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Much of the current interest in the Dead Sea Scrolls is stimulated by parallels, real or imagined, between passages in the scrolls and New Testament statements about Jesus. A new text has recently been published that, its editor claims, contains a new and very interesting parallel. The text allegedly refers to a “servant messiah”—that is, a messianic figure who is said to atone for the sins of others, like the suffering servant in Isaiah.
This Dead Sea Scroll text was first brought to public attention in 1963 by Jean Starcky,1 one of the original members of the official Dead Sea Scroll editing team. It has now been published in definitive form by Emile Puech of the Ecole Biblique et Archéologique Française in Jerusalem.2 Puech is a scholar of impeccable credentials. In recent years he has produced a series of exemplary editions of difficult fragmentary texts from Cave 4. Yet, in this case, I suspect that he has exaggerated the theological overtones of what is, as is so often true at Qumran, a rather obscure text.
The “suffering servant” is described in four passages in the Book of Isaiah, in the part of the book (chapters 40–66) that scholars call Second Isaiah or deutero-Isaiah because it does not come from the eighth-century B.C.E. prophet Isaiah, but was written after the Babylonian Exile in the, sixth century. There are four servant poems: Isaiah 42:1–7, 49:1–6, 50:4–9 and 52:13–53:12. The last of these is the most important. It describes a figure who
“was despised and rejected by others; a man of suffering and acquainted with infirmity … he has borne our infirmities and carried our diseases … he was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities … he was cut off from the land of the living, stricken for the transgression of my people” (New Revised Standard Version).
Scholars still debate whether the prophet had an individual person in mind, or whether he intended the servant as a personification of Israel. Jewish tradition understands the servant as Israel. Early Christians, however, regarded the passage as a striking prediction of the passion and death of Jesus. Paul handed on the teaching that he had himself received—that “Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures” (1 Corinthians 15:3). The association of Isaiah 53 with the passion of Jesus in popular Christian imagination was vividly expressed in Handel’s oratorio The Messiah. There is no evidence, however (at least before the publication of this Dead Sea Scroll), that Jews at the time of Jesus regarded Isaiah 53 as a prophecy of the Messiah.
The Dead Sea Scroll text that supposedly anticipates the messianic interpretation is known as 4Q541 (4Q stands for Qumran Cave 4; the number is arbitrary; the texts were simply numbered in sequence) or 4QAaron A (because it apparently refers to a figure who is high priest).
4Q541 consists of 25 fragments, two of which have been joined to reduce the number to 24. There is also a second copy, of which three fragments survive.3 On paleographic grounds (the shape and stance of the letters), it has been dated to about 100 B.C.E.
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Several of the fragments are so brief that they are virtually unintelligible, but two are more substantial and are especially interesting. These are fragments 9 and 24, which appear in the boxes above and opposite. They are written on leather in Aramaic, the vernacular in Judea during the time of Jesus.
Starcky noted that only a few of the fragments were intelligible, adding: “but their interest is great, for they seem to us to evoke a suffering messiah, in the perspective opened up by the Servant poems.”4 Starcky appears to claim that the servant described in Isaiah was understood in 4Q541 as a messianic figure a century before the time of Jesus.
Puech cites Starcky with approval and sets out to corroborate his opinion. He characterizes the figure of whom the text speaks as a sage, a priest and “a servant despised and rejected.”5
That the person referred to in 4Q541 is a sage and a priest seems beyond dispute. His wisdom is clearly emphasized in fragment 9 (“His word is like a word of heaven, and his teaching is in accordance with the will of God”). This wisdom motif also appears in other fragments of 4Q541.6 The statement that “he will atone for all the children of his generation” shows that he is a priest. Presumably, he will make atonement by offering sacrifices in the Temple, as prescribed in the Torah.
Whether the wise priest described in 4Q541 is also “a servant despised and rejected,” thereby anticipating the Christian view of Jesus as a suffering messiah, is a more difficult question. True, the end of fragment 9 does involve suffering of some sort. We are told that the eschatological priest will endure lies and calumnies:
“They will speak many words against him, and they will invent many [lie]s and fictions against him and speak shameful things about him. Evil will overthrow his generation …. His situation will be one of lying and violence [and] the people will go astray in his days, and be confounded.”
The trials described here, however, hardly constitute suffering as envisaged in Isaiah 53, where the servant is bruised and ultimately killed. Rather, 027these trials are reminiscent of the trials of the Qumran leader known as the Teacher of Righteousness, who endured the opposition of the “Man of the Lie.” According to the Damascus Document, fragments of several copies of which have been found at Qumran: “The Scoffer arose who shed over Israel the waters of lies. He caused them to wander in a pathless wilderness … ” (column 1). A hymn that is usually thought to be the work of the Teacher complains: “Teachers of lies [have smoothed] Thy people [with words], and [false prophets] have led them astray,” and again, “The teachers of lies and seers of falsehood have schemed against me a devilish scheme.”7
I do not suggest that the eschatological priest in 4Q541 should be identified with the Teacher of Righteousness. I do suggest, however, that this eschatological priest who was still to come was imagined by analogy with the Teacher, who was also both priest and sage. As the Teacher encountered opposition from “liars” who led the people astray, so would it be with the eschatological priest of 4Q541 at the end of days. Neither the Teacher nor the eschatological priest, however, was modeled on the suffering servant of Isaiah, and neither bears much similarity to the suffering messiah of Christian faith.
The statement in fragment 9 that “he will atone for all the children of his generation” bears only a surface similarity to the suffering servant in Isaiah. In Isaiah, the servant atones by offering his own life. In 4Q541, the priest atones by offering the prescribed sacrifices.
The significance of Isaiah’s servant for early Christianity lay in the notion of vicarious suffering the idea that the servant could atone for the sins of others by his own suffering and death. This notion became very important for the Christian understanding of the death of Jesus as a sacrifice for the sins of humankind, but Puech himself admits that there is no question of vicarious suffering or death in 4Q541.
Another passage in 4Q541 also deals with suffering of some sort and must be considered. Fragment 24, although impossibly obscure, contains intriguing allusions to hanging (or crucifixion) and “the nail.” The word translated as nail (ss’) is unknown in western Aramaic, but is translated on the basis of its Syriac usage.8 Assuming that the text does refer to crucifixion, still no messianic figure is being crucified. The person addressed in the text is told not to afflict the weak by crucifixion. It does not seem to me that there is any reference whatever to the servant songs in fragment 24.
The possible, but very uncertain, reference to crucifixion inevitably brings Jesus to mind, but as Puech quite properly points out, crucifixion was widely used as a means of punishment in the Roman era. The Hasmonean priest-king Alexander Janneus is said to have crucified 800 of his Jewish opponents (probably Pharisees).9 There is a well-known reference to him, in the Commentary on Nahum from Qumran, as “the lion of wrath who hangs men alive.” Fragment 24 of 4Q541 can be read as a condemnation of, or warning against, such behavior: A descendant of Levi should not do such things. There is no reference here to a suffering servant of the Lord.
The Dead Sea Scrolls have indeed produced some interesting parallels to the New Testament. The Son of God text (4Q246) is an obvious 063example. On the other hand, there has been a tendency in some quarters to exaggerate the points of correspondence. This occurred, for example, in the controversy over the alleged Pierced Messiah or Dying Messiah text (4Q285). The controversy concerned the possibility that, even before the crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth, some Jews expected a messiah who would be killed. For some people, this possibility, if true, would undermine “the uniqueness” of Christianity. For others, it would enhance the credibility of Christianity in the context of ancient Judaism. In fact, nothing found in the Dead Sea Scrolls is likely to have much impact, either positive or negative, on Christian faith, but the theological (or anti-theological) interest of scholars can distort the reading of an ancient text. I believe that this was the case in the Pierced Messiah controversy. In that instance, the context makes it quite clear that the messianic figure did the killing, and was not killed. Some scholars were misled, however, by their eagerness to find a parallel to the New Testament.
The text of 4Q541 is more difficult and obscure than the Pierced Messiah text, so it is reasonable to expect that scholars will interpret it in different ways. It is very unlikely, however, that it refers to a servant messiah. It does refer to an eschatological priest, who may be called a messiah by analogy with the messiah of Aaron, who appears elsewhere in the Dead Sea Scrolls. We have only a few texts that describe an eschatological priest. A new one is welcome. It is important because it helps fill out a detail in our knowledge of ancient Judaism. It is not likely to affect anyone’s belief or theology, It does not involve a suffering messiah, such as early Christians understood Isaiah to describe.
