The Grammar of Messianism
An Ancient Jewish Political Idiom and Its Users
by Matthew V. Novenson
- Offers a revisionist account of messianism in antiquity.
- Presents an unconventional appeal to both Jewish and Christian evidence as mutually informative.
- Presents a novel research program for a classic corpus of texts.
- Engages a detailed discussion of some little understood and newly published ancient texts.
Description
Messianism is one of the great themes in intellectual history. But for precisely this reason, because it has done so much important ideological work for the people who have written about it, the historical roots of the discourse itself have been obscured from view. What did it mean to talk about "messiahs" in the ancient world, before the idea of messianism became a philosophical juggernaut, dictating the terms for all subsequent discussion of the topic? In this book, Matthew V. Novenson gives a revisionist account of messianism in antiquity. He shows that, for the ancient Jews and Christians who used the term, a messiah was not an article of faith but a manner of speaking. It was a scriptural figure of speech, one among numerous others, useful for thinking kinds of political order: present or future, real or ideal, monarchic or theocratic, dynastic or charismatic, and other variations beside. The early Christians famously seized upon the title "messiah" (in Greek, "Christ") for their founding hero and thus molded the sense of the term in certain ways, but, Novenson shows, this is nothing other than what all ancient messiah texts do, each in its own way. If we hope to understand the ancient texts about messiahs (from Deutero-Isaiah to the Parables of Enoch, from the Qumran Community Rule to the Gospel of John, from the Pseudo-Clementines to Sefer Zerubbabel), then we must learn to think in terms not of a world-historical idea but of a language game, of so many creative reuses of an archaic Israelite idiom. In The Grammar of Messianism, Novenson demonstrates the possibility and the benefit of thinking of messianism in this way.
Table of Contents
ContentsAcknowledgements
Abbreviations
1. After the Messianic Idea
2. Oil and Power in Ancient Israel
3. Messiahs Born and Made
4. Messiahs Present and Absent
5. The Quest for the First Messiah
6. The Jewish Messiah-Christian Messiah Distinction
7. The Fate of Messiah Christology in Early Christianity
8. The Grammar of Messianism
Bibliography
Index of Subjects
Index of Ancient Sources
Index of Modern Authors
Author Information
Matthew V. Novenson, Senior Lecturer, University of EdinburghMatthew V. Novenson is Senior Lecturer in New Testament and Christian Origins at the University of Edinburgh. He has also been a visiting professor at Dartmouth College and Duke University and a visiting research fellow at Durham University. He is the author of Christ among the Messiahs (Oxford University Press, 2012).
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Matthew Novenson - The Grammar of Messianism
October 3, 2017
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CHRIST AMONG THE DISCIPLINES
CONFERENCE NOTES
https://www.christamongthedisciplines.com/
by R.E. SlaterNovember 18, 2020
Please note: I write these notes to myself. They are not intended to be exact transcriptions from the speakers themselves. What I have written are not their words but my own thoughts. - resPlease note: All panelists provided textual statements for comments to attendees. These are not allowed to be publically published as they are intended to form to the moment-in-time not replicable beyond the panel discussions themselves as very specific conversations to one another in the AAR setting
Introduction by Madhavi Nevader
"Putting the Messianism back into Judaism."
- Grammar, a love song to exegesis, as we return to biblical studies and second temple Judaism.
- Symbol of Oil. Anointing conveys the status of power to the chosen priest, prophet, leader, or king. From the mundane to the holy. The dedication of an office and the person filling the office to execute their duties faithfully to God, the people, and to all those affected by that office.
- What are the rules of Messianic grammar? Are do the Messiah texts correlate with one another?
- How does Messianism connect to Judahistic politics? In itself Messianism is politics.
- What does all this mean and where is it going?
Judaism
Judaism (originally from Hebrew יהודה, Yehudah, "Judah";[1][2] via Latin and Greek) is an ethnic religion comprising the collective religious, cultural and legal tradition and civilization of the Jewish people.[3][4] Judaism is considered by religious Jews to be the expression of the covenant that God established with the Children of Israel.[5] It encompasses a wide body of texts, practices, theological positions, and forms of organization. The Torah is part of the larger text known as the Tanakh or the Hebrew Bible, and supplemental oral tradition represented by later texts such as the Midrash and the Talmud. With between 14.5 and 17.4 million adherents worldwide,[6] Judaism is the tenth largest religion in the world.Within Judaism there are a variety of movements, most of which emerged from Rabbinic Judaism,[7] which holds that God revealed his laws and commandments to Moses on Mount Sinai in the form of both the Written and Oral Torah.[8] Historically, all or part of this assertion was challenged by various groups such as the Sadducees and Hellenistic Judaism during the Second Temple period;[9] the Karaites during the early and later medieval period; and among segments of the modern non-Orthodox denominations. Modern branches of Judaism such as Humanistic Judaism may be nontheistic.[10] Today, the largest Jewish religious movements are Orthodox Judaism (Haredi Judaism and Modern Orthodox Judaism), Conservative Judaism, and Reform Judaism. Major sources of difference between these groups are their approaches to Jewish law, the authority of the Rabbinic tradition, and the significance of the State of Israel.[11] Orthodox Judaism maintains that the Torah and Jewish law are divine in origin, eternal and unalterable, and that they should be strictly followed. Conservative and Reform Judaism are more liberal, with Conservative Judaism generally promoting a more traditionalist interpretation of Judaism's requirements than Reform Judaism. A typical Reform position is that Jewish law should be viewed as a set of general guidelines rather than as a set of restrictions and obligations whose observance is required of all Jews.[12][13] Historically, special courts enforced Jewish law; today, these courts still exist but the practice of Judaism is mostly voluntary.[14] Authority on theological and legal matters is not vested in any one person or organization, but in the sacred texts and the rabbis and scholars who interpret them.[15]Judaism has its roots as an organized religion in the Middle East during the Bronze Age.[16] It evolved from ancient Israelite religions around 500 BCE,[17] and is considered one of the oldest monotheistic religions.[18][19] The Hebrews and Israelites were already referred to as "Jews" in later books of the Tanakh such as the Book of Esther, with the term Jews replacing the title "Children of Israel".[20] Judaism's texts, traditions and values strongly influenced later Abrahamic religions, including Christianity, Islam and the Baháʼí Faith.[21][22] Hebraism, like Hellenism, played a seminal role in the formation of Western civilization through its impact as a core background element of Early Christianity.[23]Jews are an ethnoreligious group[24] including those born Jewish, in addition to converts to Judaism. In 2015, the world Jewish population was estimated at about 14.3 million, or roughly 0.2% of the total world population.[25] About 43% of all Jews reside in Israel and another 43% reside in the United States and Canada, with most of the remainder living in Europe, and other minority groups spread throughout Latin America, Asia, Africa, and Australia.[25]
Judaism and politics
The relationship between Judaism and politics is a historically complex subject, and has evolved over time concurrently with both changes within Jewish society and religious practice, and changes in the general society of places where Jewish people live. In particular, Jewish political thought can be split into four major eras: biblical (prior to Roman rule), rabbinic (from roughly the 100 BCE to 600 CE), medieval (from roughly 600 CE to 1800 CE), and modern (18th century to the present day).Political leadership is a common topic in the Hebrew Bible, and several different political models are described across its canon, usually composed of some combination of tribal federation, monarchy, a priestly theocracy, and rule by prophets. Political organization during the Rabbinic and Medieval generally involved semi-autonomous rule by Jewish councils and courts (with council membership often composed purely of rabbis) that would govern the community and act as representatives to secular authorities outside the Jewish community. Beginning in the 19th century, and coinciding with the expansion of the political rights accorded to individual Jews in European society, Jews would affiliate with and contribute theory to a wide range of political movements and philosophies.
Reflections by Katherine Hockey
- How does one explore the grammar of Messianism? What are the rules? Where do we start?
- How do we take the linguistic basis into the historicity of societal norms and understandings.
- Messiah language is a regional, geographic, cultural understanding between the Jewish people.
- It relates to political and spiritual leadership.
- Does power reside in the person of the office? In viewpoint of responsibilities?
- What are our definitions and categories?
- Deconstructive and Reconstructive efforts seem to rearrange the grammar and rules it seems.
- How does OT Messianism relate to NT Christology?
- How did it continue in the early church period and afterwards in the 2nd and 3rd Centuries?
- This would be in relationship to Jesus Christ's atoning sacrifice and the destruction of the Temple.
Reflections by Philip Zeigler
- Novenson's book taught me a lot re Ancient Messianic texts.
- A sustained argument to return to the texts and follow how the word runs in its connotations.
- Therapeutic -
- Reflected - how have we changed its meaning to the original intention of the cultures of their day?
- Construction of a Venn Diagram Cloud of Messianic Meanings applicable per Jewish, Christian,
- and later day understanding.
- How does Messianism connect with the politics of yesteryear's and today's Jewish communities
- and churches in their uses of it in their doctrines today?
- What are the normative practices between faith communities?
- How do the discriminate or don't discriminate when in use?
- Are these practices good, fair, kind, loving, wrong, unfair, incoherent, betraying, or false?
- True or False? Did Israel v. Church see Messiah differently between their faiths. One Descriptive of Messiah versus the other as Constitutive of Messiah.
- How are we to misspeak of the event and figure of Jesus to better speak of the Messianic event?
Reflections by Ruben Rosario Rodriguez
- How does one account for all the Messianic texts from the Jewish and Christian understanding?
- Resisting Christian anti-semetism prevalent in Christian supersessionism (where the church
- replaces Israel as God's covenanted people. Later, after the Holocaust, the church recognizes
- Israel as God's rightful people and the church as the grafted in branch to God's covenanted
- children). cf Wikipedia - supersessionism.
- Impressed by openness to reading non-Christian, non-Jewish sources.
- Apocalypsis - Revelation, Uncover, Disclose = ~~ Messiology where God reveals, uncovers, and
- discloses Himself. Barth - Jesus as both norm, hope, and personage of the Jewish God.
- Religions are like languages describing a set of faith rules within a specific religious community.
- Heritage, Source Tradition v. Living Messianism.
- ...
- Messianism has required the church to speak more clearly of God's covenants, its peoples, inheritors,
- anti-semitism, and Zionism re God's love, discrimination, inherited biases, etc.
Speaker Matthew Novenson
- My note: all reflections seemed to lean critically into the author's titled work.
- Matt then answers each reflection one by one in turn as they have spoken. I found him excellent as his own self-advocate before this board of judgments meant kindly but candidly.
- My work covers Messianism from the 6th Century BCE to 6th Century CE
- Everything goes back to ancient Israel. Oil anointing of stones, altars, things, and humans, as proxies of the deity being honored and obeyed. To elicit or underline sanctity.
- Side Note to myself - Political implications: What are the social consequences of transforming a person into a God? Ex. Trumpism. They become "untouchable" to the society they serve. But are they sanctified? Are they God given, or God granted, especially when in their character, policies, and office is shown to be distinctly unholy, ungodly, unloving, unjust? Trumpism teaches us that it is right and proper to remove such "Messianic" figures from office and try to undo the evil of their influences.
- Prophet, Priest, and King - the assumptions of all previous and separate OT sanctified offices into Jesus Himself.
- Jesus anointed by the Spirit of God under John the Baptist with reading of an OT text.
- The anointing of Jesus feet was not a royal anointing but a death/baptismal ritual
- Acts - Jesus anointed by the HS and with power (verse?)
- Christians are both anointed by the Spirit as well as baptised into the Spirit
- The Israelite Offices were always political as is any public office of a society.
- After 70 CE when the Temple was gone the offices of priest continues in Judahism. Each Jewish community anoints its own shabat houses, later Jewish worship centers.
- The book is not theological but historical and philological throughout. It may draw out some theology but it is not its main intentions. Thus, is there a descriptive normative distinction of Messianism? Yes, but its complicated. What the text meant then and means now is always complicated in guessing a society's intentions.
- "So yes, in the historical sense it is. It is the best we have to date of other comparative accounts. That one should think about these texts as I have written of them." - Matt Novenson
If Messianism is a language game then who wins it? Jews or Christians? Matt says it is unanswerable. It is a zero-sum one-on-one conflict. You play the game for the fun of it but it has no meaning for "winning" overall. The texts are not competitions but advocacy for the people of their day. It is never meant to be played directly against one another but to receive it from one another as vessels of sanctity and blessing upon the other.
Ruben - "Is Matt side-stepping the theological or religious over the political?"
Matt - "I suggest we learn to read biblical texts more charitably to one another."
- Messianism is for all faiths, religions, peoples, not just one or two faiths. Consider Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Atheism, etc.
Q&A between Speaker, Hosts, and Guests
1.
Madhavi to Phil - Deviant Messianism as not become the new Messianism.
Phil - It's how we see Jesus isn't it? It's how we twist His figure this way or that. The only anointing of oil of Jesus is non-existent except by the unnamed woman. Why is it that the NT writers never mention this? Had this symbolism lost its savor? Its meaning? Or was Jesus not wishing a political designation?
Pauline use of Christ as Messiah constitutes for him as a Jew the fulment of the office. He changing the OT contours to NT contours.
2.
Madhavi to Matt - Are we strictly beholden to the sources we have or do we have some freedom to go beyond these texts into contemporary relevancy. To have permission to move away from the ideal to the benevolent? That is, the idea of Messianism is not deviant but its message has become deviant by religious bodies.
Matt - long answer.
3.
Kate to Phil and Ruben - How do we talk about Jesus as Christ?
Phil - In the grammars of Messianism is Jesus as the Christ deflated all the way down, up or sideways?
Does Messianism go beyond the individual to the societal?
Ruben - Constructive Theologies are being written today of Messianism versus previous deconstructive theologies such as speaking to supersessionsim's unhelpfulness of a monolithic orthodoxy. There have been stigmas that have arisen over the years and have attached to such things as the death and suffering of God in Christ.
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