the jewish messiah . how did jews understand this word ? and what did it mean to them ? there
are a lot of misunderstandings about this particularly in christian circles today
and i think we should go to a really good reliable historical
introduction to this subject supplied by Bart D. Ehrman the professor of new testament studies
he has produced this excellent work "THE NEW TESTAMENT , a historical introduction to the
early christian writings" if you're serious about the study of the new testament you've
got to get this book it's really readable and it's published by oxford university press .
so this is what professor Bart Ehrman tells us about the jewish messiah . and there are
some surprises in store i think : the term messiah comes from a jewish word that means anointed one
the exact equivalent of the greek term "christos" thus messiah and christ mean the same thing
in the hebrew bible the term is applied to the jewish king who was anointed with oil at his
inauguration ceremony as a symbolic expression of god's favor . he thus was called the lord's anointed
and see 1 samuel chapter 10 verse 1 and second psalm verse 2. the term came to
refer to a future deliver of israel only after the babylonians overthrew the nation of judea
in 587 bce and remove the jewish king from the throne . from that time on , there was no anointed one
(messiah) to rule for several generations until the hasmonean rulers starting in the mid-second
century bce . but some jews record a tradition in which god had told david (his favorite king)
that he would always have a descendant on the throne see 2nd samuel chapter 7 verses 14 to 16.
this is probably the origin of the idea that there will be a future messiah to fulfill god's promises .
a future king like david who would rule the people of god once again as a
sovereign nation in the promised land . by the time of the new testament , different jews had different
understandings of what this future ruler would be like . some expected a warrior king like david ,
others a more supernatural cosmic judge of the earth and still others such as the community that
produced the dead sea scrolls a priestly ruler who would provide the authoritative interpretations of
god's law for his people . all of these figures are designated messiah in the ancient jewish sources .
no source prior to the writing of the new testament however ,
is there any reference to a future messiah who is to suffer and die for the sins of the people . let
me just repeat this because this is so important to understand this issue of the jewish messiah
historically . in no source prior to the writing of the new testament however , is there any reference
to a future messiah who is to suffer and die for the sins of the people . this notion appears to
be a christian creation so in other words it's invented by the early church it's not there in
the torah , in the old testament , in jewish belief or practice anywhere in recorded history .
it may represent (Bart Ehrman says) a combination of the belief in a future messianic deliverer
with the notion that the one who is truly righteous suffers a notion expressed in such
biblical passages as psalms 22 and 69 and isaiah 53. and then Bart Ehrman says something that is
really important to pay attention to . surprisingly for many christian readers , the term messiah never
occurs in these passages . in other words they're not about a messiah they're about other things .
in the psalms case they're about the author himself david and isaiah 53 most historians
consider this to be about the exiled remnant of israel in babylon in the babylonian exile .
so we can see i think from this passage that there was no single understanding of
what a jewish messiah would do , who would be his role in the world . there were several different
understandings of messiahs . some expected a warrior king like david , others a supernatural cosmic
judge of the earth , others like the dead sea scrolls a priestly ruler who would rule god
through god's law . but nowhere in the jewish writings was it ever expected that the messiah
would suffer and die for the sins of the world let alone be god . i mean that's just unthinkable that
god would become a human being like that . so and the traditional passages that christians refer
to for messianic prophecies psalm 22 Isaiah 53 are actually not about a messiah at all . that's a later
reading into the text , what scholars call Eisegesis or i see jesus as some wag once put it
rather than exegesis which is where you try and understand the author's original meaning in
the text in its historical context . so i think that's a really helpful
discussion of the jewish messiah and i hope you found that beneficial . until next time