:: Partialy agreed. Apostles, Paul in particular, were quoting Scripture to the Jews and pagan godfearers as the evidence that Jesus of Nazareth is the Christ and were expecting them to accept the Gospel and the ressurection based on Scripture. Apollos succesfuly did the same thing without the experience of christian life.
Apostles drew their conviction and boldness from expirence of ressurection but did not treat it as out-of-the-blue fenomenon which reforms the Scriptures.
I suspect that it is the apreciation for the Scriptures that can not be attained apart from the christian life and discipleship succesion, and thus also understood, not that they have no intelligibile spiritual message in them selves.
Until the resurrection, the apostles did not understand how the life and death of Jesus could make Him the messiah. Afterwards, they were so convinced by experience that they were willing to dramatically transform how they understood the Scripture so that it would conform to what they knew to be true by other means.
::I have pointed to a fact that quireleader of the apostles clearly thought otherwise; maybe I should have quoted him: "Of this salvation the prophets have inquired and searched carefully, who prophesied of the grace that would come to you, searching what, or what manner of time, the Spirit of Christ who was in them was indicating when He testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ and the glories that would follow. To them it was revealed that, not to themselves, but to us they were ministering the things which now have been reported to you through those who have preached the gospel to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven -- things which angels desire to look into." (1.Pt 1:10-12)
Whether the prophets had knowledge of the hidden meaning or not, it cetainly was a hidden meaning, and there was a literal meaning which occupied it's Jewish audience for some time before the apostles unconvered a figural meaning.
::Rejection of the Messiah by the Jews was clearly understood by the apostles as judicial blindness and not as the unexplainable turn of events. Paul goes so far as to claim that in the end they will finally nationally accept Christ.
There is no unanimus aproach to the OT Scripture among the apostles that would allow your conclusion. The naked fact is that they quoted it, found it authorotative and relied upon it regardless of their expirience of Chritian life, which was sometimes quite mutually exclusive.
The Jews did not believe that Jesus was the messiah because He did not fulfill their interpretation of the Scripture.
The apostles didn't understand either, but all of them experienced the resurrection, and thus became convinced, then turned to the Scripture to see if they could reinterpret it to conform to what they knew by other means.
::No, I am not saying that man is to depraved to be reflecting God's fulfillment but am saying that regenerated man can reflect also un-Godly fullfillments. In some theological traditions this is called carnality. Distinction between the two is mastery that takes life time to acheeve, if even then. Scripture is the Sword that can separate them for us.
Scripture cannot interpret itself. And the spirit of man is either regenerate or not; it is either fit to interpret Scripture or it is not.
