1 Enoch 48:7

Pseudepigrapha

5 All who dwell on earth shall fall down and worship before him, And will praise and bless and celebrate with song the Lord of Spirits. 6 And for this reason hath he been chosen and hidden before Him, Before the creation of the world and for evermore. 7 And the wisdom of the Lord of Spirits hath revealed him to the holy and righteous; For he hath preserved the lot of the righteous, Because they have hated and despised this world of unrighteousness, And have hated all its works and ways in the name of the Lord of Spirits: For in his name they are saved, And according to his good pleasure hath it been in regard to their life. 8 In these days downcast in countenance shall the kings of the earth have become, And the strong who possess the land because of the works of their hands; For on the day of their anguish and affliction they shall not (be able to) save themselves.

Acts 4:12

New Testament

8 Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, replied, “Rulers of the people and elders, 9 if we are being examined today for a good deed done to a sick man—by what means this man was healed— 10 let it be known to all of you and to all the people of Israel that by the name of Jesus Christ the Nazarene whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead, this man stands before you healthy. 11 This Jesus is the stone that was rejected by you, the builders, that has become the cornerstone. 12 And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among people by which we must be saved.” 13 When they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and discovered that they were uneducated and ordinary men, they were amazed and recognized these men had been with Jesus.

 Notes and References

"... the messenger not only bears the name of YHWH, but exercises divine prerogatives by virtue of bearing that name. This endowment likely sought to make sense of the occasional confusion in early biblical narrative of God’s identity with that of the angel (e.g., Genesis 21:17-19; Exodus 3:2-6; Judges 6:11-23), but it would become central to early Judaism and early Christianity’s understanding of theophany and divine mediation. (1 Enoch 48:2-10; Philo, The Confusion of Tongues 146; Romans 10:12; Gospel of Phillip 11; Odes of Solomon 39:7-8) ... The New Testament and other early Christian texts repeatedly appeal to Christ’s possession of the divine name and to traditions associated with it (e.g., Exodus 23:21 and the “Son of man” tradition) as foundational to his authority and mission. Because Christ was represented as the authorized possessor of the divine name, no concept of shared “divine identity” is necessary to account for Christ’s implied or explicit associations with the name YHWH or with divine prerogatives. This is not to argue that Christ was originally an angel, but simply that the relationship of the patron deity to the agent via the indwelling of the name became a foundational interpretive lens that converged within the Christ tradition with a number of other lenses related to divine sonship, presencing, and mediation ..."

McClellan, Daniel Cognitive Perspectives on Early Christology (pp. 647-662) Biblical Interpretation, Vol. 25, 2017

 User Comments

Do you have questions or comments about these texts? Please submit them here.