The Messiah will come and the great age of salvation will dawn

The Jewish Context of
Jesus' Miracles, by Eric Eve

"This leaves the problem of how God can be said to be about to preach the good news to the poor. Whatever weight is placed on the particular use of [ ] at Isa. 61.1, nowhere in the Old Testament is this verb used with God as its subject, but always of human proclaimers of (mostly good) news. Added to the fact that Isa 61.1, which appears to be in view here, speak of one anointed by God’s spirit to perform various actions on God’s behalf, the difficulty seems almost insurmountable. Thus there appears to be an exegetical deadlock. Every other consideration points to God being the subject of the verbs in Line 12, and yet the third of these verbs, preaching the good news, stubbornly resists having God as its subject." - Eric Eve

“This, presumably, is why Vermes chose to translate the particles by “he who…’,55 understanding the author to be referring to God’s habitual acts rather than his future ones, as in the psalm from which the quotation is taken. On this reading, it could be argued that he who regularly does these activities in the present may yet plan to do his greater saving actions through his Messiah in the future.

In favour of the future interpretation is the fact that the immediate context implies a future hope, and the idea of being about to liberate captives and lift up those bowed low would constitute some kind of parallelism with the ideas expressed in the previous line. If the Lord is already liberating captives, restoring sight to the blind and elevating their downtrodden, it is unclear why the audience have to be exhorted to hold on for future deliverance... On balance, then, it seems most likely that line 8 does intend a future reference, although the grammatical construction is admittedly unclear.56

This leaves the problem of how God can be said to be about to preach the good news to the poor. Whatever weight is placed on the particular use of [ ] at Isa. 61.1, nowhere in the Old Testament is this verb used with God as its subject, but always of human proclaimers of (mostly good) news. Added to the fact that Isa 61.1, which appears to be in view here, speak of one anointed by God’s spirit to perform various actions on God’s behalf, the difficulty seems almost insurmountable. Thus there appears to be an exegetical deadlock. Every other consideration points to God being the subject of the verbs in Line 12, and yet the third of these verbs, preaching the good news, stubbornly resists having God as its subject.

At this point one must step back and consider some broader questions about the genre and purpose of this text. It appears that 4Q521 is hymnic in type. In Puech’s view, the different themes evoke the genre of an exhortation on the blessings and punishments that God will bring about in the days of his Messiah. In language that is half-prophetic and half-apocalyptic the author invites the just to persevere in the law and in the orthodox practice of the cult.57 This view seems reasonable. But this means this text is not a systematically constructed theological treatise but a poetic evocation of God’s imminent saving act; it is highly allusive in nature, making frequent use of psalms and prophecy and weaving them into a tapestry designed more with evocative than with didactic goals in mind. The author may not have taken minute pains to express himself precisely at every turn; he was more concerned with inspiring his audience.

This does not mean that he will have been content to write any old nonsense. But it allows the possibility that he was prepared to slip a little carelessly between one subject and another. In particular, he may not have been greatly concerned to distinguish between what God was going to bring about directly and what God was going to effect through the person of his Messiah.58 Or he may have considered that the action of the Messiah sent by God was the equivalent of God acting himself (on the shaliach principle). In Isa. 61.1-2 the prophetic figure (perhaps interpreted as the Messiah by the author of 4Q521) is anointed with God’s spirit to act as God’s agent; on the shaliach principle the acts he performs while carrying out this mission may also be seen as God’s acts; he proclaims the good news on God’s behalf, so that his words may be regarded as God’s words just as the prophets of old certified their proclamations with ‘Thus says Yahweh.’ Or again, the text may describe what God is going to do quite apart from the Messiah.

Where does this leave the raising of the dead and the other miraculous deeds? In the end, one can only say that the text does not make it clear whether these are to be performed through the Messiah or not. This is not a distinction the author was concerned to make: in common with several other authors of intertestamental texts his interest lay not with the person of the Messiah but with what God was going to do in the Messianic age. The Messiah will come and the great age of salvation will dawn (for the pious); that is the author’s message; demarcating a precise division of labour is not his concern.61

Moreover, it is not even clear that the text look forward to the performing of actual individual miracles of healing and raising the dead. As in I. 8 so also in II. 11-13 the language may be rather the traditional language of salvation. What may be in view is not so much a literal revival of the dead or healing of the mortally wounded as the revival of God’s hard-pressed people (cf. Ezek. 37.1-14; Hos. 6.2). This may well be the language of eschatological salvation, but it is not necessarily a prediction of individual healing miracles.62

The importance of this text is not that it associates the coming of the Messiah with an eschatological action of God that includes the literal restoration of sight to the blind, healing, raising the dead, and preaching good news to the poor, but that it provides an example of this type of language being applied to the end time, even if only in a metaphorical sense.”

The Jewish Context of Jesus' Miracles, by Eric Eve, pp. 194-196.
Hardcover: 282 pages
Publisher: Continuum International Publishing Group Ltd. (27 Jun 2002)
ISBN-10: 1841273155
ISBN-13: 978-1841273150

55. Vermes, Complete Dead Sea Scrolls, p. 392.
56. Cf. Betz and Riesner, Jesus, Qumran and the Vatican, p. 91.
57. Puech, ‘Apocalypse messianique’, p. 514.
58. Cf. Kvalbien, ‘Wonders of the End-Time’, pp. 87-88, who asks, ‘who is performing the wonders in 4Q521 2.5-8 and 11-13?’, and at once answers, ‘Grammatically the subject is obviously the Lord, mentioned in II. 4 and 11. But maybe his saving actions are to be done by the anointed one (I. 1) as his agent?’ But Kvalbein is sceptical of this possibility, see n. 60 below.
59. Cf. Betz and Reisner, Jesus, Qumran and the Vatican, p. 93.
60. Kvalbein, ‘Wonders of the End-Time’, p. 107, is sceptical of the view that 4Q521 describes what God will do through the Messiah on several grounds: the lack of any other pre-Christian Jewish evidence that Isa. 61 was applied to the messianic king, the fragmentary nature of 4Q521, and the great variety in the Qumranic views of the Messiah. He thus concludes, ‘it is scarcely possible to give an exact description of the role of the Anointed one in I. 2’ (p. 108).
61. Cf. Wise and Tabor, ‘Messiah at Qumran’, p. 63.
62. So Kvalbein, ‘Wonders of the End-Time’, pp. 90-92. Kvalbein goes on to argue persuasively that several texts that appear to promise physical healing e.g. Isa. 29.18-19; 35.5-6; Ps. 146,7-8, were in fact understood as poetic descriptions of salvation and return from exile (pp. 93-101).

The Messiah "will bear the signs of that same Jesus who arrived in the past."

"Almost clandestinely, the Roman Catholic Church has in recent weeks taken another step toward reducing Christian animosity toward Judaism - animosity stemming from the theological dispute between the two religions. In a 210-page document published in book form in Rome, the Church states that there is no contradiction between the Jews' anticipation of the Messiah's arrival and the Christians' belief that the Messiah has already arrived, because Christians believe that the Messiah will return at the End of Days. It is significant that the Vatican's new document does not unequivocally or explicitly state that the Messiah destined to return will be Jesus Christ but instead says that the Messiah "will bear the signs of that same Jesus who arrived in the past." The document even adds that the Jews' anticipation of the Messiah's arrival can significantly encourage Christians' belief in the Messiah's return. The new document was written by the Pontifical Biblical Commission, established by Pope John Paul II in 1997. The commission was headed by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, prefect of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith and its other members were 20 Bible experts, each of whom received papal authorization to serve on the committee."

Eliahu Salpeter
Waiting for the Messiah

"I am here to do the job of God Almighty."

Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi
Bordi, India — February 6, 1985

"To know God itself is such a great blessing, because He is the God Almighty; the God who has all the powers and all the loved ones.

He is our Father, He is waiting for us to enter into His Kingdom, to enjoy that peace and beauty of His Being, because He has created us and He wants His creation to come up to that."

Shri Mataji Shri Nirmala Devi

"Today we are celebrating the resurrection of Christ. With it we also have to celebrate the resurrection of human beings, of Sahaja Yogis, who have been resurrected as realised souls. With that we have to understand that we enter into a new awareness. He had to come down and again to show to this world that you are the eternal life, that you lead a life that is spiritual, which never perishes. You have to rise, into that new realm, which is the Realm of God Almighty, what you call the Kingdom of God.

And He said it very clearly to Nicodemus that ‘You have to be born again’ when he asked, ‘Am I to enter back into my mother’s womb?’, and He said it so clearly. Those who don’t want to see can remain blind. No, that is, whatever is born of the flesh, is the flesh, but whatever is born of the Spirit is the Spirit.’

But whatever is manmade is not the Spirit. This is the clear statement of Christ, which people wanted to avoid, and start their own organisations, and ideas, and created a very mythical thing in His name. And now the time has come for it to be blasted. It has been going on and on now for thousands of years, captures so many innocent people and people are into it."

Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi
V4 No 23 Sept 84 p4

NOTE: If this page was accessed during a web search you may wish to browse the sites listed below where this topic or related issues are discussed in detail to promote global peace, religious harmony, and spiritual development of humanity:

www.adishakti.org/
www.al-qiyamah.org/
www.adi-shakti.org/  — Divine Feminine (Hinduism)
www.holyspirit-shekinah.org/  — Divine Feminine (Christianity)
www.ruach-elohim.org/  — Divine Feminine (Judaism)
www.ruh-allah.org/  — Divine Feminine (Islam)
www.tao-mother.org/  — Divine Feminine (Taoism)
www.prajnaaparamita.org/  — Divine Feminine (Buddhism)
www.aykaa-mayee.org/  — Divine Feminine (Sikhism)
www.great-spirit-mother.org/  — Divine Feminine (Native Traditions)