Jewish Messianism and the Cult of Christ William Horbury This important new book offers a reassessment of two central and related topics connected with the origins of Christian belief. The fist is the place of messianism in the Judaism of the Second Temple period, roughly from Haggai to Josephus. Dr. Horbury argues that much recent work underrates the significance of messianic hope within the scripture and tradition of Jews in this period. However, there is evidence that a rich and largely consistent messianism grew up in pre-exile and later Israel, which was given clarity and impetus in the editing and collecting the Old Testament books. The second is the origin of the cult of Christ. This bore a close resemblance to contemporary Gentile cults of heroes, sovereigns and divinities, a resemblance which was noted in the ancient world, so that it has been argued that the cult of Christ was essentially a Gentilized manifestation of Christianity. However the cult of Christ has so many Jewish elements that it is more likely to originate from the Jewish or Christian-Jewish community. The flourishing messianism explored in the first part of the book forms the link between the Judaism of the time of Herod and the Christian cult of Christ. This new explanation of the growth of the cult of Christ clearly has important consequences for our understanding of Christian beginnings. William Horbury is Reader in Jewish and Early Christian Studies, Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge and a Fellow of the British Academy.