Adam Winn
I think we should start by saying we begin to look at Second Temple Judaism and the monotheism of Second Temple Judaism. We looked at the various pieces of evidence that we have related to how Jews understood the God of Israel. And what we begin to look at, was a long debate. Larry Hurtado has been involved in this debate. Crispin Fletcher-Louis has been involved in this debate. What is the nature of Jewish monotheism during this time? Scholars have offered a variety of different ways of understanding it.
Larry Hurtado and Richard Bauckham offer this exclusive monotheism where there’s strict boundary markers between the God of Israel and everything else. For Hurtado, worship seems to be the primary boundary marker. Bauckham would acknowledge worship as a boundary marker but would emphasize the act of creation as a boundary marker. Yahweh creates. Nothing else creates. Yahweh is sovereign over creation. He closely associates the throne of God with this. Yahweh sits on the throne in heaven. No one else sits on the throne in heaven.
A lot of evidence from the Second Temple period supports this. There’s a lot of evidence that leans in that direction and supports their conclusions. But then also at the same time, there’s these nasty exceptions to those conclusions as well. The Enochic Son of Man in Bauckham’s first work on this said the Enochic son of man was equivocally part of the divine identity, because he looks like he sits on the divine throne and maybe receives worship. He’s equivocally a part, and then he’s the exception that proves the rule. And other scholars pushed back, like Crispin Fletcher-Louis says, wait a minute, how is he the exception that proves the rule? Why doesn’t he break the rule? Why does it disprove the rule?
You have figures like that, the Enochic Son of man. You have other figures like Word and wisdom in Philo and different things that seem like they create or they’re involved in creation. There are “Angel of the Lord” traditions, various angelic figures, and these sorts of things. There’s these “flies in the ointment” that you’re trying to navigate. And then there’s an alternative side, another group, that takes these exceptions and says, well, maybe monotheism was more inclusive. Maybe there weren’t these hard and fast boundaries. Maybe the God of Israel could share worship with someone, or he could share the act of creation, or could share sovereignty. And we also note that that has weaknesses as well, because that explains the exceptions well, but it does a really bad job of explaining the rules that Hurtado and Bauckham point out. If Yahweh can share, well, then why don’t we see more broad sharing in terms of worship or expressions of cult, or these sorts of things?
Those are the polls we’re navigating. This exclusive monotheism versus inclusive monotheism, and trying to say, how can we resolve this tension. And what we do is look ahead and say, maybe we can find something in later Rabbinic Judaism that can help us out to resolve this. And this is where we look at the work of Segal, the work of Daneil Boyarin , and say in the rabbinic period, they’re talking about two powers. They’re talking about the existence of two powers, where it seems like they understand that the one God of Israel exists in terms of two, in some way. And so that’s where we get that language of two powers and we’re not the first people to do this. Boyarin does this. Segal does this. Maybe that’s not just a rabbinic phenomenon. Maybe that’s a phenomenon that existed in the Second Temple period, and maybe it was an acceptable version of Judaism. That’s how we get to two powers and what we mean by two powers.
David Capes
I think it’s very helpful, because you’re explaining a lot of phenomena, a lot of data that later becomes the language of the two powers. Now you’re not talking about two gods are you?
Adam Winn
We are not talking about two gods.
David Capes
Because some people might hear that and wonder, does that mean there’s two co-equal, separate, distinct powers? That’s not what you’re talking about.
David Wilhite
The reason it’s in the rabbinic literature is the rabbis are rejecting two powers. There can only be one, and they seem to mean one God, but there can’t be a second god. If you’re worshiping another person on another throne in heaven, they’re saying that’s outside the bounds of the one God. Well, that’s understandable. We look to the earlier sources, though, and you find Jews prior to the New Testament who keep using this sort of second figure. And Philo is a famous example. Philo is a Jewish writer, writing in Greek. He from Alexandria. Philo will talk about the Logos, the word of God, as if he is god on earth, doing all the things God’s supposed to do on Earth. Even sitting in the temple, getting worshiped.
All of these things.
And at one point he’s even asked the question, do you believe in two gods? And he says he doesn’t prefer two gods, but two powers. Again, we don’t try to explain all the relationships here, but even though Jews would not want to think of a second god, God is somehow in heaven and transcendent and beyond us. God is also somehow present as the second power who operates on Earth, whether that’s the word of God, the wisdom of God, the angel of the Lord. The second figure goes under several different titles, which we try to unpack in our book.
David Capes
I’ve always been fascinated with this angel of the Lord figure. We see it in Genesis, the first time. I really would appreciate Adam if you’d give us your idea of what’s happening. It seems like the angel is there, let’s say, in the burning bush, and yet it is God who speaks from the midst of the bush. So, it seems like it’s both. both the angel of the Lord, but it’s also God Himself. How do you look at that? That’s one of those theophanic or theophanies that are sometimes described.
Adam Winn
Yes, that’s right. Let me first say we are trying to answer that question from the perspective of second temple Jews, and so we don’t try and answer that question from the perspective of the author of Exodus. So, we’re careful there. I just read this text this morning. It’s interesting that you brought up the angel of the Lord who appears in the burning bush, and then it’s Yahweh that speaks. Yahweh speaks from the burning bush. There’s a lot of different places where it almost seems like the angel of the Lord and Yahweh are synonymous. What we think we see in the Second Temple literature is there are many second temple Jews that are looking at that and understanding it in terms of the angel of the Lord is the Yahweh that is present to Moses, you can say the angel of the Lord and you can say the Lord speaks, because the angel of the Lord and the Lord are understood as one, in some sense. But in other sense they are distinct. David (Wilhite) talked about Philo. Interestingly, Philo talks about the Logos. But for Philo, the Logos is also the angel of the Lord that has this distinct identity. It’s the Logos as the angel of the Lord that’s operating in the burning bush. It’s Yahweh who is present with Israel. We think second temple Jews understood the angel of the Lord as the Lord, but it’s distinguished because of imminence versus transcendence. Now I’m going to hand it over to David, because he did more of the work on the angel of the Lord chapter than I did.
David Wilhite
You handled it well. You know, one of the things we have to admit, whether it’s trying to read the Old Testament or trying to read the New Testament, is what scholars are trying to avoid. This may not be the case for all of your audience, but what scholars are trained to do is not take the Trinitarianism that was formulated in the early church [in the 4th century AD] and impose that on the biblical text. If you assume that ancient Jews weren’t Trinitarian in the time of Exodus, well then there must be one God. Except for what you point out David, that there’s all these strange texts of the angel of the Lord, where
the angel of the Lord is called the Lord and speaks as if he’s the Lord and acts like the Lord. Is it just the Lord appearing as an angel? Well, no, because the angel refers to the Lord, so there is not one, but two.
And again, Christian listeners are going to be anticipating, wait, where’s the third? Where’s the Holy Spirit? We’re not trying to sort all of that out, as Adam said. We’re thinking about these confusing texts from the Hebrew Bible, where this angel of the Lord is a second figure who is also called the Lord Yahweh. How did Jews in the time of the New Testament writers understand them? All we can do is look at the texts that were available and see what they were doing with these texts.
For example, there’s 3 Enoch which is later. It’s rabbinic. But 3 Enoch is a Jewish text where there is this angelic heavenly figure. It seems to be the angel of the Lord under this new angel’s name. A new name, I should say, Metatron. And he’s called, in one part, the younger Yahweh. So there’s Yahweh, and younger Yahweh. The angel of the Lord is the lesser one. We’re not saying that’s orthodoxy. We’re not saying that everybody in the second temple understood it that way, but we’re trying to sort through all of these clues as to how could New Testament writers have read those texts.
David Capes
Well, it’s a fascinating book. We’re going to continue this conversation in the next podcast, and we will go a little bit deeper into some of these categories that you’ve mentioned. And at the same time, I’d like to get a little hint of what’s coming and how this is going to be figuring in to what we find in the New Testament, when Jesus is now treated as God and worshiped and prayed to. There’s a feast in his honor, and those kinds of things that are typically associated in that time and culture with divinity. Thank you both for being here for part one. Part two is on its way.
David Wilhite
Thanks for having us.
Adam Winn
Thank you.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
