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The Messenger of God in Hecataeus of Abdera
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 August 2011
Extract
Despite the well-known and well-attested tradition that the Law was given by angels, W. D. Davies has recently presented a case for interpreting δι΄ ἀγέλων in Josephus, Antiquities, 15:136 as a reference not to angels but to the prophets as ambassadors of God. Together with other arguments he adduces the fact that in the LXX the word ἄγελος is occasionally used to refer to prophets and priests, and for the latter he cites Malachi 2:7 (sic, not 2:1), where a priest is described as angelos Kyriou. Thus a Greek precedent for the usage of Josephus may be found as early as ca. 250 B. C., the approximate date of the LXX.
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References
1 HTR, XLVII (1954), 135–140Google Scholar.
2 So Jaeger, W., Journ. Rel. 18 (1938), 127–143CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
3 This seems to be a bit of standard Oriental coloring: cf. Herodotus 3:128 for reverence paid to the rolls of Darius, and see Lieberman, S., Hellenism in Jewish Palestine (New York, 1950) 9Google Scholar, n. 34 for a collection of later parallels.
4 The reference, inexact and at best obtained by hearsay, is perhaps to Deut. 29:1.
5 See F. Jacoby, FGrH III a (Kommentar), pp. 46–51 for a discussion of the ‘Judenexkurs” and its relation to the work as a whole. It was perhaps a variant, given by Hecataeus, to his account of Egyptian colonization (cf. Diod. 1:28–29). The question of authenticity for the separate work Περὶ Ἰονδαίων ascribed to Hecataeus need not concern us, but for a more liberal view than that allowed by Jacoby cf. Olmstead, A. T., JAOS 56 (1936), 243–44Google Scholar.
6 Jacoby, op. cit., 32–33, apparently favors a date early in the reign, with 315/4 as the probable terminus ante quem.
7 The function that he ascribes to the High Priest is surely prophetic in character, and has nothing in common with the priestly oracles, urim.
8 But for the occasional ascription of powers of prophecy to the High Priest, cf. John 11:51, and the parallels cited by Bauer, especially Josephus, Bell. Jud. 1:69. I have not seen the article by Bammel, Ernst, ΑΡΧΙΕΡΕΥΣ ΠΡΟΦΗΤΕΥΩΝ, in Theol. Lit. Z. 79 (1954), 351 ffGoogle Scholar.