Co-regency in Ancient Israel’s Divine Council as the Conceptual Backdrop to Ancient Jewish Binitarian Monotheism

Abstract

Scholars have long wondered what theological and hermeneutical trajectories allowed committed monotheistic Jews to embrace Christianity’s high Christology. How exactly could devoted followers of Yhwh convert to Christianity and still consider themselves innocent of the charge of worshiping another deity? Alan Segal’s seminal work on the “two powers in heaven” doctrine of ancient Judaism demonstrated that Judaism allowed a second deity figure identified with, but distinct from, Yhwh prior to the rise of Christianity. But Segal never succeeded in articulating the roots of this theology in the Hebrew Bible. This essay seeks to bridge this gap by proposing a Godhead framework put forth by the biblical writers in adaptation of the earlier Canaanite (Ugaritic) divine council involving a co-regency of El and Baʿal. The essay suggests that Judaism’s two powers theology had its roots in an ancient Israelite co-regency notion whereby Yhwh and a second, visible Yhwh figure occupied both roles of the co-regency in the biblical writers’ conception of the divine council.