3. The Divinized Human in the Self-Glorification Hymn from Qumran

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the Self-Glorification Hymn from Qumran, which is among the many writings of the community that had withdrawn from Jerusalem to the Dead Sea and dedicated itself to apocalyptic fantasies of the end of days. The Hymn was written in the late Hasmonaean or early Herodian period, which is, the second half of the first century BCE. In it, an unidentified hero boasts that he was elevated among and even above the angels in heaven. The chapter describes the two parallel fragments of the hymn that take the superior, angel-like status of its author yet further. It analyzes the line, “Who is like me among the divine beings?” which is a rhetorical question that evidently means, “Who else is like me among the angels? Is there anyone else who is as elevated as I am among the angels or above them?”