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Christianity is rooted in Palestine in a Jewish environment and in the historical circumstances of a plainly dated period. This assuredly requires no argument. To this time and place we are therefore bound to go for the elucidation of Christian Origins. What we find is not only surprising to most Christians but is diametrically opposite to many of their "beliefs" about the concept of the Jewish Messiah.
But it is by no means easy to relate the life of Jesus and the activities of his original followers, known as Nazoreans (Nazarenes), to the contemporary situation as modeled by Gentile Christianity and its teachings. This is largely due to the character of the New Testament and the lack of external evidences about the beginnings of Christianity. To reach conclusions which can fairly be regarded as corresponding as nearly as possible to the reality entails a vast amount of analysis and comparison, the patient piecing together of a host of hints and scraps of tradition, and in particular a sympathetic involvement in the affairs of the Jewish people and detachment from considerations of Christian theology. This I have done! Because of what the Church has taught for so many centuries it has been extremely difficult for Christian scholars to undertake such an investigation objectively.
Let us begin our investigation by reiterating that the term "Christ" is the Greek translation of the Hebrew term Messiah, meaning the Anointed One. The term "Gospel" is from the Greek "Evangel", translating the Hebrew word for "Good News."
What important for us to distinguish right from the beginning was that Israel was well familiar with how to "obtain" salvation and the "Good News" was not to be understood in any such way in the first century by the hearers of Yeshua. Atonement was possible in many different ways as taught by the Jewish Tanakh (Law, Prophets, and Writings). What the Christian needs to understand out right is that Israel was not waiting to be saved "spiritually"; she was waiting for the "Good News" that her "Messiah" that was expected by the Jews had appeared. The difficulty we have in Christianity today is that the picture presented to identify "the Messiah" by the Christian Church is completely different from the "Messiah of the Jewish Scriptures. Such a "metamorphosis" is accomplished in the New Testament by the numerous misquotations from the Jewish Palestinian Masoretic Text along with the hundreds of mistranslations and scriptures lifted out of context for "theological purposes" by the Gentile Fathers of the Church.
It makes all the difference to our understanding of Christianity if we are enabled to apprehend that it did not begin as a new religion but as a movement of monotheistic Jews who held Jesus to be their God-sent king and deliverer from the various political and religious tyrannies inflicted upon the them by the non-Jewish nations. Rome just happened to be the latest in a long line of such persecutors.
Here, in a sentence, is what it is imperative to know about the origins of Christianity. Here we have the essential clue to the activities of Jesus and his first followers which helps to compensate for many material facts which are beyond recovery. Armed with this information we can get Christianity in correct perspective, and trace clearly and simply what is ascertainable to the student of the Bible today. What is interesting is how this concept of "the Jewish Messiah" was transformed into what it become afterwards under the influence of Gentile religious domination.
It is often said that Christianity is founded upon a person. That is true. But it is only part of the historical truth. What, so to speak, was the person founded upon? The answer is that he was founded upon an idea, a strange idea current among the Jews of his time, an idea alien to Western thought which many non-Jewish theologians still find very inconvenient, the idea of Messianism. It was Messianism which made the life of Jesus what it was and so brought Christianity into being. It was Messianism, as accepted and later altered by Gentile believers, which contributed towards making the deification of Jesus inevitable. It was Messianism which provided the spiritual impulse behind the Jewish war with Rome which broke out in A.D. 66, resulting in the destruction of much authoritative testimony and records about Jesus and the substantial separation of Gentile from Jewish Christianity. The fundamental teaching of Christianity, then, was that in Jesus the Messiah (the Christ) had come. There can be not the shadow of a doubt about this. It is the ultimate conviction on which the whole edifice of Christianity rests, the historical fact on which all the Gospels are agreed. This teaching was the gospel, underlying all the Gospels, the one thing which gave them the right to be so called. The faith of the earliest believers in Jesus was that which voiced itself in the declaration of Peter, as recorded in Mark, "You are the Messiah" (Mk. 7:29), simply this without any qualification. The persuasion they had was built upon what Jesus had said and done. It was he who had given them cause to conclude that he was the Messiah, and he had done so quite deliberately. But what the Gospels do not tell us is what in the first instance had persuaded him. Unless we can discover why Jesus held himself to be the Messiah, what current teaching about the Messiah he applied to himself, we are not in possession of the key to the mystery of his life and death.
We have no right to say that while Jesus accepted the designation of Messiah he did so in a sense quite different from any expectations entertained in his time. We must stop and reflect upon this in detail. The Jewish People had been promised their Messiah and were given signs to look for that confirmed that he "that is King of the Jews" had come. Simply said these things never materialized before Yeshua's death; nor afterwards for that matter. The Jewish await today the fulfillment of the "Messianic Scriptures" found in their Bible. It would be unthinkable for Yeshua to be other than what was promised, firstly because being the Messiah meant answering to certain prophetic requirements which for him were divinely inspired, and secondly because he would consciously have been depriving his people of any possibility of acknowledging him: he would be inviting them to reject him as a false Messiah. This he did not do.
Yes! I believe he was to be the long awaited Messiah but sadly something went wrong. We need to look into this and understand why the Messianic Kingdom did not materialize as prophesied.
We have to take the view that Jesus believed it to be his calling and destiny to fulfill the Messianic Hope, and to do so in a manner which would conform with the predictions he accepted as authoritative. Our business is to find out the conditions with which Jesus felt he had to comply, and on this basis to follow the course of his actions. Obviously we have to divorce the issue altogether from the paganized doctrine of the incarnation of the Godhead. Scriptural expectation did not identify the Messiah with God, and, indeed, the nature of Jewish monotheism wholly excluded such an idea! This might be hard for the Christian to accept, but Jesus as much as any other Jew would have regarded as blasphemous the manner in which he is depicted, for instance, in the Fourth Gospel which is a very "Hellenized" document. Jesus is a Jew, not a Greek-god-man. Lack of study on the part of the Christian prevents him from realizing this.
Taking the Gospels together, and these are the chief source of our information about Jesus, we have in them an epitome of the process by which the traditions about him grew and expanded with the changing needs and fortunes of succeeding generations of believers, Jewish and Gentile, so that Jesus as he appears in them is a composite and somewhat contradictory figure.
Answer for yourself: Have you ever seen this for yourself yet? It exists and your failure to see it does not mean it does not exist; only that your level of perception is not deep enough yet to see it.
Yeshua's image in the Gospels is like the idol of Nebuchadnezzar's dream in the book of Daniel, part gold, part silver, part bronze, part iron and part clay. The gold is there to be extracted, but we cannot take hold of it unalloyed without knowledge of the influences and circumstances to which Jesus himself had responded. It is not enough to look back to him through the minds of much later believers not of Jewish origin. This might surprise you, but scholars today will easily refute that the Gospel writers were the Jewish Apostles of Yeshua; in fact strong evidences remain to make one strongly believe that Gentile authorship is behind such documents. If you seek the truth about Yeshua then you must look for him through the pre-Christian development of Messianism and not through the alterations of history and facts handed down to us by the Gentile Church.
The coming of the Messiah was not something fortuitous: it was closely linked with a period of history prophetically anticipated, the Last Times or End of the Days, which would precede the inauguration of the Kingdom of God. Now pay close attention to what is said next: The Messiah could NOT appear at any time, but only at the End of the Days, which would precede the inauguration of the Kingdom of God. The Messiah could not appear at any time, but only at the End of Days, at a time of testing and great tribulation for Israel. This is calculated by understanding Daniel chapter 9 in the Palestinian Masoretic Text and not the Old Testament in Christian Bibles which most, but not all, have altered the Rabbinical interpretations by changing the punctuation in order to explain away the lack of the appearing of the Kingdom of Heaven and the lack of fulfillment of the Messianic prophecies by Yeshua (Selah)!
The conception of the Last Times drew upon Biblical predictions relating to the Latter Days and the Day of the LORD, which became combined with Babylonian and Persian ideas of a succession of Ages. During the Ages the forces of Good and Evil would contend with one another, and the struggle would reach its climax in the penultimate Age, being followed by the final Age of peace and bliss, the Kingdom of God. The Last Times would thus be the closing period of the old order, when the assaults of Evil would reach their most malevolent intensity, bringing great misery to humanity and persecution and suffering to the Elect of Israel. When these signs of the "Last Days" appeared then the Messiah was to be expected to appear.
According to those who studied these matters, it could not be known how long the Last Times would endure, but it could be known approximately when "The Last Days" would begin. For this a basis of calculation had to be available, and it was found in the book of Daniel in the prophecy of the Seventy Weeks (Dan. 9:24-27), later understood to mean seventy weeks of years (490 years). The Last Times could be expected to begin after the lapse of 490 years 'from the going forth of the commandment [of Cyrus] to restore and build Jerusalem, that is to say, the Messiah was to become manifest no later than 70 C.E.
If you have never read Daniel chapter 9 in the Stone Edition Tanakh or the JPS Tanakh I suggest you do so and then compare with your Old Testaments in your Christian Bibles to see if the punctuation of the "weeks" is the same. What is paramount for you to understand is that the Hebrew manuscripts contained no punctuation; therefore often the understanding of the passage was handed down through oral tradition which the Rabbis preserved. Later punctuation was added to the printed texts to reflect the proper interpretation held sacred by the Rabbis. Later you need to know that theological necessity caused Christians to alter and add punctuation in certain places to the "weeks" prophecy which differed from the Rabbinical interpretation. Remembering who is a "light to the nations" then understand this: "the light to the nations" was rejected by the Gentile Christian authorities as they altered the texts to suit their theological persuasions. They felt the need to explain away why Jesus, their Messiah, had not fulfilled the Jewish Scriptures. These Christian authorities needed reasons to respond to the Jews' claim that Jesus had not fulfilled the prophecies and could not be considered their Messiah. Literally these Gentile Fathers "created" theology explaining away the lack of manifestation of the Kingdom as expected by Yeshua and the Jews along with the failure of Yeshua to fulfill the prophecies that was expected of "the Messiah" when he appeared. The seventy weeks of Daniel were separated through creative punctuation in Christian texts and the last seven years postponed into the future. Dispensational theology holds strong sway in Christianity yet today. The Jews have always understood this and their theological works reflect such an understanding and oppose traditions Christian positions that most are familiar with today. As a Seminary graduate I had never read a Tanakh and was unfamiliar with alternate readings and punctuations which is no longer the case. I always wondered why in Seminary I had a "rubrics cube" theology; as one thing was made to fit then "opps" another problem surfaced which required tinkering to make it fit the scheme of things. In Seminary I realized one day that my "theology" was not pure; it contained a little bit of this and that and nothing was pure. I was taught whatever was necessary to validate the "current" accepted beliefs of the denomination. This was so convenient. This is not necessary with the Jewish texts in the Tanakh…they all lay perfectly as seen in their interpretation of Daniel 9. But at that time in my life I did not know this until I became very familiar with the Tanakh and did laborious comparisons with my Christian Bibles.
Those Jews who believed in this interpretation as found in their Tanakh, and were living in the reign of Herod the Great (37-4 B.C.), could accept that the Last Times had now begun, and that therefore before very long the coming of the Messiah was to be expected. They could count the years from the going forth of the decree of which Daniel spoke. The end of the time period was rapidly approaching and the Messiah was expected soon! This explains why a strong messianic excitement manifested itself among the Jews from this time onward, and why no one before this had claimed to be the Messiah. Some were thought by the people to be "Messiahs in waiting" but events proved them wrong.
More later. Shalom