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A Note on Josephus, Antiquities 15:136

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 August 2011

W. D. Davies
W. D. Davies
Affiliation:
Duke University
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Extract

In my recent monograph entitled Torah in the Messianic Age and/or the Age to Come, I sought particularly to examine the question whether Judaism anticipated a New Torah in its ideal future, however conceived. One passage in Josephus, Antiquities, 15:136 has been suggested as relevant to this purpose because it contains the idea that “the Law was given through angels, an idea which in Acts 7:53, Gal. 3:19, Heb.2:2 is associated with the notion that it was to change?” (See Morton Smith, J. B. L., Vol. LXXII, September 1953, pp. 192) Strack-Billerbeck cite the passage in their comment on Gal. 3:19 and take it to refer to the mediation of angels, as do also Grundmann in the Theologisches Wörterbuch (Ed. Kittel), I, p. 74, and Walter Bauer in his Wörterbuch, 1952, col. 13. It is the first aim of this note to follow up a suggestion made to me by Dr. Ralph Marcus that the passage may not refer to angels but to prophets.

Type
Research Article
Information
Harvard Theological Review , Volume 47 , Issue 3 , July 1954 , pp. 135 - 140
Copyright
Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1954

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References

1 The works of Flavius Josephus, London, 1906, p. 44Google Scholar.

2 For the evidence see Strack-Billerbeck, Kommentar zum Neuen Testament, III, p. 554 ff.

3 Josephus and the Jews, New York, 1930, pp. 59 ffGoogle Scholar.

4 Op. cit., p. 30, Section 1.

5 The Loeb Classical Library, Josephus, Vol. i, pp. 177 f.

6 Op. cit., ibid.

7 The Jewish War, 2:142. Here again the onomata angelôn may be ambiguous; do they refer to the messengers or agents by which the books mentioned previously were transmitted? More probably in view of Essene angelology they refer to the names of angels. See Theologisches Wörterbuch, I, pp. 74 f.

8 The ambiguity of the meaning of angelos emerges in the translation of Gal. 4:14 and 1 Tim. 3:16. (See Burton, E. DeWitt, I. C. C, Galatians 1920, pp. 242–3Google Scholar and Spicq, C., Les Épitres Pastorales, Paris, 1947, p. 107Google Scholar), though in both cases most scholars prefer to render it by angels. Moulton and Milligan point out that the meaning “angel” is the older signification of the term in Homer. See the Vocabulary of the Greek N. T., London, 1930.

9 Op. cit., p. 82.

10 Cf. Bruce, F. F., The Acts of the Apostles,2 London, 1952, p. 177Google Scholar.

11 Some passages suggest that after the close of the New Testament period efforts were made in some quarters to belittle the role of the angels on Mt. Sinai. In Deut. R. 7:9 Yahweh refused to give the Torah to the ministering angels though they coveted it. In Deut. R. 8:2 the ministering angels eagerly desired the Torah, it is claimed, but it was too abstruse for them. According to other passages Moses had, metaphorically, to wrestle with the angels on Mt. Sinai: they pleaded that man was unworthy of the Torah, and wanted it for themselves. (See Exod. R. 28:1; Shabb. 88b.). In Song of Songs R. 1:2 R. Johanan's view that angels mediated between Yahweh and the Israelites at Sinai is expressly set over against that of the Rabbis who insisted that it was each commandment itself which went in turn to each of the Israelites not an angel mediating a commandment. It will be recalled that in a passage near to the first two cited above, i.e., Deut. R. 8:6 there is probably anti-Christian polemic (See Torah in the Messianic Age and/or The Age to Come, pp. 87 f.). It is possible that a similar polemic emerges in the tendency revealed in the passages cited to make it clear that the angels did not receive the Law from Yahweh. Judaism would be anxious to counteract the Christian notion that the Law because it was mediated by angels was an inferior revelation. Perhaps it is further not wholly irrelevant to point out that all the prophets and all the sages could be conceived as having received their messages, whether in the form of prophecy or of wisdom, directly from God at Sinai (See Exod. R. 28:6).