The Jewish Gospels (19 page)

3
.
For discussion, see A.Y. Collins and J.J. Collins,
King and Messiah as Son of God: Divine, Human, and Angelic Messianic Figures in Biblical and Related Literature
(Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans, 2008), 16–19.

4
.
Leo Baeck,
Judaism and Christianity: Essays
(Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1958), 28–29.

5
.
For a good survey, see Delbert Royce Burkett,
The Son of Man Debate: A History and Evaluation
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).

6
.
For the literature supporting this view, see John J. Collins, “The Son of Man and the Saints of the Most High in the Book of Daniel,”
Journal of Biblical Literature
93, no. 1 (March 1974):
50n2. In his view, the one like a son of man is Michael. He represents Israel, as its heavenly “prince,” quite explicitly in chapters 10–12. Collins, accordingly, disagrees with me, thinking that the interpretation in Daniel 7 does not demote him at all. In both chapters 7 and 10–12, for Collins, reality is depicted on two levels. I would only remark that Collins's interpretation is by no means impossible, but I nonetheless prefer the one I have offered in the text for reasons made most clear in my article in the
Harvard Theological Review,
as well as on grounds of relative simplicity.

7
.
Louis Francis Hartman and Alexander A. Di Lella,
The Book of Daniel
, trans. Louis Francis Hartman, The Anchor Bible (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1978), 101. They themselves list Exod 13:21; 19:16; 20:21; Deut 5:22; I Kings 8:10; and Sir 45:4.

8
.
J.A. Emerton, “The Origin of the Son of Man Imagery,”
Journal of Theological Studies
9 (1958): 231–32.

9
.
Matthew Black, “The Throne-Theophany, Prophetic Commission, and the ‘Son of Man,'” in
Jews, Greeks, and Christians: Religious Cultures in Late Antiquity: Essays in Honor of William David Davies,
ed. Robert G. Hamerton-Kelley and Robin Scroggs (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1976), 61.

10
.
For a study of the ubiquity of this pattern, see Moshe Idel,
Ben: Sonship and Jewish Mysticism,
Kogod Library of Judaic Studies (London: Continuum, 2007).

11
.
Frank Moore Cross,
Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1973), 43.

12
.
Readers of modern Hebrew will surely find Yisra'el Knohl,
Me-Ayin Banu: Ha-Tsofen Ha-Geneti Shel Ha-Tanakh
[The Genetic Code of the Bible] (Or Yehudah: Devir, 2008), 102–13, of interest here. Especially riveting is Knohl's idea that YHVH was represented by a golden calf insofar as he was understood as the son of El, who was a bull.

13
.
After the rabbis, I have found only Sigmund Olaf Plytt Mowinckel,
He That Cometh: The Messiah Concept in the Old Testament and Later Judaism,
trans. G.W. Anderson (Oxford: B. Blackwell, 1956), 352, emphasizing this point sufficiently, but, of course, since the literature is massive, I may (almost certainly have) missed others.

14
.
Following the argument made originally by Emerton, “Origin.”

15
.
John J. Collins,
Daniel: A Commentary on the Book of Daniel,
Hermeneia (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993), 291.

16
.
I have modified Collins's original list of such patterns in two ways. I have dropped the comparison with the sea, since I believe that the sea vision and the Son of Man vision were once two separate elements, and I have emphasized the differential ages of the two divine figures, which seems to me crucial for understanding the pattern of relationships here.

17
.
Carsten Colpe, “Ho Huios Tou Anthrōpou,” in
Theological Dictionary of the New Testament,
vol. 8 (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1972), 8:400–477.

18
.
Ronald Hendel, “The Exodus in Biblical Memory,” in
Remembering Abraham
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 57–75.

19
.
Cross,
Canaanite,
58. See also David Biale, “The God with Breasts: El Shaddai in the Bible,”
History of Religions
21, no. 3 (February 1982): 240–56, and Mark S. Smith,
The Early History of God: Yahweh and the Other Deities in Ancient Israel,
2nd ed. with a foreword by Patrick D. Miller, Biblical Resources Series (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2002), 184.

20
.
This explanation of Ba
Ê¿
al and YHVH as rivals for the young God spot might be taken to explain better the extreme rivalry between them manifested in the Bible.

21
.
Smith,
Early History of God,
32–33. Cross, in contrast, had argued that YHVH was originally a cultic name for
ʾ
El used in the south; YHVH eventually splits off from and then ousts
ʾ
El (Cross,
Canaanite
, 71). This seems to me to leave somewhat unclear the Ba
Ê¿
al-like characteristic of YHVH as these have been described by Cross himself in the passage cited immediately above. Cross's comments (Cross,
Canaanite
, 75) on two strands in “Israel's primitive religion” don't quite answer this question. In a later chapter of his book, Cross treats the close affinities between Ba
Ê¿
al and YHVH, so close, indeed, that as my teacher H.L. Ginsberg realized already in the 1930s, an entire Ba
Ê¿
al hymn has been lifted intact and adapted for YHVH in Psalm 29. As Cross himself emphasizes, this could hardly have been done if the imagery were not appropriate already for YHVH (Cross,
Canaanite
, 156). Cross therefore writes:
“The language of theophany in early Israel was primarily language drawn from the theophany of Ba
Ê¿
l” (Cross,
Canaanite
, 157), a formulation that I would slightly modify: the language of theophany of YHVH in ancient Israel was parallel to and nearly identical to the language of theophanies of Ba
Ê¿
al among northern Canaanites. Cross, of course, recognizes the merger here, but it is less clear why, according to him,
ʾ
El/YHVH should have absorbed characteristics of Ba
Ê¿
al that seemingly did not exist before in Israel's religion. As Cross's reconstruction seems not to recognize YHVH as a variant of Ba
Ê¿
al, where would he come from? This difficulty is obviated if we assume an ancient cult of
ʾ
El as the universal old god of all of the Canaanites and Ba
Ê¿
al and YHVH as variant forms and names of the young god, with YHVH merged into
ʾ
El in the later forms of official biblical religion. Of course, I do not imagine for a second that YHVH did not further appropriate characteristics of Ba
Ê¿
al as he moved northward and became more of a rain and storm god in addition to the mountain and volcano god that he had been in his putative original southern home. See also Peter Hayman, “Monotheism—a Misused Word in Jewish Studies?”
Journal of Jewish Studies
42, no. 1 (1991): 5. See also especially Paula Fredriksen, “Mandatory Retirement: Ideas in the Study of Christian Origins Whose Time Has Come to Go,” in
Israel's God and Rebecca's Children: Christology and Community in Early Judaism and Christianity: Essays in Honor of Larry W. Hurtado and Alan F. Segal,
ed. David B. Capes et al. (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2007), 35–38.

22
.
A similar explanation, mutatis mutandis, might, just might, help to understand the place of
Ḥ
okhma, Lady Wisdom, as a virtual consort to God in Proverbs 8 and her connections with Ashera, for which see Smith,
Early History of God
, 133.

23
.
It is here that I part company most decisively with Otto Eissfeldt, “El and Yahweh,”
Journal of Semitic Studies
1 (1956): 25–37, and Margaret Barker,
The Great Angel: A Study of Israel's Second God
(London: SPCK, 1992).

24
.
Daniel Abrams, “The Boundaries of Divine Ontology: The Inclusion and Exclusion of Me
á¹­
a
á¹­
ron in the Godhead,”
Harvard Theological Review
87, no. 3 (July 1994): 291–321.

25
.
Pace
Barker,
Great Angel,
40. I thus agree with Emerton's
conclusion that “the language used of the Son of man suggests Yahwe, not the Davidic king.” Emerton, “The Origin,” 231.

26
.
Seen in this light, it really is a sort of quibble to distinguish between second divinity and highest angel. We need to remember that in antiquity monotheism meant not the sole existence of only one divine being but the absolute supremacy of one to whom all others are subordinate (and this was good Christian theology until Nicaea as well). Fredriksen, “Mandatory Retirement,” 35–38, is a concise, excellent presentation of this position.

27
.
“Yahoel” appears in the Apocalypse of Abraham (
A.D.
70–150), but then as late as 3 Enoch (fourth–fifth centuries), we find “Little Yahu,” “Yahoel Yah,” and “Yahoel” explicitly given as names for Metatron. Andrei Orlov, “Praxis of the Voice: The Divine Name Traditions in the Apocalypse of Abraham,”
Journal of Biblical Literature
127 (2008): 53–70, and Philip S. Alexander, “The Historical Setting of the Hebrew Book of Enoch,”
Journal of Jewish Studies
28 (1977): 163–64. (See also in this context Gedaliahu G. Stroumsa, “Form[s] of God: Some Notes on Metatron and Christ: For Shlomo Pines,”
Harvard Theological Review
76, no. 3 [July 1983]: 269–88.) As Alexander points out in that article as well, these very names are predicated in other contemporary texts of God himself. The lines between exalted angels and gods get harder and harder to draw and see. “At some stage, the old myth was reinterpreted in terms of the supremacy of Yahwe, who had been identified with both Elyon and Baal. Then the Son of man was degraded to the status of an angel, even though he retained the imagery which was so closely attached to him in tradition. This would help to explain the attribution of an exalted status to such beings as Michael and Metatron in later Judaism” (Emerton, “The Origin,” 242). It is important to add, however, that angel is not necessarily such a degradation, but perhaps precisely the point of a tension or ambiguity about monotheism at the heart of Israel's religion (this is more an explication of Emerton than a correction of him). Throughout the Hebrew Bible there is confusion between YHVH himself, as it were, and his Mal'akh, the single, unnamed angel of the Lord, precisely in theophanies. The first example of the use of the term in Genesis
already manifests this conflation. In Genesis 16:7 the “angel of YHVH” appears to Hagar and performs a series of clearly divine offices. No wonder that in v. 13, she refers to him as YHVH. As Robert Alter remarks in the name of Richard Elliot Friedman, “No clear-cut distinction between God and angel is intended.” Similarly in Genesis 22:11–18, where clearly the angel of YHVH is performing precisely the offices of YHVH himself. Another brilliant example is Exodus 3, where Moses sees the angel of YHVH inside the burning bush and then in v. 7 the very same figure addresses him and is called YHVH. There is, indeed, no clear distinction between YHVH and this special Mal'akh; they are two aspects of one divinity but also the product of a productive tension derived from the hypothetic originary ditheism of Israel's religion.

28
.
Collins,
Daniel,
281. Collins seems to consider the pattern of religion enshrined in the throne vision as a frozen relic from Israel's past (or even a foreign past): “it has been argued that motifs should not be ‘torn out of their living contexts' but ‘should be considered against the totality of the phenomenological conception of the works in which such correspondences occur.' Such demands are justified when the intention is to compare the ‘patterns of religion' in a myth and a biblical text, but this has never been the issue in the discussion of Daniel 7.”

29
.
See Daniel Boyarin, “Beyond Judaisms: Me
á¹­
a
á¹­
ron and the Divine Polymorphy of Ancient Judaism,”
Journal for the Study of Judaism in the Persian, Hellenistic, and Roman Periods
41 (July 2010): 323–65.

30
.
Andrew Chester, “High Christology—Whence, When and Why?”
Early Christianity 2,
no. 1 (2011): 22–50.

31
.
Chester identifies three trends within the group of scholars who see the divinity of Christ as emerging within Jewry, defined almost according to the tempo of the emergence: (1) James Dunn's, according to which “high Christology emerges within essentially Jewish categories, but does so only very gradually,” and it is in John that it emerges (in this respect like the first view but without necessitating Gentile sources); (2) Martin Hengel's and Larry Hurtado's, according to which high Christology emerges very rapidly—“explosively”—within
a Jewish context in response to the resurrection and is seen most clearly in Paul; and (3) the view of Horbury and Collins that I am maintaining here, namely, that the theological ideas behind a high Christology were already present within Second Temple Judaism. Chester, “High Christology,” 31.

32
.
I have modified the translation of the end of the sentence (RSV: “but God alone”) following Adela Yarbro Collins,
Mark: A Commentary,
ed. Harold W. Attridge, Hermeneia—a Critical and Historical Commentary on the Bible (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2007), 181, and see her discussion, 185.