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

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This book provides an interesting discussion of some late Second Temple Period texts. The proposal that Augustus being called divi filius, Son of God, is reflected in a negative allusion to him in a Qumran Cave 4 text is well worth consideration. The Menahem mentioned in the Mishna (Hag. 2.2) may indeed be the Menahem the Essene mentioned by Josephus (Ant. 15), even though those writers who suggested this centuries ago misunderstood the origin of the name "Essenes," IMO.

But Menahem was not the Essene Teacher of Righteousness, nor was the teacher considered messiah.

The Essene Teacher was apparently earlier than Menahem (and earlier still than John the Baptist, James et al.). Most probably the teacher was Judah the Essene, a teacher, the first Essene mentioned by Josephus (in both Ant. and War), as is shown in "Jannaeus" [...].

Damascus Document indicates 390 years after the end of Babylonian captivity (538 BC), and after 20 more years, God saw the ma'asim. deeds, of a group (Essenes, from 'asah, 'osey hatorah, observers of torah) and raised the teacher. The Qumran Essene Pesher texts associate the teacher and the 'osey hatorah, the Essenes. Archaeology of Qumran and C14 and paleography dating of some Qumran mss also point to a time for the teacher earlier than Menahem, but fitting Judah.

In any case, Knohl raises several interesting questions.

The Messiah Before Jesus is a new anomaly in Dead Sea Scrolls and New Testament studies. Israel Knohl is one of the many authors to propose an uncommon unheard of idea. The book is primarily about certain Qumran documents, the Thanksgiving Hymns, namely, the 'Self-Glorification Hymn.' His work is somewhat speculative, and rests on a number of historical assumptions. I'm not saying that this automatically makes it incredible, since most of history IS reconstruction. But for example, this Scroll theory heavily lies on the Sectarian Hypothesis regarding the Essenes inhabiting Khirbet Qumran. What I found interesting is his new historical insight on the book of Revelation (St. John's Apocalypse) and its historical basis in Roman history and connection to Qumran. Knohl's thesis is another which robs Jesus Christ of his orthodox "uniqueness." It views him as the successor to Menahem (the Essene's messiah) in a chain of messiahs that would continue even after Christ. So essentially, he disagrees with the historians and at the same time the Christians. He does this by asserting that Jesus DID in fact regard himself as the Son of God and the Suffering Messiah. (which Christians also would do, but for theological agreement with Him) Historians regard things like the divine conception and self predictions of suffering and death as post-historical Christ interpolations of the earliest Christians. They assent this because they have come to believe that such concepts were alien to the first century Judaism that expected a military Messiah-conqueror. But this book sets out to establish a precursor to Jesus identified as Isaiah 53's 'Suffering Servant.' I must admit I have a feeling that I need to recommend this book to all of you because it contains some profoundly interesting historical data that you might not find anywhere else. Such as the Paraclete of John's Gospel. Find out for yourself!! Israel Knohl gave me satisfaction. The work is condensed to about 100 pages with a plethora of footnotes that take up a good portion of the book's thickness, but none the less could quite possibly provide key information as to understanding Christ's messianic position!

A Messiah before Jesus is not a new idea. After all, this is what the main crux of the Dead Sea Scrolls is all about, where we have an Essene Teacher of Righteousness whose life not only paralles that of the life of Jesus, but appears to pre-date the Christian saviour. What is more, the Wisdom of Solomon, found in the Catholic Bible but not in the Protestant, if part and parcel of the Old Testament and not the New, suggests in chapters 2 & 3 that not only was there a Messiah before Jesus, but chapter 3 implies that there were many. The Dead Sea Scrolls in turn, "Manual of Discipline: Rules of the Order," also appears to support this view where it states, and I quote from the Millar Burrows translation:

"They shall not depart from any counsel of the law, walking in all the stubbornness of their hearts; but they shall be judged by the first judgments by which the men of the community began to be disciplined, until there shall come a prophet and the Messiahs of Aaron and Israel."

What the Manual of Discipline appears to suggest, was that there was not one or two Messiahs, one pre-dating the other, but rather there was a belief in many Messiahs, this being possibly a group, or "Messianic Order." However, on a more positive note regarding "The Messiah Before Jesus," Israel Knohl's view will certainly open up more avenues for thought, discussion and insight into what really was the situation in Palestine during this period in history.

Israel Knohl has written another of the "messiah before Jesus" books, Michael Wise (The First Messiah) and Alvar Ellegard (Jesus 100 years Before Christ) being notable among the contributors to this theme. Knohl proposes "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 lived one generation before Jesus (p. 2)." Why exactly Jesus felt he was an "also ran" messiah Knohl neglects to say, which is all the more questionable when one searches the gospels in vain for any indication that Jesus ever claimed to be the Messiah, much less a duplicate of a previous Messiah.

In any event, Knohl's Messiah is a James Bond secret agent who is among Herod's closest advisers and maintains his night job as the head of the Qumran community (his name, by the way, was Menahem). All of this he gets from an analysis of the "Thanksgiving Scroll", and particularly a passage he describes as the "Self Glorification Hymn". His analysis further reveals a connection to the suffering servant of Isaiah, although since Bultmann and Vermes almost every thorough analysis of Isaiah reveals no real parallels to Jesus' life. Moreover, Michael Wise researches the same passages and comes up with a completely different theory.

The book has an index and notes, but no reference list. Knohl's thesis itself occupies a mere 71 pages. Perhaps he should have done more. This book is certainly interesting, and Knohl's speculations are not impossible. But anyone interested in the messiah before Jesus will probably find more fertile ground in Wise or Ellegard.

I read this book right after reading Micheal Wise's 'The First Messiah'. The two books are in conflict in that they use the same Dead Sea Scrolls to construct different messiahs two generations apart. Personally I find Knohl's book more convincing. It is come compact: merely 102 pages. It also is better integrated into the culture of the time discussing possible influences from Virgil's 4th Eclogue and from the cult of the Prince of Peace and Son of God, Octavian Ceasar Augustus.

A challenging and heuristic work. Do read it.

Israel Knohl's "The Messiah Before Jesus" is a University of California publication and has a promotional blurb from a number of big-gun scholars on its back cover, including Emanuel Tov, the Editor-in-Chief of the Dead Sea Scrolls Publication Project. It's a good thing, because the thesis of the book has the potential of overturning many assumptions about early Christianity and might be dismissed if proposed by a less respected scholar. The thesis of Knoll's book is that the most recent fragments coming out of the Dead Sea Scrolls project reveal that the Qumran community believed that the Messiah would suffer, be pierced, and rise again on the third day in accordance with the scriptures. This has been the long-anxiety of Orthodox Christians, that the Dead Sea scrolls would prove to undermine the uniqueness of Jesus, or somehow anticipate the central doctrines of Christianity, making them less "special." And Knoll's thesis, and the evidence he supports it with, is compelling and ought to be of grave concern to those who style themselves "Christian apologists." Knoll believes that the Qumran community not only anticipated an Isaiah 53-style "suffering servant" Messiah, but that the leader of their sect believed that he was that Messiah. Knoll further postulates that this Messiah had in fact acted out his beliefs, was martyred, and that the Qumran community believed that he had been raised from the dead and taken up to heaven. This Messiah, according to Knoll, did this a full generation prior to Jesus. Knoll gathers several lines of persuasive evidence for these assertions. Some of his arguments, however, are circumstantial, but if you buy his stronger lines of evidence, they become possible. Two circumstantial lines of evidence that I found interesting (and that can be looked at directly by anyone with a Bible) come from the books of Revelation and John. In Revelation, for example, there seems to have been retained a memory of not one, but two messianic witnesses who die in Jerusalem and are raised from the dead (Revelation 11:10-12). And the gospel of John seems to have retained (in a distorted form) Jesus' messianic-lineage consciousness. In the gospel of John Jesus tells his disciples that he will send them "another Comforter" after he is gone (John 14:16). The word translated "comforter" in Greek is "paraclete." This is the word used to translate the Hebrew word "menahem." It just so happens that a man named Menahem is the leader of the Qumran sect a generation before Jesus. It is this Menahem (mentioned also in Josephus) who Knohl postulates was the first suffering servant of the Qumran community. Thus John's gospel retains the memory of Jesus telling his disciples that he was a "Menahem" and that he, being in a line of "Menahem" would send "another Menahem" after his death.

This book brings to light a little known hymn from the Dead Sea Scrolls which sheds alot of light on Jesus and his followers.
It also stresses the importance of the "Suffering Servant" theme in first century Jewish Messianic beliefs.

The "Self Glorification Hymn", probably written by the Qumran
Teacher, himself reveals the belief in a mortal, after rejection and martyrdom, achieving a divine or semi-divine status and being exalted to Heaven. This and the books of Enoch blow apart all the modern liberal theories which try to refute the New Testament.

The author makes a good argument that Menahem the Essene was the Teacher of Righteousness, although there are other excellent but conflicting arguments (see my review of Michael Wise's "The Saviour Before Christ").

Whether you agree with the author or not, his argument that the "Paraclete" in John's Gospel refers to Jesus as another Menahem is very credible and fascinating. The word Paraclete or comforter can be derived from the name "Menahem" and is also connected with the Messiah in rabbinic literature. Knohl's credential as a Hebrew scholar speaks for itself and I have no reason to doubt these claims. Knohl also claims that a passage concerning two messianic leaders in Revelation 11 refers to Menahem.

The book claims that Jesus became acquainted with Menahem's legacy through John the Baptist who was more than likely a member of the Qumran community at one time. Jesus may have started out as a Galilean Hasid who continued John the Baptist's apocalyptic message, but somewhere along the line, perhaps after John's death, he took upon himself the role of the Suffering Servant Messiah to continue and complete what Menahem had started. The fact that Menahem was rejected by the Pharisees may explain Jesus' condemnation of the same.

Whether you agree with the author or not, his exposition of the "Self Glorification Hymn" sheds a new light on Jesus' own self understanding and what was recorded about him in the New Testament.

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.]