Winter 1984 - 1985 - Quarterly Review

QUARTERLY REVIEW, WINTER 1984
achievements. This concept of a "failed" but true messiah is found in a
rabbinic tradition of the Messiah ben Joseph. The Messiah ben David
(son of David) is the one who brings the final restoration. In the
Messiah ben Joseph idea, you have a messiah who comes and fails,
indeed is put to death, but this messiah paves the way for the final
redemption.
In fact, Christians also sensed that Jesus did not exhaust the
achievements of the final messiah. Despite Christian claims that Jesus
was a total success (the proof being that redemption has been
achieved; it is of the otherworldly kind) even Christians spoke of a
Second Coming. The concept of Second Coming, in a way, is a tacit
admission that if at first you don't succeed, try, try again.
One might argue then that both sides claimed—and denied—more
than was necessary in order to protect their own truth against the
counterclaims of the other. Both sides were too close to recognize each
other, and too close and too conflicted to come to grips with each
other's existence as valid in its own right. Both faiths stepped out of
history to protect their own position—Christians denying anything
revelatory further can happen in history because Christ is the final
revelation; Jews denying any further revelation in history because
Judaism is a covenant that cannot be revoked.
There was even more theological fallout to these moves. Religion
tended to abandon the world to Caesar or to mammon. Religion all too
often ended up as an opiate of the masses, i.e., promising people
fulfillment in the great by-and-by if they accept suffering and the
world as it is. In a way, each group was defining the sacred out of
history into another realm.
Placing the sacred beyond history protected faith from refutation
and disappointment but the cost was high. It is not surprising then
that each faith tended to generate movements from time to time that
sought to redress the balance or that sought to bring the "missing"
part of redemption into being. What was defined as "missing" grew
out of the interaction of tradition, local culture, and the historical
condition of the group. Since the concept of redemption can be
pushed toward a spiritual realization or a worldly one, both religions
developed parallel responses along a spectrum of positions within
each faith. These developments further complicated the relations
between the two faiths even as they ensured even greater overlap and
parallelism between them.
In retrospect, a key moment of division came in the differential
response of the two groups to the destruction of the Second Temple.
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