The Scepter and the Star: Messianism in Light of the Dead Sea Scrolls

Much scholarship has been written on this. For lack of space, I will quote only from the concluding analysis of John J. Collins on this fragment, found in his definitive study, The Scepter and the Star: Messianism in Light of the Dead Sea Scrolls, 2nd ed. (Eerdmans, 2010): Whether, in the end, the speaker in the Self-Exaltation Hymn is a messi­anic figure remains uncertain. Despite the precedent of Psalm 110, the fig­ure in question does not seem to be the royal messiah. The priestly mes­siah, also understood as a teacher, remains a possibility, but the text does not admit of a definitive interpretation. The primary interest of this fragment does not lie in the specific identification of the speaker, which can never be certain, but in the notion of a human figure enthroned in heaven in a Jewish context. We have seen that this notion is not as strange as it might have seemed initially. The apoca­lyptic literature offered the prospect of a heavenly afterlife with the stars or angels (Dan 12:3; 1 Enoch 104:2,4), even of heavenly enthronement (1 Enoch 108:12). The author of the Hodayot claimed to walk already on "limitless level ground" and mingle with the host of heaven. Stronger more distinc­tive claims were made for the Davidic messiah and Danielic "Son of Man," and also for Moses. The fact that Moses is called "god" by Philo is not an aberration of Greek-speaking Judaism. The figure in 4Q491 is also reck­oned among the gods, elim. In no case does this "divinization" impinge on the supremacy of the Most High, the God of Israel. But it clearly in­ volves the exaltation of some human figures to a status that is envisaged as divine and heavenly rather than human and mortal. The sharp distinction between heaven and earth that was characteristic of the Deuteronomic tra­dition and of much of the Hebrew Bible was not so strongly maintained in the Hellenistic age, even in the Hebrew- and Aramaic-speaking Judaism represented by the Dead Sea Scrolls. More analysis and details of this text and a host of other Jewish texts as they relate to the development of NT christology are found in Ruben A. Bühner's excellent study, Messianic High Christology: New Testament Variants of Second Temple Judaism (Baylor University Press, 2021).