Ancient Judaism, Judaisms, Met ̣at ̣ron, Son of Man, Talmud, 3 Enoch Ruth Stein, in memoriam
“Two Powers in Heaven” as the Older Orthodoxy
When Alan Segal, three decades ago in his landmark book, Two Powers in Heaven, wrote about the eponymous alleged heresy, he treated it as a phenomenon external to rabbinic Judaism and “reported” on in rabbinic texts: “Not unexpectedly, the sources showed that some mysticism and apocalypticism, as well as Christianity and gnosticism, were seen as ‘two powers’ heretics by the rabbis,” and, “it was one of the central issues over which the two religions separated.” His project then was the reconstruction of the “development of the heresy.”2 For him, “the problem is to 2) A. F. Segal, Two Powers in Heaven: Early Rabbinic Reports About Christianity and Gnosticism (SJLA 25; Leiden: Brill, 1977), ix. In addition to Segal’s work, parts of this question, or rather various of the questions that go to make up this synthetic form of the question have been treated in M. Idel, “Enoch is Met ̣at ̣ron,” Immanuel 24/25 (1990): 220-40; idem, “Met ̣at ̣ron: Notes Towards the Development of Myth in Judaism,” in Eshel Beer-Sheva: Occasional Publications in Jewish Studies (Beersheva: Ben-Gurion University of the Negev Press, 1996), 29-44 [Hebrew]; idem, Ben: Sonship and Jewish Mysticism (Kogod Library of Judaic Studies; London: Continuum, 2007); N. Deutsch, Guardians of the Gate: Angelic Vice Regency in Late Antiquity (BSJS 22; Leiden: Brill, 1999); P. S. Alexander,
“The Historical Setting of the Hebrew Book of Enoch,” JJS 28 (1977): 156-80; idem,
“3 Enoch and the Talmud,” JSJ 18 (1987): 40-68; C. Morray-Jones, “Hekhalot Literature and Talmudic Tradition: Alexander’s Three Test Cases, ” JSJ 22 (1991): 1-39; C. Rowland and C. R. Morray-Jones, The Mystery of God: Early Jewish Mysticism and the New Testament (CRINT 3.12; Leiden: Brill, 2009); G. G. Stroumsa, “Form(s) of God: Some Notes on Met ̣at ̣ron and Christ: For Shlomo Pines,” HTR 76 (1983): 269-88; A. A. Orlov, The Enoch-Met ̣at ̣ron Tradition (TSAJ 107; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2005), inter multa alia.
These and other works, cited and uncited, have all played a role in the synthesis hypothesized here.
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discover which of the heretical groups were actually called ‘two powers in heaven’ by the earliest tannaitic sages.”3 Following, however, some brilliant rethinking of method in the study of Christian heresiology, in which the matter has been shifted from the histories of alleged heresies to the history of the episteme (in the Foucauldian sense) of heresy itself and its functions in the formation of an orthodox Church,4 we can shift our own attention from the development of “Two Powers” as a heresy “out there”
to the discursive work that its naming as such does in order to define and identify rabbinic orthodoxy. Moreover, in some of the best work on the use of heresiology to produce orthodoxy among Christians, it has been shown that almost always the so-called “heresy” is not a new invader from outside but an integral and usually more ancient version of the religious tradition that is now being displaced by a newer set of conceptions, portraying the relations almost mystifyingly in the direct opposite of the observed chronologies.5 We can accordingly reconfigure the study of the relations among such entities as the apocalyptic literature (especially in this case the Enoch texts), the Gospels, the texts of late-ancient para-rabbinic mysticism, known as the Merkabah mysticism (the Hekhalot
texts and their congeners), and classical rabbinic literature, including especially the Talmud, in the same vein, namely, as the history of the invention of a heresy, of the displacement of a religious conception formerly held by many Jews by a new-fangled orthodoxy. To forestall one kind of objection to this thesis, let me hasten to clarify that I am not arguing that the idea of a single and singular godhead is the invention of the Rabbis, nor that there was no contention on this question before them, but I do assert that the evidence suggests that the issue was by no means settled in biblical times nor yet even in the Middle Ages and that, therefore, the notion of a polyform Judaism (rather than orthodoxy/heresy or “Judaisms”) has quite substantial legs to stand on. It is the purpose of this case study to show how the genealogy of rabbinic Judaism can be shown to be in some measure a product of such a development of a
“notion of heresy,” in which a rabbinic orthodoxy (not nearly, to be sure, as detailed or as precise as that of Christian orthodoxy) was formed out of 3) Segal, Powers, 89.
4) A. Le Boulluec, La notion d’hérésie dans la littérature grecque II e -III e siècles (Paris: Études Augustiniennes, 1985).
5) C. Kannengiesser, “Alexander and Arius of Alexandria: The Last Ante-Nicene Theo logians,”
Comp 35 (1990): 391-403.
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a much more multiform set of religious ideas and even practices of worship than “orthodoxy” would allow for.6
Earlier iterations of this line of argument7 have been misunderstood, certain scholars thinking, it seems, that I have assented to Segal, rather than dissenting from his approach (after having learned much from him, to be sure).8 I want, therefore, to make as clear as possible the crucial difference between my approach and that of my predecessor. Perhaps the
clearest way that I can articulate the difference in our methods or
approaches is that where he can imagine asking (and answering) a question about the existence of the “heresy” before the Rabbis, for me, since it was the Rabbis who invented the “heresy” via a rejection of that which was once (and continued to be) very much within Judaism, that question is, of course, impossible. This goes to the heart of our respective portraits of ancient Judaism. Where Segal seems clearly to imagine an “orthodox core” to Judaism that pre-exists and then develops into what would
become rabbinism, I imagine a Judaism that consists of manifold historical developments of a polyform tradition in which no particular form has claim to either orthodoxy or centrality over others. Accordingly while I am reading many of the same texts as Segal, my overall way of putting them together is almost diametrically opposed to his and many of the individual readings are quite different as well. I say this not to engage in a 6) This represents a distinct refinement of the position I took in D. Boyarin, Border Lines: The Partition of Judaeo-Christianity (Divinations: Rereading Late Ancient Religions; Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), perhaps even a border correction.
Rather than concluding, as I did then, that ultimately the rabbinic tradition rejected an
“orthodox” formation, I would now rephrase that to suggest that a virtual orthodoxy was continued (excluding, for instance, Christians who considered themselves Jews after the third century, for sure); rather, it was the concept of theological akribeia, precision or exactitude, that never seems to have developed among non-Christian versions of Judaism including rabbinism. This not minor shift, will, I hope deflect some of the charges of apparent triumphalism or apologetic that the formulation in the book brought in its wake.
See especially V. Burrus, R. Kalmin, H. Lapin, and J. Marcus, “Boyarin’s Work: A Critical Assessment,” Henoch 28 (2006): 7-30, especially the essay by Joel Marcus there.
7) D. Boyarin, “Two Powers in Heaven; or, the Making of a Heresy,” in The Idea of Biblical Interpretation: Essays in Honor of James L. Kugel (ed. H. Najman and J. Newman; JSJSup 83; Leiden: Brill, 2004), 331-70.
8) Schäfer, for instance, regards my own earlier renditions of this theory as “inspired by Segal,” while I quite clearly and explicitly disagree with him, P. Schäfer, The Origins of Jewish Mysticism (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2009), 323 n. 367. Goshen-Gottstein mistakes me in the same way (See appendix below in this article). Idel, Ben, 591 clearly and precisely understood what was at stake between Segal and me.
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competition with Segal’s thirty-year old work. I learned much from it then and still do, and he too has moved on, but simply to make clearer the methodological difference between our projects so that readers won’t have to work so hard lest they miss the point, as some earlier readers have clearly done. That out of the way, let me get on to the major theoretical intervention about Judaism that I wish to make here, moving beyond
“Judaisms.”9
Since the 1970’s it has become fashionable to speak of Judaisms, rather than of Judaism. To be sure, this move was part of a salutary attempt—
initially on the part of Jacob Neusner10—to open up our study of Judaism to include non-rabbinic religion as part and parcel of Judaism and thus not to write the history of Judaism as the history of the winners.11 Having learned the lessons of that move, I think it is time to move beyond it, seeing Judaism as the sum of the religious expressions of the Jews.12 We need 9) I should, perhaps, however, modify an impression easily gathered from my earlier work. I certainly made it seem as if my argument was that the production of rabbinic Judaism out of the multiform Judaism from which it emerged was primarily a theological matter (see Idel, Ben, 591-93; A. Goshen-Gottstein, “Jewish-Christian Relations and Rabbinic Literature—Shifting Scholarly and Relational Paradigms: The Case of Two Powers,” in Interaction Between Judaism and Christianity in History, Religion, Art, and Literature [ed. M. Poorthuis, J. Schwartz, and J. Turner; Leiden: Brill, 2008], 15-44).
Both of these critics of my earlier work are correct in taking me to task on this matter; there was much more going on than just a theological “conspiracy.” Nonetheless, I do claim that the repeated attempt to portray “Two Powers in Heaven” as a heretical divagation from the essential and ancient norm, the “orthodox” core, of Judaism that we find in the late-ancient texts, represents classical heresiological practice, as in the rethinking of the Arian controversy that we find argued in Kannengiesser, “Alexander and Arius.” The rabbinic texts are, themselves, almost telling us that they had met the heretic and he is us (viz. Rabbi Akiva). The Rabbis were apparently no more successful in defeating this deeply ancient religious idea than the Fathers were in eradicating the ancient theology that they had named “Arianism.” I also believe that the Rabbis were under theological/hermeneutic pressure from interpreters of the biblical texts in question, as well they might have been, as these texts do strongly tend to support that ancient (ex hypothesi) Jewish theological mythologoumenon.
10) See, just for example, J. Neusner, W. S. Green, and E. S. Frerichs, Judaisms and Their Messiahs at the Turn of the Christian Era (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987).
11) A. F. Segal, The Other Judaisms of Late Antiquity (BJS 127; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1987).
12) Note that this is a very different move from that of E. P. Sanders, Jewish Law from Jesus to the Mishnah: Five Studies (London: SCM Press, 1990), who sought to discover some constant that subtended all the Judaisms (and excluded thereby Pauline Judaism, for instance).
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to more clearly distinguish among histories of the Jews, histories of Judaism, and histories of rabbinic Judaism. Getting clearer on the ways that these are separate, if obviously imbricated, projects will help to clarify some confusion (and undoubtedly, perhaps in a salutary way, introduce new confusion). If we think of “the Jews”—anachronistically from a ter-minological point of view—as an ethonym that includes all the people of Israel,13 then Judaism is all of the complex of related and contending religious forms comprehended by those folks, including the figures of Enoch, Moses, Jesus, and all.14 It is all-important, however, to emphasize that these different religious forms do not necessarily resolve themselves into separate social groups (and this is not just a failure of our knowledge); they overlap and interact.15 As much as it has been proven that the history of Judaism is not the history of rabbinic Judaism with all other forms of Judaism as either marginal, inferior competitors or worse, it is still wrong, I think, to think of separate Judaisms that belong to separate social groups. In this sense, the history of Judaism, the religion of Jews, is not the same, at all, as the social history of Jews. It is indeed part of the process of production of rabbinic Judaism as orthodoxy that it will seek to define and exclude various internal others—and not so others—as
external others and members of particular groups, and scholarship should not be complicit with this at all, although it seems that positivist scholarship will somehow always be. Part and parcel of this genealogy then will be to show how muddy are the lines in the sand that supposedly divide rabbinic Judaism from its others, including but not limited to that form of Judaism that eventually is called Christianity. I return, then, to the 13) A better term might be, then, Israelites but it is hard to go against convention in such matters.
14) For a precisely opposite view, arguing for a “normative Judaism,” as a phenomenological entity, see E. E. Zuesse, “Phenomenology of Judaism,” The Encyclopaedia of Judaism (ed. J. Neusner, A. J. Avery-Peck, and W. S. Green; Leiden: Brill, 2005), 3:1968-86.
Phenomenology in this case seems to mean deciding in advance that rabbinic Judaism is Judaism, tout court, marking its central norms as definitional for Judaism, and then writing out other Jews as they deviate from those norms. This may be good philosophy—I don’t know—, it bears little relation to critical, historical scholarship. Furthermore, much in Zuesse’s “factual” account of Christianity is simply false historically, reading back later forms into earlier periods, but maybe that too is phenomenologically acceptable, since I suppose Christianity too must have a time-and-place transcendent phenomenological essence.
15) As recently as Boyarin, “Two Powers,” I was completely enthralled by the notion of
“Judaisms.”
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study of Judaism, a reconfigured post-Judaisms Judaism that compre-
hends all of the forms of religious expression of the Jews without central-izing, marginalizing, or reifying any of its forms. In what follows, then, I shall be reading certain key religious texts in the Babylonian Talmud as integral expressions of a polymorphous Judaism of which rabbinic Judaism is, in part, a special articulation, in part, simply a post factum rhetorical construct.16
Met ̣at ̣ron, the Son of Man
In the Babylonian Talmud Sanhedrin 38b, we read:
Rav Naḥman said: A person who knows how to answer the minim [sectarians or heretics]17 as Rav Idi,18 let him answer, and if not, let him not answer. A certain min said to Rav Idi: “It is written, ‘And to Moses he said, come up unto the YHWH [Exod 24:1].’ It should have said, ‘Come up to me’!”
If YHWH is speaking and he says to Moses, Come up to YHWH, the
implication seems to be, according to the min that there are two persons up there, or, as the Rabbis usually name the heresy: “Two powers in
heaven.” But:
He [Rav Idi] said to him: “This was Met ̣at ̣ron, whose name is like the name of his master, as it is written, ‘for My name is in him’ [Exod 23:21].”
“But if so, they should worship him!”
“It is written, ‘Do not rebel against him’ [Exod 23:21]—Do not confuse him with me!”
“If so, then why does it say ‘He will not forgive your sins’”?
16) This is nearly opposite to the position taken, e.g., by J. Fraenkel, Sipur Ha-Agadah, Ahdut Shel Tokhen Ve-Tsurah: Kovets Mehkarim. [Aggadic Narrative] (Sifriyat Helal ben Hayim; Tel-Aviv: Ha-Kibuts ha-meuhad, 2001), 339 who draws a firewall between the Rabbis and the Hekhalot literature and explicitly regards the classical rabbinic literature as nearly totally isolated from the surrounding religious worlds.
17) The precise meaning of this term (I’m speaking now on the lexical level) has been much contested. As I have written elsewhere I believe that it is related to Justin Martyr’s genistai and meristai as names for Jewish heresies and thus, almost literally, just means sectarians without defining the content of their dissension.
18) This is the correct reading of the name, according to manuscript evidence.
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“We have sworn that we would not even receive him as a guide, for it is written ‘If Your face goes not [do not bring us up from here]’ [Exod 33:15].”
( b. Sanh. 38b)19
This extraordinary bit of rhetoric needs some glossing and then a deeper consideration of how to read it than it has received so far.20 The min produces a seemingly compelling argument that there are two powers in
heaven, and this the primary, perhaps sole, focus of rabbinic heresiology.21
Following then the above-mentioned well-known principle in the study of heresiology that most often what is now called heresy is simply an earlier form of a religion which has now been discredited by an important and powerful group of religious leaders, we might well hypothesize that such belief is both ancient and entrenched in Israel.
So let us see what these minim are made to claim here. God has been addressing the Jewish People as a whole (in Exod 23), informing them that he will send his angel before them and instructing them how to
behave with respect to this angel. He then turns to Moses and tells him to come up to YHWH (the Tetragrammaton), implying quite strongly that
“YHWH” of whom he speaks is not the same “YHWH” who is the
speaker of the verse: Two YHWHs.22 This is, in fact, precisely the sort of argument that a Justin Martyr would have produced from Scripture to
argue for a “second person” (the Logos). It is, moreover, very much remi-niscent of the talk about the Name of the Lord of Spirits in the Parables of Enoch, and, if Steven Richard Scott’s interpretation of that text is accepted, that Name is the Name of the Son of Man and thus Met ̣at ̣ron.23 And so 19) רמא .רדהיל אל − אל יאו ,רדהיל − תידיא ברכ םינימל ירודהאל עדיד ןאמ יאה :ןמחנ בר רמא
רמא !היל יעבימ ילא הלע ,'ה לא הלע רמא השמ לאו +ד"כ תומש+ ביתכ :תידיא ברל אנימ אוהה
− !היל וחלפינ יכה יא − .וברקב ימש יכ +ג"כ תומש+ ביתכד ,ובר םשכ ומשש ,ןורטטמ והז :היל
:היל רמא − ?יל המל םכעשפל אשי אל ןכ םא − .וב ינרימת לא − וב רמת לא +ג"כ תומש+ ביתכ
ךינפ ןיא םא וילא רמאיו +ג"ל תומש+ ביתכד ,הינליבק אל ימנ אקנוורפב וליפאד ,ןדיב אתונמיה
וגו םיכלה' (text from Bar Ilan Rabbinic Texts Project).
20) For previous readings, see Segal, Powers, 68-69, whose interpretation is quite close to mine in large part and Deutsch, Guardians of the Gate, 49. For a much older reading, see R. T. Herford, Christianity in Talmud and Midrash (New York: Ktav, 1978), 285-90.
21) See appendix below for discussion of an opposing position recently argued by Goshen-Gottstein, “Jewish-Christian Relations.”
22) The medieval Bible commentary of Ibn Ezra solves this problem by referring to other verses in which a speaker refers to himself by his own name.
23) S. R. Scott, “The Binitarian Nature of the Book of Similitudes,” JSP 18/1 (2008): 55-78, esp. 71-72. On the Name as belonging to the second person, see Stroumsa,
“Form(s),” 283, comparing Christ to Met ̣at ̣ron.
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the minim conclude that there is a second power in heaven. Rav Idi, in refuting them, turns back to the previous chapter and remarks that verse 21 there explicitly says, “My name is in him [that is, in the angel].”24
Met ̣at ̣ron, that angel, therefore, could be called by the name “YHWH,”
and it is to him that Moses is being instructed to ascend. What this amounts to is the Rabbi proclaiming that there are not two divine powers in heaven but only God and an angel whom God Godself has named God
as well.
At this point, the min responds by saying that if Met ̣at ̣ron is indeed called by the ineffable name, then we ought to worship him as well; in other words, that Rav Idi’s own answer can be turned against him. To this, Rav Idi retorts that the verse also says “Do not rebel against him,”
which by a typical midrashic sleight of hand can be read as “Do not substitute him,” that is, even though Met ̣at ̣ron is called by God’s name, do not pray to him. Al tamer bo [Do not rebel against him] has been read as Al tamireni bo: Don’t substitute him for me. The very verse in which Israel is enjoined to obey the second YHWH has been turned by a pun into its exact opposite. The min says if that is what is meant, then why does it continue in the verse and say that he, Met ̣at ̣ron, will not forgive sins? The min is arguing that if the people are being warned not to rebel against Met ̣at ̣ron, because he is as powerful as God, then it makes sense to tell them that he will not forgive their sins if they do rebel, but if he is no God at all, then it is otiose to tell them that he will not forgive sins. Only if he has the power to redeem sins does it make sense to declare that he will not forgive their sins if they rebel against him. (Of course, the rabbinic reading is: Don’t confuse him with me for he cannot redeem sins but only I can. The “heretical” reading, I’m afraid, is much stronger and more adequate to the language.) In other words, the min argues that Met ̣at ̣ron seemingly has precisely the redeemer features that are characteristic of his direct ancestor, Enoch the Son of Man, or for that matter Jesus, the Son of Man as well, including the power to forgive sins (Mark 2:10).
According to the sectary, the verse must read: He has the power to forgive sins but will not for those who rebel against him. Two Powers in Heaven, indeed.
24) Segal makes the interesting point that in its original form the protagonist must have been named not yet Met ̣at ̣ron but some theophoric name, such as (I suggest) Akatriel, or Anafiel-YHWH, as we find later in the Merkabah texts.
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I would suggest, moreover, that, in typical midrashic fashion, another verse underpins this comment of the min. Joshua 24:19 reads: “It will be very difficult for you [lit. you will not be able to] to worship YHWH, for He is a holy God; He is a jealous God; He will not forgive your sins and your iniquities.” In other words, the logic would run: if there it remarks of YHWH that he will not forgive sins and iniquities, then if the same language is being used here, ought it not indicate that the divine figure being spoken of has the same attributes as YHWH?25 Moreover, if there the context is one of worshipping YHWH, then here too worship of
Met ̣at ̣ron, the second Lord or lesser Yahu, would seem to be implicated as well. The comparison is rendered even stronger when we notice that exactly the same context is involved in both the Exodus and the Joshua verse, namely the expulsion of the Canaanites from the land of Israel and the warnings to the people of Israel to be worthy of this benefit and to worship YHWH, or their sin will not be forgiven at all. It certainly seems as if the verse in Exodus can be read as equating Met ̣at ̣ron to YHWH and therefore demanding worship for both figures.
To this the Rabbi answers that “we” the Jews, through our leader Moses, already have declared that we do not even want him, Met ̣at ̣ron, to be our guide in the desert, as the cited verse says: “If Your face goes before us not.” In other words, the angelic regent was of such non-importance that, far from considering him worthy of being worshiped, Moses would not
even accept him as guide. In order to escape the seemingly ineluctable conclusion that there is indeed such a second divine figure, Rav Idi proposes to read the verse as if saying, “Be careful before him and obedient to him. Do not confuse him with me, for he will not forgive your sins, though my name is in him.” Aside from the fact that this translation renders the verse considerably less coherent in its logic, the min argues that it makes this angel seem absolutely insignificant, hardly worthy of mention, to which Rav Idi answers (and this is his brilliant move) that indeed that is so. The Israelites have already registered their rejection of any interest in this insignificant angel when they insisted that God Himself must go before them and no other, thus dramatizing the rejection of the Son of Man theology, a rejection that the Rabbis themselves perform. Although much of what I’ve just said can be seen in Segal’s analysis of this text as well, it is here that there is a parting of the ways between us, for he writes, 25) Segal, Powers, 131-32, shows that this verse was a locus for controversy between Rabbis and others independently of this particular text.
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based on the comparison with the Gospel that “if we take the literature in the New Testament as characteristic of some kinds of heresy in the first century,” then, “it seems clear therefore that some varieties of the heresy go back to the first century, even if the rabbinic texts do not.”26 I would propose rather that the Gospel text is evidence that these religious ideas were present among Jews in the first century and are being first named and excluded as heresy in the rabbinic text, in other words that there is no a priori reason to regard this as heresy in the first century at all before the talmudic intervention. Do not worship a second God as (many of ) you have been accustomed to doing so far is the burden of the Talmudic narration of the interaction with the min.
Let me draw out the implication of this reading a bit more. It is important to note that Rav Idi does not deny the existence of Met ̣at ̣ron; he does not finally, cannot it seems, deny even the power of Met ̣at ̣ron, of his capa-bilities as Second God. What he claims, rather, is that Israel has rejected such worship, even refused to entrust Met ̣at ̣ron with leading them in the desert. Or as the Haggadah has it: Not by means of an angel, and not by means of an agent, and not by means of the Logos (that one’s only in old manuscripts). You may exist, Met ̣at ̣ron, say the R