Act IV: The Coming of the Messiah

Bearing in mind the Jewish expectations for what was soon to come—the vindication of Israel and the dethronement of the pagan overlords, the rebuilding of the Jewish temple, the overarching theme of the Davidic King, return from exile, and new creation—we fast-forward to the first century AD. At the close of the Old Testament, the Persians were the overlords of the Jewish people. The Greeks followed the Persians, and the Greeks were notably hard on the Jews in their attempts to Hellenize them (the horror stories about this “cultural indoctrination,” especially those stories involving the ruthless Antiochus Epiphanes IV, don’t serve as good bedtime stories). After the Greeks came the Romans, who weren’t as bad as the Greeks, but who still used and abused the Jewish people, especially by high taxation and the use of crucifixion to keep them in subjection. The psychological terror-tactic of crucifixion became necessary, as the Jewish people kept revolting; but these revolts always ended with Jewish hopes being dashed on the rocks with some charismatic leaders’ execution.

Despite all the false starts and bloody quelling of revolution, the Jewish people clung to the hope that the kingdom of God would come. God’s kingdom in Jewish thought was characterized by the manifest sovereign rule of God over the entire world. The kingdom of God spoke of the day when God would rescue Israel from her pagan oppressors, when evil (not least the evil of all those wicked pagan empires!) would be judged, and when God would usher in a new and final era of peace and justice. The hope of the kingdom of God encapsulated all the Jewish hopes that were coming to a head during their oppression under the Romans. Jesus of Nazareth showed up on the scene, beginning his public career after his baptism, which served as a dramatization of the Exodus, hinting that the return from exile was about to take place. Jesus proclaimed that the kingdom of God was both “here” and “at hand.” He proclaimed that all the Jewish hopes were coming together, converging in the present, reaching their climax. Heaven was coming to earth, and Jesus was at the center of it, and he showed how it was so through his miracles. 

As Jesus announced the kingdom of God, this coming-to-fruition of all the Jewish hopes, one would think that the people would easily perceive him to be the Messiah, the King through whom all this would take place. But for the most part, that wasn’t the case. Most of his Jewish contemporaries thought he was a prophet in the same vein as Jeremiah. Just as Jeremiah predicted the destruction of Jerusalem and its Temple centuries before Jesus, Jesus did the same, and his predictions would come true in AD 70 when the Romans would decimate the city and ravage the Temple. Hardly anyone perceived him to be Messiah, and even his closest followers didn’t find a consensus on who he was. The Apostle Peter recognized Jesus’ identity as Messiah, which explains his actions in the Garden of Gethsemane; were Jesus the Messiah, the one who would win the military victory over the oppressive pagans, then Peter’s appropriate response, as an associate of the Messiah, would be to take up sword and shield. Not until the tail-end of Jesus’ ministry did the public sway towards identifying him as Messiah; his entry into Jerusalem on a donkey was a dramatic act revealing that Jesus was claiming to be the coming king, and the Jews’ praise of him showed that at least some of them believed him to be such. The reason for the skepticism regarding Jesus’ identity was that although he proclaimed the coming of God’s kingdom, he acted in a way that defied normal Jewish expectations of how it would come about.

Messiah, after all, would be crowned the Davidic King and would rule over Israel. Jesus taught that the best way to be a ruler was to serve, a counter-intuitive statement; and whenever people surrounded him in apparent efforts to hail him as king and crown him as such, he slipped away like an introvert at a Las Vegas rave. The Anointed One was supposed to defeat the pagan enemies and thus deal with evil; Jesus talked as if evil ran rampant even within Jewish ranks (not a surprising thing for a prophet like Jeremiah to say, but not something expected of the militant Messiah). Instead of advocating the zealot’s maneuver of overthrowing the pagans by the way of violence, Jesus taught non-violence through-and-through. If you live by the sword, you’ll die by the sword. Turn the other cheek and go the second mile. Jesus saw that the best way to defeat evil wasn’t through violence, since a victory through violence would only be a victory for violence, no matter who won. Quite paradoxically, Jesus realized, evil is best defeated by suffering and martyrdom—something he would embody and put into practice at the end of his life. The Anointed One was supposed to rebuild the Temple, but Jesus condemned it as a den of rebels, and he prophesied not of its rebuilding but its destruction, the complete antithesis to the Jewish hope. His preaching against the Temple and his subsequent actions in the Temple (which rendered the Temple ineffective for several hours, symbolizing its failure to function) were foundational in the trials that led to his shameful death. When he was executed, the message was clear: he did not defeat the pagans but was rather defeated by them, and in the most grotesque and shameful way possible, suspended naked and bloodied over a mocking crowd. He did not rebuild the Temple but rather caused a ruckus and nothing about it really changed. He did not take the throne as the King of the Jews but was rather executed in a mockery of that title. Those who had followed him were disenchanted, disillusioned, and a little more than disturbed. They scattered, not so much out of fear but out of hopelessness and brokenness, having wasted so much time on yet another would-be but failed Messiah. The pagan overlords weren’t crumbled to powder under Messiah; rather, the disciples’ expectations of the Messiah were crumbled to powder under the pagan overlords. Evil still ran rampant, the status quo hadn’t changed, and Israel remained in exile, enchained by her mocking persecutors who nonchalantly crucified her would-be king.

And then Jesus rose from the dead, and everything changed. 

The death and bodily resurrection of Jesus isn’t just a sufficient explanation for the empty tomb, Jesus’ post-death bodily appearances, and the explosive rise of early Christianity. It isn’t just a sufficient explanation but a necessary explanation. All other explanations seeking to account for the empty tomb, the multiple appearances of Jesus, and the rise of early Christianity fail historically. The data we have at our disposal supports the resurrection no less than relevant data supports Caesar’s crossing of the Rubicon or the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70. The resurrection isn’t a “conclusion based on faith.” It is a scientific and historical conclusion, for such conclusions derive not merely by deduction from hard data but by inference to the best explanation for the gathered data. The conclusion that (a) Jesus died and that, subsequently, (b) he was bodily raised from the grave is the best explanation of the relevant data. It makes sense of the data in a simplistic, coherent manner and is, historically, highly probable. The burden of proof lies not on those vouching for the bodily resurrection of Jesus but on those denying it, since belief in the bodily resurrection makes the most historical sense. If the resurrection is so historically ridiculous, as many critics claim, then why has no one come up with any better explanation of the data, despite unending attempts to do so? The resurrection of Jesus has high historical probability, but the fact that it happened doesn’t tell us what it means. For that we must go to the scriptures.

Before his death Jesus told his accusers they would see him and thus he would be vindicated. His apocalyptic prophecy came true in two waves: first, his resurrection and ascension. This validated his teachings, his claims, and his authority. The resurrection in and of itself served as a testament to his identity as the Son of God. Second, the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70 and the destruction of the Temple at the hands of Roman soldiers vindicated Jesus against his accusers and the accusations they lodged against him. Both of these stand as testaments to the reality of Jesus’s identity as Messiah. Early on in the Christian tradition, Jesus was identified as Messiah and as God: the titles “Son of God,” “Son of Man,” nor his resurrection prove that he was in any sense divine, but in the midst of the wrestling of the early church, the conviction that Jesus was not only with God but that he is God arose, because Jesus had done what only God could do and what God had said through the prophets (not least Isaiah) he would do: defeat evil and inaugurate the New Creation. Jesus’s death and resurrection signified the dawning of a new age, the defeat of evil, and the overcoming of death itself. 

St. Ignatius wrote to the Christians of Ephesus: 

Mary’s virginity was hidden from the prince of this world; so was her child-bearing, and so was the death of the Lord. All these three trumpet-tongued secrets were brought to pass in the deep silence of God. How then were they made known to the world? Up in the heavens a star gleamed out, more brilliant than all the rest; no words could describe its luster, and the strangeness of it left men bewildered. The other stars and the sun and moon gathered round it in chorus, but the star outshone them all. Great was the ensuing perplexity; where could this newcomer come from, so unlike its fellows? Everywhere magic crumbled away before it; the spells of sorcery were all broken, and superstition received its death-blow. The age-old empire of evil was overthrown, for God was now appearing in human form to bring in a new order, even life without end. Now that which had been perfected in the Divine counsels began its work; and all creation was thrown into a ferment over this plan for the utter destruction of death.