From the Bible to Messiah

With centuries of Christian biblical interpretation behind us, it is easy to assume that understanding Christ as the suffering, dying, and rising Messiah is simply a matter of "reading the Bible." However, for the first followers of Christ, such an assertion was a radically new and extreme claim about the Messiah "according to the Scriptures," especially to their fellow Jews. The Hebrew Bible makes different claims about Messiah and the second temple period had a variety of ideas about what this term meant. However, it was only when a group of followers of Jesus of Nazareth started claiming their crucified leader was the long-awaited Messiah that the idea of a suffering and dying Messiah emerged within Judiaism. Even the famous "suffering servant" passage found in Deutero-Isaiah is talking about a past suffering ("He was oppressed, and he was afflicted"). However, the first Christians discovered a new meaning of the Messiah by moving beyond the literal context of their scriptures. They experienced the dying and rising Lord and began to see their sacred texts with a new lens. It's no wonder they found themselves in regular conflict with the Jewish experts of the Law.

At the very least, Christians owe it to ourselves to recognize that the very foundation of our faith comes from a surprisingly novel interpretation of the Hebrew Bible. We should avoid presenting the interpretation of Scripture as a mere process of biblical literalism.