Loading...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, well….
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Please tell me your thoughts on this, but I’ve often thought that the overturning of the moneychangers’ tables was Jesus’s attempt to activate his role of messiah as the leader of a revolt. The Maccabean Revolt would have been well known to Jesus, and possibly an inspiration; a single action causing an uprising.
At this late point in his ministry, Jesus has a large following and is convinced in his own mind that he is the messiah. He’s welcomed into Jerusalem as the messiah with palm branches and shouts of “Save us!” All that’s left is to start a revolution.
But people weren’t inspired by the overturning of the tables; they were just confused and angry. And of course, the Romans weren’t amused at all; they immediately captured him and crucified him for it. Jesus didn’t go to Jerusalem to get himself crucified, but to start a revolution and it all fell apart.
I suppose the problem is that when he overturns the tables etc he does not speak out against the Roman occupation but against the corruption of the temple; it’s a religious act, not a political one. (And he wasn’t arrested for another week; if he was actually preaching rebellion he would have been arrested on the spot)
Bart, I was thinking about Luke’s address to “Theophilus” at the beginning of Luke and Acts and thought the name might be Luke’s way of addressing the reader (as a “lover of God”) rather than a greeting to a specific individual to whom the books are written.
Is the idea that “Theophilus” may be any given reader rather than an individual given any credence in modern scholarship? Where might I be able to find a discussion of who Theophilus is believed to be?
Yes, that’s my view and one that is common, though not the majority, among critical scholars. Any good commentary on Luke will discuss this. My preferred on is Josephy Fitmyer’s.
,,,,,,well,,my thoughts drift into various “ascension ideas” in the Old Testament, including Daniel 7’s vision of the “Son of Man” ascending (or perhaps as I believe, re-ascending, as other OT themes might suggest) to the Ancient of Days to receive eternal rulership. I would not be surprised that Christians might think this imagery highlight a messianic identity defined not by military victory but by divine appointment and authority.
In my understanding, I think,,,? the resurrection for many didn’t initiate this messianic status; rather, it validated their conviction that Jesus, even during his life, saw himself in this elevated role aligned with Daniel’s vision in chapter 7…..?
The Messiah (Hebrew: מָשִׁיחַ, romanized: Māšīaḥ)
• in Judaism –a great military leader who will win battles for Israel.
• in the Hebrew Bible –a King or High Priest of Israel anointed with holy oil.
• in Second Temple eschatology –two Messiahs, the first one who suffers and the second one who comes in the clouds to vanquish evil and usher in the Messianic Age and world to come.
Dr. Bart, I hope you will clarify which Messiah Jesus believed himself to be.
None of the above. He believed he would be the leader of the people of God (Israel) when the Son of Man destroyed the forces of evil in judgment. There weren’t just three options to choose from. (And I don’t know where you can find your third one; in the Dead Sea Scrolls there is talk of two messiahs, one a priest and another apparently a political ruler; but neither of them is said to suffer)
Thank you, Bart, for transporting me back in time to witness what it was like to see Jesus.
I am glad you are so diligent in your writing about the historicity of Jesus. And you are not proselytizing folks into gnostics. Just presenting facts and logic that are provable.
Steve
Every time I hear an evangelical preacher, I walk away with many things that I want to check out. So here’s the latest. He was talking about Isaiah 53 and mentioned a few things that I’d really like to see documented.
First, he said that Isaiah 53 is the “forbidden chapter.” It can’t be read in synagogues and they’ll reach chapters 52 and 54, but skip over 53. Is there any evidence that this is true?
Second, he said that the traditional rabbinic interpretation of Isaiah 53 was that it was referring to the Messiah. But after Christianity became popular, the interpretation changed to say that the Servant was Israel, not the Messiah.
Lastly, if you could refer me to some reading where any of this is discussed in detail, I’d be grateful! Thanks for your time!
Good grief. 1. No 2. Not… A good place to start on interpretations of passages is the Harper Collins Study Bible, which will provide you with the standard scholarship in a nice compact form.
Excellent article that makes sense for sure. Recently it had been my understanding like you said that the Jews never anticipated the Messiah dying in the first place, and also expected the Messiah to free them from their oppression under Rome.
Do you think the passage in Matthew 27 where the tombs emptied and the saints entered the town upon Jesus death was alluding to the gospel writers hope of the dead resurrecting upon Jesus’s second coming?
Yes, it is usually thought that the story is Matthew’s way of saying that wiht the death of Jesus in some sense the end has begun.
Didn’t David Koresh see himself as a messianic figure, if not “a” or “the” messiah? If so, that would have been yet another spectacular and tragic failure. I kind of expected, after Waco, to see people a few years after that sad event, to be waving their fingers in the air, making the sign of the flame.
He considered himself to be a Christ, but not the same as Jesus Christ. Jesus was the sinless Christ; Koresh was the sinful one. I talk about this a bit in my book Armageddon.
Hello!
Where in the jewish texts do we see the cutting of bread? Is it in the OT? What is the origin of the cutting of bread that Jesus did when eating with his disciples?
In the Gospels Jesus doesn’t cut the bread, he breaks it. I’d assume that was the typical way of sharing a loaf when there weren’t a lot of bread knives going around. Off hand I’m not sure if there are OT passages tha tuse the same terminology.
I understand your line of reasoning, but a few questions:
How do you understand Romans 1:4 that Jesus was declared/appointed son of God by the resurrection from the dead?
Also, since Jesus was baptized by John, he would look secondary to John and not look like a messiah by anyone at that time. So how/when/why do you think people (and Jesus?) changed their views about him?
Also, do you think many of second-temple Judaism specifically expected a “messiah” (an anointed hero) or was it that most just wanted change–a coming kingdom, the day of the Lord, a big reset, regardless if that was led by a popular proclaimer (John), a priestly figure (Qumran), a band of brothers (the sons of Matthias), an uprising, or whomever/whatever? “Christ/Messiah” seldom occurs in Jewish sources. Twice in Josephus. Only once in Isaiah–regarding Cyrus! If there was an obvious national hero in the previous 200 years, it was Judas against the Greeks, but he was called Maccabee, not Messiah. How much of our talk about Jewish expectation of a messiah is anachronistic, imposing a later Christian template onto the actual Jewish mindset of the times?
Thoughts?
(I have my own thoughts on all these matters, but I enjoy reading yours.)
Within the Christian tradition, among those, obviously who believed that Jesus was the messiah, his resurrection proved it; Paul in Romans 1:3-4 is quoting a creed of some kind that actually says he *became* the messiah at that point. But that is a view of Christians looking *back* on the resurrection. Jews who don’t believe that Jesus was raised never expected that the messiah *would* be raised, so a resurrectoion would not provde someone is the messiah. For a Xn to convince a Jew that Jesus was the messiah, and to say “Because he was raised” would make little sense. That’s one reason that most Jews didn’t find it convincing (the more important reason is that they didn’t think he was raised at all…). Resurrection was simply not something thought (in Jewish circles) to be about to happen to the messiah.
I understand your line of thinking if the resurrection is viewed as an isolated individual event per se. But in Mark, Paul, and even Hebrews, the resurrection seems to be a combo string of events: resurrection, exaltation, and return. And you can’t have Jesus’ return as judge/ruler without his resurrection/exaltation. So I wonder if it’s the proclamation of his return that early on caused Jesus to be proclaimed as the Christ.
What’s also interesting to me is that Jesus isn’t the only significant Jewish martyr of those times. Many others (depending on how you define a martyr) could be listed as righteous martyrs (John the Baptist, James the Just, Jesus ben Ananias, etc) and yet none of them were claimed to be resurrected. So what made Jesus different? I suspect because they expected his return to finish business.
I also wonder, prior to the writing of the Gospels, what exactly did early Christians perceive when they mentioned or heard of the risen Jesus appearing? Because of the appearance scenes in Matthew, Luke-Acts, and John, we subconsciously think of earthly appearances. But prior to the Gospels, could resurrection appearances simply have been visions of the exalted Christ in the heavens, soon to return?
Interesting idea. I don’t now how we would figure out whether that’s the case or not. The only pre-Gospel evidence is Paul, and he seems to be talking about a bodily appearance, since in 1 Corinthians 15 he uses the glorified immortal body of Jesus as evidence of what human resurrections from the dead will entail.
(Btw, clarification: yes, in Mk 6:16; Mk 8:28, there are words that might sound like some thought maybe John the Baptist was raised from the dead. But I doubt those are good evidence that some people actually claimed John had been resurrected. More likely, this is just Mark’s way of saying that Jesus’ ministry sounded so much like John’s ministry that people could confuse the two.)
Isn’t they were called ”Christians” in Antioch because Jesus came from Nazareth and in Hebrew, Christians = “נוצרים” and Nazareth = “נצרת” which is the same root word
There isn’t a Hebrew/Aramaic word for Christians. I think you’re giving the word “Nazarenes”