Ebook: The Messiah before Jesus: The Suffering Servant of the Dead Sea Scrolls

The Synopsis says: "Knohl gives evidence for a messianic precursor to Jesus who is described as the `Suffering Servant' in recently published fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls". These do indeed show that claims for a human-divine, suffering, dying, rising and glorified redeemer/saviour leader were in fact already being made in the first century before Christ. However, Knohl applies these texts to a hypothetical Qumran leader called Menahem, and calls him (p. 8) "the Messiah, who is the `nasi' (leader) of the [Qumran] community", the "Qumran Messiah before Christ", killed in 4 BC leading a revolt against the Romans on the death of Herod. This Menahem had been a friend of Herod, but also a secret enemy of Rome. However, Knohl's linking of the terms Messiah and messianism to this hypothetical `Menahem' (also supposed by Knohl to be the author of the crucial Dead Sea fragments) does not convince. None of this is certain. Josephus's account of this revolt does not mention any Essene Menahem as a messianic leader killed by Rome.

Referring to the two witnesses, killed, their bodies lying for three and a half days in the street, then raised back to life, in Rev. 11.1-12, Knohl says (p. 68): "Menahem was probably one of these two messianic witnesses". Margaret Barker mentions no such thing in her commentary on this passage in her book The Revelation of Jesus Christ. Knohl again (p. 42): "One can therefore assume that one of the two Messiahs killed in 4 BCE was the hero of the messianic hymns from Qumran." All guesswork.

Knohl goes on: "The disciples believed that the humiliated and pierced Messiah had been resurrected after three days and that he was due to reappear on earth as redeemer, victor and judge" (p. 45). But one must ask: where is the redemption wrought by this slain Qumran Messiah? Jewish writers claim that Jesus cannot be the Messiah because he did not lead his people to military victory, nor inaugurate a visible Kingdom of God, a new age of justice and peace. The "Qumran Messiah" certainly fails this test.

Knohl's identification of an actual Qumran-Messiah is very problematical. But he is to be congratulated for stating boldly that the New Testament claims for the Person and Work of Jesus Christ are not Christian inventions, but were already part of the Essene expectations. The Synopsis ends thus: "This book should reshape our understanding of Christianity and its relationship to Judaism." It does - but it reshapes it by solidly supporting Christianity's claims for its Messiah. Knohl quotes Geza Vermes from Jesus the Jew, (1981): "Neither the suffering of the Messiah, nor his death and resurrection, appear to have been part of the faith of first-century Judaism' (Knohl, p. 106, Notes). Knohl says (p.2): "In this book I intend to counter these claims. I propose to show that Jesus really did regard himself as the Messiah and truly expected the Messiah to be rejected, killed, and resurrected after three days, for this is precisely what was believed to have happened to a messianic leader who had lived one generation before Jesus". This is sensational. However, while the Church and the New Testament exist as historical authentications of Jesus' messianic claims, one must ask, humbly but bluntly: what is there to authenticate Knohl's claim that an actual Qumran Messiah was killed but then believed by his followers to have been resurrected after three days and to have risen to heaven in a cloud (p. 45)? Proofs for this belief (Knohl quotes only Revelation 11.12, and Lactantius) and for this resurrection simply do not exist.

A further point. In The Way of the Lord - Christological Exegesis of the Old Testament in the Gospel of Mark (T & T Clark, 1992), Joel Marcus adduces the influence of not only the Suffering Servant, but also Daniel 7, Zechariah 9-14, Psalms 2 and 110, and a very large number of Psalms of the Righteous Sufferer. This is the wide OT sourcing for the NT vision of the Suffering and Rising Messiah. So these latest DSS hymns confirm, but do not originate or create, the NT view of Jesus the Messiah. Jesus did not need the Qumran Messiah's example. His role is already, solidly, in the OT, though one welcomes its further development in the Intertestamental literature.

A final `cri du coeur'. Everything that I have read in the Dead Sea Scrolls debate serves only to confirm the Christian view of Jesus Christ. John summarizes his Gospel thus: "These signs are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in His Name" (John 20.31). It is time for the methodology of this scholarly discipline to accept as a `'fait acquis', as the central point now beyond dispute, the authenticity of the New Testament picture of the Messiah. This is the unshakable (certainly unshaken) and inescapable conclusion of every discussion, hostile, neutral or friendly, of the relationship between the Dead Sea Scrolls and Christianity. The New Testament must be accepted as the most detailed and best historically grounded treatment of Messianism - not the DSS, and not the Mishnah and the Talmuds that date from two hundred to six hundred years after Christ. Luke's Gospel has (7.20-23): "John the Baptist has sent us to you [Jesus] to ask: `Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?' Jesus had just cured many people of diseases, plagues, and evil spirits, and had given sight to many who were blind. And he answered them: 'Go and tell John what you have seen and heard: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, the poor have good news brought to them [ptochoi evangelizontai]. And blessed is anyone who takes no offence at me [hos ean me skandalisthe en emoi]'".

Messiah has come. Jesus does not 'follow' Menahem. He will have no successor (see Hebr 1.1,2).

[This review has figured on the Amazon UK website since 1 March 2007.]