Fulfilling the Job Description

Almost the entire story of the Christ – with important variations to be sure – is found as well in the religious ideas of some Jews who didn’t even know about Jesus.

The Jewish Gospels: The Story of the Jewish Christ, by Daniel Boyarin

It wasn’t only “Jesus folk” who had this idea of a second God or a second aspect of God. Ezekiel the Tragedian, an Alexandrian Jew, would write of a vision: a noble man sitting on a great throne on the top of Mount Sinai. This noble man gave him the scepter, gave him the crown, got up from the throne, and asked him to sit down on it.

…we see that in this text, Moses has become God.

If it can happen to Moses, why not Jesus? Yes, not an exact parallel to the Christian story, but also much closer to it than the idea of an invented Trinity. Boyarin captures this succinctly:

Jesus for his followers fulfilled the idea of the Christ; the Christ was not invented to explain Jesus’ life and death.

For those Jews who both believed this idea and that Jesus fulfilled it…well, we have come to know these as the first Christians, although, initially at least, they would not have called themselves this. They merely saw themselves living within an accepted strand of Second Temple Judaism.

Jews at the same time of Jesus had been waiting for a Messiah who was both human and divine and who was the Son of Man, an idea they derived from the passage in Daniel 7.

Boyarin points to other books from around the same time of the Gospels. One of these, the Similitudes, or Parables, of Enoch, shows that there were Palestinian Jews who expected a Redeemer known as the Son of Man. Boyarin suggests the mid-first century AD as the time of authorship for this book, others suggest as early as a century before Christ.

Here, Enoch describes a vision. He saw one whose head was like white wool, and with him, another, whose face was like the appearance of a man. The angel of peace told Enoch: “This is the son of man who has righteousness…”

The wording is quite similar to that which is found in Daniel, and demonstrates that this idea from Daniel, a Son of Man as a divine-human redeemer, had penetrated wider Palestinian-Jewish society. There is, however, one key contradiction in Enoch vs. Daniel: while Daniel’s angel explains the Son of Man as a symbol of the holy ones of Israel, Enoch’s angel explains the Son of Man as a righteous divine figure.

What we learn from this is that there was controversy among the Jews about the Son of Man long before the Gospels were written. Some Jews accepted and some rejected the idea of a divine Messiah.

Enoch’s “Similitudes” offer evidence, outside of the Gospels, for just such an understanding. This was not an idea of just some isolated sect, but reflected a more general world of Jewish thought.

In the Book of Enoch, this figure is a part of God; as a second or junior divinity, he may even be considered a Son alongside the Ancient of Days, whom we might begin to think of as the Father.

Again, not exactly Nicene, but demonstrating that Trinitarian theology was not invented from whole cloth. Boyarin offers an extensive passage from Enoch 48, from which I will offer only a few snippets:

In that place I saw the spring of righteousness, and it was inexhaustible… their dwelling places were with the righteous…

And 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. 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.

He will be a staff for the righteous… All who dwell on earth will fall down and worship him. … For this reason he was chosen and hidden in his presence before the world was created and forever.

For in his time they are saved, and he is the vindicator of their lives.

This text offers a view that helps illuminate the Christology of the Gospels. In this light, the conflicts and disagreements regarding Jesus as Christ – certainly with the Jewish leaders but also even among the disciples prior to His resurrection (even, perhaps prior to Pentecost) – can be better understood.

We find here the pre-existence of the Son of Man – before Creation was, He was…forever. Or, as Jesus would say: “I am.” We find also that this Son of Man would be worshipped on earth. But, it is clear in Scripture that none other than God is to be worshipped. Further, he is named as the Anointed One, or, Messiah.

…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.

There is a further revelation in chapter 69 of the Similitudes; again, a few snippets:

…the name of that son of man had been revealed to them. And he sat on the throne of glory, and the whole judgment was given to the son of man……for that son of man has appeared, And he has sat down on the throne of his glory…

All of the functions given to “one like a son of man” in Daniel are given to this Son of Man – who, being the Anointed One, is also the Messiah, or Christ. Reflecting on this passage, Boyarin writes:

It is hard to escape the conclusion that the Son of Man is in fact a second person, as it were, of God.

Throughout this text, Enoch is having a vision – he is not the Son of Man being witnessed. However, by the end of the text (chapters 70-71), Enoch becomes the Son of Man – he becomes God! The text just shifts to the first person, “I.” Boyarin does see this as an expansion of the Biblical text, where Enoch walked with God and he was not, for God took him.

In the end, at least as far as Enoch is concerned in the Similitudes, he is exalted and fused with the Son of Man, the preexistent divine Redeemer and heavenly Messiah. “He was not” is not said of anyone else; per the Similitudes, this is worked out as Enoch becoming the Son of Man.

Here there are two conflicting possibilities: the apotheotic, where Enoch is one of the few elite individuals to transcend the human mortal situation, vs, the theophanic, the idea of God being made manifest to men by appearing on earth as a man.

Remnants of these two possibilities exist in the Gospels and even in Paul: Mark offers no divine birth story, and there are at least glimpses of the idea that Jesus became God only at his baptism. Of course, we know how Christology within Christianity worked out these issues. Nevertheless, it must be noted that the story isn’t tidy (keep in mind, it took centuries for Christian theology to work out Christology).

Boyarin explores even further back, looking at the earlier Book of the Watchers, 1 Enoch, which he dates as old as the third century BC (in his view, this makes it older than the book of Daniel). He sees Daniel as a reflection of this earlier (again, in his view) Book of the Watchers.

Conclusion

Both texts offer a Son of Man who arrives with clouds and is brought near the Ancient of Days. Both include a similar description of the throne.

A crucial step in the developed messianic idea had thus been taken: the merger of the second God, heavenly Redeemer figure and an earthly savior exalted into heaven.

Again, while Christian theology would come to word it differently, this description can be understood to reflect the idea that Christians would come to associate with Jesus as Christ: a Son of Man, a pre-existent, transcendent Messiah, yet a Messiah who would be embodied on earth.

All of the elements of Christology are essentially in place in the Similitudes. … While the Gospels are certainly not drawing from the Similitudes, the Similitudes help illuminate the cultural, religious context in which the Gospels were produced.