Margaret Barker
Atonement: The Rite of Healing.[1]
There has recently been a number of books on the Christian
understanding of atonement. What has been fascinating for me is
the extent to which these books do, or more often do not, use the
Old Testament material on atonement as the basis for what they
have to say. The New Testament speaks in a variety of ways about
atonement, and this has become the centre of Christian dogmatics;
but this ‘atonement’ is only loosely related to its Old
Testament roots. Did the first Christians, then radically alter
what was understood by atonement, or was this radical alteration
made by subsequent expositors of their ideas? The latter is more
likely; in other words, the original model for New Testament
theology has been lost.
George Steiner, in his book The Death of Tragedy, said
this:
When the artist must be the architect of his own mythology, time
is against him. He cannot live long enough to impose his special
vision and the symbols he has devised for it on the habits of
language and the feelings of his society. Without an orthodox or
public frame to support it, it does not take root in the common
soil.[2]
The death of Jesus was interpreted immediately in terms of
atonement, even though the first Christians cannot have been, to
use Steiner’s phrase, ‘architects of their own
mythology’. That they had been just this, however, is the
unacknowledged presupposition of much of the debate. We are given
no explanation as to how the two goats of the Day of Atonement
found their fulfilment in events which were interpreted as the
Lord himself coming to his people as their Redeemer and the
renewer of the creation.
In his book The Christian Understanding of Atonement,
Dillistone made this observation: ‘From the New Testament
there come hints, suggestions, even daring affirmations of a
comprehensive cosmic reconciliation.’ He doubted that this
was derived from Hebrew thought, but continued: It was not until
early Christian witnesses found themselves confronted by pagan
systems in which a full theory of cosmic redemption played a
prominent part that the effect of the work of Christ upon the
cosmos at large began to receive serious consideration’.[3]
I have reason to believe that this ‘cosmic’ theory of
atonement does not originate in paganism but in the Jerusalem
temple. Failure to understand this cult has led to some curious
distortions in reading the New Testament, even by Old Testament
scholars. Thus B.S.Childs in his volume on Exodus, could say of
the tabernacle: ‘(the letter to the ) Hebrews offers a major
reinterpretation of the Levitical system in the Christian
gospel’. But does it? Elsewhere he seems not to recognise
the importance of atonement; in his new book Biblical Theology
of the Old and New Testaments, a work of over five hundred
pages, only four deal with atonement in the Old Testament. [4]
I want to suggest in this paper that there was no influx of
paganism into the concept of atonement as that was expressed and
assumed in the New Testament, and no major reinterpretation. What
was assumed by the New testament writers was a traditional
understanding of the temple rituals and myths of atonement.
When the rituals had ceased and the myths were no longer
recognised for what they really were, the key to understanding
the imagery of atonement was lost. It is recognised that certain
concepts in the New testament such as covenant, righteousness,
justification and grace must have been related to the central
theme of atonement, but the overall pattern, it seems, has been
lost.
Atonement translates the Hebrew kpr, but the meaning of kpr
in a ritual context is not known. Investigations have uncovered
only what actions were used in the rites of atonement, not what
that action was believed to effect. The possibilities for its
meaning are ‘cover’ or ‘smear’ or
‘wipe’[5], but these reveal no more than the
exact meaning of ‘breaking bread’ reveals about the
Christian Eucharist. What these actions were believed to effect
in ritual have to be deduced by other means. To understand
atonement we have to understand what the faith community believed
was happening when the priests smeared and sprinkled blood, and
when the high priest took blood into the holy of holies on the
Day of Atonement and then brought it out again to smear and
sprinkle around the holy places.
First, the rite of the Day of Atonement was ancient. Under the
influence of T.K.Cheyne[6], it was fashionable for a long
time to say that the Day of Atonement rituals were a late
insertion into the Levitical legislation. He asserted, as one did
in those days, that such a ritual showed the low spiritual state
to which the Jews had sunk in the inter-testamental period!
Opinion has shifted; the rite is now thought to be of ancient
origin. Furthermore, according to the Jewish Encyclopaedia, it
was ‘ the keystone of the sacrificial system of post-exilic
Judaism’. In other words, it could be the link between the
pre- and post-exilic cults, and the extent of our ignorance about
the Day of Atonement is the extent of our ignorance about
Israel’s religion[7] Much that is said or not said on
this subject reveals unacknowledged presuppositions (e.g. that
atonement counted for less than one percent of Israel’s
theology!), but when these are challenged, interesting
possibilities emerge.
What, for example, is the significance of Azazel, a name which
appears in many forms? I quote again from the Jewish
Encyclopaedia: ‘Azazel enjoys the distinction of being the
most mysterious extra-human character in sacred literature’.[8] The best clue to his identity
comes from the Talmud; the context is a discussion of Azazel,
which by that time was generally assumed to refer to the rocky
place to which the goat was sent. ‘Our rabbis taught:
Azazel... it should be hard and rough... Another taught: Azazel
the hardest of the mountains, thus also does it say: And the
mighty (`ele) of the land he took away.’ Only one of
the rabbis had a different view; he said that Azazel was a fallen
angel aand not the name of place: ‘The school of R. Ishmael
taught: Azazel because it obtains atonement for the affair of Uza
and Aza`el (b.Yoma 67b),
The affair of Asael and its consequences is the major theme of 1
Enoch; how these fallen angels came to be associated with
the Day of Atonement has been variously explained. Note the
assumption; they cannot have been part of the original but must
have been added. Hanson and Nickelsburg aired this issue in the
JBL in 1977. There are two names of the leader of the fallen
angels in 1 Enoch: Asael and Semihazah, and two versions of what
happened. Hanson suggested that the Asael material in 1 Enoch had
been joined to the Semihazah story by stages: the judgement of
Semihazah was amplified by atonement motifs from Leviticus 16
because the Azazel of Leviticus and the Asael of 1 Enoch had
similar names. Nickelsburg disagreed and thought the Semihazah
material had been amplified by the Prometheus myth. I shall
return to his observations at a later stage. [9]
In the Enochic account of the fallen angels, the Great Holy One
comes forth from his dwelling place to bring the Judgement (1
En.1). This is very similar to temple traditions such as Micah
1.3: The Lord is coming forth out of his place, and will come
down and tread upon the high places of the earth’; or
Deuteronomy 33.2 where the Lord ‘dawns’ with ten
thousand of his holy ones and becomes King; or Psalm 73 where the
judgement of the wicked is perceived in the sanctuary. In the
Enochic tradition, the sin of the fallen angels results in the
breaking of the ‘cosmic’ covenant and the corruption of
the earth. It is perhaps significant that the rabbi who linked
Azazel to the fallen angels was Ishmael, the rabbi credited with
knowledge of secret temple traditions which surfaced in the
Merkavah texts.[10] It is not impossible that the
banishing of Azazel in the atonement ritual came from the same
stratum of temple tradition as did the Merkavah texts, namely
that which had kept touch with the traditions from the time of
the monarchy. The fallen angels would then have been associated
with the Day of Atonement from the beginning.
Second we must note how the rite of atonement functioned in the
Pentateuch. The action of kpr protected against the plague
of divine wrath, an outbreak of destruction, an outbreak of
destruction which signalled the breakdown of the created order.
Thus the Levites were installed to kpr in case anyone
should come too near the sanctuary and thus risk plague
(Num.8.19). After the revolt of Korah, those who continued to
support the rebels were threatened with wrath from the Lord. A
plague began but was stopped by Aaron with his incense. He stood
physically between the dead and the living, and the plague was
stopped (Num.16.47 English numbering). The best known example is
that of Phineas, who killed the apostate Israelite and his
Midianite wife (Num.25.10-13). He made ‘atonement’. As
a result, he was given the covenant of priesthood, the covenant
of peace. The significant point here, apart from atonement
stopping the plague again, is that atonement was the ritual
associated with covenant; here the covenant of peace, the
covenant of the priesthood of eternity, elsewhere called the
covenant of eternity or, more recently, the Cosmic Covenant[11]. Now covenant is the first of
the concepts associated with atonement in the New Testament. The
covenant in question must have been this priestly covenant, the
eternal covenant.
The eternal covenant was the system of bonds which established
and maintained the creation, ordering and binding the forces of
chaos. There are several places in the Old Testament where this
older view of the creation is implied at e.g. Job 38.8-10:
‘Who shut in the sea with doors and prescribed bounds for
it?’; or Jeremiah 5.22: ‘I placed the sand as a
boundary for the sea, the eternal rule which it may not
transgress’; or Psalm 104.9: ‘You set a boundary that
(the waters) should not pass, so that they might not again cover
the earth’.[12] The eternal covenant is more
prominent in the non-canonical texts such as 1 Enoch, which
describes how this covenant was broken and then restored. The
restoration of the covenant is described in terms we recognise as
the Day of the Lord, the Judgement, as we shall see later. When
the statutes and laws of the eternal covenant were broken, the
fabric of the creation began to collapse and chaos set in. Total
disregard for the statutes resulted in the return to chaos
described in e.g. Isaiah 24.5: ‘The earth lies polluted
under its inhabitants for they have transgressed the laws,
violated the statutes and broken the everlasting covenant.’
Or Jeremiah 4.23: ‘I looked to the earth and lo it was waste
and void; and to the heavens and they had no light’.
Jeremiah sees the world returned to its pre-creation state. When
the covenant was restored, the creation was renewed and returned
to its original condition of salom and sedaqah/dikkaiosune[13], the second of the concepts
associated with atonement in the New Testament.
I should like to quote here from an article by Mary Douglas
published earlier this year in Jewish Studies Quarterly:
Terms derived from cleansing, washing and purging have imported
into biblical scholarship distractions which have occluded
Leviticus’ own very specific and clear description of
atonement. According to the illustrative cases from Leviticus, to
atone means to cover or recover, cover again, to repair a hole,
cure a sickness, mend a rift, make good a torn or broken
covering. As a noun, what is translated atonement, expiation or
purgation means integument made good; conversely, the examples in
the book indicate that defilement means integument torn.
Atonement does not mean covering a sin so as to hide it from the
sight of God; it means making good an outer layer which has
rotted or been pierced. [14]
This sounds very like the cosmic covenant with its system of
bonds maintaining the created order, broken by sin and repaired
by ‘atonement’.
Third, we must consider the temple, the place where atonement was
effected. The temple was the meeting place of heaven and earth,
time and eternity. The holy of holies, the place of the throne of
the Lord, was simultaneously heaven and earth. The Lord is in his
holy temple, the Lord’s throne is in heaven’ (Ps.11.4)
wrote the psalmist, and we must believe what he said. ‘A
glorious throne set on high from the beginning is the place of
our sanctuary’ are the words of Jeremiah (Jer.17.12). The
traditions say that it was an exact replica of the service of
heaven. Moses had been given the plan of the tabernacle, not just
its construction, but the details for the vestments, the incense,
the oils, the priesthood and the sacrifices (Exod.25-30). Or
David had given Solomon a comprehensive plan of the temple which
he had received from the Lord (1 Chron.28.11-19 c.f. 11QT) the
furnishings of the temple were those of heaven; Solomon sat on
the throne of the Lord (1Chron.29.23). That is what the
Chronicler wrote and presumably that is what he and the Jerusalem
temple personnel of his time believed. Such a belief can be
deduced from the Qumran texts such as the Songs of the Sabbath
Sacrifice or the Blessings: ‘ May you be as an
angel of the presence in the abode of holiness to the glory of
the God of [hosts]’ (1QSb 4).
The implication of this belief must be that what was performed in
the temple ‘was’ the service of heaven and so the rite
of atonement must have had a heavenly counterpart, for want of
better words. The association of atonement and covenant of
creation in the texts cited above suggests that atonement rituals
were creation and covenant rituals.
Further, the role of the priests is significant. According to the
Qumran texts they were angels, and there is enough evidence
elsewhere to suggest that the high priest was the Lord. The
tradition recorded in Deuteronomy 32.8 (using the Qumran and LXX
reading rather than the MT) is that the lord was the first among
the sons of El Elyon, in other words, the chief of the angels[15]. His counterpart, the high
priest, would have been the first among the priests. Further, the
high priest wore the sacred name YHWH on his forehead when he was
officiating in the temple. This is obscured in the canonical
texts, but is quite clear in Philo who says the high priest wore
a golden plate showing a name that only the purified may speak,
and ‘that Name has four letters’; and in the Letter
of Aristeas which reads ‘On the front of the hallowed
diadem... in holy letters on a leaf of gold (the high priest)
wears the Name of God’[16].
That creation rituals should be performed by the Lord is hardly
surprising. If the Lord had bound the creation at the beginning
with the great covenant which kept the forces of chaos in their
place and gave security to his people, any covenant renewal
ceremony must have involved the Lord performing these acts.
Atonement rituals repaired the damage to the created order caused
by sin through which ‘wrath’ could have broken in with
such disastrous consequences. Again the Jewish Encyclopaedia
makes an interesting observation: ‘But while, according to
Scripture, the high priest made atonement, tradition
transferred the atoning power to God’[17].
Fourth, we must consider the remainder of the temple. The debir,
the holy of holies, was the place of the Lord’s throne, but
the hekal, the great hall of the temple, was the Garden of
Eden. The decorations of the temple were those of Eden (trees,
pomegranates, lilies, cherubim), the seven branched lamp was
described in later tradition as the tree of life, a bronze
serpent was removed from the temple by Hezekiah, and Ezekiel saw
the river of life flowing from the temple[18]. Just as the debir
represented heaven (represented is a concession to our way of
thinking), so the hekal represented the completed
creation. This again suggests that the rituals of the temple were
creation rituals.
Fifth, we note that in temple atonement symbolism, blood was
life. Texts which deal with cultic matters are notoriously
difficult to translate; the RSV gives Leviticus 17.11 as:
‘For the life of the flesh is in the blood; and I have given
it for you upon the altar to make atonement for your souls; for
it is the blood that makes atonement by reason of the life’.
The life of the flesh is in the blood, and that blood on the
altar serves to kpr ‘al the lives of the people.
We come now to the sixth and last preliminary observation. When
the action kpr was performed, the object was a place or a
thing not a person. Often there was an impersonal form: ‘It
shall be kpr for you’. On the Day of Atonement
according to Leviticus 16, the high priest sprinkled the blood on
the kapporet (‘the mercy seat’) and in front of
it, to kpr ‘al the holy of holies, then he performed
a similar ritual for the tent of meeting and then again for the
altar. In the Mishnah these actions are prescribed for the holy
of holies, the curtain, the incense altar in the temple, and the
altar of sacrifce outside. Places were sprinkled to cleanse,
consecrate and kpr them from all the uncleannesses of the
people (m.Yoma 5.4-5). The Jewish Encyclopaedia again: ‘In
the prophetic language, however, the original idea of the
atonement offering had become lost, and instead of the offended
person (God) the offence or guilt became the object of
atonement[19]. The assumption here is that the
prophets altered the original meaning of atonement. Milgrom says
something similar[20]:
‘Outside the cult kipper undergoes a vast change which is
immediately apparent from its new grammar and syntax. Whereas in
rituals the subject of kipper is usually a priest and the
direct object is a contaminated thing, in non-ritual literature,
the subject is usually the deity and the direct object is sin
(Isa. 6.7; Jer.18.23; Ezek.16.63; Pss 65.4; 78.38; 79.9)’.
Actually this represents no rupture. This is very important; the
ritual texts describe the actions done by the priests, whilst the
non-ritual texts give the meaning of those actions. A priest
smearing blood in the temple ‘was’ God removing sin.[21]
These six are the bases for any investigation of atonement:
first, that it could be illuminated by the Enoch texts; second,
that atonement was associated with the eternal covenant; third,
that the temple service was the service of heaven; fourth, that
the temple represented the entire system of heaven and earth;
fifth that blood was life; and sixth, that it was places with the
temple complex that were ‘repaired’ to remove the
effects of sin.
The result of kpr was that the ‘iniquity’ was
*** and here there is another problem with the meaning of the
Hebrew word. The literal meaning of nasa` is
‘bear’ or ‘carry’ but in certain contexts it
seems more appropriate to translate it by ‘forgive’.
There are cases when a person is said to ‘bear’ his own
guilt when he has deliberately broken a law (e.g.Lev.19.8). The
priests are said to ‘bear’ the guilt of the sinner
after they have performed the atonement ritual for inadvertent
offences (e.g.Lev.10.17), and yet the Lord, with the same verb,
is said to ‘forgive’. ‘Who’, asked Micah,
‘is a God like you bearing i.e. forgiving sin?’
(Mic.7.18) Job asked (again, reading literally): Why do you not
bear my transgression and cause my guilt to pass away? (Job 7.21)
There are many examples. What emerges is that
‘carrying’ iniquity was the role of the priests, of the
Lord and of the scapegoat. If the temple rituals were the rituals
of heaven and the Lord was part of the rituals, it is unlikely
that a distinction would have been made between the role of the
lord ‘forgiving’ and the high priest
‘bearing’ the iniquities. We then have to ask what
aspect of the ritual could have depicted this ‘bearing’
of sins, and the obvious answer is the scapegoat.
The priests were enabled to ‘bear’ the guilt in two
ways: ordinary priests ate the flesh of the sin offering whose
blood had been used for kpr. They were then said to
‘bear’ the iniquity (Lev.10.17). The implication is
that by eating the flesh of the victim the priests absorbed the
impurity and made it possible for the offender to be reintegrated
into the community. If the offerings were not eaten by the
priests, then the people continued to bear their own guilt
(Lev.22.15, but this text is obscure). The high priest himself
‘bears’ the iniquity of gifts consecrated to the Lord
and thus they become acceptable (Exod.28.38), but to do so, the
high priest has to wear the on his forehead the sacred Name. This
seems to suggest that when the high priest functioned as the
Lord, he absorbed the impurities of others. This understanding of
atonement is well illustrated by Ps.32.1, which, whilst not using
kpr, says exactly what was done in that ritual. Again,
rendering literally: ‘Blessed is the man borne in respect of
his transgressions and covered in respect of his sin’. This
is quoted in Romans 4.7-8. Is it possible, then, that underlying
the metaphorical use of nasa` there lies the memory of an
older ritual when the Lord (or his representative, the high
priest) literally bore away the guilt, sin, and transgression of
his people which would otherwise have laid them open to the
dangers of sickness, enemies, plague and other consequences of
the broken covenant?[22]
I return now to Mary Douglas’ article: she notes that what
is unusual about biblical purity laws is that they do not serve
to set members of the congregation apart from one another. The
rituals are for keeping the community together. ‘The more
closely we look at the biblical rules of sacred contagion, the
more strongly marked appears the difference between the Bible
system and other systems of contagious impurity. We cannot avoid
asking why the priests defined laws of purity that did not make
parts of the congregation separate from or defined as higher or
lower than the rest’[23] This implies that the role of
the priest/the Lord was to hold hid people together; this would
have been done by the priest absorbing the effects of sin and
repairing the covenant bonds.
The blood ritual was performed in the temple. For some offences
the ritual was performed by the priests in the outer part of the
temple, but for the transgressions, (pesa`im,
literally rebellions) the high priest took the blood into the
holy of holies and then brought it out again. Jacob Milgrom has
compared the long distance effect of sin upon the temple to the
portrait of Dorian Grey[24]; sins committed elsewhere had
the effect of polluting the temple. Whilst I think that Milgrom
is broadly correct in this comparison, there is room for
refinement. If the temple represented, ‘was’ the
creation, then when any offence was committed, the cosmic
covenant was breached and the people were exposed to danger. It
was not simply the case that the temple was polluted by sinners ,
as they themselves would not have been allowed into those parts
of the temple complex which their sins had damaged. It was the
land or the creation which had been polluted and the temple
‘was’ the creation. Thus Isaiah 24.5: ‘The earth
lies polluted under its inhabitants; for they have transgressed
the laws, violated the statutes, broken the everlasting
covenant.’ The damage was restored by ritual in the temple.
‘Life’ i.e. blood was applied to the damaged parts and
the impurity was absorbed, ‘borne’ by the priest who
performed the kpr . It was the ritual of restoration and
healing.
For the great atonement a greater ritual was demanded. The high
priest took blood into the holy of holies and when he emerged, he
smeared and sprinkled it on various parts of the temple. Then he
placed both his hands on the scapegoat, loaded the animal with
the sins of the people, and sent it into the desert. Translated
into temple terms this means: The Lord emerged from heaven
carrying life which was given to all parts of the created order
as the effects of sin were absorbed and wounds healed. The Lord
then transferred the sins of the people, which he had been
carrying, onto the goat, which was then driven away carrying the
sins. The question which must be asked is: ‘Whose life did
the |Lord use to restore the creation?’ or ‘Whose life
did the blood represent?’
Before that question can be answered, we need to look for the
‘myth’ which corresponded to the high priest coming out
of the holy of holies carrying blood. I suggest that the Day of
the Lord texts belong with the Day of Atonement ritual. They
describe how the Lord came forth from his dwelling i.e. from the
holy of holies. The Qumran Hebrew of Deuteronomy 32.43 is very
similar to the LXX (but different form the MT) and reads:
Heavens praise his people, all `elohim bow down to him
For he avenges the blood of his sons and takes vengeance on his
adversaries
And requites those who hate him and kpr the land of his
people.
The one who performs the kpr of the land here in this text
is the Lord.
Further, the Assumption of Moses[25], which is widely held to
be an expansion of this part of Deuteronomy, has significant
additional detail where it corresponds to Deuteronomy 32.43.
Then his kingdom will appear throughout his whole creation
Then the evil one will have an end.
Sorrow will be led away with him[26]
Then will be filled the hands[27] of the angel who is in the
highest place appointed
He will at once avenge them of their enemies.
The heavenly one will go forth from his kingly throne
He will go forth from his holy habitation with indignation and
wrath on behalf of his sons (Ass.Mos 10)
The Assumption, dated towards the end of the second temple
period, shows how this texts was then understood; the figure
emerging from his holy habitation was an angel priest, coming to
bring judgement and establish his kingdom. The evil one was led
away.
The Qumran Melchizedek text (11 QMelch) provides a third piece of
evidence. It describes the day of Judgement which is also the Day
of Atonement at the end of the tenth Jubilee. A heavenly
deliverer, Melchizedek, the great high priest and leader of the
sons of heaven, comes to deliver the sons of light from the hand
of Satan. The accompanying texts are Psalm 82.1, where the `elohim
are judged, Isaiah 52.7, where the messenger brings peace and
proclaims the reign of God in Zion, Daniel 9.25, where the
anointed prince comes to Jerusalem, and Isaiah 61.2-3, the day of
the Lord’s favour and vengeance. The text describes
judgement on the fallen angels as the people are rescued from
Satan, peace for Jerusalem, the advent of the Messiah and the Day
of the Lord. These three extracts, from Deuteronomy, the Assumption
of Moses and the Melchizedek Text are mutually
consistent, and show that the heavenly high priest was the Lord
who came from his holy place on the Day of Atonement in order to
save his people from the power of the fallen angels, to punish
their enemies and to kpr the land. I suggest, in the light
of this, that kpr has to mean restore, recreate or heal.
The most detailed description of the Day of the Lord (and indeed
of the cosmic covenant), is found in 1 Enoch (the Ethiopic
Enoch). The text begins with the Great Holy One coming from his
dwelling place to bring judgement on the fallen angels. You will
recall the minority opinion of R.Ishmael, that the Day of
Atonement was necessitated by the fallen angels and their deeds.
In 1 Enoch their leader Asael is bound by the archangel
Raphael (the healer!) and then imprisoned in the desert in a
place called Dudael. The purpose of this judgement, we are told,
is to give life to the earth. ‘And he will proclaim life for
the earth, that he is giving life to her’ (1 En.10.7)[28]. This was the blood ritual, the
life giving ritual.
We now have to attend to some details in the ritual in the light
of the underlying myth. First, there were tow goats and,
according to the Mishnah, they had to be identical (m.Yoma
6.1). Between them, they carried the ritual. The is important;
the two goats were two aspects of one ritual and cannot be
separated. This was known to the first Christians who had no
difficulty in comparing Jesus to both goats; he was both the
sacrifice and the scapegoat.[29]
The two goats were distinguished by lot: one was ‘for
Azazel’ and the other was ‘for the Lord’. That is
how we usually translate. The scapegoat was driven into the
desert to a place whose name appears in a variety of forms[30]. Origen (Celsus 6.43) , writing
early in the third century CE, implies that the goat sent out
into the desert was not ‘for Azazel’ but was called
Azazel. This is quite clear in both the Greek and Latin texts;
the evil one was identified with the snake in Eden and with the
goat named Azazel sent out into the desert. Such an
identification would be quite in accord with the system of
counterparts which characterised temple ritual. The animal chosen
was also appropriate; in Hebrew, the words ‘goat’ and
‘demon’ look identical (sa`yr)[31]. The high priest would have put
the sins of Israel on to Azazel before he was taken to the
desert. If the one goat chosen ‘was’ Azazel, then the
other must have been the Lord. The construction in the Hebrew is
identical, and the sequence in the ritual confirms this. The goat
offered as the sin offering does not in fact take away the sin.
Instead this is somehow collected by the high priest, presumably
as he performs the atonement rite, ‘carried’ and then
transferred from the high priest on to the head of the Azazel
goat (Lev.16.21)[32].
Nickelsburg drew very different conclusions. In summing up his
disagreement with Hanson, he discussed first the names of the
desert place to which the goat was sent, and then offered this
decisive conclusion as to why Enoch cannot have been related to
Leviticus 16:
‘In Enoch all sin is written over Asael the demon. In the
Targum (and the Bible) all of the people’s sins are placed
on the head of the goat (Lev.16.21)... In Enoch the demon is
destroyed. In the Targum it is the goat that perishes
(Lev.16.22)... On the basis of this comparison we must ask
whether 1 Enoch has been amplified by a Leviticus tradition which
is represented by Targum Pseudo Jonathan. Indeed we shall ask,
does 1 Enoch reflect Leviticus 16 at all?’
The evidence which Nickelsburg use as ‘proof’ that 1
Enoch and Leviticus 16 were unrelated is in fact the most crucial
evidence for understanding the ritual of atonement, namely that
the goat ‘was’ the demon. Nickelsburg continued his
disagreement thus:
‘If (Hanson’s proposed) reviser (of the Semihazah and
Asael traditions to form 1 Enoch) has used the Day of Atonement
motif, he has made some radical revisions in his biblical
tradition. 1. In the biblical text and the Targum, a ritual is
prescribed which involves the sending out of a goat into the
wilderness ‘to Azazel’ ( a demon? That is already out
there) in consequence of which atonement is effected. In 1 Enoch,
Asael, clearly a demon, is himself led out into the wilderness
and buried there, in consequence of which the earth is healed. 2.
Not only is Asael identified (in Hanson’s thesis) with the
Azazel in the wilderness, he is also identified with the goat
which is led out to Azazel. He has all sin written ver him and he
is destroyed like th goat in the Targum...’
Such an identification of goat and demon was clearly impossible,
and so he continued:
‘Although (Hanson’s proposed) reviser is dependent on
Leviticus 16, he has used none of the specific atonement language
of that chapter. Instead Raphael’s action is derived from
his name; he heals the earth...
In summary, if the reviser is dependent on Leviticus 16, he has
changed the nature of the biblical tradition, he has confused the
cast of characters, and he has failed to introduce the central
concept of Leviticus 16, viz. atonement... In view of these
difficulties, a primary dependence on the Prometheus myth appears
more tenable’.[33]
Can we be so certain that an ancient author changed the nature of
the tradition, confused the cast of characters and failed to
understand the atonement when the tradition, the characters and
the nature of atonement are the very things we are trying to
discover?
When lesser offences were kpr, the priest
‘carried’ the sin by virtue of eating the flesh of the
animal whose life had effected the kpr. He identified with
it. For the great kpr, the blood/life of the goat ‘as
the Lord’ was a substitute for the blood/life of the high
priest (also the Lord) who thus carried the sin of the people
himself as he performed the act of kpr throughout the
temple/creation. Thus, having collected the sins, he it was who
was able to transfer them onto the goat who ‘carried’
them (ns`, Lev.16.22) and took them to the desert[34]. The role of the high priest,
the Lord, was to remove the damaging effect of sin from the
community and the creation, and thus to restore the bonds which
held together the community and the creation. This is consistent
with Mary Douglas’s observation about the peculiarity of
biblical purity laws; many of the rituals were for reintegration
not expulsion.
I must now offer some corroborating evidence. First, from 1 Enoch
again, chapter 47 which is part of the first Similitude. Each of
the three Similitudes is a vision of the heavenly throne
and the judgement, and it is easy enough to establish the
identity of the central Man figure. He is called Son of Man
(whatever that means), the Anointed One, and the Chosen One, and
the simple process of matching phrases and descriptions shows
that he was identical to Isaiah’s enigmatic Servant. The
scene in chapter 47 is this: the Man figure has ascended to the
throne, as in Daniel 7; then we learn that the blood of the
Righteous One has been brought up to the Lord of Spirits,
together with the prayers of the righteous ones. Then the
judgement begins. The Righteous One elsewhere in the Similitudes
(1 En.38.2; 53.6) is the Anointed One. M Black suggested that
the Righteous One whose blood was brought before the Lord could
be a reference to Isaiah 53, where the Servant, who makes
righteous, pours out his life as an `asam. [35]
Second, we see that Isaiah 53 could have been inspired by the Day
of Atonement ritual. A few points must suffice.
All this suggests that the Servant figure was modelled on the one
who performed the atonement rites in the first temple. This
figure appears in Enoch’s Similitudes in his heavenly aspect
as the Man, the Anointed, the Chosen One. In the ritual of the
second temple, the figure became two goats: one bearing the sins
away and the life/blood of the other being taken into the holy of
holies where the ark, the throne had been[40].
Third, there is additional information about the scapegoat in the
Mishnah; people pulled out the goat’s hair as it was
led away (m.Yoma 6.4). In the Epistle of Barnabas[41] there is a quotation from an
unknown source about the scapegoat: ‘Spit on it, all of you,
thrust your goads into it, wreathe its head with scarlet wool and
let it be driven into the desert’ (Barn.7). The goat
suffered the fate of the Servant: ‘I gave my back to the
smiters and my cheeks to those who pulled out the beard. I hid
not my face from shame and spitting (Isa.50.6); and ‘He was
pierced for our transgressions’ (Isa.53.5). Barnabas
continues: ‘When they see him (Jesus) coming on the Day,
they are going to be struck with terror at the manifest parallel
between him and the goat.’ The reference is to the future
coming of the Lord to his people. This is another Servant motif;
the recognition of who the Servant is[42]. Barnabas, too, associates the
scapegoat with the Day of the Lord: ‘They shall see him on
that Day, clad to the ankles in his red woollen robe, and will
say, ‘Is this not he whom we once crucified and mocked and
pierced and spat upon?’ (Barn.7).
To conclude. I must return to the question with which I began:
what was the understanding of atonement which gave rise to the
Christian claims about cosmic reconciliation, which Dillistone
thought must have derived from pagan systems? What I have
proposed would explain why the Lord himself was the atonement
sacrifice[43]. The whole point of the argument
in the Epistle to the Hebrews is that it was Jesus the high
priest who took his own blood into the heavenly sanctuary and
thereby became the mediator of a new covenant (Heb.9.11-15). What
I propose would explain the cosmic unity described in Ephesians
1.10: ‘to unite all things in him, things in heaven and
things on earth...’ and in Colossians 1.17,20: ‘In him
all things hold together,... through him to reconcile to himself
all things whether on earth or in heaven...’ It would
explain Matthew’s use of the Servant text ‘he took our
infirmities and bore our diseases’ in the context of healing
miracles (Mat.8.17). It would explain why a sermon in Acts refers
to Jesus as the Righteous One and the Servant but also as the
Author of Life (Acts 3.13-15). It would explain all the new life
and new creation imagery in the New Testament. Above all it would
explain the so-called kenotic hymn in Philippians2.6-11; the
self-emptying of the Servant would have been the symbolic life
giving when the blood, the life, was poured out by the high
priest on the Day of Atonement to heal and restore the creation.[44]
[1] This paper was read to the Society
for Old Testament Study in Edinburgh, July 1994, and published in
SJT 49.1.1996.
[2] G.Steiner The Death of Tragedy
London 1961 p.322.
[3] F.W.Dillistone The Christian
Understanding of Atonement Welwyn 1968 p.47
[4] B.S.Childs Exodus London
1974.p.551; Biblical Theology of the Old and New Testament
London SCM 1992
[5] See J.Milgrom Leviticus 1-17
New York 1991 pp.1079-84
[6] T.K.Cheyne Jewish Religious Life
after the Exile 1898 pp.75-76
[7] Milgrom, op.cit.n.5 pp.3-12; c.f.
W.R.Smith, Lectures on the Religion of the Semites, 3rd
edn. London 1927 p.216: The worship of the second temple was an
antiquarian resuscitation of forms which had lost their intimate
connection with the national life and therefore had lost the
greater part of their original significance.’
[8] Entries in Jewish Encyclopaedia for
‘Day of Atonement’ p 286 and Azazel p.365; c.f. 3 Enoch
4.6. The name Azazel appears in many forms but the sheer number
of these suggests that they are all versions of the same name.
The name in Leviticus is ‘z`zl; in b.Yoma 67b ‘z`zl and
‘z`l; in 4QEnc it is ‘s`l; in the Greek
Gizeh text it is Aseal; Syncellus has Azalzel; the Ethiopic Enoch
has Asael at 6.7 but Azazel in the Similitudes at 69.2;
4QEnGiants has ‘z`[z]l, the same form as Leviticus,
whereas 4Q 180 has ‘zz`l.
[9] P.Hanson ‘Rebellion in Heaven.
Azazel and Euhemeristic Heroes in 1 Enoch 6-11’ and
G.W.E.Nickelsburg ‘Apocalyptic and Myth in 1 Enoch
6-11’ both in JBL 96 (1977). The origin of both Azazel and
Semihazah could be the same. Cheyne ZAW xv 1895 suggested that
Azazel was ‘zz `l, the mighty god, and R.H.Charles, The
Book of Enoch Oxford 1912 p.16 suggested that Semihazah was sm
‘zz the mighty name.
[10] The title of 3 Enoch is ‘The
Book of Enoch by Rabbi Ishmael the High Priest’
[11] R.Murray The Cosmic Covenant
London 1992. The most graphic account of atonement in the second
temple period is Wisdom18.20-25: the high priest held back the
wrath and prevented it reaching the living.
[12] Also Jer.3.20ff.
[13] Ps.72; Isa.11.1-9; 32.1-20.
[14] M.Douglas ‘Atonement in
Leviticus’ JSQ 1(1993-94) p.117
[15] See P.S.Skehan ‘A Fragment
of the Song of Moses (Deut.32) from Qumran’ BASOR 136
(1954).
[16] Philo Moses II.114; Abraham
103; Aristeas 93. A literal reading of the third
commandment (Exod.20.7; Deut 5.11) suggests that it applied
originally to the high priest: ‘You shall not bear the Name
of the LORD your God for evil purposes... ‘ The description
of the high priest Simon coming out of ‘the house of the
veil’ is a theophany (Eccles.50.5-21).
[17] My emphases
[18] 1Kgs 6.14-36; Exod.25.31-37;
Philo Questions on Genesis 1.10; 2Kgs 18.4; Ezek.47.1-12.
Also my book The Gate of Heaven London SPCK 1991 pp. 90-95
[19] My emphases
[20] Milgrom op.cit n.5 p.1083
[21] C.f. W.R.Smith The Old
Testament and the Jewish Church London and Edinburgh 1892
p.381 ‘The most important point (about kpr) is that
except in the Priests’ Code, it is God not the priest who
(atones)... ‘
[22] F.Brown, S.R. Driver, C.A.Briggs Hebrew
and English Lexicon Oxford (1907) 1962 p.671 says that nasa`
is used to mean ‘forgive’ in older texts and not in
Deuteronomic texts.
Contra .Smith op.cit n.7, p.349: ‘.. the flesh is given to
the priests because they minister as representatives of the
sinful people...’
[23] Douglas op.cit. n.14.p.114
[24] Milgrom op.cit.n.5 pp. 260-261
[25] Also known as the Testament of
Moses.
[26] Note the terminology.
[27] ‘Filling the hands’
i.e. with incense, means ordination.
[28] There are various readings here.
The Ethiopic texts have either ‘heal the earth’ or
‘That I may heal the earth’. The Akhmim Greek has
‘the earth’ ge, and Syncellus has ‘the
plague’ plege. Either way, the meaning is clear
enough.
[29] The themes of e.g. Heb.89.11-12
or 13.11-12 is that Jesus was the Day of Atonement sacrifice,
whereas Heb.13.13 implies that he was the scapegoat. The Epistle
of Barnabas chapters 5 and 7 compares Jesus to the scapegoat.
[30] Targum Ps.Jon. Lev.16 has Beth
Chadure; m.Yoma 6.8 has Beth Haroro (variants Hiddudo, Horon).
The Enochic Dudael probably arose from a confusion of the Hebrew
letters r and d (resh and daleth) which can look
alike.
[31] There is similar word play
underlying the New Testament, since the Aramaic talya
young one, can be used for a servant or a lamb.
[32] L.L.Grabbe ‘The Scapegoat
Tradition. A Study in Early Jewish Interpretation’ JSJ xviii
(1987) concluded thus: ‘the scapegoat was symbolic of this
archdemon (i.e.Azazel) who would eventually be bound and punished
and thus prevented from subverting God’s people.’ In
other words, the ritual did not send a goat out to Azazel,
but as Azazel. Because he only dealt only with the
scapegoat part of the ritual, and therefore with only a part of
the evidence, he did not draw the obvious conclusion as to what
the other goat must have represented.
[33] Nickelsburg op.cit.n.9.p.402.
[34] Azazel himself as the bearer of
sins appears in the Apocalypse of Abraham 13.14, addressed
to Azazel; ‘...the garment in heaven which was formerly
yours has been set aside for him (Abraham) and the corruption
which was on him has gone over to you’. In 4QEN Giants we
find: ‘Then he punished not us but Aza`zel...’
J.T.Milik The Books of Enoch. Aramaic Fragments of Qumran Cave
4 Oxford 1976 p.313.comments: Azazel appears here in his
expiatory role (Lev.16.8,10,26) for he seems to be punished for
the sins of the giants.’ He does not comment on the fact
that here again it is Azazel and not a goat for Azazel which is
the expiation.
[35] M.Black The Book of Enoch or 1
Enoch Leiden 1985 p.209.
[36] ‘Sprinkles’ rhantisei
is kept in Aquila and Theodotion. There is the problem of the
object of the verb, since elsewhere the object of this verb is
the blood, or whatever is sprinkled, and not what it is sprinkled
upon, but this difficulty, not felt by the ancient translators,
must be balanced against a major emendation.
[37], ‘Chastisement’ mwsr
c.f.Ezek.20.37, msrt hbryt, where this word means
‘bond of’ the covenant; and Ps.2.3, the
‘bonds’ of the LORD’s Anointed, in a cosmic
covenant context. Similarly Jer.2.20; 5.5.
[38] Identical consonants in
Exod.26.4,10 mean ‘something to join together the curtains
of the tabernacle’.
[39] Milgrom op.cit. n.5 p.347.
[40] Two goats, because the
‘resurrection’ of the king/high priest could take place
in the holy of holies, but the resuscitation of a dead goat could
not.
[41] According to Acts 4.36 Barnabas
was a Levite and would have known the temple practice of his
time.
[42] The recognition motif is common
throughout this material: Isa.52.13-15; 1 En.62.1; 108.14-15; 2
Esdr.7.37;Wisd.5.1ff is an adaptation of the theme; 2 Bar.51.4-6.
[43] This builds upon the theory set
out in my book The Great Angel. A Study of Israel’s
Second God London SPCK 1992. Jesus was believed to be the
manifestation/incarnation of Yahweh.
[44] See W.Zimmerli and J.Jeremias The
Servant of God ET London 1957 p.97n
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