But this is a fact. In Hebrew, Meshiach, or Messiah. means anointed one.
I'm not disputing the definition of the word, only that it can have different shades of meaning.
An annointed one (any king, priest, or basically anyone who's had some olive oil dumped on their head) can be quite different from
The Annointed One (a specific king, etc, pre-ordained to liberate Israel from the Romans; or pre-ordained to save us all from hell, depending on one's faith.) Just like when I say "The Lord," people know I'm not talking about Lord Byron.
I see what you're saying. Denotations versus connotations. But "Messiah" is a connotation where "messiah" is
the denotation and originally the only meaning. It was not until the Council of Nicea that the word was given this new "shade of meaning." And it is a fact that Jesus was not considered truly Holy until the Council, even with all of the Gospels out by that time.
You're right. Rome did not enslave the Jews. Rome was quite a bit better to the Jews than Egypt. I agree on that.
But then you'd have to understand that there was a reason for the Jews to start fighting. The fact is that the Romans were using the Jewish Temple as a place to worship their deities. The Jews did not revolt for no reason. They were egged on because there was an amount of suppression going on, and they were kings of Rome who wanted the religion obliterated.
You aren't wrong. They were smart, but for
their time, not ours. They barely had even a half of the knowledge we have today. We learned things from them, yes, but much of what we know comes from the advent of modern technology, even (what now seems like) the
painfully obvious stuff. And I'm not saying we don't have these older times to thank for our advances and understandings in technology. After all, the first computer was created back then.
But even so, their technology and knowledge was limited to their time, and as far as I know, we have no documents of anyone from that era (from peasants to kings) knowing the difference. Now note I did say to my knowledge, so the possibility exists that I'm missing something, so please feel free to prove me wrong (I'd be much obliged, actually, if such proof exists, because it'd be good to know... ;D)
Again, I say, they were not stupid
for their time. Keep in mind that for their time, cavemen could, for all intents and purposes, be considered geniouses. After all, they did discover fire.
You have to keep in mind the times. Fact is, we know quite a bit more today then they did. But, their smartest were geniouses of their time, and made incredible discoveries. Another good example:
To us today, gravity is painfully (both physically and metaphorically ;D) obvious. But before it was discovered, no one knew about it. Today the fact that there is a universe that holds our planet and that we revolve around the Sun with other planets is obvious. But before that was discovered, nobody knew about the universe, and even when it was discovered, people thought our planet was the center until proven otherwise.
Today, all the things we find trivial, obvious, and, as such, we take for granted, were at one time unknown, and had to be discovered. Now I don't know when the way to tell the difference between being dead and being passed out was discovered, so I could be batting strikes here, which is quite possible. I'll admit it if I'm wrong. But there's a good possibility that back then, they didn't know the difference, regardless of the signs.
And as another argument... in the end, the only proof we have of stories of the Gospels is just that... the Gospels. None of them have been substantiated or proven. And yeah, they all take place in real places, But half of Harry Potter takes place in London, and, last I checked, that's a real city. So the fact that the places existed (or still exist) doesn't mean the stories are true. We have no way of knowing if Jesus did any of the things these stories claim he did. Plus, considering the fact that his crucifixion isn't documented in
any Roman texts, it's not quite hard to see why some people doubt Jesus's very existance.
So did Jesus raise the dead, or did his fictional version raise the dead? That's one question only a time-machine or a true Holy Grail discovery will answer.
