Today’s post is a guest post from Sinouhe. It’s a response to Kipp Davis’ video LIVE! with Q&A: A pre-Christian “Dying Messiah”? Responding to Richard C. Carrier’s Incompetence.
1. In the thumbnail of Davis’ video, he calls Carrier incompetent on this subject. Yet he is merely reiterating the conclusions of renowned scholars such as Émile Puech, Martin Hengel, Florentino Martínez, and even your dissertation supervisor, George Brooke. Are they incompetent scholars?
2. 30:15 about the Messiah “That’s never been a divine figure. As far as i can tell, the literature that i’ve read so far to this point doesn’t really give any indication that that it was meant to be a divine figure or even a semi-divine figure. Just a guy…” (with KIPP DAVIS acquiescing !)
Yet several Jewish texts contain highly exalted, heavenly figures associated with messianic expectations:
- 11Q13 (11QMelchizedek) presents a heavenly, superhuman eschatological figure and is identified with the אֱלֹהִים (“God/divine being”) of Psalm 82:1
- The Self-Glorification Hymn — presents a heavenly, superhuman figure although its identification and messianic status are debated
- The Parables of Enoch presents a heavenly, superhuman messianic figure
- 4 Ezra presents a heavenly, superhuman messianic figure
- The Pauline Epistles presents a heavenly, superhuman messianic figure
Moreover, explicit or near-explicit pre-existence is :
- The Parables of Enoch — the Son of Man exists/has been hidden before the creation of the world (1 En. 48:2–3, 48:6; 62:7).
- 4 Ezra — the messianic Son has been kept by the Most High « for many ages » (4 Ezra 13:26).
- The Pauline Epistles
3. 53:30 Kipp Davis describes John Collins’s The Scepter and the Star as the standard reference work on Jewish messianism. That is not necessarily wrong, but he greatly overstates the significance of the excursus “The Suffering Servant at Qumran” and the extent to which Collins’s conclusions have settled the question.
Indeed, a number of scholars have challenged Collins’s claim that a suffering Messiah is absent from the Qumran manuscripts, including Joseph L. Angel and Daniel Stökl Ben Ezra. Moreover, numerous studies arguing for allusions to Isaiah 53 in messianic texts from Qumran were published after Collins’s book, including work by scholars such as Martin Hengel and Florentino Martínez. This alone shows that Collins’s argument has certainly not convinced everyone.
The Scepter and the Star may well be a major reference work for the study of Jewish messianism as a whole. But that does not make it infallible, nor does it mean that scholars simply accept all of Collins’s conclusions without question. This is particularly true when it comes to the question of the Suffering Servant and Isaiah 53 at Qumran, where there remains substantial scholarly disagreement.
4. 58:22 The fact that Carrier happens to agree with Collins and other scholars, without having published a separate study arguing every point in the primary texts himself, and without those same scholars necessarily being familiar with Carrier’s work, is a rather desperate attempt to ridicule him.
A scholar can agree with another scholar without having to independently reproduce an entire body of research in order to demonstrate that he has arrived at the same conclusion. And if Hengel or Collins are unfamiliar with Carrier’s work, how exactly does that prevent Carrier from agreeing with them? That is a very strange line of reasoning.
Moreover, Kipp attempts to refute Carrier in his video by citing the work of other scholars, despite the fact that he himself has apparently not published a study specifically addressing the question of a suffering Messiah in pre-Christian Judaism. In other words, he is doing precisely what he criticizes Carrier for doing. The double standard is hard to miss.
At least Carrier has actually published on this subject, even if Davis apparently considers the journal in which his work appeared insufficiently “prestigious.”
5. 1:13:16 “When Collins is talking about Isaiah 53, what Carrier is not telling you is that there is ample discussion and everybody is in pretty firm agreement that the servant songs were significant for the writers and the collectors of the dead sea scrolls, but not with respect to the Messiah, with respect to the career of the teacher of Righteousness.”
Davis’ presentation is misleading at this point.
First, the majority of scholars see an allusion to Isaiah 53 in 4Q541, and a substantial number of scholars also see an allusion to Isaiah 53 in the Self-Glorification Hymn. The identification of the figures in these two texts with the Teacher of Righteousness certainly exists as a scholarly proposal, but it is by no means the majority position.
More importantly, Collins’s later work significantly complicates the picture Davis is presenting..
In a study published after the excursus in The Scepter and the Star, he explicitly changed his mind and acknowledged that 4Q541 does indeed allude to Isaiah 53, as many scholars had argued.
And even worse for Davis, Collins also explicitly identifies the eschatological priest in 4Q541 with the Messiah of Aaron, rather than with the Teacher of Righteousness.
See John J. Collins, “Teacher and Servant,” Revue d’histoire et de philosophie religieuses, 80th year, no. 1 (January–March 2000), Hommage à Marc Philonenko, p. 47.
“Again here there is similarity to the career of the Teacher, who also complains of opposition. The more likely referent, however, is the messiah of Aaron, who is also said to atone for the sin of the people in CD 14:19.”
So Davis is simply wrong when he claims that Collins thought 4Q541 referred to the Teacher of Righteousness. Collins himself acknowledged that the figure in 4Q541 should be understood as the Messiah of Aaron. This is not a minor detail: it directly contradicts the way Davis is presenting Collins’s position.
6. 02:55:15 Kipp Davis tries to portray Carrier as an incompetent or dishonest scholar who manipulates secondary sources and makes them say things they do not actually say in order to support his thesis.
This is particularly obvious at this point in the video, where he accuses Carrier of misrepresenting Timothy Lim’s study, “11QMelch, Luke 4 and the Dying Messiah,” in order to claim that Lim regarded 11Q13 as evidence for a dying Messiah at Qumran.
That accusation is rather dishonest. Carrier explicitly highlights Lim’s reservations on this very issue. He writes:
“He concedes this is debatable, and lists reasons for its uncertainty, but he affirms, nevertheless, that ‘what is unassailable is that in Dan 9:25ff. there is a figure who is described as “an anointed one” and “a priest,” whose appearance is connected with the rebuilding of Jerusalem and who after sixty-two weeks of years is cut off or killed (cf. Dan 11:22).’”
It is true that Richard Carrier repeatedly cites Timothy Lim’s study as supporting his case for a dying Messiah in 11Q13. But Lim himself acknowledges the difficulties involved in his study—which is actually an appendix to a study by Geza Vermes. He explicitly states:
“The argument for the existence of a dying messiah in the Qumran scrolls is fraught with difficulties”
and:
“The search for a pre-Christian source of a dying messiah in the Qumran scroll 11QMelch is unsatisfactory.”
So Lim neither rejects nor conclusively establishes the identification of the 11Q13 Messiah as a dying Messiah. His position is that the text is too fragmentary and the evidence too tenuous to warrant a certain conclusion.
But that is not the end of the matter. Lim nevertheless argues unambiguously that 11Q13 alludes to the Messiah of Daniel 9:25-26—the figure who is “cut off” in Daniel. He also connects this figure with the herald of Isaiah 52:7 and the prophet of Isaiah 61:1.
In other words, Lim’s position is nuanced: he does not claim that 11Q13 conclusively proves the existence of a dying Messiah, but he does identify the figure in 11Q13 with the anointed figure of Daniel 9:25–26, whose fate is described as being “cut off,” while connecting him with the figures of Isaiah 52:7 and 61:1.
And, crucially, Carrier explicitly acknowledged Lim’s reservations in his own study. So Davis cannot reasonably accuse Carrier of concealing or manipulating Lim’s qualifications when Carrier actually puts those qualifications front and center.
Davis is therefore attacking a position that Carrier himself did not claim Lim held. The disagreement is about how the evidence should be interpreted, not about whether Carrier accurately reported Lim’s reservations.
7. 03:07:14 As with the Lim study, Davis once again tries to ridicule Carrier by portraying him as someone who manipulates secondary sources to make them support his argument.
But the quotation from Craig Evans actually shows the opposite. Evans writes:
“It seems that the anointed one who comes proclaiming the year of the YHWH’s (or Melchizedek’s) favor will be killed. But the Melchizedek text says nothing about this.”
Evans is not refuting the idea that the author of 11Q13 is referring to a dying Messiah. He is simply pointing out that the text itself does not state this explicitly. That is a cautious conclusion, and it is entirely compatible with Carrier’s position.
The point is not that 11Q13 explicitly says that the Messiah will die. It does not. The point is that the text appears to allude to the anointed figure of Daniel 9:25–26, who is described as being “cut off,” and that this provides a plausible basis for understanding the figure in 11Q13 as a suffering or dying Messiah.
So once again, Davis is presenting a scholarly qualification as though it were a refutation of Carrier’s argument. But Evans’s actual wording does not support that interpretation. In fact, his cautious formulation—“It seems that…” followed by “the text says nothing about this”—is perfectly consistent with the distinction Carrier is making between what the text explicitly states and what can reasonably be inferred from its allusions.
8. The rest of the video consists largely of tangents. It becomes increasingly clear that Davis is not particularly comfortable with the specific question of the Suffering Servant at Qumran, and that he repeatedly tries to shift the discussion onto terrain where he appears to be more comfortable: Jewish messianism in general.
It is particularly noteworthy that Davis carefully avoids addressing the conclusions of scholars who have argued for a pre-Christian influence of Isaiah 53 on messianic beliefs. He discusses 4Q541 only to claim that it refers to the Teacher of Righteousness, even though this is not what Collins says in his later study on the subject. He does not discuss the allusions to Isaiah 53. Nor does he mention the Self-Glorification Hymn, which likewise contains possible allusions to an exalted yet despised figure resembling the Servant of Isaiah.
When he discusses 11q13, he does not mention the references to Isaiah 52 and Isaiah 61 either. Isaiah 61 is particularly relevant because it is understood in Christianity as referring to the Isaianic Servant, and it may have been understood in a similar way at Qumran. We find there the same basic concept of an eschatological figure commissioned by YHWH, upon whom the Spirit rests, and who releases captives—features strikingly similar to the figure of the Servant in Isaiah 42.
Perhaps this will be addressed in a second part, which he teased at the end of the video and which is apparently scheduled for next week.
It is also interesting that Davis never discusses his dissertation advisor´s work in his video.
This is especially significant given that George J. Brooke concluded in his study of 4Q541:
“4Q541 must now be taken into account by all future generations of scholars who wish to consider the issue. It now seems that there is a Jewish text whose author used the Servant passages of Isaiah to support the understanding that there was to be an eschatological priest who would suffer, possibly even that the suffering involved death, death that would lead to joyous benefits for others.”
—George J. Brooke, The Dead Sea Scrolls and the New Testament (1993), p. 153.
Perhaps this will be addressed too in the second part.
By portraying Carrier as incompetent while failing to provide anything approaching a comprehensive overview of the relevant scholarship, Davis effectively frames the debate in a way that favors his own position, knowing full well that most viewers have not studied this particular question in depth. That is intellectually questionable, and it becomes fairly easy to detect for anyone who has done even a modest amount of research on the subject.
I do not know whether Carrier intends to respond to Davis’s video, but he would certainly have plenty to say. Once you look closely at the primary texts and the secondary literature, Davis’s presentation becomes considerably less convincing than it initially appears.
Despite a certain degree of bias on both sides, and Davis’s apparent determination to “take down Carrier” rather than present the subject in a comprehensive and intellectually honest way, Carrier’s videos with Godless Engineer and Davis’s video are nevertheless interesting and worthwhile for anyone interested in the subject.
To be continued…
