MESSIANIC EXPECTATIONS, FIRST CENTURY CE
In few cases in world history have humans forgotten the
message for worshipping the creeds like they have in the case of the man known
to most, in English anyway, as Jesus Christ.
That should really be “Jesus the Christ” because the latter is not a
surname, but a title. It is the Greek
version of the Hebrew word meaning “The Anointed”, whose English rendering is
usually “Messiah”.
What the creeds leave out completely, in their Hellenistic
obsessions with doctrine and dogma and defining the undefinable which had
little to do with the actually message and more to do with internal bickering,
is the most important point of the Gospels, at least the Synoptics. The undeniable goal of the writers of the
gospels, and their later editors who interpolated and redacted and reorganized
many parts of the originals, and their primary purpose, was to present Isho the
Nazorean as the long-awaited Messiah ben David.
Before we get to that, however, we need a little lesson on
what exactly a Messiah is, or at least was expected to be in Isho’s time.
The Four Craftsmen (or Four Carpenters)
In the first century CE, the Jews, most of them anyway, were
waiting for not just one Messiah, but four, or at least four eschatological
figures who’s coming would herald wars and rumors of wars ending in the
establishment of the kingdom of heaven on Earth.
This scheme of four figures was based upon the passage about
the Four Craftsmen in the first chapter of Zechariah, verses 18-21. According to the Talmud, since the time of
Simon the Just (high priest Simon I in the late third century BCE), these four have
been identified as Elijah the Prophet returned, the Messiah ben Joseph, the
Messiah ben David, and the Righteous Priest.
Interestingly, the Hebrew word kharash translated as “craftman” in this passage specifically
refers to a “craftsman of wood”, or a carpenter, corresponding to the Greek
word tekton used in that place in the
Septuagint, as well as in the New Testament to describe the secular occupation
of Isho the Nazorean.
Some of the pseudepigraphal and apocalyptic Jewish literature
which flourished in the last two centuries BCE and the first century CE supply
different, though related, designations for three of the four figures, all but
Elijah.
The Prophet Like Moses, the Son of Man, are other
eschatological figures that will be discussed later.
Elijah the Prophet
Elijah, the First Craftsmen to appear according to tradition,
is to be the forerunner of the whole cycle of events. Jewish mysticism holds that after being assumed
into heaven, Elijah became the archangel Sandalphon, anchoring the root of the
Tree of Life opposite his likewise-assumed predecessor Enoch at the top as the
archangel Metatron.
The two main passages of the Tanakh used to indicate Eljah’s
position as one of the Four Craftsman and as the Forerunner is Malachi 3:1-3 and 4:5-6.
Pesach (Passover) and Matzot (Unleavened Bread) are the time
of Elijah. At the seder on Pesach
(Passover), Jews set out a cup of wine in hopeful anticipation of his arrival.
Messiah ben Joseph
Also known as the Suffering Messiah and the Messiah ben
Ephraim, the Messiah ben Joseph is the Second Craftsman. His function is to prepare the way for the
one who is to come after him by waging war against the Messiah ben David’s potential
enemies. Tradition holds that it will be
he who leads the forces of righteousness against the armies of the “destructive
one” in the war of Gog and Magog depicted in Ezekial 38-39, dying in the final battle.
Rabbinic tradition names the leader of the armies of Gog and
Magog as “Armilus”, whom the Gentile world worships as God and Messiah. In Ezekial,
Gog is the leader of Magog, but by the first century CE popular usage had
turned Gog of Magog into Gog and Magog among Jews as well as members
of the nascent Christian movement.
Most textual scholars have determined that passage on Gog
and Magog is an interpolation from the second century BCE, reflecting the
concerns and political situation of that time.
In Revelation, the war against
Gog and Magog takes place after the thousand-year reign following the Battle of
Armageddon against the Beast (Antichrist), False Prophet, and the Devil at the
end of the seven-year Tribulation.
Two of the chief passages of the Tanakh with which the
Messiah ben Joseph is identified are the Mourning for the “Pierced One” (Zechariah 12:10-14) and the Songs of the
Suffering Servant (Isaiah 42:1-4,
49:1-6, 50:4-9, 52:13-53:12, and 61:1-3).
Others are Psalms 22 and 44
and the vision of the Seventy Weeks in the ninth chapter of Daniel.
Shavuot (Feast of Weeks), or Pentecost, is the time of the
Messiah ben Joseph.
Messiah ben David
The key messianic figure of most Jewish eschatology in the
first century CE was the Messiah ben David, or the King Messiah, referred to in
some eschatological literature as the Messiah ben Judah. The Messiah ben David is the Third Craftsman.
Several passages in the Tanakh relate to the Messiah ben
David in Jewish tradition. The most
important are Psalms 2 and 110, but Psalms 45, 72, 89, and 132 are also associated
with the Messiah ben David, if not quite as directly.
Among the most relative of many passages in Isaiah include 2:2-4 (about the future “house
of God”); 7:10-16 (the Immanuel verses); 9:1-7 (about the righteous coming
king); and all of chapter 11 (about the future peaceful kingdom).
The relevant passages in Jeremiah
include 23:5-8 (about the righteous branch, or descendant, of David); 31:31-34
(foretelling the new covenant); 33:14-18 (combined prophecy of the righteous
branch and the covenant with David).
The coronation of the Branch, the scion of the House of
David, is foretold in Zechariah
6:9-15.
The vision of the two sticks in Ezekial 37:22-28 prophesies that Joseph and Judah will be reunited
as one under the Messiah ben David. This
follows immediately after the vision of the valley of dry bones.
The Messiah ben David is represented in the vision of the
menorah and two olive trees in the fourth chapter of Zechariah as one of the latter.
Sukkot (Feast of Booths) has been identified with the coming
of the Messiah ben David since at least the first century BCE. This is based on the passage in Zechariah 14:16-21 which follows the
description of the “Day of the Lord”, the final battle when “all nations” come
against Jerusalem and the people of Judah, and Yahuweh takes his stand on the
Mount of Olives. Then the survivors of
the nations come to Jerusalem to keep the feast of Sukkot.
The hymn at the beginning of the fourth chapter of Micah (and the near identical passage at
the beginning of the second chapter of Isaiah)
is another passage associated with the expected kingdom of the Messiah ben
David. This passage contains the famous line,
“And they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into
pruning hooks; nations shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall
they learn war anymore”.
The Righteous Priest
In the interpretation contemporary with the time of Isho the
Nazorean, the Righteous Priest, elsewhere called the Messiah ben Levi and the
Priestly Messiah, was expected alongside the Messiah ben David but subordinate
in authority to him. The Righteous Priest is the Fourth Craftsman.
The chief passages identified with the future Righteous Priest
are 1 Samuel 2:35, Zechariah 4:11-14 (the two anointed
ones), and Zechariah 6:12-14 (where
he becomes high priest).
The fourth chapter of Zechariah
tells of the rebuilding of the temple of Yahuweh, represented by a lampstand
with seven branches (a menorah). On
either side of the menorah are two olive trees which represent two “anointed
ones”: the Messiah ben David and the Righteous Priest who will oversee the
temple. The menorah itself represents
the rebuilt temple of Yahuweh in which the Righteous Priest will lead the
worship of Yahuweh.
In the original prophecy the olive trees stood for
Zerubbabel the governor of the Iranian province of Yehud (Judah) and Joshua
(Iesous in Greek, or Jesus), but had been repurposed by the second century BCE to
indicate the Messiah ben David and the Righteous Priest. The author of the Revelation of John the Divine later repurposed the motif yet again
for the “two witnesses” in the first half of his “Great Tribulation”.
The figure of the Righteous Priest was/is identified with
the mysterious Melchizedek, king of Salem and priest of El Elyon (God Most
High) whom Abraham encounters in Genesis
14:7-24. The Targum and the Talmud
further identify Melchizedek with Shem son of Noah.
Prophet like Moses
The Samaritans to this day await the Taheb, their name for
the Prophet Like Moses foretold in Deuteronomy
18:15-19. Not much was said about this
eschatological figure in the time period in which we are talking about.
Son of Man
The seventh chapter of the pseudepigraphal, apocalyptic,
predictive, retrodictive, canonical (for Christians), and deuterocanonical (for
Jews) work called Daniel introduced
the figure of the “Son of Man” as an eschatological figure. The vision of the Son of Man comes after the
vision of the Four Beasts, which represent four great empires. But here the Son of Man serves merely as a
representative figure.
In the final verses of the chapter, the author prophesies
that his Son of Man will destroy the fourth empire, which is unlike the other
three, and bring its ruler before his throne in Jerusalem for judgment. This fourth empire has always been equated
with Rome, which probably places this passage no earlier than the first century
BCE, though the previous century is possible, as the Roman Republic was the
ally who forced Antiochus IV of the Seleucid Empire to turn back from his
invasion of Ptolemaic Egypt in 168 BCE.
His stopover in Jerusalem on the return to Damascus
occasioned the alleged “abomination of desecration” in which Antiochus
supposedly erected a statue of Zeus in the Holy of Holies in the temple. In real life, Menelaus the high priest
claimed that he stole the money from the Corban, the money dedicated to the
temple, from the treasury, which would have been considered a desecration,
especially by the avaricious priests.
What actually happened was that Menelaus used the money to pay the back
debt he owed Antiochus for enthroning him over his brother Jason, whose bribe
was less “sufficient”.
In chapters 38-71 of the pseudepigraphal, apocryphal,
apocalyptic, and canonical (for the Ethiopian and Eritrean Orthodox) work known
as 1 Enoch, the Son of Man develops
into a pre-existent figure who dwells with Yahuweh. In this the figure corresponds somewhat to the
concept of the Logos as interpreted by Julius Philo Judaeaus.
Also called the Chosen One, the Righteous One, and the
Anointed One (or Messiah), in this section (called the Book of Parables or the
Similtudes). Since Messiah is one of
this figure’s titles and Yahuweh makes him king and judge of all the earth,
there can only be one Anointed One with whom to equate him: the Messiah ben
David.
In the thirteenth chapter of the deuterocanonical work 2 Esdras, the vision of the Man from the
Sea, the figure representing the motif of the Son of Man (and therefore the
Messiah ben David, though the author does not make that precise connection)
transforms into an individual concrete person, pre-existent and dwelling with
Yahuweh but now also human.
Son of God
In the Similtudes of Enoch (1 Enoch 37-71) again, we find the Chosen One first referred to as
the “Son of God”, though not in the same coequal sense of orthodox Trinitarian
doctrine. For one thing, “Son of God”
was a ceremonial titles of the Davidic kings, and may have been used by their
successors, the exilarchs (or nasis) of Babylon. And the presentation in 1 Enoch is of one who is divine but not deity. From the kingly Messiah who was a mere mortal
scion of the line of David ruling over just the restored and reunited Israel, the
journey to a divine universal savior (some might say rather “journey to the
dark side”) was now complete.
Logos
When Philo borrowed the Platonist nomenclature of the Logos
in formulating his philosophical explanation of Judaism for Gentiles, he
undoubtedly drew from Hellenistic Jewish philosophy as seen in 1 Enoch, as I mentioned above, which
ties it to the expected Chosen One. In
the mystical terminology of Rabbinic Judaism, this designation became
“Memra”. Both terms can be translated
“Word”, though they can also be used to stand for “Reason”.
Philo presents his Logos as a mediator between Heaven and
Earth, an instrument or Hand of God on one hand and an advocate for humans on
the other.
Nehushtan
The Nehushtan derives from the Torah passage named “Parashah
Chukat” (Numbers 19:1-22:1), in which
Yahuweh send fiery serpents (nachashim)
to plague the Israelites until they repent and save themselves by looking
toward a bronze serpent fashioned by Moses mounted atop a pole, upon which the
poison would vanish. The full name in
Hebrew for the Nehushtan was Nachash
Bareach.
The earliest Qabbalistic works described the Teli being that around which the stars
and everything revolve; rabbis identified this Teli with the Nachash Bareach as
well as with the Messiah, who is often called the Nachash ha-Kodesh, or “Holy
Serpent”.
Though these particular Qabbalistic works were published
centuries after the first of the Common Era, strong evidence demonstrates the
ideas were already around, perhaps through the Merkava. The Merkava is the
body of literature revolving around mystical philosophy about Elijah’s Havenly
Chariot and the beasts who pull it.
Expectations of the Essenes
The Damascus Document,
found in Old Cairo decades before the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls at
Qumran, in which fragments of it were also found, relates that the community at
Qumran, for which the name Damascus is code.
This colony, along with the extinct sect of the Essenes, was founded 390
years after the Babylonian Exile, or in 196 BCE, and that the Teacher of
Righteousness came twenty years later, in 176 BCE.
The Essenes considered the Teacher of Righteousness to be
Moses incarnate (the prophet like Moses in Deuteronomy
18:18-19), and they also wrote of him as the Suffering Priest.
For the future, the Essenes did not look for Elijah, but
they did look for a priestly Messiah ben Aaron (Deuteronomy 33:8-11) and a kingly Messiah ben Israel (Numbers 24:15-17). In their scheme, the Messiah ben Aaron would
take precedence over his more secular counterpart.
Expectations of the Samaritans
The only eschatological figure for whom the Samaritans of
the first century CE looked was the Prophet like Moses, whose cult never gained
much traction among mainstream Jews, at least not in the first century CE. However, that is till this day the sole future
savior looked for by the Samaritans. They
refer to this figure as the Taheb.
Isho as Messiah
Elijah is the
only Jewish eschatological figure with which Isho is never identified in any
work of the New Testament, that role early on having been assigned to John the
Baptist.
Isho as the Messiah ben Joseph
Isho is indirectly identified with the Messiah ben Joseph in
the story of Philip and Simeon the Ethiopian eunuch in Acts of the Apostles 8:26-40.
Here, Simeon is in his chariot reading about the Suffering Servant and
Philip explicitly identifies Isho (Jesus) with that figure. In fact, all four gospels, 2 Corinthians, 1 Peter, Romans, Hebrews, and Galatians quote the Servant passages, particularly the fourth, in
reference to Isho the Nazorean in some way.
The cry of Isho from the cross in Matthew and Mark,
“My God, my God, why have you forsaken
me?”, likewise identifies Isho with the Messiah ben Joseph, along with other
references to Psalm 22. The passages in which the writers of the
gospels show Isho predicting his own suffering and death also point to this
Messiah rather the Messiah ben David.
Abraham Abulfia, one of the two founders of Ecstatic
Qabbalah who lived in thirteenth century Spain before fleeing to Messina,
Sicily, then Malta, accepted Yeshua ben Yosef (Isho, or Jesus) as the Messiah
ben Joseph. Abulfia identified himself
as both Messiah ben David and as Melchizedek, the eschatological figure of the
Righteous Priest.
As a side note, the other founder of Ecstatic Qabbalah, was
Isaac ben Samuel, originally of Spain and later of Acre in the Levant. He is also noted for stating that the
universe was, as of his own time, 15,340,500,000 years old, seven centuries
before any scientist posited anything close (it’s actually 13,800,000,000 years
old).
Isho as the Messiah ben David
This being the main focus and central point of the gospels
collectively, these points will be discussed elsewhere.
Isho as the Righteous Priest
The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews explicitly
identifies Isho the Nazorean with how many interpreted the Righteous Priest in
verses 5:10 and 6:20, and in the entirety of chapter 7. However, the exact wording he uses, “high
priest after the order of Melchizedek” ties the term to the definition of the
Messiah as priest-king in Psalm 110.
In Peter’s speech at Solomon’s Portico after he has healed a
lame beggar in Acts 3:11-26, the
author portrays Peter referring to Isho as the prophet foretold by Moses (in Deuteronomy) who would be like him.
In the speech of Stephen the protomartyr before the council
of the high priest in Acts 7, the
lead character of the periscope refers to Isho as the Son of Man and as the
Righteous One, both titles straight out of 1
Enoch.
Isho as the Son of Man
The title Son of Man as used in 1 Enoch is overwhelmingly the favored title of Isho the Nazorean in
the gospels, coming in at being used to refer to him eighty-seven times to the
seventeen uses of “Son of David” and the thirty-two uses of “Son of God”.
Clearly, 1 Enoch
had a huge influence over the writers of the gospels, both the original authors
and their editors, most so than indicated by its rejection from the canon,
although one could make the case that is has indirect canonicity through the
statistic just cited. In addition, the
work is quoted in the Epistle of Jude
and the Epistle to the Hebrews,
influenced the secondary and tertiary stages of the development of Christian
soteriology, and was cited by the Church
Fathers Tertullian, Origen, Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Augustine of Hippo,
Justin Martyr, Athenagoras, and several more.
Isho as the Logos
As for Isho’s identification with the concept of the Logos,
the Second Editor of the Gospel of John clearly does so, as does the
interpolator who inserted after “There are three that testify:” in 1 John 5:7 this: “There are three that testify in heaven, the
Father, the Word (Logos), and the Holy Spirit, and these three are one. And there are three that testify on earth:”.
Isho as the Nehushtan
The editor/contributor
of the Gospel of John who wrote the third chapter lines “And just as
Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted
up; so that whoever believes will in him may have eternal life” (John
3:14-15) explicitly identifies Isho with the Nehushtan, and also bears witness that this concept of the Messiah
existed then.
Isho as Chrestus
Literally meaning “good one”, “good servant”, or “useful
implement”, Chestus in Latin, or
Chrestos in Greek, was a common name among Gentiles that could simply mean
“good”. It is used this way seven times
in the New Testament.
In Greek, the word frequently followed the name of a deity
as an epithet, as in Osiris Chreistos, Helios Christos, or Mithras
Chrestos. It was also used on tombs of
dead humans.
Because of its similarity in spelling, this word was often
confused, even by devout and in some cases quite knowledgeable believers, with
Christos, the Greek translation of Messiah, for which there was no equivalent
in Latin, unlike Chrestos-Chrestus.
Also, many who did know the difference still used the two words
interchangeably.
In Book 2 of his Stromata,
Clement of Alexandria wrote “All who believe in Chrestos (a
good man) both are, and are called, Chrestianoi, that
is, good men (Chrestoi).”
In the famous acrostic in the Sibylline Oracles of which the initials spell Icthus, or “fish”,
the title is spelled “Chreistos” as in Iesous
Chreistos Theoi Uios Soter Stauros (“Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior,
Cross”). Here, Chreistos could correctly
be translated either way.
Justin Martyr also referred to himself as a Chrestianos, rather than a Christianos.
This Codex Sinaiticus, one of the earliest almost complete
collections of the books of the New Testament, sheds some light on Tacitus’ use
of “Chestianoi” rather than the more modern “Christianoi”. There are three families of ancient
manuscripts of the New Testament which scholars have classified by their
text-type which also share certain phrases and passages not found in later
texts, and they are missing some too, such as the Pericope Adulterae (story of the Adulterous Woman). These three families of manuscripts have been
designated the Alexandrian family, the Western family, and the Byzantine family.
The Codex Sinaiticus belongs to the Alexandrian family, the
one almost universally recognized as generally being least tampered with by
perpetrators of “pious fraud” to create a foundation for later ideology (this
also applies to the Western family in some cases). Where texts such as those of the Western and
Byzantine families have the word “Christianoi” in the three places in the New
Testament translated into English as “Christians” (Acts 11:26, Acts 26:28, 1 Peter 4:16), the Codex Sinaiticus has
the word “Chrestianoi”.
Some argue that these discrepancies are a sign that the
whole thing was made up. I would just
the contrary; that these discrepancies are a sign that the existence of a human
individual upon whom the religion of Christianity is a reality, and that the
nascent movement did not come from a mass production factory or a replicator.
Messianic pretenders of the Roman era
In terms of royal succession to a throne, to be a pretender
means merely that one is a claimant, without judging the validity of the
claim. For instance, Charles Stuart,
known as Bonnie Prince Charlie to his supporters, was called the Young
Pretender, and by the rules of primogeniture he certainly had a better claim to
the throne of Great Britain than the sitting monarch, George Welph (George I).
Several messianic pretenders rose up during the Roman era
of Palestine in the decades preceding
and succeeding the time of Isho the Nazorean.
The first was Hezekiah ben Garon, a general of the former
Hasmonean king Hyrcanus II, who rose against the Roman procurator Antipater, a
Jew of Idumean descent, in 47 BCE, proclaiming himself King of the Jews. His rebellion was put down by Herod the
Great, then governor of the province of Galilaea.
After the death of Herod the Great, King of the Jews, in 4
BCE, revolts broke out in Iudaea (Judea), Galilaea, Peraea, and Idumaea. Those in Peraea and Iudaea were led by messianic
pretenders: Simon, a former slave of Herod, in Peraea, a man named Anthronges in Iudaea, and Judas ben Hezekiah
(aka Judas the Galilean) in Galilaea.
The one in Idumaea was led by Herod’s cousin Achiab, who claimed the
throne through that link.
The messianic
pretender Judas the Galilean was back out in 6 CE, this time leading a revolt
against Iudaea having been made a province under direct Roman rule.
Those were the rebellions led by a messianic pretender that
took place in the decades before the time of Isho the Nazorean; several came
after.
The Samaritan Prophet led his people in a rebellion against
the prefect, Pontius Pilatus, taking his final stand atop Mount Gerizim, near
Shechem (now Nablus), in 36 CE. The
brutality with which he put down this insurrection led to Pilate being sent
back to Rome.
The revolt of the messianic pretender Theudas in Iudaea took
place in 45 CE under procurator Cupius Fadus.
In 46 CE, Jacob and
Simon, sons of Judas the Galilean, revolted against the procurator Tiberius
Julius Alexander, a Jew from Alexandria.
The uprising lasted two years.
In 58 CE, a messianic pretender known to history as the
Egyptian Prophet led a revolt that ended with a climactic battle on the Mount
of Olives outside of Jerusalem.
Led by an unnamed messianic pretender, the Sikarii came out
in 59 CE against procurator Porcius Festus, who made sure his troops slew them
to the last man.
Three of the many, often infighting, leaders of the Great
Jewish Revolt of 66-70 CE were messianic pretenders. First was Simon bar Giora, a peasant leader
from Iudaea. Second was Menachem ben
Yehuda (Judas the Galilean), leader of the Sikarii and grandson of Hezekiah ben
Garon. Third was John ben Levi of
Giscala, leader of the Galilean Zealots.
In 115, a messianic pretender named Lukuas rose up in
Cyrenaica, leading his armies in a swath of devastation that left Libya
virtually depopulated, the two Jewish sections of the five in Alexandria
burned, and inspired uprisings in Cyprus and Mesopotamia, before he was killed
an his army destroyed near Jerusalem.
The last major Jewish revolt against Rome under a messianic
pretender, Simon bar Kokhba in this case, broke out in 132, lasting until 135.
One of the two leaders of the revolt against the Roman
empire under Heraclius (614-629) during the last Roman-Sassanian war, Nehemiah
ben Hushiel, was a messianic pretender.
He was the son of the Exilarch, or Nasi, of the Jews of Babylon, and
therefore of Davidic descent.
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