Before the Church · c. 50–1 BC
The Son of God Text
4Q246
Anonymous
What it is
Two damaged columns in which a figure before a king is said to be called great, to be named Son of God and Son of the Most High, and whose kingdom will be an everlasting kingdom. Whether the figure is a messiah or a blasphemous usurper is unresolvable from what survives.
Why it lasted
The phrases are those the angel uses of Jesus in Luke 1, in the same order and the same language. Whichever way the text means them, it proves the titles were current Jewish idiom rather than a Christian coinage.
Scripture it works from
Where to read it
Public domain and free to read in full, though not held here. The archives below have it.
These open a search on each archive rather than a direct link, which is the honest way to point at an edition nobody here has checked line by line.
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