"Messiah" is a Hebrew word that means "anointed one." It was translated into Greek as "Christos" by the early Christians. In the OT, "Messiah" is used to designate Israel's kings who have been given God's blessing. For example in 1 Sam. 16.13 we read, "Then Samuel took the horn of oil and anointed [David] in the presence of his brothers; and the spirit of the Lord came mightily upon David from that day forward." The term "messiah," then, had both political and religious connotations.
	However, this does not mean that the Messiah was necessarily conceived of as a divine figure. In fact, in the OT tradition, what we see is "political messianism." Put differently, Israel's king received divine sanction, but he himself was not a divine figure.
	A good example of political messianism can be seen in the Bar Kochba Revolt on 132 CE. When the Roman emperor Hadrian made it known that he planned to build a shrine to Jupiter on the site where the Jewish temple in Jerusalem used to stand, a revolt broke out under the leadership of Simon Bar Kosiba. Bar Kosiba changed his name to "Bar Kochba," which means "Son of the Star," a reference to the Star of David. He was considered to be a messianic leader who would lead the people of Israel in victory over their Roman oppressors. Unfortunately, this revolt was crushed. Judaism was outlawed and the Jews were banned from Jerusalem. Bar Kochba, however, escaped.
	By the time that the works of what would become the New Testament were being written, there were a number of different conceptions of the Messiah. Some Jewish groups thought that the Messiah would be an apocalyptic figure. This is an idea that many Christians held as well, and we can see evidence of this in numerous New Testament passages, such as Mark 13 or 1 Thes. 4.
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