Two Powers – a Jewish scholar responds

[Thomas]

The following is an extract from an essay on The New Republic website.

It's a review of The Jewish Gospels: The Story of the Jewish Christ by By Daniel Boyarin (New Press), but much is relevant to his interpretation of the Two Power hypothesis, so I thought it worthwhile. Normally I would offer an edit and find, in the end, a really long post. This time I'm trying to cut to the chase – if one wants to interrogate the comments, then one can do no better than read the article itself.

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Boyarin’s main evidence is built on the Book of Daniel, and his interpretation of the Ancient of Days and the one like a human being (“Son of Man”) to whom is given dominion, glory, and kingship forever.

Schafer's critique here points out that Daniel tells us "thrones (in the plural) were set in place," only the Ancient of Days took his seat, and Boyarin surmises that the second (and presumably only other) throne was reserved for the Son of Man, a second divine figure. But Daniel speaks of an unidentified number of “thrones,” not just two, and Daniel goes on to say "the (heavenly) court shall sit in judgment."

Boyarin lightly dismisses the view favoured by many scholars (including Schafer) – in a footnote, with no clear reason – the the much more likely alternative that the Son of Man is the archangel Michael, who represents Israel in heaven. Michael, as Israel’s guardian angel, is given dominion and kingship in heaven as a prelude to the dominion and kingship given to the people of Israel on Earth – mentioned explicitly in the explanation of the vision – when the Maccabees will defeat the Seleucid king and destroy his kingdom.

"That is clearly how the author of the Book of Daniel understands the vision," Schafer argues. He goes on to say:
"Boyarin also invokes the Canaanite gods El and Ba‘al, the former being the ancient sky god and the latter his younger associate, whom the Bible tried—not always successfully—to merge into one God in order to accomplish its idea of a strict monotheism. The notion of a duality within God, he argues, is present in the Hebrew Bible itself. Fair enough—nobody would want to disagree with him here: that duality was a condition that the Bible sought not to affirm but to overcome. Yet with such a broad perspective on origins, almost anything that later emerges in Christianity could be traced back to the Hebrew Bible."

This is more or less the essence of what Boyarin’s book has to offer in support of its questionable thesis.

 

[Thomas]

Furthermore ...

"The long chapter about the Son of Man in the Similitudes of the First Book of Enoch and the Fourth Book of Ezra does not add much that is new, but merely builds on Boyarin’s dubious reading of Daniel 7."

"Boyarin goes on to argue in conclusion that Jesus’ vicarious suffering and death is informed not only by the Suffering Servant of Isaiah 53, which can be taken for granted, but also by Boyarin’s strange reading of Daniel’s vision. It also claims that the idea of a suffering and dying Messiah was common among the rabbis ... "
Relying, as Schafer points out, on thin evidence, he then goes on:

"Worse, Boyarin completely ignores the most important evidence of the vicarious suffering of the Messiah Ephraim in rabbinic Judaism, in the midrash Pesiqta Rabbati, where the notion of the Messiah’s vicarious expiatory suffering returns to the Jewish tradition. These texts have been thoroughly discussed in recent scholarship, and it has been argued that they most likely belong to the first half of the seventh century C.E. and may well be a rather late response to the Christian usurpation of the Messiah Jesus’s vicarious suffering. If this interpretation is correct, then there is clearly not a single unbroken line of tradition leading from Isaiah 53 through of all places Daniel 7—to the New Testament and the subsequent rabbinic literature. Instead what we encounter here is the rabbinic re-appropriation of a theme that is firmly embedded in the Hebrew Bible, was usurped by the New Testament Jesus and therefore largely ignored or better suppressed by most rabbis, only to make its way back later into certain strands of rabbinic Judaism."

"BOYARIN’S BOOK leaves the reader irritated and sad. It has very little that is new to offer—and what appears to be new is wildly speculative and highly idiosyncratic. Even judged by its commendable intentions—to win over dogmatic defenders of the perfect uniqueness of Christianity or Judaism—it is disappointing. As the younger Talmud professor in the acclaimed Israeli movie Footnote says to his hapless student, “There are many correct and new aspects in your paper—only what is new isn’t correct and what is correct isn’t new.”

"It turns out, for example, that the old binitarian idea of two divine figures, presaged in Second Temple Judaism and adopted by the New Testament, lived on in certain circles in rabbinic Judaism, despite its ever more sophisticated formulation in Christian theology with its climax in the doctrine of Trinity. The most prominent example of rabbinic Judaism’s ongoing preoccupation with—and its struggle against—binitarian ideas within its own fold is the elevation of the prediluvian patriarch Enoch to the highest angel Metatron, enthroned in heaven next to God and granted the title “Lesser God.” This is a concept that seems to come directly out of the New Testament playbook."

"(I)f we wish to evaluate “Judaism” and “Christianity” in the first centuries C.E. from a historian’s point of view, we need to stay away from the dogmatic notion of two firmly established religions, the one defined by its ultimate triumph over Judaism after it became the religion of the Christian state—with all its horrible consequences for the Jews—and the other defined by the victory of the rabbis over their enemies from within and from without. In doing so, we will discover that there is no single line or single point in the first centuries of the Christian era that distinguished Judaism and Christianity once and forever. There are several lines and several points. The binitarian idea of two divine powers does not constitute a definite line of demarcation between the faiths—but the Trinitarian idea of three divine powers does.
Schafer also points out that the vicarious suffering of the Messiah, or even his death, does not constitute an impassable boundary—but the scandal of his death on the cross, so much emphasized by Paul, does.

As for the dead redeemer’s resurrection: Boyarin is confident that it also belongs to the pre-Christian, Jewish storehouse of traditions, but he provides no evidence to support his view. Instead he resorts to the murky statement that “Perhaps his [Jesus’s] followers saw him arisen, but surely this must be because they had a narrative that led them to expect such appearances, and not that the appearances gave rise to the narrative.”

Peter Schäfer is Perelman Professor of Jewish Studies at Princeton University and the author, most recently, of The Jewish Jesus: How Judaism and Christianity Shaped Each Other (Princeton University Press).