Second Temple Messianic Expectations

Collins, John J.  “The Scepter and the Star: The Messiahs of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Other Ancient Literature.”  Anchor Bible Reference Library.  New York: Doubleday.  1995.  The standard survey of Jewish messianism from about 200 BC to AD 135 by a Yale professor of Old Testament who worked on the Scroll editions.  He sorts the evidence into four types of figure and argues that the royal son of David was the common expectation, while every claimed pre-Christian suffering messiah "disappears under examination."  The article uses it as the main statement of the minimal case on suffering and the maximal case on a Davidic king.

1. 1a.

   Page 126:  “The alleged allusions to a suffering messiah in the Scrolls disappear under examination. The Christian belief in such a figure, and discovery of prophecies relating to him, surely arose in retrospect after the passion and death of Jesus of Nazareth. There is no evidence that anyone in first-century Judaism expected such a figure, either in fulfillment of Isaiah 53 or on any other basis.” ↩ ↩

2. 1b.

   Page 12:  “We shall find four basic messianic paradigms (king, priest, prophet, and heavenly messiah), and they were not equally widespread. … If we may accept Ed Sanders's notion of a common Judaism, in the sense of what was typical, though not necessarily normative, in the period 100 BCE–100 CE, the expectation of a Davidic messiah was surely part of it.” ↩ ↩

3. 1c.

   Page 50:  “the death of the foreign invader “on the mountains of Egypt” (2:26). The latter passage is a transparent allusion to the death of Pompey in Egypt in 48 BCE, and the other allusions relate to Pompey’s conquest of Jerusalem in 63 BCE.” ↩

4. 1d.

   Page 49:  “Prior to the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the only clear evidence from the last two centuries before the turn of the era for the use of the term messiah (χριστός) with reference to a future Davidic king, and indeed for the expectation of a Davidic messiah in any terms, lay in the Psalms of Solomon.” ↩

5. 1e.

   Page 56:  “He is first of all the one who will liberate Jerusalem, and defeat and subjugate the Gentiles. He will then usher in an era of peace and reign in a kingdom marked by holiness and righteousness. This picture draws its warrants from biblical prophecy, especially Isaiah 11 and Psalm 2.” ↩

6. 1f.

   Page 76:  “In fact, all the major rule and law books, the Community Rule, the Messianic Rule, the Damascus Document, and the War Rule, support the bifurcation of authority in the messianic era.” ↩

7. 1g.

   Page 166:  “Since Michael or the Prince of Light is never called “Son of God,” and since there is a clear basis for applying this title to the Davidic king, whether past or future, the messianic interpretation should be preferred.” ↩

8. 1h.

   Page 79:  “The expression … (“messiah of Aaron and Israel” or “messiahs of Aaron and Israel”) provides only a precarious foundation for any theory of messianic development.” ↩

9. 1i.

   Page 199:  “Josephus, who is virtually our only source for popular movements in Judaism in this period, preserves no stories of priestly messianic pretenders. The ideal of a messiah of Aaron, who would take precedence over the messiah of Israel, was not a common Jewish concern, and appears to have been distinctive to sectarian circles.” ↩

10. 1j.

    Page 118:  “In view of the introduction of a messiah in the first line of the fragment (“heaven and earth will obey his messiah”) it is likely that God acts through the agency of a prophetic messiah in line 12.” ↩

11. 1k.

    Page 122:  “The parallel between 4Q521 and the New Testament text is intriguing since both go beyond Isaiah 61 in referring to the raising of the dead. This can hardly be coincidental.” ↩

12. 1l.

    Page 143:  “This figure is also called “messiah” in the Similitudes (1 Enoch 48:10), but he is a heavenly preexistent figure, rather than an exalted human king.” ↩

13. 1m.

    Page 177:  “The date of this document has been controversial, especially since no fragment of it has been found at Qumran. Absence from Qumran, however, does not require a date after 70 CE. … It is doubtful whether a Jewish author would have made such explicit use of the expression “Son of Man” for a messianic figure after that phrase had been appropriated by the Christians. … Since the Similitudes make no allusion to the fall of Jerusalem, a date prior to that event seems most likely.” ↩

14. 1n.

    Page 148:  “The High Priest of the War Scroll is de facto the eschatological High Priest or Messiah of Aaron. While our canticle was not necessarily composed for this context, this placement is highly compatible with the view that the implied speaker is the eschatological priest/teacher.” ↩

15. 1o.

    Page 200:  “It is not clear what passage in the Scriptures Josephus had in mind.” ↩

16. 1p.

    Page 13:  “Attempts to find precedents in the Scrolls for a suffering or dying messiah have, I believe, been misguided.” ↩

17. 1q.

    Page 123:  “The view that Isa 52:13-53:12 was interpreted with reference to a suffering messiah by some Jews before the rise of Christianity is associated above all with Joachim Jeremias. Subsequent scholarship has largely moved away from that position”. ↩

18. 1r.

    Page 59:  “In view of the association with Isaiah 11, where the shoot of Jesse will strike the earth with the rod of his mouth and kill the wicked with the breath of his lips, it seems beyond reasonable doubt that the Prince/Branch is the subject of the verb to kill, not its object.” ↩

19. 1s.

    Page 125:  “The figure described in 4Q541 is said to atone for the children of his generation. The obvious implication is that he is a priest and makes atonement by means of the sacrificial cult. He does not atone by his suffering and death, as is the case with Isaiah’s servant. … Finally the figure in this passage undergoes suffering, but it is mental anguish, brought on by lies and calumnies, and so is of quite a different sort from the suffering described in Isaiah 53.” ↩

20. 1t.

    Page 125:  “If we may assume, however, that the text does refer to crucifixion, there is still no question of a messianic figure being crucified. Rather, the person addressed in the text is told not to afflict the weak by crucifixion.” ↩

21. 1u.

    Page 124:  “Third, in the late-first-century CE apocalypses of 4 Ezra and 2 Baruch, the messiah dies. His death, however, does not involve suffering and has no atoning significance. In 4 Ezra 7:29-30 the death of the messiah marks the end of a four-hundred-year reign and is the prelude to seven days of primeval silence, followed by resurrection.” ↩

22. 1v.

    Page 199:  “He does not attribute any messianic claims to these figures. It may be that he “studiously avoids” such language, as Horsley suggests, and that they really were messianic pretenders, but we have no real evidence of their aspirations.” ↩

23. 1w.

    Page 124:  “In the case of Isaiah 52-53, however, the targum systematically subverts the references to the suffering of the servant. … There is still no evidence for a Jewish interpretation of Isaiah 53 in terms of a suffering messiah.” ↩

24. 1x.

    Page 124:  “The Son of Man figure in the Similitudes of Enoch, who will concern us in a later chapter, is called “the light of the nations” in 1 Enoch 48:4. The same phrase is used of the servant of the Lord in Isa 42:6; 49:6. … But the Son of Man is not a suffering figure, and carries no allusions to the notion of vicarious suffering as found in Isaiah 53.” ↩

25. 1y.

    Page 59:  “which has been variously translated as “they will put to death the Leader of the Community, the Bran[ch of David],” or “the Prince of the Congregation, the Bran[ch of David] will kill him.””  The first rendering is Eisenman and Wise's. ↩

26. 1z.

    Page 123:  “Jean Starcky, however, claimed to find “a suffering messiah, in the perspective opened up by the Servant poems” in 4Q541 (4QAaronA), and the claim has been endorsed by Emile Puech.” ↩

Hengel, Martin, and Daniel P. Bailey.  “The Effective History of Isaiah 53 in the Pre-Christian Period.”  The Suffering Servant: Isaiah 53 in Jewish and Christian Sources, 75–146.  Grand Rapids: Eerdmans.  Translated by Daniel P. Bailey.  Edited by Bernd Janowski and Peter Stuhlmacher.  2004.  The fullest scholarly case that Isaiah 53 shaped Jewish hopes for a suffering, atoning figure before Jesus, by a leading German historian of early Judaism and Christianity.  It surveys Daniel 11–12, the Septuagint, 4Q541, the Testament of Benjamin and the self-glorification hymn, and ends by conceding that the case cannot be proven.

1. 2a.

   Page 140:  “The expectation of an eschatological suffering savior figure connected with Isaiah 53 cannot therefore be proven to exist with absolute certainty and in a clearly outlined form in pre-Christian Judaism. Nevertheless, a lot of indices that must be taken seriously in texts of very different provenance suggest that these types of expectations could also have existed at the margins, next to many others.” ↩ ↩ ↩

2. 2b.

   Page 76:  “Might these “effects” not rather be mainly the product of the wishful thinking of a few conservative exegetes? … Yet the wish of so-called critical interpreters to reject this kind of tradition history from the start before examining the complex details of the case is no less suspect. Historical reality never follows our wishes.” ↩

3. 2c.

   Page 76:  “Nevertheless, the demonstrated uses and echoes of this text are enough to suggest that traditions of suffering and atoning eschatological messianic figures were current in Palestinian Judaism, and that Jesus and the earliest Church could have known and appealed to them.” ↩

4. 2d.

   Page 118:  “For Puech — and we can hardly contradict him here, despite all the remaining uncertainties — our text contains “the first and oldest midrashic exploitation of the Servant Songs of Isaiah interpreted in terms of an individual, in a current of Palestinian Judaism which more or less dates from the second century B.C.E. at the latest.”” ↩

5. 2e.

   Page 138:  “In you [Joseph] will be fulfilled the heavenly prophecy which says that the spotless one will be defiled by lawless men and the sinless one will die for the sake of impious men.”  Hengel's translation of the Armenian version of Testament of Benjamin 3:8. ↩

6. 2f.

   Page 77:  “We even find a Messiah ben Joseph or Messiah from Ephraim who ultimately dies, though in the background stands not Isaiah 53 but rather Zechariah 12:10-14 (in addition to Deut. 33:16-17); see the Baraita in b. Sukkot 52a. … But since a pre-Christian origin of this idea is only possible, not provable, we must leave it to one side for the moment”. ↩ ↩

7. 2g.

   Page 140:  “Baillet entitled our particular text “The Song of Michael and of the Just.””  Of 4Q491 fragment 11 column i, published by Maurice Baillet in Discoveries in the Judaean Desert 7 (1982). ↩

Popović, Mladen et al.  “Dating ancient manuscripts using radiocarbon and AI-based writing style analysis.”  PLOS One 20(6):e0323185.  2025.  A Groningen-led team took new radiocarbon dates from Dead Sea Scrolls and other Judean manuscripts, after chemically removing modern oils and consolidants, and used 24 of the dated samples to train a handwriting-dating program.  Three of the messianic texts discussed here, 4Q161, 4Q521 and 4Q541, were among the samples, as was 4Q259, a copy of the Community Rule.  The dates are in the supplementary appendices.

1. 3a.

   Section S2 Appendix, Table S1:  “4Q161 (4QpIsaa ) 2028 18 45 BCE–10 CE 55 BCE–30 CE,”.  Section S4 Appendix:  “the 2σ calibrated range for another specimen of the Herodian round semiformal, 4Q161, is 55 BCE–30 CE (92.1%)”.  The columns are the radiocarbon age, 2028 ± 18 years before present, then the 68 % range and the 95 % range.  Two minor peaks, 90–80 BC and AD 45–60, carry 1.7 % each. ↩ ↩

2. 3b.

   Page 10:  “First, 14 C date ranges and Enoch’s style-based estimates are overall older than previous palaeographic estimates. These older dates for the scrolls are realistic. Hasmonaean-type manuscripts have accepted 2𝜎 calibrated ranges that allow for older dates in the first half of the second century BCE, and sometimes slightly earlier, instead of only circa 150–50 BCE. … Second, ‘Herodian’ script emerged earlier than previously thought.” ↩

3. 3c.

   Section S4 Appendix, section S4.1.1:  “This manuscript was also radiocarbon dated in the 1990s [18]. That BP date (1984 ± 33) now has to be recalibrated according to the IntCal20 calibration curve ( [20]), which results in a 2σ date range of 45 BCE–120 CE. According to the bimodal evidence of our study, the younger 2σ calibrated range is 230–100 BCE (57.5%), while the older peak in the 2σ range of 355–285 BCE (38.0%) can be rejected as a possible solution due to comparative typological evidence from date-bearing Aramaic manuscripts from that period. The difference in age between the two radiocarbon tests may be due to the Soxhlet procedure cleaning castor oil from the sample, but it is not possible to quantify or ascertain that. The palaeographic estimate of 100–80 BCE and our 2σ calibrated range of 230–100 BCE connect in the year 100 BCE.”  Section S2 Appendix, section S2.7.4:  “Samples 4Q521 and Mur19 were characterized by the presence of an acrylic resin.” ↩

4. 3d.

   Section S4 Appendix, section S4.1.1:  “4Q259 has a 2σ calibrated range of 210–100 BCE (69.7%) and a minor peak of 70–55 BCE (1.4%).”  The study rejects an older peak, 350–310 BC, on palaeographic grounds. ↩

5. 3e.

   Section S2 Appendix, Table S1:  “4Q541 … 2148 22 … 345–320, 205–150 BCE … 355–300, 210–95, 75–55 BCE”.  The radiocarbon age, 2148 ± 22 years before present, with the 68 % and 95 % calibrated ranges. ↩

García Martínez, Florentino, and Eibert J. C. Tigchelaar.  The Dead Sea Scrolls Study Edition.  Leiden: Brill.  1999.  The standard two-volume edition of the non-biblical Scrolls, with the Hebrew or Aramaic on each left-hand page and the editors' English opposite.  Square brackets mark letters the editors restore where the leather is lost, so a reader can see which words actually survive.  The article quotes its English for every Scroll passage unless another edition is named.

1. 4a.

   Pages 91–93, section 1QS col. IX, lines 9–11:  “They should not depart from any counsel of the law in order to walk in complete stubbornness of their heart, but instead shall be ruled by the first directives which the men of the Community began to be taught until the prophet comes, and the Messiahs of Aaron and Israel.” ↩ ↩

2. 4b.

   Page 317, section 4Q161 frags. 8–10 col. iii, lines 18–25:  “[The interpretation of the word concerns the shoot] of David which will sprout in the fi[nal days, since] 19 [with the breath of his lips he will execute] his [ene]my and God will support him with [the spirit of c]ourage […] 20 [… thro]ne of glory, h[oly] crown and multi-colour[ed] vestments 21 […] in his hand. He will rule over all the pe[ople]s and Magog 22 […] his sword will judge [al]l the peoples. … 24 […] and according to what they teach him, he will judge, and upon their authority 25 […] with him will go out one of the priests of renown”. ↩

3. 4c.

   Page 353, section 4Q174 frags. 1–3 col. i, lines 10–13:  “2 Sam 7:12-14 «he will build you a house. I will raise up your seed after you and establish the throne of his kingdom 11 [for ev]er. I will be a father to him and he will be a son to me.» This (refers to the) «branch of David», who will arise with the Interpreter of the law who 12 [will rise up] in Zi[on in] the [l]ast days, as it is written: Amos 9:11 «I will raise up the hut of David which has fallen», This (refers to) «the hut of 13 David which has fall[en»”. ↩

4. 4d.

   Page 107, section 1QSb col. V, lines 20–28:  “20 Blank Of the Instructor. To bless the prince of the congregation, who […]”  Page 109:  “With your sceptre may you lay waste the earth. With the breath of your lips 25 may you kill the wicked. … For God has raised you to a sceptre 28 for the rulers be[fore you … all the na]tions will serve you”. ↩

5. 4e.

   Page 561, section CD-A col. VII, lines 18–21:  “And the star is the Interpreter of the law, 19 who will come to Damascus, as is written: Num 24:13 «A star moves out of Jacob, and a sceptre arises 20 out of Israel». The sceptre is the prince of the whole congregation and when he rises he will destroy 21 all the sons of Seth.”  The text quoted is Numbers 24:17;  the edition's text as read here labels it 24:13. ↩

6. 4f.

   Page 587, section 4Q266 frag. 3 col. iii, lines 18–22:  “The sceptre is the [pr]ince [of the wh]ole [congregation and when he rises] 22 [he will destroy] all the sons of Seth.”  A Cave 4 copy of the Damascus Document, so the sentence is not a medieval addition to the Cairo Genizah manuscripts. ↩

7. 4g.

   Page 505, section 4Q252 col. V, lines 1–5:  “1 […] Gen 49:10 The sceptre shall [no]t depart from the tribe of Judah. While Israel has the dominion, 2 there [will not] be cut off someone who sits on the throne of David. … Until the messiah of righteousness comes, the branch 4 of David. For to him and to his descendants has been given the covenant of the kingship of his people for everlasting generations”. ↩

8. 4h.

   Page 495, section 4Q246 col. II, lines 1–4:  “1 He will be called son of God, and they will call him son of the Most High. Like the sparks 2 that you saw, so will their kingdom be; they will rule several year[s] over 3 the earth and crush everything; a people will crush another people, and a province another provi[n]ce. 4 Blank Until the people of God arises and makes everyone rest from the sword.” ↩

9. 4i.

   Page 571, section CD-A col. XII, line 23:  “until there arises the ‹messiah› of Aaron”.  Page 577, section CD-B col. XIX, lines 10–11:  “when there comes the messiah 11 of Aaron and Israel”.  Page 579, section CD-B col. XX, line 1:  “until there arises the messiah out of Aaron and Israel”.  The other occurrence is CD-A col. XIV, line 19.  The angled brackets in col. XII mark the editors' correction of the manuscript's spelling. ↩

10. 4j.

    Page 595, section 4Q266 frag. 10 col. i, lines 11–13:  “This is the exact interpretation 12 [of the regulations by which they shall be r]uled until the rise of the messiah of Aaron and Israel. 13 [And their iniquity will be atoned through meal] and sin-offerings”. ↩

11. 4k.

    Page 103, section 1QSa col. II, lines 11–21:  “when [God] begets 12 the Messiah with them: [the] chief [priest] of all the congregation of Israel shall enter … Afterwar[ds,] the Messiah of Israel [shall str]etch out his hands 21 towards the bread.” ↩

12. 4l.

    Page 357, section 4Q175, lines 1–20:  “5 Deut 18:18-19 «I would raise up for them a prophet from among their brothers, like you, and place my words 6 in his mouth, and he would tell them all that I command him. … A star has departed from Jacob, and a sceptre /has arisen/ from Israel. He shall crush 13 the temples of Moab, and cut to pieces all the sons of Sheth.» Blank 14 And about Levi he says: Deut 33:8-11 «Give to Levi your Thummim and your Urim, to your pious man”. ↩

13. 4m.

    Page 745, section 4Q377 frag. 1 recto col. ii, line 5:  “all the la[ws of y]hwh by the mouth of Moses his anointed one”. ↩

14. 4n.

    Page 1045, section 4Q521 frags. 2 col. ii, lines 1 and 11–12:  “1 [for the heav]ens and the earth will listen to his anointed one, … 11 And the Lord will perform marvellous acts such as have not existed, just as he sa[id,] 12 [for] he will heal the badly wounded and will make the dead live, he will proclaim good news to the poor”. ↩

15. 4o.

    Page 1209, section 11Q13 col. II, line 18:  “And the messenger i[s] the anointed of the spir[it] as Dan[iel] said [about him: Dan 9:25 «Until an anointed, a prince, it is seven weeks.»”.  Everything inside the square brackets is the editors' restoration. ↩

16. 4p.

    Page 981, section 4Q491c frag. 1, lines 5–7:  “a mighty throne in the congregation of the gods above which none of the kings of the East shall sit, and their nobles no[t …] … I am counted among the gods and my dwelling is in the holy congregation”. ↩

17. 4q.

    Page 643, section 4Q285 frag. 5, lines 3–5:  “3 […] the bud of David. And they will go into battle Blank with […] 4 […] and the Prince of the Congregation will kill him, the bu[d of David …] 5 […] and with wounds. And [the High] Priest will command”.  The edition numbers this fragment 5;  later editions number it 7. ↩

18. 4r.

    Page 1081, section 4Q541 frag. 9 col. i, lines 2–6:  “And he will atone for all the children of his generation, and he will be sent to all the children of 3 his [people]. His word is like the word of the heavens, and his teaching, according to the will of God. … They will utter many words against him, and an abundance of 6 [lie]s; they will fabricate fables against him, and utter every kind of disparagement against him.” ↩

19. 4s.

    Page 981, section 4Q491c frag. 1, lines 8–9:  “[W]ho has been considered despicable on my account? And who is comparable to me in my glory? Who, like the sailors, will come back and tell? 9 […] Who bea[rs all] sorrows like me? And who [suffe]rs evil like me? There is no-one.” ↩

Josephus, Flavius.  Antiquitates Judaicae (Greek text).  Berlin: Weidmann.  Edited by Benedikt Niese.  1892.  The standard Greek text of Josephus's Jewish Antiquities, written about AD 93–94, in the Perseus Digital Library's encoding.  The article searched the whole text for every word built on the root of christos, "anointed."

1. 5a.

   Book 18, section 63:  “ὁ χριστὸς οὗτος ἦν”.  Book 20, section 200:  “τὸν ἀδελφὸν Ἰησοῦ τοῦ λεγομένου Χριστοῦ, Ἰάκωβος ὄνομα αὐτῷ”.  A search of the Greek of the Antiquities finds four words from this root:  these two, "Christians" at 18.64, and 8.137, where the word means "plastered."  The Jewish War, searched the same way in Niese's text, has none.  The first passage, 18.63, belongs to the disputed Testimonium Flavianum. ↩ ↩

Fitzmyer, Joseph A.  The One Who Is to Come.  Grand Rapids: Eerdmans.  2007.  A history of the word "messiah" from the Old Testament to the Talmud by a Jesuit New Testament scholar and Aramaic specialist who published several of the Qumran texts.  He argues that messianism in the strict sense, an anointed agent expected at the end of days, appears only in the second century BC, and that no Jewish text before or beside the New Testament has a suffering messiah.

1. 6a.

   Page 178:  ““Jerusalem Talmud,” dated roughly A.D. 450; and … “Babylonian Talmud,” dated roughly A.D. 550.”  The Hebrew titles and their transliterations are omitted. ↩ ↩ ↩

2. 6b.

   Page 150:  “The targum, as an Aramaic translation of the Hebrew Scriptures, was composed to record a fixed tradition of interpretation, a written record dating in general from the Amoraic period.”  Page 151:  “Onqelos, which may stem originally from the mid-third century, and which is usually regarded as the official or authoritative targum of the Mosaic Law. The other three pentateuchal targums, Fragmentary Targum, Targum Neofiti 1, and Targum Pseudo-Jonathan, in their final form all date from considerably later times.” ↩

3. 6c.

   Page 89:  “Here one finds an affirmation of the community’s expectation of three coming figures: a prophet (undoubtedly a prophet like Moses, an allusion to Deut 18:15, 18), a (priestly) Messiah of Aaron, and a (kingly) Messiah of Israel, who are all to be God’s agents for the deliverance of His people.” ↩

4. 6d.

   Page 97:  “That, however, is far from clear, because line 3 ends with vacat, and the subject of lines 4-14 is rather “the Lord” (אדני). Hence they are deeds that the Lord will accomplish in the time of His Messiah.” ↩

5. 6e.

   Page 141:  “In the Old Testament one reads about the Suffering Servant in the Fourth Servant Song (Isa 52:13-53:12), which per se has no messianic connotation, even though subsequent references to the Song in the developing Jewish tradition so interpret it, but nothing is read about a suffering Messiah. Even in the Similitudes of 1 Enoch, where there is the oldest messianic interpretation of the Servant, no mention is made of a suffering Son of Man or a suffering Messiah.”  Page 142:  “The idea of a suffering Messiah, however, is found nowhere in the Old Testament or in any Jewish literature prior to or contemporaneous with the New Testament. It is a Christian conception that goes beyond the Jewish messianic tradition.” ↩ ↩

6. 6f.

   Page 104:  “Theoretically … could be taken as a 3rd person plur. form (wĕhēmîtû), “and they shall put to death (the Prince of the Congregation),” as Eisenman and Wise understood it (The Dead Sea Scrolls Uncovered, 29). Such a reading of the text, however, would normally demand את, the particle marking a definite direct object, which is missing. Yet such a reading does not cope with the context”.  Note 94.  The Hebrew verb is omitted at the ellipsis. ↩

7. 6g.

   Page 113:  “But nowhere in the text does he claim to be an anointed figure, and משיח does not appear in it”.  “Yet Knohl claims that the text speaks of a royal Messiah”.  “Although such an interpretation may be possible, little of it is probable, and none of it is certain”. ↩ ↩ ↩

8. 6h.

   Page 112:  “The story of this Messiah, reconstructed from the hymns, the Oracle of Hystaspes, Revelation 13, details from the life of Caesar Augustus, and Virgil’s Fourth Eclogue, shows that he is none other than Menahem the Essene, known from Josephus as a friend of Herod.”  Fitzmyer is summarising Knohl's argument. ↩

9. 6i.

   Page 63:  “In any case, the words … “an Anointed One shall be cut down with no one to help him” (9:26a; cf. 11:45), cannot refer to the same Anointed One of 9:25, because the Anointed One of v. 26 appears later, “after sixty-two weeks,” and that undoubtedly means the already mentioned Onias III. That he is the one meant by “an Anointed One shall be cut down” (9:26) is commonly admitted by commentators today”.  The Hebrew of the phrase is omitted at the ellipsis. ↩

10. 6j.

    Page 147:  “It was codified or put in writing eventually under Rabbi Judah the Prince ca. A.D. 200-220.” ↩

11. 6k.

    Section Preface:  “The title of this book is taken from the question that John the Baptist’s disciples ask of Jesus of Nazareth, “Are you the one who is to come?” (Matt 11:3; Luke 7:19)”. ↩

Yadin, Yigael.  Bar-Kokhba: The Rediscovery of the Legendary Hero of the Second Jewish Revolt against Rome.  New York: Random House.  1971.  A popular account by the Israeli archaeologist who led the 1960–61 expedition that found Simon bar Kosiba's letters in the Cave of Letters at Nahal Hever.  It quotes the letters and coins directly.

1. 7a.

   Page 15:  “‘Shimeon Bar Kosiba, President over Israel’”.  Page 124:  “Not one letter is signed by Shimeon bar Kosiba personally.”  The first quotation is the opening line of a wooden letter, as Yadin read it aloud to Israel's president in 1960.  The Hebrew title is nasi, which other writers translate "prince." ↩ ↩

“Hazon Gabriel: New Readings of the Gabriel Revelation.”  Early Judaism and Its Literature 29.  Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature.  Edited by Matthias Henze.  2011.  The conference volume on the Gabriel Revelation, an 87-line Hebrew text written in ink on a stone about a metre high.  It gathers the first editors' text, a rival edition, Israel Knohl's revised reading, and responses by John and Adela Yarbro Collins and others, so that each side of the dispute can be read in its own words.

1. 8a.

   Page 109:  “The most plausible explanation remains that the idea of a dying messiah took hold after the defeat of Bar Kokhba, in the second century c.e. … There is certainly no hint of the expectation of such a figure in the surviving Jewish literature from the period before Bar Kokhba.”  John J. Collins, "Gabriel and David: Some Reflections on an Enigmatic Text," pp. 99–112. ↩ ↩

2. 8b.

   Page xi:  “The stele, which measures about one by three feet, is owned by Dr. David Jeselsohn, a private antiquities collector from Zurich, Switzerland, who had acquired the stone a decade earlier from an antiquities dealer in Jordan.”  “the Jordanian antiquities dealer, who has since passed away, was unable to provide exact information about the provenance of the stele.”  Henze's preface. ↩

3. 8c.

   Page 25:  “The script of this text is a “Jewish” formal hand, typical of the Herodian period, written by a professional scribe. … The script may be securely dated to about the late first century b.c.e. or the early first century c.e.”  Ada Yardeni and Binyamin Elizur, "A Hebrew Prophetic Text on Stone from the Early Herodian Period," pp. 11–29. ↩

4. 8d.

   Page 5:  “there was no indication of modern treatment of the surface of the stone.”  Page xii:  “None of the experts who have examined the text has concluded that the stone is a forgery.”  The first quotation is Goren's finding as reported by the stone's owner, David Jeselsohn;  the second is Henze's preface. ↩

5. 8e.

   Page 4:  “In line 80 of the inscription, Knohl read after the words “in three days” the word חאיה, meaning “come to life,” or “be resurrected.” He interpreted the word as the angel Gabriel’s call to the killed Messiah, who was the Messiah son of Joseph, to come back to life, that is, to be resurrected three days after his death. Yardeni and Elizur could read with certainty only the first letter of the word, namely, the letter ח.”  David Jeselsohn, "The Jeselsohn Stone: Discovery and Publication," pp. 1–10. ↩

6. 8f.

   Page 36:  “In three days the sign will be (given). I am Gabriel”.  Elisha Qimron and Alexey Yuditsky, "Notes on the So-Called Gabriel Vision Inscription," pp. 31–38, their translation of line 80. ↩

7. 8g.

   Page 43:  “I now accept the reading האות (“the sign”) of the third word of line 80. This reading was first suggested by Ronald Hendel, “The Messiah Son of Joseph. Simply ‘Sign,’” BAR 35 (2009): 8; and Yuditsky and Qimron (“Notes,” 140–41). In my previous publications, I have argued for the reading חאיה (“live”). I still maintain that the reading חאיה (“live”) is possible graphically. Yet the inner connections between lines 17–21 and line 80 support the reading האות (“the sign”).”  Israel Knohl, "The Apocalyptic and Messianic Dimensions of the Gabriel Revelation in Their Historical Context," pp. 39–60, note 12. ↩

8. 8h.

   Page 44:  “This human being, probably an earthly leader of Israel, was killed and was not buried properly.”  Page 47:  “It is thus possible that the Gabriel Revelation was composed shortly after 4 BCE, against the backdrop of the crushing of the revolt.”  Israel Knohl's chapter. ↩

9. 8i.

   Page 108:  “From this perusal of the reconstructions of the text that have been offered to date, it is clear that many of the readings are uncertain, and that only a very elliptic text is available to us. … It is apparent that the Davidic Messiah has a role to play in this eschatological drama”.  John J. Collins's chapter. ↩

Jull, A. J. Timothy et al.  “Radiocarbon Dating of Scrolls and Linen Fragments from the Judean Desert.”  Radiocarbon 37(1):11–19.  1995.  The University of Arizona accelerator laboratory's dates for 18 scrolls and 2 linen fragments, set beside each scroll's palaeographic date.  It includes the Community Rule 1QS, two copies of the Damascus Document and the Messianic Apocalypse 4Q521.

1. 9a.

   Page 14, table 2:  “DSS-8 4Q521 … 35 BC-AD 59 … 2σ: 93 BC-AD 80”.  The laboratory's one-sigma and two-sigma calibrated ranges.  The 2025 re-test recalibrates the same measurement to 45 BC–AD 120. ↩

2. 9b.

   Page 18, section Appendix 1, DSS-8:  “"Cette écriture se placerait assez bien après celle de 1QIsa et 1QS, dans le premier quart du 1er s., entre 100 et 80" (Puech 1992: 480).”  Puech's palaeographic date, quoted in French in the appendix:  the hand falls "in the first quarter of the first century, between 100 and 80." ↩

3. 9c.

   Page 14, table 2:  “DSS-4 1QS … 2041 ± 68 159 BC-AD 20 … 2σ: … 206 BC-AD 111 (98%)”.  Page 18, section Appendix 1, DSS-4:  “As we have seen, it belongs to a special semi-formal tradition of the Jewish script, a Hasmonean exemplar of this style from about 100-75 B.C.”  The appendix quotes Frank Moore Cross (1972).  The sample came from column XI of the scroll. ↩

4. 9d.

   Page 14, table 2:  “DSS-1 4Q266 … 1954 ± 38 AD 5-80 2σ: 45 BC-AD 120 100-50 BC”.  Page 18, section Appendix 1, DSS-1:  “The writing is in a semi-cursive Hasmonean hand which in Cross’ paleographic sequence may be dated to the first half of the first century B.C.E.”  The appendix quotes Joseph Baumgarten (1992), the editor of the Cave 4 copies of the Damascus Document. ↩

Atkinson, Kenneth.  “Psalms of Salomon.”  A New English Translation of the Septuagint.  New York: Oxford University Press.  Edited by Albert Pietersma and Benjamin G. Wright.  2007.  The NETS translation of the Psalms of Solomon by a specialist on the book, with an introduction on its manuscripts, its Greek text and the Christian scribes who copied it.  Mirror:  Archive.org

1. 10a.

   Page 763:  “PsSal is also extant in five Syriac manuscripts”.  Page 764:  “In manuscript 253 (XI/XII CE), which contains the best and earliest text”.  The introduction also counts "PsSal’s eleven Greek manuscripts" on page 763. ↩

2. 10b.

   Page 774, verse 17:21–24:  “See, O Lord, and raise up for them their king, the son of Dauid, at the time which you chose, O God, to rule over Israel your servant. And gird him with strength to shatter in pieces unrighteous rulers, to purify Ierousalem from nations that trample her down in destruction, in wisdom of righteousness, to drive out sinners from the inheritance, to smash the arrogance of the sinner like a potter’s vessel, to shatter all their substance with an iron rod, to destroy the lawless nations by the word of his mouth”. ↩

3. 10c.

   Page 775, verse 17:32:  “And he shall be a righteous king, taught by God, over them, and there shall be no injustice in his days in their midst, for all shall be holy, and their king the anointed of the Lord.” ↩

4. 10d.

   Page 763:  “In one instance (17.32), Rahlfs adopted the suggestion first proposed in 1870 by A. Carrière … that χριστὸς κύριος, which is preserved in all of PsSal’s manuscripts, should be emended to χριστὸς κυρίου.”  Page 764:  “In 17.32, for example, the original genitive κυρίου was likely erroneously rendered as a nominative by a later Christian scribe resulting in two anarthrous nominatives (χριστὸς κύριος). This same reading is also found in the LXX of Lam 4.20.” ↩

Boyarin, Daniel.  The Jewish Gospels: The Story of the Jewish Christ.  New York: The New Press.  2012.  A short book by a Berkeley professor of Talmudic culture, an observant Jew who does not accept Jesus.  It argues that a divine Son of Man and a suffering messiah were Jewish ideas before Jesus, reading the Similitudes of Enoch, the Gospel of Mark and later rabbinic texts.  The article uses it as the most widely read statement of the maximal case, and quotes its own endnotes on the limits of the evidence.

1. 11a.

   Page 74:  “Fragments of them have been found at Qumran (among the Dead Sea Scrolls), except for the Similitudes, and fragments are known from various Greek sources as well. Present opinion is almost entirely solid that the Book of the Watchers is the oldest bit of Enoch (third century B.C.) and the Similitudes, our present concern, the youngest, dating from the mid-first century A.D.” ↩ ↩

2. 11b.

   Page 132:  “This commonplace view has to be rejected completely. The notion of the humiliated and suffering Messiah was not at all alien within Judaism before Jesus’ advent, and it remained current among Jews well into the future following that—indeed, well into the early modern period.” ↩

3. 11c.

   Page 133:  “Jews, it seems, had no difficulty whatever with understanding a Messiah who would vicariously suffer to redeem the world.” ↩

4. 11d.

   Page 186:  “I do not know early evidence outside of the Gospels for this particular way of reading the Daniel material as applying to a suffering Messiah, still less to a dying and rising one”.  An endnote to chapter 4. ↩

5. 11e.

   Page 134:  “This point of the “Jewishness” of the vicarious sufferings of the Messiah can be established in two ways: first by showing how the Gospels use perfectly traditional, midrashic ways of reasoning to develop these ideas and apply them to Jesus, and second, by demonstrating how common the idea of a suffering and dying Messiah was among perfectly “orthodox” rabbinic Jews from the time of the Talmud and onward.” ↩

Vermes, Geza.  The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English.  London: Penguin.  1998.  The most widely read English translation of the Scrolls, by an Oxford Jewish-studies scholar who took part in the 1991 seminar on 4Q285.  Each text has a short introduction giving its date and Vermes's view of its meaning.

1. 12a.

   Page 493:  “Originating from Cave 4 (4Q174) and known also as ‘Florilegium’, the composition was edited by J. M. Allegro (DJD, V, 53-7); it probably belongs to the late first century BCE.” ↩

2. 12b.

   Page 576:  “I see in the ‘son of God’ of 4Q246 neither Flusser’s Antichrist, nor the straight historical individual of the Milik-Puech”.  Page 577:  “variety, but the last historico-apocalyptic sovereign of the ultimate world empire who, like his model, Antiochus Epiphanes in Dan. xi, 36-7, is expected to proclaim himself and be worshipped as a god.” ↩

3. 12c.

   Page 576:  “Milik advanced a historical theory, associating the title with the Seleucid ruler, Alexander Balas. Fitzmyer, in turn, considered him to be a Jewish, possibly Hasmonaean, king, but allowed for a ‘messianic undertone’ in the use of ‘son of God’. On the other hand, David Flusser opted for a strictly apocalyptic meaning, and claimed that the idioms referred to the Antichrist. Still apocalyptically, but in a positive sense, F. García Martínez argued in favour of an angelic identity, the ‘son of God’ being either the heavenly Melchizedek or Michael, the Prince of Light.” ↩

4. 12d.

   Page 87:  “phrase is absent, however, from all the extant 4Q manuscripts of the Community Rule.”  The phrase is "the Prophet and the Messiahs of Aaron and Israel," quoted on the preceding page. ↩

5. 12e.

   Page 495:  “This short document from Cave 4 (4Q175), dating to the early first century BCE and similar in literary style to the Christian Testimonia or collections of messianic proof-texts, includes five quotations arranged in four groups.” ↩

6. 12f.

   Page 500:  “A striking first-century BCE document, composed of thirteen fragments from Cave 11 and centred on the mysterious figure of Melchizedek, was first published by A. S. van der Woude in 1965.” ↩

7. 12g.

   Page 187:  “Fragment 5, erroneously labelled by some as the ‘Pierced Messiah fragment’, is based on an interpretation of Isa. x, 34-xi, 1, and should be read in connection with 4Q161, frs. 8-10, an Isaiah Commentary from Cave 4, and the Blessing of the Prince of the Congregation (1QSb v, 20-29)”. ↩

Krajnc, Aljaž.  “Aramaic Daniel Apocryphon (4Q246): Its Interpretative Challenges Reconsidered.”  Bogoslovni vestnik 85(3):603–620.  2025.  A recent review of the readings of 4Q246, with a fresh transcription and translation, by a Ljubljana biblical scholar.  It summarises the palaeographic dating and the history of the dispute over who the "son of God" is.

1. 13a.

   Page 606:  “The text is written in the Herodian style, named after King Herod the Great, as numerous Hebrew and Aramaic documents from his reign are written in this style. Milik’s dating of the text’s writing to the last third of the 1st century BC was accepted by most scholars (Puech 1996, 166; Machiela 2023, 254) and was not questioned.” ↩

Metso, Sarianna.  “The Serekh Texts.”  Library of Second Temple Studies 62.  London: T & T Clark.  2007.  A short handbook on the Community Rule and its Cave 4 copies by the scholar whose 1997 study of the rule's textual development set the terms of the debate.  It compares the manuscripts passage by passage.

1. 14a.

   Page 13:  “In 4QS^e the passage parallel to 1QS VIII.15b–IX.11 is not present. An argument can be made that the passage is a secondary insertion in 1QS consisting of three smaller interpolations (Metso 1993: 304-305).” ↩

Schechter, Solomon.  Documents of Jewish Sectaries, vol. 1: Fragments of a Zadokite Work.  Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.  1910.  The first edition of the Damascus Document, from two medieval manuscripts that Schechter found in the Cairo Genizah, published 37 years before the first Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered.

1. 15a.

   Page ix:  “The MS. probably dates from the 10th century.”  Page x:  “It is undoubtedly of a later date than Text A (perhaps the 11th or 12th century)”. ↩

Wright, Benjamin G.  “Sirach.”  A New English Translation of the Septuagint.  New York: Oxford University Press.  Edited by Albert Pietersma and Benjamin G. Wright.  2007.  The NETS translation of the Wisdom of Ben Sira, written in Hebrew about 180 BC and translated into Greek by the author's grandson after 132 BC.  Mirror:  Archive.org

1. 16a.

   Page 759, verse 48:10:  “He who was recorded ready for the times, to calm anger before wrath, to turn the heart of a father to a son and to restore the tribes of Iakob.” ↩

eBible.org.  World English Bible.  2020.  A public-domain modern English translation of the Bible, quoted for New Testament verses.

1. 17a.

   Verse 1 Corinthians 1:23:  “but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Greeks,”. ↩ ↩

2. 17b.

   Verse Numbers 24:7:  “Water shall flow from his buckets. His seed shall be in many waters. His king shall be higher than Agag. His kingdom shall be exalted.”  Verse Numbers 24:17:  “A star will come out of Jacob. A scepter will rise out of Israel, and shall strike through the corners of Moab, and crush all the sons of Sheth.” ↩

3. 17c.

   Verse Daniel 12:3:  “Those who are wise will shine as the brightness of the expanse. Those who turn many to righteousness will shine as the stars forever and ever.” ↩

4. 17d.

   Verse Luke 7:22:  “Jesus answered them, “Go and tell John the things which you have seen and heard: that the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them.” ↩

Charles, R. H.  The Book of Enoch or 1 Enoch, Translated from the Editor's Ethiopic Text.  Oxford: Clarendon Press.  2nd edition.  1912.  The classic English translation of 1 Enoch from the Ethiopic, with Charles's introduction dating each section.  His early date for the Similitudes is now a minority view.

1. 18a.

   Verse 48:10:  “For they have denied the Lord of Spirits and His Anointed.”  Verse 52:4:  “All these things which thou hast seen shall serve the dominion of His Anointed that he may be potent and mighty on the earth.” ↩

2. 18b.

   Section Introduction, on chapters 37–71:  “Rome was not as yet known to the writer as one of the great world-powers—a fact which necessitates an earlier date than 64 B.C., when Rome interposed authoritatively in the affairs of Judaea. Thus the date of the Parables could not have been earlier than 94 B.C. or later than 64 B.C.” ↩

Collins, John J.  “Pre-Christian Jewish Messianism: An Overview.”  The Messiah: In Early Judaism and Christianity, 1–20.  Minneapolis: Fortress.  Edited by Magnus Zetterholm.  2007.  Collins's later twenty-page summary of the evidence, covering the Septuagint, the Scrolls, the Similitudes, 4 Ezra and the claimants.  It restates the conclusions of his 1995 book briefly.

1. 19a.

   Page 18:  “The lion is identified as “the Messiah whom the Most High has kept until the end of days, who will arise from the posterity of David” (12:32). In chapter 13, Ezra sees “something like the figure of a man” come up from the sea and fly with the clouds.” ↩

2. 19b.

   Page 18:  “The messiah also is said to be preexistent in the LXX translation of Ps 110 (109 in Greek), where he is said to have been begotten “before the Day Star” (the Hebrew has “from dawn”).” ↩

3. 19c.

   Page 7:  “The situation is different in the Prophets and Psalms, which were translated later (second or first century BCE).” ↩

4. 19d.

   Page 7:  “One possible window into the early Hellenistic period is provided by the Greek translation of the Bible, the Septuagint, of which the Pentateuch was translated by the mid-third century BCE. Despite some claims to the contrary, the LXX Pentateuch provides little evidence of messianic expectation. … The majority reading of the LXX manuscripts translates siloh as “the things laid away for him” and fails to associate the future glory of Judah with an individual ruler. The Greek version of Balaam’s oracles (Num 24:7, 17) speaks of a “man,” who will have a kingdom, and this is of some significance for messianism in the Hellenistic period, even though this passage refrains from calling him a king.” ↩ ↩

5. 19e.

   Page 7:  “For example, in Amos 4:13, the Lord reveals to humanity “what is his thought” (mah-seho). The Greek reads: “announcing to humanity his anointed” (ton christon autou).” ↩

6. 19f.

   Page 20:  “The Mishnah only twice makes passing reference to “the days of the messiah” (m. Ber. 1:5 and m. Sotah 9:15).” ↩

Septuaginta (CATSS morphologically analysed text).  Philadelphia: Center for Computer Analysis of Texts, University of Pennsylvania.  Edited by Alfred Rahlfs.  1935.  Rahlfs's standard edition of the Greek Old Testament in the University of Pennsylvania's tagged electronic form.  The article quotes its Greek for the Septuagint readings.

1. 20a.

   Verse Psalm 109:3 (Hebrew and English 110:3):  “ἐκ γαστρὸς πρὸ ἑωσφόρου ἐξεγέννησά σε”. ↩

Flint, Peter W.  “Numbers.”  A New English Translation of the Septuagint.  New York: Oxford University Press.  Edited by Albert Pietersma and Benjamin G. Wright.  2007.  The NETS translation of the Greek Numbers, made from the Göttingen critical text by a Dead Sea Scrolls scholar, with an introduction on how the translator handled the Hebrew.  Mirror:  Archive.org

1. 21a.

   Page 107:  “LXX Numbers may be described as quite a literal reproduction of the Hebrew that is often wooden.” ↩

2. 21b.

   Page 130, verse 24:7:  “A person will come forth from his offspring, and he shall rule over many nations, and reign of him shall be exalted beyond Gog, and his reign shall be increased.” ↩

3. 21c.

   Page 131, verse 24:17:  “A star shall dawn out of Iakob, and a person shall rise up out of Israel, and he shall crush the chiefs of Moab, and he shall plunder all Seth’s sons.”  The Greek word for "person" is ἄνθρωπος, where the Hebrew has שֵׁבֶט, "scepter." ↩

Philo of Alexandria.  On the Life of Moses, Book I.  Translated by C. D. Yonge.  c. 40 (edition of 1855).  Philo's retelling of Moses's life for Greek readers, written in Alexandria in the first half of the first century AD.  The article quotes his paraphrase of Balaam's oracle in Numbers 24:7.

1. 22a.

   Section 290:  “A man shall hereafter come forth out of thee who shall rule over many nations, and his kingdom shall increase every day and be raised up to heaven.” ↩

Philo of Alexandria.  On Rewards and Punishments.  Translated by C. D. Yonge.  c. 40 (edition of 1855).  Philo's treatise on the blessings and curses of the Law, which ends with a picture of Israel's future restoration.  It contains his only clear use of a scriptural promise of a coming conqueror.

1. 23a.

   Section 95:  “for a man will come forth, says the word of God, leading a host and warring furiously, who will subdue great and populous nations, God sending that assistance which is suitable for pious men”.  Yonge's edition marks the scripture as Numbers 24:7. ↩

Sefaria.  Targum Onkelos on Genesis 49:10 and Numbers 24:7, 17;  Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Genesis 21:21, 49:10 and Numbers 24:17;  Targum Jonathan on Isaiah 11:1 and 52:13.  2026.  The Aramaic texts with English translations:  the Metsudah Chumash (2009) for Onkelos, J. W. Etheridge (1862) for Pseudo-Jonathan, and the London "Chaldee Paraphrase" (1871) for Targum Jonathan on Isaiah.

1. 24a.

   Verses Onkelos, Genesis 49:10:  “עַד דְּיֵיתֵי מְשִׁיחָא דְּדִילֵיהּ הִיא מַלְכוּתָא”.  Verses Onkelos, Numbers 24:17:  “כַּד יְקוּם מַלְכָּא מִיַּעֲקֹב וְיִתְרַבָּא מְשִׁיחָא”.  Verses Targum Jonathan, Isaiah 11:1:  “And a king shall come forth from the sons of Jesse, and from his children's children the Messiah shall be anointed.”  Verses Targum Jonathan, Isaiah 52:13:  “Behold, my servant the messiah shall prosper, he shall be exalted and extolled, and he shall be very strong.”  The Aramaic of Onkelos means "until the Messiah comes, whose is the kingdom" and "when a king arises from Jacob and the Messiah is anointed." ↩

2. 24b.

   Verses Pseudo-Jonathan, Genesis 21:21:  “And he dwelt in the wilderness of Pharan, and took for a wife Adisha, but put her away. And his mother took for him Phatima to wife, from the land of Mizraim.”  Etheridge's translation.  Aisha and Fatima were the names of Muhammad's wife and daughter. ↩

Josephus, Flavius.  The Wars of the Jews.  Translated by William Whiston.  c. 75 (edition of 1737).  Josephus's history of the revolt of AD 66–70, written in the 70s by a Jewish commander who surrendered to Vespasian and wrote under Flavian patronage.  He is hostile to the rebels and is the only detailed source for most of the claimants.

1. 25a.

   Book 6, chapter 5, section 4:  “But now, what did the most elevate them in undertaking this war, was an ambiguous oracle that was also found in their sacred writings, how, “about that time, one from their country should become governor of the habitable earth.” The Jews took this prediction to belong to themselves in particular, and many of the wise men were thereby deceived in their determination. Now this oracle certainly denoted the government of Vespasian, who was appointed emperor in Judea.”  Niese's section numbers 6.312–313. ↩

Tacitus.  “Histories.”  Loeb Classical Library.  Translated by Clifford H. Moore.  c. 105 (edition of 1931).  The Roman senator Tacitus's history of the civil wars of AD 69 and the Flavian years.  Book 5 opens with an ethnography of the Jews and the siege of Jerusalem.

1. 26a.

   Book 5, section 13:  “the majority firmly believed that their ancient priestly writings contained the prophecy that this was the very time when the East should grow strong and that men starting from Judea should possess the world. This mysterious prophecy had in reality pointed to Vespasian and Titus”. ↩

Suetonius.  “The Deified Vespasian.”  Loeb Classical Library.  Translated by J. C. Rolfe.  c. 120 (edition of 1914).  Suetonius's life of the emperor Vespasian, written in the early second century by an imperial secretary with access to the palace archives.

1. 27a.

   Section 4.5:  “There had spread over all the Orient an old and established belief, that it was fated at that time for men coming from Judaea to rule the world. This prediction, referring to the emperor of Rome, as afterwards appeared from the event, the people of Judaea took to themselves”. ↩

Josephus, Flavius.  Antiquities of the Jews.  Translated by William Whiston.  c. 94 (edition of 1737).  Josephus's history of the Jews from creation to AD 66, written in Rome about AD 93–94.  It retells Daniel and gives the fullest account of the claimants of 4 BC and the sign prophets of the 40s and 50s.

1. 28a.

   Book 10, chapter 10, section 4:  “Daniel did also declare the meaning of the stone to the king but I do not think proper to relate it, since I have only undertaken to describe things past or things present, but not things that are future”.  Niese's section 10.210.  A note number printed after "king" is omitted. ↩

Zimmerli, Walther, and Joachim Jeremias.  “The Servant of God.”  Studies in Biblical Theology 20.  London: SCM Press.  1957.  The English version of the two authors' article on "servant of God" for the Theological Dictionary of the New Testament.  Jeremias wrote the sections on Judaism and the New Testament, where he argued that Palestinian Judaism read Isaiah 53 of a suffering messiah before Jesus.  It is the classic statement of the maximal case, written before most of the Cave 4 texts were published.

1. 29a.

   Page 77:  “It is astonishing that in this rich material there is no reference to Isa. 53. Of this there is only one possible explanation: the connexion of Isa. 53 with the Messiah was from pre-Christian days so firmly and exclusively held by Palestinian”.  Page 78:  “Judaism that the application of this chapter to the expiatory death of the righteous was automatically excluded from consideration.”  Jeremias's section. ↩

2. 29b.

   Page 77:  “The widespread conclusion, that the relative infrequency of messianic interpretations of Isa. 53 in late Judaism shows that the latter was not acquainted with the idea of the suffering Messiah, does not do justice to the sources; for it ignores the great part which—very understandably—the debate with Christianity played in this question.” ↩

Knohl, Israel.  The Messiah Before Jesus: The Suffering Servant of the Dead Sea Scrolls.  Berkeley: University of California Press.  Translated by David Maisel.  2000.  A book by a Hebrew University biblical scholar arguing that the speaker of the Qumran self-glorification hymns was a messianic leader killed in 4 BC whose followers believed he rose after three days, and that Jesus saw himself as this figure's successor.  Its case for the death and resurrection rests on Revelation 11 and the Oracle of Hystaspes, not on the hymns.

1. 30a.

   Page 3:  “This Messiah was finally killed in Jerusalem, and his body was left in the street for three days. His disciples believed that he had arisen after three days and had ascended to heaven. The humiliation, rejection, and slaying of the Messiah caused a crisis of faith among his followers. … Thus, for the first time in the history of Judaism, a conception emerged of "catastrophic" messianism in which the humiliation, rejection, and death of the Messiah were regarded as an inseparable part of the redemptive process.” ↩

2. 30b.

   Page 9:  “This imaginary reconstruction of a day in the Messiah's life is based on literary sources from the period and on archaeological discoveries made in Qumran”.  Page 71:  “This tradition succinctly expresses the chief claim of this book, which is that Jesus was the heir and successor of the Messiah of Qumran.” ↩

3. 30c.

   Page 15:  “[Who] has been despised like [me? And who] has been rejected [of men] like me? [And who] compares to m[e in enduring] evil?”  Page 16:  “same time he views himself in the image of the "suffering servant" in Isaiah 53. Of the "suffering servant" it is written: "He was despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief" (Isaiah 53:3).”  Knohl's translation of the first version of the hymn, preserved in 4Q471b, 4Q427 and 1QHa. ↩

4. 30d.

   Page 19:  “[N]owhere else in the corpus of the scrolls do we find words placed in the mouth of either Messiah, and so there is no parallel for a speech such as we find in 4Q491 by a messianic figure.” ↩

5. 30e.

   Page 39:  “Hystaspes says that the prophet of God was killed by the "son of God," whom we have identified as Augustus. In the Book of Revelation, the two witnesses/Messiahs were killed by a beast that ascends from an abyss (abyssos) (Revelation 11:7), which is also a designation for Augustus and his army.”  Note numbers in Knohl's text are omitted. ↩

The Messiah: In Early Judaism and Christianity.  Minneapolis: Fortress.  Edited by Magnus Zetterholm.  2007.  A short survey by five Scandinavian and American scholars of the messiah from the Hebrew Bible to the rabbis and the church fathers, edited by a Lund New Testament scholar.

1. 31a.

   Page xxii:  “Even though there was a rich supply of culturally determined messianic traditions, none of these included the suffering and death of the Messiah of Israel.”  From Zetterholm's introduction. ↩

Bockmuehl, Markus.  “A 'Slain Messiah' in 4Q Serekh Milhamah (4Q285)?”  Tyndale Bulletin 43(1):155–169.  1992.  A study of the "pierced messiah" fragment published within a year of the 1991 press reports, by a New Testament scholar then at Cambridge.  He gives his own transcription and translation and weighs the grammar and the Isaiah 11 context.

1. 32a.

   Page 166:  “The Polel of [the root] in line 5 appears to mean 'woundings' or 'piercings'; Biblical passages to be compared include Ezekiel 32:26 and possibly Isaiah 51:9, 53:5.”  The Hebrew root is printed in Hebrew letters in the original. ↩

2. 32b.

   Page 167:  “In the end, then, the answer to our stated question is quite straightforward: the fragment from 4Q Serekh Milhamah does not refer to a dying Messiah. Nor of course does it advance the question of whether there was any Jewish notion of a suffering and dying Messiah before the coming of Christ.” ↩

The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament in English, vol. 2: Pseudepigrapha.  Oxford: Clarendon Press.  Edited by R. H. Charles.  1913.  The standard English collection of the Pseudepigrapha for most of the twentieth century, with a translation and introduction for each book.  The article uses G. H. Box's translation of 4 Ezra and G. Buchanan Gray's introduction to the Psalms of Solomon.

1. 33a.

   Verse 4 Ezra 7:28–29:  “For my Son the Messiah shall be revealed, together with those who are with him, and shall rejoice the survivors four hundred years. And it shall be, after these years, that my Son the Messiah shall die, and all in whom there is human breath.”  G. H. Box's translation.  The versions differ on the number 400. ↩

2. 33b.

   Verse 4 Ezra 3:1:  “In the thirtieth year after the downfall of the City”.  Section Introduction, § 8:  “The limits within which the final redaction of our book must have taken place may be fixed as A.D. 100-135. It is clear that the book cannot have been published in its present form before the former date in view of the explicit reference in iii. 1 to the thirtieth year after the downfall of the city”.  Box's translation heads 7:26–30 "The sudden revelation of the Messiah: his 400 years reign and death" and marks it as the redactor's work. ↩

A rough check of what the silence of the sources can and cannot show, for scale only.  This article cites about twenty pre-Christian or contemporary compositions that speak of a coming messianic figure:  Psalms of Solomon 17 and 18, 4Q161, 4Q174, 1QSb, the Damascus Document, 4Q252, 4Q285, 4Q246, 1QS, 1QSa, 4Q175, 4Q521, 11Q13, 4Q541, the self-glorification hymn, the Similitudes of Enoch, Greek Numbers 24, Philo, and Ben Sira 48.  None has a suffering, dying and atoning messiah.  If a fraction f of such compositions had carried that idea, and the twenty were independent draws, the chance of seeing none would be (1 − f)^20:  0.8^20 ≈ 0.012 for f = 1/5, 0.9^20 ≈ 0.12 for f = 1/10, and 0.95^20 ≈ 0.36 for f = 1/20.  The draws are not truly independent, since half of them come from one sect's library, so the true chances of silence are somewhat higher than these figures.  No published model claims a particular fraction;  the figures only show that the silence rules out a common expectation and cannot rule out a rare one. ↩

Sefaria.  Babylonian Talmud, William Davidson Edition:  Sanhedrin 97a–99a and Sukkah 52a;  Jerusalem Talmud, Taanit 4:5, Guggenheimer edition.  2026.  The rabbinic passages most often quoted on the messiah, in the Aramaic and Hebrew with modern English translations.  The Babylonian Talmud's English is the Koren–Steinsaltz rendering, which expands the terse original with explanatory words.

1. 35a.

   Section Sukkah 52a:  “Rabbi Dosa and the Rabbis disagree concerning this matter. One said that this eulogy is for Messiah ben Yosef who was killed in the war of Gog from the land of Magog prior to the ultimate redemption with the coming of Messiah ben David. And one said that this eulogy is for the evil inclination that was killed.” ↩

2. 35b.

   Section Sanhedrin 98b:  “And the Rabbis say: The leper of the house of Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi is his name, as it is stated: “Indeed our illnesses he did bear and our pains he endured; yet we did esteem him injured, stricken by God, and afflicted” (Isaiah 53:4).” ↩

3. 35c.

   Section Sanhedrin 98a:  “Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi said to Elijah: When will the Messiah come? Elijah said to him: Go ask him. Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi asked: And where is he sitting? Elijah said to him: At the entrance of the city of Rome. … He sits among the poor who suffer from illnesses.” ↩

4. 35d.

   Section Sanhedrin 99a:  “Rabbi Hillel says: There is no Messiah coming for the Jewish people, as they already ate from him, as all the prophecies relating to the Messiah were already fulfilled, during the days of Hezekiah.”  “Rav Yosef says: May the Master forgive Rabbi Hillel for stating matters with no basis.” ↩