From the Hebrew Bible to the New Testament: Reflecting on the True Meaning of Messiah

From the Hebrew Bible to the New Testament: Reflecting on the True Meaning of Messiah

WONG Tin Sheung

Many people understand the Messiah mostly from the perspective of the New Testament. As a result, they often regard the Old Testament passages as typology of Jesus Christ. There are two problems with this approach: first, it ignores the contexts of the Old Testament passages; second, they understand the passages solely from the perspective of the New Testament while ignoring the theological development in the intertestamental period.

The purpose of this article is to investigate, with the perspective of the Hebrew Bible as the starting point, the development of different messianic concepts during the Second Temple period, and thereby identify those messianic concepts which were prevalent at the time of the New Testament and were revealed in Jesus Christ. The Messiah as shown by Jesus Christ becomes believers' basis of hope in any situation.