Is Jesus the Messiah?

[Spengler]

Is Jesus the Messiah? on the Spengler Blog


by David Layman

It all depends what the meaning  of "is," is.

Is Jesus the Messiah now? Bloody unlikely. Whether your political rogue du jour is Obama or Palin, politicians lie, the elderly and sick die (panels or no panels), wars arise and end with predictable pace; how long does this ellipsis have to be.........................?

Was Jesus the Messiah 2000 years ago? I suppose it depends who you  ask. The Jews didn't think so. Jesus simply didn't meet the job qualifications: execution by the enemies of the Jewish people was not a good way to get this particular job promotion. As Maimonides said a millenium later in Ch. 11 of Hilchos Melachim of his Mishneh Torah, Rabbi Akiva believed that Ben Koziva (Simon bar Kokhba) was the messiah, but once he was killed, realized it was not the case.

The Greek transliteration of mashiach only appears twice in the New Testament. In John 1:41, Andrew told Simon Peter, "We have found the Messiah" and the author quickly paraphrased the term into the Greek equivalent Christos. But Jesus did not affirm the description.

In the next scene, Jesus saw Nathaniel approaching, and called him "an Israelite without any guile." Nathaniel returned the compliment in spades: "you are the son of God! You are the king of Israel!" (Flattery will get you somewhere?) Jesus sarcastically retorts: if you believe because I said I saw you under a fig tree, then you are certainly easy to convince! If "king of Israel" was meant as a periphrasis for mashiach, then Jesus brushed it aside: Nathaniel would see events more powerful than something that would make him believe Jesus was the king of Israel. He would see "heaven opened" and the "the Son of Man" revealed.

In only one case did Jesus directly link himself to the mashiach identification: in the story of the Samaritan woman at the well, in John 4. The discussion turned to the religious differences between Jews and Samaritans, and the proper location for worship. Jesus told the woman that, while "salvation is of the Jews," in a future era worship will be neither at Jerusalem or Mt. Gerizim, but "in spirit and in truth." The woman responded,when the Messiah comes, he'll straighten out this fight and declare or announce (anangelei) everything. Jesus then said: egô eimi o lalôn soi: "I am (the one) speaking to you." It is not clear that Jesus was saying "I am the Messiah." The Samaritan woman was expecting someone to pronounce the solution to the centuries-old Jewish-Samaritan schism; Jesus said: I am speaking it now.

This redefinition of the messianic identity is nowhere clearer than in the basic text, Matthew 16:16: the Petrine confession, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God." Jesus most certainly owned this definition, but in so doing was quite clear that the traditional expectations of the Jews had nothing to do with it: "flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven (v. 17 ESV)." (If Peter or Jesus was basing his messianic identity on current expectation then the phrase, "flesh and blood has not revealed this" would have been false.) In no text or tradition did the Jews connect "Son of God" with the Messiah.

So early Christianity quickly redefined Christos as Son of Man (probably a reference to the heavenly son of man in Daniel 7:13) and Son of God. Paul ignored any reference to a messianic identity based upon a genealogical linkage, however hypothetical, to David. Rather, Christ Jesus' divine identity was based on his resurrection from the dead: the gospel was "concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh  and was declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord,.... (Romans 1:3-4)" (To understand the Pauline dichotomy between "flesh" and "spirit," see Romans 8.)

The ecumenical creeds (Nicene, Apostles', Athanasian) or Reformation confessions (Augsburg, Heidelberg, Westminster) nowhere declared belief in the messianic identity of Jesus to be an article of faith. Indeed when the Heidelberg Catechism had an opportunity to make the connection, it twice went out of its way to avoid it. In Question 31, "Why is he called CHRIST, that is, the ANOINTED ONE?," it answered that Christ is "ordained by God the Father and anointed with the Holy Spirit." Christ had a three-fold ministry, prophet, priest and king, but  the kingly authority (where one would expect some interpretation of his messianic identity) was given a spiritualized explanation: Christ is "governing up by his Word and Spirit and defending and sustaining us in the redemption he has won for us."

So where does the generally held claim that Jesus "was the messiah" arise? The "spiritualized" Christ was the standard view through the Protestant confessions. So when does it become "de-spiritualized"? The short answer appears to be in English empiricism, beginning with Thomas Hobbes and John Locke. Hobbes observed that the Jewish kingdom of God was a worldly kingdom. Although he thought that the Jews had rejected the theocratic rule when they asked for a king, Jesus came, as a messiah, to restore that rule. However, such a rule would not be fulfilled until at his second coming. In the meantime, because life was nasty, brutish, and short, men covenanted with each other to chose a sovereign, who constrained the otherwise vicious liberty of men, and thus brought an end to the war of all against all. So for Hobbes, while God, with his messianic vicar Jesus, was in heaven, man ruled on earth. And "man," for Hobbes, was the sovereign king.

Locke seems to have done something similar: calling Jesus "messiah" was shorthand for saying that Jesus was superlative, perhaps quasi-divine, teacher. Certainly both Hobbes and Locke claimed to believe in Christianity. However, as scholars have noted of both men, it was a very strange Christianity. Both were radical empiricists. The continuities between Hobbes and David Hume are obvious and strong (see the first ten chapters or so of Leviathan). Hobbes especially is suspected of having been a closet atheist. Clearly, their belief that "Jesus was the messiah" was not part of a vital Christian faith, a supernatural empowerment by one believed to be the incarnation of God. Rather, for both Hobbes and Locke, the core of Christianity was intellectual assent to certain basic doctrines, most importantly that Jesus was the messiah, and that this assent was expressed by obedience to a basic program of moral law. (For Locke, see pp. xxiii-xxv in the Introduction to the Clarendon Edition of Locke's The Reasonableness of Christianity.)

Therefore, the affirmation, "Jesus was the messiah expected by the Jews," is not contained in the New Testament; is not required by Christian creeds or confessions;  originated as an attack upon traditional Christian faith and practice, by trying to make Christianity a moral mode of life in the rationalistically conceived order of the world; and is a tacit denial of any manner of supernatural power in or through Jesus Christ. Perhaps it is long overdue for Christians to drop it.

[CognitiveDistoibance]

Instead of the what the meaning of is is, maybe this all turns on the meaning of Christos? In both Jn 1:41 and 4:25 the texts explain that the Greek transliteration of "mashiach" is then translated or means Christ "Christos".

Some Greek lexicons on Christos:
BDAG (Briefly, obviously just the main definitions. Note they refer to several works on Jesus' Messianic consciousness.)
(1) fulfiller of Israelite expectation of a deliverer, the Annointed One, the Messiah, the Christ.
...
(2) the personal name ascribed to Jesus, Christ,
...

Barclay-Newman Dictionary:
m Christ (lit. the Anointed One, equivalent to the Hebrew Messiah)

An Intermediate Greek--English Lexicon
χριστός, ή, όν, verb. Adj. of χρίω, to be rubbed on, φάρμακα χριστά salves, Aeschylus, Euripides. II. of persons, anointed: ΧΡΙΣΤΟΣ, ὁ, the Anointed One, the Christ, as a transl. of the Hebrew Messiah, N.T.

Louw & Nida:
93.387 Christos, ou m: (the Greek translation of the Hebrew and Aramaic word ‘Messiah’) a proper name for Jesus - ‘Christ’ (Matt 27:17). See also 53.82

53.82 Christos, ou m; Messias,ou m: (literally ‘one who has been anointed’) in the NT, titles for Jesus as the Messiah - ‘Christ, Messiah’ (but in many contexts, and especially without an article, Christos becomes a part of the name of Jesus; see 93.387). Christos: epynthaneto par' autôn pou ho Christos gennatai ‘he inquired where the Messiah was to be born’ Matt 2:4. Messias: oida hoti Messias erchetai, ho legomenos Christos ‘I know that the Messiah, the one called Christ, will come’ John 4:25. ...

Thayer's treatment with respect to the LXX:
... the Septuagint for masiah, anointed: ho hiereus ho christos, Lev. 4:5; 6:22; hoi christoi hiereis, 2 Macc. 1:10; the patriarchs are called, substantively, hoi christoi Theou, Ps. 104:15 (Ps. 105:15); the singular ho christos tou kuriou (mesiah yehowa) king of Israel (see chrisma), as 1 Sam. 2:10,35; (1 Sam. 24:11; 26:9,11,23); 2 Sam. 1:14; Ps. 2:2; Ps. 17:51 (Ps. 18:51); Hab. 3:13; (2 Chr. 22:7); also of a foreign king, Cyrus, as sent of God, Isa. 45:1; of the coming king whom the Jews expected to be the saviour of their nation and the author of their highest felicity: the name ho christos (masiah, Chaldean mesiha) is not found in the O.T. but is first used of him in the Book of Enoch 48, 10 (cf. Schodde's note); 52, 4 (for the arguments by which some have attempted to prove that the section containing these passages is of Christian origin are not convincing (cf. huios tou anthropou, 2 and references)), after Ps. 2:2 referred to the Messiah; (cf. Psalter of Solomon 17, 36; 18, 6. 8 ). Cf. Keim, ii., 549 (English translation, 4:263f; Westcott ‘Additional Note’ on 1 John 5:1. On the general subject see Schürer, Neutest. Zeitgesch. sec. 29.)

I'm not aware of a lexicon that backs away from the Messianic connotations of Christos as a simple "paraphrase." If you succeed in your efforts to get Christians to drop that Messianic focus, you'll occaision some re-writes, it seems to me.

Also, the LXX use of Christos with Messianic passages (which I haven't dug into as yet) seems a bit problematic to your desire to exclude messianic implications of the term and largely confine them to just the Greek transliteration of the Hebrew word. It seems to be a bit more than just a "paraphrase." Unless I have misunderstood your point(s) badly. (Certainly possible. I can't really follow the relevance of Locke, Hobbes or Hume at all.)

Was Jesus the Messiah 2000 years ago? I suppose it depends who you ask. The Jews didn't think so.

Well, this Christianity ball got rolling by Jews, not gentiles. It took a bit of convincing/divine intervention to even acknowledge or allow the admission of gentiles to the club in the early going...

Your essay is certainly thought-provoking. I do wonder what spurred you to write this? Related to Jewish-Christian relations and conversions?

[Not Even The Rain]

Therefore, the affirmation, "Jesus was the messiah expected by the Jews," is not contained in the New Testament; is not required by Christian creeds or confessions;  originated as an attack upon traditional Christian faith and practice, by trying to make Christianity a moral mode of life in the rationalistically conceived order of the world; and is a tacit denial of any manner of supernatural power in or through Jesus Christ. Perhaps it is long overdue for Christians to drop it.

I don't think Jesus was the messiah expected by the Jews. On the other hand, why is it that important, what the Jews are expecting or not? For instance, they are expecting to rebuild their temple... So what? What is easy to expect is difficult to do...God doesn't need the approval of the Jews for His relation with mankind...

[potkas7]

[quote]Perhaps it is long overdue for Christians to drop it./quote]

Or, alternatively, maybe it's time for the Jews to accept it.

[quote]Is Jesus the Messiah now? Bloody unlikely. Whether your political rogue du jour is Obama or Palin, politicians lie, the elderly and sick die (panels or no panels), wars arise and end with predictable pace; how long does this ellipsis have to be…………………….?/quote]

What thought lies behind this essay? Is it just the editor was pressing you for 500 words or is there something else inspiring this composition? What were you thinking when you wrote this? It's thought-provoking and obviously meant to be a conversation-starter, but what is the conversation about?

[BWoB]

Oh dear. I hate to ruin a good Let's Get Together, ecumenical, Kumbaya-around-the-campfire. And I certainly hesitate to go up against Dr. Layman's vast erudition, but I had hoped it would never quite come to "what is theirs (the Jews) is theirs, and what is ours (the Christians) is negotiable."

Approaching this from the other direction, it seems clear enough that the Jews of the day were expecting SOMETHING. There were bunches of would-be Messiahs popping up all over at the time. All of them ended up quite dead, and only one was claimed to have, somehow, gotten around that. So on the matter of their Messiah, either they were wrong, or they were right, but wrong about its specifics. So really, if not Jesus, then who? Or were they completely wrong?

It may well be that this claim isn't as important as its been made to seem. We've already been told that Matthew's proof-texting from Isaiah about "a virgin shall be with child" is wrong. That seems a littler thing than this, though. As Spengler quite nicely put it in one of his essays, I'm in the camp of those who, where the Jews are concerned, are content to wait for Jesus to come and "make the invitation in person." Frankly, nothing less will do. Whoever is right or wrong, that will be the time to know of it.

I say this all in the spirit of wanting to hear more.

[David Layman]

CognitiveDistoibance:

I appreciate all your hard work in collating that data, but alas, it is, in my judgment, all for nought. I do not regard this as a lexical question at all. Of course Christos is the Greek translation of mashiach. That is a commonplace.To refute my claim that the dogmatic content is different, you need a different sort of argument.

Let's take two statements:

Mc = the Christian statement, "Jesus is the Messiah"
Mj = the Jewish statement, "Jesus is not the Messiah"

Do Mc and Mj contradict each other? For centuries, Christians (and Jews?) have assumed that they do. I am arguing that they do not, because the term Messiah in those statements has different content. That is why lexicography does not settle the question.

To everyone:
And that was why I was attempting to develop a history-of-theology question. Specifically, when did the alleged "messianic identity" of Jesus became a central foundation of theological construction? When did it become a theological concept, integrated into the remainder of dogma and/or theological systematics? At this point, my discussion of the pre-Reformation period is weak, since a great deal of dogmatic construction never made it into the ecumenical creeds. Still, the fact that the 3 major Protestant confessions completely ignore the issue suggests that it was simply was not in view in the western Christian dogmatic tradition before 1600.

If that judgment is correct, and can be further verified by a careful overview of the pre-Reformation theological tradition, then the question remains: where and when does this concept enter into the tradition? I believe I have stumbled upon something enormously significant: the first use of the alleged "messianic identity of Jesus" in theological construction appears to be in the (Christianly) heterodox, rationalizing political theories of Thomas Hobbes and John Locke.

The only counter-argument that applies is a historical-theological argument. Show me--from Origen, or Tertullian, Ireneus, Chrysostom, Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, Calvin--that the "messianic identity of Jesus" played an integral and positive role in their Christology and/or their view of the Jews. That is the only way to refute my claim.

If I am right, then the conclusions are absolutely ground-shaking, and fundamental to understanding the origins and development of the Anglo-American Christian and theological tradition. It means, to begin with, that a concept that is a great number of (especially American evangelical) Christians assume is an integral part of orthodox theology is not so at all.

Finally, on the question of motive:

I have believed since my graduate study days (20 years ago) that Judaism and Christianity are two different sorts of religion. Judaism has the election and the covenant; Christianity has the supernatural participation in Jesus Christ. As David Goldman/Spengler keeps saying: "different things for different people in different ways." I have always thought that Christian attempts to "Judaize" not only fails to bridge the gap between Judaism and Christianity, but also compromises Christianity. My above analysis of the apparent origins of the "messianic identity of Jesus" in Christian theology is simply another piece of the puzzle, further substantiating the historical and systematic validity of my long-held intuition.

[bakerman]

So, for the simple minded ( yours truly ) Jesus was Messiah to the gentiles but not to the jews? Or, do I conflate "Messiah" with "Savior"? It sounds like the author is saying that Jesus offered "restoration" to the jews and "salvation" to the gentiles. I'll buy that.

[potkas7]

Ah, now I understand. Thank-you.

"...I have believed since my graduate study days (20 years ago) that Judaism and Christianity are two different sorts of religion. Judaism has the election and the covenant; Christianity has the supernatural participation in Jesus Christ..."

That is certainly an interesting subject for inquiry. It is clear that that by the end of the First Century, Christianity had established itself in the metropolitan centers of the Empire. Yet it seems equally clear that the early Christians saw themselves as something other than a sect of Judaism. Jews had a dispensation from sacrificing to the Emperor, but the Christians asserted the claim, though they were not Jews, their religion too demanded allegiance to a single God that made them unable and unwilling to acknowledge the divinity of the Emperor even at the cost of their own lives.

I am a Christian and a Gentile. I do not claim descent from Abraham, but I do claim to share in God's Covenant. But what Covenant is that? Not the one YHWH with Abram, nor the one he made with Moses. It is a claim to a share in a kingdom not of this earth. But am I wrong to feel my faith has a connection to Judaism - a sort of filial bond with the Jews as elder brothers?

[David Layman]

I am a Christian and a Gentile. I do not claim descent from Abraham, but I do claim to share in God's Covenant. But what Covenant is that? Not the one YHWH with Abram, nor the one he made with Moses. It is a claim to a share in a kingdom not of this earth. But am I wrong to feel my faith has a connection to Judaism - a sort of filial bond with the Jews as elder brothers?

No objection here. That is much what I feel myself.

[Marcus]

Is Jesus the Messiah? on the Spengler Blog
by David Layman

. . . Is Jesus the Messiah now? Bloody unlikely. . .

Was Jesus the Messiah 2000 years ago? I suppose it depends who you  ask. The Jews didn't think so. . .

That such a question can be asked boggles the mind! Now? Then? What have such questions to do with the Lamb slain before the foundations of the world?

"The Jews didn't think so"? Some Jews did think so. Nor does it matter what some Jews—or Hindus or Muslims or Mormons or Buddhists—think. What does God think?

The Parable of the Tenants

He went on to tell the people this parable: "A man planted a vineyard, rented it to some farmers and went away for a long time. At harvest time he sent a servant to the tenants so they would give him some of the fruit of the vineyard. But the tenants beat him and sent him away empty-handed. He sent another servant, but that one also they beat and treated shamefully and sent away empty-handed. He sent still a third, and they wounded him and threw him out. "Then the owner of the vineyard said, 'What shall I do? I will send my son, whom I love; perhaps they will respect him. "But when the tenants saw him, they talked the matter over. 'This is the heir,' they said. 'Let's kill him, and the inheritance will be ours.' So they threw him out of the vineyard and killed him.

"What then will the owner of the vineyard do to them? He will come and kill those tenants and give the vineyard to others." When the people heard this, they said, "May this never be!"

Jesus looked directly at them and asked, "Then what is the meaning of that which is written: " 'The stone the builders rejected has become the capstone. Everyone who falls on that stone will be broken to pieces, but he on whom it falls will be crushed."

The teachers of the law and the chief priests looked for a way to arrest him immediately, because they knew he had spoken this parable against them. But they were afraid of the people. —Luke 20:9-19

[Douglas Bilodeau]

This is a layman's opinion (mine, that is): It appears to me that there is an emphatic understanding of the messianic role of Jesus even in Paul. The Messiah is the one who comes to fulfill the covenant, in Paul the covenant with Abraham in particular. In the letters of Paul, Jesus is emphatically the one who has come and who has fulfilled (in an "already but not yet" sense) the covenant, the law, and much else. The Hebrew passages of "expectation" in e.g. Isaiah and implicitly in the Psalms are directly tied to Jesus in both the gospels and the epistles, not least by Jesus himself after the resurrection in a peripatetic seminar to his disciples on the road to Emmaus (though which passages he cites then are not specified, except that "beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself").

What you seem to be trying to allow for is that there may be a future Messiah who is not Jesus who will fulfill specifically Jewish ethnic/national aspects of the covenants. I don't know of any Christian theological conception from any era in which this fits. The people of Israel were (are) called upon to be the people of God not just to serve God in some private-ethnic capacity or even just to be an example of a "holy and priestly" people, but rather to be much more ACTIVELY a light to the nations. A light necessarily shines outward. The traditional Christian view is that it is through its representative embodiment in Jesus, God incarnate both fully human and fully divine, that the Jewish people have become this light to the nations -that Israel needed this representative sacrificial divine apotheosis in order to fulfill its mission. I think it's pretty clear that Paul is saying this, and at the same time that this is not a "supercessionist" view in the light of Romans 11, i.e. that ethnic Israel remains the "natural" root of the "olive tree" of the people of God. I think Paul sees ethnic Israel as necessarily continuing to exist (in a pre-eschatological manner, at least), and by its inheritance it is a people who have and will always have a far greater right to be "Christian" (that is, Messianic) than do the members of any pagan tribe. In Paul's view, the covenantal promise to Israel becomes something far greater and more sublime than an Earthly kingdom, certainly not a kingdom apart from the nations, but rather participation in an eschatological kingdom joined together with a redeemed and purified mankind made possible by the work of God through Israel over many centuries, culminating in the redemptive advent of God as Savior.

[Marcus]

. . . The people of Israel were (are) called upon to be the people of God not just to serve God in some private-ethnic capacity or even just to be an example of a "holy and priestly" people, but rather to be much more ACTIVELY a light to the nations. A light necessarily shines outward. The traditional Christian view is that it is through its representative embodiment in Jesus, God incarnate both fully human and fully divine, that the Jewish people have become this light to the nations -that Israel needed this representative sacrificial divine apotheosis in order to fulfill its mission. I think it's pretty clear that Paul is saying this, and at the same time that this is not a "supercessionist" view in the light of Romans 11, i.e. that ethnic Israel remains the "natural" root of the "olive tree" of the people of God. I think Paul sees ethnic Israel as necessarily continuing to exist (in a pre-eschatological manner, at least), and by its inheritance it is a people who have and will always have a far greater right to be "Christian" (that is, Messianic) than do the members of any pagan tribe. In Paul's view, the covenantal promise to Israel becomes something far greater and more sublime than an Earthly kingdom, certainly not a kingdom apart from the nations, but rather participation in an eschatological kingdom joined together with a redeemed and purified mankind made possible by the work of God through Israel over many centuries, culminating in the redemptive advent of God as Savior. —emphasis added

Well stated!

[David Layman]

The Messiah is the one who comes to fulfill the covenant, in Paul the covenant with Abraham in particular. In the letters of Paul, ...

Yes, Christianity believes that there is

one who comes to fulfill the covenant,....

Yes, Christianity identifies this as Jesus Christ.

But I know of no place in the New Testament canon where this is tied to the "messianic identity" of Jesus. You are reading your own theological assumptions into the text, precisely the assumptions which I am arguing are flawed. I.e., you are assuming what you need to prove.

What you seem to be trying to allow for is that there may be a future Messiah who is not Jesus who will fulfill specifically Jewish ethnic/national aspects of the covenants.

No, that is not my opinion. When (if) Jesus is revealed as Lord, he will also be revealed as the one Jews have expected as Messiah. But until then..................

Paul's view, the covenantal promise to Israel becomes something far greater and more sublime than an Earthly kingdom, certainly not a kingdom apart from the nations, but rather participation in an eschatological kingdom joined together with a redeemed and purified mankind made possible by the work of God through Israel over many centuries, culminating in the redemptive advent of God as Savior.

I agree.

[Tor]

Who is stating "Jesus was the messiah expected by the Jews" ?

Isn't the invocation of Isaiah 61 also explicit?

[CognitiveDistoibance]

CognitiveDistoibance:
... Of course Christos is the Greek translation of mashiach. That is a commonplace.To refute my claim that the dogmatic content is different, you need a different sort of argument.
Let's take two statements:
Mc = the Christian statement, "Jesus is the Messiah"
Mj = the Jewish statement, "Jesus is not the Messiah"
Do Mc and Mj contradict each other? For centuries, Christians (and Jews?) have assumed that they do. I am arguing that they do not, because the term Messiah in those statements has different content. That is why lexicography does not settle the question.

I better understand you, but my points (inartfully articulated, to be sure) were:
1. It seemed you acknowledged the applicability of the Greek transliteraion of mashiach to the discussion as regards the NT canon, but seemingly deprecated the Greek translation of mashiach in the form of "Christos," which I was trying to support. That deprecation (forgive me if I read too much into your term of "paraphrase") seemingly allowed you to sweep aside the far more numerous NT instances of the translation as compared to the transliteration.
2. I do not see, in the time of Jesus, any reason to suppose that there was different (Christian and Jewish) contents for the word "Messiah" or Christos." (To be sure, thereafter...) Further, that the widespread familarity of the LXX equivalence of the Greek "Christos" for the Hebrew term predated pre-dated any potential tampering of Christians with the terms or content thereof. (There is also the side issue that potentially much of the NT conversations recorded in the Greek NT may have actually taken place in Aramaic, and the NT record is a translation of Aramaic dialogue, and in fact the Hebrew messianic term or its Aramaic counterpart could have been used much more widely in the conversations.)
3. So if one allows (perhaps you would not) that the NT writers were not already overtly redefinining of the contents of "Christos" toward a purely Christian content, then it seems to me to broaden the discussion (of the texts you cited) to verses such as Christian confessions in: 1Jn 2:22, 5:1; Acts 17:2-3.

The only counter-argument that applies is a historical-theological argument. Show me--from Origen, or Tertullian, Ireneus, Chrysostom, Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, Calvin--that the "messianic identity of Jesus" played an integral and positive role in their Christology and/or their view of the Jews. That is the only way to refute my claim.

Do Justin Martyr in Dialogue with Trypho or Cyprian in Testimonia adversus Judaeos qualify? (I haven't time to chase the issue much further, before I compiled this response. I have little familiarity here, I confess.)

If I am right, then the conclusions are absolutely ground-shaking, and fundamental to understanding the origins and development of the Anglo-American Christian and theological tradition. It means, to begin with, that a concept that is a great number of (especially American evangelical) Christians assume is an integral part of orthodox theology is not so at all.

Agreed, with that quallification.