During Lent I'm sharing a series of thoughts and summaries from reading N.T. Wright's The Resurrection of the Son of God. They will be from the second half of the book dealing mostly with the New Testament Narratives...
The Jewish Christians of the early church did not abandon their hope for the Messiah of Israel. Jesus was clearly embraced as Israel’s long expected and hoped for Messiah. However, Jesus as Messiah took on a ‘transformed’ and ‘redrawn’ look that built upon the existing Jewish models. The early Christians and manuscripts connected Jesus the Messiah to Old Testament scriptures but added much meaning to what Messiah is in contrast to what Messiah meant for Israel alone. Wright suggests four distinctions between second-Temple Jewish thinking about the Messiah and Jesus as Messiah. 1) The Messiah no longer belonged exclusively to the Jews, moving beyond ethnic specificity to serve as the Messiah for the whole world and all peoples of the world. 2) The second-Temple Jews hoped for a messiah who would overthrow their oppressors. Jesus the Messiah, on the other hand, did not come to fight a military battle but to overthrow the evil in the world and usher in righteousness. 3) The expectation for the messiah to rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem shifts in Christianity to Jesus the Messiah building his church, a vibrant community of followers. 4) The justice and peace that Messiah brings would not be through creating an Israel that would rule in an imperial Roman way but would be about the renewal and restoration of the whole world. Chapter Twelve, Page 562-3
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