Продолжение. Великий Ангел "изгоняющий" Небесного Козла Отпущения

Re-enactment of the Yom Kippur Festival in the Apocalypse of Abraham:  The Scapegoat Ritual

The High Priest and Azazel

Like in the Enochic tradition where the profiles of both protagonists  and antagonists  often reveal their cultic affiliations, in the Slavonic apocalypse too both Azazel and Abraham are envisioned as priestly figures. As has already been mentioned, this sacerdotal vision permeates the fabric of the entire pseudepigraphon, in which all main characters are endowed with cultic roles. The most spectacular cultic attributes are, of course, given to Yahoel, who is presented in the text as the heavenly high priest and the celestial choir-master.

The repeated instructions about sacrificial rites and proper liturgical procedures that he conveys to his human apprentice Abraham reveal Yahoel as the most distinguished sacerdotal figure of the story. It is possible that, in his role as instructor and revealer of cultic mysteries, Yahoel discloses his teachings to the patriarch not only in speech but also through direct participation in priestly praxis. One such instance may be seen in chapters 13 and 14 of the Slavonic apocalypse, where Yahoel appears to perform one of the central ordinances of the Yom Kippur atoning ceremony, in which impurity is transferred onto Azazel and the scapegoat is dispatched into the wilderness.
Thus, in Apoc. Ab. 13:7-14 the following arcane encounter between the high priest Yahoel and the scapegoat Azazel can be found:

… “Reproach is on you, Azazel! Since Abraham’s portion is in heaven, and yours is on earth,
Since you have chosen it and desired it to be the dwelling place of your impurity. Therefore the Eternal Lord, the Mighty One, has made you a dweller on earth. And because of you [there is] the wholly-evil spirit of the lie, and because of you [there are] wrath and trials on the generations of impious men.
Since the Eternal Mighty God did not send the righteous, in their bodies, to be in your hand, in order to affirm through them the righteous life and the destruction of impiety.
… Hear, adviser! Be shamed by me, since you have been appointed to tempt not to all the righteous!
Depart from this man! You cannot deceive him, because he is the enemy of you and of those who follow you and who love what you desire. For behold, the garment which in heaven was formerly yours has been set aside for him, and the corruption which was on him has gone over to you.”

In view of the cultic affiliations of Yahoel, it is possible that his address to the scapegoat has a ritual significance, since it appears to be reminiscent of some of the actions of the high priest on Yom Kippur.  The first thing that draws attention is that Yahoel’s speech contains a command of departure: “Depart from this man!”  Crispin Fletcher-Louis has noted a possible connection between this command found in Apoc. Ab. 13:12 and the dispatching formula given to the scapegoat in m. Yoma 6:4 – “Take our sins and go forth.”
Scholars have also pointed out that some technical terminology found in chapter 13 appears to be connected with Yom Kippur terminology. Thus, Daniel Stökl draws attention to the expression about “sending” things to Azazel in Apoc. Ab. 13:10,  which Alexander Kulik traces to the Greek term a)poste&llw or Hebrew xl#.  Stökl proposes that this terminology “might allude to the sending out of the scapegoat.” 
The phrase “dwelling place of your impurity” is also noteworthy since it alludes to the “purgation” function of the scapegoat ceremony, the rite which centered on removing the impurity heaped on the sacrificial animal to the “dwelling” place of the demon in the wilderness.
Putting reproach and shame on Azazel in Apoc. Ab. 13:7 and 13:11 may also relate to the ritual curses bestowed upon the scapegoat.
Another important detail of Yahoel’s speech is the angel’s mention that the corruption of the forefather of the Israelite nation is transferred now to Azazel.
Reflecting on this utterance of the great angel, Robert Helm sees its connection to the Yom Kippur settings by proposing that “the transference of Abraham’s corruption to Azazel may be a veiled reference to the scapegoat rite….”  Similarly, Lester Grabbe also argues that the phrasing in the statement that “Abraham’s corruption has ‘gone over to’ Azazel suggest[s] an act of atonement.” 
It is also possible that the high priest Yahoel is performing here the so-called “transference function” – the crucial part of the scapegoat ritual – when the high priest conveys the sins of Israel onto the head of the goat through confession and laying-on of hands. 

Abraham and the Scapegoat

It is quite clear that in the Apocalypse of Abraham Yahoel functions as a senior priest explaining and demonstrating rituals to a junior sacerdotal servant - Abraham.  This parallelism between the instructions of the master and the actions of the apprentice is manifested already in the beginning of the apocalyptic section of the text, where the patriarch faithfully follows the orders of his angelic guide about the preparation of the sacrifices.  The same pattern of sacerdotal instruction in which orders of the master are then followed by the performance of the disciple is also discernable in the depiction of the ritual of dispatching the scapegoat.
In the Apocalypse of Abraham, after Yahoel’s own “handling” of Azazel, the angel then verbally instructs Abraham on how to deal with the scapegoat:
Say to him, “May you be the fire brand of the furnace of the earth! Go, Azazel, into the untrodden parts of the earth. <Since your inheritance are those who are with you, with men born with the stars and clouds. And their portion is you, and they come into being through your being. And justice is your enmity. Therefore through your own destruction vanish from before me!” And I said the words as the angel had taught me. (Apoc. Ab. 14:5-8).

In this narrative the dispatching formulas appear to be even more decisive and forceful than in the previously investigated passage from chapter 13, now including such commands to the scapegoat as: “Go” (Slav. иди)  and “Vanish from before me” (Slav. буди от мене исчезлъ). 
Another captivating detail is that the dispatching formula “Go, Azazel, into the untrodden parts of the earth” designates the destination of the demon’s removal as “the untrodden parts of earth.” The word “untrodden” (Slav. беспроходна)  is significant since it designates a place uninhabitable (lit. impassable) to human beings. Reflecting on the language of Lev 16 where the scapegoat is dispatched “to the solitary place” (hrzg Cr)-l)) “in the wilderness,” (rbdmb),  Jacob Milgrom observes that “the purpose of dispatching the goat to the wilderness is to remove it from human habitation.”
In view of these observations it is possible that in the Apocalypse of Abraham one encounters another, so-called “elimination,” aspect of the scapegoat ritual whereby impurity must be removed from the human oikumene into an inhabitable (or in the language of the Apocalypse of Abraham, “untrodden”) realm.
In this respect Daniel Stökl also observes that the terminology found in Apoc. Ab. 14:5, where Azazel goes “into untrodden parts of the earth,” is reminiscent of the Septuagint version’s translation of Leviticus 16:22 (ei)v gh~n a!baton)  and the expression chosen by Philo in De Specialibus Legibus 1:188 in his description of Yom Kippur. 
The concluding phrase of the passage from chapter 14, which reports that Abraham repeated the words he received from the great angel, confirms our suggestion that Abraham is depicted here as a sort of a priestly apprentice receiving instructions from his master Yahoel and then applying this knowledge in dispatching the scapegoat. 
 
Conclusion

In the conclusion of our study of the Yom Kippur imagery discernable in the second part of the Apocalypse of Abraham, we should again draw attention to the possible connections between these sacerdotal traditions and the conceptual developments found in the first, haggadic section of the pseudepigraphon.
As has already been mentioned, the first part of the text is also permeated with cultic concerns as it depicts the idolatrous worship of the household of Terah, envisioned there through the metaphor of the polluted sanctuary. The section ends with the demise of the infamous house of worship and the death of its sacerdotal servants - Abraham’s father Terah and his brother Nahor – perishing in the fire of the destroyed shrine polluted by idols.
In this respect it is intriguing that the description of the Yom Kippur ritual found in Leviticus 16 also begins with a reference to two priests who have perished: Aaron’s sons Nadab and Abihu who, like Terah and Nahor in the Slavonic apocalypse, were killed by the fire proceeding from God because their improper priestly practice defiled the sanctuary.
This reference to priests who have perished and caused a contamination which now requires purgation appears to serve well for the cultic agenda of Lev 16, which then offers the description of the purificatory rite of Yom Kippur.   As was already seen, later rabbinic materials that link the Golden Calf episode with the establishment of Yom Kippur hint at this correspondence between sacerdotal transgression and the need for its cultic repair.
In light of the aforementioned traditions, it appears that the re-enactment of the Yom Kippur observances found in the second part of the Apocalypse of Abraham also fits nicely in the overall structure of the Slavonic pseudepigraphon where the hero’s transition from the polluted and destroyed sanctuary depicted in the beginning of the story to the true place of worship shown him by Deity at the end is mediated by the atoning ritual.