Jewish Texts and History • Re: Two Powers in Heaven

The next prominent focal point of the Son of Man concept that originates from Daniel is in the so-called Similitudes...part of the Ethiopic Book of Enoch and are dated by most scholars at around the turn of the first century BCE to the first century CE. One of its main features is the interest in a messianic redeemer figure, which here is called the “Son of Man,” referring back to Daniel 7, or “the chosen one.” The connection to Daniel is again unmistakable:

(1 Enoch 46:1-3)

The “Head of Days” is the “Ancient of Days” or the “Ancient One” from Daniel, and the “one with the appearance of a man” is the “one like a human being” or “Son of Man” in Daniel.

Enoch’s question as to the identity and origin of this son of man is not directly answered; the answer comes somewhat later:

(1 Enoch 48:2-6 [cited])

This text makes two key, almost-unheard-of statements. First, the name of the Son of Man was “named” before God prior to the creation of the world. In plain terms this means that the Son of Man was created before God created the world. This directly brings to mind the wisdom in Proverbs and Jesus Sirach: before any earthly creation, the Son of Man was with God in heaven, virtually god-like. Second, even more dramatically, all human beings fall down before him (v. 5), which apparently means that they worship him ...

It also cannot be ruled out, however, that the boundaries are deliberately unclear and the text intentionally keeps the worshipping of the Son of Man vague, only revealing it in a somewhat concealed manner.

Not at all vague, but completely transparent and unambiguous is the statement in the third parable [1 Enoch 62:2-9]. There, the Last Judgment of the Son of Man, judging over all creatures, including the powerful of the earth, is described:

(1 Enoch 62:2-9 [cited])

Here the Son of Man is enthroned as the eschatological judge on the “throne of his glory.” Both the enthronement on the throne of glory and carrying out of the judgment are attributes that are otherwise reserved for God alone ...

... The conclusion of the third parable6 once again describes this appearance of the enthroned eschatological judge appearing on the throne of his glory:

1 Enoch 69:29:
And from then on there will be nothing that is corruptible;
For that Son of Man has appeared.
And he has sat down on the throne of his glory,
and all evil will vanish from his presence.
And the word of that Son of Man will go forth
and will prevail in the presence of the Lord of Spirits.

Up to now, the Similitudes depict Enoch clearly as an earthly seer who receives visions in which he sees the heavenly Son of Man created before the creation of the world.

Enoch and the Son of Man have nothing to do with each other—one is a divine figure and the other is a human being.

In chapters 70–71, however, they are suddenly combined. In order to tone down this bold statement, many scholars assume that the two chapters are a later addition to the Similitudes.

The chapters begin with Enoch’s name being taken from the people on earth during his lifetime and lifted up to God. This is obviously an interpretation of the enigmatic passage in Genesis 5:21–24, where it is said of the antediluvian patriarch Enoch that he did not die a natural death but instead was taken away by God (ki laqah oto elohim) at the tender age of 365 years; all other antediluvian patriarchs lived much longer. Almost all interpreters of this verse understand this to mean that he was elevated into heaven ...

eg., 1 Enoch 71:13-14 [Schäfer cites more than this]:
And that Head of Days came with Michael and Raphael and Gabriel and Phanuel, and thousands and tens of thousands of angels without number.
(14) And he [the angel Michael] came to me and greeted me with his voice and said to me,
“You [Enoch] are that Son of Man who was born for righteousness, and righteousness dwells on you ..."

... Michael proclaims to him that he is the Son of Man, who will exercise righteousness, and with whose righteous dominion eternal peace will dawn for the people of Israel ...

Daniel Boyarin...sees in chapters 70–71, “the independent strand of very ancient tradition, in which the two originally separate ideas of God becoming man and a man becoming God are fused.” ... In the last two chapters of the Similitudes, he sees not only the first fusion of [the 'theophanic and apotheotic strands of tradition'] but also a direct predecessor of the New Testament message “of a God who became man, came down to earth, and returned home,” and “of a man who became God and then ascended on high.” I can agree wholeheartedly with the second part of this interpretation ...

[The editor's] message was: the highest being alongside God is not one of his well-known angels and archangels but rather an angel who had previously been a man, and this man—as the Messiah—will bring justice and eternal peace to humanity. There is also no doubt that this Son of Man–Enoch of the Similitudes is part of the Jewish repertoire that the New Testament drew on.

But this still does not mean that the chapters 70–71 echo a “very ancient tradition”—we know absolutely nothing about the age of these chapters as compared with the main part of the Similitudes—or that it was the declared intention of the redactor to fuse the theophany of the Son of Man with the apotheosis of Enoch ...

... the Son of Man–Enoch in chapters 70–71 is indeed a human being who becomes God, or rather godlike, but the Son of Man in the main part of the Similitudes is certainly not a God who became human, came down to earth, and then returned to heaven ... the incarnation of God...is missing in the Similitudes. With the elevation of the man Enoch to the godlike Son of Man, the Similitudes go far—in fact very far—and they surely also help us understand the early Christology of the New Testament ...

but the claim that...“all of the elements of Christology are essentially in place then in the Similitudes” is not justified by a sober analysis of the text. The father of that thought was...Boyarin’s exaggerated wish to anchor as many core messages of the New Testament as possible in early Judaism.