Messianic faith, often based on calculations from The Book of Daniel and other biblical passages, tended to foster mass enthusiasm. Almost every generation had its messianic figures—e.g., Abū ʿĪsā al-Iṣfahānī and his disciple Yudghan in the 8th century and David Alroy in the 12th century in Persia, the propagandists of the messianic agitation in the Jewish communities of western Europe in the 11th and 12th centuries, and the pseudomessiah Shabbetai Tzevi (Sabbatai Zevi) of Smyrna in the 17th century. Messianic beliefs became firmly established tenets of Judaism and are included among the great Jewish medieval philosopher Maimonides’ Thirteen Articles of Faith. There was great variety in the elaboration of the doctrine—from the early apocalyptic visionaries and later Kabbalistic (Jewish esoteric) mystics at one end of the scale to the rationalist theologians on the other.
Modernist movements in Judaism maintain the traditional faith in an ultimately redeemed world and a messianic future for humankind without insisting on a personal messiah. Undoubtedly, Judaism owes its survival, to a considerable extent, to its steadfast faith in the messianic promise. In spite of its spiritual and mystical connotations, Jewish messianism never relinquished its understanding of the messianic order in historical, social, and political terms. Hence, many writers consider the participation of Jews in so many secular reform, liberation, and revolutionary movements as a secularized version of traditional Jewish messianism. The ideology of Zionism, as a movement for Jewish national emancipation and liberation, is not devoid of messianic or millennial features.
Individual eschatology, on the other hand, emerges only on the periphery of the Hebrew Bible. Amazingly, in Israel there were neither known death cults nor vivid conceptions of life after death. The late expectation of resurrection to judgment (Daniel 12:2) is not a yearning for salvation but hope in the victorious righteousness of God and the ability of the righteous who have died to enjoy the fruits of the millennial kingdom. Rabbinical messianism continued this same line of thought. Christianity The New Testament period
Although an older tradition contends that apocalyptic beliefs were a later addition, it is generally held that the preaching and ministry of Jesus of Nazareth and the activities of his followers in the 1st century ad can be properly understood only in the context of contemporaneous Jewish apocalyptic beliefs. The precise nature of Jesus’ beliefs about himself and his "messianic" task remains a matter of scholarly controversy, but there is little doubt that at an early date his followers saw him as the Lord’s "anointed one" (Greek christos, whence the English name Christ), the Son of David, who would either accompany the advent of or inaugurate the messianic kingdom. This view is evident in the Gospel accounts that attempt to trace the ancestry of Jesus back to David. The Gospel According to Luke (2:11) states that the angels proclaimed Jesus the messiah at his birth. Yet the Gospels present Jesus rejecting the term messiah, possibly because of its political implications—either for him or for the Evangelists—in favour of other eschatological titles (e.g., the "Son of Man"). Believing in his Resurrection after the Crucifixion, however, his early followers felt that the term messiah best expressed the role and function that they attributed to their master and "Lord" (Greek kyrios). In due course the title ("Jesus, the Christ") became synonymous with the proper name, and the word Christ was used by believers as the name of the risen Jesus (compare Galatians 1:6; Hebrews 9:11).
Byzantine illuminated manuscript: Tree of JesseTree of Jesse, illuminated page from Rabanus Maurus's De laudibus sanctae crucis, Anchin, mid-12th century; in the Municipal Library of Douai, France.Bibliotheque Municipale de Douai, France—Giraudon/Art Resource, New York
There is much controversy surrounding the textual traces of the lively apocalyptic and millennial discourse. Many historians, including those who study other millennial movements, read the Gospel accounts as retrospective narratives that try to make sense of the profound apocalyptic disappointment in the “failure” of their leader to produce the kingdom of heaven. For these scholars, later documents reveal a process of reinterpretation, as moment after apocalyptic moment passed, bringing further apocalyptic disappointment.
This pattern reappears throughout the history of the early movement, and Christianity is unique among religions for the duration of its apocalyptic commitment, sustained by a constantly evolving tradition of redating the expectation. The delay in the return of Jesus had other consequences for the early church, including a rearticulation of the message and the identity of the messiah (the kingdom of heaven within, Jesus as part of the Godhead).
The movement’s single most important response to the delay of the End was to take it as a sign that the message had to be spread to all the nations of the world. Thus, rather than retreat into the desert to await the final day as other Jewish apocalyptic groups had done in their disappointment, the disciples of Jesus, especially under the impetus provided by Paul, translated their religious beliefs into a universal message. The result was that, by the time the Temple had been destroyed, Christianity had created a spiritual teaching that enabled it to survive tremendous disappointment and to thrive independent of its original Jewish matrix.
The adoption of the word Christ by the church of the Gentiles (non-Jewish believers) permitted the new movement to avoid the nationalist and political implications of the term messiah, which then vanished from the written texts of Christianity. In its place emerged a politically neutral and religiously original messianic conception based on the “Son of David,” “Son of Man,” and the “Suffering Servant” (Isaiah 52–53). This political shift was further advanced by the interpretation of the Roman Empire as the “obstacle” to Antichrist (II Thessalonians 2:6). Indeed, Christians were encouraged to pray for the health of the empire. In the process, the revolutionary apocalyptic millennialism of the early movement transformed into an apolitical Christology that could spread throughout the empire without threatening Roman rule. Thus the doctrine of the messiahship of Jesus (Christology) developed in response to other features of evolving Christian dogma (the messiah as the Son of God; the Trinity of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; and the incarnation of the Word), eventually asserting that Jesus, as the Messiah, Saviour, and Redeemer, was essentially divine. In time the concept of salvation was radically spiritualized, and Jesus, through his sacrificial death, was viewed as delivering humankind from the bondage of sin and restoring it to communion with God.
According to this theology, the saving event had already occurred, but in the spiritual rather than the material world. It had strong supporters from a broad range of theologians, including Origen and Augustine, who articulated a completely nonmillennial form of Christian theology. Meanwhile, other early Christians, dissatisfied with this immanent eschatology, articulated a belief in the provisional nature of the world, which would continue only until the imminent Second Coming (the Parousia) of Christ in power and glory to judge the living and the dead.
In the centuries immediately following the writing of Daniel, the apocalyptic worldview significantly influenced Jewish culture: the audiences whom Jesus addressed were acquainted with it, and the early Christian church embraced it. It included the idea of a world ruled by an evil empire (the world’s last and the worst) whose collapse would be announced by signs, wonders, and the appearance of a saviour. The apostle Paul frequently expressed similar expectations (I Thessalonians 4), and a passage often called “the little (or synoptic) apocalypse” (Mark 13; compare Matthew 24 and Luke 21) reflects the early Christian community’s belief in the imminent return of Christ following the destruction of the Second Temple (ad 70), one of the most intense moments of apocalyptic anticipation on record for both Jews and Christians.