The Jewish Annotated New Testament (154 page)

In rabbinic and mystical literature, the angel Metatron is identified as the
sar ha-panim
, the Prince of the (divine) Presence. He is the angel next to God in power and authority. In the later mystical work
3 Enoch
(dated to the sixth century ce), Metatron is identified with the translated Enoch (who in Gen 5.24 “walked with God and then was not, for God took him”). When Enoch enters the divine realm, he is challenged by the angels, but God takes him then and transforms him into an enormous fiery heavenly being with many wings and eyes whose status is higher than any of the other angels. In the third- or fourth-century CE rabbinic story of the four who entered the
pardes
(paradise), Elisha ben Avuyah (a second-century tannaitic rabbi) sees Metatron sitting in judgment of the world and cries out that there are “two powers” in the heavenly realm. For this statement the rabbinic story judged him a heretic; this indicates that any approach to teachings that could be seen as analogous to Christian doctrine were viewed negatively by some rabbinic authors.

YHWH can also be manifested in other forms, for example as the pillar of cloud or fire that led the Israelites in the desert (see, e.g., Ex 13.21–22). In Ex 16.10 the glory (Heb
kavod
) of the Lord appeared in the cloud to the people. The glory (
kavod
), seated on the divine throne, has a close relationship to the divine essence, and it is depicted especially in Priestly and related literature. In Ezekiel 1, the
kavod
is anthropomorphic, as the prophet sees their “appearance: they were of human form” (1.5) on the throne, which is the “appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord” (1.28). Daniel 10.5–6 depicts a similar figure:

a man clothed in linen, with a belt of gold from Uphaz around his waist. His body was like beryl, his face like lightning, his eyes like flaming torches, his arms and legs like the gleam of burnished bronze, and the sound of his words like the roar of a multitude.

He may be identified as the angel Gabriel, who also appears in Daniel 8.15–26; 9.21. Named angels appear only in the book of Daniel and postbiblical books (for example, the angel Raphael is an important character in the book of Tobit). Michael is Israel’s protector (Dan 12.1). Soon after the period in which Daniel was written (second century BCE), the number of angels, including named angels, proliferated in many Jewish sources.

One important role of angels in both the Tanakh and the New Testament is to announce to certain women that they will give birth to important sons. Along with the three “men” who announced that Sarah would have a son (Gen 18), the angel of the Lord informs Hagar, Abraham’s second wife, that she will have a son whom she should name Ishmael (Gen 16.11). In Judges 13.3, an angel of the Lord appears to the wife of Manaoh and announces to her that she will “conceive and bear a son” (Samson); some later readers even believe that this angel impregnated her (see Gen 6.1–4). In Lk 1.11 “an angel of the Lord” appears in the Temple to the priest Zechariah to tell him that his wife will bear a son (John the Baptist). The angel is Gabriel (Lk 1.19), “who stand[s] in the presence of God.” Gabriel also tells Mary that she will bear a child, whom she will name Jesus (Lk 1.31).

A very significant figure for developing messianic views appears in Daniel 7.9–14. Daniel sees that “thrones were set in place, and an Ancient One (lit., “Ancient of Days,” a name for God) took his throne.” Daniel then sees “one like a human being (lit., ‘son of man’) coming with the clouds of heaven,” who came to the “Ancient One and was presented before him.” (In Hebrew and Aramaic, “son” may refer to a biological male child, or to a member of a class, and thus the translations “son of man” and “human being” are both possible.) To him was given “dominion and glory and kingship, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him.” This text distinguishes between “the son of man/the one like a human being” and God. Most early Jewish and Christian interpreters identified the “son of man” as the messiah. A first-century CE pseudepigraphic Jewish work, the
Similitudes of Enoch
, further developed the image of the “one like a human being” of Daniel 7, depicting him as a messianic figure who existed before the world was created: “even before the sun and the constellations were created, before the stars of heaven were made, his name was named before the Lord of Spirits” (
1 En
. 48.3) and: “from the beginning the Son of Man was hidden, and the Most High kept him in the presence of his power and revealed him only to the chosen” (62.8). Modern scholars disagree with the ancient interpretation, arguing that Daniel displays no interest in the Davidic dynasty and would not have applied the term “messiah” to the “one like a human being.” For Daniel, this figure was likely a divine being subordinate to YHWH, perhaps Michael, the leader of the heavenly host of angels, who is called “the great prince, the protector of your people” (Dan 12.1).

The New Testament uses the term “Son of Man” in various ways. It is Jesus’ preferred self-designation; sometimes he uses it to refer, cryptically, to an eschatological heavenly judge and advocate. For example, when Jesus heals a man who is paralyzed, he says to the skeptical scribes who question his actions (Mk 2.9–11),

“Which is easier, to say to the paralytic, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Stand up and take your mat and walk?’ But so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins”—he said to the paralytic—“I say to you, stand up, take your mat, and go to your home.”

Here, he identifies himself with the Son of Man who has the divine authority to forgive sins. In Mk 14.61–62, the high priest asks him, “Are you the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed One?” Jesus answers by saying, “I am; and ‘you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of the Power,’ and ‘coming with the clouds of heaven.’” (Parallels in Mt 26.64 and Lk 22.70 have Jesus say, “You say [that I am]” in response to the question.) Jesus here quotes from Daniel 7.13, implying that his future role will be as ruler, seated at the right hand of God. John’s Gospel uses “Son of Man” twice in sayings of Jesus to refer to the preexistent Christ: see Jn 3.13: “No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man.” Eventually, in Christian usage, the title “son of man” for Jesus was replaced by the title “son of God.”

Later Jewish rabbinic and mystical literature continued to develop earlier concepts about angels and lesser divine beings, ranging from the midrashic idea that God consulted the ministering angels when deciding whether to create human beings, to the portrayal in early mystical texts of a vast host of angels, organized in a hierarchy, who are responsible for all aspects of the world. Postbiblical Christian writers also continued to elaborate ideas about angels. In the early sixth century ce, a Christian writer known as Pseudo-Dionysius wrote
The Celestial Hierarchy
, which presented the angels in a threefold hierarchy, using terms known both from Tanakh and the New Testament. The highest order included seraphim, cherubim, and thrones; the second order consisted of dominions, authorities, and powers; the third order encompassed principalities, archangels, and angels. In the Middle Ages, the Jewish philosopher Maimonides also organized the angels into a hierarchy containing ten levels.

LOGOS
, A JEWISH WORD
JOHN’S PROLOGUE AS MIDRASH

Daniel Boyarin

In the first centuries of the Christian era, the idea of the Word (Gk
Logos
) was known in some Greek philosophical circles as a link connecting the Transcendent/the Divine with humanity/the terrestrial. For Jews, the idea of this link between heaven and earth, whether called by the Greek
Logos
or
Sophia
(“wisdom”) or by the Aramaic
Memra
(“word”), permeated first- and second-century thought. Although monotheistic, Jews nevertheless recognized other supernatural beings who communicated the divine will. The use of the
Logos
in John’s Gospel (“In the Beginning was the Word/
Logos
, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” [Jn 1.1]) is thus a thoroughly Jewish usage. It is even possible that the beginning of the idea of the Trinity occurred precisely in pre-Christian Jewish accounts of the second and visible God that we find in many early Jewish writings.

Philo, writing in first-century CE Alexandria for an audience of Jews devoted to the Bible, uses the idea of the
Logos
as if it were a commonplace. His writings make apparent that at least for some pre-Christian Judaism, there was nothing strange about a doctrine of a manifestation of God, even as a “second God”; the
Logos
did not conflict with Philo’s idea of monotheism.

Philo and his Alexandrian Jewish community would have found the “Word of God” frequently in the Septuagint (LXX), where it creates, reveals, and redeems. For example, speaking of the exodus, Philo writes:

whereas the voice of mortals is judged by hearing, the sacred oracles intimate that the
words of God
(
logoi
, the plural) are seen as light is seen, for we are told that
all of the people saw the Voice
[Ex 20.18], not that they heard it; for what was happening was not an impact of air made by the organs of mouth and tongue, but the radiating splendor of virtue indistinguishable from a fountain of reason … But the voice of God which is not that of verbs and names yet seen by the eye of the soul, he [Moses] rightly introduces as “visible.” (
Migr
. 47–48)

This text draws a close connection between the
Logos
and light, as in John 1.4–5: “In him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.”

Further, for Philo as for the Gospel of John, the
Logos
is both a part of God and also a separate being:

To His Word (
Logos
), His chief messenger (
archangelos
), highest in age and honor, the Father (
Pater
) of all has given the special prerogative, to stand on the border and separate the creature from the Creator. This same [i.e., the Word] both pleads with the immortal as suppliant for afflicted mortality and acts as ambassador of the ruler to the subject. He glories in this prerogative and proudly proclaims, “and I stood between the LORD and you” [Deut 5.5], that is neither uncreated by God, nor created as you, but midway between the two extremes, a surety to both sides. (
Heir
205–6)

Philo oscillates on the point of the ambiguity between separate existence of the
Logos
, God’s Son, and its total incorporation within the godhead. Philo’s
Logos
is neither just the Wisdom (Gk
sophia
; Heb
ḥ
okhmah
) of the Bible, nor is it quite the Platonic
logos
, nor the divine Word (Heb
davar
), but a new synthesis of all of these.

Although this particular synthesis is as far as we know original to Philo, he develops it, as is his wont, by biblical allegories:

The Divine Word (
Theios Logos
) descends from the fountain of wisdom (
Sophia
) like a river to lave and water the olympian and celestial shoots and plants of virtue-loving souls which are as a garden. And this Holy Word (
Hieros Logos
) is separated into four heads, which means that it is split up into the four virtues … It is this Word (
Logos
) which one of Moses’ company compared to a river, when he said in the Psalms: “the river of God is full of water” (Ps 65.10); where surely it were absurd to use that word literally with reference to rivers of the earth. Instead, as it seems, he represents the Divine Word (
Theios Logos
) as full of the stream of wisdom (
Sophia
), with no part empty or devoid of itself … inundated through and through and lifted up on high by the continuity and unbroken sequence from that ever-flowing fountain. (
Dreams
2.242–45)

Other versions of
Logos
theology, namely notions of the second god as personified Word or Wisdom of God, were present among Aramaic-, Hebrew-, and Syriac-speaking Jews as well. Hints of this idea appear in Jewish texts that are part of the Bible such as Proverbs 8.22–31, Job 28.12–28, as well as those not in the Hebrew Bible (but included in the Apocryphal/Deuterocanonical books): Sirach 24.1–34, Wisdom of Solomon 7.22–10.21, and Baruch 3.9–4.4. Especially common is the Aramaic word
Memra
(“Word”) of God, appearing in the Targumim, the early Aramaic translations and paraphrases of the Bible (e.g.,
Targum Onqelos
,
Targum Neofiti
), where it is used in contexts that are frequently identical to ones where the
Logos
has its home among Greek-speaking Jews.