Continued from Part 1.
“God created the world through his Word. By saying things. ‘Let there be light.’ So Metatron cannot be a created being. He has always been with God, since eternity. In a way he is God – or at least part of God. Why do you think God said ‘Let us make mankind in our image?’ Why do you think that the very word for God, Elohim, is in plural form in Hebrew? God is so more complex than we can imagine, even if he is One. When God said ‘Let there be light’ – that was the light of Metatron.”
Naamah nodded. She loved these late night lessons with Yishmael. She often felt that she got closer to God for every time. Now she felt like she had found gold. This was amazing. She closed her eyes and started to speak slowly.
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”
As she opened her eyes she realized that Daniel and Yishmael were staring at her in awe. They were stunned.
“That… that was beautiful,” Yishmael said. “That is exactly right. This is very deep knowledge about the very nature of God.”
Naamah leaned over to Daniel and whispered to him. “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.”
Daniel turned to her. “You mean…?”
“Yes. Yeshua is Metatron. He is the son of God. The one who is constantly begotten by God. He is the Word. I must search the other prophets. There must be some sort of clue somewhere that the Metatron and the Messiah are the same.” Naamah admired Daniel for many things. He had studied with Pharisees, Esseans, Evionites and Nazarenes and was very learned. But she had a gift for finding connections in the scriptures that he didn’t posses.
“You are wonderful, you know that?” Daniel got up and gave Naamah a kiss on her lips. She kissed him back and smiled at him. She got up and went to the shelf. She grabbed the scroll of the twelve minor prophets.
“Looking for something?” Yishmael wondered.
“Yes,” she said, as she quickly eyed through the writings of Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah and Jonah. As she reached Micah she exclaimed “found it!”
Yishmael got up from his seat and went over to Naamah to see what she pointed at.
“But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from of old, from ancient times.”
Yishmael nodded. “Yes, this is a prophecy about the Messiah who will be born in Bethlehem.”
“But it says that his origins are from old, from ancient times,” Naamah said.
“Yes, that is because the idea and thought about the Messiah in God’s plan is since ancient times.”
“But that’s not what it says,” Naamah protested. “It says that he is from old. The Messiah himself is of ancient times.”
“What are you trying to say?”
“That the Messiah and the Metatron are the same, and his name is Yeshua.”
“No!” Yishmael became very assertive. “That is not true. The Messiah is a human being that God will send to be our king. Metatron is not the Messiah, chas veshalom. The Messiah will establish a kingdom of peace. Everlasting eternal peace. He will rule the entire world from Jerusalem. I wish it had been Yeshua, but it wasn’t. He was killed, and all hopes that he was the Messiah died with him. If he really was the Messiah we wouldn’t be living in fear for the Romans now.”
Naamah’s mouth became thin and she kept scrolling forward, determined to find something more. Another passage that could confirm to her that the Metatron was the Messiah. She didn’t answer Yishmael’s protests. She knew that those prophecies of the Messiah would be fulfilled at his second coming, but Yishmael didn’t see the distinction between the prophecies of the first and second coming. He had studied in the yeshiva of Jerusalem with some of the most prominent Pharisees. Including Yochanan ben Zakai, one of the wisest and most revered teachers among the Pharisees in Jerusalem. She kept scrolling forward past Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai and Zechariah. Just when she thought she wouldn’t find anything else she found it.
“Here! Look! Look what Malachi wrote!” This time Daniel came up to her and read it out loud.
“I will send my messenger, who will prepare the way before me. Then suddenly the Lord you are seeking will come to his temple; the messenger of the covenant, whom you desire, will come, says the Lord Almighty.”
“See?” she said. “The messenger of the covenant. The angel of the covenant. The same as the angel of the presence. It has to be Metatron. Who else could it be? And here it says that he will become flesh. He will come to his temple. It’s crystal clear. Metatron is the Messiah. The Messiah is Metatron. He is the Word that is begotten by God.” Naamah shivered throughout her body and prayed a silent prayer of thanks to God for revealing this to her. Daniel and Yishmael read through the same passage. Daniel embraced her.
“You found gold again, honey.”
But Yishmael just shook his head. “I don’t know what to do with you two.” He gave them a sad smile. “I am trying to teach you the true Pharisaic teaching, but you only seem to drift further away.” He rolled up the scrolls to put them back in the shelves.
***(skipping a part of the chapter that is not relevant)***
Naamah went home with Daniel tired but happy that night. As the sun was rising and they reached their door, Daniel turned to Naamah and gave her a kiss.
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God,” he quoted. “I will never forget those words. Write that down, Naamah. We must have those words written down.”
***
This was a part of a chapter from my book “The Secret Scroll of Magdala,” which I am still working on rewriting. It is a duology of two books that have a total of 103 chapters. Only if you read both of them will you find out how come these words that Naamah made up eventually made it into the Gospel of John.