Introduction
Twenty-five
years ago, rabbinical scholar Alan Segal produced what is still the
major work on the idea of two powers in heaven in Jewish thought. Segal
argued that the two powers idea was not deemed heretical in Jewish
theology until the second century C.E. He carefully traced the roots of
the teaching back into the Second Temple era (ca. 200 B.C.E.). Segal was
able to establish that the idea’s antecedents were in the Hebrew Bible,
specifically passages like Dan 7:9ff., Exo 23:20-23, and Exo 15:3.
However, he was unable to discern any coherent religious framework from
which these passages and others were conceptually derived. Persian
dualism was unacceptable as an explanation since neither of the two
powers in heaven were evil. Segal speculated that the divine warrior
imagery of the broader ancient near east likely had some relationship.
In my dissertation (UW-Madison, 2004) I argued that
Segal’s instincts were correct. My own work bridges the gap between his
book and the Hebrew Bible understood in its Canaanite religious context.
I suggest that the “original model” for the two powers idea was the role
of the vice-regent of the divine council. The paradigm of a high
sovereign God (El) who rules heaven and earth through the agency of a
second, appointed god (Baal) became part of Israelite religion, albeit
with some modification. For the orthodox Israelite, Yahweh was both
sovereign and vice regent—occupying both “slots” as it were at the head
of the divine council. The binitarian portrayal of Yahweh in the Hebrew
Bible was motivated by this belief. The ancient Israelite knew two
Yahwehs—one invisible, a spirit, the other visible, often in human form.
The two Yahwehs at times appear together in the text, at times
being distinguished, at other times not.
Early Judaism understood this portrayal and its
rationale. There was no sense of a violation of monotheism since either
figure was indeed Yahweh. There was no second distinct god running the
affairs of the cosmos. During the Second Temple period, Jewish
theologians and writers speculated on an identity for the second Yahweh.
Guesses ranged from divinized humans from the stories of the Hebrew
Bible to exalted angels. These speculations were not considered
unorthodox. That acceptance changed when certain Jews, the early
Christians, connected Jesus with this orthodox Jewish idea. This
explains why these Jews, the first converts to following Jesus the
Christ, could simultaneously worship the God of Israel and Jesus, and
yet refuse to acknowledge any other god. Jesus was the incarnate second
Yahweh. In response, as Segal’s work demonstrated, Judaism pronounced
the two powers teaching a heresy sometime in the second century A.D.