The Meaning of "Messiah" in Jewish Tradition

The concept of the Messiah has a complex, diverse and, no surprise, contradictory history in Jewish religion. We will trace the evolution of this idea: its relatively meagre biblical roots; its emergence as a central religious concept at the turn of the rabbinic (Common) era and in the rise of the Jesus movement; the divergences between rabbinic Judaism and emergent Christianity; the medieval Jewish debate about the Messiah as the overture to apocalyptic transformation of history, or as an "upgrade" to an otherwise stable world, with attention the Jewish mystical understandings; and the controversies over the concept of a Messiah in modern and contemporary forms of Judaism.