This series has explored various Old Testament references to a figure who suffers on behalf of others in order to accomplish God’s redemptive work. These descriptions of vicarious and atoning suffering provide astounding links to Jesus’s own work, and Jesus is said to have identified himself as the Suffering Servant described by the prophet Isaiah:
“It is written: ‘And he was numbered with the transgressors’ [Isa 53:12]; and I tell you that this must be fulfilled in me” (Luke 22:37).
Other New Testament writers explicitly recognised Jesus as the pierced, suffering figure of prophecy (John 12:38 – 41 19:36–37; Matt 8:17; Acts 8:32–35). This Old Testament background explains why Jesus’s disciples could have proclaimed him as the promised Messiah even after his execution, and why they assumed that their positive message about his death would have been understood by other Jews.
It is often claimed that there must have been a general belief in a messianic figure that would suffer and atone for others, and that Jesus’s followers simply latched onto these current ideas and misguidedly applied them to their adored leader. However, despite the scattered hints in the Old Testament, the concept of a suffering Messiah is not found in contemporary Jewish beliefs.
Various scholars of religion have shown that Jewish messianism was strongly dominated by expectations of a triumphant warrior-king, particularly in the first century AD. As Randall Price points out, even in the extensive collection of Dead Sea Scrolls, “the overriding theme is one of royal messianic expectation” (“Eschatology of Dead Sea Scrolls,” 25). And Geza Vermes, a specialist in Judaic studies, states adamantly that “neither the suffering of the Messiah, nor his death and resurrection, appear to have been part of the faith of first-century Judaism” (Jesus the Jew, 38). Jewish scholar Joseph Klausner has confirmed this opinion by pointing out that “all the references to the suffering Messiah in Rabbinic literature . . . belong without exception to the post-Tannaitic period, when Christian influences cannot be wholly discounted” (Messianic Idea, 405, original emphasis). Even skeptical scholar Bart Ehrman, who challenges many orthodox Christian beliefs, makes this categorical statement: “In no surviving Jewish text—whether in the Hebrew Bible or later, up to the time of Christianity—is the Messiah said to die and be raised” (Apocalyptic Prophet, 218).
After a comprehensive survey of the relevant literature, biblical scholar Martin Hengel has concluded that there is very little evidence of vicarious suffering in Jewish sources.[1] He also points out that a crucified divine son of God would have been an unacceptable contradiction in both Hellenic and Judaic cultures of the time (Crucifixion in the Ancient World, 10). In addition, Jesus’s death by crucifixion would have placed him under the Old Testament curse on a hanged person (Deut 21:23), which Paul admitted was a “stumbling block” (skandalon) to the Jews (1 Cor 1:23; Gal 3:13).
Therefore, although Jesus’s followers taught that his death fulfilled ancient Jewish predictions of a suffering servant of God, there was no precedent for this belief in contemporary thought, either within Judaism or contemporary polytheistic cultures of the time. No other messianic group adopted this approach, and Jesus was the only figure to be associated with themes of humiliation as well as exaltation to God’s right hand of power. The evidence therefore suggests that there did not exist any clear-cut category that the disciples could have applied to Jesus. On the contrary, the New Testament depiction of his atoning suffering as the Messiah was a unique innovation.
It is therefore unlikely that Jesus’s followers randomly applied Old Testament verses to Jesus. Instead, his teaching, acts and death identified him as the pierced figure in the Old Testament, whose suffering would atone for the sins of others and bring all nations to God. As in the case of ancient prophecies of a triumphant messiah sent to do God’s work, we see that Jesus fulfilled predictions made long before his birth.
[1]. Hengel, “History of Isaiah 53,” 89, 119. It is sometimes claimed that there is a Christ-like figure in three texts dated to the first century BC or AD: Parables of Enoch, Four Ezra, and Wisdom of Solomon. However, the “son of man” in the Parables does not suffer; a messianic figure does die in Four Ezra, but this might reflect Christian influence and in any case his death does not provide atonement; the righteous do suffer in Wisdom of Solomon, but there is no vicarious suffering to atone for the guilt of others. Judaism did have a fringe tradition of heroic martyrdom and vicarious suffering in the text known as Second Maccabees. However, this is extremely rare in Second Temple literature and the relevant chapter could well be a post-Christian addition from the first or second century AD. Daniel McClellan argues as follows: “It has long been thought that 2 Macc 7 provided the foundation for the development of Christian beliefs about martyrdom, resurrection, and the doctrine of vicarious expiation . . . Far more parsimonious is later borrowing on the part of the author of 2 Macc 7 from the milieu of the Judeo-Christian battles for identity and orthodoxy” (“Function of 2 Maccabees 7,” 94).
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