What is "messiah"

Ghost dance \Ghost dance\ A religious dance of the North American Indians, participated in by both sexes, and looked upon as a rite of invocation the purpose of which is, through trance and vision, to bring the dancer into communion with the unseen world and the spirits of departed friends. The dance is the chief rite of the

Ghost-dance, or

Messiah,

religion, which originated about 1890 in the doctrines of the Piute Wovoka, the Indian Messiah, who taught that the time was drawing near when the whole Indian race, the dead with the living, should be reunited to live a life of millennial happiness upon a regenerated earth. The religion inculcates peace, righteousness, and work, and holds that in good time, without warlike intervention, the oppressive white rule will be removed by the higher powers. The religion spread through a majority of the western tribes of the United States, only in the case of the Sioux, owing to local causes, leading to an outbreak.

Messiah \Mes*si"ah\, n. [Heb. m[=a]sh[=i]akh anointed, fr. m[=a]shakh to anoint. Cf. Messias.] The expected king and deliverer of the Hebrews; the Savior; Christ.

And told them the Messiah now was born.
--Milton.

c.1300, Messias, from Late Latin Messias, from Greek Messias, from Aramaic meshiha and Hebrew mashiah "the anointed" (of the Lord), from mashah "anoint." This is the word rendered in Septuagint as Greek Khristos (see Christ). In Old Testament prophetic writing, it was used of an expected deliverer of the Jewish nation. The modern English form represents an attempt to make the word look more Hebrew, and dates from the Geneva Bible (1560). Transferred sense of "an expected liberator or savior of a captive people" is attested from 1660s.

n. 1 (context Abrahamic tradition English) The one who is ordained by God to lead the people of Israel, believed by Christians to be Jesus Christ. 2 An extremely powerful divine figure.

1. n. any expected deliverer [syn: christ]

2. Jesus Christ; considered by Christians to be the promised deliverer

3. the awaited king of the Jews; the promised and expected deliverer of the Jewish people

In Abrahamic religions, the Messiah or Messias (; ) is a saviour or liberator of a group of people, more specifically, the Jewish people. The concept of messianism originated in Judaism, and in the Hebrew Bible, a messiah is a king or High Priest traditionally anointed with holy anointing oil. However, messiahs were not exclusively Jewish, as the Hebrew Bible refers to Cyrus the Great, king of Persia, as a messiah for his decree to rebuild the Jerusalem Temple.

In Judaism, the Jewish Messiah, ha-Mashiach (המשיח, "the Messiah", "the anointed one"), often referred to as "King Messiah" (מלך המשיח, melekh mashiach), is to be a human leader, physically descended from the paternal Davidic line through King David and King Solomon. He is thought to accomplish predetermined things in only one future arrival, including the unification of the tribes of Israel, the gathering in of all Jews to Eretz Israel, the rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem, the ushering in of a Messianic Age of global universal peace, and the annunciation of the World to come

In Christianity, the Messiah is called the Christ, from , translating the Hebrew word of the same meaning. The concept of the Messiah in Christianity originated from the Messiah in Judaism. However, unlike the concept of the Messiah in Judaism and Islam, the Messiah in Christianity is the Son of God. Christ became the accepted Christian designation and title of Jesus of Nazareth, because Christians believe that messianic prophecies in the Christian Old Testament were fulfilled in his mission, death, and resurrection. They believe that Christ will fulfill the rest of the Messianic prophecies in the Second Coming, specifically the prophecy of a future king who would come from the Davidic line and usher in a Messianic Age and World to Come.

In Islam, Jesus was a Prophet and the Masîḥ (مسيح), the Messiah in Islam, sent to the Israelites, and that he will return to Earth at the end of times, along with the Mahdi, and defeat al- Masih ad-Dajjal, the false Messiah.

The Messiah is a title given to a saviour or liberator of a group of people in Abrahamic religions.

Messiah also may refer to:

• Christ (title), Greek translation of Messiah

Messiah is a third person shooter video game developed by Shiny and published by Interplay.

Messiah (HWV 56) is an English-language oratorio composed in 1741 by George Frideric Handel, with a scriptural text compiled by Charles Jennens from the King James Bible, and from the version of the Psalms included with the Book of Common Prayer. It was first performed in Dublin on 13 April 1742 and received its London premiere nearly a year later. After an initially modest public reception, the oratorio gained in popularity, eventually becoming one of the best-known and most frequently performed choral works in Western music.

Handel's reputation in England, where he had lived since 1712, had been established through his compositions of Italian opera. He turned to English oratorio in the 1730s in response to changes in public taste; Messiah was his sixth work in this genre. Although its structure resembles that of opera, it is not in dramatic form; there are no impersonations of characters and no direct speech. Instead, Jennens's text is an extended reflection on Jesus as the Messiah called Christ. The text begins in Part I with prophecies by Isaiah and others, and moves to the annunciation to the shepherds, the only "scene" taken from the Gospels. In Part II, Handel concentrates on the Passion and ends with the " Hallelujah" chorus. In Part III he covers the resurrection of the dead and Christ's glorification in heaven.

Handel wrote Messiah for modest vocal and instrumental forces, with optional settings for many of the individual numbers. In the years after his death, the work was adapted for performance on a much larger scale, with giant orchestras and choirs. In other efforts to update it, its orchestration was revised and amplified by (among others) Mozart. In the late 20th and early 21st centuries the trend has been towards reproducing a greater fidelity to Handel's original intentions, although "big Messiah" productions continue to be mounted. A near-complete version was issued on 78 rpm discs in 1928; since then the work has been recorded many times.

Messiah is a British television drama series, broadcast on the BBC One network and produced in-house by BBC Northern Ireland, although the series itself is set in England. Made up of a series of occasional serials, the first, with two parts subtitled The First Killings & The Reckoning, was broadcast in 2001. It has been followed by Messiah 2: Vengeance is Mine (2003), Messiah III: The Promise (2004), Messiah IV: The Harrowing (2005) and most recently Messiah V: The Rapture (2008). The original production was based on a novel by Boris Starling: the subsequent installments have been written directly for television. Starling has a cameo as a murder victim's corpse in the first serial.

A crime series, it follows the investigations of DCI Red Metcalfe, who often investigates particularly gruesome murders. Metcalfe is played by Scottish actor Ken Stott, and the other main regulars in the series are Kate Beauchamp ( Frances Grey), Duncan Warren ( Neil Dudgeon) and Metcalfe's wife Susan ( Michelle Forbes). The deafness of Forbes' character necessitated both her and Stott learning British Sign Language for their characters' frequent exchanges.

Messiah were a death/ thrash metal band from Switzerland.

Messiah's debut album, Hymn to Abramelin, was released in 1986 through Chainsaw Murder Records. Their second LP, titled Extreme Cold Weather, came out in 1987 and was re-issued on CD three years later by Nuclear Blast. The release also contained the band's debut album. The band then managed to sign to a German major metal label, Noise Records, which released their next album, Choir of Horrors, in 1991. Messiah released two more albums, Rotten Perish and Underground, through Noise, but disbanded in the mid-1990s. Although the band members have since rehearsed together and gave a concert, they have decided not to re-unite.

Messiah is a thriller novel by British writer Boris Starling, published in 1999. Following the success of the novel, a sequel, Storm (2000), was also released.

The novel became the basis for the popular BBC TV series Messiah, starring Ken Stott.

'Messiah ' is a compilation album by American industrial metal band Fear Factory released in 1999 by Roadrunner Records. It includes one song from Soul of a New Machine, six from Demanufacture, two from Remanufacture and one from Obsolete. It is the soundtrack to the video game, Messiah.

Messiah is an EP by industrial metal band Godflesh. The songs on this EP were originally recorded and mixed during 1994, and released only to members of the band's fan club. After Justin Broadrick disbanded Godflesh, he re-released the material, along with four remixes, which were created in 1995.

Messiah (1712) is a poem by Alexander Pope which Samuel Johnson translated into Latin in December 1728. This was the first poem of Johnson's to be published, and consists of 119 lines written in Latin verse. The whole translation was completed in two days and was submitted to Pope for appraisal.

Messiah is a 'sacred eclogue' by Alexander Pope, composed in 1709. It is based on the Fourth Eclogue of Virgil, and is an example of English Classicism's appropriation and reworking of the genres, subject matter and techniques of classical Latin literature.

Samuel Johnson, while still a student at Oxford University, translated Pope's 'Messiah' into Latin hexameters: it was Johnson's first published work (1731).

Messiah (also known as messiah:studio) is an award-winning 3D animation and rendering application developed by pmG Worldwide. It runs on the Win32 and Win64 platforms. It is marketed to run on Mac OS X and Linux via Wine. Messiah's fourth version, messiah:studio was released April 2009 and version 5.5b as messiah:animate was released November 2006. messiahStudio6 was released in April 2013.

Messiah is a Derren Brown special originally shown on Channel 4 on 7 January 2005 at 21:00. In the episode, Brown travels to the United States to try to convince five influential figures that he has special abilities in their particular field of expertise: psychic powers, Christian evangelism, New Age theories, alien abduction and contacting the dead, with the objective of getting them to endorse him as a practitioner in their field.

The concept of the show is to highlight the power of suggestion with regard to beliefs and people's abilities, and failure to question them. Brown makes it quite clear that if any of the subjects accused him of trickery he would immediately come clean about the whole thing, a rule similar to one of the self-imposed rules of the perpetrators of the Project Alpha hoax. Using a false name each time, he succeeds in convincing four "experts" that he has powers, who openly endorsed him as a true practitioner. The fifth expert, the Christian evangelist Curt Nordheilm, is reserved in his response; whilst impressed by Brown's performance, he does not agree to a public endorsement without at least meeting him again. Brown concludes with his impressions of the experience and summary of how belief systems work.

Messiah were a British techno/ acid house duo formed in London in 1988 by members Mark Davies and Ali Ghani. Known for their heavy use of sampling quotes from films, melodic female vocals, and aggressive synthesizer lines, the group released two full-length albums and several singles during the 1990s.

is a 2011 Japanese film directed by Shusuke Kaneko.

Messiah or Handel: Messiah features the Mormon Tabernacle Choir with the Philadelphia Orchestra, Eugene Ormandy (conductor), Richard Condie (choir director) and soloists Eileen Farrell, Martha Lipton, Davis Cunningham and William Warfield. The classic recording of George Frideric Handel's masterpiece was recorded during the Choir's 1958 concert tour and has been remastered for CD. This recording was selected by The National Recording Registry for the recorded sound section of the Library of Congress in 2004 as being "culturally, historically or aesthetically important."

The choir and orchestra had a long history, going back to 1936. This recording was made in 1958 and has set a standard for classical music recordings. It has been available for more than 50 years.

Messiah is a satirical novel by Gore Vidal, first published in 1954 in the United States by E.P. Dutton. It is the story of the creation of a new religion, Cavism, which quickly comes to replace the established but failing Christian religion.

Messiah (1999) — in French and English, Le Messie — is a film performance of George Frideric Handel's celebrated oratorio Messiah (1741) with accompanying photographs and filmed images (shot in France, the United States and Russia) assembled by American-born French photographer William Klein (born 1928). The music was directed by Marc Minkowski conducting the Musiciens du Louvre/Grenoble Orchestra and Chorus. Producer was Michel Rotman. The film was a co-production of Kuiv Productions/ France 2-Cinema, Canal+ and La Sofica Gimages 2.