Monday, November 29, 2021

The Messiahs We Have Known

Nadene Goldfoot                                              

What is a Messiah?  In Jewish eschatology, the Messiah is a future Jewish king from the Davidic line, who is expected to be anointed with holy anointing oil and rule the Jewish people during the Messianic Age and world to come.The concept of a Messiah has changed through the ages as mankind has grown mentally.  The Messiah is the anointed One, the ultimate deliverer.  The word is used in the Bible as an adjective also referring to kings, etc, who have been anointed, thereupon receiving Divine sanction and a unique inviolability of status.     

                                                           


 
After the exile of the Jews, the prophetic vision of the universal establishment of G-d's kingdom was associated with the ingathering of Israel under a scion of David's house.  This has been happening since Israel's establishment again in 1948.  Jews from all over the planet have been returning now that Israel is a reality for them to return to without the Romans or any other people keeping them out, for after seeing their Temple and city of Jerusalem burned to the ground in 70 CE, the Romans kept the survivors out as they took over the city and built a Roman Temple over Solomon's 2nd Temple. 

Who is  that scion of David's line of genealogy that has been involved?  We don't know, but Israel is made up of many men who bear the Y haplogroup of the Cohens, J1 and its variants; descendants of the tribe of Levi who are the Cohens and Levites, Cohens being the direct line of Aaron, brother of Moses. 

 King David, who ruled from 1000 to 960 BCE, was born in Bethlehem to Jesse and Ithra's daughter, their 8th and last son.   It is considered without a conclusion that David's mother was Nahash. However, [N]ahash was, king of the Ammonites, also an ancient people and country in Transjordan, today's Jordan, semitic and related to the Israelites, not a woman.   Actually, it's not known for sure who David's mother was.  

The prophetic vision was that of the universal establishment of the g-d kingdom with the ingathering of Israel under the scion of David's house, that of the annointed, a descendant of King David who would bring in the Golden Age. 

 In 29 CE, upon the death of Jesus,  the followers of the Jesus, their teacher, claimed him to be the messiah, but it wasn't being accepted by the Jews.  Moses had taught to beware of people claiming such beliefs.  Jesus did not make such a claim.  His followers did.  They  were: Peter, James, John, Andrew, Bartholomew or Nathanael, James, the Lesser or Younger, Judas, Jude or Thaddeus, Matthew or Levi, Philip, Simon the Zealot, and Thomas.   They supposedly were all Jewish.     

 Many of the stories in the Bible from the time of Moses to the Babylonian captivity are predicated on the choice between exclusive worship of the Lord and false gods. The Babylonian exile, itself a punishment for idolatry, seems to have been a turning point after which the Jews became committed to monotheism, even when facing martyrdom before worshipping any other god.


A Jewish Revolt occurred again in 115 to 117 and people prayed for the Messiah to appear.  In the summer of 115 C.E., the Jews of the Western and Eastern diasporas rose up against the Romans. For more than two years, from the eighteenth year of Trajan’s reign to the beginning of the reign of Hadrian in August-September 117, in Cyrenaica, Egypt, Cyprus, Mesopotamia, and perhaps even in Judaea itself, a relentless war pitted the Jewish population against the imperial legions. In the turmoil of the general disaster, the Hellenized Jews of Egypt perished, with all their worldly possessions. The war of 66-73 had its historian, but in 115-117 no Josephus was present to spell out the details of the conflict.                                                             

We've had many false messiahs who show up in time of exhaustion and of losing hope.  When the Temple was destroyed in 70, the Messiah was needed badly.  The last Jewish Revolt was carried out by General Bar Kokhba in 132 and lasted for 3 years when he was killed in battle, but he had held Jerusalem for 3 years, something the Romans thought would never happen.  They were furious to be beaten for so long as they were the greatest in the world.                                                                             

In the 5th century, a pseudo-messiah called Moses appeared in Crete.  He called himself Moses, and promised to lead the people, like the ancient Moses, dry-shod through the sea back to Palestine. His followers, convinced of his claim, left all their possessions and waited for the promised day; upon which they followed Moses to a promontory overlooking the sea and at his command cast themselves off - where many drowned or were destroyed on the rocks below.  Then Moses himself immediately disappeared.  In accordance with computations found in the Talmud, the Messiah was expected to appear in the years 440 (Sanh. 97b) or 471 ('Ab. Zarah 9b). This expectation in connection with the disturbances in the Roman empire attendant upon invasions may have raised up hopes of the Messiah. Moses of Crete appeared about this time and won over many Jews to his movement.  Socrates of Constantinople states that Moses of Crete fled, while the Chronicle of John of Nikiû claims that he perished in the sea. While he called himself Moses, the Chronicle gives his actual name as 'Fiskis'.

  The fall of the Persian and Byzantine Empires of the 7th century again aroused Jewish messianic hopes, and in the 8th century, 3 pseudo-messiahs appeared, Abu Issa al-Isfahani in Persia, Severus or Serene in Syria, and Yudghan in Hamadan, Persia. 

                                                                   


Yudghan, called "Al-Ra'i" ("the shepherd of the flock of his people"), who lived and taught in Persia in the first half of the 8th century. He was disciple of Abu Isa of Ispahan, who continued the faith after Isa was slain. He declared himself to be a prophet, and was regarded by his disciples as the Messiah. He came from Hamadan, and taught doctrines he claimed to have received through prophecy. According to Shahristani, he opposed anthropomorphism, taught the doctrine of free will, and held that the Torah had an allegorical meaning in addition to its literal one. He admonished his followers to lead an ascetic life, to abstain from meat and wine, and to pray and fast often, following in this his master Abu 'Isa. He held that the observance of the Sabbath and festivals was merely a matter of memorial. After his death his followers formed a sect, the Yudghanites, who believed he had not died but would return at a future date.

                                                                      

  • Serene (his name is given variously in the sources as Sherini, Sheria, Serenus, Zonoria, Saüra, Severus) the Syrian was born a Christian. He preached in the district of Mardin between 720 and 723. Those Christian sources dependent on Theophilus's history report that "Severus" proclaimed himself Messiah; the Zuqnin Chronicle reports that he proclaimed himself Moses "sent again for the salvation of Israel". Serene promised "to lead you into the desert in order to introduce you then to the inheritance of the Promised Land which you shall possess as before"; more as a "prophet like Moses" than as a Davidic "anointed one" as such. The immediate occasion for his appearance may have been the restriction of the liberties of the Jews by the caliph Omar II (717–720) and his proselytizing efforts. Serene had followers even in Spain, where the Jews were suffering under the oppressive taxation of the new Arab rulers they had enthusiastically welcomed, and many left their homes for the new Moses. These Jews paid instead a tithe to Serene. Like Abu 'Isa and Yudghan, Serene also was a religious reformer. According to Natronai b. Nehemiah, gaon of Pumbedita (719–730), Serene was hostile to rabbinic Judaism laws. His followers disregarded the dietary laws, the rabbinically instituted prayers, and the prohibition against the "wine of libation"; they worked on the second day of the festivals; they did not write marriage and divorce documents according to Talmudic prescriptions, and did not accept the Talmudic prohibition against the marriage of near relatives. Serene was arrested. Brought before Caliph Yazid II, he declared that he had acted only in jest, whereupon he was handed over to the Jews for punishment. Natronai laid down the criteria by which Serene's followers might rejoin the synagogue; most of said followers then presumably did so.

  • Isḥaḳ ben Ya'ḳub Obadiah Abu 'Isa al-Isfahani of Ispahan. He lived in the reign of Marwan II (744–750). Known as Abu Isa, he claimed to be the last of the five forerunners of the Messiah and that God had chosen him to free Israel. Having gathered a large number of followers he rebelled against the caliph in Persia.  He was defeated and killed at Rai. His followers claimed that he was inspired, offering as proof the fact that he wrote books - even though he was illiterate. He founded the first sect that arose in Judaism after the destruction of the Temple, the 'Isawiyya.  Never did he claim to be the Messiah himself, but some of his followers felt that he would return after his death and bring the End Times. He made some minor alterations to the general set of Rabbinic laws and his followers became ascetic in their manners. The most radical of the Isawite beliefs was the acceptance of both Jesus and Muhammad as true prophets, but only to their own peoples.
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In the 9th century, Eldad ha-Dani announced the existence of the LOST TEN TRIBES, whose return was a prerequisite of the messianic era, and he stimulated the apocalyptic imagination, but did not say that he was the messiah. Eldad ben Maḥli ha-Dani (Hebrewאֶלְדָּד בֶּן מַחְלִי הַדָּנִי‎, lit. 'Eldad son of Mahli the Danite') (fl. c. 851 – c. 900) was a ninth-century Jewish merchanttraveller, and philologist. Though probably originally from southern Arabia,he professed to be a citizen of an "independent Jewish state" in East Africa, inhabited by people claiming descent from the lost Tribes of DanAsherGad, and Naphtali. Eldad visited BabyloniaKairouan, and Iberia, where he spread fanciful accounts of the Ten Lost Tribes and halakhot which he claimed he had brought from his native country. 

                                                                 

Maimonides is a medieval Jewish philosopher with considerable influence on Jewish thought, and on philosophy in general. Maimonides also was an important codifier of Jewish law. His views and writings hold a prominent place in Jewish intellectual history.  Maimonides in 1172 was confident of the coming of the Messiah.

In 1096 Jews thought the Messiah's deliverance had already begun, so by 

1121, a Karaite claimed to be the messiah in Palestine.  The Karaite sect absorbed both such Jewish sects as the Isawites (adherents of *Abu ʿIsā al-Isfahānī) and *Yudghanites, who were influenced by East-Islamic tendencies, and other anti-traditional movements.

                                                                    

The Wondrous Tale of Alroy is the sixth novel written by Benjamin Disraeli, who would later become a Prime Minister of Britain. It is a fictionalised account of the life of David Alroy. Its significance lies in its portrayal of Disraeli's "ideal ambition" and for its being his only novel with a distinctive Hebrew subject.  The real facts were that The caliphate in the days of Alroy was in a chaotic state. The Crusades had caused a general condition of unrest and a weakening of the authority of the sultans of Asia Minor and Persia. Defiant chieftains set up small independent states and a heavy poll taxes were levied on all males above the age of fifteen.

In 1147, David Alroy appeared in Mesopotamia claiming to be the messiah.  David Alroy led an uprising against Seljuk Sultan Muktafi and called upon the oppressed Jewish community to follow him to Jerusalem, where he would be their king and free the Jews from the hands of the Muslims.  Alroy recruited supporters in the mountains of Chaftan, and sent letters to Mosul, Baghdad, and other towns, proclaiming his divine mission. He was born Menaḥem ben Solomon, but adopted the name "David Alroy" ("Alroy" possibly meaning "the inspired one") when he began claiming to be the Messiah.

He was able to convince many Jewish people to join him and Alroy soon found himself with a considerable following. He resolved to attack the citadel of his native town, Amadiya, and directed his supporters to assemble in that city, with swords and other weapons concealed under their robes, and to give, as a pretext for their presence, their desire to study the Talmud.

What followed is uncertain, for the sources of the life of Alroy each tell a different tale in which events are interwoven with legend. It is believed that Alroy and his followers were defeated, and Alroy was put to death. Despite Alroy's death, Jewish communities in Iran, particularly in TabrizKhoy and Maragheh continued to regard David Alroy as their messiah according to mathematician and historian Al-Samawal al-Maghribi.

Similar men were recorded coming forward in Yemen, Fez, Persia, Spain and France in the 11th and 12th centuries.  

By the 13th century, Abraham Abulafia was active in Sicily and was followed in Spain by his disciples. Abulafia’s prophetic and messianic pretensions prompted a sharp reaction on the part of Shelomoh ben Avraham Adret, a famous legal authority who succeeded in annihilating the influence of Abulafia’s ecstatic Kabbalah in Spain.

 He went to Rome in 1280 in order to convert Pope Nicholas III to Judaism on the day before Rosh Hashanah. The Pope was in Suriano when he heard of it, and he issued orders to "burn the fanatic" as soon as he reached that place. The stake was erected in preparation close to the inner gate; but Abulafia set out for Suriano all the same and reached there August 22. While passing through the outer gate, he heard that the Pope had died from an apoplectic stroke during the preceding night. He returned to Rome, where he was thrown into prison by the Order of Friars Minor but was liberated after four weeks' detention. He was next heard of in Sicily.

Very early in life he was taken by his parents to Tudela, Navarre, where his aged father Samuel Abulafia instructed him in the Hebrew Bible and Talmud. In 1258, when Abraham was eighteen years old, his father died, and two years later Abraham began a life of ceaseless wandering. His first journey in 1260 was to the Land of Israel, where he intended to begin a search for the legendary river Sambation and the Ten Lost Tribes. He got no further than 'Akko, however, because of the desolation and lawlessness in the Holy Land stemming from the chaos following the last Crusades; the war that year between the Mongol Empire and the Mamluk Sultanate forced his return to Europe, via Greece. He had determined to go to Rome, but stopped short in Capua, where during the early 1260s he devoted himself with passionate zeal to the study of philosophy and of The Guide for the Perplexed of Maimonides, under the tutelage of a philosopher and physician named Hillel—probably the well-known Hillel ben Samuel of Verona.

In 1295, Samuel and Abraham, messiahs were expected at Avila.  

The Spanish persecution of 1391 produced Moses Botarel.

The expulsion of Jews in 1492 was followed by a number of such possible messiahs; Asher Lammlein in 1503, Solomon Molcho in about 1500 to 1532, and others. 

  • Asher Lammlein, Asher Kay (Käei) (?), a German proclaiming himself a forerunner of the Messiah, appeared in Istria, near Venice in 1502, and announced that if the Jews would be penitent and practice charity the Messiah would come within half a year, and a pillar of cloud and of smoke would precede the Jews on their return to Jerusalem. He found believers in Italy and Germany, even among some Christians. In obedience to his preaching, people fasted and prayed and gave alms to prepare for the coming of the Messiah, so that the year came to be known as the "year of penitence." However, by the end of the year of penitence Lammlein had either died or disappeared.

                                                             

In 1626 to 1676 we had Shabbetai Tzevi of Smyrna, of today's Turkey,  the most important of all pseudo-messias, who gained wide adherence and an offshoot of whose sect, the Donmeh, still survives.   d. at Dulcigno (present day Ulcinj) 1676), an Ottoman Jew who claimed to be the Messiah, but then converted to Islam.  One of the most important messianic movements, and whose influence was widespread throughout Jewry. His influence is felt even today. After his death, Sabbatai was followed by a line of putative followers who declared themselves Messiahs and are sometimes grouped as the "Sabbethaian Messiahs." Other prominent sages feared Hasidism because they associated it with the Sabbatean heresy and began to fight it by all means. [The Sabbatean heresy refers to Sabbatai Zevi (1626–1676), a rabbi who was proclaimed to be the Jewish Messiah in 1665.]  
                            
1726-1791 brought on Jacob Frank and Hayyim Malakh.There were also Mordecai Mokhiah, Judah Hasid, and Lobele Prossssnitz who appeared.

                                                               

Jacob Joseph Frank was an 18th-century Polish-Jewish religious leader who claimed to be the reincarnation of the self-proclaimed messiah Sabbatai Zevi and also of the biblical patriarch Jacob. he was born in 1726, Korolivka, Ukraine.  The Jewish authorities in Poland excommunicated Frank and his followers due to his heretical doctrines that included deification of himself as a part of a trinity and other controversial concepts such as neo-Carpocratian "purification through transgression" "OY VEY!"

Frank arguably created a new denomination of Judaism, now referred to as Frankism, which incorporated some aspects of Christianity into Judaism. The development of Frankism was one of the consequences of the messianic movement of Sabbatai Zevi. This religious mysticism followed socioeconomic changes among the Jews of PolandLithuania and Ruthenia.

1889 saw a pseudo-messiah declaring himself in Yemen.  

                                                                                                                          

                                Yemenite Jews

  • Shukr Kuhayl I, 19th-century Yemenite Messiah candidate.Shukr ben Salim Kuhayl I (?–1865), also known as Mari (Master) Shukr Kuhayl I (Hebrew: מרי שכר כחיל), was a Yemenite messianic claimant of the 19th century. He initially revealed himself in San‘a’ in 1861 as a messenger of the Messiah at a time when Jewish messianic expectations in Ottoman Yemen were ripe as a result of political turmoil. Divorcing his wife, he took up the life of an itinerant preacher to live in poverty and exhort the community to repentance. "I come to warn you and to remind you of repentance and redemption," he is reported to have said when publicly announcing his mission on a Sabbath in May 1861.  Although Kuhayl was very shortly thereafter killed by local Arabs in 1865 —apparently under direction of the imam controlling the capital of San‘a’, who viewed his activities as a threat—there were many among his followers who did not accept his demise, and expected his imminent return. Among these were his sister and son, who did not mourn his death. They were soon enough rewarded in 1868 by the appearance of Judah ben Shalom, claiming to be the self-same recently deceased Shukr Kuhayl, who then went on to lead a very significant messianic movement, which attracted both Yemenite Jews and Arabs.

  • Judah ben Shalom (Shukr Kuhayl II), 19th-century Yemenite Messiah candidate.  Judah ben Shalom, also known as Mori Shooker Kohail II or Shukr Kuhayl II, was a Yemenite messianic claimant of the mid-19th century.  (Same as Above). 

  • An answer to the Yemenite Jewish prayers:  Operation Magic Carpet is a widely known nickname for Operation On Wings of Eagles (Hebrewכנפי נשרים‎, Kanfei Nesharim), an operation between June 1949 and September 1950 that brought 49,000 Yemenite Jews to the new state of Israel,
  •  During its course, the overwhelming majority of Yemenite Jews – some 47,000 from Yemen, 1,500 from Aden, as well as 500 from Djibouti and Eritrea and some 2,000 Jews from Saudi Arabia– were airlifted to Israel. British and American transport planes made some 380 flights from Aden.
Oprah Haza, singer, was a Yemenite. When I hear, "Yemen," I immediately think of my favorite singer, Ofrah Haza.   

19 November 1957 – 23 February 2000), was an Israeli singer, actress and Grammy Award-nominated recording artist, commonly known in the Western world as "The Israeli Madonna", or "Madonna of the East". Her voice has been described as a "tender" mezzo-soprano.

Of Yemenite-Jewish heritage, Haza's music is known as a mixture of traditional and commercial singing styles, fusing elements of Eastern and Western instrumentation, orchestration and dance-beat. She became successful in Europe and the Americas; during her singing career, she earned many platinum and gold discs. In Israel, Haza was an influential cultural figure who helped to popularize Mizrahi culture.

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  • Yemen is in bad shape today.  Yemen has been suffering from a famine in since 2016 as a result of the Civil War. More than 50,000 children in Yemen died from starvation in 2017. The famine is being compounded by an outbreak of cholera that has affected more than one million people. The Saudi Arabian-led intervention in Yemen and blockade of Yemen have contributed to the famine and cholera epidemic.
I've probably left out a few of these false messiahs, people that tried to help their people and thought they could. They tried, failed and usually paid for it with their life.  I think many needed some personal advice; they had some meshugana ideas. 


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We've seen many who have claimed or were claimed to have been the Messiah, but nothing has changed.  The Golden Age of perfection has not arrived, though many people live in a high level of technology that is golden.  People haven't changed much at all.  However, there is such a think as a messiah complex.  

A messiah complex ( savior complex) is a state of mind in which an individual holds a belief that they are destined to become a savior today or in the near future. The term can also refer to a state of mind in which an individual believes that they are responsible for saving or assisting others.

Two events have already been fulfilled:
  • God redeems the Jewish people from the captivity that began during the Babylonian Exile, in a new Exodus
  • God returns the Jewish people to the Land of Israel, still happening, awaiting, many of lost 10 tribes have returned, almost all returned.
                                                                             

According to the Talmud, the Midrash, and the Zohar, the 'deadline' by which the Messiah must appear is 6000 years from creation (approximately the year 2240 in the Gregorian calendar, though calculations vary). Since this is near the end of 2021, that would mean that the Messiah may arrive in 219 more years.  I've heard possibly sooner.  This is the year 5782 on a Jewish calendar.  

  Edit 11/29,21 and 11/30/21

 Resource:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Jewish_messiah_claimants

https://biblia.com/factbook/Abigail-(sister-of-David)

https://www.bibleinfo.com/en/questions/who-were-twelve-disciples

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nahash_of_Ammon

https://christianity.stackexchange.com/questions/74193/were-the-12-disciples-jewish

https://www.urantiabook.org/139-The-Twelve-Apostles/?gclid=Cj0KCQiA7oyNBhDiARIsADtGRZY2yra5ma8wi58CV97Uvj07ZIdZQk4Bob5AB7wMhHKEeII8on4rY7kaAljMEALw_wcB

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Jewish_messiah_claimants

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wondrous_Tale_of_Alroy

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Isa

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Abulafia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judah_ben_Shalom

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messiah_in_Judaism#:~:text=According%20to%20the%20Talmud%2C%20the,calendar%2C%20though%20calculations%20vary).