Messianic Consciousness Research Articles

Eimuntas Nekrošius's Transnational ‘Voice from Lithuania’: Reinterpreting Polish Classics within Frames of the Theatre of Sensual Metaphors

The aim of this article is an interpretation of Eimuntas Nekrošius's performances staged in the National Theatre Warsaw in the last years of his life. In the context of complex political and cultural relationships between Poland and Lithuania, the aesthetics of the theatre of sensual metaphors invented by Nekrošius might be perceived from an uncommon perspective – not as a type of universal art presenting crucial issues of mankind, but as a transnational reinterpretation of Polish classic plays – first of all, the nineteenth-century Forefathers’ Eve by Adam Mickiewicz, the Polish poet born near Vilnius in Lithuania. From this point of view, the theatre of Nekrošius reveals his political potential to create a transnational bridge between neighbour states. The author tries to apply notions of ‘subaltern agency’ (Gayatri Spivak) and the ‘cosmopolitan subject’ (Yana Meerzon) to present the complex issue of empowerment of Polish and Lithunanian subjects – from rejection of the false messianic consciousness to transnational rapprochement.

Performing innocence: Violence and the nation in Ian McEwan’s Saturday and Sunjeev Sahota’s Ours Are the Streets

Mainstream British society and post-9/11 fiction borrow from the discourse of American exceptionalism (including the fall from innocence to experience, the desire to create or preserve a better world, a “Messianic consciousness” reflecting the arrogance of virtue, the development of narratives of heroism and goodness tied to nation-building, and the use of the above to justify “exemptionalism”) to expose and query the entitlement of those within the narrative home of Britishness and the outsider status of those used to define its borders. This article discusses Ian McEwan’s Saturday and Sunjeev Sahota’s Ours Are the Streets, arguing that they illustrate a turning point in Britain’s imagination of itself as a nation in a struggle over Britishness which is predicated on notions of violence and innocence. Since 9/11 the debate about Britishness has used innocence as a constitutive inside of the nation and direct violence as an exclusionary characteristic. McEwan satirizes this rhetoric of innocence whereas Sahota challenges it. Both novels illustrate how post-9/11 British fiction deals with politics as war, placing violence at the heart of society. McEwan parodies the point of view of British normative society by allowing his main character to justify his privileged position under the guise of arguing for the current social and international status quo. Sahota charts the journey of those who are caught between the rejection of unjust social structures and the desire to fit within them, depicting his protagonist’s misguided attempt to redefine the British nation through terrorism. Violence and exceptionalism are central to both novels, which portray a turn in the imagining of Britain. The events of 9/11 can therefore be seen not just as a historical turning point but as a turn in Britain’s imagination of itself.

Prophetic Literary Authority and the American Messianic Consciousness

Prophetic Literary Authority and the American Messianic Consciousness

Eskatologiens udvikling hos den historiske Jesus

This article reviews Per Bilde’s Den historiske Jesus. Three theses of Bilde are discussed: (1) The “sign prophets” in the first century C.E. are the nearest analogies to Jesus, but we should make a difference between those before the Caligula-crisis, who have been interested in cult and conversion, and those after this crisis. (2) Jesus had a messianic consciousness, but participated in a mentality that says: Nobody can legitimately give oneself a new status he can only receive it from a superior. (3) There is a development from proclaiming God’s mercy to announcing God’s judgement, but the interpretation of Jesus’ death as atoning death seems to be a retrospective interpretation after Easter. We may therefore say: The main three theses are basically justified but theyshould be modified a little bit.

Levinas’s Weak Messianism in Time and Flesh, or The Insistence of Messiah Ben David

From 1947 through 1974, Levinas worked out a first philosophy against fundamental ontology and in a very conscious tension with conceptions of messianism that turn on an other “time” or a “uchrony” of a future of promise or hope. In Existence and Existents, Levinas first began reworking the phenomenology of subjective time toward an interpretation of the “transcendental I” as embodied and caught up in cycles of its own repetitive birth to consciousness (awaking) and escape from consciousness (in sleep, in erotic life, escapism). This “I” is more than an “open” or a “Da‐”; it arises from the neutrality of existence, masters and enjoys its world in a present time, anxious about tomorrow. Unfolding the uniqueness of the present brought Levinas to philosophies of the instant and to a different source of transcendence in the present, namely the other person who, like death itself, is neither objectively graspable nor escapable. Because this Other affects a me at a sensuous level, bringing to our encounter something I do not experience in solitude, our conceptions of the hopeful place or moment of redemption are shifted from some future to a present instant. For the uniqueness of the now‐moment to come to light in phenomenology, a difference must be secured between the upsurge of sensibility and the flowing, essentially unified and formal time that Husserl had identified with the transcendental ego of phenomenology (thereby formalizing the “times” of bodily sensation, and momentary affects). The question thus arose for Levinas: how can we rethink hope, with responsibility, in light of the double nature of so‐called phenomenological time? In answering this question, Levinas considerably reworked the Heideggerian heritage of phenomenology, even as he began to weave his “ethics” together with a profoundly corporeal understanding of Jewish messianism, secular and religious. The author of this article argues that Levinas, long before he is taken for an ethical thinker, is a unique thinker of messianic consciousness. The author compares the way he reopens messianic suffering and remembrance with Walter Benjamin’s weak messianic force. We have, the author believes, in Levinas, what may be the most fragile, perhaps the ultimate form of messianic hope, located in a rethinking of the present and the intersubjective body as informal conditions of possibility of a conscience both subjective and intersubjective.

Illusions of Managing History: The Enduring Relevance of Reinhold Niebuhr

January/February 2008 Historically Speaking 23 Illusions of Managing History: The Enduring Relevance of Reinhold Niebuhr* AndrewJ. Bacevich Reinhold Niebuhr, a towering presence in American intellectual life from the 1930s through the 1960s, thought deeply about the dilemmas confronting the United States as a consequence of its emergence as a global superpower. The truths he spoke are uncomfortable ones. They do not easily translate into sound bites suitable for the Sunday morning talk shows. Nor do they offer material from which to weave the sort of stump speech likely to boost the poll numbers of your favorite candidate in Iowa or New Hampshire. Four of those truths merit particular attention at present. They are the persistent sin of American Exceptionalism; the indecipherability of history; the false allure of simple solutions; and, finally, the imperative of appreciating the limits of power. One persistent theme of Niebuhr's writings on foreign policy concerns the difficulty that Americans have in seeing themselves as they really are. "Perhaps the most significant moral characteristic of a nation," he declared in 1932, "is its hypocrisy."' Niebuhr did not exempt his own nation from that judgment. The chief distinguishing feature of American hypocrisy lies in the conviction that America's very founding was a providential act, both an expression of divine favor and a summons to serve as God's chosen instrument . The Anglo-American colonists settling these shores, according to Niebuhr, saw it as America 's purpose "to make a new beginning in a corrupt world." They believed "that we had been called out by God to create a new humanity."2They believed further that this covenant with God marked America as a new Israel. As a Chosen People possessingwhat Niebuhr referred to as a "Messianic consciousness," Americans came to see themselves as set apart, their motives irreproachable , their actions not to be judged by standards applied to others." "Every nation has its own form of spiritual pride," Niebuhr observed in The Irony of American History. "Our version is that our nation turned its back upon the vices of Europe and made a new beginning." Even after World War II, he wrote, the United States remained "an adolescent nation , with illusions of childlike innocency."3 Indeed, the outcome of World War II, vaulting the United States to the apex of world power, seemed to affirm that the nation enjoyed God's favor and was doing God's work. Such illusions have proven remarkably durable. * On October 9, 2007, AndrewJ. Bacevich delivered Boston University 's 2007 University Lecture. We publish a substantial excerpt of the lecture here; an expanded version of the lecture appeared in theJanuary 2008 issue of WorldAffairs. Reinhold Niebuhr speaking at the Union Theological Seminary , February 1, 1959. (Photo by Walter Sanders/Time Life Pictures/Getty Images). We see them in the way that President Bush, certain of the purity of U.S. intentions in Iraq, shrugs off responsibility for the calamitous consequences ensuing from his decision to invade that country. We see them also in the way that the administration insists thatAbu Ghraib or Guantanamo or the policy of secret rendition that delivers suspected terrorists into the hands of torturers in no way compromises U.S. claims of support for human rights and die rule of law. It follows that only cynics or scoundrels would dare suggest that more sordid considerations might have influenced the American choice for war or that incidents like Abu Ghraib signify something other than simply misconduct by a handful of aberrant soldiers . As Niebuhr wrote, when we swathe ourselves in self-regard, it's but a short step to concluding that "onlymalice could prompt criticism of anyof ouractions "—an insight that goes far to explain the outrage expressed by senior U.S. officials back in 2003 when "Old Europe" declined to endorse the war.' In Niebuhr's view, America's rise to power derived less from divine favor than from good fortune combined with a fierce determination to convert that good fortune into wealth and power. The good fortune —Niebuhr referred to it as "America, rocking in the cradle of its continental security"—came in the form of a vast landscape, rich in resources, ripe for exploitation , and...

Jesus the Good Shepherd Who Will Also Bring Other Sheep (John 10:16): The Old Testament Background of a Familiar Metaphor

AbstractJohn 10:16 is one of the major Johannine mission texts that sheds significant light on Jesus' messianic consciousness during his earthly ministry. Almost exclusively, however, scholarly treatments focus on the fourth evangelist's use of the Hebrew Scriptures without entertaining questions regarding the historical Jesus. Taking its point of departure from a study of the literary and historical contexts of John 10 and an investigation of its genre, the present essay seeks to uncover the fabric of OT motifs that converge in Jesus' pronouncement in John 10:16, focusing particularly on prophetic passages in Ezekiel, Zechariah, and Isaiah as well as Davidic typology. The scope of this article also includes Qumran, the apocrypha and pseudepigrapha, and rabbinic literature. Jesus emerges as a faithful interpreter of the Hebrew Scriptures who understood himself as the eschatological Davidic messianic "shepherd." John the evangelist is found to uphold the lofty vision of a community—composed of both Jews and Gentiles—united by faith in the God-sent Messiah.

The Messiah before Jesus: the suffering servant of the Dead Sea Scrolls

In a work that challenges notions that have dominated New Testament scholarship for more than a hundred years, Israel Knohl gives startling evidence for a messianic precursor to who is described as the 'Suffering Servant' in recently published fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Messiah before clarifies many formerly incomprehensible aspects of Jesus' life and confirms the story in the New Testament about his messianic awareness. book shows that, around the time of Jesus' birth, there came into being a conception of 'catastrophic' messianism in which the suffering, humiliation, and death of the messiah were regarded as an integral part of the redemptive process. Scholars have long argued that could not have foreseen his suffering, death, and resurrection because the concept of a slain savior who rises from the dead was alien to the Judaism of his time. But, on the basis of hymns found at Qumran among the Dead Sea Scrolls, Knohl argues that, one generation before Jesus, a messianic leader arose in the Qumran sect who was regarded by his followers as ushering in an era of redemption and forgiveness. This messianic leader was killed by Roman soldiers in the course of a revolt that broke out in Jerusalem in 4 B.C.E. Romans forbade his body to be buried and after the third day his disciples believed that he was resurrected and rose to heaven. This formed the basis for Jesus' messianic consciousness, Knohl argues; it was because of this model that anticipated he would suffer, die, and be resurrected after three days. Knohl takes his fascinating inquiry one step further by suggesting that this messiah was a figure known to us from historical sources of the period. This identification may shed new light on the mystery of the 'Paraclete' in the Gospel of John. A pathbreaking study, The Messiah before Jesus will reshape our understanding of Christianity and its relationship to Judaism.

Phenomenology, Dialectic, and Time in Levinas's Time and the Other

In his introduction to 1979 re-publication of his 1948 lecture series Time and Other, Emmanuel Levinas expressed some misgivings about shortcomings of that text. It was written, he claimed, in haste; its style (or non-style) was maladroit and abrupt; theses were baldly stated (improvised) without their justifications being worked out or their conclusions fully or systematically developed. Nevertheless, he said, he still adhered to the main project, of which it is . . . birth and first formulation: project to determine, satisfaction and dissatisfaction, surplus of sociality (TO 8 (30)).1 Relatively little attention has been paid in Levinas literature to this text and to related analyses ofthe instant and hypostasis in an earlier book, Existence and Existents. While it is true that these treatments of figures of temporality lack depth and sophistication of his ones of diachrony and they still merit close attention. In first place, they are among Levinas's earliest original efforts in philosophy, after his translation, with Gabrielle Peiffer, of Husserl's Cartesian Meditations and his 1932 dissertation on what he called Husserl's theory of intuition. As such, they show strong influence upon his thought of Husserl's phenomenology after latter's so-called transcendental turn, especially in emphasis on time as form of all egological genesis, whether active or passive. Crucial influences upon his thinking also included Bergson (whose Essay on Immediate Data of Consciousness Levinas considered among five greatest works in history of Western philosophy); Vladimir Jankelevitch's analyses of time, boredom, and other psychological phenomena; existentialisms of Sartre and especially of Merleau-Ponty; and, of course, extended treatment of ecstatic temporality given by Heidegger in Being and Time. Secondly, a significant methodological difference is apparent between Time and Other and Totality and Infinity. As will be shown below, earlier text makes use of a dialectical method of exposition or development along with its self-professed one. By time of latter text, this dialectical element has been dropped, and phenomenological character of exposition brought to fore. Why does Levinas adopt this methodology for Time and Other, and abandon it so completely in Totality and Infinity? Finally, Time and Other highlights a significant difference in treatment of temporality of exteriority and alterity between Levinas (up to and including Totality and Infinity) and later Levinas (from publication of Totality and Infinity to present). To put it briefly, temporal emphasis in early writings is upon future; that of upon past. The language of works of Levinas is language, not offuture never future enough but of never past enough; of and glory, not of peace. This shift marks an abandonment of a line of thinking begun in Existence and Existents and Time and Other and continued in Totality and Infinity, perhaps insistently. The open question of messianic eschatology is replaced with exploration of enigma of deep past. It is not to a future given in extreme vigilance of a messianic consciousness, but to a diachronic past and trace out of which face of other person arises that thought, and service, turns. It will be argued in this essay that temporal emphasis on futurity in Totality and Infinity is a consequence of Levinas's commitment to, and extension of, his treatments of time in Time and Other, which text predates Levinas's full appropriation of Franz Rosenzweig's thought. A larger task, one beyond scope of this essay, would be to trace connection between gradual abandonment of absolute futurity and its associated themes of separation, distance, and height in Totality and Infinity and adoption of passe immemorial, proximity, trace, illeity, and glory in works. …

Messianic Consciousness as an Expression of National Inferiority: Chaadaev and Some Samizdat Writings of the 1970s

A long time ago, the religious thinker Chaadaev published a "Philosophical Letter," which is still regarded as a slander on Russia which he dated from "The Necropolis," i.e. Moscow. Anyone looking at Brezhnev's Russia must feel with horror what a prophetic term it wasBoris Shragin, 1977Stalin's death and Nikita Krushchev's unsuccessful attempt at de-Stalinization significantly eroded official Marxist-Leninist ideology in the Soviet Union. Searching for a new alternative to the fading Communist ideology, many Russians turned toward traditional Russian forms of national and religious identity.

The American Messianic Consciousness: The Concept of the Chosen People and Manifest Destiny

The American Messianic Consciousness: The Concept of the Chosen People and Manifest Destiny

A note on Jesus’ Messianic Consciousness and 11 HQ Melchizedek

A note on Jesus’ Messianic Consciousness and 11 HQ Melchizedek

The Alleged Messianic Consciousness of Jesus

The Alleged Messianic Consciousness of Jesus

The Messianic Consciousness of Christ

The Messianic Consciousness of Christ

Jesus as Lord

In successive discussions of the title Son of God, which seems to have been Jesus' own self-designation, and Son of Man, which would seem to have been applied to him after his death by the primitive Aramaic-speaking community of believers in his second coming, we have sought to disentangle primitive from secondary tradition. We have particularly emphasized the fact that in its distinctive principles Jesus' own teaching attaches itself to the primitive form of the messianic ideal—Israel as Yahweh's son; not the later theocratic—the Davidic heir to the throne as Son of God; nor the still later apocalyptic—the supernatural deliverer coming on the clouds of heaven as the fulfilment of the promise. In agreement with this view of the teaching of Jesus, our earliest documents, the Pauline epistles, make sonship in the ethical and religious sense the essence of the glad tidings. Since the publication of our argument our conclusions have been confirmed by the important newly-discovered document, the Odes of Solomon. The confirmation is especially strong if the view of Harnack be taken, that the Odes in their original form are Jewish, rather than the view of their discoverer, J. Rendel Harris, who regards them as Christian. The Odes give irrefutable evidence of the existence in first-century Judaism, or at least in primitive Christian circles, of a doctrine of sonship in the ethical and religious sense closely in line with what we have urged as the distinctive element in the messianic consciousness of Jesus. The ideal of the odist for Israel is an ideal of spiritual sonship. By the knowledge and love of the Beloved, “the Most High and Merciful,” Israel is guaranteed not only sonship to God, but immortality, an eternal dwelling in God's presence.

The Dawn of the Messianic Consciousness

The Dawn of the Messianic Consciousness

The Dawn of the Messianic Consciousness

The Dawn of the Messianic Consciousness

The Dawn of the Messianic Consciousness

The Dawn of the Messianic Consciousness

The Name 'Son of Man' and the Messianic Consciousness of Jesus+

The Name 'Son of Man' and the Messianic Consciousness of Jesus+

The Messianic Consciousness of Jesus

The Messianic Consciousness of Jesus