Messiah

"Messiah" (Hebrew mashiach, Greek christos) means "anointed one." This entry is about the idea of the Messiah — the many-stranded Jewish hope Christ came to fulfill — rather than about Jesus Christ Himself.

Overview

• Messiah means "anointed one"; in Israel, kings, priests, and prophets were all anointed with oil, so the hope for a coming "Anointed" took several forms.
• The most prominent was a Davidic king who would defeat Israel's oppressors and restore the kingdom; other strands looked for an anointed priest, a prophet like Moses or Elijah, or the heavenly "son of man" of Daniel 7.
• Often the emphasis fell less on the figure than on the messianic age — the time when God's justice would finally reign.

Summary

The word Messiah (Hebrew mashiach, rendered in Greek as christos, "Christ") simply means "anointed one," and the messianic hope of Second Temple Judaism was correspondingly rich and varied.[^jant] Because kings, priests, and prophets were all anointed, the expectation ran along several lines at once: a royal Son of David to break the yoke of the nations (as in the first-century BC Psalms of Solomon), an anointed priest, a prophet like Moses returned, and the mysterious heavenly "one like a son of man" of Daniel 7. Frequently the hope centered less on the deliverer himself than on the coming age of God's justice.[^jant] First-century Judea was thick with this expectancy, and several would-be messiahs and prophetic movements rose and were crushed by Rome. Against this backdrop the Church's confession stands out: not that Jesus met one narrow definition, but that in Him the whole hope — king, priest, prophet, and son of man — converges and is transfigured (see Prophecies Fulfilled in Christ, Christology). Cross-link Prophecies Fulfilled in Christ, Christology, Jesus Christ, Sicarii.

Sources

[^jant]: The Jewish Annotated New Testament (eds. Amy-Jill Levine & Marc Zvi Brettler, Oxford Univ. Press), essay "Messianic Movements" (David B. Levenson) — messiah/christos as "anointed one"; the several forms of Jewish messianic expectation (Davidic king, priest, prophet, Danielic son of man) and the focus on the messianic age; and the first-century messianic movements, (in-copyright scholarly reference; paraphrased).