stephan huller

I love Islam for no other reason than it provides a counter-balance to the insipid messianic arguments on behalf of 'Jesus Christ.' Origen already makes clear that this understanding of Jesus is simple-minded (Commentary on Matthew Book 12) but the Europeans persist. Why do they persist? Because they, like their Imperial ancestors (spiritual ancestors at least) never wanted the fulfillment of a Semitic Christ. But that's another story.

Owing to the prompting of some members of a thread I have decided to my first thread devoted to the idea that Agrippa was originally held to be the true messiah of Israel. I don't necessarily want to get into the complexities of the issue because of the often polemic nature of the responses at this site. Discussions about truth should be carried with low voices rather than shouting matches.

The idea that Agrippa was the messiah is already confirmed by Jews and Jewish witnesses throughout European history. Origen knew of a 'Jewish history' (presumably written by Agrippa's secretary Justus or perhaps Josephus) which identified him as such. Nachmanides refers to the existence of the opinion among 'sages' of the contemporary period. The same idea shines through the account of Mishnah Sotah (which we will cite shortly). The point is that it is impossible to argue against the idea that Jews associated Agrippa with the title of 'messiah.'

Whether that was some Jews, most Jews, all Jews of any given period is up for debate but ALL the prominent Christian commentators on the Jewish people and their beliefs reference this understanding (Luther, Calvin etc).

Why was this belief widespread? Well I'd argue it is hard to avoid. One of the most important messianic prophesies associates the coming of the messiah with the end of the line of kings of Judea (Gen 49:8 - 12). Jews could not avoid associating Agrippa with Daniel 9:24 - 27 because the prophetic description bears such an uncanny resemblance to the times Agrippa lived in (I'd even entertain the idea that the text we now have was edited in the time of Agrippa to help this association).

I have taken the idea further by associating certain traditions about St. Mark in the Coptic tradition with the historical Marcus Agrippa but this isn't the point of this thread.

Agrippa was fully Jewish. Rashi however long ago established the rule that Agrippa had to be considered Jewish because his mother was Jewish. But it is interesting to see how Maimonides uses a similar line of attack against Mohammed which rejected his messianic candidacy, a decision which was decided favorably for Agrippa.

Maimonides report in Iggeret Teiman about the Islamic application of Deut 18:15 to Mohammed was exactly what was lurking behind the surface of the famous story in Sotah 41 about Agrippa.

Let's see if I am right.

I will cite the story from the Mishnah and then follow it with Maimonides attack against the Islamic application of the same scripture to Mohammed. All the reader has to do is apply the original Muslim argument to the figure of Agrippa who was the descendant of the Arabian king Herod the Great.

Eusebius already demonstrates a justification for thinking Herod was the messiah because he was an Arab.

The story in Sotah 41 reads:

what was the procedure in connection with the portion read by the king? At the conclusion of the first day of the festival (of the tabernacles) in the eighth (year), i.e. the end of the seventh, they erect a wooden dais in the temple court, upon which he (the king) sits; as it is said, at the end of every seven years, in the set time etc. [Deut. XXXI, 10] The hazzan takes a Torah scroll and hands it to the synagogue president, and the synagogue president hands it to the (high priest's) deputy. He hands it to the high priest who hands it to the king. The King stands and receives it, but reads sitting. King Agrippa stood and received it and read standing, for which act the sages praised him, when he reached, thou mayest not put a foreigner over thee, [Ibid. XVII, 15] his eyes ran with tears. They said to him, 'Fear not, Agrippa, thou art our brother!' [ibid XVIII:15f]

The reason that Agrippa is portrayed as standing rather than sitting is deliberate. This is a story which is deliberately crafted to hide an important historical truth. As I note in my book the scriptural passage which lies behind this narrative is Deut 18:15f where:

The LORD your God will stand [יָקִים] for you a prophet like me from among your own brothers. You must listen to him ... I will stand for them a prophet like you from among their brothers; I will put my words in his mouth, and he will tell them everything I command him.

Do you have any idea how many stupid - and I mean stupid, stupid, stupid - interpretations of this passage have been written? Not one of them ever bothers to explain the thread which develops from Agrippa 'standing' to the sages acknowledging him as a 'brother.'

Anyway compare this to Maimonides' attack on the application of the same passage to another Arabian:

You write in your letter, that some people were duped by the argument that Mohammed is alluded to in the verse "A prophet will the Lord thy God raise up unto thee, from the midst of thee, of thy brethren" (Deuteronomy 18:15), while others remained unconvinced because of the phrase "from the midst of thee." It is most astonishing that some folks should be deluded by such specious proof, while others were almost persuaded, were it not for the phrase "from the midst of thee." Under these circumstance it is incumbent upon you to concentrate and understand my view in the matter ...

You will not be compelled to go in search after him from country to country, nor to travel to distant parts, as is implied in the phrase, "from the midst of thee." Moreover, another notion is conveyed in the words "from the midst of thee from thy brethren like unto me," namely, that he will be one of you, that is, a Jew. The obvious deduction is that you shall be distinguished above all others for the sole possession of prophecy. The words "like unto me" were specifically added to indicate that only the descendants of Jacob are meant. For the phrase "of thy brethren" by itself might have been misunderstood and taken to refer also to Esau and Ishmael, since we do find Israel addressing Esau as brother, for example, in the verse, "Thus saith thy brother Israel" (Numbers 20:14). On the other hand, the words "like unto me," do not denote a prophet as great as Moses, for this interpretation is precluded by the statement "And there hath not arisen a prophet since in Israel like unto Moses." (Deuteronomy 34:10). The general drift of the chapter points to the correctness of our interpretation and will be confirmed by the succession of the verses, to wit "There shall not be found among you any one that maketh his son or his daughter to pass through the fire etc.," (Deuteronomy 18:10), "For these nations, that thou art to dispossess, hearken unto soothsayers, and unto diviners; but as for thee, the Lord thy God hath not suffered thee so to do ." (Verse 14). "A prophet will the Lord why [sic] God raise up unto thee, from the midst of thee, of they brethren, like unto me," (Verse 15). It is obviously clear that the prophet alluded to here will not be a person who will produce a new law, or found a new religion. He will merely enable us to dispense with diviners and astrologers, and will be available for consultation concerning anything that may befall us ...

The point of course is that Maimonides does say in an early passage that someone has to be considered to be Jewish if their mother is Jewish - a line of reasoning which convinced Rashi that Agrippa was indeed fully Jewish and thus - by implication - 'a brother' worthy of acceptance as the prophet hailed by Moses.

Rashi does not say this (i.e. that Agrippa was the prophet like Moses) explicitly but it is impossible not to see the implication of the passage.

The Talmud interesting has an anonymous witness comment on the sages praising Agrippa for standing saying "since they praised him, it follows that he acted rightly." The dissenters to this original opinion (which by its placement is necessarily the accepted interpretation). The first cited is R. Ashi (352–427 CE) who says:

Even according to him who maintains that when a Nasi forgoes the honour due to him one may avail himself of the permission, when a king forgoes the honour due to him one may not avail himself of the permission; as it is said: Thou shalt set a king over thee [Deut. XVII, 15] — that his fear may be over thee! — It is different [with the fulfilment of] a precept.

Yet look carefully at the passage which is at the heart of the controversy:

When you enter the land the LORD your God is giving you and have taken possession of it and settled in it, and you say, "Let us set a king over us like all the nations around us," be sure to appoint over you the king the LORD your God chooses. He must be from among your own brothers. Do not place a foreigner over you, one who is not a brother Israelite ... when he takes the throne of his kingdom, he is to write for himself on a scroll a copy of this law, taken from that of the priests, who are Levites. It is to be with him, and he is to read it all the days of his life so that he may learn to revere the LORD his God and follow carefully all the words of this law and these decrees and not consider himself better than his brothers and turn from the law to the right or to the left.

The rabbanites want to make the passage about whether or not the Jews were justified in accepting the legitimacy of Agrippa's rule. Yet this is stupid. It neglects to explain why Agrippa was standing rather than sitting which is the original context to the 'praise' heaped on Agrippa by the sages.

The important thing to draw from this is (a) there were Yemenite Jews who presumably held fast to a very early opinion associated with Mohammed (i.e. that he was the messiah) (b) that this opinion was rejected by Maimonides in part because Mohammed was not Jewish and (c) there were Jews from the first century down to the modern era who held that Agrippa was this figure (mostly as a kind of vestige from a belief carried down from the early period) and that he had enough claim to be identified as 'fully Jewish.'

Even more significant perhaps is that the Jews and Muslim converts debated the question of 'who is the messiah' in a way which necessarily precludes Jesus's candidacy as the one to come. Jesus was never a historical king, he was never accepted as such by an authoritative body of Jewish sages (as presumably Mohammed was in Yemen and Agrippa was so recognized by the Sanhedrin).

Of course the fact that Jesus approves of the title 'messiah' being applied to his person is the most obvious sign that he was not the 'one to come' but it seems unlikely that Christians are ever going to come around to see that one ...

Iskander

I think that this post could do with some background information. Messiahs in Judaism can be no better than pimps

Shabbatai Zevi.

Shabbatai declared that he was the Anointed of the God of Jacob .This action evoked a hysterical response—a number of Jews fell into trances and had visions of him on a royal throne crowned as king of Israel.

During his stay in Istanbul he was imprisoned but the prison became a messianic court: pilgrims from all over visited him in prison to join in messianic rituals and ascetic activities.
Eventually the Turks gave him the choice between conversion to Islam or death. He chose conversion and the name of Mehemet Effendi. Many of his followers remained faithful to him, excusing his conversion or denying that he had converted to Islam—they said it was a phantom who had taken on his appearance, the messiah himself had ascended to haven

The followers that excused his apostasy argued on the basis of Lurianic kabbalah that there were two kind of divine light...


A number of groups continued in their belief that Shabbatai was the Messiah including a sect, the ‘dissidents’(Doenmeh), which professed Islam publicly , but nevertheless adhered to their own traditions. Marrying among themselves, they eventually divided into sub-groups which violated Jewish sexual laws and asserted the divinity of Shabbatai and their leader Baruchia Russo.

In the eighteenth century the most important Shabbatean sect was led by Jacob Frank (1726-1791)( who was influenced by the Doenmeh in Turkey. Believing himself to be the incarnation of Shabbatai, Frank announced that he was the second person of the Trinity.
Eventually Frank and his disciples were baptized

Was Agrippa recognized as a Messiah? Perhaps he was by some, but...
Babylonian Talmud: Tractate Sotah
Folio 41a

http://www.come-and-hear.com/sotah/sotah_41.html

stephan huller

But the key is to look at the first opinion. This is always the authoritative one in the Gemara and so we read the original reference in the Mishnah:

Followed by the statement:

R. Ashi is NOT the authoritative view otherwise the order would have been reversed. If it were heretical to accept the actions of the sages as 'praiseworthy' Rashi and ALMOST EVERY OTHER MAJOR AUTHORITY wouldn't have lined up in support of understanding Agrippa as the messiah of Daniel 9:26

Iskander

Babylonian Talmud: Tractate Sotah
Folio 41b

charles

I have never heard that the Jews thought Agrippa was the messiah. My understanding was that they are still waiting for the messiah to come. How does this fit within this framework? Did the Jews really believe that Agrippa was the messiah? Maybe they were confused with the Agrippa mentioned in Acts who seems to claim that he was the messiah:

Is it possible the Jews just read Acts incorrectly?

Iskander

Once upon a time I heard a funny story. It went something like this:

A young man is referred to a psychologist because he sees sexual activity in everything.

The psychologist, uncertain of what to say, draws a square with a pencil on a piece of paper and asks the young man, what is this?

The young man replies; two people fornicating

The psychologist replies that it is the drawing of a standard geometric figure, how could it be confused with copulation?

The young man is very surprised that what is obvious to him is hidden from the less fortunate ones and shouts back the explanation:

The drawing is that of a standard geometric figure representing a wall, but behind the wall there are people copulating.

This type of explanation is not uncommon in religion.

stephan huller

That is a funny story. Thanks for sharing it.

Iskander

Glad you like it.

Good luck with your work

darstec

Just so I understand, you are using sources that were first written at least 500 years after the events and furthermore our earliest existent copies of those sources are at least another 500 to 800 years later?

What possible evidence can we find in documents 1300 years removed from the history and thought of the time?

And the Islamic material is even further removed from the events. Things back when those sources were written is not the same as now where we have 2000 year old documents and modern scientific methods of testing archaeological finds. We are talking about writers who believed in Phoenix birds and headless people among other wondrous things.

stephan huller

Well, the Mishnah is a collection of material which comes from the beginning, middle and end of the second century - in some cases even earlier. The Mishnah Sotah citation is a snapshot of an event which happened in the middle of the first century. A second century witness of a first century even is quite acceptable all things considered.

The sad reality is that most of the original material from the period has not survived. So we are left to this and by 'we' I mean skeptics and believers.

If you don't want to accept that situation and find it unacceptable there are other things you could be spending your time doing. But just shouting how the situation isn't perfect doesn't help anyone.

Either you become a scholar who studies the sources and makes sense of them the best you can or you take a new interest in a field which doesn't have the shortcomings you repeatedly mention.

It's like complaining that women have vaginas and don't have strong muscular arms. Take an interior decorating course. Go to a Celine Dion concert. Work out at the gym incessantly. Learn to dress better. You'll find your way.