Meatros

First: I'm not a scholar and in fact, I don't know much about this topic, so please be gentle.

I was just thinking about it this morning and I seem to recall that Josephus (among others) indicates that during the first century AD (and before) there was a plethora of Messiahs floating about - the end times were upon the people of the period.

That said, what are the chances that the basis for the New Testament - or rather the Q was written basically whole cloth out of the Old Testament (with other influences perhaps) AND then various messiah's attempting to 'recreate' key elements of the story.

That might be a bit sloppy, but what I mean is that the Jews of the time had written up a Messiah blue print (man is born of a virgin, gets baptized, goes into Jerusalem on two donkeys, etc). Various Messiahs attempt to fulfill this and one, Jesus, does manage to fulfill most of the prophecies, but gets executed. This would cause unimaginable headaches for the believers at the time and they had to create a resolution (ie, Mark, the passion narrative).

So, again, I'm not an expert (AT ALL), so I'm just curious about this thought I'd been having (which is probably cobbled together out of various bits that I've read).

bacht

Hi. I'm no scholar either.

Simon bar-Kochba was a typical messianic leader who was crushed by Rome in 135. The life of Jesus is more or less the opposite of traditional messianic expectations, so deliberately copying him wouldn't have been the obvious Jewish procedure.

The story in Mark and the other gospels is almost anti-messianic, and may have come from gentile interpretation of Jewish scripture. The earliest Christian martyrs seem better candidates for your theory, eg Stephen in Acts.

semiopen

I think the Virgin birth thing came after as opposed to before Yoshke.

Maybe a key thing is that the guy had to be from the tribe of Judah (as opposed to a Levite). The tribes seem to have been mixed up other than the Levites.

Bar Kochba was a military guy, I think most of the other Messiahs might have been these bandit types as bacht correctly states.

Juststeve

Step One: Guy comes out of Nazareth in the beginning of the first century C.E., travels about preaching and develops a small but devoted following. Members of his following become convinced that he is in fact the Messiah.

Step Two: Guy gets cross ways with the Romans and ends up crucified.

Step Three: His old followers can’t let go of the idea that Jesus was the Messiah so they invent a new kind of Messiah for him to be, one who will die and come back some day. They and later followers who never knew Jesus spin aggrandizing tales about the real Jesus to make more plausible their elevated notion about him.

Step Four: Add fifty years and you’ve got a full blown cult that grows over time to what it is.

Steve

aa5874

What IMAGINATION you have.

You are a story teller and MYTH MAKER.

You have NO evidence for YOUR fairy tale "steps".

We have EVIDENCE of MYTH.

Do you EVEN understand what is EXPECTED of a JEWISH MESSIAH?

The ORIGIN of the JESUS story is from so-called INVENTED prophecies in Hebrew Scripture.

Let us NOT waste anymore time.

Everyone KNOWS what you BELIEVE only EXISTS in your IMAGINATION.

There was NO GUY from Nazareth.

JESUS ORIGINATED as a CHILD of a holy GHOST. See Matthew 1.18 and Luke 1.35

Toto

The 'Q' material consists mostly of sayings. The scholars who analyze them tend to see them as related to Hellenistic Cynic philosophy, not so much the Jewish Scriptures.

Scholars have traced most of the story elements in the gospels to parts of the Hebrew Scriptures. This could mean that the gospels were stories constructed from those earlier scriptures, or that one of those Messiah-types actually tried to act out the scriptures, or perhaps some combination. It's not clear how you would tell the difference to a certainty.

Except that the virgin birth is not part of the Messiah blueprint, nor is baptism. And we don't have a record of these Messiah types trying to act out numerous passages of the Hebrew Scriptures, one after the other.

This is a pretty standard interpretation of the passion narrative. It's not unreasonable, but there's no evidence for it outside of the gospels (except for a few sentences in Josephus that are probably forged.) The historical tendency is for a movement to die out after its founder is killed (which shows that he is not in fact the Messiah). That's why the Romans executed these upstarts.

aa5874

Well, if you don't know much about the topic then what you may be thinking may not be true or historically accurate.

Do you KNOW that the Jewish War was fought based on the EXPECTATION of a JEWISH MESSIANIC ruler BASED on supposed PROPHECIES in Hebrew Scripture?

Do you KNOW that JOSEPHUS himself FOUGHT against the Romans EXPECTING A JEWISH MESSIAH?

"WARS of the JEWS" 6.5.4 The JESUS of the NT ORIGINATED as a HOAX sometime AFTER the fall of the Jewish Temple and AFTER the writings of Josephus.

Chili

Except that myth is real and we are the illusion until we ride two donkey's into the new Jerusalem which would be Rome in Christendom. One would be the left and the other the right brain and not much more needs to be said after that.

bacht

But not a 'normal' messiah like Theudas or the Egyptian or Judah the Maccabee

standard outcome for troublemakers

Do we know that Jews, whether in Palestine or diaspora, would elevate a dead rebel in this way? The re-vivification idea seems to have been applied to famous prophets, like Moses & Elijah, or to ancient figures like Enoch & Melchizedek.

The original (Palestinian?) message probably travelled to Jewish communities around the east, with changes and embellishments along the way.

There would have been God-fearers and converts open to the new message in synagogues. After 70 and especially after 135 these synagogue Christians would've been ejected by regular Jews. Once outside the legal protection of the Jewish community they would need to present an innocuous face to the Roman authorities to avoid prosecution.

aa5874

There were "ABNORMAL" Messiahs?

Josephus did NOT claim Theudas, or the Egyptian were Messiahs or that Jews believed Theudas or the Egyptian were Messiahs.

This Josephus on Theudas in "Antiquities of the Jews" 20.5.1 Theudas was NOT regarded as a MESSIAH but a MAGICIAN. And they CUT off his HEAD.