Messiah

• 1. Introduction

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  Messiah is a word that carries the weight of centuries, a single title that has divided empires, sparked movements, and shaped the faith of billions. At its root, the Hebrew word mashiach simply means "anointed" , someone consecrated by having holy oil rubbed onto them. Kings were anointed. Priests were anointed. Even the altar in the Temple and the unleavened bread could be anointed. The word appears throughout the Hebrew Bible in reference to a wide variety of individuals and objects, and even a non-Jewish king, Cyrus the Great, receives the designation. Yet from this practical, ritual act grew one of the most consequential ideas in human history: that a single future figure would come to transform the world entirely. The Greek translation of messiah is Khristos, anglicized as Christ, and it occurs 529 times in the New Testament alone. Three major Abrahamic traditions , Judaism, Christianity, and Islam , each carry a messiah concept, but they describe that figure in fundamentally different ways. The questions that follow are not small ones. Is the Messiah human or divine? Has the Messiah already come, or is the coming still ahead? And what, exactly, does the anointed one have to do when the moment arrives?

• 2. The Hebrew Root

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  Maimonides, one of Judaism's most influential thinkers, laid out the identity of the Messiah in terms that have shaped rabbinic understanding ever since. For Maimonides, the Messiah is a king who arises from the House of David, someone who studies the Torah, fights God's wars, and ultimately builds the Holy Temple in its proper place and gathers the dispersed people of Israel together. He is explicitly not a deity and not a pre-existent divine being. He is a political and religious leader, fully human, descended through an unbroken paternal line from King David and King Solomon. This Davidic lineage is not a minor credential. It defines the very category. Judaism refers to the coming figure as Ha-mashiach, or more formally, melekh ha-mashiach, meaning "the Anointed King." The Messiah is expected to unify the twelve tribes of Israel, gather all Jews to Eretz Israel, usher in a Messianic Age of global universal peace, and announce the world to come. Belief in this eventual coming is listed as one of Maimonides' 13 Principles of Faith, though it was once considered a somewhat fringe position before becoming a cornerstone of Jewish religious identity. One Kabbalistic tradition holds that a second figure, Messiah ben Joseph, will arrive before Messiah ben David. Messiah ben Joseph will gather the children of Israel, lead them to Jerusalem, reestablish Temple worship, and then be slain by hostile forces , either by a figure called Armilus or by Gog and Magog , with his body lying unburied in the streets of Jerusalem until Messiah ben David arrives to bring him back to life.

• 3. When and How He Comes

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  The Talmud tells a story that has circulated among Jewish communities for centuries. A respected rabbi discovered the Messiah waiting at the gates of Rome and asked him directly, "When will you finally come?" The Messiah answered, "Today." Overjoyed, the rabbi spent the day in anticipation. When the Messiah did not arrive, the rabbi returned the next morning confused and disappointed. The Messiah replied with a verse: "Today, if you will but hearken to his voice." The story captures a widely held rabbinic interpretation: there is a potential Messiah in every generation. His arrival is not fixed on a calendar. It depends on human conduct. The Messiah is said to come either when the world is at its most sinful and most desperate for saving, or when genuine goodness so thoroughly prevails that the world deserves his coming. Trying to predict the precise time is actively frowned upon in Jewish tradition, because such attempts are thought to weaken the faith of the community. Sabbatai Zevi, who was active throughout the Ottoman Empire and who claimed to be the long-awaited Jewish Messiah, is perhaps the most famous cautionary figure. His forced conversion to Islam led Jews to regard him as perhaps history's second most famous false messiah.

• 4. Christ: The Greek Translation

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  The Greek Septuagint translates all 39 instances of the Hebrew mashiach as Khristos, "anointed." The New Testament records the Greek transliteration Messias twice, in the Gospel of John. For Christians, this linguistic inheritance carries enormous theological weight. The title Christ became the accepted Christian designation for Jesus of Nazareth, based on the belief that the messianic prophecies of the Old Testament , including descent from the Davidic line and the declaration as King of the Jews , were fulfilled in his mission, death, and resurrection. The remaining prophecies, including the ushering in of a Messianic Age, are expected to be fulfilled at a Second Coming. This produces a framework fundamentally different from the Jewish one. Mainstream and historical Christian theologies hold that Jesus is the Son of God and God the Son, a claim with no direct parallel in Jewish messianic thought. In each of the four New Testament Gospels, the only literal anointing of Jesus is performed by a woman. In the Gospels of Mark, Matthew, and John, that anointing takes place in Bethany, outside Jerusalem. In the Gospel of Luke, the scene occurs at an indeterminate location, with the context suggesting Galilee, or possibly a separate anointing event altogether. The Book of Isaiah applies the term messiah to Cyrus the Great, king of the Achaemenid Empire, for his decree to rebuild the Jerusalem Temple , a reminder of how wide the Hebrew usage of the term originally was.

• 5. Islam's Isa al-Masih

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  The Arabic word for Messiah is al-Masih, which carries meanings including "the anointed," "the traveller," and "one who cures by caressing." The Quran identifies Isa, the son of Maryam, as the Messiah and a prophet sent to the Children of Israel. According to Qadi al-Nu'man, a jurist of the Fatimid period, the Quran identifies Jesus as the messiah because he was sent to remove the impurities of the people's faith, whether apparent or hidden. Jesus holds a place among Islam's most important prophets, alongside Noah, Abraham, Moses, and Muhammad. But Islam explicitly rejects the idea that Jesus is God or the Son of God. Islamic theology holds that Jesus did not die on the cross; God raised him bodily to Heaven, while a resemblance of Jesus was crucified in his place. A hadith preserved in Abu Dawud describes the physical appearance of Jesus at his return: a man of medium height, reddish fair, wearing two light yellow garments, looking as if drops were falling from his head though it would not be wet. At the end of times, Jesus will return preceded closely by al-Mahdi. Together they will defeat al-Masih ad-Dajjal, the false Messiah and great falsifier, a figure similar to the Antichrist. After Isa slays al-Dajjal at the Gate of Lud, he will live on the earth for forty years and then die, and the Muslims will pray over him. Twelver Shia Muslims add that the twelfth Imam, who disappeared in 874, will also return with Jesus to set up the messianic kingdom before the final Day of Judgment.

• 6. Ahmadiyya and Chabad Claims

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  Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, born in 1835 and died in 1908, founded the Ahmadiyya Movement with the conviction that the long-awaited figures of Christian and Islamic prophecy , the Messiah and the Mahdi , were not two separate individuals but one and the same person, namely himself. He declared this following what he described as divine revelations in 1891. Ahmad argued that Jesus had survived the crucifixion, migrated eastward, and died a natural death, making room for a spiritual second coming rather than a physical one. He also claimed to have appeared in the likeness of Krishna and taught that the founder of Sikhism was a Muslim saint. His 1880 work Barahin-e-Ahmadiyya drew on Indian, Sufi, Islamic, and Western thought to defend Islam against the pressures of the British Raj, Protestant Christianity, and rising Hinduism. He attracted Muslims who felt particularly oppressed by Christian and Hindu missionaries. In a different tradition, Chabad Lubavitch messianism produced its own claimants. Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the seventh Rebbe of Chabad who lived from 1902 to 1994, publicly declared his deceased father-in-law, Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn , who served as the sixth Rebbe from 1920 to 1950 , to be the Messiah. Schneerson described Yosef Yitzchak as the "Essence and Existence of God which has placed itself in a body." A later Chabad halachic ruling declared it "incumbent on every single Jew" to believe that Menachem Mendel Schneerson himself is King Moshiach. Thousands of visitors and letters arrive each year at the Ohel, his gravesite, on the anniversary of his death.

• 7. Across Other Traditions

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  Emperor Haile Selassie I of Ethiopia is believed by followers of the Rastafari movement to be the Messiah, even though the Emperor himself denied the claim. Rastafarians point to his bloodline, held to trace back to King Solomon of Israel, and to his titles: Lord of Lords, King of Kings, and Conquering Lion of the tribe of Judah. In the Druze faith, Jesus holds three formal titles: the True Messiah, the Messiah of all Nations, and the Messiah of Sinners. Druze manuscripts also identify Hamza ibn Ali as a reincarnation of Jesus and as the true Messiah, who directed Jesus's deeds and ultimately took him down from the cross, allowing him to return to his family. In Zoroastrianism, three separate messiah figures called Saoshyant progressively bring about the final renovation of the world, an event known as the Frashokereti. The Baha'i founder Bahaullah claimed to be the Messiah figure of multiple prior religions simultaneously , Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Zoroastrianism, Buddhism, and Hinduism , and taught that additional "Manifestations of God" would appear in the distant future, but that the next would not arrive until after the lapse of "a full thousand years." In Buddhism, Maitreya is the next Buddha expected to come and renew Buddhist teaching once the teachings of Gautama Buddha have completely decayed. Javanese religious tradition holds that Satrio Piningit, prophesied by King Jayabaya of Kediri in the Serat Pararaton, will become a great leader of Nusantara, ruling the world from Java. His arrival is said to be preceded by flash floods and volcanic eruptions without warning.