THE current teaching about the Messiah the Son of David at the time of Christ, as we have seen in Part One, Chapter 2, was that he would be a righteous and holy king as predicted in the prophecies of Isaiah ix and xi. But we do not know whether the Davidic Messiah as distinct from the Priestly Messiah of the sectarian documents had at all been associated with the Suffering Servant of Isaiah xlii–liii. There was a belief that the Saints, the Elect of Israel, the Son of Man collective of the Book of Daniel, would perform an atoning work for sin by their faithfulness to the Law and by their sufferings at the hands of the wicked, and it would appear that at least in sectarian circles the same function was applied to a messianic personality, the Elect One and Just One, the Son of Man singular.
It is not easy to throw light on these pre-Christian ideas of the Jewish eclectic groups because much of their teaching was not made public and the literature to which we have access is somewhat mysterious in its expressions. We have to explore as best we can and reach certain tentative conclusions.
It was wholly in keeping with the testimony of the Scriptures that persecution and even death was the likely lot of those who followed the way of the Lord faithfully. Perhaps nowhere is this better expressed than in a famous passage of the Wisdom of Solomon.
Let us lie in wait for the righteous man,
because he is inconvenient to us and opposes our actions;
he reproaches us for our sins against the Law,
and accuses us of sins against our training.
He professes to have knowledge of God,
and calls himself a child of the Lord . . .
Let us see if his words are true,
and let us test what will happen at the end of his life;
for if the righteous man is God's son, he will help him,
and deliver him from the hand of his adversaries.
Let us test him with insult and torture,
that we may find out how gentle he is,
and make trial of his forbearance.
Let us condemn him to a shameful death,
for, according to what he says, he will be protected.1
This passage is very close to what we read in Psalm xxxvii. 30–3, on which fortunately we have a commentary from Qumran. It is in fragmentary condition, but in an important section the sense of what is missing can be sufficiently restored.
‘The wicked watches out for the righteous and seeks to slay him. The Lord will not abandon him into his hand or let him be condemned when he is tried. Interpreted, this concerns the Wicked Priest who rose up against the Teacher of Righteousness that he might put him to death because he served the truth and the Law, for which reason he laid hands upon him. But God will not “abandon him into his hand and will not let him be condemned when he is tried”.’
For the Qumran Essenes their founder had been a Suffering Just One, though he had escaped death at the hands of his enemies by going into exile. His sufferings are described in the Thanksgiving Hymns, which many scholars hold to be autobiographical.
By way of illustration we give an excerpt here from Hymn ii, 2, but the interested reader is recommended to study these poignant compositions some of which reflect the atmosphere of the Davidic Psalms which were interpreted in a messianic sense in the Christian tradition.
Violent men have sought after my life
because I have clung to Thy Covenant.
For they, an assembly of deceit,
and a horde of Satan,
know not that my stand
is maintained by Thee,
and that in Thy mercy Thou wilt save my soul
since my steps proceed from Thee.
From Thee it is
that they assail my life,
that Thou mayest be glorified
by the judgement of the wicked,
and manifest Thy might through me
in the presence of the sons of men;
for it is by Thy mercy that I stand.2
We are rather in the dark, however, about what the Essenes held would be the fate of that other Teacher of Righteousness whom they expected to arise at the End of the Days. Would he too be a Suffering Just One? It appears likely, as suggested by G. Vermes, that the Teacher of Righteousness was thought of as the messianic Prophet like Moses, and identified with ‘the Man’ who in the Last Times would ‘instruct the upright in the knowledge of the Most High’.3 In this case there would be a direct link between the Just One and the Son of Man figure. Moses Gaster proposed long ago that the Son of Man of Daniel's vision who came with the clouds of heaven was inspired by Moses, who received the Law amidst the clouds on Mount Sinai. But we must leave this issue for the present to pursue another line of tradition concerning the Just One.
A messianic interest had attached itself to the person of the patriarch Joseph among certain sections of the Saints. Due to this, perhaps, there emerged the concept in later Judaism of a Messiah ben Joseph, who would be killed.
In Jewish teaching Joseph was the perfect righteous man, whose brethren persecuted him and attempted to get rid of him. But in the providence of God he who was humiliated was afterwards exalted and became the saviour of the sons of Jacob from whom he had been separated. It was prophesied of him, ‘From thence is the Shepherd, the Stone of Israel.’4 This curious passage had the consequence of enlisting in the messianic cause various Scriptures relating to the Shepherd and to the Stone, both of them having connections with suffering or rejection. As we shall have to deal particularly with the Shepherd aspect, we may briefly note here about the Stone, that messianic interpretation brought together the stone which Jacob used as a pillow when it was confirmed to him in a dream that in his seed all the families of the earth would be blessed, which stone he set up and anointed at the spot which became the northern cult centre of Bethel,5 the stone laid in Zion for a foundation, ‘a tried stone, a precious corner stone’,6 the stone which the builders rejected and which would become the chief corner stone’7 and the stone of Nebuchadnezzar's dream, which smote a great image representing the successive heathen empires and became a great mountain and filled the whole earth.8
But to return to Joseph. In the sectarian Testaments of the XII Patriarchs he is revealed as the antetype of the Suffering Just One.
‘Do ye also, therefore, my children, love the Lord God of heaven and earth, and keep his commandments, following the example of the holy and just man Joseph. For until his death he was not willing to tell regarding himself; but Jacob, having learnt it from the Lord, told it to him. Nevertheless he kept denying it. And then with difficulty he was persuaded by the adjurations of Israel. For Joseph also besought our father that he would pray for his brethren, that the Lord would not impute to them as sin whatever evil they had done to him. And thus Jacob cried out: “My good child, thou hast prevailed over the bowels of thy father Jacob.” And he embraced him, and kissed him for two hours, saying, “In thee shall be fulfilled the prophecy of heaven, which says that the blameless one shall be defiled for lawless men, and the sinless one shall die for godless men.”’9
There once existed a Book of Joseph the Just, mentioned in the Ascension of Isaiah, of which we do not know the contents. But in another sectarian work the Book of Jubilees it is said that the annual Day of Atonement was instituted because of Joseph. ‘And the sons of Jacob slaughtered a kid, and dipped the coat of Joseph in the blood, and sent it to Jacob their father on the tenth of the seventh month . . . For this reason it is ordained for the children of Israel that they should afflict themselves on the tenth of the seventh month—on the day that the news which made him weep for Joseph came to Jacob his father.’10
It is by no means easy to get to the heart of this Joseph mystery; but we may venture to suggest that it has a northern background, for Joseph is synonymous with the northern Kingdom of Israel in several places in the Old Testament.11 There is room for suspicion that as a result of strict monotheism there was transferred to the Joseph figure of a Suffering Just One some of the characteristics of the old Syrian cult of Adonis-Tammuz or Adad, Tammuz:
Whose annual wound in Lebanon allur'd
The Syrian damsels to lament his fate.
The death and resurrection of Adonis-Tammuz had to do with the Fertility cult, and in the ancient liturgies he is called Shepherd and Wild Ox, names used in the Joseph predictions.12 As is well known, pagan customs and beliefs are not extinguished by a change of faith, and the Church has had to absorb and Christianise many of them. T. J. Meek has pertinently illustrated this kind of survival in writing on the theme of Canticles and the Tammuz cult. A traveller in Euboea, according to Lawson (Modern Greek Folklore), had observed the gloom of the people in Holy Week. Asking an old woman for an explanation, he was told, ‘Of course I am anxious: for if Christ does not rise tomorrow we shall have no corn this year.’ Meek regards the shepherd lover in Canticles as an original reference to the god Dad, who in Palestine was Adad, the counterpart of Tammuz. There is a connection between the god-name and that of David the shepherd king of Israel, and there is a strong probability that in Palestine the messianic expectation embodied elements of the local Fertility cult. Tammuz in the liturgies was ‘shepherd, pure food, sweet milk’, and of the Messiah it is said, ‘And I will set up one shepherd over them, even my servant David; he shall feed them, and he shall be their shepherd.’13 There was a shrine of Adonis-Tammuz in David's city of Bethlehem (the place of Bread).
The view is speculative, but deserving of consideration, that in the north in the time of Jesus a Joseph messianic concept of a Suffering Just One existed which could readily be combined with that of the Davidic Messiah. In the Mandaean literature John the Baptist says of himself, ‘A shepherd am I who loves his sheep; sheep and lambs I watch over.’14 and the words were applied to the Messiah, ‘Awake, O sword, against my shepherd, and against the man that is my fellow, saith the Lord of hosts: smite the shepherd, and the sheep shall be scattered.’15 The persecuted David, destined to be king and shepherd of Israel, is not far from the Suffering Servant of Isaiah.
The Messianic Hope was sufficiently fluid to permit the inter-changeability of the messianic personalities, and there is considerable evidence of such fusions. When Jesus is made to declare in the Fourth Gospel, ‘I am the Good Shepherd: the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep,’ he is speaking with the voice of Adonis-Tammuz-Adad, as well as in accordance with messianic prophecies, and most appositely in his case, since he came from Galilee and by parentage was Son of Joseph and by descent Son of David.
The more we look into the origins of Christianity the more we are confronted with venerable beliefs and ideas woven into the messianic pattern by the Jewish sectarian groups, beliefs and ideas to which Jesus to some extent had access, and to which he was responsive, and which helped to shape his own messianic convictions.
One of the most curious of these ideas is that which concerns the Son of Man, or—avoiding the orientalism—the Man. It belongs to the sphere of Jewish mystical teaching regarding the Archetypal or Primordial Man,16 and its messianic significance was developed among the Essenes.
The Biblical source of the concept is Daniel, that remarkable book of the Saints. ‘I saw in the night visions, and, behold, one like the son of man [i.e. a human being] came with the clouds of heaven, and came to the Ancient of Days, and they brought him near before him. And there was given him dominion, and glory and a kingdom, that all people, nations, and languages, should serve him: his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom that which shall not be destroyed.’17
From the context we can see that this human figure is contrasted with the successive wordly imperialisms, described under the figures of beasts, the last to appear being the worst of all. The Son of Man stands for the Elect Ones of Israel, the people of the Saints of the Most High, who ultimately will possess the kingdom and institute the rule of righteousness.
It was natural, however, that what was believed of the Elect Ones of Israel should be applied to the ideal Israelite. Just as the suffering Holy Community was personified by the suffering Holy and Just One, so the corporate Son of Man found its epitome in the messianic Elect One, the Prophet like Moses who was brought near to God in the clouds of heaven. Jesus is described as the True Prophet in the Clementine literature of the Ebionite Nazoreans. Whether Moses was at all in the mind of the author of Daniel, we can more definitely find the image of the cloud-borne Man in the religious symbolism of Assyria and Babylonia, from whence it came to Palestine, and lent itself admirably to the mystical doctrines of the Jewish sectarles. We have a reflection of this image in the John the Baptist stories of the Mandaeans, where John is conveyed on a cloud to Jerusalem and set down there.18
There is some warrant for the opinion that the Qumran documents linked the expected Prophet with the Son of Man figure (the Man, geber) and with the Teacher of Righteousness. ‘It is not so simple’, writes G. Vermes, introducing The Dead Sea Scrolls in English, ‘to define the role of the mysterious Prophet since he is named only once and his duties are not given. But if I have understood it correctly, the functions ascribed to the persons alluded to in the Community Rule (IV) as geber, “Man”, correspond to those of the expected Prophet: geber was to “instruct the upright in the knowledge of the Most High” at the end of time, and “to teach the wisdom of the Sons of Heaven to the perfect of way”. Geber, however, seems to have been identified with the Teacher of Righteousness. In the Commentary on Psalm 37, the verse, “The steps of geber are confirmed by the Lord” is interpreted: “This concerns the Priest, the Teacher of Righteousness.” ’19 The role of Geber (the Man) is messianic. Through his teaching the Elect Community regains the innocence of the First Man, ‘for God has chosen them for an everlasting Covenant and all the glory of Adam shall be theirs’.20
We are on the fringe here of Pauline Christology of the Second Adam from heaven and the doctrine of the predestination of the Elect.
But on the theme of the messianic Man there is another link between the Qumran and Christian records. In the Revelation we read:
‘And there appeared a great sign in heaven; a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars: and she being with child cried, travailing in birth, and pained to be delivered . . . And she brought forth a man child (the Geber), who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron: and her child was caught up unto God, and to his throne.’21
This recalls an apocalyptic passage in the Qumran hymns, where it is stated:
For the children have come to the throes of Death,
and she labours in her pains who bears the Man.
For amid the throes of Death
she shall bring forth a man-child,
and amid the pains of Hell
there shall spring from her child-bearing crucible
a Marvellous Mighty Counsellor;
and the Man shall be delivered from out of the throes.22
Probably in both cases we are meant to understand that it is the Elect Community, the True Israel, which brings forth the Man, who here seems to be identified with the Messiah ben David, since the words of the hymn make obvious reference to Isaiah ix. 6–7: ‘Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful Counsellor . . . Of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom, to order it, and to establish it with judgement and justice from henceforth even for ever.’
Can it be that among the Saints before the time of Jesus the Son of Man was already another term for the Messiah, whether he was the Prophet, the Priest or the King?
This would help to explain the Son of Man messianism of the Similitudes of Enoch, a section of the Enoch collection of documents which circulated among the Saints, which is still our principal source of information on the subject. Enoch the antediluvian patriarch who had walked with God and who was translated to heaven was one of their great heroes, as also was Noah. Both the date and place of origin of the Similitudes are in doubt. Fragments of other parts of the collection have been found at Qumran; but so far this section is missing. One explanation which has been proposed is that the Similitudes is not pre-Christian but Jewish-Christian. On the other hand it could well be that it was a product of northern Nazarean-Essenism and was not used in the south. It is consistent with this view that Jesus the Nazorean should have applied the term Son of Man to himself in a messianic sense, and when replying to the challenge of the high priest as to whether he was the Messiah, declared, ‘I am: and ye shall see the Son of Man sitting on the right hand of Power, and coming in the clouds of heaven.’ In his answer Jesus employs a substitute for the divine name, ‘Power’, which as Matthew Black, following Lohmeyer, has pointed out, ‘was a northern form of speech, certainly Samaritan, and possibly no less Galilean.’ As he says, ‘The same substitute for the divine name (and the same type of “Son of Man” Christology) is to be encountered in the famous reply of James (brother of Jesus), reported by Hegesippus . . . “Why do ye ask me concerning the Son of Man. He sits at the right hand of the great Power, and will come in the clouds of heaven”.... We have to do with a North Palestinian idiom, attested especially in accounts of sectarian circles in this area. Here we have a very striking link between the “Galilean” Gospel tradition and North Palestinian forms of religion.’23
Since the Son of Man doctrine of the Similitudes is of major importance and will be unfamiliar to many readers we shall supply now some representative extracts. In the document Enoch relates his heavenly visions, when he is permitted to see to the very Last Times. In the divine courts he beholds the Son of Man.
‘And there I saw One who had a Head of Days [i.e. the Ancient of Days], and his head was white like wool, and with him was another being whose countenance had the appearance of a man whose face was full of graciousness, like one of the holy angels. And I asked the angel who went with me and showed me all the hidden things, concerning that Son of Man, who he was, and whence he was, and why he went with the Head of Days. And he answered and said unto me, “This is the Son of Man who hath righteousness, with whom dwelleth righteousness, and who reveals all the treasures of that which is hidden, because the Lord of Spirits hath chosen him, and his lot before the Lord of Spirits hath surpassed everything in uprightness for ever. And this Son of Man whom thou hast seen . . . will put down the kings from their thrones and kingdoms because they do not extol and praise him [the Lord of Spirits] nor thankfully acknowledge whence the kingdom was bestowed upon them . . .
‘And at that hour that Son of Man was named in the presence of the Lord of Spirits and his name before the Head of Days. And before the sun and the signs were created, before the stars of heaven were made, his name was named before the Lord of Spirits. He will be a staff to the righteous on which they will support themselves and not fall, and he will be the light of the Gentiles and the hope of those who are troubled in heart. All who dwell on earth will fall down and bow the knee before him, and bless and laud and celebrate with song the Lord of Spirits. And for this cause has he been chosen and hidden before him before the creation of the world and for evermore. And the wisdom of the Lord of Spirits hath revealed him to the holy and righteous, because they have hated and despised this world of unrighteousness . . . And in those days the kings of the earth, and the strong who possess the earth will be of downcast countenance . . . And I will give them over into the hands of mine Elect Ones . . . before them they will fall and not rise again . . . for they have denied the Lord of Spirits and his anointed.
‘And the Lord of Spirits seated him [the Son of Man] on the throne of his glory, and the spirit of righteousness was poured out upon him, and the word of his mouth slew all the sinners . . . And all the Elect will stand before him in that day . . . And the righteous and elect will be saved on that day and will never again from thenceforth see the faces of the sinners and unrighteous. And the Lord of Spirits will abide with them for ever, and with that Son of Man will they eat and lie down and rise up for ever.’24
The atmosphere of the Similitudes of Enoch is apocalyptic and predestinarian, and is reflected in the Revelation and the Pauline Epistles. The Son of Man concept unites here with the Just One and the Messiah of Righteousness, the Branch of David. He is present in the mind of God and chosen before the creation, and from time to time revealed to the righteous for their consolation; but he is neither divine nor actually pre-existent. He is named and hidden from the beginning in the secret thoughts of God, finally to be revealed in the Last Times as the ideal Man who will justify God's creation of the world. In this sense he is the Second Adam, answering to the Light Adam of the Nazorean-Mandaeans, and the Nazorean-Ebionite ‘manlike figure invisible to men in general’. From such teaching, probably while he was in the borders of Arabia, Paul acquired the inspiration from which he developed his concept of the Heavenly Messiah who had incarnated in the earthly Jesus.
At the end of the Similitudes Enoch is told that in the Son of Man he has seen an image of his own righteous self; so that we are not required to go beyond the idea that when the Messiah would be manifested he would embody that perfect righteousness which God from the beginning designed for humanity, and which was present in the chief Saints of all the ages. By virtue of that perfection of holiness Man in the Messiah is exalted to the right hand of God, and is fitted to be God's representative in the reborn and redeemed world from which all sin has been banished. The Son of Man is so to speak the essential Messiah embodied in all the Messiahs, the eternal principle of Righteousness exemplified in all the Just Ones.
The extent to which Jesus drew upon this heritage is evident. His language again and again echoes that of the Similitudes, as we can see by bringing together some of the Gospel references.
‘Whosoever therefore shall be ashamed of me . . . of him also will the Son of Man be ashamed, when he cometh in the glory of his Father with the holy angels. And then shall they see the Son of Man coming in the clouds with great power and glory. Ye shall see the Son of Man sitting on the right hand of Power, and coming in the clouds of heaven. The Son of Man shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity; and shall cast them into a furnace of fire. For the Son of Man shall come in the glory of his Father with his angels; and then shall he reward every man according to his works. Ye which have followed me, in the Regeneration when the Son of Man shall sit on the throne of his glory, ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. When the Son of Man shall come in his glory . . . then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory: and before him shall be gathered all the nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats. The Father hath given him authority to execute judgement also, because he is the Son of Man.’25
Thus we can appreciate how among the Saints belief in the Messiah could envisage both a Suffering Just One and a Glorious King. The two apparently distinct concepts could be united, the one preceding the other, as evidently they were in the mind of Jesus. It took a Nazorean of Galilee to apprehend from the Scriptures that death and resurrection was the bridge between the two phases. The very tradition of the land where Adonis yearly died and rose again seemed to call for it.
1. Wisdom, ii. 12–20, RSV.
2. Vermes, The Dead Sea Scrolls in English, p. 155.
3. Vermes, op. cit., p. 50.
4. Gen. xlix. 24.
5. Gen. xxviii. 10–22.
6. Isa. xxviii. 16.
7. Ps. cxviii. 22.
8. Dan. ii. 29–45.
9. Testament of Benjamin, iii. 1–7. Tr. Charles.
10. Jubilees, xxxiv. 12–18.
11. See Ps. lxxix. 67, lxxx. 1; Ezek. xxvii. 16, 19; Amos. v. 6, 15.
12. See Gen. xlix. 24; Deut. xxxiii. 17; also Langdon, Babylonian Liturgies.
13. Ezek. xxiv. 23–4, xxxvii. 24–5.
14. Sidra d'Yahya, xi. See G. R. S. Mead, The Gnostic John the Baptizer, p. 81.
15. Zech. xiii. 7.
16. See Schonfield, The Jew of Tarsus, ch. vii, where the subject is dealt with in some detail.
17. Dan. vii. 13–14.
18. Sidra d'Yahya, xxxii. Mead, op.cit., p. 56 ff.
19. The Dead Sea Scrolls in English, p. 50.
20. The Community Rule, iv.
21. See Rev. xii. 1–6.
22. Hymns, III. 4. Tr. Vermes, op. cit., p. 157.
23. Matthew Black, The Scrolls and Christian Origins, p. 81.
24. Enoch, Similitudes, xlvi. 1–5, xlviii. 1–10, lxii, 2–16. Tr. Charles. See also lxix. 26–9.
25. The passages quoted are in order, Mk. viii. 38, xiii. 26, xiv. 62; Mt. xiii. 41–2, xvi. 27, xix. 28, xxv. 31–2; Jn. v. 27.