Enoch or Jesus? The Quest of the Historical Metatron

well Christianity as we know includes two components a penchant for suffering and faithfulness so those of you who've been here for the last two and they're here for the third are a good Christians in one of them in one of those two categories so Enoch or Jesus the quest of the historical method wrote and that read has remarked for Gershom Scholem the combination of apocalyptic with theosophy and cosmogony in one anak was quote by itself sufficient to prove the essential continuity of thought and quote that linked early Jewish apocalyptic with later Merkava mysticism is still in that reader meaning here however recent advances in scholarship she writes prompted by Peter Schaffer's 1981 publication of the hallowed corpus have thrown doubt upon Shalom's theory that the two traditions evidence a quote religious movement of a distinctive character end quote with an unbroken development from the anonymous conventicle z' of the old apocalyptic s-- to the Merkava speculation of the Mishnah teachers to the macabre mysticism of late and post Talmudic times end quote if shown if Shalom's approach could be deemed the first quest of the historical Metatron and Schafer's the second question i have been trying to stake out a different path a third quest i'm not sure what an unbroken development means or is supposed to mean but surely it ought not to mean that nothing changed between 1 & 2 & 3 anak nor did Shalom intended to mean that on the one hand i wish to assert the essential correctness of Shalom's intuition while modifying it to read that the combination of cosmogony even meteorology and theosophy in 1 & 2 Enoch and in the Talmudic apocalypse of Bob Lisa Giga as shown in last night's lecture does be speak a diatonic connection of one sort or another but quite certain between these two corpora and moreover the further connections between the Talmudic material and at least some of the Merkava texts testified to further continuity at the same time however I categorically deny that the necessary upshot of such diachronic connectivity is either a distinct religious movement or unbroken development all development in the history of human cultures is broken fragmentary reconstructive bricolage and this is no exception the most crucial part of my argument is that the second chapter of hagigah which we have been reading throughout these lectures contains virtually an apocalyptic anthology of the rabbis one that both suppresses as does the Mishnah and at the same time reveals and adds up to matically to evidence for lively apocalyptic speculation at the time of the rabbis and even among them in addition to the cosmic cosmic garnet I guess and meteorological matters that we have looked at until now there is of course the Asaf expectant in this text as well in a Giga 14a we read all the text should be on on the papers one verse Daniel 7:9 says his garment was like white snow and the hair of his head like the wool of sheep and one verse says his hair is curls as black as a raven this is no difficulty one is in court literally sitting ie in court judging court and the other is at war for the master has said there is no one more appropriate for judgment than an elder and there was no one more appropriate for war than a youth one verse says his throne was flames of fire and one verse says until Thrones were set up and one Ancient of Days sat right so the contradiction here is between one throne or two Thrones this is no difficulty one was for him and one for David ie there were two Thrones one for the Ancient of Days the Lord the Father we might call him and one for David as we have learned in a brighter one for him and one for David the words of Rabbi Akiva Robbie OC the Glee lien said to him Akiva how long will you make the divine presence the Shema profane rather one for judgment and one for mercy did he Robbie Akiva accept it from him from Robbie OC or did he not accept it from him coming here one for judgment and one for mercy the words of Rabbi Akiva right so clearly Rabbi Akiva repented of his theological error of thinking that the two Thrones are one for the Lord and one for David said Tim Rabbi Eleazar Ben Azaria Akiva what are you doing with Haggadah desist from your words and go back to laws of purity and impurity literally skin diseases diseases and tent impurities any time that Rabbi Akiva makes so bold is to make some sort of a theological comment and not a halakha comment somebody says to what do you what are you talking about you go back to your to your specialty you know you you know about purity and impurity and not theology rather one for the throne and one for the footstool the throne to sit upon the footstool to rest his feet as it says the heaven is my throne and the earth my footstool in this text we find thematize the apparent contradiction between God being portrayed as a wise elder and being portrayed as a youth full of vigor and passion to different contradictions are cited the second one which is the one that concerns us here it's quite explicitly the contradiction between the notion of one God and the representation so it seems in Daniel of two divine figures the second one like a son of man who is seated on a second throne Daniel 7:13 the crucial but dangerous proof text is pretentiously not cited explicitly but only obliquely through the reference to cursive on Thrones in the plural the Tanner incited in the Bob we both read Daniel 7 in the same way the second throne is for a second figure dis FEMA whom rabbi akiva identifies as David on rabbi yosef reading of rabbi akiva statement we have here then apparently both by night Aryan by night arianism right two divine figures I think you mean the Ancient of Days and the one like a son of man who is David sitting on the second throne and a theosis right David the human become divine which ladder raises rather Yossi stander it is highly unlikely Patchi Allan Segal closely that we are dealing here with a genuine tradition about robbing a Kiva from early in the second century this on general methodological grounds there may be some indication however that the Beretta was not at any rate produced for this context and may even be there for a Palestinian source it can be seen that it does not quite fit its context in the Bodley since the anonymous voice in the tone with the stahma the redactor we might say actually asserts the position raffia Kiva's that the Bharata appears to reject so that there is a disconnect between the stars quotation of rabbi akiva a support for its view and then seemingly noting that he abandoned it this at least suggests the possibility that the brighter is an earlier and thus spinny and possibly Palestinian source let me go through my reading of the passage a bit more slowly now although as I have suggested the text and other rabbinic texts carefully gingerly avoids actually citing the son of man passage in these very Daniel verses it is on these verses that they indeed rely the portrayed rabbi akiva spoink is that one of the two thrones was for the Ancient of Days and one for David thus the one like a son of man the crux is his identification of David the Messiah as the Son of man who sits at God's right hand thus suggesting not only a divine figure but one who is incarnate in a human being as well are you the Messiah I am and you shall see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power and coming in the clouds of heaven I don't think I need to give the chapter and verse for that in this crowd anyway hence his objectors taunt until when will you make the divine presence profane that is implied that the Son of man has become incarnate in the human figure of the Davidic Messiah or perhaps that the human David has been divinized through his presence on the second throne either way rabbi Akiba seems at any rate - rabbi OC to be projecting a divine human son of man who will be the Messiah his contemporary rabbi you'll see the Galilean strenuously objects - rabbi akiva dangerous interpretation and gives the verse a mode list interpretation well I think a certain degree of caution is in order this reading is not shall we say entirely provable notwithstanding it seems the most plausible and compelling way to understand this text on this reading Rubbia Kiva's interpretation grows out of precisely the same kind of conflation of Messiah son of even with the redeeming Divine Son of man of Daniel seven that we find in mark producing similar Christological results supporting this interpretation at least in the Babylonian Talmud we read the following passage in Sanhedrin 98 a rabbi Alexandre said rabbi Yeshua the son of LaVey raised the contradiction it is written and behold with the clouds of heaven there came one like a son of man and it is written pour and riding on a donkey if they Israel are righteous with the clouds of heaven if they are not righteous poor and riding on a donkey right so if anyone doubts that the rabbi's gave a Messianic reading to Daniel 7 here is the proof right the one like a son of man here is not Israel but the Messiah it couldn't be clearer it is clear that Daniel 7 had been given a messianic reading and that there was tension felt between the Messiah of Daniel 7 and the Messiah of Zechariah 9 between the Messiah as a divine figure in the Messiah as a humiliated human being expressed in good rabbinic fashion as a contradiction between vs. resolved in a totally topical fashion in the text the tension and the potential it bears for an incarnation already is nonetheless there it is this tension I think that motivates the controversy between the figures of Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi Yosef in the Haghighi texts as well of course the tone would itself must record that Rabbi Akiva changed his mind in order for him to remain Orthodox the son and Orthodox of course is a squiggly fingers the Son of Man aka to sovereignties in heaven is thus not foreign even at the very heart of the rabbinic enterprise even a figure like Robbie eva has to be educated as to the heretical nature of his position suggesting once again that any absolute difference between mystical circles that embrace such theological notions and rabbinic circles that have always as it were rejected such quote/unquote malign influence has to be withdrawn once and for all this is what the editors of the Talmud would want us to believe but a different reality is easy to perceive behind their very efforts to convince rabbinic judaism kua orthodoxy is formed precisely out of the rejection of ideas about the Godhead that were once widely held injury and that rejection is dramatized in our text of rabbi Akiba 'z re-education Schaffer more or less accepts and agrees with my reading of the Talmud here we differ with respect to the textual background to the Talmudic text for Schaffer it is to be explained as a late ancient Babylonian response to Christianity the issue is then it seems not so so much methodological as Schaffer wishes to present it as hermeneutical the consequences are however not insignificant at all the stakes here are nothing less than a picture of the history of relations between the religious genealogy of late ancient Jews and Christians according to Schafer's approach the babylonian passage is completely severed from any previous rabbinic tradition it is only thus that Schaffer can conclude the jury did not continue into the rabbinic Age some of its ancient apocalyptic strands which occur also in the Gospels and thus later Christian thought but instead that the Babylonian Jews were profoundly impacted and imitated the Christianity of their time once again the issue is not methodological or theoretical but empirical above in these very lectures I have alluded to a powerful example of lain ancient Christian intercourse with Babylonian rabbinic judaism in principle but it is a far cry from that to the Gospel reading Babylonian rabbis of Schaeffer I turn now to the locale within the tal Merrik tradition that I take to be the clearest case for such diachronic connections namely Metatron the Rabanne the rabbinic or so I claimed successor to the son of man right so just to to give a quick summary up to this point what I'm suggesting is of course a profound connection between Jewish traditions and the Gospels but I'm suggesting that that profound tradition then splits into two branches one that identifies Jesus of Nazareth is the son of man and one that continues along the paths of identifying Enoch with the son of man and it develops that direction into a medieval Judaism after all if we think about it those two traditions had to be at loggerheads from the beginning because if Enoch is the son of man that Jesus can't be the son of man right so either Enoch or Jesus so once the gospel traditions settle from mark on on Jesus as the Son of man then the identification of Enoch with the Son of Man that we find in the similitudes of Enoch is a different tradition right is that clear winner what I'm suggesting so then we have two lines of development but from the same historical origin of the notion that there are two divine figures the Ancient of Days and the son of men in what follows I'm going to reread this famous Tamarack passage in ways that partly draw on what I've written in the past and partly overturn it to read some new conclusions about its historical meanings the biggest innovation here visibly my previous work on this text is that in this final edition of my thoughts on these matters bleah neder that is I don't actually vow that these are my final thoughts but I hope and aspire that they will be I will read it as integrally integrally related to the whole town wooded context to what I have styled the Talmudic apocalypse yesterday in the passage we have just looked at we see I maintain a dramatic effort to suppress a certain important aspect of apocalyptic texts from Enoch to Revelation namely the presence of a second or junior divinity once known as the son of man alongside of the father on a second throne typically moreover this second divine person is in some shape or form a transformed human being it is not hard nor unprecedented to see here in their most general forms the religious notions that give rise to Trinity and incarnation by presenting in this text as it were the re-education of Rabbi Akiva on these questions David the Messiah on a second throne the very idea the talmud is indeed engaged their act of clamping down on such thoughts the next story can be seen as part and parcel of such efforts of suppression as well but it needs more careful and contextual reading than I have given it before the reading offered here subtly different from previous ones will further support my thesis that the material in the second chapter of kaga especially in the bobbly is a somewhat tortious tortuous and certainly fragmentary rabbinic apocalypse given the close connections between the Talmudic apocalypse and hagigah and the earlier enoch literature exposed in the previous lecture an old question needs to be asked to MU namely the question of the relation between a famous passage and it's very near but also distinct parallel in 3 enoch a famous Talmudic passage the babylonian talmud has a very famous and remarkable narrative of the ascent that was me regretting using the word famous twice in two sentences and remarkable narrative of the ascension of a certain Elisha bana bouya nicknamed a higher to heaven whereupon he makes a fateful mistake misidentifies Metatron as a god and suffers terrible consequences Schaefer has made it compelling a point about this narrative in which the highest angel potentially identified with or confused with the second divine person namely Metatron appears it can only be explained as he shows on the basis of traditions such as those found in the book 3 Enoch in which Enoch is transformed into Metatron explicitly Alexander has further pointed out that Metatron's Peter Alexander has further pointed out that Metatron's absorption of translated enoch could only have taken place in circles acquainted with the Palestinian apocalyptic enoch traditions Schaefer however declines any possibility of seeing connections between the early Enoch apocalypse is 1 & 2 enoch in which such an apotheosis takes place for Enoch and the much later Hebrew text known as safer hakalo or 3 Enoch he consequently ends up asserting as the only possible explanation direct Christian influence on the Talmud in late antiquity ie that Metatron is produced in the Byzantine era out of whole Christian cloth as an imitation of Christ other scholars have taken note of the importance of to Slavonic Enoch and understanding the development of the later Metatron materials a line of investigation that Schafer has seen largely to ignore the crucial point is to envision a connection between the transformation of Enoch into the Son of Man in 1 enoch 71 Enochs angelic transformation in - enoch 22 and the transformation of enoch into the Archangel Metatron in Seyfried hello 3 Enoch right so I'm suggesting a historical I'm not only i but following Orloff and alexander suggesting a historical trajectory in which the human inna becomes the son of man in 1 in X 71 is transformed into an angel into Enoch 22 and in 3 Enoch actually becomes Metatron easily an archangel or the second divine figure we need not I propose imagine anything quite so retic radical as an all-out incursion of Christian Christology all of a sudden into Byzantine era Babylonian Jewish texts although I would never deny and will actively actively advance below the possibility or even probability of such intercourse as at least a partial explanation for historical changes within the traditions why not after all thus to take one example while already in classical rabbinic literature God is frequently described as having a pimalia a Familia there is no reason to doubt that within the Merkabah texts the descriptions of the pimalia draw on images of the Byzantine Court in the text of Thomond Huggy go we find the story of elisha ben abayas apostasy this famous heretic upon seeing a vision of the glorious being named Metatron sitting in heaven sitting in heaven wondered if perhaps there are two sovereignties in heaven the arch heresy of the town would notoriously we find an all identical but significantly different parallel to this text in safe rights alone please follow along because I'm not going to read the right column I'll only read the Talmudic column and you'll see the differences as we go along our rabbis have taught for went into the par days and who are they Ben Isaiah and Ben Zoma a hare and Rabbi Akiva a hare chopped down the shoots Rabi Akiva came out safely right so bad things happened to three of them but Rabi Akiva came out safely a hare had chopped down the shoots whatever that means we'll see right away I can't chop down the shoots of him the verse says do not let your mouth cause your flesh to sin what does this mean he saw that Metatron had been given permission to sit and write the good deeds of Israel he said but it is taught that on high there will be no sitting no conflict no back and no tiredness perhaps God forbid there are two powers to sovereigntist a result they don't Metatron out and whipped him with sixty whips of fire they said to him what is the reason that when you saw him you did not get up before him Metatron was given permission to erase the good deeds of a hare a voice came out from heaven and said return o backsliding ones except for a hare in other words a fire has committed the sin against the Holy Spirit against from which there can be no repentance no forgiveness he said since that man has that he that is a hare since said since that man referring to himself has been driven out of that world let him go out and enjoy himself in this world he went out to evil culture he went and found a prostitute and solicited her she said aren't you elisha ben abulia he went and uprooted a radish on the side and gave it to her she said he is an other a hair right explaining why he is called a fair man famous rabbi comes and solicits the prostitute she said but aren't you the famous rabbi so he goes and proves he's not by violating the Sabbath so she says oh I must have confused him with somebody else although the tumba detects its relationship to three Enoch haven't been interpreted quite a few times in recent scholarship and even very recently there is still it seems more to be said rejecting earlier attempts to argue direct dependence of one of the versions on the other as well as claims for very different meanings for the two versions I shall claim that it is unlikely that one was copied from the other and perhaps more surprisingly that they both add up ideologically to the same thing despite vast literary and other differences between them it is crucial to observe that it is the sitting of Metatron that precipitates the crisis for elisha in both texts he saw that Metatron had been given permission to sit and write the good deeds of Israel most commentators do not I think take sufficient measure of the significance of this detail and indeed it has been partially obscured within the textual transmission of the Talmud itself in the hakalo the three Enoch version of the story as well met to turn himself emphasizes that he was seated on a throne and judging on the authority of the Holy One I think it highly likely that this statement of authority to sit is a market allusion to the very enthronement scene in Daniel 7 which has been the pumping heart of the tradition the one like a son of man who is seated on a throne and awarded shulton in Aramaic Greek ik socia Hebrew resuits a hair's confusion is occasioned precisely by this illusion which he gets to is it possible that the interpretation of those verses from Daniel so current in Israel and lately declared heretical is true perhaps there are indeed two sovereignties today we salute a father and son in heaven the cause of our theological confusion as we have it in the Textus Receptus of the bobbly is however very puzzling on the one hand it is clear that it is the fact that Metatron sitting that causes our hair to fall into error but on the other hand his own speech about this seems incoherent or nearly so as he remarks that but it is taught that on high there will be no standing no sitting no jealousy no conflict no back and no tiredness how is the rest of this list other than the sitting itself to be connected with Metatron seated posture and what in this long list caused a hair to consider the possibility of two sovereignties in heaven on the one hand there are indications at least in most witnesses that the sitting evoked thoughts of competition between God and Metatron but directly contradicting that is the suggestion that Metatron sat because he was tired which would certainly suggest his mortality not as divinity the list is in short in Co yank and self contradictory if we understand it to be the cause of affairs error Philip Alexander suggests that the list has been imported from another text which is not extant in which it is asserted that God and the angels are without body parts or passions in rather platonic fashion it defined the heavenly world as the negation of all that we know and experience here on earth we can build a bit further on this crucial insight muhammara cher Seco who was I think once present in this university for several years I in fact be here if I'm not mistaken remarked of this list that it is hermeneutic in character each of the elements in the list refers to a verse thus for standing we find numbers 12 5 where the verse reads and the Lord came down on a column of cloud and stood in front of the tenth or for another striking example in the verse job tweet 25 2 he makes peace in his heaven is taken to mean that there's conflict and competition Taco Ruth in heaven by the early Madras using in this case exactly the same word as that which our text denies similarly we can find verses that suggest employer actually impute jealously tiredness and sitting of course the crux back is now neatly solved as well referring to the back of God that Moses allegedly saw the text denies the literal existence of that as well our statement comes therefore my main man Adia novella fugu to indicate that these are all metaphorical and not literal statements and no more the original point of the statement was simply that God has no body and there's none of these characteristics that seem implied by the biblical text however this statement which was implanted in the Talmudic text is completely at odds with the rest of the Tom Wanek narrative which is precisely and exclusively about sitting engendering confusion with God not about a godhead who ought to be disembodied right in other words what a that might have been a little bit dense for hearing so let me quickly gloss it the three Enoch text says only that God sat him on the throne and gay and gave him permission to judge and then when Elisha came up there so I'm sitting and judging and said oh my god there's a second divinity the Talmudic text in reconstructing essentially says exactly the same thing but in order to as it were camouflaged that another midrashic statement denying any physical attributes to God was imported and put into the text causing the text to be incoherent but actually disguising the fact that it was the sinning the second divinity that was or the imagination of the second divinity that was disturbing and confusing to Alicia and made him think that there are two divine figures the issue on this reconstructed on this reconstruction is precisely the sitting and the specter that that called up was precisely two sovereigns in heaven that Thea leguminous that was so closely connected with the double throne of Daniel seven as well as the theological develop developments of that within the world that surrounded the rabbi's into a doctrine of two divine persons wherever such developments had taken place or were still taking place there is another support for this conclusion as well the word translated permission would be much better translated as authority power or sovereignty as it is the same word reshoot that appears in that very heretical thought of our hairs perhaps god forbid there are two sovereigns stay with you yoke and indeed bears close comparison with Greek exclusion to far better I think to translate to sovereignties in heaven the same word that is used to indicate the authority or sovereignty given Metatron to sit and write the virtues of Israel resuit is used to indicate the name of the alleged heresy to ritual I suggest therefore that it was the combination of sitting suggesting enthronement an authority or sovereignty to sit and judge that is represented as both a hair's mistake bringing the Talmud very very and crucially close to the three Enoch version in which it is the fact of Metatron's enthronement which leads to the idea of two sovereignties both versions three Enochs and the Talmud says I interpret it go back to Daniel 7:13 and the Talmudic reshoot is the equivalent in Hebrew of the Schulten awarded the one like a son of math there where the Septuagint gives of course EXO Xia when a when a hair saw that sovereignty had been awarded to Metatron to sit it is no wonder that he concluded forgive me even tentatively that there are two sovereignties in heaven namely precisely God and that one like a son of man to whom sovereignty Sultan had been awarded in Daniel whether called Metatron or David Enoch or Jesus the second divine figure is the son of man locating this quote/unquote heretical interpretation right at the heart of the rabbinic Academy and indeed among some of its leading figures strongly supports the hypothesis offered above that these views had been current in the very Jewish circles from which the rabbi's emerged and the views were eventually anathematized by them and driven following them Alexander's insight that the phrase but it is taught that on high there will be no standing no sitting no jealousy no competition no backhand no tiredness is an import into the text from another context entirely albeit a very early import the weak explanation for Alicia's error given by the Talmud can be understood as part of the very process of camouflage of the real reason for Alicia's confusion which is identical to that of three Enoch in the version and three Enoch it is the sitting on a throne and with it the imputation of sovereignty that so discomfort selecia that he becomes a hair the other one the one who is other to himself this is the case in the Talmud version as well if we remove the imported words from the text and reconstruct a proto-tool Matic version which would then read he saw that Metatron had been given sovereignty reshoot to sit and write the good deeds of Israel perhaps God forbid there are two sovereignties in other words I reconstruct in the ground of the Talmudic text something that is almost identical to the three Enoch text this reconstruction would make absolutely clear the good reason for Alicia's error if my reconstruction and interpretation bear weight then there is very little almost no ideological difference between the text and the Talmud and in three enoch the sitting is indeed the crux as it invokes the Daniel 7 passage together with psalms 110:1 eg as in mark 14 62 with the son of man sitting at the right hand of God or aloft moreover has compellingly shown that the motif of Enoch sitting in heaven comes out very clearly in to Enoch the inscription to Metatron in the Talmudic text of both judicial and scribal rolls precisely those given to the son of man as early as the similitudes of enoch strongly supports this connection as well the sitting is indeed the crux as it invokes the tante Daniel 7 passage just as I have just said the description to the Talmudic text cannot in my view be isolated or insulated from the Enoch tradition as represented in 3 Enoch it is engaged in a massive struggle as it itself seems to understand with such highly ancient and well rooted elements of Jewish philosophy as the second throne and a second divine personal absorbs the translated emic it is simply then not the case that the so-called so the but graphic literature had no legs in later judaism and was only preserved within christian circles this is the major point of my argument here throughout without denying the probable interchange between jews and christians in such matters and indeed supporting its strongly below i would propose that these apocalyptic traditions remain vital among jews without making any absolutely clear distinction between the rabbis and other jews on this point imagining that alongside of other developments within late ancient jewish culture various forms of apocalyptic writing also continued and develop new forms interacting in differing ways with other streams of rabbinic and para rabbinic tradition including those that sought to suppress those apocalyptic traditions and so within the same text the talmud you're getting almost a battle between revealing and concealing of the apocalyptic material the three enoch text is at least as at much pains to clarify that Metatron devotion does not constitute a theological assertion of two power powers as the bobbly is accordingly part a much of the scholarly tradition there is no great ideological gap between these two parallel versions neither denies the significance of Metatron and both assert that to see in him a divinity is a grave error there is in my view in both texts a nexus of concern about the import and possible miss reading of daniel 7 9 13 which connects that text the talmud in multiple ways with other texts including ancient poustinia apocalyptic sources such as the parables of enoch and to enoch usually assume that only Christians read the one like a son of man as a divine figure and that Jews universally accept the interpretation that it's a symbol for Israel what I'm suggesting is that the picture is considerably more complex that there were Jews as we saw explicitly in that Talmudic passage that read the one like a son of man as a divine Messiah figure and other Jews who accepted that this is a Enoch or Metatron but then denied that Enoch Metatron is actually divine so it almost parallels what we might call late ancient Christological controversies in a sense to sum up according to my reconstruction that takes very like the one in three Enoch underlies the Talmud's version as well Metatron had been given route to sit and write and Elisha concluded quite plausibly that there are stay ratio to sovereignties because supposedly only the divine king may sit on a throne in heaven just as by the way only a king of the house of David may sit in the earthly temple right so think if anybody sitting down there we would assume that they were the king in order to further suppress any such possibility the bobbly imported the Platonic madrasa text about sitting and standing and necks and tiredness and that's obliterated the throne thus distorting the text and rendering a hair's response a barely intelligible reaction to a contradiction between a tradition that angels don't sit and Metatron sitting it is not clear in any case how this contradiction about the postures of angels would lead a hare to conclude or even speculate that there are two powers in heaven whereas finding Metatron on a godly throne with sovereignty surely would do that I wish not to reassess my former position that the Talmudic text is in some way dependent on the version in three Enoch this reassessment will moreover conduct us to the conclusions that I draw and the hypothesis that I offer in this lecture series right so we're on the down stream the down stretches at work I are the home stretch until now the question of the relation of the version of the narrative in the Talmud to the narrative and three Enoch has been discussed in terms of who came first and who copied from whom having myself taken a position on the question put in those terms I propose now to reform and reformulate the question in new as I no longer believe in direct dependence in either direction the most important point is that there is no conflict between the two versions of the text when they are interpreted in the fashion proposed here nor is the story in its three Enoch Version in tension with or a corrective of the context in the Talmud the comparison with the fourth century Church Fathers afforded by kiss stir well sorry I skipped all the kissters stuff so the bottom line is that both of these versions of the story of Elisha seemed clearly to go back to an earlier version which contained the common elements of the narrative found in both the extant versions and from which each of the current versions was developed independently the general suggestion that even the relatively late three Enoch preserves important connections with earlier Park elliptic is now supported by an important argument in an argument in a recent article by Menachem kissed her on these subjects while Kistner disagrees with me in many details of interpretation on this point our position seems synergistic histor demonstrates impressive connections between specific languages in the three enoch tradition and in both the apocalypse of abraham and the ascension of Isaiah very very specific formulations and linguistic forms there for supporting strongly the connection between three Enoch in the fifth sixth or maybe even 7th century and texts like the apocalypse of Abraham the Ascension of Isaiah from Late Antiquity okay last section de bunda Yara des jungen Metatron's there is no doubt that Metatron himself is the historical product of various developments within Jewish tradition as shown by Alexander in a pioneering paper Metatron seems clearly to be the conflation of at least three figures from earlier Jewish traditions Enoch the lesser yow right yahuwah cotton and Michael met the tongue there is further proof for Alexander's contention that Michael is identified with Metatron in the 5th 6th century the visions of Ezekiel we find the following paragraph what is there in the rule and you remember that Seville is one of the seven heavens I think it's the fourth robertlevi said in the name of rabbi Shama bar-abba who said in the name of rabbi yohanan the prince dwells nowhere but in the rule and what is his name chemos is his name rabbi Isaac said Murata is his name Robbie Indian a bar sison said B's booth is his name rabbi tongue home the elder said attack yeah is his name Eleazar not whadya said Metatron like the name of the power Alexander correctly observes that the prince here identified with Metatron is the art Angel Michael much identified with the Son of Man in earlier texts as well Metatron wherever his name comes from is a link in a chain of tradition about Michael that goes back at least to the Book of Daniel we can add another proof to this contention in the Talmudic passage of the seven heavens discussed in the previous lecture here it is precisely and explicitly the Great Prince Mike Michael Michael Michael who was identified as presiding over the third heaven zaboo right just as here we found Michael it is clear that in the Talmudic text Michael is the heavenly high priest just as Metatron is in three Enoch Metatron is clearly an avatar of Michael there is accordingly little or no reason to adopt or even entertain Schafer's position that Metatron is an entirely babylonian product or envious mimesis of Christology sometimes reading the scholarly literature on Metatron I feel like I am observed observing the blind pundits with their proverbial elephant the one grasping the trunk thought that an elephant was a snake the one grasping the leg that I thought thought that it was a tree and the one grasping the tail thought an elephant is a rope scholars of Byzantine Christianity see only Byzantine Christian elements here and latterly scholars of middle Persian have located Metatron's origins in Zoroastrian figures namely Yemen like those pundits so I claim they may all be right many other scholars even those relatively close to Schafer's general opinions in these matters nonetheless maintained that there were diachronic connections between 1 & 2 Enoch and 3 Enoch now if it be granted that there are intimate diachronic connections between 1 & 2 Enoch and 3 Enoch it seems far more plausible to ascribe the transformation of Enoch into Metatron in the last text to a continuation of themes from the earlier ones surely far superior a hypothesis the one that has Metatron invented de novo since we have little reason to believe and surely no evidence that one in - Enoch passed in the Jews from Christian circles that had preserved them we might as well assume that at least these traditions if not these texts had circulated among Jews as well as among Ethiopian Slavonic and perhaps Coptic Christians this conclusion is well supported by the evidence adduced here for close affiliations between the Talmudic apocalypse of hagigah and the cosmo meteora logical material from one Enoch and - Enoch the Tanner aim were not the only Jews between the Second Temple and the Byzantine period that's what we have to remember throne only rabbis very close to the view being promulgated here indeed anticipating it is the following statement once again by in that read the older scholarly model of an unbroken continuity between 1 and 3 Enoch must be replaced with the image of an ongoing process of redaction and accretion of material by which the hallowed traditions in the three enoch tradition were continually reshaped through the integration of both early anarchic and rabbinic traditions by a variety of different hands on the other hand the possible role of the Byzantine Kronig refers from the transmission of early anarchic materials to the to some of these circles may help to explain how one Enoch may have influenced parts of three Enoch in a manner that was historically distinct from the development of under Enoch themes within later mystical traditions with further analysis of individual units between within the three Enoch macro forms we may hopefully begin to formulate a more nuanced image of the complex relationship between the earlier Jewish duralee Jewish apocalypsis and the hey hello literature end quote it is indeed a distinct possibility that Byzantine Jews knew about one anak from the chronograph is equally as plausible that the text circulated among Greek speaking Jews in the same environments as those very Kronig refers in either case a far cry indeed from either Sholem secret conventicle x' or Schafer's imitation of much of our understanding of the historical relations between Jewish and Christian communities from late antiquity and into the Byzantine era depends on the ever growing complexity with which we approach the task of that which I have styled the quest of the historical Metatron equally nuanced as the view of read is Ron ANBU stands in each case the vertical silo created by internalist interpretations of the Jewish mystical tradition no matter how dialectical has begun to give way to a horizontal orientation in the study of Jewish history rather than seek the roots of Jewish mystical and magical discourses within a hermetically sealed Jewish culture and documenting their linear even teleological development through successive stages of Judaism many scholars are increasingly taking up the challenge of tracing the criss-crossing roots ro Utes of conceptual and material exchange at and across the boundaries of religious community and tradition end quote Schafer's model of a unitary and essential Judaism and Christianity which then may influence each other is just a silo like as anything showroom ever produced just with two silos next to each other one occasionally spilling over into the other or I'm thinking of cartoons that I must have seen as a child of you know - embattled cities next to each other completely enclosed in walls and everyone so while somebody throws a stone from one over the wall in into the other another way of stating this would be that according to both Salomon Schaffer and without the slit on this Judaism and Christianity are much more distinct and bound identities than in the more nuanced and complex models offered by such scholars as Bustan and read in this communique my purpose will have been served if I have sex successfully added to the complex ingredients of de bricolage ongoing traditions and memories of tradition that tie the head hello text back historically two forms of life thinking experience in writing that extend to the Second Temple apocalyptic as well and thus to the sources of both later Judaism and Christianity Metatron is neither the father of Jesus nor his son but if you can stand this metaphor the scion of a parallel branch of the family lineage

Channel: Yale Divinity School

Views: 46,203

Keywords: jewish, hebrew, talmud, theology, christian, christ, christianity, scholar, scholarly, new haven, yale, yale divinity school, metatron, old testament, new testament

Id: qyK2GCyQGYQ

Length: 55min 57sec (3357 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 22 2016