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The Jews considered themselves the chosen of Yahweh and attributed to Him their every victory, defeat, or chastisement.... No other people has ever been so conscious of ultimate primacy through supernatural intervention. This has given them cohesion and courage to persevere in the face of persecution and decimation. The conviction that every Jew will one day share in his divine destiny as a member of the world's ruling race has made him proud and has enabled him to survive unassimilated among the nations of the earth. . . . It was indeed a Judaeo- centric world.25

According to scripture, the Gentiles would embrace the Jewish religion, and the Jewish empire would extend to all ends of the earth. Included in the promised inheritance was a deliverer or messiah to bring about "the kingdom." This messiah would be either a temporal, human leader who with his armies would overthrow the enemies of Israel, or a supernatural being who would do likewise, establishing an "everlasting" Jewish kingdom as well. In this struggle, in fact, God Himself would appear:

Moreover, in line with what the prophet Zechariah had foretold (14.3-5), it was held that the Lord Himself would come with His heavenly legions and fight on behalf of his people.26

Furthermore, the passage in Zechariah, the penultimate book before the New Testament, describes the Lord appearing on the Mount of Olives, obviously used as a blueprint in the creation of Christianity.

The Jewish imperialism would thus come as the awaited deliverer destroyed the enemies and gave their booty to Israel. As Larson says, "This Messiah shall bring judgment upon the Gentiles and they shall become the slaves of Judah ..."27 In order for the messiah to be considered genuine, he had to incorporate various characteristics described in the Old Testament, such as being of the seed of Abraham, the tribe of Judah, and the house of David. He was to be born in Bethlehem of a virgin or young maiden and would be called "Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace."

At the time of destruction of the temple in 70, the Jewish world had been in turmoil for centuries. In 332 BCE, Alexander the Great conquered Palestine, and after his death Israel came under the rule of the Greek Ptolemies of Egypt. In 175 BCE, Antiochus of Syria invaded Jerusalem and set up an altar to Zeus and other "foreign gods." Around 88 BCE, Judean king Alexander Jannaeus allegedly crucified 800 Pharisees and had the throats of their wives and children cut in front of them, while Jannaeus himself drank and lay around with concubines. During the vicious infighting between Pharisees and Sadducees under Jannaeus's rule, some tens of thousands on both sides were allegedly killed. Next, the Romans moved into Palestine under Pompey around 63 BCE, an invasion that crushed the Jewish nation and increased messianic fever, resulting in the appearance of swarms of alleged messiahs and christs. As Larson says, "The land was a boiling cauldron of Messianic expectation, and many were daily awaiting the Son of Man arriving upon the clouds and surrounded by myriads of angels, coming to establish the `everlasting kingdom.'"28 Of this era, Higgins relates:

About sixty years before Christ the Roman empire had been alarmed by prodigies, and also by ancient prophecies, announcing that an emanation of the Deity was going to be born about that time, and that a renovation of the world was going to take place.... Josephus says, "That which chiefly excited them (the Jews) to war was an ambiguous prophecy, which was also found in the sacred books that at that time someone, within their country, should arise, that should obtain the empire of the whole world."29

This messianic frenzy increased throughout the Roman occupation and was high during and after the purported advent of Christ. It is impossible to believe that, in such a desperate and fanatical environment, if Christ had been real, had done the miracles ascribed to him and-most importantly-had satisfied all the scriptural requirements of the messiah, the Jews would not have jumped