But in fact, prophets were sometimes said to be anointed. This, basically, is what got Jesus crucified: The Romans took him to be a messianic pretender, or someone who claimed to be restoring the kingdom of the Jews. That is why they nailed to the cross Jesus of Nazareth, king of the Jews. What they concluded was, yes, he is the Messiah, but not the kind of messiah that everybody was expecting.
Jesus is a messiah who has to die first and then come back. When Bar Kokhba, a messianic pretender years after Jesus who led a revolt against Rome, got killed, that was the end of him. People believed he was the Messiah before he was killed. Once he was killed, that cleared up that question.
But in the case of Jesus, his followers believed he was risen from the dead. They were not looking for historical context. As far as they were concerned, all of these texts were prophecies, and they were all written for their benefit.
What they do then systemically in the New Testament is apply anything that could possibly be taken as a messianic prophecy to Jesus. The glaring example was Daniel, Chapter 7, with its description of the Son of Man. For Jesus to be the Son of Man, he had to die: The Son of Man was supposed to come on the clouds of heaven, not be walking around in Galilee.
Now let me emphasize this: While the Son of Man originally meant a human figure, this term does not emphasize the humanity of Jesus. It presupposes that he was raised from the dead and ascended into heaven. In the Book of Acts, before Stephen is stoned, he says that he has a vision in which he saw the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.
This vision combines imagery from Daniel 7 and Psalm , both of which I mentioned earlier. This happened with other texts as well.
You get the story of the flight into Egypt, which gets into only one out of four gospels. This is the way the beliefs about Jesus get formulated. An awful lot of it is based on the assumption that all Old Testament prophecy was being fulfilled. All these texts were written in a particular time and place and were meant to make sense to the people of those times and places. Christmas truly is the most wonderful time of the year.
More than presents, lighted trees and time with loved ones, now is when we celebrate the birth of Christ. Yet, even with the splendor and joy of Christmas all around, you or someone you know may be convinced Jesus was just another man, possibly a prophet, but certainly not the Messiah.
Jesus is in fact unique. There are numerous things that set Him apart from other religions—with biblical prophecy and proof to back up each of them. From the very beginning, God had a plan. And through hundreds of prophecies in the Old Testament, God prepared the world for the coming of His Son. Jesus really did live to die for the sins of humanity. When a woman said to him, "I know that Messiah is coming," he replied, "I who speak to you am he" John Naturally, that doesn't prove anything one way or the other.
But if Jesus had never made the claim to be the Messiah, why would we bother to try and prove that he was? His own claim lays the groundwork for the rest of the evidence. To understand this, one must realize that by the time of Jesus, the messianic hope had become greatly politicized in the minds of the people.
They were seeking deliverance from the tyranny of Rome. Although the Scripture spoke both of the sufferings and of the victories of the messiah, the victorious aspect had become uppermost in the minds of the common people because of Roman domination.
This "lopsided" view of the Messiah has stuck with many Jewish people, and the politicization of the messianic hope has continued to this day. This is not to say that all Jewish people rejected the claims of Jesus.
On the contrary, all the first followers of Jesus were Jews. In fact, the rabbis of that time and afterwards were well aware of the many messianic prophecies which Christians claimed were fulfilled in Jesus. So, for instance, although the Talmudic rabbis concurred that Isaiah 53 was a prediction of the Messiah , by medieval times the pressure from those who applied this prophecy to Jesus was so great that Rashi, one of the greatest medieval Biblical scholars, reinterpreted the chapter and said it referred to the nation of Israel.
This interpretation is maintained today by many Jewish scholars, though it only dates back to the Middle Ages. There have been false messiahs throughout Jewish history. Among the most prominent were Bar Kokhba who led a revolt against Rom AD and Shabbetai Zevi, a self proclaimed messiah of the seventeenth century. Jesus was the One who would bring judgment as well as life by the Spirit of God Matt The evangelists record that Jesus was anointed by the Spirit when he was baptized.
Jesus proclaimed himself as the Messiah in Nazareth Luke and at Jacob's well to the Samaritan woman John As complex as it is for us to comprehend, He was fully God and fully man, Jesus was and is the Messiah. This is the unique way in which our heavenly Father chose to demonstrate His eternal love for us.
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