SCHOLARS AND THE 2 POWERS IN HEAVEN

By Sam Shamoun (1, 2, 3, source)

In this post I will be citing particular scholars that acknowledge the fact that both the Hebrew Bible and early Jewish tradition affirm the existence of at least two distinct divine Powers. The second Power is variously identified as the Angel/Messenger of YHWH, the Son of Man, the Word/Wisdom of God etc. These authorities testify that this belief was widespread among various Jewish groups both before and after the time of Christ. The scholars I cite also admit the early Christians identified Christ as the human enfleshment, incarnation of this second divine Power. All emphasis will be mine.   

ALAN F. SEGAL

One of the leading scholars in this field of study was the late Alan F. Segal. Segal noted that the rabbinic traditions indicate that their earliest so-called opponents, whom they deemed heretics, believed there were to Divine figures reigning in/from heaven:

“believed in two complimentary powers in heaven while only later could heretics be shown to believe in two opposing powers in heaven. The extra-rabbinic evidence allowed the conclusion that the traditions were earlier than the first century. Furthermore, in the literature, it was possible to define a number of dangerous scriptural interpretations central to the heresy and show how the rabbis countered them by bringing in other scriptural which unambiguously stated God’s unity. From this evidence it became clear that the basic heresy involved interpreting scripture to say that a principal angelic or hypostatic manifestation in heaven was equivalent to God. This heresy was combated by the rabbis with verses from Deuteronomy and Isaiah which emphasized God’s unity.” (Segal, Two Powers in Heaven – Early Rabbinic Reports about Christianity and Gnosticism [Brill Academic Publishers, Inc., Boston – Leiden, 2002], Preface, p. x; emphasis mine)

Segal’s findings show that this belief in a second Divine Power in heaven alongside God is a view that was embraced by certain Jews even before the time of Christ:

“… It became clear that ‘two powers in heaven’ was A VERY EARLY CATEGORY OF HERESY, EARLIER THAN JESUS, if Philo is a trustworthy witness, and one of the basic categories by which the rabbis perceived the new phenomenon of Christianity. It was one of the central issues over which the two religions separated… (Ibid., p. ix; capital emphasis mine)

In fact, it was only at a later date, sometime during the second century AD, that the rabbis anathematized anyone holding this position since they saw it as a threat to their strict monotheistic beliefs, a belief which did not necessarily reflect biblical teaching, just as the Scriptures which the “heretics” quoted demonstrated.

And yet other Jews such as Philo obviously didn’t see any problem believing in a second Divine Power with their commitment to monotheism.

Segal also provides the list of OT verses which the “heretics” were using to support their case, and which the later rabbis had great difficulty addressing and dealing with (cf. Genesis 1:26; 11:7; 19:24; 35:7; Exodus 15:3; 23:20-21; 24:10; Deuteronomy 4:7; Joshua 22:22; 24:19; 2 Samuel 7:23; Psalm 50:1; Daniel 7:9-10, 13-14). These passages posed great difficulties for the rabbis who wanted to insist upon and impose a very strict unitarian conception of God, in order to combat those whom they deemed to be heretics for believing that there were two coequal Divine Powers in heaven. For the details on how and why these specific texts proved quite damaging to the rabbinic case we highly recommend Segal’s book since it is the standard work on this issue.

Segal, quotes and comments on the rabbinic traditions which mention these problematic texts:

PASSAGE 8

Tanhuma Kadoshim4 (Buber, 37a) 2

Another interpretation: Say to the whole congregation of the Children of Israel “You shall be holy for I am Holy”. (Lev. 19:2) The Holy One Blessed Be He told them “Be holy for I am Holy in every matter. Look at what is written: ‘For God is Holy (pl.)’” (Josh. 24:19). What is the meaning of “For God is Holy?” This verse gave an opportunity to the heretics for it appeared like two powers. The heretics asked R. Simlai about “For the Lord is Holy (pl.)” – “You yourselves don’t say that He is one power, rather there are two powers.” He said to them “What fools the world contains! Look at what is written: ‘For He is a Holy God.’ If it had said ‘They are Holy Gods,’ you might have thought there were two powers.” – sefaria.org

This passage is recorded in Tanhuma, a later document which is sometimes believed to contain ancient traditions… These heretical arguments were seen to be of the same type by the rabbis, confirming what we already know–that “two powers” had become a conventional term for a variety of heresies whenever scripture could be interpreted to imply plural forms for divinity. Here the argument seems to be confined to grammatical plurals.

However, there is nothing in the traditions to indicate that the heretics themselves would have argued solely from plural grammar. Wherever we know that a scriptural passage was used by heretics, the arguments of the heretics were much more complicated.

The most complete version of this particular tradition is found in b. Sanhedrin 38b where almost all of this type of dangerous scriptural passages were brought together.

R. Yohanan said: in all the passages which the minim have taken (as grounds) for their heresy, their refutation is found near at hand. Thus: let us make man in our image (Gen. 1:26) – and God created (sing) man in His own image (ibid., 27); Come, let us go down their confound their language (Gen. 11:7) – and the Lord came down (sing) to see the city and tower (ibid., 5). Because there were revealed (Gen. 35:7) to him, God. Unto God who answers men in the day of my distress (ibid., 3); For what great nation is there that has God so nigh (pl.) unto it, as the Lord our God is (unto us) whenever we call upon Him (Dt. 4:7). And what one nation in the earth is like Thy people, like Israel whom God went (pl.) to redeem for a people unto Himself (sing.) (2 Sam. 7:23). ‘Til thrones were placed and [one that was] the ancient of days did sit (Dan. 7:9).

… A grammatical plural form in scripture is used by heretics to demonstrate duality or plurality in the deity. The rabbi suggests that the remedy to the heresy, always a grammatical singular, invariably occurs close to the plurals, proving the heretical doctrine wrong. Some of the dangerous scriptures must reflect real arguments between orthodox and heretical communities, but other passages may have been added purely by analogy, as the tradition grew. More importantly, we have no evidence that any actual heretical argument took the form in which it is reported. While the heretics might have used the passage, their beliefs were no doubt more sophisticated than the rabbis reported. (Segal, Part Two. The Early Rabbinic Evidence, Chapter Eight. How Many Powers Created the World?, pp. 121-123)

One of the texts that the rabbis had a difficult time with is Daniel 7:9-10. There, the prophet Daniel speaks of thrones in the plural, one of which God sat on who is described here as the Ancient of the Days. According to certain rabbis the other throne was for the Davidic Messiah, called David in the rabbinic literature. Yet other rabbis could see the problem this created for their position since this meant that the Messiah sat enthroned alongside God in heaven, and was therefore a second Power or Divinity besides God.

Segal explains:

“One passage says: His throne was fiery flames (Dan. 7:9) and another says: and thrones were placed; and One that was ancient of days did sit–there is no contradiction; One (throne) for Him and one for David: this is the view of R. Akiba. Said R. Yosi the Galilean to him: Akiba, how long will you treat the divine presence as profane! Rather, one for justice and one for grace. Did he accept (this explanation) from him, or did he not accept it?–come and hear: One for justice and one for grace; this is the view of R. Akiba.21

These two rabbis were perplexed by the seeming contradiction in the verses. In one place, more than one throne is indicated by the plural form of the noun. In another place “His (God’s) throne was fiery flames” implies only one throne. Does this mean that the ‘son of man’ in the next verse was enthroned next to God? Rabbi Akiba (110-135 C.E.) affirms the possibility, stating that the other throne was for David. Akiba must be identifying the ‘son of man’ with the Davidic messiah. Nor was R. Akiba alone in the rabbinic movement in identifying the figure in heaven as the messiah. There is some evidence that Judaism contained other traditions linking these verses in Daniel with the messiah.” (Segal, Part Two. The Early Rabbinic Evidence, Chapter Two. Conflicting Appearances of God, pp. 47-48)

21. b. Hag. 14a Tr. Epstein. Cf. also b. Sanhedrin 38a where other rabbis are said to oppose R. Akiba… (Ibid., p. 47; emphasis mine)

And:

“… R. Hiyya b. Abba answers in Aramaic, rather than in Hebrew, that if a heretic says that there are ‘two gods’ based on Dan. 7:9f., one is to remind him that God stated that He is the same at the Sea and at Sina…” (Ibid., p. 42; emphasis mine)

PETER SCHAFER

Schäfer is the Ronald O. Perelman Professor of Judaic Studies and Professor of Religion. His teaching and research interests have focused on Jewish History in Late Antiquity, the religion and literature of Rabbinic Judaism, Jewish Mysticism, 19th and 20th century Wissenschaft des Judentums, and Jewish Magic. In 1994 he was awarded the German Leibniz Prize, in 2006 the Mellon Distinguished Achievement Award, and in 2013 the Howard T. Behrman Award for Distinguished Achievement in the Humanities. His latest books are: Zwei Götter im Himmel: Gottesvorstellungen in der jüdischen Antike, München: Beck, 2017; The Jewish Jesus: How Judaism and Christianity Shaped Each Other, Princeton University Press, 2012; Die Geburt des Judentums aus dem Geist des Christentums, Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010; Origins of Jewish Mysticism, Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2009, and Princeton University Press, 2011. He retired in June, 2013, and in September, 2014, he was appointed Director of the Jewish Museum Berlin, Germany

I cite from the introduction to Schafer’s book dedicated to this widespread early Jewish belief regarding the existence of two divine Powers in heaven:

Among the most popular clichés not only in Jewish and Christian theology but also in popular religious belief is the assumption that Judaism is the classic religion of monotheism, and if Judaism did not in fact invent monotheism, then it at least ultimately asserted it.1 Nothing summarizes this basic assumption better than the affirmation in Deuteronomy 6:4: “Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord is one.” As the Shema‘ Yisrael, it became the solemn daily prayer, with which many Jewish martyrs went to their death. Christianity, as this narrative continues, adopted this Jewish monotheism, but quickly expanded it with the idea of the incarnation of God’s son, the Logos, and finally watered it down entirely with the doctrine of three divine persons, the Trinity. In this view, Judaism was thus compelled to limit itself even more to the abstract concept of the one and only God. This God could then easily degenerate into the caricature of the Old Covenant’s God, who receded ever farther into the distance and against whom the message of the New Covenant could set itself apart with all the more radiance. Judaism, according to this narrative, had no alternative but to assume its assigned role, as there was never a serious, much less balanced dialogue between mother and daughter religion.

We know today that pretty much none of this ideal picture stands up to historical review.2 Some potential objections have meanwhile become generally accepted, while others are still extremely controversial and the subject of heated discussion. With respect to biblical monotheism, today it can be read in all the related handbooks that this tends to be an ideal type in religious history rather than a historically verifiable reality.3 The term “monotheism” is a modern coinage, first documented in 1660 by the English philosopher Henry More, who used it to characterize the ideal pinnacle of faith in God. Well into the twentieth century the term continued to play a key role in two opposing models of development of religions: either monotheism was considered the unsurpassable end point in a long chain of religions, which at the dawn of time began with all kinds of “primitive” forms, in order then to be spiritualized in increasingly “pure” forms (the evolutionary model), or on the contrary, it was the original ideal form of religion, which over time continued to degenerate and ultimately lost itself in polytheistic diversity (the decadence model). Both models have long since become obsolete in religious history. Monotheism is neither at the beginning of “religion” nor does it represent the final apex of a linear development. What makes more sense is a dynamic model that dispenses with value judgments, and moves between the two poles of “monotheism” and “polytheism,” including numerous configurations and combinations that crystallized at different times and in different geographic regions.

This also means that Jewish monotheism was not “achieved” at a certain point in time in the history of the Hebrew Bible,* in order thereafter only to be defended against attacks from “the outside.” This linear developmental model is also outdated. Bible scholars today paint a multifaceted picture of the idea of God in ancient Israel, in which various gods stand side by side and compete with one another. Israel’s own God YHWH** had to assert himself not only against numerous powerful spirits and demons but especially also against the deities of the Ugaritic and Canaanite pantheon, headed by the old god El and his subordinate, the young war god Ba‘al. The strategy of the authors and editors of the Hebrew Bible to let competing gods be subsumed in YHWH was not always successful.4 Ba‘al worshippers proved to be particularly resistant to this, as shown by the confrontation of the prophet Elijah against the cult of Ba‘al, as demanded by King Ahab in the ninth century BCE (1 Kings 18). The prophet Hosea still felt compelled in the eighth century BCE to take action against the Ba‘al worship at the land’s high places (Hos. 2).

The ideal of biblical monotheism becomes utterly problematic if we take into account how easily a consort was long associated with the biblical God. The inscriptions of Kuntillet Ajrud near the road from Gaza to Eilat, from the time of the Kingdom of Judah, mention YHWH as the God of Israel together with his Asherah.5 This Asherah is a well-known Canaanite goddess, also documented in the Bible as the wife of Ba‘al (1 Kings 18:19). Her cultic image was worshipped in the Kingdoms of Judah and Israel, and was even displayed by King Manasseh in the YHWH Temple in Jerusalem.6 The biblical narratives that report triumphantly of the successful destruction of these idols cannot conceal the fact that this cult continued to be widespread, and was revived time and again. Even regarding the fifth century BCE, we hear of Jewish mercenaries who settled in the Egyptian border fortress Elephantine and not only built their own temple there (despite the allegedly one-and-only sanctuary in Jerusalem) but in addition to their God Yahu (YHW), also worshipped two goddesses and this continued for more than two hundred years without the Temple congregation in Jerusalem being able or inclined to take action against it.

The conflict between a theology that wished to acknowledge only YHWH as God and a religious tradition with many goddesses and gods came to a head in the crisis triggered by the Babylonian exile. While the “angel of the Lord” (Exod. 23:20–33), who is in competition with YHWH and would play a large role in rabbinic commentaries, has been placed by Bible scholarship in an earlier layer in the Hebrew Bible, the indefinite plural in the first story of creation—“Then God said, ‘Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness” (Gen. 1:26)—is part of the priestly account, which was probably written during the exile. For this reason, the priestly account of creation may well imply a “monotheistic confession,”7 despite the use of a plural from the mouth of the same God, but this confession, as the rabbis experienced during the confrontation with their Christian, Gnostic, or also inner-Jewish opponents, was anything but uncontested. The same is true for the apocalyptic as well as the wisdom literature of postexilic Judaism of the Second Temple, both belonging to the canonical and especially also noncanonical literature, which will be the subject of the first part of this book. This is not simply a matter of an angelology, which places itself, as a “buffer” as it were, between the ostensible “distance of a God becoming increasingly transcendent” and his earthly people, Israel,8 yet more directly and tangibly, it is about the return of not many but at least two gods in the Jewish heaven.

No less problematic about the ideal picture sketched above are the roles assigned to Christianity and the rabbinic Judaism* that was becoming established at the same time. There is no doubt that the Christianity of the New Testament and the early church fathers of the first centuries CE adopted Jewish monotheism however, it was not a “pure” monotheism matured to eternal perfection but rather the “monotheism” that had developed in the postexilic period in the later canonical literature of the Hebrew Bible and noncanonical writings, the so-called apocrypha** and pseudepigrapha.* The New Testament took up these traditions that existed in Judaism, and did not reinvent but instead expanded and deepened them. The elevation of Jesus of Nazareth as the firstborn before all creation, the God incarnate, Son of God, Son of Man, the Messiah: all these basic Christological premises ARE NOT PAGAN or other kinds of aberrations; THEY ARE ROOTED IN SECOND TEMPLE JUDAISM, regardless of their specifically Christian character. This is not changed by the fact that the divine duality of father and son led, far beyond the New Testament, to the Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, which would then be codified in the First Councils of Nicaea (325 CE) and Constantinople (381 CE).

The Christological and then also the Trinitarian intensification of the concept of God in Christianity by no means implies that rabbinic Judaism forgot or repressed its own roots in Second Temple Judaism. Quite to the contrary. Recent research shows with increasing clarity that the Judaism of the first century CE did not ossify in lonely isolation and self-sufficiency; rather, only through constant discourse with the evolving Christianity did it become what we refer to today as rabbinic Judaism and the Judaism of early Jewish mysticism. Just as Christianity emerged through recourse to and controversy with Judaism, so too the Judaism of the period following the destruction of the Second Temple was not a Judaism identical to that of its early precursors but instead developed in dialogue and controversy with Christianity. Therefore, I prefer to define the relationship between Judaism and Christianity not as linear from the mother to the daughter religion but rather as a dynamic, lively exchange between two sister religions—a process in which the delimitation tendencies steadily grew, leading ultimately to the separation of the two religions. The second part of this book is devoted to this dialectic process of exchange and delimitation…

The title of this examination, Two Gods in Heaven, is pointedly based on the rabbinic phrase “two powers in heaven” (shetei rashuyyot), which clearly implies two divine authorities side by side. This does not refer to two gods who fight each other in a dualistic sense (“good god” versus “evil god”), as we are familiar with primarily from Gnosticism, but rather two gods who rule side by side and together—in different degrees of agreement and correlation. Scholarship has developed the term “binitarian” to describe this juxtaposition of two powers or gods, analogous to the term “trinitarian” associated with Christian dogma.9

The theme of two divine authorities in the Jewish heaven is not new. Almost all pertinent studies follow the key rabbinic concept of “two powers,” concentrating on the period of classical rabbinic Judaism. After the pioneering work of R. Travers Herford, the revised dissertation of Alan Segal, Two Powers in Heaven, is considered a milestone in more recent research.10 Despite their indisputable merits, however, both works set out from the premise that the rabbis, in their polemics against “two powers,” were referring to clearly identifiable “heretic sects” that were beginning to break off from “orthodox” Judaism. For Herford, it was overwhelmingly Christianity that incurred the wrath of the rabbis, whereas Segal attempted to address an entire spectrum of pagans, Christians, Jewish Christians, and Gnostics. But ultimately, even Segal’s Two Powers in Heaven remains caught in the methodological straitjacket of dogmatically established “religions” that defended themselves against “sects” and “heresies.”…

Early Judaism—that is, the period prior to rabbinic Judaism and the New Testament—has up to now been examined predominantly by Christian New Testament scholars. With his seminal contribution on the Son of God, Martin Hengel opened up an entire field of research that has since gained considerable influence especially in Anglo-Saxon research under the heading of “High Christology.”15 “High Christology” is understood as referring to the Christology of the New Testament that specifically addresses the divinity of Jesus, in contrast to “Low Christology,” which is primarily concerned with Jesus’s human nature. If the writings of the New Testament—that is, long before the later dogmatic statements by the church fathers—already speak of the idea of Jesus’s divinity and his being worshipped as a second God next to God the Father (which is generally affirmed), how does this relate to the supposed biblical and early Jewish monotheism?

Diverse research literature has meanwhile emerged on this, covering the range between these two poles:16 from, on the one hand, advocates of an exclusive monotheism who view early Judaism as bearing witness only to a strict belief in the one and only God, through, on the other hand, all possible stages of an inclusive and fluid monotheism up to authors who recognize authentic early Judaism in the idea of two Gods side by side.17 The assessment of the divinity of Jesus then results from its relation to the varying degrees of early Jewish monotheism: almost all authors, including the exclusive monotheists, meanwhile concede that numerous mediator figures (angels, patriarchs, personified divine attributes, etc.) were known to early Judaism, but they remain at the level of divine agents and do not explain the undisputed divinity of Jesus. The latter results, as Larry Hurtado has stated with particular emphasis, exclusively from the cultic worship and veneration of Jesus, which is what comprises the “binitarian mutation” in Jewish monotheism that is characteristic of early Christianity. According to Richard Bauckham, a contemporary ally of Hurtado, the ostensibly strict early Jewish monotheism can only be overcome when Jesus becomes identical with the one and only Jewish God.18 The messiah Jesus is not a second semidivine figure but instead God himself. This is without doubt the most radical deduction from an extreme Jewish monotheism.19 (Schäfer, Two Gods in Heaven: Jewish Concepts of God in Antiquity [Princeton University Press, 2020], Introduction: One God?, pp. 1-8)

BART D. EHRMAN

In giving the reason for rejecting the view of some scholars that Philippians 2:5-11 does not speak of the prehuman existence of Christ, but rather focuses on his humanity in order to contrast him with Adam, Ehrman states:

“Third, and possibly most importantly, from other passages in Paul it does indeed appear that he understands Christ to have been a preexistent divine being. One example comes from a very peculiar passage in 1 Corinthians, in which Paul is talking about how the children of Israel, after they escaped from Egypt under Moses, were fed while they spent so many years in the wilderness (as recounted in the books of Exodus and Numbers in the Hebrew Bible). According to Paul, the Israelites had enough to drink because the rock that Moses struck in order miraculously to bring forth water (Num. 20:11) followed them around in the wilderness. Wherever they went, the water-providing rock went. In fact, Paul says, ‘the rock was Christ’ (1 Cor. 10:4). Just as Christ provides life to people today when they believe in him, so too he provided life to the Israelites in the wilderness. That would not have been possible, of course, unless he existed at the time. And so for Paul, Christ was a preexistent being who was occasionally manifest on earth.

“Or take another passage, one in which Paul actually does speak of Christ as a second Adam. In 1 Corinthians, Paul contrasts Christ’s place of origin with that of Adam: ‘The first man was from the earth, and was made of dust; the second man is from heaven’ (15:47). What matters here is precisely the difference between Adam and Christ. Adam came into being in this world; Christ existed before he came into this world. He was from heaven.

“And so, the interpretation of the Philippians poem that takes it as an indication that Christ was a kind of ‘perfect Adam’ does not work, on one hand, because the passage has features that do not make sense given this interpretation. And on the other hand, this interpretation is completely unnecessary. It does not solve the problem of an Incarnational Christology–because Paul clearly says in other passages that Jesus was indeed a preexistent divine being who came into the world. That’s what this poem teaches as well.” (How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee [HarperOne, First edition 2014], 7. Jesus as God on Earth: Early Incarnation Christologies, pp. 261-262)

Ehrman further proposes that this hymn was composed in the early forties, which means that within less than ten years of Jesus’ resurrection his very own followers were already proclaiming him to be the human incarnation of the divine Angel of YHWH!

“Some scholars have had a real difficulty imagining that a poem existing before Paul’s letter to the Philippians – a poem whose composition must therefore date AS EARLY AS THE 40s CE – could already celebrate AN INCARNATIONAL UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS…” (Ibid., p. 259)

Ehrman believes that texts such as Galatians 4:14 suggest that Paul viewed the Lord Jesus as God’s chief angel, in fact THE Angel of the Lord spoken of throughout the OT writings:

“But this means that in Galatians 4:14 Paul is not contrasting Christ with an angel; he is equating him with an angel. Garrett goes a step further and argues that Galatians 4:14 indicates that Paul ‘identifies [Jesus Christ] with God’s chief angel.’

“If this is the case, then virtually everything Paul says about Christ throughout his letters makes perfect sense. As the Angel of the Lord, Christ is a preexistent being who is divine; he can be called God, AND HE IS GOD’S MANIFESTATION ON EARTH IN HUMAN FLESH. Paul says all these things about Christ, and in no passage more strikingly than in Philippians 2:6-11, a passage that scholars often call the ‘Philippians Hymn’ or the ‘Christ Hymn of Philippians,’ since it is widely thought to embody an early hymn or poem devoted to celebrating Christ AND HIS INCARNATION.” (Ibid., p. 253)

Ehrman further argues that this is the view of some of the other NT writers as well:

“In the most thorough investigation of Christological views that portray Jesus as an angel or an angel-like being, New Testament scholar Charles Gieschen, helpfully defines the Jewish notion of an angel as ‘a spirit or heavenly being who mediates between the human and divine realms.’ Once Jesus was thought to be exalted to heaven, he was quickly seen, by some of his followers, to be this kind of heavenly mediator, one who obediently did God’s will while he was here on earth. From there, it was a very small step to thinking that Jesus was this kind of being by nature, not simply because of his exaltation. Jesus was not only the Son of God, the Lord, the Son of Man, the coming messiah; he was the one who mediates God’s will on earth as a heavenly, angelic being. In fact, it came to be thought that he had always been this kind of being.

“If Jesus was the one who represented God in human form, he quite likely had always been that one. He was, in other words, the chief angel of God, known in the Bible as the Angel of the Lord. This is the figure who appeared to Hagar, and Abraham, and Moses, who is sometimes actually called ‘God’ in the Hebrew Bible. If Jesus is in fact this one, he is a preexistent divine being who came to earth for a longer period of time, during his life; he fully represented God on earth; he in fact can be called God. Exaltation Christologies became transformed into incarnation Christologies as soon as believers in Jesus came to see him as an angelic being who performed God’s work here on earth.

“To call Jesus the Angel of the Lord is to make a startlingly exalted claim about him. In the Hebrew Bible, this figure appears to God’s people as God’s representative, and he is in fact called God. And as it turns out, as recent research has shown, there are clear indications in the New Testament that the early followers of Jesus understood him in this fashion. Jesus was thought of as an angel, or an angel-like being, or even the Angel of the Lord–in any event, a superhuman divine being who existed before his birth and became human for the salvation of the human race. This, in a nutshell, is the incarnation Christology of several New Testament authors. Later authors went even further and maintained that Jesus was not merely an angel–even the chief angel–but was a superior being: he was God himself come to earth.” (Ibid., pp. 250-251)

This is a rather shocking statement on Ehrman’s part since he virtually admits that the Hebrew Bible proclaims that this particular Angel is none other than Yahweh himself in visible form!

Note, for example, the following quotation where Ehrman references Genesis 16:7-14, which speaks of the Angel appears to Hagar, and then makes the following observations:

“… But then, after referring to this heavenly visitor as the Angel of the Lord, the text indicates that it was, in fact, ‘the LORD’ who had spoken with her (16:13). Moreover, Hagar realizes that she has been addressing God himself and expresses her astonishment that she had ‘seen God and remained alive after seeing him’ (16:13). Here there is both ambiguity and confusion; either the Lord appears as an angel in the form of a human, or the Angel of the Lord IS THE LORD HIMSELF, GOD IN HUMAN GUISE.

“A similar ambiguity occurs two chapters later, this time with Abraham. We are told in Genesis 18:1 that ‘the LORD appeared to Abraham by the oaks of Mamre.’ But when the episode is narrated, we learn that ‘three men’ come to him (18:2). Abraham plays the good host and entertains them, preparing for them a very nice meal, which they all three eat. When they talk to him afterward, one of these three ‘men’ is identified explicitly as ‘the LORD’ (18:13). At the end of the story we are informed that the other two were ‘angels’ (19:1). So here we have a case where two angels AND THE LORD GOD HIMSELF have assumed human form–so much so that they appear to Abraham to be three men, and they all eat the food he has prepared.

“The most famous instance of such ambiguity is found in the story of Moses and the burning bush (Exod. 3:1-22). By way of background: Moses, the son of Hebrews, had been raised in Egypt by the daughter of Pharaoh, but he has to escape for murdering an Egyptian and is wanted by the Pharaoh himself. He goes to Midian where he marries and becomes a shepherd for his father-in-law’s flocks. One day, while tending to his sheeply duties, Moses sees an astonishing sight. We are told that he arrives at Mount Horeb (this is Mount Sinai, where later, after the exodus, he is given the law) and there, ‘the angel of the LORD appeared to him in a flame of fire out of a bush’ (Exod. 3:2). Moses is amazed because the bush is aflame but is not being consumed by the fire. And despite the fact that it is the Angel of the Lord who is said to have appeared to him, it is ‘the Lord’ who sees that Moses has come to the bush, and it is ‘God’ who then calls to him out of the bush. In fact, the Angel of the Lord tells Moses, ‘I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’ (Exod. 3:6). As the story continues, the Lord God continues to speak to Moses and Moses to God. But in what sense was it the Angel of the Lord that appeared to him? A helpful note in the HarperCollins Study Bible puts it: ‘Although it was an angel that appeared in v. 2, there is no substantive difference between the deity and his agents.’ Or as New Testament scholar Charles Gieschen has expressed it, this ‘Angel of the Lord’ is ‘either indistinguishable from God as his visible manifestation’ or he is a distinct figure, separate from God, who is bestowed with God’s own authority.” (Ibid., 2. Divine Humans in Ancient Judaism, pp. 56-57)

JAMES D.  TABOR

Ehrman isn’t the only liberal critic of the Holy Bible who believes that some of the first Christians such as Paul depicted the Lord Jesus as the OT Angel of the Lord:

“As we saw in the previous chapter, Paul says that it was Christ, and not the human Jesus, who existed from the beginning of creation in the ‘form of God’ but then subsequently emptied himself, being born in the likeness of a mortal human being (Philippians 2:6-7). Paul makes the rather startling assertion that this cosmic Christ, ages before he was born as a human being, HAD MANIFESTED HIMSELF AS YAHWEH, THE GOD OF ISRAEL. He refers particularly to the time of Moses, when the Israelites ‘saw’ Yahweh as a mysterious cloud-fire: ‘And Yahweh went before them by day in a pillar of cloud, to lead them the way, and by night in a pillar of fire, to give them light, that they might go by day and by night’ (Exodus 13:21).

“Paul says that the God who led the Israelites through the Red Sea and in their desert wanderings for forty years, the one they called the Rock, WAS CHRIST (1 Corinthians 10:4; Deuteronomy 32:4, 18). He does not explain the particulars of his view, but the idea that there was AN ‘UPPER’ YAHWEH, who remains unseen, sometimes called ‘God called Most High,’ as well as A ‘LOWER’ MANIFESTATION OF THAT SAME GOD, CALLED THE ‘MESSENGER YAHWEH,’ who appears from time to time in human history in a visible manner on earth, WAS COMMON IN VARIOUS FORMS OF JUDAISM OF PAUL’S TIME. This lower Yahweh is not flesh and blood, even though in some of the stories he seems to ‘materialize,’ but when he appears he is then ‘taken up’ or in one case disappears in a flame of fire.

“This is very much akin to the Greek notion of the ineffable God manifest in the lower world as the ‘Word’ or Logos, which was an integral part of Platonic and Stoic cosmology. The Logos idea was appropriated by the Jewish philosopher Philo, a contemporary of Paul, to deal with passages in the Hebrew Bible THAT SEEM TO REFER TO TWO YAHWEHS, AN UPPER AND A LOWER. In the New Testament the Gospel of John adopts the Logos idea wholesale, but makes the shocking assertion that ‘the Logos became flesh,’ referring to the birth of Jesus (John 1:1, 14). This is akin to Paul’s view of the preexistent Christ. In the form of God, who emptied himself and was born of a woman.

“Paul says little more about the preexistent Christ as a manifestation of Yahweh other than that he was present in the days of Moses. Paul is focused entirely on the other end of history, the termination of what he calls ‘this present evil age’ (Galatians 1:14 [sic]). What Jesus represents to Paul is one thing and one thing only–the cosmic, preexistent Christ, being ‘born of a woman,’ as a flesh-and-blood mortal human being now transformed to a life-giving Spirit. This is what drove Paul and excited him most. For him it explained the Genesis creation itself and accounted for all the subsequent ‘blood, sweat, and tears’ of the human story. Humans were created to become Gods! ‘This slight, momentary affliction’ was preparing them for an ‘eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison’ (2 Corinthians 4:17).

“In the Hebrew Bible, Yahweh, the One God of Israel, had declared: ‘Turn to me and be saved, all the ends of the earth! For I am God and there is no other … To me every knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear’ (Isaiah 45:22-23). Paul quotes this precise phrase from Isaiah but now significantly adds: ‘At the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on the earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father’ (Philippians 2:10-11). Christ as the newly exalted Lord of the cosmos IS THE FUNCTIONAL EQUIVALENT OF YAHWEH.” (Tabor, Paul and Jesus: How the Apostle Transformed Christianity [Simon & Schuster, New York, NY 2012], Six. A Mystical Union, pp. 133-135)

Tabor goes on to say in a footnote:

7. The literal term in Hebrew, “messenger Yahweh,” is usually translated as “the angel of Yahweh” but this is not the best choice for English since “angel” in English has its own set of connotations quite different from Hebrew. In Hebrew the phrase used, malak Yahweh, MEANS A MANIFESTATION OF YAHWEH and this figure speaks and acts as Yahweh in the first person, appearing and departing, sometimes in a flame of fire (see Genesis 16:10; 18:33; 22:11; Exodus 3:2; Judges 13:20). There are a few passages where these “two Yahwehs” are mentioned in a single verse: “Then Yahweh (below) rained on Sodom and Gomorrah brimstone and fire from Yahweh (above) from heaven” (Genesis 19:24). (Ibid, p. 257; bold and capital emphasis mine)

OTHER SCHOLARS

Professor Elliot R. Wolfson comments on the significance of the angel bearing God’s name within himself and its impact on Jewish understanding and exegesis:

“The textual proofs for the incarnation of the divine in the angelic figure are found in passages where there is a deliberate confusion between the angel of God and divinity itself (Gen. 16:9-13, 18:2, 21:7, 22:11, 31:11, 33:11-13; Ex. 3:2ff., 14:19, 23:21, 32:34; Jos. 5:13-15; Jud. 2:1, 4, 5:23, 6:11ff., 13:3ff.; Is. 63:9; Ps. 34:8). In such instances, the shift in the narrative from God to the angel points to the fact THAT GOD APPEARS IN THE GUISE OF AN ANGEL. One scriptural verse that is extremely significant for understanding this ancient Israelite conception is God’s statement that the Israelite’s should give heed to the angel whom he has sent before them and not rebel against him, for his name is in him (Ex. 23:21). The line separating the angel and God IS SUBSTANTIALLY BLURRED, for by bearing the name, WHICH SIGNIFIES THE POWER OF THE DIVINE NATURE, the angel IS THE EMBODIMENT OF GOD’S PERSONALITY. To possess the name is not merely to be invested with divine authority; it means that ONTOLOGICALLY the angel is the incarnational presence of the divine manifest in the providential care of Israel … This notion, attested in older Jewish mystical texts as well, is consistent with what one finds in the biblical texts themselves; that is, the ancient Israelite belief was THAT GOD COULD APPEAR AS AN ANGELIC PRESENCE TO HUMAN BEINGS, and the shape this presence took WAS THAT OF AN ANTHROPOS. The angelic form, therefore, is the garment (as later kabbalists expressed the matter) in which the divine is clad when it is manifest in the world in the shape of an anthropos. Clearly, this phenomenon, which is notably similar to the Christological identification of Jesus as THE GLORIOUS ANGEL, should be classified as an example of incarnation as distinct from anthropomorphization.

“… I would argue that the possibility of God assuming the form of an angel is one of the ground myths that informs the liturgical imagination in rabbinic praxis. The implication of the biblical conception is made explicit in several midrashic sources. Thus, in one context, the matter is related exegetically to the expression ‘captain of the Lord’s host’ (Jos. 5:14): ‘I am the captain from above, and in every place that I am seen the Holy One, blessed be he, is seen.’ The particular angelic being who serves as the chief of the celestial host is not identified in this text, but the implication of the passage is clear: from a theophanic perspective, the highest angel and God ARE PHENOMENALLY INTERCHANGEABLE, for in every place that the former appears THE LATTER APPEARS. It is not only that the two belong together, BUT THAT THEY RESEMBLE ONE ANOTHER TO THE POINT THAT THE ONTOLOGICAL DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE TWO IS OBSCURED…” (Christianity in Jewish Terms, ed. Tikva Frymer-Kensky, David Novak, Peter Ochs, David Fox Sandmel, Michael A. Signer [Westview Press, a member of the Perseus Books Group, 2000], pp. 244-245)

The late reformed apologist Dr. Robert A. Morey wrote in respect to Exodus 23:21that,

“To the Jews at that time, the name of God was a revelation of His divine nature. As Ellicot correctly pointed out, ‘God and His name are almost convertible terms. He is never said to set His Name in a man.’ Hengstenberg said, ‘The name of God can dwell in him only, who is originally of the same nature with God.’ Dean Alford comments:

He is no created angel, but a form of the Divine Presence, bearing the name of Jehovah, a in ch. xiii. 21, and clothed with His attributes, and indeed identified in action (ver. 22) with Him; for it is not said ‘he will be an enemy.’ &c., but ‘I will be,’ as equivalent: and (23) the way in which this will be shewn is by his going before thee, and his cuting off the nations.

“The Divine Name… was ‘in’ the Messenger in the sense that what God was the Messenger was. Keil explains:

Jehovah revealed Himself in him; and hence he is called in chap. xxxiii. 15,16, the face of Jehovah, because the essential nature of Jehovah was manifested in him.

“In the Old Testament, the ‘name’ of someone revealed his character. For example, the name ‘Jacob’ meant ‘scoundrel’ and so he was. Thus, the statement that God’s ‘name’ is in the Messenger can only mean that this Messenger has the character of God…” (Morey, Trinity: Evidence and Issues [Word Publishing; Grand Rapids, MI 1996], p. 152)

MORE ARTICLES RELATED JEWISH SOURCES

YHVH’S DIVINE ANGEL AND ETERNAL SPIRIT

JUDAISMS’ VIEWS ON THE MESSIAH’S PREHUMAN EXISTENCE

JEWISH SOURCES ON THE WORD AS A DIVINE PERSON

METATRON IS THE WORD OF GOD?

TWO POWERS IN HEAVEN: REVEALING ISRAEL’S SECOND GOD

THE ANGEL METATRON: JUDAISMS’ SECOND YHWH

METATRON: ISRAEL’S SECOND GOD REVISITED

THE RABBIS’ DILEMMA: WORSHIPING GOD’S ANGEL

THE RABBIS’ DILEMMA: WORSHIPING GOD’S ANGEL

FURTHER READING

YHVH’S DIVINE ANGEL AND ETERNAL SPIRIT

JUDAISMS’ VIEWS ON THE MESSIAH’S PREHUMAN EXISTENCE

JEWISH SOURCES ON THE WORD AS A DIVINE PERSON

METATRON IS THE WORD OF GOD?

THE ANGEL METATRON: JUDAISMS’ SECOND YHWH

METATRON: ISRAEL’S SECOND GOD REVISITED

TWO POWERS IN HEAVEN: REVEALING ISRAEL’S SECOND GOD

THE RABBIS’ DILEMMA: WORSHIPING GOD’S ANGEL

CHALLENGE TO THE RABBIS: SEEING THE GOD OF ISRAEL

OT Appearances of Christ as the Angel of God

The OT Witness to the Divine Personhood of the Spirit

The Trinity in Genesis 3:5 and 22