neilgodfrey
New Blood
- Joined
- Dec 31, 2012
- Messages
- 23
Good and well. But at #4072 you said this: So did the change in the understanding of the Messiah take place post 70 - in consequence of the War, as you say? Or later, in the 2nd century, as you also say? Or was it in fact already present prior to the outbreak of the War, as one of its major causes, as we have seen that Josephus says?
Fair point. I was trying to avoid a long comment to begin with.
We don't have any specific appellation of "messiah" applied to a contemporary until Bar Kochba in the second century.
What Josephus refers to is a widespread expectation of a fulfillment of a messianic prophecy at the time Judea/Jerusalem were directly threatened by Roman armies.
I don't know of any evidence for messianic expectations prior to this time -- though many have surmised that various bandit leaders and other (even unarmed) nonconformists were "messianic" hopefuls. (At the same time scholars often tell us that a messiah was expected to conquer, and the idea of an unarmed messiah was unthinkable to Jews -- hence the radical nature of Christianity.)
I am not betting my house on this. We may one day discover new evidence. But till then I think we can only mount a justifiable case that addresses the evidence we have. And Thompson, Green, et al do in the meantime give us cogent rationales for understanding that the messiah concept was a theological term that had no relevance to living people -- until from the time of the Jewish Wars.
