The Bible and the Dead Sea Scrolls: The ... - josephprestonkirk

CHAPTER FIVE
WHAT WAS DISTINCTIVE ABOUT MESSIANIC
EXPECTATION AT QUMRAN?
John J. Collins
In an article published in 1979, James Charlesworth surveyed the references
to “the messiah” in the Jewish Pseudepigrapha from the period around the
turn of the era. 1 Although much of this literature is concerned with
eschatology, or the expectation of an end to the present order and a utopian
future, he found only five texts that anticipated a messiah. Only one of these,
the Psalms of Solomon, could be dated before the time of Christ. Another, the
Similitudes of Enoch (1 Enoch 37–71), is of uncertain date but probably comes
from the first century C.E., before the destruction of the temple in the year
70. Two messianic texts, 4 Ezra and 2 Baruch, date from the end of the first
century and are roughly contemporary with the book of Revelation. The
fifth, 3 Enoch or twlkh rps, is several centuries later and is not relevant to
the period under discussion. The absence of any messiah in several texts
from the period was striking. Charlesworth’s study signaled a revision of traditional
assumptions about the importance of messianic expectation in
ancient Judaism. This revision reached its climax in the late nineteen eighties.
A volume edited by Jacob Neusner, William Scott Green, and Ernest
Frerichs proposed to ditch the old consensus and to speak instead of
“Judaisms and their Messiahs,” emphasizing the lack of uniformity. 2 In his
introduction to the proceedings of the first Princeton Symposium on Judaism
and Christian Origins in 1987, Charlesworth claimed that “No member of
the Princeton Symposium on the Messiah holds that a critical historian can
refer to a common Jewish messianic hope during the time of Jesus.” 3
1. James H. Charlesworth, “The Messiah in the Pseudepigrapha,” in ANRW
19.1:188–218. Charlesworth extended his survey to early Christian pseudepigrapha. See
also his more recent study, “Messianology in the Biblical Pseudepigrapha,” in Qumran-
Messianism: Studies on the Messianic Expectations in the Dead Sea Scrolls (ed. J. H. Charlesworth,
H. Lichtenberger, and G. S. Oegema; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1998), 21–52.
2. Jacob Neusner, William S. Green, and Ernest S. Frerichs, ed., Judaisms and Their
Messiahs (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987). See Green’s introduction, 1–13.
3. James H. Charlesworth, “From Messianology to Christology: Problems and
Prospects,” in The Messiah: Developments in Earliest Judaism and Christianity (ed. J. H.
Charlesworth; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992), 5.
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