Messiah the Jews Looking for - Essay Example

?Messiah When Jesus was on earth many people were puzzled by him. Luke 9 v 18 tells us that Jesus asked “Who do the crowds say that I am” and then gives us the response:- Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others that one of the prophets from long ago has come back to life ( Luke 9 v 19). but others, including Peter, were quite sure that he was the long promised Messiah, an idea that is dominant within the Old Testament, a saviour or liberator, especially at the time of the Gospels, when the Jews were a subject people, and Israel a mere dusty corner of the Roman Empire, and with only foreign puppet kings. The Jews that the Messiah would be in the line of Abraham, as promised in Genesis 22 v 18, and in particular be descended from Isaac, that is Jewish, when God tells Abraham:- Your wife Sarah will bear you a son, and you will call him Isaac. I will establish my covenant with him as an everlasting covenant for his descendants after him ( Genesis 17 v 19, N.I.V.). Although such passages do no explicitly use the word ‘messiah’ its meaning is definitely implied. In the Septuagint Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures the word is translated as ??????? ( Christos) and this word was applied to Jesus right from the beginning of his ministry. Modern day Jews use the word “moshiach” to describe the same idea, but in older Hebrew it was “Mashiach” ( Price, 2013). The word is normally used only of an expected future king who will deliver the Jews from oppression and bring back the glory of the reign of David. It expresses the idea of someone set apart by God for a particular task, as in I Samuel 24 v 5,6, where David describes Saul as “The anointed of the Lord.” ( Bible ,New International Version). In Psalm 105 v 15 prophets are also described as ‘my anointed ones.”. The term “anointed” was also applied to priests , as in Leviticus 4 v 3, and even to foreign rulers, as in Cyrus ( Isaiah 45 v 1).There are however other ideas. In Daniel 7v 13 the saviour is ‘The Son of Man’, another way in which Jesus described himself’ (Mark 2 v 28) , but Daniel’s would save the people from heaven, rather than coming to Earth. Boadt ( 1984, page 532) also points out that Second Isaiah ( Chapter 53) saw the whole people of God as being an suffering servant - another aspect of Old Testament messiahship. There is also the idea of a new Moses found in Deuteronomy, a relatively early work. In Deuteronomy 18 v 15 he tells the Israelites “The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your brothers. You must listen to him.’ Earlier in the scriptures , as far as the arrangement of the Hebrew scriptures is concerned, we have the idea of the messiah as a saviour in Genesis 3 v 15 , where God tells the serpent that the messiah will be a human. In Psalm 2 v 7 we are told however that he will be the Son of God. Christians believe that these apparently ideas were reconciled in the person of Jesus of Nazereth, Jesus Christ, as shown in passages such as Matthew 3 v 17 when God himself declares “This is my son” a fact declared even by unclean spirits ( Mark 3 v 11) when they cry out to Jesus “You are the Son of God.” There was also the idea that this messiah would be a sacrifice for the sins of the people, a sacrificial lamb, as in Isaiah 53 v 7. John the Baptist echoes this when he points out Jesus to the crowds near the Jordon “Look the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.” ( John 1 v 29, Bible , N.I.V.). Right at the beginning of Jesus’ earthly ministry we read (John 1 v 41, New International Version) :- The first thing Andrew did was to find his brother Simon and tell him, “We have found the Messiah” (That is the Christ). Andrew is referring to a long cherished hope for a Messiah, often, but not always thought of as a king in the line of David. Matthew (1 v 1 ) gives the genealogy of Jesus, whom he calls the Christ, and this is traced back through David. As we have already considered there were a number of ideas at the time in Jewish minds as to what this of Messiah actually meant. The idea of a saviour who was also a king is clearly shown in Isaiah 32 , which begins “See, a king will reign in righteousness and rulers will rule with justice.” So the idea of a restored kingship was strongly linked with the restoration of the nation. According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church ( Chapman, 2010, paragraph 710) the Spirit of God was at work preparing for the coming of the promised Messiah, during the time covered by the Old Testament period. This it says means that when the church reads the Old Testament Scriptures it should search through it to see what the Spirit is telling us about Christ, who will be “The consolation of Israel” ( Luke 2 v 25 ) and the “Redemption of Jerusalem” ( 2010, paragraph 711).It is believed that these ideas are based upon passages such as Isaiah 49 v 13:-“The Lord comforts his people and will have compassion on his afflicted ones.” Isaiah 11 describes the kind of person this messiah would be, one with the Spirit of the Lord resting upon him (Chapman 2010, paragraph 712). Jesus would later echo this when he stated “The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me” ( Luke 4 v 18). In paragraph 715 ( Chapman, 2010) it is claimed that God speaks in “the language of promise”. As has already been stated a messiah is literally an anointed one, as when a king is crowned ( 1 Kings 1 v 39) or when someone became high priest ( Exodus 29 v 7 ( Boadt, 1984, page 532) . The gospel writers show Jesus, their messiah as king. In Matthew 2 v 2 the magi ask “Where is he that is born king of the Jews?” Early Christians see him as priest (Hebrews 5 v 5, 6). This idea is perpetuated in Catholic thought and practice in the idea of the priests as being ‘in persona Christi’. This is said to mean that at ordination, in some mystical way, an ordinary person becomes empowered to do what Christ did , that is to change ordinary bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ. It is because the ministerial priesthood represents Christ that it can represent the church ( Chapman, 2010, Paragraph 795). Another strong idea was linking the idea of Messiahship to David. In 2 Samuel 7 Nathan prophecies to the king telling him:- I will raise up you offspring to succeed you….I will establish the throne of his kingdom for ever…..your house and your kingdom shall endure before me for ever (Bible New International Version) Elsewhere it is made clear that God’s promise to David carries conditions, that adherence to the covenant between God and man at Sinai. One example is found in 1 Kings 9 where God says to Solomon, David’s son:- If you walk before me in integrity of heart and uprightness as your father did, and do all I command and observe my decrees and laws, I will establish your royal throne over Israel for ever. ( 1 Kings 9 v 4,5, N.I.V.). After the Exile though there were no more kings in David’s line. At first there was some thought of a restored kingdom with a descendant of David on the throne. When it became clear that this wasn’t going to happen the people began to look into the distant future. Zechariah 9 v 9 could be an exact description of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. The country was being ruled over the years by a succession of foreign rulers and people There developed the idea that God would intervene directly ( Boadt, 1994, page 533). There was also the idea that an actual person would intervene, and it is the latter which led to a number of rebellions against foreign oppressors. Luke lists a number of these in Gamaliel’s address in Acts 5 v 33-37. Over the centuries covered by the Hebrew scriptures the Israelites had had many problems, some of which they incurred on themselves. The record is a list of pluses and minuses – no land, the promised land, gaining land, losing land, good kings, bad kings or no kings at all. The prophets frequently warned them of retribution if they did not turn back to God and obey his laws, but if their behaviour did improve it soon deteriorated again, as when Jeremiah describes king Jehoiakim as a broken pot to be discarded (Jeremiah 22 v 28). In the 6th century B.C.E. alone the Israelites lost their temple, their king and their land. The Babylonian ruler Nebuchadnezzar had laid siege to Jerusalem, and eventually destroyed the temple built by Solomon, as well as deposing the Jewish king Jehoiakim at some point. The Jews tended to interpret such disasters as punishment for sin, but they believed that God still cared about them. Despite these disasters and other setbacks the hope remained that God would intervene, renewing or restoring things to their best possible state. Among the writing of the many prophets the messianic idea often has special reference to God’s promise of a Davidic king who will restore Israel to the God’s ideal:- ( He will be called Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and peace there will be no end. Isaiah 9:6,7, Bible New International Version, 2010 It was these ideas which were over time translated into the hope of a Messiah, greater than any earlier king, who would enable Israel to bloom once more. They blended together various strands of thought such as the eternal priesthood of Melchizedek (Genesis 14 v 18-20), with ideas of heavenly intervention and the continuation of the Davidic line. This was also linked to the idea that this new king would rule all nations (2 Samuel 22 v 44). In Isaiah 11 v 1 we are told that he will rule these many nations with justice. This combining of various messianic ideas was a relatively late development in Jewish thought, so is only stated or hinted at in relatively newer books such as Daniel. All this seems rather a lot to ask of a Galilean carpenter, a former refugee, someone people perhaps knew was born out of wedlock, and still only a young and untried leader - yet Andrew was very sure of what he said and never went back from that statement of faith. This was one very special person, yet every day , all round the word the words of the Nicene creed are declared as a statement of faith. This creed originally put together in 325 C.E., but represents very early Christian and New Testament ideas when it says “We believe …….in one Lord Jesus Christ” that is Jesus, the Messiah, the anointed one. Such ideas were persistent. As late as the 12th century C.E., when the Jewish nation had long been scattered around the globe and the temple was just a few stones, the great Jewish scholar Moses Maimonides declared:- The anointed king is destined to stand up and restore the Davidic Kingdom to its antiquity, to the first sovereignty. He will build the Temple in Jerusalem and gather the strayed ones of Israel together. All laws will return in his days as they were before. (The History of Zionism, 2013) The Jews were still looking for their future Messiah. References Boadt, Lawrence., Reading the Old Testament , New Jersey, Paulist Press, 1984 Bible, New International Version, London, Hodder and Stoughton, 2008 Chapman, Geoffrey., The Catechism of the Catholic Church, London, Burns and Oats, 2010 Price, Randall.,The Concept of the Messiah in the Old Testament , 2013, 29th January 2013http://www.worldofthebible.com/Bible%20Studies/The%20Concept%20of%20the%20Messiah%20in%20the%20Old%20Testament.pdf The History of Zionism,Jewish Virtual Library, 2013, 31st January 2013 http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/isdf/pps/zionism_Stauber.ppt, Read More