Jacob Neusner has challenged a long tradition of scholarship by the addition of a single letter to the magical word messiah. Messiahs it now is. And the singular notion of “the” messiah is disclosed for what it always has been – a scholarly assumption generated by the desire to clarify Christian origins. It matters not that biblical scholars have learned long since to contrast Jewish “backgrounds” with the Christian designation of Jesus as the Christ, thus regarding the many diverse “messianic” figures in Judaism primarily as partial precursors to the new and comprehensive configuration. The definitive notion given with the Christian configuration has been the lens through which most studies on “the messiah in Judaism” have nonetheless been undertaken. Neusner has, in effect, asked us to set that lens aside.

With the shift from singular to plural the alternative approach is also given. With plurality noted, differences among exemplary texts are highlighted as of significance for understanding any particular configuration. This particularity of a given configuration, moreover, indicates at least two further, fundamental considerations appropriate to the understanding of a text. One is to see each text as a creative product of the imagination. The other is to see that product placed in some context within which its particularity can be assessed. There are two con-texts with which scholarly discourse is familiar – the social history that provides the setting for a text's composition and address, and the literary-cultural tradition within which a text takes its place. Neusner's challenge is to work out an approach to texts that can position them at the intersection of these two contexts.