King and Messiah as Son of God, Chapter 3, part 2

Ok, it's been a while. Let's pick up again with King and Messiah as Son of God. I'm realizing that reviews/summaries should be written as soon as possible after reading the works to which they correspond. Next time I'll do that and hopefully save myself some rereading.

Turning to the Septuagint in his investigation of the portrayal of messiah in the Hellenistic Period, Collins asks whether “the translators ever enhance the claims of the king/messiah to divine status, or show influence from the Hellenistic cults?” Little evidence from the Pentateuch would seem to support such a judgment, but Collins maintains that the LXX renderings of the Psalms and prophets provide suggestive evidence.

LXX

Psalms 45. Collins concludes that the translator was not importing into this psalm a notion of the king’s divinity. Rather, when it comes both to (1) addressing the king as “God” in verse 6 and (2) and offering the psalm to Agapeitos—a word “used for . . .  ‘only begotten,’ in Genesis 22 and elsewhere”—the translator is likely faithfully reproducing the original meaning of the Hebrew. What this may show us in both instances is that the translator, perhaps because of the “influence of the Hellenistic ruler cults,” was not uncomfortable with the attribution of divinity to the king. 

Psalm 110 (LXX 109). Again, Collins points out the LXX translator’s lack discomfort translating the Hebrew word into Greek as “I have begotten you” (see LXX 109:3). He also finds significant the alteration of “holy,” singular in the Hebrew, to “holy ones,” plural in the LXX, and suggests that it represents an attempt to associate the messiah with angelic beings, similar to the “depiction of Melchizedek . . . as a heavenly being in the Melchizedek scroll from Qumran.”

Psalm 72:17 (LXX 71:7). Following Volz, Collins suggests that the neutral Greek (LXX) rendering of the Hebrew term meaning “before the sun” should be taken in a temporal sense, implying “the preexistence of the name of the messiah.” The original Hebrew, though not often taken this way, at least allows this interpretation as well.

 Isaiah 7:14, 9:6. Though he clearly believes the child mentions in Isa 7:14 was the offspring of the king or a prophet, meaning that his mother was not a “virgin” in the modern sense of the word, Collins nonetheless finds it striking that the LXX translator uses the word parthenos to render the Hebrew word often translated as “virgin.” Though even parthenos does not necessarily imply a woman who has not had sexual relations, it is not the word usually employed to translate the word we find in the Hebrew version of this verse. I’m guessing here that Collins is merely proposing that the translator was ascribing a miraculous significance to the woman and her giving birth. In the latter part of the prophecy, the translator renders “mighty God” as either “messenger” or “angel” of great counsel. Collins opts for the latter and suggests that “this is not so much a demotion as a clarification of his [the messiah’s] status in relation to the Most High.”

The Dead Sea Scrolls

Collins draws attention to the so-called “Son of God” text from Qumran. In 4Q246 there appears “a figure who is called ‘son of God’ and ‘son of the Most High,’ using Aramaic phrases that correspond exactly to the Greek titles given to Jesus in the Gospel of Luke 1:32–35.” Though some argue that this reference is in fact a negative one, that is, describing a personage inimical to the community at Qumran, Collins concludes that “4Q246 is most plausibly interpreted as referring to a Jewish messiah,” arguing sensibly that “Luke would hardly have used the Palestinian Jewish titles with reference to the messiah if they were primarily associated negatively with a Syrian king [as is suggested by some].” Collins finds in this text many analogies to Daniel and is thus tempted to draw parallels between this “son of God” figure and the “one like a son of man” in the earlier work, but expresses caution on this front, as there are many differences as well—not least of which is that the vision is “that of a king rather than of a visionary like Daniel.”

Collins concludes this chapter with the reminder that “more important than the putative influence of the ruler cults [on the conceptualization of messiah] is the tendency that we have noted in a few passages in the LXX to attribute to the messiah preexistence and angelic status.”