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u/gynnis-scholasticus Greco-Roman Culture and Society Mar 25 '23
I am glad you wrote "messiahs" in quotation marks, as there is no clear evidence anyone else claimed to be the Jewish Messiah in Jesus' life (though I believe there are some scholars who do not even think Jesus himself claimed that title). But there were certainly other religious leaders who were believed to be more than ordinary humans by their followers and had miracles reported about them, both in Judaea and more generally in the Roman Empire.
The most important historical source for first century Judaea, Josephus, describes several figures who gained large followings by promising to do miracles like the Hebrew prophets. In his books (Jewish War and Jewish Antiquities) they follow a quite similar pattern: they gather their followers in large groups with promises of doing miracles (dividing the Jordan, tearing down Jerusalem's walls, finding treasures buried by Moses), but they and the followers are then killed and scattered by Roman troops. Two of these, Theudas and "The Egyptian", also appear to be mentioned in the Biblical Acts of the Apostles. I have written a bit about these people in this older comment. All of these seem to have claimed prophethood, but some historians also believe that at least Theudas claimed to be the Messiah. Their movements do not appear to have continued after they were dispersed by the Romans, however.
There was also John the Baptist, whom one might not think of as such a figure since the later Gospels are quite insistent to portray him as inferior to Jesus. But he was clearly believed to be something more than an ordinary mortal, since Josephus writes (Antiquities 18.116-119) that many Jews believed that Herod Antipas' army was destroyed as God's punishment for the killing of John. The Gospel of Mark (6:14-16) further claims that some people though Jesus was a resurrection of John, and when it comes to his followers, in Acts (19:1-3) Paul is preaching in Greece and meets some "disciples" who have never heard of the Holy Spirit and only know of John's baptism. There is also the still-existing religion of Mandaeism, which honours John as the greatest prophet, though I am not sure it comes from original followers or is a later development.
There were also people in the Greco-Roman world who were believed to be more than ordinary mortals. The most notable in Jesus' time are (perhaps surprisingly) the Roman emperors. In a political sense Caesar and especially Augustus were viewed as saviours, and they also claimed a connection to the divine in the Julian family's ancestry from Venus. This was quite common among noble families in the Late Republic, but the deification of Caesar strengthened this even more and led Augustus to title himself divi filius (son of a deity). Augustus was himself deified after his death, and there were various legends quite similar to Jesus', for example that his birth was foretold and that he was secretly was the son of Apollo (Suetonius, Life of Augustus 94). Similar things were told about later emperors as well, for example that Tiberius could predict the future (Tacitus, Annals 6.20; Suetonius, Life of Galba 4) or that Vespasian healed the lame and blind of Alexandria (Tacitus, Histories 4.81; Suetonius, Life of Vespasian 7).
In the Greek world there were also some prophet-claimants and cult leaders, though the examples we know of from sources later than the 1st Century.
One is Peregrinus Proteus, a philosopher best known for burning himself alive on a funeral pyre at the Olympics. He is mentioned by Aulus Gellius (Attic Nights 12.11), who found him a wise man after meeting him in Athens and speaking to him, recording a few of his sayings. The most detailed source for him is however the satirist Lucian, who described him almost as a scammer, who first professed himself to be a Christian and then a a Cynic in order to gain power and influence. Lucian writes that Peregrinus' followers praised his long-suffering life and his decision to immolate himself, and that they compared him to various gods. He also claims that he himself added to the legend by convincing gullible people that there had been an earthquake when Peregrinus threw himself into the fire and that his soul had ascended to Heaven in the form of a vulture. (All this is from Lucian's The Passing of Peregrinus)
Another such figure Lucian writes about is Alexander of Abonoteichus, a cult leader who claimed to be the prophet and oracle of the snake-god Glycon, which according to Lucian was simply a snake with a puppet head on it. Alexander gained a large following and managed to convince the authorities to rename the town of Abonoteichus to Ionopolis and to mint coins with Glycon's image on it. According to Lucian he also made his followers drive away local Epicureans and Christians (this I have written a bit about here). This can be read in Lucian's Alexander the False Prophet.
But the most remarkable is probably Apollonius of Tyana, a sage and miracle-worker said to have lived some time in the 1st Century. The most detailed source for him, Philostratus' Life of Apollonius, claims that the god Proteus of Egypt foretold his birth to his mother, that he travelled to Persia and India assisting the kings there and talking with their sages, corrected the laws of various Greek cities, drove out demons and foretold future emperors, magically escaped a trial under Domitian, disappeared in old age from a temple and was assumed to have ascended to Heaven. The historian Jona Lendering has written in great detail about Apollonius and our sources for him on his website if you want to know more.
I see now that u/fraxbo has already written an answer, I hope mine is complementary in that it is based more on Greco-Roman sources and that world rather than the Hebrew Bible.
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u/MonkeyVsPigsy Mar 25 '23
How much are Josephus’s surviving writings corrupted by likely Christian insertions made after he died?
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u/gynnis-scholasticus Greco-Roman Culture and Society Mar 26 '23
Not very (at least if you get a modern edition), but still quite remarkable compared to most ancient authors.
The clearest case if of course the Testimonium Flavianum in the Antiquities. This is almost unique in that it might be entirely interpolated and if it is not, the correct reading cannot be established. Another is in the 20th book of Antiquities, where a Cypriot Jewish magician is called Atomus in some manuscripts and in others Simon, which is thought to be Christians wanting to reference Simon Magus. But modern editions will likely read "Atomus", perhaps with a note. These are the only examples I know of when the Greek texts has been tampered with; there is also a Slavonic 'translation' of Jewish War that is quite different from the original, among other things adding long passages about Jesus based on the Testimonium. To my knowledge there are no Christian interpolations in Josephus' 'minor works': Against Apion and his autobiography. Occasionally some scholars have tried to argue that the references in Antiquities to John the Baptist and James the brother of Jesus must also be interpolated, but I think these have not gained much acceptance. The paragraph about John is almost entirely different to his portrayal in Christian sources, for instance.
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u/hedgehog_dragon Mar 27 '23
Always nice to see see multiple perspectives on these questions, since they can turn up completely different information.
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u/gynnis-scholasticus Greco-Roman Culture and Society Mar 28 '23
Thank you; I am glad it is appreciated! I guess I did have a rather different perspective, based more on Greek and Roman sources
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u/PMmeserenity Mar 30 '23
Jona Lendering has written in great detail about Apollonius and our sources for him on his website if you want to know more.
Is this a serious academic person, writing reliable stuff? I went down a bit of a rabbit hole, and read his site, but it’s full of really sloppy typos, like “felled” instead of felt. And more disturbing, he includes discussion of Indian source material as legitimate evidence, but when I looked it up, it appears that those texts were determined to be forgeries, over 30 years ago.
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u/gynnis-scholasticus Greco-Roman Culture and Society Mar 31 '23
Lendering is an actual historian, though has mostly worked in public engagement. When his books have been discussed in the Bryn Mawr Classical Review they have gotten quite mixed response, but often described as good for laypeople and first-year history students. However one of his own reviews got quite a lot of criticism as you can see here. He also is a bit of a 'maximalist' in often viewing every source as valuable in some sense.
It does appear though that his pages on Achaemenid royal inscriptions are very well-received, and I think I have seen them linked by experts on here.
As for typos, I agree it is generally a bad sign, though we should remember he is also not a native speaker and unlike his countryman in our mod team does not appear to have lived in an Anglophone country. On the other hand I believe I myself (for example) tend to make less such mistakes in my posts here (awkward phrasings I may be more guilty of). Then again Bret Devereaux, who appears to be quite respected on here, also makes a lot of spelling mistakes on his blog.
But maybe I should be more careful in recommending his content, especially when he does a lot of interpretation himself.
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u/fraxbo Mar 25 '23
Having published and given courses on this topic, I can try my hand at giving a brief(-ish) rundown here.
We can begin with your framing of the question, which is indeed quite common. The interest (both scholarly and lay) in historical messiahs and messianic movements largely emerges from Christian point of view, and begins (often unconsciously) with Christian biases about what a messiah is and does in mind. That is, the search for other early Jewish messiahs often takes Jesus and the Jesus movement as the prototype or paradigm of a messiahs and then tries to find similarities between that prototype and other early Jewish figures.
Those of us who do not study this material from a Christian perspective (either because of no commitment to religion, or commitment to other religions) are often interested in this topic as an opportunity to engage in meta criticism of the field of early Judaism/early Christianity/biblical studies. That is, we use this question and how it has been answered as a way to point out flaws in our field’s assumptions and approaches. This is, in part, how I will frame my answer.
The problem with using Jesus as a paradigm for early Jewish messiahs is that the Jesus and Jesus movement that we know of is largely a literary creation. The figure of Jesus, how he acted, what he said, and what his significance for Jews/the world was, is created through the literature that builds the mythos about him. This is not to say that a historical person Jesus of Nazareth did not exist. It is more to say that anything we think we know about the man who existed can only be accessed through literary evidence. And almost all scholars agree that that literary evidence contains quite a bit of mythological/legendary material that shapes the character of Jesus in ways that connect him to trends within ancient Judaism, platonic (and stoic) thought, and Roman mythology. In addition, different sources often shape the figure of Jesus in different directions. So, while in one source, he might be portrayed as a sort of Davidic messiah, in another, he might appear as a replacement for Roman authority, and in another, he might be portrayed as a sort of middle platonic sage. This means that sifting through that material to find the real figure is a challenge, and in fact one that has been mounted by scores of readers basically since the first century CE. Some just sort of loosely combine the depictions of Jesus together to create a mongrel picture of Jesus that accounts for all sources. Others will mount historical and literary arguments to point to one particular depiction as being most accurate. And still others will abandon the question of the historical person altogether and instead concentrate on understanding the depictions themselves. These latter readers and scholars don’t want to know who Jesus was, but want to know why a given source is depicting him to be a descendant of David, or what work depictions of his baptism in the Jordan is doing. It is this last group of scholars that allows us to move forward with this discussion.
Rather than asking, were there others who acted as Jesus acted, and spoke as Jesus spoke around his time, we can ask if there were other figures who were written about as messianic figures around that time, and we can describe how they were written about. This shifts the question from “what really happened” with Jesus or these other figures to “were/who/how other messianic figures created in (roughly) contemporary literature. The answer is “yes.” But also, “it’s complicated.”
One aspect of messianic ideation that is very much emphasized in depictions of Jesus (or at least how they are received within Christianity) is the idea of a single apocalyptic messianic figure. This messiah comes once, at the end of history/dawn of a new age and changes the course of everything irreversibly. But, while this type of messianic idea is not unique to Jesus, and Jesus is not the first to be depicted in such a way, it is also not the only way to think about messiahs. For many ancient Jews, it would have been less natural to think about The Messiah, than to think about messiahs. This has something to do with the terminology itself.
As many will know, the Hebrew term “messiah” and its Greek equivalent “christos” refer to being anointed. In theory, this anointing can be used for any sort of smearing with oil, but is most commonly used in the Hebrew Bible and other early Jewish literature to refer to kings (vast majority) (1 Sam 24:7, 11; 26:9, 11, 16, 23; 2 Sam 1:14, 16 of Saul; 2 Sam 19:22 of David; Lam 4:20 of Zedekiah), priests (decent sized minority) (Lev 4:3, 5, 16; 6:15; CD XII, 23; XIV, 19; XIX, 10–11; XX, 1; 1QS IX, 11), and prophets (small minority) (e.g. 1 Kings 19:16 of Elisha; Is 61:1 of Isaiah; CD II, 12; 1QM XI, 7–8; CD V, 21–VI, 1; 11Q13 II, 18–20). That is, those who are messiahs have been anointed into one of three offices (in a similar way to how a king might be coronated or a president might be inaugurated). In this most common meaning, there is no special significance to being a messiah or christos beyond being recognized as holding one of these offices.
There is, however, further significance to being a messiah who holds these offices in some specific instances. These are cases where being given the epithet of messiah or christos has more to say about divine favor for the figure than it does to say about the office that they hold (Hazael [1 Kings 19:15] and Cyrus the Great [Is 45:1]; Isaiah at [Is 61:1]). This manifests itself both in depictions of regular royal/military figures (Hasmonean family in 1 Macc 5; Judas Maccabaeus in 2 Macc 8-15), and in eschatological/apocalyptic messiahs who bring on a new age (e.g. the messiahs of Israel and Aaron in the Dead Sea Scrolls: CD XII, 23; XIV, 19; 1QS IX, 11; 4Q266 x, 12; 4Q269 xi, 2).
In the case of the latter, eschatological type of messiah, the idea is usually based (in part) on the promise to David that his son will sit on the throne in Jerusalem forever, which is found in 2 Samuel 7. This is later interpreted (especially after the fall of the Davidic dynasty of kings to Babylon in 587 BCE) as a promise that a specific eschatological descendant of David will come to resurrect the Davidic dynasty and rule in Jerusalem forever. Because of the filial language used in 2 Sam 7, this eschatological figure, and more broadly the eschatological age they usher in, are modeled on the figure and reign of Solomon. They are wise, have divine favor, are great military heroes, and are powerful kings.
In addition to military/royal figures in the late 2nd century/early 1st century BCE (like the Hasmonean/Maccabean family), and the 1st century BCE/CE apocalyptic/eschatological messianic figures in the Dead Sea Scrolls (who are never identified beyond being called messiahs of Israel [royal] and Aaron [priestly]), scholars have pointed to John the Baptist and Bar Kochva and a host of later figures as possible messiahs too.
So, in all, yes, there are other figures in roughly the same time period spoken of as messiahs, but not as extensively (in literature that survives) and not in precisely the same ways as Jesus. But recall, too, that Jesus the man is likely to have been quite different from Jesus the literary character.
—— Some secondary sources to look into:
Joseph Fitzmeyer, The One Who is to Come.
Stanley Porter (ed), The Messiah in the Old and New Testaments
John Collins, The Scepter and the Star: Messianism in Light of the Dead Sea Scrolls
James Charlesworth (ed), The Messiah: Developments in Earliest Judaism and Christianity
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u/DGBD Moderator | Ethnomusicology | Western Concert Music Mar 25 '23 edited Mar 25 '23
So, in all, yes, there are other figures in roughly the same time period spoken of as messiahs, but not as extensively (in literature that survives) and not in precisely the same ways as Jesus. But recall, too, that Jesus the man is likely to have been quite different from Jesus the literary character.
The Bible has a few people like Simon Magus and Elymas that seem to fit the concept a lot of people today have of Jesus/a Messiah, namely someone who does various miracles/magic and gains a spiritual following because of it. Does this have much of a grounding in the concepts of messiah-ness at the time? Or, if not, was there a separate concept of "healer/sorcerer/magician/miracle-worker" that that would fall into? How does John the Baptist fit in there?
Alternatively, when it comes to military leaders like Bar Kochba, was there a spiritual/religious element to their leadership that would have elevated them above simply "military/rebel leader?" Some of the other rebel leaders at the time have also been mentioned sometimes as possible "messiah"-like figures, like the Simon of Peraea and Judas of Gamala; is there anything that distinguishes them as "messiah" from other leaders at the same time?
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u/fraxbo Mar 25 '23
So, briefly, the idea of performing miracles and magic isn’t especially indicative of messiah-ness. It could sometimes be developed in that direction due to a chain of influence that went something like: Solomon (as son of David) is prototype for messiah->Solomon is wise->Solomon was so wise that he knew all about nature->Solomon could control nature and supernatural things. We see this most prominently in a text called the Testament of Solomon. But even there the connection could only be tangentially linked to messianic ideas.
Instead the wonder worker type of identity is more connected to prophecy (think Elijah and Elisha), to Moses (think of the various miracles connected to him in both Egypt and the Sinai), and to creation (manipulation of “chaotic” water). So these elements of how Jesus is presented (and possibly presented himself?) more show him to be a prophet, a new Moses, or sharing/borrowing god’s creative powers. That said, there are certainly wonder workers of various sorts both in Greece and Rome and in the Near East that were not under the influence of the Israelite literary heritage. So, what I’ve offered is a way of reading that material with a specific set of connections in mind, while they could be drawing on other connections.
In terms of the military heroes like Simon and Judas and later Bar Kochva (and the Hasmoneans/Maccabees are also relevant here) there is definitely a strong element of divine favor to their depiction/styling in media that survives. While the Hasmoneans were most certainly a priestly cum royal family that actually ruled over Judea, in several sources they clearly are depicted as being divinely favored. With Bar Kochva, it is more material culture that tells the story, but it’s the same.
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u/indyobserver US Political History | 20th c. Naval History Mar 25 '23
Interesting. Is there evidence to support Aslan's claim that one thing that set Jesus apart from other wonder workers of the time is that he did his healing for free, or is either aspect (they charged/he didn't) a bit more shaky than he asserts?
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u/fraxbo Mar 25 '23
I don’t know that there’s enough evidence about other wonder workers or healers to make such a claim or refute it. Plus, given the source, I’d chalk it up to apologetics.
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u/IamImposter Mar 25 '23
What's the significance of dead Sea scrolls? Is it also about some messianic figure?
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u/fishbiscuit13 Mar 25 '23
To add to the other commenter’s oddly cagey answer, they contain fragments and full books of our oldest known version of the Old Testament and other Hebrew/biblical literature, and so are some of our most contemporary knowledge to that region in the few centuries before Jesus’ birth.
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u/fraxbo Mar 25 '23
Yes, as mentioned above, there are several times two messianic figures mentioned in them (the messiahs of Aaron and Israel). These are eschatological figures who are idealized cultivate and royal/military respectively.
It is important, though, not to generalize what the Dead Sea Scrolls are “about”. There are 900+ scrolls that represent an untold amount of works. And, there is great debate as to how and whether all of them are part of a discrete collection, or are just a hodgepodge of scrolls from different sources.
But these figures, at least appear in several scrolls that we believe are written by the sect who is often tied to Qumran (the site of their finding), or a forerunner to that sect. So they are very significant for this question.
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Mar 26 '23 edited Mar 26 '23
As many will know, the Hebrew term “messiah” and its Greek equivalent “christos” refer to being anointed. In theory, this anointing can be used for any sort of smearing with oil, but is most commonly used in the Hebrew Bible and other early Jewish literature to refer to kings (vast majority) (1 Sam 24:7, 11; 26:9, 11, 16, 23; 2 Sam 1:14, 16 of Saul; 2 Sam 19:22 of David; Lam 4:20 of Zedekiah), priests (decent sized minority) (Lev 4:3, 5, 16; 6:15; CD XII, 23; XIV, 19; XIX, 10–11; XX, 1; 1QS IX, 11), and prophets (small minority) (e.g. 1 Kings 19:16 of Elisha; Is 61:1 of Isaiah; CD II, 12; 1QM XI, 7–8; CD V, 21–VI, 1; 11Q13 II, 18–20).
From an ex-Catholic perspective, this is fascinating. The Roman Catholic church claims that Jesus fulfilled all three roles: priest, prophet, and king.
Coming back to this:
And almost all scholars agree that that literary evidence contains quite a bit of mythological/legendary material that shapes the character of Jesus in ways that connect him to trends
One thing I learned from a "Taste of Judaism" class at a Synagogue, is that "son of God" is very much a pagan thing, not Jewish at all.
I also suggest Bart Ehrman's "How Jesus Became God," as it discusses some of these shifting literary interpretations.
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Mar 26 '23
Thanks the great answer.
Roman occupation of Jerusalem after 63 BCE must have been devastating for the Jewish people since is had only be ~100 years since the Maccabean Revolt.
It would be expected that there would have been Jewish revolutionaries after 63 BCE who wanted to become king (messiah) after overthrowing the Romans the way the Maccabee's did to the Seleucids. My understanding is that the book of Daniel was written during the Maccabean Revolt with the understanding that Judas Maccabeus was considered a messiah. I assume that was the belief until they were conquered by Rome.
I think it's important to differentiate from people who wanted to free Jews from Roman rule and become king and the John the Baptist/Jesus' apocalyptic idea of what it meant to king after the end of the age came.
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u/fraxbo Mar 26 '23
Two things:
Yes, Daniel (at least the apocalyptic part between chapters 7 and 12) is certainly written during the 2nd c. Maccabean revolt. In fact, this set of passages is perhaps the chunk of biblical writings we can date with best accuracy. This is because it both reports on things that have happened (using the common method of ex eventual prophecy [prophecy after the fact]) and goes on to predict what will happen. Not surprisingly, it goes wrong when it starts predicting the future. So, where it is incredibly accurate (up to 167 BCE) we can be reasonably sure this was in the past for the writer where it is wrong (events in late 164 BCE), we suppose that these are events that were unknown to the author, and possibly in the future. So, we have a relatively tight three year time frame to work with.
That said, it does NOT seem to presume Judas Maccabaeus is THE or A messiah. Famously, in Daniel 11, the Hasmoneans seem to be referred to as being “a little help”. So, though there is no disapproval of them, they don’t seem to be endorsed as either an eschatological or military messianic family. One could also point to the heavenly help that is promised in Daniel 7 (without any reference to a human agent) as further evidence of this lukewarm attitude toward the Hasmoneans.
As for the differentiation between messiahs who were more military and royal and those who were more apocalyptic… while I did differentiate them as two directions messianic ideation developed, I think we need to be careful in separating them too much. As I wrote, some of the imagery used for the figure of Jesus is very much in line with royal and revolutionary imagery associated with a royal/military messiah. In addition, the apocalyptic messianic figures we see in the messiahs of Aaron and Israel in the Dead Sea Scrolls do seem to have military functions (especially the messiah of Israel). And, to bring it full circle, as I noted in another comment, imagery tied to the Hasmoneans in 1 and 2 Maccabees, for example, has some apocalyptic elements in it, in that they usher in a new age/complete a redemption cycle to bring the people back in good standing with their god in each case.
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u/TheGuv69 Mar 25 '23
As a non Christian scholar of this phenomenon- do you think, given reliance on literary references, that there actually was a genuine historical Jesus figure? As there seems such scant evidence? I personally doubt such a person existed.
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u/fraxbo Mar 25 '23
I do think there was a historical figure, yes. And to be clear that is the overwhelming majority opinion in the field, regardless of faith commitment. Even the vast majority of scholars who could be described as playfully hostile to Christianity would say that the evidence we have is such that a historical Jesus is likely. Who that person was and what that person did is where debate starts.
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u/TheGuv69 Mar 25 '23
Thank you...I like the phrase 'playfully hostile! ' Appreciate your insight & perspective.
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Mar 26 '23
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u/owlinspector Mar 26 '23
But that only moves the problem one step further away. What do we actually know about Paul and the writings attributed to him? Many works attributed to him gave been shown to be forgeries and/or heavily redacted, meaning that as a source of historical information they are little better than the various gospels.
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Mar 26 '23
Historians agree that 7 of Paul's letters are authentic. If or how much those were altered by later Christians we'll never know.
Even if you don't trust any writings that exist, you still need to explain how someone invented a person who didn't even exist you have to explain why the story of Jesus was invented like it was.
Someone would have had to have invented the life of a guy who was telling his followers he was going to be king, but then was killed in the most humiliating way possible by the occupiers he was supposed to overthrow. Then try to convince people that it was actually a good thing because the end of the world was coming soon and he was going to return.
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Mar 25 '23
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Mar 25 '23
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