No and look, it's not all that important, but I love Israel and the Jewish people.
I do too, although I recognize that God loves them for the sake of their forefathers, and not for what some of them are doing. Today's Israel is very noble in their attempts to minimize deaths. But some of this is due to the unfair standard the world is holding them to, and not necessarily due to their kind-heartedness.
I know the way of God's salvation because of all the work that they did for God in turning His plan into a readable format that could be passed down from generation to generation.
God turned Israel's history into a "readable format"--not the vast majority of Israel. Throughout Israel's history, the people turned en mass to idolatry and to paganism. It was a relative few who held the people to account, namely godly leaders and a relatively small group of obedient people. "Narrrow is the way," Jesus said.
And because I do love and have studied a bit about their history, I know that there has never been a time in history that the Jews thought that God's Messiah had come. You are confusing what the word 'Messiah' means with just a standard everyday prophet or false god that they did worship in the beginning.
I'm not "confusing" the word "Messiah" but stating how I define it in terms of Jesus' statement that there would be "false messiahs." To me, "messiah" refers to a political leader seeking to overthrow an oppressive governing nation that is preventing the coming of God's Kingdom. Those leaders among the Jews who led Jewish factions in insurrection against the Romans were "messianic leaders," even though they were not called "messiahs."
I never said "messiah" is associated with "every prophet" or "false god." I never said "messiah" is associated with "prophets" at all! In fact, I said quite the opposite, that I think "messiah" was conceived of more as a political figure than a religious figure. We look back on Jesus as Messiah today, and see "messiah" as a religious figure.
But I think Jesus used the word "messiah" to convey a general sense of a political figure who sought to defeat the Romans, just like the Maccabees defeated the Syrians to make way for the return of God's Kingdom to Israel.
No, they never held Saul or David up as their Messiah.
I never said this either. I said the Jews looked forward to a messiah figure as being a "son of David," as prophesied. They may have thought, in Jesus' day, that anybody who could lead a Jewish faction successfully against Rome may have been a "son of David," and thus a messiah or THE Messiah?
Nobody in Israel ever accredited either of those men as being the Messiah.
Your standard of fullfilment of the role of "messiah" is different than mine. You look back and see these failed Jewish rebellions as non-messianic because you look back at them, after the fact, as failures, and thus going unrecognized by future generations of Jews to be a recognizable messiah figure.
But I see that at the time Jews expected that even Jesus could be the Messiah, not just because he was a religious figure, but also because they expected he would lead a revolution against Rome. Do you think these Jewish factions expected their military leaders to fail in their insurrections?
Obviously, if these messiah-figures failed, future generations of Jews would look back and deny that they were legitimate messiahs. But even Rabbi Akiva, who died in the bar Kokhba insurrection, thought at the time that bar Kokhba may have been the Messiah. For all he knew, bar Kokhba may have succeeded in his revolution, and bring the Kingdom back to Israel, becoming the Messiah?
Now, that doesn't mean that some 'bible scholar' may have written in one of THEIR accounts on the matter that they believed that the Jews had many, many Messiahs. But neither historical records, nor the Scriptures, support that Israel ever thought they had found the Messiah.
Each factional political leader would not have proclaimed themselves "Messiah" before the fact, ie before they had returned the Kingdom to Israel. They were just insurrrectionist leaders, who I believe Jesus identified as "false messiahs."
Jesus was not saying they would declare themselves by the word "messiah," but that they would proclaim themselves as political messiahs over revolts that they led Jewish factions to believe would be successful, thus fulfilling one of the requirements of the prophesied Messiah.
This place where you found the single name that you keep repeating is referencing a few small groups that had tried such things as the Pharisees 'thought' they were seeing in Jesus' ministry and the decision was that they turned out not to be so special and their cause and their people died off or went away. But they weren't some group or single person claiming to be Isreal's Messiah.
I kept repeating the name bar Kokhba because you kept saying I provided no name! You said I didn't provide Scripture initially too, which I had to *repeat!*
Again, the point wasn't so much that these people adopted the title "Messiah" but that they declared their movement to be messianic. As such, they were trying to identify themselves as Messiah, even though that was premature. Their failure led the Jews later to discount their claims to be Messiah.
They just wanted to run their lives differently and caused some uproar among the people and then their causes died out. But nothing that I have read about those groups that would have been referenced as their going around and teaching that someone was the Messiah. There just isn't any historical record that any of these references of various groups and people written about in the Scriptures were seen by Israel as their Messiah. They were just groups with political disagreements in how things were being run from all I can tell. Much as we have also today.
The Pharisees were a New Testament political - religious group of influential and seemingly righteous men with a vast knowledge of the Scriptures and held to very, very strict accounting. In their running of the government in Jerusalem they had, from time to time, groups that worked against them. These groups and people mentioned by the High Priest were such groups. They rose up against the ruling of the Pharisees and caused disturbances among the people. But there's just no record that there was ever anyone running around Israel that they recognized as their Messiah.
Again, these messiahs were not embraced by title, necessarily, but as ambitious military leaders, leading insurrections. As such, they were posing as messiah figures, promising to bring the Kingdom of God back to Israel by defeating the Romans.
I never said all Israel had to embrace a single Messiah, or that even all the Pharisees had to crown a "Messiah." Rather, these were smaller factions within the Jewish People who promised deliverance from the Romans, thus declaring themselves possible messiahs. They would finally be recognized not before the fact but after the fact, which of course they never accomplished.
Consequently, all Israel never recognized any of these false messiahs for any length of time. But until they failed, many Jews did embrace them as messiahs, as these political figures saw themselves, as well.
And in your mind some group that leads a faction for some cause equates to Messiah. I just see them as you now explain them. They were small groups that had some agenda that they wanted to work out and they failed. But that doesn't mean that their agenda was proclaiming someone to be the Messiah.
Yes, and I explain that above. You don't have to agree. I'm just explaining that yes, this is how I explain what Jesus meant by saying false messiahs would appear. I don't think he said this in vain, or that it never really happened.
Yes he did and well there may have been... but Israel never gave any lasting evidence that they followed them and so it would only be a guess for someone to say that they did. Yes, Jesus warned the people in Israel that there would be false Messiahs. He told them not to follow them. And as far as we know they never did.
And so, you think Jesus just made up his prediction that there would be false messiahs?
Anyway, I've made my point and I believe that I have substantiated it with factual information from both the Scriptures and extra-biblical sources. If you want to believe that the Jews have accepted many, many false Messiahs, then you'll have to do that. I don't.
You have substantiated your position using *your definition* of "false messiahs," which clearly does not equate with *my definition* of "false messiahs." That's okay.
We can agree to disagree. Have a nice day. We shouldn't lose any sleep over this? ;)
Meaning: David recognizes that external rituals alone aren’t enough. What God truly desires is repentance, humility, and inner transformation. This is a pivot from Mosaic ritual to heart-based covenant—a foreshadowing of the New Covenant.
