https://www.bookreviews.org/bookdetail.asp?TitleId=12408

RBL 06/2020 Andrei A. Orlov

Yahoel and : Aural Apocalypticism and the Origins of Early Jewish Mysticism

Texts and Studies in Ancient Judaism 169

Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2017. Pp. xii + 238, Hardcover, $171.00, ISBN 9783161554476.

Pavlos D. Vasileiadis Aristotle University of Thessaloniki

Debate over the origins of the belief on Jesus’s divinity remains vibrant. A spectrum of theological ideas has been proposed for centuries, extending from so-called high Christologies that uphold that Jesus was actually God or divine in some way to the low Christologies that endorse that Jesus was virtually a charismatic human being, either an inspired prophet or an exceptional teacher.1 Adjusting the prism that has produced this range of views affects the way that we receive the historical data. As regards the following discussion, this is emphatically true for the paths that have been followed for reconstructing the actual development of Judaism and Christianity. More specifically, Boyarin interestingly observed that, “if all the Jews—or even a substantial number—expected that the Messiah would be divine as well as human, then the belief in Jesus as God is not the point of departure on which some new religion came into being but simply another variant (and not a deviant one) of Judaism.”2 The roots of such beliefs date back to a few centuries BCE.

It was during the early to mid-Second Temple period that elaborate forms of Jewish apocalyptic and angelology appeared and advanced. In the apocalyptic literature, a mediating figure linking the heavenly and earthly realms was often called “the human-like one” and was described as an

1. See Andrew Chester, “High Christology—Whence, When and Why?,” Early Christianity 2 (2011): 22–50. 2. Daniel Boyarin, The Jewish Gospels: The Story of the Jewish Christ (New York: New Press, 2012), 53.

This review was published by RBL ã2020 by the Society of Biblical Literature. For more information on obtaining a subscription to RBL, please visit http://www.bookreviews.org/subscribe.asp.

enthroned bearer of God’s holy name, the Tetragrammaton, and even “Iao-El” (Yahoel).3 In some texts, righteous men of the ancient times (e.g., Enoch and Jacob) were assimilated to this angelic mediator. One may also observe, during this period, attempts to accommodate this divine figure within the contemporary monotheistic theology.

This “monotheizing” tendency is reflected even in the Greek translations. In the somewhat ambiguous text of Dan 7:13, Theodotion’s translation follows closely the text and speaks of “one like a son of man” who is coming with the clouds of and being presented to the Ancient of Days. However, the Old Greek text sketches a figure with godlike characteristics who moves upon the clouds of heaven and receives worship and enthronement and thus he is both anthropomorphic and theomorphic: “like a son of man” (ὡς υἱὸς ἀνθρώπου) and “like the Ancient of Days” (ὡς παλαιὸς ἡµερῶν). This textual divergence was a result of the pre- (or non-)Christian Jewish exegesis that attempted to undermine the widespread binitarian theology (“Two Powers in heaven,” b. Hag. 15a), which was considered dangerous, by merging these two figures. This identification or intimate link between these two figures within Jewish soil in both Palestine and the diaspora heavily influenced Christian theology, producing a case of the so-called polymorphic Christology. Two interpretive perspectives developed: one distinguishing between the Son of Man (identified as the Son) and the Ancient of Days (God the Father), one presenting Jesus as acting in both roles.

Gershom Scholem (1897–1982) was the first to approach early Jewish mysticism as it appeared in Mishnaic and talmudic sources concerning the Maaseh Merkabah (“Work of the Chariot”) and developed in the hekhalot writings as a genuine Jewish movement that was rooted in biblical and pseudepigraphic traditions (such as 1 Enoch, , and the Apocalypse of Abraham).4 Since then, many scholars have investigated various aspects of early Jewish mystical traditions.5

Andrei A. Orlov has richly contributed in this field and is acknowledged as a distinguished specialist in the study of the formative influences of Jewish apocalypticism and mysticism on Christian origins. Using as tools the Old Testament pseudepigrapha, and especially Slavonic texts related to Jewish mysticism and Enochic traditions, he has been providing valuable insight on issues related to—or originating in—the Second Temple period. The study under review here was published in 2017 and attempts a comprehensive investigation of the supreme Yahoel and

3. “In Jewish apocalyptic literature there was the development of beliefs about an exalted angelic figure who shared the attributes and characteristics of God himself” (Christopher Rowland, The Open Heaven: A Study of Apocalyptic in Judaism and Early Christianity [New York: Crossroad, 1982], 338). Box argues that “the name Jaoel itself is evidently a substitute for the Tetragrammaton, which was too sacred to be written out in full” (G. H. Box and J. I. Landsman, The Apocalypse of Abraham [London: SPCK, 1919], xxv). 4. Gershom Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (New York: Schocken, 1941). 5. Among others, Hugo Odeberg, Ithamar Gruenwald, Philip Alexander, David Halperin, Peter Schäfer, Joseph Dan, April DeConick, Jim Davila, Crispin Fletcher-Louis, Jarl Fossum, James VanderKam, Charles Gieschen, Rebecca Lesses, Christopher Morray-Jones, Phillip Munoa III, Alan Segal, Moshe Idel, and Stone.

This review was published by RBL ã2020 by the Society of Biblical Literature. For more information on obtaining a subscription to RBL, please visit http://www.bookreviews.org/subscribe.asp.

Enoch-Metatron, who play crucial roles in apocalypses, pseudepigrapha, and Jewish exegesis. Orlov attempts to trace the connections and continuity between the traditions about these two angels in Judaism and early Christianity, as representatives of two distinct ideologies. One concerns the aural ideology of the divine Shem (Name), while the other one deals with the visual ideology of the Form (Image) or Kavod (Glory). Both Metatron and Yahoel were called by the epithet “The Lesser YHWH,” a designation appearing also in gnostic and Mandaean sources. It seems probable that the figures of Yahoel and Metatron developed separately but that, some time later, Metatron absorbed the identity of the initially independent Yahoel—“a hypostasis or personification of the Tetragrammaton” (116).

The book is dedicated to in-depth comparative study of these two figures and their respective ideological contexts. Orlov overcomes the primary obstacle of such an effort, namely, the fact that the vast majority of the Yahoel tradition has been preserved in the Apocalypse of Abraham, a Jewish pseudepigraphon dating from the late first to second century CE, that has come down to us solely in its Slavonic translation. The same is the case with the insufficiently studied 2 Enoch (first century CE), another Slavonic text that provides testimony for tracing the Enochic origins of Metatron’s lore. These were preserved by Eastern Orthodox Christians and are among the ancient literary sources that survived the “process of rigorous censorship by dominant Jewish and Christian orthodoxies who often preserved only documents and traditions that were in agreement with their mainstream ideologies” (6).

In chapter I, “Antecedents and Influences,” Orlov investigates the aural ideology in the Hebrew Bible. A number of celestial and human figures, envisioned as mediators of the divine name in early Jewish and Christian traditions, are explored: the , Moses, the high priest, the Michael, the Watcher named Shemihazah, the son of man, Patriarch Jacob, Little Yao, the Logos, and Jesus. It is demonstrated that many of these figures are connected with the biblical imagery of the Angel of the Lord, an archetypal messenger in the subsequent biblical Shem ideologies. Orlov supplies evidence for a Deuteronomistic tradition in which revelation is aural rather than visual, with special emphasis on the divine name. Many of the stories of these intermediary figures display mediation of the Name in various ways, such as the reception or transmission of the divine name, the clothing with the divine name, or the “embodiment” of the Name.6 These mediatorial profiles define the roles attributed to both Yahoel and Metatron in their respective apocalyptic and hekhalot contexts. Both figures were associated with the Angel of the Lord traditions by applying to them well-known biblical markers. They are depicted as corporeal embodiments of the divine name, while at the same time they act as mediators of the sacred

6. The importance of such onomatological theologies is underlined by the observance that “the participation in God’s Name is participation in God’s power, and thus in the deity itself” and “means a participation in God's power and perhaps even in His essence” (Karl Erich Grözinger, “The Names of God and the Celestial Powers: Their Function and Meaning in the Hekhalot Literature,” Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Thought 6 [1987]: 62–63).

This review was published by RBL ã2020 by the Society of Biblical Literature. For more information on obtaining a subscription to RBL, please visit http://www.bookreviews.org/subscribe.asp.

Tetragrammaton. They both contain the divine name inside of them, but they are also “clothed” with it, wearing turbans and crowns bearing its inscription.

Chapters 2 and 3 follow a similar structure and contain Orlov’s scrupulous investigation of the development of concepts surrounding Yahoel and Metatron-Enoch. These supreme angels exhibit a developed aural theology in the texts under examination, which seems to have prevailed over the visual one in the first centuries CE. Both of these angelic protagonists are analyzed their properties and functions, such as their roles as mediators and bearers of the divine name, the roles of heavenly high priest and celestial choirmaster, and of guide and guardian of the apocalyptical visionary, remover of sins, revealer of mysteries, and protector of humanity within the context of the apocryphal and mystical sources. In the Christian tradition, Jesus is depicted as the “image of the invisible God” and personification of the divine name, while theophanies in the gospels are realized through the aniconic voice of God.

In his conclusion, Orlov summarizes the essence of his research regarding the development of a multifaceted tradition of heavenly angelic mediators. He sketches his conclusions within the ongoing scholarly discussions on the continuity between early apocalyptic traditions and later Jewish mystical currents.

Orlov is cautious not to devise artificial schemes for early Jewish mysticism (206). He successfully demonstrates that “the aural trend was developed in a long-standing dialogue with the Ezekielian ocularcentric paradigm and can be considered as a rival theophanic tendency of equal symbolic power” (210). His methodological approach attempts to trace the roles and titles of Enoch and Metatron from their Mesopotamian origins to the hekhalot tradition, thus firmly establishing the ground-breaking idea of the Enoch-Metatron tradition. Commendably, Orlov’s book opens up new perspectives for the study of Jewish and Christian traditions in this field. Surely this is a must- read study for everyone who wants to delve into the development of the binitarian monotheism within Judaism and early Christianity.

This review was published by RBL ã2020 by the Society of Biblical Literature. For more information on obtaining a subscription to RBL, please visit http://www.bookreviews.org/subscribe.asp.