King and Messiah, Chapter 4, Part 1

Collins begins Chapter 4, “Messiah and Son of Man,” by discussing and eventually dismissing the notion of some scholars that lying behind Jewish conceptions of the “Son of Man” was a myth of Iranian origin. While advocates of this view believe the “Jewish conception of ‘the Son of Man’ was a ‘Jewish variant of this oriental, cosmological, eschatological myth of Anthropos [Gk, “Man”],” adapted and transformed, Collins has a different explanation. He credits instead the creative forces of Jewish reflection on and exegesis of Daniel’s vision (Dan. 7). In elaborating on this thesis Collins discusses several key writings: (1) Daniel 7, (2) 11QMelchizedek, (3) The Simultudes of Enoch, (4) and 4 Ezra 13.

Daniel 7

Here Collins summarizes his views presented elsewhere. The “son of man” (7:13) is the archangel Michael (see Dan. 10–12). The images surrounding the ancient of days and the frightening natural attending him and the son of man’s coming represent “old mythic traditions that derive from pre-Israelite, Canaanite roots.” Collins seems to endorse the scholarly view that the “one like a son of man” was not “originally meant to be identified with the messiah.”

11 QMelchizedek

This text, part of the Melchizedek scroll found in Qumran, bears witness to a deliverer figure and thus captures Collins’s attention. The scroll brings together various passages from the OT in midrashic form. Most interesting is one particular point where the reconstructed text has been rendered “Your god is Melchizedek.” Collins admits that this is a “bold reconstruction” but finds support for it in the fact that “Melchizedek had already been identified with the Elohim, or God, of Psalm 82.” Collins argues that in this scroll Melchizedek appears as an angelic figure. At the same time, he is “the paradigmatic priest-king.” The relevance of this work for the present book’s purposes is, according to Collins, that it “shows the growing interest in imagining a savior figure who was divine in some sense, while clearly subordinate to the Most High, and the attempt to ground such a figure in innovative interpretation of traditional texts.”