מטטרון האל ובעיית שתי הרשויות: לבירור הדינמיקה של מסורות, פרשנות ופולמוס

This article discusses two stories in the Babylonian Talmud, which are of great importance
|for understanding the religious world of the Sages and the polemic against the view that the
|Sages call shte rashuyot, ‘Two Powers’.
| 1. The first story, in BT Hagigah 15a, is about Elisha Ben Abuya, who saw the angel
|Metatron sitting in heaven and concluded: ‘there are two powers’ (i.e., two gods, or godly
|figures). According to the story, Metatron was allowed to sit in order to write down the merits
|of Israel. According to a parallel source, the Hekhalot work known as 3 Enoch, Elisha saw
|Metatron on his royal throne in heaven. According to both passages, upon seeing Metatron
|seated, Elisha was led to the mistaken conclusion that there are ‘two powers’. This article
|shows that this tradition, with its two attestations (in the Talmud and in 3 Enoch), combines
|two basic assumptions, each of which is known from ancient times: (1) figures who are
|worthy of it angels and human beings are permitted to sit on high. Among these figures
|is Metatron the Great Prince (according to 3 Enoch) or the Heavenly Scribe (according to
|the Talmud); the two descriptions of this figure, the Great Prince and the Heavenly Scribe
|reflect a duality about Enoch in the traditions from Second Temple times. (2) According to
|an opposing basic assumption, only God Himself sits on high. This discussion is connected
|to the ‘thrones’ in Daniel 7:9. According to the interpretations of several Church Fathers,
|the plurality of ‘thrones’ proves that there is another divine figure, equal to God the Father,
|because in Daniel it is said explicitly that the angels stand; the two thrones for sitting must
|therefore be for the two persons of God, the Father and the Son. This argument, known
|from the Church Fathers, is precisely the reason for Elisha’s error according to the story
|under discussion. These two opposite basic assumptions do not in themselves derive from
|theological conceptions; theological importance, however, is attached to them in Christian
|and Jewish sources. This accounts for the tradition of Elisha’s heresy. This part of the
|article also contains a discussion of the controversy over the interpretation of Daniel 7:9
|in Talmudic literature. There is also an analysis of a fragment of Hekhalot literature. The
|article shows that the key to understanding the story is first of all scrutinizing the underlying
|tradition and its metamorphoses.
| 2. The second story, in BT Sanhedrin 38b, describes a dispute between Rav Idi and a
|heretic. A scrutiny of the traditions underlying this story is helpful in this case as well. An
|analysis of Rav Idi’s argument clarifies the use it makes of exegetical traditions (some of
|them ancient), adapting them to the needs of polemic against the assumption of a plurality
|within the Divinity. It appears that this polemic was directed against arguments similar to
|the Christian arguments of Justin Martyr in his Dialogue with Trypho. In this context the
|article also discusses a parallel passage from Shiʿur Qomah and two Genizah fragments
|from the Hekhalot literature. On the one hand, the similarity between Justin’s perceptions
|and arguments to those attributed by the rabbis to the heresy of ‘Two Powers’ is evident; on
|the other hand, there is a striking affinity of the arguments in the Hekhalot fragment to those
|of Rav Idi, all of them making the point that even the highest heavenly power is not part of
|the Divinity