Word Finder - messiah

definition

(Abrahamic tradition) The one who is ordained by God to lead the people of Israel, believed by Christians and Muslims to be Jesus Christ.

definition

A similar religious figure or awaited divine ruler, such as the Islamic Mahdi.

definition

An extremely powerful figure.

He wore on his breast a badge with his title of "Pere," was spoken of by his preachers as "the living law," declared, and probably believed, himself to be the chosen of God, and sent out emissaries in a quest of a woman predestined to be the "female Messiah," and the mother of a new Saviour.

It becomes the assertion; historically, providentially, the expectation of a unique religious figure arose - " the " Messiah; and Jesus gave himself to be thought of as that great figure.

While posing as the messiah of the poor, Lassalle was a man of decidedly fashionable and luxurious habits.

Between the two aeons there would take place the advent of the Messiah, who would lead the struggle with evil powers which was called " the agonies of the Messiah."

Henceforward the doctrine of the Messiah is the centre of popular hope and the object of theological culture.

The turning from idols was of course peculiar to the Gentile communities, but the waiting for the Messiah from heaven was common to all Christians, whatever their origin.

Between the Messiah of the Jews and the Son of Man who came to give His life a ransom for many there was on the surface little resemblance; and from their standpoint the Pharisees reasoned that the marks of the Messiah were conspicuously absent from this Christ.

Dante from his mountain solitudes Advent of passionately called upon him to play the part of a Messiah.

If the Fourth Gospel is to be trusted, John had already recognized and acclaimed Jesus of Nazareth as the Messiah for whom the Jews were looking.

It was, therefore, during the reign of Antipas, and partly if not wholly within his territory, that the Gospel was first preached by the rabbi or prophet whom Christendom came to regard as the one true Christ, the Messiah of the Jews.

Accordingly, David is not to be condemned for failing to subdue the sensuality which is the chief stain on his character, but should rather be judged by his habitual recognition of a generous standard of conduct, by the undoubted purity and lofty justice of an administration which was never stained by selfish considerations or motives of personal rancour, 5 and finally by the calm 3 See Hebrew Religion, Messiah, Prophet.

Two hundred and forty years after the appearing of the false Messiah there came to the world sixty thousand saints out of Pharaoh's world to take the place of the Mandaeans, who had been completely extirpated; their high priest had his residence in Damascus.

Here, where he had to deal with the Judaism that believed in a Messiah, he was far better able to do justice to Christianity as a revelation; and so we find that the arguments of this work are much more completely in harmony with primitive Christian theology than those of the Apology.

It is connected with the doctrine of a Messiah, which arose in Nevada among the Piute Indians in 1888 and spread to other tribes.

But from a comparison of prophetic passages of the Old Testament learned apocalyptic writers came to the conclusion that a distinction must be drawn between the earthly appearance of the Messiah and the appearance of God Himself amongst His people and in the Gentile world for the final judgment.

Hence the world will last for six thousand years of toil and labour; then will come one thousand years of Sabbath rest for the people of God in the kingdom of the Messiah."

Briggs, The Messiah of the Apostles, p. 284 seq.; Sabatier, Les Origines litteraires et la composition de l'Apocalypse de St Jean (1887); Spitta, Die Offenbarung des Johannes untersucht (1889).

The Maccabean dynasty had now reached the zenith of its prosperity, and in its reigning representative, who alone in the history of Judaism possessed the triple offices of prophet, priest and king, the Pharisaic party had come to recognize the actual Messiah.

This second writer singles out three of the Maccabean priest kings for attack, the first of whom he charges with every abomination; the people itself, he declares, is apostate, and chastisement will follow speedily - the temple will be laid waste, the nation carried afresh into captivity, whence, on their repentance, God will restore them again to their own land, where they shall enjoy the blessedness of God's presence and be ruled by a Messiah sprung from Judah.

When the whole pleroma of preexistent souls in the world of the Sephiroth shall have descended and occupied human bodies and have passed their period of probation and have returned purified to the bosom of the infinite Source, then the soul of Messiah will descend from the region of souls; then the great Jubilee will commence.

And if we cannot without much hesitation admit that Isaiah was really the first preacher of a personal Messiah whose record has come down to us, yet his editors certainly had good reason for thinking him capable of such a lofty height of prophecy.

It is not because Isaiah could not have conceived of a personal Messiah, but because the Messiahpassages are not plainly Isaiah's either in style or in thought.

This improvement was first proposed by Rabbi Samuel, rector of the Jewish school of Sora in Mesopotamia, and was finally accomplished in the year 360 of our era by Rabbi Hillel, who introduced that form of the year which the Jews at present follow, and which, they say, is to endure till the coming of the Messiah.

Cardinal Newman admits that the latter woman " represents the church, this is the real or direct sense "; yet as her man-child is certainly the Messiah, this church must be the faithful Jewish church.

Later Judaism emphasized the idea of vicarious atonement for Israel through the sufferings of the righteous, especially the martyrs; but it is very doubtful whether the idea of the atonement through the death of the Messiah is a pre-Christian Jewish doctrine."

According to the early disciples Jesus was the Jewish Messiah, and had significance only in relation to the expected Messianic kingdom.

But Paul saw in Jesus much more than the Jewish Messiah.

The truth is, that not only were Christians expecting (as we say) the Second Coming of the Messiah, but what they expected was the Coming.

According to Strauss the fulfilments of prophecy in the New Testament arise from the Christians' belief that the Christian Messiah must have fulfilled the predictions of the prophets, and the miracles of Jesus in the New Testament either originate in the same way or are purely mythical embodiments of Christian doctrines.

Abarbanel (Abrabanel), records that the conjunction of these particular planets in this particular constellation was to be a sign of Messiah's coming.

All such passages are frequently called Messianic; but the term is more properly reserved as the specific designation of one particular branch of the Hebrew hope of salvation, which, becoming prominent in post-canonical Judaism, used the name of the Messiah as a technical term (which it never is in the Old Testament), and exercised a great influence on New Testament thought - the term" the Christ "(6 xpccrros) being itself nothing more than the translation of" the Messiah."

As yet we have no fixed doctrine of a personal Messiah, but only material from which such a doctrine might be drawn.

It was, however, only very gradually that the figure and name of the Messiah acquired the prominence which they have in 2 The hopes which Haggai and Zechariah connect with the name of Zerubbabel, a descendant of David, hardly form an exception to this statement.

The name Messiah is still lacking, and the central point of the prophecy is not the reign of the deliverer but the subjection of all nations to the law and the temple.'

With the growing weakness and corruption of the Hasmonaean princes, and the alienation of a large part of the nation from their cause, the hope of a better kingship begins to appear in Judaea also; at first darkly shadowed forth in the Book of Enoch (chap. xc.), where the white steer, the future leader of God's herd after the deliverance from the heathen, stands in a certain contrast to the actual dynasty (the horned lambs); and then much more clearly, and for the first time with use of the name Messiah, in the Psalter of Solomon, the chief document of the protest of Pharisaism against its enemies the later Hasmonaeans.

It is in this connexion that the doctrine and name of the Messiah appear in the Psalter of Solomon.

And while the polemical motive is obvious, and the argument from prophecy against the legitimacy of a non-Davidic dynasty is quite in the manner of the scribes, the spirit of theocratic fervour which inspires the picture of the Messiah is broader and deeper than their narrow legalism.

In a word, the Jewish doctrine of the Messiah marks the fusion of Pharisaism with the national religious feeling of the Maccabean revival.

But, as the fatal struggle with Rome became more and more imminent, the eschatological hopes which increasingly absorbed the Hebrew mind all group themselves round the person of the Messiah.

Soon after, Messianic hopes were active at the time of the fall of the Omayyads, and led to a serious rising under Abu `Isa of Ispahan, who called himself forerunner of the Messiah.

The false Messiah David Alrui (Alroy) appeared among the warlike Jews in Azerbijan in the middle of the 12th century.

Thus Abarbanel calculated the coming of the Messiah for 1503 A.D.; the year 1500 was in many places observed as a preparatory season of penance; and throughout the 16th century the Jews were much stirred and more than one false Messiah appeared.

As applied to Jesus the name of Messiah lost all its political and national significance.

It would carry us too far to consider in this place the details of the Jewish conception of the Messiah and the Messianic times as they appear in the later apocalypses or in Talmudic theology.

In its ultimate form the Messianic hope of the Jews is the centre of the whole eschatology, embracing the doctrine of the last troubles of Israel (called by the Rabbins the "birth pangs of the Messiah"), the appearing of the anointed king, the annihilation of the hostile enemy, the return of the dispersed of Israel, the glory and world-sovereignty of the elect, the new world, the resurrection of the dead and the last judgment.

A word, however, is necessary as to the Rabbinical doctrine of the Messiah who suffers and dies for Israel, the Messiah son of Joseph or son of Ephraim, who in Jewish theology is distinguished from and subordinate to the victorious son of David.

That the Jews in the time of Christ believed in a suffering and atoning Messiah is, to say the least, unproved and highly improbable.

A Theological Question for the Times (1889); The Authority of the Holy Scripture (1891); The Bible, the Church and the Reason (1892); The Higher Criticism of the Hexateuch (1893); The Messiah of the Gospels (1894) The Messiah of the Apostles (1894); New Light on the Life of Jesus (1904); The Ethical Teaching of Jesus (1904); A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Book of Psalms (2 vols., 1906-1907), in which he was assisted by his daughter; and The Virgin Birth of Our Lord (1909).

Accordingly many of them, while placing their hope for the future upon Messiah and His eagerly expected return in power, might seek assurance of present forgiveness of daily offences and cleansing of conscience in the old mediatorial system.

The coming of the Messiah will be preceded by the Last Woes.