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CHAPTER THIRTEEN Where the Ways Divide
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54 • • • Fallen Angels myth? Obviously because a mythological interpretation of the story was current. But even as allegory, the popular tale is objectionable to him. Philo has a special reason for this. Following his master, Plato, Philo is a philosophical dualist. Matter and spirit are sharply sundered entities, radically opposed to each other. Matter is evil, mind good. Or, matter is unreal, spirit is real. Philo can therefore not conceive of beings both immaterial and wicked: the angels can become evil only by descent into material forms. Thus the angels could not have desired mortal women until they had first committed the cardinal sin of donning materiality. This is not very different from the descent of the human soul into the body, which Plato had described as a sort of "fall"; and Philo echoes the idea in this very treatise.10 But this philosophical dualism has little connection with the dualistic mythology we are examining. For Philo, the fallen angels are not rebels against God, nor the source of human corruption . Yet the Hellenistic world did know a cycle of dualistic myths which bear the general label "Gnostic/' We shall say something of these in our next chapter. CHAPTER THIRTEEN Where the Ways Divide Standing at the crossroads, we glance backward, then look ahead. We have seen many variations of the myth of the rebel angels. We have recognized in this myth the attempt of certain Jewish teachers to solve the riddle of human suffering and moral evil. The long drawn out tragedy of Palestinian Jewry—above all, the terrible fate that overtook the most pious and loyal—made this no mere academic problem. Faith was threatened: without faith a people cannot endure. We who in our generation have witnessed an unparalleled outburst of savage cruelty can understand how these ancient Jews reacted ; mere human selfishness has seemed inadequate to explain the bestiality of the Nazis. The workers of iniquity appear to be driven by a demonic force that exults in malice and glories in de- Where the Ways Divide • • • 55 struction. It is not surprising that some of our forebears concluded that human wickedness is inspired and directed by mighty angels who have rebelled against God. The astounding thing is that, after some centuries of experimentation with this idea, the authoritative teachers of Judaism dropped it altogether. But the nascent Christian faith adopted and extended the dualistic viewpoint of the apocalyptic writers. The main line of Jewish thought returned to an uncompromising monotheism in which there was no room for satanic rebels. This is, indeed, a notable parting of the ways. It is no wonder that a conservative like Ben Sira, who kept close to the biblical viewpoint and whose own life was sheltered and tranquil, should have disregarded the myth of the fallen angels . But those who were more receptive to new religious influences , and who lived through the mounting horrors of Roman oppression and the fall of the Temple, also rejected this myth. What was their reason? Did they object to the story because it drew on foreign sources? Probably not. For the Pharisees adopted the belief in resurrection and made it a cardinal principle of faith, though it was borrowed from the Persian religion. This they did despite their difficulty in finding Scriptural support for the resurrection-doctrine, whereas in the case of the fallen angels they had to explain away biblical passages that seem to teach the idea! Nor did the Synagogue reject this belief because the Christian Church adopted it. Representative Jewish writers, some of them unmistakably Pharisaic, had dropped the notion of rebel angels well before the Christian era. Witness the Psalms of Solomon^ the later strata of I Enoch, and the Testament of Abraham. On this point the Ezra apocalypse is particularly instructive. Composed toward the end of the first Christian century, it contains speculations about original sin much like those of Paul. Yet despite this spiritual kinship to Christian thought, it never mentions Satan or the fallen angels. The fact is: all such beliefs are inconsistent with an effective monotheism. Not logically, it is true. Christian theologians were to meet the requirements of theoretical monotheism by the doctrine that God created all angels good, but endowed them with free will. When they rebelled against Him, neither His omnipotence nor His goodness were impaired. But no matter how subtly [3.16.81.94] Project MUSE (2024-04-17 05:51 GMT) 56 • • • Fallen Angels one may elaborate this theory, it still leaves...