Texts in Conversation
Stephen tells his accusers in Acts 7 that Israel received the Torah from angels and did not keep it. Herod makes the same claim in Josephus when he tells his soldiers that Israel learned its holiest laws from angels.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Acts 7:53
New Testament
52 Which of the prophets did your ancestors not persecute? They killed those who foretold long ago the coming of the Righteous One, whose betrayers and murderers you have now become! 53 You received the law by decrees given by angels, but you did not obey it.” 54 When they heard these things, they became furious and ground their teeth at him.
Josephus Antiquities of the Jews 15.5.3
Classical
Is it therefore a question with you, whether the unjust are to be punished or not? when God himself hath declared his mind that so it ought to be, and hath commanded that we ever should hate injuries and injustice. Which is not only just but necessary in wars between several nations. For these Arabians have done what both the Greeks and Barbarians own to be an instance of the grossest wickedness, with regard to our ambassadors: which they have beheaded. While the Greeks declare that such ambassadors are sacred and inviolable. And for our selves, we have learned from God the most excellent of our doctrines, and the most holy part of our law, by Angels, or ambassadors. For this name brings God to the knowledge of mankind; and is sufficient to reconcile enemies one to another. What wickedness then can be greater than the slaughter of ambassadors? who come to treat about doing what is right. And when such have been their actions, how is it possible they can either live securely in common life, or be successful in war? In my opinion this is impossible. But perhaps some will say, that what is holy, and what is righteous is indeed on our side: but that the Arabians are either more couragious, or more numerous than we are.
Date: 93-94 C.E. (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
... In Commentary on Galatians ad 1.8–9 (Patrologia Graeca 61, 624) Chrysostom appears to assert a belief which rabbinic Judaism was now seeking to impose against the tradition of angelic involvement in the giving of the Torah: he says that Scripture ranks above angels, for angels are only servants, and Scripture was given, not by servants, but by God. There is good evidence for a tradition that angels gave the law on Sinai: Josephus, Antiquities 15.136, Acts 7.53, Galatians 3.19, Hebrews 2.2; Song of Songs Rabbah 1.2 2; also the setting of Jubilees, where the angel is the mediator of God’s revelation to Moses. Again like Eusebius of Emesa, Homily on Romans 9 stresses that “it was not by angels or archangels, but by His only-begotten Son Himself that He saved us”. ...
Tuschling, R.M.M.
Angels and Orthodoxy: A Study in Their Development in Syria and Palestine from the Qumran Texts to Ephrem the Syrian
(p. 69) Mohr Siebeck, 2012
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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