The First Messiah: Investigating the Savior Before Jesus

I echo what other reviewers have said: intriging, not the most dense history text, but well researched. I want to clear up some points from the other reviews: 1) In the first chapter, he doesn't exactly give a history of crisis cults, but several examples throughout history. The theory could be fleshed out more. I think most readership can fill in the blanks, but it might have been more explicit. 2) I believe he readily admits that he decided to call the person he is referring to "Judah", so as to not have to repeat phrases like 'the person he is referring to' over and over again. I would not make a big deal of it. It helps the story along. 3) He admits that he is extrapolating from the documents, and so the biography is necessarily somewhat speculative. He seldom loses sight of this fact, like some books do. Occasionally, he needs to argue his points better before moving on to the next thing. Those are choices any author has to make, and they will bother some readers more than others. More extensive notes and references might have addressed this better. 4) Related to the last point: in his defence, he includes the quotes on which he is basing his biography. He also indicates where the text is broken. I think the quotes are a very good inclusion. It largely answers those who say his story is speculative. A few criticisms: 1) As several people mention, the last chapter is not well argued. The thesis seems to be that Jesus, like "Judah", saw a role for himself in the Hebrew literature. In other words, he is arguing against those who say that the connection of Jesus' messiah-ship to the Hebrew scriptures occurred only after Jesus' death, by his followers, trying to make sense of thier master's untimely and horrific death. Unfortunately (as spelled out by other reviews) his argument comes up short. It is probably worth another book (or at least several chapters). It seems like he is saying that because crisis cult leaders often pour over scriptures to find a role for themselves, re-invent thier role as prophecies fail to come true, etc. that Jesus did this as well. While there may be something in human nature that both explains why crisis cults take a similar form across history and applies to Jesus as well, does that 'something' exclusively explain the development of Christianity? Probably not, and that topic, and the relationship of the crisis cult factor to other factors, is left unexplored. 2) He does not connect the texts he is using for the life of 'Judah' to the other scrolls. He leaves the question of who wrote the Dead Sea scrolls, how they got to where the modern era found etc. alone. He somewhat dismissed it, saying that the scrolls found could have been part of a much larger library (implying that speculation about them is therefore pointless). 3) An intriguing thought was that the idea of a messiah as expressed in Judah and Jesus started with Judah. The assertion is covered in a few paragraphs. Alth

This book, along with Israel Knohl's "The Messiah Before Christ" (see my review) present conflicting but very credible theories concerning the Qumran Teacher of Righteousness and how he may have been a catalyst for Jesus' self understanding as the Messiah of Israel. Wise identifies the Teacher as an individual named Judah who started a breakaway movement about 76 b.c. in opposition to the Pharasaic takeover of the Temple. We can surmise that this may be the Essene leader of the same name mentioned in Josephus but Wise leaves that up to the reader. Wise goes through each of the hymns he believes were written by Judah which gives us the only authentic self portrait we have of a Jewish messianic leader almost contemporaneous with Jesus. These writings are crucial to our understanding of Jesus and the New Testament. Rather than undermining the New Testament, which so many sensationalists have done, the Thanksgiving Hymns actualy support the claims that were made about Jesus. They also explain why Jesus may have been so hostile to Pharisees since these were Judah's antagonists as well. Wise claims that the "Self Glorification Hymn" was probably written after Judah's martyrdom by his followers which is strikingly similar to what Jesus' followers handed down to us in the New Testament. Even if you don't agree with Wise's theories, he gives us an outstanding and in depth overview of the Dead Sea Scroll community. The Damascus Document gives us a history of the community similar to the Book of Acts. The progression of the hymns written by Judah reveals how his own movement progressed and was in danger of collapsing when many of his followers turned on him. It reveals the diversity of Judaism and how they were pitted against eachother even though the ultimate enemy was the foreign invader ie Rome. The War Scroll is a cryptic diatribe against Rome, similar to the Book of Revelation, and that Rome would be desroyed on a cosmic and supernatural scale, not by human political movements. Jesus probably became familiar with Judah's legacy through John the Baptist who was probably a member of this community at one time. After John was killed, Jesus took the messianic role upon himself which Judah had done a hundred years prior. The most important idea in this book is that if Judah could believe this about himself, why not Jesus?

This is a truly remarkable book. Wise offers an interpretation of the enigmatic figure of the Teacher of Righteousness, who figures as a unique teacher and interpreter of the Bible in central texts of the Qumran scrolls. Many scholars have ascribed a large part of the Thanksgiving Hymns to him. Alphonse Dupont-Sommer regarded him as a forerunner of Jesus. Wise goes much further. Based on a close examination of the Hymns and other Qumran literature, Wise is able to reconstruct the life and career of the Teacher, who started out as a high-ranking Jerusalem priest, and ended up as an exiled rebel, but deriving strength from his firm belief that he is the Messiah of God. As a careful and highly respected scholar, Wise naturally realises that such a reconstruction has to be speculative. He therefore presents it as a kind of historical novel. The result is astounding But it is largely convincing. The story of the First Messiah comes to life. Wise presents us with a detailed picture of the inner life of a great religious figure. He starts his account with a review of various Messiahs of the modern world, finding several common characteristics. He ends by comparing the First Messiah with the Jesus of the New Testament, finding many parallels between them. But he derives the similarities rather from the psychological mind-set of all Messiah figures, not from more direct influences. Remarkably, he never even mentions the Essenes, considered by most modern scholars as the religious group responsible for the Qumran Scrolls, and thus the community in which the Teacher was working. It is also remarkable that Wise, when discussing the Jesus of the New Testament, does not bring out the very marked difference between the Jesus figure of Paul - remarkably similar to the Essene Teacher - on one hand, and the Jesus of the Gospels and Acts, on the other. The largely fictional nature of the latter figure is emphasized in recent books by George A. Wells (The Jesus Myth), Earl Doherty (The Jesus Puzzle), T. Freke and P. Gandy (The Jesus Mysteries), and myself (Jesus, - A Hundred Years before Christ). Altogether Wise's superlatively written book is a weighty contribution to our knowledge of Judaism and and its Christian offspring in the centuries around the beginning of our era.Alvar Ellegård, University of Göteborg, Sweden.

Author Wise has done a masterful work showing that the "historical" Jesus could have easily asserted his role as Messiah by virtually proving that 100 years before the time of Jesus there was someone (probably named Judah) who not only made the same claims, but was the one who first POPULARIZED the idea of a semi-divine Messiah.The book further demonstrates, rather successfully I might say, that in the Dead Sea Scrolls we actually can read this first Messiah's own words... not just the words written decades later by followers.In fact, for the first time in this reader's experience, in Judah's writings you can see a direct connection with the kinds of spiritual views and "Jewish innovation" that the modern knowledgeable reader might have always seen in Christianity. "Was it Jesus himself who invented so much of the novel theology we call Christianity?" According to this book, the answer is a quiet "no." Some of the basic "planks" of faith of Christianity existed at least 100 years earlier in the works of this First Messiah.I am sure there are those who would want the book to make a controversial three-way connection between the "Dead Sea Scroll" Judah, Jesus and the Essenes. I am not surprised that the author deliberately chose a conservative approach and refused to fish in those waters in this particular book. But I would not be surprised if the author later follows up with an equally exciting sequel that pursues those matters to the likely satisfaction of all Essene-oriented readers.This book is a "MUST READ" for anyone who wants to see how coherent a picture the Dead Sea Scrolls CAN make of early Judea when armed with a full understanding of scriptural text and cultural context. Get the book!

The only thing wrong with this book is Mr. Wise doesn't go far enough. But considering the cut-throat academic environment regarding linking the Dead Sea scrolls with the Essenes, perhaps his "conservative" approach is appropriate. Mr. Wise does a GREAT job linking ignored Dead Sea texts to what we know about the Pharisees and the Sadducees, and a "flight to the land of Damascus." And he does an AMAZING job showing that historians don't have to "flinch" so much about whether the historical Jesus could have REALLY believed he was the Messiah. Mr. Wise proves to my satisfaction that there was an earlier man, a member of the Priesthood and NOT a "son of David," who made the very same claim... and he was the FIRST one to do it in terms of being a semi-divine Messiah. So, 100 years later, when Jesus is said to do the very same thing, it is actually MORE understandable that Jesus, with a Davidic background, is willing and able to make a more powerful or less proves is The Teacher of Righteousness, with how the Essenes split off from a part of the temple priesthood (before or during the formation of the Sadducees), and how this links Judah with the Essenes.Considering how good this book is, I am willing to wait for a sequel (by him or any other author) who can build on Wise's conclusions. George Brooks at [email protected]