ABSTRACT
Messianism is essentially a belief in the perfection of man at the end of days, in a decisive and radical improvement that will take place in the condition of humanity, society and the world, in a final and complete resolution of history. Unlike the cyclical conceptions of time in classical and Eastern cultures, the Messianic conception of time envisaged a revolutionary change of order leading all at once to the Messianic future, or a linear progress of time from the imperfect present to a better state. This was an entirely new and utopian scheme, though it was sometimes viewed as a return to a golden age in the past (a “restorative utopia,” to use Gershom Scholem’s expression, as in “restore our days as of old”).1 The idea of the perfection of man at the end of days lies at the heart of the Messianic conception. Judaism and Christianity had different approaches to Messianism and
consequently to the idea of redemption. The various currents in historical Judaism saw redemption as a manifestation which takes place in the public sphere and in the arena of history, while Christian theology, with its stress on sin and atonement, saw it as the personal salvation of the individual. Christianity was essentially hostile to all movements of political Messianism because they declared that they had come to replace it. Their preaching of national or universal redemption and their vision of history moving towards a redemptive climax in which all social contradictions would be resolved in one revolutionary act were in contradiction to the Christian conception of history as a process of decline.2 In a similar way, Martin Buber, the philosopher of I and Thou, saw the Messianic urge as a desire to resolve tensions, oppositions, and contradictions: “The world we live in is always full of fierce oppositions and always aspires to redemption.”3
