02/07/2026 09:00 - 18:20

HALL: Pola - School of Journalism

Contact: Baron G.B.

Chair: Baron G.B., Martino M., Perotta M.

Messianism originates from the Hebrew term mašia? (????????), which translates as "the anointed one." In its earliest context, the term referred to a specific ritual within the ancient Sinaitic tradition: the anointing of a king, a ceremony that signified divine selection and political legitimacy. Initially, mašia? denoted a present ruler whose authority was established through ritual. Over time, the meaning of the term shifted, and the anointed king became a figure of future expectation, envisioned as a redeemer who would restore the Kingdom of Israel. This shift introduced prophetic and eschatological dimensions, connecting political authority to the promise of ultimate redemption. This panel begins from the observation that messianism is never solely temporal. While scholarship has often emphasized futurity, anticipation, and deferred redemption, messianic imagination is equally articulated through the sacralization of concrete geographies - holy lands, promised territories, imperial spaces, or revolutionary homelands - endowing them with theological and political meaning. Messianism thus operates not only as a structure of time but as a powerful mechanism of territorial sacralization, transforming land into the site of divine election, historical destiny, and maximalist political claims. By placing different perspectives in dialogue with broader religious and political traditions, this panel explores how messianic narratives contribute to the sacralization of land in Jewish, Christian, Islamic, and secular contexts, as well as in nationalist, revolutionary, and colonial imaginaries. From Zionist and post-Zionist debates to imperial and post-imperial visions of destiny in Russian culture, messianism continues to shape how territory is imagined as redemptive, inviolable, or absolute. The panel is explicitly comparative, without flattening traditions or detaching messianism from its historical genealogies.