need and in a profoundly religious interest.