I am almost certain that the answer to my question is ‘No’, as far as anyone can tell based on the surviving evidence.
Yet Christianity, which emerged out of an ancient Jewish sect, promotes the belief that the expected Jewish Messiah really was a sacrifice.
How is this gap to be explained? Is it because the historical Jesus had the innovative belief he would be a sacrifice?
Depends on your interpretation of the self-glorification hymn in the dead Sea Scrolls. I don’t think there is any other clear historical evidence of the expectation of a suffering Messiah. There is however a lot of discussion on the number one highest number of comments Bart post on Isaiah 53 as to whether some Jews would have interpreted it as applying to single individual, rather than the nation of Israel as in prior suffering, servant, passages
Omar6741 said
I am almost certain that the answer to my question is ‘No’, as far as anyone can tell based on the surviving evidence.Yet Christianity, which emerged out of an ancient Jewish sect, promotes the belief that the expected Jewish Messiah really was a sacrifice.
How is this gap to be explained? Is it because the historical Jesus had the innovative belief he would be a sacrifice?
What is probable is that Jesus’s disciples believed him to be the messiah before he was executed. After his execution, for some reason, they continued to believe this and looked in the scriptures for an explanation of why the messiah should be killed. The explanation they believed they had found was that the messiah’s execution would serve as a sacrifice for sins. This is the historic birth of christianity (pre-Pauline).
As Luke 24:25-46 “Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures. He told them thus is written the messiah will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day.” ie their minds are opened to the meaning of the scriptures after the resurrection.
brenmcg said
Omar6741 said
I am almost certain that the answer to my question is ‘No’, as far as anyone can tell based on the surviving evidence.
Yet Christianity, which emerged out of an ancient Jewish sect, promotes the belief that the expected Jewish Messiah really was a sacrifice.
How is this gap to be explained? Is it because the historical Jesus had the innovative belief he would be a sacrifice?
What is probable is that Jesus’s disciples believed him to be the messiah before he was executed. After his execution, for some reason, they continued to believe this and looked in the scriptures for an explanation of why the messiah should be killed. The explanation they believed they had found was that the messiah’s execution would serve as a sacrifice for sins. This is the historic birth of christianity (pre-Pauline).
As Luke 24:25-46 “Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures. He told them thus is written the messiah will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day.” ie their minds are opened to the meaning of the scriptures after the resurrection.
Yeah, it is interesting that in the gospels none of the disciples expected the messiah to suffer and die (e.g., Mt 16:20-22). Even on the road to Emmaus, they seem to have given up hope that he was the messiah after he was crucified– Lk 24:21, and this even after Jesus had gone around predicting his own death.
Of course, it is an open question whether such details are at all historical.
Still I do very much suspect that the birth of Christianity involved some core of his disciples (who had, per the gospels, left everything to follow him) not being able to admit they had been mistaken about him being the messiah (not just because of what it had cost them, but also out of guilt for encouraging him in the messianic claim that got him killed) and trying post factum to make sense of a suffering and dead messiah–“we didn’t make a catastrophic and tragic mistake, his death isn’t, even in part, our fault. This was God’s plan all along”. That is basically what happened with the Sabbateans.
BDEhrman
FreedomBen
evgendob
Robert
2 Guest(s)