"Hyper-Johannine" vocabulary in the First Epistle of John

One of the things that has come to my attention in the process of my ongoing examination of the Fourth Gospel ("of John") is how much of its distinctive vocabulary is shared by the First Epistle of John, leading me to state in a recent post that the two works are "almost certainly" by the same author. In this post I attempt to quantify that similarity.

I began (somewhat unscientifically, I must admit) by making a list of words that I think of as "typically Johannine" -- that is, as being typical of the Fourth Gospel as opposed to the Synoptics. One of these, comforter, was excluded from consideration because it occurs only in the Fourth Gospel and thus cannot be used to compare that book's style to those of other New Testament books. The remaining 10 words were: begotten, born, eternal, father, know, life, light, love, truth, and world.

Though this list of words was derived from my own impressions rather than by any quantitative process, quantitative measures back up those impressions: each of the 10 words does in fact occur significantly more frequently in the Fourth Gospel than in any of the Synoptics.

The charts below show the occurrence of each of the 10 target strings in each of the four Gospels and in the First Epistle of John. The numbers indicate what percentage of verses in each book contains the target string. Words that include the target string are included in the count; so, for example, instances of knoweth, knowledge, etc. count as instances of the string know. I have used the King James Version for convenience. The numbers would of course be somewhat different in the original Greek, but the overall patterns would presumably be similar.

Two generalizations are immediately apparent:

1. Every one of the target strings occurs much more frequently both in the Fourth Gospel and in the First Epistle of John than in any of the Synoptics.

2. With two exceptions (begotten and father), the frequency of a given string in the First Epistle is not similar to its frequency in the Fourth Gospel but is rather much, much higher. For example, love occurs in about 1% of Synoptic verses, in about 4% of the verses in the Fourth Gospel, and in nearly 25% of the verses in the First Epistle!

There are two possible interpretations of this second fact. One possibility is that the differing frequencies are due to the presence of a great deal of narrative material in the Gospel, whereas the Epistle is more or less entirely theological in character. If this is true, then removing the narrative portions of the Gospel from consideration should yield frequencies more in line with those found in the Epistle.

The other possibility is that the stylistic differences are real, and that they show the Epistle to be written in an exaggerated caricature of the Johannine style. This would imply that the Epistle was not written by the author of the Gospel but rather by someone making a conscious effort to imitate his style.

Jesus in Samaria (Notes on John 4:27-42)

Continuing on from the story of Jesus and the Samaritan woman:

[27] And upon this came his disciples, and marvelled that he talked with the woman: yet no man said, What seekest thou? or, Why talkest thou with her?

Since none of the disciples witnessed Jesus' conversation with the Samaritan woman at the well, the account in the Gospel must be based on information from either Jesus or the woman, or else on hearsay. Since the disciples were astonished to see Jesus conversing with a Samaritan, we can assume that they themselves would never do such a thing, and that the Gospel account is therefore not based on a direct interview with the woman. We are also told here that the disciples didn't ask Jesus any questions about his conversation with the woman. It's possible that Jesus later told them the whole story, but it seems more likely that the account we have is hearsay, based on rumors circulating in Samaria about how he "told her everything that ever she did." Some of the more sensational details, then, such as the five husbands, may be nothing more than rumor, but I would assume that the author of the Gospel, who knew Jesus and his ideas well, would have captured the latter fairly accurately in his record. Whether or not the actual conversation was much like the Gospel account, I think we can be fairly confident that the statements about living water, Mt. Gerizim and Jerusalem, etc. represent actual teachings of Jesus.

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[28] The woman then left her waterpot, and went her way into the city, and saith to the men, [29] Come, see a man, which told me all things that ever I did: is not this the Christ? 

[30] Then they went out of the city, and came unto him.

Remember that the Samaritans acknowledged no prophets other than Moses and the Messiah (Taheb), and many held that even the Messiah would not be a second prophet but would be the second coming of Moses himself. From the Samaritan point of view, if Jesus was a prophet -- as his paranormal knowledge of the woman's life would suggest -- he could only be the prophet, the Messiah himself.

I have discussed elsewhere the Samaritan expectation that the Messiah would "tell us all things" -- which apparently derives from an alternative reading of Deuteronomy 18:18.

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[31] In the mean while his disciples prayed him, saying, Master, eat.

[32] But he said unto them, I have meat to eat that ye know not of.

[33] Therefore said the disciples one to another, Hath any man brought him ought to eat?

[34] Jesus saith unto them, My meat is to do the will of him that sent me, and to finish his work.

"Meat" here just means food, with no connotation of animal flesh.

Was Jesus really like this in conversation? It seems like it would have been rather maddening! I guess the justification for this mode of discourse -- deliberately confusing his interlocutors, letting them talk among themselves for a minute trying to figure out what he mean, and then explaining -- is that it would have engaged the disciples' attention more fully and made the final epigram more memorable.

The characterization of the Father as "he that sent me" is distinctively Johannine. The string "sent me" occurs 34 times in the Fourth Gospel and only 7 times in the other three Gospels combined.

Finishing God's work sounds like a once-and-for-all thing -- but Jesus calls it his food. Eating food is not the grand culmination of one's life's work; it is something we have to do again and again, day after day, for as long as we live. It is interesting to juxtapose this saying with the prayer, attributed to Jesus in the Synoptics, "Give us this day our daily bread"; also with the line from Deuteronomy supposedly quoted by Jesus when tempted by Satan, "man doth not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the Lord doth man live."

Elsewhere in the Gospel it is suggested that God's work can be "finished" more than once. Shortly before his execution (apparently at the "Last Supper") Jesus says "I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do" (John 17:4), even though few would be willing to say Jesus had already finished his work before his death. Later, on the cross, his last words are "It is finished" (19:30), but I think it's safe to say his work wasn't really finished until the resurrection -- or, for those who expect a Second Coming, not until then. Come to think of it, if we believe Moses, God's work had already been pronounced "finished" long before the time of Jesus: "the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God ended his work" (Genesis 2:1-2). The belief that, pace Moses, God's work wasn't really finished until the resurrection is probably what underlies the longstanding Christian custom of keeping Sabbath on Sunday rather than on the seventh day.

Is the work of God ever really finished? The Book of Mormon prophet Nephi criticizes those who would say, "behold there is no God today, for the Lord and the Redeemer hath done his work" (2 Nephi 28:5). "There is no God today" is rather a striking way of putting it -- Joseph Smith anticipated Nietzsche's famous statement "God is dead" by some 50 years -- but isn't a God who is done, who is never going to do anything ever again, world without end, the functional equivalent of one who no longer exists?

If the work of God can ever be completely finished, what then? An eternity of nothing to do, of hanging around, of resting on laurels? But on the other hand, supposing the work of God can't ever be finished, doesn't that reduce everything to a sort of Sisyphean futility? The only solution that works for me comes from combining the Book of Mormon with Spinoza: "Men are that they might have joy" (2 Nephi 2:25), and "Joy is man's passage from a lesser to a greater perfection" (Ethics, 3, defs. 2 & 3). There is no endpoint of absolute perfection such as the Classical Theist imagines God to enjoy, but the lack of a finish line does not make the race an exercise in futility, since the joy in the passage to a greater perfection, not in the static enjoyment of absolute perfection. Another way of expressing the same point is to say that God's definitive role is not "Supreme Being" but rather Creator -- characterized not by static perfection but by continuous making-things-better. "The knowledge and power of God are expanding," says a Mormon hymn to which many a Christian might object. But of course they are; otherwise, how could he have joy?

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[35] Say not ye, There are yet four months, and then cometh harvest? behold, I say unto you, Lift up your eyes, and look on the fields; for they are white already to harvest. [36] And he that reapeth receiveth wages, and gathereth fruit unto life eternal: that both he that soweth and he that reapeth may rejoice together. [37] And herein is that saying true, One soweth, and another reapeth. [38] I sent you to reap that whereon ye bestowed no labour: other men laboured, and ye are entered into their labours.

The harvest of wheat and barley (the crops being alluded to by "the fields are white") was typically in April or May, so this episode apparently took place four months earlier, in December or January.

This was a favorite passage of Joseph Smith's, alluded to again and again in the Doctrine & Covenants, apparently with reference to the work of proclaiming the gospel and "harvesting" converts. It's hard to be sure whether or not that was also the meaning originally intended by Jesus.

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[39] And many of the Samaritans of that city believed on him for the saying of the woman, which testified, He told me all that ever I did. [40] So when the Samaritans were come unto him, they besought him that he would tarry with them: and he abode there two days.

[41] And many more believed because of his own word; [42] And said unto the woman, Now we believe, not because of thy saying: for we have heard him ourselves, and know that this is indeed the Christ, the Saviour of the world.

This is one of only two places in the Bible where the title "Saviour of the world" is used; the other is in the anonymous First Epistle of John (4:14) -- called "of John" because it is almost certainly by the author of the Fourth Gospel, for whom the name John has become conventional. It seems highly likely that the author is here putting his own ideas in the mouths of the Samaritans. Neither the Jews nor the Samaritans were anticipating a savior of the world; the Taheb and the Messiah were only expected to save Israel.

Matthew's Messiah is the most "Davidic"; John's, the most "Samaritan"

As discussed elsewhere on this blog, Jews and Samaritans had different understandings of what sort of person the Messiah was supposed to be. The entire Messianic tradition of the Samaritans is derived from the 18th chapter of Deuteronomy. Their Messiah is a prophet like Moses -- the only prophet besides Moses, in fact -- who will tell us all things. The Jews, on the other hand, added to this the Messianic writings of the prophets, in which David has largely eclipsed Moses as the Messiah's most important precursor. If the Samaritan Messiah is essentially a prophet like Moses, his Jewish counterpart is primarily a king like David. The two visions are not mutually exclusive -- both peoples expected the Messiah to be both a prophet and a king -- but they represent very marked differences in emphasis.

Corresponding differences in emphasis are found in the Four Gospels. A writer with a more "Samaritan" idea of the Messiah might be expected to mention Moses more often, and to give the Samaritans themselves a more prominent role in the Gospel story. A writer whose views were more traditionally "Jewish," on the other hand, would mention David more often and speak more of kings and kingdoms.

I searched each of the Gospels for the strings "Moses," "Samari-," "David," and "king-." (Why not also "Jew" and "prophet" to contrast with "Samaritan" and "king"? Well, naturally most of Jesus' story takes place among the Jews, so of course every Gospel will mention them a lot. "Prophet" is also not useful for distinguishing between the two Messianic visions, since the Samaritans see the Messiah as being primarily a prophet, while the Jewish Messiah is based on the writings of the prophets.) Here are the results.

To control for the varying lengths of the Gospels, the numbers indicate
what percentage of verses in each Gospel contain the target string.

The pattern is clear, and confirms the impression I already had. The Fourth Gospel ("of John") emphasizes Moses and the Samaritans, while downplaying David and Jesus' role as king; Matthew shows the opposite pattern; and Mark and Luke are intermediate.

I should mention that it is already my opinion, for reasons unrelated to this issue, that the Fourth is the most trustworthy of the Gospels and that Matthew is the least so.

Why was the Messiah expected to "tell us all things"?

Having completed my survey of Messianic prophecies and their applicability to Jesus (qv), I notice that I appear to have missed one of the Messianic expectations recorded in the Fourth Gospel. Look back at the story of the Samaritan woman in John 4.

[25] The woman saith unto him, I know that Messias cometh, which is called Christ: when he is come, he will tell us all things.

[26] Jesus saith unto her, I that speak unto thee am he. . . .

[28] The woman then left her waterpot, and went her way into the city, and saith to the men, [29] Come, see a man, which told me all things that ever I did: is not this the Christ?

The Samaritans had been expecting the Messiah to prove his identity by specific signs: by producing the ark of the covenant, the rod of Moses, and the omer of manna -- things that would prove that he was quite literally a "prophet like unto Moses" -- but the Samaritan woman said nothing about any of that. Her proof was simple: he "told me all things that ever I did: is not this the Christ?"

In John 1, it is strongly implied that the Jews, too, expected the Messiah to be someone who could tell them things no one else could know.

[47] Jesus saw Nathanael coming to him, and saith of him, Behold an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile!

[48] Nathanael saith unto him, Whence knowest thou me?

Jesus answered and said unto him, Before that Philip called thee, when thou wast under the fig tree, I saw thee.

[49] Nathanael answered and saith unto him, Rabbi, thou art the Son of God; thou art the King of Israel.

[50] Jesus answered and said unto him, Because I said unto thee, I saw thee under the fig tree, believest thou? thou shalt see greater things than these.

Jesus knew, apparently by supernormal means, Nathanael's character and whatever it was that happened to him under the fig tree -- and that was enough to prove to Nathanael that he was the Messiah.

Nowhere in the prophecies I looked at is there anything that says the Messiah will be distinguished by his supernormal knowledge or his ability to "tell us all things," and yet both Nathanael and the Samaritan woman seem to take this for granted as a sign of the Messiah.

There is of course a sense in which any sufficiently impressive miracle would show that Jesus was someone very special and thus perhaps the Messiah. We could easily imagine someone seeing him walk on water and concluding that he must be the Messiah, even in the absence of any specific prophecy that the Messiah would do anything like that. This perhaps suffices to explain Nathanael's reaction, but not that of the Samaritan woman, who said, "I know that Messias cometh, which is called Christ: when he is come, he will tell us all things." This implies a specific prophecy. No one would have said, for example, "I know that when Messias is come, he will walk on water."

Now my survey of Messianic prophecies was not exhaustive. As I have explained in other posts, I wanted to find those few prophecies that define the Messiah -- that tell us what the claim "I am the Messiah" means -- not every single Old Testament passage that might conceivably be about the Messiah. My first thought, then, was to go back and comb through the prophetic books once again looking for this elusive "tell us all things" prophecy -- but then I remembered that this was the expectation of a Samaritan, which makes things much simpler. The Samaritans' only prophet is Moses, their only scripture is the Torah, and their only Messianic prophecy is in the 18th chapter of Deuteronomy. Nothing Isaiah or Zechariah or any other Jewish prophet may have written is of any relevance.

Sure enough, that chapter turns out to be the probable source of this prophecy. Here is Deuteronomy 18:18 as it reads in the King James Version:

I [God] will raise them [Israel] up a Prophet from among their brethren, like unto thee [Moses], and will put my words in his mouth; and he shall speak unto them all that I shall command him.

I propose that the bolded passage is the source of the prophecy alluded to by the Samaritan woman. English grammar requires that "that I shall command him" be a restrictive relative clause, so in English this cannot mean that the Prophet will tell them everything, but only everything-that-God-commands. But what if the distinction between restrictive and non-restrictive modifiers is less clear-cut in Hebrew than in English? What if the passage in question could also be translated as "he shall speak unto them all, as I shall command him"? If the relative clause does not restrict the scope of reference of the word "all," then here is our prophecy of a Messiah who "will tell us all things."

How grammatically defensible is this reading? Speaking as a linguist who is almost entirely ignorant of Hebrew, I have no idea. Setting those professional scruples to one side, though, and speaking as a Bible reader, I feel quite confident that the Samaritans simply must have read Deuteronomy this way. Where else could the prophecy have come from?

Jesus and the Messianic prophecies: Summary and conclusions

Having surveyed what I understand to be the main Messianic prophecies of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, Micah and Zechariah, as well as the Deuteronomy-based Samaritan Messiah, I shall now attempt to summarize what I have found and draw some conclusions.

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Which prophecies I considered and why

First of all, I should perhaps say something about the apparent spottiness of my survey, which has excluded a great many passages commonly thought of by Christians as Messianic prophecies. Some few of these, such as the famous Immanuel prophecy in Isaiah 7:14, I reject entirely as manifestly having nothing to do with the Messiah or with Jesus. Many others, though, such as the "suffering servant" prophecies of Deutero-Isaiah, may well have been intended as Messianic prophecies and may well have been fulfilled by Jesus, but have nevertheless been excluded from my survey. This is because my purpose has not been to list every single prophecy that may be about the Messiah or about Jesus, but rather to collect the prophecies that define the Messiah -- those that can tell us what exactly Jesus and his disciples were claiming when they claimed he was the Messiah.

Take Isaiah 53, for example, universally regarded by Christians as a prophecy of Jesus' atonement for sin ("he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: . . . and with his stripes we are healed"). It may well be just that -- but what it is not is one of the passages that help to define the idea of the Messiah. "Jesus is the Messiah" does not mean that Jesus was wounded for our transgressions and so on. Isaiah's "suffering servant" is not clearly and explicitly a Messianic figure. Rashi takes him to be a symbolic representation of the nation of Israel. The Ethiopian eunuch of Acts 8 asks Philip about Isaiah 53, "I pray thee, of whom speaketh the prophet this? of himself, or of some other man?" So far is this chapter from being explicitly Messianic that his first thought was that it was about Isaiah himself!

I believe that the prophecies I included in my survey, in contrast, do define the Messiah. In other words, when Jesus said he was the Messiah, he was saying that he was the person referred to in these prophecies.

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The centrality of the Messiah

I was impressed to discover just how major a theme the Messiah is in both the Old and New Testaments. All the major prophets and several of the minor ones wrote about the Messiah. If we include all the prophecies about the Messiah's work (the restoration of Israel), even those that do not focus on the Messiah as an individual, they account for an even larger percentage of the Bible's prophetic material. I have sometimes been tempted to think of the Messiah as being something like Hanukkah -- a relatively minor aspect of Judaism, the importance of which has been exaggerated as a result of Christian influence -- but that was a mistake. The centrality of the Messiah to the Old Testament is a manifest fact, not, as I have sometimes thought, an artifact of reading the book through the lens of Christianity.

Jesus and the writers of the New Testament were very, very familiar with these prophecies -- not just with the general idea of the Messiah, but with the detailed content of the Messianic writings -- and made numerous specific allusions to them, many of which would not be noticed by most modern readers (including myself before undertaking the present project). This has confirmed to me the importance of facing this issue head-on. Jesus Christ is first and foremost Jesus Christ, a Messiah claimant, and believing in him while at the same time sidelining the whole Messiah business is simply not an honest option.

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David and Moses

The three most-mentioned personal names in the Bible are Jesus, David, and Moses, in that order. That fact in itself confirms what I have said about the centrality of the Messiah. The Jews were expecting the coming of a new David and a new Moses, and Jesus claimed to be both.

Among Jesus' contemporaries, opinion seems to have been divided regarding whether the new David and the new Moses -- the Messiah and the Prophet -- were to be two people or one. I come down on the latter side of the controversy. From the point of view of Old Testament prophecy, the Messiah ben David cannot be separated from the Prophet like unto Moses. The same things that make him a second David also make him a second Moses.

David ruled over a united and independent nation of Israel. The northern tribes seceded under the reign of his grandson Rehoboam, and this northern kingdom was destroyed and scattered by the Assyrians circa 722 BC. The Davidic dynasty continued to rule the southern kingdom of Judah until the conquest of Judah by Babylon in 597-586 BC. At that time, most of the Jews were deported to Babylon and lived in exile there; they would later return to their homeland, but not as a free and independent nation. The new David -- David's legitimate successor -- was to restore Israel to the situation it had enjoyed under David. That is, he was to bring the exiles (meaning the Ten Lost Tribes and, for prophets who wrote during that period, the Jews in Babylon) back to their homeland, free Israel from the rule of foreign nations (Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Greece, Rome), and establish himself as sovereign king of Israel.

But this is also a summary of what Moses did: He freed Israel from subjection to a foreign power (Egypt), and he led them back to the ancestral homeland from which they had been exiled -- well, almost brought them back. As we know, Moses himself died just before entering the promised land, and so the work of the exodus was completed by his successor Joshua -- or, to use the Greek form of his name, Jesus. Thus Jesus' very name has prophetic significance, suggesting one who would succeed Moses and complete Moses' unfinished mission of liberation and restoration. It also seems significant that his father's name was Joseph; in the Old Testament, it is Joseph who brings the Israelites into Egypt in the first place and Joshua/Jesus who finally brings them back to their own land. (Mary, for her part, has the same name as Moses' sister Miriam, the only woman to play a prominent role in the exodus.)

Who is the Messiah? The Messiah is a new David and a new Moses. This is the central unifying concept that underlies all the Messianic prophecies.

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A summary of the Messiah's mission

The Messiah will, above all, reestablish the throne of David and rule on it forever. All the tribes of Israel will return to their ancient homeland and be reestablished as a single united kingdom, no more to be subject to foreign powers. The Messiah will be full of the spirit of the Lord and will rule with wisdom and justice.

Besides ruling specifically over Israel, the Messiah will also have dominion over the whole earth. He will bring peace, either by destroying the heathen nations (often referred to metaphorically as wild beasts) or by rendering them peaceful and harmless. He will abolish war and weapons of war. Israel will live in safety and have nothing to fear. He will also bring material prosperity, favorable weather, and an end to hunger.

The Messiah will rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem and reestablish the Levitical cult of animal sacrifice. The tabernacle of Moses may also be restored alongside the Temple. One prophecy speaks of the Messiah himself being a priest.

The Messiah will be a prophet like Moses. He will put an end to idolatry and cleanse Israel of their sins, and he will spread knowledge of the Lord over the whole earth.

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A second coming?

There is not the slightest hint in Old Testament prophecy that the Messiah will come twice. His is a "second coming" all right, but a second coming of David.

I tend therefore to think of the Christian doctrine of the Second Coming as something of a cop-out, an facile way of dealing with Jesus' apparent failure to do what the Messiah was expected to do. Either Jesus fulfilled the Messianic prophecies, or he didn't. If he did, we must come up with some non-obvious but convincing interpretation of those prophecies, since if they are taken at face value he did not fulfill them. If he did not fulfill the prophecies, then he was not the Messiah, and the real Messiah is either still to come in the future or else was a delusion all along.

To my mind, to posit a Second Coming is simply to say that the Messiah has yet to come -- but that when he does come, he will be a second Jesus as well as a second David and a second Moses.

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Jesus as the Messiah

Let's start with the easy part. Jesus was a undeniably a prophet, and a prophet of Mosaic and more-than-Mosaic stature. Like Moses, he led the way out of Egyptian slavery (though, ironically, the Egyptian to whom the people of his day were enslaved was -- Moses!). This aspect of the Messiah's mission fits Jesus perfectly.

As for putting an end to idolatry and spreading knowledge of the Lord over the whole earth, it can be argued that that process was set in motion by Jesus. The spread of Christianity put an end to the "idolatrous" pagan religions of the Roman Empire, and today "non-idolators" (comprising Christians, Muslims, Jews, and the non-religious) comprise some 70% of the world population. Even among those who do not profess to worship the God of Abraham, some degree of knowledge of that God is virtually universal. Christianity, if not Jesus personally, did "speak peace to the heathen," successfully assimilating the Roman Empire (not without some regrettable assimilation in the other direction!) and rendering the heathens nations no longer a threat.

As for the Davidic part of the Messiah's mission, Jesus certainly did not accomplish it in any literal sense. He did not gather Israel. The Jews were already living in their homeland in his time, though most of them had been driven out by the end of the 2nd century and did not return in large numbers until modern times. The Ten Lost Tribes remain lost. Jesus did not free Israel from foreign rule; it continued to be ruled by the Romans, and later the Arabs and the British. Israel is now an independent country again, but that did not happen until many centuries after Jesus, and its sovereignty over Jerusalem is still contested. Jesus did not restore David's throne, and the new Israel was founded as a modern democratic state with no king. Jesus did not rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem, which had already been rebuilt centuries before and was still standing in his day. This Second Temple was destroyed in AD 70 and has never been rebuilt.

If, then, we wish to maintain that Jesus was the Messiah and accomplished the Messiah's mission, all this must be interpreted figuratively. Jesus was figuratively a king. He figuratively reunited the tribes of Israel in their homeland and freed them from foreign oppression. He figuratively rebuilt the Temple.

Jesus himself clearly claimed to be a king only in a figurative sense. Once, when a crowd of would-be subjects "would come and take him by force, to make him a king," he ran away from them and hid in the mountains (John 6:14-15). When questioned by Pilate about his pretensions as "King of the Jews," he said, "My kingdom is not of this world," and, "Thou sayest that I am a king. To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth. Every one that is of the truth heareth my voice." Jesus' kingdom is the kingdom of truth, and his subjects are all those who are "of the truth." Certainly it makes sense to say that Jesus is a leader, that he has authority -- and he holds that authority not by force like a tyrant, nor because it has been delegated to him by the people like a consul, but rather as a legitimate monarch, who has authority because of who he is -- and who his Father is.

Building the Temple of the Lord is also relatively easy to interpret figuratively, with reference to Jesus' role as what might loosely be called a religious reformer, as someone who brought humanity into a new relationship with God. Every Temple, every religious edifice, is sooner or later desecrated or destroyed, or is simply outgrown by new developments in human consciousness, and so people like Moses, David, Jesus, and Joseph Smith are necessary -- builders of temples -- people who, although they respect and build-upon existing foundations, fundamentally offer new wine in new bottles. By putting Jesus in a list with others, I in no way mean to imply that he was not absolutely unique -- but it was Jesus himself who, by calling himself the Messiah, claimed to be in some sense the same sort of thing that Moses and David were, and who also said there would be others like them to come. It may seem somewhat counterintuitive to put King David in the same category as Moses and Jesus, but I think it is justifiable. The great Psalmist introduced into the law-based religion of Moses something personal and conscious and lyrical -- almost "Romantic" avant le lettre -- and it was on this foundation, even more than on the stone tables of Moses, that Jesus was to build his Temple.

That leaves the gathering of Israel, the hardest aspect of the Messianic mission to apply to Jesus, even figuratively. My best guess is that it has to do with the establishment of Christianity as a universal religion, transcending the ethnic religion of Judaism. The Lost Tribes were thought of as being scattered throughout all the nations of the earth, and the Messiah was to set up an ensign to the nations that would draw God's people from every corner of the world. When Jesus said his disciples were to be "fishers of men," he was alluding to Jeremiah's account of the gathering of Israel -- first by fishers casting out their nets and drawing in the catch en masse, and then (the phase we are in now?) by hunters who would "hunt them from every mountain, and from every hill, and out of the holes of the rocks." We may see in the idea of the Lost Tribes a symbolic expression of the fact that God's people, or those who have the potential to become such, are not confined to one nation.

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What did the prophets know?

I have given my understanding of what Jesus may have meant when he called himself the Messiah. Is it also what the prophets meant when they said that the Messiah was coming? There are several possible answers to that question, listed here in descending order of orthodoxy.

1. God revealed Jesus' life and mission to the prophets. They knew who he was and what he would do, but they wrote about it in figurative language, which was later misunderstood by the Jews.
2. God revealed to the prophets more or less what we see in the prophetic books -- that a new David was coming to gather Israel, rebuild the Temple, etc. God meant this all figuratively, and was in fact referring to Jesus, but the prophets themselves did not know that and wrote in the expectation that their prophecies would be fulfilled in a more literal manner.
3. The prophets had only a vague knowledge that a "savior" was coming, an idea which they elaborated on based on their own beliefs and expectations, perhaps supplemented by a handful of specific but ill-understood precognitions.
4. The prophets had no truly prophetic knowledge of Jesus at all. They wrote what they wrote for their own reasons, and were "inspired" to some degree, but Jesus and his mission played no causal role at all in the production of the prophetic books. Jesus, born among people who were expecting a Messiah, decided to cast himself in that role and to reinterpret the Messianic prophecies as references to himself. Had he been born in a different culture, he would have assumed the role of the Saoshyant or or the Mahdi or Maitreya Buddha or whatever, and would have read his own mission into those prophecies.

I consider option 1 to be clearly wrong. It is just not plausible that so many different prophets would have couched their prophecies of Jesus in the same, rather non-obvious, figurative terms. I tend to think that the truth lies somewhere between options 3 and 4, but really I'm not at all sure.

The Messiah in the Minor Prophets

Micah 5:1-6

[1] Now gather thyself in troops, O daughter of troops: he hath laid siege against us: they shall smite the judge of Israel with a rod upon the cheek.

[2] But thou, Beth-lehem Ephratah, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel; whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting.

[3] Therefore will he give them up, until the time that she which travaileth hath brought forth: then the remnant of his brethren shall return unto the children of Israel. [4] And he shall stand and feed in the strength of the Lord, in the majesty of the name of the Lord his God; and they shall abide: for now shall he be great unto the ends of the earth.

[5] And this man shall be the peace, when the Assyrian shall come into our land: and when he shall tread in our palaces, then shall we raise against him seven shepherds, and eight principal men. [6] And they shall waste the land of Assyria with the sword, and the land of Nimrod in the entrances thereof: thus shall he deliver us from the Assyrian, when he cometh into our land, and when he treadeth within our borders.

This is the source of the belief that the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem (where King David was born), motivating both Matthew and Luke to come up with (two different) stories about how Jesus of Nazareth was, despite appearances, actually from Bethlehem. But this Bethlehem-born Messiah's role is to "be ruler in Israel" and "deliver us from the Assyrian." The Assyrian Empire collapsed some 600 years before Christ, so this apparently has nothing to do with Jesus.

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Zechariah 3:8-10

[8] Hear now, O Joshua the high priest, thou, and thy fellows that sit before thee: for they are men wondered at: for, behold, I will bring forth my servant the BRANCH. 

[9] For behold the stone that I have laid before Joshua; upon one stone shall be seven eyes: behold, I will engrave the graving thereof, saith the Lord of hosts, and I will remove the iniquity of that land in one day. [10] In that day, saith the Lord of hosts, shall ye call every man his neighbour under the vine and under the fig tree.

We have learned from the other prophets to see "Branch" as a Messianic title, referring to a righteous branch of the House of David. What follows -- the stone with seven eyes, the vine and fig tree, etc. -- is obscure and gives little information about what the Branch is supposed to do. Fortunately Zechariah returns to the subject later.

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Zechariah 7:12-13

[12] And speak unto him, saying, Thus speaketh the Lord of hosts, saying, Behold the man whose name is The BRANCH; and he shall grow up out of his place, and he shall build the temple of the Lord: [13] Even he shall build the temple of the Lord; and he shall bear the glory, and shall sit and rule upon his throne; and he shall be a priest upon his throne: and the counsel of peace shall be between them both.

The Branch (Messiah) will rebuild the Temple and will be both a king and a priest. Jesus did not rebuild the temple, which in his time had already been rebuilt and had yet to be destroyed again -- although he did say he could rebuild it in three days if it were destroyed. His disciples understood that "he spake of the temple of his body" -- but it would be quite a stretch to say that when Zechariah wrote "he shall build the temple of the Lord" what he actually meant was "he shall die and return to life."

Jesus was also neither a king nor a priest, although of course both titles could be interpreted figuratively.

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Zechariah 9:9-10

[9] Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion; shout, O daughter of Jerusalem: behold, thy King cometh unto thee: he is just, and having salvation; lowly, and riding upon an ass, and upon a colt the foal of an ass. 

[10] And I will cut off the chariot from Ephraim, and the horse from Jerusalem, and the battle bow shall be cut off: and he shall speak peace unto the heathen: and his dominion shall be from sea even to sea, and from the river even to the ends of the earth.

The Messiah will be a peaceful ruler, as symbolized by his riding on an ass and abolishing horses, chariots, and weapons of war. (Matthew in his ignorance misunderstood Zechariah's poetic parallelism as saying that the Messiah would ride on two asses simultaneously and claims in his Gospel that Jesus did just that!)

Jesus did ride an ass (or two!) into Jerusalem, apparently on purpose to fulfill this prophecy. As for the rest of it, I suppose Jesus was just rather than unjust, but it is hardly his most salient characteristic. "Having salvation" is of course very appropriate, but in fact the Hebrew may simply mean "victorious." The description of a king as "lowly" (i.e., humble, unassuming) is interesting, and may suggest that this person is not a literal monarch, as Jesus was not.

Jesus did not bring peace in any literal or worldly sense, but perhaps speaking peace to the heathen, and reigning from the river to the ends of the earth, can be interpreted in terms of creating a religion which embraced gentile as well as Jew and which spread over the whole world. Specifically, Christianity "conquered" Rome by renouncing violent resistance and "speaking peace unto the heathen."

Overall, I find this one of the most relevant-to-Jesus of the Messianic prophecies.

The Messiah and Son of Man in Daniel

The vision of Daniel 7,
from Beatus of Santo Domingo de Silos

Daniel is the only book of the Old Testament to use "Messiah" as a personal name, without the definite article (much as we use "Christ" today), and is thus the only place where the word "Messiah" occurs in most English translations of the Old Testament. (Elsewhere, the word is rendered "anointed," which is what it means, and does not always refer to the prophesied figure who would later come to be known as the Messiah.)

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Daniel 9:24-27

If Daniel is unusually clear in calling the Messiah the Messiah, that is unfortunately just about the only thing that is clear about his Messianic prophecy (which he presents as something that Gabriel told him). Here it is.

[24] Seventy weeks are determined upon thy people and upon thy holy city, to finish the transgression, and to make an end of sins, and to make reconciliation for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness, and to seal up the vision and prophecy, and to anoint the most Holy. [25] Know therefore and understand, that from the going forth of the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem unto the Messiah the Prince shall be seven weeks, and threescore and two weeks: the street shall be built again, and the wall, even in troublous times.

[26] And after threescore and two weeks shall Messiah be cut off, but not for himself: and the people of the prince that shall come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary; and the end thereof shall be with a flood, and unto the end of the war desolations are determined. [27] And he shall confirm the covenant with many for one week: and in the midst of the week he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease, and for the overspreading of abominations he shall make it desolate, even until the consummation, and that determined shall be poured upon the desolate.

Prophecies such as these are a happy hunting ground for chronology cranks, the most illustrious of whom was Sir Isaac Newton. By Newton's reckoning, it was in 458 BC that Artaxerxes I gave the decree to rebuild Jerusalem, and it was exactly 70 "weeks of years" (i.e., 490 years) later, in AD 33, that Jesus was crucified and resurrected. (Of course Daniel also says the Messiah shall be "cut off" in what would in Newton's system be 24 BC, before Jesus was born.) The Internet is full of would-be Newtons with their own refinements of or alternatives to his chronology, but I shall resist the temptation to wade into that fray myself. I simply don't believe that precisely dated prophecies of the distant future are possible, and at any rate chronology is secondary. The questions at hand are: (1) what did Daniel say the Messiah would do? and (2) did Jesus do that?

At first glance, "to make an end of sins, and to make reconciliation for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness" sounds like an acceptable description of Jesus' mission -- but Daniel (or Gabriel) actually presents this as a list of things that the people of Israel must do, and the last item on the list is "to anoint the most Holy" -- that is, to acknowledge and "crown" the Messiah, anointing being the cultural equivalent of coronation. These are not things the Messiah is going to do, but things the people must do in order to be worthy of the Messiah. Except for this passage, the rest of the prophecy deals with the destruction of Jerusalem and desecration of the temple (presumably with allusion to the outrages of Antiochus Epiphanes) and the subsequent restoration and rebuilding. Some may see in "he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease" a reference to how Jesus' final sacrifice would put an end to the cult of animal sacrifice, but in context the cessation of sacrifice is temporary, and is a result of "the overspreading of abominations."

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Daniel 7

While Daniel 7 is not an explicitly Messianic prophecy per se, it is relevant because it provides the prophetic context in which Jesus' contemporaries would have understood his references to himself as the "son of man."

[2] Daniel spake and said, I saw in my vision by night, . . . [3] And four great beasts came up from the sea, diverse one from another. [4] The first was like a lion, . . . [5] . . . a second, like to a bear, . . . [6] . . . another, like a leopard, . . . [7] . . . and behold a fourth beast, dreadful and terrible, and strong exceedingly; and it had great iron teeth: . . .

[9] I beheld till the thrones were cast down, and the Ancient of days did sit, whose garment was white as snow, and the hair of his head like the pure wool: his throne was like the fiery flame, and his wheels as burning fire. [10] A fiery stream issued and came forth from before him: thousand thousands ministered unto him, and ten thousand times ten thousand stood before him: the judgment was set, and the books were opened. [11] . . . I beheld even till the beast was slain, and his body destroyed, and given to the burning flame. [12] As concerning the rest of the beasts, they had their dominion taken away: yet their lives were prolonged for a season and time.

[13] I saw in the night visions, and, behold, one like the Son of man came with the clouds of heaven, and came to the Ancient of days, and they brought him near before him. [14] And there was given him dominion, and glory, and a kingdom, that all people, nations, and languages, should serve him: his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom that which shall not be destroyed.

Rashi's interpretation of this is that the four beasts are respectively Babylon, the Medes and Persians, Alexander's Hellenistic empire, and Rome -- four subsequent conquerors of the Jews -- that the Ancient of Days is God, and that the Son of Man is Messiah. Most Christians read it the same way, understanding the Messiah to be Jesus at his Second Coming. (Mormons differ slightly from others in understanding the Ancient of Days to be Adam rather than God.)

(Incidentally, the great beast of Revelation, with its seven heads and ten horns, is an amalgamation of Daniel's four beasts, which have among them a total of seven heads and ten horns.)

"Son of man" simply means "man" -- cf. the plural "children of men," or the way "son of Adam" is used in the Narnia stories. In contrast to the four great beasts that have preceded it, this latest apparition is of a human being. Elsewhere in the Bible, particularly in the Book of Ezekiel, "son of man" is used in the sense of "mortal man," as contrasted with God. Jesus' use of the title "son of man" would have been understood as alluding to Daniel (Mark and Matthew even have him refer to the son of man coming "with the clouds of heaven," making the allusion unmistakable) while at the same time maintaining plausible deniability; no one could accuse him of blasphemy for calling himself a son of Adam, a mere mortal.

What did Daniel himself understand his vision to mean? Well, it so happens that he asked for, and received, an interpretation from "one of them that stood by" (presumably an angel).

[15] I Daniel was grieved in my spirit in the midst of my body, and the visions of my head troubled me. [16] I came near unto one of them that stood by, and asked him the truth of all this. So he told me, and made me know the interpretation of the things. 

[17] These great beasts, which are four, are four kings, which shall arise out of the earth. [18] But the saints of the most High shall take the kingdom, and possess the kingdom for ever, even for ever and ever. . . . 

[21] I beheld, and [one of the horns of the fourth beast] made war with the saints, and prevailed against them; [22] Until the Ancient of days came, and judgment was given to the saints of the most High; and the time came that the saints possessed the kingdom. . . . [27] And the kingdom and dominion, and the greatness of the kingdom under the whole heaven, shall be given to the people of the saints of the most High, whose kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and all dominions shall serve and obey him.

This certainly sounds as if the Son of Man represents "the saints of the Most High" collectively, rather than a single individual, the Messiah. After the successive dominance of the four heathen kingdoms represented by the beasts, God will intervene and give dominion over the world to Israel, a holy and therefore fully human kingdom. This kingdom will presumably have a king, who is the Messiah, but that is not emphasized in this prophecy.