Dying and rising Gods in pagan antiquity Part-III

In the previous posts we explored the views of four Scholars on this subject (Dying and rising gods) plus Bart Ehrman's personal take on the issue. Here in this post I am going to explore how the discovery of Dead Sea Scrolls demolishes the idea that "Jesus was not called Son of God in the divine sense". This post is not about dying and rising gods however this is to demolish any myth that says JESUS was not considered divine. So in a way this still relates to the topic of dying and rising gods. Craig A Evans is a distinguished professor of the New Testament Studies his work on dead Sea Scrolls is phenomenal, in his book Jesus and His World: The Archaeological Evidence He writes... At one time it was fashionable to assert that the early Christian confession of Messiah Jesus as ‘Son of God’ arose not from Jewish and Old Testament antecedents (2 Sam. 7.14; Ps. 2.2, 7, for example) but from the influence of the Greco-Roman world, where Greek kings and Roman emperors were hailed as sons of the gods. The discovery of 4Q246, comprising two columns of Aramaic text from Qumran’s fourth cave, demolished this view. The author of this first-century bce text anticipated the coming of a deliverer who will be called ‘Son of God’ and ‘Son of the Most High’. The remarkable parallels to the language of the annunciation (Luke 1.31–35) are widely acknowledged. It seems that Aramaic-speaking Jews at least one generation before the time of Jesus hoped for a messiah who would be described in rather exalted terms. Post-Easter competition with the Roman imperial cult was not required for the followers of Jesus to speak of their risen Master as the Son of God. For much of the twentieth century a number of New Testament scholars assumed that Jesus possessed no messianic consciousness; that recognition of him as Messiah was a post-Easter development. The publication of 4Q521 put that negative conclusion to rest. A fragment of this Qumran scroll anticipates the appearance of God’s Messiah, whom heaven and earth will obey. When this Messiah comes the downtrodden will be raised up, the injured will be healed, the dead will be raised up and the poor will hear good news. Scholars immediately recognized the parallels with Jesus’ reply to the im prisoned John the Baptist: ‘Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them’ (Matt. 11.4 –5; Luke 7.22). The authenticity of the passage is doubted by almost no one; and now its messianic import is widely recognized. Did Jesus understand himself as God’s anointed, as the Messiah? It seems he did". PS: Hopefully next in this series I would be fact checking the rising gods and comparing that with the Resurrection of JESUS. For this I would be exploring the work of Dr. Gary Habermas who is a pioneer on the resurrection of Jesus.