Two Powers in Heaven? Here are Three Items ...

Item #1

Dr. Michael Heiser lectures at Beit-Tefillah in Gig Harbor, WA, on the Two Powers in Heaven in Jewish Thought. (Two Powers of the Godhead, YouTube, May 4, 2013, 1:21:52)

Item #2

The thesis (by the same Mike Heiser):

Twenty-five years ago, rabbinical scholar Alan Segal [see @  Wikipedia] produced what is still the major work on the idea of two powers in heaven in Jewish thought. [Two powers in heaven: early rabbinic reports about Christianity and Gnosticism, Brill, 313 pp., 1st ed. 1977, 2nd ed. 2002] 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 [see @ NET Bible]. 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) [Mike Heiser, “The Divine Council in Late Canonical and Non-Canonical Second Temple Jewish Literature”, see footnotes ¹,²,³] 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. [see @ Wikipedia > Ugarit > Religion; Baal Berith] 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. [there simply is no evidence for this ...]
-- Mike Heiser, Two Powers in Heaven (@ twopowersinheaven.com)

Notes and links for Mike Heiser's Dissertation

[1] Dissertation Defense, 5 pp., May 3, 2004 (@ michaelsheiser.com)

[2] Abstract, 2004 (@ digitalcommons.liberty.edu)

[3] Dissertation, 271 pp., 2004 (@ digitalcommons.liberty.edu)

Item #3

Here are some problems with the thesis:

The Talmud relates that Elisha ben Abuyah (a rabbi and Jewish religious authority born in Jerusalem sometime before 70 CE), also called Acher (אחר, "other", as he became an apostate), entered Paradise and saw Metatron sitting down (an action that is not done in The Presence of God). Elishah ben Abuyah therefore looked to Metatron as a deity and said heretically: "There are indeed two powers in Heaven!"^[18] The rabbis explain that Metatron had permission to sit because of his function as the Heavenly Scribe, writing down the deeds of Israel (Babylonian Talmud, Hagiga 15a).^[19]

The Talmud states, it was proved to Elisha that Metatron could not be a second deity by the fact that Metatron received 60 "strokes with fiery rods" to demonstrate that Metatron was not a god, but an angel, and could be punished.^[20]

-- Wikipedia > Metatron > Origins

References

[18] Alan F. Segal titled his book, Two Powers in Heaven (Brill, 1977/2002) on this alleged exclamation.

[19] Scholem, Gershom (1974), Kabbalah, Keter Publishing House Jerusalem Ltd

[20] Oxford Centre for Postgraduate Hebrew Studies, Society for Jewish Study (1983). The Journal of Jewish Studies,Volumes 34-35. The Oxford Centre for Postgraduate Hebrew Studies. p. 26. Retrieved 5 March 2014.

Conclusion (?)

So what is it? (Two Powers in Heaven:  Christian Heresy or Theology of the Tanakh?)