Dead sea scroll specialist Kipp Davis is doing a multi-part series on On the Historicity of Jesus (or at least select parts of it), and in his first video he demonstrated a catastrophic failure to actually read the text he is critiquing, such that he actually just ended up confirming everything I said, and objecting to things I didn’t say, all while confusedly thinking he was rebutting my peer-reviewed study, when actually he wasn’t even discussing its actual content. See Kipp Davis’s Selective Confirmation and Ignoring of Everything I Actually Said in Chapter 4 of On the Historicity of Jesus. Which Davis didn’t read, even though it warns him about mistakes he is making that he could avoid in coming entries.

Instead, Davis tried slander rather than scholarly engagement. For examples, see Godless Engineer’s latest take in Kipp Davis Responds to the Suffering and Dying Messiah (to whose account the only correction I’d make is that b.Sanhedrin 93b only establishes a messiah would suffer; it’s the other passages I cited, e.g. b.Sanhedrin 98b and b.Sukkah 52a, that establish a belief that that messiah would also die; the first indirectly, the second directly). One thing GE points out there is that all the points Davis tries criticizing me for are actually just my summaries of leading scholars. For example, my position on reading the Talmud is not based on my own reading of the Hebrew; it’s based on that of rabbinical scholar Daniel Boyarin, whom I cite.

Davis is uninterested in even telling you this—he wants to give the false impression that I just made all this up on my own, and that he’s catching “me” making mistakes, not Boyarin, or his peer reviewers (or mine for that matter). And yet as I showed last time, my arguments have wide support in the expert literature (I cite there now two dozen different examples of these claims passing peer review in the field). It’s not just me and Boyarin now. Notice that Davis never cites any expert literature for any of his claims against it. It’s just Davis “making claims.” He has no evident support. Whereas I have abundant support. You decide, then, which of us is doing this correctly.

Davis now has published his second video in the series, (Mis)reading the Dead Sea Scrolls: Reviewing Richard Carrier’s “On the Historicity of Jesus”, Part 2 (Part 3 will probably go public next week). No surprise, of course, but his second video makes all the same mistakes as the first. It wouldn’t have, if Davis had read my response and fixed these errors. But alas, here we are. (I suspect he made all three videos before all of this, and is only dropping them piecemeal, but is too angry and emotional—and lazy—to re-edit them, or even admit they need to be). This time I’ll just refer to my last response, so I don’t have to repeat the same points, and then treat the two sources this new video discussed. But first, a point about logic.

Please Learn Some Basic Logic, Kipp

Davis seems really only upset about my claim that there were probably some Jews before Christianity who already expected a dying messiah. As I pointed out last time, my conclusion on that now has the support of over twenty published studies, and thus has passed the approval of a dozen experts and dozens of peer reviewers. Davis is thus not arguing with me. He is arguing with dozens of his expert peers. Does he have any countermanding studies to cite? No. The field’s literature pretty unanimously supports me now, not him. So what leg can he stand on here? Beats me. This isn’t me “messing up the Hebrew” (I never construct any argument from the Hebrew; on all these texts, I entirely rely on experts in Hebrew, and I am simply summarizing what they say). This is, rather, Davis not checking the state of the field, and inventing apologetical excuses to dismiss it all.

But also as I pointed out last time, Davis isn’t reading my exact formulation of this argument. He is most upset by this fact being probable. Facts don’t care about your feelings, of course; but regardless, what Davis keeps overlooking (just like last time) is that my arguments in this chapter, as the chapter itself in fact states (OHJ, p. 65), are often modal—meaning: they are arguments not only to a probability but even to just a plausibility or possibility. For example, right in the first paragraph of “Element 5” (the only one Kipp seems obsessed with so far) I state the matter thus:

Such a concept [of a dying messiah] was therefore not a Christian novelty wholly against the grain of Jewish thinking, but already exactly what some Jews were thinking—or could easily have thought.

“Or” is a logical operator. It is thus not sufficient to rebut me by disproving my claim that this is probable. That would still be useful, though, as it would eliminate one side of my disjunct and thus require a revision or correction; so it still matters that he fails to succeed even at that. But success at that still wouldn’t succeed in removing my point, because even after eliminating that part of the disjunct, the other remains: the argument to plausibility. Davis has nothing to say about that. Hence in terms of basic logic, Davis hasn’t even tried to dispatch Element 5 (pp. 73–81). It remains untouched by any of his arguments even if they were sound (though as we’ve noticed, and will notice again, they aren’t).

Because Davis doesn’t read—and thus he doesn’t know he has two parts of a disjunction to address, not just one. Even though that disjunction is referenced repeatedly across that section:

… [and] the Talmud provides us with a proof of concept at the very least (and actual confirmation at the very most).

… Clearly dying messiahs were not anathema. Rabbinical Jews could be just as comfortable with the idea as Christians were

… if anyone were to merge these two messiahs [in medieval and “possibly” earlier Jewish thought] into a single person (the Son of Joseph and the Son of David, one who dies and rises and one who returns to bring victory), we would have Christianity: a messiah fathered by a Joseph who is killed by an evil power and is then resurrected and anointed ‘the Son of David’, destined to return triumphant.

… a narrative that could easily have been taken by some as referring to the messiah—and even if not, it certainly established a heroic model that one could adapt into a dying messiah already within pre-Christian Judaism, which would thus already be intelligible to Jews.

… [The] Wisdom of Solomon archetype could even have been associated with the despised-and-dying servant of Isaiah 53, as they sound quite similar (innocent righteous men humiliated and killed by the wicked, but exalted and made triumphant).

… [Daniel] 9.25-26 could easily be read as being not about a Christ and a Prince but a Princely Christ, all one and the same person, who dies (9.26) and then rises from the dead (9.26-27 and 12.1).

… But even without such a connection being made, the notion that a Christ was expected to die to presage the end of the world is already clearly intended in Daniel, even by its original authors’ intent, and would have been understood in the same way by subsequent readers of Daniel.

… But even if scholars remain obstinate against an established fact of a pre-Christian dying-christology, in the face of the same evidence they can no longer insist upon its implausibility. Because even if you are uncertain of the fact of it, this same evidence still conclusively proves that the proposition ‘Christianity arose from a sect of Jews that came to expect a dying messiah’ is a plausible hypothesis, even if we can’t prove such a sect existed.

… there is no evidence against that hypothesis or its plausibility.

… We therefore do not require direct evidence of ‘there was a sect of Jews that came to expect a dying messiah’. Because if all other evidence is better explained by that proposition, then that other evidence is evidence for that proposition.

… even should anyone reject that conclusion, it still cannot be denied that the hypothesis (that some pre-Christian Jews were expecting a dying messiah to presage the end of the world) is at least plausible enough to take seriously, given all that same evidence.

So I said this twelve times. Davis missed literally all twelve. I also precede or follow all of these statements with arguments and evidence that Davis ignores. They aren’t mere assertions. So you won’t really see my point through his false account of it. You have to go and read my actual arguments to learn what they are. And once you see those arguments, the ones Davis ignores, you’ll find Davis’s own complaining doesn’t carry much force in the end.

It is vitally important that historians attend to logic in their arguments. They must also read things, not rage-skim them and thus miss every important citation, argument, and caveat. But logic is even more important. Historians need to know the difference between a factual and a modal argument and how to recognize each. They also need to know what the word “or” means (or any other logical operator) and how to spot and correctly analyze a disjunct. This is important because though I do believe this hypothesis is probable (Daniel 9:26 already establishes it; all my other evidence just triangulates to the same conclusion), I am responding to critics who would insist that it is not even plausible (that Jews “would never” do or think this). So all I need establish is that this would make sense in context as a participating cause of the Jewish origination of Christianity. That is the actual point of Element 5.

Historians also need to recognize that a position repeatedly passing peer review a dozen times is not the invention of one lone scholar you don’t like. That scholar is instead merely summarizing the expert literature. If you wish to claim that dozens of your expert peers are incompetent, you have a lot more work cut out for you. Because with so many scholars on my side, and zero on his, that sooner suggests he is the one who’s wrong. Sure, that’s not a proof; you have to check and see. But you then really do have to check and see. For example, Davis might respond by claiming they don’t back my conclusion; but he will never demonstrate this is true. When you check, you will find his claim is the one that is false. Likewise if he tries to find scholars asserting the old assumption now refuted—if you check, you’ll find they often aren’t even aware of, and never respond to, the evidence and arguments of my twelve. You can’t refute new findings by just citing uncritical repetitions of the old ones they refute.

Either way, check. Then you know which of us to trust.

1. Wisdom of Solomon

Davis spends around nine minutes complaining about my asserting that the Wisdom of Solomon is a messianic text predicting a messiah’s death. But since I never said that, nothing he says is pertinent to my book. I also never say anything here about this text referring to a “cosmic” messiah. Nor do I ever say anything about the sections of Wisdom 5 still in the plural (in the Greek translation) for Davis to contradict. Davis has simply made all that up. None of his objections are incorrect. They just aren’t objections to anything I said in Historicity.

Here is what I actually say (literally, this is the entirety of my reference to this text in Element 5):

Christianity looks exactly like an adaptation of the same eschatological dying-messiah motif in Daniel. And the Wisdom of Solomon, an important scripture to the first Christians, presents a son of God who is despised, killed, resurrected and crowned as a king in heaven (cf. 2.12-22; 5.1-23), a narrative that could easily have been taken by some as referring to the messiah—and even if not, it certainly established a heroic model that one could adapt into a dying messiah already within pre-Christian Judaism, which would thus already be intelligible to Jews. This Wisdom of Solomon archetype could even have been associated with the despised-and-dying servant of Isaiah 53, as they sound quite similar (innocent righteous men humiliated and killed by the wicked, but exalted and made triumphant).

OHJ, p. 76.

I expand on this point on p. 146 (for Element 17), but I don’t say there anything substantially different. In fact, that entire Element begins: “The fundamental features of the gospel story of Jesus can be read out of the Jewish scriptures.” Can be. Not were. I do not argue it was read that way by anyone before Christians did it. The Element simply establishes how easy it would be for Christians to have built a pesher like this, using the common logic of pesharim generally. In other words, it was an available pathway to the invention of Christianity. And that’s true whether Jesus existed (and they were raiding these Scriptures for some pesher logic to justify his death) or not (and they were raiding these Scriptures for some pesher logic to justify their belief that the time of Daniel’s fulfillment must have come; for how this fits both historicity and ahistoricity models, see my Wichita Rapture Day presentation).

Since Davis never challenges what I actually argued, there is nothing in his remarks to respond to. All I argue is for a possible way the first Christians could have read these texts. Which will never have been as they were originally written, so arguing over what their author originally meant is not relevant to my point. Pesher never seeks the original (historical) meaning of the Scriptures it reinterprets. As Davis well knows, Christians rarely read Scripture under its original intent. That was their jam. Meanwhile, that Christians did believe the Wisdom of Solomon was prophetic of their Christ and cult is a common conclusion in the field, as also the belief that Wisdom and Isaiah are intertextually linked just as I suggested. My position is thus entirely mainstream and supported by leading experts.

On that point see:

• Mark Elliott, “The Book of Isaiah, the Wisdom of Solomon and the Fathers: An Exploration of the Textual History and Concepts,” in The Early Reception of the Book of Isaiah (De Gruyter 2018).
• Holly Carey, “The Servants in Wisdom of Solomon,” in Isaiah’s Servants in Early Judaism and Christianity (Mohr Siebeck 2021).
• Martin Hengel, “The Effective History of Isaiah 53 in the Pre-Christian Period,” in The Suffering Servant: Isaiah 53 in Jewish and Christian Sources (2004).
• George Nickelsburg, “Some Related Traditions in the Apocalypse of Adam, the Books of Adam and Eve, and 1 Enoch,” in The Rediscovery of Gnosticism (Brill 1981), cf. pp. 537–38.
• M. Jack Suggs, “Wisdom of Solomon 2:10-5: A Homily Based on the Fourth Servant Song,” Journal of Biblical Literature 76.1 (March 1957), pp. 26-33.

Hence, in the end, Davis just won’t tell you everything I actually said is actually mainstream in the field. He instead makes up arguments I never made and falsely attributes them to me.

2. The Melchizedek Scroll

Davis then spends the remaining 27 minutes complaining about my brief aside on the “Melchizedek Scroll,” or 11Q13, a tiny collection of fragments of what was once a whole book among the Dead Sea Scrolls, which used a “bible code” style of interpretation of Scripture called “pesher,” to predict the future coming of the messiah and the end of the world.

Almost all of Davis’s time is spent arguing that the scroll must have quoted Daniel 9:25, not Daniel 9:26. But I never said 11Q13 quoted from Daniel 9:26. I said “11Q13 appears to say that this messenger is the same man as the ‘messiah’ of Daniel 9, who dies” (p. 77). This is not because I think the scroll quotes from verse 26. It is because when the scroll was written, as several scholars argue, the messiah in verse 25 could not be separated from the messiah in verse 26: they could only be understood to be the same person. This has always been my argument. The brief paragraph in OHJ summarizes my conclusions in The Dying Messiah Redux (2012), where I explain the reasoning in detail—none of which Davis presents any response to, although to be fair he is going off my peer-reviewed brief, not the blog article.

Since Davis isn’t even responding to any argument I made, almost everything he says is irrelevant. But since he keeps pretending I am making all this up, let’s throw several of his peers at him…

It Doesn’t Matter Which Verse Is Being Cited

We have a peer-reviewed survey of pre-Christian “messianic” interpretations of Daniel 9 in Roger Beckwith’s article, “Daniel 9 and the Date of the Messiah’s Coming in Essene, Hellenistic, Pharisaic, Zealot, and Early Christian Computation,” Revue de Qumrân 10.4 (December 1981), pp. 521-542. You will note that is a journal dedicated to the study of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Its reviewers won’t have let anything pass that “incompetently” reads those scrolls. Beckwith’s points have thus been vetted by experts in precisely the way Davis’s counterpoints have not been. Of course peer reviewers don’t have to agree with everything Beckwith says (I don’t); all they have to agree upon is that his arguments for his conclusions are respectable—that they are not “incompetent.”

Beckwith there observes that after the Antiochene war that Daniel was originally written for (see How We Know Daniel Is a Forgery), many Jews (especially the authors of the Dead Sea Scrolls) used Daniel 9 to predict knowledge about a future messiah instead, and thus no longer regarded it as referring to past events—or insofar as they did, they regarded it as also predicting future events, and in messianic contexts that is the interpretation they intend. And so that is the only meaning applicable in 11Q13. In every scholarly discussion of this scroll it is admitted its content refers solely to the last few years of Daniel’s timetable, and not distant past events. Which has a crucial consequence Davis overlooks.

As Beckwith puts it:

Since they are looking to the future, they concentrate their attention on the concluding part of the 70-week period, and expect ‘the anointed one, the prince’ of verse 25 not after the 7 weeks but after the 7 weeks and 62 weeks (i.e. 69 weeks). Also, and as a consequence, they usually identify ‘the anointed one, the prince’ with ‘the anointed one’ who is cut off after the 62 weeks in verse 26.

In other words, anyone reading Daniel as messianic prophecy when 11Q13 was composed was no longer regarding the messiah in verse 25 to be a different person than the one in verse 26. They were, to the contrary, regarding them as the same person. Because they had to. Which means any statement about one is then true of the other—by the logical law of transitive relation. This was because Daniel 9’s original meaning was a failed prophecy: it said the end of the world would come just a few years after the death of a messiah (the High Priest Onias III); but it didn’t. Beckwith makes other arguments unrelated to this that I don’t think hold up on final analysis; but on this one point his logic is unassailable.

Hence as I myself argued in Element 5:

In Daniel’s originally intended case, the end of the world did not come (in fact everything after the death of its intended messiah did not occur as the forgers’ prophecy predicted), so later Jews had only two options: either reject Daniel as a false prophecy (and we know the Jews who initiated Christianity had not done that) or conclude ‘Daniel’ wasn’t talking about Onias III but some other messiah in the future (necessitating attempts to reinterpret the 490-year timetable in Dan. 9.24 to figure out what time in history Daniel was actually talking about), which is clearly what many Jews did—the author of 11Q13 in particular. In other words, the authors of Daniel were plainly saying, and by many were read as saying, that the last Christ was to die—shortly before the final end when God’s chosen agent (in Daniel, the archangel Michael; in 11Q13, Melchizedek) would descend from heaven, defeat the forces of evil once and for all, and resurrect the dead. This means many Jews were expecting a dying messiah, as a sign the end was nigh.

OHJ, p. 79

That means by the time 11Q13 was written it was not logically possible to separate the “messiah” in Daniel 9:25 from the “messiah” in Daniel 9:26 because doing so required returning to the old chronology, which could not fit any future statement, but only a statement about the past (indeed, about Onias III in verse 26, and Jesus ben Jehozedak in verse 25)—which statement had to be rejected as false, because the world did not end just a few years after as that original chronology entailed. Beckwith concurs. And I made this argument in the section Davis claims to be answering.

So when Davis claims the authors of 11Q13 were thinking the messiah in verse 25 wasn’t the messiah in verse 26, he’s simply wrong. Not only didn’t they think that, they literally couldn’t have. As that would set the end of the world in their past. And that would immediately refute their interpretation. Which they would surely have noticed. Since they have to regard verse 25 to be about a future coming messiah, not a long past one, the only possible way left to read verse 25 is as referring to the same guy in verse 26: the one who dies shortly before the end of the world. It is therefore not possible to separate them as Davis avers.

This is why my reading of 11Q13 is correct, not his. And this follows not from “the Hebrew.” It follows from logic. It also has the backing of many experts in the Hebrew, some of whom I even cite (I cite more in my last article). But Davis pretends I am making this up, and that I am not, in fact, just summarizing what peer-reviewed experts have already said. He never has any rebuttals to the scholars I am getting this from. He won’t even acknowledge to you that they exist.

No, the Pesharim Did Not Religiously Atomize Scripture

Davis tries to maintain his position by appealing to the notion that the authors of 11Q13 somehow were so thoroughly atomizing the text of Daniel 9 that it never occurred to them that the messiah in verse 25 had to be the same messiah in verse 26. This is not logical. No one is that stupid, least of all a sect dependent on building a chronology of the end times out of Daniel 9 and going over that text with a fine-toothed comb. But it is also not historical. Half a century ago it was assumed the pesharim atomize Scripture this extremely. But that is no longer the dominant view in the field, and all the latest commentaries of the Qumran pesharim abandon it.

For example, Shani Berrin (now Tzoref), in The Pesher Nahum Scroll from Qumran: An Exegetical Study of 4Q169 (Brill, 2004), pp. 12–18, affirms that it is no longer believed that the pesharim regularly “atomize ” their texts in this particular way; that, to the contrary, each pesher more usually maintains a “sensitivity to the structure of its base text” and that complete “atomization” only appears occasionally, as a last resort (when the base text can’t carry meaning to the connected text). She gives as an example the fact that once a pesher concludes the Book of the Prophet Nahum is not talking about Assyria when apparently talking about Assyria, then it is saying the entirety of the Book of Nahum is therefore not talking about Assyria and can only be genuinely understood that way.

The surrounding text of any quote thus is being carried in and implicated in the “new” interpretation; the quoted verse is not being treated in isolation. Hence, Tzoref observes, the pesher on Nahum as a whole does indeed view “individual lemmas [lines] cohesively, and it perceived larger units, ‘pericopes’, consisting of a series of lemmas from a cohesive biblical passage” (18). It is thus aware of, and takes into account, “the content, structure, and the original context” of Nahum’s prophecies. And likewise any others it draws into connection with it. She points out the same was proved by Bilha Nitzan in her 1981 study of 1QpHab, the Qumran pesher on Habakkuk. And we find the same in Timothy Lim’s study of that same pesher, The Earliest Commentary on the Prophecy of Habakkuk (Oxford University Press 2020). As Lim himself says: “The pesherist does not just atomize his biblical text in his interpretation; he also reads larger sections as a connected whole” (p. 57). [See also Maurya Horgan.]

Like them, there aren’t many Qumran scholars left who still maintain the strict atomization thesis. So even if a pesher references Daniel 9:25 when it says the figure in Isaiah 52:7 “is the one” there mentioned, that still implicates Daniel 9:26, because at that time (when 11Q13 was written) the only way to read Daniel 9:25 is as a statement predicting the coming of the figure in Daniel 9:26 who dies. They surely understood this. Certainly, there is no evidence they imagined it to refer to someone else or that they thought 9:26 wasn’t pertinent to their messianic timetable. And Davis will never present any evidence of that either. To the contrary, the evidence we have indicates that if “the one” mentioned in verse 25 is who they are talking about being the “good news” messenger of Isaiah 52:7, then they thought they were talking about the same guy in verse 26—because he is “the one” mentioned in verse 25.

The authors of 11Q13 are thus signaling to us that this messenger is the same messiah who will die just before the end of days. This should be all the more obvious as verse 25 doesn’t tell us anything about that man, so it would make no sense to say “only verse 25” is about him; to learn anything about him, you have to follow the sentence through verse 26; but understanding that point requires a grasp of literary theory, and I don’t get the impression that Davis is very up on that. It’s easier to just point out that he has no evidence they didn’t see the two verses as about the same guy; whereas I have evidence supporting the conclusion that they did. And I presented it. And that is why I reach my conclusion.

That the author of this pesher thought this way, and expected his readers to as well, is evidenced, for example, by their own linking of this Daniel 9 text to Isaiah 52, where they say “this is the Day concerning which God spoke through the prophet Isaiah,” but then quoting from Isaiah 52:7, not the preceding verse, 52:6, that mentions that prophecy being about a special day. Which means they expected the reader will look up verse 7 and see that this section, the whole prophecy containing verse 7, speaks of a special Day. Here the pesher’s author clearly assumed it was understood that a quote of verse 7 counted as referencing the connected thought of the previous verse as well. The same is then surely the case for his reference to Daniel 9:25, which by itself makes no sense (indeed says nothing at all) except in continuation with (what they by then had to believe was) the connected thought of the following verse as well.

There are leading scroll experts who’ve reached the same conclusion. For example, that same Timothy Lim I just quoted, a major scholar in Dead Sea Scrolls research and author of one of the standard manuals in the subject—Pesharim (Sheffield 2002)—concurs with me on this reading of 11Q13. Geza Vermes (pronounced: Vèrmesh), another renowned scrolls specialist, even commissioned Lim to add an appendix to his published comments from “The Oxford Forum for Qumran Research Seminar on the Rule of War from Cave 4 (4Q285)” in the Journal of Jewish Studies (vol. 43, 1992, pp. 90–92), entitled “11QMelch, Luke 4 and the Dying Messiah.” Which entails Vermes himself endorses Lim’s contribution to his own article (I should note that Vermes here agrees as well with my point, discussed last time, about the dying Messiah ben Joseph in the Talmud).

In this appendix to Vermes, Lim says (I’m removing the bracketed Hebrew): “the herald of Isa. 52:7 is identified with ‘the anointed of the spirit’, a figure described in Dan. 9:25 as the ‘messiah/prince’,” and he credits this observation to Joseph Fitzmeyer (whose same study I cited later in Element 5 but also relied on here), through “the reference to Dan. 9:25” that is likely in the actual text of 11Q13. And Lim links this to 9:26, because the author of 11Q13 says this is the one “about whom Daniel spoke,” and thus is not merely extracting one line, but referencing the entirety of what Daniel says about this person; and the text of 11Q13 is referencing the entire timetable in Daniel 9 and thus aware of it and assuming its pertinence here. And hence, Lim concludes, “what 11QMelch does is to link the dying prince/messiah of Dan. 9 to the herald of Isa. 52:7.” He concedes this is debatable (as I do), and lists reasons for its uncertainty, but he affirms, nevertheless, that “what is unassailable is that in Dan. 9:25ff. there is a figure who is described as ‘an anointed one’ and ‘a priest’, whose appearance is connected with the rebuilding of Jerusalem and who after sixty-two weeks of years is cut off or killed (cf. Dan. 11:22).” That is, once you read this in the context of this author trying to predict the future from Daniel, rather than in the context of Daniel originally referring to people by then in that author’s past.

Nevertheless, in Historicity I explicitly pointed out: “Not all scholars have recognized this in 11Q13 or conceded it” (OHJ, p. 77), and then I move on to other evidence and arguments, having supplied only one brief paragraph on this possible evidence, which I concede to be controversial. So I was aware of the fact that one could challenge our position on 11Q13 (and I say “our” because, again, I’m not the only scholar saying this), and I informed my readers of that fact, and even cited scholarship debating it. I vowed to tackle the question in a future paper, which I shelved for years because it seemed settled by subsequent scholarship (as I pointed out last time). But it seems a thirteenth time might have to be the charm. I’m on a research trip this month. So on that I’ll assemble materials for writing up yet another study for peer review making this same point. But for the purposes of OHJ, Davis has nothing to complain about: I already acknowledged his complaints exist; I even cite the scholars who debate it.

Which is the weirdest thing about Davis’s critique. He complains that I don’t mention there are disputes about how to interpret this passage. But I do mention that. Quite prominently. I even cite scholars who agree with Davis. He also claims I said the “messenger / messiah” of 11Q13 was the cosmic Melchizedek. But I do not. That’s possible, I guess. But in my book I assume they were distinct, based on the two-messiahs eschatology I had just discussed in this Element (hence I distinguish them as separate in this scroll on p. 79, something Davis strangely takes me to task for “not” doing; and that’s immediately following my discussion of the two-messiahs eschatology in Judaism: OHJ, pp. 75–78). Likewise, Davis claims I say this scroll linked the “messenger” with the “servant” in Isaiah 52–53, but I didn’t. I said “the ‘messenger’ of Isaiah 52–53 who is linked in Isaiah with a ‘servant’ who will die,” not linked in 11Q13. And in the next sentence I say “At Qumran, 11Q13 appears to say that this messenger is the same man as the ‘messiah’ of Daniel 9, who dies.” I don’t say anything about 11Q13 saying this messenger is the servant. Whether the Qumran author saw this too we can’t tell because we are missing some 99% of his text. And we can only go on what we have.

Certainly, as I point out in a different Element (p. 82), given what was for the Qumran authors in their time a logically required link between Daniel 9:25 and 9:26, we can know they were looking at two atoning deaths of God’s chosen (in Isaiah 52–53 and Daniel 9). So one can infer they saw (or might have seen) these parallels, and that notion may even have appeared in the missing pages of 11Q13. Modern scholars have observed there are evident links between Daniel 9 (and its continuation in 12) and Isaiah 52–53 (for example, see: André Lacocque, “The Liturgical Prayer in Daniel 9,” Hebrew Union College Annual 47 (1976), pp. 119-142; Otto Betz, “The Servant Tradition of Isaiah in the Dead Sea Scrolls,” Journal for Semitics 7.1 (1995), pp. 40–56; Sook-Young Kim, The Warrior Messiah in Scripture and Intertestamental Writings (Cambridge Scholars 2010), pp. 79–87, 144–49). So that’s not improbable. But I don’t declare it in OHJ anyway. So there is nothing here for Davis to criticize.

Conclusion

In these and other ways documented above, none of Davis’s arguments are even relevant to my case. I didn’t say half the things he criticizes. And I don’t dispute “which verse” 11Q13 quotes. I dispute his assumption that it could be atomized away from the following verse. There is no logical basis for that assumption; it is, rather, quite illogical. And my position on that is not “incompetent.” It is the position even of some leading scroll specialists today, like Lim and Vermes. It is not possible they are incompetent. When compared to some of the most renowned scholars in the field, if anyone is incompetent here, it is more likely to be Davis. The same goes for Davis’s botched treatment of my argument from the Wisdom of Solomon, where again he argues against things I never said, and never mentions that what I did say is entirely mainstream and barely controversial. And Davis ignores all the modal arguments of my disjunct in respect to both texts; which still sustain my point (the whole point to Element 5) that some such developments leading to Christianity cannot be dismissed as implausible.

-:-

For my response to Davis’s third video, see And So Kipp Davis Conclusively Demonstrates His Incompetence as a Scholar.