The Christ: A Critical Review and Analysis of the Evidences of His Existence

by John E. Remsburg

10. The Messianic Idea.

The desire for a deliverer naturally arises in the minds of a people who are in subjection and bondage. This desire was the germ of the Messianic idea. While there are traces of this idea in the earlier writings of the Hebrews, it reached its highest development during and immediately following the Captivity, and again in the Maccabean age.

The Messiah of Judaism and the Messiah, or Christ, of Christianity, were derived from the Persian theology, the adherents of each system modifying the doctrine to suit their respective notions. In its article on Zoroaster, “Chambers’s Encyclopedia” says: “There is an important element to be noticed, viz., the Messiah, or Sosiosh, from whom the Jewish and Christian notions of a Messiah are held by many to have been derived.... Even a superficial glance at this sketch will show our readers what very close parallels between Jewish and Christian notions on the one hand, and the Zoroastrian on the other, are to be drawn.”

Christians cite numerous passages from the writings of the Old Testament which they claim foretold the advent of Jesus. Not one of these passages, as originally penned, refers in the remotest degree to him, though many of them do refer to the office he is said to have filled. The Jews hoped for a deliverer, for a national leader who would reestablish the kingdom of Israel, and restore to it the glory of David’s reign. They were loyal to the house of David and believed that this deliverer would be a descendant, a son, of David. Pietists, too, in the fervor of their religious enthusiasm dreamed of universal conversion to the Jehovistic theocracy. In the writings of their prophets and poets these hopes and dreams found expression. “I have made a covenant with my chosen, I have sworn unto David, my servant, thy seed will I establish forever, and build up thy throne to all generations” ([Ps. xxxix, 3, 4]). “And the kingdom and dominion, and the greatness of the kingdom under the whole heaven, shall be given to the people of the saints of the most High, whose kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and all dominions shall serve and obey him” ([Dan. vii, 27]).

While the Messianic idea was originally a Persian idea, the materials used in the formation of the Christian Messiah were drawn largely from the Jewish Scriptures. There are passages in the Old Testament, as we have seen, which predict the coming of a Messiah. These furnished a portion of the materials out of which this Messianic deity, Christ, was formed. There are many more which have no reference whatever to a Messiah which have been made to serve as Messianic prophecies. The Old Testament, as we have it, is alleged to be a Jewish work. It is, rather, a Christian work. It is a Christian version of ancient Jewish writings, every book of which has been more or less Christianized. Much of it is scarcely recognizable to a Jewish scholar. This is especially true of so-called Messianic prophecies.

The Christian Messiah was, on the one hand, modeled, to a considerable extent, after the Jewish ideal, while the Jewish materials, on the other hand, were freely altered to fit the new conception. Referring to the work of the Evangelists, M. Renan says: “Sometimes they reasoned thus: ‘The Messiah ought to do such a thing; now Jesus is the Messiah, therefore Jesus has done such a thing.’ At other times, by an inverse process, it was said: ‘Such a thing has happened to Jesus; now Jesus is the Messiah; therefore such a thing was to happen to the Messiah.’” (Jesus, p. 27).

That the so-called Messianic prophecies of the Jewish Scriptures were the immediate source of the Christ is apparent. That he was, however, merely a borrowed idea and not a historical realization of these prophecies is equally apparent. The Jews were expecting a Messiah. Had Jesus realized these expectations they would have accepted him. But he did not realize them. These prophecies were not fulfilled in him. He was not a son of David; he did not deliver his race from bondage; he did not become a king; the important events that were to attend and follow Messiah’s advent form no part even of his alleged history. His rejection by the Jews proves him to be either a false Messiah, or an imaginary being—a historical myth, or a pure myth—in either case a myth.

The Jewish argument against Jesus as the Messiah is unanswerable: “We do not find in the present comparatively imperfect stage of human progress the realization of that blessed condition of mankind which the prophet Isaiah associates with the era when Messiah is to appear. And as our Hebrew Scriptures speak of one Messianic advent only, and not of two advents; and as the inspired Book does not preach Messiah’s kingdom as a matter of faith, but distinctly identifies it with matters of fact which are to be made evident to the senses, we cling to the plain inference to be drawn from the text of the Bible, and we deny that Messiah has yet appeared, and upon the following grounds: First, because of the three distinctive facts which the inspired seer of Judah inseparably connects with the advent of the Messiah, viz., (1) the cessation of war and the uninterrupted reign of peace, (2) the prevalence of a perfect concord of opinion on all matters bearing upon the worship of the one and only God, and (3) the ingathering of the remnant of Judah and of the dispersed ten tribes of Israel—not one has, up to the present time, been accomplished. Second, we dissent from the proposition that Jesus of Nazareth is the Messiah announced by the prophets, because the church which he founded, and which his successors developed, has offered, during a succession of centuries, most singular contrast to what is described by the Hebrew Scriptures as the immediate consequence of Messiah’s advent, and of his glorious kingdom. The prophet Isaiah declares that when the Messiah appears, peace, love, and union will be permanently established; and every candid man must admit that the world has not realized the accomplishment of this prophecy. Again, in the days of Messiah, all men, as Scripture saith, ‘are to serve God with one accord’; and yet it is very certain that since the appearance of him whom Christians believe to be Messiah, mankind has been split into more hostile divisions on the ground of religious belief, and more antagonistic sects have sprung up, than in any historic age before Christianity was preached.”

With orthodox Jews the belief in a Messiah is a deep rooted conviction. For 2500 years there has been displayed in front of the synagogue this sign: “Wanted—a Messiah.” During this time many, including Jesus, Bar-Cocheba, Moses of Candia, and Sabatai Zevi, have applied for the place, but all applicants have been rejected, and the Messianic predictions of the Jewish prophets are yet to be fulfilled. So, too, are those of the Persian prophet. In the meantime the followers of Jesus—turning from the Jews to the Gentiles—have from this borrowed idea evolved a deity who divides with Brahma, Buddha, and Allah, the worship of the world.