The Mishnah in the Context of Earlier Uses of the Messiah Theme

When the Temple of Jerusalem fell to the Babylonians in 586 b.c.e., Israelite thinkers turned to the writing of history to explain what had happened. From that time onward, with the composition of the Pentateuch and the historical books, Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings, to teach the lessons of history, and of prophetic and apocalyptic books to interpret and project those lessons into the future, Israel explained the purpose of its being by focusing upon the meaning of events. The critical issue then was salvation: From what? For what? By whom? In that context, the belief in a supernatural man, an anointed savior or Messiah, formed a natural complement to a system in which teleology took the form of eschatology. Israelites do their duty because of what is happening and of where events will lead. All things point to a foreordained end, presenting the task of interpreting the signs of the times. No wonder, then, that when the Temple of Jerusalem fell to the Romans in c.e. 70, established patterns of thinking guided writers of Judaic apocalypse to pay attention to the meaning of history. In that setting, Jesus, whom Paul had earlier grasped in an essentially a historic framework, now turned out, in the hands of the writers of the Gospels, to be Israel's Messiah. He was the Messiah at the end of time, savior and redeemer of Israel from its historical calamity, thus a historical-political figure: king of the Jews.