“With His Stripes We Are Healed”

Brant Gardner

These verses presume a physical harm done against Jesus. Certainly "wounded," "bruised," and "stripes" describe events in a painful ending of Jesus earthly ministry. While the KJV "stripes" may hint at the flogging of Jesus, other translations give "wounds." While still appropriate and prophetic, "wounds" is much more generic that "stripes." Just as the KJV translators may have been influence by their historical knowledge of Jesus when they used "stripes" as a translation, Gileadi gives "But he was pierced for our transgressions…" which appears to also require post knowledge to inform the translation (Gileadi, Avraham. The Book of Isaiah. Deseret Book, 1988, p. 201).

For a time there was much excitement about a reconstructed passage in the Dead Sea Scrolls that appeared to discuss a Messianic figure who would be (or was) put to death (See Eisenman, Robert, and Michael Wise. The Dead Sea Scrolls Uncovered. Barnes and Nobles Books, 1992, pp. 24-29). The process of further scholarship in the subject, however, now indicates that the reading was probably erroneous:

"Rediscovered' among the unpublished fragments fo the scrolls when they first became available late in 1991, 4Q285 frag. 5 of The War of the Messiah created a flurry of excitement and generated front-page headlines all over the world. Line 4 o the fragment is ambiguous in the original Hebrew, which is written without vowels. According to the vowels mentally supplied by the Hebrew reader, 1.4 could say either "they (the enemy) will put the Leader of the community to death" or "the Leader of the community will have him (the enemy leader) put to death." The Leader of the community is a messianic figure known from other Dead Sea Scrolls . Thus following the first option, frag. 5 appeared to be describing the execution of a messiah, and the obvious parallels to Jesus of Nazareth were drawn.

The excitement has since died down. After a whirlwind of research activity and a number of critical assessments, scholarly consensus has rejected the first option and settled on the second. Even the primary exponent of the "dying messiah" interpretation, Robert Eisenman, has publicly recanted, saying that in fact he never really believed it in the first place." (Wise, Michael, Martin Abegg, Jr. and Edward Cook. The Dead Sea Scrolls. Harper San Francisco. 1996, pp. 291-2).

The Dead Sea Scrolls do deal with a Messiah, but tend to concentrate on the triumphant Messiah rather than the suffering Messiah. As with Abinadi, the frequently use Isaiah as a base text for their understanding (Eisenman, Robert, and Michael Wise. The Dead Sea Scrolls Uncovered. Barnes and Nobles Books, 1992, p. 17).

Multidimensional Commentary on the Book of Mormon

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