It’s already significant that he acknowledged that Isaiah 53 is clearly alluded to in 4Q541.

I think he acknowledged it somewhat reluctantly, since most scholars who have written about this text have recognized the allusion.

He didn’t really have much choice.

I wonder whether his position has changed since 2000. The idea of a suffering Messiah in pre-Christian Judaism has become much more firmly established since then, especially thanks to Martin Hengel’s study, which is still an important reference today.

Thank you. I love super helpful bibliographic comments like that!

Though this reveals that Collins is not here backtracking after all. He is insisting there is no suffering figure in the scrolls, the very dogma proponents extensively refute. He seems here to be just leaning on his other work and assuming he successfully rebutted what in fact he never addressed, and thus just hat tipping the existence of opposition rather than taking a more positive stance on it. Which is typical behavior in this field I am finding out.

Collins’s article dates to 2000 (five years after he wrote his excursus on the suffering servant in The Scepter and the Star).

It was published in a French journal, which may explain why it has somewhat flown under the radar.

The exact reference is:

John J. Collins, “Teacher and Servant,” in Revue d’histoire et de philosophie religieuses, 80th year, no. 1, January–March 2000. Hommage à Marc Philonenko.

Here is the relevant quotation concerning 4Q541:

“There are however some other points that still lead scholars to assume a relationship with Isaiah 53. Chief of these is the word מכאבין, afflictions, which occurs twice in fragment 6 and once in fragment 2. This appears to be a Hebraism. The same word is used in Isa 53:3-4 (איש מכאבות, a man of sorrows, and מכאבינו סבלם, he has borne our afflictions). This term is unusual enough to give some credibility to the opinion that the author had Isaiah 53 in view. The text is too fragmentary, however, to allow a confident conclusion as to how the prophetic text was interpreted. If the figure who makes atonement in fragment 9 is cast in the role of the Servant, as is possible but by no means certain, then the Isaianic passage is read to refer to a priest, who makes atonement not by his sufferings but by fulfilling his priestly functions and enlightening people with his instruction.
Again here there is similarity to the career of the Teacher, who also complains of opposition. The more likely referent, however, is the messiah of Aaron, who is also said to atone for the sin of the people in CD 14:19.”

>>The folks who erroneously believed a certain YouTube guy with a goatee and a tuque

Not only has he continued misrepresenting your arguments and evidence after being corrected several times, but also he seems not to be able to do discuss anything you do like a grown adult. I really lost respect for him after this, I occasionally listened to him online.

I think the sensible historicist model needs at least some Jews to be ok with a dying messiah, otherwise you would never get Christianity at all. I don’t think one random zealot Who got crucified would be accepted by anyone as a messiah unless his core followers already had that belief.

Those are all around the same time, but yes. It’s fair to give Puech first credit. Hengel even cites him.

And wow, yes, I checked both editions and knew about how Collins approached that thee. But I was unaware of his different take in 2000. Can you give the full citation? I’d love to check into it and readers here can add it to my bibliography.

Hengel was the first to suggest it though (so far as I know). So the idea has been around since the DSS were published. But Brooke has the most extensive case and he is literally the world’s leading expert on Apoc. Levi. See The Dead Sea Scrolls and the New Testament.

The first scholar to explicitly identify a connection between 4Q541 and Isaiah 53 was Émile Puech, the French Dead Sea Scrolls scholar who was assigned to study the text in 1991.

In his substantial study, “Fragment d’un apocryphe de Levi et le Personnage eschatologique,” Puech argued that 4Q541 provided early evidence for the existence of a suffering messianic figure prior to Christianity.

George Brooke subsequently followed this line of interpretation in 1993.

Now, regarding John J. Collins, I think there is an important point that is often overlooked. I watched your video with GE, and I’m not sure whether you are aware of this. I thought it might be interesting to you.

In the excursus of The Scepter and the Star, published in 1995, Collins rejected the interpretation of 4Q541 as referring to a suffering servant.

He did not identify any connection between the figure in 4Q541 and Isaiah 53. When the second edition of The Scepter and the Star was published in 2010, this excursus remained unchanged.

Nevertheless, Collins’s position appears to have evolved.

In a study published in 2000—only five years after the publication of his excursus—Collins conceded that particular terms in 4Q541 was unusual enough to give some credibility to the view that the author had Isaiah 53 in view.

Moreover, he argued that the eschatological priest in 4Q541 was most likely a messianic figure, namely the Messiah of Aaron
attested in the Dead Sea Scrolls.

That creates a rather interesting situation.

On the one hand, Collins’s 1995 excursus is sometimes cited as evidence against the existence of a suffering-servant tradition at Qumran.

On the other hand, in his later treatment of 4Q541, Collins himself acknowledged that particular terms in the text lends some credibility to an Isaiah 53 connection, while also identifying the eschatological priest as most likely a messianic figure.

Those who reject the idea of a suffering Messiah before Christianity should therefore be cautious about citing Collins as evidence against it. His later work points to a considerably more nuanced position.

so I assumed that you were using Wisdom 2 & 5 to argue that some Jews were expecting a suffering messianic figure.

I discuss it. But it’s really discussed by the authors I cite and summarize, like Hengel. This is also the case in OHJ.

I therefore think we agree that Wisdom cannot demonstrate that pre-Christian Judaism interpreted Isaiah 53 messianically.

Right. The logic goes the other way: once we have evidence of their reading Is 53 messianically, we get the reading of Wis 2/5 messianically. Daniel 9 also plays a role in understanding this but indirectly. Dan 9 is explicitly reading Is 53 messianically (possibly even inventing the entire concept of an eschatological messiah, though that would be under the influence of Persian Zoroastrianism whose idea it was from long before). So it establishes proof of concept: if they saw that so as to produce it, then it’s easy for the same kind of thinkers to see it in Wisdom; it basically falls out as an inevitable consequence of the same pesher logic.

One more important question: do you discuss the Apocryphon of Levi (4Q541) and the Self-Glorification Hymn (4Q471b/4Q491) in your article?

Not as such. The article is a survey article, so it is mainly surveying what others discuss. 4Q541 comes up in several of the scholars cited (more even than I mention do in the article), but most prominently (as mentioned in the slides portion of the GE show, which is in the article), George Brooke—Kipp Davis’s dissertation advisor.

Hengel was the first to suggest it though (so far as I know). So the idea has been around since the DSS were published. But Brooke has the most extensive case and he is literally the world’s leading expert on Apoc. Levi. See The Dead Sea Scrolls and the New Testament.

later (1st century) apocalypticists would necessarily read the Dan 9 prophecy as referring to one single anointed, rather than two.

No, I said the author of 11Q13 must have. Because their reference to it is in a list of the final years of the apocalypse. If they thought it was two, their reference to the first would be several sections earlier (if the scroll even covered earlier sections of the timetable; all we have is a section about the last few years of it).

But yes, Daniel is deliberately dodgy and easily reinterpreted many ways. Like most prophecy was. Indeed that feature basically caused the entire pesher genre 11Q13 was written in.

However, your proposal won’t work, because if we read Daniel 9:25 as meaning a different messiah than the one in 9:26, that entails chronologically a messiah at the seventh seven of years, and the next messiah at the sixty second seven, and whether you overlap or add those periods, either way, it’s a difference of hundreds of years.

This is why, as I noted in the talk, the original intent appears to have been to refer to the bookends of messianic priests: the first of the second temple (in legend named Jesus, who inaugurated the second temple, built by Cyrus the Great in the late 500s BC, and is the one originally meant by the Jesus in Zech 3 and 6) and the last of the second temple (Onias III in the 160s BC being believed at the time to be the last legitimately anointed high priest, and the end of the world predicted to occur seven years later, ending the 70th seven). For background see How We Know Daniel Is a Forgery.

Hello Richard,

Thanks for your answer.

Unfortunately, I haven’t read your article yet, so I assumed that you were using Wisdom 2 & 5 to argue that some Jews were expecting a suffering messianic figure.

I understand your reasoning, since I agree with you about the concept of pesher and about the fact that Wisdom 2 & 5 allude to Isaiah 53.

Hengel, whom you cite in your response, demonstrates this as well, but then concludes:

“The book of Wisdom therefore presents a universally applicable religious experience, which it supports by manifold allusions to the Scriptures, not least to (Deutero-) Isaiah. But Isaiah 53 loses its unique traits almost completely. Moreover, it should be stressed that the motif of vicarious suffering to overcome the guilt of others is entirely absent. Wisdom deals only with the basically conventional idea of the justification of the righteous and the punishment of the wicked, and even the immanent eschatological expectation essential to Daniel, Qumran, and the Septuagint of Isaiah 53 falls away.”

I therefore think we agree that Wisdom cannot demonstrate that pre-Christian Judaism interpreted Isaiah 53 messianically.
But it is certainly possible that some Jews may have read Wisdom 2 and 5 as referring to the Messiah. That simply cannot be demonstrated from the text itself or from its reception.

One more important question: do you discuss the Apocryphon of Levi (4Q541) and the Self-Glorification Hymn (4Q471b/4Q491) in your article?

In my view, these provide some of the strongest evidence for a concept of a suffering messianic figure in the intertestamental literature, alongside 11Q13 and the Parables of Enoch (which associate the Messiah with Isaiah’s Servant, even though suffering and death are not mentioned there).

Best regards,