But this proof that the true kingdom of God could not be realized in an earthly state, under the limitations of national particularism, was not the final refutation of the Old Testament hope. Amidst the last convulsions of political Judaism a new spiritual conception of the kingdom of God, of salvation, and of the Saviour of God’s anointing, had shaped itself through the preaching, the death, and the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. As applied to Jesus the name of Messiah lost all its political and national significance. Between the Messiah of the Jews and the Son of Man who came to give His life a ransom for many there was on the surface little resemblance; and from their standpoint the Pharisees reasoned that the marks of the Messiah were conspicuously absent from this Christ. But when we look at the deeper side of the Messianic conception in the Psalter of Solomon, at the heartfelt longing for a leader in the way of righteousness and acceptance with God which underlies the aspirations after political deliverance, we see that it was in no mere spirit of accommodation to prevailing language that Jesus did not disdain the name in which all the hopes of the Old Testament were gathered up.
Messianic Parallels.—Within the limits of this article it is impossible to attempt any extended survey of parallels to Hebrew Messianic conceptions drawn from other religions. One interesting analogy communicated by Professor Rapson, may, however, be cited from the Bhagavad-gītā, iv. 5–8, in which Krishna says:—
5 “Many are the births that have passed of me and of thee
Arjuna.
All these I know: thou knowest them not, O conqueror of
thy foes.
6 Unborn, of imperishable soul, the Lord of all creatures,
Taking upon me mine own nature, I arise by my own power.
7 For whensoever, O son of Bharata, there is decay of righteousness
And a rising up of unrighteousness, then I create myself,
8 For the protecting of the good and for the destroying of
evil-doers,
And for the establishing of righteousness I arise from age
to age.”
“Somewhat similar are the avatars of Vishnu, who becomes incarnate in a portion of his essence on ten occasions to deliver mankind from certain great dangers. Krishna himself is usually regarded as one of these avatars.” This we may consider as one of the striking parallels which meet us in other religions to that “hope of the advent of an ideal king which was one of the features of that larger hope of the salvation of Israel from all evils, the realization of perfect reconciliation with Jehovah and the felicity of the righteous in Him,” to which reference was made in an early portion of this article and which constitutes the essential meaning of Messiahship. The form in which the Indian conception presents itself in the above quoted lines is more closely analogous amid many differences to the later and apocalyptic type of the Messianic idea as it appears in Judaism.
The interesting parallels between the Babylonian Marduk (Merodach) god of light and Christ as a world saviour are ingeniously set forth by Zimmern in K.A.T. 3rd ed., pp. 376–391, but the total impression which they leave is vague.
It would carry us too far to consider in this place the details of the Jewish conception of the Messiah and the Messianic times as they appear in the later apocalypses or in Talmudic theology. See for the former the excellent summary of Schürer, Geschichte des jüdischen Volkes im Zeitalter Jesu Christi, 3rd ed., vol. ii. pp. 497–556. See also Weber, Jüdische Theologie, ch. xxiii. For the whole subject see also Drummond, The Jewish Messiah, and Kuenen, Religion of Israel, ch. xii. For the Messianic hopes of the Pharisees and the Psalter of Solomon see especially Wellhausen, Pharisäer und Sadducäer (Greifswald, 1874). In its ultimate form the Messianic hope of the Jews is the centre of the whole eschatology, embracing the doctrine of the last troubles of Israel (called by the Rabbins the “birth pangs of the Messiah”), the appearing of the anointed king, the annihilation of the hostile enemy, the return of the dispersed of Israel, the glory and world-sovereignty of the elect, the new world, the resurrection of the dead and the last judgment. But even the final form of Jewish theology shows much vacillation as to these details, especially as regards their sequence and mutual relation, thus betraying the inadequacy of the harmonistic method by which they were derived from the Old Testament and the stormy excitement in which the Messianic idea was developed. It is, for example, an open question among the Rabbins whether the days of the Messiah belong to the old or to the new world (הָעוֹלָם הַזֶּה or חָעוֹלָם הַבָּא), whether the resurrection embraces all men or only the righteous, whether it precedes or follows the Messianic age. Compare Millennium.
We must also pass over the very important questions that arise as to the gradual extrication of the New Testament idea of the Christ from the elements of Jewish political doctrine which had so strong a hold of many of the first disciples—the relation, for example, of the New Testament Apocalypse to contemporary Jewish thought. A word, however, is necessary as to the Rabbinical doctrine of the Messiah who suffers and dies for Israel, the Messiah son of Joseph or son of Ephraim, who in Jewish theology is distinguished from and subordinate to the victorious son of David. The developed form of this idea is almost certainly a product of the polemic with Christianity, in which the Rabbins were hard pressed by arguments from passages (especially Isa. liii.) which their own exegesis admitted to be Messianic, though it did not accept the Christian inferences as to the atoning death of the Messianic king. That the Jews in the time of Christ believed in a suffering and atoning Messiah is, to say the least, unproved and highly improbable. See, besides the books above cited, De Wette, Opuscula; Wünsche, Die Leiden des Messias (1870).
See the articles on “Messiah” in Hastings’s D. B. (together with Fairweather’s art., “Development of Doctrine,” in extra vol., pp. 295–302) in Ency. Bibl. Also P.R.E. 3rd ed., as well as Hastings’s Dict. of Christ and the Gospels, should be consulted. Comp. Edersheim, Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah, 2nd ed., i. 160–179, ii. 434 sqq., 710–741; Stanton, The Jewish and the Christian Messiah (1886); Wendt, Teaching of Jesus, i. 60–84, 176–181, ii. 122–139; Holtzmann, N. T. Theologie (1897), pp. 81–85, 234–304; Baldensperger, Das Selbstbewusstsein Jesu; Wellhausen, Israel. u. jüd. Geschichte (1895), pp. 198–204; Charles’s Book of Enoch and Apocalypse of Baruch (especially the introductions); Bousset, Religion des Judentums, 2nd ed., pp. 245–277; Volz, Jüdische Eschatologie von Daniel bis Akiba, pp. 55–68, 213–237: Dalman, Der leidende u. sterbende Messias; Gressmann, Ursprung der israelitisch-jüdischen Eschatologie, pp. 250–345. A fuller survey of literature will be found in Schürer. op. cit., p. 496 sqq. (W. R. S.; O. C. W.)
MESSINA, a city of Sicily, 7 m. S.S.W. of the promontory of
Faro (anc. Promontorium Pelorum), which forms the north-eastern
angle of the island, the capital of the province of Messina
and the seat of an archbishop. Pop. (1850), 97,074; (1881),
126,497; (1901), 149,778; (1905), 158,812. The site of the town
curves round the harbour, between it and the strongly fortified
hills of Antennamare, the highest point of which is 3707 ft.
The straits, which take their name from the town, are here about
312 m. wide, and only a little over 2 m. at the promontory of Faro.
The numerous earthquakes from which the city had suffered,
notably that in 1783, had left it few remains of antiquity. But
it was a flourishing and beautiful city when in 1908 one of the
most disastrous earthquakes ever recorded destroyed it totally.
The earthquake occurred early in the morning of December 28,
and so far as Messina was concerned the damage was done chiefly
by the shock and by the fires which broke out afterwards; the
seismic wave which followed was comparatively innocuous. But
it did vast damage elsewhere along the strait, notably at Reggio,
Calabria, which was also totally destroyed. Many other smaller
towns suffered both in Sicily and in Calabria; the loss of life was
appalling and the distress widespread, in spite of the prompt
assistance rendered by Italian naval and military forces and by
the crews of British, Russian and German warships and other
vessels, and the contribution of funds for relief works from every
part of the world. The immediate seismic focus appeared to be
in the straits, but Dr E. Suess pointed out that it was surrounded
by a curved line of earth-fracture, following an arc drawn from
a centre in the Lipari Islands, from Catanzaro to Etna, and so
westward; within this arc he held that the crust of the earth is
gradually sinking, and is in an unstable condition. According
to an official estimate the earthquake caused the loss of 77,283
lives.[1] (See also Earthquake.)
The façades of buildings at Messina in great part withstood the earthquake, but even when they did so the remainder of the buildings was destroyed. The cathedral, which was completely wrecked, was begun in 1098 and finished by Roger II. It had a fine Gothic façade: the interior had mosaics in the apses dating from 1330, and the nave contained 26 granite columns, said to have been brought from a temple of Poseidon near Faro, and had a fine wooden roof of 1260. The rest of the edifice was in the baroque style; the high altar (containing the supposed letter of the Virgin Mary to the people of Messina), richly decorated with marbles, lapis lazuli, &c., was begun in 1628 and completed in 1726. The importance of Messina was almost entirely due to its
- ↑ See S. Franchi, “Il Terremoto . . . a Messina . . ., " in Boll. R. Comit. geologico d’Ital., 4th series, vol. x. (1909).
