Christian Churches of God
Law
of God
Volume
2
God
Revealed:
Introduction
Ancient Monotheism
(Edition 20130915-20130915)
This work is the
second in the series concerning the Law of God. It deals with the nature of God. It shows the
history of the development of the Revelation of The One True God to mankind and
the way in which that Revelation was given to mankind and how it resulted in
the sending of the being that was the means by which God spoke to man through
the prophets and patriarchs and through ancient Israel. It shows the development of the doctrines
within Christianity and shows how the world’s religious systems have become
quite unlike and estranged from authentic Christianity. Very soon God will send
Christ to again deal with the planet but this time it will bring peace and
sound government and the plan of God to the earth.
Christian Churches of God
Email: secretary@ccg.org
(Copyright
© 1994, 1996, 2000, 2013 Wade
Cox)
All rights
reserved
This paper is available from the World Wide Web page:
http://www.logon.org and http://www.ccg.org
God
Revealed Chapter 1-I Introduction – Ancient Monotheism
The
Concept of Monotheism in Ancient Israel
Peter Hayman points out, in the
Presidential address to the British Association for Jewish Studies, Edinburgh,
21 August 1990, published as Monotheism -
A Misused Word in Jewish Studies?, Journal
of Jewish Studies 42 (1991) that:
In the academic world of twenty or thirty years ago it was conventional to hold that the story of Judaism was one of a gradual, but inexorable, evolution from a Canaanite/Israelite pagan and mythological environment into the pure light of an unsullied monotheism.
There is no doubt that the assertion by
Hayman is correct and that the view was wrong. The sort of argument advanced,
for example, by Alt is admitted by Frank Moore Cross (Yahweh And The God Of The Patriarchs, Harvard Theological Review, Vol. 55 No. 24, 1962, pp. 225-259) to
be wholly unsatisfactory in the examination of the so called 'el religion. The isolation of the God
of the Patriarchs as a series of local clan deities differing one from another
is conjecture. In effect, the thesis was developed that the God of Abraham,
Isaac and Jacob became aggregated into one deity from separate household Gods. Further,
it is then asserted that this aggregate and the God of Moses were entirely distinct
and, in any case, belong in two stages in an historical development. Such
conjecture seems to be based on the simple fact that the revelation to Moses
was sequential to the Patriarchs. The concept denies any reality to the
revelation or the fact of God's existence. It insists on the sequence yet
ignores the continuity of Genesis 11:31 to 12:5; 16:16; 17:1-27; 24:1-10;
28:1-9. These passages show that the intermarriage of the Patriarchs was to
ensure that there would be no loss of the understanding of the One True God.
Hayman notes that the point at which the above breakthrough was achieved was
the subject of debate but most scholars agreed that it took place.
Scholars such as T.C. Vriezen
(Religion of Ancient Israel, (1963)
Eng. tr., London, 1967, p. 37) held that there was an extreme and excessive
stress on the transcendental nature of God which increasingly led Jews to
perceive God as inaccessible to them. This concept is also evident in the work
of W. Bousset (Die
Religion des judentums im späthellenistischen Zeitalter,
3rd edn, ed. H. Gressman, Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck],
1926 (cit. Die Religion)). His work
is now acknowledged as deficient especially in the question of Jewish divine
agent figures. He regarded the post-exilic thought as erosive of an earlier and
purer thought from three areas: (a) angelology (b) dualistic tendencies and (c) speculation concerning hypostases. These aspects are examined
by Larry Hurtado (One
God One Lord Early Christian Devotion
and Ancient Jewish Monotheism, SCM Press, UK, 1988, p. 23 cf. Bousset Die religion,
Der Monotheismus
und die den Monotheismus beschränkenden
Unterströmmungen, pp. 302-357). Hurtado notes that Bousset was
not particularly innovative but his work was widely circulated because it
articulated well the views of many scholars of his own and subsequent times
(ibid.). Bousset concluded that post-exilic Judaism
was characterised by a growing interest in intermediary
beings (Mittelwesen)
(Bousset, pp. 319-331).
This interest in turn he attributed to a growing sense of God's transcendence, which involved the notion that God had distanced himself from the world and was less available, having turned [H]is rule of the world over to angels and other intermediaries [Bousset, pp. 319,329-331] (Hurtado, p. 23).
The conclusion drawn by Bousset
was that
although these figures were messengers of God and executors of [H]is will, nevertheless they represented a threat to Jewish monotheism, and the interest in them was linked with a softening of monotheism characteristic of Jewish piety of the period in question (Hurtado, ibid., cf. Bousset, p. 329, citing also Moore Christian Writers in Judaism, pp. 227-253).
This thinking was the fundamental error of
most exegetical activity over the previous few centuries. The philosophical
requirements of the logic of monotheism (which is examined in Cox, Creation: From Anthropomorphic Theology to
Theomorphic Anthropology, UNE, 1990) shows that the subordination of
activity under the central will of God is necessary to Monotheism.
Trinitarianism and the Soul Doctrine logically compromise Monotheism. Further,
the biblical position will be shown to be consistent and to be that position
which is held by Bousset to be a post-exilic
compromise. The so-called weakened post-exilic view was used as the explanation
as to how the exalted Christ came to be viewed as a pre-existent heavenly being
very early in the Christian movement (Hurtado,
ibid.). Thus, the veneration of Jesus was a development which was of itself to
represent a defective Monotheism or insipient Binitarianism. However, it cannot
be demonstrated that early Christianity worshipped Jesus. The veneration of
Christ was in no way an act of worship. Early Christianity was
subordinationist. The Bible at no stage indicates that Christ was thought of as
the One True God. Neither was he held to be co-equal or co-eternal with God.
This is a later manifestation as we will see. That Christ was seen to be a
pre-existent heavenly being is the biblical view of both Testaments. It is continuous
and coherent. It is the accepted Judaic view of Messiah, which we shall see
herein. Hayman in his paper above goes on to say (p.1):
In the last twenty years or so there has been a radical change in the climate of Old Testament studies as scholars have come to realise that claims about the originality of ancient Israelite religion are virtually impossible to substantiate and relatively easy to demolish.
In illustration, he contrasts the work of Vriezen with the following quote from Niels
Peter Lemche's Ancient
Israel (Sheffield, 1988, p. 256).
All we can be sure of is that the Israelite conception of Yahweh during the period of the monarchy did not contain features which distinguish his worship from other types of religion in western Asia.
Hayman says that:
Despite the changed climate in Old Testament studies of which Lemche's book is but one symptom, there still remains, however, a consensus that Judaism after the exile represents a startling new development in the history of religion, and that it is the Jewish monotheistic conception of God that makes this religion stand out from all others (op. cit., p. 2).
Hayman goes on to make the most significant
statements:
that it is hardly ever appropriate to use the term monotheism to describe the Jewish idea of God, that no progress beyond the simple formulas of the Book of Deuteronomy can be discerned in Judaism before the philosophers of the Middle Ages, and that Judaism never escapes from the legacy of the battles for supremacy between Yahweh, Ba'al and El from which it emerged (ibid.).
Now these contentions are important. The
propositions can be listed as follows:
·
that the structure of Jewish Monotheism was fixed in
the Pentateuch;
·
that structure involved a multiplicity of heavenly
entities or representations of heavenly entities; and
·
that structure remained unchanged until the
philosophers of the Middle Ages altered the way in which Judaistic
Monotheism was explained.
There are sound reasons why these
propositions should be advanced. The major reason for the alterations in the
explanations of Judaism are to be found in the formulations of the propositions
of Judaic mysticism and philosophy. Hayman holds that Judaism could not stand
up against a model definition of Monotheism and that Maimonedes
and the other Jewish philosophers knew this and thus made a massive effort to
allegorise the tradition (Hayman, p. 2).
The reason why those propositions were
accepted and not challenged by Christian academic scholarship is that Christian
Trinitarianism, using the basic tenets of Greek philosophy, had developed
similar concepts between the Councils of Nicaea (325 CE) and Chalcedon (381 CE).
This non-biblical transition made it difficult for mainstream Christianity to
adequately examine the changes in any intellectually objective way. Hayman
examines the patterns of Jewish beliefs about God from the Exile to the Middle
Ages to assess whether or not it is truly monistic. The results of his
observations led him to the conclusion that
most varieties of Judaism are marked by a
dualistic pattern in which two divine entities are presupposed: one the supreme
creator God, the other his vizier or prime minister, or some other spiritual
agency, who really 'runs the show', or at least provides the point of contact
between God and humanity (ibid.).
He goes on to say that even in rabbinic
Judaism, there clearly is one dominant divine figure. He doubts whether the
picture of God presented to us is really unitary at all.
Hurtado (p. 49) holds that these vice regent or
grand vizier characteristics are interesting because the view reflects an
aspect of the conceptual background of the understanding of the role of the
exalted Jesus in earliest Christianity. He says of the relationship between
Christian devotion and divine attributes or agency:
There are differences of course: (1) These divine attributes were not thought of as real entities alongside God, as I have argued; and (2) at a very early point the exalted Jesus did come to function as an object of religious devotion in the life and cultic setting of Christian groups. This role of the exalted Jesus in the devotional life of earliest Christianity marked the Christian binitarian mutation in ancient Jewish piety and gave Christian devotion its distinctive binitarian shape.
Hurtado is wrong here. Early Christian devotion
was not Binitarian. It was Unitarian for centuries. The Binitarian assertion is
a peculiarity of American fundamentalism and is found among a number of
Sabbatarian churches in the US. Binitarianism logically derives from a
misapprehension of the biblical structure, being adopted in deference to
fundamentalist Trinitarianism, based on its biblical translation and exegesis.
It is in error, logically, biblically and philosophically as we will see. There
is no doubt that the structure contained in the Bible is Unitarian. Harnack (History of
Dogma, see esp. Vol. IV) and Brunner are clear on that point (Emil Brunner The Christian Doctrine of God,
Dogmatics, Vol. 1, tr. Olive Wyon, The Westminster
Press, 1949, Cambridge, Ch. 16 The Triune
God, pp. 205-206 esp 206; see also Calvin Institutes of the Christian Religion,
Bk. I, 13,4, tr. Beveridge, James Clark & Co, London, 1953 for the
extra-biblical nature of later Christian doctrine).
What obscures the unitary nature of the
structure is the garbled interpretations advanced both by rabbinic Judaism and
mainstream Christianity. This occurs for two questionable reasons. With Judaism
it seems to stem from a desire to defeat the arguments that the Great Angel (or
Elohim of Israel of Ps. 45:6-7) was in
fact to appear as Messiah and, thus, admit of the possibility that the man Yehoshuah (Joshua or Jesus) was the Messiah. With Trinitarian
Christianity, it stems from a desire to prove that Christ was not the Great
Angel and, hence, the subordinate elohim of Israel but was in fact an hypostases, as an integral element of
the God Most High as a Triune god.
Most arguments stem from these two factors
and, more recently, from a third source which finds its roots in humanist
social theory. This third element gave rise to the incoherent arguments of
twenty to fifty years ago which tried to introduce social conflict and the
developing cults as the origin of the various names for God and the subordinate
governing structure to which Hayman refers. The sort of intellectual processes
involved have been admirably examined by scholars such as Derek Freeman in MARGARET MEAD AND SAMOA The Making and
Unmaking of an Anthropological Myth, ANU Press, Canberra, 1983.
Creation
as the Beginning of the Problem
Hayman's conclusions sprang in part from
his work on the Sefer Yesira
text. The work, developed between the third and the eighth centuries CE,
explaining creation, has no trace of the doctrine of creation ex-nihilo (Doctrine of the Creation: Some Text Critical
Problems; Proceedings of the Congress of the European Association for Jewish
Studies, Troyes, 1990). The earliest manuscript of Sefer
Yesira §20 has
He formed substance from chaos and made it
with fire and it exists, and he hewed out great columns from intangible air
(Hayman, p. 2).
Hayman points to the congruity between the Sefer Yesira and the Bereshit Rabba:
R. Huna said, in the name of Bar Qappara: 'If it were not written explicitly in Scripture, it would not be possible to say it: God created the heaven and the earth. From what? From the earth was chaos (&%;), etc.' (ibid.).
Hayman notes that the position advanced by Sefer Yesira and Rab Huna:
represents no advance whatsoever on Genesis
chapter one (p. 3). God creates order out of a pre-existing chaos; he does not
create from nothing. Nearly all recent studies on the doctrine of creation ex nihilo have come to the
conclusion that this doctrine is not native to Judaism, is nowhere attested in
the Hebrew Bible, and probably arose in Christianity in the second century C.E.
in the course of its fierce battle with Gnosticism (Hayman noting (5) Weiss,
Winston, Schmuttermayr, and May and noting also the
concession of Jonathan Goldstein as to the weakness of his position).
Hayman considers David Winston to be
correct
to argue that the doctrine of creation ex nihilo came into Judaism from Christianity and Islam at the beginning of the Middle Ages and that even then it never really succeeded in establishing itself as the accepted Jewish doctrine on creation. Aristotelian views on the eternity of the world were perfectly acceptable in Judaism, as also were neo-platonist views on its emanation out of the One, because creation ex nihilo could not be demonstrated out of the Scriptures. Maimonedes (Guide, II.26) concedes that rabbinic texts teach creation out of primordial matter and most commentators, starting with Samuel Ibn Tibbon, the first translator of his work into Hebrew, believe that Maimonedes himself privately thought that the world was eternal (p. 3 quoting Colette Sirat, A History of Jewish Philosophy in the Middle Ages, Cambridge, 1985, pp. 188 ff, 218 ff).
The origin of the creation then clearly had
to derive from the tohu and bohu of
Genesis 1:2. These concepts were then held to be either co-eternal with God and
hence compromised His unique status or they emanated from Him. Hayman holds
that the Kabbalists were not afraid of drawing the
latter conclusion noting the Kabbalist text Bahir.
There is in God a principle that is called 'Evil', and it lies in the north of God ... for the tohu is in the north, and tohu means precisely the evil that confuses men until they sin, and it is the source of all man's evil impulses (cf. C.G. Scholem On the Kabbalah and its Symbolism, London, 1965, p. 92).
There is thus a perceived conflict between
such a concept of the creation story of Genesis and Judaism's supposed
Monotheism. There does not need to be any conflict even if primordial tohu and bohu is understood as the primary creation. We can see the activity of the subordinate
elohim as creation within the will of El Elyon or the
One True God. Monotheism is thus not compromised. In this way, Christ creates
as a product of the Father but the primary creation is nevertheless of God.
The question of evil coming from the north
appears non-biblical. Fair weather comes out of the north: with Eloah is
terrible majesty (Job 37:22). Thus the Bahir would have evil and God co-existing or God as the
source of evil. No doubt such a position is derived from the text in Isaiah
45:7 where the Lord makes peace and creates evil. The sense is, however, that
the Lord creates adversity from the failure to keep the law. The word for evil
(as ra') demonstrates the fall from a cohesive
whole and will be dealt with in the work on the Problem of Evil. Hayman attempts to answer the question: Is a
doctrine of Monotheism conceivable without a doctrine of creation ex nihilo? Such a question
led scholars in the teeth of the evidence to suggest that creation ex nihilo is at least presupposed in the Hebrew Bible, even if it is nowhere explicit. And if this doctrine is so weakly rooted in Judaism, even as late as the Middle Ages, then we can only conclude that Judaism never escaped from the Canaanite mythological background which all scholars now see behind biblical teaching on creation. The potentially evil tohu and bohu has always been there, limiting God's power and frustrating his purposes. However often he defeats it, it always comes back because ultimately it is as primordial as he is himself, perhaps as the mystics thought, even a part of himself (p. 4).
From this, Hayman sees John Gibson as being
correct in holding that the Jewish examination of the problem of the holocaust
is a restatement of the problem of the author of Job in the second speech from
the whirlwind. It is thus evident that the correct understanding of the Problem of Evil is predicated upon a
correct understanding of the doctrine of creation and the structure of the
Godhead. No curse comes without its cause (Prov. 26:2).
To this end the primary work dealt with
creation (Cox, Creation: From
Anthropomorphic Theology to Theomorphic Anthropology). In that work it is
pointed out that the Augustinian and, hence, mainstream Christian understanding
of the creation is incorrect. Moreover the propositions accepted by mainstream
Christianity have hindered the understanding of the Godhead and, hence, the
Problem of Evil.
Judaic Monotheism
The inability of Christianity to explain
the structure of the earth and pre-Adamic civilisation in terms of their
paradigms left the stage open for the social theorists to attempt to explain,
just as inadequately, the biblical revelation in terms of the social theory of
tribal interaction in the Middle East. Such propositions deny the logical
necessity of Monotheism and the Problem of Evil, namely, that under Monotheism
it is logically necessary for the supreme God to reveal His will to the
creation at every level to establish Monotheism as a functional system within
the will of one God. All subordinate entities are one within that will and
derive their existence and unity from the willing self revelation and power of
the One True God.
Rabbinical Judaism and mainstream
Christianity do not appear to understand this basic philosophical issue. For
example, Hayman does not agree that the experience of the mystical unity with
God is missing in Judaism because it is incompatible with Jewish definitions of
Monotheism. Hayman, in his 1988 paper at Oxford (Was God a Magician? Sefer Yesira
and Jewish Magic, Journal of Jewish Studies 40 (1989), pp. 225-237), states
that:
What SY, and later on the Kabbala, offers Jews is the opportunity 'to think God's thoughts after him', and hence in a real sense to experience imaginatively what it is like to be God (ibid., p. 234).
The function of Kabbalah
is to achieve mystical union with the One, the unio mystica (see also Aryeh
Kaplan Meditation and Kabbalah (later chapters) and Jacobs ed. The Jewish Mystics, Kyle Cathie, 1990).
That union is fundamental to Mysticism. The concept stems from Shamanism.
It is the concept which influenced the
Cappadocians to seek to achieve union with, and to become, God (see Basil 9.23
trans. NPNF, V, 16 abiding in God, being made like to God and
highest of all, being made God; see also R.C. Gregg Consolation Philosophy; Greek
and Christian Paideia in Basil and the Two Gregories, Philadelphia Patristic Foundation, 1975, p.
228 and fn. 3 where Gregg identifies the origin of the Cappadocian
thought with Plotinus). Moshe Idel (Kabbalah: New Perspectives, New Haven, 1988,
esp. pp. 59-73) holds that Mysticism, even in its extreme form, can be found in
Judaism. Many of the texts used by Idel are held to
presuppose that humans can become divine and dispose of the powers of God.
Hayman holds (p. 5) that
the theme of self identification with God, once we start to explore it, leads us virtually everywhere in Judaism, from the style of biblical prose (R. Alter, The Art of Biblical Narrative (1981), p. 157) to the claims of Jewish magicians (Hayman Was God a Magician?, p. 235), but above all to the claims of the Hekhalot literature that a man, Enoch, ascended to heaven and was metamorphosed into Metatron, the 'little Yahweh' (Hayman, ibid.). The theme of the apotheosis of the wise man, the mystic, binds the Jewish mystical trends together with Jewish Apocalyptic of the post-exilic era, for the most widespread version of belief in the Afterlife in the post-Maccabean period assumed that the faithful would join the heavenly assembly and become like the 'angels', the 'sons of God', the stars (see Dan. 12:3; Wis. Sol. 5:5, 1 Enoch 104:2).
But Hurtado notes
this practice particularly in relation to the Son of man figure in 1Enoch, termed the Parables or Similitudes
(Chs. 37-71). The Son
of man is righteous, being familiar with divine secrets and triumphant
(46:3), victorious over the mighty of the earth, having judgment of the wicked
(46:4-8; 62:9; 63:11; 69:27-29). He has a pre-ordained status in God's plans
(48:2-3, 6; 62:7) being saviour of the elect (48:4-7; 62:14). He is the Chosen
One, the Elect (or Anointed) One, or Messiah, as the three have practically
identical functions (see e.g. 49:2-4; 51:3-5; 52:4-9; 55:4; 61:4-9; 62:2-16).
The figure is Messianic and alludes to the Old Testament (e.g. 48:4 alluding to
Isa. 42:6; 49:6 where the Son of man
is the Servant of the Lord of
Isaiah). Hurtado notes the figure as acting as judge
on God's behalf (in the name of the Lord
of Spirits, e.g. 1Enoch 55:4), and in this capacity sits upon a throne that
is closely linked with God: On that day
the Chosen One will sit on the throne of Glory (45:3; see also 51:3; 55:4;
61:8; 62:2,3,5-6; 70:27).
The meaning of this is not that the figure rivals God or becomes a second god but rather that he is seen as performing the eschatological functions associated with God and is therefore God's chief agent, linked with God's work to a specially intense degree (Hurtado, p. 53).
This is likened to the Davidic king of the
Old Testament in Psalm 45:6 (see also Sir. 47:11). The real essence and origin
of the concept is from Zechariah 3:1-9 which shows the Angel of YHVH is given
the judgment and Satan stands before him as accuser. Moreover, Zechariah 12:8
shows that the Angel of YHVH (Yahovah or Jehovah) was an elohim and that the
household of the king will be as elohim. Thus, the concept is biblical and part
of the Messianic sequence. The association of the Son of man of 1Enoch 46:1-3
with the imagery of Daniel 7:9-14 reinforces the argument. The conclusion that
Christ is the Angel of YHVH is resisted where it might be thought obvious. Hurtado notes 3Enoch (circa fifth century CE) as conveying
the idea that Enoch ascended to heaven and became God's chief agent. 3Enoch
identifies Enoch as Metatron
and says he is a gigantic being from whom no splendour is missing (3Enoch 9)
and who has a throne like the throne of glory (10:1) with a majestic robe
(12:1-2) and crown (12:3-4). Hurtado rightly notes
that the late date of 3Enoch should make us cautious of taking the ideas as
indicative of pre-Christian traditions. The concepts are, however, extant in
the literature of the first century. It is more likely that the Enoch based
argument is a counter thrust to the Christian tradition based on the mysterious
references to Enoch in Genesis 5:24.
Rashi, however, explains the text quite
normally. Rashi holds the text to mean:
He was tempted to become wicked, whereupon God cut his life short so that he was not - this phrase being used rather than the normal 'and he died' (Rashi: Soncino).
For
God took him is interpreted
as before his time (Rashi). Ibn Ezra dissents from
the view and interprets the text as indicating that his death was a mark of
honour. This concurs with the view of Hebrews 11:5 which states that he was
removed (metetethe)
not to see death, as a result of faith. The earlier Enoch traditions do not
explicitly say that he was transformed into an angelic being. The Judaic
traditions and the biblical account are therefore against any use of this later
account to deduce a Messianic advent from any pre-existent human. In 1Enoch
71:11, when Enoch sees God in heaven, he says my whole body melted and my spirit was transformed (citing Hurtado, p. 55). 2Enoch 22:5-10 says that God tells Enoch
to stand in front of His face for ever
(vv. 5-6, ibid.). The text shows that Enoch is held to have been made like one
of God's glorious ones. The texts develop the concepts that are vested in the
elect from the biblical texts.
The concept in 2Enoch 24:1-3 shows the
vesting of the mysteries of God in man. Secrets not known to the angels are
made known to him. This accords with the concepts of the elect according to
Paul (in Rom. 16:25; 1Cor. 2:7; Eph. 3:9, 10 (nb);
Col. 1:26). God hid the mystery from the beginning and reveals it to the
heavenly powers through the elect.
The text at 3Enoch 12:5 holds that God
orders Metatron/Enoch to be called The lesser YHVH which Hurtado holds is a clear allusion to Exodus 23:20-21 (my name is in him). The practice of God
conferring authority by use of the name is found throughout the Bible (see the
text on The Angel of YHVH). The idea is resisted because of the Trinitarian and
Binitarian paradigms. This resistance seems evident in Barker's THE
GREAT ANGEL A Study of Israel's Second God, SPCK, London, 1992, see below).
The identification of Enoch with Metatron or the Son of man is derived from the clear
Messianic understanding of the biblical texts. The Pseudepigraphical
texts appear to be developments of the Messianic expectations of the time.
For this reason Messiah was also identified
as Melchisedek (see also DSS). This idea persisted,
off and on, over two thousand years. The idea was present among the Melchisedekites or Melchisedechians (see C.E.,
Vol. X, p. 157), an offshoot of the Sabbatarian sect of Paulicians,
which were termed Athingani
(Intangibles, C.E., ibid.) (see ERE, Vol. 9, pp. 695 ff).
The Catholic Encyclopedia may have misunderstood the position of Melchisedek in this situation as we have a duality of
intercession here in this sect. Melchisedek was
understood as the heavenly intercessor and Christ the earthly intercessor. The
idea was also found among the offshoots of the Paulicians
in Europe (e.g. Bogomils: see ERE, Vol. 1, pp. 784 ff),
where Messiah was identified as Michael. The idea that Christ was Melchisedek, surfaced in the 20th century in the
writings of H.W. Armstrong. The midrash holds Melchisedek
to have been Shem (Rashi: see Soncino, Gen. 14:18). Melchisedek was also identified with the Holy Spirit in an
anonymous work which Jerome refuted (Ep. 73). (The Pseudepigraphical
texts are examined further elsewhere).
Hayman says that the Dead Sea Scrolls
seemed to hold that the goal of becoming one of the 'Sons of God' etc. was
attainable in this life (see 1QH 3:19-23; 1QSb 4:22-6; 1QS 11:7-9; cf. Jubilees
31:14). The present tense phrasing of Luke 20:36 was held also to indicate such
a possibility. The notation of that age
however removes the position into the future and Hayman perhaps appears to
confuse the timing. Hayman says the theme of becoming like one of us reveals itself as the lurking sub-text of
Judaism from Adam to Nachman of Bratslav
(p. 5).
Hayman considers these propositions to be
incompatible with the supposed transcendental Monotheism of the post-exilic
period. He says that the areas of Jewish angelology and Jewish magic are
where the steadily increasing weight of evidence makes very clear the continuity of Jewish religious belief and practice from its ancient Canaanitic sources.
As Hayman says, who were the angels and
archangels, the Cherubim and the Seraphim, Satan, Azazel
and Mastema? The question is best answered by taking
the Bible as a literal cohesive whole. From a literal construction we can
coherently establish the identities and relationships of the Host.
Hayman holds that:
The Hebrew Bible is quite clear on the fact that these figures belong to the class of divine beings .*%-! *1" / .*-! *1", members of the 'host of heaven' (.*/:% !"7). Yahweh belongs to this class of beings, but is distinguished from them by his kingship over the heavenly host. However, he is not different from them in kind. This reflects the probable origin of Yahweh as one member of the heavenly host, namely the national God of the Israelite people, who became king of the gods when he was identified with El Elyon, the head of the Canaanite pantheon. This identification of Yahweh with El (.*%-!% !&% %&%*) is the essential theme of the Hebrew Bible. But Yahweh in the Old Testament times had many rivals who are explicitly named in ways which make quite clear that these other gods were believed to exist [e.g. Judges 11:24 (Chemosh); Jer. 46:15 (Apis); Jer. 49:1,3 (Milcom)].
Hayman seems to not understand the El Elyon was the Eloah of the OT worship in the Temple. Many seem to ignore this major premise.
Hayman notes that Yahweh had, in popular
belief, a female consort. We are, however, concerned here only with what can be
substantiated by cross reference with the biblical text.
The concept of a female consort no doubt
arose from the reference to wisdom in the feminine in Proverbs 8 (see also in
later chapters). Barker (THE GREAT ANGEL,
pp. 51 ff), identifies this concept with that of the worship of the Queen of
Heaven denounced by Jeremiah especially 44:17-30. The Israelite host in Egypt
was destroyed except for a small remnant because of the worship of this deity.
The Queen of Heaven is deduced by Barker as being
the figure whom the Enochic writers and the gnostics remembered as Wisdom and the Kabbalists as Shekinah, the figure abandoned at the time of Josiah's reform had been known to her worshippers as the Queen of Heaven.
Jeremiah 44:17-18 shows that the cult had
been established in Jerusalem for some time. What we know of the cult
identifies the figure with Ashtarte, Ishtar or Easter
and the cakes referred to in Jeremiah 44:19 were the traditional Easter cakes,
made even today. Barker's identification of the Shekinah
and Wisdom with this figure fails to account for the evidence even within her
own text (e.g. Baruch 3:12; 3:36-37; 4:1). Wisdom is more realistically
understood as the Spirit of God which God gave to Israel in the law. This
concept is based on the progression of ultimate goodness from God as regulated
activity. The law was intended to be a spiritual concept (Deut. 10:16; 30:6;
Jer. 4:4).
[He] gave her to Jacob [H]is servant and to Israel whom [H]e loved. Afterwards she appeared upon earth and lived among men (Baruch 3:36-37)
The Deuteronomists
did not offer the law as a substitute for wisdom in Deuteronomy 4:6. The law
was wisdom but, more importantly, the Holy Spirit proceeded from the very
nature of God and was itself the law. Trinitarians simply do not comprehend
this process because it is outside their paradigm. We will examine the process
below and in the subsequent volume.
The concept of Israelite Monotheism is
advanced by Hayman as being a gradual and progressive identification of Yahweh
with El as though one took on the identity of the other and that El Elyon was not understood and worshipped by Israel. This
premise is completely false. It comes from a failure to understand the
interrelationship of the Host and the roles allocated to them under the
monotheist structure. Moreover, it assumes there is no actual reality to each
of the beings named.
Importantly it misapprehends the cause of
the initial states of tohu
and bohu as
demonstrated in Genesis 1:2. The assumption of primordial chaos is of itself a
misunderstanding of the intent of Genesis. Genesis can equally be understood as
a re‑creation story and not the account of creation ab origine.
If approached from the perspective that the
chaos was the result of rebellion, then we can begin to comprehend what is
being related in the Bible. More importantly, we can begin to explain the
findings of science that archaeology and geology are digging up with exciting
regularity. The time frame and scope of Genesis and the authority of the Bible
is once again lifted out of the convenient pigeon hole of mythology to which it
has been relegated. The assumption that the Bible is the result of development
is just that – an assumption. The structure was understood not only in ancient
Israel. It was a consistent theme of the ancient Near East. The Most High God
was known as El Elyon. He was God Most High or The
Father of the Gods. The concept of the All Father as creator of the Elder Gods
was consistent from Asia Minor to Africa and Europe (see below). They were
known as Elohim in Hebrew or Elahin in Chaldee and
there are multiple references to them in the Bible. Graves (The Greek Myths: 1, Pelican, 1986, in
28:3, p. 114) says that:
The novel worship of the sun as All-father seems to have been brought to the Northern Aegean by the fugitive priesthood of the monotheist Akhenaton, in the fourteenth century B.C., and grafted upon the local cults; hence Orpheus' alleged visit to Egypt.
Thus, the All-father concept was common to
Egypt as well as Mesopotamia. The Coffin texts show the concept as extant in
Egypt. The first born god of primeval matter, the divine soul had a Father (see
Budge, The Book of the Dead, Arkana, London, 1989, pp. 273-274). The great God ruled the
gods in the Fields of Peace which are
termed the Elysian Fields hence the
interrelationship with the mysteries (Budge, CX, pp. 319-323).
Hurtado says in his summary of the ancient Jewish
texts that:
Various texts reflecting ancient Jewish tradition present a chief angel in the role of God's chief servant and describe this figure in remarkable ways. Perhaps most striking are the angel Yahoel, in whom the name of God dwells, and the heavenly Melchizedek who is identified as the Elohim of Psalm 82. This shows that Judaism embraced the idea that God had a particular angel more exalted than all others, whose authority and status made him second only to God and who bore some measure of divine glory (p. 81).
Hurtado attempts to exalt the Great Angel above
all other angels such that he is not simply an angel. He functions in a way
that sets him above all other angels. The angel acts as God's vizier and with
full authority exercises the power of His name. This concept is essentially
correct. However, the full function of the Host requires to be examined with
this individual. Moreover, it will be shown that Binitarianism cannot be
predicated on this relationship and is a philosophically absurd breach of the
logic of Monotheism.
Our task is to
reconstruct the framework within which the structure of these elohim are said to have operated. From
this we can better understand biblical Monotheism and, perhaps, more accurately
view Christianity. We will proceed to examine the Old Testament texts and the
role of the Angel of YHVH (or Yahovah) and the Sons of God. In subsequent
chapters we will examine the New Testament structure and the position of Christ
in those texts interrelated to the Old Testament. We will then examine the Pseudepigraphical and later Christian positions. These later
false positions developed from the Mystery and Sun Cults developing from the
Triune god and the worship of the gods Attis in Rome and Adonis in the East and
Osirus and Isis in Egypt.