Messiah in Judaism


In Jewish eschatology, the Messiah is a savior and liberator figure who is believed to be the future redeemer of the Jews. The concept of messianism originated in Judaism, and in the Hebrew Bible a messiah is a king or High Priest of Israel traditionally anointed with holy anointing oil.
However, messiahs were not exclusively Jewish, as the Hebrew Bible refers to Cyrus the Great, an Achaemenid emperor, as a messiah for his decree to rebuild the Jerusalem Temple.
In Jewish eschatology, the Messiah is a future Jewish king from the Davidic line, who is expected to be anointed with holy anointing oil and rule the Jewish people during the Messianic Age and world to come. The Messiah is often referred to as "King Messiah".
Jewish messianism gave birth to Christianity, which started as a Second Temple period messianic Jewish religious movement.

Etymology

In Jewish eschatology, the term Messiah refers specifically to a future Jewish king from the Davidic line, who is expected to save the Jewish nation and will be anointed with holy anointing oil and rule the Jewish people during the Messianic Age. The Messiah is often referred to as King Messiah. In a generalized sense, messiah has "the connotation of a savior or redeemer who would appear at the end of days and usher in the kingdom of God, the restoration of Israel, or whatever dispensation was considered to be the ideal state of the world."
Messianism "denotes a movement, or a system of beliefs and ideas, centered on the expectation of the advent of a messiah." Orthodox views hold that the Messiah will be a blood descendent from the Davidic line through his father, and will gather the Jews back into the Land of Israel, usher in an era of peace, build the Third Temple, father a male heir, re-institute the Sanhedrin, and so on. However, the word Mashiach is rarely used in Jewish literature from the 1st century BCE to the 1st-century CE.
The Jewish tradition of the period centering on the destruction of the Second Temple alludes to two redeemers, one suffering and the second fulfilling the traditional messianic role: respectively, ben Yosef and ben David. Messiah unqualified refers to ben David.
Belief in the future advent of the Messiah was first recorded in the Talmud and later codified in halakha by Maimonides in the Mishneh Torah as one of the fundamental requisites of the Jewish faith, concerning which it has been written: "Anyone who does not believe in him, or who does not wait for his arrival, has not merely denied the other prophets, but has also denied the Torah and Moses, our Rabbi."

Origins and history

Pre-exile Jewish eschatology (8th–6th cent. BCE)

The roots of Jewish eschatology are to be found in the pre-exile prophets, including Isaiah and Jeremiah, and the exile prophets Ezekiel and Deutero-Isaiah. The main tenets of Jewish eschatology are the following, in no particular order, elaborated in the books of Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel:
Early in the Second Temple period, hopes for a better future are described in the Jewish scriptures. After the return from the Babylonian exile, the Persian king Cyrus the Great was called "messiah" in Isaiah, due to his role in the return of the Jewish exiles.
Some messianic ideas developed during the later Second Temple period, ranging from this-worldly, political expectations to apocalyptic expectations of an end time in which the dead would be resurrected, and the Kingdom of Heaven would be established on earth. The Messiah might be a kingly "Son of David," or a more heavenly "son of man", but "Messianism became increasingly eschatological, and eschatology was decisively influenced by apocalypticism", while "messianic expectations became increasingly focused on the figure of an individual savior." According to R. J. Zwi Werblowsky, "the Messiah no longer symbolized the coming of the new age, but he was somehow supposed to bring it about." The "Lord's anointed" thus became the "savior and redeemer" and the focus of more intense expectations and doctrines." Messianic ideas developed both by new interpretations of the Jewish scriptures but also by visionary revelations.

Apocalypticism

Messiah in apocalypticism
Religious views on whether Hebrew Bible passages refer to a Messiah may vary among scholars of ancient Israel, looking at their meaning in their original contexts and among rabbinical scholars. The reading of messianic attestations in passages from Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel is anachronistic because messianism developed later than these texts. According to James C. VanderKam, there are no Jewish texts before the 2nd century BCE that mention a messianic leader, though some terms point in this direction. Some terms, such as the servant songs in the Book of Isaiah, were later interpreted as such.
According to Werblowsky, the brutal regime of the Hellenistic Seleucid emperor Antiochus IV Epiphanes led to renewed messianic expectations reflected in the Book of Daniel. His rule was ended by the Maccabean Revolt, and the installment of the Hasmonean dynasty. The Maccabees ruled Judea semi-independently from the Seleucid Empire from 167–110 BCE, entirely independently from 110–63 BCE, and as a Roman client state from 63–37 BCE, when Herod the Great came to power. The belief in a messianic leader further developed with the end of the Hasmonean dynasty. According to James C. VanderKam, the apocalyptic genre shows a negative attitude towards the foreign powers which ruled Judea. Rejection of these powers was not the only cause of the development of the apocalyptic genre.
VanderKam states, "the vast majority of Second Temple texts have no reference to a messianic leader of the endtime." The Animal Apocalypse of Enoch 1:85-90 is the first to do so. After that time, only some apocalypses and some texts which are not apocalypses but do contain apocalyptic or eschatological teachings refer to a messianic leader. According to VanderKam, the lack of messianic allusions may be explained by the fact that Judea was governed for centuries by foreign powers, often without great problems or a negative stance by Jews toward these gentile powers.
In the first century BCE, in the Qumran texts, the Psalms of Solomon, and the Similitudes of Enoch, "both foreign and native rulers are castigated and hopes are placed on a Messiah who will end the present evil age of injustice. After the First Jewish–Roman War, texts like 2 Baruch and 4 Ezra reflect the despair of the time. The images and status of the messiah in the various texts are quite different, but the apocalyptic messiahs are only somewhat more exalted than the leaders portrayed in the non-apocalyptic texts.
Charleswoth notes that messianic concepts are found in the Old Testament pseudepigrapha, which include a large number of Apocalypses.
Book of Daniel
The Book of Daniel was quoted and referenced by both Jews and Christians in the 1st century CE as predicting the imminent end-time. The concepts of immortality and resurrection, with rewards for the righteous and punishment for the wicked, have roots much deeper than Daniel, but the first clear statement is found in the final chapter of that book: "Many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to everlasting shame and contempt." Without this belief, Christianity, in which the resurrection of Jesus plays a central role, may have disappeared, like the movements following other charismatic Jewish figures of the 1st century.
1 Enoch
The Book of Enoch is a Second Temple Jewish apocalyptic religious work, ascribed by tradition to Enoch, the great-grandfather of Noah. Enoch contains a prophetic exposition of the thousand-year reign of the Messiah. The older sections of the text are estimated to date from about 300 BCE, while the latest part probably to the 1st century BCE.
Enoch is the first text to contain the idea of a preexistent heavenly Messiah, called the "Son of Man". 1 Enoch, and also 4 Ezra, transform the expectation of a kingly Messiah of Daniel 7 into "an exalted, heavenly messiah whose role would be to execute judgment and to inaugurate a new age of peace and rejoicing." He is described as an angelic being, who "was chosen and hidden with God before the world was created, and will remain in His presence forevermore." He is the embodiment of justice and wisdom, seated on a throne in Heaven, who will be revealed to the world at the end of times, when he will judge all beings.
Some scholars contend that Enoch was influential in molding New Testament doctrines about the Christ, the son of man, the messianic kingdom, Christian demonology, the universal resurrection, and Christian eschatology.
Messianic titles of the Dead Sea Scrolls
VanderKam further notes that a variety of titles are used for the Messiah in the Dead Sea Scrolls:
Messianic allusions to some figures include Menahem ben Hezekiah who traditionally was born on the same day that the Second Temple was destroyed.