Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

stephan happy huller wrote:They invented the 'first' and 'last' letter thing.

For when Moses asserts that "God is a burning and consuming fire," taking what is said by Moses not in its correct sense, he affirms that fire is the originating principle of the universe. (But Simon) does not consider what the statement is which is made, namely, that it is not that God is a fire, but a burning and consuming fire, (thereby) not only putting a violent sense upon the actual law of Moses, but even plagiarizing from Heraclitus the Obscure.

Out of heaven He made thee to hear His voice (קֹלוֹ), that He might instruct thee; and upon earth He made thee to see His great fire (אִשּׁוֹ); and thou didst hear His words out of the midst of the fire. [Deut 4:36]

Apelles tells us that our souls were enticed by earthly baits down from their super-celestial abodes by a fiery angel, Israel's God and ours, who then enclosed them firmly within our sinful flesh. [De Anima 23]

But Apelles, sprung from these, thus expresses himself, (saying) that there is a certain good Deity, as also Marcion supposed, and that he who created all things is just. Now he, (according to Apelles,) was the Demiurge of generated entities. And (this heretic also maintains) that there is a third (Deity), the one who was in the habit of speaking to Moses, and that this (god) was of a fiery nature, and that there was another fourth god, a cause of evils. [Hippolytus on Apelles] etc.

The Pythagorean system, however, lays down that the Creator of all alleged existences is the Great Geometrician and Calculator--a sun; and that this one has been fixed in the whole world, just as in the bodies a soul, according to the statement of Plato. For the sun (being of the nature of) fire, resembles the soul, but the earth (resembles the) body. And, separated from fire, there would be nothing visible, nor would there be any object of touch without something solid; but not any solid body exists without earth. Whence the Deity, locating air in the midst, fashioned the body of the universe out of fire and earth. And the Sun, he says, calculates and geometrically measures the world in some such manner as the following: The world is a unity cognizable by sense; and concerning this (world) we now make these assertions.

And that, he says, the originating principle of the generation of things begotten is from fire, he discerns after some such method as the following. Of all things, (i.e.) of whatsoever there is a generation, the beginning of the desire of the generation is from fire. Wherefore the desire after mutable generation is denominated "to be inflamed." For when the fire is one, it admits of two conversions. For, he says, blood in the man being both warm and yellow, is converted as a figured flame into seed; but in the woman this same blood is converted into milk. And the conversion of the male becomes generation, but the conversion of the female nourishment for the foetus. This, he says, is "the flaming sword, which turned to guard the way of the tree of life." For the blood is converted into seed and milk, and this power becomes mother and father--father of those things that are in process of generation, and the augmentation of those things that are being nourished

From the heaven He let you hear the voice of His Memra to teach you; on earth He let you see ishu (His great fire): and His words you heard from amidst that fire.

See, now: See, [now, that] I, in My memra am He, and there is no other god besides Me; it is I Who puts to death and gives life in this world, and Who resurrects the dead in the world to come. [Deut 32:39]

And He said, "Certainly My Memra will help you, and this is the sign that it was I who sent you: when you bring forth the people from Egypt, you shall worship before the Lord on this mountain."

One verse says, "You yourselves saw that I spoke to you from the very heavens" (Exodus 20:19). Another verse says, "The Lord came down upon Mount Sinai" (Exodus 19:20). Rabbi Ishmael's Thirteenth Canon of Interpretation says that in such a case, a third verse shall be brought as the tie-breaker. Thus, it says, "From the heavens He let you hear His voice to discipline you; on earth he let you see His great fire" (Deuteronomy 4:36). From this, Rabbi Ishmael concluded that God did not descend on the mountain, but only let the people hear His voice from heaven.

Rabbi Akiva accepted the third verse as decisive but interpreted it differently: "The Holy and Blessed One bent the upper heavens down so that they touched the top of the mountain and spoke to them from the point where heaven and earth touched, as it says: 'He bent the sky and came down, thick cloud beneath His feet' (Psalm 18:10). "1 Another version added this detail: "The Divine Glory came down and rested on Mount Sinai, as one who sets a pillow at the head of the bed and speaks with his head resting on the pillow."

Why did some of the Sages avoid the notion of the divine descent? There was one Second Temple philosopher in particular who insisted that our notions of God should be refined. He avoided any concrete descriptions of the deity and interpreted all such concrete descriptions in the Bible allegorically. Yet he hesitated to treat the account of God's descent on Sinai in the same way. He stated that the Lord descended "at the time of giving the Torah, so that all should be in awe of the divine power." God sought to reveal to the world the foundations of true religion. Such a revelation was impossible without a violation of the natural order, and the descent of God onto Mount Sinai was just such a violation. After quoting the scriptural account of the Sinaitic revelation, Aristobulus concludes: "It is clear from this that a divine descent occurred. God Himself, without any intermediary, revealed His greatness by means of all these visions." But Aristobulus did not believe that this was truly a descent of the inner essence of God, for God is everywhere. Rather, this "descent" was a revelation of God's powers to the whole world, outside the normal course of nature.9

It seems to me that the debate of the Tannaim on the issue of God's descent to earth does not center on the question whether to attribute spatial movement to the Master of the Universe or not. The basic question is, does the Holy and Blessed One, whose very heavens cannot contain Him, reduce Himself in size to the dimensions of this world? Bound up with this issue is an even more profound matter, namely, what is the nature of God's revelation? Is it verbal communication? Is it the revelation of God's will alone? Or is it an event that affects the Divine Essence?'2]

See how Rabbi Joshua ben Hananiah and Rabbi Eleazar ben Arakh discussed this very question. They both asked: "How is it that the Holy and Blessed One, Who is manifest from the highest heavens, spoke with Moses in a bush?" According to Rabbi Joshua, there was no alteration in the Divine Essence here. The Shekhinah is always with Israel, and the theophany at the burning bush was not a unique event: "When Israel went down to Egypt, the Shekhinah went down with them; when they encamped at the sea, the Shekhinah was with them; when they came to the wilderness, the Shekhinah was with them. On the other hand, Rabbi Eleazar ben Arakh taught that the theophany of the burning bush was an event in the life of the Divine Essence, and an exceptional one at that: "God humbled Himself and spoke from the burning bush."

The notion that God humbled himself by descending to earth was an important element in the theology of Paul the Apostle. He taught that Jesus "even though he bore the divine likeness . . . made himself nothing, assuming the nature of a slave. Bearing the human likeness ... he humbled himself, and in obedience accepted even death—death on a cross" (Philippians 2:6-8). Perhaps those Sages who taught that the Divine Glory did not descend, recognized that this concept was an article of faith among the Christians.[p. 360 - 361]

I saw the view of the face of the Lord, like iron made burning hot in a fire and brought out, and it emits sparks and is incandescent. Thus even I saw the face of the Lord. But the face of the Lord is not to be talked about, it is so very marvelous and supremely awesome and supremely frightening. And who am I to give an account of the incomprehensible being of the Lord, and of his face, so extremely strange and indescribable? And how many are his commands, and his multiple voice, and the Lord's throne, supremely great and not made by hands, and the choir stalls all around him, the cherubim and the seraphim armies, and their never-silent singing. Who can give an account of his beautiful appearance, never changing and indescribable, and his great glory? And I fell down flat and did obeisance to the Lord (2 Enoch 22:1-4, the longer recension).[8]

And now, my children it is not from my lips that I am reporting to you today, but from the lips of the Lord who has sent me to you. As for you, you hear my words, out of my lips, a human being created equal to yourselves; but I have heard the words from the fiery lips of the Lord. For the lips of the Lord are a furnace of fire, and his words are the fiery flames which come out. You, my children, you see my face, a human being created just like yourselves; I am one who has seen the face of the Lord,[9] like iron made burning hot by a fire, emitting sparks. For you gaze into my eyes, a human being created just like yourselves; but I have gazed into the eyes of the Lord, like the rays of the shining sun[10] and terrifying the eyes of a human being. You, my children, you see my right hand beckoning you, a human being created identical to yourselves; but I have seen the right hand of the Lord, beckoning me, who fills heaven. You see the extend of my body, the same as your own; but I have seen the extend of the Lord,[11] without measure and without analogy, who has no end... To stand before the King, who will be able to endure the infinite terror or of the great burning (2 Enoch 39:3-8).[12]

You, my children, you see my face, a human being created just like yourselves; but I am one who has seen the face of the Lord, like iron made burning hot by a fire, emitting sparks... And you see the form of my body, the same as your own: but I have seen the form (extend) of the Lord, without measure and without analogy, who has no end (2 Enoch 39:3-6).

This Enoch, whose flesh was turned to flame, his veins to fire, his eye-lashes to flashes of lightning, his eye-balls to flaming torches, and whom God placed on a throne next to the throne of glory, received after this heavenly transformation the name Metatron.