Jewish Messianism

I have held this book back many years.  It is now time for it to see the light of day (being part of the larger work, A Great And Terrible Love:  A Visionary Journey from Woodstock’s Sorceries to God’s Paradise).  With the gained perspective of years it needed some adding to.

Of course for a Poet to stand among the people of Israel—that Israel which cleaves to its King, Messiah, as well the children of that apostate Jewry who spurned Him—and speak truly to both camps without fear of man, this must needs be—simultaneously—an act of war and of love.  The prophetic office in Israel closed when the last prophet, John son of Zebedee (Matthew 10:2), finished writing the apocalyptic vision and prophecy given him around 95 CE—the culmination of all Old and New Covenant prophecy—so what I write is not “immediate” prophecy given me, yet as a student of prophecies the prophetic word of those who came before us is in my mouth.  Paul the apostle of Messiah put it like this, “For who hath known the mind of the Lord, that he may instruct him?  But we have the mind of Christ” (1 Corinthians 2:16), and John was instructed by the angel, “the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy” (Revelation 19:10).  The word of our prophets is precious to us who heed them.

I say this is war because of the tearing down of spiritual/intellectual strong holds many have invested their lives building and defending.  To err in this area of theology and vision allows actual blood to be spilled, much blood, precious blood.  We Jews know this first hand, the Arabs also.  But the Christian—and some of the Jewish—West do not; it mostly just sits in its easy chairs in front of the TV and drinks in the fruit of its unseeing.  A storm coming will turn these chairs over.

I do not know how many of my own family have perished because of the blind and blinding rabbinate, and when I say “perished” I mean in the prophesied Gehenna of eternal Hell, so this is no idle theology with me, and I mean it to be war, that the falsity plaguing my people may be challenged on the world stage, what I call, “Apocalypse Field, global arena of consciousness”.  Will my opponents resort to the old tricks of murder, slander, and lies?  What do I care, for I am given a heart and tongue to speak by Him who is Lord of poets, and there could be no power against me were it not given from above, so I will bear this testimony and love not my life even if it be unto the death.  I mean to cut down the lies and hatred that have cost the eternal lives of so many Jews I cannot count them.

What I say is in accord with both the Old Covenant (Tanakh) and the New Covenant Scripture (B’rit Chadashah), despite the opposition of some, both Christians and Jews.  These things impact the wider world also, as Gentile believers in Yeshua (Jesus) our Messiah are grafted into the spiritual faith of Israel, from which flows the river of eternal life to all nations—the ancient promise to Abraham fulfilled.

Mark you, the poet’s pen is not filled with lifeless ink.  It is a sword of the Spirit of YHWH, and His vessel.  It is among the foremost weapons of the Apocalypse—if so be it have the wind of Heaven filling its sails, and speeding its missiles, even as Heaven’s power sped David’s stone into the brain of the giant.

ערב רב: פנים וחוץ בוויכוח הפרנקיסטי הוא ספר מרתק וחדשני החושף את סיפורה הייחודי של התנועה הפרנקיסטית, תנועה יהודית אפיקורסית שצמחה בפולין והתפשטה במרכז אירופה במחצית השנייה של המאה ה-18.

בעיני רוב היהודים פרנק היה 'משיח שקר' ידוע לשמצה. בעיני נוצרים נאורים ומיסיונרים מילנריסטים היה יהודי-נוצרי ואדם חופשי בדעותיו, שלו קשרים מסתוריים והוא משתמש במגיה ובמאגרי עושר סודיים. עבור מאמיניו היה למבשר שחרור מן המסגרות המקובלות המדכאות של מגדר, הלכה, מעמד, משטר ודת.

התנועה הפרנקיסטית עוררה הדים והיתה סלע מחלוקת גם בקרב גורמים דתיים ופוליטיים לא יהודיים: יוזף השני, קתרינה הגדולה, גתה, קזנובה ואחרים. תורותיו של יעקב פרנק, מנהיג התנועה, הציבו אתגר בפני היהדות הנורמטיבית, אך גם בפני האסלאם וזרמים בנצרות. הספר מברר מחלוקות פנימיות ביהדות המודרנית אך דן גם ביחסים בין יהודים לסביבתם במאות ה-18–ה-19.

ערב רב מבוסס על מקורות פנימיים שחיברו פרנק ומאמיניו, על מקורות יהודיים פולמוסיים אנטי פרנקיסטיים, ועל מקורות שכתבו גורמים לא יהודיים בני הזמן. דרכו המוקצנת של יעקב פרנק עוררה עניין רב בו ובתנועתו, ולקורא מוגש ניתוח מעמיק של פרשה היסטורית ייחודית זו.
המחבר, ד"ר פאבל מצ'ייקו מן האוניברסיטה העברית בירושלים, חוקר את תולדות היהודים בפולין-ליטא בעת החדשה. נולד בוורשה וקיבל תואר דוקטור מאוניברסיטת אוקספורד. פרסומיו הרבים זיכו אותו בפרסים, במלגות ובמענקי מחקר רבים. שימש מרצה אורח באוניברסיטאות שונות, בארצות הברית, בצרפת, בגרמניה ובפולין.

Since from the late Middle Ages to the Emancipation, Eastern European Jewry was spiritually, physically and linguistically isolated from the Christian society, we are inclined to believe that it had always been so ever since Judaism and Christianity turned their backs on each other in late antiquity, especially because rabbinical literature mentions Christianity by name only sporadical-ly. According to the traditional narrative, also represented by Paul Johnson in his History of the Jews, the destruction of the Temple, the failure of the Bar Kokhba revolt and the spread of Christianity caused Judaism to turn in on itself for hundreds of years and became oblivious of its richer past and untouched by the outside world, as if living in a hermetically sealed world. This paradigm has difficulties accommodating that four Midrashim (rabbinic exegeses) in a collection of Jewish homilies for Sabbath titled Pesiqta Rabbati, recorded in the seventh century but prob-ably composed earlier, features Ephraim son of Joseph, another Messiah apart from David’s son, whose description contains an amazingly large number of Christological features, which strikingly resemble the Gospels’ Passion account and the book of Revelation. The homilies also draw heavily from Psalm 22, understood by Christian tradition as describing Christ’s sufferings. Recent scholarly discourse defines the polemics in which Jews take over Christian cultural or religious ideas to build their own religious identity as “counterhistory” or “inward accultura-tion.” Its confrontational form denies the opponent’s identity by frontally attacking Christian religious symbols to deprive them of the sanctity attributed to them, such as the medieval Jewish Gospel parody titled Toledot Yeshu. The other strategy is internalization or “re-Judaization,” in which Jews appropriate and take control over Christian symbols as if saying: “what the Chris-tians talk about is really our Messiah because anything may they say, we are still the true Israel.” It reinstates into the Jewish tradition ideas that were inherent in pre- and para-Rabbinic Judaism but embraced by Christians, so deemed heresy by the rabbis, thus found only in traces in the Talmud. Concerning Jesus Christ, one of them is the binitarian theology of “two powers in heaven,” which elevates human figures to divine status such as in the Enoch/Metatron tradition, and the other one is the idea of “two messiahs” stemming from the Suffering Servant of Isaiah 53. The Midrashim of Pesiqta Rabbati revive this latter in a seemingly traditional manner, but in fact they go far beyond the limits of Rabbinic messianism without precedent, among others by merging the Messiahs son of David and son of Joseph into the figure of a preexistent Ephraim, who undertakes suffering for the sins of humans at the time of the creation, which is unknown outside the New Testament. By wandering into such dangerous theological waters, the Midra-shim support the new scholarly narrative that the rabbis knew the Christian discourse, the Chris-tian interpretation of the Old Testament, and the New Testament more profoundly and relied on them to develop Jewish religious identity to a greater extent than we formerly thought, and that the spiritual and ideological borderline between the two sisters, Ecclesia and Synagoga, was far from so rigid and impermeable as it seems for the first sight.

This article argues that in Ben Sira 50 the high priest is a representative office, not a person. That office sums up and binds together in worshipful unity (at-one-ment), through liturgical and civil duties, multiple identities: those of Adam, Israel, Lady Wisdom, God the Creator and the whole cosmos. The high priest is a multiple personality order. Chapter 50 is the literary and theological climax of the work. And the text is a vital witness to the shape of Israel's Temple theology in the Hellenistic and Persian periods, and to the way the Pentateuch was read and interpreted.

A Pre-teaching Interpretation Paper:
Today, the word “Messiah” commonly incites George Handel’s renowned oratorio or the person of Jesus Christ, whose second name is a Greek translation of the word. This is understandable given the pervasiveness of Christianity as a religion in the world. However, not only has the word been understood differently in different circles, it has also been attributed to and claimed by different individuals throughout the history. This paper seeks to evaluate the claim made by third-century Rabbis Bar Kappara and Hillel II that King Hezekiah of Judah is the Messiah.  In order to do that, what the word means to Jews in Ancient Near Eastern and Rabbinical contexts needs to be considered.
Although Rabbi Joseph has refuted Hillel II’s claim,  it is still a worthy endeavor to give the claim a second hearing, especially as Mika Pajunen noted that “there was renewed interest in these traditions,” referring to Deuteronomistic and Chronistic traditions, “to highlight the unity of the people and hence also their common heritage” after the destruction of the second temple.  Therefore, the account of Hezekiah in Chronicles will be exegeted, highlighting its uniqueness from that in Kings and, by extension, Isaiah, and drawing implications if the thesis, “King Hezekiah is the fulfillment of Yahweh's promise for THE Messiah,” is supported by Chronistic perspective.

The messianism expressed in 11QMelch is not idiosyncratic, as is often thought, but conforms to other sectarian works from Qumran which anticipate two Messiahs (one royal and another priestly) and a patron angel (known by various aliases: Melchizedek, the Prince of Lights, Michael, etc.). The author of 11QMelch finds references to these three figures in Isa 52:7 by interpreting the term měbaśśēr (“herald”), which occurs twice in the verse, as referring to the two Messiahs. The author then interprets the phrase mālaḵ ělohāyiḵ (“your god reigns”) as a reference to the angel Melkî-ṣedeq (“king of righteousness”). Several other terms in this verse are interpreted in similarly atomistic fashion: “the mountains” = “prophets”; “Zion” = “the community of all the sons of the righteous.”

תיקון שבתי צבי / יונתן מאיר. ההרצאה מבקשת להציג תמונה מורכבת ביחס לשבתי צבי, מכתיבתו הקבלית של נתן העזתי על המשיח הנפוּל, דרך ניסיונות תיקון נשמתו בידי הבעש"ט, ועד לשילובו בנרטיב הלאומי בידי זלמן שז"ר וחוקרים שבאו אחריו. יהא זה ניסיון למשוך קו במחשבה ובהיסטוריוגרפיה היהודית העומד מנגד לתפיסת הצרה בדבר "משיח שקר"

King David is one of the most colorful, complex, and controversial, personalities in Jewish lore. While numerous studies have focused on David's centrality to biblical literature and late antiquity, to date no comprehensive scholarly attempt has been made to investigate his image in the kabbalistic literature. This study contributes to the understanding of the connection between messianic thought, gender and mysticism. By focusing on the centrality of the figure of King David in Jewish culture the book discusses psychoanalytic perception of the self, and illuminating issues of identity, sexuality, and gender fluidity in Medieval kabbalistic literature.

The topic of the Jubilee is a significant one, both in size and importance.  In the present paper, I seek to trace its emergence and evolution in the course of Scripture, from Ararat to Sinai, Jericho to Judah, Naboth’s vineyard to Jeremiah’s field, and Nazareth to the new heavens and earth.  The Jubliee is, in a nutshell, a declarative act of restoration.  It is an eschatological peak in Israel’s calendar, and, although it is typically viewed as a priestly abstraction, it actually turns out to be reflected in the ebb and flow of Israel’s history.

In terms of its theological and cultic significance, the Jubilee is grounded in three important principles:  the perfection of God’s plans, the purity of God’s person, and the sovereignty of God over the earth.  The Jubilee cycle is first initiated in the late 15th cent. BC in the aftermath of Jericho’s fall, once the land of Canaan has been divided among the Israelites.  While the land of Israel is a microcosm of God’s new Creation, it is nevertheless part of a fallen world.  As such, it is subject to the normal process of decay, decline, and pollution, and must be ‘rebooted’ (in Yom Kippur style) every seven weeks of years in order to bring the land of Israel back into line with its divine blueprint.  Aside from such reboots, Israel would go the way of the world, as is depicted in Nebuchadnezzar’s colossus.  The land would become progressively polluted, disordered, and removed from Yahweh’s Edenic ideal, until it reached a point of total de-creation and returned to dust.  Grounded in the day of Atonement, the Jubilee provides an antidote to such entropic decline.  But, of course, a reboot can never advance Israel beyond her initial condition.  The notion of a Jubilee ‘cycle’ therefore seems inherently frustrated, plagued by a kind of Qoheleth-like futility.

In the NT, Jesus cranks the notion of a Jubilee up a notch.  For Jesus, the Jubilee is not merely a reset of Israel’s initial conditions;  it is a reversion of all Creation to its initial (Edenic) condition.  As such, Jesus’ Jubilee is inextricably bound up with the defeat of Satan and the release of Israel and the nations from Satan’s dominion.  It is set against the backdrop of a chaotic wilderness, a worldwide day of atonement, and a cosmic showdown with the world’s powers and principalities, all of which notions are latent in ‘the Nazarean pericope’ (Luke 4.16-21), and are inherently connected with the person of Melchizedek and the conclusion of the Jubilee cycle in Second Temple literature.

This paper is an abject lesson in how communal memory can be formed hundreds of years after the fact through substituting knowledge with organized religion. A curious visitor read back the content of the dedicatory inscription inside the Dome of the Rock and took a transcript in Arabic – only that it happens in unexpected ways during a time far from any suspicion of a monumental fraud.

The primary evidence in this presentation demonstrates that mosaics and inscriptions are creations during the Ottoman era. The Templum Domini from the Crusades was replaced by Saladin. It also shows that architects of olden times achieved what modern architects long deemed impossible: they completely replaced the inner drum from the ground up to the cupola.

Scholars have generally depicted kabbalists within an air of exclusivity. During the second quarter of the eighteenth century, however, a handful of Jewish mystics in Padua, led by Moses Hayim Luzzatto, opened their secret society to others interested but not adept in Kabbalah in an attempt to establish a "perfected community" and attain the long-awaited messianic redemption. This article explores the social factors and intentions that drove the group's activity, specifically how Luzzatto's thoughts of the unity of creation played out in life and community.

Hvad kan der videnskabeligt siges om den historiske Jesus? I kilderne uden for Det Nye Testamente finder vi kun oplysninger om hans død, messiastitel og broderen Jakob. Desuden har Jesus’ liv berøringspunkter med samtidige messiasfigurer, der kritiserer romerne eller det jødiske tempel.

How can one think of History in a time in which Europe happened to be haunted by the specter of catastrophe, in our modern times? How can one escape the perils of Progress? This urgency determined the thought of Walter Benjamin since his youth, and decisively marked his conception of history itself, but also of his vision of language and of translation, of his own critique of art and reception. Starting from the concept of dialectic image as a new paradigm of comprehension of history, Benjamin tries to substitute an idea of a narrative of progress for discontinued and figurative idea of history, that regains in the present the possibility of reactivate the past and that values a qualitative dimension of temporality, instead of a quantitative temporality that homogenized and disfigured his reading of history. Benjamin takes, essentially from the idea of Messianism, as a secularized category of Jewish tradition, to “build” what he designated as the dissident and revolutionary gesture of the historian of “brushing history against the grain”, focusing on himself that potentiality of rescuing the “messianic parcel” that become our fate and that brings in itself the echoes of voices that come to us. This is also the most important dimension of Benjamin’s thought, eminently political and ethical, configuring a radical gesture that reclaims justice for the ones that the history of Progress forgot: the overpassed and the victims of history.

*Published version now in Reynolds and Boccaccini, eds. Reading the Gospel of John's Christology as Jewish Messianism: Royal, Prophetic, and Divine Messiahs. AJEC 106. Leiden: Brill, 2018.

The first challenge is the historicity of John’s Gospel. If John does not present a historical portrait of Jesus and his time, there is less likelihood of finding evidence of early Jewish Messianism in John’s Gospel. Related to this, the second challenge arises from the aspect of Johannine scholarship epitomized in J. Louis Martyn’s two-level reading of the Gospel, in which the life of Jesus in the Gospel reflects the life of the Johannine community that writes and revises the Gospel based on their experiences. The third challenge is connected to the so-called “high Christology” of John. The general understanding of New Testament scholarship is that the Fourth Gospel’s Christology stands at the end of a long trajectory of Christological development as Jesus moves from prophet or messiah to divinized, preexistent Son of God. These three challenges to reading John as evidence of Jewish Messianism underlie Johannine scholarship.

At the same time, since the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, Johannine scholars have come to recognize that the Fourth Gospel has a close relationship with early Judaism. But where differences exist, Johannine scholarship has tended to view those differences as adaptations of the early Christian tradition or the Johannine community’s critique or correction of Jewish belief or other Jesus-followers’ beliefs. Even when scholars have recognized that John indicates parallels with early Judaism, the tendency is not to consider that the Johannine perspective might possibly reflect a Jewish sectarian perspective.

In our discussions, let’s consider why the Gospel of John might reflect shared messianic expectations. What meaning and relevance do they have for the variegated expectations of early Jewish messianism? What does it mean that John shares ideas, interpretive methods, language, descriptions, festivals, names, places, and messianic expectations with other Jewish texts from the period? What does it mean for the Fourth Gospel and New Testament Christology that John has so many Jewish expectations connected to the identity of Jesus? Can we accept Boyarin’s statement from his Sixth Enoch Seminar paper as a point of departure: “Jews came to believe Jesus was God, because they already believed that the Messiah would be a divine redeemer incarnated in a human body; they just argued about who that human being was” ?

Summary:  In the present note, I discuss Jesus as ‘the root of Jesse’.  Isaiah 11.1’s reference to Jesus as a branch from the root of Jesse finds its fulfilment in the two Messianic ancestries recorded in Matthew and Luke.  In the aftermath of Jehoiachin’s curse, YHWH raises up a new Messianic ‘branch’ from Jesse’s roots, namely Jesus’ Lukan ancestry.  Keywords:  Jesus, Matthew 1, Luke 3, genealogies, Jesse, root, branch, Messiah, Isaiah.  Date:  Nov. 2019.

The story of the Samaritan woman at the well in the Gospel of John provides one of the clearest expositions on the messiahship of Christ in the New Testament. “In a momentous self-disclosure that is unique to any Gospel narrative prior to Jesus’ trials, Jesus acknowledges that he is the Messiah.”  Suppose though, there had been another. What if the Jewish messiah, as they had expected him to be, had come, had ruled, and had failed one hundred years before the coming of Christ? He had come as a warrior king who reconstituted Judea, restored the temple and was purported to commune with the Divine - the fourth Hasmonean ruler, John Hyrcanus. Hyrcanus is not a name found in the Bible, nor known by many outside of biblical scholarship, but whose importance cannot be understated.  Edward Wicher, in his article, Ancient Jewish Views of the Messiah, makes the astounding claim that for a short time in Jewish history under the rule of Hyrcanus, “the pious Israelite imagined that the reign of Messiah had already begun upon the earth.”  But who was John Hyrcanus, how is his story linked to Jesus’ meeting with an outcast Samaritan at Jacob’s well and what implications does this have on Christ’s messiahship?

4Q390 is a document akin to but not identical with Apocryphon of Jeremiah C. It presents the exilic and postexilic era of history of Israel as a period of 70 x 7 = 70 + 7 x 49 + 70 + 7 years of forced theocracy. 4Q390 may partially account for the rise of Messianic expectations in Israel ca. 200-175 B.C. and ca. 103-96 B.C.

Introduction to Messianic Judaism provides a description of what the Messianic Jewish community looks like today at its center and on its margins. The first section of the book traces the ecclesial contours of the community, providing a socio-historical and theological snapshot of the community's origins, where it is presently and where it is heading. Alongside these chapters, the book also includes a number of essays on biblical and theological issues central to the identity of Messianic Judaism. The twelve contributors to the first part of the book are recognized leaders in the Messianic Jewish community. They work with various organizations, including the Union of Messianic Jewish Congregations, the Messianic Jewish Alliance of America, the International Alliance of Messianic Congregations and Synagogues, the Messianic Jewish Rabbinical Council, Tikkun International, Chosen People Ministries, Messianic Jewish Theological Institute, Israel College of the Bible and the New School for Jewish Studies. Fourteen scholars from a wide spectrum of Christian backgrounds have written essays for the second part of the book. Their participation signals a growing academic and ecclesial interest in Messianic Judaism. Since the 1970s, a sea change has taken place in New Testament studies that has far-reaching implications for how the church evaluates Messianic Judaism. A broad reassessment of the New Testament writers’ view of Judaism has occurred since the publication of E. P. Sanders’s seminal work Paul and Palestinian Judaism (1977), and this reevaluation continues unabated. The contributors to the second part of Introduction to Messianic Judaism draw from this recent scholarship and demonstrate how post-supersessionist interpretation of the New Testament results in readings of the biblical text that are consistent with Messianic Judaism. The final section of the book is written by Joel Willitts who provides a summary and synthesis of the essays, explaining how they shed light on the ecclesial context and biblical foundations of Messianic Judaism.

And be good to the neighbour who is your relative and to the neighbour who is not a relative . . . (Qur'an, 4:36)

Islam has great respect for the mutual rights and duties of neighbours. The Holy Prophet said:

Jibra'1 always used to advise me to be generous with neighbours, till I thought that Allah was going to include the neighbours among the heirs of a Muslim.

The rights of neighbourhood are not meant for Muslim neighbours only. of course, a Muslim neighbour has one more claim upon us - that of Islamic brotherhood.


Explaining it, the Holy Prophet said:
Neighbours are of three kinds:

(1) that one who has got one right upon you;

(2) that one who has got two rights upon you;

(3) that one who has got three rights upon you.

The neighbour having three rights upon you is the one who is also a Muslim and a relative. The neighbour having two rights is the one who is either a non-Muslim or a non-relative Muslim.

The neighbour having one right is the one who is neither a Muslim nor a relative. Still he has got all the claims of neighbourhood-rights upon you.

Here are some more traditions which show the Islamic love towards the neighbours:

The Holy Prophet said:
That man is not from me who sleeps contentedly while his neighbor sleeps hungry.

The issue of neighbours is of interest and concern to all. Disputes and feuds regularly hit the headlines. A bad neighbour is something to be dreaded, while a good neighbour is, as the saying goes, worth his or her weight in gold. Islam has plenty to say about neighbours. The Prophet’s statements quoted in Neighbour’s Rights, although over fourteen hundred years old, are as topical and relevant today as they were then. Much may have changed in the physical surroundings in which we live, but human nature is the same as ever, and we still need guidance on how we should treat one another. Islam shows us how to deal with our fellow human beings—and our own neighbourhood is a good place to start. This book Neighbour's Rights According to the Sunnah and the Example of the Salaf by Ali Hasan A. Abdul-Hamid is a good book to start.

Max Scheler (1874-1928), fue filósofo alemán cuya obra filosófica se inscribe dentro de la corriente del romanticismo, escribió hacia el final de su vida una obra titulada El puesto del hombre en el cosmos, la cual se ha convertido en la referencia clásica de la antropología filosófica. En esa obra define al hombre y su puesto singular en el universo en base a dos conceptos fundamentales, el evolucionismo biológico (como un subgrupo de los vertebrados y de los mamíferos); y el concepto de Espíritu, esto es, el hombre no sólo está dotado de razón (logos) sino también de sentimientos; expandiendo así el significado del logos griego. El hombre, según Scheler, tiene como atributos, el Espíritu y los impulsos, los cuales se oponen al Espíritu, y el tercer atributo es deitas, el cual se manifiesta cuando el hombre logra suprimir los impulsos del cuerpo –orientado por los valores y la sublimación- y, en este sentido, el hombre llega a ser dios. Este trabajo, examina brevemente las principales ideas que se han presentado a lo largo de la historia acerca de las diversas antropologías, y partir de allí, realiza un lectura crítica y hermenéutica -en el sentido de Gadamer- de la obra de Scheler con el objeto de desmontar y poner al descubierto las bases epistemológicas y filosóficas sobre la cual Scheler construye su antropología filosófica. Como resultado de esta lectura este ensayo muestra algunas conexiones del pensamiento de Scheler con la antigua filosofía estoica, y muestra además que la visión scheleriana del hombre es en verdad un antropocentrismo idolátrico: el hombre es dios –imperfecto y mortal-, su propio salvador y el centro de su propia adoración. Esta lectura hermenéutica y crítica es realizada bajo el enfoque de mi perspectiva judía de la vida y del hombre.

Most of the voluminous book of Zohar was written in Spain at the turn of the 13th and 14th centuries. Its texts are written either as homilies or as stories (and very often as a combination of both genres). There are about 350 stories in the Zohar, but about 20 of them combine together into describing the life story and spiritual development of R. Shimeon bar Yochay and his circle (fraternity). These stories are literarily very sophisticated and are characterized by acute messianism.
Here one scene in this biography is described, in which a new novice, R. Hiyya the Great, joins the fraternity. Thus the fraternity consists now of 10 members and is therefore "whole". At the same time R. Hiyya is being rewarded with an awesome mystical experience and is to be considered a prophet, just like all other members.
This article presents a critical edition of this story, based on 28 sources – manuscripts, different printed editions and quotations. It also presents an additional, unknown version of the story, probably an earlier one, which is extant in one manuscript only.
The article begins with detailed introductions which lay special emphasis on literary and theological analysis.

Mesih inancı ya da başka bir deyişle gelecek kurtarıcı Mesih'i beklemek Ortodoks Yahudiliğin karakteristik özelliğidir. XVIII. yüzyılda Ortodoks Yahudiliğin içinden doğan Hasidim ve Mitnagedim hareketlerinin Mesih inancına getirdiği yeni yorumla Yahudi toplumu için yeni bir dönem başlamıştır. Mitnagedim disiplininden gelen Mesihçi rabbiler sonraki yüzyılda hem Siyonist hareketin öncüsü hem de destekçisi olmuşlar, dini Siyonist olarak adlandırılarak Mizrahi grubunun çatısı altında toplanmışlardır. Siyonizm'e destek olmayan diğer Mesihçiler ise Holokost'a kadar anti-Siyonist Mesihçiler olarak Agudat Israel grubu olarak kendi politikalarını oluşturmuşlardır. Bu gün İsrail'in resmi mezhebi Ortodoks Yahudiliktir. Ülkede %22'lik kesim de kendisini Ortodoks ve Ultra Ortodoks olarak tanımlamaktadır. Seçim sistemi nedeniyle Knesset de sandalye sayıları az olmasına rağmen koalisyon hükümetlerinde yer alarak kendi düşünceleri doğrultusunda mevcut politikalarını uygulama alanı bulabilmekte, İsrail devletini dini kurallara uygun yönetilmesi için çaba göstermektedirler. Bugünü iyi anlamak geçmiş tarihi iyi analiz etmekle mümkündür. Dolayısıyla tarihsel sürece bağlı kalarak hazırladığımız çalışmamızda amacımız; Mesih inancı, dini önderlerin görüşleri ve politikaları, Siyonist hareketin ve İsrail devletinin sadece laik temelli olmadığı, Yahudilerin Filistin'e göç etmesinde Mesihçilerin doğrudan ya da dolaylı desteklerinin bulunduğu, devlet kurulduktan sonra da nasıl din devleti haline dönüştüğünü Mesihçi anlayış açısından ortaya koymaktır. The Messianic belief or in other words, waiting for the coming of messiah is characteristic of Orthodox Judaism. In XVIII century Hasidim and Mitnagedim movements, came from Orthodox Judaism, brought to a new understanding about Messianic belief. The Messianic rabbis of Mitnagdim's discipline have been the pioneers and supporters of Zionist movement in the next century. They were grouped under the roof of Mizrahi group. The other Messianists who did not support Zionism formed their own policies as Agudat Israel group as anti-Zionist until holocost. Today,Israel's official religion sect is Ortohodox Judaism. In the State, 22% of the people define themselves as Orthodox and Ultra Orthodox. Despite the small number of seats in the knesset, they are able to realize their idea in the current policies in line with their own thoughts by taking part in the coalition governments and striving to manage the state of Israel according to religious rules. A better understanding of this day is possible by analyzing past history well. Therefore, we prepared this study with adhering to the historical process. Our aim show Messiah belief, the social and political effects of the new understanding of Messianic belief, the views and policies of the religious leaders, Zionist movement and the state of Israel are not only secularly based, the direct or indirect supports anf effects of Messianism. Thus, we targetted to reveal how the state of Israel became a religious state by evaluating it from the point of view of Messiah belief.

«Behold, my servant shall understand» is the title of the lively commentary to Is 52,12–53,12 which the Catalan rabbi and exegete Moseh ben Nachman, better known as Nachmanides, composed in the months following his «debate» inBarcelona (July 1263) with the Dominican Pau Christià. In Nachmanides’ exegesis,the Suffering Servant is not so much the people of Israel, as held by traditional Jewish exegesis but nor is it Jesus as the Christians wanted. He is rather a flesh and blood individual, called to free Israel at the moment established by God the positive aspects of which he sets out. This little work, therefore, intends to strengthen the resistance of the Jewish communities of Aragon in the face of the Dominican missionary  effort and perhaps to keep alive their messianic expectation.

From the early 1430's, and during the course of the century that followed, Jewish society was rife with tales and reports of the rediscovery of the ten tribes. Rumor had it that the courageous and invincible tribesmen had departed their exilic abode of the previous 2100 years, engaging and conquering their neighbors and adversaries, and were now poised to assume a significant political and military role in the international arena. Since the tribesmen's ultimate objective was the reestablishment of an independent Jewish kingdom in the Land of Israel, these rumors assumed messianic significance. It was further claimed that high ranking political forces in Europe and the Islamic world were aware of this process while attempting to contend with it and that portents observed in various places established and corroborated these reports. These rumors surfaced in an intensive correspondence comprising 30 letters from the 1402 to the 1532, exchanged between Italy and the Land of Israel and also circulated within Italy and dispatched to additional countries, dealing with various reports and rumors of the impending redemption
Based on an analysis of these letters I argue that the Jewish expectations for a redemption led by the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel were influenced by European hopes that Prester John would come to their help to eradicate the Ottoman-Islamic threat. These hopes flourished in Italy from the 1430's on due to the political convergence between Italy and Ethiopia, perceived as the land of Prester John, at that time.
I also indicate a shift in the image of the ten tribes, from an image, common between the ninth and fourteenth centuries, of religious piety and complete detachment from what was happening outside their world, to a belligerent military image. This new image is explicitly expressed in the rumors, from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, that the tribes are on their way to become, once more, an active political and martial factor in the world history.
The new militant image, I claim, stems from a Jewish reading of the German anti-Semite traditions of the "Red Jews". According to these traditions the Ten Tribes are wild and fierce warriors and barbarian cannibals. They were prisoned in a remote and isolated place because they endanger the mere existence of the civilized (Christian) world. The Christian traditions of Prester John and the Red Jews, when read through Jewish eyes, have become a source for consolation and messianic hope.
Sixteenth century Jewish messianism was a historical messianism. It was affected by the international and geo-political situation, and envisioned as the rise of a political and martial Jewish power (the ten tribes) as a new and significant player in world politics.

How do the miracle stories in the Synoptic Gospels contribute to our understanding of Jesus and his ministry? 
Since the first witnessing of them and through the thousands of years that followed, throughout the world, the miracles of Jesus have become a major point of discussion.  Using the synoptic gospels as the key text and by referring to the works of scholars such as Alexander Balmain Bruce, James Kallas and others, this essay seeks to contribute to our understanding of Jesus and his ministry, with the intent of drawing out their significance.