Dr. Helen Bond

Yes, exactly.

And I mean, we don't know what Jesus himself claimed.

Did he claim to be the Messiah?

Certainly some of his followers quite quickly say that he is the Messiah.

And it's presumably the same with these other figures.

So, you know, John the Baptist is well known.

He's there just a little bit before Jesus.

At the death of Herod the Great in 4 BCE, we get lots of kingly pretenders.

You know, are they...

messiah-type figures, all kinds of people that the whole place erupts into disarray.

And then as you go after Jesus into the rest of the first century, increasing numbers of these figures who appear

One appears in Samaria and he says, I'm going to lead you up this sacred mountain and we'll find certain things that Moses buried there and then God will sort of intervene.

And many more.

There's one called Theudas, one called the Egyptian.

Sometimes they sort of lead their people out to the wilderness and

One of them leads the people to the Mount of Olives and he says, you know, at my signal, the whole of Jerusalem will fall.

We don't get to know what happens because the Roman governor sends in the troops and gets rid of them too quickly.

But there's a kind of a whole list of these people, particularly as we move towards the Jewish revolt against Rome in 66 AD.

even during the revolt, actually, there are Messiah type figures because the revolt was a civil war as much as anything else.

So, you know, various factions have their own leader and some of these seem to have been sort of Messiah type figures.