Rosh Hashanah is one of Judaism’s “high” holidays, and some very significant traditions are associated with it.  Rosh Hashanah marks God’s creation of the world, and is the “birthday” of Adam and Eve.

The Bible (Lev. 23:24–25) refers to this holiday as Yom Ha-Zikkaron (“the day of remembrance”) or Yom Teruah (the day of the sounding of the shofar/trumpet).  Why the trumpets? Some scholars have suggested that the trumpet blast actually represented the angelic song/shout of joy at the Creation.  At the New Year, the Creation of the Cosmos, and this accompanying angelic shout, was commemorated or “remembered” by the blowing of the shofar (probably accompanied by actual shouting as well, Ezra 3:12–13).  The sounding of the shofar has remained a part of the Rosh Hashanah commemoration to the present day.

The Temple of Solomon was dedicated during the ancient festival of the Autumn New Year.  The temple itself represented the created Universe brought up out of the primordial Chaos.  Every year at the New Year festival, the Creation was remembered in a dramatic presentation on the Temple grounds.  In a sense, the Creation was thought to be renewed each year and the Temple was rededicated or re-sanctified.  The corrupt and dying world was renewed to its pure, fertile, paradisaical state.

An important part of today’s Rosh Hashanah celebrations is the Tashlikh or “casting off”.  Participants often wade into flowing water and “cast off” what is in their pockets (sometimes bread), which is symbolic of turning away from sin.  I imagine that this tradition is in place due to the fact that Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement) was most likely a part of the ancient New Year Festival.  This is the day that Yahweh atoned for the sins of the Israelite nation and the Temple was cleansed from impurity.  The broken covenant was renewed and God’s blessings and protection reassured.

There is a focus at Rosh Hashanah today on God’s sovereignty and on the idea of judgment.  These were key elements of the ancient Autumn New Year Festival.  At this festival, as some scholars suggest, there was a dramatic re-enactment of Yahweh’s victory over Chaos/the Dragon, and his ascent to and enthronement on his heavenly throne.  This was a celebration of Yahweh’s well-deserved kingship.  Seated upon his throne, Yahweh subsequently judged all of his Creation and determined their destinies.  Captives were released, the wicked punished, and righteousness reigned.

Although Christians don’t often celebrate Rosh Hashanah as a holiday, its themes pervade our belief system as well — much of the imagery of the ancient New Year can be found in biblical books we read such as Isaiah, Daniel, and Ezekiel, as well as the life of Jesus and the book of Revelation.  Maybe this time of the year is a good opportunity, for us as well, to think of the very significant concepts of Creation, Atonement, Judgment, and the Sovereignty of God.  While we often use our New Year as a time for making resolutions, why not make today a day of personal renewal of your commitments/covenants to God?  For Latter-day Saints, if you are able, today would be an exquisite day to attend the Temple!

As the traditional saying goes: L’shanah tovah tikatev v’taihatem (“May you be inscribed and sealed for a good year”).

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Judaism 101: Rosh Hashanah

Joseph  is the beloved son of his father and (although not born first) is essentially made the firstborn.  Jewish tradition held that Joseph was the son that most looked like his father and whose life most resembled Jacob’s. Jacob taught Joseph the mysteries and the learning that he had obtained in the school of Shem and Eber. His (priesthood) garment was dipped in blood. Joseph was sent to be a slave/servant in Egypt (which is associated with Babylon, or the World). He was made second-in-command (vice-regent) in Potiphar’s house, and resisted all temptation. He was put into prison for crimes he did not commit. While in prison, he helped (in a way) liberate the good (butler/cup-bearer) and condemn the wicked (baker). He was raised up out of the prison to become vice-regent of Pharaoh. He is responsible for providing fertility/prosperity to Egypt (the World) during a time of draught, and brings salvation to his brethren. I’m sure there are many other parallels that can be noted.

After we are told of the death of Joseph, the book of Genesis ends and Exodus begins. The Israelites have multiplied and, because the Egyptians (who possibly overthrew the dynasty that favored Joseph and his Semitic family) feel threatened by their numbers, they are made slaves. We are told that they were in this condition of slavery for over 400 years. They looked forward to a new savior who would free them and return them to their promised land.  They desired, in effect, for the Lord to give them a new beginning.

That is exactly how the psalms represent the Exodus events — as a new Creation.  The psalms speak extensively about the Creation of the world, which they describe as Yahweh’s victory over the Chaos Waters — often including great sea monsters (Rahab, Leviathan, etc.). Gen. 1 picks up on this idea when it describes God as “dividing” the waters in the early stages of creation. The psalms are much more graphic and likely represent older versions of the story.  A good example is Psalm 74:12–17:

Yet God my King is from of old, working salvation in the midst of the earth.

13 Thou didst divide the sea by thy might; thou didst break the heads of the dragons on the waters.

14 Thou didst crush the heads of Leviathan, thou didst give him as food for the creatures of the wilderness.

15 Thou didst cleave open springs and brooks; thou didst dry up ever-flowing streams.

16 Thine is the day, thine also the night; thou hast established the luminaries and the sun.

17 Thou hast fixed all the bounds of the earth; thou hast made summer and winter.

Psalm 89 expresses a very similar image of Yahweh’s conflict at the Creation:

9 Thou dost rule the raging of the sea; when its waves rise, thou stillest them.

10 Thou didst crush Rahab like a carcass, thou didst scatter thy enemies with thy mighty arm.

11 The heavens are thine, the earth also is thine; the world and all that is in it, thou hast founded them.

12 The north and the south, thou hast created them; Tabor and Hermon joyously praise thy name.

Compare also Psalms104:5-9; 93:1-4. Yahweh’s victory over the Chaos waters and its forces of darkness merits his being enthroned as king over the world. Sigmund Mowinckel believed that this was the basis of the so-called enthronement (and other related) psalms we have in our Bible. He commented:

Even the special hymns of enthronement bring out very clearly that the fundamental myth of the festival is the myth of creation … Yahweh has become king of the world, because he has created it. And as we have seen, these psalms do not refer to any abstract notion of creation, but to the same mythical and poetical idea which may be glimpsed behind the account of the creation in Gen. 1, but which is much more prominent in other passages of the Old Testament, namely the idea of creation as the victorious struggle of Yahweh against the dragon of the primeval ocean, or against the primeval ocean itself (tehom).¹

Mowinckel then points out that in the Psalms (and elsewhere) the rise, or “election”, of Israel in the Exodus story is equated with the Creation. Egypt becomes the chaotic monster Rahab and the Red Sea becomes the primeval ocean, Tehom (Isa. 30:7; Ex. 15:48). Just as Yahweh divided the primeval waters, he also divides the Red Sea for his people. Through this historical act of “creation”, Yahweh becomes king over Israel (Deut. 33:2, 4f.; 114:1f.; cf. Deut. 32:8 LXX). Yahweh then builds his temple on his holy mountain (Ex. 15:17f.). Yahweh establishes his covenant with his people, which is then renewed at the annual festival (when all these psalms about Creation, the Exodus, and Yahweh’s enthronement in his temple are sung).²

Psalm 77 presents the dividing of the waters at the Exodus in the same type of “conflict” language as the Creation.

13 Thy way, O God, is holy. What god is great like our God? 14 Thou art the God who workest wonders, who hast manifested thy might among the peoples. 15 Thou didst with thy arm redeem thy people, the sons of Jacob and Joseph. Selah 16 When the waters saw thee, O God, when the waters saw thee, they were afraid, yea, the deep trembled. 17 The clouds poured out water; the skies gave forth thunder; thy arrows flashed on every side. 18 The crash of thy thunder was in the whirlwind; thy lightnings lighted up the world; the earth trembled and shook. 19 Thy way was through the sea, thy path through the great waters; yet thy footprints were unseen. 20 Thou didst lead thy people like a flock by the hand of Moses and Aaron.

(Note the cool reference to God’s footprints in v. 19)

Psalm 114 contains very similar language, informing us that “When Israel went forth from Egypt…the sea looked and fled…at the presence of the Lord.”

One of the clearest passages that relates the primeval battle at Creation to the Exodus is Isa. 51:9–10:

Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of the LORD; awake, as in days of old, the generations of long ago. Was it not thou that didst cut Rahab in pieces, that didst pierce the dragon? 10 Was it not thou that didst dry up the sea, the waters of the great deep; that didst make the depths of the sea a way for the redeemed to pass over?

As Mowinckel noted, in the various manifestations of this motif, Pharaoh/Egypt seems to be cast as Rahab, the Dragon, the agent of Chaos in opposing Yahweh’s salvific works (liberating Israel). We also note that the plagues sent against Egypt line up quite well with the days of Creation — i.e., there are the plagues that have to do with water, with land, with the air, with darkness,  and with destruction of life (instead of creation). In the end, the waters are parted so that dry land appears, but then close down again to crush the Egyptians (Rahab). The Israelites (Adam and Eve) are placed in the Promised Land (eventually).

Last, but certainly not least, we should mention the role of Moses as Yahweh, dividing the waters. Exodus 7:1 alludes to this when God declares to Moses: “See, I have made thee a god to Pharaoh: and Aaron thy brother shall be thy prophet.” Moses was placed in the position of Yahweh in this story. Philo, at the turn of the era, understood this very literally and wrote that Moses “was named God and king of the entire nation.”³ At Qumran, 4Q374 2 ii relates Exo. 7:1 to the story of Moses’ transfiguration after seeing God on Sinai. It seems to be suggesting that Moses’ resultant shining face was evidence of his deification. Crispin Fletcher-Louis suggests that Moses, with his shining face, is fulfilling the priestly blessing of Aaron expressed in Num. 6:25 — “The LORD make his face shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee.” Moses’ face, Fletcher-Louis argues, is to the Israelites as if it were the Lord’s face shining upon them.⁴  In the Exodus story, Moses speaks to Pharaoh through Aaron (his prophet). Moses performs great wonders, including the parting of the Red Sea, just as Yahweh parted the great waters at Creation.

This Creation story is fundamental to the oldest sections of the Hebrew Bible and can be seen repeated over and over — in the Flood story, the Exodus, the Psalms, Isaiah, Job, many of the minor prophets, and elsewhere. Keep that in mind and you will find many fun and insightful parallels that will help you understand your reading better. God’s work of Creation is the first work of Salvation and that theme is repeated over and over again in the history of Israel.

1. Mowinckel, The Psalms in Israel’s Worship, Vol. 1, 143
2. See Ibid., 154ff.
3. Philo, Life of Moses 1:158
4. Crispin Fletcher-Louis, “Some Reflections on Angelomorphic Humanity Texts among the Dead Sea Scrolls,” in Dead Sea Discoveries, vol. 7, no. 3 (2000), 298

While the purpose of this post is not to give a fully history, or even a summary, of their view, I wanted to at least highlight the work of Danish scholar Aage Bentzen on this topic. Essentially, this post will contain a few passages from his book King and Messiah, first translated into English in 1955 by The Lutterworth Press.

In this thin volume, Bentzen does a stellar job of summarizing the work of the great scholars before him and presents an overview of the arguments surrounding the meaning of the so-called “ascension,” ”enthronement,” and “royal” psalms that had been identified.  From these psalms, and by comparison with their knowledge of ancient Near Eastern rituals (based on Egyptian, Mesopotamian, and then newly discovered Canaanite texts), scholars believed they could reconstruct a hypothetical Israelite ritual that was central to First Temple religion.  The ritual that emerged was seen as “The Festival of Yahweh’s Ascension to his Throne on New Year’s Day,” a “ritual drama” that could be seen through a trained reading of these psalms. This ritual had the Creation of the world as its central theme–an event that included Yahweh’s fight against the powers of Chaos (Sea, Flood, Dragon, Rahab), his victory, and subsequent creation of the world, along with his enthronement in his new temple. This event was re-created in the Israelite New Year festival, where the Israelite King represented Yahweh in the ritual drama.

I add to this very brief summary some of Bentzen’s comments on this topic, starting in Chapter 2 of his book. 

Looking at Psalm 2, he explains:

The…interpretation of the psalm…suggests that it is an oracle on the day of the king’s ascension to his throne…The presupposition is that the Day of the Ascension to the Throne is no common day of the year. The kings of Babylon and Assyria do not ascend the throne de jure, until the New Year’s Day following the death of their predecessor; and in Egypt the coronation of the king takes place in connection with the beginning of the rule of the gods.¹

The enthronement of a king is always a repetition of a primeval act. It is a repetition of the enthronement of the first king in the days of the beginning, the primeval age. The first king is the patriarch of the Royal House, identical with the patriarch of mankind. Hammurabi says in the introduction to his great collection of Babylonian Laws that he got his “name” from teh great Creators Anu and Enlil, when they created the World; i.e. that he was elected king at the creation² . The same is said in Israel of the Messiah in Micah 5:1, where his epiphany is compared with the sunrise…And so we get a significant and powerful pun between the two meanings of the word mikkedem: “His uprising is from the East”, the latter word (mikkedem) being interpreted in its other sense through mime ‘olam, “from the Days of Old”, the beginning of time. The Messianic poem in Micah 5, like the parallesl in Isaiah 9 and 11, is a typical Royal Psalm. This conception of the primeval election and birth of the king is also preserved in the ancient versions of Psalm 110:3 (cf. LXX, Syr. and also Vulg.) Probably this same idea is behind the name of the Messiah in Isaiah 9:5, when he is called not only “God Almighty”, but also ‘abi-’ad, “Father from Eternity”, i.e. “primeval patriarch”. 

The  king, then, is Primeval Man. The first man of Genesis 1:26–28 is desribed as the first ruler of the world. In the first Creation Story, the “gospel” of the New Year, we hear the blessing spoken by God at the enthonement of the first Royal Couple of the world. Man is to “rule” over all living creatures. Man and Woman, like the Babyloian kings, are “images of God”, i.e. the Royal Couple is Divine, as in the famous apostrophe to the king in the oracle for the Royal wedding (Psalm 45:7). The same idea is developed in Psalm 8, in the description of the “Son of Man”, who is “little lower than God”, “nearly a God”. This “Son of Man”, according to the evident dependence of the psalm on the ideas behind the first chapter of Genesis, is the First Man and the First King…[I]n the Creation story of Genesis 2:4ff…we are told that the First Man gave the animals their names and that none of them was his equal…the Israelite prince in Psalm 110 is enthroned at the right hand of God, on Zion, his holy mountain (Psalm 2)…He has enthroned his King in the Sanctuary of Jerusalem, which is also from the Days of Old (cf. e.g. Jeremiah 17:12). This king and saviour, who (like all ancient kings) is also his prophet, now pronounces the will of God…

The king, as in Mesopotamia, is Son of God by adoption…we have no right at all to doubt that in principle the king of Israel was considered an ‘elohim…But the king is thought of as the divine-human bearer of salvation, the guarantor of the victory of God. He is not so absolutely a god as in Egypt. 

It is certainly singificant, too, that in Psalm 2 the enemies asre described as “terrestrial” (“kings of the earth”, v. 2). These earthly beings are emphatically confronted with “Him that sits in the heavens” and we find the king on his side through the divine act of adoption. Through the ceremony of anointing, and through the enthronement mentioned in v. 6, he has been made “celestial”. He is now, through God’s decree, “a new creature”, made unconquerable by his holy strength.

All this is made clear to the people in the Song of the King, in which he proclaims his election on the enthronement festival. He has received the divine oracle…which he now proclaims to the people. The Psalm is phenomenologically a parallel and type of the Christmas Gospel: The Saviour has been born! Isaiah 9:1–6 belongs to the same literary type. This is, moreover, significant not only for religious phenomenology, but also for Christian theology.³

To be continued…I want to share next Bentzen’s presentation of what the New Year enthronement ritual actually entailed, including enthronement, investiture, and ordination as priest. I believe this is important for LDS, as it is key to understanding the Old Testament, the New Testament, including early Christian understanding of Jesus as Messiah (and simultaneously prophet, priest and king), and also the LDS Temple rituals.

1. King and Messiah, 16
2. my note: see Abr. 3:23
3. King and Messiah, pp. 17-20

• A. Grillmeier, Christ in the Christian Tradition, vol. I
• J.N.D. Kelly, Early Christian Creeds
• Angelo di berardino, ed., Patrology, vol. IV
• Lewis Ayres, Nicaea and Its Legacy
• John Dillon, The Middle Platonists
• Jean Danielou’s Jewish Christianity and Origins of Latin Christianity
• H.B. Swete, The Holy Spirit in the Ancient Church
• Jarl Fossum, The Name of God and the Angel of the Lord

Apocalyptic Literature: This week’s readings

This week, Dr. Orlov had us read (I apologize that I don’t have on-line links for all of them):

Readings: Genesis 1-3; Latin Life of Adam and Eve; The Book of the Watchers; G. Boccaccini, Roots of Rabbinic Judaism, ch. 2.

Additional Readings: G. Boccaccini, Beyond the Essene Hypothesis, pp. 68-79; J. Reeves, Early Jewish Mythologies of Evil; Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible, entries: Anthropos, Adam, Glory.

Accounts of Creation and Fall

With the readings from Genesis, the Life of Adam and Eve, and the Enochic Book of the Watchers, Dr. Orlov wanted to make us aware that there were multiple accounts of the Creation and Fall (introduction of evil into the world) in the Second Temple period. Generally, these are all very ancient stories, yet modified to suit the purposes/ideology of the parties who used them.  The following represents some of my notes from the readings:

Gen 1-3

Gen 1–This chapter is considered by scholars to have been written by Zadokite priestly authors. It is very concerned with ordering, separating, classifying. God(s)/Spirit of God create Earth and heavenly firmament-Earth is without form and void and covered in darkness. God divides waters. God forms cosmos in 6 days, rests on 7th. Creation is good. God says, “Let us make man in our image and our likeness.”

Gen 2-Second creation account (spiritual vs. physical?). Man commanded not to eat of Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil-or they would surely die. Woman created from man.

Gen 3-Serpent (God’s creation) tempts Eve to eat of fruit, Eve gives in. She gets Adam to eat fruit. Serpent cursed, Adam and Eve expelled from Garden and Tree of Life. The introduction of evil and death into the world is Adam and (principally) Eve’s fault, under influence of the Serpent.

Latin Life of Adam and Eve

Adam and Eve have been expelled from Garden. They miss angelic food in paradise and don’t want to eat what animals eat. For penitence, seeking God’s mercy, they stand in river for 40 days with water up to neck (compare baptism).
Satan transforms himself into angel of light and tries to convince Eve to leave water.
Satan is the one by whom they were “alienated from the dwelling of paradise and spiritual happiness.” Satan hates Adam because Satan (and angel followers) was expelled from heaven when he would not worship Adam, the image of God. Satan grieved because of his loss of glory. He wanted Adam and Eve to experience the same loss.
Adam taken to heaven in chariot of fire. He sees the fiery face of God. He sees vision of the future of his children.
Adam suffers great pain as punishment for his transgression and is near death. He sends Seth and Eve to retrieve oil from the Tree of Life to cure him. Adam is not granted the oil, but is promised that he will be resurrected by the Son of God and led to the Tree of Life. Signs and darkness accompany Adam’s death. After Adam is redeemed, his will sit on the throne formerly occupied by Satan.
Eve commands children to keep a record in stone and earth of their life. 8th day is day that Christ will reign forever. These stone records survived the flood and were seen by many, but they could not be read. God helped Solomon to understand all that was written as he built the Temple.

Book of Watchers

Angels (Watchers) married human women who then gave birth to great giants who caused many problems. Watchers (with Azaz’el) taught heavenly secrets (that are performed in heaven) to mankind. These angels bring corruption into the world. Michael, Gabriel saw sin and problems on Earth caused by Watchers. The Holy One will cry because of the sin and oppression on Earth (1 Enoch 9:10). Deluge will be sent to destroy wickedness from the Earth. Whole Earth was corrupted by sins of Azaz’el.
Watchers ask Enoch to write memorial prayers seeking mercy of God for them. Enoch reads judgment to Watchers that they will be imprisoned forever.
Enoch is taken up into Heaven. He sees a white building surrounded by tongues of fire. Goes into inner house of white marble. Walls have mosaics with cherubim, floor is of crystal and ceiling depicts stars. Fire is all around. He enters second house (3rd section), which has fire on floor and ceiling. He sees chariot throne lifted up with wheels, cherubim, and fire from underneath. He sees Great Glory on the throne dressed in white robe. He is surrounded by fire. He calls Enoch to come near to Him and His Word. God speaks with Enoch.

Boccaccini, Roots of Rabbinic Judaism

Zadokite Worldview:
Zadokites wrote Gen 1, describing how God made order out of chaos-God separates and defines boundaries-society, space, and time are divided hierarchically into graded holiness.
Sins of kings bring destruction on Jerusalem-Zadokites insist that all priests and people guilty of sin as well-could not have been destroyed if they had been innocent.
Temple closely mirrors Heaven-”to enter the Temple and take part in the Temple cult is therefore to participate to some degree in the unceasing worship going on in heaven.”

Entries in Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible:

Anthropos:

One designation, with or without qualification, of the highest being in many gnostlc systems…The name draws attention to the direct or indirect link between supreme divinity and humanity, esp. the ‘unwavering race’, thanks to which redemption from the world created by the Archons is possible. The name Anthropos signifies that God is the prototype of Man (anthropos) because man is made, directly or indirectly, in his image.

Adam:

In the Bible itself there are no traces of traditions that Adam was ever regarded as an angelic or divine being…[must look to other Ancient Near Eastern literature]
Some passages in early rabbinic literature testify to the existence of “heretics” (minim) that held that Adam had acted as God’s associate in creation, or as his pleni-potentiary (e.g., b.Sanh. 38a: “Our rabbis taught: Adam was created [last of all beings] on the eve of Sabbath. Why so? Lest the minim should say: The Holy One, blessed by He, had a partner [sc. Adam] in his work of creation.”). Gnostic sources seem to confirm this when they speak of Adam as [the one] through whom everything came into being (Fossum 1985:267). In other early Christian sources the idea of Adam having been God’s viceregent crops up occasionally, epecially in the so-called Adam literature (see, e.g., the Cave of the Treasure; further Stone 1992). Philo’s distinction between the heavenly Man of Gen l:27 and the earthly man of Gen 2:7 may have been one of the tributaries to the development of this motif (Opif. mundi 134 et al.). In 2 Enoch 30:11-12 (long recension) God says: “On the earth I assigned him [Adam] to be a second angel, honoured and great and glorious. I assigned him to be a king, to reign on the earth and to have my wisdom. There was nothing comparable to him on the earth, not even among my creatures that exist [the angels].” But the Testament of Abraham ch. 8 (rec. B) goes a step further when identifying Adam with a Kavod-like (Glory) Man in heaven, “sitting upon a throne of great glory” at the gates of Paradise, encircled by a multitude of angels and looking at the many souls being led to destruction and the few souls being led to life. “Adam is enthroned in heaven as the Glory at the end of time” (Fossun 1985:276). The description of Adam as a “wondrous man,” “adorned in such glory,” with a “terrifying apperance, like that of the Lord” (Test. Abr. I I, rec. A) clearly recalls Ezekiel’s vision in ch. 1. It would seem that in certain circles with mystical inclinations God’s Glory, the Heavenly Man, and Adam merged into one angelic figure. On the development of this idea in later Kabbalistic circles see Scholem 1974 (Reg., s.v.). The implication that all this may have for the study of New Testament christology is a matter of debate.

Notes from Class Lecture:

The Second Temple (intertestamental) period is largely a mystery. Looking at pseudepigraphal and apocalyptic literature helps put together picture, but it is still very confusing. “Canon” did not exist in this period–just collections of scrolls that varied from library to library. Apocalyptic literature is response to absence of Temple–promoted the idea that heavenly liturgy goes on eternally in heavenly temple. Apocalypses are “outlines of mystical practice”–meant to be taught to and understood by only a few.  Study of Rabbinics and Patristics gives us insight into later interpretations of these texts, but not necessarily original meaning.

586 BC–First Temple destroyed

538 BC–End of Exile

516 BC–Temple is Rebuilt

After Exile, Judahite monarchy wasn’t continued. Zadokites edit sacred writings and reshape Judaism. Genesis 1 is the “manifesto” of the priestly tradition–outlines their vision of God, the Universe, and Creation. For them, society was divided into graded levels of holiness, with the Temple at the center of Jerusalem and Jerusalem and the center of the world. Boundaries between levels had to be strictly enforced. Humans couldn’t go to the Underworld or to Heaven without terrible consequences.

Enochic tradition focused on the violation of those boundaries (e.g., ascent to heaven). Zadokites wanted to marginalize this trend–that’s why we don’t see it in the Old Testament. The Zadokites only focused on the human realm.  Terms like God’s Glory (kavod) were introduced to reinforce the boundaries–men do not see God, they see his Glory. Humans are protected from seeing Deity directly.

We know very little of the First Temple because we only have literature from the Second Temple–anything from earlier is edited by Zadokites. Zadokites tried to exclude all theologies that they didn’t agree with. Other parties kept their own alternative theologies, but they (generally) didn’t make it in to our Old Testament. This is why Old Testament is so different than New. New Testament authors had access to, and often preferred alternative theologies.

All groups wanted access to the temple, but Zadokite priests restricted access. Enochic literature preserves access to temple through heavenly temple. Enoch becomes high priest in heavenly temple. Although not emphasized in their writings, Zadokites also believe in heavenly temple–earthly sanctuary is a copy of heavenly.

Creation, Fall, and Evil

Traditions of protology (the beginning) and eschatalogy (the end) are often symmetrical. Same characters/places that exist in beginning often come back in end of times.

Adamic tradition of creation carried on by Zadokites. In some interpretations of this tradition, Fall of Adam actually took place before the incident with the Serpent in the Garden. The Fall occurred during the process of creation.

• In Genesis 1, Adam is “created” (bara). Adam (man, human being) is created male and female. Some later interpreters explained that this meant that Adam was androgenous–both male and female inseparable. At this point, Adam existed in the “world of creation” (olam ha’beriah)–a world of potential existence, the highest of the worlds that exist outside of God’s presence.
• In Gen 2, Adam is formed (yazah). Adam (male human) is formed from the dust of the earth. This takes place in the “world of formation” (olam ha’yetzirah). Here there is a joining of substance and spirit, and making “something from something.”
• Finally, Eve is made (asiah). She is separated from Adam’s body–this marks the third of the lower worlds, the “world of making” (olam ha’asiyah). This is where the human race is propagated.

These traditions (found principally in Kabbalistic literature), indicate that in the end times, the female will be incorporated back into the male, and the two will be one eternally.  (I’m sure David Littlefield or Kerry Shirts could tell us more about these traditions).  

Another interesting aspect of the Adam tradition is the idea that when Adam fell, he lost his “garments of light” that he had possessed in the Garden of Eden. When they were expulsed from the Garden, they were given “garments of skins” so that they would not be naked–but also to indicate their loss of heavenly glory.  In Life of Adam and Eve, Adam instructs Seth and Eve to go back to the Garden to ask for oil from the tree of life. The purpose of this oil is to give back garments of light (= resurrection and immortality).

Enochic Tradition

The Enochic literature doesn’t mention transgression of Adam and Eve–they were our noble parents. Evil comes into the world because of the Watchers, demiurgic angels who want to corrupt the earthly realm–fornicate with earthly women and share heavenly secrets without God’s permission. These were angels of great power and authority.  These angels are punished by God and cast into a pit in the desert. Because of the fall of these important angels, humans (e.g., Enoch) are called to come to heaven to become angels and take the place of those who fell. Some scholars think that this stories were meant to criticize the Second Temple Zadokite priesthood who were seen as corrupt by those who were excluded from serving in the new temple. Themes of Enochic literature continue unchanged for centuries, and are very important to Christian theology. We don’t find these themes in Old Testament, but they appear in the New. Life of Adam and Eve appears to be a mix of Adamic and Enochic literature used by Christians.

Please excuse the partial and sketchy nature of these notes–I hope they were understandable and of interest. If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to add a comment here or email me. All things being equal, I will make the same type of posts next week with what I have learned until then.