Tenorikuma

In fact, this very scenario has happened in modern times in some of the Japanese new religions that incorporate Jewish or Christian theology into a Buddhist or Shinto framework.

spin

Yes, you're good at trawling the net for 100-year-old stuff that tells you what you know. If you keep citing your antiquarian internet stuff, is your methodology any different from Acharya S? You should open a scholarly book once in a while. Try John J. Collins's The Sceptre and the Star, Doubleday: 1995. Collins is one of today's big names in messianism scholarship. He's not a great one for your apologetic approach to messianism.

I've asked you at least twice now for specific references in the Hebrew bible about the expected messiah and still nothing at all. Let me ask you again, please cite biblical references for the messiah and spare us the tangential references to suffering servants and ideal kings.

TedM

Address Isaiah 9. Messiah. See Jewish Encyclopedia. As for the 100 years old stuff, your point is well taken, but it was his life's work. That should count for something. In any case, I started with premises that are universally held by Christians to be true. Your way of addressing what you saw was a problem regarding the Messiah seemed obtuse. Why not just come right out and explain the issue since you see it as black and white? I felt you were making claims against widely accepted positions without a sufficient explanation--and with an attitude on top of it. Why does everyone here seem ready to pounce? I thought my OP was civil and well thought out.

PhilosopherJay

Hi TedM,

Excellent question.

Myths are often created to solve irreconcilable contradictions between ideology (the way people think things work) and real life (how things actually work).

After the burning of the Temple and their defeat in the Jewish-Roman war, the Jews who still believed needed a reason why their God had not saved them. The Jesus Myth explains that God did try to send someone to save them, but the Jewish leadership did not recognize him and turned him over to the Romans for executions.

This myth cleverly turns the problem around. It was not that the Jewish God Yaweh did not recognize the distress of the Jews and answer the prayers/sacrifices of the Jewish leadership, it was that the Jewish leadership did not have enough faith to recognize that he was sending someone to help them.

Warmly,

Jay Raskin

stephan huller

There is a very similar parallel in the Josephus material with respect to Agrippa especially in the Yosippon. The narrative can be read as being structured around the Jews rejection of Agrippa as their rightful monarch. It is bracketed on the one end by the long speech by Agrippa (ten pages of print!) in the Yosippon and other traditions (starting on p. 277 in Flusser's edition) which warns the Jews against these traits of theirs.

The Yosippon interesting has the Jewish rebels continually referring back to that original speech in a parallel form of artificiality - i.e. whenever things are getting really bad one rebel turns to the other and says 'remember what Agrippa said about seeking peace, do you think he was right?'

It’s hard to tell from the wording in the Yosippon whether the Abomination of Desolation is to be dated to the death of Agrippa or to just before the destruction of the Temple. The only grounds for my choice of the second possibility as more probable is that the reference in the “Little Apocalypse” in Mark and Matthew is to some object set up in the sanctuary.

Whichever reading is right, the Yosippon is emphatic that the erection or appearance of the Abomination is the direct consequence of the execution of Agrippa on false evidence. The Abomination and Agrippa are inseparable, according to this text.

I’ve always found it difficult to work out precisely which offering the Yosippon refers to as having ended a week exactly after the judicial murder of Agrippa. The Rabbinic texts always say it was the Tamid, the daily offering, but the word in the Yosippon is more specific, “Minha” מנחה, which is an offering of flour with olive oil kneaded through it. Either way, if the precise form was the Sabbath offering, which was slightly more elaborate, and Agrippa was executed on a Sabbath, then the nefarious consequences would have come about immediately, but again would only have been evident a week later, on the next Sabbath.

So here is my proposed solution to the contradictions. First, p. 398 of the Yosippon (Venice ed. ch. XCII), which interprets the Anointed in Daniel 9:26 as the Anointed High Priest. The speaker is said to be Josephus. Second, p. 450 (in an appendix; Venice ed. ch. LXXVII) which seems to identify the Anointed Leader in v. 25 with the Anointed in v. 26, and sets the execution of Agrippa and Monobaz three and a half years before the destruction and one week before the end of the Tamid. The speaker is the anonymous author of the whole book. Third, p. 296 (Venice ed. ch. LXV), which speaks of the destruction of the Temple in the twentieth and last year of Agrippa. The speaker is again the anonymous author.

aa5874

The Jews NEVER did believe or accepted the Blasphemous Jesus story because c 132-135 CE they did defeat the Romans and had what they thought was their own Jewish Expected Messianic ruler, Simon Barchocheba who ordered that Christians should be punished for their Blasphemy.

The blasphemy called Jesus the Son of God did NOT originate with the Jews at all.

Examine Justin's Dialogue with Trypho XXXI The Jesus story could have only appeared clever to Non-Jews because it was blasphemy to the Jews.

The Jesus story was theologically barbaric to Jews and the evidence from antiquity will show that No known Jew of antiquity was a Christian of the Jesus cult.

Virtually all christians writers of the Jesus cult were Non-Jews for hundreds of years.

In fact, history will show that it was the Romans who HIJACKED the Jesus story and claimed it was their STORY from the very beginning and made the fiction character Peter their First Bishop of Rome.

stephan huller

But let's start with the idea that the heavenly Jesus figure is derived from the LXX account of the change of names of Oshea. The idea that the angelic figure who would have given them the power to summon a new Joshua and metaphorically allow them to enter into the Promised Land could well have originated among Jews after the destruction.

semiopen

This reminds me of the Chabad joke (but its in wide circulation) about the guy standing on top of his flooded house with the waters constantly rising.

A boat comes for him but he says, no God will save me.
A helicopter but he says, no God will save me.

Eventually he drowns.

In heaven, he asks God why he didn't save him.
God says, I sent you a boat and a helicopter.

In the Yoshke case however, God is killing his only son to stop the Jews from making stupid sacrifices. Considerably more obscure than the joke.

stephan huller

There is more to it than this. The question may well have been more tied to the unsuitability of enclosed structures (= temples) or indeed the profanity of the Jerusalem altar or perhaps the institutionalizing of human sacrifice (= martyrdom). It's hard to say what was most original.

aa5874

We know that up to c 132-135 CE that the Jews did not accept a heavenly Messiah.

It is not what you imagine happened that counts.

We know that Simon Barchochebas [Simon bar Kochba] was actually considered a Jewish Messianic ruler and that the Jews expected an earthly Messianic ruler since c 70 CE.