The Jewish Gospels Read online

  and their dwelling places were with the righteous and the holy and the chosen.

  2And in that hour that son of man was named in the presence of the Lord of Spirits,

  and his name, before the Head of Days.

  3Even before the sun and the constellations were created,

  before the stars of heaven were made,

  his name was named before the Lord of Spirits.

  4He will be a staff for the righteous,

  that they may lean on him and not fall;

  And he will be the light of the nations,

  and he will be a hope for those who grieve in their hearts.

  5All who dwell on the earth will fall down and worship before him,

  and they will glorify and bless and sing hymns to the name of the Lord of Spirits.

  6For this reason he was chosen and hidden in his presence before the world was created and forever.

  7And the wisdom of the Lord of Spirits has revealed him to the holy and the righteous;

  for he has preserved the portion of the righteous.

  For they have hated and despised this age of unrighteousness;

  Indeed, all its deeds and its ways they have hated in the name of the Lord of Spirits.

  For in his name they are saved.

  and he is the vindicator of their lives.

  8In those days, downcast will be the faces of the kings of the earth,

  and the strong who possess the earth, because of the deeds of their hands.

  For on the day of their tribulation and distress they will not save themselves;

  9and into the hands of my chosen ones I shall throw them.

  As straw in the fire and as lead in the water,

  thus they will burn before the face of the holy,

  and they will sink before the face of the righteous;

  and no trace of them will be found.

  10And on the day of their distress there will be rest on the earth,

  and before them they will fall and not rise,

  and there will be no one to take them with his hand and raise them.

  For they have denied the Lord of Spirits and his Anointed One.

  Blessed be the name of the Lord of Spirits.9

  This piece of beautiful religious poetry forms an absolutely pivotal text for illuminating the Christology of the Gospels—as well as for demonstrating the essential Jewishness of that phenomenon. First of all, we find here the doctrine of the preexistence of the Son of Man. He was named even before the universe came into being. Second, the Son of Man will be worshipped on earth: “All who dwell on the earth will fall down and worship before him, and they will glorify and bless and sing hymns to the name of the Lord of Spirits.” Third, and perhaps most important of all, in v. 10 he is named as the Anointed One, which is precisely the Messiah (Hebrew mashiah) or Christ (Greek Christos). It seems quite clear, therefore, that many of the religious ideas that were held about the Christ who was identified as Jesus were already present in the Judaism from which both the Enoch circle and the circles around Jesus emerged.

  An equally exciting revelation comes in chapter 69 of the Similitudes, where we read about the final judgment:

  26And they had great joy,

  and they blessed and glorified and exalted,

  because the name of that son of man had been revealed to them.

  27And he sat on the throne of glory

  and the whole judgment was given to the son of man,

  and he will make sinners vanish and perish from the face of the earth.

  28And those who led the world astray will be bound in chains,

  and in the assembly place of their destruction they will be confined;

  and all their works will vanish from the race of the earth,

  29And from then on there will be nothing that is corruptible;

  for that son of man has appeared,

  And he has sat down on the throne of his glory,

  and all evil will vanish from his presence.

  And the word of the son of man will go forth

  And will prevail in the presence of the Lord of Spirits.10

  Here the Son of Man is clearly occupying his throne of glory, seated, perhaps, at the right hand of the Ancient of Days. It is hard to escape the conclusion that the Son of Man is in fact a second person, as it were, of God. And all of the functions assigned to the divine figure called “one like a son of man” in Daniel 7 are given to this Son of Man, who is also called, as we have seen, the Christ.

  And Enoch Was with God:

  The Apotheosis of Enoch

  One of the most striking aspects of the doctrine of Christ is the combination in one figure of man and God. Even this radical idea, however, is not unique among Jews to followers of Jesus. We find it in the Similitudes as well. In the main body of the Similitudes, Enoch is not the Son of Man. This is emphatically the case, since in chapter 46 and throughout the main body of the text, he is the one who sees the Son of Man and to whom is revealed the description of the Son of Man as the eschatological Redeemer and Messiah; therefore Enoch cannot be identical with him.11 In the end, however, in chapters 70 and 71, Enoch becomes the Son of Man—he becomes God.12

  In these chapters we have a remarkable exaltation scene. In chapter 70, we are told of Enoch in the third person: “And it came to pass after this [that], while he was living, his name was lifted from those who dwell upon the dry ground to the presence of the Son of Man and to the presence of the Lord of Spirits. And he was lifted on the chariots of the spirit, and his name vanished among them.” But then, without pause, the text shifts into the first person, and we are told, “And from that day I was not counted among them.” We have here a midrashic expansion of the famous Enoch verse from Genesis that “Enoch walked with God and he was not”: that is, an instance of apotheosis, of a special human becoming divine. As Moshe Idel, the world-renowned scholar of Kabbalah, has remarked:

  Various important developments in the history of Jewish mysticism [are to be explained as] an ongoing competition and synthesis between two main vectors: the apotheotic and the theophanic. The former represents the impulses of a few elite individuals to transcend the human mortal situation through a process of theosis, by ascending on high, to be transformed into a more lasting entity, an angel or God. In contrast to this upward aspiration is the theophanic vector, which stands for the revelation of the divine in a direct manner or via mediating hierarchies.13

  This very competition is being worked out in the pages of the Enochic Similitudes; moreover, a crucial synthesis is taking place, a synthesis of apotheotic and theophanic traditions that is key to the religious background of the Gospels as well. In Enoch here, as in the nearly contemporary Gospels, we find a powerful connection or synthesis between the idea of God made manifest to men by appearing on earth as a man (theophany) and of a man being raised to the level of divinity (apotheosis).

  In these final chapters of the Similitudes, Enoch is shown all of the secrets of the universe and brought to the house of the archangels, with the Ancient of Days among them. In chapter 71, the Ancient of Days comes to Enoch and declares, “You are the Son of Man who was born to righteousness, and righteousness remains over you, and the righteousness of the Ancient of Days will not leave you.” Enoch has been exalted and been fused with the Son of Man, the preexistent divine Redeemer and heavenly Messiah whom we have already met.14

  Enoch Becomes the Son of Man

  Notwithstanding later theological niceties, the Gospels also comprise a story of a God who becomes man (theophany) and another of a man who becomes God (apotheosis). That is, we can still observe within the Gospel (especially in Mark, which has no miraculous birth story, and also even in Paul) the remnants of a version of Christology in which Jesus was born a man but became God at his baptism. This idea, later named the heresy of adoptionism (God adopting Jesus as his Son), was not quite stamped out until the Middle Ages. Seeing the doubleness of the narrative of the Son of Man in the Enoch book thus help
s us understand the doubleness of the story of Jesus in the Gospels as well. It helps us make sense of the multiple acts of the Christ story: his birth as God, his becoming of God at his baptism, his death and resurrection as a living human once again, teaching on earth, and then his exaltation to the right hand of God for eternity. It is almost as if two stories have been brought together into one plot: one story of a God who became man, came down to earth, and returned home, and a second story of a man who became God and then ascended on high.

  Looking at Enoch in detail will teach us much about the religion and religious history of these Jews who believed that a man became God (or that God became a man). The roots of Enoch’s apotheosis seem to go back very far in the ancient Near East. I hope to uncover the outlines of a fateful moment in Jewish religious history, the one in which the doctrine of the Messiah as an incarnate divine person and as an exalted human is formed.15 It is good to remember here that the idea of the Messiah originally centered around an ordinary, human king of the House of David who would restore that longed-for monarchy, while the idea of a divine Redeemer developed separately. It is around the time of Jesus (or actually somewhat earlier) that these two ideas are combined into the concept of a divine Messiah. The best evidence for this is that in the Similitudes, we find the same combination of religious notions that we find in the contemporaneous Gospels.

  The preexistence of the Son of Man is quite explicitly brought out in the Similitudes at 48:2–3: “And at that hour that Son of Man was named in the presence of the Lord of Spirits, and his name before the Head of Days. Even before the sun and the constellations were created, before the stars of heaven were made, his name was named before the Lord of Spirits.” This is the same chapter in which he is named as the Messiah as well. Moreover, in the verses that continue from this one, he is indicated as the Redeemer and also one to whom worship is due: “He will be a staff for the righteous, that they may lean on him and not fall; And he will be the light of the nations, and he will be a hope for those who grieve in their hearts. All who dwell on the earth will fall down and worship before him, and they will glorify and bless and sing hymns to the name of the Lord of Spirits. For this [reason] he was chosen and hidden in his presence before the world was created and forever” (vv. 4–6). And finally: “For in his name [the righteous] are saved, and he is the vindicator of their lives” (v. 7).

  This is not precisely the same sort of tradition as the one that involves the ascension of a human figure to the position of preexistent heavenly Redeemer, however; the two themes seem almost to contradict each other. In chapter 46 and its sequels, the Son of Man is divine and Enoch a wise seer who has been afforded remarkable visions; in chapters 70–71, Enoch himself has been identified as divine. This is a version of the apotheosis tradition, the human who has become divine.

  On the other hand, in the earlier chapters of the Similitudes, the Son of Man does get to sit on that throne; here we have the notion of the theophany, the divine figure who will reveal himself in the man. In these chapters, the Son of Man, who also carries, as we have seen, the title of Messiah, has the role of eschatological judge (judge at the final assizes). This clearly comes out from a way of reading Daniel 7:14—“To him was given dominion and kingdom. All peoples, nations, and languages will serve him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion, which will not pass away, and his kingdom is indestructible”—in which the assignment of sovereignty to the Son of Man is primarily constituted via his role as this judge at the last time.16 In these chapters, the Son of Man is made, like Moses, to sit on the divine throne itself (62:2, 5; 69:27, 29; 61:8). Following the principle just articulated—that one who sits on the divine throne either alongside or sometimes in place of God is himself divine and a sharer in God’s divinity—then the Son of Man certainly fits this description in the Similitudes. He is, moreover, clearly the object of worship in this text also (46:5; 48:5; 62:6, 9). But he is not yet Enoch. Enoch in these chapters is the seer, not the seen.

  We can observe, then, two parallel Enoch traditions, growing out of 1 Enoch 14 and Daniel 7: a tradition of an exalted divinized human, on one hand, and on the other, a tradition of a second God-like Redeemer who comes down to save Israel. What we don’t have yet is the identification or merging of that divinized human with the anthropized divinity, such as we find in the Gospel of Mark and its followers.

  Where this comes together is in chapters 70–71 of the Similitudes, which must be seen as an independent strand of very ancient tradition, in which the two originally separate ideas of God becoming man and a man becoming God are fused.17 In the first part of the work, the Son of Man is explicitly described as preexistent to creation, while Enoch is the seventh born human after Adam. Enoch, the seventh of the patriarchs from Adam, bears strong connections with the seventh of the antediluvian Babylonian kings, Enmeduranki, who was of human descent but was taken up into heaven. Among the features that Enoch shares with his Babylonian ancestor is being seated on a throne in heaven in the presence of the gods and taught wisdom there.18 This makes clear why an identification could be made. As in the Book of Daniel itself, different texts have been quilted together to make a single theological statement.

  The whole story of Enoch as the Son of Man all begins with the verses about Enoch in the Book of Genesis. The story of Enoch as we have it in those few enigmatic verses of Genesis 5 reads:

  21And Enoch lived sixty and five years, and begat Methuselah:

  22And Enoch walked with God after he begat Methuselah three hundred years, and begat sons and daughters:

  23And all the days of Enoch were three hundred sixty and five years:

  24And Enoch walked with God: and he was not; for God took him.

  This terminology is unique in the Bible; of no one else is it said that “he was not.” It cannot be interpreted, therefore, to mean simply that he died. Something special happened to Enoch: not only was he shown visions and wonders and given understanding, but he was with God and he was not; he was taken by God. Chapters 70–71 likely were added to the Enoch text from some other version to answer this very question, precisely because they fill out the story of Enoch’s apotheosis. They explain what happens when Enoch walks with God; he becomes the Son of Man, and that is why he was no longer among humans. This literary move, interpreting the obscure text of Genesis by splicing together two apparently originally separate texts about Enoch, has had an enormous theological effect.

  This movement of the theology is indicated precisely at the difficult textual moment in which “that angel came to me and greeted me with his voice and said to me, ‘You are that son of man who was born for righteousness, and righteousness dwells on you, and the righteousness of the Head of Days will not forsake you.’” Two traditions are combined in the Similitudes of Enoch: the preexistent, second God, Redeemer of Daniel, now not only described as the Son of Man but so named, and the exalted seventh antediluvian sage, Enoch, who went up to heaven because he walked with God, and God took him, and he was not. Once this stitch in time has been made, we must read the text as implying that Enoch was from the beginning the Messiah, the Son of Man, hidden from the beginning, then sent to earth in human form, and now exalted once again to his former state.

  This theological innovation must have taken place before the actual writing of the Similitudes of Enoch in the first century A.D.; it is of major importance for understanding the similar development that we can observe in the Christology of the New Testament. Just as the Son of Man in the Similitudes is a preexistent divine figure holding the dignity of the second divine throne and afforded all the privileges and sovereignty of the one like a son of man in Daniel, so too the preexistent Son of Man who lies behind the Gospels. This divine figure became ultimately identified with Enoch in two ways, one via his becoming Enoch when Enoch is exalted into heaven and one in his being revealed as having been Enoch all along. This is the paradox that inhabits the Gospel story of the Christ as well: on one hand, the Son of Man is a divine person, part of God, co
existent with God for all eternity, revealed on earth in the human Jesus; on the other hand, the human Jesus has been exalted and raised to divine status. To use once more the terms afforded us by Moshe Idel, we have here an instance of the “Son of Man” as apotheosis, a man becoming God, and at the same time, the “Son of Man” as theophany, the self-revelation of God in a human.19 To be sure, the emphasis in the Enochian version is on the apotheosis, in the Gospel on the theophany, and that will be an important part of the further story, but I think it well established that both elements are present in both versions of the Jewish Son of Man tradition. Further examination of the history of the Enoch tradition will help prepare us to understand this better.

  Enoch and the Christ Son of Man

  The second book of 1 Enoch, the Similitudes of Enoch, is a product roughly of the same time as the Gospel of Mark—but there is a still earlier first book. Known as the Book of the Watchers, this first book of 1 Enoch is probably as old as the third century B.C. Enoch 14, from the Book of the Watchers, is thematically directly related to Daniel 7, and very probably its progenitor, which is to say that the vision of Daniel was based on an even older literary apocalyptic tradition.20 In 1 Enoch 1 14–16, we find the following elements in order: Enoch has dreams and visions; “In a vision, I saw” (14:2); clouds summoned him and winds carried him up; he sees a throne with wheels like the shining sun; streams of fire go out from under the throne; God’s raiment is whiter than snow; Enoch is called to God’s presence who hears his voice saying: “Fear not, Enoch, go, say the message.”21 Now there may be no doubt that this text draws on the prophetic commissioning of Ezekiel in the prophet’s book, chapters 1–2, incorporating as well Ezekiel’s tour of the heavenly temple in chapters 40–44. It is perhaps only somewhat less apparent that the author of Daniel 7, in turn, is drawing on this chapter in 1 Enoch and developing it further in accord with his own theological traditions and other apocalyptic sources that include the vision of the second throne and the second divine person.