Jewish Messianism in the 2nd Temple Period

Episode 14 of “The Entanglement of Being”

7 min readJan 2, 2025

Chapter 3 — The Revisionism of the Apostolic Age

3.1. Jewish Messianism (Episode 14 on Medium)

Let us return to the post-crucifixion beginnings and look, in more detail, at how and why the community of followers of Jesus adapted and developed their ideas in those early formative years, setting it on the path to become the religion we know today. Christianity, of course, began as a sect within Judaism towards the end of the 2nd Temple period. It was Judaic messianism that provided the source of the messianic interpretation of Jesus’ life, although Jesus being a Messiah has never been accepted by Judaism.

‘The earliest followers of Jesus comprised an apocalyptic, Second Temple Jewish sect, which historians refer to as Jewish Christianity.’ (Wikipedia on History of early Christianity, 2016, p. Introduction)

‘Jewish messianism has its root in the apocalyptic literature of the 2nd century BC to 1st century BC, promising a future “anointed” leader or Messiah to resurrect the Israelite “Kingdom of God”, in place of the foreign rulers of the time.’ (Wikipedia on History of early Christianity, 2016, p. Section 1.1)

The term Messiah was originally just a designation, an attributive adjective, denoting an “anointed one of God”. It became a personal noun in later stages of its development in Judaism when it was used to describe the future hope of the Jewish people.

‘But though the name is of later origin, the idea of a personal Messiah runs through the Old Testament. It is the natural outcome of the prophetic future hope. The first prophet to give a detailed picture of the future ideal king was Isaiah (ix. 1–6, xi. 1–10, xxxii. 1–5).’ (Jewish Encyclopedia, 1906)

‘Such is the nature of messianism that it develops and flourishes in periods of suffering and frustration. When the present is satisfactory it need not be redeemed but should be perpetuated or renewed (e.g., by periodic or cyclical renewal rites). When the present is profoundly unsatisfactory, messianism emerges as one of the possible answers: the certainty of a satisfactory natural, social, and historical order (and this certainty was particularly strong in Israel, based as it was on God’s promise enshrined in his eternal covenant) is projected on the horizon of an ideal future. As the biblical account amply shows, already in biblical times the present was generally perceived as far from satisfactory (wicked and sinful kings, enemy incursions, defeats), and hence ideas concerning an ideal order under an ideal Davidic king began to crystallize.’ (Encyclopedia,com, 1987)

‘The messianic doctrines that developed during the second half of the Second Temple period from approximately 220 bce to 70 ce (also called the “intertestamentary” period) were of diverse kinds, reflecting the mentality and spiritual preoccupations of different circles. They ranged from this-worldly, political expectations — the breaking of the yoke of foreign rule, the restoration of the Davidic dynasty (the messianic king), and, after 70 ce, also the ingathering of the exiles and the rebuilding of the Temple — to more apocalyptic conceptions, such as the spectacular and catastrophic end of “this age” (including a Day of Judgment), the ushering in of a new age, the advent of the kingdom of heaven, the resurrection of the dead, a new heaven and a new earth. The main protagonist might be a military leader, a kingly “son of David,” a supernatural figure such as the somewhat mysterious “son of man” mentioned in some books of the Hebrew scriptures as well as in apocryphal apocalyptic texts.’ (Encyclopedia,com, 1987)

Tom Holland, in his book, Dominion, descriptively captured the situation in the century before Jesus was born and the period in which Jesus lived, as follows:

‘It was as God’s Anointed that this prince was destined to rule: as his ‘Messiah’, or translated into Greek — his Christos. Already, in the visions of the prophet named Isaiah, the title had been applied to Cyrus; but now in the wake of Pompey’s desecration of the Temple, it had come to possess a far more urgent significance. Anticipation of a messiah sprung from David’s line, who would impose the covenant with a new vigour, winnowing the wheat from the chaff and restoring the lost tribes to Jerusalem, crackled in the air. All foreign practices were to be purged from Israel. The messiah would smash the arrogance of the unrighteous rulers like a potter’s vessel. ‘And he shall have the peoples of all nations to serve him under his yoke, and he shall glorify the the Lord in the sight of all the earth, and he shall purify Jerusalem in his holiness as it was in the beginning.’(Psalms of Solomon 17:30)’ (Holland, 2020, p. 57)

‘In AD 6, when direct rule was imposed on Judea, the prefect sent to administer the province was ‘entrusted by Augustus with full powers — including the infliction of capital punishment’. The Jews’ noses were rubbed humiliatingly in the brute fact of the subordination. Rather than dull their expectation that some great change in world affairs was approaching, however, and that the end of days might well be drawing near, the Roman occupation served only to heighten it. The Jews responded in various ways. Some, taking to the wilderness east of Jerusalem, withdrew from the world; others, cleaving to the Temple, clung for their hopes of salvation to the rites and services ordained of the priesthood. Others yet — scholars known as ‘Pharisees’ — dreamed of an Israel in which obedience to the laws given by God to Moses would be absolute, so universal, that every Jew would come to serve as a priest.’ (Holland, 2020, p. 58)

It was a time of ferment, with Judaism divided into antagonistic factions and a number of charismatic religious leaders contributing to what would later become the Mishnah of Rabbinic Judaism. It would be disingenuous to believe that Jesus was not influenced by this ferment and the sharp debates between factions in Judaism about bodily resurrection, immortality of the soul and the salvation and redemption of Israel. As we shall discuss in following episodes (covering Chapter 3), the Gospels cannot be relied upon to tell us what happened historically. To try to distinguish what Jesus really said, rather than what is presented in the Gospels decades later, is a great challenge for nonsectarian New Testament scholars. While he lived in a time of messianic and apocalyptic expectations, it is another matter whether Jesus identified himself as a promised Messiah. For all we know, the Messiah-ship may have just been a mantle thrust upon him by hopeful followers, wishing, among other things, to escape the yoke of Roman occupation. E. P. Sanders (1993, p. Chapter 15) also points out there were different meanings of the term Messiah at the time:

‘In the Hebrew Bible, three classes of people are identified as “anointed”, that is, “Messiahs”: prophets, priests and kings. In Jesus’ time, the term Messiah was used in different ways, and no one can be sure how Jesus would even have meant it if he had accepted the term. Though Messianic expectations in general centered on the King Messiah, the Essenes expected both a kingly and a priestly figure in their eschatology.’ (Wikipedia on Historical Jesus, 2016, p. Section 2.2.1)

It is important to note that the Jews did not regard the Messiah as a god or part of a Godhead.

‘The Jews, unlike their rulers, did not believe that a man might become a god; they believed that there was only the one almighty, eternal deity. Creator of the heavens and the earth, he was worshipped by them as the Most High God, the Lord of Hosts, the Master of all the Earth. Empires were to his order; mountains to melt like wax. That such a god, of all gods, might have had a son, and this son, suffering the fate of a slave, might have been tortured to death on a cross, were claims as stupefying as they were to most Jews repellent. No more shocking a reversal of their most devoutly held assumptions could possibly have been imagined. Not merely blasphemy, it was madness.’ (Holland, 2020, p. xviii)

It is ironic that the Romans, their rulers, believed or accepted the idea of divinity, but it applied to the greatest of the great: the victors, heroes and kings, not someone who had been crucified on a cross.

After the fall of the Hasmonean dynasty and the subsequent Roman occupation of Judea in 64BC, ‘many Jews believed it to be the end of days and hoped that the Romans would somehow fall or be replaced by a Jewish king. Most Jews believed that their history was governed by God, meaning that even the conquest of Judea by the Romans was a divine act. They believed that the Romans would be replaced by a Jewish king only through divine intervention.’ (Wikipedia on Historical Background of the New Testament, 2017, p. Section 1.3)

The Gospels portray a Jesus who was a willing participant in espousing apocalyptic ideas, starting with his linkage to John the Baptist, a populist apocalyptic and ascetic preacher. The ministry of John the Baptist which involved ‘going into the desert and baptizing in the Jordan suggests that John and his followers were purifying themselves for what they believed was God’s imminent deliverance’ (Wikipedia on Historical Jesus, 2016, p. Section 2.3). The Gospels contain apocalyptic passages, including from Jesus’ mouth[1], though one cannot be sure they are not later insertions or that Jesus was speaking of himself as the ‘Son of man’ in these passages. The doctrine of Christian Church Religion includes an apocalyptic eschatology, while conveniently overlooking that, 2000 years ago, there was an imminent expectation of the end of days. However, some scholars argue that Jesus’ teaching in other ways diverges from John’s apocalyptic vision and possibly characterizes the Kingdom of God not as imminent, but as already present. This issue is the subject of debate among scholars and the main disagreement in contemporary research. We shall discuss this non-orthodox view of the Kingdom of God later in this chapter.