Theology Thursdays: The Dead Sea Scrolls, Prophecy and Messiah IV

In the first part of this series, we looked into the thinking of some theologians, represented by the late influential theologian and Dead Sea Scrolls scholar Dr. Hugh Schonfield, that there is a deep connection between the concept and identity wrapped up in the word "Messiah" and the first five books of the Bible, referred to as the Pentateuch, or the "books of Moses". Dr. Schonfield wrote the following:

What has to be clarified and appreciated is that the Bible presents us not only with an individual Messiah, but also essentially with a Messiah-collective. The Messiahship is shared (Hosea 11:1; Matthew 2:15). The Nation-Messiah would have to be singular among the nations, set apart for the service and benefit of all peoples, and as a mediator Between God and Mankind.

So, when Abraham, the progenitor, was called to Canaan from Chaldea, he was told: "In thee shall all families of the Earth be blessed"(Genesis 12:3). The promise is reiterated that the nation arising from Abraham's descendants would be for the blessing of all nations. It will be agreed that this is a very exceptional reason for a nation's existence.

Here is no lust for conquest or tribal egoism. The function of this nation is to serve and to bless, to operate in a priestly capacity, performing as a mediator for the nation-states.

But for such a purpose a severe training and discipline was called for, a priestly code of national conduct, the experience of slavery, as in Egypt, and of homelessness, as in the wanderings in the Wilderness.

The Messianic requires us to read and study the books of Moses with a new appreciation and insight, not as something relating to a past experience which has been superseded, but as something of present and future relevance to that ideal world economy which would come to be expressed as the Kingdom or rule of God on Earth.

In the classic Message To The Blackman, the Honorable Elijah Muhammad wrote the following:

And Moses says that God told him (Deut. 18:18) "I will raise them up a prophet from among thy brethren like unto thee and will put my words in his mouth and shall speak unto them all that I command him."

This is an answer or a prophecy that compares with the prayer of Abraham - that God raised up a messenger from among them and taught him the wisdom and the book, because his people would not have knowledge of the book and were only guessing at its meaning. This book is referring to the Bible - that they were guessing at its meaning.

The Honorable Elijah Muhammad is referring to a prayer contained within the Holy Qur'an offered by Abraham and his son Ishmael which reads in Surah 2 and verses 128 to 129 (Maulana Muhammad Ali translation):

128: Our Lord, and make us both submissive to Thee, and (raise) from our offspring, a nation submissive to Thee, and show us our ways of devotion and turn to us (mercifully); surely Thou art the Oft-returning (to mercy), the Merciful.

129: our Lord, and raise up in them a Messenger from among them who shall recite to them the Book and the Wisdom, and purify them. Surely Thou art the Mighty, the Wise.

A key factor of context to consider in relating Abraham's prayer to his Lord, written in the Holy Qur'an, and what Moses is told by Jehovah, written in the Torah, is contained within the book of Genesis the 15th chapter and verses 13-14 where Jehovah tells Abraham "Know of a surety that thy seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not theirs, and shall serve them; and they shall afflict them four hundred years..." There is a rich body of literature which includes commentary by Muslims, Christians and Jews regarding the concept of the "seed of Abraham". Some say the "seed of Abraham" is literally a bloodline of desendants from Abraham, others argue it is a particular race; others say it is a faith. Interesting.

From the excerpt we just referenced in Message To The Blackman the Honorable Elijah Muhammad continues:


This is true! Thousands of preachers here are preaching the Bible and do not understand the true meaning of it. They only guess at its meaning.

It is not true that the Bible was being taught and preached by the Arab people before Muhammad. The Torah was used among the Jewish people but not in the vicinity of Mecca and its inhabitants. A prophet would be raised among a people and that this man would be like Moses but the Holy Qur’an and Bible do not give the direct place where this people would be. Moses was raised among his brethren to warn and guide them, and they were the ones who rejected him at first. And it was Moses that God spoke to that a last messenger would be like him.

Moses' people had not had a prophet to come to them from God before the raising of Moses and they did not know the scripture because Pharaoh had them worshipping in his false religion. Therefore, Moses had to preach a new God and a new religion to the Hebrews and give them a new concept of God and His religion.

So shall it be with the last messenger. His people must be taught about the true God and that God's true religion which the slave-masters did not teach them. The Holy Qur'an backs up the truth of Allah, that He always raises an apostle from among a people whom He would warn.


The idea of a second Moses-like figure coming in the "latter days" or as a last messenger or warner is not one that is commonly discussed by religious scholars in Islam, Christianity and Islam, much less preached in sermons to congregations on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. But, it is a subject that some theologians have explored in considerable depth. Jewish scholars have been foremost in writing about this subject. Several non-Jewish writers have increasingly explored the subject and written about it from primary research conducted from Jewish sources - primarily the Torah, Talmud and the contents and history of Rabbinical literature. One such writer is Risto Santala, regarded as an expert on both the Dead Sea Scrolls and Jewish theology. Here is what Mr. Santala wrote in his book, THE MESSIAH IN THE OLD TESTAMENT IN THE LIGHT OF RABBINICAL WRITINGS in a section called, "THE MESSIAH AS THE SECOND MOSES":

The Rabbinic literature often presents parallels between similar types of fact. Sometimes this comparison is developed by the qal'va- Hômer principle -- from the simple to the more complex; sometimes the matter is brought to life with an appropriate illustration. Likewise the Messianic concept has created its own figurative language.

One of the most freqently used parallels is the likening of the Messiah to the "first saviour", Moses.

Amongst Christians a similar parallelism appears as early as Jesus' statement that, "If you believed Moses you would believe me, because he wrote about me" (John 5:46). Those who listened to him sometimes exclaimed, "We have found the one Moses wrote about in the Law, and about whom the prophets also wrote" (John 1:45).

When speaking about the Messiah, Christian theologians sometimes use the concept Moses redivivus, 'Moses brought back to life', or the 'new' Moses. This notion is derived from a verse to which both Peter and Stephen refer in the Acts of the Apostles (3:22 and 7:37).


In another section called, "Comparisons between Moses and Jesus", he writes:

The Midrash uses the comparative phrase, "as it was, so it will be". We also find close scrutiny of the parallels between Jesus and Moses not infrequently in Christian literature. It has led to the inference that Jesus is somekind of 'Moses redivivus'. What contributory factors do we see there? Firstly, Moses' parents were Levites, so it was natural for him to give teaching about the worship of God to his people. Jesus too devoted himself to his high priestly commission -- the letter to the Hebrews speaks of this some fifteen times. On Moses' birth, newborn baby boys in Egypt were persecuted, and likewise when Jesus was born the sound of children's crying was heard in Bethlehem. Moses spent 40 years in the desert of Midian as a shepherd. Jesus too showed himself to be the good shepherd who searches out his lost sheep. In one well-known story of the Rabbis there is a description of Moses carrying a stray lamb to a well. A voice is then heard from heaven to say, "Because you have shown mercy to a creature of flesh and blood, I will make you the shepherd of your people".

Moses came to Egypt to liberate his brothers from slavery; Jesus came to redeem us from the yoke of sin. Moses was the leader of his people; Jesus went before his disciples. Moses gave the tables of the Covenant; Jesus wished to write the dual commandment of Love in believers' hearts. Moses also served as a judge; similarly, Jesus stressed that all judgement was entrusted to the Son, that all may honour the Son. Moses prayed for those who opposed and maligned him, such as Miriam. When the people had been worshipping the golden calf Moses called out, "Whoever is for the LORD, come to me". He prayed, "Please forgive their sin -- but if not, then blot me out of the book you have written" (Ex. 32:26,32); in the same way Jesus said, "Come to me all who are heavy laden and weary, and I will give you rest," and he prayed on the cross for the malefactors. Moses was "a very humble man, more humble than anyone else on the face of the earth" (Num. 12:3); Jesus too was "meek and lowly in heart". Such comparisons show that Jesus really was the promised prophet who would be "like Moses".


The Christian concept of Messiah is complex, and much more layered than is commonly taught in the church. One of the main features to what is taught on the subject among religious scholars and writers is that David and Moses are types of the Messiah. Typology is a huge subject in theology. We have touched on it in earlier parts of this series. But it is sufficient to note at this point that many Christians believe or have argued that Abraham, Melchizedek, Moses, Aaron, Joshua, Job, David, Solomon, Jeremiah, Isaiah, Ezekiel and other Old Testament figures are "types" of the Messiah. They believe the Messiah came 2,000 years ago.

But not all people who believe in the Messiah - whether he came 2,000 years ago or whether he is yet to arrive or just recently arrived - and state that they accept Jesus Christ as such, do so on the basis of a conviction that more than one prophet or combination of Old Testament figures, in sum, are types of the Messiah. Some communities are pictured in the scriptures as having accepted Jesus as Messiah on the basis of how his ways, words and actions correspond to the life of Moses or the expectation of a man who would one day come who would be like Moses; and whom Moses himself, is said to have described. In the book, Christ: A Crisis In The Life Of God by Jack Miles we can see this in a passage that revolves around the account of the conversation between Jesus and the Samaritan woman, in John 4: 21-26:


21Jesus declared, "Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem.

22You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews.

23Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks.

24God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth."

25The woman said, "I know that Messiah" (called Christ) "is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us."

26Then Jesus declared, "I who speak to you am he."

Of these verses Jack Miles writes:

The Samaritans regard only Torah as sacred scripture, and the Messiah whom they await to this day is not a second David, an anointed king, but a second Moses, anointed prophet. Moses foretold the coming of this prophet in Deuteronomy 18, a passage that the Samaritan woman quotes when she says “he will explain everything”:

Mr. Miles then quotes from Deuteronomy 18:15-18:

15 The LORD your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your own brothers. You must listen to him.

16 For this is what you asked of the LORD your God at Horeb on the day of the assembly when you said, "Let us not hear the voice of the LORD our God nor see this great fire anymore, or we will die."

17 The LORD said to me: "What they say is good.

18 I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brothers; I will put my words in his mouth, and he will tell them everything I command him.


Mr. Miles continues,” By his reply to the woman, Jesus assumes the identity of a second Moses or prophetic messiah more explicitly than he did when Phillip characterized him (John 1:45) as "him of whom Moses...wrote."

According to what Jack Miles writes, the Samaritans, to this day, are expecting the Messiah to be a second Moses. Their expectation is particularly interesting when considered opposite some of the Jewish rabbinical writings on the subject of the correspondence between a second Moses and the expected Messiah; and, what the Dead Sea Scrolls say of a messianic-figure - "The Teacher Of Righteousness" - expected to appear in the last days. Scholars who have handled the scrolls have written that the Teacher Of Righteousness expected in the last days is strikingly similar to the Moses of the Torah. In Part two of this series we quoted a scholar, Sarah Klitenic who wrote, "the Teacher of Righteousness not only knows the Law, but his knowledge of the Law is given to him by God. As in Numbers 12:6-8 when Moses receives the Law mouth to mouth from God, the Teacher also receives the law from the mouth of God in 1 Qp Hab II 2-3."

In another section she outright states, "The Teacher of Righteousness can be compared to Moses as the author of the Law for a sectarian community".

The belief that the expected Messiah would be a second Moses is much more wide-spread among a well-studied minority of scriptural scientists than most would currently believe.

Furthermore, some believe that there is an important relationship that exists between a second Moses and Elijah - whom Jews believe will accompany or serve as the forerunner of the Messiah when he arrives. (The vast majority of Jews, generally speaking, do not accept that Jesus of 2,000 years ago was the Messiah. To this day, they believe he is yet to arrive) The arrival of a second Moses, for many, dovetails with the Jewish expectation of the coming of Elijah. The book of Malachi speaks of the coming of Elijah at a critical hour. It reads:


4 Remember ye the law of Moses my servant, which I commanded unto him in Horeb for all Israel, with the statutes and judgments.

5 Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the LORD:

6 And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse.

Again, Jack Miles writes:

When the Samaritans accept Jesus as Messiah, they see him as a new Moses rather than a new David. He is the prophet who Moses promised would eventually come; but like Moses himself, he is a prophet who does not just predict the action of God but also imparts teaching, or torah, a prophet who “will explain everything”. According to a widely held popular belief, Elijah had been the promised second Moses, and therefore any further appearance of a Moses redux would have to be a Elijah redux. It was Elijah who, proverbially, would resolve all disputes and answer all questions.

The possibility that a second Moses and the “Elijah redux” would be one in the same person is a subject worthy of serious inquiry, as it would open up an enormous subject as to who would be accompanying this second Moses in his great work. Elijah is said to be returning, when he does, as the forerunner of the Messiah or actually with him It would also raise questions regarding the relevancy of the slave experience that Moses is written to have brought his people out of juxtaposed to the work of Elijah that takes place right before “the great and dreadful day of the Lord”. In symbolic terms Jews in ceremony and ritual make Elijah's return relevant to the slave narrative in written in the book of Exodus. In his book, The Prophets, Norman Podhoretz writes, "Every year at the seder, the festive meal that Jews celebrate at Passover in memory of the deliverance of their ancestors from slavery in Egypt, a special cup of wine is set aside for Elijah, and at a certain point the door is opened to let him in as the assemblage sings a melodious prayer asking that he come to them soon accompanied by the Messiah".

If the second Moses fulfills an Elijah-like role as a herald or forerunner it would mean that he would have to be accompanied by another person who shares in a Messianic-type work. Interestingly, in Jewish traditional literature, such a scenario is actually described, but on the pages of the Torah. In the Targum, the Aramaic translation and interpretation of the Old Testament, Moses and the Messiah are actually working together in the exodus narrative. Jona Lendering writes of this:


Moses and the Messiah are often mentioned together. The Aramaic aptation of the story of the exodus is an example. The original version is that God protected the Hebrews; it is rendered as protection by Moses and the Messiah, who will be the Hebrews' heavenly guide.

Moses will go forth from the midst of the wilderness and the king Messiah from on high: this one will lead at the head of the flock, and that one will lead at the head of the cloud; and the word of the Lord will be between the both of them; and they will proceed together. This is the Passover night before the Lord. [Fragment Targum Exodus 12.42]

The word 'cloud' is interesting, because in later times the Messiah was called Bar Naphle, 'son of the clouds'. It is also said that the Messiah will one day come 'on the clouds of heaven' (a reference to Daniel 7.13, found in the Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 98a)..

****

Think over this from the must-read, Is It Possible That The Honorable Elijah Muhammad Is Still Physically Alive?:

There is a great resemblance or similarity between the histories of various prophets, messengers, saints, and certain great men (often taken to be prophets of Allah) and the history of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad. It is easier to show this resemblance between some of those men and Messenger Muhammad than between him and some others.

For example, it is easier to show the similarity between Moses and Messenger Muhammad than between Jesus and the Messenger. Of course, it can and has been done.

One of the main reasons is the emotional factor. Most Black people are much more emotionally attached to Jesus than to Moses. Moreover, Jesus is identified with God to a much greater degree in the minds of most Blacks than is Moses.

Has the relative emotional detachment that Black people feel toward Moses been used against them? Furthermore, has it been designed? It is interesting to note that when Blacks were in chattel slavery, and while they were coming up out of their condition and given religion by their slavemasters in this country; they were prevented from reading the Torah and the writings of the prophets, both of which orbit around the account of 1) the promise that God made to Abraham regarding his "descendants"' future enslavement and liberation 2) Jehovah's visiting Egypt and raising up Moses and Aaron from among the enslaved Children of Israel. Yet and still, the Black slaves in the United States were disproportionately taught certain sections of the New Testament and very little or next to nothing from the Torah. This is an important subject for anyone interested in understanding some of why Blacks worship and read and study the Bible in the manner that they do they do in America, and why they have not been able to fully connect their belief in Jesus with their political ideology.

If there is a second Moses to come in the last days can he appear out of the context of a "second Children Of Israel"? Can it be argued that in the last 4,000 years since Moses, that there are any people in recorded history who fit the description of the Children Of Israel better than Black people in the United States? Is there any country that can be said to fit the description of Egypt better than the United States Of America? If Black people and the United States fulfill these descriptions by design, then the Messiah that Christians, Muslims and Jews believe in is obligated to do the majority of his work in the Western hemisphere.

Revelation 15 speaks about the people of God, who overcome evil, singing "the song of Moses, the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb". Why the song of Moses?

The Honorable Elijah Muhammad wrote that 90% of what is written in the book of Revelations is directed at events and people in America. Dead Sea Scrolls scholar Dr. Hugh Schonfield wrote that the scrolls, in his view, correspond to the predictions, personalities, and prophecies contained in the book of Revelations. The Honorable Elijah Muhammad also said that the United States government, for decades, has paid 100 people to study the "problem of prophecy" – in essence how to circumvent certain aspects of what is written in the scriptures or to allow events to occur without direct opposition, that are unavoidable, but to control and dictate the manner in which the masses of people would interpret the events so that they would not realize that what was happening was actually fulfilling what was written, described and predicted in the scriptures.

For the last ten years, a respected former reporter for The Wall St. Journal and The Washington Post has been arguing publicly that the Bible contains a code that literally gives dates and times for the most significant world events of the past, present and future. Most recently he has presented a case that the Bible prophecies and code predicted the events that took place on September 11th, 2001. This man's arguments regarding this code, Biblical prophecies and geopolitical events have been so persuasive that he has been granted private audiences with world leaders in order to advise them. He has personally advised former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzak Rabin (reportedly predicting and directly informing him of his assassination, 14 months before it occurred) and Yasser Arafat about their political steps and their explosive consequences in the Middle East and throughout the world.

On October 16, 2000, at a critical point in the Middle East crisis, he met with President Clinton's chief of staff, John Podesta regarding Biblical prophecies, the existence of a code in the Bible, and the "End Of Days". For the last two years, he has been writing letters to both President George W. Bush and Secretary Of State Colin Powell regarding Biblical prophecies, Armageddon and the End Of Days. He writes that his letters meant for President Bush have been, instead, read by President Bush's Chief of Staff Andrew Card (whom he speaks directly with) and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, but it has been decided that these letters not be given to the President Of The United States.

This man warns that the Bible predicts that President Bush's war on terrorism will come to a "terrible end" - a conclusion that he is convinced the President of the United States does not currently see. Some of his arguments sound very similar to those that Minister Louis Farrakhan has been making in his letters to both President Clinton and President Bush in recent years.

Next week we intend to look more closely at this man's efforts, thinking and approach to prophecy, and get into the mathematics involved in proving the reality of prophecy and its fulfillment to any reasonable person; and how all of this relates to events happening in the United States and a small group of people who are intelligently arguing, and some, who are literally pleading with President Bush to consider prophecy and scriptural science regarding his desire to go to war with Iraq.

They believe that if President Bush understood prophecy he would not pursue the current plans for war that he has in his mind.

Cedric Muhammad

Thursday, February 6, 2003

To discuss this article further enter The Deeper Look Dialogue Room

The views and opinions expressed herein by the author do not necessarily represent the opinions or position of BlackElectorate.com or Black Electorate Communications.