RASIMUS 2013 1SDB2019

Tuomas Rasimus

„The Archangel Michael in Ophite Creation Mythology”, în

Jewish and Christian Cosmogony in Late Antiquity

Edited by Lance Jenott/ Sarit Kattan Gribetz

Tübingen. Mohr Siebeck, 2013, pp. 107-125. (pdf.)

Fragment

„Second Temple Jewish traditions about the archangel Michael are multiform and depict him, for example, as the principal angel, conqueror of Satan, and guardian of Israel. Among other things, such traditions have contributed to the presentations of Christ in the Book of Revelation and of the principal angel Metatron in later Jewish literature. What is less wellknown, and often neglected in scholarship, is the contribution that these Michael traditions have made to the presentation of the demonic creator Yaldabaoth in Gnostic literature. Jarl Fossum is among the few scholars who have taken this idea seriously. According to him, the concept of the Gnostic demiurge itself derives from Jewish traditions about the Angel of the Lord, who came to be seen as a veritable “second power in heaven” by certain Jews and Samaritans in the Second Temple period. Due to some “social dynamics,” which Fossum does not specify, some of these Jews and Samaritans turned their angelic viceroy into a demonic figure opposed to God. Fossum further argues that, among the Gnostics, at least Saturninus and the Ophites regarded Michael as the demiurge, and that Yaldabaoth’s leonine shape in Ophite mythology derives specifically from apocalyptic and magical traditions about Michael” (pp. 107-108).