2:9: In him dwells the fullness of the divinity in a bodily way.
The ancient synagogue knows only of the Shekinah or the spirit of God
resting on a person; see b. Pesaḥ. 117A at § 1 Cor 14:26. ‖ Babylonian Talmud
Soṭah 48B: A voice from heaven sounded, which called out, “There is a person
among you who would be worthy of the Shekinah dwell on him שתשרה שכינה עליו; but his time is not worthy of it.” — A
few lines later, the same words of a voice from heaven appear again. See the
unabbreviated report according to the parallel passage in t. Soṭah 13.3f. (318)
at § Matt 3:17 A, #8. Here the voice from heaven cries out: “There is a person
here who is worthy of the holy spirit.” This shows that the expression about
the Shekinah resting on a person is synonymous with the spirit of prophecy or
inspiration resting on a person. At the same time, one can recognize how
infinitely far the apostle’s statement about Christ in Col 2:9 goes beyond the
idea of the Shekinah resting on a person. ‖ A baraita in b. Sukkah 28A: Hillel
the elder (ca. 20 BCE) had eighty students: thirty of them were worthy to have
the Shekinah rest on them like our teacher Moses, and thirty of them were
worthy to have the sun stand still for them as for Joshua the son of Nun;
twenty of them were mediocre. The greatest among them was Jonathan b. Uzziel
(the author of the targum at the Prophets), while the smallest among them was
Rabban Yohanan b. Zakkai († ca. 80). (Hermann L. Strack and Paul
Billerbeck, A Commentary on the New Testament from the Talmud and Midrash,
ed. Jacob N. Cerone, 4 vols. [trans. Andrew Bowden and Joseph Longarino;
Bellingham, Wash.: Lexham Press, 2021], 3:727-28)
