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