(12 votes, average: 4.67 out of 5)
Loading...Here is another post on the Hebrew Bible from the blog in 2012, written while I was working on the first edition of my Bible Introduction. It is an excerpt from my first rough draft of a discussion of an unusually important passage in the book of Isaiah.
Brief context: at this point I was discussing Second Isaiah (Isaiah 40-55), almost universally thought by scholars to be written by a different author from chapters 1-39 (themselves written by Isaiah of Jerusalem in the 8th c. BCE). Second Isaiah was writing after the destruction of Judah and Jerusalem (including the temple) in 586 BCE, while the leaders of the people and many of the elite had been taken into exile in Babylon, in what is known as the Babylonian Captivity.
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Pastors regularly cite the suffering servant passages as prophecy about Jesus. I wonder how they refute the facts that the suffering servant is never described as the messiah, his suffering is portrayed as past instead of future, and he is explicitly identified on several occasions as “Israel.”
Ah, I have a podcast on that showing up in two weeks on Misquoting Jesus podcast!
Sadly, pastors seem to misquote/misinterpret much of the Bible to fit their narrative.
They might argue for a double prophecy
Dear Bart. Re your points:
1. “The prophets of the Hebrew Bible are not predicting things that are to happen hundreds of years in advance.” This is not true. Isaiah predicts a messianic age far in the future.
2. Your contention that because Isaiah 53 was written in the past tense, it must be talking about the past, does not stand. If you were to have a mystic vision of some event in the future, say, the fall of America, you would describe it in the past tense: ‘New York was in ruins. All the cities were destroyed etc
3. You say Isaiah 53 is not about the Messiah citing that the term Messiah never occurs in the passage. Isaiah is the most messianic book in the Hebrew Bible, yet it only uses the term Messiah once in Isaiah 45:1 referring to Cyrus. Isaiah used the term my servant, the branch, wonderful counsellor and prince of peace for the concept of the Messiah.
Isa. 53 is not a mystic vision; it’s a statement of reassurance to a people who have suffered. Put another way: Can you point to a passage in Scripture where a future event is described in the past tense?
There is no connection between the messiah in Isa. 45 and the suffering servant in Isa. 53. Isaiah calls Cyrus the messiah because Cyrus let the Israelites return from exile (standard Persian policy regarding the peoples that the Assyrians had conquered). The details of what messiah meant changed over time, but it always meant someone who led or otherwise helped the Israelites. (See the Psalms of Solomon for a later example.)
There are numerous passages in Ezekiel that refer to future events that are described in the past tense for example the dry bones prophecy. There is the prophecy of doom against Babylon in Isaiah 21:9. There is the whole book of Revelation. You say Isaiah 53 is not a Mystic vision, but you give no evidence to support that assertion.. The fact that Cyrus had nothing to do with the suffering servant is the point I was making!
Ezekiel was speaking to the Israelites in exile, describing a vision that God had given him, so of course he used the past tense; it’s a literary device. When he explains the vision to his listeners or readers, he puts God’s words in the future tense (Ezek. 37:12-14). Similarly, Isa. 21:9 puts the quote in the past tense because when it happens, that is what the messenger will say. In any case, tense in Biblical Hebrew does not precisely correlate to tense in English. Revelation is not Scripture, but New Testament.
When a prophet claims to have had a mystic vision, he says so (Isa. 1:1, Ezek 37:1). In Isa. 53, the prophet does not claim to be reporting a vision; rather, he is using poetic and metaphorical language to describe a person (or, more likely, the people of Israel), what has happened to him in the past (despised, rejected), and what will become of him in the future (he will prosper, have children and long life). (Alter, in translating this passage, notes that “the Hebrew is crabbed and the translation conjectural.”)
It is much more likely that Isaiah’s use of the term ‘My servant’ refers to the Messiah as King and representative of the nation (as all Kings are) and the nation of Israel and the nation of Judah all at once.
There is also evidence, as we previously discussed, that Isaiah 53 may well have been a passage regarded as Messianic prior to Christianity. Although this is not indisputable evidence, paucity or absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
So, although you can rightly take lots Christian beliefs on the basis of biblical scholarship, the belief that Isaiah 53 may have been a prophecy of Jesus is not a belief you can justify taking away from Christians purely on scholarship grounds
I suppose if one reads the bible forward instead of backwards in timelines, it is much harder to see any Jesus ties. Looking backwards, those ties can be constructed fairly easily. I still tend to agree with the Jewish Study Bible take of Isaiah. In my personal reading and understanding, my imagery of Jesus derived from the NT sources clearly does NOT accurately match up with many of the servant descriptors found in Isaiah 52-53 (sold for no price? so marred was his appearance, unlike that of man? no form or beauty? no charm? That makes it that much more difficult to accept a suffering servant ==> Jesus instead of a metaphor for the nation of Israel. It seems reasonable that Jesus, and some of his disciples, likely sensed that he was paralleling Isaiah at some point after his trial and that this relationship to Isaiah 53 was noticed and kept alive in various sermons over the centuries.
Well said, Rezubler, and these passages from Is. 53 also support your point.
v. 9a: Jesus’s grave was among the wicked, his burial place with evildoers? Not according to the NT (see Mt. 27:57-60, Mk. 15:42-46, Lk. 23:50-53, and Jn. 38-41.
v. 10c: Jesus had offspring? Nothing in the NT supports that and Catholic tradition at least emphatically asserts he was a celibate.
Also, in connection with v. 9a, as a practicing Roman Catholic, I want to note that the Catechism passages that deal most directly with Jesus’ burial (para. 624-630) say nothing about his being buried among the wicked and evildoers.
I find it curious that you seem to insist on a (supposedly) implied meaning of “the servant” and disregard the explicit identification of it in multiple passages.
I’m afraid you’ve lost me. As I pointed out, the “servant” is indeed explicitly identified in three passages, each one calling him “Israel.”
I intended to respond directly to a comment above by neurotheologian, but as I’m a new member it took a bit of time for my comment to be moderated/approved. So now it’s out of order and thus the referent was unclear.
Sorry: my bad. I just can’t get to all teh comments immediately. (Usually when someone is commenting on a comment, rather than to my post, it tells me; I don’t think it did so in that case.)
Could a lot of the passion narrative come from the belief that Isaiah was predicting the suffering messiah?
Yup, a lot of details seem to be drawn from there, and other passages of the Hebrew Bible (Ps. 22:1, e.g.)
Dear Rezubier,
Yes, hindsight is a wonderful thing and in medicine, we joke about the ‘retrospect-oscope’ being a very accurate diagnostic instrument. Retrospective attribution of Isaiah 53 to Jesus clearly happened. However, there are 2 lines of evidence for a pre–Christian Jewish interpretation of Isaiah 53 as referring to the Messiah.
https://www.jewishawareness.org/the-suffering-servant-of-isaiah-a-rabbinic-antholo/
https://a.co/d/2TzVh5B
‘You will be sold for nothing, and without money, you will be redeemed’ occurs at the beginning of Isaiah 52 (Isaiah 52:3) and very specifically refers to the city of Jerusalem, rather than the servant of Yahweh.
‘Just as there were many who were appalled at him – his appearance was disfigured beyond that of any human being and his form marred beyond human likeness’ (Isaiah 52:14), was clearly referring to the same suffering servant in Isaiah 53. I think that this could easily be taken to apply to the state of Jesus after he was tortured, before being crucified. Have you seen ‘The Passion of the Christ’ film?.
‘He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him… ‘(Isaiah 53:2). The word translated charm or beauty is ‘Hadar’, often taken to mean majesty, honour, or glory certainly applies, to Jesus, in the sense that he didn’t come as a messianic king in robes, but as a humble Messiah, “riding on a donkey”.
I think that Isaiah 53 probably did indeed apply to Israel and Judah, but also, bearing in mind this very messianic prophecy book Isaiah, I think it also applied even more specifically to the Messiah, as the vicarious representative of the nation. The analogy of a man becomes so precise and specific, particularly when one gets to verse 3-7. ”He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain. Like one from whom people hide their faces, he was despised, and we held him in low esteem (as indeed did the Jewish nation, echoing Jesus’ use of the quote ‘a prophet is not without honour except in his own country, among his own people’)….. yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him and afflicted. He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth…’
Thank you for the clear response. Yes, the Isaiah passages, with their flowing between territorial, historical, futuristic and humanistic references allow for creative ways to manage all the imagery. The nation-personification mode of writing can be found throughout the Hebrew Bible (Ezekiel, Jeremiah, Leviticus, etc.) It is quite a challenge to stay in alignment with the writer’s focus at times (especially with the lack of punctuation in Hebrew/Aramaic.) The emotions surrounding the relatively recent destruction of the 1st Temple are clearly felt along with a vision of hope. Jesus certainly aligns with Isaiah’s vision in many significant ways.
There are numerous things in 52 and 53 that don’t apply to the idea of Jesus crucifixion as an atonement. For example, in the resurrection appearances of Jesus, he is not disfigured beyond recognition (contrary to 52:14). Contrary to 53:3, according to the gospel accounts and the book of Acts, before his crucifixion Jesus was hugely popular with masses of people coming to him from as far away as Syria and, after his resurrection, thousands of people immediately became followers around the day of Pentecost. So, in no way was Jesus despised or rejected by humanity. Contrary to 53:3-4, Jesus didn’t go through life carrying any infirmities nor did he carry anyone’s diseases during his ministry (even on his way to Golgotha). Contrary to 53:7, the gospels say Jesus did open his mouth and speak during his trial, on his way to Golgotha, and during his execution. Similar problems like these appear in the other alleged prophecies about Jesus.
If Israel understands etself as God’s suffering servant, why wouldn’t/couldn’t they be okay with the Messiah being a suffering servant as well?
I’m not saying teh would not have been OK with it or not OK with it. I’m saying they didn’t have the idea of it.
We do not know that for certain and I have linked to 2 lines of evidence that suggest pre-Christian interpretations of the passage as messianic
Craig Evans, a major evangelical scholar and expert on the suffering servant, writes: “there was no pre-Christian understanding of [Isaiah’s] Servant as Messiah, at least nothing has yet come to light to indicate this.” Craig Evans, “Isaiah 53 in the Letters of Peter, Paul, Hebrews, and John” pg 149. In The Gospel According to Isaiah 53: Encountering the Suffering Servant in Jewish and Christian Theology.
Craig, quoting an authoritative evangelical scholar’s opinion (argumentum ad verecundiam), does not constitute an argument that carries any logical weight. Why don’t you read the 2 linked sources for 2 lines of evidence for a pre–Christian Jewish interpretation of Isaiah 53 as referring to the Messiah and then get back to me with a substantial argument!
https://www.jewishawareness.org/the-suffering-servant-of-isaiah-a-rabbinic-antholo/
https://a.co/d/2TzVh5B
Actually, it carried more weight than your first response, since you didn’t provide a link then. However:
Targum Jonathan: Even by Moshe Gold’s argument, Jonathan as a student of Hillel the Elder is dated to mid-first century CE. But there is another problem – the earliest texts we have are medieval, and there are textual variants.In the text of the targum (which, by the way, is an interpretation, not a pure translation) that I found on Sefaria.org, the only reference to a messiah is יֶחֱזוּן בְּמַלְכוּת מְשִׁיחֵיהוֹן – “that they (the remnant of Israel) might see the kingdom of the messiah.” This does not specifically call the servant the messiah and in any case is not pre-Christian; it was around the time of Jesus at the earliest.
As for the other citations: the mishnah cannot be precisely dated, but since all codifications are 200 CE or later, it cannot be called pre-Christian. The gemara is definitely post-Christian. The Zohar is often claimed to be by Bar Yochai (who is second century CE anyway), but is known by scholars to be from twelfth century Spain (Moses de Leon), given the late style of its Aramaic.
I’ll stick with Evans.
Interesting topic. So the consensus here is that Isaiah is prophesying about a Messiah and also that the ‘suffering servant’ is Judah? I certainly used to believe this passage was strictly about Jesus but not anymore. As with many Christian tenants, if you dig a little deeper, even modestly, you’ll find them wanting. This passage looks more like a lamentation than anything else.
What would be the purpose of this author describing a hideous event (crucifixion, which had not been invented yet) 800 years hence as an encouragement to a dispossessed people?
As in the case of Isaiah and King Ahaz, the purpose of prophecy was to address the urgency of the ‘here and now’. I doubt Ahaz, in his distress, would be comforted by a prophecy of a Messiah 800 years in the future who would die for their sins.
The Jews certainly do not believe that Isaiah or any prophet prophesied about Jesus anywhere in the OT.
No, the scholarly consensus is that hs is not prophecying about a messiah but is describing the suffering of the Judeans during the Babylongian exile and their utlimate vindicatoin. And these servant songs were written about 150 years after the descriptoin of Isaiah and Ahaz (written by a different author) in Isaish 6-9.
Despite the textural errors, the scribal insertions & deletions, the author biases, the mythologisations, the deification, the exaggerations, the harmonisations, the Pauline atoning theologiisations and anything else in the biblical narratives that may add to or take away from the historical truth, nevertheless the person of Jesus of Nazareth, shines through as a humble, suffering, loving, servant of YHWH, perfectly encapsulated by the predictive words of Isaiah 52 – 53. Even in the words of John’s gospel, for which we have to accept a lot of retrospective interpolation, he was lifted up in his weakness and suffering to the point of such unbearable agony and humiliation that we turn our faces from, like the serpent on the pole that Moses lifted up in the wilderness, and has brought to all humanity since he lived, the very model of how to bear the sufferings of human life and how to serve the father of all, the consciousness in which the universe was formed. So in one way, he does bear the transgressions and the sufferings of all and sets the greatest example of all.
We often try so hard to see Jesus in the Torah that we use circular reasoning and confirmation bias to fit a narrative. Just as we did with Isaiah 7:14 and the book of Daniel. This causes us to read between the lines with a great deal of inference. So the Christian analysis is heavily opinionated at best. Right or wrong, what difference does it make? Perhaps we should read the Hebrew Bible through the lens of Judaism.
The use of Isaiah 52-55 as a basis for a messianic prophecy of Jesus seems much like the use of Isa. 7 to prove Jesus was virgin born. In both cases, it seems quite a stretch. Regarding the former I find it significant that if it were referring to Jesus there likely would have been a mention of his resurrection, ascension and coming again as that seems to be the most important concept of the Jews’ Messiah, that is if they considered him to be that type of Messiah. If not, then what else was this Messiah supposed to accomplish? Is not the answer found in the prophecy of Zachariah recounted in Luke 1:67-80? In other words, Jesus was to be one who came only for the lost sheep of the house of Israel to save, redeem, liberate and deliver them from those hated them at a time they were living in their own promised land then flowing with milk, honey and Romans. It was the Romans they needed to be delivered from as they both held them in bondage and hated them. Could the Messiah idea just be a myth? What say ye Bart and Neurotheologian?
I’m not sure what you mean about the idea being a “myth”? Normally a myth involves some kind of narrative (connected with the gods).
Thanks. I am referring to the Messiah figure as being a creature of the imagination just like Santa. There were Messiah claimants before and after Jesus were there not? What I am getting at is this: a Jew claiming to be the Messiah was like a fat man with a white beard claiming to be Santa Claus. In other words we are dealing with a ‘mythical, imaginary” figure. Even in Isaiah there is no Messiah mentioned. Furthermore, in Malachi we find that Elijah was the precursor to the “great and dreadful day of the Lord” as opposed to the precursor to the Messiah. I hope this helps and request you take another peek and tell me what you think. Much obliged.
I don’t think I see that. Claiming to be the messiah was like claiming to be the next president. People listening to you might think you were a bit crazy, but they wouldn’t think there was no such thing as a president. The messiah was to be the future ruler of Israel.
What does ‘waiting for moderation’ mean?
It means that they lazy schmuck who runs this blog hasn’t gotten around to approving or responding to your comment yet. The guy should be fired!! (Seriously: it’s hard for me to respond to all comments promptly; and seriously, I know it’s a problem….)
My church recently faced a decision about renovating the nursery. We had two options: a more expensive renovation of the basement or a less costly upgrade to the adjacent building. We chose the basement, guided by survey feedback from parents who emphasized wanting to stay close to their babies. Ironically, many of those same parents later questioned why we didn’t just go with the easier, cheaper option next door. The takeaway? Be cautious about putting too much weight on survey results.
If I answered my mom’s calls with the same speed and thoughtfulness you put into your replies, she’d be overjoyed—and I’d get scolded a lot less. You’re doing an incredible job. Seriously, keep it up and don’t be so hard on yourself. I’d subscribe just for the blog content—it’s that good. Your personal responses are icing on the cake. And if people want even more, that’s what your books are for.
Thanks for this post. I grew up hearing Isaiah 53 taught as a crystal-clear prophecy about Jesus, and it’s only recently that I’ve come to see how much of that was shaped by later Christian interpretation. Your work has helped me look at these texts with fresh eyes.
My brother and I co-host a podcast called Exodus Brothers, where we talk about faith, doubt, and the experience of growing up in evangelical churches as pastor’s kids. We’d love to have you on the podcast to talk about common misconceptions around passages like this, the Gospels, and how early Christian theology developed. It’s a topic we think a lot of our listeners would really benefit from exploring with someone who brings both scholarly depth and clarity.
If you’d be open to it, I’d be happy to follow up by email or whatever’s easiest. Thanks again for all you do to make scholarship accessible.
The easiest way to contact me about a speaking / interview possibility is thru my website, http://www.bartehrman.com Thanks.
Response to Neurotheologian: 5-Point Calvinists assure me that if I misinterpret Isaiah 53, it is because God predestined me to, so infallibly that I could not possibly have adopted the “correct” interpretation. Is this the part where you pretend to seriously expect a spiritually dead unbeliever to view Calvinism as heresy, even though you will charitably assume many Calvinists are spiritually alive?
Sure, you think Calvinism is heresy, but how is that supposed to be anything that authoritatively “obligates” me to take the same view? Does god expect from spiritually dead unbelievers the same level of discernment he expects from spiritually alive Christians? I think your bible gives us unbelievers an excuse for misinterpreting Isaiah 53, and you’d rather burn to death than to admit such an ego-deflating truth.
I actually think there are about 8 times in Isaiah that the servant is described as either “Israel” or “Jacob” i.e. the same thing, both before AND after Isaiah 53…..yet we are somehow expected to switch it to the a Messiah figure for just that verse, then arbitrarily switch back?
That just seems like the NT authors trying to rationalise Jesus’s death by looking back at scripture and seeing if anything can be made to fly to me.
Neurotheologian, you can always find a fringe group of Messianic Jews who will believe the whole 66 books are 100% inerrant. They are very fringe, and they are forced to even deny facts like evolution such is there slavish devotion to that inerrancy.
Most jews and biblical scholars look at the text in Isaiah and clearly see the 9 verses before and after 53 where the servant is unambiguously called either “Israel” or “Jacob”
Again I ask you, other than it suits a narrative, why should anyone think it pertains to a Messiah and the word doesnt actually appear in the text does it?
Bart, if one who is a free-thinking seeker of the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth as I am and cannot find in Isaiah or any other book in the Old Testament one single, clear, complete, definitive prophecy of the Jews’ Messiah which is measurable in time and manner then who can deny that the Messiah figure idea grew up and existed only in the imagination just as the Santa figure did? You wrote that claiming to be the Messiah was like claiming to be the President. I cannot believe you wrote such a thing as we have statutes written about the President but you cannot show me even one stand alone Messiah prophecy and all you have are fragments like Isaiah which you even refute as being Messianic in nature. So I simply ask you to educate me by showing me where I can find in the Old Testament evidence which tells me the Messiah figure is as identifiable and tangible a personage as is the President. Can you do that? Even if there was a prophecy concerning our President or the Messiah, who says it had to come to pass?
Many people in our country are hoping for a new Abraham Lincoln figure, or a new FDR, or a new Ronald Reagan to appear to be elected as president. That doesn’t make the hope a myth.
The term messiah is indeed applied to specific “saviors of Israel” in the Old Testament. “Cyrus” is called the future “messiah” (Isaiah 45:1). He, as one might note (!) was the king of Persia (!!). But he was the one God would use to deliver Judah from its captivity in Babylon. Later thinkers who were hoping for a deliverer from their current foreign oppressor (Rome, after 63 BCE), looked for a similar warrior / king, but usually, of course, a Judean rather than a foreigner. It’s not a myth but an expectation. For a clear indication of what one group of Jews thought about that figure, read the Psalms of Solomon chapter 17 (it’s a non-canonical Jewish book from after the OT and before teh NT; you should be able to find it fairly easily online).
Thanks. According to Chetan Batra “Expectation is nothing but a Myth” but you seem to say the two are different. I submit the Santa personage is a mythical figure (a product of the human imagination) as it is based on an expectation; likewise I claim the Messiah personage is a mythical figure (a product of the religious imagination of the Jews) as it is also based on an expectation. Moreover, I argue the Messiah figure has no more basis in fact and reality than does the Santa personage. In the case of the Cinderella story there was this one glass slipper that only the foot of the real, one-and-only Cinderella would fit into to provide the way to prove she was this one-and-only person. But when we come to the Messiah we have little to go on inasmuch as the term Messiah is not even found until we come to the Book of Daniel and a good case can be made this prophecy was supposed to have been fulfilled long ago. Surely no one has the power to raise an expired (unfulfillable) prophecy from the dead. Even Malachi does not use the word Messiah.
2 Samuel chapter 7 is the earliest reference to the idea of the Messiah. King David is specifically referred to as ‘’my servant’’ multiple times. God, speaking through the prophet Nathan, promises descendants to David and an everlasting Kingdom. Isaiah 53 specifically mirrors these promises as well the suffering to be endured by David as the representative of his people Israel. This is I think one of the reasons why there is good, but not indisputable evidence (see my previous two links) that Isaiah 53 was considered to refer to Messiah before the crucifixion of Jesus. Isaiah unlike the psalms, does not use the term Messiah except once as a figure of speech applying to Cyrus (Isaiah 45:1), but Isaiah uses the concept of the Messiah arguably more than any other book in the old Testament. In other books, King David is explicitly called “my servant David” by God on multiple occasions (e.g., 2 Samuel 3:18, 7:5, 7:8; 1 Kings 11:13, 11:34; Psalm 89:3, 89:20). The King of Israel is the representative of the nation and this is why the servant song passages in Isaiah, most particularly Isaiah 53, refer to the Messiah
So are you saying there was more than one Jewish Messiah? There was only one Cinderella and only her foot would fit into the glass slipper. But we cannot find even one stand-alone Messiah prophecy which is clear, definitive, complete and measurable as to both manner and time as to its fulfillment. Even with regard to Jesus if Elijah was supposed to have come first then Jesus could not have been the Messiah inasmuch Elijah only came as far as the Mount of Transfiguration along with Moses to meet Jesus and failed to keep on coming down. John the Baptist flatly denied he was Elijah and rightly so as there is not one word in the Hebrew Bible saying Elijah would come in spirit. Furthermore, how could Jesus have been the Messiah if he made eschatological prophecies which not only failed to come to pass they also became unfulfillable nearly 2k years ago? Such expired prophecies cannot be raised from the dead just as no failed prophet would be resurrected. I submit the whole Messiah idea and figure is a figment of the Jews’ religious imagination and is a myth (mere expectation) much like the Santa idea.
“Messiah” (moshiach) originally meant “anointed” and was applied to kings, high priests on occasion, and least once to a non-Jew (Cyrus). In the late Second Temple period, the concept shifted to a powerful (or superpowerful) person sent by God to rescue the Jews from the Romans and restore the kingdom of David. There were a number of ideas in the first century CE about who and what the messiah would be; in the Qumran scrolls we find descriptions of two and possibly three messiahs – messiah of the house of Aaron, messiah of the house of David, and perhaps a prophet messiah.
During the period (ie, the life of Jesus and after) there were a number of individuals who claimed to be the messiah. In the second century, Rabbi Akiva hailed Bar kochba as the messiah. In the late Middle Ages, Sabbati Tzvi claimed to be the messiah (and may have believed it), while Jacob Frank claimed to be the messiah as a way to defraud people.
Current Orthodox thinking tends more toward a “messianic age” than a personal messiah, though many Lubavitcher Chasidism believed (and some still do) that Rebbe Schnerson was/is the messiah.
It’s complicated.
Thanks dankoh. I do appreciate your insights especially since I am a neophyte and self-taught. Being legally trained, I research and study relying on the best evidence I can find before arriving at my conclusions. What I have found is that the gospels impeach (discredit) each other because they are replete with inconsistencies, contradictions and irreconcilable differences to such an extent I concluded they were the tendentious work products of anonymous authors who were writing sua sponte (at their own volition) and not under the inspiration of some Divine Being. In other words, no Omnipotent, Supreme Being would ever leave itself “holding the bag” to answer for the impeached writings” of fallible humans. So when I was trying to figure out how a Jew (Jesus) could be transformed into being the Messiah of the Gentiles as a result of most Jews not believing he was their Messiah (“Expected One”), I was faced with finding out all I could about who this Messianic figure was and if, like Cinderella in the story of the glass slipper” there was some sort of “Messianic glass slipper” in the evidence which there isn’t. You are right, it is complicated. Much obliged.
What kirbinator5000 said
I agree with Dankoh 100% and the other expectations which we’ve hardly mentioned are the Bar Enash (son of man) in Daniel chapter 7 and a large part of the second half of 1 Enoch; the prophet like Moses, prophesied by Moses himself and the return of Elijah, clearly expected by at least some of the apocalyptic first century groups and mentioned by Mukerider in the above thread. Christians have conflated all of these expectations into the one notion of Messiah, the final King of Israel who would bring peace to the whole world and redeem Israel. But as I say, there is good but not in disputable evidence that the suffering servant of Isaiah 53, was interpreted pre-Christianity by at least some groups as a messianic prophecy. That’s all I’m arguing and I’ve argued it from Isaiah, 2 Samuel chapter 7 and the evidence from Judaism itself and the dead Sea scrolls, for which I’ve provided two links.
Neurotheologian: Thanks for your input. So are you saying the Messiah was an “expectation”? I found that Chetan Batra contended an “expectation” was a “myth”. I look at a myth as being something which exists in the imagination such as the Santa figure who is a fabricated being with no basis in fact and reality; as such, I now look at the Messiah figure as being a myth (a mythical personage which is the product of the religious imagination [hope, expectation] of the Jews). But Paul convinced the Gentiles that this imaginary figure was their Messiah as well and he was real and tangible. The way I now see it, the Messiah is as “illusive” as is the “Kingdom God” (which Samuel Reimarus contended was actually the Kingdom of the Messiah on earth with the Messiah being God’s regent) or the “Holy Spirit” (Ghost). In other words, the odds that a real, true, one-and-only Messiah would come riding on the clouds are the same as a real, true, one-and-only Santa will come riding in his sleigh pulled by a team of reindeer. Many Messiahs, many Santas. BTW, I rode a “mule” not a “muke”.
Yes, the concept of a Messiah was an expectation, a hope. It may have been a false hope, but it existed as a hope, so you can’t really call it a myth. A myth is a story about something that happened in the past, that historically did not happen and it usually serves a religious or political goal. I presume you believe that Jesus existed and you’re not a mythicist in that sense? The other questions are whether the suffering servant was a messianic expectation and if it was a messianic expectation, did Jesus fulfil that expectation? They are all different questions.