Wednesday, 27 December 2017

Jews and Christians diverge, first of all, on the Messiah: can they converge again on the Messiah?

JDG Dunn: The Parting of the Ways

Very schematically, this is what happened to the notion of Messiah, during and after the 2nd half of the 1st century CE:

• The few (Jewish) followers of Yeshua of Nazareth proclaimed that he was the Messiah => then their Christian heirs overdid it, and, by the end of the 4th century they ended up with "god-the-son", the "second person of the trinity" => now fewer and fewer Christians believe that Jesus was God, or son of God, or, literally the awaited Messiah.

• The overwhelming majority of the Jews refused to recognize Yeshua of Nazareth as the Messiah  => then after the destruction of the temple, for centuries and nearly two millennia they held on to the expectation of the Messiah (Moschiach) as a future event => now fewer and fewer Jews believe in the literal coming of the Messiah as some future event relative to a real individual human being.

Can anyone see them converge again precisely where they parted their ways: on the Messiah?

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