Tests / Qualification for Being the Messiah and Reasons for Rejected Jesus as the Messiah
#1 The world did not change.
#2 In traditional Judaism, the Messiah (Mashiach) is expected to rebuild the Holy Temple in Jerusalem. This act is considered one of the defining signs that the true messianic era has arrived.
#3 Jesus died, not living on the earth in human form, say, 50 days after present-day Easter. The Jewish messiah does not die before finishing his mission in one human lifetime.
#4 Jesus would have appeared accursed of God to traditional Judaism. So, a Jesus and Akiva’s Messiah were not the messiah.
Given the Parable of the Wicked Tenants, Jesus was not the Messiah.
#5 God is one. Maybe I can not include this one because “Let us make man.”
#6 God is not a man. Maybe I can not include this one because god’s footsteps were heard in Eden.
The Messiah cannot be a false prophet like Jesus was.
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- The Passage: “For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders… Of the greatness of his government and peace there will be no end. He will reign on David’s throne and over his kingdom, establishing and upholding it with justice and righteousness from that time on and forever.”
- The Promise: A literal declaration of a future child born to inherit the throne of King David, establishing an eternal kingdom of justice.
- The Passage: “The days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when I will raise up for David a righteous Branch, a King who will reign wisely and do what is just and right in the land. In his days Judah will be saved and Israel will live in safety.”
- The Promise: An explicit covenantal promise that God will raise a direct, royal descendant of David to rule as a wise king, rescue the nation, and restore safety.
- The Passage: “Rejoice greatly, Daughter Zion! Shout, Daughter Jerusalem! See, your king comes to you, righteous and victorious, lowly and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.”
- The Promise: A direct prophetic command to look for the arrival of the promised king, specifically characterizing his humble entry into Jerusalem.
Jesus did not have more military victories than King David. The Messiah would have less victories than Moses or King David?
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Clean up this draft, please, Steefen.
Steefen said
Tests / Qualification for Being the Messiah and Reasons for Rejected Jesus as the Messiah
#1 The world did not change.
Yeah it did, just not as fast or in the ways people thought it would.
#2 In traditional Judaism, the Messiah (Mashiach) is expected to rebuild the Holy Temple in Jerusalem. This act is considered one of the defining signs that the true messianic era has arrived.
In Jesus’s day the Temple didn’t need rebuilding. The Jewish Temple was very much intact. It wasn’t destroyed until 70CE, 40 years after Jesus’s earthly life.
#3 Jesus died, not living on the earth in human form, say, 50 days after present-day Easter. The Jewish messiah does not die before finishing his mission in one human lifetime.
Did he die or become eternal? (that is another question.)
#4 Jesus would have appeared accursed of God to traditional Judaism. So, a Jesus and Akiva’s Messiah were not the messiah.
Jews understand themselves as God’s “suffering servant”. So why wouldn’t they understand their Messiah to be a suffering servant also?
#5 God is one. Maybe I can not include this one because “Let us make man.”
Haven’t you ever felt “one” with another person? Of one mind, of the same spirit, on the same page? You are still two separate people but at the same time you are one.
#6 God is not a man. Maybe I can not include this one because god’s footsteps were heard in Eden.
The whole question of whether Jesus was God or just had a lot of God’s Spirit in him is one that is debated in many different circles.
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Here are three distinct times the Hebrew Bible explicitly promises this future ruler-messiah:
1. Isaiah 9:6–7The Passage: “For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders… Of the greatness of his government and peace there will be no end. He will reign on David’s throne and over his kingdom, establishing and upholding it with justice and righteousness from that time on and forever.”
The Promise: A literal declaration of a future child born to inherit the throne of King David, establishing an eternal kingdom of justice.
2. Jeremiah 23:5–6The Passage: “The days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when I will raise up for David a righteous Branch, a King who will reign wisely and do what is just and right in the land. In his days Judah will be saved and Israel will live in safety.”
The Promise: An explicit covenantal promise that God will raise a direct, royal descendant of David to rule as a wise king, rescue the nation, and restore safety.
3. Zechariah 9:9The Passage: “Rejoice greatly, Daughter Zion! Shout, Daughter Jerusalem! See, your king comes to you, righteous and victorious, lowly and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.”
The Promise: A direct prophetic command to look for the arrival of the promised king, specifically characterizing his humble entry into Jerusalem.Jesus did not have more military victories than King David. The Messiah would have less victories than Moses or King David?
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Clean up this draft, please, Steefen.
They say that Jesus is of the line of David. Considering all the wives and women that both David and Solomon had, this claim may not be that far-fetched.
The Jesus movement did take over the Roman Empire. Though not in the time frame or in the way the Jews expected. At some point, the Roman Empire became the Holy Roman Empire. Is it what everyone wanted? idk, but things did change.
Jesus was a nonviolent change-maker. He didn’t have any military victories. He preached mental and spiritual conversion and change, not violent and forced change.
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This is the best I can do for right now. (don’t have time to proofread it). Hope it’s positive for you. Have a good evening or day.
Yeah the whether Jesus became a Davidic messiah is an intetesting debate. I’ll say up front I’m biased to say yes, and also I’m still not sure what being a Davidic messiah meant in the First Century.
Jewish ingenuity in fulfilling traditions reminds me of the fishing line around Manhattan — it’s not inflexible: ** you do not have permission to see this link **
Helen brings up a great point, the temple didn’t need rebuilding while Jesus is there. Of course in Revelation, Jesus is taking part in a judgement of Jerusalem and Jewish folk, while saving other Jewish folk (144k).
So I think there’s this illusion that the Hasmoneans were independent, or that David’s Tribalarchy or whatever was independent, and it’s interesting that it’s the two times where they overtly mixed with Arabians.
The ANE has had a heirarchy for thousands of years before the Bible era.
When you look at Hasmoneans in the Books of Maccabees — Nabataea leaders are mentioned by name as doing some hegemon stuff there. Assisting their military (in peaceful ways), supplying interkingdom security, judging, marital alliances. Nabataea runs as a confederacy, and then as a confederacy, they interact with empires.
With David, not only is his Ishmaelite nephew commander of his army, and he has multiple high-level foreign people in his tribalarchy, I also think that there’s a a non-zero chance that Bathsheba’s mother is from Sheba, like the Queen of Sheba. South Arabians.
(Reason: Most people in the ANE seem named for their god or their region/city/town, and not many seem only named for an ‘interesting meaning’ as far as I can tell.)
So I think these are the times where Jewish people joined a Semitic confederacy that buffered them from empire.
I obviously think the survived Jesus’ regnal name is Malichus II:
Malichus is the head of a tribal confederacy ✅
Jewish refugees were saved in the Nabataean Hauron ✅
The ‘lost’ Israelite tribsl renmants were known to hsve simply integrated into the Hauran, therefore reuniting them ✅
Mandaeans don’t think so, I’d say yes of course.
The Jesus movement totally took over the Roman empire lol. It’s important to realize that what were cslled Arabs is like ‘jetsetter’ not necessarily an ethnicity
even the malichus movement, philip the Arab comes from the -Hauron
“Jesus was a nonviolent change-maker”
Alvin J. Schmidt, _How Christianity Changed the World_ (2004), 49-50
** you do not have permission to see this link **
One way that Christianity underscored the sanctity of human life was its consistent and active opposition to the widespread pagan practice of infanticide-killing newborn infants, usually soon after birth.
Frederic Farrar has noted that “infanticide was infamously universal” among the Greeks and Romans during the early years of Christianity.^2
Infants were killed for various reasons.
Those born deformed or physically frail were especially prone to being willfully killed, often by drowning.
Some were killed more brutally.
For instance, Plutarch (ca. A.D. 46-120) mentions the Carthaginians, who, he says, “offered up their own children, and those who had no children would buy little ones from poor people and cut their throats as if they were so many lambs or young birds; meanwhile the mother stood by without a tear or moan” (_Moralia_ 2.171D).
Cicero (106-43 B.C.) justified infanticide, at least for the deformed, by citing the ancient Twelve Tables of Roman law when he says that “deformed infants shall be killed” (_De Legibus_ 3.8).
Even Seneca (4 B.C.?-A.D. 65), whose moral philosophy was on a higher plane than that of his culture, said, “We drown children who at birth are weakly and abnormal” (_De Ira_ 1.15).
So common was infanticide that Polybius (205?-118 B.C.) blamed the population decline of ancient Greece on it (_Histories_ 6).
Large families were rare in Greco-Roman society in part because of infanticide.^3
Infant girls were especially vulnerable.
For instance, in ancient Greece it was rare for even a wealthy family to raise more than one daughter.
An inscription at Delphi reveals that one second-century sample of six hundred families had only one percent who raised two daughters.^4
Historical research shows that infanticide was common not only in the Greco-Roman culture but in many other cultures of the world as well.
Susan Scrimshaw notes that it was common in India, China, Japan, and the Brazilian jungles as well as among the Eskimos.^5
Writing in the 1890s, James Dennis shows in his _Social Evils of the Non-Christian World_ that infanticide was also practiced in many parts of pagan Africa.
…
As with abortion (discussed below), the early Christians called the Greco-Roman practice of infanticide murder.
To them infants were creatures of God, redeemed by Christ.
Moreover, they knew of Christ’s high regard for little children, for he once said, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them” (Matthew 19:14).
Resolution:
Jesus did not improve Temple Judaism by AD73 or by 130 C.E. to 140 C.E.
1. Judea (Jerusalem), Israel (Galilee), the Roman Empire (the cities of Rome and Alexandria) did not improve because of Jesus by AD45, AD 73, or by 130 C.E.
Rome was not “improved” in any measurable imperial sense by 130
This distinction is important.
There is no evidence that by 130 CE Christianity had:
- reduced Roman poverty on an imperial scale;
- reduced slavery;
- reformed Roman government;
- eliminated corruption;
- improved Roman military conduct;
- improved the economy;
- changed Roman law substantially;
- ended gladiatorial games;
- ended imperial violence;
- or produced measurable improvements in Roman living standards.
Rebuttal:
Greater attention was paid to people outside the traditional patronage hierarchy.
This may be one of the more historically important developments.
Roman benefaction traditionally operated heavily through relationships between patrons, cities and social elites. Research on Roman poverty notes that the destitute were generally not the principal recipients of traditional elite benefaction.
Christian communities developed a different model in which the poor themselves were an important object of communal assistance.
Because of Jesus communities were created that crossed normal Roman social boundaries.
Christian communities could include:
men and women, different ages, and different social ranks
That is precisely the demographic pattern Pliny encountered around 112.
The movement therefore offered a social identity that was not based exclusively upon citizenship, ethnicity, wealth, occupation or family status.
Resolution:
By 130 CE, Jesus had arguably been more successful at transforming the religious identity of people outside Judea than at improving Judea itself.
The movement that originated in Galilee/Judea was becoming increasingly Gentile, Mediterranean and translocal. Justin Martyr’s writings are a good snapshot of this transition: he presents Christianity as the fulfillment of Israel’s Scriptures while simultaneously arguing that Gentiles can constitute God’s people without becoming Jews.
1) Jesus did NOT prevent the Jewish Civil War and the Jewish Revolt against Rome which brought down Temple Judaism.
2) Jesus did NOT help Galileens win the Battle of Galilee when Rome arrived to end the Galilean Revolt against Rome.
3) Jesus did not help Rome by stopping the Vesuvius Volcano that destroyed Pompeii and Herculaneum if God gave the vineyard to Gentiles.
4) Jesus did not help his brother James from being murdered.
5) Jesus did not make the Roman procurators govern in a way to avoid a rebel uprising leading to the Jewish Revolt. He did not come on clouds in glory ending Roman mistreatment.
Jesus did not prevent three Jewish Revolt:
- First Jewish–Roman War (66–73 CE): Sparked by religious tensions and protests against Roman taxation, this rebellion in Judea led to the ** you do not have permission to see this link **]
- Kitos War (115–117 CE): A widespread uprising across the eastern Mediterranean diaspora—including Egypt, Cyrene, Cyprus, and Mesopotamia—fueled by ethnic clashes and opposition to Roman campaigns in the East, which was brutally suppressed by Roman legions. [** you do not have permission to see this link **]
- Bar Kokhba Revolt (132–136 CE): Led by Simon bar Kokhba, this final massive rebellion in Judea was provoked by Emperor Hadrian’s plans to build a pagan city over Jerusalem and restrictions on Jewish religious laws. The rebellion established a short-lived independent Jewish state before being crushed with devastating casualties, leading to the renaming of Judea to Syria Palaestina. [** you do not have permission to see this link **]
Your argument becomes stronger if you organize it chronologically
I’d formulate the historical test this way:
What did the expected intervention actually accomplish?
c. 30 CE — Jesus dies by Roman crucifixion.
c. 62 CE — James, brother of Jesus and leader of the Jerusalem movement, is executed.
66–67 CE — Jewish revolt against Rome; Galilee is conquered by Roman forces.
70 CE — Jerusalem falls and the Second Temple is destroyed.
73/74 CE — Masada falls, ending the major organized resistance of the First War.
79 CE — Vesuvius erupts and destroys Pompeii and Herculaneum.
115–117 CE — Kitos War; Jewish revolts erupt across portions of the eastern Roman Empire.
c. 112 CE — Pliny’s correspondence with Trajan demonstrates that Christians are now numerous enough in Bithynia to attract official Roman attention.
130 CE — Rome still controls Judea; Christianity exists as a growing religious movement but has not liberated Judea or ended Roman rule.
132–135 CE — Bar Kokhba revolt; another enormous Jewish rebellion against Rome is crushed.
That sequence produces an interesting historical conclusion:
Within the first century after Jesus’ death, the historical record shows the expansion of the Jesus movement—not the fulfillment of an observable political or military transformation of Judea.
And that distinction is especially useful for your Historical Accuracy project: the measurable historical success of Christianity was the spread of a movement, not the prevention of the disasters, wars, executions, Roman domination, or Jewish catastrophes that an imminent eschatological reading of Jesus’ message might lead one to expect.
One further point is worth investigating: whether the Gospel writers themselves were responding to the failure of Jesus’ expected intervention by rewriting the meaning and timing of the Second Coming after the destruction of the Temple. That gets directly into your “Jesus Rewritten after Rome’s Victory in Galilee” thesis.
Helen Young said
Jesus did change the way people related to and treated each other.
That everyone didn’t go along with these changes is apparent.
People are still working on it.
Perhaps Jesus is still working on it too.
There was supposed to be a separation of the wheat (those who “get it”) and the chaff/tares (those who aren’t smart enough to “get it”).
New Testament inconsistency
The kingdom in the gospels has no end but the kingdom in the book of revelation only lasts 1,000 years?
Yes—with an important distinction. The Gospels and Revelation present two different formulations of the kingdom’s duration.
In the Gospels: the kingdom is portrayed as everlasting
Several Gospel passages associate Jesus’ kingdom with no end:
- Luke 1:32–33 — Jesus will receive David’s throne and “of his kingdom there will be no end.”
- Matthew 25:31–34, 46 — the Son of Man comes in glory and the righteous inherit the kingdom; the contrast is between “eternal life” and “eternal punishment.”
- Luke 22:29–30 — Jesus speaks of his disciples sharing in his kingdom.
- Matthew 19:28 — the Son of Man sits on his glorious throne in the future regeneration.
The most explicit “no end” statement is actually Luke 1:33, although it comes from the infancy narrative rather than Jesus’ own speech.
Revelation: the thousand years has a definite endpoint
Revelation 20:1–6 introduces something quite different:
Satan is bound for 1,000 years.
During that period, those who belong to Christ reign with him. Then:
- the 1,000 years end;
- Satan is released;
- there is another rebellion;
- Satan is defeated;
- the final judgment occurs;
- death and Hades are destroyed;
- the new heaven and new earth appear (Rev. 20–21).
So the 1,000 years is not presented as the final eternal state.
That’s an important distinction:
Gospel kingdom
→ eternal kingdom / kingdom without end
Revelation 20
→ 1,000-year reign
→ Satan released
→ final judgment
→ new heaven and new earth
→ eternal state
Therefore, it would be inaccurate to say simply “Revelation says Christ’s kingdom lasts only 1,000 years.” Revelation’s 1,000 years is an intermediate reign, followed by the eternal order of Revelation 21–22.
But your observation identifies a real chronological tension
If we’re examining the texts historically rather than harmonizing them automatically, there is something interesting here.
The Synoptic eschatological expectation generally has Jesus announcing God’s kingdom as imminent:
“The kingdom of God has come near.” — Mark 1:15
And the Son of Man is expected to come in glory and judgment (Mark 13; Matthew 24–25).
Yet Revelation, probably written considerably later, gives us a more elaborate sequence of eschatological stages:
Christ’s victory → 1,000-year reign → Satan’s release → final rebellion → final judgment → eternal kingdom/new creation.
So Revelation doesn’t simply repeat the Gospel eschatology. It develops it into a much more elaborate chronology.
That is potentially very relevant to your historical-accuracy argument, because it raises a question:
If Jesus’ original proclamation concerned the imminent arrival of God’s kingdom, how and when did that proclamation become the later Christian chronological scheme of an intermediate millennium followed by a final eternal kingdom?
That is a genuine historical-development question rather than something that has to be resolved by assuming all the texts mean exactly the same thing.
“If Jesus’ original proclamation concerned the imminent arrival of God’s kingdom, how and when did that proclamation become the later Christian chronological scheme of an intermediate millennium followed by a final eternal kingdom?”
I don’t know everything about this. I see the kingdom as continually inbreaking since Jesus’s day. Am I right about this? Idk. It’s what I see in what one could call the moral development of humanity. Is it always working, or is it all in one straight line? Perhaps not, but perhaps we are getting somewhere.
Helen Young said
“If Jesus’ original proclamation concerned the imminent arrival of God’s kingdom, how and when did that proclamation become the later Christian chronological scheme of an intermediate millennium followed by a final eternal kingdom?”
I don’t know everything about this. I see the kingdom as continually inbreaking since Jesus’s day. Am I right about this? Idk. It’s what I see in what one could call the moral development of humanity. Is it always working, or is it all in one straight line? Perhaps not, but perhaps we are getting somewhere.
Hi Helen! I think I figured out a possible explanation for the 12k by 12 k stadia New Jerusalem thing?
It looks like Revelation may fit my syncretic literature hypothesis, like the Gospel of John seems to. ie syncretizing a pre-Islamic Arabian literary format:
Pre-Islamic Arabian poetry has 3 parts:
• Part 1 — elegy for someone no longer there.
Jesus (the 7 scrolls seem to be a will and testament thing for Jesus Malka if Malichus II, with the little lamb being the child, Rabbel.
Part 2 — gritty ordeal/trial/journey stuffs.
Jewish-Roman war and refugees, Nero issues, etc.
Part 3 hyperbolic boast.
New Jerusalem is 12,000 stadia high, new reign is 1,000 years
Epiphanius also was dismissive of Nabataean-area Gnostics for saying spirit bodies were like, miles high.
And apparently Revelation is already known to have rhyming sections when translated from koine Greek to Arabic.
I have trouble reading and getting through Revelation.
Sometimes I just agree with those people who say it shouldn’t be in the bible.
Sometimes I think that some of the things in Revelation have already happened (the black plague, for instance), and other things are yet to happen.
I really like the idea that in the end everything is going to turn out alright and be just wonderful.
I don’t like the idea that we have to go through such intense trials and tribulations until we get there.
As far as i read Revelation, the bullship only happened to the fraction that were the ‘judged’ people in Jerusalem (not meek).
It didn’t happen to the rescued Jewish people. And the much, much bigger group is those that Revelation didn’t affect at all, like gentiles or diaspora.
I choose my God concept based on what consistently delivers on bliss, comfort, safety, ease, and success
Serene said
I choose my God concept based on what consistently delivers on bliss, comfort, safety, ease, and success
I agree with that. Or at least most of it.
If something out there (& through inside myself) is giving me bliss, enlightenment, a better understanding of things, a better perception of things, balance, safety, even love, that is God. There’s more to it; there’s always more, but that is a real part of who and what God is.
Helen Young said
Serene said
I choose my God concept based on what consistently delivers on bliss, comfort, safety, ease, and success
I agree with that. Or at least most of it.
If something out there (& through inside myself) is giving me bliss, enlightenment, a better understanding of things, a better perception of things, balance, safety, even love, that is God. There’s more to it; there’s always more, but that is a real part of who and what God is.
But ladies doesn’t this almost guarantee that your God will simply be a projection of your personal hopes and desires? No offense intended but I immediately think of the quote from Richard Feynman:
The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool.
And another whose source I cannot recall:
All authentic revelations contain a component of terror. The first words from the mouth of the angels is always “Fear not!”
Stephen said
Helen Young said
Serene said
I choose my God concept based on what consistently delivers on bliss, comfort, safety, ease, and success
I agree with that. Or at least most of it.
If something out there (& through inside myself) is giving me bliss, enlightenment, a better understanding of things, a better perception of things, balance, safety, even love, that is God. There’s more to it; there’s always more, but that is a real part of who and what God is.
But ladies doesn’t this almost guarantee that your God will simply be a projection of your personal hopes and desires?
Nope. No, No, No, No. Nope.
No offense intended but I immediately think of the quote from Richard Feynman:
The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool.
And another whose source I cannot recall:
All authentic revelations contain a component of terror. The first words from the mouth of the angels is always “Fear not!”
There is nothing to be afraid of in God. Maybe that’s one of the stunts they pull to prevent people from getting into and going into God. To keep people down and out, and to keep them giving money to the church or something. To quote JS Spong, “Fear is a great way of controlling people”.
If you haven’t experienced it, if you haven’t experienced a kind of oneness with God or JC, I don’t think one person can explain it to another.
A person can’t explain what drinking lemonade is like; people just have to experience it. If people can’t explain that, how can they explain experiencing God’s Spirit? Maybe people can give other people hints, but that’s about it.
Is there any reason why the experience of God can’t or wouldn’t be very positive? Doesn’t it even make sense that it is? There’s more to it, but doesn’t it make sense that this is really the way it is?
Helen Young: “A person cannot explain what drinking lemonade is like;”
Would you believe AI can! When reading what you wrote, I found myself wondering if that could be true.
- The First Taste: A sharp, bright sourness hits the tongue immediately, making your mouth water.
- The Sweet Balance: A smooth wave of sugar quickly follows, softening the tart edge of the citrus.
- The Texture and Temperature: Ice-cold liquid washes over the throat, offering an instant, crisp chill on a hot day.
- The Aftertaste: A clean, zesty citrus tang lingers, leaving the palate refreshed and revitalized.
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