Submitted by Peter Herz (United States), Sep 28, 2006 at 17:44
Does Ahmadinejad truly yearn for the coming of the Messiah? I believe his hopes focus on the return of the Twelfth Imam and the appearance of the Mahdi.
Messianism might better be reserved for Christianity. After all, the Greek Christos, from whence we get the name "Christ" is the deliberate translation of the Hebrew "M'shiach" (and is so used in the Greek Septuagint version of the Bible in Psalm 2). Christian Messianism hold that Jesus of Nazareth is the fuilfillment of the Old Testament's Messianic hopes; most prominently those embodied in the Suffering Servant passages of Isaiah. Judaism, of course, disagrees; but the argument has always been built around the exegesis of a common stock of Old Testament Scripture. Islam, which charges that the Scriptures have been corrupted, ipso facto excludes itself from the discussion.
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