ABSTRACT
Ever since the days of the Second Temple the messianic idea has acquired a variety of meanings and contents, and in this sense it designates different constructs regarding the human purpose in history. What we are concerned with here is historical Messianism, in other words Messianism dealing with the ultimate purpose of the history of the human race as such, rather than with a Utopian cosmic eschatology, dealing with changes in the construct of our known world. 1 More specifically, we are dealing here with national Messianism, meaning the redemption of a national body, rather than with individual Messianism, which concerns individual redemption. From this point of view the term ‘Messianism’, within the context of the history of the Jewish people, refers to the hope of the ingathering of the Jewish exiles and the national redemption of Eretz Israel — a redemption combining elements of restoration (modelled on the Golden Era of the Kingdom of David) with futuristic Utopian elements. Messianism must therefore be understood as the expectation of a redemption in the wake of the appearance of a human Messiah, a messiah of the House of David.
