"Two powers in heaven" (Hebrew shtei rashuyot ba-shamayim) is the rabbinic label for the belief that a second divine figure shares God's throne and authority.
Imported citation, not independently checked: A. F. Segal, Two Powers in Heaven (1977)
religion · Shared topic · Revision 0
What Is the Two Powers in Heaven Heresy?
What Is the Two Powers in Heaven Heresy?
The current answer
How the rabbis named a heresy out of a reading their own scriptures had once allowed.
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The earliest datable condemnations cluster around the mid-second century CE (the generation of Rabbi Akiva and after) not earlier.
Imported citation, not independently checked: A. F. Segal, Two Powers in Heaven (1977)
Metatron is then punished with sixty lashes of fire to demonstrate he is a servant, not a sovereign, the text dramatizing its own correction.
Imported citation, not independently checked: Babylonian Talmud, Hagigah 15a
Peter Schäfer (responding to Boyarin) argues the developed two-powers material is later than Boyarin needs and partly reactive to Christianity, not prior to it.
Imported citation, not independently checked: Peter Schäfer, response to Daniel Boyarin
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