The categories “Messiah” and “messianic era” or “end-time” are categories that have been much abused in the history of religions. Scholars in many subfields of the history of religions – as different as for example, Biblical Studies and Native American Studies – have used the categories assuming that they are “normative” categories for religious traditions and without much concern for what the terms might imply about their respective historical data. In many cases, we assume that the “Messiah idea” is the central religious idea, basically the same but with superficial differences in historical manifestation, or that the categories are synonymous (when they should remain distinct, e.g., apocalypticism or millenarian movements). Jacob Neusner has challenged us to revise our understanding of these categories in the Judaisms of late antiquity in his study of the “Messiah idea” in the formative canon of the rabbis. He presents his thesis in this way: