Who is expected, who is feared, and everyone who has been accused of being either. Quoted texts are SCRIPTURE or TRADITION. Identifications are SPECULATION. The register is long, and its length is the finding.
Every tradition specifies what its figure must do. These are those lists, cited line by line. They are the denominator of THE FIT, and they are never trimmed to flatter a score.
Confirms a covenant with many for one week.
Causes sacrifice and offering to cease.
Presupposes a functioning sacrificial cult. None has operated since AD 70.
Exalts himself in the temple of God, claiming to be God.
Comes with all power, signs and lying wonders.
Denies the Father and the Son.
An interior state as well as a profession. Not assessable from public record.
Receives a mortal wound to the head that is healed.
Given authority over every tribe, people, language and nation for forty-two months.
An image of the beast is given breath and speaks.
Causes all to receive a mark on the right hand or the forehead.
No one may buy or sell without the mark.
The number of his name is 666.
The earliest surviving witness, Papyrus 115, reads 616. The variant is part of the evidence, not a footnote to it.
Blind or defective in one eye.
The letters k-f-r written on the forehead, readable by the believer.
Performs false miracles: rain at his command, the earth yielding its treasure.
Claims divinity.
Appears before the return of Isa, who kills him.
Descended from David through Solomon.
Immersed in Torah and occupied with the mitzvot as David his ancestor was.
Compels all Israel to walk in the way of Torah and repairs its breaches.
Fights the battles of God.
Rebuilds the Temple in its place.
Gathers the dispersed of Israel.
Succeeds to this whole degree and is not killed. If he does not succeed to this degree, or is killed, he is thereby known not to be the Mashiach.
The tradition supplies its own disproof. This clause is the reason the register below reads as it does.
From the family of the Prophet, descended from Fatimah.
Bears the name of the Prophet.
Appears in a time of widespread injustice.
The one criterion in the list that almost any era satisfies, which is precisely why it cannot carry an identification on its own.
Fills the earth with justice as it had been filled with oppression.
Reigns for a stated period.
The traditions vary: seven years, nine years, and forty years all appear in the collections. The variance is shown rather than resolved.
Twelver position: the Mahdi is Muhammad al-Mahdi, the Twelfth Imam, in occultation since 941 and yet to return.
Structural bar, rendered on every Mahdi audit: under Twelver doctrine the office is already occupied, so every living or historical claimant other than the Twelfth Imam scores this criterion UNMET by definition.
It is the same Jesus who ascended, returning — not another person.
Comes on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory, visible to all.
Not to be found in a secret place; anyone directing followers to one is not to be believed.
The dead in Christ rise.
No one knows the day or the hour; a claimant who sets one contradicts the criterion.