A question about the bible.

reply to post by Cogito, Ergo Sum


Do you know what the Messiah was supposed to represent to the jews of the old testament?

people never think to ask themselves this question.

reply to post by undo

Do you know what the Messiah was supposed to represent to the jews of the old testament?

people never think to ask themselves this question.

Unfortunately, I ask myself this question. Unfortunate, because it seems to keep me out of step with the "World As They Would Like It".

The Messiah of Old Testament dreams was not supposed to "represent" anything. He was to be "in fact" the Emperor of the World, from the line of David, enthroned in Jerusalem. All kings and rulers of the nations were to bow down and kiss his whatever and pay tribute taxes to him.

Any king or nation failing to be subservient would suffer the wrath of the Godfather, no rain, drought, starvation and death.

What irks me most is the fact that this concept is very much alive in the Western World. The politicians seem hell bent to bring this thing into existence. Many religious and non religious people seem to think it's the natural order.

I disagree.

reply to post by jjsr420


Another search, and I find this:

The historical documents referring to Christ's life and work may be divided into three classes: pagan sources, Jewish sources, and Christian sources. We shall study the three groups in succession

A. Pagan Sources

The non-Christian sources for the historical truth of the Gospels are both few and polluted by hatred and prejudice. A number of reasons have been advanced for this condition of the pagan sources: The field of the Gospel history was remote Galilee; the Jews were noted as a superstitious race, if we may believe Horace (Credat Judceus Apella, I, Sat., v, 100); the God of the Jews was unknown and unintelligible to most pagans of that period; the Jews in whose midst Christianity had taken its origin were dispersed among, and hated by, all the pagan nations; the Christian religion itself was often confounded with one of the many sects that had sprung up in Judaism, and which could not excite the interest of the pagan spectator. It is at least certain that neither Jews nor Gentiles suspected in the least the paramount importance of the religion the rise of which they witnessed among them. These considerations will account for the rarity and the asperity with which Christian events are mentioned by pagan authors. But though Gentile writers do not give us any information about Christ and the early stages of Christianity which we do not possess in the Gospels, and though their statements are made with unconcealed hatred and contempt, still they unwittingly prove the historical value of the facts related by the Evangelists.

We need not delay over a writing entitled the "Acts of Pilate", which must have existed in the second century (Justin, "Apol.", I, 35), and must have been used in the pagan schools to warn boys against the belief of the Christians (Euseb., "Hist. Eccl.", I, ix; IX, v); nor need we inquire into the question whether there ever existed any authentic census tables of Quirinus. We possess at least the testimony of Tacitus (A.D. 54-119) for the statements that the Founder of the Christian religion, a deadly superstition in the eyes of the Roman, had been put to death by the procurator Pontius Pilate under the reign of Tiberius; that His religion, though suppressed for a time, broke forth again not only throughout Judea where it had originated, but even in Rome, the conflux of all the streams of wickedness and shamelessness; furthermore, that Nero had diverted from himself the suspicion of the burning of Rome by charging the Christians with the crime; that these latter were not guilty of incendiarism, though they deserved their fate on account of their universal misanthropy. Tacitus, moreover, describes some of the horrible torments to which Nero subjected the Christians (Ann., XV, xliv). The Roman writer confounds the Christians with the Jews, considering them as an especially abject Jewish sect; how little he investigated the historical truth of even the Jewish records may be inferred from the credulity with which he accepted the absurd legends and calumnies about the origin of the Hebrew people (Hist., V, in, iv).

Another Roman writer who shows his acquaintance with Christ and the Christians is Suetonius (A.D. 75-160). It has been already noted that Suetonius considered Christ (Chrestus) as a Roman insurgent who stirred up seditions under the reign of Claudius (A.D. 41-54): "Judos, impulsore Chresto, assidue tumultuantes [Claudius] Roma expulit" (Claud., xxv). In his life of Nero he appears to regard that emperor as apublic benefactor on account of his severe treatment of the Christians: "Multa sub eo et animadversa severe, et coercita, nec minus institute... afflicti Christiani, genus hominum superstitionis novae et maleficae" (Nero, xvi). The Roman writer does not understand that the Jewish troubles arose from the Jewish antagonism to the Messianic character of Jesus Christ and to the rights of the Christian Church.

Of greater importance is the letter of Pliny the Younger to the Emperor Trajan (about A.D. 61-115), in which the Governor of Bithynia consults his imperial majesty as to how to deal with the Christians living within his jurisdiction. On the one hand, their lives were confessedly innocent; no crime could be proved against them excepting their Christian belief, which appeared to the Roman as an extravagant and per-verse superstition.

I won't bore with a wall of text. For the rest of this section, and the other sources, check out the source.

Originally posted by undo
reply to post by Cogito, Ergo Sum

 

Do you know what the Messiah was supposed to represent to the jews of the old testament?

people never think to ask themselves this question.

Well, the Jews of the OT era believed two were coming. Moshiyach ben David and Moshiyach ben Yosef. The suffering servant and the conquering king. They didn't see that it was one Messiah in two advents.