The Messiah in the First Century: a Review Article

In October 1987 an international symposium was held at Princeton Theological Seminary on the general topic of "Judaism and Christian Origins" and with the specific theme of messianism. The papers arising from the conference have now been published under the editorship of James H. Charlesworth, who also acted as chairman of the steering committee for the conference. The result is a major collection of essays by a distinguished group of scholars from several countries. It is therefore a significant volume in terms of both its topic and the contributors. The book can be assessed from two angles. First, it can be seen as a set of scholarly essays offering research on important aspects of the topic of messiahship in the first century. Some of the essays deal with messianism in the narrower sense, that is, the use of the term Messiah and the associated concept of a royal or priestly Messiah in Judaism and in early Christianity. Other essays are concerned with issues that are messianic in a broader sense, such as the Son of Man. It is very important to see the narrower concept within the context of the broader one. However, where essays in this book deal with the broader concept in a way that is not too closely related to the more specific topic, we shall pass over them fairly briefly in this review.