The Fourth Deliverer A Josephite Messiah in 4QTestimonia (original) (raw)
A Dying and Rising Josephite Messiah in 4Q372
Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha, 2009
This article draws attention to difficulties in the prevailing interpretation of 4Q372, which sees the text as referring to the fall of the historical northern kingdom. This study suggests the Joseph figure of 4Q372 appears to be a righteous king or `eschatological patriarch' who quotes in his death-throes Psalms 89 and 22, like the suffering Ephraim Messiah of Pesikta Rabbati 36-37. This study therefore argues that the genre of 4Q372 is not history but prophecy, a view supported by its verbal forms. Such an interpretation has implications for the dating of the Josephite Messiah.
4.25 Literary and Textual History of Joshua 2
Wolfgang Kraus, Michaël N. van der Meer, and Martin Meiser, eds., XV Congress of the International for Septuagint and Cognate Studies, Munich, 2013, SBLSCS 64 (Atlanta: SBL, 2016), 565-591
Ever since Samuel Holmes identified the recurring pluses in MT-Joshua 2 as elements of a re-edition of the Hebrew book of Joshua, scholars have studied the quantitative variants between the MT and LXX of Joshua in light of the presumed process of literary editing of biblical books evidenced by the oldest textual witnesses. Whereas the extant Qumran scrolls for this chapter (i.c. 4QJosh b and XJosh) do not lend support for such a thesis, the character of the Greek translation is more ambiguous and judged as either witness to the process of reformulation of the book or rather straightforward rendering and hence witness to a deviating, shorter Hebrew Vorlage. In this paper I will readdress this issue in the light of a literary-critical analysis of the book in its own right. Joshua 2 contains the well-known story of the spies at Rahab's house at Jericho, their oath to let her and her family life when the Israelites conquer the city and it tells the spies' safe escape from the city. As in so many other chapters in the book of Joshua, the extant Hebrew and Greek texts differ at many relatively small instances. 1 A synopsis of the two versions makes this clear: 2 1 See the discussion of Joshua 1, 5:2-12; 8:1-29 and 8:30-35 in Michaël N. van der Meer, Formation and Reformulation. I have used the following conventions: where the Hebrew text of MT lacks an equivalent in LXX, I have marked such a minus in the Greek text by means of three hyphens for each missing Hebrew lexeme. Where the Greek text is longer than or different from MT, I have marked such variant by means of italics. The Hebrew and Greek texts are divided in (single) clauses.
Proper Worship and the Better Messiah: Expositional Paper on John 4:19-26
2018
The story of the Samaritan woman at the well in the Gospel of John provides one of the clearest expositions on the messiahship of Christ in the New Testament. “In a momentous self-disclosure that is unique to any Gospel narrative prior to Jesus’ trials, Jesus acknowledges that he is the Messiah.” Suppose though, there had been another. What if the Jewish messiah, as they had expected him to be, had come, had ruled, and had failed one hundred years before the coming of Christ? He had come as a warrior king who reconstituted Judea, restored the temple and was purported to commune with the Divine - the fourth Hasmonean ruler, John Hyrcanus. Hyrcanus is not a name found in the Bible, nor known by many outside of biblical scholarship, but whose importance cannot be understated. Edward Wicher, in his article, Ancient Jewish Views of the Messiah, makes the astounding claim that for a short time in Jewish history under the rule of Hyrcanus, “the pious Israelite imagined that the reign of Messiah had already begun upon the earth.” But who was John Hyrcanus, how is his story linked to Jesus’ meeting with an outcast Samaritan at Jacob’s well and what implications does this have on Christ’s messiahship?
4.31 The Reception History of Joshua in the Septuagint and Contemporary Documents
Michaël N. van der Meer, "The Reception History of Joshua in the Septuagint and Contemporary Documents," in Die Septuaginta-Geschichte, Wirkung, Relevanz, ed. Martin Meiser, Michaela Geiger, Siegfried Kreuzer, Marcus Sigismund, WUNT 405 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2018), 431-463, 2018
In this paper the reception of the book of Joshua as reflected in the Old Greek version is placed within the context of contemporary interpretations of the figure and book of Joshua in the Persian, Ptolemaic, Seleucid, Hasmonean, Julio-Claudan and Flavian periods. Attention is given to passages in Ben Sira, Eupolemos, 1 and 2 Maccabees, the Qumran Joshua Apocryphon, 4QTestimonia, the Testaments of Moses, Philo, Acts, Hebrews, 2 Baruch, 4 Ezra, Sibylline Oracles, Josephus and Pseudo-Philo. Particularly the latter two rewritten versions show interesting parallels and contrasts with the Old Greek version of Joshua, when it comes to the role of warfare and attitude to foreign powers. It is argued that a historical and contextual approach instead of an inner-biblical approach to reception history helps to explain the early reception history and even late redaction history of that biblical book.
Jesus, the Eschatological Prophet in the Fourth Gospel: A Case Study in Dialectical Tensions
Reading the Gospel of John’s Christology as Jewish Messianism, 2018
Central to the presentation of Jesus in the Fourth Gospel is his association with the Eschatological Prophet, anticipated within first century Judaism. Rooted in Jewish agency typologies cohering around such prophetic figures as Moses and Elijah, these primitive associations reflect historical proximity to Jesus of Nazareth, who as a Galilean prophetic figure continued in the trajectory of John the Baptist while also challenging Jewish institutions and religious conventions in Galilee, Samaria, and Judea. From his prophetic demonstration in the temple to his healing on the Sabbath, the Johannine Jesus furthered the social concerns of the Hebrew prophets, and when challenged by the religious leaders in Jerusalem, he legitimated his actions on the basis of Deut. 18:15-22. This Mosaic agency schema is the key to the Father-Son relationship in John, and the signs of Jesus in John echo the wondrous ministries of Moses and Elijah, sometimes in tension with Davidic, Synoptic, and other contemporary views. From beginning to end within the Johannine tradition, the prophetic ethos remains central within its development, reflecting a synchronicity of tradition within a diachronicity of situation.
The “firstborn son” in 4Q369 1 ii line 6 is interpreted by the vast majority of scholars as referring to a Davidic Messiah vis-à-vis an allusion to Psalm 89:27–28. The minority view is that “firstborn son” in 4Q369 refers to “Israel,” which is supported by multiple attestations to such a tradition in early Jewish literature. However, neither side in this debate have assessed the significance of “firstborn son” in 4QInstruction to determine what significance, if any, there may be for understanding 4Q369. This study argues that 4QInstruction uses the expression “firstborn son” in relationship to God and when this conclusion is set in conversation with 4Q369 1 ii it problematizes the identification of an allusion to Psalm 89:27–28 and, therefore, a reference to a Messiah.
4.26 Textual History of Joshua (THB 1c 3.1)
Textual History of the Hebrew Bible, Volume 1B, edited by Emanuel Tov and Armin Lange (Leiden: Brill, 2016), chapter 3.1, pp. 251-256., 2016
This contribution presents a short overview of the general textual history of the book of Joshua in the Hellenistic, Roman and Byzantine periods and pays particular attention to the MasoreticText, the Qumran scrolls (4QJosh-a, 4QJosh-b and 4QJosh-c) as well as the Old Greek translation of that biblical book as well as their assessment by modern scholars.