The word Christ is Greek for Messiah. Throughout the Greek language books of the New Testament Jesus is called the Messiah, as in the following well known passage from the book of Luke:
Now in that same region there were shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid, for see, I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord.”
(Luke 2:8 – 11)*
From his birth Jesus was announced to the world as being the Messiah. But what exactly does that mean? The Hebrew word “Messiah” means “Anointed one.” But there were a great many Hebrew leaders who were anointed before the time of Jesus. Every king of Israel and of Judah was anointed by the temple priests. Here Samuel describes the anointing of Saul as King of Israel:
Samuel took a vial of oil and poured it on his head and kissed him; he said, “The LORD has anointed you ruler over his people Israel. You shall reign over the people of the LORD, and you will save them from the hand of their enemies all around.”
(I Samuel 10:1)
At the time of Saul, there were two kingdoms populated by the descendants of Jacob: Israel in the north, with its capital in Samaria; and Judah in the south, with its capital in Jerusalem. After the death of King Saul, David was first anointed King of Judah:
Then the people of Judah came, and there they anointed David king over the house of Judah.
(2 Samuel 2:4)
Saul’s son Ishbosheth was king of Israel at the time. After the assassination of Ishbosheth, David was anointed king of all Israel:
So all the elders of Israel came to the king at Hebron, and King David made a covenant with them at Hebron before the LORD, and they anointed David king over Israel.
(2 Samuel 5:3)
Following the death of this father King David, Solomon was anointed as king:
There the priest Zadok took the horn of oil from the tent and anointed Solomon. Then they blew the trumpet, and all the people said, “Long live King Solomon!”
(1 Kings 1:39)
Anointment was also used for the installation of Hebrew priests:
“The sacred vestments of Aaron shall be passed on to his sons after him; they shall be anointed in them and ordained in them.”
(Exodus 29:29)
And even some foreign kings were considered to be among the anointed, as in this passage from Isaiah that describes Cyrus the Great of the Persian empire:
Thus says the LORD to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have grasped to subdue nations before him and strip kings of their robes…
(Isaiah 45:1)
Was Jesus anointed? He was baptized by John the Baptist, as is reported in this passage:
Then Jesus came from Galilee to John at the Jordan, to be baptized by him. John would have prevented him, saying, “I need to be baptized by you, and you come to me?” But Jesus answered him, “Let it be so now, for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.” Then he consented. And when Jesus had been baptized, just as he came up from the water, suddenly the heavens were opened to him and he saw God’s Spirit descending like a dove and alighting on him. And a voice from the heavens said, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”
(Matthew 3:13 – 17)
These passages illustrate that baptism isn’t the same thing as anointment. For one thing, baptism was performed with water, whereas anointment was done with oil. And anointment was the ceremony by which a person was initiated into a leadership position, whereas baptism was intended to be a form of confession:
Then Jerusalem and all Judea and all the region around the Jordan were going to him, and they were baptized by him in the River Jordan, confessing their sins.
(Matthew 3:5 – 6)
Baptism and anointment were two different processes that were devised for two different purposes. But in addition to being baptized Jesus was also anointed, as described in this passage:
While he was at Bethany in the house of Simon the leper, as he sat at the table, a woman came with an alabaster jar of very costly ointment of nard, and she broke the jar and poured the ointment on his head.
(Mark 14:3)
That was a very different type of anointment. The woman didn’t anoint Jesus as part of an initiation ceremony; she did it in preparation for his burial:
“She has done what she could; she has anointed my body beforehand for its burial.”
(Mark 14:8)
So yes, Jesus was anointed with oil, but not as part of a ritual that would have appointed him a king or priest. This story is told in Matthew 26:6-13 and again in John 12:1-8; but in the book of John the woman is named as Mary the sister of Lazarus.
Jesus even made every effort to avoid being anointed as king:
When Jesus realized that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, Jesus withdrew again to the mountain by himself.
(John 6:15)
Luke says that Jesus was anointed in a completely different sense:
When he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to set free those who are oppressed,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. Then he began to say to them, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”
(Luke 4:16 – 21)
(The passage from the book of Isaiah referenced in the above passage can be found in Chapter 61.) According to Luke, Jesus wasn’t anointed with oil, as would be done in an initiation ceremony; he was anointed with the Holy Spirit. The Annunciation of Luke 2:8 – 11 proclaims Jesus to be the Anointed One. But as we have seen, every king and priest of Israel was anointed– so Jesus could not have been “the” Anointed One– at least, not in the terminology of the Old Testament. And since Jesus was never anointed in the fashion of the kings of either Israel or Judah, he couldn’t have been a king, at least not in the Old Testament sense.
Returning to the annunciation, we should note that Jesus was also called a savior:
“…to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah.”
(Luke 2:11)
The word “savior” makes many appearances in the Old Testament, as for example the following:
“The LORD is my rock, my fortress, and my deliverer,
my God, my rock in whom I take refuge,
my shield and the horn of my salvation,
my stronghold and my refuge,
my savior; you save me from violence.”
(2 Samuel 22:2 – 3)
In the Old Testament it is God who is the savior. But there are a few passages that describe a savior who is to arrive at some point in the future:
On that day there will be an altar to the LORD in the midst of the land of Egypt and a pillar to the LORD at its border. It will be a sign and a witness to the LORD of hosts in the land of Egypt; when they cry to the LORD because of oppressors he will send them a savior, and will defend and deliver them.
(Isaiah 19:19 – 20)
The savior Isaiah described is someone who will defend the worshipers of Yahweh, the god of the Old Testament. The above passage is part of a longer narrative of the conquest of Egypt by Judah:
On that day the Egyptians will be like women and tremble with fear before the hand that the LORD of hosts raises against them. And the land of Judah will become a terror to the Egyptians; everyone to whom it is mentioned will fear because of the plan that the LORD of hosts is planning against them.
(Isaiah 19:16 – 17)
The LORD will make himself known to the Egyptians, and the Egyptians will know the LORD on that day and will serve with sacrifice and offerings, and they will make vows to the LORD and perform them.
(Isaiah 19:21)
Well, that did not happen. The kingdom of Judah was conquered by the Neo-Babylonians in 597 BCE. So the savior of this passage is really just a literary device employed by the author to serve his thematic purposes.
Here is another passage in which Isaiah identifies God as the Savior:
Truly, you are a God who hides himself,
O God of Israel, the Savior.
All of them are put to shame and confounded;
the makers of idols go in disgrace together.
But Israel is saved by the LORD with everlasting salvation;
you shall not be put to shame or confounded
ever again.
(Isaiah 45:15 – 17)
God in this selection is viewed as the savior of Israel, not of all the people of the world. The passage states that Israel has already been saved, and that its salvation shall last forever. That, too, turned out to be false, since long after this passage was written the Romans conquered Palestine. After a revolt in Judaea the Romans destroyed the city of Jerusalem in 70 CE, tore down the temple of Solomon, and used booty from the temple to build the Colosseum of Rome. That hardly sounds like a permanent salvation.
This gives us some context to understand what the word “Messiah” meant to the authors of the Old Testament. So does Jesus measure up to their expectations?
To answer that we need to go back to the story of the garden of Eden. Here’s what that story says about why God threw Adam and Eve out of the garden:
Then the LORD God said, “See, the humans have become like one of us, knowing good and evil, and now they might reach out their hands and take also from the tree of life, and eat and live forever” — therefore the LORD God sent them forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from which they were taken. He drove out the humans, and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a sword flaming and turning to guard the way to the tree of life.
(Genesis 3:22 – 24)
God threw them out because he didn’t want the humans to eat the fruit of the tree of life, because doing so would extend their lives. He even posted cherubim and a flaming sword at the entrance to the garden to prevent any of their descendants from entering the garden and getting access to the tree of life. In other words, God threw them out to prevent any of their descendants from having eternal life.
And that is the perspective from which the entire Old Testament was written– except for Chapter 12 of the book of Daniel. That is the only section of the Old Testament that explicitly describes the resurrection of the dead, a last judgment, and rewards or punishments in the afterlife.
Here’s a passage from the Psalms:
I am counted among those who go down to the Pit;
I am like those who have no help,
like those forsaken among the dead,
like the slain that lie in the grave,
like those whom you remember no more,
for they are cut off from your hand.(Psalm 88:4-5)
If God no longer remembers the dead, then he can’t forgive their sins. If the dead are cut off from the hand of God then God can’t resurrect them.
The Old Testament authors (with the exception of Daniel) didn’t believe in the single most important teaching of Jesus: the rewards of the afterlife.
But it goes much deeper than that. They didn’t believe in anything Jesus had to say about the forgiveness of sins. The Old Testament was about knowing the law, following the law, and punishing those to disobey it. But Jesus said:
“Do not judge, so that you may not be judged. For the judgment you give will be the judgment you get, and the measure you give will be the measure you get.”
(Matthew 7:1-2)
You can’t punish someone according to the law unless you first judge them an find them guilty of violation of the law. Here’s another quote:
Then Peter came and said to him, “Lord, if my brother or sister sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?” Jesus said to him, “Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times.
(Matthew 18:21-22)
So every sin must be forgiven 77 times. And which sins must be forgiven? Jesus answered that question too:
Therefore I tell you, people will be forgiven for every sin and blasphemy, but blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven. Whoever speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come.
(Matthew 12:31-32)
So murder, rape, incest, sodomy, assault, robbery, battery, fraud, slander, libel– all must be forgiven, and must be forgiven 77 times each. That is literally the opposite of what the Old Testament authors taught.
The Old Testament authors had a vision of the end of time– but it was nothing like that of the New Testament authors. Zechariah 14 describes a final battle that will take place before the gates of Jerusalem. And here’s what he says will happen afterwards:
Then all who survive of the nations that have come against Jerusalem shall go up year after year to worship the King, the Lord of hosts, and to keep the Festival of Booths. If any of the families of the earth do not go up to Jerusalem to worship the King, the Lord of hosts, there will be no rain upon them.
(Zechariah 14:16-17)
That is decidedly NOT a New Testament vision. That is a vision of a world converted to Judaism, not to Christianity.
The Old Testament authors did not believe in Jesus’s message about the afterlife, they didn’t believe in anything he had to say about forgiveness, they didn’t believe in his morality, and they had a completely different vision of the end of time. Why would they have predicted the coming of someone whose beliefs were so antithetical to their own? Answer: they wouldn’t have.
*All passages cited are taken from the New Revised Standard Version, Updated Edition that was published in 2019 by the National Council of Churches of the United States of America.
Copyright (c) 2025, David S. Moore
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