At 04:02 AM 12/21/00 EST, you wrote:
>In a message dated 12/20/00 9:21:04 PM Eastern Standard Time,
>[log in to unmask] writes:
>
>> 2) where Gow holds that the identification of the Antichrist with the one
>>  who many Jews would accept as their Christ as opposed to Jesus Christ
was a
>>  Medieval, largely anti-semitic invention (pp. 2-3).  I guess he has never
>>  read Scripture (John 5:43; Mt 24:24; 2 Thes 2:1ff.) or St. Chrysostom, St.
>>  Augustine, St. Cyrill, who are hardly described as medievals.
>>
>Messianic expectations originate in the OT, which of course lays the
>foundation for the Christian claim that Christ is the fulfullment of the OT
>prophecies. Emphasis is often put on the point that Jews don't believe Christ
>was divine, and don't believe he was the messiah. But it's not always made
>clear that this is essentially a mistaken identity argument. It's perfectly
>possible to be a devout Jew and believe that the messiah, as predicted,  will
> appear in due time (but Christ was not that messiah). Some (not all) of the
>Lubavicher Hasidim believe that their rebbe, Menachem Schneerson, was the
>messiah. Although this may sound odd from a Christian perspective, the OT

Yes, but there have been many such persons in Jewish History, even before
Jesus Christ; it is not strange. It would be stranger, considering the role
of the Messiah in the OT that there would be no expectation, rather than
too eger expectation.

But for the record, since Gow quotes many popular works on Medieval
beliefs: it should be noted that many of these ideas are found nowhere in
Catholic teaching: who believe that a great number of the Jews will accept
the Messiah when he comes at the end of time, just as the OT prophesies,
but that this will be the same Messiah that Christians have always
followed. So to say that the Jewish Messiah is the Antichrist is definitely
a non-Catholic idea; at the most an exaggeration of a Catholic substatum,
since clearly Catholic teaching holds that the Jewish people in large
numbers will receive a grace from God not to being deceived into becoming
adherents of the Antichrist. Whereas many Christians, afforded the same
grace, but will become his adherents; so in the long run on cannot say that
this person or group will actually be an ally or opponent of the Antichrist
when he does come. And to cross that line and start naming names, is where
the speculation takes a route outside authentic Catholic teaching. Not to
mention that it is darn uncharitable to start playing God by saying who is
and who is not of the elect, etc..

>doesn't require that the messiah be superhuman or an incarnation of God.

Here you touch upon a point which appears central in the growing identity
gap in Medievals of Western Europe who where Christians and those who were
Jews.  A medieval Christian's response to your statement would include the
following points:

Then what do the medieval rabbis say about Daniel 7:13 ff ; Psalm 2:7 &
109:3; Isaiah 7:14, 8:8, 9:6, Micah 5:2? And how do they reconcile this
with Isaiah 35:4? All of which point to the Mesiah having superhuman
qualities and divine attributes.Or at least leave the inescapible
conclusion of having a theological justification for a "Jewish Messiah"
[this is anachronistic at best for a term, since to neither Jews nor
Chrisitans is there any kind of a Messiah that is only for one group; both
would confess a Messiah who is one person for all peoples] with a great
deal more difficulties in claiming to be the authentic depiction of OT
prophecies.

I think that the more the Jewish community identified itself publically
with an absolute, uncomprimising denial of Jesus of Nazareth as their
Messiah, the more it would be likely for the abberant popular forms of
religious to racial categorize the Jewish people as enemies.

> He
>might be just a great leader, another King David. Whether he'll appear in the
>near future or far future is left a mystery, at least in the OT.

Actually the OT tells the exact year of his coming:  Daniel 9:24 ff., and
the circumstances: Genesis 49:10, Micah 5:1ff and Malachi, chapter 3, to
name just a few.

> A subsidiary
>point is that Jews are not alone in understandings of Christ that are
>non-trinitarian or deviant from a catholic perspective. In Islam, Christ is
>regarded as one of the prophets, not divine. Unitarians too regard him as
>human, not divine, and not a member of a trinity.
>
This is all consistent with their not being Chrisitians. The fact that the
Orthodox Churches of Contantinople agree with catholics could be equally
cited with the same logic, even though there was schims formally from 1054
to the present with some small exceptions.

>In any case, I agree with you, Br. Alexis, on the point that the idea of a
>messiah for the Jews was not invented during the middle ages or by
>antisemites. It's from the Old Testament, the Jewish Bible. Certainly,

A Messiah, yes; but not for the Jews only, that I believe is an
anachronism. There is no room in OT or NT for more than 1 messiah; no one
back then among these circles was a religious relativist.

>though, anyone can play with this idea in an adversarial manner by filtering
>it through the mistaken identity argument, as in  "my messiah is the right
>messiah and your messiah is the wrong messiah, and--furthermore--your messiah
>is actually satan." Anatole France wrote a novel somewhat along this line, in
>which God turns out to be wicked and the devil is mankind's true friend.
>
No doubt such arguments existed; but I think the better informed members of
both groups would agree there is only one messiah and that Satan, who is an
angel would not qualify for candidacy in either theology :)!

>To see what was actually done with these ideas at any particular time, we'd
>have to look to artifacts and documents. A Hieronymus Bosch painting of the
>nativity includes not only the three magi but also a sceptre-carrying figure
>who wears a jeweled crown and a loincloth and has a bandage on his leg. The
>art historian Lotte Brand Philips feels that this is the Jewish messiah, and
>points to a story in the Babylonian Talmud that says the messiah will appear
>as a leper (hence the bandage). It's an interesting reading, though I still
>don't understand what he's doing in a painting of the nativity. As in the

That the Messiah would be a leper is the Talmudic reading of Isaiah 53:4, I
think; at least it is that in the Vulgate

There is an ongoing intricacy in the very nature of what it means to be a
Jew in the Medieval mind; in biblical terms it can be a geneological,
political or religious category, and in the NT it is used in all senses;
though from the literature quoted by Gow it is clearly on the way to
becoming a fusion of all three that for all practical purposes is
coextensive with the racial category.  As Europe moved away from its
Christian roots this racial categorization remained in the post medieval
mind, and hence was paved the way to modern anti-semitism.


And intriguing question is whether there was in Medieval literature any
conception of Jesus as a Jew and if not, then why not? An equally strong
popular tradition of such identification would have gone a long way to
curbing the advent of modern anti-semitism.  Does anyone know of any
reasearch into this?


Sincerely in Christ,

Br. Alexis Bugnolo