Jesus in the Talmud

58 Chapter 5Glory, clothed in a majestic robe, crowned with a kingly crown, andcalled “The lesser YHWH” (YHWH ha-qatan), as it is written: “Since myname is in him” (Ex. 23:21). 40 This verse refers to the angel of the Lord, 41who is identical with God because God’s name is in him, that is, becausehe bears God’s name. Whereas in the Bible the “angel of the Lord” is indeedGod himself, Metatron in 3 Enoch becomes the highest being nextto God, due to the power of God’s name residing in his name.But where do we find God’s name in the name “Metatron”? Scores ofscholars have tried to explain the enigmatic name “Metatron” 42 —themost likely explication is probably (ho) meta thronon = “(the throne) nextto the (divine) throne”—but none of all the possible derivations explainsthe relationship between God’s name and the name Metatron (unless weaccept the not very likely explanation that “Metatron” contains the Greektetra—“four,” hence an allusion to the tetragrammaton). It seems safer toassume that the story as we have it in 3 Enoch and the Talmud reflects alater development and that an earlier version contained a name that moreclosely resembles the name of God. And, indeed, among the many namesthat Metatron has absorbed in the esoteric literature, appears most prominentlythe name “Yahoel,” 43 a name we know from other and earliersources, independently of the Enoch-Metatron tradition. In the Apocalypseof Abraham, preserved only in Slavonic but written presumably inHebrew sometime after 70 C.E., 44 the angel Iaoel plays an important role.There, he says of himself: “I am Iaoel and I was called so by him whocauses those with me [the other angels in the seventh heaven] ...toshake, a power through the medium of his ineffable name in me.” 45 Thismakes much better sense: the name “Iaoel/Yahoel” indeed contains thedivine name “Iao/Yaho,” the abbreviation of the tetragrammaton YHWH,which is also used in the Greek magical papyri. It seems, therefore, that itwas originally the angel Iaoel/Yahoel to whom Exodus 23:21 was appliedand who later, after Metatron had absorbed Yahoel, was replaced by theman-angel Metatron. 46The godlike magician, in assuming God’s name, exercises powerthrough the theurgical use of this name. Not by coincidence, it is thename of the Jewish God that appears quite prominently in the Greco-Roman magical texts of late antiquity. 47 The Jews were regarded as particularlypowerful magicians (did not Moses already outdo the magicians of