But for more:
Although some expected a victorious Davidic messiah (such as the author of the Psalms of Solomon), there were other notions such as a priestly messiah (such as at Qumran in 1QS 9:11, 4QFlorilegium, 4Q521, 11QMelch) or a heavenly messiah called the Son of Man who would sit on a heavenly throne and judge the wicked and the righteous (Book of Parables, written in the late first century BCE or early first century CE). Also there were eschatological agents with functions analogous to the messiah but without this term specifically used to characterize them. So the Testament of Levi 18:1-14 refers to a new priest raised up at the time of the end who is very similar to the priestly messiah from Qumran, who would bring forth justice and peace and open up the gates of Paradise. The notion of the messiah in the Book of Parables is also very pertinent to the NT concept of the parousia, with Jesus returning in a judicial role (as the Son of Man, cf. Matthew 10:23, 13:41, 16:27-28, 19:28, 24:30, 25:31-33, Mark 8:38, 13:26, 14:62) to end the current world system and reward the wicked and righteous according to their deeds. Both the Book of Parables and the NT are exegetical of the “one like a son of man” figure from Daniel 7 who is given sovereignty over the world; the former identifies this figure with Enoch (a man who was raised up to heaven) while the latter identifies him with Jesus (also a man raised up to heaven). So the Christians still expected Jesus to perform these deeds but they still lay in the future. Daniel 7 depicts this person in heavenly language (“coming with the clouds of heaven”), so the belief that Jesus was alive and presently in heaven was congruent with the interpretation that Daniel 7 referred to the exalted Jesus.
The Suffering Servant figure in Isaiah was earlier not quite applied the same way we find in the NT but there are many clear precursors. The most important application can be found in Daniel. Daniel 12:3 gives the oldest extant interpretation of the Fourth Servant Song of Deutero-Isaiah (see H. L. Ginsburg’s article in VT, 1953), applying the servant collectively to the faithful Jews who underwent Antiochus Epiphanes’ horrific persecution (המשכלים “the wise”, cf. 11:33-35) whose suffering had expiatory value for the many (with ומצדיקי הרבים having a exegetical basis in Isaiah 53:11’s יצדיק לרבים), and the verse uses astral language to describe their glorification and exaltation, “they will shine like the brightness of the firmament, like the stars forever and ever”. This draws on Isaiah 52:13 which says that the servant, being “wise” (ישכיל, the same root as in Daniel), “will be raised and lifted up and highly exalted”. What is more, ch. 8-12 of Daniel (the Hebrew apocalypse) is interpretive of the older vision in ch. 7 and the “wise” in ch. 11-12 are equivalent to the “the holy people of the Most High” who were persecuted and martyred by the “little horn” (7:21, 25), but end up possessing the kingdom and are handed “the sovereignty, power and greatness of all the kingdoms under heaven” (7:22, 27), exactly what was given to the “one like a son of man” in 7:14 (suggesting that the “one like a son of man” and the “holy people of the Most High” are analogous). Following their heavenly (or heaven-like) glorification, the “wise” are given their allotted inheritance (12:13), which appears to refer to the kingdom that the “holy people of the Most High” receive in ch. 7.
There is a group of literature at Qumran, possibly concerning the Teacher of Righteousness (the founder of the Qumran sect), that interprets the Suffering Servant hymn in a similar manner. The Self-Glorification Hymn (4Q471b, 4Q491c) is interesting for having a speaker that both identifies with the Suffering Servant (“Who has been despised like me? Who bears all sorrows like me? And who suffers evil like me?”) and speaks about being exalted to heaven (“My glory is incomparable and besides me no one is exalted, nor comes to me, for I reside in the heavens, and I am counted among the gods and my dwelling is in the holy congregation”). See John J. Collins, “The Self-Glorification Hymn from Qumran” (in Crossing Boundaries in Early Judaism and Christianity; Brill, 2016). The Hodayot hymns at Qumran also appear to draw on both Isaiah 52-53 and the Self-Glorification Hymn, e.g. “For I have been rejected by them, and they do not esteem me (ולא יחשבוני) when you made yourself great through me…Your rebuke has been changed into happiness and joy for me, my diseases into ev[erlasting] healing (למרפא ע[ולם), the scoffing of my rival into a crown of glory for me (1QH 12:8, 17:24-25; cf. Isaiah 53:3-5). Although the Teacher of Righteousness had an eschatological role in opening the eyes of the faithful in the last generations (see CD-A 1:3-13), he was not a messiah figure as far as can be discerned. There is another eschatological text in the Dead Sea Scrolls that draws on the Suffering Servant song.
Although the passage is fragmentary, it mentions a defiling of the Temple (as in Daniel) and wars, with those walking “with the language of truth” experiencing persecution at the hands of “those with misguided spirit”, “and they expiated (ירצו) their iniquities (עוונם) through [their] sufferings (בנגיעי[הם)” (4Q183 1 II 7-8; cf. Isaiah 53:4, 11-12). For more on the exegesis of Isaiah 53 see Martin Hengel’s “The Effective History of Isaiah 53 in the Pre-Christian Period” (in The Suffering Servant: Isaiah 53 in Jewish and Christian Sources; Eerdmans, 2004)
In light of this, the application of Isaiah 53 to Jesus would have been quite natural if his followers believed that he died innocently a martyr’s death. And there were several other notable suffering figures in apocalyptic expectation. The Oracles of Hystaspes prophesied that a great prophet would be killed by the king of Syria who would leave him unburied, but then “after the third day he will rise again and be taken into heaven while all look and marvel” (Lactantius, Divine Institutes 7.17). David Aune (WBC, Vol. 2) considers this text a possible source to the two witnesses pericope in Revelation 11. In the Assumption of Moses (a pseudepigraphon quoted in Jude 9), the end-times priest Taxo, who is described as sinless (9:4-5), dies during the great tribulation in order to remain steadfast to God (9:6-7), and then God’s kingdom appears and a messenger “will be in heaven” whose hands would be filled with executing judgment on the enemies of Israel (10:1-2). According to Johannes Tromp in his commentary (Brill, 1993), this messenger is probably Taxo glorified to heaven (analogous to Daniel’s “one like a son of man”), and then Israel “will mount the neck and wings of an eagle and they will be filled and God will exalt you and make you live in the heaven of the stars, the place of his habitation, and you will look down from above, and you will see your enemies on the earth” (10:8-10).