David Wilhite
No, but this goes back to what we talked about on the first podcast, where in our opening chapter we take on this idea that monotheism is not such a simple idea for ancient Jews. Monotheism seems to be there’s one God, but even the Old Testament refers to other gods, the gods of the nation. Did ancient Jews think there only existed one God, or you only worshiped one God? Then you get to well, our God seems to be the god who created everything. So maybe these other gods aren’t really gods at all. Are they other powers? Are they lesser? Like the fallen angels or watchers in 1 Enoch, we admit that there are scholars today who would want to say the monotheism of Judaism at the time of Jesus was actually allowed for many, many kinds of expressions of God.
We don’t quite buy that. That’s where we fall somewhere between this absolute exclusive monotheism. There’s only God and nothing else counts as God. And this idea where there’s just many gods, and God works through many self-expressions, but we don’t think it’s quite that loose. There seems to be a one and only exception to there being one God, and this exception is the second power who goes under various names, Angel of the Lord, Word of the Lord, Wisdom of the Lord, Son of man, etc.
Adam Winn
I wanted to follow up on that. And some will say, you just mentioned the Angel of the Lord, the Word of the Lord, the Wisdom of the Lord, the Son of Man. But why aren’t those the many? Why aren’t those multiple? And that’s what we found in our research. It’s very interesting. I think we mentioned in the last podcast in Philo, you have these things all united. It’s widely recognized the Wisdom of the Lord and the Word of the Lord, the Logos and Wisdom are the same in Philo. And that the Angel of the Lord is the Logos. He’s also the Wisdom of the Lord. We also argue there’s also this Heavenly Man that is also identified with the Logos. So you have this kind of collection of one thing being expressed in many different ways. In Philo you see the exact same thing in the Jewish targums? These Aramaic paraphrases where it’s very clear the Angel of the Lord is the memra or Word of the Lord, and also the Wisdom of the Lord.
And also, angel that appears in human form or the name of the Lord. I argue, in 1 Enoch, I think the Son of Man is identified clearly with the Word of God. They’re bringing these things together. So, for us, we’re saying it looks like they’re not thinking of four or five or six separate powers. They’re thinking of one power that can be described, and different titles that can be applied to it, depending on the literature or the situation or the circumstance. For us, we see what some see as a lots of different powers, really, for Jews all being the same thing. That is a second power.
David Capes
A big part of your project is trying to grapple with the nature of second temple monotheism, it sounds like. And that will have a great effect on what’s happening in the New Testament, because we find that the first Christians, who were all Jews, are considering Jesus to be, and I’m using Bauckham’s language here, within the divine identity. He’s included within that identity, which I found to be very helpful language at one point. But it’s a way of trying to capture the fact that there is one God, and yet Jesus is found in the ledger on the God side of things and not on the created side of things. Is that fair?
David Wilhite
Yes, and essentially, we agree with Bauckham on that. Now it’s some of the fine print where we do disagree. I mentioned earlier that scholars, when they read these biblical texts, are not trying to impose . . . In fact, they want to very carefully avoid imposing later, third and fourth century AD Christian ideas of Trinitarianism back onto these texts. The word trinity is not in our Bible, so we have to admit that the ancient Jews and ancient Christians were not thinking in precisely those categories. So how did we get from A to B? New Testament scholars like Bauckham and others are very careful to try to say, look, ancient Jews were monotheists. They did not have this three person view of God, and we agree with that. But what seems to be the exception is this second figure. And how did we sort all this out? That’s really coming in our third book. If you were to ask New Testament scholars today, could Christians have even envisioned something other than the one God of Israel sitting on the throne. You would typically assume, no, because we’re not imposing Trinitarianism backwards.
But what I was surprised to find and Adam was the one who led the charge in this and helped us both to see this, is this second power figure is actually ubiquitous in the pre-Christian, Jewish writing of the Second Temple period. If you looked at Philo, maybe Philo’s view of the Logos is just sort of an outlier. He’s too Greek or too Hellenized. Well, Adam mentioned the targums. These are very Jewish Aramaic translations and paraphrasing of the Hebrew Scriptures, and they’re doing the same thing. And if you look at apocalyptic literature, as we’ve talked about the Son of Man. If you look at Wisdom literature, that figure, wisdom is in there. I was very surprised, and I think it needs to be emphasized in the field of New Testament studies, just how widespread this view of God being more than a simplistic monad monotheism was already in place before the New Testament writers come along.
David Capes
It sounds like what you’re saying is that Jesus fits into that space that was already created by a rather inclusive form of monotheism. Is that fair?
Adam Winn
When we say inclusive, we want to be careful what we mean by that. Some people mean that the prerogatives of God are seemingly shared all over the place. We want to say somehow Jews understood that there was plurality in the One God, before Christians ever came to the conclusion that there was plurality in the one God. We want to say we think they got that from somewhere. They got it from their Jewish origins. And it was then very natural for them to identify Jesus with this second expression of Yahweh, or manifestation of Yahweh, whatever you want to call it. That was called Yahweh. And so, they can very naturally refer to Jesus as the Lord. John can talk about Jesus as the Word in the flesh, and then also talk about Him as the Son of Man that comes down from heaven. Why is John combining Logos and Son of Man? Why is he doing this? We’re saying, well, because that already existed in the Judaism that he lived in. They’d already done that. And it’s very natural then to say the one God of Israel that many Jews understand in terms of a multiplicity or two. John says, yes and Jesus is the incarnation of that second power. So that’s how we see it. Not this widespread, inclusive monotheism, but we would say, Listen, we think Hurtado and Bauckham are right about an exclusive monotheism if they understand that one God in terms of two powers.
David Wilhite
We’d be remiss if we don’t mention your work on this, because, in our second book, we’re going to talk about New Testament authors. Paul is our earliest Christian source, and you have shown how much Paul is able to just read what we call Old Testament texts. He reads scriptures and the Yahweh text, and he just applies them to Jesus. And to me, some of the most remarkable ones, like in 1 Corinthians 8:6. Paul takes the Shema, “Hear, oh Israel, the LORD your God is one”. And somehow he splits that in two. He says to his audience in Corinth, we believe in one God, the Father and one Lord Jesus Christ. How did he get the Shema to go from one to two? And he doesn’t have to explain that. In 1 Corinthians, he’s got to explain food laws, laws about eating, laws about meat sacrifice to idols. He’s got to explain all kinds of things. But not this. This is just ready made for him, apparently. So, you’ve done work in area that we’re trying to build on, and we’re going to explore these kinds of things further.
David Capes
Well, I look forward to that book. We’re talking to David Wilhite and Adam Winn, who’ve written a terrific book entitled “Israel’s Lord: Yahweh as ‘Two Powers’ in Second Temple Literature.” This is book number one in a three-part series that they’ll be putting out over the next few years. I look forward to having you guys back to talk a little bit about that. We hope that our conversation today has been enlightening and helpful. Adam, David, thank you both for being with us.
Adam Winn
Thank you so much for having us on. David.
David Wilhite
Yes, it’s an honor to be here and to talk with you.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
