Photographs of several previously unpublished Dead Sea Scroll fragments appeared in “A Messianic Vision,”BAR 17:06, including one entitled “A Messianic Vision” (translated by Robert Eisenman). A clearer picture of this fragment may be seen in plate 1551 in A Facsimile Edition of the Dead Sea Scrolls, published last November by the Biblical Archaeology Society.
This fragment unlocks the symbolic meaning of the dove in an episode that is recounted in all three Synoptic Gospels,a Matthew (3:16), Mark (1:10) and Luke (3:21–22)—Jesus’ baptism in the Jordan River by John the Baptist. (The reference to the dove in the Gospel of John is not in the context of baptism.)
In the three Gospel accounts, Jesus’ baptism is accompanied by the descent of the Spirit of God. As Mark describes it: “When he [Jesus] came up out of the water, immediately he saw the heavens opened and the Spirit descending upon him like a dove.”1 Commentators differ on the significance of the phrase “like a dove.”2 Few still believe that it records a historical fact, in other words, that “like a dove” appears in the Gospels because Jesus or others actually saw something that reminded them of a dove. Rather, most believe that “like a dove” must have had symbolic or theological significance for early Christians. This phrase therefore is part of a Christian interpretation of Jesus’ baptism. But exactly what meaning did the authors intend to convey?
Several possibilities suggest themselves. Some scholars, observing that 1 Peter 3:20–21 compares the deliverance of Noah to baptism, have maintained that the reader should recall the dove sent out by Noah (Genesis 8:8–12). Noah released his dove to determine whether the waters had subsided from the earth and to determine whether the time of judgment had passed. So perhaps the early Christians added the dove to the story of Jesus’ baptism in order to express their conviction that the advent of Jesus closed a time of judgment and ushered in a new era of salvation, that the kingdom of God had arrived.
A second possible interpretation holds that the dove is a motif from folklore. In fairy tales throughout the world, the action of a bird often designates, or reveals, the true king. That such a motif could have had a place in early Christianity is proven by its appearance in the apocryphal second-century Book of James (or Protevangelium) 9. This tells how a husband was picked for the Virgin Mary. The story says that Zacharias was instructed by an angel to have the widowers among the people come to the Temple with rods. They did so, Joseph among them. The high priest took the rods into the Temple, prayed over them and then returned them to the widowers—whereupon a dove flew out of Joseph’s rod and lighted upon his head, proof enough that God had chosen him to wed Mary. In like manner, could not the dove of the Synoptic Gospels be a sign that God had chosen Jesus?
Yet a third possible interpretation is that a dove symbolizes Israel in Liber Antiquitatum Biblicarum 21:6 and in other extra-Biblical sources, so perhaps one can think of Jesus’ emergence from the waters as the emergence of a renewed Israel. A passage in the Mekilta, an early rabbinic commentary on Exodus, claims that the Holy Spirit rested upon Israel at the crossing of the Red Sea and that Israel was then like a dove.
Despite all that may be said in favor of these interpretations, probably a majority of modern commentators have preferred to look to Genesis 1:2 as the most obvious source for elucidation of the dove: “The Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.” Here we have together three elements that reappear in the baptism story: the Spirit of God, water and the image of a bird implied in “hovering” (in Deuteronomy 32:11, “As an eagle stirs up its nest, and hovers over its young … ” the same verb [rahap] translated as “hover” in Genesis is plainly applied to a bird). A passage in the Babylonian Talmud (Hagigah 15a)b lends support to the comparison because it explicitly likens 059the hovering of God’s Spirit at the creation to the hovering of a dove.
What would have been the point of likening the baptism of Jesus to what happened when the world began? The answer is clear. Early Christians, drawing on the eschatologicalc expectations of Judaism, conceived of the end time as a new beginning, a time when paradise would be restored: “The last things [will be] like the first” says the second-century Christian Epistle of Barnabas. This is why Revelation 22:1–5 depicts the future as a return to an Eden-like paradise. Just as God, in the beginning, created a paradise with a tree of life in it (Genesis 2:9, Genesis 3:22, Genesis 3:24), so too will he create a second paradise with another tree of life (Revelation 22:2). And just as God, in the beginning, set a river in Eden (Genesis 2:10), so too will he set a river in the new Jerusalem of a new earth (Revelation 22:1). Furthermore, because early Christians thought of Jesus as bringing the eschatological renewal, they often likened his advent and its consequences to the creation.3d
In light of these passages, which link Jesus with renewed creation, it is likely that the descent of the dove at Jesus’ baptism was designed to trigger memories of Genesis 1:2. Thus, readers steeped in Jewish Scripture and tradition would understand that Jesus was the bringer of a new creation. At the commencement of things, the Spirit of God hovered over the face of the watery chaos, and at the Messiah’s advent the Spirit fluttered over the waters of the Jordan. In other words, when Jesus came into the world, a new age commenced and God, through his Holy Spirit, renewed his great work of creation.
The Messianic Vision fragment among the Dead Sea Scrolls, printed in “A Messianic Vision,”BAR 17:06, prophesies, in its two readable columns, the wonderful messianic future, when the heavens and the earth will obey the Messiah. This text is important and fascinating for a number of reasons. For one, there is the clear reference to one Messiah (other scrolls seem to refer to two); for another, there is heavy borrowing of passages from Isaiah, a borrowing that irresistibly reminds one of the concatenation of Isaianic texts in Matthew 11:2–6 and Luke 7:18–23. But for our purposes here, which have to do with understanding the baptism of Jesus, attention needs to be directed to line six of the first readable column. Eisenman renders it: “And over the Poor will His Spirit hover and the Faithful will He support with his strength.” The Hebrew of the first half of the line, if I read the photograph correctly, is: w‘l ‘nwym rwkw trtp. This is a clear allusion to Genesis 1:2: “and the Spirit (rwhw) of God was hovering 060(mrhpt) over (‘l) the face of the waters.” It would seem that the author of our scroll, when contemplating the eschatological redemption, moved his thoughts back to the story of creation; that is, he appropriated the language of Genesis 1:2 to characterize the eschatological redemption: Just as the Spirit of God once hovered over the face of the waters, so too, at the end, will the Spirit hover over the saints and strengthen them.
The relevance of all this for understanding the function of the dove that descends upon Jesus in Matthew 3, Mark 1 and Luke 3 is clear. Before publication of this fragment, the interpretation of the dove in terms of Genesis 1:2 could not cite any specific Jewish precedent. There were plenty of Jewish texts that transferred creation imagery to the end time, but, to my knowledge, there was no pre-Christian instance of the application of Genesis 1:2 to the eschatological future.e Furthermore, there was no clear example of the image of the Spirit hovering over human beings as opposed to hovering over lifeless material, as in Genesis 1:2 (there over watery chaos). Once more, however, the new fragment makes up for the lack: It foresees the Spirit of God hovering over the poor, that is, the saints. This text strengthens—indeed, all but confirms—the judgment of those who understand the baptismal dove as an allusion to Genesis. We now have clear precedent for the creative application of the language of Genesis 1:2 to eschatological matters and for picturing the Spirit as hovering over people.
One final word. The process of reading and studying the thousands of recently released photographs of Dead Sea Scroll fragments has only just begun for the scholarly community at large. It remains to be seen what the consequences will be for New Testament interpretation. I strongly suspect, however, that the scrolls will primarily come to be valued not because they will inform us directly about Jesus or Paul or other early Christian figures, but because they will expand our restricted knowledge of what ideas were in the air in first-century Palestinian Judaism. The light thrown by the Messianic Vision upon the baptismal dove suggests the kind of illumination we can expect as new scrolls and fragments are read and pondered. We can look forward, not to a revolution in understanding, but to a helpful trimming of our ignorance.
Photographs of several previously unpublished Dead Sea Scroll fragments appeared in “A Messianic Vision,” BAR 17:06, including one entitled “A Messianic Vision” (translated by Robert Eisenman). A clearer picture of this fragment may be seen in plate 1551 in A Facsimile Edition of the Dead Sea Scrolls, published last November by the Biblical Archaeology Society. This fragment unlocks the symbolic meaning of the dove in an episode that is recounted in all three Synoptic Gospels,a Matthew (3:16), Mark (1:10) and Luke (3:21–22)—Jesus’ baptism in the Jordan River by John the Baptist. (The reference to the dove in the Gospel […]
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The adjective “synoptic,” like the noun “synopsis” from which it is derived, is based on the Greek adjective synoptikos, meaning “seeing the whole together.” The first three Gospels are known as the Synoptic Gospels because, when printed in parallel columns and “seen together,” they exhibit numerous striking verbal and literary similarities. See Glossary by David Aune, “Synoptic Gospels,”BR 06:06.
2.
“Our Rabbis taught: Once R. Joshua b. Hanania was standing on a step on the Temple Mount, and Ben Zoma saw him and did not stand up before him. So [R. Joshua] said to him: Whence and whither, Ben Zoma? He replied: I was gazing between the upper and lower waters, and there is only a bare three fingers’ [breadth] between them, for it is said: And the Spirit of God hovered over the face of the waters—like a dove which hovers over her young without touching [them].”
See, for example, the following New Testament texts: “‘The first man Adam became a living being’; the last Adam [Jesus] became a life-giving spirit” (1 Corinthians 15:45), “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; behold, the old has passed away, behold, the new has come” (2 Corinthians 5:17); Jesus “is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation; for in him all things were created … He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead” (Colossians 1:15–18).
5.
This assumes that the Messianic Vision fragment is Jewish, not Christian. To judge from his other publications, Robert Eisenman may dispute that. But I am sure that the majority of scroll scholars will concur with my assumption. The text itself is not explicitly Christian in any particular. More important, in the judgment of nearly all the experts, no other Dead Sea Scroll has yet been shown to have been composed by followers of Jesus. Even if one were to hold that the new text is Christian, however, the interpretive implications would be very much the same. We would still have new first-century evidence for a creative application of Genesis 1:2 that largely coincides with what many modern commentators have found in Mark 1:10, Matthew 3:16 and Luke 3:22.
Endnotes
1.
Whether “like a dove [hos peristeran]” qualifies “Spirit” and so means that we are to envisage the Spirit as actually having the form of a dove, or whether the words are adverbial and refer instead to the manner of the Spirit’s descent, is unclear, and commentators disagree.
2.
For a catalogue of 16 different interpretations see W.D. Davies and Dale C. Allison, Jr., A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel according to Saint Matthew, International Critical Commentary (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1988), vol. 1, pp. 331–334.
3.
See Nils Alstrup Dahl, Jesus in the Memory of the Early Church (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1976), pp. 120–140.
