I have been talking about the early Christian understandings of Jesus as the messiah – not just the messiah, but the “crucified messiah,” a concept that would have seemed not just unusual or bizarre to most Jewish ears in the first century, but absolutely mind-boggling and self-contradictory.  I’ve been arguing that it was precisely the contradictory nature of the claim that led almost all Jews to reject the Christian claims about Jesus. Several readers have asked me whether I think Jesus understood himself to be the messiah.  Probably those who know a *little* bit about my work and my general views of things would think that my answer would be Absolutely Not.   But those who know a *lot* about my views will know that the answer is Yes Indeed. I think Jesus did consider himself the messiah.  But not the to-be-crucified-messiah.   The key to understanding Jesus’ view of himself is to recognize what he *meant* by considering himself the messiah.  I will get to that in a later post.  For now I want to give [...]