Daniel Boyarin is a professor of Jewish Studies at the University of California-Berkeley. Like Alan Segal before him, he is a Jewish scholar with a special interest in the two powers “heresy”. I’ve attached a PDF of his important Harvard Theological Reivew article, “The Gospel of the Memra: Jewish Binitarianism and the Prologue to John” (John 1:1-14). It’s a terrific piece of scholarship that demonstrates that John primarily got his doctrine of the Logos from the Old Testament and his own Jewish context, not pagan Greco-Roman thinking.
It’s scholarship like this that makes me (and others) groan when people like Bart Ehrman want to argue that the idea of Jesus being God was a late invention of the early church.
January 14th, 2009 at 6:51 pm
Zec 6:13 He will build the LORD’s Temple, and he will receive royal honor and will rule as king from his throne. He will also serve as priest from his throne, [fn] and there will be perfect harmony between the two.
Melchizedek is King of Righreousness and Priest of the Most High. He may be the co-regent in the Old Testament, as alluded to in the Dead Sea Scrolls. He is the anointed one of the Old Testament and Jesus is the anointed one of the New Testament. Zecharia states that there are two anointed ones:
Zec 4:11 Then I asked the angel, “What are these two olive trees on each side of the lampstand,
Zec 4:12 and what are the two olive branches that pour out golden oil through two gold tubes?”
Zec 4:13 “Don’t you know?” he asked. “No, my lord,” I replied.
Zec 4:14 Then he said to me, “They represent the two anointed ones who assist the Lord of all the earth.”
Jesus would be the spiritual Messiah who is ranked above the world deliverer Melchizedek who comes to rescue his people the Jews and bring judgement to the world at the end of the age. They represent the two poles of divinity ie justice and mercy, righteousness and love.
Michael Heiser’s treatise and the Dead Sea Scrolls support the idea of Melchizedek being the lesser Lord of the Old Testament. It is possibe that he appeared to Melchizedek in physical form and also as the angel of the Lord, the burning bush, the presence, the shekinah, the divinity that had its home above the mercy seat in the temple,the cloud and pillar of fire that lead the Israelites, the one who spoke face to face with Moses, the head of the Divine Council,etc. Just a thought. Ed
January 20th, 2009 at 10:07 pm
@roache5456: Yes; At least one writer at Qumran believed that Melchizedek was the second power. His name is inserted into Psalm 82:1 in place of “elohim” in a Dead Sea Scroll (11QMelchizedek). I do not believe Melchizedek was the second power. 11QMelchizedek simply shows one (of a dozen or so) Jewish candidates for the second power that you’ll run into in 2nd Temple literature.
January 21st, 2009 at 4:54 am
Thanks for your response Michael. Who do you think the second power is? It seems clear that the Old Testament expects this second power whoever it may be to return and reinhabit the Temple in some sort of Presence at the coming end of the age. This ‘one who is coming back’ will be a political messiah who delivers the House of Israel and maintains a presence in the Temple forever after. Jesus tells us over and over that his kingdom is not of this world, so it seems contradictory to place him in the role of a conquering world deliverer that rules over the nations that are made into his ‘footstool’ as promised by God. Jesus is always portrayed as non judgemental, peaceful personality in the Old Testament: Wonderful Councillor, Prince of Peace, suffering servant, etc… To transform him into a personality of an avenger of Justice seems to be contrary to his Persona and his own words as witnessed in the New Testament (except for Revelation). Revelation should be put away to one side when it contradicts much of the prophecy of the Old Testament I believe. That Jesus’ kingdom is not of this world is attested to in multiple places in the Gospel. It also agrees with his statement that the kingdom that he is talking about is a spiritual kingdom that is found ‘within’ as he states on one occasion. It is either here nor there or over there. Couldn’t Jesus return as promised but perhaps not as the world deliverer who would be instead another divine personality. Your two powers in heaven idea would seem to be most important in the sense that it relates to the identity of the one who is coming back to stay as witnessed by the Old Testament. As an afterthought how could Jesus be this personality if he was not even known to the world at the time that the Old Testament Prophets gave witness. It would make more sense if they were speaking about someone that the hearers of that time were already familiar with. As another afterthough why wouldn’t Jesus identified himself as the lesser Lord of the Old Testament at the time of his sojourn here. It would have been to his advantage in convincing the people that he was indeed the awaited Messiah of the Jews. Thanks again Michael.
January 21st, 2009 at 5:29 am
Another related question about the two powers concept relates to the following quote from Michael’s dissertation:
“Not unexpectedly, as Segal’s work on the two powers controversy details, there were Jewish exegeteswho resisted the implication of two divine beings in Daniel 7. One common answer to the language of Daniel7 was that Yahweh-El’s vice-regent was the Davidic king, a view that was taken up by the messianic predilections of many pre-critical scholars. This interpretation might be expected in view of several passages in the Hebrew Bible that speak to the universal rule of the Davidic king. The assumption of two thrones in Psalm 110 (one for the Davidic king) would also appear to support such an answer.”
My question is how could this Psalm be referring to the Davidic king if it was written by David himself as one of the ‘Davidic psalms?’ It would not make any sense. Also doesn’t the language of the Psalm have the connotation of a divine being for the second lord and not a human Davidic ruler. I think the hebrew word that is used is ‘Adonai’ for the second Lord of the Psalm?
January 21st, 2009 at 8:49 am
@roache5456: I’ll excerpt a bit of your reply in this response. First, I think the second power is the visible Yahweh of the OT. Melchizedek is never described in such terms or equated with the invisible Yahweh like, say the Angel of Yahweh is. Theologically, I believe the second power became incarnated as Jesus. You wrote: “Jesus is always portrayed as non judgemental, peaceful personality in the Old Testament: Wonderful Councillor, Prince of Peace, suffering servant, etc.” Actually, that isn’t true. The divine warrior imagery used of Yahweh in the OT is attributed to Jesus in the NT. For a nice, readable summary of that (falling far short of the book-length treatments of that sort of thing) see the link below to an article by Tremper Longman on the subject.
http://www.beginningwithmoses.org/articles/divinewarrior.htm
Longman co-wrote a book called “God is a Warrior” with Dan Reid. It has 4-5 chapters on Jesus and OT divine warrior motifs.
It would seem much of your response is based on the misconception that Jesus isn’t a divine warrior, so I’ll leave it at that.
January 21st, 2009 at 8:55 am
@roache5456: The short answer is that the king of Israel was (in similar fashion to the other ancient Near Eastern monarchs) conceived of as divine in the OT (but not incarnate deity). One of the major differences for the Israelite king was that he was not considered to have been sexually fathered by the gods/God, but was “adopted” by God to be His son. Since Israel itself as a nation was called the son of God (see Exod 4:23; Hosea 11:1) and the king the “embodiment” or human representative of the nation, the sonship status came with that. All these motifs: king-divine son-servant-nation inter-mix. The messiah is identified with all of them as well, but his kingship and “nature” are defined in more cosmic terms (like an eternal reign and a “doer of miracles”). A very good scholarly book on this is theone by Tryggve Mettinger: “King and Messiah: The Civil and Sacral Legitimation of the Israelite Kings.”