Prophecies of the Messiah:
Did Jesus Really Fulfill Hebrew Prophecy?
Did Jesus Really Fulfill Hebrew Prophecy?
For nearly 2,000 years most Christians have held to a spiritual concept of messianism, in which Jesus Christ came as the Messiah, a savior from sin and death supposedly predicted by Jewish prophets hundreds of years before his time. However, the Jewish messianism that preceded Christianity consisted of predominantly nationalistic, political, and conservative religious aspirations, mainly a desire to live as an independent nation in a peaceful world of material prosperity. Jewish prophets expected a political leader who would make their nation and traditional religion great. This paper defines the term "messiah" and the Jewish concept of messianism as found in their scriptures, and it explains how the messianism in the scriptures developed out of the tumultuous history of the Hebrew nation in its troubles with surrounding peoples.
First, messiah comes from the Hebrew mashiah (christos in Greek), meaning literally "anointed one." The word originally denoted a king whose reign was consecrated by a ceremonial anointing with oil (Ringgren, "Messianism" 469). The Jewish scriptures almost always use mashiah in reference to the king of Israel. Saul (I Sam. 12:3-5; 24:6-10), David (2 Sam. 19:21-22), Solomon (2 Chron. 6:42), and every subsequent king (Pss. 2:2; 18:50; 20:6; 28:8; 84:9; 89:38,51; 132:17) were all messiahs, ones anointed with oil. Other uses of the word are rare but include anointed priests (Lev. 4:3; 5:16), patriarchs (Ps. 105:15; 1 Chron. 16:22), and even Cyrus the Great of Persia (Isa. 45:1). Thus, the Hebrews had many messiahs, and belief in a special messiah-to-come did not develop until the nation faced serious political troubles.
Knowledge of Hebrew political history proves vital for understanding the development of messianism. Jewish legend and history tell of a heroic King David who ruled the united northern and southern tribes of Israel for forty years around 1000 BCE. David's son Solomon is remembered as the king who built a temple in Jerusalem for the national god, Yhwh (Yahweh, or Jehova), and who was wiser than any person who ever lived or will live. Solomon supposedly ruled in the 900's BCE, and according to tradition there came a great schism after his death: the northern tribes became the Kingdom of Israel, and the southern tribe(s) became the Kingdom of Judah. From all available evidence, the Israelite concept of monarchy appears consistent with ancient Middle Eastern monarchic ideology in general. In theory, the king had an everlasting kingdom and was the "son" of the national god, responsible for ruling in righteousness, destroying all enemies, and following the laws of the god; in turn the national god would bless the king, the land, and the people (Ringgren Messiah in OT 8-24; 2 Sam. 7:12-16; Pss. 2; 2 1; 45; 72; 110). [See Appendix A] Also fairly typical was the Hebrew religion, with its practices of animal sacrifice and temple worship. From around the tenth to the eighth century BCE when kings ruled the two separate monarchies of Israel (north) and Judah (south), the term messiah referred to the current king. But from 740 BCE on, there arose a succession of empires that dominated the political scene in the Middle East: Assyria, Egypt, Babylon, Persia, Ptolemaic Egypt, Seleucid Syria, and finally Rome. When Israel and then Judah found themselves in the midst of suffering and foreign domination, they dreamt of a future time of "political freedom, moral perfection, and earthly bliss for the people Israel in its own land, and also for the entire human race" (Klausner, 9). Many believed that a new king (messiah) from the lineage of their legendary king David would help to bring about this time of peace and prosperity; thus messianism developed as a future hope. Ultimately, any passages in Jewish scripture expressing belief in a golden-age-to-come received the title "messianic." Abba Hillel Silver, in A History of Messianic Speculation in Israel, lists three factors contributing to the spread of the messianic belief among the Jews: "the loss of independence and the attendant depravations, the will to live dominantly and triumphantly as a rehabilitated people in its national home, and the unfaltering faith in divine justice by whose eternal canons the national restoration was infallibly prescribed" (ix). A perusal of the Jewish prophecies in their historical context verifies Silver's statement and reveals the distinctively political and nationalistic characteristics of Jewish messianism.
The political troubles that first fostered messianism in Israel began in the 700's BCE with the growth of Assyrian power. In 733-2, Assyria conquered Galilee, the plain of Sharon, and Gilead, required tribute from Israel and Judah, and exchanged populations on a large scale. Later, in 721, the Assyrian King Sargon II overran Samaria (Israel) and carried prosperous Israelites (Ephraimites) into exile; Israel (the northern tribes) ceased to exist as a nation. Finally, in 701-700, King Sennacherib conquered all the fortified cities of Judah and besieged Jerusalem. While the Assyrians relocated many Jews (people of Judah), a sudden disease prevented them from destroying Jerusalem and King Hezekiah, and they withdrew from the land, but not before exacting a heavy tribute from Jerusalem. In the Jewish scriptures, the prophets Amos, Hosea, Isaiah (I), and Micah cover the period of the Assyrians and contain messianic elements.
Amos prophesies concerning the exiled people of Israel (the northern kingdom), saying that God will bring them back into their own land again, where they will rebuild the ruined cities, plant vineyards and gardens, and enjoy their agricultural produce (9:14). Furthermore, God will "restore David's fallen tent . . . and rebuild it as it used to be" and will "plant Israel in their own land, never again to be uprooted" (9:11,15). In other words, Amos hopes for a return of exiles from Assyria and a new king (messiah) from the lineage of legendary King David who will rule all Israel, not just the north, in a time of peace and material prosperity. He believes God will replant Israel in the land, never again to be uprooted. Thus, Amos contains a political, this-worldly messianism with visions of agricultural prosperity.
Outline of Amos with most pertinent scriptures quoted.
Speaking in the same period, Hosea says, "The people of Judah and the people of Israel will be reunited, and they will appoint one leader" (1:11). After God uses Assyria to punish sinful Israel, he will call his people back, restore their vineyards, make a covenant of peace with nature, abolish war and weapons, send rain to water the crops, betroth the nation to himself forever, and plant Israel in the land (2:14-23). "The Israelites will live many days without king or prince, without sacrifice or sacred stones, without ephod or idol. Afterward the Israelites will return and seek Yhwh their god and David their king" (3:4-5). Here, as in Amos, lies a hope for a new messiah-king from David's line who will reestablish the dynasty and a kingdom that will rule Israel in earthly bliss, material prosperity, and peace with nature and man. Here again one finds a political, this-worldly messianism with material prosperity.
Outline of Hosea with most pertinent scriptures quoted.
Isaiah I (chapters 1-39) teaches that after Yhwh uses Assyria to punish sinful Israel and Judah, a remnant will remain in the land (1:7-9; 4:2-6; 6:12-13; 7:20-23; 10:20-22; 37:31-35), and a small number of survivors who had been scattered by the transplantation of populations will return to the land (10:21-22; 11:11-13,16; 27:13). After the darkness and gloom of the Assyrian invasion, God will enlarge the nation and shatter the rod of oppressive Assyria, for "a child is born" to reign on David's throne, establishing the kingdom with justice, righteousness, and everlasting peace (9:1-7). This messiah-king will "stand as a banner for the peoples;" all of the exiles of Israel and the scattered Jews will return to their homeland and conquer, plunder, and subjugate their enemies--Philistia, Edom, Moab, and the Ammonites (11:10-14). Furthermore, an age of everlasting peace will ensue, in which there will be harmony in nature; even dangerous animals will no longer harm people or other animals, for God will put an end to all harm and destruction (11:6-9). "In the last days, the mountain of Yhwh's temple will be . . . chief among the mountains . . . and all nations will stream to it. . . . The law will go out from Zion, the word of Yhwh from Jerusalem. He will judge between the nations," and nations will turn their weapons into farm tools and never make war again (2:2-4). Even Egypt and Assyria will stop fighting and will worship Yhwh together with Judah and Israel (19:17-25). Thus, Isaiah envisions the same political, prosperous, this-worldly messianism as Amos and Hosea, but adds that the new messiah will conquer all the neighboring countries. While Isaiah's hopes remain very nationalistic, his prophecies contain the first glimpses of a kind of universalism added to the Jewish nationalism, as he predicts that Egypt and Assyria will come to worship Yhwh with Israel.
Isaiah probably intended his messianic prophecies for Hezekiah, who did become the anointed king (messiah) of Judah. King Hezekiah witnessed the "salvation" of Jerusalem due to the Assyrian withdrawal from the land in 701 BCE, and many hoped he would rebuild the nation in a new age of peace and prosperity. But when all the high hopes of greatness were not fulfilled in Hezekiah's time, the nation postponed fulfillment to a later time, expecting another king to make the nation great (Klausner 56, 64).
Outline of Isaiah I with most pertinent scriptures quoted.
Micah also promises that Yhwh will gather the remnant of Israel with a new king and with Yhwh as their head (2:12-13; 4:6-7). He will restore the former dominion, and the people will live peacefully and securely with their king, whose greatness will reach the ends of the earth (4:8; 5:2-5). This king will deliver the people from the Assyrians when they invade, and Israel will triumph over its enemies (5:6-9). Micah 4:1-3 matches Isaiah 2:2-4 almost word-for-word in its promise of the international greatness of the temple in Jerusalem and of the Jewish law. All war and weapons will vanish, every man will sit under his own vine and fig tree, all the nations may walk in the name of their gods, and Israel and Judah will walk in the name of Yhwh for ever and ever (4:1-5).
Outline of Micah with most pertinent scriptures quoted.
Events turned out very differently from what Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, and Micah had promised, and their wonderful messianic golden age never came to fruition. King Hezekiah of Jerusalem did survive the Assyrian assault of 701 BCE. He apparently made some religious reforms strengthening the traditional, national Judaic religion and purifying it from Assyrian influences, and he may have expanded his borders to a small extent after Assyrian withdrawal, but the age of peace with the exaltation of Jerusalem, the law, and the Hebrew king among the nations never came. All the grandiose predictions failed, as the exiled Israelites did not return and unite with Judah in a single Davidic monarchy to conquer their neighbors and establish world peace with the Jewish law going out to the whole world. In fact, those of the "Ten Lost Tribes" who went into exile "disappeared from history as a separate group," as they "were absorbed by the peoples among whom they lived" (Bamberger 20). And those Israelites who remained in the land after the Assyrian invasion later intermarried with other peoples transplanted by the Assyrians and lost their previous racial identity, becoming the Samaritans--a group despised by later orthodox Jews as racial and religious half-breeds. Nevertheless, the hopes and words of the prophets continued to influence subsequent generations, and the messianic desire for peace, prosperity, and a great king never died.
Judah was free for a time under King Hezekiah, but his son Manasseh (686-642) submitted again to Assyrian political and religious control. King Josiah (640-609) witnessed a momentary surge of Judean independence and nationalism, and he led a reactionary revival of the traditional religion, in which he attempted to rid the land of all forms of foreign religions and to put to death the priests thereof. Simultaneously with Josiah's reforms, Assyria experienced a rapid decline, and in 612 BCE, Babylonians, Medes, and Scythians all cooperated in destroying Assyria's capital Nineveh and dividing Assyria's empire. Jewish hopes must have run high at the time. But the fall of Assyria in no way ended Judah's problems, for new enemies soon replaced the old. Dashing the hopes of many, King Josiah died in 609 trying to prevent the forces of Egyptian Pharaoh Necho from aiding Assyria, and the Egyptians put a puppet-king Jehoiakim in charge of Jerusalem. For many, Josiah had been the heroic messiah they needed, but now they were hard-pressed to explain why Yhwh would allow his faithful servant to fail and perish at the hands of the enemy.
The Babylonians continued to grow in power, and when they defeated Egypt at Carchemish in 605 BCE, they took over Syria and Palestine, which included Judah. At this time, they raided Jerusalem and took some Jews as hostages. King Jehoiakim was murdered in a coup, and his son Jehoiachin became king. Then in 597 BCE, the Babylonians captured Jerusalem and took captive to Babylon many important persons, including King Jehoiachin. They made Zedekiah, a son of Josiah, regent in Jerusalem, but he rebelled against Babylon and allied with Egypt. Babylon soon retaliated, and in 586 BCE after a long siege, Jerusalem fell to Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon, who destroyed the city, blinded King Zedekiah, and took him and most of the population into captivity in Babylon. All the cities of Judah were completely destroyed, and the Jews wept in despair from their great suffering and the loss of their homeland. They believed that they must have greatly offended their god Yhwh for him to punish them so harshly. Without a king or a kingdom, without their city or temple, they longed for national restoration.
The Jews lived in Babylonian exile for forty-eight to sixty years, from 597 and 586 until 539 BCE, when Cyrus the Great of Persia captured Babylon and established the Persian Empire. Cyrus allowed the Jews to return to Jerusalem in 538 (For this, Isaiah 45:1 calls him the messiah of Yhwh). The invasion of Nebuchadnezzar, the destruction of Jerusalem, the Babylonian exile, and the subsequent return of many Jews to their homeland inspired highly emotional writings, and many Jews hoped that as they returned from exile their god Yhwh would make them a great nation again and raise up a new king-messiah from David's line to lead them in victory and righteousness. This time period saw renewed prophecies of a golden age soon to come, in which Israel (Judah), its god, and its religious law would become a light to all nations and inaugurate world peace. The writings of Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and "Second" Isaiah (chapters 40-66) cover the Babylonian captivity and the subsequent return of the Jews.
The book of Jeremiah says that Yhwh will gather the remnant of the Jews from Babylon and the Israelites from Assyria and bring them back to their land (3:14-18; 12:14; 23:3; 29:14; 30:3; 32:37; 46:27). Ephraim (Israel) will return to Samaria and will worship Yhwh in Jerusalem with Judah, and Yhwh will be the god of all the families of Israel (31:1, 4-5, 9, 15-17, 20). He will give the Jews leaders after his own heart, and the house of Judah will walk together with the house of Israel (3:14-18). Yhwh will break off the yoke of Babylon and Egypt, and strangers will no more make Israel their slave (30:8). Jerusalem and the royal palace will be rebuilt, the cities will be densely populated, and those with vines and flocks will be numerous (31:24). The people will sing and have plenty of corn, wine, oil, flocks, and herds, and they will cry no more (31:12). In this blissful time, a messiah from their own people will rule them, one from the house of David (30:9,21); he will prosper and execute justice, and in his days Judah will be saved and Israel will dwell safely (23:5-6; 33:14-16). Jerusalem will never again be destroyed (31:38-40). Yhwh will rebuild Israel and Judah as they were before, and never again will Israel fail to have a Davidic king on the throne or a Levitical priest to stand before Yhwh and offer burnt offerings and sacrifices (33:4-9,15-18). All the nations will gather to Jerusalem to worship Yhwh (3:17; 16:19-21). Jeremiah's messianism sounds basically like religious and political nationalism together with a mild utopianism.
Outline of Jeremiah with most pertinent scriptures quoted.
Ezekiel, writing during the Babylonian captivity, prophesies that Yhwh will bring his people back to their land and place over them one leader of the line of David. He foresees plentiful rain, fruit, and crops and a nation dwelling in safety, no longer victims of famine or the scorn of other nations (34:11-31; 36:8-38). The Israelite tribes will reunite with Judah as one nation with one king-messiah, never again to be divided. The people will keep the decrees and laws of Yhwh and will dwell in the land forever (37:19-22); David will be their prince forever, and the temple of Yhwh will stand among them forever (37). After a war in which Yhwh destroys all the Gentile invaders (38-39), God's glory will return to the new temple in Jerusalem where he will dwell forever, and the people and kings will never again defile his holy name (43:7). The people will restore the animal sacrifice system (40:38-9,45-6; 42:13; 43:10-11,18-27; 44:15,24); they will divide the land among the tribes, the priests, and the prince's family; and from the temple into the Dead Sea will flow a great river giving life to fish, creatures, and fruit trees that bloom all year long (45-48). Basically, Ezekiel sees the nation's future as a paradise on earth, with the political and religious system restored to its former state. Merely a political institution, messiahship in this book lacks any otherworldly or fantastic qualities, and Ezekiel cares more for the temple of Yhwh than for the institution of kingship.
Outline of Ezekiel with most pertinent scriptures quoted.
Scholars call Isaiah 40-66 "Second Isaiah" or "Deutero-Isaiah" because it belongs to post-exilic times, after Cyrus the Great of Persia in 538 BCE allowed the Jews to return to Jerusalem and rebuild their city and temple (Klausner 143-8, Bamberger 38, Gitay 427).1 These chapters call Cyrus the messiah (44:28-45:1) even though he was a foreigner, and there is no mention of any personal messiah besides Cyrus (Klausner 154-5, 163). Nevertheless, scholars consider as messianic the descriptions of the future age of peace and greatness for Yhwh, Jerusalem, the Jews, and their law, and on this subject Second Isaiah fantasizes at great length.
In Isaiah 40-66, Jerusalem lies in ruins, and the prophet writes to encourage the remnant of Jews preparing to return from Babylonian exile after the decree of Cyrus. He wants the people to take heart, because not only will Yhwh gather the exiles back to their homeland and rebuild Jerusalem, he will make it a fabulously wonderful city--one with walls of precious stones, a place of righteousness and peace with no more terror or tyranny, a place where anyone who attacks will fail (54:11-17), for although he abandoned the city for a "brief moment," says Isaiah, God swears never again to punish or to be angry at Jerusalem (54:7-15). Even foreigners will keep the covenant of Yhwh, honor the Sabbath, and bring sacrifices to the temple, which will serve as a house of prayer for all nations (56:4-7). Nations and kings will come to Jerusalem's light, and riches from all over the world will pour into the city--camels, gold, silver, bronze, iron, incense, sheep and rams for offerings in a glorious temple, fine trees from Lebanon for building the sanctuary (60:3-7,10-22; 61:4-6). Any nation refusing to serve Jerusalem will perish, and Yhwh, the light and glory of the city, will banish all violence, ruin, and destruction (60:12,18-19). All the people will be righteous and possess the land forever; even the lowest Jew will have 1,000 descendants, and aliens and foreigners will shepherd the flocks and work the fields (60:21-22; 61:5). Jerusalem will shine as the praise of the earth; never again will foreigners plunder Israel (62:7-9; 54:9). Yhwh will make the heavens and the earth brand new, a new creation with no more weeping or crying: children will no longer die as babies, all people will live to a very old age, those who die at 100 will be considered young, all will live in their own houses and eat the fruit of their own vineyards, Yhwh will bless the people and their descendants, and even animals will no longer kill or eat each other, as wolves and lambs will lie down together (65:17-25). Yhwh will bring back to Jerusalem all his scattered people, some as priests and Levites; the new heavens and earth, the Jews, and their descendants will endure before him, as all mankind comes to bow before him on every Sabbath and New Moon celebration. And as a warning, he will allow people to go out and look at the dead bodies of those who rebelled against him; worms and fire will remain in those bodies forever, loathsome to all mankind (66:19-24). Clearly Second Isaiah waxes more idealistic and imaginative than anyone before him, and he cares more for the religion and earthly prosperity of the nation than for any individual messiah-king. [See Appendix B for Second Isaiah's Servant Passages]
Outline of Isaiah II with most pertinent scriptures quoted.
As with the prophecies of the Assyrian age, the fantastic prophecies of Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Second Isaiah--the glorious restoration of the Kingdom of Israel after the Babylonian captivity--failed miserably. This paper previously explained the fate of the northern tribes, so any prophecies of a reunion of Israel and Judah never saw fulfillment. While a large portion of Judah's exiles remained in Mesopotamia, in the 530's BCE thousands of enthusiastic Jews returned to Jerusalem under the leadership of two men: Zerubbabel, a prince of the lineage of David, and Joshua, a priest of the family of Zadok. However, their homecoming met with deep disappointments: despite the prophets' predictions of prosperity, the country was impoverished, other peoples had settled on some of the choicest lands, crops failed from drought, neighboring peoples showed hostility toward them, and many Jews did not hold exclusively to the worship of Yhwh (Bamberger 40). Why did the mountains and trees not burst into song as Isaiah had promised? What would become of such prophecies as the rebuilding of Jerusalem as the pride of the earth, the new and glorious temple filled with Yhwh's glory, the expected restoration and exaltation of the Jewish kingdom, or world peace with the nations coming to Israel's god and bringing their animal sacrifices? Would Zerubbabel become the awaited messiah?
Onto this scene of disappointed hopes came two more prophets to encourage Yhwh's "chosen people."
The first, Haggai, encourages the returned exiles to rebuild the temple for Yhwh as their first priority. The new temple, he says, will surpass the old in its glory (2:6-9). Furthermore, Yhwh will soon destroy the foreign kingdoms with their kings, chariots, and horses (2:21-22), and at that time Yhwh will take Zerubbabel (grandson of King Jehoiachin of Judah and, thus, a descendent of David) to be his chosen one, his signet ring--i.e. the king-messiah (2:23, Klausner 192). The call to rebuild the temple and the purely political messianism hinted at in Haggai continue the themes of the previous prophets.
Outline of Haggai with the most pertinent verses quoted.
The second prophet, Zechariah (chapters 1-8), likewise seeks to comfort the returned exiles and strengthen their resolution to rebuild the temple. He promises that they will indeed rebuild the temple and that Yhwh will return to Jerusalem and live there with the people (1:16; 2:10-12; 8:3). The towns will overflow with prosperity (1: 17), and Jerusalem will have so many men and livestock that there will be no wall--in stead, Yhwh himself will be a wall of fire around it and the glory within it (2:4-5). Zerubbabel will complete the building of the temple (4:7-9), and he and Joshua the High Priest will be Yhwh's two messiahs (4:14), serving together in harmony (6:11-15, Klausner 195-6, Hanson 1159). Also, people will live to a ripe old age and sit in the city streets among playing children (8:4-5), and Yhwh will save his people from foreign countries and bring the rest of the exiles back to Jerusalem (8:7-8). Seeds, vines, and crops will grow in abundance, the heavens will drop their dew, and many foreigners and great nations will come to Jerusalem to seek the God of Israel, because they will hear that God is with the Jews (8:20-23; 2:11). Thus, Zechariah envisions two messiahs, a king and a priest, who merely serve Yhwh in righteousness during a time of earthly prosperity brought about by Yhwh himself. This concept of messianism, as with previous expectations, lacks any otherworldly or mysterious qualities, and the text makes it clear that Zechariah believed in an imminent fulfillment of his prophecy in the lives of those to whom he prophesied.
Outline of Zechariah with the most pertinent verses quoted.
Did the prophecies of Haggai and Zechariah come to pass? The Jews did manage, after political troubles and much outside interference, to rebuild a temple for Yhwh in Jerusalem and to re-institute the sacrifice system. However, instead of Zerubbabel becoming Yhwh's signet ring and "chosen" one (as Haggai predicted) or one of two messiahs (as Zechariah predicted), he disappeared from history, probably from execution or deportation after a revolt against Persia (Bamberger 40). Many scholars argue that he actually led a messianic movement to restore the kingdom but failed (Cook 168, Ackroyd "Zerubbabel" 1056). After Zerubbabel's removal, which upset the messianic hopes of many, Joshua the High Priest and his successors became the leaders of Palestinian Jewry. This explains the supposed amendment of the text of Zechariah 6:11-15 by the removal of Zerubbabel's name, making Joshua the High Priest the only one crowned in that chapter, after Zechariah had previously called both Joshua and Zerubbabel "two messiahs" (Klausner 195-6, Bamberger 40, Hanson 1159, Zech 4:14). Years later, "following a second uprising against Persia, the country was ravaged, many of the people were slain, and the city of Jerusalem was reduced again to ruins" (Bamberger 40, Cook 183). The most glorious visions for post-exilic Israel remained unfulfilled--those words of Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Second Isaiah calling for the reunification of Israel and Judah under a great king-messiah, the destruction of all the Gentile enemies, and the age of perfect peace and material prosperity with the exaltation of the Jews, their law, and their god among the nations. Nevertheless, the Jews would continue to hope for greatness.
Scholars debate the date and authorship of Zechariah 9-14, and without a definite historical context in which to place these chapters, this paper will cover 9-10 presently and 12-14 in Appendix C. Chapters 9-10 foresee the destruction of Damascus, Hamath, Tyre, Sidon, Ashkelon, Gaza, and Ekron, and they promise that never again will any nation overrun and oppress Israel (9:1-8, an empty promise as Jerusalem and Israel were overrun and oppressed many times afterward). A gentle, peace-loving king will enter Jerusalem riding on a donkey; he will remove the chariots, war-horses, and battle bows from Ephraim and Jerusalem and will proclaim peace to the nations, and his rule will extend to the ends of the earth (9:9-10). The prophet here presents a peaceful messiah who addresses an international audience, but this messiah remains a political one nonetheless. This prophecy, as those before it, never came to fruition but remained a hope.
Eventually, the Jews rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem under the leadership of Nehemiah in the middle 400's. Also, Ezra the scribe came up from Babylon bringing the Torah of Moses, and he led a conservative revival of nationalistic religion, enforcing observance of the Sabbath day and religious festivals, forbidding intermarriage with other ethnic groups, and reading aloud the Torah of Moses. Additionally, in the 400's BCE, the ultra-conservative and ethnocentric Jews rejected unification, intermarriage, or peaceful cooperation with the Samaritans (the mixed descendants of north-Israelite peasants from Assyrian times and other transplanted peoples), and Jews and Samaritans continued to hate each other through Roman times. Those Jews who had married gentiles were told to send away their foreign wives and children, as such intermarriages displeased Yhwh. Although the Jews still had no king-messiah, at least they had a priest-messiah, and they apparently lived in a relatively peaceful condition during much of the remainder of the Persian Empire, which lasted until the campaign of Alexander the Great in 331-330 BCE. They basically had a theocracy in which the High Priest governed the people with the assistance of a council of elders. This time of relative peace may have diminished the intensity of hopes for a new king, but even so, Judah almost certainly experienced occasional nationalistic and messianic revivals during sporadic periods of unrest and revolt within the Persian Empire (Cook 168-9, 175-6, Ackroyd 775).
After the death in 323 BCE of Alexander the Great of Macedon, who had conquered the entire Middle East, his generals carved up the short-lived Greek Empire, and Ptolemaic Egypt and Seleucid Syria dominated Judah until the middle of the second century BCE. First Egypt and then Syria controlled Palestine, but the Jews did not seem to care which power took their tax money, as long as their local religion and autonomy remained intact. However, the people eventually grew sharply divided over the issue of Hellenistic (Greek) culture. The aristocracy generally favored adopting Greek ways, while the traditional, nationalistic, and conservatively religious segments of society vehemently opposed it. In 168 BCE after a series of corrupt and bloody power struggles among various Jewish factions, King Antiochus IV of Syria put Jerusalem under martial law, outlawed Judaism, demanded worship of Greek Gods, burned copies of the Torah, and in the temple of Yhwh set up an alter to Zeus on which a priest sacrificed swine (an "abomination of desolation" to the Jews). While many Jews went along with the changes, Syrian officials persecuted those who refused to abandon their traditional religion. For traditionally pious Jews, this appeared to be the end of the world, for how could Yhwh allow such a thing to happen in Israel? At a time when all appeared hopeless for the religion of Judaism, a new apocalyptic literature (dealing with the approaching end of the world) came to the fore and included a renewed messianism which revived the old visions of grandeur for Israel and Yhwh (Bamberger 70-73).
One apocalypse that made its way into the Hebrew Bible was the Book of Daniel. Although Jews continued to produce messianic writings, many of which deserve study for their impact on history (especially Christianity), Daniel was probably the last writing accepted into the canon of Jewish scripture. To lend authority to the writing, the true author ascribed it to Daniel, a legendary, heroic Jew who lived during the Babylonian captivity (Klausner 222-227, Habicht 346, Collins 206). The "prophetic" content of Daniel refers to Antiochus IV and the Syrian persecution of Israel (including the 168 BCE "abomination of desolation" in the temple), and it predicts the death of Antiochus ("king of the north") and the ultimate triumph of Israel (Bamberger 73). After this time of intense distress, Yhwh will deliver the Jews and will resurrect many who sleep in the dust of the earth (12:1-3). Yhwh will make Israel a kingdom "which shall never be destroyed;" Israel will stand forever and will conquer all its enemies (2:44). "The sovereignty, power, and greatness of the kingdoms under the whole heaven will be handed over to the saints, the people of the Most High. His kingdom will be an everlasting kingdom, and all rulers will worship and obey him (7:27,13-14,21-22). While Daniel contained no individual messiah, shortly after its composition many Jews interpreted the dream of a "son of man" in the clouds of heaven (chapter 7) as referring to the messiah (Klausner 230, Collins 206, Mowinckel 350). In the period in which Daniel was written, the messiah and the restoration of the kingdom of Israel were associated with the end of time, the climactic culmination of world history.
Outline of Daniel with the most pertinent passages quoted.
Daniel 2: Nebuchadnezzar's Dream representing Jewish political hopes in the 160s BCE.
Daniel 7: Daniel's Dream of the Four Beasts and the Son of Man.
Well, history did not come to a sudden end and there occurred no resurrection of the dead, but the events of the reign of Antiochus IV did spur a rebellion, the Maccabean revolt, in which the Jewish people eventually established an independent Jewish kingdom under the Hasmonean dynasty (with some helpful interference from the Romans). Had Yhwh finally restored the kingdom? Yes and no. The Jews had the independent kingdom (but not a Davidic king) of which they had dreamt for so long, but those who clung to the fantasy world of Second Isaiah and the other gloriously utopian prophecies of international peace and greatness for the Jews, their law, their city, and their god, found themselves wanting more. The Hasmoneans gradually became very Hellenistic in their ways, some even persecuting those of traditional Jewish beliefs. Eventually, Rome took over Palestine; Christianity sprouted from a combination of scriptural and non-scriptural Jewish messianism perhaps mixed with some elements of mystery religions; Rome destroyed Jerusalem and banished the Jews; and the Jews of the Diaspora once again turned to messianic dreams of a beautiful future for a restored nation of Israel in its old homeland.
The study of Jewish messianism reveals a utopian and restorative hope, a hope characterized as simultaneously nationalistic, political, and religious, with tendencies toward universalism. The messianic ideas of Hebrew scripture developed out of a bloody, violent, struggle-filled history of political troubles with Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, and Romans, and an understanding of those ideas and dreams remains inextricably tied to the nation's past. While today the word messiah usually brings up images of Jesus as the savior from sin and death, the original messianism of the Jewish scriptures (and, thus, the Christian Old Testament) contains a very different, this-worldly hope: the longing of an oppressed but strong-willed people for an independent kingdom of Israel ruled by a Davidic king and living in peace, material prosperity, and international greatness.
Biblical and historical scholarship has shown that Jewish kingship ideology belonged to a larger world of ancient Middle Eastern ideas of divine kingship. Helmer Ringgren, in The Messiah in the Old Testament, explores various OT passages (esp. 2 Sam. 7:12-16 and Pss. 2, 18, 20, 21, 45, 72, 89, 110, 132) and provides numerous examples of ancient Middle Eastern texts revealing the roles of kings.2 Derived from the aforementioned OT selections, all of the following statements describe characteristics of the king of Israel as conceived in Biblical times: 1) He is the Anointed of Yhwh (i.e. messiah) and the son of Yhwh, 2) He shall maintain righteousness in the country, 3) He conveys to his people divine blessing, rain, and fertility, 4) Through divine power, he defeats all enemies, 5) He rules over the whole world, and 6) His throne is said to stand eternally (Ringgren 20). Furthermore, each of these characteristics agrees with ancient Middle Eastern kingship ideology in general.
Similarly to the OT's portrayal of the king of Israel, texts from Egypt, Babylon, and Assyria portray their kings also as sons of god(s), ruling the land in righteousness with laws given by god(s), bringing the blessings of the god(s) upon the land--rain, fertility, prosperity, happiness, and abundance. Rulers were expected to conquer all their enemies by the power of the national god(s), and they were supposed to extend their dominion to the ends of the earth. Babylonian ideas influenced Canaanite kingship, which in turn influenced Israel's monarchy. One knows from history that rulers of Egypt, of the Hellenistic kingdoms, and of the Roman Empire also claimed divine status, and even the Chinese emperor far to the east styled himself the "Son of Heaven." King Hammurabi of Babylon was chosen by the gods "to make right shine in the country" through the divine law given to him on the mountain (like the legendary Moses). Antiochus IV of Seleucid Syria was titled Theos Epiphanes, "God Manifest," and the poet Virgil wrote of the deification of Augustus Caesar in his Aeneid. These are but a few examples of a widespread phenomenon.
When reading the messianic passages in the prophets, one will notice that to a great extent they reflect elements of this ancient kingship ideology. According to Ringgren, these ideas of divine kingship provided the fertile soil from which the messianic hope sprang (21). If "such great things were expected from every new king," at least in theory and in the coronation ritual, these expectations were bound to fail "from time to time" and were probably "transferred to an ideal ruler in the future" (23). Knowing this, it is not surprising to hear Jewish prophets say of the expected king-messiah that he is a wonderful counselor, mighty god, everlasting father, and prince of peace, or that he will conquer all Israel's enemies and extend his kingdom to the end of the land, or that he will bring prosperity and everlasting peace. Such was the courtly language commonly used of kings in ancient times.
There remain other passages in Second Isaiah that most Christians now consider messianic, but which contain no explicit messianism in their original context. Christians consider especially chapter 53 as a messianic prediction, thinking Isaiah here describes the suffering Jesus who will die for people's sins. However, here the "suffering servant" most likely represents not a single man, but Israel itself (Weiss-Rosmarin 122; Klausner 161-167; Bamberger 39). One of the most important keys to understanding chapter 53 is that when it is taken in context, chapter 53 fits into a larger framework--a connected series of "servant passages" in chapters 41-53 through which there runs a common theme of Yhwh's relationship with his servant Israel. Eight times the author explicitly identifies the servant as Israel (41:8; 43:1-10; 44:1,2,21; 45:4; 48:20; 49:3), and the other passages imply the same by their use of the common theme and recurring words and phrases. The content of the servant passages fits in with the content of the rest of Second Isaiah: because of the people's sins Yhwh punishes Israel through the Babylonian captivity, but after the suffering of a righteous remnant of the nation, the nation will see its offspring and Yhwh will restore them and make them great.
The full story runs as follows. Yhwh's servant Israel is deaf, blind, plundered and looted by the Babylonians (42:19-25), but Yhwh takes Israel's hand and will lead him out of captivity to be a covenant (42:6; 49:8) and a light for the Gentiles (42:6-7; 49:6) and to bring justice to the nations by his law (42:1-4). Yhwh has ransomed and redeemed his servant Israel by giving other nations (Egypt, Cush, and Sheba) to Persia in exchange for the "blind and deaf" children of the captivity, whom he will lead back to their land (43:1-10). Israel, whom God formed in the womb (43:1; 44:2,21; 49:1-3,5), will have offspring and descendants, and God will bless them (44:1-3; 53:10-12). Not only does Yhwh want servant Israel to "restore the tribes of Jacob" and bring back the remnant from captivity, he also wants to make servant Israel a "light for the Gentiles," bringing his religion to all the earth (49:3-6). Israel was once "despised and abhorred by the nations," but soon kings and princes will honor him (49:3-7). Yhwh will keep servant Israel and make him "to be a covenant for the people, to restore the land and to reassign the desolate inheritances, to say to the captives, 'Come out,' and to those in darkness, 'Be free!'" (49:8-9). In captivity, suffering Israel was mocked, spat upon, and beaten; his beard was pulled out (50:6); his appearance was disfigured beyond that of any man; he was despised and rejected, a man of sorrows familiar with suffering, stricken by God, smitten, afflicted, pierced, and crushed because of the sins of the people (53:3-5). But the suffering of the righteous remnant in captivity served as a guilt offering (53:10); by accepting divine punishment, captive Israel enabled the people to be forgiven their past sins (40:2; 53:5,10-12), and Yhwh will now prosper Israel and his offspring (the children of the captivity) and prolong Israel's life, giving him a portion among the great and letting him divide the spoils with the strong (53:10-12). God will call Israel back to him, rebuild the cities, and make Israel great; the nations will honor Israel, and even foreigners will keep the law and bring their sacrifices to the temple of Yhwh in Jerusalem, "a house of prayer for all nations" (56:6-7).
While the literary context and the content of the servant passages point most strongly to personification of the nation as a suffering man, the pre-Christian Jewish interpreters sometimes debated whether the servant passages referred to Isaiah himself or to the whole people Israel. Early Christians, however, considered the "servant" of these passages to be Jesus, despite the fact that such would be very much out of place within Second Isaiah's message. Even Christian scholars like Mowinckel (who believes the servant passages were a later addition to the text and describe a single person) admit that these passages were not intended to be taken as messianic (Mowinckel 187, 244). Joseph Klausner states that much of Jesus' career "is intentionally portrayed in the Gospels in such a manner that the events appear to have happened in fulfillment of the words in this chapter [Isaiah 53]" (162). I agree with Klausner's observation.
The author(s?) of Isaiah 40-66 does not claim to be prophesying about the future in 53:1-9, and throughout chapter 53, all of the suffering is spoken of as occurring in the past, whereas the following are put in the future: seeing his offspring, prolonging of days, seeing the light of life, justification, receiving a portion among the great. This use of tenses reflects the situation of Israel coming out of captivity: their suffering was behind them; the nation's sins had been punished and thus paid for, even with the suffering of the innocent Jews who held fast to Yhwh's law, and they hoped for a brighter future, since their god's anger had been appeased. Just as chapter 40 opens, "Comfort, comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem and proclaim to her that her hard service has been completed, that her sin has been paid for, that she has received from Yhwh's hand double for all her sins" (40:2). As in the rest of these chapters, the author uses the past tense to describe the suffering of servant Israel, and the future to predict greatness for his nation.
Anyone who should attempt to take the servant passages and place Jesus in them would run into serious difficulties and inconsistencies. For example, Isaiah 42:2 says that the servant "will not shout or cry out or raise his voice in the streets;" yet Jesus is depicted as raising his voice (Jn 7:37 for instance). And Jesus' appearance was not said to have been "disfigured beyond that of any man" nor was his form said to have been "marred beyond human likeness" (Is 52:14), but this author was moved to use such language to describe the suffering of the innocent remnant of his people in captivity. And, as mentioned above, the servant is specifically named Israel at least eight times. The servant passages form a chain, and one passage should not be separated from the others on a whim and be said to mean something far removed from the knowledge and message of Second Isaiah as a whole.
In 42:18-22 the servant is deaf and blind, just as Israel is plundered, looted, trapped, and imprisoned (by Babylon), even though elsewhere the servant is depicted as innocent. Presumably this is because the Jews assumed that they must have done something wrong/sinful to have suffered so badly, yet they had to admit that apparently innocent people suffered to; this prophet would say that the innocent of the nation had not suffered in vain, but had born the consequences of the nation's previous sin in order to appease Yhwh's wrath and secure a brighter future. Yhwh promises to ransom Israel, his child, and tells Israel in the next chapter to lead the blind and deaf out of captivity (43:8), for "You (Israel) are my witnesses and my servant whom I have chosen" (43:10). In 44:1-5, 21-22, Yhwh again calls Jacob (Israel) his servant and promises to bless his offspring and descendants. The servant also needs to be redeemed-- "Leave Babylon, flee from the Babylonians . . . Yhwh has redeemed his servant Jacob" (48:20). In chapter 49, the servant even speaks in the first person, saying,
Hear this you distant nations, before I was born Yhwh called me. . . . He said to me 'You are my servant Israel in whom I will display my splendor.' . . . And now Yhwh says--he who formed me in the womb to be his servant to bring Jacob back to him and gather Israel to himself . . . --he says, 'It is too small a thing for you to be my servant to restore the tribes of Jacob and bring back those of Israel I have kept. I will also make you a light to the gentiles that you may bring my salvation to the ends of the earth.' This is what Yhwh says . . . to him who was despised and abhorred by the nation, to the servant of rulers: 'Kings will see you and rise up, princes will see and bow down. . . . In the time of my favor I will answer you, and in the day of salvation I will help you. I will keep you and make you to be a covenant for the people, to restore the land and to reassign its desolate inheritances, to say to the captives 'Come out' and to those in darkness 'Be free.' They will feed beside the roads and find pasture on every barren hill. . . . See, they will come from afar . . . . For Yhwh comforts his people and will have compassion on his afflicted ones. But Zion said 'Yhwh has forsaken me.' [and Yhwh replied] 'Can a mother forget the baby at her breast . . . I will not forget you. See I have engraved you on the palms of my hands; your walls are ever before me. Your sons hasten back, and those who laid you waste (the Babylonians) depart from you. (49:1-18)
And Yhwh goes on to tell the nation that although they have been ruined, desolate, laid waste, devoured, bereaved, barren, exiled, and rejected (i.e. the suffering servant), he will have compassion on the children born in Babylonian captivity and will "beckon to the gentiles" and "they will bring your sons in their arms and carry your daughters on their shoulders. Kings will be your foster fathers and their queens your nursing mothers. They will bow down before you with their faces to the ground; they will lick the dust at your feet" (49:19-23). Presumably, the gentiles that will bring back the sons of Israel are the Persians, who allow the Jews to return to their homeland and rebuild their temple, and among the kings who "serve" Israel would be placed Cyrus the Great, although the language here is very exaggerated. And when the prophet says that servant Israel will be a "light to the nations," what does he mean? The answer appears in 51:4 "The law will go out from me; my justice will become a light to the nations," and in 42:4 "In his law the islands will put their hope." And what law is this? The only law the Jewish priests knew, the same law that Israel supposedly broke, earning their punishment: "For they would not follow his ways; they did not obey his law. So he poured out on them his burning anger, the violence of war" (42:24-25). As the earlier parts of Isaiah had said, "To the law and to the testimony. If they speak not according to this word, they have no light of dawn" (8:20). And for the Isaiah scroll as a whole, the law certainly included the animal sacrifice system and religious calendar, in which the writers expect all the nations to one day participate, as is clear from 56:6-7, 60:1-22, 66:19-23.
Among the characteristics of this literature that make it so difficult are the abundant use of hyperbole; the personification of inanimate objects, cities, nations, and institutions; and inconsistencies in some metaphors. The personification of the entire nation as a man is typical of this writer. Israel is depicted not only as a man at times, but also as a woman (ex. 54:1) and as a child (ex. 44:1-2;46:2-4). Mountains crumble, cities have babies, trees burst into song. Such is the language of this prophet to a long-suffering, weak, and desperate nation.
Isaiah 53 became one of Christianity's favorite examples of supposed predictions of Christ by Jewish prophets. Fulfilled prophecies are spoken of so frequently that many lay people and even preachers have no idea how vague these supposed prophecies can really be, much less how badly they are taken out of context. The Christian idea of God becoming a man, wandering around preaching, working miracles, healing the sick, being crucified on a cross, lying dead in a tomb for three days, rising again, setting up an institution, then going away again into the air is not to be found in the Jewish prophets. And the idea that the propitiatory crucifixion of a future suffering servant would fulfill the law and remove the need for the temple sacrifice system is completely foreign both to Isaiah and to Jewish scripture as a whole.
Here is a collection of the Servant Passages in full, in their context.
See this short summary: "Prophecy, Double Fulfillment, Typology, and Literary Influence."
Scholars disagree concerning where Zechariah 12-14 belongs in history (Grintz 953-8, Hanson 1160). The oracle says that all the nations will gather against Jerusalem and Judah, but Yhwh will make Jerusalem an immovable rock (sounds like Daniel 2:34,44-45), and the strong leaders of Judah will consume the surrounding peoples. The house of David and the people of Jerusalem will mourn over one whom they have pierced (2nd century High Priest Onias?), and Yhwh will cleanse Jerusalem and the house of David from sin, banishing idols and prophets from the land. After a leader is struck with the sword, Yhwh turns against the people, killing two-thirds of them and testing the others before he accepts them. Nations capture Jerusalem, ransack it, and rape the women, and half the city goes into exile while the rest remains. Then Yhwh himself will come to stand on the Mt. of Olives to fight the nations. That day will have no daytime or nighttime, living water will flow from Jerusalem to the Dead Sea and the Mediterranean Sea in summer and winter, and Yhwh will rule as king over the whole earth. Yhwh will flatten all the surrounding land except Jerusalem, which he will raise up in its place; Jerusalem will be inhabited and never again destroyed. Yhwh will send a plague on the nations that fought Jerusalem, and their flesh will rot. Judah will collect an abundance of gold, silver, clothing, and wealth from the nations. The survivors of the nations will go up to Jerusalem every year to worship Yhwh and to celebrate the Feast of Tabernacles; upon those who do not, Yhwh will send drought and plagues. In that day, horses' bells and cooking pots and every pot in Judah will be holy, and all who come to sacrifice will take the pots and cook in them.
Zechariah 12-14 has a universal, as well as national, vision of the kingdom of Yhwh. It includes other nations in the vision, but they adopt the Jewish religion centered upon the temple in Jerusalem. Ignoring many elements of the prophecies, Christians concentrate on the one "whom they have pierced" as a prophecy of Jesus, despite the fact that the vision has nothing to do with Christianity.
One may find many cases in which the NT misinterprets or takes out of context an OT passage and applies it somehow to the life of Jesus.
The most widely discussed NT interpretation "contrary to the literal and accepted meaning" of a Hebrew text is the dogma of the Virgin Birth, which Matthew bases on Isaiah 7:14, "Behold, the young woman shall conceive and bear a son and shall call his name Immanuel" (Weiss-Rosmarin 120-1). Matthew 1:22-23 says the virgin birth of Jesus happened to fulfill the words of the prophet Isaiah. The writer of the Gospel of Matthew was probably using the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures) as his "Old Testament," and the Septuagint translates the Hebrew word almah, meaning "young woman," as the Greek word parthenos, "maiden, virgin, unmarried girl," so that the Greek text may falsely be read, "a virgin shall conceive" (Weiss-Rosmarin 121). "Behold, the young maiden will conceive" does not mean she will be a virgin when she gives birth, nor does it imply that Yhwh will be the father. In other words, the original Hebrew text of Isaiah never prophesied a virgin birth, only that a young woman would bear a child.
But that is by no means the worst problem! Besides using a misinterpretation of the Hebrew, the NT takes Isaiah 7:14 totally out of context. The passage actually refers to an imminent invasion of Israel by the Assyrians, which took place in the late 700s BCE. The story of Isaiah 7-8 goes as follows. During the reign of King Ahaz of Judah, Kings Rezin of Aram and Pekah of Israel marched up to fight against Jerusalem (7:1). Ahaz feared the worst, but Isaiah told him Yhwh would not allow the two kings to destroy Jerusalem. Then Isaiah tells Ahaz that Yhwh will give a sign to prove the truth of what he says: the young woman will give birth to a son and call him Immanuel, and before the boy is old enough to know the difference between right and wrong, the land of the two kings, whom Ahaz fears, will be laid waste by the king of Assyria (Isa. 7:14-17). Obviously the king of Assyria did not destroy Israel and Aram when Jesus was a boy--no, that happened in 732 and 722-21 BCE, so Jesus could not fulfill this prophecy. The birth of the child in Isaiah was supposed to be a sign that the attack on Jerusalem in the 700s BC would fail.
In fact, the very next chapter in Isaiah, chapter eight, continues the story. Isaiah goes to the prophetess (maybe his wife?), and she conceives and bears a son. In verses 3-4, they call him Maher-Shalal-Hash-Baz ("quick to the plunder, swift to the spoil") because before the boy is very old the king of Assyria will "plunder" and "spoil" Damascus and Samaria. And verses 8 and 10 again refer to Immanuel ("God is with us"), because Yhwh will save Ahaz and because even though the Assyrians will sweep all the way into Judah (701 BCE), their plans against Jerusalem will not succeed. Whether Maher-Shalal-Hash-Baz and Immanuel are the same child or two different children matters not; both belong in time to the 700's BCE and to chapters 7 and 8 of Isaiah. Isaiah 8:18 even lets the reader know that the children in chapters 7-8 belong to Isaiah himself: "Here I am, and the children Yhwh has given me. We are signs and symbols in Israel" (Isaiah's other child was Shear-Jashub, "a remnant will return," Isa. 7:3 and 10:21). To summarize this issue, the writer of the Gospel of Matthew both used a mistranslation of Isaiah 7:14 and conveniently ignored 7:15-17 and the context of the "Immanuel" verse, as he misused Isaiah to support the doctrine of the virgin birth of Jesus. But in the Greco-Roman world, the virgin birth of a divine or semi-divine hero was a common motif.
Matthew 2.5-6 says, “for this is what the prophet has written: ‘But you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for out of you will come a ruler who will be the shepherd of my people Israel’" (quoting Micah 5.2).
Micah 5 actually originally referred to a king who was to rescue Israel-Judah from Assyrian domination in the 600's BCE, as is clear if one continues to read to verse 6 of Micah 5 (quoted below). To think Micah 5 refers to Jesus shows complete ignorance of and disregard for the historical context and message of the book.
The writers of both Matthew and Luke want Jesus to be born in Bethlehem. Why did some Christians want to place Jesus' birth in Bethlehem instead of Nazareth?
Various Jewish groups had been constantly reinterpreting their scriptures for centuries. When Christians began to claim that Jesus was the messiah, they began to comb the Jewish scriptures for "messianic" passages, or passages they considered possibly messianic, and develop narratives to link such passages to Jesus. They did not concern themselves with the original historical or literary context or intent of such passages.
Among other claims, they developed the idea that Jesus was born in Bethlehem as the messiah mentioned in Micah 5, despite the fact that the historical and literary context of Micah dealt with hopes for a king who would rescue Israel from Assyrian domination in the 8th-7th centuries BCE. The reason Micah 5 had mentioned Bethlehem in the first place was simply because Jewish tradition held that Kings David had been born there, and the writer hoped for a Judean king from David's lineage to come along and reunite the north and south and deliver Israel from the Assyrians.
From 733 to 700 BCE, the Assyrian empire took over the land of Israel, exiled most of the Israelites, settled other peoples in the territory of Israel, took over 40-something towns of Judah, exiled many from Judea, and exacted tribute from the remnant of Judah living in Jerusalem. Micah, like other writers during Assyrian domination ca. 733 – 600's BCE, hoped/said that YHWH would gather the remnant of Israel with a new king and with YHWH as their head (2.12-13; 4.6-7); that the new king would restore the former dominion of the country; that the people would live peacefully and securely with their king, whose greatness would reach the ends of the land (eretz) (4.8; 5.2-5); and that this king would deliver the people from the Assyrians, leading Israel to triumph over its enemies (5.6-9). Such predictions failed to come to pass, but various sects of Jews would continue to reinterpret such writings and apply their hopes to new situations.
Here is the actual context of the passage from Micah:
Micah 5.1-9: "1. Marshal your troops, O daughter (city) of troops, for a siege is laid against us. They will strike Israel’s ruler on the cheek with a rod. 2. But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from of old, from ancient times. 3. Therefore Israel will be abandoned until the time when she who is in labor gives birth and the rest of his brothers return to join the Israelites. 4. He will stand and shepherd his flock in the strength of YHWH, in the majesty of the name of YHWH his God. And they will live securely, for then his greatness will reach to the ends of the land (ha eretz). 5. And he will be their peace. When the Assyrian invades our land and marches through our fortresses, we will raise against him seven shepherds, even eight leaders of men. 6. They will rule/crush the land of Assyria with the sword, the land of Nimrod with drawn sword. He will deliver us from the Assyrian when he invades our land and marches into our borders. 7. The remnant of Jacob will be in the midst of many peoples like dew from YHWH, like showers on the grass, which do not wait for man or linger for mankind. 8. The remnant of Jacob will be among the nations, in the midst of many peoples, like a lion among the beasts of the forest, like a young lion among flocks of sheep, which mauls and mangles as it goes, and no one can rescue. 9. Your hand will be lifted up in triumph over your enemies, and all your foes will be destroyed."
Another example of an out-of-context quotation is Matthew 2:15, which says that Joseph and Mary took Jesus to Egypt to escape danger from Herod and then bought Jesus back to their homeland in fulfillment of the prophecy, "Out of Egypt have I called my son" (Hosea 11:1). But the original verse contains no prophecy at all and in fact refers to the legendary Exodus, Yhwh's previous deliverance of his "son" Israel from bondage in Egypt. Through the Exodus, as the story went, Yhwh called his enslaved "son" Israel out of Egypt.
The author's loose appropriation of passages from the Old Testament matches his willingness to fabricate other elements of his Jesus story. For example, Matthew and Luke both try to harmonize two different traditions: one that Jesus was from Nazareth, and another mistakenly suggesting that the messiah had to come from Bethlehem. Each author attempted the harmonization in different ways. Matthew assumed Jesus' parents were from Bethlehem, and using part of the Moses plot from the Old Testament, he invented a story in which King Herod tried to kill the prophesied child-king, causing Jesus' family to flee to Egypt. Herod's baby-killing episode was unknown to ancient historians and even to other gospel writers; it is a mere fabrication. Also, in Matthew, Mary and Joseph only move to Nazareth because they are afraid to move back to their home town of Bethlehem. Contrast this plot with that of Luke. The writer of Luke imagines that Jesus' family is originally from Nazareth, not Bethlehem (as in Matthew), and this writer must invent some plot device to get them from Nazareth to Bethlehem in order to incorporate the other tradition. So the author invents a Roman census under a governor named Quirinius requiring all Jews to register in their ancestral home towns. Notice, there is no trip to Egypt in Luke, as in Matthew. Historically speaking, there was no empire-wide census requiring people to travel to their ancestral homes in order to register. Also, the writer unknowingly made a chronological error. Quirinius was governor 10 years after the death of Herod, which means that no census under his supervision could have occurred during the reign of King Herod (as in the gospel story). Quirinius' dates as governor are known from Tacitus and Josephus (two different Roman historians) and from ancient inscriptions. The census story in Luke is no more historically accurate than the plot of Matthew. The writer of Luke used or invented or supposed the census story as a plot device to move the birth of Jesus from Nazareth to Bethlehem. The author of Matthew used a completely different plot device, having Bethlehem as Mary and Joseph’s home town to begin with, and only later moving them to Nazareth after a fictitious sojourn in Egypt developed to make Jesus’ biography parallel to the story of the nation of Israel. See my other paper, "The Fictitious Birth Narratives of Jesus in the Bible," for more information.
There is even one case in which the NT not only takes a passage out of context, but refers to the wrong prophet as the source of a supposed prophecy. Matthew 27 says that Judas, through an incident involving 30 pieces of silver, fulfilled the words of Jeremiah. But the passage to which Matthew refers comes from Zechariah 11: 12, not Jeremiah, and if one reads it in context, one wonders how "Matthew" could ever think of it as a prophecy for his time anyway. Even if Matthew had named the proper source, to think that Zechariah 11:14-17 predicted Judas, the 30 pieces of silver, and the situation in Matthew 27:3-10 would be totally groundless. It is more likely that the story of the 30 pieces of silver never happened, but was put into Matthew to try to link the Jesus story with the OT.
Isaiah 61: The spirit of Yhwh is upon me?
Luke 4:18 has Jesus reading from Isaiah 61, "The spirit of the sovereign Lord is upon me . . . to preach good news to the poor . . . liberty to the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners." Luke portrays Jesus as "fulfilling" this "prophecy," but important questions arise: Was that passage in Isaiah prophetic, or did it refer to Isaiah himself, or Cyrus, or someone else in Isaiah's time? Doesn't "liberty to the captives" and "release for the prisoners" refer to Isaiah's message to the Jews who were "captives" and "prisoners" in Babylon? Doesn't Isaiah 61 fit in with the rest of Isaiah 40-66 in dealing with events from the 500's BCE? Doesn't Isaiah elsewhere portray the exiled Jews as poor, blind, deaf, oppressed, and afflicted (42:7,19-25; 48:10,19; 49:7-9,13-14,21; 50:6,8; 51:7,11,13-14,21; 52:2-5; 53)? When one pursues the answers to these questions, one finds that the NT has again taken the Hebrew scriptures out of context. The Christians probably took this passage as applying to Jesus simply because it had the word "anointed" (messiah) in it; they did not seem to consider historical or literary context or the intent of the author.
Matthew 2:23 says that by growing up in Nazareth, Jesus fulfilled a prophecy saying, "He will be called a Nazarene." However, the OT contains no such prophecy. It does mention Nazarite vows, but it never says the expected messiah would take such vows, and even if it did, the Jesus of the Gospels certainly had not taken the Nazarite vows explained in Numbers 6, for he drank wine.
Matthew and Luke both give genealogies to show that Jesus was a descendant of King David, but these genealogies have three problems: 1) they conflict with each other on whether Joseph (Jesus' "father") descended from David through Solomon or Nathan, 2) Luke 3:35 follows the Septuagint and contains an extra name conflicting with the list in the Hebrew Genesis, and 3) the genealogies do not matter anyway if Joseph was not really Jesus' father (i.e. Virgin birth). Since the Messiah was to be a descendant of David, the Gospel writers or others preceding them thought they had to "prove" the genetic link. Obviously, the different writers neglected to consult each other on Jesus lineage, giving us another clue to the story's fabricated nature.
The NT abounds with other examples of illogical interpretations of OT passages, and this paper has no space to explain them all here. The writers of the NT appear to have found nothing wrong with taking a single phrase or section out of an OT text and applying to Jesus regardless of what it meant in context or when it was written. After reading the prophets in their historical circumstances, to suggest that they "saw Jesus' glory and spoke about him" (John 12:37-41) is absurd. Indeed, if one studies the OT source passages and their historical backgrounds and then reads the NT's claims of fulfilled prophecies, it appears that the NT authors were inventing elements of a story to try to match isolated, non-contextual passages in the OT so that they could claim their story fulfilled ancient prophecies.
If interested, one should explore the following for examples of NT interpretations of the OT:
Matthew 1:18-23; 2:6,15,17-18,23; 3:3; 4:14; 8:17; 10:35; 11:2-5,10,14; 12:17,39-40; 13:14,35; 15:7-9; 17:10-13; 21:4-5,16,42; 22:41-45; 26:24,31,54,56; 27:9-10,35; Luke 4:17-21; 18:31-34; 24:25-27,44-47; John 2:14-17,18-22; 5:39-40,45-6; 7:38;12:38-41; 13:18; 15:25; 19:24,28-30,33-36,37; Jesus' interpretation of Daniel (in Mt 24; 26:64; Mk 13; Lk 21:17:24-35; and John 5:25-30; 6:40,44,54); Acts 1:15-20; 2:1-21,24-31,34-35; 3:22,24; 4:25; 26:22-3; Hebrews1:5; 10:5-10; Galatians 3:7; and Revelation's use of various OT visions. This list omits many verses in Mark, Luke, and John that have parallels in Matthew. A Bible translation with good footnotes will usually give the OT reference for a verse or passage.
The heaviest consequences of such a study of Jewish scriptural messianism lie in its implications for Christianity. What should one think of the Christian claim that Jesus was the Christ, i.e. the Messiah predicted by Jewish prophets? Historically, such a claim is simply groundless. To illustrate this point, I will list some important counts on which Jesus failed to fulfill OT messianic prophecies.
Jesus never restored "David's fallen tent," rebuilt it "as it used to be," or planted Israel in their land, never again to be uprooted (Amos 9:11,15).
Jesus did not reunite Judah with Israel (the northern tribes) under himself (Hosea 1:11; Ezekiel 37:15-28). This prophecy was not fulfilled and never will be, because the northern tribes disappeared as a people.
Jesus did not become ruler of the world and abolish war and weapons (Hosea 2:14-23; Zech. 9:9-1 0). Zechariah's prophecy is also beyond fulfillment, since this king was to remove chariots and war-horses from Ephraim and Jerusalem. Ephraim no longer exists and chariots went out of style a while back. "Bow and sword and battle I will abolish from the land" likewise reflects a long-passed era.
Jesus did not rule on David's throne with justice, righteousness, and everlasting peace (Isa. 9:1-7). The prophets prophesied of an earthly king, and Jesus, who never became king, was not what they had in mind.
Jesus did not "stand as a banner for the peoples" or call exiled Jews to return to the land, and he did not lead them to conquer Philistia, Edom, Moab, and the Ammonites, as Isaiah's messiah was supposed to do (Isa. 11:10-14). Micah said the messiah would deliver Israel from the Assyrians (5:6-9). The prophets expected the coming king to restore the former dominion (Micah 4:8). They had no vision of a dying and reviving spiritual savior, and even what they did envision did not come to pass. They thought the messiah would come and destroy all the enemies of Israel, like Assyria, Philistia, etc.
Jesus did not appear after the Israelite captivity and bring in an age of everlasting peace (Isa. 11:1-9; 9:6-7).
Christianity says that Jesus does away with the law. Therefore, he cannot fulfill the numerous prophecies of the law's greatness (Isa. 2:2-4; 8:20; 19:21; Micah 4:1-3; Jer. 33:17-18; Ezek. 37:24; 40-48; Isa. 42:4,24-5; 51:4; 56:4-7; 60:6-7; 66:19-24, etc.). The law, the temple, and the sacrifice system were important to all the prophets, and none of them said Yhwh would do away with them. In fact, they saw the end times as times of greatness for the law, when even Gentiles would come bringing animal sacrifices to the temple.
These are all examples of expected and prophesied messianic characteristics that Jesus lacked. [Review the prophecies summarized in my paper for a more complete account.] There would be no need for such a list if Christians were not claiming that Jesus fulfilled the OT prophecies. Not only did he not fulfill them, no one can ever fulfill them all. They described and were intended for a time far removed from Jesus, and too many of them had already failed beyond the possibility of precise fulfillment even by the time of Jesus. For example, in Jeremiah 33:7-18, Yhwh promises,
I will bring Judah and Israel back from captivity and will rebuild them as they were before. I will cleanse them from all the sin they have committed against me and will forgive all their sins of rebellion against me. Then this city will bring me renown, joy, praise, and honor before all nations on earth that hear of all the good things I do for it; and they will be in awe and will tremble at the abundant prosperity and peace I provide for it. . . . For I will restore the fortunes of the land as they were before, says Yhwh. . . . In those days and at that time I will make a righteous Branch sprout from David's line; he will do what is just and right in the land. In those days Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will live in safety. . . . David will never fail to have a man to sit on the throne of the house of Israel, nor will the priests, who are Levites, ever fail to have a man to stand before me continually to offer burnt offerings, to burn grain offerings and to present sacrifices.
These alleged "promises" from Yhwh to the captive Israelites simply never came to pass; they merely reflected the national hopes of a portion of the Jewish people in the 500's BCE -- hopes that were disappointed. Yhwh did not rebuild Israel as it was before the captivity, David did fail after the return from captivity (and has continued to fail) to have a man on the throne of Israel, Jerusalem was not honored by all the nations for its peace and prosperity, but has always been a place of bloodshed, and who cares if for a few hundred years Israel had Levitical priests to slaughter animals to please Yhwh. Jeremiah wanted the same thing the other "prophets" wanted; they wanted their homeland back with their old religion restored and a strong and upright king on the throne. This is NOT what modern Christianity is about at all. While the original Christianity might well have been a Jewish rebel movement using symbols to represent a hoped-for rebellion against Rome and a hoped-for political resurrection of Israel, such aspirations failed, and as Christianity evolved, Jewish political aspirations faded while a "spiritualized" mix of Judaism with Greco-Roman ideas remained.
The prophets said Yhwh would restore things as they were before the Assyrians and Babylonians and would even make things better, but Israel never became what it had been before and never will. Who wants it to anyway? Does the modern nation of Israel want a Davidic king or a renewed sacrifice system; does it want to teach the nations the "Law of Moses"? By and large, no. And why should it? Do modern Christians want Israel restored to its old self? No way. For one thing, most modern Christians no longer believe in keeping the Mosaic law, with its sacrifices, rituals, commands, and regulations. Regarding the differences in opinion over the law, consider the following.
Isaiah 2:1-4: "In the last days the mountain of Yhwh's temple will be established as chief among the mountains . . . and all nations will stream to it. . . . The law (torah) will go out from Zion, the word of Yhwh from Jerusalem. He will judge between the nations and will settle disputes for many peoples. . . . Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore."
Isaiah 8:20: "To the law and to the testimony! If they do not speak according to this word, they have no light of dawn."
Isaiah 19:21: "So Yhwh will make himself known to the Egyptians, and in that day they will acknowledge Yhwh. They will worship with sacrifices and grain offerings; they will make vows to Yhwh and keep them."
Isaiah 42:1-9: "Here is my servant [Israel], whom I uphold, my chosen one in whom I delight. . . . In faithfulness he will bring forth justice; he will not falter or be discouraged till he establishes justice on earth. In his law the islands will put their hope..."
Isaiah 42:24-25: ". . . For they would not follow his ways; they did not obey his law. So he poured out on them his burning anger, the violence of war."
Isaiah 51:4: "Listen to me, my people; hear me, my nation: The law will go out from me; my justice will become a light to the nations."
Isaiah 56:6-7: "And foreigners who bind themselves to Yhwh to serve him, to love the name of Yhwh and to worship him, all who keep the Sabbath without desecrating it and who hold fast to my covenant--these I will bring to my holy mountain and give them joy in my house of prayer. Their burnt offerings and sacrifices will be accepted on my altar; for my house will be called a house of prayer for all nations."
Isaiah 60:1-22: "Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of Yhwh rises upon you. . . . Nations will come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn. . . . To you the riches of the nations will come. Herds of camels . . . and all from Sheba will come. . . . All Kedar's flocks will be gathered to you, the rams of Nebaioth will serve you; they will be accepted as offerings on my altar, and I will adorn my glorious temple."
Isaiah 66:19-23: Yhwh says he will gather the exiles back to Jerusalem and "will select some of them also to be priests and Levites. . . . As the new heavens and new earth that I make will endure before me, declares Yhwh, so will your name and descendants endure. From one New Moon to another and from one Sabbath to another, all mankind will come and bow down before me, says Yhwh." (Yet Paul, in Colossians 2:13-17, says New Moons and Sabbaths do not really matter.)
Jeremiah 33:17-18, Ezek. 37:24, Ezek. 40-48, and Micah 4:1-3 also call for the greatness of the OT law for all time.
When we compare these OT scriptures and prophecies to the NT, we find differences that the Hebrew prophets would never have approved. While the original Jesus of Nazareth (of whom historians know very little, if anything) may never have called for an end to the law, Pauline Christianity most certainly does. Matthew 5 presents Jesus as saying, "Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them." In fact, here Jesus says, "not the smallest letter" nor "the least stroke of a pen" will by any means disappear from the law "until heaven and earth disappear."
The rest of the NT, however, basically says the opposite:
Rom. 10:4: "Christ is the end of the law."
Eph. 2:15: speaks of Christ " abolishing in his flesh the law with its commandments and regulations."
Heb. 10:1: "The law is only a shadow."
Gal. 3:24-25: "The law was put in charge to lead us to Christ that we might be justified by faith. Now that faith has come, we are no longer under the supervision of the law."
Col. 2:13-17: says that Jesus "cancelled the written code, with its regulations. . . . He took it away, nailing it to the cross." New Moon celebrations and Sabbath days were just "a shadow."
What a glaring difference this is! Isaiah said that in the last days the law would go forth as a light to the nations and that foreigners would keep the Sabbath (which is Saturday, not Sunday) and make burnt offerings and sacrifices on the altar of the temple. Jeremiah said there would always be a Levitical priest to offer burnt offerings, grain offerings, and sacrifices before Yhwh (Jer 33:7-18), and Ezekiel spoke of the greatness of the temple system in an earthly paradise (Ezek. 40-48). But Pauline Christianity says Jesus the Messiah abolished the law, fulfilling it, superseding it, and removing the need for sacrifice. Either the prophets of Yhwh, or Paul and Christianity, or both were false, for they simply do not agree.
Consider this statement made in 1943 by Trude Weiss-Rosmarin in Judaism and Christianity: The Differences:
Judaism on the other hand maintains that Jesus was not the Messiah for he did not fulfill the Messianic hopes. The defenders of Judaism in the "Religious Disputations," arranged by the medieval Church and forced upon the Jews in the hope of defeating their spokesmen, invariably stressed that not one of the Messianic promises was fulfilled through Jesus. He neither established universal peace and social justice for all of mankind nor did he redeem Israel and raise the Lord's mountain as the top of the mountains. As far as the Jews are concerned, their own exile and homelessness and the continuation of war, poverty and injustice are conclusive proof of the fact that the Messiah has not yet arrived, for his coming, according to the prophetic promises, will usher in the redemption of Israel from exile and the redemption of all the world from the evils of war, poverty and injustice. (128-129)
That is the general Jewish perspective and has been for nearly 2000 years. Yet the Christians dare to twist the Jews' own scriptures almost beyond recognition in an effort to prove that their Jesus was their Christ, the Messiah.
Not only did Jesus not fulfill the words of the prophets, he was never a king at all. Sure, the NT may claim that he was a king, but what good is that? One can claim to be the king of England all one wants to, but if the people of England do not acknowledge him as king, is he really a king? The Jews never acknowledged Jesus as a king, or messiah, and why should they? What evidence did they have? The Gospel stories certainly are not, and were not, enough to convince the Jews; they are just stories, not real evidence. And if the Jews do not acknowledge him as king, how can he be said to reign on David's throne? Was David's throne in heaven, or was it on earth? John 18:36 records Jesus as saying, "My kingdom is not of this world," but the Jewish prophets spoke of a messianic kingdom that was of this world. David's throne was on the earth, not up in the sky, but Jesus never had an earthly throne.
The whole development seems to me to be an intensely tragic one. The promises of the prophets did not come true, but there were groups of pious Jews who zealously continued to reinterpret them and take portions of them out of context to draw meaning for their own times. Assuming there was a historical Jesus, he very possibly came from one such group. But regardless of what his life was really like, it appears that some organization(s) seized upon elements of his biography, embellished the plot to make the details appear to fulfill selected portions of isolated OT passages, and made a wonderful story out of it, full of rich symbolism -- a story that would be a great model for a new religion. Either that or Jesus and his group purposely tried to fulfill what they thought were messianic prophecies for their time. But even so, too much of the Gospels betray evidence of crafty construction. Why people invented or embellished the story is beyond me. One could ask the same question of those who invented the myths behind Mithraism, Orphism, the Isis cult, other ancient mystery religions, Zoroastrianism, or any religion with a mythical story or stories as its centerpiece. I can understand the core myth of crucifixion and resurrection as perhaps originally symbolic of the hoped-for resurrection of Israel's political aspirations, then later reinterpreted as spiritually symbolic of death to the flesh and life in the spirit, and I can understand the embodiment of the solar myth, as the sun (light of the world) dies at the winter solstice but rises again every year and triumphs over darkness around Easter, but I do not know why it was ever made into a piece of historical fiction that people eventually took literally.
In any case, literal-minded Christians and Jews would do a great service to the world to see their religions for what they are -- manmade and fallible. Admittedly, the dream of world peace and prosperity is a beautiful and much-needed dream, and we must never toss away such precious hopes or let them fall prey to indifference and cynicism. But we should know by now that tradition and nationalism are not the answer; if we value our differences more than our community, and our race, ethnicity, or nationality more than our shared humanity, we are begging for strife. The world does not need a Jewish king, a 2500-year-old legal code, or an outdated religious system to have peace. And if we are waiting for a god to come out of the sky and solve all our problems, we wait for no good reason and will probably be waiting for a long, long time. Rather than depending on a Davidic monarch or a mythical savior, we would do better to concentrate our energies on living as much as possible in love, compassion, patience, truthfulness, and understanding in this world now, today, and in doing what we can do ourselves to have a peaceful and joyful existence in this great big all-encompassing Life of which we are all, every one, a part and manifestation.
By Matthew Kruebbe
University of Texas at Tyler
Philosophy of Comparative Religion
12/07/1999
with slight editing through later decades
1While some scholars have identified part of Isaiah as "Trito-Isaiah," such a distinction, regardless of its validity, would only further complicate this paper without affecting the analysis or conclusion. The distinction has, therefore, been omitted.
2In addition to Ringgren, Sigmund Mowinckel's He That Cometh provides an excellent chapter on the kingship ideal of the ancient Middle East.
Ackroyd, Peter R. "Zerubbabel." Dictionary of the Bible. Revised edition. New York: Scribner's, 1963.
------. "Persia." Harper's Bible Dictionary. New York: Harper & Row, 1985.
Bamberger, Bernard J. The Story of Judaism. 3rd printing. New York: American Book-Stratford Press, 1962.
Collins, John J. "Daniel, the Book of." Harper's Bible Dictionary. 1985 ed.
Cook, Stanley A. "The Inauguration of Judaism." The Cambridge Ancient History. London: Cambridge UP, 1964. Vol. VI: Macedon 401-301 BC, 167-199.
Friedman, Theodore, Harold Louis Ginsberg, and Isaac Arishur. "Isaiah." Encyclopedia Judaica2nd ed. Jerusalem: Keter Publishing House, 1973.
Ginsberg, Harold Louis. "Daniel, Book of." Encyclopedia Judaica. 1973 ed.
Gitay, Yehoshua. "Isaiah, the Book of." Harper's Bible Dictionary. 1985 ed.
Grintz, Yehoshua M. "Zechariah." Encyclopedia Judaica. 1973 ed.
Habicht, C. "The Seleucids and Their Rivals." The Cambridge Ancient History. Vol. VIII: Rome and the Mediterranean to 133 BC, 324-387.
Hanson, Paul D. "Zechariah, the Book of." Harper's Bible Dictionary. 1985 ed.
Klausner, Joseph. The Messianic Idea in Israel: From Its Beginning to the Completion of the Mishna. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1955.
Mowinckel, Sigmund. He That Cometh. New York: Abington Press, 1956.
Ringgren, Helmer. The Messiah in the Old Testament. Chicago: Alec R. Allenson, 1956.
------. "Messianism: An Overview." The Encyclopedia of Religion. New York: Macmillan, 1987.
Scholem, Gershom. The Messianic Idea in Judaism, And Other Essays on Jewish Spirituality. 4th printing. New York: Schocken Books, 1978.
Silver, Abba Hillel. A History of Messianic Speculation in Israel: From the First through the Seventh Centuries. Boston: Beacon Press, 1959.
Weiss-Rosmarin, Trude. Judaism and Christianity: The Differences. 5th printing. New York: Jonathan David Publishers, 1965.
Werblowsky, R. J. Zwi. "Messianism: Jewish Messianism." The Encyclopedia of Religion, New York: Macmillan, 1987.