1. The first radical yet only temporarily successful attempt at a “monotheistic counterrevolution” has been attributed to the ill-fated pharaoh Amenhotep IV (Akhenaten). For a detailed exploration, which triggered a broad and controversial discussion, see Jan Assmann, Moses the Egyptian: The Memory of Egypt in Western Monotheism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997).
2. An early, lone critic of the cliché of Jewish monotheism was Peter Hayman. For his now-classic article, see Peter Hayman, “Monotheism—A Misused Word in Jewish Studies?” JJS 42 (1991): 1–15.
3. For just a selection of the many relevant articles, see Gregor Ahn, “Monotheismus und Polytheismus I: Religionswissenschaftlich,” in RGG, ed. Hans Dieter Betz, Don S. Browning, Bernd Janowski, and Eberhard Jüngel (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 42002), vol. 5, cols. 1457–59; Hans-Peter Müller, “Monotheismus und Polytheismus II: Altes Testament,” in RGG, ed. Hans Dieter Betz, Don S. Browning, Bernd Janowski, and Eberhard Jüngel (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 42002), vol. 5, cols. 1459–62. For one of the most important recent books on biblical monotheism, see Mark S. Smith, The Origins of Biblical Monotheism: Israel’s Polytheistic Background and the Ugaritic Texts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001). I myself also dealt with this topic in the introduction to my book Mirror of His Beauty: Feminine Images of God from the Bible to the Early Kabbalah (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002), 1ff.
4. In Deut. 32:8–10, YHWH is still subordinate to the “Most High” god (El), whereas in Ps. 89:6–8, he appears as head of the divine council.
5. Otto Kaiser, ed., TUAT, vol. 2, Religiöse Texte: Grab-, Sarg-, Votiv- und Bauinschriften, ed. Christel Butterweck et al. (Gütersloh: Mohn, 1988), 563–64.
6. On Judah, see 1 Kings 15:13. On Israel, see 1 Kings 16:32–33; 2 Kings 10:18ff. On Jerusalem, see 2 Kings 21:3–7.
7. Müller, “Monotheismus und Polytheismus II,” RGG, vol. 5, col. 1461.
8. Müller, ibid.
9. Less common terms are “ditheistic” and “ditheism.”
10. R. Travers Hereford, Christianity in Talmud and Midrash, (1903; exp. ed., Jersey City, NJ: Ktav, 2006); Alan F. Segal, Two Powers in Heaven: Early Rabbinic Reports about Christianity and Gnosticism (Leiden: Brill, 1977).
11. Daniel Boyarin, Border Lines: The Partition of Judaeo-Christianity (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004).
12. Daniel Boyarin, “The Gospel of the Memra: Jewish Binitarianism and the Prologue to John,” HTR 94 (2001): 243–84; idem, “Two Powers in Heaven; or, The Making of a Heresy,” in The Idea of Biblical Interpretation: Essays in Honor of James L. Kugel, ed. Hindy Najman and Judith H. Newman (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 331–70; idem, “The Parables of Enoch and the Foundation of the Rabbinic Sect: A Hypothesis,” in “The Words of a Wise Man’s Mouth Are Gracious” (Qoh 10,12): Festschrift for Günter Stemberger on the Occasion of His 65th Birthday, ed. Mauro Perani (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2005), 53–72; idem, “Beyond Judaisms: Met at ron and the Divine Polymorphy of Ancient Judaism,” JSJ 41 (2010): 323–65; idem, “Once Again: ‘Two Dominions in Heaven’ in the Mekhilta,” Tarbiz 81 (2012–13): 87–101 (Hebr.); idem, “Is Metatron a Converted Christian?” Judaïsme Ancien / Ancient Judaism 1 (2013): 13–62.
13. Peter Schäfer, Die Geburt des Judentums aus dem Geist des Christentums. Fünf Vorlesungen zur Entstehung des rabbinischen Judentums (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010); idem, The Jewish Jesus: How Judaism and Christianity Shaped Each Other (Prince ton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012). Although it appeared later than Die Geburt des Judentums, The Jewish Jesus is the (more comprehensive) original version, which was abridged for the Jena lectures and which I translated into German. My methodological premises in The Jewish Jesus are developed more programmatically and in much greater detail (see especially the introduction) than in Die Geburt des Judentums. Boyarin’s article “Is Metatron a Converted Christian?” is to a large degree a discussion of my book The Jewish Jesus.
14. Menahem Kister, “The Manifestations of God in the Midrashic Literature in Light of Christian Texts,” Tarbiz 81 (2012–13): 103–42 (Hebr.); idem, “Metatron, God, and the ‘Two Powers’: The Dynamics of Tradition, Exegesis, and Polemic,” Tarbiz 82 (2013–14): 43–88 (Hebr.).
15. Originally his 1973 inaugural lecture at the University of Tübingen, this has been published in numerous versions in German and English, most recently as “Der Sohn Gottes,” in Martin Hengel, Studien zur Christologie. Kleine Schriften IV (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2006), 74–145. See also Martin Hengel, The Son of God: The Origin of Christology and the History of Jewish Hellenistic Religion, trans. John Bowden (1976; repr., Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2007). Although closely focused on the Messiah, nevertheless helpful for our topic is John J. Collins, The Scepter and the Star: The Messiahs of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Other Ancient Literature (New York: Doubleday, 1995). The second edition appeared with a new subtitle and a completely new chapter 6 on the heavenly throne; see John J. Collins, The Scepter and the Star: Messianism in Light of the Dead Sea Scrolls, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2010).
16. The literature in this area has become virtually boundless. Here I will limit myself largely to Larry W. Hurtado and Richard Bauckham, the two main actors dominating this field. Larry W. Hurtado opened the discussion with One God, One Lord: Early Christian Devotion and Ancient Jewish Monotheism (London: SCM Press, 1988), followed by idem, How on Earth Did Jesus Become a God?: Historical Questions about Earliest Devotion to Jesus (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2005) and idem, God in New Testament Theology (Nashville, TN: Abingdon, 2010). Richard Bauckham developed his theories for the first time in the much-acclaimed essay God Crucified: Monotheism and Christology in the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998), which he expanded a decade later with additional explorations into what he considers a prolegomenon of a “Christology of divine identity.” See idem, Jesus and the God of Israel: God Crucified and Other Studies on the New Testament’s Christology of Divine Identity (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2008).
17. The latter is represented with particular vigor by Margaret Barker. See especially Margaret Barker, The Great Angel: A Study of Israel’s Second God (London: SPCK, 1992); eadem, The Great High Priest: The Temple Roots of Christian Liturgy (London: T & T Clark, 2003). For a Judaism scholar focused on religious history, these books are particularly hard to digest. They contain numerous surprising as well as brilliant insights, but all in all create a new syncretistic religion that avoids any and all chronological, geographic, and literary differentiations.
18. That is, for both (as well as for most Christian theological authors), the actual binitarian revolution is reserved for Christianity.
19. The similarities and differences between Hurtado and Bauckham, in their dialogue with other researchers, become especially clear in two major essays that were contributions in Festschriften. See Richard Bauckham, “Devotion to Jesus Christ in Earliest Christianity: An Appraisal and Discussion of the Work of Larry Hurtado,” in Mark, Manuscripts, and Monotheism: Essays in Honor of Larry W. Hurtado, ed. Chris Keith and Dieter T. Roth (London: Bloomsbury, 2015), 176–200; Larry W. Hurtado, “Richard Bauckham’s Christological Pilgrimage,” in In the Fullness of Time: Essays on Christology, Creation, and Eschatology in Honor of Richard Bauckham, ed. Daniel M. Gurtner, Grant Macaskill, and Jonathan T. Pennington (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2016), 82–96.
20. Daniel Boyarin, The Jewish Gospels: The Story of the Jewish Christ (New York: New Press, 2012).
21. Peter Schäfer, “The Jew Who Would Be God,” New Republic, June 7, 2012, 36–39. After that, I examined and further developed this part of the subject in several lectures (at Yale University, as the Wellhausen lecture at the University of Göttingen, at the Israel Institute for Advanced Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, as the Dalman lecture in Greifswald, in the Berlin Antike-Kolleg, and at the University of Vienna). The diverse audiences helped me refine my thoughts and sharpen my theses—and sometimes retract them, if I had ventured too far.
22. For a critical appraisal of “Early High Christology,” which is closely related to my considerations, see Philip S. Alexander, “‘The Agent of the King Is Treated as the King Himself’: Does the Worship of Jesus Imply His Divinity?” in In the Fullness of Time: Essays on Christology, Creation, and Eschatology in Honor of Richard Bauckham, ed. Daniel M. Gurtner, Grant Macaskill, and Jonathan T. Pennington (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmanns, 2016), 97–114.
23. Matt. 26:63–64; Luke 22:67; Mark 14:62.
24. The editors of the Babylonian Talmud were not bothered by the fact that the historical Aqiva was a representative of Palestinian Judaism.
1. For the sake of simplicity, in the following I also use the commonly used phrase “Son of Man.”
2. Frank Moore Cross, Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1973), 43.
3. Daniel Boyarin, “Daniel 7, Intertextuality, and the History of Israel’s Cult,” HTR 105, no. 2 (2012): 139–62.
4. Michael Segal, Dreams, Riddles, and Visions: Textual, Contextual, and Intertextual Approaches to the Book of Daniel (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2016). Through the good offices of Professor Reinhard Kratz, Segal was kind enough to grant me access to the fourth chapter of his book manuscript (“Reconsidering the Theological Background of Daniel 7 and 4Q246 in Light of Innerbiblical Interpretation”), and I had the opportunity to discuss this chapter with him in detail in Jerusalem. He has meanwhile published the part on the Daniel Apocryphon separately (see below).
5. The same conclusion was already drawn by John Emerton: “There are good grounds for believing that the enthronement of the Son of man by an aged deity goes back to Canaanite myth and ritual, and that behind the figure of the Son of man lies Yahwe, and ultimately Baal.” John A. Emerton, “The Origin of the Son of Man Imagery,” JTS 9 (1958): 242. I would like to thank my colleague Martha Himmelfarb for drawing my attention to this important contribution.
6. In my opinion, John Collins overemphasizes the angels as a collective distinct from Israel. This is not a matter of either-or (either the angels or Israel) but instead a combination of the two: the dominion is given not to the angels but to Israel as an angel-like community, similar to the meaning of Israel in Qumran. See John J. Collins, Daniel: A Commentary on the Book of Daniel (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993), 313–19.
7. Boyarin, “Daniel 7,” 154ff.
8. Supposedly the peshar, followed by most exegetes, already interprets the “one like a human being” as a symbol of the people of Israel (Boyarin, “Daniel 7,” 140–41) and transfers this symbolic reading to the vision, with the goal of demythologizing and tempering the original Daniel text. What Boyarin presents here is a classical two-sources theory, inspired by the outmoded and, in this form, problematic theory of multiple sources of German Old Testament scholarship. Collins (Daniel, 305) speaks of a “mythic-realistic symbol for God, the Ancient One, [who] is assumed to exist outside the dream.”
9. Boyarin is not the first to claim this. See John J. Collins, The Scepter and the Star: The Messiahs of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Other Ancient Literature (New York: Doubleday, 1995), 142 (only in the 1st ed., deleted in the 2nd ed.). Collins also refers to the Babylonian Talmud.
10. See pp. 81ff. below.
11. Boyarin has meanwhile acknowledged this (“Is Metatron a Converted Christian?” Judaïsme Ancien / Ancient Judaism 1 [2013]: 33n39), but he does wish to localize the two thrones in the parallel account, Mekhilta de-Rabbi Shimon ben Yochai (Jacob Nahum Epstein and Ezra Zion Melamed, eds., Mekhilta de-Rabbi Shimon ben Yochai [Jerusalem: Mekize Nirdamim, 1955], 233). Again, I cannot follow this, as this parallel also does nothing but introduce Exodus 15:3 as proof text for the young war god and Daniel 7:9 as proof text for the Ancient One, as does the Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael. I find it puzzling how Boyarin (“Metatron,” 33n39) comes to the conclusion, “Although it is not absolutely proven that the problem of the two thrones is what lies at the heart of this passage, so close to our Mekhilta, I find such a reading extremely attractive indeed, nearly inescapable, if not entirely so” (ibid.). The rhetoric here is all too obvious.
12. With this I am attempting to take up the approaches of both Segal and Boyarin, and place them in a historically reliable perspective.
13. Collins, Daniel, 304–411. See also idem, The Scepter and the Star: Messianism in Light of the Dead Sea Scrolls, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2010), 195.
14. Daniel 8:15 (gaver); 8:16, 10:18 (adam); 10:16 (bene adam); 9:21, 10:5 (ish).
15. The same wording as in Dan. 10:18, which clearly refers to an angel.
16. Boyarin, “Daniel 7,” 149.
17. Read ish instead of esh.
1. Here I am summarizing and modifying what I wrote in my book Mirror of His Beauty: Feminine Images of God from the Bible to the Early Kabbalah (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002), 19–38.
2. David Andrew Teeter and Bernd U. Schipper, eds., Wisdom and Torah: The Reception of “Torah” in the Wisdom Literature of the Second Temple Period (Leiden: Brill, 2013).
3. Literally: “poured out.”
4. For an overview, see Bernhard Lang, Frau Weisheit. Deutung einer biblischen Gestalt (Düsseldorf: Patmos, 1975), 93ff.; Otto Plöger, Sprüche Salomos (Proverbia) (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1984), 86–87, 94ff.
5. See also Wisd. of Sol. 7:21–22, 8:6: technitis (fashioner or craftswoman).
6. See Christa Kayatz, Studien zu Proverbien 1–9. Eine form-und motivgeschichtliche Untersuchung unter Einbeziehung ägyptischen Vergleichsmaterials (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1966), 93ff.; Burton L. Mack, Logos und Sophia. Untersuchungen zur Weisheitstheologie im hellenistischen Judentum (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1973), 34ff.; Jan Assmann, Ma’at. Gerechtigkeit und Unsterblichkeit im Alten Ägypten (Munich: Beck, 1990).
7. Literally “vapor, mist” (atmis).
8. And not, as it is often translated, “in/with wisdom.”
9. FragmT Gen. 1:1 (MS Paris). See Michael L. Klein, ed., The Fragment-Targums of the Pentateuch according to Their Extant Sources, vol. 1, Text, Indices, and Introductory Essays (Rome: Biblical Institute Press, 1980), 43; idem, ed., The Fragment-Targums of the Pentateuch according to Their Extant Sources, vol. 2, Translations (Rome: Biblical Institute Press, 1980), 3. A marginal gloss corrects be-hokhmah to the more common min leqadmin—“in the beginning.” MS Vatican also has be-hokhmah, but leaves out “and perfected” (Klein, Fragment-Targums, 1:126, 2:90).
10. Genesis Rabbah 1:1.
11. Alejandro Díez Macho, Neophyti 1: Targum Palestinense MS de la Biblioteca Vaticana, vol. 1: Génesis: Edición Príncipe, Introducción General y Versión Castellana (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1968), 3.
12. Anonymous, The Palestinian Targum to the Pentateuch: Codex Vatican (Neofiti 1) (Jerusalem: Makor, 1970), 2. Hence the verse Genesis 1:1 originally read as follows: Mileqadmin be-hokhmah bera de-YYY’ we-shakhlel yat shemayya ve-yat ar’a.
13. Díez Macho, Neophyti 1, 57ff.; Peter Schäfer, “Bibelübersetzungen II: Targumin,” in TRE, ed. Gerhard Krause and Gerhard Müller (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1980), 6:217.
14. Martin McNamara, Targum Neofiti 1: Genesis, The Aramaic Bible, Volume 1A (Collegeville, MN: Michael Glazier, 1992), 45.
15. This explanation was already suggested by Díez Macho, Neophyti 1, 3, critical apparatus to Gen. 1:1. See also McNamara, Targum Neofiti 1, 52n2.
16. A glance into the related weblogs makes it easy to see how dangerous such an option was and is viewed to be.
1. Quoted with minor editing, from Esther Eshel, “4Q471B: A Self-Glorification Hymn,” RdQ 17/65–68 (1996): 184–85. See also the German translation by Johann Maier, Die Qumran-Essener. Die Texte vom Toten Meer (Munich: Ernst Reinhardt Verlag, 1995), 2:559–60.
2. Or, “of the East” (as in Maier, ibid.).
3. For a more comprehensive analysis, see Peter Schäfer, The Origins of Jewish Mysticism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011), 146ff.
4. 4Q471b, fragments 1–2, line 5; 4Q427 (4QHa), fragment 7, col. 1, line 8.
5. As has been correctly observed by Eshel, “4Q471B,” 180.
6. There are close parallels in the hymns of praise, the Hodayot. On this, see John J. Collins, The Scepter and the Star: Messianism in Light of the Dead Sea Scrolls, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2010), 150–51.
7. I am herewith correcting my statement in The Origins of Jewish Mysticism, 147–48.
8. 1QM, xvii, 7.
9. Maurice Baillet, Qumrân Grotte 4.3 (4Q482–4Q520). DJD-7 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982), 7:26–30.
10. Morton Smith, “Two Ascended to Heaven: Jesus and the Author of 4Q491,” in Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls, ed. James H. Charlesworth, 290–301 (New York: Doubleday, 1992), 298.
11. Collins, The Scepter and the Star, 2nd ed., 159. See also, similarly, Eshel, “4Q471B,” 202.
12. Schäfer, The Origins of Jewish Mysticism, 150.
13. Schäfer, ibid., 150–51.
14. Collins, The Scepter and the Star, 2nd ed., 164.
15. Israel Knohl, The Messiah before Jesus: The Suffering Servant of the Dead Sea Scrolls (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 42ff.
1. For a good summary, see John J. Collins, The Scepter and the Star: Messianism in Light of the Dead Sea Scrolls, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2010), 171ff.
2. Florentino García Martínez and Eibert J. C. Tigchelaar, eds., The Dead Sea Scrolls Study Edition (Leiden: Brill, 1997), 492–95.
3. Here and in the following, the antecedent is either the Son of God / Son of the Most High (here, he/him/his) or the people (here, it/its) of God.
4. Michael Segal, “Who Is the ‘Son of God’ in 4Q246? An Overlooked Example of Early Biblical Interpretation,” DSD 21 (2014): 301.
5. Frank Moore Cross, The Ancient Library at Qumran (Sheffield, UK: Sheffield Academic Press; Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1995), 190–91; idem, “The Structure of the Apocalypse of ‘Son of God’ (4Q246),” in Emanuel: Studies in Hebrew Bible, Septuagint, and Dead Sea Scrolls in Honor of Emanuel Tov, ed. Shalom M. Paul, Robert A. Kraft, Lawrence H. Schiffman, and Weston W. Fields (Leiden: Brill, 2003), 151–58; Collins, The Scepter and the Star, 2nd ed., 173ff.
6. For emphasis on an eschatological savior figure, see Florentino García Martínez, “The Eschatological Figure of 4Q246,” in Qumran and Apocalyptic: Studies on the Aramaic Texts from Qumran (Leiden: Brill, 1992), 173; idem, “Two Messianic Figures in the Qumran Texts,” in Current Research and Technological Developments on the Dead Sea Scrolls: Conference on the Texts from the Judean Desert, Jerusalem, 30 April 1995, ed. Donald W. Parry and Stephen D. Ricks (Leiden: Brill, 1996), 25ff.
7. 11Q13, ii, 9–10.
8. Common translations level this out even more by eliminating the difference between Elohim and El: “God stands in the divine assembly; among the divine beings He pronounces judgment” (JPS).
9. 11Q13, ii, 24–25. Although “Melchizedek” has been added, it is clear from the context that he is meant, as he will liberate Zion from the hand of Belial.
10. 11Q13, ii, 11; remarkably, what is rendered here as “El” is actually “YHWH” in the Masoretic Text of the Hebrew Bible.
11. 11Q13, ii, 13.
12. Józef Milik interprets this as divine hypostasis. See Józef T. Milik, “‘Milkî-ṣedek et Milkî-reša‘ dans les anciens écrits juifs et chrétiens,” JJS 23 (1972): 95–144.
13. 1QM, xi, 17.
14. 1QM, xiii, 10.
15. 1QM, xvii, 6–7.
16. García Martínez (“Two Messianic Figures in the Qumran Texts,” 30) speaks of “a messiah, an almost divinized messiah, similar to Melchizedek and the heavenly Son of Man.” Collins (The Scepter and the Star, 2nd ed., 181ff.) distinguishes too schematically between the collective, the angelic, and the messianic interpretations. The individual lines of interpretation cannot always be clearly separated but often overlap.
17. Luke 1:31.
18. Cross, The Ancient Library, 190; idem, “The Structure of the Apocalypse,” 157n20. For a summary, see Segal, “Who Is the ‘Son of God’ in 4Q246?” 302–3.
19. On this, see Collins, The Scepter and the Star, 2nd ed., 171ff. David Flusser goes yet a step further and votes for the Antichrist. See David Flusser, “The Hubris of the Antichrist in a Fragment from Qumran,” Immanuel 10 (1980): 31–37; idem, Judaism and the Origins of Christianity (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1998), 207–13.
20. Segal, “Who Is the ‘Son of God’ in 4Q246?,” 311.
21. Segal, ibidem, 301.
22. Better: II, 1, the passage in question.
23. Segal overlooks the fact that the vacat is not only at the beginning but also at the end of line II, 4. Thus I think it serves not so much to mark the transition from the negative to the positive narrative thread (Segal, “Who is the ‘Son of God,’” 300), but instead emphasizes the salvation-historical importance of the people of God.
24. Adela Yarbro Collins and John J. Collins, King and Messiah as Son of God: Divine, Human, and Angelic Messianic Figures in Biblical and Related Literature (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2008), 70–71.
25. See also Collins, The Scepter and the Star, 2nd ed., 177: “The description of the conflict between the peoples in column 2 is redundant, but such redundancy is a feature of apocalyptic style.”
26. Segal, “Who Is the ‘Son of God’ in 4Q246?” 298, 301.
27. See also Collins, The Scepter and the Star, 2nd ed., 172.
28. See also Collins, ibidem, 178: “The ambiguity of the third person suffixes in column 2 of our Qumran fragment can be explained most satisfactorily if the one who is called ‘Son of God’ is understood as the ruler or representative of the people of God. The everlasting kingdom, then, belongs to both, and the ‘Son of God’ exercises universal judgment on behalf of his people.” Collins, however, then takes a step back and warns against emphasizing the parallel with Daniel too strongly. Similarly ambivalent is the appraisal when he resumes the subject in Collins and Collins, King and Messiah as Son of God, 72–73. On the one hand, he stresses the link in the tradition history to the Son of Man in Daniel 7, but on the other hand, he downplays this by arguing that the Daniel Apocryphon is certainly not an interpretation of Daniel 7. Yet both might in fact be closely connected with regard to tradition history, without the entire text having to be viewed as an interpretation of Daniel 7. Here as well, Collins is thinking too schematically in predefined categories.
1. The translation follows George W. E. Nickelsburg and James C. VanderKam, eds., 1 Enoch: The Hermeneia Translation (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2012), 59–60, 62.
2. John J. Collins, The Scepter and the Star: Messianism in Light of the Dead Sea Scrolls, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2010), 200. Collins here refers to Psalm 147:4, where God gives the stars their names—that is, he creates them. In the following, I will avoid the word “preexisting” because it suggests uncreated, eternal existence. The son of man, although he exists prior to the creation of the world, is created and consequently not eternal.
3. Nickelsburg and VanderKam, 1 Enoch, 62.
4. Also for Collins (The Scepter and the Star, 2nd ed., 204n61), the veneration and worship of the Son of Man is the most natural reading.
5. 1 Enoch 58–69.
6. 1 Enoch 69:26–29. This portion probably belongs with Enoch 63–64.
7. Thus it is written in the third person in the text. In the following, the narrative switches to the first person: Enoch now tells about himself. This too could be an indication of a literary seam.
8. 1 Enoch 71:5ff.
9. Daniel Boyarin, The Jewish Gospels: The Story of the Jewish Christ (New York: New Press, 2012), 88.
10. Moshe Idel, Ben: Sonship and Jewish Mysticism (London: Continuum, 2007), 4.
11. Boyarin, The Jewish Gospels, 85.
12. Boyarin, ibidem, 94.
1. Here I continue the discussion that I started in Peter Schäfer, Die Geburt des Judentums aus dem Geist des Christentums. Fünf Vorlesungen zur Entstehung des rabbinischen Judentums (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010), 89ff.; and in idem, The Jewish Jesus: How Judaism and Christianity Shaped Each Other (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012), 78–79.
2. 4 Ezra 13:2ff. The translation follows B. M. Metzger, “The Fourth Book of Ezra,” in The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, ed. James H. Charlesworth (New York: Doubleday, 1983), 1:517–59. It is irrelevant for our context whether or not the vision in 4 Ezra 13 was originally an independent tradition, to which the author of 4 Ezra added his own interpretation, as suggested by Michael E. Stone, Features of the Eschatology of IV Ezra (Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1989), 123ff.; idem, Fourth Ezra: A Commentary on the Book of Fourth Ezra (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1990), 211ff.
3. As the rabbis understood Deuteronomy 33:2 (esh dat, a fire of law).
4. Odil H. Steck, Israel und das gewaltsame Geschick der Propheten. Untersuchungen zur Überlieferung des deuteronomistischen Geschichtsbildes im Alten Testament, Spätjudentum und Urchristentum (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1967), 177ff.
5. The ten tribes might also be a rabbinic reminiscence.
6. In 13:37, both Arabic translations have “my youth.”
7. Josef Schreiner, Das 4. Buch Esra. Jüdische Schriften aus hellenistisch-römischer Zeit, vol. 5, Apokalypsen (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus Gerd Mohn, 1981), 397n32a.
8. Septuagint: hyios; Vulgate: filius.
9. Collins refers to him as a “preexistent … transcendent figure of heavenly origin.” John J. Collins, The Scepter and the Star: Messianism in Light of the Dead Sea Scrolls, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2010), 210.
10. Michael Stone (Fourth Ezra, 383) points out that fire is mentioned in 4 Ezra only in connection with God. The sole exception is 4 Ezra 13:10. As mentioned above, fire comes out of the mouth of the Messiah—a further indication of the special status of the godlike Messiah in 4 Ezra 13.
1. For an English translation with a comprehensive introduction, see Jonathan Z. Smith, “Prayer of Joseph,” in The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, ed. James H. Charlesworth (New York: Doubleday, 1985), 2:699–714.
2. Smith, ibidem, 713.
3. The Greek word archikos can mean both “ruling” and “original, primordially eternal.”
4. Smith, “Prayer of Joseph,” 713.
5. Martin Hengel, The Son of God: The Origin of Christology and the History of Jewish Hellenistic Religion, trans. John Bowden (1976; repr., Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2007), 48.
6. Jonathan Z. Smith, “The Prayer of Joseph,” in Religions in Antiquity: Essays in Memory of Erwin Ramsdell Goodenough, ed. Jacob Neusner (Leiden: Brill, 1968), 272.
1. On this in greater detail, see Peter Schäfer, Mirror of His Beauty: Feminine Images of God from the Bible to the Early Kabbalah (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002), 39–57. See also idem, The Jewish Jesus: How Judaism and Christianity Shaped Each Other (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012), 174ff.
2. Quod Deus immutabilis sit, §§31–32; De confusione linguarum, §§146–47.
3. On the interplay, see Schäfer, Mirror of His Beauty, 41–42.
4. De opificio mundi, §24. See also De fuga et inventione, §§12–13. The English translation follows Philo, “On the Creation of the World,” in Philo, trans. F. H. Colson and G. H. Whitaker (Cambridge, MA: Loeb Classical Library, 1929), 1:21.
5. In Philo, according to Martin Hengel, “Jewish wisdom speculation is connected with the Platonic doctrine of creation found in the Timaeus.” Martin Hengel, The Son of God: The Origin of Christology and the History of Jewish Hellenistic Religion, trans. John Bowden (1976; repr., Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2007), 51–52.
6. De confusione linguarum, §146. The English translation follows Philo, “On the Confusion of Tongues,” in Philo, trans. F. H. Colson and G. H. Whitaker (Cambridge, MA: Loeb Classical Library, 1931), 4:89, 91.
7. De confusione linguarum, §147. The English translation follows ibidem, 91.
8. Quaestiones in Genesim, 2:62. The English translation follows Philo, Questions and Answers on Genesis, trans. Ralph Marcus (Cambridge, MA: Loeb Classical Library, 1953), Supplement 1:150. See also Hengel, The Son of God, 52.
9. Refers to the Word (Logos), which in John is identified with Jesus; hence “he” instead of “it.”
10. David Winston, Logos and Mystical Theology in Philo of Alexandria (Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 1985), 10; David T. Runia, Philo and the Church Fathers: A Collection of Papers (Leiden: Brill, 1995).
1. The circle around Gabriele Boccaccini. See Boccaccini’s short research report in his article “The Rediscovery of Enochic Judaism and the Enoch Seminar,” in The Origins of Enochic Judaism, ed. Gabriele Boccaccini (Turin: Zamorani, 2002), 9–13. And see also the articles in this volume.
2. For the most important representatives, see Daniel Boyarin, “Once Again: ‘Two Dominions in Heaven’ in the Mekhilta,” Tarbiz 81 (2012–13): 87–101 (Hebr.); idem, “Is Metatron a Converted Christian?” Judaïsme Ancien / Ancient Judaism 1 (2013): 13–62; Menahem Kister, “The Manifestations of God in the Midrashic Literature in Light of Christian Texts,” Tarbiz 81 (2012–13): 103–42 (Hebr.); idem, “Metatron, God, and the ‘Two Powers’: The Dynamics of Tradition, Exegesis, and Polemic,” Tarbiz 82 (2013–14): 43–88 (Hebr.).
1. With slight variations, the midrash is preserved at two different places in the Mekhilta, namely in Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael, ba-hodesh 5 and shirata 4. See H. S. Horovitz and I. A. Rabin, eds., Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael (Frankfurt, 1931), 129–30, 219–20; and Jacob Z. Lauterbach, ed., Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael (Philadelphia, 1933, 22004), 1:188–89; 2:314–15. In one of my very first articles, I analyzed this midrash complex with its numerous parallels. See Peter Schäfer, “Israel und die Völker der Welt. Zur Auslegung von Mekhilta deRabbi Yishma’el, bahodesh Yitro 5,” FJB 4 (1976): 32–62. Now see also Peter Schäfer, Die Geburt des Judentums aus dem Geist des Christentums. Fünf Vorlesungen zur Entstehung des rabbinischen Judentums (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010), 65ff.; idem, The Jewish Jesus: How Judaism and Christianity Shaped Each Other (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012), 55ff; see also the respective contributions by Boyarin and above all Kister’s article in Tarbiz 81.
2. “I am he who was at Sinai” only in the printed editions.
3. Or “I am he.”
4. Schäfer, Die Geburt des Judentums, 69–70; idem, The Jewish Jesus, 59–60.
5. Daniel Boyarin, “Is Metatron a Converted Christian?,” Judaïsme Ancien / Ancient Judaism 1 (2013): 28.
6. Final redaction around the seventh century CE, but the text contains numerous older traditions.
7. Died 1105.
8. Boyarin, “Metatron,” 29ff.
9. Adiel Schremer, “Midrash, Theology, and History: Two Powers in Heaven Revisited,” JSJ 39 (2008): 246.
10. Boyarin, “Metatron,” 31.
11. Schäfer, Die Geburt des Judentums, 71; idem, The Jewish Jesus, 61. It gratifies me to see that such an experienced midrash exegete as Menahem Kister advocates a similar view (Kister, “Manifestations,” 111f.): “I think the interpretations that were being attached to the quotation of this verse [Dan. 7:10] are dubious; it is possible that this verse is nothing but the continuation of the quotation of v. 9.”
12. Boyarin, “Metatron,” 32n37.
13. Boyarin (“Metatron,” 36–37) takes offense that I am supposedly using a double standard: Whereas I reject Boyarin’s Son of Man interpretation in the Mekhilta, because Daniel 7:13 is not explicitly quoted, I generously relate Aqiva’s midrash in b Sanhedrin 38b to the Son of Man, although the verse Daniel 7:13 is also not cited there. Here he overlooks that the Talmud midrash is about David, and that for precisely that reason (the messiah-king David is the Son of Man), an explicit reference to Daniel 7:13 is not necessary. On Aqiva’s midrash, see the next chapter.
14. On the direct parallels, see Kister, “Manifestations,” 112ff.
15. Pesiqta Rabbati 21, ed. Meir Friedmann, Pesiqta Rabbati (Vienna, 1880), fol. 100b–101a. The English translation follows William G. Braude, Pesikta Rabbati: Discourses for Feasts, Fasts, and Special Sabbaths (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1968), 1:421ff.
16. Kister, “Manifestations,” 113 with note 52.
17. Presumably Hiyya II bar Abba, a contemporary of Rabbi Levi (early fourth century CE).
18. On the whore’s son as an allusion to Jesus, see Peter Schäfer, Jesus in the Talmud (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007), 111–12.
19. See Schäfer, Die Geburt des Judentums, 33ff.; idem, The Jewish Jesus, 21ff.
20. Numerous midrashim go yet a step further and prove that even God’s name Elohim usually collocates with a singular verb. See Schäfer, Die Geburt des Judentums, 37ff.; idem, The Jewish Jesus, 25–26.
21. Kister (“Manifestations”) adds another perspective to the debate: it may well be that the different “appearances” of God in the Mekhilta and other midrashim do not aim as it were at ontologically different manifestations of God (and thus binitarian ideas), but in fact at how God is perceived from the perspective of Israel. In that case, the appearances of God would be phenomena in the eye of the beholder (Israel), yet not different modes of being of God. This is a noteworthy approach, which, however, cannot be discussed here.
22. Boyarin, “Metatron,” 54, 21.
23. See Schäfer, The Origins of Jewish Mysticism, 10–11.
24. This is connected with endeavors to draw close ties between early Jewish apocalypticism (in particular the ascent accounts) and above all the Qumran literature and the emergence of early Jewish mysticism. For a book that especially propagates this idea, see Rachel Elior, The Three Temples: On the Emergence of Jewish Mysticism (Oxford: Littmann Library of Jewish Civilization, 2004). On this, see Schäfer, The Origins of Jewish Mysticism, 14ff.
25. The beginning of the Islamic period in Palestine in the early seventh century CE brought with it a renaissance of apocalyptic literature, especially the Apocalypse of Zerubbavel. See Peter Schäfer, Mirror of His Beauty: Feminine Images of God from the Bible to the Early Kabbalah (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002), 212ff.
26. The classic example in the Bavli also used by Boyarin (“Metatron,” 57) is the elaborated small treatise on the seven heavens along with the associated cosmological and meteorological traditions that precede the Metatron discussion in the Bavli (b Hagigah 12b–13a). Some motifs are in fact taken up here that we know from the apocrypha and pseudepigrapha too, but they are hardly particularly significant, and above all, b Hagigah 12b–13a is the sole example for such an adaptation of apocalyptic traditions in the Bavli. It virtually goes without saying that they are radically reinterpreted in the Bavli. See Peter Schäfer, “From Cosmology to Theology: The Rabbinic Appropriation of Apocalyptic Cosmology,” in Creation and Re-Creation in Jewish Thought: Festschrift in Honor of Joseph Dan on the Occasion of His Seventieth Birthday, ed. Rachel Elior and Peter Schäfer (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2005), 39–58.
27. Schäfer, The Origins of Jewish Mysticism, 323–24; idem, Die Geburt des Judentums, 129ff.; idem, The Jewish Jesus, 143.
28. Boyarin, “Metatron,” 54ff.
29. In my review of Boyarin’s The Jewish Gospels, I briefly outlined them for the first time, and it is the specific purpose of the present book to expand on them more precisely.
30. Boyarin, “Metatron,” 14–15.
1. On the parallel b Sanhedrin 38b, see pp. 87ff. below.
2. The parallel in b Sanhedrin inserts here, “For it has been taught (in another baraita).”
3. On this in detail, see Menahem Kister, “Metatron, God, and the ‘Two Powers’: The Dynamics of Tradition, Exegesis, and Polemic,” Tarbiz 82 (2013–14): 43–88 (Hebr.). The Munich Talmud manuscript Cod. Hebr. 6 has recorded only the two “bare” baraitot, without the artful structure of the Bavli redactor. According to Kister, they are tannaitic—that is, pre-Talmudic—but this is by no means necessarily the case. See Kister, “Metatron,” 53, 53n56 (Hebr.).
4. Peter Schäfer, Die Geburt des Judentums aus dem Geist des Christentums. Fünf Vorlesungen zur Entstehung des rabbinischen Judentums (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010), 79ff.; idem, The Jewish Jesus: How Judaism and Christianity Shaped Each Other (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012), 68ff.
5. Aqiva lived in the first half of the second century CE.
6. Mark 14:62. See also Matt. 26:64; Luke 22:69.
7. Boyarin does not want to rule out that the baraita could be an earlier and thus Palestinian source. He bases this on the tension in the text, according to which the anonymous voice of the Bavli first accepts the position that is then rejected in the cited baraita (the two thrones for God and David). I consider this an overly logical interpretation since the dialectic artfulness of the sugya lies precisely in first taking up Aqiva’s position only then to reject it with exactly the same baraita from which it is taken. Daniel Boyarin, “Is Metatron a Converted Christian?” Judaïsme Ancien / Ancient Judaism 1 (2013): 23.
8. y Taanit 4:8/27, fol. 68d. See Peter Schäfer, Der Bar Kokhba-Aufstand. Studien zum zweiten jüdischen Krieg gegen Rom (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1981), 137ff.
9. Schäfer, Die Geburt des Judentums, 94f.; idem, The Jewish Jesus, 82.
10. Schäfer, ibidem.
11. Regardless of Boyarin’s efforts to document them in the Mekhilta midrash discussed above. Boyarin (“Metatron,” 26ff.) explicitly creates the connection between the Babylonian baraita and the Palestinian midrash in the Mekhilta: the Mekhilta is the express (and only) bridge between the pre-Christian binitarian traditions and the Bavli.
12. On this in detail, see Schäfer, Die Geburt des Judentums, 33ff.; idem, The Jewish Jesus, 27ff.
13. Plural in Hebrew.
14. Plural in Hebrew.
15. The angels.
16. “Watchers” and “holy ones” are also terms for the angels.
17. b Sanhedrin 38b. This is followed by the discussion in the baraita, as above in b Hagigah 14a.
18. On this in detail, see Anna Maria Schwemer, “Irdischer und himmlischer König. Beobachtungen zur sogenannten David-Apokalypse in Hekhalot Rabbati §§122–126,” in Königsherrschaft Gottes und himmlischer Kult im Judentum, Urchristentum und in der hellenistischen Welt, ed. Martin Hengel and Anna Maria Schwemer (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1991), 309–59; Ulrike Hirschfelder, “The Liturgy of the Messiah: The Apocalypse of David in Hekhalot Literature,” JSQ 12 (2005): 148–93.
19. Schwemer, “Irdischer und himmlischer König,” 32.
20. Schäfer, The Jewish Jesus, 85–94.
21. Peter Schäfer, Margarete Schlüter, and Hans Georg von Mutius, Synopse zur Hekhalot-Literatur (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1981), §§125f.; Hirschfelder, “The Liturgy of the Messiah,” 188ff. Translation based on Schäfer, The Jewish Jesus, 86–87.
22. “I,” as in most manuscripts, instead of “he.”
23. Literally run (ratzin/ratzim).
24. Although necessary to make sense, this is missing in almost all manuscripts with the exception of MSS New York 8128 and 3021.
25. As in all manuscripts with the exception of MS New York 8128: “toward my beloved one.”
26. Numerous manuscripts add “and the holy creatures.” Ofannim and Serafim are different classes of angels.
27. MS Budapest 238: “approached”; MS Leipzig 613: “shuddered”; MS New York 8128 (although this makes no sense): “were made.”
28. Some manuscripts cite Exodus 15:18: “The Lord will reign forever and ever.”
29. In two manuscripts, “angels.”
30. In the sense of “special”; in some manuscripts, “praiseworthy.”
31. In some manuscripts, “in the (great) Temple.”
32. In some manuscripts, “four hundred.”
33. This continuation only in some manuscripts.
34. In two manuscripts, “and all heavenly bodies.”
35. And more often, for example, Ps. 96:10, Ps. 97:1.
36. I first developed this thesis rudimentarily in The Jewish Jesus, 85ff. Kister (“Metatron,” 56n69) rejects it vehemently, going into detail on some minor details, but without engaging in the main point.
37. The Qedushah is a prayer in the synagogue service that revolves around the Trisagion (“Holy, holy, holy”) of Isaiah 6:3.
38. Kister’s (“Metatron,” 56n69) long note is clearly an attempt to comply with the adage, “That which must not, cannot be.” Hirschfelder offers a different take on this: “Although God here is expressly the subject of the Psalm verse, the context of the ensuing royal procession definitely places the emphasis on David’s celestial reign.” Hirschfelder, “The Liturgy of the Messiah,” 173.
39. The similarity between dodi (דודי) and dawid (דוד) is much more obvious in Hebrew.
40. Kister, “Metatron,” ibidem; Hirschfelder, “The Liturgy of the Messiah,” 189. Also, one must add, the New York manuscript is a late manuscript influenced by the haside ashkenaz.
41. See, for example, the variant reading “in the (great) Temple” (above, n. 31, below, n. 46).
42. Hirschfelder, “The Liturgy of the Messiah,” 172; Schäfer, The Jewish Jesus, 89.
43. The Shi‘ur Qomah texts describe and calculate the infinite dimensions of God’s body from head to toe. Although God’s body cannot be measured in earthly dimensions, the authors paradoxically do just that: they measure the length of the individual limbs of the divine body, although in immeasurable, fantastic numbers. On this genre of Hekhalot literature, see Christoph Markschies, Gottes Körper. Jüdische, christliche und pagane Gottesvorstellungen in der Antike (Munich: Beck, 2016), 202ff.
44. Hirschfelder, “The Liturgy of the Messiah,” 172 with note 87.
45. Hirschfelder, ibidem, 172 with note 88.
46. Despite Kister’s (“Metatron,” 56n69) unconvincing objections, in view of the context, I prefer this reading over that of the “great house of learning.”
47. Of course it is possible once again to object, as does Kister, that “opposite” does not mean “next to one another,” and that “opposite” can also be translated as “corresponding.”
48. Schäfer, Schlüter, and von Mutius, Synopse zur Hekhalot-Literatur, §295 in MS Budapest 238 (as an addition to the Sar ha-Torah complex) and §405 in MS New York 8121.
49. Because Psalm 146:10 is doubled, it makes sense to cite the parallel Exodus 15:18 for David.
50. Hirschfelder (“The Liturgy of the Messiah,” 173, 178) clearly recognizes the special position of David in the Apocalypse, but in the end prefers to view the Messiah-King David as a substitute for the Merkavah mystic: no longer does the yored merkavah take the position of the Messiah, but the Messiah takes the position of the yored merkavah.
51. With this I am refining my deliberations in The Jewish Jesus, 91f. Kister (“Metatron,” 56n69) dismisses them with the remark that I neglected to indicate that the cited Bible verses (including Zech. 14:9) are part of the Qedushah.
52. On this in greater detail, see Peter Schäfer, The Origins of Jewish Mysticism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011), 103ff.; idem, The Jewish Jesus, 92ff.
53. Schäfer, The Jewish Jesus, 94.
54. Kister (“Metatron,” 57–59) was the first to mention this.
55. Contra Haereses 32:1. Ephrem the Syrian, “Hymnen gegen die Irrlehren (Hymni contra haereses),” in Des heiligen Ephräm des Syrers ausgewählte Schriften, trans. from Syrian and Greek, vol. 1. Bibliothek der Kirchenväter, series 1, vol. 61 (Munich: J. Kösel & F. Pustet, 1928).
56. Daniel 7:13.
57. Daniel 7:9.
58. Daniel 7:10.
59. Contra Haereses 32:5–6.
60. Christoph Markschies, Alta Trinità Beata (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2000), 13ff. Kister (“Metatron,” 57n74) correctly notes that the Syriac bar motva corresponds to the Greek synthronos.
61. Johannes Chrysostomus, Contra Anomoeos 11 (Migne, PG 48, 800). See Jean Chrysostome, Sur l’égalité du Père et du Fils. Contre les Anoméens homélies VII–XII, in Sources Chrétiennes, trans. Anne-Marie Malingrey (Paris: Cerf, 1994), 304f.
62. Kister, “Metatron,” 58.
1. On this in greater detail, see Peter Schäfer, Anziehung und Abstoßung. Juden und Christen in den ersten Jahrhunderten ihrer Begegnung / Attraction and Repulsion: Jews and Christians in the First Centuries of Their Encounter, bilingual ed. (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2015); idem, “Genesis Rabbah’s Enoch,” in Genesis Rabbah in Text and Context, ed. Sarit Kattan Gribetz, David M. Grossberg, Martha Himmelfarb, and Peter Schäfer (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck: 2016), 63–80.
2. 1 Enoch 12–16.
3. Philip R. Davies, “And Enoch Was Not, for Genesis Took Him,” in Biblical Traditions in Transmission: Essays in Honour of Michael A. Knibb, ed. Charlotte Hempel and Judith M. Lieu (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 97–107.
4. 2 Enoch 22:8–10. See Peter Schäfer, The Origins of Jewish Mysticism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011), 77ff.
5. See Peter Schäfer, “Metatron in Babylonia,” in Hekhalot Literature in Context: Between Byzantium and Babylonia, ed. Ra‘anan Boustan, Martha Himmelfarb, and Peter Schäfer (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013), 29–39. Klaus Herrmann vehemently argues for a Byzantine cultural background of the earliest layers of 3 Enoch (whichever these might be), but the supposed “absorption of visual impressions”—with that he means Byzantine iconography—is not much more than an impression gained from the splendid mosaics of Ravenna, and certainly no easier to prove than the conflict I postulate between the Metatron ideology of 3 Enoch and New Testament Christology (the “literary dependency” demanded for the latter is in any case a chimera). Moreover, the clear-cut distinction between “Byzantine” and “Babylonian-Sasanian” cultural spheres seems to me far too static, and thus not very helpful. See Klaus Herrmann, “Jewish Mysticism in Byzantium: The Transformation of Merkavah Mysticism in 3 Enoch,” in ibidem, 85n1, 107.
6. Genesis Rabbah 25:1.
7. The other verse that mentions Enoch is the Epistle of Jude 1:14, which cites the pseudepigraphic Book of Enoch (1:9).
8. Set in quotation marks in the cited passage.
9. Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho, 19:3.
10. Clemens Alexandrinus, Stromata, IV, 17:3; ibid., II, 15:3.
11. Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses, IV, 16:2. See also ibidem V, 5:1.
12. Tertullian, Adversus Iudaeos, 2:13. See also ibidem, chap. 4.
13. Tertullian, De resurrectione mortuorum, 58:9.
14. Tertullian, De anima, 50.
15. y Taan 2:1/24, fol. 65b; Exodus Rabbah 29:5. See Peter Schäfer, Jesus in the Talmud (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007), 107–9.
16. A notable exception are the Targumim, the Aramaic translations of the Pentateuch. See Schäfer, “Genesis Rabbah’s Enoch,” 78–80.
17. This is an allusion to Elijah’s ascent to heaven (2 Kings 2:11).
18. Peter Schäfer, Margaret Schlüter, and Hans Georg von Mutius, Synopse zur Hekhalot-Literatur (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1981), §9.
19. Schäfer, Schlüter, and von Mutius, ibid., §11. The English translations are based on Philip S. Alexander, “3 Enoch,” in The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, ed. James H. Charlesworth (New York: Doubleday, 1983), §8:2, 1:263.
20. More precisely, according to the dimensions of the “world in length and breadth”; that is, he made him as big as the earthly world.
21. Schäfer, Schlüter, and von Mutius, ibid., §12; Alexander, “3 Enoch,” §9:4, 1:263.
22. Schäfer, Schlüter, and von Mutius, ibid., §13; Alexander, “3 Enoch,” §10:2, 1:264.
23. Schäfer, Schlüter, and von Mutius, ibid., §13; Alexander, “3 Enoch,” §10:3, 1:264.
24. Schäfer, Schlüter, and von Mutius, ibid., §13; Alexander, “3 Enoch,” §10:4–5, 1:264.
25. Schäfer, Schlüter, and von Mutius, ibid., §14; Alexander, “3 Enoch,” §11:2–3, 1:264.
26. The number forty-nine is evidently taken from the rabbinic literature: Moses received forty-nine of the fifty gates of understanding that were created in the world (b Nedarim 38a), and at the end of days, the light of the sun will be forty-nine times brighter than it is now (Exodus Rabbah 15:21).
27. Schäfer, Schlüter, and von Mutius, Synopse zur Hekhalot-Literatur, §15; Alexander, “3 Enoch,” §12:3–5, 1:265.
28. The spelling of God’s name varies in the manuscripts.
29. Literally “within him.”
30. Schäfer, Schlüter, and von Mutius, Synopse zur Hekhalot-Literatur, §16; Alexander, “3 Enoch,” §13:1, 1:265–66.
31. Schäfer, Schlüter, and von Mutius, ibid., §§17–18; Alexander, “3 Enoch,” §14:5, 1:267.
32. Schäfer, Schlüter, and von Mutius, ibid., §19; Alexander, “3 Enoch,” §15, 1:267.
33. Schäfer, Schlüter, and von Mutius, ibid., §20; Alexander, “3 Enoch,” §16:1, 1:268.
34. Schäfer, Schlüter, and von Mutius, ibid., §20; Alexander, “3 Enoch,” §16:2–5, 1:268.
35. From the boundless secondary literature on the two versions of the episode in 3 Enoch and the Talmud, I mention here only the (presently) two most recent contributions that deal extensively with their predecessors: Daniel Boyarin, “Is Metatron a Converted Christian?” Judaïsme Ancien / Ancient Judaism 1 (2013): 13–62; David M. Grossberg, “Between 3 Enoch and Bavli Hagigah: Heresiology and Orthopraxy in the Ascent of Elisha ben Avuyah,” in Hekhalot Literature in Context: Between Byzantium and Babylonia, ed. Ra‘anan Boustan, Martha Himmelfarb, and Peter Schäfer (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013), 117–39.
36. Boyarin misjudges the editorial context in 3 Enoch, when following Alexander he claims “that the purpose of the author of 3 Enoch was to validate Metatron speculation.” Daniel Boyarin, “Beyond Judaisms: Met at ron and the Divine Polymorphy of Ancient Judaism,” JSJ 41 (2010): 349; idem, “Metatron,” 45.
37. In contrast to the beginning of the section, this passage does not specifically reassert that Metatron is sitting at the entrance to the palace/heaven—as distinct from God, who is enthroned in its midst.
38. In Greek, this is expressed as exousia and dynamis; on this in greater detail, see Alan F. Segal, Two Powers in Heaven: Early Rabbinic Reports about Christianity and Gnosticism (Leiden: Brill, 1977), 7–8n8.
39. This is also correctly mentioned in Boyarin, “Metatron,” 46–47.
40. On punishments with lashes of light or fire, see also b Yoma 77a (Gabriel) and b Bava Metzia 47a.
41. b Hagiga 15a. Here I am further developing the observations introduced in Peter Schäfer, Die Geburt des Judentums aus dem Geist des Christentums. Fünf Vorlesungen zur Entstehung des rabbinischen Judentums (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010), 114ff.; idem, The Jewish Jesus: How Judaism and Christianity Shaped Each Other (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012), 127ff.
42. On the development of this narrative, see Schäfer, The Origins of Jewish Mysticism, 196ff.
43. For the most comprehensive analysis with all text variations, see Menahem Kister, “Metatron, God, and the ‘Two Powers’: The Dynamics of Tradition, Exegesis, and Polemic,” Tarbiz 82 (2013–14): 63ff. (Hebr.).
44. “To sit down” or “to be seated” is missing in the otherwise important manuscript Munich 95, but this is obviously a scribal error, or more specifically a haplography (omission in writing of one of two adjacent and similar words)—in this case, lemetav (to sit) and lemikhtav (to write).
45. “No standing” in most manuscripts. See David Halperin, The Merkabah in Rabbinic Literature (New Haven, CT: American Oriental Society, 1980), 167 with note 84.
46. “No jealousy” (qin’ah) in most manuscripts. See Halperin, The Merkabah in Rabbinic Literature, ibid. with note 88.
47. On this in detail, see Kister, “Metatron,” 65ff. Kister (68) introduces the subtle difference between “text-based truth” and “tradition-based truth”: the text must be accepted as it is and may not be carelessly emended. Nevertheless, the message of the text can stand in contrast to the traditional wording. As much as I agree with Kister in the matter itself, this distinction is dangerous because it can of course be easily misused.
48. For example, in Boyarin, “Metatron,” 41ff.
49. I disagree here with Boyarin (“Metatron,” 41–42), who wrongly criticizes Alexander: “His [Alexander’s] interpretation of the conflict or competition as between different angels and not as rivalry with God quite misses the point in my opinion (41n58).”
50. It is no longer possible to reconstruct how the “no standing” came to be included in the original tradition.
51. According to Ezekiel 1:7, the legs of the four creatures that carry God’s throne are straight; that is, they have no knee joints. See Genesis Rabbah 65:21, where an interpretation from Daniel 7:16 is added.
52. See H. S. Horovitz, ed., Sifre Numeri, §42, 47; M. Higger, ed., Tractate Derekh Eretz, chap. 8, 120. Pace Boyarin (“Metatron,” 42n61), the absence of jealousy has nothing to do with the fact that God is a jealous God, and that in this respect too, the angels are distinct from God.
53. This is obviously also derived from Ezekiel (1:9), where it is said of the four creatures that they do not turn as they move, always moving straight ahead in the direction of their faces. See also Genesis Rabbah 49:7. The back has nothing to do with God’s back in Exodus 33:23 (pace Boyarin, “Metatron,” 42).
54. Because they are not mortal as humans are, and not because God had to rest on the seventh day (Boyarin, “Metatron,” 42n61). Kister (“Metatron,” 66n120) refers to the parallel Tractate Derekh Eretz (292–93), where the inability of the angels to procreate (Hebr. ribbui) is also mentioned—one of the possible meanings of the root ‘pp in Syriac. I find this, however, far-fetched.
55. Triggered especially by the seminal article by Philip S. Alexander, “3 Enoch and the Talmud,” JSJ 18 (1987): 54ff. The most recent comprehensive contribution (up to now) is Boyarin, “Metatron,” 44ff.
56. See also Kister, “Metatron,” 60–61 with note 90.
57. As expressly mentioned also in Kister, “Metatron,” 69–70.
58. Grossberg, “Between 3 Enoch and Bavli Hagigah.”
59. Grossberg correctly notes that only at the very end of the narrative—namely, when encountering the prostitute—is Elisha referred to as “Aher.”
60. b Bava Metzia 59b.
61. Schäfer, Schlüter, and von Mutius, Synopse zur Hekhalot-Literatur, §597 (only in MSS Oxford 1531 and New York 8128; the translation follows MS Oxford). In the following, I summarize my observations presented in The Jewish Jesus, 131–38.
62. Literally, “paradise”; here this refers to the highest of the seven heavens or palaces.
63. Literally, “with which the humans compare.”
64. From the root katar (to crown) or keter (crown), apparently meaning the angel who is crowned.
65. This is also stated in Kister, “Metatron,” 61. Yet Kister then reads the message of the 3 Enoch and Bavli version into this text.
66. “Unexpected” against the background of the 3 Enoch and Bavli version.
67. Kister, “Metatron,” 61n93.
68. Ibidem.
69. The tenor of his argument is a case of Roma locuta, causa finita (Rome has spoken, the case is closed), as is unfortunately often the case with Kister’s remarks.
70. b Berakhot 7a.
71. This means: that I do not go to the extreme and follow the law strictly.
72. Second generation of the Babylonian Amoraim and a student of Rav.
73. The Hebrew word barakh (“bless” and “praise”) means here more specifically “recite a blessing” in the sense of composing a prayer.
74. As expressed also in Kister, “Metatron,” 61n94.
75. The fact that both here and in “The Mysteries of Sandelfon” Akatriel carries the epithet YH (a form of the tetragrammaton YHWH) is not significant, as particularly high angels in the Hekhalot literature also carry this epithet.
76. b Sanhedrin 38b. For a discussion of this text, see Schäfer, Die Geburt des Judentums, 97ff.; idem, The Jewish Jesus, 104ff. Here I will again limit myself to the most significant points and a discussion of the secondary literature that has since been published. For the most comprehensive analysis to date, see Kister, “Metatron,” 75ff.
77. And not, as Lazarus Goldschmidt [Der Babylonische Talmud, vol. 8, Baba Bathra / Synhedrin (repr., Berlin: Jüdischer Verlag, 1967), 611] and others suggest, “This said Metatron,” in the sense of “And unto Moses he [Metatron] said: Come up to the Lord (YHWH).” This is improbable both linguistically and in terms of subject matter: zehu Metatron means “this is Metatron” and not “this said Metatron,” and as regards our subject, it is precisely the identity of their names (God and Metatron have the same name) that is the key here.
78. Literally, “do not exchange me for him.”
79. Parwanqa is a Persian loanword, derived from the Middle Iranian parwānak (Middle Persian parwānag); it means “guide, messenger, precursor.” See Michael Sokoloff, A Dictionary of Jewish Babylonian Aramaic of the Talmudic and Geonic Periods (Ramat-Gan: Bar Ilan University Press; Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002), 929.
80. Literally, “if your face goes not.”
81. b Sanhedrin 38b. See Schäfer, The Jewish Jesus, 38.
82. Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho, 56:23; see also 60:2.
83. Or, “do not defy him!”
84. This is also the interpretation of Exodus 33:14–15 in the Septuagint, which translates the “face” (see above, n. 80) unequivocally with autos (you yourself).
85. From the context, this clearly refers to God.
86. Despite Joseph Dan’s attempts to confirm this. Joseph Dan, The Ancient Jewish Mysticism (Tel Aviv: MOD Books, 1993), 109–10.
87. Apocalypse of Abraham 10:3 and 8. R. Rubinkiewicz, “Apocalypse of Abraham,” in The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, ed. James H. Charlesworth (New York: Doubleday, 1983), 1:693–94.
88. Iao/Iaho is the Greek form of the Hebrew YHWH.
89. Peter Schäfer and Klaus Herrmann, Übersetzung der Hekhalot-Literatur (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1995), 1:lii. On this in detail, see Kister, “Metatron,” 76.
90. As early as Philo (De Agricultura, 51), the angel in Exodus 23:20 is interpreted as the “Logos and firstborn son,” which of course opened the door to Christological speculations.
91. Kister, “Metatron,” 84ff.
92. Peter Schäfer, Geniza-Fragmente zur Hekhalot-Literatur (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1984), 132 (T.-S. K 21:95.J, fol. 1a, lines 1–17).
93. Kister (“Metatron,” 80n219) correctly indicates that eresh is not a miswritten form of ro’sh, as I had erroneously assumed, but instead common in liturgical poetry (piyyut), meaning something like “speech.” More appropriate here is perhaps “meditation, devotion.” See Marcus Jastrow, A Dictionary of the Targumim, the Talmud Babli and Yerushalmi, and the Midrashic Literature (New York: Pardes, 1950), 1:126.
94. Literally, “Beware of his face,” that is, of him.
95. The following line of text is indented here—that is, the scribe wanted to indicate a break in the text.
96. Literally, “he is mistaken.”
97. Schäfer, Geniza-Fragmente, 131.
98. Kister (“Metatron,” 39) correctly refers to it as “bold.”
99. Schäfer, Geniza-Fragmente, 176–79 (T.-S. K 21.95.A, fol. 2a, line 22 to fol. 2b, line 2).
100. Followed by explanations of the three names.
101. In the sense of “from this point of reference.”
102. The text is to be corrected as “yelekh,” as in Kister, “Metatron,” 84.
103. As is common, the tetragrammaton YHWH is rendered here as “the Lord,” though more precisely “the Lord God” is meant.
104. There is a gap in the text. The missing word could be mal’akh (angel).
105. Schäfer, Geniza-Fragmente, 171.
106. Literally, perhaps something like “arguing/deciding/interceding spirit.” Apart from the Hekhalot literature, it is mentioned only in the Babylonian Talmud. See b Sanhedrin 44b, where he argues with God.
107. Schäfer and Herrmann, Übersetzung der Hekhalot-Literatur, vol. 1, §76.
108. The reference to Job 1:7 (see Schäfer, Geniza-Fragmente, 180, on fol. 2a/28) is correct, but in our context this can only be referring to Zechariah 3:2, as Kister (“Metatron,” 84f.) correctly recognized.
109. Of course, only a fool would propose that the attribution of these verses to Rabbi Yehoshua was influenced by the High Priest Yehoshua.
110. This is also the case in the unified German translation, which renders the verse as follows, without any additional commentary: “The angel of the Lord said to Satan.”
112. Kister, “Metatron,” 82ff.
113. And it sometimes even contradicts Kister’s own (astute and correct) analysis.