REX IUDÆORUM: FROM THORNBUSH TO THE CROWN OF THORNS

Abstract

The aim of this study is to trace the development of the messianic thought from its pre-monarchic roots (Pre-Temple) to the monarchic period (First Temple), to the post-exilic period (Second Temple), and to the post-Second Temple period. I hypothesise that the first identification of the messiah (the anointed) with the military leader was an intellectual and religious endorsement of the “original sin” of kingship described in the allegory of the trees (Judges 9:8-15). However, the Babylonian exile catalysed the process by which Jews learned to abstract their expectation of the messiah from the “pagan” worship of the extant commander-in-chief. I trace this gradual process of learning to its acme in the Qumran literature: where historical and extraterrestrial strains of messianic thought are reconciled. Then I follow Mack and Juel in arguing that Mark the Evangelist used the wisdom pattern (learned after the Babylonian exile) as the foundation on which to rethink the concept of kingship from scratch. Thus it was no longer kingship that “seemed” divine but wisdom that “seemed” royal. The significance of Jesus’s scandalous ministry could only be captured by the irony which Mark uses to narrate his Gospel: Jesus’s coronation as a king could only happen as mockery because his claim to kingship does not make the slightest sense. Hence the idea of messianism was liberated from the confusion with the powers-that-be by being identified with the powerless teacher whose life embodied the wisdom tale pattern at the heart of Israel’s history – Egyptian slavery and Exodus, trial and vindication, exile and homecoming, death and resurrection.