If you were to start studying 'messianism' on your own - instead of this series, or in addition to it, you would just start reading books, academic historical books or the the religious texts themselves.
You could just start anywhere, and read one book, one text, that would lead to another, and make note of other books and texts and phrases and concepts that come up. That is what I did.
You might that a lot of the history of this discussion, or where this discussion begins, and where it focuses on, is in the academic and religious texts writings, surrounding the late 2nd Temple area, the debate between Judaism and Christianity, where the messiah idea really surfaced.
Historians of the origins of Christianity have produced an ocean of material debating and arguing how it came about and how this thing called messianism was utilized by the New Testament writers.
There is also a bulk of material from scholars of Jewish mysticism, as much of later Jewish messianism relates to mystical traditions. There is plenty of material there as well.
So one area of focus is the formation of messianism and the debate of early Christianity and early Rabbinic Judaism, somewhere between the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd centuries, while another area of focus has to do with Jewish mysticism in the late middle ages or beggining of the modern era, somewhere between the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries.
The Famous Gershom Scholem
One book where many discussions begin, from academic / historians, is the famous book “The Messianic Idea in Judaism: and Other Essays” by the famous pioneer of Jewish Mysticism research, Professor Gershom Scholem. He wrote a lot about Shabbtai Zvi and theorizes about the nature of messianism.
Scholem produced a generation of scholars on Jewish mysticism, several of whom write about messianism or messianic topics.
Scholem has many critics and is somewhat outdated in regards to messianism, and regardless does not deal with Early Christianity, but he still is a good place to start, despite discrepancies, and that is essentially where I started.
One can approach messianism through historians, mainly in the bloc of writings on early Christianity and 2nd Temple Judaism, or through the bloc of Jewish mysticism research.
One of the known items on the agenda of Scholem was correcting Jewish history. His work was meant to elevate the position of Jewish mystical traditions in Jewish history.
In particular, Shabbtai Zvi was ‘written off’ as a mistake, as a singular event, but he saw in this case an organic development of Jewish mysticism, and an enormously significant part of Jewish history.
Scholem made a grand stroke of historicizing, emphasizing how important Jewish mysticism was in mainstream Jewish history and Jewish thought from the 13th century onwards, including the classic Zohar writings, through the great expulsion from Spain at the end of the 15th century, which paved the way to the Safed (Tzfat) golden era of Jewish mysticism in the 16th century, which led to the Sabbatian movement of the 17th century, which led to the spiritual Hasidism movement on the one hand and to the enlightenment or mass secularization of Jews in the 18th and 19th centuries, which led to Zionism in the 20th century.
Scholem was dialoguing with the great 19th century Jewish historians, and he dealt also therefore in this context with the topic of messianism, to correct their presentation. Heinrich Graetz was arguably the greatest 19th century Jewish historian, and Scholem was very aware of him and his work, as kind of a father to modern Jewish history.
Versus Graetz
Graetz’s article ‘The Stages in the Evolution of the Messianic Belief’ is another good place to start, in other words, it is a symbolic beginning of the discourse by modern scholars on the origins and progression of the messianic idea throughout Jewish history. I will now present bits from this article and comment as I go along, and so we begin.
Hope or Messianism?
According to Graetz, the messianic idea is essentially a matter of hope. For him there is a special hope that is deeply embedded in the Jewish people’s hearts and sources. For him, messianism is that hope, or messianism grew on to that hope:
“The messianic idea, that constant hope for a better and more beautiful future, is the elixir of life which has granted the Jewish people its remarkable tenacity.”
This is a presumption that I would already disagree with, and have found that other scholars have made similar attitudes, reducing or assuming that messianism is hope, or nationalism, or about redemption, or religious fervor.
This is not a historical approach, but rather taking a later judgment and then seeking that idea that is not the original idea of messianism. So Graetz continues and then asks: “When did the messianic hope or idea first appear in Judaism?”
He goes on to track the development of a religious hope in God and promises for the Jewish people, beginning in the Bible, and later through later texts and events. This is problematic because it first assumes messianism is a kind of hope, but this assumption was not clarified to the reader, let alone convinced.
“The messianic hope… went through a number of different stages of development, being conceived, either narrowly or broadly, nationally or universally, in conjunction with the general rise of mankind, soberly or ecstatically and mystically. Just consider the chasm that separates the messianism of the prophet Isaiah from that of the pseudo-messiah Sabbatai Zevi!”
Interestingly, he seems to tie universal trends to the Israelite early form of messianism.
Then he writes: “Once David, “a king after God’s heart,” had been chosen as the leader of the Israelite nation securing national independence… the messianic hope attached itself permanently to a scion from the house of David…”
I will argue that the sequence of this logic is backwards. He takes a later form of a phenomenon, and then attaches early aspects to the later form, instead of seeking the original form developing into a later form. Messianic hope would be a later form of messianism.
But we are speaking of messianism. If he were speaking regardless of the concept of messianism, there would be no problem with his logic. He believes in this hopefulness from ancient Israel onwards, and then the figure of David is associated with that hope, and so on. I will argue that a few early biblical elements came together to form the messianic idea, messianic figures, and messianic texts.
So we must be thinking critically of the form and ask what is the later form, and what is the original form. The word itself messianism is a good example of form: it comes from the word messiah, ‘messiah’ is earlier than messianism. Messiah is also a later form to the word anointed one, it literally means anointed one, but when we say messiah we mean some legendary figure, the earlier form is anointed one. Anointed one is a ritual that comes from the earlier more literal meaning of the word, which is simply to spread or apply or wipe an object with oil or paste.
The article goes on and the messianic hope described by Graetz becomes more sophisticated as an idea through the later prophets who bring into a national optimism aspirations for unity within Israel and international peace for all mankind:
“when the Jewish people was forced into (Babylonian, 6th century BC) exile, the messianic idea had already taken definite shape: the return from exile to the fatherland, which would bless its inhabitants abundantly; the unification of the divided branches of the house of Jacob into one nation; the participation of the pagan nations in this peaceful kingdom of God; a long, happy, and peaceful era free of enemies; the elevation of the people by means of an altered disposition and the fear and knowledge of God; a scion from the house of David, filled with the fear of God and the love of justice, as its leader and the founder of a new dynasty.”
Those were 5 points: return from exile, unification of the people, incorporation of other nations, peace, religious revival, and an honorable Davidic leader.
After the biblical era, in the 2nd Temple period, Graetz explains that the idea of the Messiah lost its “original, naive form”. This was done by reaching into the Bible, and creating futuristic creative expectations focused on the personality of Messiah with supernatural traits.
He then skips early Christianity almost entirely, which is contrary to what later contemporary scholars usually see as Jewish and Christian orthodoxy having major impact on each other's early development.
He does mention John the Baptist as an Essene (not a Christian), as a form of spiritual “inner messianism”, as opposed to Judah from Golan presenting a form of external “political messianism”, both in the 1st century AD.
[These categories of internal and external forms of messianism Gershom Scholem will pick up many years later. As if there are 2 types of messianism, one is internal, a spiritual movement, like Christianity, supposedly, the other is characteristic of Judaism supposedly, which is external or political, like the Bar Kochba revolt in the 2nd century. Scholem nearly equates Jewish nationalism with messianism. This is an example of generally theorizing messianism, of which I am skeptical.]
Such notions affected many scholars and popular discourse related to messianism. In several books and articles this was the general notion: Christianity is spiritualistic, Judaism is nationalistic and political.
Rational vs. Mythic
Back to the article, where Graetz continues to review rabbinic literature, where the sages discuss the ideas of Messiah and argue about Bar-Kokhba, “meanwhile, the talmudic ear developed its own messianic doctrines which ran the gamut from sober rationalism to mystical glorification”.
Notice this remark of sober rationalism versus mystical glorification, which is a judgment. He continues, “to be sure, this excessive glorification of the Messiah rested on faulty biblical exegesis…” He will also refer to a “fantasy-rich, mythic mentality”.
Graetz basically is saying there is a good and constructive messianism and then there is a crazy messianism, which is unoriginal and probably influenced or stemming from Christian messianic beliefs. Judgments themselves are problematic as coming from a historian, but they are also not explained and the order of these ideas or quite mixed up.
It is helpful for us to think in terms of ‘types’, it helps us comprehend, and it is natural to communicate an explanation through types. But Graetz does so here without informing us or without him realizing he is not just describing the history but giving his ideological conviction is to what it should be, in other words, a judgment. There is truthful information here, if it was only presented respectfully and correctly:
There are different schools of messianism, varying ideologies by the Sages already as to what is the Messiah. One type is what I would call humanistic, or natural, or rational, as Graetz calls it. Another, Graetz calls mythic and mystical and such, I would also call supernatural or perhaps fantastic, but not faulty or excessive.
This series is doing just that, sorting through the scholars and popular notions, putting order to their good ideas and their own ideological judgments, updating some of their insights from the academic field, and going back and forth between the focused analysis of a case or a text and the general schema of messianism throughout history.
Above we mentioned 2 types - internal spiritual vs. political external, just now we mentioned rational vs. mythic. We will encounter several more types and definitions along the way...
Graetz mentions some scarce insignificant messianic figures through the middle ages, and then presents the Kabbalah as bringing “a new stage of development”. This I would agree with. But again, Kabbalah is the continued association of the essentially crazy messianism as far as Graetz is concerned, as compared to the opposite Maimonides (13th century) rationalistic or humanistic approach to messianism.
For Graetz, Abarvanel (16th century) is a hero of messianism, and I agree. He is the great writer of classic messianism in Judaism, and wrote extensively about the Messiah, though he was not at all humanist like Maimonides! Abarvanel even engaged with the messianic calculations and supernatural messianic prophecies, which Graetz does not mention.
Ideology in Research
Finally, Shabtai Zvi is “the last messianic enthusiast”, relying heavily on the Zohar. This is the worst case for what Graetz in his time wished to advocate Judaism and Jewish history. Graetz wanted to show Judaism is deep and rich and sophisticated and moral and universal and responsible and spirited. Shabbtai Zvi seems to be the opposite of that Judaism of Graetz:
“Is the messianic belief therefore condemned, and are the critics of Judaism right in declaring it to be a lamentable and self-evident delusion? By no means! A vision nurtured by thousands of years, foretold by divinely inspired prophets and entertained by the wisest men of Israel cannot be sheer idiocy or remain a dream…
We Israelites can be proud that Judaism was the first to plant in the world the messianic longing “to turn swords into plowshares,” which in our age is shared by the noblest men of all nations… For thousands of years the people of Israel have proven to be energetically creative in the area of religious and moral truths for the benefit of mankind.”
This is the ideology of Graetz, in his own words. Scholem’s work later will reclaim Shabtai Zvi and Jewish mysticism as part and parcel of Jewish history and messianism in particular. Scholem went as far to correct the narrative of Graetz.
But Scholem does not consider the impact of Christianity and does not delve into the Bible nor rabbinic literature so much, in regards to messianism. We wish to consider Graetz and Scholem and all the other scholars and ideas into a greater framework of ideas of Messiah, or messianisms.
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