Two mysterious bull figures, a firstborn shor and a rem, feature in 1 Enoch 90 and in Deuteronomy 33. All agree that the figures in 1 Enoch speak of the Messiah. But what about those in Deuteronomy? Could they be about the Messiah too? Here I argue that they are. In fact, they speak about a Josephite Messiah, that is, a Messiah ben Joseph.
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Messiah ben Joseph | Origins #2 (Deuteronomy)
In our last post we saw how Rabbinic literature features the figure of Messiah ben Joseph, the slain Galilean Messiah, and how his origins lie in the Seed of the Woman promised to Adam and Eve in Genesis chapter 3, and in the Shepherd-Rock from Shaddai, promised to Joseph in Genesis 49. But it’s when these two promises are joined together in the book of Deuteronomy that we see Messiah ben Joseph as a dying and rising figure.