The Scepter and the Star: Messianism in Light of the Dead Sea Scrolls

This book could have been written better. It’s all over the place using symbols, numbers, to try to illustrate the book. You need a PhD in religion to understand this book.Collins could have wrote it better keeping the train of thought centered on a similar way to get his thoughts out. In reading this book I wonder what things like CD means, what is the Damascus Doctrine. It could have wrote better

I would like to thank the dear folks at Eerdmans Publishing for providing this review copy of this volume in exchange for my honest review.Anyone interested in Messianism this volume really needs to be in one's library. The book is not an introduction into this topic by any means, so the layperson would be wise to get acquainted with The Second Temple Period as well as The Ancient Near East.Dr. Collins explains his concern in the book is primarily with Jewish messianism both as an interesting phenomenon in the history of religion in its own right and as the context in which the earliest acclamation of Jesus as messiah must be understood. This includes the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls themselves, who may have lived at the site and how the library might have been compiled and providing broader views of what Judaism was at that point in time.Moving forward chapter 2 discusses the possibility the Hebrew Bible may not have been a closed canon per se, with respect to the scrolls, since the first mention of authoritative scriptures mentioned is after 70 CE when Josephus mentions a total 22 (Against Apion 1.7). In addition, there's abundant evidence that there was already some established authoritative writings at this same time period, noting Philo and the New Testament's authors use of "the Law and the Prophets".From this point on in the book Collins begins to unpack the Messianic anticipation through out the Hebrew Bible, The New Testament, Apocrypha & Pseudepigrapha, The Dead Sea Scrolls and Rabbinic Sources. Noting three uses of messiahship, namely the priestly, prophetic and the Davidic.Throughout this amazing body of work one becomes aware of the notion that the Jewish ideas of messianism were not uniform. Dominating was the notion of the Davidic messiah, as the king who would restore the kingdom of Israel. Minor messianic strands , which envisaged a priestly messiah, or an anointed prophet or a heavenly Son of Man. Christian messianism drew heavily on some of the minor strands (prophet, Son of Man) and eventually developed them into a doctrine of Christology that was remote from its Jewish origins.Finally, the Christology of the early church was shaped by various factors. The crucifixion of Jesus led to a searching of the Scriptures and to a new creative exegesis of messianic prophecy. There was a deliberate attempt, (not sinister), to claim more for Jesus than had been claimed for any other agent of God. Despite the divergence of their branches, however, Christian and Jewish messianism were rooted in common ground.I highly recommend and endorse this book!

This is John J. Collins' second edition of "The Scepter and the Star." For reviews of the previous edition of the book, see http://amazon.com/dp/0385474571.I am a recent seminary graduate and now pastor who very much enjoyed reading this book. I picked it up with the intention of finding out what exactly the Jewish understanding of the Messiah was around the time of Jesus because I have heard many modern-day Christians espouse the idea that Jesus was what the Jews expected and that he fulfilled all OT prophecies. This book did not exactly give me the answer I wanted because the premise of my quest was faulty. While there were some shared expectations of what the Messiah would be like, there was no single vision. Simply put, given the multitude of expectations of the day, Jesus probably wouldn't have been what most people thought of as messiah material. Collins says something to this effect on p. 19, "Jesus is, moreover, an anomaly. Although the claim that he is the Davidic messiah is ubiquitous in the New Testament, he does not fit the typical profile of the Davidic messiah. The messiah was, first of all, a warrior prince, who was to defeat the enemies of Israel."Overall, I very much appreciated the scholarly analysis of this book. As hinted at above, Collins gives an in-depth portrayal of the messianic expectations of different communities by exploring different literature from the period and attacks the topic from many different angles. As should be expected from the subtitle, the Dead Sea Scrolls are central. Additionally, he explores the topic by looking at key passages from the Apocrypha, Pseudepigrapha, Mishnah, Talmud, and the Old and New Testament. Throughout the book, he explores the evolution of the term messiah throughout Israel's history, the roles of teacher, prophet, priest, and king, as well as the mysterious Son of Man title as found in Daniel.I would highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the topics!