gdeering

Here's something I've been wondering about for a while, I used to take it for granted that the Messiah was a deity - at the same time I've also been aware that the Jews consider their messiah will be 100% human (not an incarnation).

• When did the idea start that the Messiah was a literal son on God?
• What sort of person would be prepared to accept this "variant" idea in the first century?
• What sort of receptive "audience" becomes willing to tell the Jews they are wrong about their own religion?

The Jews tried for centuries to rid the Bible of polytheism - wouldn't it have seemed strange to them when the early (proto-)Christians started proclaiming that the Messiah (recently present, but now dead) was the son of God? Particularly since divinity is not a requirement for being the Messiah, and it reinserts a conceptual pantheon in to Judaism? (Even if explained way by some rough idea of a Trinity).

Imagine explaining your new religion to a first century Jew "....so God had this son..." Would it make any sense to them at all? What kind of belief structure do you need to have to side-step the "experts"?

I am more and more in agreement with those who feel that one does not need a real Jesus to have a Savior and evolve a religion. Might it also be that one does not even need the Jews to develop an idea of a (divine) Messiah in an Hellenic world? What cultures are comfortable with messenger-children of the gods, and gods who die and are reborn?

It seems like a big question, if it's been covered before, or if I am missing something about the development of messianic Judaism in the first century, please direct me to the relevant threads or links.


Thanks,


Gregg

PS - no actual belief stated or implied by the above comments. I also understand that Jesus does not fit a whole host of Messiah requirements, I'm mainly interested in the conceptual bridge between the ideas of mutable, portable gods of the ancient world and the anchor of Judaism and how this in turn becomes wedded to the a (populist) idea of suffering and saving.

aa5874

And imagine that the person was claiming God had a son after Jesus himself was executed for claiming to be the son of God.

semiopen

Messiah is Moshiach in Hebrew which means annointed, which comes from pouring oil over someone's head, like Saul or David when they became Kings.

The messianic concept was not fully developed in the early common era. This may have been considered a military ruler who would win back the kingdom. For example, Bar Kochba was considered a messianic candidate until his eventual defeat and death.

The trinity didn't come along until well after the first century CE.

The genius of Jesus (or whoever was responsible) was for making the messiah a personal as opposed to a national savior.

I consider the Jewish concept to be only technically different than the Christian concept; the main problem with both is that the messiah eventually dies and things aren't any better than before.

bacht

The simple answer is that traditional Torah-following Palestinian Jews would have no interest in such a messiah. However we know that late 2nd temple Judaism was not monolithic. Apocalyptic writers came up with some wild stuff, so maybe a divine messiah was conceivable on the fringes of populist/traditionalist Judaism.

Non-traditional diaspora Jews may have become Hellenized enough by the 1st C that such a saviour figure might have been appealing, perhaps as allegorical at first.

Or, maybe the whole thing started with gentiles re-interpreting the Septuagint :huh:

Cesc

Israel's true king (typically David) was Yahweh's "son" (Psalm 2) like Israel was his "firstborn". So of course God's kingdom on earth would be inaugurated by the annointed king, the Son.

Doesn't Jesus being "God's son" firstly have to do with his role as king, messiah? And not at all with the fact that Mary had a brush with God's spirit.

Anyway, that so much meaning has been put into the Christian "son of God" theme I speculate has to do with the fact that Christianity was competing with or directly opposing the imperial religion where the emperors were to be worshipped as gods or "sons of gods". Afterall, Jesus is not the only biblical character to be conceived with a little intervention from God.

And I dont think the Jewish idea of the "king savior" is separable from the stereotypical ancient vision of the inauguration of an ideal world by a "divine king" - in Judaism, Yahweh's "son". That vision of the ideal world of divine kingship where the lame walk, the blind see, the hungry are full, the humble are raised to the seat of honor etc. is found all over the ancient Near East, usually in the form of royal propaganda. In the OT Isaiah epitomizes it.

That Christ, the king, the Son, himself is humbled and then raised to glory I think is not merely a reflection of Isaiah's 'suffering servant' or a development of a possible historical Jesus that was crucified, but also just another symbolic illustration and example of that ancient Near Eastern utopian vision of the ideal world - or "God's Kingdom" in Christianity

DCHindley

Try as I may, I cannot see how ethnic Jews, no matter how broadly defined, would have come up with a divine messiah. Jewish gnostics, who might represent the extreme anti-establishment Jewish POV, completely rejected their traditional God, with those of them who welcomed a redeemer aeon, did not identify him with traditional messianic ideas. If anything, messianism was in their POV a warped reflection of the mission of the divine redeemer aeon.

However, I can see gentiles who had some sort of close association with Judaism developing such an idea. Gentiles would have had some contact with mystery religions that might idealize the role of divine entities who save the world or at very least keep it spinning. They may have carried some of these concepts over when they adopted Jewish ways of thinking, creating a synthesis of sorts.

It would seem to me that something very terrible must have happened to cause these gentile Judeophiles to reject Jews and traditional Jewish beliefs (law, circumcision, temple sacrificial system, etc) while at the same time transferring the favor of God from Jews to themselves, as if Jews had ultimately shown they were not worthy of it and that they themselves somehow did, being the true children of Abraham.

Now it just so happens that between the usually assumed time of Jesus (late 20's to early 30's AD) and the rise of Christianity as we know it (crystallizing in the mid 2nd century AD) such a terrible event did indeed occur. It was the Jewish rebellion against Rome - centered not only on Judea, Idumea, Samaria and Galilee, but affected gentile communities as far north as the Lebanon/Southern Syria and as far south as Alexandria - that radically polarized Jews and gentiles in the region. Any expectations that Jews and gentiles had of cooperation and peaceful coexistence were shattered and frustrations surely abounded.

The sacrificial system was destroyed with little chance of being reestablished in the foreseeable future. Aside from Jewish gnostics who seemed to be more prevalent among Hellenized Jewish communities, Jews of Galilee and Babylon developed their system of Rabbinic lore to replace it. The gentiles who had associated with the Jesus movement, who I think were looking forward to being part of a future and very just Jewish kingdom/empire, transformed the messianic/kingly figure Jesus served in the movement into a divine redeemer that resembled the redeemer aeon of the Jewish gnostics but without rejecting the God of the Jews. Of course, modifications to how this God was conceived were in order.

DCH

No Robots

You might want to look at April DeConick's blog series "Creating Jesus: How a Jewish Rabbi became God."

show_no_mercy

Gentiles were also already used to worshiping human beings as gods (the Roman Emperors). Augustus was considered a "savior" and "son of god". Considering that Christianity spread primarily among Gentiles, then this explains how the new "king" of Judaism has to also be the son of god. He has to be at least equal to or of higher status than the "normal" Roman son-of-god Emperors.

Elijah

I agree with Cesc above about it having more to do with him being considered the messiah than his biological father.

There is also the intermediary aspect to an unknowable god that he personifies for certain ideologies. Post Plato with the Greek influence on Judaism God becomes constant and unknowable. Different spiritual intermediary or emanations had to be thought up and the understanding of God had to change. Some of these intermediaries are things like Logos or the Demiurge which Jesus gets identified with as the earthly personification of, or particular of. This is rationalized usually with him just personifying Wisdom like Obama was supposed to personify Change. Which isn’t a big deal back then because of the platonic forms/spiritual elements in Greek philosophy have earthly particulars creating the platonic duality.

“For Christ is, in a manner, the demiurge, to whom the Father says, Let there be light, and Let there be a firmament. But Christ is demiurge as a beginning (arche), inasmuch as He is wisdom.” Origen Commentary on John

Now him personifying this spiritual aspect isn’t how he becomes a savior. Salvation from him comes from the pyramid scheme he started with his followers regarding the resurrection of the dead; that those who believed in him would get a call up on the day of resurrection by him. This type of salvation would be particular to ideologies that believed in the resurrection, usually because they rejected reincarnation, reunification or a magical realm where the dead live. Which was probably the understanding of most of the Gentiles the message was spreading to, so just how he was bringing about salvation was just thrown together sometimes around another ideology that probably didn’t make any sense because it only does around the concept of the resurrection of the dead.

gdeering

Thank you all for answering my questions. I think that there is a reason to assume that origin for proto-Christianity lies in the pan-spiritual Hellenistic world, rather than with an "out of Jerusalem" theory.

I hope to read more in the future on how this cross fertilization might have taken place and how one could philosophically cherry pick the Bible to justify a sort of god that must have struck Jews as obviously modeled after gods of the Hellenistic world.

To Cesc,
I sort of disagree on the generalization of the idea of a son (as say, people disagree with Paul's "brother of the Lord") - I think that to say God had a son is a huge conceptual leap. It don't mean that it could not become an acceptable fringe thought with in Judaism, since we know so little, but it seems easier for the idea to have originated (as you said) via general Near Eastern utopian philosophy.


To DCH,
Great post. I'm familiar with the facts and events, and the various diaspora explanations for the forming of early Christianity (the standard model, if you will). I wonder if distance from real Judaism actually helps the "Judeophiles" deepen their mythical background (given several decades of distance). I remember a long time ago reading someone's idea that women were put on a pedestal in order to be subjugated; similarly one could have loved the religion - and disassociate it from the Jew? Maybe the exotic idea of Hebrew monotheism was too good not to use as a base and then (this is the mystery) gild the lily by adding the hellenic redeemer?

I am just seeing a first century conceptual leap and looking for those who would be last troubled by it.



Gregg