King and Messiah

This volume gives a glimpse into debate in Scandinavia concerning a number of inter-related Biblical concepts, a debate associated with scholars such as Mowinckel, Pedersen, Widengren and Bentzen himself. The argument starts from the present Messiah of many of the Psalms, representing a demythologized form of the Oriental conception of kingship. The next stage is the eschatologized "Messianic" figure of the prophetic thought of Isaiah and Micah. Later the prophet-"Messiah" of the Second Isaiah, still a present and entirely human figure, embodies the insight that the saviour of Israel must suffer and be cast in the role of a Moses Redivivus as leader of a new Exodus. In the Son of Man of Daniel 7 the eschatologizing process is carried further. The Christology of the New Testament provides a creative synthesis of these Old Testament types. Jesus is a new Adam, the Messiah present in the flesh and present still in his body the Church, the suffering Prophet playing the part of the new Moses and the once and future Divine King. But the antitype transcends the types. Further, the Christian "myth" has crystallized round historical fad and cannot be used as solvent of the fact whose significance it reveals and adorns.