Thinking Tradition

This chapter has a lot to do with theories of messianism, circling back to things discussed in the beginning of this series.

Things like, what do we mean by this word, how do we get through the different uses of this word to find out what it originally meant, including within our minds? We previously looked at historians like Graetz, the quintessential 19th century new historian of the Jewish people, who had a clear agenda. 

His agenda is clear to us now, maybe then it was not so clear. But we have received the concepts in our mind through thinkers like Scholem, who was countering Graetz. He was presenting a narrative of Jews and Judaism as a historical progression, pioneering and championing liberal virtues ultimately, and a rational humanistic form of Judaism, as far as its meaning internally and externally, for the more religious, and the secular. 

In so doing, Graetz aligned Jews and Judaism with the growing liberal protestant school in Germany, and the academic and philosophical school of Hegel - human civilization as a constructive dialectical process leading us forward and beyond archaic matters.

In so doing, Graetz swept under the rug of history things like Sabbatian messianism and Kabbalah mysticism and such. 

In so doing, messianism became less about a legendary figure associated with the line of King David himself, his seed, but rather more of a disposition of hope.

And in that context of that thinking, the Maccabees and other cases retroactively were pinned as messianism. But there was no Davidic element there. This was a retroactive maneuver. 

Sequences of Development

They both had traditional ways of thinking embedded in him, affecting his assumptions - for example, that all sorts of biblical scriptures are presumably messianic, pointing to the messiah, which is a problematic presumption, when critical thinking and tools are applied there.

We approached messianism here in the opposite approach, organically, to understand it and what happened and how we got here.

Thus we glanced at how the terminology developed within the biblical narrative, including the word messiah, oils, there was an etymological process there.

Within the biblical narrative the legend of King David was produced and tied in with messianism and accompanying terms, and on top of that, at the end of or the adjacent era of the 2nd Temple with its history and literature, particularly with the New Testament and Early Christianity case, a third element of the legendary apocalyptic Son of Man figure was forged in with the David legendary line and the oily ritualistic ‘messiah’ wording and meaning.

And after that, the rabbinic traditional literature, a little late in coming, after the Jesus of Nazareth / New Testament / Early Christianity prototype, in the following centuries, evidently engaged with prominent but scattered traditions and interpretations and ideas in regards to the Messiah legend, processing and presenting the matter in their way - generations of discussions and commentaries of major rabbinic scholars and leaders.

After that, we kind of jumped to the mystical kabbalistic traditions hitting the stage of Jewish history between the 13th to the 16th centuries mostly, and we reviewed some messianic figures and content in that context, which were utilized by the Sabbatian outbreak in the 17th century, and following that outbreak, kabbalistic messianic content, particularly Lurianic concepts and rituals probably, spread throughout the Jewish world and continued through the Hasidic spiritualistic phenomena until today.

Critical Thinking

Well, those 2 grand sequences - biblical roots, Early Christian prototype, Talmudic follow up; and kabbalistic roots, Sabbatian outbreak, Hasidic follow up - did not tell the whole story of course, that was just a focus on these creative developmental aspects… and at the end of that and parallel to those sequences, we have the case for Zionism. 

Zionism kind of sits on top of those historical sequences. This modern wave of Zionism begins in the 19th century, parallel to middle stages of Hasidism, with a bit of overlap but not too much. Some Hasidic and even Sabbatian persons and literature fed into this Zionism, but not enough to think of it as a Sabbatian or Hasidic thing at all. 

So what is it, or where is it?

In regards to the sequences and the theories of messianism, Zionism sits on top of the historical sequences presented here, and it definitely interacts directly with the theories of messianism. These moderns were dealing with their understanding of messianism, or Messiah, and some were even acting on it. 

It is not assumed here that Zionism was a messianic movement.

That is not the logic nor the method relevant! What we are interested in is what within Zionism was messianic, and along with that, as a separate reflective matter, we are wondering how and why, and what do we think of it in general. 

Proactive Proclivity

Because Zionism was very much a proactive approach, it influenced the idea of messianism, and those Zionists brought with them a more proactive interpretation of messianism.

And because it was a nationalistic movement, bringing nationalistic ideas of the 19th century, it brought to messianism a nationalistic interpretation and association and influence, and we need to be careful, because messianism can be nationalistic and proactive, but those cannot dictate our improved understanding of messianism. 

That is how we arrived at this situation, where messianism is associated with everything - idealism, nationalism, radicalism, idle determinism, religious fanaticism, secular activism, etc. 

Sometimes Zionism is considered a post-modern phenomenon of messianism and in general. I don’t usually think this way. It seems to me in my mind a modern thing, not post-modern, but that is also a question.

I think it’s mostly modern because it is perceived as part of the historical process, perhaps the peak of it, but not post-historical or something like that.

And the religious as well as the secular Zionists, including those who used messianic concepts, were using modern tools of logic, critical thinking and revising terms and systems. 

They were not battling with a vacuum of meaning to fill, nor any kind of reconstructing systems of logic itself, politics themselves, they weren’t creating new definitions of religion as such, but rather were changing and influencing and criticizing and advocating within those. 

We will reach a bit of post modern messianism, eventually, after Zionism.