Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

A redeemer is awaited who will transform the present order, replacing it with a reign of universal harmony and bliss. This ‘messianic’ idea is crucial for the cultural complex emerging from Mediterranean history. While messianism originated in Mesopotamia, it took different forms in the Judaic, Christian and Islamic contexts and has taken on new meaning in modern times. The prophetic books of the Old Testament contain the basic features of the messianic expectation: the centrality of prophecy itself; an active rather than contemplative attitude; the perception of present conditions as unbearable (‘captivity’ or ‘exile’); a linear vision of history, where present suffering looks to the past for harmony and to the future for redemption; the visible and collective nature of that transformation; the extension of its scope towards universal limits, involving all peoples, friend or foe, and all nature, savage or domestic, earthly or cosmic; the affinity between messianism and later apocalyptic literature, symbolizing the traumatic passages from this to the other world order; redemption as an extraordinary feat which transcends human capacities in every way; the personal nature of reality's ultimate meaning, framed between divine sovereignty and human unrest; the personalization of the word and the act of redemption, made real by the coming of the ‘Messiah’. Jewish tradition projects His ... log in or subscribe to read full text