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Well if there was any doubt, I don’t believe it.

It’s a genre that emerged within Judaism after encountering Zoroastrianism in exile. Jewish apocalypticism was a ideological innovation to reconcile two contradictory conditions for Jews: a) god expected his laws to be observed, and b) his laws couldn’t be observed because “his people” were in exile and then later after returning home, they became occupied by the Seleucids and later the Romans, after a brief period of Hasmonean independence. Basically it was a tactic by priests to maintain communal cohesion during hard times where physical and political conditions prohibited their people from keeping Torah. The trick was, “hey if we can’t obey our god because we aren’t free to do so, then god must have an alternate plan to use a special agent to free us and/or destroy our enemies in a miraculous manner.”

Ironically the first person to be called messiah in the Old Testament isn’t Jewish but is Cyrus the Great of Persia, who after conquering Babylon, allowed the Jews to return home to become his vassals in Judea and in return he helped rebuild their temple.

<blockquote data-quote="musso" data-source="post: 1538410" data-attributes="member: 11400">Well if there was any doubt, I don’t believe it.It’s a genre that emerged within Judaism after encountering Zoroastrianism in exile. Jewish apocalypticism was a ideological innovation to reconcile two contradictory conditions for Jews: a) god expected his laws to be observed, and b) his laws couldn’t be observed because “his people”&nbsp; were in exile and then later after returning home, they became occupied by the Seleucids and later the Romans, after a brief period of Hasmonean independence. Basically it was a tactic by priests to maintain communal cohesion during hard times where physical and political conditions prohibited their people from keeping Torah. The trick was, “hey if we can’t obey our god because we aren’t free to do so, then god must have an alternate plan to use a special agent to free us and/or destroy our enemies in a miraculous manner.”Ironically the first person to be called messiah in the Old Testament isn’t Jewish but is Cyrus the Great of Persia, who after conquering Babylon, allowed the Jews to return home to become his vassals in Judea and in return he helped rebuild their temple.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="musso, post: 1538410, member: 11400"] Well if there was any doubt, I don’t believe it. It’s a genre that emerged within Judaism after encountering Zoroastrianism in exile. Jewish apocalypticism was a ideological innovation to reconcile two contradictory conditions for Jews: a) god expected his laws to be observed, and b) his laws couldn’t be observed because “his people” were in exile and then later after returning home, they became occupied by the Seleucids and later the Romans, after a brief period of Hasmonean independence. Basically it was a tactic by priests to maintain communal cohesion during hard times where physical and political conditions prohibited their people from keeping Torah. The trick was, “hey if we can’t obey our god because we aren’t free to do so, then god must have an alternate plan to use a special agent to free us and/or destroy our enemies in a miraculous manner.” Ironically the first person to be called [I]messiah[/I] in the Old Testament isn’t Jewish but is Cyrus the Great of Persia, who after conquering Babylon, allowed the Jews to return home to become his vassals in Judea and in return he helped rebuild their temple. [/QUOTE]