Boid on Jesus as the Angel of the Presence

Three comments on Jesus as an angel, which I will send to all your correspondents when I’ve looked up the references. First, is it an angel or the angel? This distinction is important, because THE Angel is the Angel of the Presence [literally Face], Mal’akh ha-Panim מלאך הפנים which is the vehicle of creation in some texts within the Rabbinic system and the agent of creation in some other systems. From memory, Qirqisâni attributes this opinion to the Maghâriyah مغاريه meaning cave-people or people whose writings were found in caves. Note that the preposition “by” in the phrase of the Nicene Creed, taken from the opening of John’s Gospel, “by whom all things were made” DOESN’T mean “he made all things” but rather “by means of whom all things were made”. Current translations of the Nicene Creed and John’s Gospel substitute “through” for “by” to try to exterminate this prevalent Evangelical heresy. (The Greek preposition is “dia”). Second, I’m pretty sure that Jesus is termed an angel in some early Christian texts, but that the practice ended because of possible misunderstanding, since it might seem to contradict part of the argument opening the Epistle to the Hebrews, and perhaps as well because it might have seemed to support the heresy of Docetism (equally prevalent amongst modern Evangelicals), which denied the full humanity of Jesus. I’ll have to look this up. Third, the name Israel is in the form of the name of an angel (they nearly all end in “-el”) and Jacob is said to have been given this name after wrestling with the angel at Bethel, as a sign of his angelic status. It is also said that his other name is Ya’akov-El. (Bethel being on Mt. Gerizim or according to another opinion at Balata at the foot of the mountain. This other opinion is reflected in the name مرج البهاء for the meadow). I take the passage to imply that the wrestling was at both the earthly and heavenly level. I refer to a fragmentary text from the Pseudepigrapha: the various titles of the text and the exact reference will be given later on.

On second thoughts, I’ll send this to all your correspondents and risk anyone noticing I’ve quoted from memory and shown I’m not perfect. It’ll save a bit of time and effort. The details can follow later. I presume Hermann Detering doesn’t need me to say that “Evangelical” in English is not the equivalent of “evangelisch” in German (and my apologies if this is a statement of the obvious). All the same, in my self-description for Yahoo Groups, which is set for Germany like nearly everything else on this computer, I don’t call myself Evangelisch and have described myself as “Protestant der arminischen Lehrmeinung”. I have learnt from experience that this can be a very useful filter when filling in conference registration forms as well.