Cyrus the Great — The First Messiah and What History Forgot
The Name Erased from Memory Ask most people: "Who was the first person called Messiah in the Bible?" They will say David. Or they will guess at some prophet. Or they will say Jesus. They are all wrong. The first person called Messiah in the Hebrew Bible is Cyrus the Great —the Persian emperor, the Zoroastrian king, the founder of the Achaemenid Empire. This is not interpretation.
What this resource contributes
The Name Erased from Memory Ask most people: "Who was the first person called Messiah in the Bible?" They will say David. Or they will guess at some prophet. Or they will say Jesus. They are all wrong. The first person called Messiah in the Hebrew Bible is Cyrus the Great —the Persian emperor, the Zoroastrian king, the founder of the Achaemenid Empire. This is not interpretation. This is the text: "Thus says the Lord to his anointed (מָשִׁיחַ / mashiach), to Cyrus , whom I took by his right hand to subdue nations before him." — Isaiah 45:1 The Hebrew word is mashiach —the same word translated as "Messiah," the same word rendered in Greek as "Christos," from which we get "Christ." The first Messiah in scripture is a Zoroastrian. Who Was Cyrus? Cyrus II of Persia (c. 600–530 BCE), known as Cyrus the Great, founded the largest empire the world had yet seen.
Topics and source signals
Primary sources detected
Cyrus Cylinder · Hebrew Bible