This is the second in a series of responses to a post by Arthenor’s Ramblings. Arthenor’s post gives the context for this discussion. Here I will be addressing his comments concerning the idea that an “atoning messiah” can be found in the Old Testament – therefore foreshadowing Jesus.

Arthenor writes:

The Old Testament does include passages that suggest the Messiah would atone for sins. I have already mentioned two of them. In Daniel 9:26, speaking specifically of Messiah, Daniel declares that Messiah would be “cut off, but not for himself”. In Isaiah 53, the righteous servant is clearly presented as suffering and dying for “the iniquity of us all”. Even if one rejects that this is a reference to the Messiah, as modern Judaism does along with it’s rejection of Christ, the Old Testament or Jewish scriptures clearly present the idea of one man atoning for the sins of “us all”, making such connection much more than “retroactive” interpretations.

Daniel 9:26

What exactly Jewish expectations were for their messiah (‘annointed one’) is in and of itself a good topic but one that I will not spend any time on here. Rather, let’s just note that Jewish messianic expectations, like religion and culture in general, evolved over the centuries. The book of Daniel in particular is a rather late composition relative to other prophetic works in the Old Testament:

Daniel is one of the few OT books that can be given a fairly firm date. In the form in which we have it (perhaps without the additions of 12:11, 12), the book must have been given its final form some time in the years 167-164 B.C. This dating is based upon two assumptions: first, that the authors lived at the later end of the historical surveys that characterize Daniel 7-12; and second, that prophecy is accurate only when it is given after the fact, whereas predictions about the future tend to run astray. Based upon these assumptions, the references to the desecration of the Temple and the ‘abomination that makes desolate’ in 8:9-12; 9:27; and 11:31 must refer to events known to the author. The best candidates for the historical referents of these events are the desecration of the Temple in Jerusalem and the erection in it of a pagan altar in the autumn of 167 B.C. by Antiochus IV Epiphanes. The inaccurate description of the end of Antiochus’ reign and his death in 11:40-45, on the other hand, suggests that the author did not know of those events, which occurred late in 164 or early in 163 B.C. The roots of the hagiographa (idealizing stories) about Daniel and his friends in chaps. 1-6 may date to an earlier time, but the entire work was given its final shape in 164 B.C. (Harper’s Bible Commentary, p. 696)

Now let’s take a look at Daniel 9:26. The full context of this passage is actually a response (well, a prediction) by the angel Gabriel:

24 ‘Seventy weeks are decreed for your people and your holy city: to finish the transgression, to put an end to sin, and to atone for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal both vision and prophet, and to anoint a most holy place.^{* 25}Know therefore and understand: from the time that the word went out to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until the time of an anointed prince, there shall be seven weeks; and for sixty-two weeks it shall be built again with streets and moat, but in a troubled time. ²⁶After the sixty-two weeks, an anointed one shall be cut off and shall have nothing, and the troops of the prince who is to come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary. Its^* end shall come with a flood, and to the end there shall be war. Desolations are decreed. ²⁷He shall make a strong covenant with many for one week, and for half of the week he shall make sacrifice and offering cease; and in their place^* shall be an abomination that desolates, until the decreed end is poured out upon the desolator.’

Gabriel here gives a rather specific time frame. In verse 25 he mentions a time when the word went out to rebuild Jerusalem. This was the Edict of Cyrus and was issued in 538 BCE. The New Oxford Annotated Bible
notes that the anointed one in this passage “is likely Joshua the high priest” while the anointed one who shall be cut off “may be Onias III” who was murdered in 171 BCE – just a few years before this was composed. Verse 26 then also mentions a prince who is to come, who “is Antiochus IV Epiphanes.” Antiochus IV Epiphanes profaned the Temple of Jerusalem in 167 BCE.

The author here is retroactively writing a prediction and putting it in the angel Gabriel’s mouth. However, when he does actually try to predict the future he is incorrect: “When the author of Daniel himself attempted to predict the future specifically, he, on the whole, proved to be incorrect. Antiochus did not die as he said nor did his kingdom come to a sudden end” (Understanding the Old Testament, p. 316).

The conclusion is simple. Daniel here is not writing about a future messiah, let alone one who would atone for the sins of his people. Rather, the author wrote about specific political and historical events that took place in his own lifetime.

Isaiah 53

The “suffering servant” of Isaiah 53, however, is a bit of a mystery. The language of atonement, at least, is clear and unmistakable – the “suffering servant,” for example, is described as bearing the diseases and sins of others.  The idea of atonement, of course, is well grounded in the Jewish scriptures. The problem, again, is that the servant of Isaiah 53 is anonymous. The passages are in the form of a song and are not in any way associated with the Messiah or presented in a prophetic way (scholars generally agree that Isaiah 40-66 was not written by Isaiah but rather is a later addition).

Furthermore, the suffering servant in Isaiah may not even be a man. Isaiah 42:18-24, 44:1-2, and 49:3 all identify the servant as the Jewish people. Whatever the case may be, Isaiah 53 does not seem to warrant the stronger conclusion that this is evidence for some divine foreknowledge of Jesus or Christianity. One might even argue, persausively I think, that the Christian notion of a sacrificial savior is a natural extension of some of these common ancient near eastern motifs, such as the sacrificial lamb, atonement, and the suffering servent. Nobody, of course, is suggesting that Christianity rose out of a cultural vacuum. But nowhere do the Jewish scriptures predict in any miraculous sort of way a messiah who would die and rise again as a means of atonining for the sins of all of humanity.