Q. Josephus is an enigmatic figure, no matter how you read his work, not least because he seems to be an example of the old adage of ‘once bitten, twice shy’ and by this I mean, Josephus himself was a zealot, at least to the extent that he led Jews against Romans, though perhaps somewhat reluctantly, but then blamed his fellow zealots for the destruction of Jerusalem and the failure of the war. This helps explain his extreme reluctance to... Read more
Q. Where does the idea that David was taken up into heaven, or went there at death come from? 2 Kings is clear enough that he was gathered to his ancestors, i.e. like the prophet Samuel he was in Sheol, the land of the dead, not in heaven like Enoch or Elijah. A. I think it probably comes from Ezekiel 36, where “my servant David” could very naturally be understood as David himself, not a descendant. No one thought that... Read more
Q. In your discussion of the oldest interpretation of Dan. 7 in 4 Q246 you stress on p. 191: “The interpreters of the Hebrew Bible did not think analytically like modern Biblical scholars. They did not compare Dan. 7 and the major prophecies of a new David, observe that they do not have much in common, and see them as offering different eschatological scenarios or different kinds of messianic figures. Rather they thought synthetically. They brought such passages together in... Read more
Q. So we don’t really know where the Parables were composed, nor are we sure of the date of the collection, though clearly that matters if we are to try and assess any possible influence on Jesus or the Gospel writers. You seem to incline to a date late in the first century or so, which would mean no influence on Jesus, and debatable influence on the Evangelists. Have I assessed this right? I certainly agree with you that sloppy... Read more
Q. Your conclusions on pp. 109-111 argue that the Son of Man figure in the Parables is not a divine figure, nor do the nations worship him but instead merely do obeisance as they might to a king, even though ‘that Son of Man’ figure in the Parables is not portrayed as a kingly figure in the traditional Davidic sense. Someone will ask, why are you working so hard to make that Son of Man figure in the Parables out... Read more
Q. In the Parables of Enoch, you suggest that the author does not think of ‘that Son of Man’ as personally or ontologically pre-existing creation, but merely foreordained before all creation to do something. This conclusion seems problematic when you also want to maintain that the Son of Man figure is merely human and has at some juncture been taken up into heaven in preparation for his returning to earth to judge the world. Surely the author of the Parables... Read more
Q. Why do you think it is that the writer(s) of the Parables of Enoch chose Enoch to be the figure represented in Dan. 7.13-14 as the Son of Man? Is it because he was taken up into heaven presumably as a righteous person, like Elijah was later? A. I think that would certainly be one reason. Elijah already had an eschatological role assigned to him (by Malachi) and so was not available. Enoch was an obvious alternative. But I... Read more
Q. I expect you will be addressing this in your second volume on Son of Man, but I remember Charlie Moule saying that the phrase ‘the Son of Man’ in the Gospels, with the definite article probably should be seen as deliberately allusive to Dan. 7—i.e. ‘the (aforementioned) Son of Man’. What do you think of this suggestion, which if right would mean that on the lips of Jesus, and presumably for the Evangelists the phrase in that context does... Read more
Q. Richard help my readers understand why it is important to understand the way Dan. 7 is interpreted in the Parables of Enoch, especially if the latter is too late to have influenced Jesus or his early followers? How would you sum up the importance of the Enochian material for the study of the Son of Man issue in the NT especially if in Enoch the phrase ‘Son of man’ is not a title for some messianic figure? A.... Read more
Q. I must confess to have always been very skeptical about arguments about a Q community in early Christianity, and I would say the same about an Enochian Jewish community that has a distinctive foundational corpus of literature from other streams of early Judaism. Surely the diversity of texts found at Qumran, including some Enoch literature, shows us that we can’t posit a whole community that focused exclusively on one sort of early Jewish literature any more than that works... Read more
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