(e) ' Son of David ' is the most characteristic, as it is the most tiaditional and historic, designa- tion of the Jewish Messiah. It expresses the most representative type of Messianic expectation, if we understand by that term an anointed Jewish king who was to be the national deliverer. This conception, as Ave have already seen, had its roots in the days of Isaiah of Jerusalem, and revived in the age of Jeremiah and Ezekiel, and even survived in attenuated form to the early days of post-exilic Judaism. But in later Jewish literature belonging to the Greek period Ave notice a remarkable absence of any allusion to a Messianic king of Davidic descent who at the end of the ages will erect liis throne. That the expectation still survived, and at times found expression, especially as we ap- proach the period of the Maccaba^an struggle, seems fairly clear from such Psalms as 2. 72. 110. On the other hand, we find no reference to a Messianic deliverer of the seed of David in Joel, Is 24-27, Sirach, Daniel, Enoch (chs. 1-36, the Vision of Weeks and the hortatory discourses). Book of Jubilees, Assumpt. Mosis, Sib. Or. S^s-si, The figure of the Messiah is absent also from Tobit, Judith, 1 and 2 Maccabees, Wisdom, Baruch. It is true that we do find mention of the Messiah, or allusion to Him, in the visions of animals in Enoch (chs. 85-90), in Sib. Or. 3, in Philo {de Prcern. et Pocn. 16), and also in Apoc. Bar 29^ 30^ and 2 Es 7"^^- ; but the figure holds a secondary position, and is far more shadow than substance.
Bousset, in reviewing this literature (both pre-Christian and extending to a.d. 100), endeavours to solve the problem of this absence of Messianic expectation.! The causes are twofold. First conies the patent fact to which reference has already been made in a previous page. The Jew had entered into a "larger world, and his eschatology was therefore framed on these larger dimensions of time and space in which the final catastrophe was to be vast and world-wide. The world of the Jew was no longer Palestinian or even Western- Asiatic. It was the world ruled by the successors of Alexander, and the yet greater world ruled by the Csesars. Moreover, Greek culture had begun to enter deeply into the mind of Judaism. To the cultured Jew tlie figure of a Davidic-Messianic king seemed incongruous and provincial amid these larger political and intellectual horizons. Secondly, the establishment of the line of Maccabajan rulers left large circles of pious Jews well content. In the latter part of the rule of Jonathan, and during the days of Simon and Hyrcanus,
/.,,*= '^S, ?,*^^„^^'^^ ^'^^'■^ ^^^ terra 'Son' occurs in 2 Esdras (7-8 13J-. ii. 52 149) as well as in Enoch (1052) are all extremely doubtful. The Aramaic original is lost ; and it is held by many scholars, including Drummond, Spitta {Zur Gesch. und Lit. des Urchristeiitums, ii. 9), as well as Charles, that Christian hands have worked over these texts and have inserted the expression 'Son.' See Volz, Jiid. Eschatologie, p. 213, who regards Drummond's conjecture as probable, that the phrase Son of God may sometimes have arisen from the Gr. rendering ^«/; for 'servant' (nay). See also N. Schmidt's art. 'Son of God' in EBi, col. 4694. t Religion des Judentums'^ im neutest. Zeitalter, p. 255 f.
the Jew might well have believed in the advent of a Messianic age. Now, the JIaccabees were of priestly' descent, and came, therefore, from the tribe of Levi. It is therefore not surprising that the seed of David of the trilje of Judah faded for awhile into comparative insignificance ; cf . Charles' note on Enoch 90^7.
But the old hopes bound up with the Messiah- king of David's line were by no means extinct, though they appeared sometimes to be dormant. There were Palestinian Jews as well as Jews of the Diaspora, and there were uncultured Jews both in the countiyside and in the towns, influenced by old traditions and the expectations still kept alive by tiie Law and the Prophets read in the syna- gogue, as well as the literary Jews who pored over the Book of Wisdom or consoled themselves with tlie Visions of the Book of Enoch amid their blighted political hopes. INIoreover, the spell of the Hasniona'an line of princes did not last for ever. The 1st century B.C. witnessed a great change as compared with the second. Life was no longer under Aristobulus I. and Alexander Janna^us what it was in the great days of Judas, Simon, and John Hyrcanus. The Hasmonsean princes were regarded as usurpers, and the political aspirations of the race began to turn once more to the seed of David. The ordinary uncultured Jew did not trouble him- self with apocalyptic dreams of new heavens and a new earth, and probably there were many culti- vated Jews who had little taste for the Book of Enoch. These would read with far greater satis- faction the Psalter of Solomon, especially Ps 17^''^', with its references to the familiar words of Prophecy and Psalm : —
' Thou , Lord, didst choose David to be king over Israel, and didst swear unto him concerning his seed for ever, that his kingdom should not fail before thee [2 S 713-16, Ps 89^- 5]. Then, through our sins, sinners* arose against us, attacked us, and thrust us out. Those to whom thou didst make no promise took away with violence (our honour f). . . . They laid waste the throne of David with insolent shouting. But thou, O God, wilt cast them down and remove their seed from the earth, when one that is a foreigner J to our race arises against them. According to their sins wilt thou recompense them, O God . . . (v. 23). Behold, O Lord, and raise up for them their king, the son of David, at the time which thou, O God, knowest, that he may reign over Israel thy servant ; and gird him with strength that he may break in pieces unjust rulers. Purge Jerusalem with wisdom and righteousness from the heathen that trample her down with destruction. May he thrust out the sinners from the inheritance, utterly destroy the pride of the sinners, and as potters' vessels with an iron rod break in pieces all their sub- stance ' [Ps 2»].