Messiah - The Massaged One
What The Anointed One means
Today, “messiah” means “savior”.
It comes from the Hebrew word “mashiach” which meant “the anointed one, or the one rubbed with oil”.
“Mashach” was the word for “to anoint, or to rub with oil”.
Christ also means “The anointed one”. It comes from the Greek word “Christos” which also meant “the one rubbed with oil”.
Before the 1840s, the English language didn’t have the word “massage.” When reading literature written before the 1840s, the words often used in lieu of ‘massage’ were:
Friction
Rub
Anoint
Less often: “shampoo”, “unction”, and “anatripsis”
After reading dozens of historical medical books as well as religious texts that use the word “anoint” in describing massage techniques, I am convinced that there are many more instances of stories that involve massage, but we mis-translate as a mere sprinkling of water or oil.
Getting a foot massage or, especially, a scalp/head massage can certainly feel like a religious experience.
After receiving a good massage, a person generally feels calmer, wiser, more patient, and even prophetic. It makes sense to me that Jesus held onto all the traits of someone who had just received a great massage, but was unique in that he acted like it even if he hadn’t recently been massaged. Or people loved him so much that he got many massages, and therefore always had that patient and loving state of mind that comes after a massage.
I used the U.S. National Library of Medicine, the Library of Congress, Google Books, and Google Scholar to find most of the historical texts I’m basing this conjecture on.
The book below was found in The U.S. National Library of Medicine:
The Poor Man’s Physician, or the Receipts of the Famous John Moncrief of Tippermalloch: being a choice collection of simple and easy remedies for most distempers. Published in 1716, but likely written in the late 1600s.
The excerpt below comes from:
The Institution of Christian Religion, Wrytten in Latine by Maister Ihon Caluin, and Translated Into Englysh According to the Authors Last Edition by T. N., I.e. Thomas Norton. B.L. By Jean Calvin, Thomas NORTON (Barrister-at-Law) · 1574.
Digitized in 2016 thanks to the British Library.
Upon reading more and more of these examples, you’ll start to see a pattern. In both religious contexts and medical advice, the focus of the ‘anointing’, or rubbing of the body with an oil or ointment, is on the material being applied, and not on the rubbing itself. There are stories of priests anointing a sick person for days on end, until at last the “holy oil” cured the person and they could walk again.
So as the stories continued to focus on the oil, the oil gained its own rituals while the rubbing faded over time until we are left with sprinkles of holy oil that involve no touch at all.
