7. This chapter confronts Dostoevskys abandonment to evil in The Master of Petersburg. It provides a new and detailed reading of the first part of the novels manuscript origins.

The primum mobile is the largest body of the universe, giving impetus to the whole complex system of natural causes. Limit of the physical world, it serves as a vantage point on the metaphysical structure that undergirds it. The planets are moved by angels that appear to whirl at different speeds in nine concentric fiery wheels variously distant from the common focus of their orbits. The angels are uninterruptedly intent on what they know and love, to the degree that they know and love it. The opening astronomical simile serves to describe a single moment of perfect balance in an ambiguous twilight before the universe took sides and split into light and dark, good and evil. It is a moment of expectation, in which what comes next depends on whether one settles for what appears in the here and now or believes that it promises something more yet to come.

Like other second-century authors, the author of EpAp combines Johannine incarnational theology with the Lukan miraculous conception account and views the miraculous conception as the means by which the incarnation took place. Unlike the canonical evangelists, this author also provides an account of the pre-existent Jesus’ descent from heaven, adopting angelic disguise. Thus the angel Gabriel in the Lukan annunciation story is here the Son of God in angelic form, who brings about his own incarnation in Mary’s womb without assistance from the Holy Spirit. EpAp thus narrates the entire process of incarnation, following the precedent of the angelic transformation schema depicted in the Ascension of Isaiah. In that text, the event of incarnation appears to take place not at conception but at the birth itself – a point of agreement with an otherwise quite different ‘narrative of incarnation’ in the Protevangelium of James. So-called ‘adoptionist’ christologies may better be understood as attempts to narrate the incarnation, now identified with the descent of the Spirit/Christ at Jesus’ baptism.

This chapter proposes that the author uses an ancient exegetical technique known as “prosopological exegesis.” This method was common in early Christianity, but is not often traced as far back as the NT. After establishing the author’s use, the chapter shows how this method developed out of Greco-Roman rhetorical training as well as literary criticism and also has resonances with Jewish reading strategies as well. Since this method was used by early Christian writers, such as Tertullian, to support a doctrine of the Trinity, this chapter also discusses the extent to which this is true of Hebrews. Finally, the chapter surveys previous literature on speech, or “the word of God,” in Hebrews.

This chapter looks to one of the oldest Jewish writings outside of the Hebrew Bible, the Enochic Astronomical Book, and argues for its overlooked importance for the development of Jewish angelology. It considers the intertwining of angelology and astronomy in a Jewish scribal context that resonates with cross-cultural concerns with knowledge in the early Hellenistic age.

This chapter draws upon new evidence for the Aramaic Dead Sea Scrolls to make the case for situating the beginnings of Jewish angelology and demonology in the third century BCE. It considers the new views of scribes, books, and knowledge within sources like the Aramaic Levi Document, Admonitions of Qahat, and Visions of Amram in relation to broader cultural trends in the Hellenistic Near East.

This chapter focuses on the Book of Jubilees, considering its representation of angels, demons, and the history of Jewish writing in relation to earlier Aramaic Jewish literature. It makes the case that Jubilees lays the groundwork for the broader diffusion of the angelology and demonology of Aramaic Jewish scribal pedagogy.

This chapter considers the lack of concern for demons and angels in early biblical literature, situating it in relation to other ancient cultures and surveying references to transmundane powers.

Paul’s inland travels in Galatia and Phrygia are hard to trace: the narrative in Acts, long subjected to detailed scrutiny, is incomplete at best. Complex modern arguments based on the text of Colossians have linked tensions in the church at Colossae, in the Lycus valley, to contacts with Cynic or Middle Platonist philosophers; however, Colossae was not high on the philosophical food chain. The quality of philosophical debate there was probably provincial at best. ‘Worship of angels’ was a feature of popular religiosity in Asia Minor, in multiple contexts, and it is probably right to understand the ‘Colossian philosophy’ as a concoction formed from folk belief. The church at Laodicea is addressed in Revelation and a ‘letter from Laodicea’ is mentioned in passing in Colossians: but this text may be the epistle known as Ephesians. The complex of early texts relating to the Lycus valley cities is informative about the interface of the Jewish-Phrygian and Gentile-Phrygian worlds. The Jews in Phrygia were a successful community, but it is difficult to understand the sources relating to how Jewish, Christian, and Graeco-Roman polytheist communities interacted in the Lycus valley.