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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