Scientists can be passionate about their pet theories despite their training to be objective, but rarely are they fanatical.

Who Lies Sleeping?

The Star of Bethlehem 2

The Messiah

Abstract

From Jesus’s birth, Jewish rebels were leading armed struggles against the Romans and claiming to be the Messiah, a king. Yet in the midst of all this, God chose to send Jesus as the Messiah, a king. God might have intended to sacrifice himself as His son but he chose a strange time to do it, a time when Jesus the true Messiah could not be distinguished from deluded men who suffered the same fate—crucifixion. Jesus looks to be one of many messianic pretenders to the throne of Israel. If he was, then someone has deceived us. If he was not, God looks incompetent, for if He wanted to save mankind why did he do it in a way that leaves deception, or simply error, a large possibility? Nor did the Jewish War end these messianic claims, several more arose, until bar Kosiba, the Son of the Star, another messiah, led a four year rebellion with disastrous results for all Jews. Notes on the meaning of the Star of Bethlehem

The Messiah

Though the idea of the Messiah, or in Greek parlance, the Christ, developed by Christian theologians is one of a divine spiritual saviour, from the time of exile in Babylonia, the Jewish idea of a Messiah was of a God-sent earthly saviour or deliverer, a warrior king who would save them from their enemies. Jewish religion led Jews to believe that they were God’s “Chosen People”, having a special role in His plans and being under his care, but God’s people felt violated by the oppression of foreign rulers. They dreamed that this saviour would free them from their enemies and institute a kingdom of God on earth in which the Chosen People would be the elite. The kingdom of God was a worldwide empire, centred on the land of Israel, the aristocracy of which would be God’s Chosen People, the Jews.

The word “messiah” is always said to mean “the Anointed One” (anointed is mashiach in Hebrew). “The anointed ones of God” were kings and priests who ruled through the divine will as the favourites of God. The implication is that the word “messiah” is derived from the anointing of kings and priests, at their coronation ceremonies in ancient Israel, as prescribed in Exodus 30:23-24, with the holy anointing oil of myrrh, sweet cinnamon, sweet calamus, cassia, and olive oil. Thus, “God’s anointed ones” really means “God’s appointed ones”. Anointing is therefore a technical term to describe someone who has been appointed by God into some senior position.

What came first, the anointing or the title, Son of God? In a diluted sense all of the Chosen People were children of God anyway, so all male Jews were sons of God, but anointment of ancient Jewish kings expressly made them His favourite “Sons of God”. The conventional view is that a ceremony was adopted involving anointing and from it came the word “messiah”. But messiah looks exactly like a composite word of Egyptian and Hebraic origins akin to the purely Egyptian, Ramesses, meaning “the son of Ra”. Since Ra was the Egyptian high god and mes was “son”, Ramesses means “Son of God”. The main change in the word “messiah” is only in the word for “god”. The Hebrew high god was Yehouah, or in a shorter form, Yah (Iah). The lesser change was that the word for son and god were exchanged in order. Ramesses therefore became messiah.

The Christian gospel writer Matthew identified Jesus Christ with Moses, whose name is also of course ”a son”. If Moses is the Egyptian word for a son who was he a son of? Was Moses also a messiah? He was!. Moses was adopted by Pharaoh’s daughter who found him in the bulrushes. And a Pharaoh was a god!

Moses’s brother, the priest Aaron, died and was buried at a place called Moseroth, Moserah or Mosera, the site of the Israelite camp near Mount Hor. Curiously Mosera can be read as Egyptian for Son of Ra or Son of God, Ra being the Egyptian word for god. The father of Moses and Aaron, according to the Old Testament, was Amram interpreted as the Hebrew for exalted people when it is plainly a corruption of the Egyptian Amun-Ra. Amun-Ra was the high God—Amun meaning the Hidden One—of the Egyptians. From the time of the pyramid builder, Cephren in the IVth dynasty all Pharaohs were considered to have been Ra’s son, in other words they were Sons of God or messiahs. Mosera is the purely Egyptian word from which the compound word messiah was constructed. It is the same word, with roots in a different order, as Rameses, the name of several Pharaohs—Sons of God. One of the inscriptions of Rameses the Great records Amun-Ra addressing the Pharaoh with words familiar to a modern Christian:

I am thy father. I have begotten thee like a god.

The Pharaoh replies:

I am thy son. Thou hast given me the power of a god.

Thus both Moses and his brother were considered Sons of God, both were literally messiahs. Moses and Aaron combine the roles of king, priest and prophet. Later David was identified as the Great King and Moses took the single role of the prophet, but it is plain that, in leading the Israelites out of Egypt, his role was that of king as well as prophet.

Jochebed, Amram’s wife was also his Aunt. This ties in with the practice of the Pharaohs whose title came through the female line. Thus they usually married their sisters to become king but could marry their mother’s sister—their maternal aunt—or even their mother—to succeed to the throne. Plainly the Israelites led away from Egypt by Moses, a messiah, were thoroughly Egyptianised and ruled by a Pharoah-like king, if not an actual dissident Pharoah. It seems the word messiah, a Son of God, came into the Jewish religion from Egypt.

The mixing of the two languages might have occurred early in the history of Israel, when Israel was as an Egyptian colony. But the biblical account of the Exodus was written in the time of the Egyptians Ptolemies to mythically explain an ancient Jewish dependence on Egypt, Moses leading the Israelites away from Egypt. Moses is not a name but a title, “the Son”, meaning the “Son of God”, just as Jesus is called “the Son”. Thus, “Son of God” was possibly an early Israelute description of a leader, a king or a priest, but it certainly became one from around 300 BC. When the population wanted to declare these people formally as a Son of God, they invented the ceremony of anointing. The purpose of the ceremony, apponting a Son of God, gave its name to the procedure, anointing with oil. Modern Hebrew scholars have interpreted the word messiah back to front, assuming it meant “the anointed one” from the name of the ceremony of anointing which is reported far more often in the older scriptures (in the internal chronology) than the title that it conveyed.

The ritual of anointing required the priest, acting as God’s agent, to acknowledge his Son explicitly:

Thou art my beloved Son, in thee I am well pleased.

So, by anointing in ancient Israel, the Children of Israel declared a man a “Son of God”—a special man appointed by God—a king or a priest. By the time of the Roman occupation, the Anointed One of the Jews, their Messiah was an ideal Jewish king sent by God, a Son of God. In the gospels this precise formula is applied to Jesus, and Son of God was a title held by Jesus as Messiah!. If this is to be believed Jesus was anointed as a king (anointed in the technical sense of appointed, not necessarily by application of oil). The pious lie is plain. The metaphorical Son of God of the Jewish Messiah was interpreted literally by the gentile bishops. Here was a sin of omission. The bishops failed to explain to their flocks that for the Jews a Son of God was not the product of a God’s intercourse with a mortal woman as it was for the Greeks. The ground was ploughed ready for the new doctrine of the virgin birth. The title Son of God had to be literally explained by yet another pious lie. The gospel writers say God spoke the words recognising His son, a very minor pious lie. God spoke them metaphorically through his earthly agent, the priest—just as today he speaks through books written by men! These ceremonies today would be called coronations.

The Jews deplored the idea of being ruled from abroad. Groups of Jews were constantly rebelling because they resisted the impositions put upon them by their foreign masters. They believed God had told them in the Royalty Law to rule themselves by setting one of their brothers, a fellow Jew, as king over them. Christians say Jesus did not claim to be a king of the Jews but they hail him as God’s Messiah—a king! Ministers of the church have told us at Sunday school that the Messiah was quite a different thing from a king of Judaea. The Messiah was a supernatural king—a king of Heaven, not of any place on earth. As children, we innocently accept what the fierce man in the black frock said and, as adults, we mostly don’t bother any more. It was a lie. Though the Christian faithful believe it now, it was not true when Jesus was condemned. The Messiah to Jews in the first century was a king—their king!

Their idea of a messiah is described in the Book of Daniel written about 160 BC at the time of the Abomination of Desolation when the Jews first felt the weight of Hellenistic cultural oppression. Even then the Jews were seeking for a saviour king:

Behold, one like unto the son of man came with the clouds of Heaven, and came even to the ancient of days, and they brought him near before him. And there was given him dominion, and glory, and a kingdom, that all the peoples, nations, and languages, should serve him.
Daniel 7:13-14

He was a superman to whom God gave a kingdom, that all the peoples, nations, and languages, should serve him. Furthermore:

His dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom that which shall not be destroyed.

The messianic kingdom of the Jews would last forever and all other kingdoms on earth would be its vassals.

Daniel is a favourite book of Christians because they take this “son of man” and the “everlasting” kingdom to be Jesus and either a transcendental kingdom of bliss, or the extension of Christendom throughout the world. The aspirations of the Jews for a warrior king and the Jewish kingdom he would establish have been hijacked by the Christians and applied to themselves. However since the Book of Daniel preceded Christianity, the idea expressed here is Jewish and the Jews must have known what precisely they meant.

In the non-canonical Psalms of Solomon, written not by Solomon, the king, but by unknown authors between 70 and 40 BC—only about 70 years before Barabbas, we get a detailed description (edited here for brevity). The messiah of the house of David shall gather the nation together, purge Jerusalem of nations that trample her down, and shatter unrighteous rulers. All nations would be in fear of him. The Jews would be righteous, a holy people, and neither visitor nor stranger would remain amongst them any more—they did not love gentiles. The messiah would shepherd the flock of the Lord faithfully and righteously and would suffer none among them to stumble in their pasture. They would be sons of God. He would judge peoples and nations in the wisdom of his righteousness and would have the heathen nations to serve under his yoke. Note that the messiah’s flock would all be sons of God!

O God, raise up unto them their king, the Son of David that he may reign over Israel thy servant. And gird him with strength that he may shatter unrighteous rulers, and that he may purge Jerusalem from nations that trample her down to destruction. He shall destroy the godless nations with the word of his mouth. At his rebuke the nations shall flee before him. All nations shall be in fear before him.

Wisely, righteously he shall thrust out sinners from the inheritance. He shall destroy the pride of the sinner as a potter’s vessel. With a rod of iron he shall break in pieces all their substance and he shall reprove the sinners for the thoughts of their hearts. And he shall purge Jerusalem making it holy as of old.

And he shall gather together a holy people whom he shall lead in righteousness. And he shall divide them according to their tribes upon the land, and neither visitor nor stranger shall remain with them any more.

And he shall judge the tribes of his people which has been sanctified by the Lord. And he shall not suffer unrighteousness to lodge any more in their midst, nor shall there dwell with them any man that knoweth wickedness, for he shall know them that they are all sons of God.

And he shall be a righteous king, taught of God, over them, and there shall be no unrighteousness in his days in their midst, for all shall be holy and their king the anointed of the Lord. The Lord himself is king, the hope of him that is mighty is through his hope in God.

He will bless the people of the Lord with wisdom and gladness, and he himself will be pure from sin, so that he may rule a great people and relying on his God throughout his days he will not stumble; for God will make him mighty by means of his holy spirit, and wise by means of the spirit of understanding, with strength and righteousness.

His hope will be in the Lord: who then can prevail over him? He will be mighty in his works and strong in the fear of God; he will be shepherding the flock of the Lord faithfully and righteously and will suffer none among them to stumble in their pasture. He will lead them all aright, and there will be no pride among them that any among them should be oppressed.

He shall judge peoples and nations in the wisdom of his righteousness. And he shall have the heathen nations to serve under his yoke/

You will note that a mendicant pacifist preaching goodwill to all men was not the Jews’ best idea of a leader suitable to free them from the yoke of their oppressors.

Here, the Son of David is another title of the Messiah as Christians agree. This messiah was not a pacifist. He had to shatter unrighteous rulers, purge Jerusalem from the nations that oppressed her and make it holy, destroy godless nations, instil fear in them and enslave the heathen. Ultimately peace would reign when the Messiah subjected the nations of the world. The heathen nation that plagued the Jews in the first century AD was the Romans. They were the ones who were trampling Jerusalem to destruction. The Jewish expectation was that the Messiah would purge Jerusalem and evict visitors and strangers, so the Romans would have to get out.

David was the model for the leaders of these revolutions against the foreign powers. He was the heroic king who united the disparate tribes of Canaan into the nation of Israel. In the first century, the country was again disunited. All of the region covered by Herod’s kingdom was considered by Jews to be their land, but now it had been split into a half ruled by the Prefects and two quarters (tetrarchates) ruled by Herod’s sons, Philip and Antipas. It certainly required uniting again as David had done originally but this time, when it was won from the enemy, pious Jews believed it would be purified by God. It was God’s land promised to His Chosen People and when his messiah won it back it would be sinless and uncorruptible. It would be heaven on earth! The Messiah therefore had some of the characteristics of Moses and Joshua, leading the Chosen People into the Promised land. The righteous people of God would enter the Promised land from across the Jordan to win it back as if in a new Exodus. Curiously, Joshua is the same name as Jesus, Jesus simply being a form of Joshua in Greek, the language of the Christian bible.

Jews had incessantly been humiliated by foreign rulers for centuries with only the Maccabees providing any hope. Submission had got them nowhere. A deliverer had become a fervent belief. The chief heathen nation was, by the time of Barabbas in the first century AD, the Romans. The political position of the Jews under the Romans seemed hopeless. Most Jews felt they had suffered enough. Popular Jewish hopes were still of their warrior king, born in the image of and of the line of, king David, a supernatural being sent by God who would overthrow the foreigners, impose Jewish authority over the world and institute a kingdom of God on earth which he would rule assisted by the Jews as the elite. The messiah was not a god or an aspect of God, but was entirely human, though backed by the supernatural might of God. Judaism was monotheistic—it had only one God and it was a heresy for Jews to think otherwise. Throughout New Testament times rioting and insurrection were commonplace in Judaea fueled by these messianic hopes. When Pontius Pilate was the prefect of Judaea, uprisings had been occurring regularly for over twenty years and would continue to occur even beyond the destruction of Jerusalem forty years in the future.

Leaders of varying degrees of credibility were to step forward from the death of Herod to the defeat of bar Kosiba in 136 AD claiming to be the Messiah of God, as the Jews yearned for an end to the trials and indignities of Roman rule. Josephus describes them all. Under such leaders local rebellions often lasted for month before the Roman legions were victorious. Each led an unsuccessful revolt and died. Gentle Jesus could not have fitted their preferred image—a warrior, a king David, a superman on the lines described in Daniel.

Messianic or revolutionary movements were led by Simon the slave, Athronges the shepherd and Simon son of Giora. When in 6 AD Judaea became a Roman province, the census mentioned by Luke in his gospel as happening at the time of Jesus’s birth was held so that appropriate tribute could be extracted from the new colony. Judas the Galilaean, son of Hezekiah, objected to foreign rulers and them counting the people and he rebelled. He was a Messiah but he was defeated and crucified. In 33 AD, according to Christian scholars, Jesus was crucified even though he was a sinless man who did not lead a rebellion. In 44 AD, Theudas the Pharisee, the new Moses, rebelled and was thought a Messiah (Acts contradicts Josephus in saying Theudas was active before Judas). He too was crucified. In 60 AD, Benjamin, “The Egyptian”, rebelled and was called Messiah. Since these latter failed messiahs appear in the Acts of the Apostles one wonders whether the author of Acts is making a subtle point regarding one of them. A curious isolated figure was Jesus son of John, who was not a Messiah but proclaimed woe against Jerusalem in the seven years preceding the Jewish War and was treated by the priestly class rather like Jesus in the gospels. Nor did the Jewish War end these messianic claims, several more arose until last came bar Kosiba who led a long rebellion of four years with disastrous results for Jews everywhere.

So for well over a hundred years beginning from the time of Jesus’s birth Jewish rebels were leading armed struggles against the Romans and claiming to be the Messiah, a king. Yet in the midst of this turmoil, the gospels tell us that God sent His son, a gentle wandering holy man who was maliciously picked on by jealous priests, unfairly turned over to the Romans as a pretender to the throne of Judaea and unjustly tortured to death on a cross. Among a Karno’s army of seditionists, mostly hailed as the Messiah, God choses to send Jesus as the Messiah, a king—but a king of heaven. God might have intended to sacrifice himself in the shape of His son but he chose a peculiarly confusing time to do it, a time when Jesus the true Messiah could not be distinguished from people deluded about God’s intentions, but suffering exactly the same fate—crucifixion. Uncomfortable coincidences like this point out pious lying. Jesus looks to be one in a line of messianic pretenders to the throne of Israel. If he was, then someone has deceived us. If he was not, God or His agent, the Holy Ghost, looks incompetent, for if He wanted to save mankind why did he do it isn such an unconvincing way?

Jesus was crucified as a king like lots of Jewish rebels around the same time. Christians say it was a mistake but the gospels give us quite a detailed account of Jesus’s actions in his last year or so of his life. It must contain proof proof one way or the other. If there has been pious deception, to disguise a Jewish rebel as a peaceful holy man, every trace of the true story could not have been expunged. Only if there has been no deception will the evidence be unambiguous.

Sadly for the truth of Christianity, strange coincidences and ambiguities abound in the New Testament. The rational inquirer cannot fail to be suspicious.

Judaism had become strictly monotheistic—it had only one god and it was a heresy for Jews to think otherwise—even their messiah could not be regarded as divine. A Jew proclaiming a messiah a god at the time of Jesus would have been stoned for blasphemy. But it was no blasphemy to claim to be a messiah, a man. Under the Romans most Jews felt they had suffered enough and were expecting a man of power backed by the supernatural might of God to lead the people to freedom. The idea of a saviour messiah spurred Jewish nationalism. From 4 BC to 135 AD several messiahs were proclaimed as the Jews yearned for an end to the trials and indignities of Roman rule. Each led an unsuccessful revolt and died.

In truth Jews were henotheistic. Their god was the Most High—so called because he was the highest god. He accepted angels and demons as lesser gods, his heavenly subjects, but a human who claimed to be a god, no! Even their messiah could not be regarded as divine. A Jew proclaiming a messianic claimant a god at the time of Jesus would have been stoned for blasphemy, but it was no blasphemy to claim to be a messiah, a man.

Failure fertilised the growth of another concept, the suffering servant. The despised and rejected servant of God in Isaiah would suffer to redeem the world in a spiritual rather than physical sense. The suffering servant was a personification of the sufferings of the Jewish people rather than a model for their messiah. But the messiah had to be demonstrably of the highest morals as the moral judge of mankind. Possibly some Jews thought that suffering ensured great virtue and gave supernatural power. A suffering messiah could have been part of God’s plan to save the people. They expected the messiah to suffer as the Jewish nation had. There is evidence of this in the Dead Sea Scrolls.

The contradiction of Daniel which pictured a glorious messiah was resolved by the messiah’s glorious second coming when the world would end and the faithful would be saved. From this probably came the Christian idea of Christos meaning a divine redeemer, an incarnate God who deliberately suffers, dies and is resurrected to atone for the inherent sins of mankind. Certainly the importance of the suffering messiah concept largely emerged out of the events of the intertestamental years rather than before—many scholars believe it only reached prominence as a justification of Christianity.

Page Tags: Oppression of the Jews, Jesus, Christianity, Essenes, Qumran, Apocalypticism, Kingdom, God, Star Prophecy, Bar Kosiba, Bar Kocheba, Israel, Jewish, Jews, King, Messiah, Romans

Last uploaded: 19 April, 2008.