A Pierced or Piercing Messiah?—The Verdict Is Still Out - The BAS Library
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Dead Sea Scrolls Research Council: Fragments

A Pierced or Piercing Messiah?—The Verdict Is Still Out

By James D. Tabor

Despite the unanimous and confident conclusion of Geza Vermes’ Oxford Forum that the so-called Pierced Messiah text (4Q285) actually celebrates the triumph of a piercing Messiah who slays his enemies,a things are not so clear. Vermes’ bald conclusion, “The fragment does not speak of a slain messiah,” surely goes beyond the evidence. It also ignores other perfectly plausible possibilities and gives the nonspecialist reader the impression that Vermes’ view is the only “scholarly” option. Given the fragmented nature of the text in its present state, all interpretations are necessarily preliminary. I offer here a number of points that might […]

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Footnotes

1.

See “The ‘Pierced Messiah’ Text—An Interpretation Evaporates,” BAR 18:04.

2.

This verb (hamito) appeared incorrectly transliterated as hemito in the original Vermes article, and therefore subsequently in the BAR report which was based on Vermes (“The ‘Pierced Messiah’ Text—An Interpretation Evaporates,” BAR 18:04). See Geza Vermes, “Oxford Forum for Qumran Research: Seminar on the Rule of War Cave 4 (4Q285),” Journal of Jewish Studies 43 (1992), pp. 85–94, and esp. p. 88, n. 8. The verb is a hiphil perfect, third person masculine singular with a third person masculine singular suffix, accordingly, the first vowel is shortened from e to a (hatef patah) in this form.

3.

See Robert H. Eisenman, “A Messianic Vision,” BAR 17:06, and the article on this text by James Tabor and Michael Wise, “The Messiah at Qumran,” in this issue.

4.

C.E. (Common Era), used by this author, is the alternate designation corresponding to A.D. often used in scholarly literature.

Endnotes

1.

See Geza Vermes, The Dead Sea Scrolls in English, 3rd ed. (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 987), pp. 291–292.

2.

Vermes, Dead Sea Scrolls in English, p. 287.

3.

Vermes, Dead Sea Scrolls in English, pp. 267–268.

4.

Vermes, Dead Sea Scrolls in English, p. 301.

5.

“The ‘Pierced Messiah’ Text—An Interpretation Evaporates,” BAR 18:04.