A Very Interesting Piece on Messianic Fever in First Century Israel

[Star of David]

Here is a very interesting article that I found from an online course about the messianic fever that existed at the time of Christ in Israel.

http://college.online-bible-college.com/space/lesson/files/djc020.pdf


Messianic Fever

Israel in the first century was a society in foment. "Crushed by poverty and taxation,
the great mass of urban rabble was largely unable to live by all the Pharisees'
precepts regarding purity and tithing, or by the priests' rules of ritual and
sacrifice. Their existence was frugal at best and could easily slide off into grinding,
impoverished misery."

In any society, such social despair could easily incite a revolutionary uprising. But
Israel was no ordinary society. The Jews had a keen sense of their own Godordained
destiny, and this spiritual dimension sharpened their desire for things
to change. As N T Wright explains it:

"The Jews of Jesus' day, as is well-known, were living under foreign rule and
had been for several centuries. The worst thing about that was not the high
taxation, the alien laws, the brutality of oppression and so on, awful though
that often was. The worst thing was that the foreigners were pagans. If Israel
was truly God's people, why were the pagans ruling over her?"

To have the land of promise under the rule of pagan Rome was offensive to the
first-century Jew. He viewed the Gentile as "unclean." This didn't mean that the
Gentile was physically dirty; it meant he was spiritually dirty. And if the Romans
were spiritually unclean, then the land was contaminated by their rule.

The Jews were not strangers to foreign rule. As N T Wright points out:

"This state of [foreign occupation] had existed ever since the Babylonians
had come and destroyed Jerusalem in 597 BC, carrying away the Judaeans
captive into exile. Thus, though some of them had returned from geographical
exile, most believed that the theological state of exile was still continuing.
They were living within a centuries-old drama, still waiting for the turn in the
story that would bring them out on top at last."

Nor were the local politics any better. Israel's community, though governed by
Rome, was ruled on a day-to-day basis by Jews who were, in the eyes of the
common people, mere puppet extensions of Rome's power.

With this historical background, we can understand why the Jews of the first century
were convinced that God would empower them to overthrow Roman rule, just as
he had empowered the Hasmoneans to overthrow Greek rule two centuries earlier.
It was unthinkable that the status quo of pagan rule would continue. And so
a cry began to rise – a cry for a savior, a Messiah, who would rescue them from the
tyranny of the rich, break the shackles of Rome and establish, finally, the kingdom of
God on earth. And when they heard of a young rabbi, just thirty years of age, who
taught in the synagogues with a unique authority, they flocked to hear him.

The time was right. All Scripture pointed toward the arrival of this unique deliverer.
The prophecies of Daniel, particularly his "Seventy Weeks" prophecy (Daniel
9:24-27), foretold that the Messiah would arrive in the fourth decade of the first
century, precisely the time when Jesus made his appearance. Daniel predicted that
"the Anointed One, the ruler" would come "to finish transgression, to put an end
to sin, to atone for wickedness, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal up
vision and prophecy and to anoint the most holy." One apocryphal prediction, two
hundred years before Christ, had this to say about the coming Messiah:

"In his priesthood shall sin come to an end, and the lawless shall cease to do
evil. And he shall open the gates of paradise and shall remove the threatening
sword against Adam, and he shall give to the saints to eat from the tree of life,
and the spirit of holiness shall be upon them. And Beliar shall be bound by
him, and he shall give power to his children to tread upon the evil spirits."

This messianic expectancy gripped the common people of Israel. They knew with
absolute certainty that their current state of affairs – being subjected to the rule
of a pagan power – could only be temporary and would change with the coming of
the Anointed One. Historical records indicate that many devout Jews cried out to
God three times a day for the arrival of the Messiah, praying along these lines:

"In your great mercy, O Yahweh our God, have pity on Israel your people...and
on the kingdom of the house of David, the Messiah of your righteousness. Let
the shoot of David sprout quickly and raise up his horn with your help. Blessed
be you, Yahweh, that you would cause a horn of help to grow."

It was into this climate of messianic fever that Jesus would soon arrive with the
stirring proclamation: "The kingdom of God has arrived!"