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

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.