The Origins of the Messianic Ideal

The Origins of the Messianic Ideal by Robert Wolfe presents the first strictly secular exposition of how and why the concept of "the Messiah" came to loom so large in both Jewish and Christian culture. Conventional treatments of this question, which are not very numerous, treat the Messianic ideal as something that fell from the skies as a prefiguring of the Redeemer who was to come. In reality it is obvious that the Messianic ideal was the creation of human beings the same as any other ideal. Why did the Messianic ideal assume the form that it did, and why did Jewish and Christian understandings of this ideal eventually diverge so sharply? This book answers these questions in an objective, well documented and systematic way.