Review of Novenson, The Grammar of Messianism

THE JESUS CREED BLOG: Loosening the Messiah (Scot McKnight). A review of Matthew Novenson new book, The Grammar of Messianism: An Ancient Jewish Political Idiom and Its Users (OUP 2017). Excerpt:

Second, his approach is to go to the texts and particularize, contextualize, individualize the messianic texts — those that actually mention “messiah” — and so connect each messianic text to its social setting. The result is not a messianic idea that is a synthesis of all the messianic texts, which is more or less what happens many times when people construct a messianic idea, but instead a term — messiah — that has very little meaning apart from the particular context in which it occurs.

Dr. Novenson is Senior Lecturer in New Testament and Christian Origins at the University of Edinburgh (New College). A review of his first book, Christ Among the Messiahs, was noted here. He was also a plenary speaker at the St. Andrews Symposium on Divine Sonship last June.