Jews, Christians, and the Discourse on Images before Iconoclasm 100942453X, 9781009424530

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Jews, Christians, and the Discourse on Images before Iconoclasm Between the sixth and eighth centuries CE, the image emerged as a rhetorical category in religious literature produced in the Mediterranean basin. The development was not a uniquely Christian phenomenon. Rather, it emerged in the context of broader debates about symbolic forms that took place across a wide range of ethnic, linguistic, and religious groups who inhabited the late Roman and early Byzantine world. In this book, Alexei Sivertsev demonstrates how Jewish texts serve as an important, and until recently overlooked, witness to the formation of image discourse and associated practices of image veneration in late antiquity and the early Middle Ages. Addressing the role of the image as a rhetorical device in Jewish liturgical poetry, Sivertsev also considers the theme of the engraved image of Jacob in its early Byzantine context and the aesthetics of spaces that bridge the gap between the material and the immaterial in early Byzantine imagination. Alexei M. Sivertsev  is Professor in the Department of Religious Studies at DePaul University. He was a recipient of the Fulbright Senior Scholar Award, in residence at the Department of Jewish Art at Bar-Ilan University in 2021, and held the Seymour Gitin Distinguished Professorship at the W. F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research in Jerusalem in 2022. He is the author of several books, most recently Judaism and Imperial Ideology in Late Antiquity (2011). His articles have appeared in Catholic Biblical Quarterly, the Journal of Early Christian Studies, and numerous collected volumes.

Alexei M. Sivertsev DePaul University

Jews, Christians, and the Discourse on Images before Iconoclasm

Shaftesbury Road, Cambridge CB2 8EA, United Kingdom One Liberty Plaza, 20th Floor, New York, NY 10006, USA 477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, VIC 3207, Australia 314–321, 3rd Floor, Plot 3, Splendor Forum, Jasola District Centre, New Delhi – 110025, India 103 Penang Road, #05–06/07, Visioncrest Commercial, Singapore 238467 Cambridge University Press is part of Cambridge University Press & Assessment, a department of the University of Cambridge. We share the University’s mission to contribute to society through the pursuit of education, learning and research at the highest international levels of excellence. www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781009424530 DOI: 10.1017/9781009424578 © Alexei M. Sivertsev 2024 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press & Assessment. First published 2024 A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Sivertsev, Alexei M., 1973– author. Title: Jews, Christians, and the discourse on images before Iconoclasm / Alexei M. Sivertsev, DePaul University, Chicago. Description: Cambridge, United Kingdom ; New York, NY : Cambridge University Press, 2024. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2023039725 | ISBN 9781009424530 (hardback) | ISBN 9781009424578 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Judaism – Relations – Christianity. | Christianity and other religions – Judaism. | Visual perception – History – To 1500. | Yannai – Criticism and interpretation. | Piyutim – History and criticism. | Jacob (Biblical patriarch) Classification: LCC BM535 .S528 2024 | DDC 261.2/6–dc23/eng/20231002 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023039725 ISBN 978-1-009-42453-0 Hardback Cambridge University Press & Assessment has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

In memory of my father, Mikhail Sivertsev, 1942–2013

Contents

List of Figures page viii Preface ix List of Abbreviations xi Introduction 1 1 Dissimilar Similarities 14 2 Jacob’s Image: The History of a Late Antique Motif 65 3 Jacob’s Dream and Relic Veneration 107 4 God’s Impossible Form 148 5 Articulating the Impossible 194 Conclusions 247 Bibliography Index

253 276

vii

Figures

1 Chalice with apostles venerating the cross, early seventh century. The Walters Art Museum page 113 2 Monza–Bobbio pilgrimage flask, sixth century. Bobbio Abbey 133 3 Pilgrim token from the Shrine of St. Symeon, sixth century. The Walters Art Museum 134 4 Interior of Hagia Sophia 182

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Preface

The successful completion of this book would have been impossible without unwavering support from my friends and colleagues. The project was both started and completed during my tenure years in the Department of Religious Studies at DePaul University. I want to thank members of the department for their collegiality and encouragement, which allowed me to succeed in the task. My special thanks go to the department’s chair, Dr. Khaled Keshk, for his ongoing support of a research project that took more than ten years to materialize. I am profoundly grateful to Christopher Mount for his advice on matters relevant to my research, as well as his constant readiness to read sections of this work and offer valuable comments on matters of both content and style. During the work on the project, I spent two terms as a fellow at the Frankel Institute for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Michigan, first in 2014–15, and then in 2022. My special thanks go to Mikhail Krutikov and Gabriele Boccaccini, the two head fellows for the respective terms, as well as to all my friends and colleagues at the university. Mira Balberg, in particular, generously agreed to read and comment on the early versions of chapters, offering unparalleled advice and encouragement on the wide range of topics pertaining to the research. My work in the final stages of the project was greatly enhanced by the time I spent as the Fulbright Senior Scholar in the Department of Jewish Art at Bar-Ilan University in 2021, and then as the Seymour Gitin Distinguished Professor at the W. F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research in Jerusalem in 2022. I am ix

Preface

particularly grateful to Ilia Rodov at Bar-Ilan, Matthew J. Adams and Katharina Schmidt at the Albright, and Anat Lapidot-Firilla and Noa Turgeman at Fulbright Israel for making my stay in the country both enjoyable and productive. Support and advice received from Ra’anan Boustan, Robert Chazan, Steven Fine, Daria Kovaleva, Derek Krueger, Julia McStravog, Stuart S. Miller, Peter Schäfer, Lawrence H. Schiffman, and Michael Swartz at various stages of the project played a crucial role in the successful completion of my work. My friend and colleague Oleg Rodionov, of the Russian Academy of Sciences, offered his expertise in the field of Byzantine studies on multiple occasions. Without the enthusiastic support of Beatrice Rehl of Cambridge University Press and the endorsement by two anonymous readers, this book would never have been published. Justin R. Howell did a great job with the initial proofreading of the manuscript. I deeply appreciate his help and take full responsibility for any mistakes or omissions found in the text. Earlier versions of segments from Chapter 2 have been published, first, as the article “The Image of Jacob on the Throne of God and the Construction of Liturgical Space in Late Antiquity,” Judaica Ukrainica 4 (2015): 18–35, and then, in revised form, as “Jacob’s Image: The History of a Late Antique Motif,” in Lawrence H. Schiffman’s Festschrift From Scrolls to Traditions, ed. S.  S. Miller, et al. (Leiden: Brill, 2020), 464–86. An abridged version of Chapter 2 has appeared as the article “Jacob’s Dream: The Body and its Image in Late Antique Jewish and Christian Narrative Spaces,” in Ars Judaica 18 (2022), 45–62. Finally, my special thanks go to my mother, Tamara Sivertseva, whose constant presence in my life enables me to imagine and carry out the most ambitious projects.

x

Abbreviations

Primary Sources Ambig. Io. Anth. Pal. b. (with name of tractate) CH Descr. S. Sophiae DN EH Ep. George of Pisidia, Exped. Pers. Gen. Rab. Gregory of Nazianzus, Ep. Gregory of Nazianzus, Orat. HA Itinerarium John of Damascus, Imag.

Maximus Confessor, Ambigua ad Iohannem Anthologia Palatina Bavli (Babylonian Talmud) Pseudo-Dionysius Areopagita, De Coelesti Hierarchia Paulus Silentiarius, Descriptio Sanctae Sophiae Pseudo-Dionysius Areopagita, De Divinis Nominibus Pseudo-Dionysius Areopagita, De Ecclesiastica Hierarchia Pseudo-Dionysius Areopagita, Epistulae George of Pisidia, Expeditio Persica Genesis Rabbah Gregory of Nazinazus, Epistulae Gregory of Nazianzus, Orationes Scriptores Historiae Augustae The Piacenza Pilgrim, Itinerarium John of Damascus, De Sacris Imaginibus xi

list of Abbreviations

Lam. Rab. Lev. Rab. Malal. Maximus Confessor, Ep. Mek. MT

Lamentations Rabbah Leviticus Rabbah The Chronicle of John Malalas Maximus Confessor, Epistulae Mekhilta de Rabbi Ishmael Pseudo-Dionysius Areopagita, De Mystica Theologia Myst. Maximus Confessor, Mystagogia Origen, Cant. Origen, In Canticum Canticorum Pesiq. Rab. Pesiqta Rabbati Pesiq. Rab. Kah. Pesiqta de Rab Kahana Proclus, In Eucl. Proclus, In Euclidem Procopius, De aedif. Procopius, De Aedificiis SchDN John of Scythopolis, Prologus et Scholia in Dionysii Areopagitae Librum De Divinis Nominibus Song Rab. Song of Songs Rabbah Synopse Synopse zur Hekhalot-Literatur Tanh. Tanhuma y. (with name of tractate) Yerushalmi (Palestinian Talmud)

Secondary Literature ABSA ACO ACW AJP xii

Annual of the British School at Athens Acta Conciliorum Oecumenicorum Ancient Christian Writers American Journal of Philology

list of Abbreviations

ArBib BA BJS BMGS ByzF CCSG CCSL CSHB CurBR CWS DOP EHR GNO HUCA JAAC JJS JR JRS JSJ

JSQ JWAG LCL MW NTOA OrChrAn

The Aramaic Bible Byzantina Australiensia Brown Judaic Series Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies Byzantinische Forschungen Corpus Christianorum: Series Graeca Corpus Christianorum: Series Latina Corpus scriptorium historiae byzantinae Currents in Biblical Research Classics of Western Spirituality Dumbarton Oaks Papers English Historical Review Gregorii Nysseni Opera Hebrew Union College Annual Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism Journal of Jewish Studies Journal of Religion Journal of Roman Studies Journal for the Study of Judaism in the Persian, Hellenistic, and Roman Periods Jewish Studies Quarterly Journal of the Walters Art Gallery Loeb Classical Library Muslim World Novum Testamentum et Orbis Antiquus Orientalia Christiana Analecta xiii

list of Abbreviations

PTS PG SC SFSHJ SHR

SLAEI SPB Spec SVTQ TSAJ VC WBS

xiv

Patristische Texte und Studien J.-P. Migne, Patrologiae cursus completes: Series graeca Sources chrétiennes South Florida Studies in the History of Judaism Studies in the History of Religions (supplements to Numen) Studies in Late Antiquity and Early Islam Studia patristica et byzantine Speculum St. Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly Texte und Studien zum antiken Judentum Vigiliae Christianae Wiener byzantinische Studien

Introduction

Much of the inspiration for this book comes from Averil Cameron’s analysis of the epistemic shift that took place in late Roman and early Byzantine culture in the period roughly between the sixth and eighth centuries. The shift involved a search for new forms of knowledge that could provide direct access to God. “Amongst their other properties,” says Cameron, “icons – religious images – functioned as a component in the system of knowledge which evolved as Byzantine society shed its classical past.”1 The centrality of image as a means of communicating with the divine, fully in place by the early eighth century, led to a backlash during the eighth and ninth centuries. This backlash, known as Iconoclasm, played a crucial role in the transition from late antique to medieval Byzantine culture. The book argues that the rise of image as a form of knowledge was not a uniquely Christian phenomenon. Rather, it was part of the broader rearticulation of symbolic categories that took place across a wide range of ethnic, linguistic, and religious groups that inhabited the late Roman and early Byzantine world. Jews were one such group. The present study is an invitation to consider Jewish texts composed between the sixth and eighth centuries as an important and, until recently, largely overlooked witness to the formation 1

Cameron, “Language of Images,” 17. For a helpful summary of proposed chronologies for the development of image veneration, see Elsner, “Iconoclasm,” 387, n. 9, and 390, n. 60. Unlike Cameron, Elsner is hesitant to see the period between the sixth and seventh centuries as the turning point: “It is possible there was no rise in the cult of images, just a rise in the textual noise about the cult in the materials that have survived to us” (372 in the same work).

1

Introduction

of image discourse and associated practices of image veneration in late antiquity and the early Middle Ages. “The advantage of the model of discourse,” notes Jaś Elsner, “is that it includes, without prejudicing one before the other, both theory and practice.”2 The term “image discourse,” therefore, must be distinguished from what Ernst Kitzinger calls the “systematic attempt to establish a Christian theory of images.”3 This theory of images, as understood by Kitzinger and subsequent scholarship, came at a relatively late stage. In the words of Elsner, “the move to the full theorization of the image, both as a justification for images and as a justification for the attack on them,” was the product of the eighth- and ninth-century clash about the religious value of images, known as Byzantine Iconoclasm. As a result of this clash, “images acquired a level of philosophical theorization to which they had never been subjected in the entire tradition of Greco-Roman image making, reaching back to archaic antiquity.”4 The debate about images brought in its wake the conceptual framework within which the use of images could be either delegitimized or justified. The systematic exposition of an image’s theological significance was part of that framework. Image discourse entails a different set of connotations. Rather than being a systematic theorization of the function of images, image discourse reflects ways in which image operates as, according to Cameron, “part of the grammar of Byzantine representation.”5 I understand image discourse to be a language that developed between the sixth and eighth centuries and used image as a category to construct symbolic networks of relationships. Like any other language, image discourse is best understood, in the words of 2 3

4

5

2

Elsner, “Iconoclasm,” 368. Kitzinger, “Cult of Images,” 135, and, more broadly, 86–87, 120–21, 135–40. For a good introduction to the present state of scholarship, see Anderson, “Images,” 144–47. Both quotes are from Elsner, “Iconoclasm,” 376. See, more broadly, Haldon and Brubaker, Byzantium, 44–66, 783–86. Cameron, “Language of Images,” 42.

Introduction

Roland Barthes, as “a horizon, which implies both a boundary and a perspective.” Like any other language, it offers “a field of action, the definition of, and hope for, a possibility.”6 My understanding of image discourse, therefore, is broader than Elsner’s use of a similar term. For Elsner, “the discourse of the image” or “image discourse” refers to “the use of images as a discourse in society.” The discourse of the image could “make statements that were heavily loaded, either politically or theologically” (so Elsner), or be “semi-autonomous from theological discourse and directed toward distinct purposes” (so Benjamin Anderson).7 In either case, however, the term describes material iconography’s ability to produce and communicate messages of one sort or another. For this book’s purpose, the discourse generated by material images is folded into a broader network of semiotic and semantic relationships. This network included inscriptions, elements of liturgy, and also literary texts, many of which were meant to be performed against the backdrop of the iconographic programs of synagogue and church interiors. In line with Barthes’s definition of language, the book approaches image as part of a late antique epistemic horizon, a range of possibilities, within which certain types of meaningful forms, William H. Sewell’s “cultural schemas,” such as “the various conventions, recipes, scenarios, principles of action, and habits of speech and gesture,” could develop.8 It was within the parameters of such a language, I would argue, that the production of images, their display, the practice of image veneration and, later, the theory of images could evolve as activities endowed with semiotic and conceptual significance. In early Byzantium, notes Cameron, “cult followed language and at least in part arose out of it.”9 6 7 8 9

Both quotations are from Barthes, Writing Degree Zero, 9. See Elsner, “Iconoclasm,” 373, and Anderson, “Images,” 182. Sewell, Logics of History, 131. Cameron, Christianity, 169.

3

Introduction

Articulated through multiple genres by different social and cultural groups, image discourse was by no means a uniform phenomenon. Unlike a much more normative theology of image, which would gradually crystallize from the late seventh century onward, image discourse can best be described as a collection of “the informal and not always conscious schemas, metaphors, or assumptions.”10 Until the eighth-century iconophiles and iconoclasts on both sides of the spectrum increased their attempts “to regulate the signs and define their meaning,” image was many things to many people.11 In this context, late antique Jewish literature offers additional vectors by which the pre-iconoclastic image discourse can be described. As I hope to demonstrate throughout this study, the use of image as a symbolic category in Jewish literature was anything but uniform in its own right. What can be translated as the English word image in late antique Hebrew and Aramaic compositions comes in multiple linguistic forms, appears in a variety of contexts, and is associated with a range of meanings within these contexts. My argument develops in conversation with earlier studies on the subject. From the seventh century onward, the defenders of religious images invoked the figure of a Jew as a paradigmatic opponent of images and, with the onset of Iconoclasm, the archetypal iconoclast and a precursor to the iconoclastic movement. This tradition translated into the theory of possible Jewish influences on the formation of iconoclastic ideology in modern historiography.12 More recently, a series of studies by Rachel Rafael Neis and Ra’anan Boustan have called into question the historical accuracy of what appears to be a polemically constructed figure of the Jewish iconophobe. Rather, these authors have argued, Jewish texts produced in late antiquity and the early Middle Ages reflect the importance of 10 11 12

4

Sewell, Logics of History, 131. Cf. Anderson, “Images,” 144–87. See Cameron, “Language of Images,” 30. See Neis, “Embracing Icons,” 36–37, with literature, for a good introduction to relevant texts and studies.

Introduction

image as a category in Jewish discourse. Neis and Boustan explore scenarios in which Jewish literary texts represent image veneration practices as a norm in at least some Jewish circles.13 The current project expands on this earlier research to produce a systematic treatment of the symbolic value of image in late antique and early medieval Jewish literature. The book argues that Jewish texts composed between the sixth and eighth centuries and ranging in genres from liturgical poetry and biblical commentaries to mystical literature understood image as a symbolic form that mediates between the divine and the human. The image came to be seen as a field within which translation from one sign system to another could take place and the invocation of the divine presence by means of human language and art could occur. By comparing Jewish texts with contemporaneous writings by Pseudo-Dionysius, Maximus Confessor, Romanos the Melodist, and others, the book argues that Jewish views on image inhabited the same conceptual and semiotic universe as their Christian counterparts did. At the same time, while developing within the same horizon of possibilities, Jewish texts often explored alternative scenarios from those of Christian texts. Far from being the archetypal iconoclasts of the iconophiles’ rhetoric, Jews produced a body of literature that can help us reconstruct the function and meaning of image during the two centuries leading up to Iconoclasm. Reconstructing the function of images prior to the eighth century is associated with a unique set of methodological challenges. One of them is the impact of Iconoclasm on the nature and scope of sources from earlier periods available to us. The iconoclastic controversy constitutes a watershed in the history of the Byzantine Empire. Debates about the spiritual value of image-veneration continued from 726 to 842, witnessed several reversals of imperial policy on the matter, and resulted in the formation of mature Byzantine image theory and veneration practices by the mid-ninth century. In 13

Neis, “Embracing Icons,” 36–54, and Boustan, “Jewish Veneration,” 61–81.

5

Introduction

the process, however, the pre-iconoclastic concepts of image and its place in the broader systems of knowledge were radically transformed. Both anti- and pro-image veneration forces contributed to the situation where all we have left from the pre-iconoclastic period are randomly preserved artifacts and texts. A series of studies by Paul Speck and, more recently, Leslie Brubaker have uncovered the extent to which written compositions ostensibly originating before Iconoclasm were heavily doctored by iconoclastic-era editors. This situation presents us with a unique set of problems: On the one hand, projecting post-iconoclastic image theory and veneration practices onto the earlier periods would be grossly anachronistic. On the other, pre-iconoclastic evidence had been largely obliterated by destruction on the part of iconoclasts, as well as thorough refurbishment and reinterpretation by the iconophiles. The search for historically reliable data on the function of images in the pre-iconoclastic period is a daunting task indeed.14 Since the present study is an invitation to consider Jewish literature in Hebrew and Aramaic as an important body of evidence for the role of images before Iconoclasm, a brief review of relevant sources is now in order. Many of the texts discussed in this book come to us embedded in extensive anthologies. The most common type of Jewish anthology from late antique Palestine is exegetical anthology, a collection of commentaries on a particular book from the Hebrew Bible or weekly biblical readings in synagogue lectionaries. The Hebrew name for such a composition, as well as individual traditions embedded in it, is midrash (plural – midrashim). Another type of anthology frequently referenced in this book is an anthology of early mystical texts, collectively known as Hekhalot literature. Some of the texts incorporated into such anthologies describe a mystic’s ascent through a series of heavenly palaces or 14

6

See Brubaker, “Icons before Iconoclasm?” 1218–24, 1231–34, 1239–48, and Haldon and Brubaker, Byzantium, 51–53. For a helpful bibliography of Speck’s works, see Barber, Figure and Likeness, 145, n. 4, and 146, n. 12. Elsner, “Iconoclasm,” 389, n. 48, and Anderson, “Images,” 155–64, caution against excessive skepticism.

Introduction

hekhalot, hence the genre’s name. Unlike midrashic anthologies, Hekhalot literature focuses not on the biblical text per se, but on a series of mystical and incantation practices designed to access supernatural knowledge in alternative, more immediate, ways than exegesis of biblical verses advocated in midrashim. Finally, Hebrew liturgical poetry, known as piyyut (plural – piyyutim) constitutes the third group of texts analyzed in the book. I am particularly interested in compositions attributed to Yannai, the payyetan (poet) who lived in Palestine in the sixth century and wrote poems intended to accompany weekly Torah readings at a synagogue. All three genres developed as part of, or in relationship to, rabbinic literature, a body of Hebrew and Aramaic writings composed between the third and eighth centuries in Roman Palestine and Sasanian (later, Muslim) Babylonia, and associated with an otherwise elusive provincial subelite, known as “sages” or “rabbis.”15 The precise boundaries of rabbinic literature have long been a matter of debate. It is unclear, for instance, to what extent Hekhalot texts at certain stages of their production and circulation can be accurately described as belonging within the fold of rabbinic literature. Yannai’s piyyutim develop in dialogue with many of the themes known from classical rabbinic writings but, at the same time, deal with subjects otherwise missing or nearly missing from the rabbinic conceptual lexicon. Yannai’s distinct take on the topic of image is one such subject. The chronology of these texts is complex. Manuscript recensions for some of the midrashic anthologies, such as the fifth- or early sixth-century midrash Pesiqta of Rav Kahana and the sixth- or seventh-century midrash Pesiqta Rabbati are relatively uniform.16 Even though the earliest known manuscript fragments are medieval, 15

16

For a good introduction to the status of rabbis in late Roman and early Byzantine Palestine, see Boyarin, Border Lines, 37–86, 202–25, and Schwartz, Imperialism, 103–28, 179–202. See Strack and Stemberger, Introduction, 291–96 (on the textual history of Pesiqta of Rav Kahana), and 296–302 (on Pesiqta Rabbati). For a more recent review of Pesiqta Rabbati’s textual history, see Ulmer, Pesiqta Rabbati, vol. 1, xiii–liv.

7

Introduction

one gets the impression that these anthologies had reached their final form relatively early on and then continued to be transmitted without much editorial interference. The textual history of other anthologies, such as the sixth- or seventh-century midrash Song of Songs Rabbah, is more complex and suggests continuous editing in the course of transmission.17 Finally, there are anthologies, such as the sprawling literary corpus of Tanhuma-Yelammedenu, that were continuously expanded well into the Middle Ages.18 In this scenario, deciding which tradition is late antique and which is medieval can be particularly challenging. In all these cases, however, the text of midrash is best understood not as its most “authentic” version preserved in the most “original” manuscript but rather as the range of textual adaptations across the total of manuscript witnesses. The textual history of Hekhalot literature is equally complex. Most of the texts discussed in this book have come down to us embedded in anthologies that continued to evolve at least through the high Middle Ages. Similar to Tanhuma, the text of each Hekhalot anthology is delineated by the sum total of its adaptations in individual manuscripts and therefore cannot be reduced to a single prototype. By contrast, the textual history of Yannai’s piyyutim appears to be fairly consistent, with the relative uniformity of poetic text and relatively minor (although by no means nonexistent) variations across recensions. Yannai’s Hebrew morphology is characteristically archaic (pre-Islamic) and, in the words of Laura S. Lieber, “likely reflects Hebrew grammar as it was understood, composed, and possibly even spoken in Yannai’s day.”19 Its textual complexity 17

18

19

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On the midrash’s provenance and textual history, see Strack and Stemberger, Introduction, 315–16, and, more recently, Kadari, “New Textual Witnesses,” 41–54. For a good recent introduction to the Tanhuma-Yelammedenu corpus, see Weiss, Pious Irreverence, 11–14, with literature. For a more detailed analysis, see Strack ad Stemberger, Introduction, 302–6, and Bregman, Tanhuma-Yelammedenu Literature, esp. 3–19, and 173–88. See Lieber, Yannai on Genesis, 99. On Hekhalot literature, see Boustan, “Study of Heikhalot Literature,” 130–60, and articles collected in Schäfer, Hekhalot-Studien, esp. 8–16. On Yannai’s poetry, see Lieber, Yannai, 97–105, with literature.

Introduction

notwithstanding, this study argues, Jewish literature serves as an important witness to the development of image discourse between the sixth and eighth centuries. The dynamics of textual uncertainty in Jewish anthologies is different from the dynamics of textual uncertainty in Christian writings on the nature and function of images. In contrast to their Christian counterparts, Jewish texts, as far as I can tell, have never been intentionally edited to conform to either an iconoclastic or iconophile perspective. Therefore, despite all the problems involved in the textual transmission and ongoing adaptation of Jewish literature, placing this literature in dialogue with Christian texts from the pre-iconoclastic period may help us reconstruct how image became a key symbolic category by the early eighth century. A Jewish text from the period can best be described as a range of its adaptations across manuscripts. In a similar manner, the discursive value of image is best understood as a range of that value’s modulations across late Roman and early Byzantine literatures, Jewish and Christian alike. The structure of the book is as follows: Since, from the textual perspective, Yannai’s piyyutim constitute one of the more stable bodies of evidence, it would make sense to take them as the starting point of my analysis. Chapter 1 examines the use of the word “image” (Hebrew demut) in Yannai’s poetry and, specifically, ways in which the payyetan uses the term to construct a particular form of self-narration for his audience. Yannai represents the community he addresses as belonging to the liturgical community of Israel, which in turn constitutes God’s material image and collectively shares in God’s designation, attributes, and properties. Several Christian authors, such as Pseudo-Dionysius and Maximus Confessor, developed a similar language for their respective audiences in the course of the sixth and seventh centuries  – in other words, around the period of Yannai’s own lifetime. By reading Jewish and Christian image discourses in relation to one another, the chapter attempts to reconstruct the parameters of common semantic space within which these discourses could develop. 9

Introduction

Chapter 2 continues the analysis of Yannai’s work but shifts focus from the payyetan’s use of the word demut to describe the liturgical community of Israel to his use of the same term to describe an actual image, that is, the image of Jacob, which, according to a late antique Jewish belief, was engraved on the throne of God. Christian writings composed during that time emphasize the unique role of the human body and, in particular, the body of Christ, as an epistemic form through which God’s radical difference becomes commensurate with human senses. This development was part of a broader shift toward what Cameron has described as “a new strain of realism with an emphasis on the human and physical aspects of the life of Christ signified in the Eucharist.” As part of the same process, Cameron continues, “undue emphasis on symbolism was reined in by stressing the realistic details of the Incarnation, as in canon 82 of the council in Trullo, where symbolic representations of Christ are forbidden.”20 This newly found appreciation for realism would play a crucial role in shaping the subsequent iconoclastic debate, as well as determining future venues for the development of Middle Byzantine culture. The chapter argues that rather than being a uniquely Christian concern, the interest in the epistemic function of the human body was a broader cultural phenomenon independently explored by a variety of groups in the Roman East. This phenomenon, therefore, can be understood as another instance of Ernst Gombrich’s ambiguity, which as such “cannot be seen – it can only be inferred by trying different readings that fit the same configuration.”21 To meaningfully describe the late antique epistemology of the human body, one has to read it as a range of adaptations developed by Christians and Jews alike. The chapter traces the motif of Jacob’s image through its multiple iterations, including midrashim, Yannai’s poetry, and Hekhalot 20

21

See Cameron, “Language of Images,” 38. The council in Trullo took place in Constantinople in 692. Gombrich, Art and Illusion, 313.

10

Introduction

literature. Rather than seeing it as a semantically consistent body of lore, the chapter argues that the motif comes in many linguistic forms that often carry with them distinct sets of meanings. The evolution of the motif from its earliest attestations in the fifth- and sixth-century midrashim and Yannai’s poetry to its fairly idiosyncratic rendering in the Hekhalot literature may reflect the broader evolution of image discourse in early Byzantium between the sixth and eighth centuries. Chapter 3 explores the theme of Jacob’s dream in Genesis 28:10– 22 as interpreted in late antique Jewish literature. The way Jewish texts imagine the relationship between Jacob’s sleeping body and his image on God’s throne seen in the dream is structurally similar to the description of several scenarios of relic veneration in contemporaneous Christian accounts. In particular, the veneration of the imagined body of Saint Demetrius, portrayed in some visions as resting on a couch inside a shrine, offers intriguing parallels to how Jacob’s dream comes to be conceptualized in Jewish literature. Pilgrim ampullae depicting the crucifixion scene and tokens featuring the bust portraits of Saint Symeon Stylites the Elder (d. 459) and the Younger (d. 592) on top of a column may offer another, this time material, intertext to the interpretation of Jacob’s dream. Central to these scenarios is a common formula, a scripted situation that organizes the scenario’s space as a system of relationships. Such formulas, the chapter argues, offered a range of possibilities independently explored by literatures and visual arts of the time. Chapter 4 takes a closer look at the broader epistemic shift within which the evolution of image discourse became possible. One aspect of that shift had to do with addressing what Cameron calls “the problem of how to translate the essentially paradoxical into language that conforms to more normal logical expectations.”22 The resulting epistemology attempted “to express the paradoxical, 22

See Cameron, Christianity, 159.

11

Introduction

to describe in language what is by definition indescribable.”23 The chapter focuses on language used in late antique Jewish texts to imagine God’s act of self-contraction (Hebrew tzimtzum). This language was designed to articulate the paradox of the infinite deity becoming spatially delineated and, therefore, linguistically identifiable through descent to the tabernacle as narrated in Exodus 35–40. Rhetoric that developed in the process, the chapter argues, was part of the broader search for symbolic forms to communicate the paradox of a God who was infinite and, at the same time, spatially circumscribed. One such form, Cameron notes, was the Virgin Mary, “a rhetorical construction arising from contemporary Christological definitions.”24 Understood to be the Theotokos (“the Mother of God”), in whose womb the infinite deity became spatially delineated and, therefore, capable of being “circumscribed in language,” Mary was central to the formation of early Byzantine imagery.25 The chapter investigates possible parallels between the rhetoric developed to describe the paradox of God’s self-contraction to dwell in the tabernacle and the rhetoric developed to articulate the paradox of God’s human birth. Finally, Chapter 5 focuses on the semiotics of God’s self-​ contraction. Late antique Jewish compositions understand the tabernacle to be a system designed to translate heavenly realities with the help of earthly signs. Self-contraction is an act of transposition from one set of codes to another and, therefore, not just an ontological but a semiotic phenomenon. Self-contraction produces a sign system, a text, within which God becomes identifiable in relation to material signifiers and, therefore, legible within the parameters of human knowledge. Contemporaneous Christian authors composed similar descriptions of church buildings and liturgical celebrations that took place inside those buildings. For these authors and their 23 24 25

12

Cameron, Christianity, 156. Cameron, Christianity, 169. See Cameron, Christianity, 157, and, more broadly, 165–70.

Introduction

audiences, image comes to be understood as a tool intended to render the intelligible through the semiotics of the sensible. Of particular interest, in this context, is a series of traditions that deal with the production and function of so-called acheiropoietoi, images miraculously produced without human intervention (literally, images “not made with hands”). The chapter analyzes Jewish traditions on the tabernacle, according to which the tabernacle and its implements, such as the candelabra known as the menorah, were made “of themselves,” rather than manufactured by Moses. Along with other acheiropoieta of early Byzantine lore, the tabernacle and the menorah reflect a broader search for sign systems that could bridge the gap between the heavenly and the earthly, the intelligible and the material, the divine and the human. The chapter is an invitation to see image discourse as a rhetorical form intended to articulate the impossible within the framework of human language.

13

Dissimilar Similarities 1

This chapter takes its cue from a Hebrew liturgical poem (piyyut) composed at some point during the sixth century by the Jewish poet Yannai. Recently translated into English and analyzed by Lieber, the poem offers a good introduction to the broader set of issues that this chapter and the rest of the book are going to address. The poem belongs to a genre of Hebrew liturgical poetry known as the qedushta.1 It was composed to accompany the reading of Exodus 19:6 on one of the Sabbaths of the Pentateuch’s triennial reading cycle, customary among the Jewish communities of late Roman and early Byzantine Palestine. In correspondence with the reading that it accompanies, the poem deals with the revelation of the Torah at Mount Sinai and the encounter between God and the people of Israel that took place in the process. The opening stanza of the qedushta depicts the events at Sinai as a wedding ceremony between God and Israel. The stanza reaches its climax with a statement addressed directly to God: “[T]hose who cleave to You, You shall make God [‫]תאלהיו‬.” 2 As noted by Lieber, this phrase has been the subject of some unease on the part of qedushta’s earlier commentators. While Zevi M. Rabinovitz includes the consonants of ‫ תאלהיו‬in his edition but leaves the word unvocalized, Nahum Bronznick abandons this reading altogether as an alleged scribal error. Lieber 1

2

For a detailed study of the genre and its history, see Elizur, Sod Meshalshei Qodesh. Lieber, Yannai on Genesis, 35–64, offers an excellent introduction to the subject. Rabinovitz, Liturgical Poems, vol. 1, 318, line 5; trans. Lieber, “Exegesis of Love,” 94, with modifications.

14

Dissimilar Similarities

is right to reject Bronznick’s emendation as unconvincing, but her own interpretation of the phrase as merely a possible “reference to converts” also strikes me as being somewhat evasive.3 In what follows, I will attempt to situate Yannai’s use of ‫ תאלהיו‬within the broader context of the theory of image as it developed in the course of the sixth and seventh centuries, the era when, in Cameron’s words, “a massive intellectual adjustment was necessitated by the final demise of the classical world and the new circumstances of the early medieval one.”4 This period, Cameron argues, witnessed the process of conceptual realignment, as a result of which the new forms of religiously authoritative knowledge gradually replaced the epistemic systems of classical antiquity, the theory of images being one such new form. Cultural idioms that emerged in the process of realignment are available to us today in literary and artistic readings produced by a variety of ethnic, linguistic, religious, and social groups that populated the late Roman and early Byzantine world. It would make good sense, then, to approach the poetry of Yannai as another such reading and investigate it, in Cameron’s words, “in relation to the intellectual and imaginative framework” of that poetry’s cultural milieu.5 It is hard to pinpoint the dates of Yannai’s life with any certainty. There are good reasons to place him in sixth-century Roman Palestine, but how early or how late in the sixth century he lived must remain an open question.6 Most of the manuscript evidence for his works comes in the form of medieval copies stored away in the Cairo Genizah, the Jewish communal depository for out-ofuse documents in Old Cairo in Egypt. The earliest of these copies are palimpsests dating from the early centuries of Muslim rule and 3

4 5 6

See Lieber, “Exegesis of Love,” 94–95, n. 22, and, more broadly, 81–82. Cf. Rabinovitz, Liturgical Poems, vol. 1, 318, line 5, and Bronznick, Liturgical Poetry, vol. 1, 148, and vol. 2, 71. Cameron, “Language of Images,” 40. Cameron, “Language of Images,” 40. For a good introduction to the historical context of Yannai’s work, see Lieber, Yannai, 1–16, 282–84, and “‘You Have Skirted This Hill,’” 63–73.

15

Dissimilar Similarities

written over sixth-century Greek biblical texts. During the Middle Ages, Yannai’s writings gradually lost their liturgical and, more broadly, aesthetic relevance. They became a cultural nontext, that is, a meaningless collection of symbolic forms no longer considered useful or even, as Jewish linguists of medieval Spain would argue in connection with late antique piyyutim in general, grammatically correct.7 As a result, these writings simply stopped being copied. Most of Yannai’s poems are available to us today owing to their chance discovery in the Cairo Genizah, rather than their deliberate transmission as part of Jewish liturgical collections. The corpus uncovered so far suggests uniform and consistent textual history with relatively few variations across manuscripts. It is probably fair to argue that the texts we have in front of us represent more or less accurately what was composed by the payyetan during his lifetime. It makes good sense, then, to start the book with a chapter on Yannai’s poetry, one of few Jewish textual witnesses that in their present form can be dated with a degree of confidence to the late Roman and early Byzantine period in the Near East.8

Searching for Context The form ‫תאלהיו‬, used by Yannai to describe Israel’s status in relation to God, is a verbal construct based on the noun ‫( אלהים‬elohim). As noted by Lieber, Yannai uses the word elohim to designate Israel in several places across the qedushta for Exodus 19:6, and, therefore, his choice of ‫ תאלהיו‬falls within a consistent and deliberate semantic 7

8

See Baron, History, vol. 7, 57–59, and 101–4. For the cultural context of changing attitudes toward the piyyut, see Scheindlin, “Merchants and Intellectuals,” 327–34, 349–51, and 361–77. On Yannai, in particular, see Lieber, Yannai, 8–10, and 14–15. For an introduction to relevant manuscripts, their circulation, and the history of their discovery, see Rabinovitz, Liturgical Poems, vol. 1, 16–28 (Hebrew pagination) and 3–7. For a balanced review of the rabbinic context of Yannai’s work, including references to earlier literature, see Lieberman, “Hazzanut Yannai,” 221–50, Lieber, Yannai, 139–90.

16

Searching for Context

pattern.9 A biblical source behind Yannai’s choice of language comes in the form of Psalm 82:6, “I said, ‘You are elohim and sons of the Most High, all of you,’” explicitly quoted by the poet immediately following the first stanza. If we were to search for a broader late antique Jewish context of Yannai’s elohim reference, much of that context would come from biblical commentaries (midrashim) composed between the third and sixth centuries CE.10 Like the qedushta, midrashic tradition in circulation during the time of Yannai’s life associates Psalm 82:6 with the revelation at Sinai. Mekhilta of R. Ishmael, a third-century commentary on the book of Exodus, brings up the psalm’s reference to elohim as a prooftext for the legend that the angel of death no longer held power over the Israelites while they were standing at Sinai. That was the case until the Israelites had “ruined their deeds,” an apparent reference to the golden calf debacle, and, as a result, returned to their mortal condition. In a similar manner, Leviticus Rabbah, a fifth-century commentary on the book of Leviticus, uses the same verse to illustrate the point that God “acted in favor of them” (‫)צידקתים‬, that is, Israel, and “called them divinity” (‫ )קראתי אותן אלוהות‬prior to the calf affair.11 Both texts associate the godlike status of Israel at Sinai with Israel’s adherence to the Torah. The breaking of the law results in Israel’s lapse back to the human condition. Another third-century commentary, this time to the book of Deuteronomy, makes this connection explicit: Therefore, if man lives by the Torah and performs the will of his Father in heaven, he is like the heavenly creatures, as it is said, “I 9 10

11

Lieber, “Exegesis of Love,” 94–95, n. 22. Kister, “Son(s) of God,” 191–99, offers a good introduction to the theme of Israel’s divine sonship in biblical and Second Temple literature. The extent, immediacy, and precise nature of the impact of these traditions on Yannai, however, remain uncertain. See Mek. Bahodesh 9 (Horovitz and Rabin, 237), and Lev. Rab. 4.1 (Margulies, vol. 1, 77; my translation). For a broader literary context, both Jewish and non-Jewish, see Kister, “Son(s) of God,” 202–3, and, especially, “‘First Adam,’” 356–59.

17

Dissimilar Similarities said, you are elohim, and sons of the Most High, all of you” (Psalm 82:6). But if he does not live by the Torah and does not perform the will of his Father in heaven, he is like the creatures of the earth, as it is said, “Nevertheless you shall die like Adam” (Psalm 82:7).12

There is no indication in this fragment that the comparison to “heavenly creatures” is more than a metaphor for the Torah observance and righteous behavior that results from such an observance. In the words of Menahem Kister, “the Jewish godlike ideal status of humans attached to this verse [Psalm 82:6] should not be conceived as deification in the strict sense and should be distinguished from Christian statements, the phraseological similarity notwithstanding.”13 The midrashic interpretations of the elohim reference in Psalm 82:6 emphasize the value of the Torahcentered ethics, rather than Israel’s collective status as God’s earthly alter ego. There is no easy transition, therefore, from what we find in early rabbinic literature to Yannai’s significantly more ambitious interpretation of elohim.14 Stanza 4 of the qedushta is particularly important in this regard. It runs as follows: With eternal love / You have loved an eternal people // for were it not for this eternal people / the world would be no more Nothing resembles You / but You made them resemble You // Nothing equals You / but You made them equal to You You were, and shall be // and You said: “You were, and shall be” In every way they praise You, You praise them // and by every name they call You, You call them You are elohim / and they are elohim // You are King / and they are a kingdom 12

13 14

18

Sifre on Deuteronomy 306 (Finkelstein, 340–41; trans. Hammer, 307, with modifications). Kister, “Son(s) of God,” 207–8. I disagree, therefore, with Bronznick’s suggestion that early rabbinic texts can explain Yannai’s use of elohim. See Bronznick, Liturgical Poetry, vol. 1, 148.

Searching for Context You are one God / and they are one people // You are a great God / and they are a great people You are a holy God / and they are a holy people15

Yannai then, once again, uses the word elohim to describe Israel in the opening lines of stanza 5: “You are elohim,” You said to us // with the strength with which we affirmed You, You affirmed us At the sea we made You king / at Sinai You made us kings // before we hallowed You / You made us holy16

Stanzas 4 and 5 offer us a broader context within which we can situate the elohim reference of the first stanza, and in relation to which this reference can now accrue meaning. The qedushta is designed to merge the identity of its listeners with that of the mythical community of Israel standing at the foot of Sinai. The alternating “we” and “they” that Yannai uses throughout the poem to reference the collective Israel articulate this fusion of identities. But the fusion of identities takes place in another register as well. At the moment of the revelation, God becomes isomorphic with Israel, both the people of Israel receiving the Torah at Sinai and the liturgical community of Israel personified in Yannai’s audience. At Sinai Israel becomes God’s unique image (demut).17 Otherwise, God is beyond comparison. In Yannai’s words, “nothing resembles You [‫]אין דומה לך‬, but You made them [Israel] resemble You [‫]ודימיתם לך‬, nothing equals You [‫]אין שװה לך‬, but You made them [Israel] equal to You [‫]והשװיתם לך‬.” God’s epistemic loneliness is completely outside the referential systems available to us as human beings. The only frame of reference that makes God’s 15

16

17

Rabinovitz, Liturgical Poems, vol. 1, 319, lines 12–18; trans. Lieber, “Exegesis of Love,” 95–96, with modifications. Cf. Novick, “Who Resembles You,” 274. Rabinovitz, Liturgical Poems, vol. 1, 319, lines 19–20; trans. Lieber, “Exegesis of Love,” 96, with modifications. On the qedushta as “performed theology” and the dynamics of the first and third person addresses, see Lieber, “Exegesis of Love,” 88–92, esp. 90–92.

19

Dissimilar Similarities

radical otherness commensurate with human senses and human knowledge is Israel. In Israel, God acquires form that makes God visible and thus intelligible within the epistemic parameters of our universe. The qedushta is an invocation of God’s presence in Israel for, as Peter Brown notes, “images were not messages. They were presences.”18 The poem belongs among several of Yannai’s compositions in which, as noted by Tzvi Novick, “the poet contends, repeatedly and variously, that God’s transcendent singularity is simultaneously mirrored, produced, and checked by Israel’s own singularity.”19 This parallelism between God and Israel and “the notion that Israel resembles God,” Novick argues, “is hardly Yannai’s innovation.”20 Leviticus 19:2 calls on Israel to “be holy, for I, the Lord your God, am holy.” 2 Samuel 7:22–24 and 1 Chronicles 17:20–22 praise first God’s and then Israel’s uniqueness, thus correlating the two within a single rhetorical formula. Rabbinic midrashim further explore possibilities created by this rhetoric.21 The third-century midrash Sifre on Deuteronomy juxtaposes a series of biblical verses that deal respectively with God’s uniqueness in the universe and Israel’s uniqueness among the nations.22 The juxtaposition comes in the form of a carefully structured antiphonal litany and, according to Michael Fishbane, results in “a theological correlation of 18

19

20 21

22

Brown, “Images,” 24. On the understanding of an image as a site of its referent’s presence as well as absence, see Elsner, “Iconoclasm,” 369–70, with literature. For the development of this theme in early medieval midrashic anthologies, see Kister, “Son(s) of God,” 214–17. Novick, “Who Resembles You,” 265. Jewish liturgical poetry does not always qualify God’s absolute uniqueness through a comparison to Israel. Sometimes, God’s otherness is powerfully asserted as being completely beyond comparison. See Sokoloff and Yahalom, Jewish Palestinian Aramaic Poetry, 130, line 44. Novick, “Who Resembles You,” 264. See Hayward, Interpretations of the Name Israel, 252–54, for a review of some of the relevant texts. Sifre on Deuteronomy 355 (Finkelstein, 422–23). On the rhetorical function of this text and its comparison to the diatribe, see Marmorstein, “Background of the Haggadah,” 186–87. On the content, see Fishbane, Exegetical Imagination, 57–62, and 70.

20

The Function of Image in Pseudo-Dionysius

God and Israel.”23 The litany belongs within a larger rhetorical unit that invokes but then purposefully leaves unresolved the tension between God’s utter transcendence and God’s special relationship with Israel. The unit’s second half offsets the litany by emphasizing the gap between Israel and God. In contrast to Yannai, Sifre on Deuteronomy is not prepared to call Israel elohim. Yannai is aware of these precedents. In the qedushta for Leviticus 19:1, analyzed by Novick, the payyetan explicitly references 2 Samuel 7:22–23 to construct his own rhetoric that qualifies “God’s transcendence by reference to Israel’s own exalted status.”24 The formal structure and some of the key themes in the qedushta for Exodus 19:6 appear to draw directly or indirectly on the litany from Sifre on Deuteronomy. Yannai, however, also goes a step beyond his sources by characterizing Israel as God’s image, which participates in its archetype’s properties, or, in Yannai’s words, “resembles” its archetype and “is equal” to it. In this sense, Israel can be legitimately articulated as elohim. This theme, while central to Yanni, is missing from biblical and earlier rabbinic texts. The latter, therefore, are necessary yet insufficient to fully contextualize Yannai’s interpretation of Israel as God’s image, as well as the range of meanings that the payyetan reads into such an interpretation. To find additional contexts, one has to turn to Christian explications of the Greek term eikon (“image”), composed between the early sixth and early seventh centuries, that is, within the broad chronology of Yannai’s own lifetime.

The Function of Image in Pseudo-Dionysius Sometime between the late fifth and early sixth centuries, Yannai’s younger contemporary known today only as Pseudo-Dionysius 23

24

Fishbane, Exegetical Imagination, 59. Elliot R. Wolfson’s comment that Israel in the midrash “represents the angelic Jacob who is comparable to the deity,” goes well beyond what the text says. See Wolfson, Along the Path, 6. Novick, “Who Resembles You,” 266.

21

Dissimilar Similarities

worked to address a set of issues similar to the one explored by the Jewish payyetan. Pseudo-Dionysius is about as enigmatic a figure as Yannai. There is little we know about him for certain. The Christian tradition has attributed his writings to Dionysius the Areopagite, mentioned in Acts 17:34 as one of Paul’s converts in Athens. This traditional attribution has long since been discarded by modern scholarship, but the author’s real identity still eludes us, and so far no attempt to identify him with any known figure has been entirely satisfactory. He must have lived at some point between the last quarter of the fifth and first quarter of the sixth century and probably resided in Roman Syria. Pseudo-Dionysius was well versed in the Christian as well as Neoplatonic teachings of his day. Indeed, his own work represents a synthesis between the two. His doctrinal affiliation remains a matter of debate, as both the Miaphysites and the Orthodox claimed him for themselves. Incidentally, this proves just how artificial and imprecise the “Miaphysite” and “Orthodox” categories are as hermeneutic tools for understanding the continuum of intellectual life in late antiquity. The Dionysian heritage was sufficiently multivalent to satisfy a broad variety of theological doctrines developing in the early Byzantine commonwealth. In the course of the sixth century, it was taken up and interpreted by the Miaphysites, Origenists, and Orthodox alike. Within the several decades of its composition, the Dionysian corpus was translated from Greek into Syriac. The translation also involved a good deal of adaptation, whose exact relationship to the original text remains somewhat of a mystery. It is significant, however, that virtually from the first decades of its circulation, the Dionysian corpus existed as a range of linguistic, cultural, and doctrinal adaptations spanning a spectrum of communities in the Roman East.25 What interests me in the context of the present study is not the uniqueness of 25

For a good introduction to the early history of the Dionysian corpus and its reception, see Perczel, “Earliest Syriac Reception,” 27–41, and Louth, “Reception of Dionysius up to Maximus the Confessor,” 43–53, with the literature cited there.

22

The Function of Image in Pseudo-Dionysius

Pseudo-Dionysius as a thinker but, on the contrary, the extent to which his writings may reflect the norms of a broader conceptual koine spoken at the time. In that sense, the Dionysian corpus, a characteristically pseudepigraphic body of writings that a range of religious and linguistic groups could identify with, offers a promising point of reference. Unlike Yannai’s poetry, Dionysian writings were not intended for liturgical performance. They belonged to a genre described by René Bornert as “une theoria liturgique,” a contemplation of liturgy intended to discover meanings hidden behind the symbolism of church ceremony.26 Pseudo-Dionysius seeks to interpret signs, not to perform them, the way Yannai does. Whereas Yannai’s audience is a congregation assembled in a synagogue, the nature of the Dionysian audience is less clear. He probably wrote for an intellectual elite well versed in Neoplatonic modes of thinking. The purpose of Dionysian works was to apply these modes to the understanding of Christian liturgy. It is remarkable, therefore, that these two otherwise very different bodies of texts use similar language of God’s material image to formulate identities for Jewish and Christian liturgical communities. By tracing this language in its applications by Yannai and Pseudo-Dionysius, I hope to uncover some of the ways in which image served the function of symbolic self-articulation in the early Byzantine world. For the chapter’s purpose, I will concern myself primarily with The Celestial Hierarchy and The Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, the first two of the four surviving Dionysian treatises. These two works (or, as some scholars would argue, two parts of the same work) set out to describe the way in which an otherwise hidden and unknown God reveals Godself within the parameters of the created universe. The universe itself is understood as theophany, a mode of articulating the divine unknown in spatial and temporal categories. The revelation takes place through the medium of “hierarchies,” which 26

See Bornert, Commentaires, 90, and, more broadly, 90–97.

23

Dissimilar Similarities

consist of the intelligible angelic or celestial hierarchy and the sensible human or ecclesiastical hierarchy. In the words of PseudoDionysius, “a hierarchy is a sacred order, a state of understanding and an activity approximating as closely as possible to the divine. And it is uplifted to the imitation of God in proportion to the enlightenments divinely given to it.”27 A more expanded definition of “hierarchy” is then offered as follows: “If one talks of hierarchy, what is meant is a certain perfect arrangement, an image of the beauty of God which sacredly works out the mysteries of its own enlightenment in the orders and levels of understanding of the hierarchy, and which is likened toward its own source as much as is permitted.”28 For Pseudo-Dionysius, light provides a central metaphor to talk about God, “une ‘métaphore absolue’ de Dieu,” in the words of Sergej Averincev.29 The two hierarchies serve, on the one hand, to translate the light of God’s presence downward through their ranks and, on the other, to uplift created beings to God in accordance with creatures’ inherent receptivity to the divine light. PseudoDionysius describes hierarchy as “an image [eikon] of the beauty of God,” which is “likened to its own source as much as is permitted.” Following in the footsteps of his Neoplatonic forerunners, he understands the image, to quote Eric D. Perl, as the “differentiated presence or appearance of the transcendent form,” that is, a hermeneutic situation in which the transcendent form makes itself available to sense perception “as the character of this or that particular instance.”30 The main function of the image is to achieve the closest 27 28

29

30

CH 3.1 (Heil and Ritter, 17; trans. Luibheid and Rorem, 153). CH 3.2 (Heil and Ritter, 18; trans. Luibheid and Rorem, 154). For a good introduction to the text, see Rorem, Pseudo-Dionysius, 58. For a more detailed analysis, to which my own understanding of Pseudo-Dionysius is greatly indebted, see Perl, Theophany, 17–34, and 65–81. Cf. Cohen, Formes théologiques, 130–49. Averincev, “L’or dans le système des symboles,” 55, and, more broadly, 54–57, in conversation with Blumenberg, Paradigmen zu einer Metaphorologie, 14–17. For a recent discussion, see Schibille, Hagia Sophia, 6–8, 23, and 177–97. Both quotations are from Perl, Theophany, 21.

24

Dissimilar Similarities

possible resemblance to God by rendering itself transparent to the divine light. “The goal of a hierarchy,” writes Pseudo-Dionysius earlier in the chapter, “is to enable beings to be as like as possible to God and to be at one with him.”31 Angels and humans achieve this likeness by making themselves “pure mirrors” that reflect transcendental luminosity radiating from the divine center: “A hierarchy bears in itself the mark of God. Hierarchy causes its members to be images of God in all respects, to be clear and spotless mirrors reflecting the glow of primordial light and indeed of God himself.”32 By serving as mirrors, the members of the hierarchy transmit the flow of the divine light from one level to the next. They become members of the externalized divine presence constantly maintaining that presence’s outflow.

Dissimilar Similarities Even though Yannai never refers to Israel as God’s mirror, his understanding of Israel’s role as God’s image is not dissimilar from what we find in Pseudo-Dionysius. In the qedushta for Exodus 19:6, with which I started my analysis, and elsewhere in his piyyutim, Yannai uses a set of two verbs, ‫ דמה‬and ‫שװה‬, to talk about Israel as God’s image or demut.33 Whereas the verb ‫ דמה‬serves to indicate resemblance between God and Israel, pairing this verb with ‫שװה‬ adds further semantic nuance by emphasizing equality and a form of shared identity between the two. Existing outside any referential system available to us as human beings, and, as a result, epistemically opaque to us, God becomes known only in relation to Israel. Israel translates God’s invisibility into sensorial and, hence, legible 31 32 33

CH 3.2 (Heil and Ritter, 17; trans. Luibheid and Rorem, 154). CH 3.2 (Heil and Ritter, 18; trans. Luibheid and Rorem, 154). The qedushta for Leviticus 19:1 describes likeness and equality between God and Israel by further exploring valences of the same vocabulary. See Rabinovitz, Liturgical Poems, vol. 1, 444–45, lines 2–4.

25

Dissimilar Similarities

forms that render God visible within the created world’s structures of meaning. Similarly, Pseudo-Dionysius understands angelic and ecclesiastical hierarchies as a “certain perfect arrangement, an image of the beauty of God,” which, to use René Roques felicitous phrase, functions as “un compromis entre le silence de Dieu et le langage des hommes.”34 In their capacity as God’s image, members of the hierarchy constitute “clear and spotless mirrors reflecting the glow of primordial light and indeed God himself.” It is worth noting in this context that the root ‫ שװה‬used by Yannai, in addition to indicating the “equality,” can also mean “seeing” or “placing before one’s eyes.” In a manner similar to the Dionysian hierarchies, the verb describes Israel as being equal to God as well as facing God in a mirror-like fashion.35 Both authors share the same understanding of image as a hermeneutic situation in which God’s transcendental being could be described by means of material signs. In both cases, to quote Cameron yet again, the image serves as “one of the signs by which the impossibility of understanding God through language could be circumvented.”36 The symbolism of mirrors, however, is ambiguous. A mirror implies not just translucency but also the perennial acts of recoding. The latter takes place in the process of movement from one set of mirrors to the next “by way of natural reflections suited to the human intellect.”37 A mediating space between the intelligible and the material, the image, to quote Gombrich, “is a transposition, not a copy.”38 Images serve to translate knowledge between the otherwise incongruous sign systems of the material and heavenly 34 35

36 37

38

Roques, L’univers dionysien, 223. I would like to thank Mira Balberg for calling my attention to this aspect of the root’s semantic range. Cameron, “Language of Images,” 30. EH 2.3.1 (Heil and Ritter, 73; trans. Luibheid and Rorem, 204). Pseudo-Dionysius may be referencing here 1 Corinthians 13:12. On the transmission of light as an act of recoding, see also CH 13.3 (Heil and Ritter, 44–45). Gombrich, Art and Illusion, 48. On the Dionysian mirrors as a hierarchy of metaphors, see Averincev, “L’or dans le système des symboles,” 56–57.

26

Dissimilar Similarities

realms, rather than merely replicate this knowledge on the different levels of cognition. Hence, in the further development of the theory on analogical relationship between the symbol and its referent developed by the fifth-century Neoplatonic philosopher Proclus, Pseudo-Dionysius understands image as a “dissimilar similarity,” the space in which one sign system is transcribed by means of another.39 The two systems are identical and nonidentical at the same time: “For the very same things are both similar and dissimilar to God. They are similar to Him to the extent that they share what cannot be shared. They are dissimilar to Him in that as effects they fall short of their Cause and are infinitely and incomparably subordinate to Him.”40 Reading the image requires, to use Paul Rorem’s terminology, an act of “hermeneutical transfer” between the semiotic systems in which the same information is coded through the material language of the senses and, alternatively, the immaterial (and, as a result, sensorily incomprehensible) language of the heavenly realm.41 Image is not a copy; it is a translation. Image does not replicate its source but rather articulates it in an alternative code system: “In reality there is no exact likeness between caused and cause, for the caused carry within themselves only such images of their originating sources as are possible for them, whereas the causes themselves are located in a realm transcending the caused.”42 The Dionysian hierarchies are thus both luminous reflections of the divine presence on lower, and progressively more material, levels of existence and acts of 39

40

41 42

On Proclus’s theory, see Coulter, Literary Microcosm, 47–57, and Struck, Birth of the Symbol, 238–52. For a good introduction to the Neoplatonic context of Pseudo-Dionysius, see Schibille, Hagia Sophia, 205–12, with literature. DN 9.7 (Suchla, 212; trans. Luibheid and Rorem, 149). For the term “dissimilar similarity,” see CH 2.2–4 (Heil and Ritter, 10–14). See Roques, L’univers dionysien, 115, n. 2, for a succinct but thorough explication of the term, and, more recently, Cohen, Formes théologiques, 121–30. My analysis here develops in dialogue with Rorem, Pseudo-Dionysius, 54–57, and 159–60. See Rorem, Pseudo-Dionysius, 55, and Biblical and Liturgical Symbols, 66–73, 80–83. DN 2.8 (Suchla, 132; trans. Luibheid and Rorem, 64).

27

Dissimilar Similarities

recoding, through which this presence becomes transcribed every time it enters a new level. “The paradoxical implication is that God’s transcendence is realized precisely in Israel’s transcendence,” notes Novick in his analysis of Yannai’s apophatic language.43 I rather would argue that God’s transcendence is realized precisely in Israel’s immanence. Unlike Pseudo-Dionysius, Yannai never explicitly deals with the category of dissimilar similarity. Central to both authors, however, is the paradox of imaging the transcendental deity by means of a sign system legible to human beings. In contrast to PseudoDionysius, Yannai does not use the dichotomy between the material and intelligible, but the function of Israel as God’s demut is similar to the function of Dionysian material images. In both cases, we deal with a scenario of hermeneutical transfer that allows the epistemically opaque deity to become legible within an alternative set of signifiers. These signifiers “share what cannot be shared” with the object of their signification, that is, God. In Bornert’s words, “si le signe et l’objet signifié sont réellements distincts, ils participent l’un à l’autre. La dimension invisible du signe se manifeste à travers son revêtement sensible.”44 It should come as no surprise, then, that the language of signification features prominently in Yannai. Israel’s role as God’s demut manifests itself primarily in how the two of them share names, attributes, and designations. “In every way they praise You, You praise them // and by every name they call You, You call them,” states the payyetan as he elaborates on the Israel’s relation to God. “With the strength with which we affirmed You, You affirmed us,” he continues a few verses later, “before we hallowed You, You made us holy.”45 43 44

45

Novick, “Who Resembles You,” 275. Bornert, Commentaires, 55: “Even though the sign and the object which it signifies are in reality different, they participate in one another. The invisible dimension of a sign manifests itself through its sensible cover” (my translation). Rabinovitz, Liturgical Poems, vol. 1, 319, lines 15, and 19–20; trans. Lieber, “Exegesis of Love,” 96.

28

Dissimilar Similarities

Pseudo-Dionysius, notes Bissera Pentcheva, “depicts mirroring as the energy structuring the cosmos.”46 For him, the divine likeness of either angelic or human hierarchy is directly linked to that hierarchy’s imitation of God’s activities (energeiai). As mentioned earlier, the Dionysian hierarchy “is a sacred order, a state of understanding and an activity (energeia) approximating as closely as possible to the divine.”47 The goal of every member of the hierarchy, therefore, consists in “imitating God as far as possible” and becoming “a reflection of the workings of God”: “Indeed for every member of the hierarchy, perfection consists in this, that it is uplifted to imitate God as far as possible and, more wonderful still, that it becomes what scripture calls a “fellow workman for God” [cf. 1 Corinthians 3:9, and 1 Thessalonians 3:2] and a reflection of the workings of God.”48 In keeping with the concept of “dissimilar similarity,” the hierarchy offers a situation in which God’s activities articulated in the language of human senses become an important mode of hermeneutical transfer.49 By transcribing God’s energeiai within an alternative sign system, the human hierarchy creates a condition in which God becomes semiotically and semantically “approximated” to the language of human senses, and, as a result, the imitation of God’s workings becomes possible. For Yannai, the common designation of God and Israel also manifests itself through a series of common attributes, which are functionally similar to the Dionysian energeiai. The payyetan, Lieber notes, understands holiness as “an attribute of action.”50 In both cases we deal with a new hermeneutic condition in which God 46 47

48 49 50

Pentcheva, Hagia Sophia, 156. CH 3.1 (Heil and Ritter, 17; trans. Luibheid and Rorem, 153). On the Neoplatonic and patristic context of the term energeia, see Bradshaw, Aristotle, 138–42, and 172–78, Schibille, Hagia Sophia, 208–9, and Larchet, La théologie des énergies divines. CH 3.2 (Heil and Ritter, 18; trans. Luibheid and Rorem, 154). See Rorem, Pseudo-Dionysius, 58. Lieber, Yannai, 246, and, more broadly, 241–47.

29

Dissimilar Similarities

can be transcribed in accordance with a new set of semiotic norms. A qedushta intended for recitation in the time of Passover lists a series of attributes applied interchangeably to God and Israel: Being that He is a holy God / and they are a holy people // Being that He is a great God / and they are a great people Being that He is a unique God [‫ ]אל מיוחד‬/ and they one people [‫ ]גוי אחד‬// Being that He resembles [‫ ]דומה‬them / and they resemble [‫ ]דומים‬Him Being that He is called by their name / and they are called by His name // His name is like their name [‫ ]שמו כשמם‬/ and their name like His name [‫]ושמם כשמו‬ He will rejoice in them / and they will rejoice in Him // In the joy of the holy Sanctuary51

Here, as in the qedushta for Exodus 19:6 and with the help of the same toolkit of formulas, Yannai describes Israel by using language otherwise associated by Scripture with God and, at the same time, describes God by using language, associated with Israel. The two of them share the same name, as well as the attributes of greatness, holiness, and oneness. Yet another qedushta, this time expounding the promise in Leviticus 19:2, “You shall be holy, for I, the Lord your God, am holy,” also invites the audience to consider the relationship between God and Israel in terms of their semblance: “Who is like you, and who is like your people? Who resembles you? But they resemble you.”52 Novick interprets the phrase as indicative of “the possibility that Israel’s incomparability paradoxically limits God’s own incomparability,” but I think the implications here go beyond that.53 Israel’s and God’s names are equal (‫)ושמות שוים לך ולהם‬, 51

52

53

Rabinovitz, Liturgical Poems, vol. 2, 278, lines 50–53; trans. Lieber, Vocabulary of Desire, 221–22, with modifications. Cf. Novick, “Who Resembles You,” 264. Lieber’s commentary offers an excellent introduction to the poem’s setting and main themes. See Lieber, Vocabulary of Desire, 251–63, esp. 258–59. Rabinovitz, Liturgical Poems, vol. 1, 444, line 2; trans. Novick, “Who Resembles You,” 267. Novick, “Who Resembles You,” 267.

30

Dissimilar Similarities

continues the payyetan, since Israel is named after God (‫)נקראו לשמך‬, and God is named after Israel (‫)ונקראתה לשמם‬. The two, moreover, share the same attribute of holiness.54 In the Dionysian language, the two “share what cannot be shared” by sharing common energeiai. Israel becomes the signifier, through which God can be inscribed within a new sign situation. In the course of the sixth and seventh centuries, this technique would become well established in rabbinic prose as well. A midrashic commentary to the Song of Songs, composed during that period and known as Song of Songs Rabbah, uses similar rhetoric to describe God and Israel through a long list of attributes and activities that situates the two of them within a semantic field defined by a series of shared characteristics. The midrash applies the same vocabulary (some of it closely related to the vocabulary used by Yannai) to both protagonists, although, in contrast to Yannai, it never refers to Israel as God’s image.55 In another and seemingly unrelated section, however, the midrash describes God as Israel’s “twin sister” (‫)תאומתי‬, one of them not being greater than the other, and thus intimates the image-like relationship between the two.56 What emerges, as a result, is a semiotic and semantic field in which the two otherwise incommensurate beings can be reciprocally identified and, hence, formed by means of common attributes. Yannai’s decision to refer to Israel as elohim in the qedushta for Exodus 19:6 must be understood in this broader rhetorical and conceptual context. Like other designations shared by God and Israel, the name 54

55 56

Rabinovitz, Liturgical Poems, vol. 1, 445, lines 4–7. On these lines, see Rabinovitz, n. 4–6, Bronznick, Liturgical Poetry, vol. 1, 240, and vol. 2, 118, and Yahalom, Poetry and Society, 194–95. See Song Rab. 2.16.1 (Dunsky, 227–31). Cf. Lieber, “Exegesis of Love,” 83–84, on midrash. Song Rab. 5.2.2 (Dunsky, 375; the reading is consistent across manuscripts, see the online Midrash Project of the Schechter Institute of Jewish Studies: www.schechter​ .ac.il/mifalhamidrash). For a similar theme in Yannai, see Rabinovitz, Liturgical Poems, vol. 2, 282, lines 105–9. On Israel as God’s twin, see Fishbane, Biblical Myth, 164–65, 365, and Lieber, Vocabulary of Desire, 259.

31

Dissimilar Similarities

elohim represents a case of hermeneutical transfer that allows God and Israel to be imaged through one another.

Image’s Many Aspects Pseudo-Dionysius and Yannai were writing at a time when church and synagogue communities across the Roman East increasingly used image as a rhetorical device to narrate and perform themselves. The Cherubic Hymn, which according to the twelfth-century historian George Kedrenus was added to the eucharistic celebration by Justin II in 573–74, illustrates this tendency. Sung as the gifts are being transferred to the altar in the ceremony of the Great Entrance, the hymn establishes the celebrating community as an image of God’s heavenly retinue: “We who mystically represent the Cherubim [hoi ta Cheroubeim mystikos eikonizontes] and sing the thrice-holy hymn to the life-giving Trinity, let us lay aside all worldly care to receive the King of All escorted unseen by the angelic hosts. Alleluia.” In the transfer of the gifts, the community becomes a reflection and assumes the identity of angelic procession. When Pseudo-Dionysius and Yannai describe their respective audiences as God’s liturgically performed image, they do so within the same horizon of expectations.57 The two versions of image discourse offered by Pseudo-Dionysius and Yannai realize two scenarios, two possibilities, which are, to quote Sewell, “shaped and constrained by the structurally available forms of thought and practice.”58 The two authors do so, however, in distinctly different rhetorical formats. The attention of PseudoDionysius to biblical and liturgical symbols is only one aspect of his much broader ontology concerned primarily with the relationships 57

58

Kedrenos, Compendium Historiarum (PG 121:748B). On the hymn, see Krueger, “Christian Piety,” 295–96, Gador-Whyte, Theology and Poetry, 158–59, and, in more detail, Taft, Great Entrance, 53–118. For a broader liturgical context, see Muehlberger, Angels, 176–202, on Christian texts, and Ahuvia, On My Right Michael, 124–33, on Yannai. Sewell, Logics of History, 251.

32

Image’s Many Aspects

between God and the created universe. Despite their interest in the workings of liturgical community, his writings were never intended for actual performance in the liturgical setting. Nor, in fact, did they have the liturgical community as their focus. As Pseudo-Dionysius contemplates the hierarchies’ meaning, his narrative unfolds with the outflow of the divine light. The author follows the light’s emergence from its source, the descent through the ranks of the angelic and human hierarchies, associated with the variety of light’s hermeneutic modes, and finally the return to God. This dynamic of “procession and return” has long been recognized as central to the Dionysian oeuvre, helping situate the author within the context of Neoplatonic thought of his day. It also helps shape the hierarchies’ rhetoric. The opening line of The Celestial Hierarchy sets the tone for the rest of the treatise: “Inspired by the Father, each procession of the Light spreads itself generously toward us, and, in its power to unify, it stirs us by lifting us up. It returns us back to the oneness and deifying simplicity of the Father who gathers us in.”59 The narrative’s vantage point is that of the divine Source, from and back to which proceeds the outflow of light. Described from the perspective of God’s transcendental being, the hermeneutic situations, in which God’s beauty finds itself on its descent through the cosmos’s increasingly material layers, are necessary accommodations to the limited capacity of the human mind to perceive the intelligible. Material symbols and images are there to guide human minds upward, but at some point during the ascent these images have to be transcended to allow for the increasingly more intelligible means of encountering the divine. For Pseudo-Dionysius, the intelligible is infinitely superior to the material in its ontological status. The purpose of image is to create 59

CH 1.1 (Heil and Ritter, 7; trans. Luibheid and Rorem, 145). On the Neoplatonic context, in addition to Perl’s and Cohen’s works, mentioned earlier, see Wear and Dillon, Dionysius the Areopagite, 51–73. Cohen, Formes théologiques, 15, n. 10, provides a helpful list of references to earlier literature.

33

Dissimilar Similarities

a hermeneutic circumstance in which the materiality of symbol is gradually eliminated. The beholder’s goal always remains to “recognize the stamps of which these things are impressions and the invisible things of which they are images.”60 The principle of “dissimilar similarity,” laid out earlier in the chapter, is important not so much because it allows us to transcribe the intelligible within an alternative sign system, but because, through its incongruity, it helps the human mind overcome that system’s material signifiers. The transposition of the intelligible is there not because of its own intrinsic value, but as the necessary means of elevating the otherwise unwieldy human mind to the intelligible Source of all being.61 Yannai wrote his poetry for synagogue services. In contrast to Pseudo-Dionysius, his texts were designed to be part of the material performance of liturgical signs, rather than a philosophical exposition of meanings behind such a performance. As Lieber notes in connection with the qedushta for Deuteronomy 6:4, on which more shortly, “the assertion that ‘the Lord is one’ is not passively accepted but affirmed through enactment  – as the community responded with ‘one,’ it became one. Instead of being spoken to, the congregation here speaks even as they are spoken for.”62 The programmatic inferiority of the material vis-à-vis the intelligible was not the language in which Yannai’s audience chose to perform its identity. Whether this had to do with the general lack of familiarity with the basic categories of Neoplatonism, or the conscious choice to eschew these categories, must remain an open question. For Yannai, the vantage point is unambiguously human. The payyetan speaks as a 60 61

62

EH 2.3.2 (Heil and Ritter, 74; trans. Luibheid and Rorem, 204). See CH 2:3 (Heil and Ritter, 12–13). For discussion, see Roques, L’univers dionysien, 200–9, and Rorem, Biblical and Liturgical Symbols, 89–90, 103–5, and 110–16. The Dionysian discourse on the function of material images does not easily translate into the Byzantine image theory as the latter developed in the course of the seventh and eighth centuries. See Meyendorff, Christ, 176, Thümmel, Bilderlehre, 34, and Louth, “St. Denys the Areopagite,” 329–39, esp. 329–32. Lieber, “Rhetoric of Participation,” 126.

34

Image’s Many Aspects

messenger of the liturgical community of Israel, addressing both the community and God and seeking to identify the two by invoking their reciprocal relationship. Yannai’s poetry, therefore, is an invocation rather than a description. To paraphrase Lieber, image for him “is not an idea but an enacted reality.”63 Rather than merely imagining the community as God’s reflective mirror, a hermeneutic receptacle of divine light, the payyetan invents language that constructs both God and the community in their relation to one another, so that God becomes the object of community’s constitutive gaze. To that end, the poet uses one and the same vocabulary to describe God and collective Israel. Just as God is one and eternal, so too Israel is one and eternal people; just as God is a great God, so too Israel is a great people; and just as God is holy, Israel is a holy people. The actions of God and Israel are also described through the language of reciprocity: In every way Israel praises God, God also praises Israel; by every name Israel calls God, God also calls Israel; and just as Israel proclaims God king at the crossing of the Red Sea, so too God crowns Israel at Sinai. Yannai seeks to create language that would allow the liturgical community to self-identify as God’s material image, “resembling Him” (‫ )ודימיתם לך‬and “equal to Him” (‫)והשװיתם לך‬. At a later uncertain date, a midrash, associated with the late antique and medieval corpus of exegetical traditions known as the Tanhuma-Yelammedenu, would further develop some of the themes central to Yannai. The midrash comments on Genesis 1:1, the verse traditionally understood to mean “in the beginning God created heaven and earth,” but which can also be read literally as “in the beginning created God heaven and earth”: “In the beginning God created” (Genesis 1:1). Fools say: “God created the beginning.” But it is not so. Why? God said: “The owner of a ship is not called naukleros unless he has a ship. Thus I cannot be 63

Lieber, “Rhetoric of Participation,” 127. For observations on broader liturgical context, see Neis, “Embracing Icons,” 53–54.

35

Dissimilar Similarities called God unless I have created a world for Myself. Thus, “In the beginning created,” and then “God.”64

The midrash interprets Genesis 1:1 to mean that God can be recognized as such only in relation to the created world, or, as Michael D. Swartz puts it, “that God in fact needs to be created in order to be God.”65 Swartz further notes that this view of the created nature of God’s existence is directly related to the piyyutim’s portrayal of God as someone who is in need of liturgically performed praise. Yannai’s poetry plays precisely such a role, as it constructs God in relation to Israel and Israel in relation to God by situating the two of them in the common field of signs. Like M. C. Escher’s Drawing Hands, God and Israel create each other in the simultaneous and reciprocal act of signification. For Pseudo-Dionysius, by contrast, the image makes no impact on God’s transcendental being, even though it does create a modality in which God exists in relation to human cognition. Within the broader principles of Neoplatonism, God can be said to exist only when He can be cognitively apprehended, for, in the words of Perl, “the foundational principle of Neoplatonic thought is the doctrine that to be is to be intelligible.”66 Otherwise, God is beyond being. In that sense, the image offers a situation in which the divinity beyond existence emerges into existence, both epistemic and ontological, through the constitutive human gaze, just as midrash’s God does. And yet the purpose of the Dionysian system is to transcend this material mode of God’s self-articulation by going back, as far as possible, to its superessential Source. There is no intrinsic value attached to the material and, hence, always inadequate transposition of the divine. In accordance with the principle of dissimilar similarity, “we cannot say that God is similar” to his material images and likenesses 64

65 66

Urbach, “Seride Tanhuma-Yelamedenu,” 12; trans. Swartz, Signifying Creator, 27, with modifications. Swartz, Signifying Creator, 26. See Perl, Theophany, 5, and, in general, 5–16.

36

The Mystagogy

“any more than we can say that man is similar to his own portrait.”67 The relationship between the portrait and its original, in other words, is the exact opposite of Escher’s Drawing Hands. Whereas Israel, in its capacity as God’s image, becomes constitutive of the “Original,” by transcribing the Original within its own mode of self-narration, the Dionysian transposition is meant to negate itself, as it enables the human mind to ascend to the intelligible (and, for Pseudo-Dionysius, ontologically superior) levels of existence. Our authors speak a common conceptual language but, as they do, actualize different valences contained within it.

The Mystagogy In the early 630s, Maximus Confessor, a prominent Christian thinker of the day and admirer of Pseudo-Dionysius, wrote a commentary on the eucharistic liturgy. Called The Church’s Mystagogy, the commentary belongs to the same genre of liturgical contemplation as the Dionysian Ecclesiastical Hierarchy. As time went on, Maximus’s Mystagogy was destined to become one of the classics of this type of literature that would help shape much of the subsequent eastern Christian discourse on the subject.68 Maximus was born in around 580 and thus could very well be Yannai’s late contemporary. The first several decades of his life remain a mystery. There are two radically different accounts of Maximus’s early years, one of which identifies Constantinople as the place of his birth and early career, and the other places him in Palestine. He became a monk, probably early in his life, although the circumstances are described differently in each account. 67 68

DN 9.6 (Suchla, 211–12; trans. Luibheid and Rorem, 117). Bornert, Commentaires, 90–97. On the Mystagogy’s date, see Jankowiak and Booth, “A New Date-List,” 30. For further observations on the genre of theoria, see Larchet, Divinisation de l’homme, 488–93.

37

Dissimilar Similarities

Consequently, Maximus’s own thought would develop in conversation with distinctly monastic themes, as well as broader theological and philosophical concerns of the day. He spent extended periods of time living in Palestine, North Africa, and Rome. As a result of his active involvement in the controversy about the respective role of human and divine wills in the person of Christ and his refusal to support an emperor-sponsored doctrine, Maximus was exiled to Lazica (present-day Georgia), where he died in 662.69 In the introduction to the Mystagogy, Maximus describes his tractate as following in the footsteps of the Dionysian Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, a claim that has been received with a degree of skepticism in modern scholarship.70 The relationship between the two works is complex and reflects the changing intellectual landscape of the eastern Roman world between the early sixth and early seventh centuries. This complexity, however, allows us to trace the concept of image in early Byzantine thought as a range of modulations across the writings of several generations of authors. Yannai’s liturgical poetry adds another vector to this range. In form and function, the works of Yannai and Maximus belong to different genres. Maximus composed the Mystagogy as a transcript of his lecture about the symbolism of the eucharistic liturgy, following a request from a listener who wanted to have the written text “as a remedy against forgetfulness and as an aid for the memory.”71 Intended for performance during the service, Yannai’s poetry is different from Maximus’s exposition of liturgy’s symbolic meanings, just as Yannai’s poetry is different from the Dionysian Hierarchy, Maximus’s most immediate forerunner. I would argue, however, 69

70

71

For a good introduction to sources on Maximus’s biography, see Allen, “Life and Times,” 3–18, esp. 10–14, and Booth, Crisis of Empire, 143–55. Booth offers a forceful argument in support of Maximus’s Palestinian origins. On the importance of monastic context, see Plested, “Ascetic Tradition,” 164–76. See Rorem, Pseudo-Dionysius, 121–22, Louth, “Reception of Dionysius in the Byzantine World,” 60–63, and De Andia, “Pseudo-Dionysius,” 186–91. Myst. (Boudignon, 4, lines 14–15; trans. Berthold, 183).

38

The Mystagogy

that some of the methods and underlying concerns behind Yannai’s and Maximus’s work are similar. For both Yannai and Maximus, actions, gestures, and signs performed during liturgy become an object of interpretive contemplation, which, in both cases, draws heavily on exegetical methods initially developed for the elucidation of Scripture’s hidden meanings. By doing so, Yannai and Maximus construct language in which their respective liturgical communities can describe themselves. For both authors, the rhetoric of image constitutes an important part of that language. The Mystagogy’s first chapter opens with a reflection on the church as God’s material image. In the words of Maximus, “Holy Church bears the imprint [typon] and image [eikona] of God since it has the same activity [energeian] as he does by imitation [kata mimesin] and in figure [typon].”72 In the letter on the physical composition of the resurrected human body, written in around 628 and thus roughly contemporaneous with the Mystagogy, Maximus offers his definition of image. He does so by partly repeating and partly amplifying the definition provided two and a half centuries earlier by Gregory, bishop of Nyssa in Cappadocia (ca. 335–ca. 394). When talking about the relationship of likeness (as opposed to sameness) between the human mind and the divine nature, Gregory notes: That which is made in the image of something else must keep in every respect a similarity to its archetype. The likeness of the intellectual is intellectual. The likeness of the bodiless is bodiless, freed from all weight and escaping all dimensional measurement like its archetype, but different from it according to the particular property of its nature. For it would not be an image if it were the same as its original in all respects.73 72

73

Myst. 1 (Boudignon, 10, lines 129–31; trans. Berthold, 186). For a good introduction to the concept of image in Maximus, see Larchet, Divinisation de l’homme, 151–65. For a brief but perceptive analysis of the passage, see Pentcheva, Hagia Sophia, 84–85. Gregory of Nyssa, On the Soul and the Resurrection (Spira, 26, lines 12–17; trans. Roth, 45).

39

Dissimilar Similarities

Being an image of something else presupposes not just similarity but also distinction “according to the particular property of its nature [ten tes physeos idioteta].” Image is always the reinscription of an object from one condition to another, and therefore is never fully identical with its archetype. Gregory offers an example of glass reflecting the sunlight to illustrate his point: “Often in a small fragment of glass, when it happens to lie in the sunlight, the whole circle of the sun is seen, not appearing in it according to its own size, but as the smallness of the fragment allows the reflection of the sun’s circle.”74 Just as the sun reflected in glass is not identical with the actual celestial body but represents a modulation of the sun’s light reconfigured in accordance with the new set of optical principles, so too does the image represent a new semiotic configuration of the archetype. As Gerhart Ladner puts it, image is “a blend of like and unlike, same and other.”75 Maximus adds further nuances to Gregory’s statement. Image has the likeness of its archetype, and this likeness is understood by Maximus as a range of common characteristics by which the image and the archetype can be described. We identify the image by using the archetype’s characteristics. Hence, the image of the immortal is immortal, the image of the invisible is invisible, and the image of the bodiless is bodiless. These characteristics are shared by the image with its archetype, yet the two are different by their nature (physis). Otherwise, says Maximus, the two would no longer be in the relationship of the archetype and image, but indistinguishable identity.76 For Maximus, notes Bornert, “l’image reproduit toute la forme (morphe) de l’archétype; mais elle n’en contient pas l’espèce (eidos).”77 74 75 76

77

Gregory of Nyssa, On the Soul and the Resurrection (Spira, 27, lines 1–4; trans. Roth, 45). Ladner, “Concept of the Image,” 12. Maximus Confessor, Ep. 6 (PG 91:429B; my translation). On this passage, see Larchet, Divinisation de l’homme, 153–54. For similar observations in Maximus’s other writings, see Larchet, 634. On the letter’s date and provenance, see Jankowiak and Booth, “New Date-List,” 31–32. Bornert, Commentaires, 115: “The image replicates the entirety of the archetype’s form (morphe), but it does not contain its substance (eidos)” (my translation).

40

The Mystagogy

Image is a material transposition of the divine archetype and, as such, while different in eidos (a polyvalent term, understood by Maximus to mean “kind” or “nature”), possesses the archetype’s activity “by imitation and in figure.” In the words of Lars Thunberg, “Maximus speaks about a relationship of transference between the intelligible and the sensible levels of the created order.”78 What characterizes the church’s status as God’s image is precisely its participation in and display of God’s activity (energeia).79 “It is in this way that the holy Church of God will be shown to be working for us the same effects [energousa] as God, in the same way as the image reflects its archetype”: Maximus reiterates his main thesis as he proceeds to describe that which constitutes, in his opinion, the foremost common activity of God and the church, that is, the state of unity among the church’s members.80 For Maximus, the activity generated by the church in imitation of the church’s divine archetype manifests itself above all in the act of unification. God functions as a unifying principle behind his creation. In God, created beings come together in “a common and unconfused identity of movement and existence.”81 Just as God unifies the created universe around himself, so too does the church create a new type of unity out of its members’ diversity. The unity of the church reflects

78 79

80

81

Zhivov, “‘Mistagogiya,’” 117–20, adds important nuances to Bornert’s observation. See also Larchet, Divinisation de l’homme, 404–5. The present analysis develops in dialogue with these works. Thunberg, Microcosm, 27. On the category of energeia in Maximus, see Larchet, Théologie des énergies divines, 331–421. On Maximus’s views on energeia as a step toward the eighth-century image theory developed by John of Damascus in the midst of iconoclastic debates, see Zhivov, “‘Mistagogiya,’” 349–51, and 373–74. Cf., however, Thümmel, Bilderlehre, 34, 45–46, 60–62, 98–99, and 105–6, who treats the energeia discourse of John of Damascus as a conceptual novelty triggered by the debates. Thümmel never mentions Maximus. Myst. 1 (Boudignon, 12, lines 163–65; trans. Berthold, 187). See Bornert, Commentaires, 119. Myst. 1 (Boudignon, 11, lines 138–39; trans. Berthold, 186).

41

Dissimilar Similarities

the divine unity and thus serves as a material transposition of the intelligible oneness. Maximus sums up his view as follows: Thus, as has been said, the holy Church of God is an image of God because it realizes [energousa] the same union of the faithful with God. As different as they are by characteristics, places, and customs, they are made one by it through faith. God is disposed to realize [energein] this union among the natures of things without confusing them but in lessening and bringing together their distinction, as was shown, in a relationship and union with himself as cause, principle, and end.82

Maximus’s language here derives from the language of PseudoDionysius, who also sees the liturgically performed unity of the church as an image of God’s ontological condition. “Every sacred initiating operation draws our fragmented lives together into a one-like divinization,” notes Dionysius in his exposition of the Eucharist; “it forges a divine unity out of the divisions within us. It grants us communion and union with the One.”83 In line with his broader line of argument, however, Pseudo-Dionysius understands the Eucharist as yet another symbol intended to uplift human beings through and beyond the material to the intelligible. For him, in the words of Rorem, “the sacramental descent into perceptible plurality results in a conceptual ascent to the simplicity and unity of the higher, divine realm.”84 With Maximus, there is a subtle shift in focus. The language of uplifting procession from the material to the intelligible so prominent in Pseudo-Dionysius is marginal in 82 83

84

Myst. 1 (Boudignon, 14, lines 199–206; trans. Berthold, 187–88, with modifications). EH 3.1 (Heil and Ritter, 79; trans. Luibheid and Rorem, 209). See also DN 1.4 (Suchla, 112). On the Dionysian understanding of the Eucharist, see Roques, L’univers dionysien, 256–71, and Rorem, Pseudo-Dionysius, 99–104. Cf. Golitzin, Mystagogy, 261–72. Golitzin reads Pseudo-Dionysius anachronistically through Maximus’s and post-Maximus conceptual lenses. In doing so, however, Golitzin highlights important dynamics in the development of some of the Dionysian themes. For a good summary of differences between Pseudo-Dionysius and Maximus, see Thunberg, Man and the Cosmos, 157–73. Rorem, Pseudo-Dionysius, 104.

42

The Rhetoric of Oneness

the Mystagogy. When Maximus describes the church’s unity as a material transposition of God’s being, this transposition assumes independent value as a condition of God’s existence, rather than just serving as a means to an end. Although different by nature, the church is isomorphic with its divine archetype and, as a result, shares in the archetype’s activity of unification. The church’s liturgical body, therefore, collectively constitutes God’s image, a sign system within which the intelligible can be articulated in the language of human senses. The Mystagogy’s image theology reflects the process of gradual ontological legitimization that images witnessed in the course of the sixth and seventh centuries.

The Rhetoric of Oneness Similar to the Mystagogy’s view of the church, Yannai considers Israel’s inner cohesion to be a function of Israel’s status as God’s material image. The theme already appears, if somewhat cursory, in the qedushta for Exodus 19:6. There, Israel’s unity as a people reflects God’s ontological oneness, just as the other qualities of Israel serve as images of God’s attributes. The same topic of God’s and Israel’s reciprocal oneness, however, becomes much more pronounced in the qedushta for Deuteronomy 6:4, the opening verse of another weekly Torah reading. Deuteronomy 6:4 is the proclamation of God’s oneness: “Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God, the Lord is one.” Significantly for Yannai’s interpretation, in addition to starting the Torah reading, the verse also serves as the opening statement in the recitation of the Shema, a string of three biblical texts, Deuteronomy 6:4–9, 11:13–21, and Numbers 15:37–41, used as a creed and recited twice daily during morning and evening prayers. Consequently, the qedushta for Deuteronomy 6:4 focuses on the Shema and unfolds by unpacking a range of meanings associated with the Shema’s recitation. “The overarching theme of this piyyut is God’s oneness,” notes Lieber in her commentary; “indeed, radical 43

Dissimilar Similarities

‘oneness’ unites God and Israel in a powerful, reciprocal fashion.”85 Structurally, the rhetoric of oneness unifies the poem by creating “a sense of ellipsis,” as the same theme reappears “multiple times, acquiring new tonalities and nuances with each repetition.”86 The piyyut’s vocabulary closely resembles that of the qedushta for Exodus 19:6. In particular, the two compositions share interest in the theme of Israel as God’s liturgical image (demut). The poem starts as follows: You are one – who can dissuade You? // You are alone – none can I compare with You The people that You made equal to its King // You made to resemble You in Your dwelling87

The first line opens with an allusion to Job 23:13: “He is one; who can dissuade Him? Whatever He desires, He does.” The allusion serves to proclaim God’s ontological otherness, an opening theme equally prominent in the qedushta for Exodus 19:6. In both poems, Yannai introduces God as being completely unique and beyond comparison, and hence incommensurate with human reason. The first line’s second half now brings into conversation Deuteronomy 6:4: the opening verse of the weekly Torah reading and the Shema’s statement of God’s radical oneness. By juxtaposing Job 23:13 and Deuteronomy 6:4, Yannai makes clear to his listeners that it is precisely God’s ontological solitude that puts him outside and beyond any reference model of human epistemology. God cannot be adequately measured 85 86

87

Lieber, “Themes and Variations,” 190. See also Lieber, “Rhetoric of Participation,” 123–27. Lieber, “Themes and Variations,” 183. For an alternative translation and analysis, cf. Van Bekkum and Katsumata, “Piyyut as Poetics,” 83–107. Rabinovitz, Liturgical Poems, vol. 2, 138, lines 1–2; trans. Lieber, “Themes and Variations,” 190, with important modifications. I follow here Rabinovitz’s reading of the qedushta’s second line. Lieber, 190, follows Bronznick, Liturgical Poetry, vol. 1, 350–51, and reads the line’s opening phrase as “the nation that established You as its King.” Novick, “Who Resembles You,” 274, also follows Bronznick. He translates the line as “the people that made you its king.”

44

The Rhetoric of Oneness

or described because nothing can be compared to him. God is a self-contained epistemic category lacking recourse to anything outside itself and hence completely opaque to human gaze.88 This initial statement about God’s radical difference, however, only serves to introduce Yannai’s further observation about Israel’s unique role as God’s material image. To talk about Israel as God’s likeness, Yannai uses the same set of two verbs, ‫ דמה‬and ‫שװה‬, as in the qedushta for Exodus 19:6 and other piyyutim, discussed earlier in the chapter.89 Israel is the people that God “made equal to its king [‫]גוי אשר מלכו שיוך‬,” and “made resemble You [‫ ]דימיתה לך‬in Your dwelling [‫]ביישובך‬.” Rabinovitz’s commentary recognizes the ambiguity of the reference, since the dwelling place in this context can be understood as both God’s dwelling place in heaven and Israel’s dwelling place on earth.90 The space inhabited by Israel becomes, at once, a space inhabited by God, who is now spatially determined through Israel’s medium, and hence becomes legible in relation to space that Israel inhabits. With Israel as God’s image, God no longer seems as incongruous with the measuring systems of human epistemology as it appeared to be the case in the qedushta’s first line, a recurrent theme in Yannai’s work explored also in the qedushta for Exodus 19:6. Immediately after describing the people of Israel as God’s image “equal to its King,” Yannai introduces the language of oneness in the closing lines of the qedushta’s first stanza: You established their unification equal to Your unification // You made their designation resemble Your designation 88

89

90

For further details on the function of apophatic language in Yannai’s works, including the qedushta for Deuteronomy 6:4, see Novick, “Who Resembles You,” 269–74. Bronznick, Liturgical Poetry, vol. 1, 350–51, recognizes the piyyut’s conceptual affinity with the qedushta for Exodus 19:6. Rabinovitz, Liturgical Poems, vol. 2, 138, n. 2. Bronznick, Liturgical Poetry, vol. 1, 351, followed by Lieber, 190, oversimplifies the meaning by reading the “dwelling” as a straightforward reference to Israel’s dwelling on earth. Cf. Novick, “Who Resembles You,” 274–75, n. 28.

45

Dissimilar Similarities You admonished them to serve You in awe // In writhing and trembling to bear witness to You91

Israel’s equality to its King, just announced by Yannai, translates on a more concrete level into Israel’s unification made equal to God’s unification (‫ )הישוויתה ייחודם לייחודך‬and Israel’s designation made to resemble God’s designation (‫)ודמיתה ייעודם לייעודך‬. 92 The word ‫ייחוד‬, “unification,” accrues meaning along two semantic vectors. On one level, it refers to Israel’s inner unity formed in the moment of saying the Shema, and, on another, to God’s ontological oneness declared in the Shema. The two meanings come together as the payyetan reads ‫ ייחוד‬in cross-pollinating semantic registers as, simultaneously, the unification of Israel and unification of God. The shared condition of oneness translates into God’s and Israel’s shared “designation” (‫ )ייעוד‬in the line’s second half. Bronznick interprets this statement as a reference to the fact that both God and Israel are called “one” in the Hebrew Bible. Lieber adds that the shared designation may also refer “to the inclusion of the theomorphic element –el (‘God’) in the name Israel.”93 The result, in either case, is a common semantic field in which the two beings become legible in relation to each other. To use Pentcheva’s language, both Yannai and Maximus understand the liturgical community as God’s “performative image,” that is, “an image engendered through a participation in the liturgy.”94 The liturgical community’s coming together at the moment of 91

92

93

94

Rabinovitz, Liturgical Poems, vol. 2, 138, lines 3–4; trans. Lieber, “Themes and Variations,” 190, with important modifications. See Van Bekkum and Katsumata, “Piyyut as Poetics,” 97–98. Van Bekkum and Katsumata, however, translate ‫ ייעוד‬as “destiny,” rather than “designation.” As a result, the focus of their analysis shifts to God’s and Israel’s “mutual need for each other” (98), rather than the process of God’s and Israel’s mutual signification. The latter, in my opinion, constitutes a central theme of this verse. See Lieber, “Themes and Variations,” 207, n. 140, and Bronznick, Liturgical Poetry, vol. 1, 351. Cf. Rabinovitz, Liturgical Poems, vol. 2, 138, n. 3. Pentcheva, Hagia Sophia, 76, and, more broadly, 76–85.

46

The Rhetoric of Oneness

either the recitation of the Shema or the Eucharist functions as the image of God’s ontological condition of unity. The ranges of meaning that Yannai and Maximus associate with the concept of unity, however, do not entirely overlap. Maximus’s God exists in relation to the created universe, and God’s activity of unification manifests itself in relation to all the created beings by drawing them together: “Maintaining about himself as cause, beginning, and end all beings which are by nature distant from one another, he makes them converge in each other by the singular force of their relationship to him as origin.”95 It is this activity of unification, drawing God and creation together, that becomes replicated in the church. The latter, in the words of Maximus, gives to its members “a single, simple, whole, and indivisible condition which does not allow us to bring to mind the existence of the myriads of differences among them, even if they do exist, through the universal relationship and union of all things with it.”96 The activity of unification that binds together the multitude of church members serves as the image of the divine activity of unification that draws creation together. Yannai’s understanding of unification is more complex. Israel’s unity performed in the recitation of the Shema involves the activity of drawing together individual community members, just as the church’s unity performed in the Eucharist involves the activity of drawing together individual members of the church. In contrast to the Mystagogy, however, this activity of unification performed on the level of Israel finds no parallel in Yannai’s description of God. In the divine register, oneness implies solitude, uniqueness, but never the activity of uniting the creation. Maximus’s language goes back to the Dionysian and, more broadly, Neoplatonic image of

95

96

Myst. 1 (Boudignon, 11, lines 135–38; trans. Berthold, 186). Cf. the image of God as the center of converging lines, used by Maximus later in the chapter (Boudignon, 13–14, lines 187–98). Myst. 1 (Boudignon, 12–13, lines 174–78; trans. Berthold, 187). Cf. Ambig. Io. 7 (PG 91:1092C Constas, vol. 1, 120).

47

Dissimilar Similarities

God as the center of the circle.97 In this view, God exists in relation to the creation as the center exists in relation to the circle’s periphery. The activity of unification draws the periphery toward the center and the creation toward God. Yannai shares the language of community’s unification, but not the language of God as the center of the circle and, hence, the created universe. Yannai’s God is absolutely nonrelational except when revealed in Israel. As a result, Israel’s condition of oneness is not exclusively determined by activity of unification among the community members. In parallel to God’s ontological and semiotic solitude, Israel is also completely unique and self-referential. This notion of uniqueness is an important semantic nuance implied in the forms of ehad and yahid, used by Yannai to describe both God and Israel.98 Except for God’s radical oneness, there is no other frame of reference in relation to which Israel could be adequately known, just as, except for Israel’s radical oneness, there is no frame of reference in relation to which God could be adequately known. Israel’s status as the unique people becomes the only means of placing God’s nonreferential being within a referencing system that would make God epistemically recognizable to human gaze. By accruing meaning in relation to Israel, God’s uniqueness turns from a form of concealment into a form of revelation. The semantic interplay between “unification” and “uniqueness,” characteristic of Yannai’s yahid, is missing from the Mystagogy’s language. The nuance of nonreferential oneness, important for Yannai’s rhetoric, does not register for Maximus. Whereas the work of the two authors develops within the same culturally delineated horizon of possibilities, the specific scenarios they choose to explore are different. 97 98

DN 5.6 (Suchla, 185). See Berthold, 217, n. 29, for further references. Rabinovitz, Liturgical Poems, vol. 2, 282, lines 105–6, explicitly associates God’s and Israel’s respective solitude and uniqueness. See Van Bekkum and Katsumata, “Piyyut as Poetics,” 97, n. 9, and 99, and Lieber, Vocabulary of Desire, 259.

48

Liturgical Community as God’s Image

Liturgical Community as God’s Image Yannai and Maximus use the category of image – called either eikon, in the case of Maximus, or demut, in the case of Yannai – to formulate identities for their respective liturgical audiences. For Maximus, addressing the Christian community, “Holy Church bears the imprint and image of God.” For Yannai, the liturgical community of Israel becomes “the people that You made equal to its king” and “made like You in Your dwelling place.” God’s demut, in the case of Yannai, like God’s eikon, in the case of Maximus, is more than a signifier indicative of, but otherwise unrelated to, the essence of God’s ontological being. Rather, in the words of Bornert, “l’image est d’une certaine façon ce qu’elle représente et, inversement, la chose signifiée existe dans sa représentation sensible.”99 The two authors understand image as a way for the radically transcendental God to be reinvented within a spatially delineated mode of existence. Both scenarios recognize what David Bradshaw describes as “a kind of reciprocal exchange of identities between God and man,” that is, the situation in which the human and the divine sides of the relationship become articulated in each other’s language.100 The attributes used by Yannai to describe God’s and Israel’s isomorphism are, therefore, functionally similar to Maximus’s energeiai, even though Yannai never uses the term itself. Just as the church is identified as God’s new modality, so too is Israel. Yannai shares with Maximus the fundamental understanding of how God’s image, embodied in a liturgical community, relates to its archetype. For both authors, to quote Maximus, “the image reflects its archetype” by “working the same effects.” The activity of unification performed by either the church, at the time of the Eucharist, or Israel, at the moment of saying the Shema, comes to be seen as an example 99

100

Bornert, Commentaires, 113: “In some way, the image is what it represents and, vice versa, the signified object exists in its sensible representation” (my translation). See, more recently, Krueger, Writing and Holiness, 6–7, and 163–64. Bradshaw, Aristotle, 199. On the language of reciprocity in Maximus, see also Thunberg, Microcosm, 23–36.

49

Dissimilar Similarities

of such an effect. In both scenarios, the two entities become isomorphic in their attributes and activities. In both scenarios, this isomorphism allows for a material transposition of the transcendental deity in the form of either Israel or the church. To use the words of Viktor Zhivov, Maximus and Yannai “affirmed something more than a representative relationship between icon and archetype: namely that the icon had the same force or energy as the archetype.”101 The two authors single out the activity of oneness and use it to imagine a sign system within which otherwise incommensurate beings can be described through a set of common characteristics. In both cases, a common activity is synonymous with a common designation. Yannai’s reference to Israel’s designation resembling God’s designation (‫ )ודמיתה ייעודם לייעודך‬echoes almost verbatim Maximus’s description of the church in the Mystagogy’s first chapter: “To all in equal measure it gives and bestows one divine form [theian morphen] and designation [prosegorian], to be Christ’s and to carry his name [to apo Christou kai einai kai onomazesthai].”102 What is different by nature becomes identical in “form and designation,” that is, within a common field of signifiers in which the name and activity of Israel become like the name and activity of God, whereas the church “carries” Christ’s name and realizes Christ’s unifying activity. In stanza six of the qedushta for Deuteronomy 6:4, Yannai further develops the theme of a shared designation of God and Israel, announced but never fully explored in the qedushta’s opening stanza: A nation whose name is called “Jews” // because they give thanks in the name of God In truth they are surnamed the only ones // because they constantly unify the Only One103 101 102 103

50

Zhivov, “Mystagogia,” 349–50. Myst. 1 (Boudignon, 14, lines 173–75; trans. Berthold, 187). Rabinovitz, Liturgical Poems, vol. 2, 143, lines 55–56; trans. Lieber, “Themes and Variations,” 193, with modifications. Cf. Fine, Art and Judaism, 203, for a slightly different rendering.

Liturgical Community as God’s Image

As noted by Lieber, Yannai interprets the name “Jews” (‫ )יהודים‬by associating it with both the root ‫( יחד‬to unify) and ‫( ידה‬to give thanks).104 Jews acquire their name and being as a liturgical community that “gives thanks in the name of God.” “They are surnamed the only ones [‫]יחידים‬,” continues Yannai, “because they constantly unify the Only One [‫]ליחיד מייחדים‬.” The payyetan reads the attribute of oneness on three levels as simultaneously the characterization of Israel (“the only ones”), God (“the Only One”), and the act of unification, performed in the Shema (“they constantly unify”). Toward the end of the qedushta, the theme is taken up one more time in a litany of mirror-like reflections. There Israel appears as “the holy ones and the hallowed ones who hallow You and are holy to You, hallowing the One and Unique in the mouth of the unique ones who unify.”105 What emerges is a sign system in which Israel and God become identified through a common set of attributes. To construct this system, Yannai uses a continuous range of modulations of a limited number of isomorphic linguistic forms.106 Like Maximus, Yannai understands image to be a semantic register identical with itself but also with the reality that exists outside that register’s structural boundaries. There is no indication that God’s and Israel’s shared characteristics imply full identity between the two by essence or, as Maximus would put it, by physis. Israel is not physically transformed into God. Rather, the identity is semiotic in character. It is the identity of activity, designation, and naming, 104 105

106

Lieber, “Themes and Variations,” 212, n. 196. Cf. Bronznick, Liturgical Poetry, vol. 1, 354. Rabinovitz, Liturgical Poems, vol. 2, 147, lines 95–96; trans. Lieber, “Themes and Variations,” 195, with modifications. Cf. Novick, “Who Resembles You,” 275, for a slightly different rendering. On Yannai’s technique of exploring “the semantic possibilities of a single root,” see Lieber, Yannai, 70, and, more broadly, 104–11, 122–24, and 266. As Lieber notes in connection with a different section of the same qedushta, “the poet uses the power of repetition to explore manifold aspects of unity” (Lieber, “Rhetoric of Participation,” 127). For further modulations of the same roots in Yannai’s other compositions, see Rabinovitz, Liturgical Poems, vol. 2, 257, line 53, and 282, lines 105–7.

51

Dissimilar Similarities

not unlike an imprint (the Greek typos or sphragis) that infuses matter with divine energeia.107 The nation’s name is called (‫)נקרא שמם‬ Jews, because they give thanks in the name of God (‫)בשם יה מודים‬. Jews are surnamed (‫ )ניתכנו‬the only ones, because they unify the Only One by reciting the Shema. It is the identity of attributes and activities, the attribute of oneness and the activity of unification being the most important ones. Jews are surnamed the only ones, because they unify the Only One (‫ ;)ליחיד מייחדים‬in other words, they perform the activity of unification. Sacrifices that were once offered in the temple in Jerusalem, Yannai tells us, also provided the means for the material reenactment of the divine. The qedushta for the holiday of Shemini Atzeret interprets the activity of sacrificing a bull and a ram, mandated in Numbers 29:36 for the eighth day after the holiday of Sukkot, as a series of cross-referential signifiers: Therefore, its offering is a unique one / of one bull and one ram // To unite together / into one people Those who unify You together / with one shoulder / one mouth / and one heart / one holy God108

The stanza is constructed, in Yannai’s hallmark fashion, around the modulations of the roots ehad and yahid, each modulation highlighting a particular aspect of God’s and Israel’s oneness.109 The sacrifice symbolizes the unity of the people of Israel, as they come together to unify one God, “with one shoulder, one mouth, and one heart.” The reference to one bull and one ram (‫)בפר אחד ואיל אחד‬, offered in a “unique sacrifice” (‫)קרבנו מיוחד‬, presents another level of description and another set of codes through which the same notion of oneness is conveyed. To paraphrase Herbert Kessler’s characterization of Byzantine visual art, the poem encompasses multiple 107 108 109

52

See Pentcheva, Sensual Icon, 28–36, 72–77, 83–88, and Hagia Sophia, 83, 154–55. Rabinovitz, Liturgical Poems, vol. 2, 230, lines 33–34; my translation. On the language of reciprocal oneness between God and Israel in the rest of the qedushta, see Bronznick, Liturgical Poetry, vol. 2, 226.

Liturgical Community as God’s Image

symbolic registers in a coherent and plausible narrative.110 Yannai interprets the sacrifice as a process of signification, a series of gestures, through which God’s ontological oneness can be materially reenacted, reinscribed, and staged as a performance, that is, in the words of Derek Krueger, “as reenactment with the power to reproduce the results of the original.”111 The sacrifice acquires a semiotic value. What emerges as a result is akin in its function not only to the recitation of the Shema in the qedushta for Deuteronomy 6:4 but also to the Mystagogy’s Eucharist. For Yannai, as for Maximus, the common designation and common activity imply the common form. In his Ambigua to John, another composition roughly contemporaneous with the Mystagogy, Maximus interprets the figure of Melchizedek, the enigmatic king of Salem who greets and blesses Abraham in Genesis 14:18–20, as a precursor of the model Christian saint. The king of Salem, Maximus says, “was named from those divine and blessed characteristics in the image of which he remade himself.”112 “Having been imbued with divine virtue,” adds Maximus later in the text, Melchizedek “was deemed worthy to become an image of Christ God.”113 The common attributes shared by God and God’s earthly image constitute that image as participating in God’s name and form, just as Yannai’s Israel participates in the name and oneness of God by virtue of its own unity publicly performed in the recitation of the Shema. “God and man are paradigms [paradeigmata] of each other,” remarks Maximus earlier in the same ambiguum, “so that as much as man, enabled by love, has divinized himself for God, to that same extent God is humanized for man by His love for mankind; and as much as man has manifested God who is invisible by nature through virtues, to that same extent man is rapt by God in mind 110 111

112 113

See Kessler, “‘Pictures Fertile with Truth,’” 54. Ambig. Io. 10 (PG 91:1141A; Constas, vol. 1, 218; trans. Constas, 219). On the date, see Jankowiak and Booth, “New Date-List,” 28–29. Krueger, Writing and Holiness, 168. Ambig. Io. 10 (PG 91:1141C; Constas, vol. 1, 220; trans. Constas, 221).

53

Dissimilar Similarities

to the unknowable.”114 The two systems otherwise incommensurate by nature (God and human beings) become “paradigms one of another,” so that they can be articulated in each other’s language and assume a new mode of existence through that articulation. Each of these systems is defined (“circumscribed,” “delineated,” in the language of Maximus) by the other system’s qualities rather than by the qualities of its own, “in the same way that air is thoroughly permeated by light, or iron in a forge is completely penetrated by fire.”115 God and human beings transcend their respective essences by being constituted in an alternative mode of activity or description. The respective roles of human and divine agents in the formation of God’s material image, however, are different. For Maximus, human beings become God’s image through assimilation to the divine attributes: Like an image that has ascended to its archetype, corresponding to it completely, in the way that an impression corresponds to its stamp, so that henceforth it has neither then inclination nor the ability to be carried elsewhere, or to put it more clearly and accurately, it is no longer able to desire such a thing, for it will have received the divine energeia, or rather it will have become God by divinization.116

This formula draws on the fourth-century church father Gregory of Nazianzus and ultimately goes back to Plotinus. The Dionysian language of images as reflective mirrors also plays a prominent role in Maximus’s rhetoric. To become a material form of God’s properties, human attributes have to let themselves be taken over by these properties. Transposition involves a form of passive 114

115

116

54

Ambig. Io. 10 (PG 91:1113B-C; Constas, vol. 1, 164; trans. Constas, 165). For an in-depth analysis of the concept of deification in Maximus, see Larchet, Divinisation de l’homme, 582–612. The present discussion develops in conversation with this work. Ambig. Io. 7 (PG 91:1073D-1076A; Constas, vol. 1, 88; trans. Constas, 89). On this and similar texts, see Larchet, Divinisation de l’homme, 529. Ambig. Io. 7 (PG 91:1076B-C; Constas, vol. 1, 90; trans. Constas, 91, with slight modifications). On this and related passages, see Larchet, Divinisation de l’homme, 537.

Liturgical Community as God’s Image

deification, although Maximus is careful to emphasize that the deification never alters the human essence but rather involves the assimilation of human attributes. As a result, while different by physis, God and deified humans become isomorphic in their properties. It is, however, always a human being who undergoes the transposition, never God.117 This concept of God as the sole agency in the relationship is missing from Yannai’s work. His reference to Israel as God’s demut does not imply that Israel’s essential humanity is taken over by divine energeiai. Israel remains an active partner in the conversation. “In every way they praise You, You praise them, and by every name they call You, You call them,” says Yannai in the qedushta for Exodus 19:6. “With the strength with which we affirmed You, You affirmed us,” he continues later in the same poem. Rather than being a reflective mirror of God’s attributes, or in the words of Maximus, “a seal rightly adapted to its archetypal stamp,” Israel’s liturgical body never relinquishes its agency. In Novick’s words, “the Jewish worshipper qualifies transcendence in her own embodied self, as a member of the people Israel. There is no self-emptying, but rather self-assertion.”118 Israel offers a sign situation in which God’s transcendent being is articulated and, hence, transposed within a radically different mode of description. God quite literally becomes embodied in Israel and constituted within the new mode through Israel’s material attributes. The two parties to the process find themselves reinscribed and reinvented in each other’s language; although in both cases we deal with a similar attempt to identify a symbolic modality in which, in Maximus’s words, “God and man are paradigms one of another,” Yannai and Maximus go 117

118

See Gregory of Nazianzus, Orat. 28 (Gallay, 134), and Plotinus, Enneads 6.9.11. For the Dionysian language of reflective mirrors, see Myst. 23 (Boudignon, 54–55, lines 876–82), and discussion in Larchet, Divinisation de l’homme, 431–32, and 542. On the programmatically passive nature of deification experience in Maximus, see Larchet, 527–53. Novick, “Who Resembles You,” 282–83.

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Dissimilar Similarities

about constructing this modality by exploring alternative configurations within the common horizon of possibilities.

The Birth of God In conclusion, I would like to circle back to Yannai’s reference to Israel as elohim, a subject with which this chapter started. It has been my argument all along that Yannai’s choice of vocabulary can best be understood in light of his broader interest in Israel’s function as God’s earthly image or demut. In line with the prevailing views of the time, Yannai approaches image as a hermeneutic system that serves as a transposition of its archetype, shares in archetype’s activities, attributes, and properties, but also embodies a new material situation of archetype’s otherwise intelligible existence. The reference to Israel as elohim was another way to articulate Yannai’s belief in the mimetic relationship between God and God’s earthly image. Christian authors of Yannai’s day used a similar conceptual language to communicate a related set of ideas. In the writings of the payyetan’s contemporaries, the description of the church’s collective body as “gods” was not uncommon. As Pseudo-Dionysius observes in his work Divine Names, The theologians say that the transcendent God is inherently similar to no other being, but that he also bestows a divine likeness [homoioteta theian] on all those who are returning to him in imitation as far as possible, of what is beyond all definition and understanding. It is the power of the divine likeness [tes theias homoiotetos] which returns all created things toward their Cause. These things must be reckoned to be like God [homoia Theo], and in accordance with the divine image and likeness [kai kata theian eikona kai homoiosin].119

119

56

DN 9.6 (Suchla, 211). I follow here the translation in Golitzin, Mystagogy, 135, which I find to be more accurate. Cf. Luibheid and Rorem, 117, for a different rendering.

The Birth of God

The nouns “divine likeness” and “image” appear here, as elsewhere in Pseudo-Dionysius, to describe the creaturely imitation of an inherently dissimilar God and portray the material universe as a sensible form of God’s otherwise transcendental being. The “divine likeness,” however, also implies for Pseudo-Dionysius a form of deification. Earlier in the same work, the author notes, “Through the deification [theosei] that derives from Him, there come to be many gods [theon pollon] by means of the deiformity [theoeidei] proper to the potential of each.”120 Originally, this language was not confined to the liturgical community alone but applied to a broad range of elements within the creation, insofar as they served as articulating modalities of divine unity. In that sense, PseudoDionysius was once again a successor to the earlier Neoplatonic understanding of the universe’s hermeneutic function.121 During the sixth century, however, the Dionysian imagery became specifically associated with the liturgical community. The sixth-century Scholia (a running commentary) to the Dionysian corpus by John, the bishop of the city of Scythopolis in Roman Palestine, illustrates this evolution: The divinity of the only God, which is hidden from all, is a “thearchic power,” because it is the source [archousa] of those who are called gods, whether angels or holy persons, as also it is the creator of those who become gods by participation, in so far as it is in truth divinity itself, from itself and without cause.122

Within the context of John’s commentary, the Dionysian “gods” are identified unambiguously as the Christian community composed of angelic and human beings. By the time of Maximus’s Mystagogy, 120

121 122

DN 2.11 (Suchla, 136; trans. Golitzin, 135). Cf. Luibheid and Rorem, 67, for a different rendering. On the use of this and related terminology by Maximus, see Larchet, Divinisation de l’homme, 631–33. On the meaning of “gods” in Proclus, see Perl, Theophany, 67. SchDN (Suchla, 116, lines 5–8; trans. Rorem and Lamoreaux, 185). On John of Scythopolis and his work, see Rorem and Lamoreaux, John of Scythopolis, 23–45.

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Dissimilar Similarities

this language would be fully established. As he interprets the distribution of the sacrament at the Eucharist’s climax, Maximus describes the participants as those who “can both be and be called gods by adoption through grace [thesei] because all of God entirely fills them and leaves no part of them empty of his presence.”123 The sacrament, therefore, “transforms into itself and renders similar [homoious] to the causal good by grace and participation those who worthily share in it.”124 Yannai’s reference to Israel as elohim should be understood as being in conversation with the same set of ideas. As God’s image, whose identity is constituted in relation to God by the verbal pair of ‫ דמה‬and ‫שװה‬, Israel can be legitimately described as “god” in the same sense as the Christian liturgical community can be described as “gods” or “deiform” by Pseudo-Dionysius, John, and Maximus. Like Pseudo-Dionysius before him and Maximus after, John understands God’s ontology within the parameters of two different epistemic models. According to one model, God is described as “hidden from all,” that is, existing beyond any frame of reference available to the created beings. In a similar way, Yannai usually starts his qedushta’ot on Israel as God’s earthly demut with the acclamation of God’s radical incommensurability.125 Both John and Yannai, however, immediately qualify their statements about God’s otherness by reading God in a different language with a different set of rules. In John’s words, “the divinity of the only God, which is hidden from all,” appears on an alternative level of description as “the thearchic power,” which is a collective corporeal entity consisting of “those who become gods by participation,” that is, angelic 123

124

125

58

Myst. 21 (Boudignon, 48–49, lines 772–75; trans. Berthold, 203, with slight modifications). On the term thesis as used by Maximus, see Larchet, Divinisation de l’homme, 601–3. Myst. 21 (Boudignon, 48, lines 769–71; trans. Berthold, 203). Cf. Myst. 24 (Boudignon, 58, lines 932–35). On meanings associated with the term homoious, see Larchet, Divinisation de l’homme, 431. See Rabinovitz, Liturgical Poems, vol. 1, 319, line 13, and vol. 2, 138, lines 1–2, discussed earlier in the chapter.

The Birth of God

and human beings. By the same token, in its capacity as God’s image, Israel creates a new epistemic model, another level of description, on which an otherwise incomprehensible God can be successfully known. “In every way they praise You, You praise them, and by every name they call You, You call them: You are elohim, and they are elohim; You are King, and they are a kingdom,” says Yannai in the qedushta for Exodus 19:6.126 God “is the source of those who are called gods, whether angels or holy persons,” John echoes him. In both cases, by sharing its name with God, the liturgical community emerges as a new register, a new situation, in which God’s ontology can be transcribed and made legible in accordance with a new grammar. When Yannai’s qedushta calls on God “to make those who cleave to you [‫ ]דביקיכם‬God,”127 it parallels John’s words about God as “the creator of those who become gods by participation” almost verbatim. In both cases, the liturgical community becomes “God” as a consequence of either “cleaving to” (so Yannai) or “participating in” (so John) the divinity and, hence, by realizing itself as another transposition, another semantic configuration, in which God’s ontology is articulated. In another one of the Scholia, this time to the Celestial Hierarchy 4:4 (181B), John of Scythopolis uses the figure of Mary, the Mother of God, or the Theotokos of Byzantine tradition, to further elaborate his idea of thearchy as the embodied situation of God’s existence. John offers the following comment on the Dionysian observation that, at the time of the Annunciation, the archangel Gabriel revealed to Mary “how in her would be born the thearchic mystery of the ineffable formation of God”: Notice also how he says that in the holy Theotokos Mary “was born the thearchic mystery of the ineffable formation of God.” By the 126

127

Rabinovitz, Liturgical Poems, vol. 1, 319, lines 15–16; trans. Lieber, “Exegesis of Love,” 96, with modifications. Rabinovitz, Liturgical Poems, vol. 1, 318, line 5; trans. Lieber, “Exegesis of Love,” 94, with modifications.

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Dissimilar Similarities expression “formation of God” he shows that God was formed and thereby became human. As it is said: “The Word became flesh” (John 1:14). The mystery of the Incarnation was thearchic in so far as God was the cause and source of those called gods, i.e. angels and righteous, Jesus being the first whom he called “God.”128

For John, thearchy describes a mode into which God “is formed” through the mystery of human birth from Mary. The formation of God, however, goes beyond the individual person of Christ. Through the human birth God acquires a new form, a new condition, as “the cause and source [arche] of those called gods, i.e. angels and righteous.” God and the collective body of the church, “those called gods,” become isomorphic with one other. The church becomes another hermeneutic situation of God’s existence. Mary gives birth not only to the individual Christ but also to the collective body of God’s new modality. Peter Schäfer’s Mirror of His Beauty identifies a series of intriguing parallels that exist between medieval Jewish discourse on God’s female aspect, the shekhinah, and the Christian Mariology of the time.129 Here and later in the book, I am going to expand on Schäfer’s argument by suggesting that many of these parallels can be traced back to the common conceptual universe of the late Roman and Byzantine milieu and, in particular, that milieu’s fascination with paradoxical forms that could mediate between divine and human forms of knowledge. Several late antique and early medieval Jewish exegetical anthologies offer evidence that within the early Byzantine cultural environment the congregation of Israel could sometimes describe itself as “God’s mother” in a sense of a sociomystical entity that (metaphorically?) gives birth to God. As 128

129

60

SchCH (PG 4:57.2; trans. Rorem and Lamoreaux, 156). On a related theme in Maximus, see Thunberg, Microcosm, 326–27. On rhetorical strategies that identify the voice of Mary with the congregation’s collective voice in the poetry of Romanos the Melodist, see Arentzen, Virgin in Song, 150–53. Schäfer, Mirror of His Beauty, 169–72.

The Birth of God

far as I can tell, the earliest anthology to include this tradition is the fifth- or early sixth-century midrash Pesiqta of Rav Kahana. The midrash takes as its starting point a verse from the Song of Songs: “O maidens of Zion, go forth and gaze upon King Solomon, upon the crown with which his mother has crowned him on his wedding day” (Canticles 3:11), and then proceeds to interpret the meaning of the phrase “upon the crown with which his mother has crowned him on his wedding day,” as follows: R. Isaac said: “We have reviewed the entire Scripture and have not found evidence that Beth Sheba made a crown for her son, Solomon. This refers, rather, to the tent of meeting, which is crowned with blue and purple and scarlet.” R. Hunia said: “R. Simeon b. Yohai asked R. Eleazar b. Yose, ‘Is it possible that you have heard from your father, what was the crown with which his mother crowned him?’ He said to him: ‘The matter may be compared to the case of a king who had a daughter, whom he loved exceedingly. He did not desist from expressing his affection, until he called her, “my sister.” He did not desist from expressing his affection, until he called her, “my mother.” So, at the outset, the Holy One, Blessed be He, expressed His affection for Israel by calling them “my daughter”: “Hear, O daughter, and consider” (Psalm 45:11). He did not desist from expressing his affection, until he called them, “my sister,” as it says: “My sister, my love” (Canticles 5:2). He did not desist from expressing his affection, until he called them, “my mother,” as it says: “Hearken to Me, O My people, and give ear to Me, O My nation [‫( ”]ולאומי‬Isaiah 51:4). It is written, however, “and to my mother” [‫]ולאמי‬.’ R. Simeon b. Yohai stood up and kissed him on his head. He said to him: ‘Had I come only to hear this teaching, it would have been enough for me.’”130 130

Pesiq. Rab. Kah. 1:3 (Mandelbaum, vol. 1, 7; trans. Neusner, vol. 1, 6, with modifications). A slightly different version of this midrash appears in Song Rab. 3.11.2 (Dunsky, 283–85), and Tanh. Pequde 8 (Buber, 133). See Schäfer, Mirror of His Beauty, 85–86, for an excellent introduction to the parable, and 130–32, for the use of this parable in the early Kabbalah.

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Dissimilar Similarities

The midrash opens by establishing an allegorical framework within which it then interprets the Song of Songs 3:11. The verse, so the midrash goes, does not speak of Solomon and his mother, Beth Sheba, at all. It describes, rather, the construction of the tent of meeting, the place of private audiences between God and Moses, pitched outside the Israelite camp in the wake of the golden calf affair, according to Exodus 33:7–11. If we accept the allegory, then, the tent of meeting becomes the crown, whereas the identity of Solomon’s mother, who makes the crown, remains somewhat blurred. She can be interpreted either as the people of Israel as a whole or as Moses, who gets charged with constructing the tent of meeting in Exodus 33:7. The parable that follows leaves no doubt that the intended reference is, indeed, the people of Israel. The parable goes through three symbolic representations of the relationship between God and God’s beloved: those of father and daughter, brother and sister, and, ultimately, son and mother. The last meaning is based on isomorphism between the two Hebrew words ‫“( ולאומי‬my nation”) and ‫“( ולאמי‬and to my mother”), which is taken by the midrash to indicate that the reference to “my nation” in Isaiah 51:4, when written without the waw, can also be read as “and to my mother.” As morphology translates into semantics, the initial reference to King Solomon’s mother bestowing the crown on her son accrues an additional meaning as a reference to Israel bestowing the crown on God.131 At this point, I would like to revisit a section from Song of Songs Rabbah, mentioned earlier in the chapter. It describes God and Israel by drawing a list of attributes that apply interchangeably to both. By doing so, the midrash creates a common field within which God accrues meaning through the semantic medium of Israel and vice versa. The list opens with the statement, “He is my God and I am His nation” (‫)הוא לי לאלהים ואני לו לאומה‬, followed by the prooftext from Isaiah 51:4. One wonders whether the choice of 131

62

See Rabinovitz, Liturgical Poems, vol. 1, 319, line 20, discussed earlier in the chapter, for a similar motif of Israel crowning God.

The Birth of God

the word ‫ אומה‬to describe Israel, along with the choice of scriptural reference, indicates that here too the midrash alludes to the exegetical tradition that reads “my nation” and “my mother” as isomorphic and, hence, semantically interchangeable categories. The statement, “He is my father and I am His son,” following immediately afterward, only strengthens this impression, as it creates a modulation among references to mother, father, and child, which is very similar to the rhetorical structure of the crown parable.132 If, indeed, the reference to Israel as God’s “nation” also implies Israel’s role as God’s “mother,” then the list of interchangeable attributes, applied to God and Israel by the midrash, acquires an additional significance. Israel gives birth to God’s new situation delineated by a set of common attributes that the two of them share. Through Israel’s medium God receives an epistemic body that makes God legible within the parameters of human knowledge. The crown parable unfolds along similar lines. Each subsequent definition, offered by the parable, reflects a stronger form of affection on the part of God to God’s people. These definitions also reflect a gradual role reversal in the relationship between the two. Whereas in the first instance God dominates Israel by virtue of being Israel’s “father,” the two become equals in the second instance, and finally God becomes a derivative being by accepting birth through the community of Israel. The focus of the discourse shifts from the benevolent superiority of heavenly deity to the paradox of divine self-contraction and birth into a new condition. The tent of meeting, mentioned in the beginning of the midrash as the crown’s allegoric reference, comes to play a new role as a material space into which God is born and in relation to which God’s new condition 132

Song Rab. 2.16.1 (Dunsky, 227–29; the reading is consistent across manuscripts, see the online Midrash Project of the Schechter Institute of Jewish Studies: www​ .schechter.ac.il/mifalhamidrash). I wonder, furthermore, whether the reference to God as Israel’s “twin sister” (‫)תאומתי‬, one of them not being greater than the other, has to be situated with the same web of isomorphic references as “nation” and “mother.” See Song Rab. 5.2.2 (Dunsky, 375), discussed earlier in the chapter.

63

Dissimilar Similarities

can now be meaningfully described. It is probably no accident that in the late antique and early medieval midrashic anthologies of Pesqita of Rav Kahana and Song of Songs Rabbah, the crown parable appears within a larger editorial unit that deals with the building of the tabernacle and the reinvention of God within a new space and new mode of description. I will come back to this unit in Chapter 4, where I hope to demonstrate its conceptual affinity with a contemporaneous role of the Theotokos as an epistemic function that helps imagine the deity who is simultaneously finite and infinite. In the meantime, however, I am going to conclude this chapter by observing that, just as through John’s Theotokos a new “formation” of God as “the cause and source of those called gods” takes place, so too, in the midrash, the people of Israel is portrayed as the mother in whose womb God is formed anew. For John, the formation of God leads to the establishment of new “thearchic” reality, that is, the reality in which the new condition of God’s existence is defined by the reciprocal divinization of creation and incarnation of the deity. In the midrash, God’s multiple hermeneutic conditions become articulated on the multiple levels of description, as God appears simultaneously as the father, brother, and son of the people of Israel. The individuality of the Theotokos dissolves in the collective body of Israel, but the structural elements of the narrative – including the human birth of God, the figure of God’s mother, either individual or collective, and, finally, the liturgical community through which God’s new mode of description is formed – remain the same. Jewish and Christian texts offer two different configurations of fundamentally the same theme, as they both seek to collapse a rigid dichotomy between the Creator and the creation, so that, in a paradoxical leap of thought, the father also becomes the son and the birthgiver becomes the one who is born.

64

2 Jacob’s Image The History of a Late Antique Motif

Yannai uses the word demut not only to create self-description for the liturgical community of Israel but also to refer to the image of Jacob, which, according to a widespread Jewish belief, is engraved on the throne of God.1 In doing so, Yannai provides a link between demut as a term for the image-like relationship between Israel and God, on the one hand, and the word’s much more technical use to describe an actual image manufactured by means of engraving, on the other. Yannai’s poetry is unique among the early Byzantine literature of the sixth and seventh centuries in offering a linguistic and, as I shall presently argue, thematic connection between these two semantic fields. Both are associated with the category of eikon, but do not become explicitly intertwined in pre-iconoclastic Christian sources. This chapter traces the history of the motif of Jacob’s image from approximately the fifth century CE, when it first appears in midrashic anthologies, to Yannai’s poetry, and then, eventually, to a point in the early Middle Ages, when the motif is attested in the collection of mystical texts known as Hekhalot Rabbati. The earliest references to Jacob’s image appear in fifth-century midrashic anthologies, such as Lamentations Rabbah and Genesis Rabbah, making this particular segment of Jacob lore almost certainly a late antique development.2 Among the most common terms used for Jacob’s image are iqonin (so midrashim and 1

2

On the history of the motif, see Wolfson, Along the Path, 1–62, including references to earlier works. For a partial but helpful summary of available sources, see Wolfson, Along the Path, 4.

65

Jacob’s Image: The History of a Late Antique Motif

targumim), demut (so Yannai), tzurah (so Qillir), and qelaster panim (so Hekhalot Rabbati). In a word, there is no uniform or standardized terminology associated with the motif.3 The motif’s thematic variety is equally broad. References to the veneration of Jacob’s engraved form, this chapter is going to argue, are relatively late and largely limited to a single passage in Hekhalot Rabbati. Coupled with a unique vocabulary, the lack of parallels makes one wonder how idiosyncratic to the Hekhalot genre this variation on the topic of Jacob’s image may be. In earlier texts, primarily in Yannai’s poetry, Jacob’s image, along with Jacob’s name, serves as an object of invocation rather than veneration. Along with other votive images known from sixth- and seventh-century iconography and literature, the image of Jacob functions as an embodiment of continuous prayer rather than a recipient of that prayer. Supplication was offered in the form of image rather than channeled through image and onto the prototype, as it would be in later practices. By invoking Jacob’s image, Yannai invoked the personified presence of his own audience standing in prayer before God, as well as that audience’s identity as God’s material presence on earth.

Jacob’s Image before Yannai: The Case of Lamentations Rabbah The earliest references to Jacob’s image engraved on the Throne of Glory appear in fifth- and early sixth-century midrashic anthologies. In these texts, the image serves to symbolically embody the community of Israel in a way that closely resembles the use of Jacob’s figure in third-century Jewish iconography and literature, such as a fresco found on the western wall of a synagogue in Dura 3

I disagree, therefore, with Silviu Bunta’s argument that rabbinic texts are uniform in using iqonin and its cognates to designate the image of Jacob. See Bunta, “Likeness of the Image,” 62–63. The motif is significantly more diverse both linguistically and thematically than Bunta allows for. For an insightful, albeit brief, critique of the motif ’s alleged “conceptual unity,” see Friedman, “Graven Images,” 237.

66

Jacob’s Image before Yannai

Europos, a small town on the border between the Roman and the Sasanian Empires on the Euphrates, or Sifre on Deuteronomy’s commentary on the commandment to recite the Shema.4 Unlike the latter two, however, Jewish traditions on Jacob’s image associate his iqonin with God’s throne, thus adding God as another vector in relation to which the collective body of Jacob-Israel can now be read. Compared with the third-century representations of Jacob, this visibility of God is a new development. Both the fresco and Sifre imply God’s involvement but never introduce God as an articulated presence into their narratives. In contrast, a parable from the fifth-century midrashic anthology known as Lamentations Rabbah makes God’s presence central to the plot: “He has cast down from heaven to earth the glory of Israel [‫( ”]תפארת ישראל‬Lamentations 2:1). R. Joshua of Sikhnin said: It is like the inhabitants of a province who made a crown for the king. They provoked him but he bore with them; they provoked him again, but he bore with them. He said: “The inhabitants of the province provoke me only because of the crown that is placed upon my head. Here, I cast it down in their faces!” Similarly, the Holy One, blessed be He, said: “The Israelites anger Me only because of the image of Jacob [‫ ]איקונין של יעקב‬that is engraved on My throne. Here, I cast it down in their faces.” This is what is written, “He has cast down from heaven to earth the glory of Israel.”5

The scene of the imperial God who curbs the arrogance of his courtiers by casting them down from heaven would be familiar to the midrash’s Jewish audience. Aramaic poems that crystallized around the celebration of Purim sometime in late antiquity or the early Middle Ages portray God as Augustus (‫ )אגוסטוס‬casting down his 4

5

For the function of Jacob’s figure in Dura’s fresco and Sifre, see Sivertsev, “Image of Jacob,” 19–24, and “Jacob’s Image,” 465–72, with literature. Lam. Rab. 2.1 (Stern, Parables, 270–71; trans. Stern, 109–10, with modifications). On the midrash, see Strack and Stemberger, 283–87, with the literature cited there.

67

Jacob’s Image: The History of a Late Antique Motif

excessively haughty courtier Haman. One of the poems substitutes an image for a person: The image of Haman, his iqonah (‫)איקונה‬, fell, as Haman himself was cast down from heaven, his status and family destroyed.6 For an inhabitant of the late Roman Empire, God’s gesture, whether directed at Haman or Jacob, would portend the disastrous consequences of the divine autocrat’s disfavor. David Stern compares Jacob’s image in Lamentations Rabbah to “actual iconic images, usually in the form of medallions portraying the Roman emperor or the Roman consuls, that were used throughout the empire to decorate imperial and consular chairs.”7 The purpose of Jacob’s image, in Stern’s opinion, is “to situate a figurative representation of Israel upon the divine throne,” and, by doing so, satisfy “Israel’s wish to be literally at God’s right hand.”8 Stern, moreover, suggests that consular diptychs  – “tablets made from ivory that were presented by consuls to their friends and relatives as souvenirs on the occasion of their appointment to office,” or as more recent research would argue, on occasion of providing public games – offer a good parallel to the midrash’s description of Jacob’s image.9 Consular diptychs were indeed a ubiquitous feature in the Roman elite’s self-presentation during the late empire. Distributed among a magistrate’s friends, the diptychs served, among other things, to symbolically identify the bonds of amicitia that tied the officeholder to his supporters. The image of Jacob could very well serve as a Jewish literary adaptation of this late imperial practice of ceremonial gift-giving. The purpose of the image then would be to visually assert the bond between God and Israel, just as the purpose 6

7 8 9

On God as Augustus, see Sokoloff and Yahalom, Jewish Palestinian Aramaic Poetry, 204, line 6. On Haman’s fall, see Sokoloff and Yahalom, 202, lines 23–26, with the reference to Haman’s iqonah in line 24. On Haman as an arrogant courtier in heaven, see Sokoloff and Yahalom, 210, lines 49–51. Stern, Parables, 111. Stern, Parables, 112. Stern, Parables, 111. Belting, Likeness, 109–14, discusses some of such images. For a more recent analysis of consular diptychs, see Cameron, “Origin, Context and Function,” 174–207.

68

Jacob’s Image before Yannai

of the diptych was to display the network of an aristocrat’s associates and assert the bond between them and the magistrate. The midrash’s understanding of the relationship between Jacob’s image and the collective Israel as its prototype finds another parallel in Basil of Caesarea’s fourth-century discussion of the relationship between an emperor and an emperor’s image. In his tractate On the Holy Spirit, Basil, the bishop of the city of Caesarea in Cappadocia and a prominent Christian thinker of his day (330–379), uses what appears to be a culturally established understanding of the emperor’s image as an analogy to explicate the relations between Father and Son within the Trinity: The image of the emperor is also called the emperor, yet there are not two emperors. Power is not divided, nor is glory separated. Just as the ruler who has power over us is also a single power, so too is our praise one and not several, for the honor given to the image crosses over to the prototype. Therefore, one who is an image here by means of mimesis is there the son by nature. Just as likeness according to form is for artists, so also is the union in the communion of the divinity for the divine and unconfused nature.10

Here, as noted by Charles Barber, the emperor’s image, “understood as a form of visual contact between copy and original, maintains a trace of its origins in the act of representation.” As a result, the image “reiterates the emperor.”11 Athanasius of Alexandria (295–373), another fourth-century Christian thinker and Basil’s contemporary, conveys essentially the same understanding of the relationship between the emperor and the emperor’s image by noting that, “there is the form [eidos] and shape [morphe] of the emperor in the image, and in the emperor is that form which is 10

11

Basil of Caesarea, On the Holy Spirit 18 (Pruche, 406; trans. Barber, Figure and Likeness, 74). Barber, Figure and Likeness, 34–35. See also Koch, “Theologie,” 170–72, Belting, Likeness, 103–7, Francis, “Living Icons,” 584–90, and Miller, Corporeal Imagination, 150–51.

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Jacob’s Image: The History of a Late Antique Motif

in the image.”12 In parallel to the emperor’s image, Jacob’s iqonin shares “the form and shape” with the collective body of Israel and, by doing so, participates in the reality of what it represents. Similar to how Basil describes the properties of the emperor’s image by using the language of “power” (kratos) and “glory” (doxa), otherwise associated with the emperor himself, the midrash describes Jacob’s image as the “glory of Israel” (tiferet yisrael). Whereas the emperor’s image serves as a figural representation of the emperor’s body, intimately associated with its prototype through shared properties, Jacob’s iqonin serves as a figural representation of Israel’s collective body and a symbolic projection of that body onto God’s throne. In 387, as riots broke out in Antioch to protest the imposition of a new tax by Theodosius I, a mob pulled down the statues of the emperor and his family members, dragged them through the streets, and broke some of the statues into pieces. The severity of Theodosius’s response indicated just how seriously the emperor took the attack on his majesty.13 By dishonoring the emperor’s statues, the rioters reenacted a script similar to the one followed by God in Lamentations Rabbah, except for a change of roles: Whereas God punished the people of Israel by casting down Jacob’s image, the people of Antioch punished the emperor by toppling his statues. “When it came to the destruction of statues,” notes Peter Stewart, “there was a continuity of imagery, a common vocabulary which could be used to articulate differing beliefs and perspectives.”14 Late antique Jewish texts were quite familiar with 12

13

14

Athanasius, Third Oration against the Arians 5 (PG 26:332A; trans. Francis, 587, with modifications). For a summary of sources on the desecration of statues during the riot, see Van de Paverd, St. John Chrysostom, 22–23, and, more broadly, on the course of the events, see 15–159 in the same work. Stern significantly misreads the culturally embedded language of the midrash when he states that, “by interpreting the phrase tiferet yisrael not as ‘the majesty of Israel’ but as ‘the icon of Jacob,’ R. Joshua effectively defused the verse’s most threatening and dangerous meaning” (Stern, 113). Cf. Neis, “Embracing Icons,” 47, n. 72, for a perceptive critique of this part of Stern’s argument. See Stewart, “Destruction of Statues,” 182, and, in general, 159–89, as well as Elsner, “Iconoclasm,” 370, with literature.

70

Yannai’s Byzantine Context

the gesture of the desecration of imperial images and that gesture symbolic value of “diminishing the image of the king.”15 God’s decision to dishonor Israel by casting down Jacob’s image in the reversal of Basil’s statement that “the honor given to the image crosses over to the prototype” operates within the same logic and the same scripts held in common by Roman imperial subjects.16

Yannai’s Byzantine Context As we enter Yannai’s world, we find ourselves in conversation with a set of issues that likely reflects the language and broader concerns of sixth-century Byzantine culture. Despite its apparent similarity to the well-known and frequently discussed Second Temple traditions of Jacob as an angelic being, Yannai’s portrayal of Jacob is, in fact, quite different in its details. I am not particularly comfortable, therefore, with the thesis, common in Second Temple and early Christian studies, that there was a seamless progression of Jacob’s representation “as a divine or angelic being” from Second Temple Jewish texts to the late antique traditions of Jacob’s image and, some would argue, all the way into the Middle Ages.17 The uniformity and certain timelessness of Jacob tradition, presumed by such a progression, have to be balanced by attention to the diversity, as well as historical and contextual embeddedness, of the individual fragments of Jacob lore. In the works of Yannai, in contrast to the Second Temple texts, Jacob’s humanity is essential to the patriarch’s special status. Jacob’s 15 16 17

See Mek. Bahodesh 8 (Horovitz and Rabin, 233; my translation). Basil of Caesarea, On the Holy Spirit 18 (Pruche, 406; trans. Barber, 74). Wolfson, Along the Path, 6. For a helpful summary of earlier scholarship on Jacob as an angelic being in Second Temple and early Christian literature, see notes 29–34 in the same work. Many of the works referenced by Wolfson in notes 29–30 treat traditions of Jacob’s image as an offshoot of the Second Temple Jacob lore. See, for example, Smith, “Prayer of Joseph,” 284–87, Fossum, Image of the Invisible God, 135–51, and, more recently, Bunta, “Likeness of the Image,” 55–84, and Orlov, “Face as the Heavenly Counterpart,” 265–71.

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role as God’s reflection no longer involves assimilation to the divine nature by becoming an angel and thus in some way becoming identical with the divine. Instead, Jacob functions as God’s material symbol. The relationship between the two calls for an act of hermeneutical transfer rather than outright identification. Jacob’s figure serves as a medium for translating God within the parameters of a new modality. Yannai sees the conjoining of God’s name with the name of Jacob-Israel as a way to produce what Boustan aptly describes as “the semiotic forms that mediate between the divine and the human.”18 These forms, however, do not assimilate to the divine. Instead, they are metaphors through which the divine can be paraphrased within the norms of a different sign system.19 This tendency to privilege Jacob’s humanity as a means of paraphrasing the divine may already be present in a brief and somewhat enigmatic statement in the fifth-century midrash Genesis Rabbah. The midrash interprets a reference in Genesis 33:20 to the effect that Jacob set up an altar near the city of Shechem and called the altar El-Elohe-Yisrael (literally, “El, God of Israel”). According to the midrash, by naming the altar this way, Jacob declared to God by means of a pun, “You are elohe [‘god’] among those above and I am elohe [‘god’] among those below” (‫)אתה אלוה בעליונים ואני אלוה בתחתינים‬. 20 The midrash proceeds to criticize Jacob for his arrogance, although the factual accuracy of the statement never gets challenged. For the purposes of the present discussion, it is important that the claim eschews the scenario of Jacob’s outright deification in favor of effectively giving him the status of God’s earthly icon. Jacob’s humanity is never called into question. Instead, the man Jacob names himself elohe and by doing so creates a sign situation in which “elohe among those above” is paraphrased and, therefore, hermeneutically transposed into “elohe among those below.” Jacob’s humanity acquires special status as a 18 19

20

Boustan, “Jewish Veneration,” 76. On icon as a metaphor, see brief but thought-provoking observations in Lotman, Universe of the Mind, 41–42. My own analysis develops in conversation with this work. Gen. Rab. 79.20 (Theodor and Albeck, vol. 2, 949–50; my translation).

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way of negotiating the gap between the heavenly and the earthly systems of signification.21 The value of Jacob’s humanity implied by the midrash resonates with some of the central themes in late Roman and early Byzantine intellectual history. The fifth- through seventh-century debates about the relationship between the human and the divine natures in Christ, which shaped the cultural and symbolic universe of the late Roman Empire, were as much about the semiotics as well as horizons and limitations of anthropomorphic knowledge in relation to God, as they were about theology in the narrow sense of the word. The debates produced a highly elaborate discourse on the epistemic function of the human body or, to use Barber’s felicitous language, on “the incarnate knowledge of the one God.”22 Aside from framing this discourse through a medium of Christian theological categories, as it traditionally has been, I suggest that we approach the questions it raises as fundamental cultural codes independently explored by a variety of ethnic, religious, and language groups within the empire. Jews, this chapter argues, were one such group.

The Name of Jacob and the Name of God The sixth-century religious aesthetic, notes Krueger, “both expressed and encouraged identification with the biblical narrative, employing 21

22

Similar considerations may be behind the identification of El with Jacob-Israel in Gen. Rab. 98(99).3 (Theodor and Albeck, vol. 3, 1252). There, the comparison is based on the claim that the two perform identical activities, another instance of the divine being paraphrased through the human. On the importance of Jacob’s humanity for rabbinic texts and the complex interplay between “glorification and prostration, dominion and vulnerability” in the rabbinic representations of Jacob, see Bunta, “Likeness of the Image,” 59, in conversation with Schäfer, Rivalität, 206. Barber, Figure and Likeness, 58. My own thoughts on the matter have developed in dialogue with Barber’s argument. For a similar approach, see also Miller, Corporeal Imagination, 11–14. On the function of the image “as an extension or re-enactment of the Incarnation,” see Kitzinger, “Cult of Images,” 144, and, more broadly, 142–45.

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liturgy to bring the congregation into the narrative and to absorb them into a liturgical present.”23 In line with these expectations, Yannai seeks to erase boundaries between the textual space of his poems and the space inhabited by his listeners as he invites the latter to insert themselves into the Jacob narrative. As Lieber observes in connection with a different composition by Yannai, “a signature element in the piyyut is its theatricality, which entails a collapsing of the distance between historical figures and audience.”24 Yannai’s poems function as a participatory icon within which the worshipping community identifies with Jacob-Israel and his name. The rhetorical space of Yannai’s poetry, therefore, reflects the pre-iconoclastic theory of representation, according to which, in Barber’s words, “rather than simply looking through the icon, one is asked to imagine oneself in the icon and to understand this space as a site for imaginary encounter.”25 In addition to emphasizing Jacob’s role as the personification of the collective Israel gathered in the act of liturgy, however, the payyetan also introduces two interrelated themes of isomorphism between God’s and Jacob-Israel’s name, on the one hand, and God’s and Israel’s image, on the other. Yannai’s poetry seeks to span the gap separating the divine and the human by creating a language in which the transcendental and the corporeal become mutually transparent. In this program, to quote Patricia Cox Miller, Jacob-Israel’s name and image “occupied a signifying field that mediated between matter and spirit and so subdued the potential dichotomy between them.”26 Yannai’s qedushta for Genesis 35:9 is a good place to begin my analysis, owing to the prominent role that Jacob’s name and 23

24 25 26

Krueger, “Liturgical Time,” 124. For the analysis of specific texts and rhetorical techniques, see 119–24 in the same work, as well as Krueger, Liturgical Subjects, 72–102, and Gador-Whyte, Theology and Poetry, 25–35, 38–42, and 161–93. Lieber, “Rhetoric of Participation,” 133. Barber, Figure and Likeness, 32. Miller, Corporeal Imagination, 64.

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engraved image play in this piyyut’s rhetorical program. Since Genesis 35:9–10 contains one of the stories in which God famously changes Jacob’s name into “Israel,” the very nature of the biblical text, interpreted here by Yannai, makes this focus on Jacob’s name appropriate. The payyetan’s interpretation of the events centers on the semiotic coinherence between the human and the divine, expressed through God’s and Jacob’s shared name. In a sign that their names are truly isomorphic, it is no longer Jacob alone who is blessed by the name of God, as Genesis 35:9 would have it, but also God who is blessed by the human name of Jacob. Yannai puts it as follows: In his going forth and return, Jacob was blessed // By whose name You are blessed, God of Jacob, Mentioning his name and blessing Your name // For You recalled his name in the mention of Your name.27

Jacob’s new name “Israel” incorporates God’s name El within itself, but it does not lose its own humanness. Instead, the two names become one and create a semiotic field within which the figures of God and Israel become commensurate with each other. God’s divinity finds itself in isomorphic relationship with Jacob’s humanity. The shared name establishes space for communication between God and Israel through a mutually translatable and mutually transparent sign system. Once Jacob’s name is entwined with the name of God, it also becomes God’s name with which God is invoked, “For,” Yannai continues, “by the name of Israel You will be blessed, Blessed and Holy.”28 In a new reality, captured in Israel’s name, human and divine attributes are intended to be read through each other’s media. Yannai is interested in exploring forms that are simultaneously corporeal and divine. 27

28

Rabinovitz, Liturgical Poems, vol. 1, 216, lines 30–31; trans. Lieber, Yannai, 642, with modifications. Rabinovitz, Liturgical Poems, vol. 1, 216, line 34.

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Throughout the qedushta for Genesis 35:9, the name “Israel” refers interchangeably to the person of Jacob and the liturgical community of Israel. The addressee, in Lieber’s words, is “both Jacob-Israel, the patriarch, and his descendants, the children of Israel – that is, the Jews, including those actually listening to this poem when it was performed in the synagogue.”29 Yannai invites his listeners to savor this interplay of meanings and, by doing so, to situate themselves in Jacob’s story. The poem reaches the crescendo when the name “Israel” is used as a refrain in the concluding sections of the qedushta.30 There, Yannai follows what Henry Maguire has once described as the method of “ambivalence” characteristic of Byzantine narrative constructs in both art and literature. In this method, Maguire argues, “a given image is repeated two or more times, but it carries a different meaning with each repetition,” and, as a result, “the organization of images can be compared to a jeweled necklace, in which the same stone is repeated in linear sequence along a chain, but at each repetition it reflects the light in a different way.”31 By stringing the name “Israel” through different contexts and by situating it in relation to different referents, the refrain creates a narrative space that allows Yannai’s audience to identify with the people of Israel throughout its generations, going all the way back to and culminating in the person of Jacob-Israel. The payyetan reads “Israel” in multiple registers as the sum of relations among the name’s many referents. One of these referents is God. Yannai’s Israel is not only the name of Jacob, the people of Israel as a whole, and the liturgical community listening to the piyyut, but also the name of God. By introducing God as another vector in relation to which the name of Israel accrues meaning, Yannai suggests that God becomes visible and 29 30 31

Lieber, “Rhetoric of Participation,” 142. Rabinovitz, Liturgical Poems, vol. 1, 219–20, lines 69–79. Maguire, Earth and Ocean, 11. For the metaphor’s broader context, see Roberts, Jeweled Style, 52–55.

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epistemically available to all creatures, human and angelic alike, precisely in the form of that name. The qedushta leads to the moment when angelic and human liturgical communities jointly perform the praise of the God of Israel and, as they do so, come together to inhabit the space created by God and Israel’s shared name: For Your blessing is in the name of Israel // And Your holiness is in the name of Jacob And the hosts above and below // This one calls out the name of Jacob / And that one confirms the name of Israel.32

At this moment of joint praise, angels and humans have access to God only as the God of Israel, that is, within the semiotic parameters established by God’s association with Jacob-Israel’s name. Moreover, by sharing in the name “Israel,” Yannai’s listeners recognize themselves as God’s human form and image, within which alone the knowledge of God is possible. “His descendants, when they appear, are blessed // The hosts of angels bless themselves by them,” notes Yannai slightly earlier in the qedushta.33 Here, again, the payyetan radically alters the meaning of the biblical verse that he expounds. In Genesis 35:11–12, God blesses Jacob’s descendants to be fruitful and multiply, and inherit the land. In Yannai’s version, however, the descendants of Jacob themselves become the source of blessing for the angels. Their special status is a direct result of isomorphism between the name of God and their name. It is not Jacob alone, in other words, whose name offers an alternative to the dichotomy between the corporeal and the divine but the community of Israel as a whole. Israel is superior to the angels and serves as a source of blessing for them, for it is through the name and the collective body of Israel that the act of knowing God becomes possible for the rest of the world – angels included. 32

33

Rabinovitz, Liturgical Poems, vol. 1, 220, lines 80–81; trans. Lieber, Yannai, 650. On this section’s language, see Lieber, Yannai, 257. Rabinovitz, Liturgical Poems, vol. 1, 218, line 55 (trans. Lieber, Yannai, 646). See Yahalom, Poetry, 186, and 237, for other modulations of the theme in Yannai’s poetry.

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Translating God in Early Byzantium In one of his earlier letters, written in around 633 and addressed to John the Cubicularius, a courtier in Constantinople, Maximus Confessor notes, God is thus manifest in those [who possess this grace], taking shape according to the specific character of the virtue of each through love for humankind, and condescending to be named from humankind. For it is the most perfect work of love and the goal of its activity, to contrive through the mutual exchange of what is related that the names and properties of those that have been united through love should be fitting to each other. So the human being is made God, and God is called and appears as human, because of the one and undeviating wish (in accordance with the will) and movement of both, as we find in the case of Abraham and the other saints. And this is perhaps what is meant when it is said in the person of God, I have been likened in the hands of the prophets (Hosea 12:11): God takes form in each, through his great love for humankind, out of the virtue that is present in each through the ascetic struggle. For the “hand” of each just man: that is his ascetic struggle in accordance with virtue, in which and through which God receives his likeness to human beings. Love is therefore a great good, and of goods the first and most excellent good, since through it God and man are drawn together in a single embrace, and the creator of humankind appears as human, through the undeviating likeness of the deified to God in the good so far as is possible to humankind.34

In his discussion of the relationship between God and righteous human beings, Maximus identifies several key themes also shared by Yannai. Both authors use the figure of a biblical patriarch to 34

Maximus Confessor, Ep. 2 (PG 91:401A-C; trans. Louth, Maximus the Confessor, 89–90). The date remains uncertain; see Jankowiak and Booth, “New Date-List,” 37. On the text, see Thunberg, Microcosm, 329–30, and Bradshaw, Aristotle, 200.

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illustrate their argument. Whereas Maximus mentions Abraham as an exemplary saint, Yannai singles out Jacob for a similar role. Both authors are interested in finding a semiotic field in which “God receives his likeness to human beings,” or, in other words, God and human beings become mutually transparent within each other’s epistemic horizon. Both authors explore how God, in the words of Maximus, “is manifest, taking shape according to the specific character of the virtue of each [saint] through love for humankind, and condescending to be named from humankind.” By “taking shape according to the specific character” of saints’ virtues and by “condescending to be named from humankind,” God enters the field of recognizable human forms, and, hence, becomes “manifest,” that is, visible, within the parameters of human senses and knowledge. Whereas for Maximus, God condescends “to be named from humankind,” in the case of Yannai, God is named after Israel, and Israel is named after God. For Yannai, “the God of Jacob” and “the God of Israel” are the two names by which “the hosts above and below” know and address God. These names are God’s legible form that makes God visible within the recognition horizon of human and angelic beings. God joins his name with the name of Jacob-Israel, just as, in the words of Maximus, God “takes form” and “receives his likeness to human beings” “through the mutual exchange of what is related,” that is, through the mutual exchange of human and divine attributes and properties. Maximus’s language echoes Yannai’s reference to the shared name of God and Israel almost verbatim. Yannai refers to the joining of God’s name with that of JacobIsrael as “mixing.” This theme is ubiquitous throughout Yannai’s treatment of Jacob. “My name I have mixed [‫ ]ערבתי‬with your name,” says God to Jacob in the qedushta for Genesis 31:3.35 “Your [God’s] name with his [Jacob’s] name You mixed [‫”]עירבתה‬ 35

Rabinovitz, Liturgical Poems, vol. 1, 189, line 84; my translation.

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reiterates the payyetan in the qedushta for Genesis 35:9.36 Later in the same piyyut, Yannai talks about the power of God’s name “intermixed and completed” (‫ )ניבלל וניכלל‬with the name of Jacob, and the name of Jacob “going forth and proclaimed” as a result of that.37 Indeed, Yannai repeatedly exploits the ambiguity involved in the use of the pronoun “his/His,” making it unclear whether the text concerns God or Jacob. Similar to Maximus, Yannai envisions “the mutual exchange of what is related” between God and Jacob. The result is that, in the words of Maximus, “the names and properties of those that have been united through love [become] fitting to each other,” or as Yannai puts it in the conclusion to the qedushta for Genesis 35:9, “for Your [God’s] blessing is in the name of Israel and Your holiness is in the name of Jacob.”38 The conjoining of names brings about the conjoining of properties. Israel’s holiness is in the likeness of God’s holiness, Israel’s greatness is in the likeness of God’s greatness, and Israel’s oneness is in the likeness of God’s oneness; in a word, God is like Israel, and Israel is like God.39 To describe the relationship between God and righteous humans, such as Abraham, Maximus uses the image of embrace. “Love,” Maximus notes, “is therefore a great good, and of goods the first and most excellent good, since through it God and man are drawn together in a single embrace.” The embrace between the two beings refers to a situation in which God becomes articulated in human form (“appears as human”) “through the undeviating likeness of the deified to God in the good so far as is possible to humankind.” In the qedushta for Genesis 17:1, Yannai uses similar language to describe the act of circumcision performed by Abraham with God’s help: “His right hand You grasped, his foreskin You clipped, his 36 37

38 39

Rabinovitz, Liturgical Poems, vol. 1, 215, line 18; my translation. Rabinovitz, Liturgical Poems, vol. 1, 219, line 67; my translation. The word “power” is reconstructed by Bronznick, Liturgical Poetry, vol. 1, 90. Rabinovitz, Liturgical Poems, vol. 1, 220, line 80; trans. Lieber, Yannai, 650. For this language, cf. Yannai’s qerova for Passover in Rabinovitz, Liturgical Poems, vol. 2, 146–47, lines 90–95. See Chapter 1 of the present study for translation and analysis.

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covenant You cut, and his circumcision You did twofold.”40 In circumcision, in other words, God’s and Abraham’s hands act as one, just as, according to Maximus, “God and man are drawn together in a single embrace” in the activity of mutual love. The effect is also similar. As Yannai notes earlier in the same qedushta: “At his loins You became one [‫]ייחדתה‬, Your hand keeping his hand steady.”41 The root ‫“( יחד‬to become one”), used here, is otherwise utilized by Yannai to describe the function of Israel as God’s material image that shares in the activities of its archetype.42 Circumcision becomes one of such activities. Through the act of circumcision, jointly performed by human and divine hands, Israel is established as God’s material image. In a similar manner, Maximus interprets the “hand” of the embrace as the “ascetic struggle in accordance with virtue, in which and through which God receives his likeness to human beings.” For both authors, therefore, the image of God’s and man’s hands acting together, either in the act of circumcision or in the act of loving embrace, offers a symbolic form through which the isomorphic relationship between God and humans can be conceptualized. Within the broader context of Yannai’s poetry, Jacob’s image engraved on God’s throne becomes another way to articulate this relationship. As we shall see soon, the image functions as a figurative equivalent of Jacob’s name, an alternative modality of articulating the isomorphic relationship between Israel and God.

Jacob’s Image in Yannai’s Poetry To reference Jacob’s image, Yannai uses the same word demut that he uses elsewhere to describe the liturgical community of Israel in its relationship to God. The word choice is important. Jacob’s 40

41 42

Rabinovitz, Liturgical Poems, vol. 1, 154, line 30; trans. Lieber, Yannai, 470–72. On the complex relationship between this tradition and related rabbinic texts, see Lieberman, “Hazzanut Yannai,” Rabinovitz, Liturgical Poems, vol. 1, 153, line 17; trans. Lieber, Yannai, 468. See Chapter 1 for a detailed discussion.

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image engraved on the Throne of Glory reiterates the collective Israel’s status as God’s image but does so in a different symbolic register. For Yannai, Jacob’s image is no longer just a personification of Israel, the way it is for Lamentations Rabbah. Rather, in the context of Yannai’s poetry, Jacob-Israel’s image offers a visual equivalent to Jacob-Israel’s name. God becomes isomorphic with Israel through the medium of their shared signification understood as the dual inscription of name and image. In a similar way, as argued in Chapter 1, God becomes isomorphic with the liturgical community of Israel through their common designation, attributes, and activities. Whether he uses demut to describe the liturgical community of Israel or the engraved form of Jacob, Yannai understands image as participating in the qualities of its prototype. It is only natural, then, that the previously discussed qedushta for Genesis 35:9 introduces its audience to Jacob’s image within the context of its broader discussion of Jacob-Israel’s name: Your name will be known and Your people will know your name // And all who are called by Your name [will make known] Your name “The Prince,” whom You created for Your glory // And You fashioned his image on Your Throne of Glory “Jacob” he was called, and You are “the God of Jacob” // “Israel” he was called, and You are “the God of Israel.” Oh Yah, fulfill for him what You proclaimed to him // And make come true all that You said to him43

Just like the other parts of the qedushta, this section blurs the boundaries between biblical Jacob and the collective personhood of 43

Rabinovitz, Liturgical Poems, vol. 1, 215, lines 23–26; trans. Lieber, Yannai, 640–42, slightly modified. The Hebrew nin, translated here as “prince,” could also mean “son,” “child,” or “offspring.” See Genesis 21:23, Isaiah 14:22, and Job 18:19. Cf. Jastrow, Dictionary, 905. On the translation and its rationale, see Bronznick, Liturgical Poetry, vol. 1, 87.

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his descendants, the people of Israel. Yannai invites his listeners to focus on Jacob as the personification of the listeners’ own liturgical identity. Yannai also asserts the isomorphism of God’s and Israel’s name. The people of Israel are the people who invoke God’s name and who are called by God’s name. Indeed, the section concludes by conjuring God’s protective presence over Israel: “Oh Yah, fulfill for him what You proclaimed to him, and make come true all that You said to him.” The relationship, however, is reciprocal, for God is also named after Jacob and Israel: “‘Jacob’ he was called, and You are ‘the God of Jacob’ // ‘Israel’ he was called, and You are ‘the God of Israel.’” Jacob, the people of Israel, and God of Israel signify one another through Jacob-Israel’s name, a unique kind of space within which one can read God’s divinity through the semiotics of a human form. It is precisely this kind of mutual signification that makes the invocation of God’s protective presence in the stanza’s final line efficacious. In the context of this broader discourse on Jacob’s name, the image of Jacob “fashioned” (‫ )וצרתה דמותו‬on the Throne of Glory offers a visual equivalent to the name. Yannai uses the name and the image to reinscribe the same concept in two different codes. Whereas the name alone may be too abstract and immaterial, the image makes the semiotic middle ground on which communication between God and Israel takes place even more corporeal. The name and the image are two forms through which the human and the divine participate in each other and, therefore, become mutually legible. In the same way that Yannai invites his audience to identify with the name of Jacob, he also invites it to identify with the image of Jacob engraved on the Throne of Glory. Indeed, through the word interplay, Yannai explicitly states that Jacob (the image, the man, and, presumably, the collective personhood of Israel) shares in God’s glory. Jacob, the payyetan proclaims, is the prince created for God’s glory (‫)נין אשר יצרתה לכבודך‬, his image is fashioned on the Throne of Glory (‫)וצרתה דמותו בכסא כבודך‬, and the name signifies God in invocation. 83

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The affinity between Jacob’s image and name is ubiquitous in Yannai’s poetry. In the qedushta for Genesis 28:10, Yannai portrays the two as the focal points of angelic praise: For Your faith is in Jacob and testimony in Israel // For (You) see the image of Jacob. They sanctify You, the Holy One of Israel, and as they recall the name of Jacob // They praise You, the God of Israel. You are called “the God of Jacob” and also “the God of Israel” // And at the show of the camps of Your angels: One proclaims the name “Jacob” and another proclaims the name “Israel,” // And the first one says, “Holy is He!” And the second one says, “Blessed is He!” and this one calls out to the other // And this one listens to the other44

The language of this text is similar to the language of the qedushta for Genesis 35:9 but also expands on it. The piyyut identifies God through the name and image of Jacob-Israel not only from the perspective of God’s human worshippers but also from the perspective of angelic ones. God becomes available to angelic praise precisely as “the God of Jacob” and “the God of Israel.” “By depicting the angels taking on the names of the patriarch,” observes Lieber, “Yannai blurs the very identity of the angelic hosts into that of the patriarch and his descendants. In some way, the angels become (or wish to become) Jacob-Israel (both the patriarch and his latter-day descendants).”45 I would like to take Lieber’s argument one step further by suggesting that the blurring of the identity of the angelic hosts into that of the patriarch and his descendants occurs precisely within the semiotic field that makes God available to human and angelic 44

45

Rabinovitz, Liturgical Poems, vol. 1, 168–69, lines 14–18; trans. Lieber, Yannai, 532, with modifications. On this text, see Lieber, “Rhetoric of Participation,” 137–40, and Neis, “Embracing Icons,” 46. Lieber, “Rhetoric of Participation,” 139.

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knowledge through the media of Jacob’s programmatically human name and image. The resulting situation adds further complexity to Elliot R. Wolfson’s observation that, since the angels are called by the names Jacob and Israel, “the image of Jacob simultaneously alludes to the earthly man and the heavenly angel.”46 It does, except the human does not simply dissolve into the divine. Instead, the human and the divine paraphrase and, therefore, create one another in an act of mutual signification. The reference to the constant presence of Jacob’s image in front of God’s eyes, in conjunction with the references to God being named after Jacob and Israel, invites Yannai’s listeners to invoke the isomorphism between God and Israel simultaneously in the two different codes of the name and the visual form. The name and the image of Jacob create God’s liturgical persona, just as, in the words of Maximus, God “takes form” and “acquires his likeness to human beings” through human asceticism. Yannai’s human audience finds itself celebrating with the angels within the space centered on the name and the image of Jacob, with whom this audience identifies itself. This understanding of name and image as interchangeable semiotic valences is not unique to Yannai. In a homily delivered in 386 on his predecessor Meletius, John Chrysostom, then the bishop of Antioch, praises his listeners for constantly keeping Meletius present by naming their children after him, and also by carving his name and his images on signet rings, seals, cups, and bedroom walls.47 Indeed, names and images routinely share the material space of rings, amulets, and magic bowls mass-produced by local workshops throughout the late antique Near East. The two of them function as mutually reinforcing components within a sign system delineated by the physical boundaries of manufactured objects. Consider M112 Aramaic magic bowl, published and translated by Dan Levene. It refers to a house being “sealed by the seal [‫ ]בחתמא‬and the form 46 47

Wolfson, Along the Path, 7. John Chrysostom, Homilia encomium in Melitium 1 (PG 50:516).

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[‫ ]ובצורתא‬of El, and by the seal of Shaddai.”48 Not unlike Meletius’s name and image, once we sift through Chrysostom’s rhetoric, the seal is protective in nature, guarding the house from a series of demonic beings listed in the rest of the incantation. The reference to the seal is followed by a series of unintelligible divine names later on in the bowl’s text, introduced by the phrase “in the name of.” The name and the image are invoked here within one sequence as two interchangeable aspects of the same formula. A version of M112 phraseology appears on a series of Aramaic magic bowls from late antique Mesopotamia in slightly different variations. Some of the variations include “By the name of Yah Yah Yah Yah Yah nomina Barbara you are sealed by the signet ring on which the great ineffable name is drawn [‫ ]ציר‬and carved [‫]גליף‬, the arrangement of the whole world, from the six days of creation”; “by the name of nomina Barbara on which the ineffable name is drawn and carved, from the six days of creation”; “by the name of nomina Barbara you are bound and sealed by his signet ring on which the ineffable name is drawn and carved, the arrangement of the world.”49 The formula invokes the divine name in two parallel codes, first, as a series of unintelligible nomina Barbara, and then as a drawing and carving on the signet ring, presumably, the ring of Solomon, mentioned in some incantations.50 In both instances, the divine name and divine image articulate God’s presence in two interchangeable codes. The name functions as a form of image and the image becomes a form of name, just as they do in Yannai’s poetry. Indeed, in at least one instance, Yannai uses the root ‫חתם‬ instead of a more common ‫ חקק‬to describe the technique with 48

49

50

Levene, Corpus, 75, line 3; trans. Levene, 75, with revisions. Cf. Naveh and Shaked, Magic Spells, 124, line 9, for a similar formula. See Dölger, Sphragis, 109–11, on the name of Christ as sphragis in early Christian literature. As already noted in Levene, Corpus, 76. See Shaked et al., Aramaic Bowl Spells, 160, lines 8–9, 162, lines 8–9, and 166, line 13; trans. Shaked. For other variations of the same formula, see Shaked, 169–213. Shaked et al., Aramaic Bowl Spells, 208, line 9.

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which Jacob’s image is engraved on the throne. “On my throne of glory I have stamped you [‫]אחתמך‬,” declares God in the qedushta for Genesis 31:3.51 The use of ‫ חתם‬situates Jacob’s image within the semantic field otherwise characteristic of magic bowls with their references to seals and the activity of sealing, as well as their understanding of the seal as simultaneously name and image. As argued by Maguire, the pre-iconoclastic iconography developed in close relationship with contemporaneous magical practices. Images, names, and various configurations of letters functioned as powerful signs “self-contained, in that their only meaning was their supposed effect.”52 In late antique Greek incantations and amulets, as well as pilgrim tokens, names and letters flowed rather seamlessly into images and forms.53 The name and the image were morphologically interchangeable on Aramaic magic bowls. In all of these scenarios, letters and pictorial representations offered a range of forms intended to reinscribe the same situation in multiple codes. In sixth- and seventh-century Christian iconography, the name of a saint was sometimes invoked next to the saint’s image, although frequently images would remain anonymous. Reasons for adding the name varied. In some cases, as in the sixth-century mosaics of Saint Catherine’s Monastery at Mount Sinai, the purpose was to identify the portrayed characters. More often, rather than providing the depicted with a clear and unambiguous identity, the name offered an alternative set of signs through which the saint’s powerful presence could be articulated and, as a result, more effectively invoked. When Yannai conceptualizes the relationship between the name and image of Jacob, he does so within the broader cultural paradigm that, on the one hand, understands the name and the image as two parallel code systems to reinscribe and thus invoke the 51 52 53

Rabinovitz, Liturgical Poems, vol. 1, 188, line 79; my translation. Maguire, Icons, 119. For a good introduction to the material, see Vikan, “Art, Medicine, and Magic,” 65–86, with the literature cited there.

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power of the signified and, on the other, sees the named image as an identifying reference pointing to the specific individual through whom this power is channeled.54 In the course of the eighth-century iconoclastic debates, the understanding of the icon as a double inscription of name and image became normative in Byzantine Christianity.55 “An image [eikon] is the name and likeness of what is depicted on it,” observes Stephen of Bostra in around 700.56 The emphasis, however, would shift from the invocation of supernatural presence through the complementary codes of name and image, to the use of name as the sanctification of image. John of Damascus (c. 675–749), the author of a series of treatises in defense of icon veneration, associates the two by observing that “divine grace is given to material things through the name borne by what is depicted.”57 “Submit to the tradition of the Church and allow the veneration of images of God and friends of God, sanctified by name and therefore overshadowed by the grace of the divine Spirit,” he urges elsewhere in the treatises.58 According to the acts of the Seventh Ecumenical Council (787), the icon “participates” in Christ only when Christ’s name is inscribed 54

55 56

57

58

Maguire’s argument about the programmatic anonymity and, hence, indeterminacy of pre-iconoclastic depictions is to some extent accurate, but it also tells only part of the story. The evidence seems to suggest that there were no strict rules one way or the other. Instead, we are confronted with a range of practices. On indeterminacy, see Maguire, Icons, 38–40, and 100–6. For a broad range of pre-iconoclastic images accompanied by (sometimes, unintelligible) names, see 120–23 in the same work, as well as Vikan, “Art, Medicine, and Magic,” 67–84. On the mosaics in Saint Catherine’s Monastery, see Weitzmann, “Introduction to the Mosaics,” 11–16, and plates CIII–CXXIX, and CXXXVI–CLXXXVII. See Koch, “Theologie,” 169–70, 443–45, and Thümmel, Bilderlehre, 150–51. As quoted in John of Damascus, Imag. 3.73, lines 19–20 (Kotter, vol. 3, 174; trans. Louth, 126, with modifications). On Stephen of Bostra and his work, see Thümmel, Frühgeschichte, 145–48, and Haldon and Brubaker, Byzantium, 59–60, with the literature cited there. John of Damascus, Imag. 1.36, lines 14–15 (Kotter, vol. 3, 148; trans. Louth, 43). For a broader context, see Pentcheva, Sensual Icon, 57–96, esp. 66–71. John of Damascus, Imag. 1.16, lines 29–32 (Kotter, vol. 3, 90; trans. Louth, 30). Cf. John of Damascus, Imag. 2.14, lines 32–35 (Kotter, vol. 3, 106).

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on it. The image alone is insufficient. Only through the name does the icon become “revered and holy.”59 The designation of icon through the name traces the honor associated with icon back to the icon’s prototype, notes another act of the same council.60 The view of the name and the image as double signification intended to invoke the presence of the divine by reinscribing it in parallel codes, characteristic of Yannai, magic bowls, amulets, and some pre-iconoclastic Christian usages, evolves by the eighth century into the notion that image participates in the sanctity of its prototype only when accompanied by the prototype’s name.

Image as an Invocation The Church of Saint Demetrius in Thessaloniki, one of several great basilicas built as part of the city’s transformation into the provincial capital in the middle of the fifth century, features several sets of votive mosaics dedicated to the city’s patron saint. The mosaics included images on the west walls of the basilica’s north and south aisles, a sequence of mosaics above the north aisle’s arcade, and images on two piers in the transept. Of these, the sequence of mosaics overlooking the basilica’s north aisle was largely destroyed in a fire of 1917 but can be reconstructed based on photographs and watercolors made by Walter S. George several years before the destruction. The mosaics in this cycle are usually dated to the first half of the sixth century.61 The north aisle sequence opens and concludes with two structurally similar representations of Saint Demetrius, both of which are accompanied by identical inscriptions.62 The westernmost 59 60 61

62

Lamberz, Concilium Universale Nicaenum Secundum, 766, line 31; my translation. Lamberz, Concilium Universale Nicaenum Secundum, 680, lines 11–13. See Cormack, Writing in Gold, 78–93, and “Mosaic Decoration,” 17–52, and Bauer, Stadt, 186–98. See Bauer, Stadt, 186–89, and 218–19, on the inscription formulas. For broader methodological considerations, see Anderson, “Images,” 158–61.

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composition, although severely damaged by the time it was recorded, can be partially reconstructed as a frontal image of the saint standing within a niche and shown orant, that is with his hands raised in prayer. There is a diminutive figure of a worshipper, most likely a donor, standing in supplication to the left of the saint’s towering presence. On the right side of the saint, there is an inscription that reads, “as a prayer for one whose name God knows.”63 A similar composition at the opposite (eastern) side of the sequence features another orant Saint Demetrius framed by a gold aedicula, with a shell-shaped niche. The diminutive figures of two donors in supplication attitude stand at the left side of the saint, and one at the right. An inscription to the left of the saint is identical in its wording to the first one and reads, “as a prayer for one whose name God knows.”64 In both mosaics, the orant type chosen to represent Saint Demetrius offers a figurative equivalent to the epigraphic formula inscribed, or, as Sean Leatherbury puts it, “embedded” next to it.65 The saint’s image functions, quite literally, “as a prayer for one whose name God knows,” that is a prayer for an anonymous donor(s). The two formulas, the image and the text, perform invocation in two parallel sign systems as a figurative representation and a written statement. The mosaics were originally designed to overlook the silver shrine, known as the ciborium, which housed Saint Demetrius’s protective presence (although not necessarily his physical remains).66 The shrine, the saint’s image overlooking the shrine, and the inscription adjacent to that image were embedded into a web of relationships that guaranteed the most agency to the prayer. Indeed, this web was the prayer made present and perpetuated in the combination of written and figurative forms. 63 64 65

66

Cormack, “Mosaic Decoration,” 24–26; trans. Cormack, 25, n. 36. Cormack, “Mosaic Decoration,” 37–39. See Leatherbury, Inscribing Faith, 245, and, more broadly, on “embedded prayers,” 239–84. On the representation of donors in the orans position, see Maguire, Earth and Ocean, 50. See Bauer, Stadt, 166–79.

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Jacob’s image in Yannai’s poetry may very well be a rhetorical construct, rather than a reference to an actual picture seen by the payyetan’s audience. There is no indication that the literary topos of Jacob’s visage engraved on the divine throne had any explicit parallel in synagogues’ material iconography. Nonetheless, both structurally and functionally, Yannai’s invocation of Jacob’s presence is similar to the prayers inscribed next to the mosaic images of Saint Demetrius. As ekphrases and epigrams from the period tell us, material images and art forms conjured in liturgical performance could easily morph into each other. Yannai’s poetry offers another instance of a text embedded with an image, even though the image itself could very well be a verbal construct rather than a material artifact. Like the prayers associated with the image of Saint Demetrius, Yannai’s references to Jacob’s image invoke that image’s presence. The image, in turn, serves as the prayer’s embodied form, a prayer articulated through the medium of a different sign system. Consider the qedushta for Genesis 28:10 discussed earlier in the chapter. There, Jacob’s image ensures the constant presence of the community’s prayer before God. “For your faith is in Jacob and testimony in Israel,” declares Yannai addressing God, “for [You] see the image of Jacob.”67 The phrase is followed by the description of angels praising God as the God of Jacob/Israel. An epigram attributed to the sixth-century lawyer, historian, and poet Agathias Scholasticus provides a good point of comparison. Composed on an image of the archangel, the epigram identifies the image with a prayer offered to that image. A person who sees the image, says Agathias, “no longer has a confused veneration, but imprinting the image in himself he fears him as if he were present.”68 So far, 67 68

Rabinovitz, Liturgical Poems, vol. 1, 168, line 14; trans. Lieber, Yannai, 532. Anth. Pal. 1.34 (Paton, 22; trans. Paton, 23). For a different reading of the epigram, with the emphasis on the archangel as a recipient of prayer, rather than the prayer’s figurative embodiment, see Peers, Subtle Bodies, 62. On the epigram’s broader context, see Brubaker, “Icons,” 1226, and 1253, and Anderson, “Images,” 159.

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the prayer and the image seem to be two different things, but this changes in the epigram’s next sentence: “The eye stirs up the depths of the spirit, and art can convey by colors the prayer of the soul.”69 Here, Agathias effectively identifies the archangel’s image with the supplicant’s prayer. By creating the image, declares Agathias, art conveys the prayer. Like Saint Demetrius, the archangel is not just a recipient of the prayer. He is the prayer itself. In Yannai’s qedushta, the image of Jacob/Israel takes place of the image of Agathias’s archangel. The roles are reversed. It is no longer the archangel’s image that is invoked in human prayer, but the image of Jacob-Israel that is invoked by angels. But fundamentally the function of the image is the same. Jacob’s image embodies the angelic praise performed in Jacob-Israel’s name, just as the orant image of Saint Demetrius appears on the mosaics “as a prayer for one whose name God knows,” and the image of Agathias’s archangel “conveys by colors the prayer of the soul.” Explicitly identified as the subject of God’s gaze (“for [You] see the image of Jacob”), Jacob’s image offers a figurative formula for Israel’s and the angels’ joint praise, just as Saint Demetrius and the archangel are figurative equivalents of verbal invocations embedded with them. In a similar manner, the combination of Jacob’s name and image referenced in the qedushta for Genesis 35:9 offers a promise of efficacy to the invocation of God’s protective presence in the stanza’s final line.70 Other roughly contemporaneous Jewish liturgical compositions also identify the image of Jacob with the prayer offered by the people of Israel before God. In an Aramaic retelling of Exodus 1–15, God evokes “the image of your forefather engraved on the throne” (‫ )איקונין דסבך חקיקה בכורסייה‬in conjuncture with “the prayer of the three forefathers” (‫)צלותה דתלתי סבייה‬, as he assures Moses that Israel will be 69

70

Anth. Pal. 1.34 (Paton, 22; trans. Paton, 23). Cf. Anth. Pal. 1.35 (Paton, 22), where the archangel’s image also functions as a figurative equivalent of donors’ prayers. Rabinovitz, Liturgical Poems, vol. 1, 215, lines 23–26. Yannai’s qerova for the Day of Atonement further expands on some of the same themes. See Rabinovitz, Liturgical Poems, vol. 2, 212–13, lines 36–47.

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Jacob’s Image in Hekhalot Rabbati

redeemed from Egypt.71 The poem combines the image and the prayer as two aspects of a single gesture that guarantees God’s benevolence toward Israel. In the early seventh century, another payyetan, Eleazar berabbi Qillir, invokes “the form” (‫ )צורה‬of Jacob “as drawn on the throne” (‫ )כרשום לכסא‬in connection with Jacob’s ongoing supplication that upholds Israel.72 For him, Jacob’s form functions as an iconographic embodiment of Jacob’s supplication. In the world of invoked presences, the boundary between image as a rhetorical construct and image as a material artefact was porous indeed.

Jacob’s Image in Hekhalot Rabbati It would be impossible to talk about the theme of Jacob’s image engraved on the Throne of Glory without addressing the theme’s variation that appears in the anthology of early mystical texts known as Hekhalot Rabbati. Sections on Jacob’s image belong to some of the most frequently referenced parts of the anthology, even though a great deal about them remains unclear. Among other things, the precise relationship between Hekhalot Rabbati’s narrative and other versions of the same motif in late antique piyyutim and midrashim remains a matter of debate.73 Whereas most of the texts discussed until now can be situated with a degree of certainty in the context of late Roman and Byzantine pre-iconoclastic culture, the situation 71

72

73

Sokoloff and Yahalom, Poetry, 90, lines 4 and 18; my translation. Cf. Kister, “Jewish Aramaic Poems,” 174, who interprets tzelotah as an “oath,” sworn by God to the forefathers, rather than a “prayer,” offered by the forefathers. Elizur and Rand, Liturgical Poems, 340, lines 457–58; my translation. Shulamit Elizur dates the bulk of Qillir’s work to the period between the late sixth century and the first decades of the seventh century. See Elizur, Sod Meshalshei Qodesh, 697–703. On the theme of patriarchal supplication in Qillir’s works, see Novick, Piyyut and Midrash, 113–22, and “Between First-Century Apocalyptic,” 356–78. For Aramaic liturgical poetry, see Sokoloff and Yahalom, Poetry, 168. See Neis, “Embracing Icons,” 46–47, for observations on the matter. References in n. 68 provide a helpful summary of earlier literature, particularly on the relationship between Hekhalot texts and Yannai’s poetry.

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with Hekhalot Rabbati is more complex. Although the current consensus still favors the late Roman and early Byzantine world as a likely setting for traditions included in Hekhalot Rabbati, the anthology’s textual history is complex. On the one hand, Schäfer and Boustan have recently offered a series of compelling arguments that there could be a Babylonian stage in the history of Hekhalot Rabbati’s text. On the other, there is a broad understanding that the entire corpus of Hekhalot writings in its present form is most likely a product of the early Islamic period (also known as the Geonic period, in the context of Judaic studies), with additional editing taking place in Christian Europe well into the Middle Ages and possibly beyond that. Considering such a continuous evolution, the very dichotomy between Palestinian and Babylonian textual elements in Hekhalot Rabbati may, on some level, be no longer relevant. As we enter the first several centuries of Muslim rule, Palestinian and Babylonian Jewish traditions find themselves increasingly fused within a newly emerging Judeo-Arabic culture, to the point of producing a common symbolic language by the tenth century. The Babylonian component in Hekhalot Rabbati may very well reflect this early medieval Jewish environment, rather than a particular Babylonian stage in the history of the text.74 In the case of Hekhalot Rabbati’s sections on Jacob’s image, moreover, the overall uncertainty associated with the corpus is further complicated by the fact that, as I shall argue in due course, this version of Jacob lore constitutes an idiosyncratic literary unit that exhibits a series of unique linguistic and conceptual features unparalleled in other Jacob traditions. Most significantly, Hekhalot Rabbati is unique in asserting that, in apparent parallel to relics and images 74

On Hekhalot Rabbati’s complex textual history, see Schäfer, Hekhalot-Studien, 63–74, and Origins of Jewish Mysticism, 245, as well as Boustan, From Martyr to Mystic, 16–29, 36–47, 288, 292, and “Emergence of Pseudonymous Attribution,” 18–38, with the literature cited there. On the Geonic period, see Brody, Geonim of Babylonia, esp. 100–22. For an excellent introduction to the history of Judeo-Arabic culture, see Scheindlin, “Merchants and Intellectuals,” 313–86.

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in early Byzantine Christianity, Jacob’s image serves as an object of adoration. In a curious reversal of culturally anticipated roles, the adoration is performed by God, but otherwise it adheres to the script generally associated with the Christian veneration of sacred objects. This makes Hekhalot Rabbati’s treatment of Jacob’s image different from what we have seen in Yannai. There, Jacob’s image is invoked as a material signifier of God’s presence but never described as an object of veneration performed through a sequence of culturally sanctioned gestures. Does the Hekhalot Rabbati’s choice of veneration scenario reflect the work of an idiosyncratic group within the fold of late antique Jewish culture? Is it a result of early medieval adaptations made sometime between the eighth and tenth centuries and reflective of the growing importance of image veneration in Byzantium? I do not think we have enough evidence to be reasonably certain about any of these options. In what follows, I will attempt, with some diffidence, to anchor Hekhalot Rabbati’s traditions on Jacob’s image within the conceptual universe of late antique culture and read them through the eyes of an audience attuned to meanings characteristic of this culture. In my opinion, however, by the very nature of their textual history, the contributions of Hekhalot Rabbati to the traditions on Jacob’s image should be treated as a special case and possibly situated at the intersection of early Islamic, Geonic, and a range of Byzantine cultural norms spanning the period between the seventh and ninth centuries.

Liturgical Context Within its present setting, the passage on Jacob’s image in Hekhalot Rabbati belongs to a larger unit that deals with God’s response to Israel’s daily prayers. The unit encompasses sections 163 and 164 in Schäfer’s Synopse and starts as follows: Blessed unto heaven and earth are they who descend to the Merkavah, if you tell and make known to my sons what I do during 95

Jacob’s Image: The History of a Late Antique Motif the morning prayer, during the Minhah and the evening prayer, every day and at every hour, when Israel says before me “holy.” Teach them and tell them: Raise your eyes to the raqia opposite your house of prayer at the hour when you say before me “holy.” For I have no joy in my entire eternal house, which I created, except at that hour, in which your eyes are raised to my eyes and my eyes are raised to your eyes, at the hour when you say before me “holy.” For the voice which goes out of your mouths at that time moves and rises before me as a pleasant savor.75

The section calls on mystics, “who descend to the Merkavah,” to serve as witnesses of God’s response to Israel’s liturgy, specifically the recitation of the “holy, holy, holy” chant during the qedushah. As Schäfer and, more recently, Neis suggest, the entire unit may very well have originated in a liturgical setting before being included into its present context in Hekhalot Rabbati.76 There are, however, significant differences between how this text and, for instance, Yannai’s piyyutim describe Israel’s liturgical performance. On the one hand, the Hekhalot version never uses the term demut, so central to Yannai, to characterize the relationship between God and collective Israel. On the other hand, Hekhalot Rabbati describes the encounter between God and Israel in terms of an intense reciprocal gaze at the moment, “in which your eyes are raised to my eyes and my eyes are raised to your eyes.”77 This theme and the vocabulary used to convey it are absent from Yannai’s work, as is the call for Israel “to raise your eyes to the raqia opposite your house of prayer” at the time of the qedushah. Considering these differences in vocabulary and key themes, it is hard to argue for simple continuity between Yannai’s piyyutim and Hekhalot Rabbati’s text. 75 76 77

Synopse, § 163; trans. Schäfer, Origins of Jewish Mysticism, 260. See Schäfer, Hidden and Manifest God, 155, and Neis, “Embracing Icons,” 41. On the category of “reciprocal gaze” see Elsner, “Between Mimesis and Divine Power,” 61.

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The call on Israel “to raise your eyes to the raqia [the highest heaven and God’s dwelling place in Jewish tradition] opposite your house of prayer” echoes almost verbatim an exhortation by the late fourth- and early fifth-century theologian Theodore, bishop of Mopsuestia, to his congregation at the time of the Eucharist, to “look upwards towards heaven and to extend the sight of our soul to God,” and provides further proof that our text seeks to construct its liturgical space according to late antique and early Byzantine semiotic norms.78 In her article, Neis emphasizes the central role the motif of reciprocal gaze plays in Hekhalot Rabbati’s section on Jacob. She also notes that this role of reciprocal gaze reflects broader conventions in late antique and Byzantine viewing techniques.79 Indeed, as James Francis argues, “the meaning of an image is constructed by an interchange between viewer and viewed,” the process that constitutes “the dynamic of viewing, of seeing and being seen.” These mutually constitutive gazes, Francis continues, result in a situation when “images have become living, and the living have become images.”80 The upward, or as Hans Peter L’Orange would call it, “transcendental” gaze was an important feature of portraiture from the third century onward.81 By the sixth century, the upward gaze on the frontal images of saints would constitute one of the ubiquitous characteristics of early Byzantine iconography.82 Hekhalot Rabbati imagines the liturgical community of Israel in accordance with formulas provided by upward–looking figures in late Roman and early Byzantine art. Israel is expected to lift their eyes heavenward to meet the eyes of God, just as numerous figures 78

79

80 81 82

Theodore of Mopsuestia, Commentary 6 (Mingana, vol. 6, 238; trans. Mingana, 99). For another example of the same script in Jewish liturgical setting, see Sokoloff and Yahalom, Poetry, 168, line 1. Neis, “Embracing Icons,” 40–43. On the use of the reciprocal gaze motif in rabbinic literature more broadly, see Neis, Sense of Sight, 41–81. Francis, “Living Icons,” 593. L’Orange, Apotheosis, 96–110. See Grabar, Martyrium, vol. 2, 40–42.

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on icons, frescoes, and mosaics lift their eyes to meet God’s gaze within the picture’s symbolic space. The precise location in which the exchange of gazes between God and Israel takes place remains a matter of debate. Schäfer interprets the phrase “opposite [ke-neged] your house of prayer” in a sense that the congregation is “expected to gaze heavenward during the prayer, presumably outside the synagogue,” but the matter is not so clear to me.83 Maximus’s Mystagogy distinguishes between two areas inside the church, “an area exclusively assigned to priests and ministers, which we call a sanctuary, and one accessible to all the faithful, which we call a nave.”84 Maximus then reads the sanctuary and nave dichotomy in two more sets of codes. On the one hand, the church’s interior space represents the spiritual and sensible worlds, for the church “has for its sanctuary the higher world assigned to the powers above, and for its nave the lower world which is reserved to those who share the life of sense.”85 On the other, the church is an image of the sensible world, “since it possesses the divine sanctuary as heaven and the beauty of the nave as earth.”86 One may wonder whether Hekhalot Rabbati’s demand “to raise your eyes to the raqia opposite your house of prayer” means, in fact, opposite the nave. Standing in the nave, the community faces the apse and the raqia symbolized by the apse and, specifically, by the conch of the apse. The raqia is located therefore opposite (ke-neged) the synagogue’s nave and the worshipping community standing in the nave and facing the apse, just as the Mystagogy’s sanctuary with its meaning of both the spiritual world and sensible heaven would be located opposite the church’s nave and “all the faithful” assembled there. This understanding of the apse as heaven would shape the apsidal iconography as well. In late Roman and Byzantine churches, apses and their conches were stage sets 83 84 85 86

Schäfer, Origins of Jewish Mysticism, 261. Maximus Confessor, Myst. 2.212–14 (Boudignon, 15; trans. Berthold, 188). Maximus Confessor, Myst. 2.231–33 (Boudignon, 16; trans. Berthold, 188). Maximus Confessor, Myst. 3.259–61 (Boudignon, 17–18; trans. Berthold, 189).

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inhabited by the figures of Christ, the Theotokos, the apostles, and martyrs arranged in a variety of scenes. Some of these images were intended to engage the beholder’s gaze from outside the image’s own boundaries. Others constituted self-enclosed sign systems in which the exchange of gazes between upward-looking figures and God took place within the image’s pictorial space. Either way, most of these scenes functioned as models with which the liturgical community gathered in front of the apse would identify.87 As it raised its eyes to the raqia to engage God in reciprocal gaze, the audience of Hekhalot Rabbati followed the structurally sanctioned script and shared in the universe of meaningful acts recognizable across Byzantine semiotic koine.

Jacob’s Qelaster Panim The second section of Hekhalot Rabbati’s unit, § 164 in Schäfer’s Synopse, expands on the theme of Israel’s liturgical community by introducing a theme of Jacob’s image engraved on the Throne of Glory: Bear witness for me to them of what testimony you see in me, of what I do to the countenance of Jacob, your father,88 which is engraved unto me upon the throne of my glory. For at the hour when you say before me “holy,” I bend down over it, embrace, caress, and kiss it, and my hands are upon my arms,89 three times, when you say 87

88 89

On the apse as heaven, see Demus, Byzantine Mosaic Decoration, 21. Demus’s discussion of the placement of figures in the eastern half of the cupola so as to “confront the beholder in an almost frontal attitude” (18), however, is based on a middle Byzantine iconographic and architectural program. For a detailed introduction to the iconographic programs of fourth- through eighth-century apses, see Ihm, Christliche Apsismalerei, and Grabar, Martyrium, vol. 2, 105–17. Some manuscripts read “their father.” Most manuscripts read “upon my arms.” Some manuscripts have “upon its/his arms,” instead.

99

Jacob’s Image: The History of a Late Antique Motif before me “holy,” as it is said: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of Hosts” (Isaiah 6:3).90

God’s veneration of Jacob’s image must be read in light of the unit’s broader interest in Israel’s recitation of the qedushah outlined earlier. Just as in Lamentations Rabbah and Yannai’s piyyutim, the image of Jacob serves to personify the liturgical community of Israel, so too does Jacob’s image in Hekhalot Rabbati. To use Schäfer’s description, “the heavenly Jacob, engraved on God’s throne, is obviously visualized as the celestial representative of Israel on earth, the (feminine) kenesset Israel.”91 It is likely that the text’s reference to Jacob as “your father” (or “their father,” according to some manuscripts) is intended to emphasize this quality of collective personhood implied in Jacob’s qelaster panim, just as Yannai’s poetry draws the worshipping congregation into its narrative space by continuously invoking the presence of the collective Israel. It has been convincingly argued by Neis that the way God venerates the image of Jacob finds almost verbatim parallels in Byzantine accounts of icon veneration.92 More recently, Boustan has demonstrated that a three-verb sequence describing God’s affection for Jacob’s image (“embrace, caress, and kiss”) is, in fact, an established formula used to describe “adoration being lavished on corporeal remains and graves in Palestinian midrashim from the fifth century onward.”93 Jacob’s qelaster panim inhabits simultaneously the worlds of relics as well as images. It is an image engraved (‫)חקוקה‬ 90

91 92

93

Synopse, § 164; trans. Schäfer, Origins of Jewish Mysticism, 261, with slight modifications. Cf. Neis, “Embracing Icons,” 41–42, and Boustan, “Jewish Veneration,” 77, for slightly different translations with important comments. Schäfer, Origins of Jewish Mysticism, 262. Neis, “Embracing Icons,” 43, and 47–48. On devotional practices associated with images in sixth- and seventh-century Byzantium, see Kitzinger, “Cult of Images,” 96–100, and, more cautiously, Haldon and Brubaker, Byzantium, 36–38, 53–60, 775–77, 781–82. Boustan, “Jewish Veneration,” 78. For a similar language used to describe the veneration of relics in Christian texts, cf. Brown, “Images,” 25–26, and Haldon and Brubaker, Byzantium, 34.

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upon the throne of glory but also, in Neis’s words, “sufficiently embodied to receive God’s physical attentions.”94 In the seventh-​ century Miracles of Saint Demetrius, one of the visitors to Saint Demetrius’s shrine prayed to the saint by “pressing his face against what was like a silver couch on which the godlike face of this all-glorious martyr was imprinted (entetypotai).”95 Here, as in Hekhalot Rabbati, an engraved face that occupies the midpoint between an image and a relic offers itself to sensory adoration, or, to use Pentcheva’s terminology, “tactile visuality.”96 At a somewhat earlier date, the Piacenza pilgrim described a miraculous imprint of Christ’s face on linen as an object of adoration in Memphis in Egypt.97 Mass-produced at about the same time, late antique pilgrim ampullae featured kneeling supplicants before the cross that carried the engraved bust portrait of Christ. Between the mid-sixth and early eighth centuries, objects that bridge the gap between a relic and an image proliferated across the Eastern Roman Empire. Jacob’s qelaster panim was one of them.98 Hekhalot Rabbati’s interest in Jacob’s qelaster panim also reflects the composition’s broader interest in the divine face as a distinct visual category. Several passages after the description of Jacob’s image, the text repeats an earlier exhortation to “those who descend to the Merkavah” to testify, presumably to the liturgical community 94

95

96

97 98

Neis, “Embracing Icons,” 42. On the term qelaster panim and its potential range of meanings, see Neis, 42, n. 39, and, more recently, Turan, “On the Word ‫קלסתר‬,” 116–32. Or, perhaps, “embossed.” See Lemerle, Miracles, 66, lines 26–28; my translation. See Chapter 3 for a detailed discussion of this and other related passages in the Miracles of Saint Demetrius. On tactile visuality, see Pentcheva, Sensual Icon, 20–21. For the broader epistemological context of this term, see Frank, Memory of the Eyes, 118–33. Itinerarium 44 (Geyer, 152). On the relationship between relic and image veneration, see further Grabar, Martyrium, vol. 2, 343–57, Kitzinger, “Cult of Images,” 115–19, Belting, Likeness, 59–63, and Haldon and Brubaker, Byzantium, 35–36, 53, and 56. On the ampullae, see Grabar, Martyrium, vol. 2, 82–83, Vikan, Early Byzantine Pilgrimage Art, 23–24, and the literature referenced in Chapter 3.

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of Israel, what they have seen upon the divine face (‫)פנים‬: “face of elevation and might, of pride and eminence, which exalts itself, which raises itself, which rages [and] shows itself great. The face shows itself mighty and great three times daily in the heights,” that is, three times during the three daily prayers.99 Later in the text, the holy creatures carrying God’s throne are described as adoring God’s face in the same manner as God adores the face of Jacob: “They go around and surround their king, one from his right and another one from the left, one from in front of him and another one from behind him. They embrace and kiss him and uncover their face. They uncover, but the king of glory covers his face.”100 As noted by Schäfer, the reference to angels embracing and kissing God’s face uses the same vocabulary as the reference to God embracing, caressing, and kissing the face of Jacob earlier in the text.101 The two passages must, therefore, be interpreted in conjunction with each other as being reflective of Hekhalot Rabbati’s overarching interest in the face (whether God’s, or Jacob’s) as an object of liturgically performed adoration. Boundaries between the face and the image become blurred. In the act of adoration, the face undergoes transformation into the image, and the image is transformed into the face. In a similar manner, in the late sixth- and seventh-century Christian texts, it is the countenance of Christ, understood as simultaneously the face and the image, that serves as an object of adoration. The Piacenza pilgrim notes that the imprint of Christ’s face venerated in Memphis was “too bright for us to concentrate on it since, as you went on concentrating, it changed before your eyes.”102 Christ’s face is both luminous and dynamic. It “changes before your eyes,” just as God’s face in Hekhalot Rabbati “exalts 99

100

101 102

Synopse, § 169; trans. Schäfer, Origins, 262–63, with modifications. For a discussion of this passage, see Schäfer, Hidden and Manifest God, 18, and Origins, 263. Synopse, § 189; trans. Schäfer, Origins, 265, with modifications. Cf. § 160, for a similar theme. Synopse, § 163–64. See Schäfer, Origins, 266. Itinerarium 44 (Geyer, 152; trans. Wilkinson, 149).

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itself,” “raises itself,” and “shows itself mighty and great.” The combination of luminosity and dynamism becomes somewhat of a cliché in the stories of acheiropoietoi – images produced by the impression of Christ’s face rather than hand-painted by a human being. The image in Memphis, described by the Piacenza pilgrim in about 570, is one of the earliest references to an acheiropoietos known to us. A later account, attributed to the fourth-century bishop Gregory of Nyssa, but probably composed between 600 and 750, narrates the discovery of another acheiropoietos, this time in the village of Kamoulianai in Anatolia. Christ’s “immaculate and inscrutable face” and its imprint, described at one point in the story as “the holy impress [character] of the Father’s radiance,” constitute the narrative’s focal point.103 The impression of Christ’s face makes the face and the image morph into a single entity, just as they do in Hekhalot Rabbati. A luminous face is equally central to the rhetorical program of contemporaneous saints’ lives.104 In a story from the Miracles of Saint Demetrius, an anonymous man had a dream in which he saw two angels, who looked like emperor’s bodyguards, entering the Church of Saint Demetrius and requesting an audience with the saint. As the saint appeared from inside his silver shrine, known as the ciborium, his “angel-like face” was impossible to look at, for “the skin of his face was glowing like the sun rays.”105 The story also notes that the saint’s appearance was “in accordance with the depiction on the most ancient icons,” a comparison borne out by a series of mosaic images of Saint Demetrius overlooking his ciborium.106 103

104

105

106

Dobschütz, Christusbilder, 16**, lines 3–4, and 17**, line 3; my translation. On the composition’s date and history, see Dobschütz, 43–44, and 9**–12**. See Frank, Memory of the Eyes, 85–86, and 137–45. For important rabbinic parallels, cf. Neis, Sense of Sight, 202–52. Lemerle, Miracles, 162, lines 16–18; my translation. On the miracle and its context, see Cormack, Writing in Gold, 67, and Speck, “De miraculis Sancti Demetrii,” 494–505. The comparison with icons, Speck argues, may very well be a post-iconoclastic addition. See Speck, “De miraculis Sancti Demetrii,” 498, and 520–21. The

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The saint’s luminous face becomes indistinguishable from the image. Like Christ’s portraits, the face of Saint Demetrius finds itself at the center of the narrative as the object of special attention and, possibly, veneration. In both cases, the luminosity makes the face hard to grasp by a human observer. The strings of epithets associated with the divine face in Hekhalot Rabbati convey a similar notion: “A lovely face, a glorious face, a face of beauty, a face of flame is the face of the lord God of Israel, when he sits upon the throne of his glory.”107 Jacob’s face in Hekhalot Rabbati also exudes light. The anthology is unique among late antique sources in using the term qelaster panim to describe Jacob’s image, and this word choice may specifically imply the luminosity of Jacob’s face. A text from another Hekhalot anthology, known as Hekhalot Zutarti, makes this connection explicit by referring to “the light of the face of Jacob, our father” (‫)אור פניו של יעקב אבינו‬. 108 Like the luminous faces of Christ and Saint Demetrius, Jacob’s face acquires the quality of an icon. The prominence of countenance, either God’s or Jacob’s, in Hekhalot Rabbati’s rhetorical program may very well be another reflection of broader cultural processes, characterized by Brown as “the momentum of the search for a face,” that endowed countenance with special significance in the early Byzantine milieu.109

107

108

109

fourth-century Historia Augusta, however, uses an almost identical language when it describes the apparition of Apollonius of Tyana visiting the emperor Aurelian (270–75) in his tent. Apollonius, the story goes, appeared to the emperor “in the form in which he is usually portrayed” (HA, Divus Aurelianus 24.3, trans. Magie, vol. 3, 243), just as Saint Demetrius would according to the Miracles. Synopse, § 159; trans. Schäfer, Hidden and Manifest God, 16, with modifications. On this text, see Neis, “Embracing Icons,” 39–40. Cf. the description of God’s appearance in § 189. Synopse, § 411; trans. Schäfer, Hidden and Manifest God, 73, based on manuscript Oxford, with modifications. On this passage’s dependence on Hekhalot Rabbati, see Schäfer, Origins, 299. The term qelaster panim most likely implies luminosity. See Jastrow, Dictionary, 1379–80, Neis, “Embracing Icons,” 42, n. 39, and, in particular, Turan, “On the Word ‫ קלסתר‬,” 116–32. Brown, “Dark-Age Crisis,” 15. For further reflections on the role of holy-face relics among Christians and Jews, see Boustan, “Jewish Veneration,” 73–81.

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Conclusions

Conclusions Hekhalot Rabbati is unique among late antique Jewish texts in understanding Jacob’s image as an object of adoration, an adoration performed through the set of culturally meaningful gestures associated in contemporaneous Christian literature with relic and image veneration. The function of Jacob’s image in Yannai’s poetry is different. There, the patriarch’s demut is invoked rather than venerated. It serves as the symbolic embodiment of Israel’s liturgical community, a community that is understood to be God’s demut. Like the combinations of names and images that appear on late antique amulets and pilgrim tokens, Jacob’s name and image serve to invoke the presence of the named and portrayed figure but also collective Israel’s presence before God. In the eyes of Yannai’s audience, the invoked figure is not a recipient of prayer addressed to him by an external supplicant but a signification of the audience’s own liturgically performed collective self. The function of Jacob’s demut in Yannai can be compared to the function of saints’ images in pre-iconoclastic Christian art. According to André Grabar, the figural representations of saints often served as “l’équivalent pictural” of a donor’s prayer. Rather than being mediators approached to channel one’s prayer, these figures were quite literally prayers themselves, that is, sign systems that perpetuated the donor’s devotional presence, the presence of prayer, in front of God. They functioned, in Grabar’s words, as “une transposition de prières individuelles en cycles iconographiques particuliers.”110 Similar to Jacob’s demut, these images were invocations rather than objects of adoration. The understanding of Jacob’s image as Jacob’s face, implied by the term qelaster panim, can also be unique to Hekhalot Rabbati 110

Both quotations are from Grabar, Martyrium, vol. 2, 128: “Iconographic equivalent,” and “a transposition of individual prayers into specific iconographic cycles” (my translation). For some of the examples of such representations, in addition to Grabar’s work, see Mango, Silver from Early Byzantium, 242–45, and 256–57.

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and the composition’s broader interest in the semiotics of God’s face. The terms demut and iqonin, used to reference the image of Jacob elsewhere, do not necessarily suggest the face as opposed to the full-length bodily form. It is only by projecting the semantic range associated with qelaster panim that we can interpret Jacob’s image as Jacob’s face across the sources. Whether Yannai and his audience understood Jacob’s demut to be Jacob’s face must, therefore, remain an open question. Hekhalot Rabbati’s emphasis on the veneration of Jacob’s face should probably be seen as one element in the formation of a new symbolic koine in the Eastern Empire between the sixth and early eighth centuries.111 Chapter 3 continues to examine how Jewish traditions on Jacob’s image are embedded in the broader symbolic repertoire of late Roman and early Byzantine cultures, by examining how the interpretation of Jacob’s sleeping body in Genesis 28:10–22 may reflect the broader conventions of relic veneration in late antiquity. 111

On this process, see Thümmel, Frühgeschichte, 103–203, and Bilderlehre, 101–14, as well as Haldon and Brubaker, Byzantium, 40–66, and 774–87.

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3 Jacob’s Dream and Relic Veneration

A series of Jewish exegetical (midrashic) and poetic texts interpret the biblical story of Jacob’s dream at Bethel in Genesis 28:10–22 by invoking the motif of Jacob’s image engraved on the throne of God. As they do so, the present chapter argues, these texts invite their audiences to enter a narrative space constructed according to rules that otherwise governed the construction of spaces associated with relic veneration. For comparative purposes, I focus on veneration practices associated with the late antique cult of Saint Demetrius, the patron saint of the city of Thessaloniki in modern day Greece. Semiotic principles that governed the display of Saint Demetrius’s presence at his shrine were similar to the principles according to which late antique Jewish authors framed Jacob’s dream. Each one of these two sets of common structural elements reveals, under a different aspect, the same impulse “towards an authoritative codification of the signs which could lead to religious knowledge.”1 Instead of suggesting a direct relationship between the two traditions, however, I would like to view them as two configurations of an idiom independently realized within the parameters of the common horizon of possibilities or, in Gombrich’s words, as two faithful constructions of a relational model.2 Rather than tracing the interpretation of Jacob’s dream to a single parallel in non-Jewish sources, I situate the interpretation within a web of references and semantic relations, 1 2

Cameron, “Language of Images,” 31. See Gombrich, Art and Illusion, 90.

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through which Jacob’s dream, like words in a language, can accrue its culture-specific range of meanings.

A Tale of Two Bodies The motif of Jacob’s image features prominently in Jewish interpretations of the biblical story of Jacob’s dream at Bethel in Genesis 28:10–22. According to the story, as he is making his way from Beersheba to Harran, fleeing from his brother Esau, Jacob stops overnight at a place that he would later call Bethel. There Jacob had a dream in which he saw “a ladder set up on the earth, the top of it reaching to heaven; and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. There above it stood the Lord” (Genesis 28:12–13). God talks to Jacob, promising him a multitude of descendants, protection, and the inheritance of the land from which Jacob is fleeing. When Jacob wakes up, he acknowledges the sanctity of the place by calling it “the house of God” (Bethel) and the “gate to heaven.” This narrative has predictably been an object of intense interest among later Jewish and Christian interpreters.3 In late antique Jewish literature, Jacob’s dream comes to be understood in light of the tradition on Jacob’s heavenly image. Central to this line of interpretation is the rhetorical juxtaposition within the same narrative space of the resting body of Jacob, asleep at Bethel, and Jacob’s image engraved on the Throne of Glory, or, as Neis puts it, “a visual symmetry, between an earthly Jacob and a divine iconic Jacob.”4 The audience is invited to experience the two bodies in the act of cross-referential viewing. Within the parameters of this narrative space, the figure of sleeping Jacob becomes legible in relation to Jacob’s engraving on the Throne of Glory and vice versa. 3 4

See Kugel, Ladder of Jacob, 9–35. Neis, “Embracing Icons,” 46.

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Late antique Jewish texts offer multiple variations on this basic scenario. In qedushta for Genesis 27:28, Yannai talks about “the image of the ladder unfurled from the Footstool to the Throne to compare [Jacob] with the image engraved on the Throne.”5 The poet uses the image of the ladder, seen by Jacob in his dream, to establish a visual connection between Jacob and his image, and guide the listeners’ gaze through a carefully choreographed process of synthetic viewing. Yannai invites his audience to follow the imagined ladder with their eyes, as their gaze moves back and forth between Jacob’s body resting on the ground and Jacob’s image engraved on the throne. Indeed, the behavior of Yannai’s audience appears to follow the pattern already established by ministering angels at Bethel. Targum Neofiti, an interpretive translation of the Pentateuch into Aramaic, composed in late antique Palestine, expands on the original story of Genesis 28 as follows: And behold, the angels that had accompanied [Jacob] from the house of his father ascended to announce good news to the angels on high, saying: “Come and see the pious man whose image [‫]איקונין‬ is set [‫ ]קביעא‬in the Throne of Glory, whom you desired to see.” And behold, the angels from before the Lord were ascending and descending and observed him.6

Both the targum and Yannai operate within the parameters of the same type of visual space, framed by the presence of Jacob’s two bodies. Just like Yannai’s listeners, the targum’s angels perform the act of synthetic viewing as they ascend and descend between 5

6

According to Maagarim, as well as Lieber, Yannai, 525; trans. Lieber, 524. This line is missing from Rabinovitz’s edition. Targum Neofiti to Genesis 28:12 (Diez-Macho, vol. 1, 179; trans. McNamara, 140, with modifications). The same tradition appears in most manuscripts and, with important variations, on which see later in the chapter, in MS Vatican of the Fragmentary Targum. See Klein, Fragment-Targums, vol. 1, 57, and 144 (MS Vatican). It is also present, in a slightly different version, in Targum Pseudo-Jonathan. See Diez-Macho, Targum Palaestinense, 195.

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Jacob’s sleeping body and his heavenly iqonin. In both cases, the narrative space is designed to produce a cumulative effect of one body being interpreted through the medium of the other. To quote Miller, we deal here with yet another scenario of “the odd doubling of saint and icon,” through which “flesh enters the order of representation.”7 The targum’s angels, as well as Yannai’s listeners, belong among late Roman and early Byzantine liturgical communities whose modes of viewing and seeing were structured in accordance with culturally anticipated sets of idioms. Just how exactly these idioms worked can be judged by a series of late fifth-century inscriptions placed in the altar area of the church of Saint Martin in Tours near the tomb in which the remains of Saint Martin, one of the most venerated saints of late Roman Gaul, were enshrined.8 As pilgrims to the saint’s shrine entered the church, they were led by a combination of inscriptions and frescoes to the tomb in the altar, which served as the culmination of a carefully guided spiritual tour. At the altar, the accompanying inscriptions instructed pilgrims to imagine a setting that was very similar to the one that the Jewish audiences of Yannai and the targum were led to imagine as they listened to the liturgical renderings of Jacob’s dream. The arch of the apse over the altar framed the pilgrim’s gaze both literally and figuratively, with the inscription referencing the story of Jacob’s dream: “How awesome is this place! Truly it is the temple of God and the gateway to heaven.”9 Indeed, judging from the late fifth-century homilies of Bishop Avitus of Vienne, Jacob’s ladder was a recurrent theme invoked in connection with Saint Martin’s role as a mediator between heaven and earth.10 The narrative space of Jacob’s dream could be read as a code for liturgical space in a variety of 7

Miller, Corporeal Imagination, 149. On the late antique cult of Saint Martin, see Van Dam, Leadership, 230–55, and Hahn, “Seeing and Believing,” 1095–97. On the inscriptions, see also Van Dam, Saints and Their Miracles, 308–9. 9 Pietri, Ville de Tours, 809, no. 12 (trans. Van Dam, Saints, 314). 10 See Van Dam, Leadership, 244–45. 8

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languages, from Latin to Hebrew, and across different segments of late Roman and early Byzantine culture, from Gaul to Palestine. By using Jacob’s dream to structure the space in which their congregations worshipped, late antique Jewish authors spoke the language that would be immediately recognizable to a wide range of contemporaneous audiences. The inscriptions placed near Saint Martin’s tomb emphasized the saint’s simultaneous presence in heaven and inside the tomb and invited viewers to read his relics simultaneously in their earthly and heavenly registers. “Here is buried Bishop Martin of blessed memory, whose soul is in the hand of God. But he is wholly present here, made manifest to everyone by the goodwill of his powers,” one inscription stated.11 “Confessor by his merits, martyr by his cross, apostle by his actions, Martin presides from heaven here in his tomb,” echoed another.12 By being simultaneously present in heaven and in his tomb, Saint Martin’s body offered a semiotic middle ground between heaven and earth, just as Jacob’s body did in the late antique Jewish interpretations of Jacob’s dream. In Yannai’s qedushta for Genesis 28:10, God leads angels on pilgrimage to see the sleeping Jacob in a manner that reads like the experience of pilgrims visiting Saint Martin’s tomb. God addresses Jacob with the words, “Here I am with you – just as your image is with me,” and then continues, “Though you sleep, your Guardian does not slumber.”13 Yannai describes Jacob’s body as being simultaneously present in two registers and two modes  – down on earth, where Jacob is sleeping at Bethel, and in heaven, where his image is with God, just as Saint Martin’s body is described by the inscriptions as being simultaneously present in heaven and in his tomb. In both 11 12 13

Pietri, Ville de Tours, 809, no. 13 (trans. Van Dam, Saints, 315, with slight modifications). Pietri, Ville de Tours, 809, no. 15 (trans. Van Dam, Saints, 315, with slight modifications). Rabinovitz, Liturgical Poems, vol. 1, 171, lines 38–39; trans. Lieber, Yannai, 536. Fossum, Image of the Invisible God, 138–49, interprets Jacob’s heavenly image as being, simultaneously, the sleeping Jacob’s guardian angel and the Glory of God. Cf. Friedman, “Anthropomorphism,” 168–76, who identifies Jacob’s image with the Divine Presence.

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scenarios, therefore, the earthly bodies – one of them asleep and the other asleep in the tomb – are also recoded as heavenly presences and thus find themselves at “the intersection of heaven and earth” to frame, in Raymond Van Dam’s words, “a ‘gravity-free’ zone.”14 In both cases, the presence of the human body in earthly and heavenly registers provides a semiotic environment that makes heaven and earth semantically commensurate and hence mutually legible.

The Invisible Relics of Saint Demetrius As visitors were entering the fifth-century basilica of Saint Demetrius in Thessaloniki, they braced themselves for a visual experience choreographed along the lines that would be also recognizable to the visitors to Saint Martin’s church, on the one hand, and the audiences of Yannai and the targumim, on the other.15 Similar to Saint Martin, Saint Demetrius was also remembered as someone who “in his immaterial spirit” dwelt simultaneously in heavenly Jerusalem and his home city of Thessaloniki.16 Inside the basilica, the visitors’ attention would be drawn to an enclosed silver hexagonal shrine known as the ciborium and located prominently on the north side of the church’s nave. A series of ex-voto mosaics invoking the saint’s protective presence overlooked the ciborium. Special visitors, such as the city eparch Marianos, would be allowed to enter behind the ciborium’s doors. As he entered, a story goes, the eparch invoked the saint’s presence by “pressing his face against what was like a silver couch on which the godlike face of this 14 15

16

Van Dam, Leadership, 244. For excellent introductions to the cult of Saint Demetrius in late antique Thessaloniki, see Cormack, Writing in Gold, 50–94, and, more recently, Bauer, Stadt, 27–233. Skedros, Saint Demetrios, 85–132, focuses on the cult’s social contexts. On the liturgical setting of Saint Demetrius’s veneration, see also Hahn, “Seeing and Believing,” 1091–92, and Bogdanović, “Performativity of Shrines,” 283–94. Lemerle, Miracles, 63, lines 21–23.

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Figure 1  Chalice with apostles venerating the cross, early seventh century. The Walters Art Museum. Public Domain

all-glorious martyr was imprinted [entetypotai].”17 Our knowledge of the image’s exact nature is limited.18 The imprint could be manufactured by repoussé, chasing, or engraving. It possibly resembled a broad range of holy figures in shallow relief (portrayed both full length and en buste) that populate a variety of sixth- to seventh-​century silver objects, including reliquaries, from Syria and Constantinople (Figure 1).19 Some visitors apparently believed that the saint’s relics 17 18

19

Lemerle, Miracles, 66, lines 26–28; my translation. For some of the theories, see Speck, “De miraculis Sancti Demetrii,” 306–7, 332, 336, and 341; Cormack, Writing in Gold, 63–64; Bauer, Stadt, 225–27. On decoration techniques, see Mango, Silver from Early Byzantium, 44–46. For a good sampling of artifacts, see Dodd, Byzantine Silver Stamps, 130–31 (a censer),

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were buried underneath the ciborium, but the author of the Miracles was skeptical about that. Indeed, there is no evidence that the ciborium ever housed the actual relics of the saint.20 The structure served to frame the presence of Saint Demetrius’s immaterial body invoked through his image or, rather, a series of images, once we consider the mosaic representations of the saint that overlooked the ciborium. While only a select few had access to the ciborium’s interior, the mosaics were expected to be visually engaged by everyone coming into the church. The iconographic program outside the ciborium anticipated the image embossed on the couch but also multiplied and projected that image as the constant presence into the basilica’s nave. The saint’s body was made available to the public through the effect of continuously invoked visual appearances rather than in the form of tangible relics.21 One could further speculate that, in parallel with some of the mosaic images, the representation on the couch also featured an orans figure of the saint. The orans type is well attested in late antique Christian art. Saints with their hands raised in prayer inhabit a variety of material media, from mosaics and frescoes to medallions and ampullae.22 Some of the better known are the orans images of Saint Menas, populating ivories and flasks, and mostly associated with pilgrimage to the saint’s shrine at Abu Mina in Egypt. Several

20 21 22

204–5 (a bowl), 220–21 (a plate), and Mango, 74–77, 228–30, 232–33 (chalices), 108–11 (a flask), 192–97 (cross medallions), 199–211, 240–45 (plaques), and 255–57 (an ewer, and a censer). See also Dodd, Byzantine Silver Treasures, 17–23, 53–54. On reliquaries, in particular, see Dodd, Byzantine Silver Stamps, 86–87, 156–57, and Byzantine Silver Treasures, 48–51, as well as Thümmel, Frühgeschichte, 191, n. 402. For further objects, see Maguire, Icons, 105, and 131, and the literature cited in Thümmel, 190–91. Mango, 210, draws a parallel between silver plaques from Syria and the decoration of silver doors in Saint Demetrius’s ciborium. Bauer, Stadt, 178–79. See Bauer, Stadt, 189–98, and Anderson, “Images,” 175–76. See Grabar, Martyrium, vol. 2, 24–29, Belting, Likeness, 82–88, Vikan, Early Byzantine Pilgrimage Art, 31–36, and Bauer, Stadt, 215–18, for succinct, but useful introductions to the topic.

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other saints are represented orant as well. A few of these images are accompanied by inscriptions, but many are not. In most instances, however, it could be argued that the images of orant saints, whether accompanied by an inscription or not, serve to secure supernatural protective presence of one sort or another. Like the orans images of Saint Demetrius, these representations function as embodied prayers through which the blessing is invoked. We learn about Marianos from the opening chapter of the Miracles of Saint Demetrius, a collection of tales about the city of Thessaloniki’s patron saint and his miracles, characterized by a complex textual history but still traceable in its core to the seventh century.23 The tenth miracle from the same collection contains another case of the saint’s bodily apparition framed by the ciborium’s inner space. This time the visit to the shrine occurs in a dream attributed to an anonymous relative of a prefect. The story was likely composed in the reign of Heraclius (610–41). It allegedly takes place during the reign of Heraclius’s predecessor Phocas (602–10) and seems to reflect the anti-Phocan bias otherwise characteristic of Heraclean literature.24 In his dream, the man enters the Church of Saint Demetrius, prays there, and then sees the ciborium, described by the narrative in considerable detail. When he inquires about the purpose of the ciborium, those around him answer that “the most glorious martyr Demetrius reposes there in divine fashion.”25 The man asks for permission to look inside. At this point, the attendant standing by the ciborium’s silver doors opens them. The story then continues as follows: When the attendant had opened the doors, our man even before he had entered, saw the little silver couch that is set up in the 23

24

25

On the Miracles’ complex textual history, see Speck, “De miraculis Sancti Demetrii,” 292–311, Skedros, Saint Demetrios, 107–15, and Bauer, Stadt, 223–25. For a succinct but useful English introduction, see Cormack, Writing in Gold, 62–63. On the miracle’s context, see Cormack, Writing in Gold, 70, Skedros, Saint Demetrios, 125–27, Bauer, Stadt, 227, and Speck, “De miraculis Sancti Demetrii,” 413–17. Speck dates the story to the reign of Heraclius. Lemerle, Miracles, 115, line 8; trans. Mango, Art, 129.

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The woman who was sitting on the second throne was Eutaxia (Good Order). By keeping Eutaxia from leaving Thessaloniki, Saint Demetrius prevented the city from falling into chaos. Just like the earlier miracle, this story mentions the silver couch as the most prominent feature of the ciborium’s interior. The stories, however, differ when it comes to details. Whereas Marianos prayed before Saint Demetrius’s image imprinted on the silver couch, the second story does not mention this image at all. Instead, the apparition of the enthroned saint appeared “in the same form as he is depicted on icons.” This difference notwithstanding, both accounts attempt to visualize the saint’s body by cross-referencing it with his image. In the first miracle, by praying before Saint Demetrius’s impression, the visitor to the ciborium prays before the saint’s imagined body made visible. In a similar manner, the saint’s apparition provides a hermeneutical key for the interpretation of the saint’s otherwise invisible body. As Speck’s meticulous analysis makes clear, Saint Demetrius’s Miracles have a long and convoluted textual history.27 Although the text’s earliest recension dates to the seventh century, different miracle stories within the collection continued to be reworked and expanded well into the post-iconoclastic period. Speck argues that the reference to the saint’s apparition in “the same form as he is depicted on icons,” in miracle ten, reflects the aesthetic and theological conventions of the post-iconoclastic era, and hence is the 26 27

Lemerle, Miracles, 115, lines 12–19; trans. Mango, Art, 129–30. See Speck, “De miraculis Sancti Demetrii,” 292–311, and “Nochmals zu den Miracula,” 317–429.

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product of post-iconoclastic editing.28 While the reference to icons may, indeed, be a post-iconoclastic revision, Saint Demetrius’s bodily form, enthroned next to his ciborium, also appears on one of the pre-620 mosaics, which used to overlook the ciborium area prior to their destruction in the fire of 1917.29 The mosaic depicting the enthroned saint is part of the larger ex–voto cycle donated by the parents of a girl named Maria in exchange for unspecified benefits from the saint. The commission consisted of three mosaics that showed, to use Henry Maguire’s description, “a three-fold presentation of the girl to the saint, at different times in her life.”30 The cycle unfolded in accordance with the rules of continuous representation. It featured a sequence of the same characters (including the figure of Saint Demetrius) introduced in various situations and narrative contexts. The purpose of the sequence was not so much to represent the saint as to invoke his protective presence over the child, as an inscription that accompanied the mosaic made clear.31 By continuously reinscribing the saint’s form in multiple registers, the commission had functional affinity with contemporaneous amulets that used multiple codes to reinscribe and, by doing so, invoke the protective presence of a powerful entity. In the same vein, the threefold representation of the saint invoked his protective presence by reiterating it in multiple situations and hence multiple codes. All three representations of Saint Demetrius, including the enthroned one, referenced the postmortem apparitions of the saint, and specifically associated it with the ciborium. In addition to their votive function, therefore, the mosaics helped structure the viewing experience of those who approached the ciborium and created the sense of the 28

29

30 31

Speck, “De miraculis Sancti Demetrii,” 341–45. Cf., however, the almost identical language used to describe an apparition of Apollonius of Tyana in the Historia Augusta, Divus Aurelianus, 24.3 (Magie, vol. 3, 240). See Cormack, “Mosaic Decoration,” 31–37, and Writing in Gold, 87–88, Maguire, Icons, 101–2, Skedros, Saint Demetrios, 79, and Bauer, Stadt, 171–72. Maguire, Icons, 101. Cormack, “Mosaic Decoration,” 31.

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continued presence of Saint Demetrius’s “transcendent-but-material body,” to borrow Miller’s felicitous term.32 The cycle’s opening mosaic represents Saint Demetrius enthroned in front of the open door of his ciborium. The saint reaches across with his right hand in a protective gesture toward a child offered to him by the child’s mother. At some distance from this scene there is a full-length standing figure of a woman with a halo. Several identifications have been proposed, including that of Eutaxia from the miracle. It seems more likely, however, that the figure represents the Virgin. The enthroned image of the latter appears in another segment of the mosaic cycle as well. Miracle ten, in other words, draws on multiple visual formulas attested in the mosaics and combines them into a scene of Saint Demetrius’s enthroned apparition. Even if the explicit cross-indexing of this apparition with the saint’s icon in the text of the miracle is a later addition (as it very well may be), we are still dealing here with what Miller describes as “an interesting illusionistic play between the three-dimensional saintly presences and their two-dimensional portrait.”33 The apparition of the saint’s bodily form, described in the miracle, and his images overlooking the ciborium are related. The narrative of the saint’s presence emerges as a verbal rearticulation of corresponding iconography. Compositionally, individual miracles follow the format of sermons, although it remains unclear whether they were actually delivered. It could very well be, then, the intent of the Miracles’ author(s) to invoke the saint’s presence through interplay between narrative scenes and the mosaics’ decorative program.34 32

33 34

Miller, Corporeal Imagination, 118. On the mosaics, see Cormack, Writing in Gold, 86–89, Skedros, Saint Demetrios, 79, Bauer, Stadt, 189–98 and Belting, Likeness, 82–88, 96–98. Miller, Corporeal Imagination, 145. On the Miracles’ genre, see Cormack, Writing in Gold, 61, and Skedros, Saint Demetrios, 108–10. On the interplay between the Miracles’ text and basilica’s iconography, see Bauer, Stadt, 223–27.

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Jacob’s Dream Based on the mosaics and the Miracles, one can argue that central to the ciborium area was the process of semiotic and semantic transference between Saint Demetrius’s bodily form, made manifest in his apparitions, his pictorial form, as it appeared on the mosaics overlooking the ciborium, and the saint’s image imprinted on the couch. The mosaics’ picture-space extended into the basilica’s nave, allowing for the images of Saint Demetrius to be read as pictorial representations, which, at the same time, invoked the presence of the “ephemeral solidity” of the saint’s timeless body, displayed in his apparitions in the ciborium.35 The apparition of Saint Demetrius’s enthroned figure could be read as a variation on the saint’s pictorial representation, and, vice versa, Demetrius’s iconography, whether in the form of mosaics or an image on the couch, could be read as the material rendering of his apparition. The reiteration in multiple codes served as an invocation but also helped define “the nature of the saint from the point of view of his bodily presence” and address, in the words of John F. Haldon, “a particularly crucial issue” of whether “saints have a real physical existence.”36 Different scenarios of Saint Demetrius’s presence offered by different miracles establish a semantic range within which Saint Demetrius’s body could be meaningfully described. Late antique Jewish interpretations of Jacob’s dream developed within the same context of what Cynthia Hahn has characterized as “a visual rhetoric of sanctity” – a synthesis of literary and art forms intended to ensure a carefully choreographed liturgical access to the deceased saint’s timeless body, believed to be simultaneously present in heaven and on earth.37 The cross-referential viewing of Jacob’s 35 36

37

Miller, Corporeal Imagination, 118. Haldon, “Supplementary Essay,” 52. For a similar function of Saint Symeon tokens, see Vikan, “Art, Medicine, and Magic,” 72–73. See Hahn, “Seeing and Believing,” 1079.

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sleeping body and his image engraved on God’s throne was central to the rhetorical program of late antique Jewish traditions on Jacob’s dream. A parable from the fifth-century midrash Genesis Rabbah illustrates the paradox of Jacob’s two bodies as follows: As it is said, “Israel in whom I will be glorified” (Isaiah 49:3) – You are the one whose image [‫ ]איקונין‬is engraved on high. [Angels] ascend and see his image; they descend and see him sleeping. It may be compared to a king who sat and judged in a courtyard. They go up to the basilica and find him sleeping. They go down to the courtyard and find him sitting and judging.38

This is a textually difficult fragment. Much attention has focused on the potential confusion between a “courtyard” (‫ )פרוור‬and a “basilica” (‫)בסילקי‬, the two locations in which the king is observed administering justice and sleeping.39 Shamma Friedman expresses a more general concern about the overall lack of clarity of a narrative situation in which the king’s body is simultaneously found in two different circumstances, that is, sitting in judgment and asleep. Although perplexed about the parable’s compositional logic, Friedman assumes “that both the homilist and his audience were quite familiar with a ‘double vision’ of the king motif, and therefore for them the parable was able to serve the homily well.”40 I believe the homilist and the audience were, indeed, quite familiar with what Friedman dubs “the double vision motif.” The parable uses what Kurt Weitzmann, in his work on the origins of text illustrations, describes as the “cyclic method” of representation to interpret Jacob’s simultaneous presence in the form of a sleeping body and the image engraved on God’s throne. “By conceiving each 38

39

40

Gen. Rab. 68.12 (Theodor-Albeck, vol. 2, 788); my translation. On Genesis Rabbah’s provenance and textual history, see Strack and Stemberger, Introduction, 276–83, with literature. See Schäfer, Rivalität, 205–6, Friedman, “Graven Images,” 234–35, and Bunta, “Likeness of the Image,” 79–82. Friedman, “Graven Images,” 235.

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changing situation of the text as a picture in itself,” Weitzmann notes, “the artist creates now a series of consecutive compositions with separate and centered actions, repeating the actors in each and so observing at the same time the rules of the unity of time and place.”41 A single, overarching picture comes to the viewer through a series of discrete scenes that depict the same character in consecutive postures or circumstances. The scenes may unfold within the same pictorial space or constitute a sequence of individual pictures similar in their structure to modern-day sequences of movie frames or comic strips. By the sixth century, the “cyclic” (so Weitzmann) or “continuous” (so Wickhoff) approach to reading the artwork becomes somewhat of a norm, as can be seen from the iconographic program of the sixth-century Vienna Genesis.42 Contemporaneous Greek authors made the point of applying the same method interchangeably to the reading of iconography and written texts. In the fifth century, as noted by Kessler, Cyril, the patriarch of Alexandria, constructed his argument, aimed at helping one Bishop Acacius comprehend the typological exegesis of the Scriptures, by drawing a semantic parallel between the typological reading of a written text and the cyclic or continuous method of viewing paintings.43 In the midrash’s parable, two discrete scenes, unfolding as a sequence of individual snapshots, depict the king in two different modes, first sitting and judging in a courtyard and then sleeping in a basilica. By moving up and down between the (basilica’s?) courtyard and the basilica, the viewers in the parable read these scenes synthetically by summarizing them as two aspects within 41

42

43

Weitzmann, Illustrations in Roll and Codex, 17. Weitzmann’s understanding of the cyclic method both develops and critiques Franz Wickhoff’s earlier theory of the continuous method of pictorial narration. See Wickhoff, Roman Art, 8–13, 154–58, and 163–67, and Weitzmann, Illustrations in Roll and Codex, 35–36. On the continuous method of narration in the iconography of the Vienna Genesis, see Wickhoff, Roman Art, 8–9. Cf. Weitzmann, Illustrations, in Roll and Codex, 89–93. For an introduction to the Vienna Genesis, see Wellesz, Vienna Genesis, 5–20. See Kessler, Spiritual Seeing, 53.

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one picture produced through a single interpretive frame. The angels who viewed Jacob’s two bodies by ascending and descending between the sleeping Jacob and Jacob’s image engraved on high engaged, presumably, in the same viewing technique. Late antique liturgical compositions, such as targumim and Yannai’s piyyutim, would invite their audiences to join the angels in this act of summarizing, in viewing of Jacob’s body, just as contemporaneous writers and artisans invited their audiences to read the artwork in the continuous or cyclic manner. In fact, in another parallel to Saint Demetrius, there is no indication whether Jewish traditions on Jacob’s image implied an en buste or full-length (perhaps orans) representation. It is possible that there was no established tradition to that effect and Jacob’s image could be visualized either way, in line with a broad and often interchangeable range of busts and full bodily forms impressed on Byzantine artifacts of the time. In late antique cultural vocabulary, Jacob’s sleeping body would be readily recognizable as what David Frankfurter calls “a habitus, in the sense of the gesture of the body asleep and dreaming.”44 The spatial juxtaposition of the couch, on which Saint Demetrius’s body is sleeping, and the eternally alive body of the saint invoked through images and visions closely resembles the juxtaposition of Jacob’s sleeping body and his image engraved on high. Indeed, as noted by Hahn, beds associated with saints’ relics were a common element of shrines’ interior, particularly in the West.45 The uniqueness of Saint Demetrius’s couch had to do precisely with the fact that it contained no visible body. Instead of physical relics, the saint’s implied body lay asleep inside the ciborium. In the broader compositional context, the sleep- and dream-related imagery was central to the Miracles’ rhetoric. In miracle one, the city eparch Marianos was healed from paralysis after accepting the saint’s 44

45

Frankfurter, Christianizing Egypt, 136, and, more broadly, on the practices of divination as “the cultural vocabulary of shrine gestures,” see 130–38. Hahn, “Seeing and Believing,” 1091, n. 92.

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invitation to sleep in “his house,” that is, the church basilica.46 For that purpose, a bed was arranged for Marianos inside the church. As he was asleep, the eparch had a dream in which he spoke to Saint Demetrius. The recovery came the next morning as Marianos was recalling the dream and the promise of cure made to him by the saint in that dream.47 In miracle ten, as well as in a series of other miracles, communication with Saint Demetrius also takes place in a dream.48 The importance of dreams for constructing a setting in which communication with the saint could take place was not accidental. For a late antique audience, dreams offered a visual world that, in Miller’s words, “was sensuous and metaphysical at once.”49 A physical object, received in a dream, could still be there once the person who received it has woken up. Thus, according to the seventh-century Miracles of Saint Artemius, a golden coin, presented in dream to a certain Sergius, turned out to be a wax seal bearing an image of the saint after Sergius woke up.50 The coin did not lose its materiality, as it passed from the dream world into the world of senses, although its meaning underwent an important transformation. As late antique and early Byzantine authors were experimenting with spaces in which the physical and the spiritual could become semiotically transferable and thus mutually legible, dreams offered just such a space. Navigating the dream world required a particular kind of epistemology, “a transfigured eye,” according to Miller, that was prepared to breach the boundaries between the world of flesh and the world of spirit by reading the spirit materially and the flesh 46 47 48

49 50

Lemerle, Miracles, 63, lines 8–9. Lemerle, Miracles, 65–66. See Cormack, Writing in Gold, 65–74, and Bauer, Stadt, 227–28, for a helpful summary. Miller, Corporeal Imagination, 64. Miracles of Saint Artemios 16 (Crisafulli and Nesbitt, 106–8). On the composition and its context, see Haldon, “Supplementary Essay,” 33–73, and Krueger, Writing and Holiness, 64–70.

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spiritually.51 By entering Jacob’s dream, late antique Jewish audiences could experience a sign system within which Jacob’s physical body had to be read immaterially through the code of his heavenly image, whereas, at the same time, Jacob’s image accrued meaning only when read through the material code of his sleeping body. Jacob’s body would thus be easily legible within the context of late Roman and early Byzantine modalities of saint veneration. It was no different from the bodies of other sleeping saints, whether implied or physically manifest in the form of relics, which constituted an important and structurally recognizable category in the world of late antiquity. Just like them, Jacob’s body was part of a stage set for liturgical performance. Surprisingly, and in contrast to Dura Europos’s wall frescoes, either Jacob himself or Jacobrelated motifs do not appear on the mosaic floors of late antique Palestinian synagogues, although, in the absence of wall decorations from that period, any such evidence must remain inconclusive. At the same time, within the framework of Jewish liturgy, the presence of Jacob’s sleeping body was textually invoked through the recitation of piyyutim and targumim. In a sense, Jacob’s body was also an implied one. It was rendered visible only through a medium of narrative space, just as Saint Demetrius’s body was made visible through a series of textually inscribed apparitions that would come either in the form of scenes in the mosaics overlooking the ciborium or miracle narratives semantically related to these scenes.

The Hermeneutics of the Saint’s Body The juxtaposition of a sleeping body and an object (a throne or a couch), on which the selfsame body is simultaneously imprinted or engraved organizes the narrative space of both the Miracles and the traditions on Jacob’s dream as a hermeneutical relationship 51

On this term, see Miller, Corporeal Imagination, 154.

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between the saint’s body and his image. This relationship, more than individual objects involved in it, creates a narrative and performative program for both traditions. In Yannai’s qedushta for Genesis 27:28, quoted earlier in the chapter, the image of the ladder stretches forth from earth to the Throne of Glory correlating Jacob’s sleeping body with his image engraved on the throne. Within this relationship between the two modes of Jacob’s body, visually established by the ladder, Jacob’s image plays the role of a hermeneutical key to unlock the meaning of Jacob’s body resting at Bethel and, at the same time, accrues its own meaning in relation to that body. Saint Demetrius’s image imprinted on the silver couch in miracle one produces a similar effect. This time, however, it appears in conjunction with the saint’s implied body, presumably lying on the bed but otherwise unavailable to an observer’s physical senses. This invisible bodily presence manifests itself only in relation to the impression of “the godlike face of this all-glorious martyr.” It is the relation between objects rather than the objects themselves that has significance. The saint’s invisible sleeping body becomes legible within the parameters of a sign system formed through the relationship between that body and the saint’s visible image. Otherwise, the body is absent and the silver couch remains empty. In a similar way, in miracle ten, Saint Demetrius’s invisible body accrues meaning in relation to the saint’s apparition enthroned next to the couch. The apparition scene draws on a series of visual formulas derived from votive mosaics that overlook the ciborium and, perhaps, from the saint’s image imprinted on the couch. Within this system, the saint’s body can be seen and therefore meaningfully described as a sum of relations between Saint Demetrius’s invisible relics, his bodily apparition, and his pictorial form. Indeed, the cross-referential reading of Saint Demetrius’s apparition and his iconography belongs to a scenario widely attested elsewhere in late antique lives and miracles. According to this scenario, the saint’s apparition becomes meaningful precisely when read in relation to the saint’s image. In parallel to the story of Saint 125

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Demetrius, the miracle of Saint Artemius, mentioned earlier in the chapter, reads the saint’s identity in multiple interrelated codes. Saint Artemius first appears to Sergius in sleep as the administrator of granaries. He then gives Sergius a gold coin, which turns out to be “a wax seal bearing an imprint [ektypoma] of the saint,” another object that belongs in the same category of imprinted or engraved images with Saint Demetrius’s image on the silver couch, Jacob’s image on the throne, and images on the ampullae and the eulogiai, to be discussed later in the chapter.52 Finally, when Sergius wakes up, he recognizes the apparition’s true identity as Saint Artemius. The miracle does not specify whether the image on the seal has anything to do with the correct identification of the saint. Instead, just as in the Miracles of Saint Demetrius and Jacob’s dream, the saint’s presence is articulated in several codes and accrues meaning only as a result of these codes’ semantic cross-pollination. By the middle Byzantine period, the role of icons as tools for determining the identity of saintly apparitions becomes somewhat of a literary cliché. In the words of Gilbert Dagron, the icon is “itself a matrix of images. It tells the faithful under what form he will see the saint appear, and the saint what face he must assume and what clothes he must wear in order to be recognized.”53 In the pre-iconoclastic period, however, the situation is more complex. Whereas the process of interpreting a saint’s apparition in relation to his image and a saint’s image in relation to his apparition is most likely a pre-iconoclastic phenomenon, the post-iconoclastic period introduces a more rigid formal structure into this type of narrative. Within this structure, to quote Dagron again, “the image authenticates the vision more than it is authenticated by it, because consensus is based on the image and it is from the image that a collective 52

53

Miracles of Saint Artemios 16 (Crisafulli and Nesbitt, 108, esp. lines 3–4). Speck, “Wunderheilige und Bilder,” 211–14, dates the story to the pre-iconoclastic period. See also Miller, Corporeal Imagination, 154–56. Dagron, “Holy Images,” 33. For a useful summary of evidence, see 30–31 in the same work, as well as Maguire, Icons, 5–47.

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imagination springs, which is simply confirmed afterwards by the imagination of the visionary or the dreamer.”54 In contrast, in earlier texts, apparition and image coexist in a significantly more indeterminate situation of “saintly doubling.”55 Understood as signs empty of innate meaning, the image and the apparition become legible in relation to each other and within a system of reading that works in both directions, that is, from the apparition to the image, as well as from the image to the apparition. The image’s privileged status as the hermeneutical key to determine the apparition’s meaning could be the product of a more normative approach that fully crystallizes during iconoclastic debates. Consider the apparition of Saint Artemius, which strikes me as being intentionally indeterminate. It is first interpreted by Sergius as being the administrator of granaries and only later as Saint Artemius. One could argue, however, that the saint’s image on the seal, presented to Sergius, is an equally empty sign devoid of binding meaning. This argument is further strengthened by Maguire’s observation about the programmatically unspecific nature of saints’ representations in pre-iconoclastic Byzantine art.56 Often left unnamed, a saint’s image functioned as a sign that could be (and, indeed, often was) explored in multiple directions and read as a reference to a number of different figures. It offered a range of potential meanings, actualized in relation to other signs within a particular semiotic and situational configuration, rather than a single meaning that was fixed and binding across different contexts. In line with these observations, Saint Artemius’s apparition and his imprint on the seal accrue their meanings strictly in relation to each other, while neither of them possesses an exclusive distinction of being the hermeneutical key to unlock a single constantly relevant meaning. 54 55 56

Dagron, “Holy Images,” 31. Miller, Corporeal Imagination, 155. Maguire, Icons, 38–40, 100–6, and 118–32.

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In what looks like a similar scenario, Saint Demetrius’s apparitions, his representations on mosaics, his image imprinted on the silver couch, and his presumed but invisible body, sleeping on the selfsame couch, function as indeterminate signs that accrue their respective meanings only in relation to one another, established within a particular semiotic configuration, that is, the ciborium and adjacent parts of the basilica.57 “A word,” notes Ferdinand de Saussure, “is studied in the context of a system,” and, therefore, “it exists only in virtue of its relation and opposition to words associated with it” within the system’s parameters.58 In a similar manner, innately empty signs that populate early Byzantine visual arts and contemporaneous lives and miracles continuously create one another as meaningful forms. Similar to other early Byzantine stories of saints, the juxtaposition of Jacob’s sleeping body with his image, engraved on the Throne of Glory, creates a space in which Jacob’s body accrues meaning in relation to his image, and Jacob’s image accrues meaning in relation to his body. In line with pre-iconoclastic modes of interpretive viewing, late antique Jewish traditions on Jacob’s dream read Jacob’s body and his image as innately empty signs that acquire content only within a relationship. When the angels that have accompanied Jacob from the house of his father invite the angels on high to come down and observe Jacob’s sleeping body, both groups act as early Byzantine viewers for whom Jacob’s body and his image accrue meaning in relation to each other. On the one hand, the angels identify Jacob’s body through the medium of his image as the body of “the pious man whose image is engraved in 57

58

As noted by Maguire, Icons, 105–6, the indeterminacy and lack of identifying naming is a distinct characteristic of pre-iconoclastic saints’ images that appear on silver objects. The same was likely the case with Saint Demetrius’s image. For a brief discussion of the lack of naming on early mosaics representing Saint Demetrius, see Maguire, 38–40. Saussure, Course in General Linguistics, 22–23. Cf. similar observations on the role of context in determining the meaning of images in Maguire, Earth and Ocean, 8.

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the Throne of Glory, whom you desired to see.”59 On the other, as our glance moves in the opposite direction, the angels need Jacob’s body to explicate the meaning of Jacob’s iqonin, engraved on the throne. Like the unnamed images of saints, discussed by Maguire, Jacob’s iqonin becomes legible only in relation to other signs within the system or, in this particular case, in relation to the iqonin’s recoding in Jacob’s body sleeping at Bethel.

Image on the Throne Revisited Along with the holy men’s sleeping bodies, the enthroned presence of their bodily forms constitutes another focal point of narrative space associated with Jacob and Saint Demetrius. In the Miracles, Saint Demetrius’s sleeping body is made visible and thus commensurate with human senses either through “the godlike face of this all-glorious martyr,” imprinted on the silver couch (so miracle one), or the saint’s apparition in “the same form as he is depicted on icons” on “a splendid throne made of gold and precious stones” (so miracle ten).60 Not unlike contemporaneous reliquaries, the couch and the throne function as frames in which the saint’s bodily presence is encased and displayed for viewing.61 An aedicula and silver ciborium play a similar role of framing device on some of the mosaics. In like manner, the heavenly throne served as a frame for Jacob’s image engraved on it, but also, more broadly, as a frame for Jacob’s body referenced by the image. Several Jewish texts suggest an intentional lack of distinction between Jacob’s body and his image engraved on the throne. A late antique Aramaic poem for the holiday of Shavuot details the vicissitudes of Moses’s ascent to Mount Sinai, focusing, in particular, on his confrontation with the angels over the right to 59 60 61

Targum Neofiti to Genesis 28:12 (Diez-Macho, vol. 1, 179; trans. McNamara, 140). Lemerle, Miracles, 66, lines 27–28 (miracle one), and 115, lines 15–17 (miracle ten). On reliquary as a frame, see Elsner, “Relic, Icon, and Architecture,” 17.

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receive the Torah. As Moses approaches the heavenly throne, he sees “the image [‫ ]איקונין‬of Jacob rising up towards him.”62 The sense here seems to be that Moses is greeted by Jacob’s bodily apparition, not just Jacob’s image engraved on the throne. If so, then the poem reads this apparition as an embodiment of Jacob’s iqonin, just as the Miracles read Saint Demetrius’s enthroned body by referencing it through the medium of the saint’s iconography. The two scenarios do not just cross-reference the body and the image: They fold the body into the image. In both cases, the throne serves to frame the holy man’s bodily form, even though it is unclear whether the poem implies that Jacob’s specter is actually seated on the throne, the way Saint Demetrius is, or simply embodies the iqonin engraved on the throne. The parable from Genesis Rabbah, discussed earlier in the chapter, blurs the boundaries between Jacob’s image engraved on the throne and Jacob’s figure seated on the throne even more explicitly than the poem does. By describing the king as sitting and judging in a courtyard, the parable creates the narrative context within which an earlier and fairly vague reference to Jacob’s “image engraved on high” can be interpreted as implying not just an image engraved on the throne but an enthroned bodily form. In Friedman’s words, “the original meaning of ‘Jacob’s image engraved on High’ is a reference to the belief that the Divine Presence bore the countenance of the patriarch Jacob.”63 Other texts within the cluster of traditions associated with Jacob’s image, scholars have noted, may be making 62

63

Sokoloff and Yahalom, Jewish Palestinian Aramaic Poetry, 114, line 30; my translation. For brief references to this line, see also Halperin, Faces of the Chariot, 121, and Fossum, Image, 143. As noted by Fossum, 141–42, MS Vatican of the Fragmentary Targum to Genesis 28 omit the word “set” (‫)קביעא‬, when talking about Jacob’s image. Instead, it reads: “Come and see Jacob, the pious man, whose image is on the Throne of Glory” (as translated by Klein, Fragment-Targums, vol. 2, 107). Fossum interprets this reading as a possible allusion to Jacob’s bodily form, seated, rather than engraved, on the throne. Friedman, “Graven Image,” 236. See, more recently and in greater detail, Friedman, “Anthropomorphism,” 173, for the interpretation of Jacob’s image engraved “on high,” as a reference to the image “engraved upon the visage of the Divine Presence.”

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a similar claim.64 It is still hard to tell, however, how easily, within the broader context of late antique Jewish discourse, the image of Jacob engraved on the throne could morph into the enthroned form of Jacob. Was this something that, for instance, Yannai could imply in his poems without explicitly stating it? Or, alternatively, is the ambiguity between Jacob’s engraved image and enthroned form suggested by Genesis Rabbah and, possibly, some other traditions idiosyncratic to them? The question must remain moot, but the potential ambiguity between Jacob’s image and his bodily form was certainly implied within the broader cultural scenario explored by the late antique Jewish readings of Jacob’s dream. Functionally, the Throne of Glory serves to frame Jacob’s image engraved on it, just as Saint Demetrius’s ciborium or golden throne inside the ciborium frame the apparition of the saint’s body, and as the silver couch frames the engraving of Demetrius’s “godlike face.” In all these cases, we deal with a container that houses and displays a venerated image. Several scholars have, indeed, argued that Saint Demetrius’s throne and couch may imply a “canopy-like proskynetaria installation for devotional icons” that was actually standing next to the couch inside the ciborium, but the evidence remains inconclusive.65 Be that as it may, the Miracles imagine Saint Demetrius’s ciborium, throne, and couch as structurally isomorphic liturgical vessels designed to frame and display the saint’s timeless body through a range of that body’s images and apparitions. The throne carrying the image of Jacob would be immediately recognizable to a late Roman and early Byzantine audience as another example of just such a vessel – an architectural framework for the display of the saint’s body.66 64

65

66

See, for instance, Halperin, Faces of the Chariot, 121, Fossum, Image, 142–45, Wolfson, Along the Path, 8–9, and Orlov, “Face as the Heavenly Counterpart,” 265–71. Bogdanović, “Performativity of Shrines,” 285. The most detailed argument to this effect has been offered by Pallas, “Ciborium,” 44–58. Cf. Neis’s suggestion that Jacob’s figure and the throne could be imagined as a single being, with the arms of the throne serving as the arms of the figure. See Neis, “Embracing Icons,” 42, n. 41.

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The Imprinted Image In the symbolic and visual world of late antiquity, the imprint of a holy countenance was especially common in the context of pilgrimage art. Two groups of objects, in particular, may provide a context for the reading of Jacob’s image. The first one includes a series of small tin-lead ampullae, or flasks, used by Christian pilgrims visiting Jerusalem to bring oil sanctified by contact with the wood of the True Cross back to their hometowns. Today, these objects are known primarily from two collections of sixth- and seventh-century ampullae preserved in the treasuries of the cathedrals in Monza and Bobbio in northern Italy (Figure 2).67 The ampullae adhere to a fairly uniform pictorial program, which, however, spans a range of stylistic adaptations. In one version, the iconography of the ampullae’s obverse is divided into two registers.68 The upper register is structured around a centrally placed “equal-armed cross supported by a shaft that rises above the three-lobed hillock of Golgotha.”69 Impressed right above the top of the cross is a nimbed bust portrait of Christ that visually dominates the rest of the scene and serves, along with the cross, as the object of veneration by two kneeling suppliants. Two other crosses carrying the two thieves are placed symmetrically on both sides of the True Cross. The ampulla’s lower register shows the Women at the Tomb but also adds important details, such as a swinging censer, otherwise missing from the original gospel story and intended to make this story legible in the context of late antique veneration norms. The women are depicted as they approach Christ’s empty tomb, 67

68

69

The ampullae’s rich iconographic program has been a subject of extensive study by Grabar, Ampoules, 45–67, esp. 55–58, and, more recently, Vikan, Pilgrimage Art, 36–40. On the history of both collections, see Elsner, “Replicating Palestine,” 117–30. See Grabar, Ampoules, 24–27, 29–31, 34–36, and plates XIV–XVIII, XXVI–XXVIII, XXXIV–XXXIX. For a variation on the same theme, see Grabar, 40–41, and plates XLVI–XLIX. Vikan, Pilgrimage Art, 39.

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Figure 2  Monza–Bobbio pilgrimage flask, sixth century. Bobbio Abbey. Public Domain

which is situated on one axis with the cross in the upper register and is architecturally framed by a canopy. On some flasks, however, Christ’s empty tomb and the scene associated with it are moved from the lower register on the ampullae’s obverse to the ampullae’s reverse.70 When that is the case, the cross carrying the bust portrait of Christ occupies full space on the obverse, whereas the ampullae’s reverse is completely devoted to the scene centered on Christ’s empty tomb. Either way, the two scenes were likely intended to be read together as a single visual statement on Christ’s resurrection and the triumphant powers of the True Cross. 70

See Grabar, Ampoules, 22–24, plates XI–XIII, and Vikan, Pilgrimage Art, 36–40.

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Figure 3  Pilgrim token from the Shrine of St. Symeon, sixth century. The Walters Art Museum. Public Domain

The second group of objects includes a series of clay eulogiai (“blessings”) brought from their journey by pilgrims who were visiting the shrines of Saint Symeon Stylites the Elder (d. 459) and the Younger (d. 592) and made, most often, from the earth gathered at the base of the columns on which the saints dwelt during their lives (Figure 3).71 The eulogiai were quite literally “blessings,” that is, physical embodiments of the saint’s protective presence made palpable in the form of engraved matter. They invoked that presence by articulating it in three complementary media: the earth sanctified by contact with the column, the image of the saint along 71

On the pictorial program of Saint Symeon’s eulogiai, see Vikan, Pilgrimage Art, 31–33, 50–58, and “Art, Medicine, and Magic,” 67–74, with the literature referenced there. Cf. Pentcheva, Sensual Icon, 17–44.

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with the representation of veneration gestures addressed to him, and, sometimes, an inscription invoking the saint’s presence. The eulogiai came in a variety of visual forms, but most of them featured the same dominant themes. At the center of the composition, there was the saint’s column with his bust portrait stamped on the top. In some cases, there was also a monk with a censer in his hand climbing a ladder that stretched toward the saint, while below the ladder another monk was kneeling in supplication. The morphological and conceptual parallels between Saint Symeon’s eulogiai and the Monza–Bobbio ampullae from Jerusalem are not accidental but rather reflect the visual idioms of late antique pilgrimage art. These parallels are particularly obvious when it comes to the overall pictorial composition structured around the central axis of the cross or the column on the disks. In Gary Vikan’s words, “the vertical axis of each is dominated by the shaft of a sacred object sanctified and empowered through contact and topped by a bust portrait of the figure whose contact sanctified that object. Moreover, the sacred object is being venerated according to the devotional protocol of kneeling supplicants leaning forward to touch it.”72 Both compositions were organized as a portable liturgical space, into which the owner of a eulogia or ampulla could embed oneself, just as a pilgrim to Christian holy sites was expected to observe with the “eye of faith” and insert oneself into the biblical drama associated with the site.73 The pictorial program of ampullae and eulogiai represents a portable version of the liturgical space imagined by the Miracles of Saint Demetrius. Both functionally and in terms of its iconography, the portrait of Saint Demetrius imprinted on the silver

72

73

Vikan, Pilgrimage Art, 54. Cf. Grabar, Martyrium, vol. 2, 51. See, however, Frankfurter, “Stylites and Phallobates,” 180–88, for a different set of iconographic associations. See Frank, Memory of the Eyes, 105–8, on parallels between the visual experience of holy sites, the Eucharist, relics, and icons, see 174–81.

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couch – possibly through a combination of repoussé, chasing, and engraving techniques  – parallels the bust portraits of Christ and Saint Symeon impressed, respectively, on top of the cross and the column. Although likely modeled on the actual tomb shrine inside the Anastasis rotunda in Jerusalem, Christ’s canopied tomb found in the ampullae’s lower register, or on the ampullae’s reverse, is also similar in its form to the canopy-like ciborium that housed Saint Demetrius’s equally bodiless couch. Indeed, when the tomb is located in the lower register, right beneath the cross, it visually extends the vertical axis, established by the cross and Christ’s image, into a sequence intended to be read as one continuous narrative. This sequence, to quote Miller, “is an artist’s attempt to picture Christ as both crucified and resurrected at the same time.”74 The portrait of Christ, who, Miller notes, looks “very much alive with open eyes,” accrues meaning in relation to Christ’s empty tomb, similar to how the portrait of Saint Demetrius accrues meaning in relation to the saint’s empty couch. In both cases, the body is portrayed as simultaneously dead and resurrected as it inhabits earth and heaven at the same time. In other words, like the cross and the column, the couch of Saint Demetrius functions as the relic’s shaft dominating the axis of the ciborium’s inner space. Like the portraits of Christ and Saint Symeon, Saint Demetrius’s image may very well be described as “a bust portrait of the figure whose contact sanctified” that shaft, that is, in Saint Demetrius’s case, the couch. The cross, the column, and the couch belong to the same category of objects that serve to carry the embossed images of saints and display them for veneration. Moreover, the kneeling supplicants on ampullae and eulogiai play the same role as the praying figure of Marianos does in structuring the narrative space of Saint Demetrius’s first miracle. By “pressing his face against what was like a silver couch on which the godlike face of this all-glorious martyr was imprinted,” Marianos invokes 74

Miller, “Figuring Relics,” 103, and, more broadly, 103–4.

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Saint Demetrius’s presence in accordance with the script articulated in the visual formulas of supplicants invoking the presence of Christ and Saint Symeon. In all these scenarios, the image embodies the presence. A reader of Saint Demetrius’s miracle was most likely expected to embed oneself within the miracle’s narrative space, just as a viewer (and the owner) of eulogia or ampulla was expected to be drawn into a miniature performance played out on their surfaces. It should come as no surprise, then, that some of the saints’ eulogiai share their iconography with representations otherwise associated with saints’ shrines. In both cases, the saint’s protective presence, a blessing, is invoked and rendered physically manifest through similar assemblages of formulas and gestures.75 Jacob’s image displayed on the Throne of Glory belongs, in my opinion, to the same category of objects. To be sure, there is no evidence that Jacob’s image was ever put on portable tokens, comparable in form and purpose to ampullae and eulogiai. Structurally, however, the display of the image follows the same iconographic principles, the same relational model, as the display of images on ampullae and eulogiai, on the one hand, and the display of Saint Demetrius’s image on the couch, on the other. Jacob’s sleeping body and his image engraved on high establish the patriarch as simultaneously inhabiting earth and the celestial realm. “Here I am with you – just as your image is with me,” the qedushta for Genesis 28:10 imagines God addressing Jacob and then continues by contrasting Jacob’s sleep with God’s watchfulness: “Though you sleep, your Guardian does not slumber.”76 Christ’s open eyes, noted by Miller, offer an intriguing parallel. The relationship between Jacob’s two bodies is not unlike the relationship between the dead and resurrected bodies of Christ as portrayed on ampullae or the invisible 75

76

For a helpful review of relevant eulogiai, see Galavaris, Bread and the Liturgy, 139–51. On blessings as a rhetorical function in saints’ lives, see Krueger, Writing and Holiness, 70–75. Rabinovitz, Liturgical Poems, vol. 1, 171, lines 38–39; trans. Lieber, Yannai, 536.

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body of Saint Demetrius and his eternal body invoked through the image imprinted on the couch. The throne, like the cross, the column, and the couch, is another example of “the shaft of a sacred object.” Just like them, it carries the holy figure’s engraved bust portrait and offers it for veneration. Just like them, the throne dominates the axis that organizes the imaginary space of Jacob’s dream, into which the audiences of Yannai and the targumim are invited to embed themselves. Indeed, late Roman Christian art knows of at least one iconographic motif that combines the cross and the throne into a single visual formula. Known as the hetoimasia, or “prepared throne,” the combination consists of the cross placed on the throne, the two of them constituting a symbolic seat that foreshadows the Christ’s second coming. Within the formula, the cross and the throne merge as two segments of a continuous visual axis. They become entwined and, to an extent, isomorphic as objects that carry Christ’s body in crucifixion and the eschatological rule.77 Even the ladder of Jacob’s dream could be a structurally legible form, not only because of the contemporary knowledge of the Genesis story but also because of the ladder’s prominence in the pictorial program of Saint Symeon’s eulogiai.78 Jacob’s ladder directed one’s gaze to Jacob’s portrait engraved on the throne, just as the eulogiai’s ladder led the viewer toward Saint Symeon’s bust portrait on the top of the column. The visual fields of pre-iconoclastic Byzantine art were inhabited by a variety of migratory forms and symbols that could easily transfer from one holy figure to another. Jacob’s dream was just one other visual field constructed with the help of some of these forms, whereas Jacob himself could very well belong among such holy figures. To paraphrase Maguire’s 77

78

On the motif, see Janes, God and Gold, 129, and Helemo, Adventus Domini, 102–8, with literature. There is no clear evidence suggesting that the ladder on Saint Symeon’s eulogiai intentionally references Jacob’s ladder in Genesis 28, but there is nothing to rule out this possibility either. The question must remain moot until further research.

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observation, the holy figures themselves were often seen as “powerful signs” rather than “portraits of powerful individuals.”79 A body simultaneously dead and alive, asleep and awake, was one such sign. The fact that Jacob’s image is engraved, in parallel with those of Christ, Saint Symeon, Saint Demetrius, and other figures, which are embossed, engraved, or incised rather than painted, may be culturally significant as well. Midrashim, Yannai, and Hekhalot Rabbati consistently use the term ‫“( חקוק‬engraved” or “incised”) to describe the technique in which Jacob’s image is made. Alternative terms are noticeably less frequent. Targum Neofiti, quoted earlier in the chapter, describes the image of Jacob as being “set” (‫ )קביעא‬in the Throne of Glory. At one point, Yannai uses the root ‫“( חתם‬to seal”) to describe God’s act of engraving the image.80 In a similar manner, the image of Saint Demetrius was “imprinted” (entetypotai) on the silver couch. At some point between the seventh and eighth centuries, a related term came to describe the production of Christ’s image “not made with hands.” In the Greek Acts of Thaddeus, composed during that period, Christ wipes his face and, by doing so, “imprints his image” (entypotheises de tes eikonos autou) on a towel.81 This choice of vocabulary falls in line with Pentcheva’s broader argument about the special role of imprinted images, “whose power stemmed from the incision or stamping of powerful visual symbols.”82 In one of his epigrams on an image of the archangel, Agathias Scholasticus uses imprint as a metaphor to invoke the presence of someone who is “incorporeal in the essence of his form” (asomaton eidei morphes).83 A person looking at the image, proclaims Agathias, no longer has “a confused veneration, but imprinting the image in 79

80 81

82 83

Maguire, Icons, 145. For specific examples, see Maguire, 118–32, and, on the eulogiai, Vikan, Pilgrimage Art, 41–44. Rabinovitz, Liturgical Poems, vol. 1, 188, line 79. Acta Thaddaei 3.17 (Lipsius and Bonnet, vol. 1, 274; my translation). For more details on the composition and references to literature, see Chapter 5 of the present study. Pentcheva, Sensual Icon, 34. Anth. Pal. 1.34 (Paton, 20; trans. Paton, 21).

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himself [en eauto ton typon engrapsas] he fears him as if he were present.”84 For Agathias, the archangel’s imprint means very real (and, therefore, frightening) presence of the divine. Even when used metaphorically, sealing and imprinting indicate the techniques of reinscribing and thereby invoking the spiritual through the material, in Pentcheva’s words, “a process through which the sacred power is imparted to matter.”85 An imprinted or incised object is infused with the power, or energeia, precisely because the imprint functions as a form that mediates between the spirit and matter, allowing one to be articulated in the language of the other. The object’s efficacy becomes associated with a particular production technique or, to quote Frankfurter, “the drawing out and material embodiment of iconographic features served the construction of efficacy.”86 The root ‫ חקק‬that usually describes the technique in which Jacob’s image is made is particularly telling in this context. In the qedushta for Genesis 17:1, briefly discussed in Chapter 2, Yannai uses the same root to talk about circumcision. As he interprets God’s promise to Abraham, “I will make my covenant between me and you, and will make you exceedingly numerous” (Genesis 17:2), Yannai offers a series of short lines that tie together the themes of the covenant and circumcision: A covenant: his wound You bound a seal of life You engraved [‫[ ]חותם חיים חקקת‬in his flesh] A covenant: his purity You molded [‫]טבעת‬ his buffeted exiles You gave root87 84 85

86 87

Anth. Pal. 1.34 (Paton, 22; trans. Paton, 23). Pentcheva, Sensual Icon, 29. On the relationship between imprinted images and late antique techniques of infusing matter with the spirit, see Pentcheva, 28–36. On incised stamps as a means of invoking divine protection, see Vikan and Nesbitt, Security, 15–22. Frankfurter, Christianizing Egypt, 155. Rabinovitz, Liturgical Poems, vol. 1, 153, lines 15–16; trans. Lieber, Yannai, 468, with modifications. The root ‫ חקק‬appears one other time later in the poem: “A statute You engraved upon him.” See Rabinovitz, Liturgical Poems, vol. 1, 155, line 32; trans. Lieber, Yannai, 472.

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I find the combination of ‫“( חקק‬engraved”) and ‫“( טבע‬molded”) significant. The latter root, in particular, designates the act of minting coins, an act of providing a coin with a particular form.88 When used together, the two offer roughly the same semantic range as the Greek sphragizo (“to seal”) and typoo (“to imprint”), as well as glypho and charatto (“to engrave,” “to carve,” “to incise”), analyzed by Pentcheva.89 Indeed, elsewhere in the poem, Yannai refers to circumcision as “the ornamental seal” (‫)חותם נויי‬, 90 “his sign” (‫)סימנו‬, or “his mark” (‫)רישומו‬, cut forever upon Abraham.91 Yannai invites his audience to imagine circumcision as another instance of stamping, engraving, or imprinting that creates a sign system through which the spiritual can enter the material. “A covenant,” Yannai continues, “at his loins You became one, Your hand keeping his hand steady.”92 A few lines later, he adds, “a covenant: with him you joined, and his offspring forever will You attend,” followed by, “a covenant: with him You made forever, and ever You linked Yourself to him.”93 Yannai, as already noted in Lieber’s commentary, understands “the function of ‘cutting,’” performed in circumcision, “as an act of ‘joining’” between God and Abraham (and Abraham’s descendants): “The act of cutting becomes an act of cleaving, a joining of God to both an individual and a community composed of similarly marked individuals.”94 It is remarkable, however, how related this language of joining between God and Abraham is to the language that describes the spirit coming to inhabit the matter by means of an imprint or 88 89

90

91 92 93

94

See Jastrow, Dictionary, 518–19. Pentcheva, Sensual Icon, 32–33, and 72–77. On incision as a seal-making technique in Byzantium, see Vikan and Nesbitt, Security, 16–23. According to Maagarim, as well as Lieber, Yannai, 467. This line is missing from Rabinovitz but included in other editions of the piyyut. See Lieber, 466, n. 1. Rabinovitz, Liturgical Poems, vol. 1, 154, lines 22, and 27. Rabinovitz, Liturgical Poems, vol. 1, 153, line 17; trans. Lieber, Yannai, 468. Rabinovitz, Liturgical Poems, vol. 1, 153, line 19, and 154, line 23; trans. Lieber, Yannai, 468–70. Lieber, Yannai, 476. See also 263 in the same work.

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engraving/incision in contemporaneous Greek texts. Circumcision creates a sign situation that materially articulates God in the bodies of Abraham and his descendants, thus making God translatable into the language of human senses. In a similar manner, stamps, seals, and amulets channel the spiritual presence by articulating it in material substances. As noted by Franz Josef Dölger, contemporaneous Christian texts routinely compare baptism to the act of providing objects with a form. These texts use sphragis (“seal”) and charakter, a polyvalent term meaning, among other things, “distinctive mark,” “type,” “character,” “stamp,” or “form,” to describe both baptism and the act of formation in accordance with a preexisting mold.95 The formula that describes “the sealing” of a Christian with myron (chrism) during baptism uses the same vocabulary and most likely operates within the same range of semantic connotations.96 A similar technique of imprinting was applied to the bread used in the Eucharist liturgy. Both dough and bread had to go through a series of sealings intended to transform them into a sign, through which God’s presence, divine energeia, could be mediated to the material world.97 Circumcision, as conceptualized by Yannai and his audience, belongs in one category of imprinting activities with baptism, chrism, and the Eucharist. Like the other three, it creates a sign system through which the spiritual articulates itself in the material. When read in this context, both Jewish and Christian, the engraved nature of Jacob’s image makes it another one of the imprinted forms through which the material becomes a mode of signification for the spiritual. The bust portrait of Christ situated 95

96 97

See Dölger, Sphragis, 111–19, and Pentcheva, Sensual Icon, 32–33, and 72–77. Early Christian literature interprets the Old Testament circumcision as a form of sealing, later replaced by baptism. See Dölger, 106–9. On a range of meanings associated with charakter, see Liddell and Scott, Lexicon, 1977. The terms sphragis and charakter are synonymous and often used interchangeably in written texts. See Dölger, 21. See Dölger, Sphragis, 184–93, and Pentcheva, Sensual Icon, 29, and 32. See Vikan and Nesbitt, Security, 14–15, and Pentcheva, Sensual Icon, 29–30, and 32–33. For a good introduction to various types of bread stamps, see Galavaris, Bread and the Liturgy.

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above the cross is not unique to the ampullae. Structurally resembling the imperial military standard, the labarum, the composition dominates the seventh-century mosaic associated with the veneration of the relics of two martyrs in San Stefano Rotondo in Rome but also appears on amulets, where it offers defense against demons, sometimes called a “headless spirit.”98 There, the composition functions as a sign through which God’s protective power is invoked within the material order. Jacob’s image, therefore, belongs among other iconographic forms that, in Frankfurter’s words, “were envisioned and developed in workshops as ways of defining, clarifying, eliding, and embodying powers” associated with divinities.99 It is a sign through which God enters the order of senses. When Eleazar berabbi Qillir, a seventh-century payyetan and Yannai’s successor, invokes Jacob’s image drawn on the throne, he uses the same noun tzurah that could also designate God’s image in the incantation formula “sealed is the house of so-and-so by the seal and the form of El,” known from Mesopotamian magic bowls.100 To be sure, no actual eulogiai or ampullae with Jacob’s image stamped on them are known to us. Chances are, such items were never made, rather than that they did not survive until our days. In general, we are unaware of any iconographic renderings of the motif of Jacob’s image engraved on the Throne of Glory.101 What we are dealing with, therefore, is a common formula that could be (but not necessarily 98

On the labarum, see Belting, Likeness, 107–9. On the mosaic and related images, see Thoby, Crucifix, 26–27, Ihm, Christliche Apsismalerei, 89, 91, 143–44, and Jensen, Cross, 105. On the amulets, see Pentcheva, Sensual Icon, 31–32, and 33. 99 Frankfurter, Christianizing Egypt, 155. 100 See Naveh and Shaked, Magic Spells, 124, line 9, and Levene, Corpus of Magic Bowls, 75, line 3, for the variations of this formula. For Qillir’s reference to the tzurah of Jacob, see Elizur and Rand, Liturgical Poems, 340, line 457. 101 On the other hand, the names Jacob and Israel, transmitted in various combinations in a range of languages, make frequent appearance in late antique and early medieval amulets and incantations. See Smith, “Prayer of Joseph,” 260, n. 3, 262, n. 1, and 263, n. 1, for a helpful summary.

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was) materially reproduced in artifacts, or performed as a structural unit in piyyutim, midrashic parables, and saints’ miracles. Performance and material reproduction are, in fact, related activities. They both amount to gesture, the temporal and spatial display of what Frankfurter understands as “habitus, the socially prescribed and learned modes of carrying and applying the body in public.”102 A passage from Hekhalot Rabbati, discussed in Chapter 2 in the context of Hekhalot adaptations of the Jacob theme, has God adore the image of Jacob through a series of gestures that immediately call to mind the kneeling figures of supplicants venerating and touching the engraved images of Christ, Saint Symeon, or Saint Demetrius.103 In all these scenarios, one could argue, we deal with a structural formula through which gestures become available for a broad range of material reproduction and transmission techniques.

Conclusions “From the fourth century onwards,” notes Brown, “the holy man was a living icon.”104 The public display of the living saint’s body, his or her relics, and the icon took place according to a similar set of scripts. As the Life of Saint Daniel Stylite (409–493) proceeds to describe the events in the immediate aftermath of the saint’s death, the narrative programmatically collapses the difference between the saint’s body and that body’s image. Daniel’s fellow monks, so the story goes, Clad him, as was the custom, in a leather tunic, and a plank was brought up and laid on the column, and he was placed on it. At early dawn Archbishop Euphemios, dearly beloved of God, came and went up the column on the ladder and kissed the precious corpse, and thus, too, did all the faithful high dignitaries and officials, for 102 103 104

Frankfurter, Christianizing Egypt, 112. Synopse, § 164. Brown, “Dark-Age Crisis,” 12, and, in general, 12–21.

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Conclusions they went up to the head of the column, gave their benediction and kissed his blessed body and came down. But the people demanded that the holy man should be shown to them before his burial, and in consequence an extraordinary tumult arose. For by the Archbishop’s orders the plank was stood upright – the body had been fixed to it so that it could not fall – and thus like an icon [tropon eikonos], the holy man was displayed to all on every side; and for many hours the people all looked at him and also with cries and tears besought him to be an advocate with God on behalf of them all.105

The display of Daniel’s body offers another reading of the scenario observed throughout this chapter. The saint’s body fixed to the plank and displayed on the top of the column, on which he used to dwell during his lifetime, belongs in the same idiom as the representations of Saint Symeon and Christ on pilgrims’ eulogiai and ampullae. The column and the plank carrying the body form the vertical shaft that structures the rest of the scene, just as the vertical shafts topped by images structure the pictorial space of eulogiai and ampullae. In each of these cases, the body, or the countenance, atop the shaft invokes presence. As the body morphs into image, and image into the body, the exact relationship between the two becomes increasingly undetermined. The saint’s body is displayed tropon eikonos, “like an icon,” whereas the scene itself is staged (narrated?) in line with the visual pattern codified by veneration scenes on eulogiai and ampullae. By taking a cue from Hans-Georg Gadamer’s definition of a performance, the display of Daniel’s body can be described as a “transformation into structure.”106 In one of Yannai’s qedushta’ot for Genesis 28:10, God “came down from His place and brought down His hosts to see the 105

106

Life of Saint Daniel the Stylite 98–99 (Delehaye, 91–92; trans. Dawes and Baynes, 69, with slight modifications by Pentcheva, Sensual Icon, 57). On this text, see Francis, “Living Icons,” 591. Gadamer, Truth and Method, 113.

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image of Jacob.”107 Remarkably, the phrase demut Ya‘akov refers here to the sleeping body of Jacob, not his image engraved on high. The identifying boundaries between the body and the image become blurred, just as they are in Daniel’s Life. Along with the Life, the dreams in the Miracles of Saint Demetrius, and other pre-iconoclastic Christian texts, Jacob’s dream constitutes a realm of indeterminate saintly doubling, within which, to quote Miller, “it becomes difficult to decide whether the image reflects the saint, or whether the saint reflects the image.”108 Jacob’s sleeping body serves to interpret Jacob’s heavenly demut for the angels but also accrues its own meaning, its identity, in relation to that demut. As a result, Jacob’s sleeping body itself can be described as “image,” just as Daniel’s body, fixed to the plank and displayed atop the column, morphs into its own icon. The angels are invited to consider the two images/bodies of Jacob in their hermeneutical relationship, just as the crowds assembled at the base of Daniel’s column are invited to view his body tropon eikonos, and the visitors to Saint Demetrius’s ciborium are expected to read the body of Demetrius in relation to his form imprinted on the couch. The world of Jacob’s two bodies is the world of indeterminate signs that can become legible only in relation to one another. Late antique Jewish texts, represented across the genres of midrash, piyyut, and targum, imagine Jacob’s dream in Genesis 28:10– 22 as a system of relationships that connect Jacob’s sleeping body, his image engraved on God’s throne, a ladder seen by Jacob in his dream, and the onlooker’s gaze traveling between the body and the image following the course of the ladder. The gaze is that of angels going up and down the ladder to compare Jacob’s body with his image, and, implicitly, the gaze is also that of an audience listening to the performance of the text. The way Jewish compositions 107

108

Rabinovitz, Liturgical Poems, vol. 1, 171, line 37; trans. Lieber, Yannai, 536, with slight modifications. Miller, Corporeal Imagination, 162.

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structure the relationship between Jacob’s sleeping body, his image, and the viewer is similar to scenarios for the invocation of a saint’s presence in contemporaneous Christian narratives and art. Central to these scenarios is a common formula, a scripted situation that organizes the scenario’s space as a system of relationships. Such systems were key to the process of translation in late antiquity, as they allowed the same system to be articulated multiple times, in multiple stage sets, and through a variety of actors. The translation was not limited to code-switching between texts transmitted in different languages. It was a broader phenomenon that involved the possibility of transfer from one sign system, such as art, to another, such as written or oral text. This common pool of transferrable idioms and formulas coordinated communities that otherwise diverged widely in language, culture, and religious orientation, across a vast expanse that stretched, in the words of Thomas Sizgorich, “from Ireland to Yemen.”109 When late antique Jewish authors interpreted and therefore reimagined the story of Jacob’s dream, they articulated scripts common in the literature and visual art of the day. 109

Sizgorich, Violence and Belief, 275.

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On Christmas Eve 562 CE, the second inauguration of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople took place. It followed the rebuilding of the church’s dome that had collapsed as a result of an earthquake several years before that. The rededication called for several elaborate hymns and sermons, one of which will be a starting point of my analysis in this chapter. The author of the hymn remains unknown, although he can be broadly situated within the poetic tradition of Romanos the Melodist.1 Within the context of celebrating the majestic grandeur of Hagia Sophia and the corresponding greatness of Emperor Justinian, the hymn addresses several key theological issues that occupied the Byzantine intellectual culture of the time. The third stanza of the hymn focuses on the paradox of how the uncontainable divinity can be contained within the physical limits of our world: Now we see actually fulfilled the word of inspired scripture: “But will God really dwell with man?” (2 Chronicles 6:18), as Solomon of old says, not doubting, but in amazement, referring enigmatically to the Incarnation of God as a localized residence; and so, by the agency of the Spirit, he sketched out in symbols what was to take place. For [by his own choice] he fenced himself around with the living temple of a virgin and was born “God with us” (Emmanuel): THE LIFE AND RESURRECTION OF ALL.2 1

2

See Palmer, “Inauguration Anthem,” 138. On the hymn’s historical context, see Palmer, 138–39. On the Inauguration of St. Sophia 3 (Trypanis, 142; trans. Palmer, 140, with slight modifications).

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The text frames the paradox through Solomon’s amazement at how God can dwell on earth with humans, expressed in 2 Chronicles 6:18 in the context of Solomon’s completion of the temple in Jerusalem.3 Solomon’s temple foreshadows one of the central paradoxes of Christianity: The incarnation of God in the person of Christ that establishes “a localized residence” for the transcendental being, who “fences himself around with the temple” and “is born ‘God with us.’” The church of Hagia Sophia, celebrated in the hymn and foreshadowed by Solomon’s temple, serves as a receptacle for uncontainable divine nature, and paradoxically circumscribes it just as Mary once did. In his study of Hagia Sophia’s rededication hymn, Andrew Palmer has emphasized Byzantine culture’s broader epistemic interest in posing a question “how the uncontainable can be contained?” In Palmer’s words, the problem raised by the question is the one “which the Byzantines, with their appetite for paradox, never tired of teasing.”4 The present chapter will analyze a series of Jewish exegetical and poetic texts that interpret the biblical story of the tabernacle in Exodus 35–40. As they do so, the texts focus on the circumstances of God’s descent to the tabernacle, and, specifically, the phenomenon of God’s self-contraction (tzimtzum), which accompanied the descent. To the best of my knowledge, Arnold Goldberg and Peter Kuhn were the first to systematically collect these texts and subject them to extensive source-critical and literary analysis. In the process, the two authors have emphasized the polymorphous nature of the tzimtzum tradition developed and transmitted as a range of textual recensions by multiple midrashic anthologies.5 So far, however, there has been no attempt to read the corpus as part of the broader late Roman and early Byzantine search for rhetorical formulas that 3

4 5

For a slightly different rendering of the same statement, see 1 Kings 8:27: “But will God really dwell on earth?” Palmer, “Inauguration Anthem,” 148. See Goldberg, Untersuchungen, 471–80, and Kuhn, Gottes Selbsterniedrigung, 63–81.

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could help describe the paradox of simultaneously uncontainable and spatially delineated God.6 This chapter is an invitation to read late antique Jewish traditions on God’s descent to the tabernacle as one of many facets of precisely such a search. It is also an invitation to view the late antique discourse on the matter as a polyphonic structural form available to us in a variety of linguistic and religious adaptations.

Alternative Scenarios My argument in this chapter will be that the late antique midrashic scenarios of divine self-contraction developed within the context of late antique and early Byzantine culture and, hence, should be studied within the late antique and early Byzantine culturally conditioned structures of meaning. Before I proceed to this argument, however, I would like to take a closer look at two scenarios of divine presence in the tabernacle, offered by the third-century midrash Sifra on the book of Leviticus and the fifth-century midrashic anthology Genesis Rabbah. Sifra’s scenario predates the bulk of rabbinic literature discussed in this chapter by about three centuries. It would be worthwhile then to consider its version of the descent story first, so as to better understand the tradition’s dynamic as we move into a later period. The story runs as follows: Said R. Simeon b. Azzai, “I do not refute the words of my master [R. Aqiba], but add to his words. It is written concerning the glory of God, ‘Do not I fill heaven and earth?’ (Jeremiah 23:24). See how 6

Kuhn, Gottes Selbsterniedrigung, 103–9, considers possible Christian parallels to some of these traditions. Unfortunately, he deals primarily with the New Testament and early patristic sources. Kuhn’s general tendency to date most of the discussed texts to the first three centuries of the Common Era, despite the fact that many of them are attested only in late antique and early medieval midrashic collections, constitutes a major weakness of his study.

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Alternative Scenarios the love for Israel caused this expansive glory as if to squeeze [‫]כלידחק‬, so as to appear speaking [‫ ]ליראת מדבר‬from the top of the Ark’s cover between the two cherubim.”7

The tradition appears as part of a larger exegetical unit on Leviticus 1:1. The unit explores possible ways God could speak to Moses from the tabernacle. In response to an anonymous question whether God spoke from the entire expanse of the ark’s cover, R. Aqiba quotes the Scripture to prove that God spoke from a very specific part of the cover, located between the two cherubim. R. Simeon b. Azzai then expands on his teacher’s view by saying that it was God’s love for Israel that made him squeeze his glory, which fills heaven and earth, so as to be able to speak from a tiny spot between the two cherubim on the top of the ark’s cover. The midrash then continues with a series of statements on creatures’ inability to see God, as opposed to hearing him. Sifra’s scenario is different from the later traditions on divine self-contraction on both terminological and conceptual levels. The midrash’s terminology is unique. The story uses the word “to squeeze” (‫ )דחק‬to describe the act of God’s self-contraction. This term is never referenced again in the later traditions, which use the word “to shrink” (‫ )מצמצם‬instead. The same applies to the formula “as if,” introducing the verb “to squeeze” (‫)כלידחק‬, which is also unattested in the later traditions.8 On the conceptual level, God’s presence in the tabernacle is limited to God’s ability to speak (‫ )מדבר‬to Israel, whereas, as observed by Goldberg, the late antique tzimtzum traditions presuppose that the divine presence in the tabernacle involves a much more radical change within God’s own mode of existence.9 Moreover, 7

8

9

Sifra Dibura Denedabah 2:12 (Finkelstein, vol. 2, 17–18). On Sifra’s provenance and textual history, see Strack and Stemberger, Introduction, 259–66. On this text and its versions in other midrashic collections, see Kuhn, Gottes Selbsterniedrigung, 47–48. For a helpful survey of the potential meanings of this formula and its variations, see Fishbane, Biblical Myth, 138–39 and 325–401. See Goldberg, Untersuchungen, 476–79.

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the phrase “so as to appear speaking” (‫)ליראת מדבר‬, like the formula “as if,” emphasizes the fact that God appears to address Israel “from between the two cherubim.” There is no indication that God himself is transformed in the process, or that God’s condescension involves, as one of the later midrashim would put it, his “leaving my council up here and going down and shrinking my Presence so as to be among you down there.”10 The glory, which “fills both heaven and earth,” condescends to speak with Israel from the tabernacle, but its transcendental nature remains uncomplicated. Indeed, the careful references to “as if” and “appearance” throughout the story make the entire event look like a metaphor intended to satisfy the limitations of human language and imagination. The second scenario comes from Genesis Rabbah, a collection of commentaries on the book of Genesis roughly contemporaneous with some of the works analyzed later in this chapter. The midrash, however, offers an explanation for God’s descent into the tabernacle, which, once again, is different from the traditions on God’s self-contraction and provides a good illustration to the intellectual diversity of late antique Jewish thought. The midrash runs as follows: [A Samaritan] said to [R. Meir]: “Is it possible that He of whom it is written, ‘Do not I fill heaven and earth?’ (Jeremiah 23:24) spoke to Moses from between the two staves of the Ark?” “Bring me a magnifying mirror,” said he. When he brought it, he said to him, “Look at your reflection,” and he saw it large. “Bring me a diminishing mirror.” He brought it. “See your reflection in it.” He saw it, small. “If you, who are but flesh and blood,” said he, “can change yourself at will, how much more so He at whose word the world came into existence! Thus when he so wishes, ‘Do I not fill heaven and earth?’, while when He wishes, He speaks to Moses from between the staves of the Ark.” R. Ania b. Susay said: “At times the world and its fullness cannot contain His glory, yet at times He speaks to man from between the 10

Pesiq. Rab. Kah. 1:3 (Mandelbaum, Vol. 1, 8). On this text, see discussion in Chapter 5.

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Alternative Scenarios hairs of his head, as it is written, ‘Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind [‫( ’]סערה‬Job 38:1), which means from between the hairs [‫ ]סערות‬of his head.”11

The first part of the midrash is constructed as a dialogue between a Samaritan (a fictional stock character who plays the role of rabbis’ adversary in rabbinic literature) and R. Meir. The issue is the same as in Sifra: How can God, described by Jeremiah as filling heaven and earth, speak to Moses from a tiny space between the two staves of the ark? The answer is that God can change his visual appearance at will, just as human appearance can be changed with the help of a magnifying or diminishing mirror. This answer is important, for, as Goldberg also notes, it deals with appearance and thus flatly contradicts the main point of the tradition on God’s self-contraction.12 According to R. Meir, the descent into the tabernacle does not entail any change in God’s mode of existence. God always stays the same. His appearances, however, can change with apparent ease. Just as the reflection in the mirror does not affect the nature of someone looking into that mirror, so too, by implication, the divine appearances can range from cosmic grandeur to a minuscule size without affecting God’s true self. The second part of the midrash draws contrast between times in which “the world and its fullness cannot contain God’s glory” and times in which God speaks to man “from between the hairs of man’s head.” The midrash proves this last point with a pun on the word sa‘arah (meaning both a “whirlwind” and “hair”), which helps establish connection to a proof-text from the book of Job. The second part of the midrash thus provides another illustration to R. Meir’s line of argument, without, however, modifying the argument itself: God is capable of taking multiple appearances, both visual and audible, and addressing human beings in many forms. 11

12

Gen. Rab. 4:4 (Theodor-Albeck, vol. 1, 27–28). On this text and its versions in other midrashic collections, see Kuhn, Gottes Selbsterniedrigung, 50. See Goldberg, Untersuchungen, 477.

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The stories in Sifra and Genesis Rabbah most likely belong to unrelated midrashic traditions. Their language, style, and cultural codes are different. Yet, for all their difference, the two stories share a similar understanding of God’s descent into the tabernacle. In both cases, this descent does not affect God’s own being. In the case of Sifra, God’s voice “appears to be speaking” from between the cherubim on the ark’s cover. In the case of Genesis Rabbah, God changes his visual appearance to speak from between the staves of the ark. Neither of these actions entails change in God’s mode of existence, for they are both external projections of God’s presence, necessary to accommodate the limited capacities of human beings. The scenario of divine self-contraction (tzimtzum) reflects a very different ontology shaped by the conceptual structures of the early Byzantine world.

Byzantine Paradox Since the early fifth century, the paradox of God, who is both uncontainable and spatially circumscribed, gradually moved to the forefront of late Roman and Byzantine religious and cultural discourse. The question of the circumscribed and yet transcendental deity became central during the debate between Nestorius, the archbishop of Constantinople (428–431), and Cyril, the patriarch of Alexandria (412–444), about the relationship between human and divine natures in the person of Christ.13 Cyril argued that Christ was fully divine yet fully human. The paradoxical nature of this claim would define Byzantine (and broader Christian) theological 13

On the history of the controversy, see Chadwick, Church in Ancient Society, 515–56, and Grillmeier, Christ in Christian Tradition, vol. 1, 363–495. A good summary of Cyril’s theology can be found in McGuckin, St. Cyril of Alexandria, 175–226. On the court’s involvement and the controversy’s broader significance for the rhetoric of imperial representation, see Holum, Theodosian Empresses, 147–74, Limberis, Divine Heiress, 53–61, and literature listed in Shoemaker, “Marian Liturgies,” 142, n. 70.

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thought for centuries to come.14 Cyril argued that the language of paradox, which made little rational sense, was the most appropriate way to express the mystery of incarnate God: Indeed the mystery of Christ runs the risk of being disbelieved precisely because it is so incredibly wonderful. For God was in humanity. He who was above all creation was in our human condition; the invisible one was made visible in flesh; he who is from the heavens and from on high was in the likeness of earthly things; the immaterial one could be touched; he who is free in his own nature came in the form of a slave.15

In a paradoxical way, the humanity of Christ was that of God, whereas Christ’s divinity was that of a human being. Cyril’s theology was a mystery to be contemplated, not a syllogism to be analyzed. In this sense, it was profoundly liturgical and marked the beginning of the truly Byzantine theological discourse with its “appetite for paradox.” It was also within the context of the debate between Cyril and Nestorius that the figure of Mary acquired new theological and cultural significance, reflected, among other things, in the development of highly elaborate modes of Marian imagery in iconographic and rhetorical traditions.16 The rhetoric of Mary’s body as a spatially circumscribed vessel, which carried the uncontainable God, 14

15

16

For good introductions to the subject, see Schäfer, Mirror of His Beauty, 148–52; Lossky, Mystical Theology, 144–55; Cameron, Christianity, 155–88; Lim, Public Disputation, 149–81. Cyril, On the Unity of Christ 723d-e, 30–35 (Durand, 332; trans. McGuckin, St. Cyril of Alexandria: On the Unity of Christ, 61). The work was composed at the later stages of the Nestorian controversy (c. 437) and thus sums up nicely Cyril’s Christology in its fully developed and theologically mature form. See Cameron, “Early Cult,” 10–13, Belting, Likeness, 34–35, Price, “Theotokos,” 56–73, and Arentzen, Virgin in Song, 34–39. For a more cautious assessment, see Shoemaker, “Marian Liturgies,” 130–45. On Mary’s iconography, see Jensen, Face to Face, 191–95. On the development of a distinct rhetorical program of Marian representation, see Limberis, Divine Heiress, 85–97, and Allen, “Severus of Antioch,” 165–70, with literature.

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was already prominent in the fourth century, being, for instance, central to Ephrem the Syrian’s Nativity Hymns.17 However, within the context of fifth-century polemics, the figure of Mary and the paradoxical question associated with her, “how the uncontainable can be contained,” became absolutely crucial to the late Roman and Byzantine vocabulary of cultural and religious identity. Ever since the council of Ephesus in 431, during which the debate reached its high point and resulted in Cyril’s win and the condemnation of Nestorius, the Virgin would be identified in Byzantine cultural discourse primarily as the Theotokos, “the Mother of God.” The name itself was significant. Whereas Cyril saw the Virgin as the medium through which the mystery of God’s humanity was realized and thus referred to her as the Mother of God, Nestorius refused to accept both the paradox and the provocative title associated with it. In the wake of Cyril’s victory and the subsequent adaptation of his theology, the title “Theotokos” would acquire not only theological but cultural significance as well. It became an essential element of what Cameron has described as “the rhetoric of paradox,” central to the self-understanding of late Roman and Byzantine societies.18 By the sixth century, this rhetoric was an important element in Byzantine culture’s koine. Romanos the Melodist, probably the most celebrated Byzantine poet of the sixth century, makes God’s simultaneous greatness and self-imposed limitation central to his poem on the Annunciation. There the paradox is expressed through the amazement of the archangel Gabriel sent to announce to Mary the upcoming birth of the child: But when he [Gabriel] arrived in Nazareth, at Joseph’s place, he was stunned For how can the exalted join the lowly in love? 17 18

See McVey, “Sogitha,” 341–45, and Gador-Whyte, Theology and Poetry, 109–10. See Cameron, Christianity, 155, and, more broadly, 165–70. For the development of Cameron’s argument with focus on Romanos the Melodist, see Gador-Whyte, Theology and Poetry, 24–25, 35–38, and 109–23.

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Byzantine Paradox “The whole heaven,” he says, “and the fiery throne do not hold my master, So how can this simple girl conceive him? Frightful up high, and visible down here?”19

The seeming incompatibility of God’s heavenly greatness and humble nature of God’s earthly birth stands at the heart of the issue, framed by Gabriel’s rhetorical question. The poet’s listeners are invited to join the archangel in marveling at God as being simultaneously uncontainable and circumscribed, frightful and humble, divine and human. Joseph echoes the same sentiment elsewhere in the hymn, but the amazement is not limited to human beings alone.20 The archangel Gabriel himself is astonished. The sense of wonder, shared by humans and angels alike, serves to introduce the Byzantine culture’s new epistemic horizon defined by the wisdom of God’s incarnation, the wisdom commemorated, among other things, in the church of Hagia Sophia (Holy Wisdom). The rededication anthem, with which I started this chapter, celebrates the empire’s most important church as a visual representation of the mystery of God “fencing himself around with the living temple of a virgin and born ‘God with us.’” In the sixth century, Byzantium’s self-narration crystallizes around the paradox of the Theotokos and its visual display in the architecture of Hagia Sophia. The fifth- or early sixth-century midrash Pesiqta of Rav Kahana, another late Roman or early Byzantine text, composed during the course of a long century separating Cyril of Alexandria from Romanos and Hagia Sophia’s rededication anthem, calls on its 19

20

Romanos, On the Annunciation I, strophe 2, lines 3–7 (Maas-Trypanis, 281; trans. Arentzen, 182). Our knowledge of Romanos’s biographical details is meagre. For a good introduction to his life and works, see De Matons, Romanos le Mélode, 159–327, and, more recently, Arentzen, Virgin in Song, 1–43, Gador-Whyte, Theology and Poetry, 7–18, and Krueger, Writing and Holiness, 166–74. Yahalom, Poetry, 199–200, and Lieber, Yannai, 219–21, discuss potential parallels between Romanos and Yannai. On the hymn, see Arentzen, 52–75, and Gador-Whyte, 112–13. On Joseph, see Arentzen, Virgin in Song, 69–72.

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audience to contemplate a very similar issue framed by a rhetorical question, just like the one asked by Gabriel: R. Judah b. Simon in the name of R. Yohanan: There were three statements that Moses heard from the mouth of the Almighty, on account of which he was astounded and recoiled. When he said to him, “And let them make Me a sanctuary that I may dwell among them” (Exodus 25:8), Moses said before the Holy One, blessed be He: “Master of the world, ‘behold, heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain you’ (1 Kings 8:27), and yet you have said: “And let them make Me a sanctuary that I may dwell among them” (Exodus 25:8)! The Holy One, blessed be He, said to him: “Moses, it is not the way you think. But there will be twenty boards’ breadth at the north, twenty boards’ breadth at the south, eight at the west, and I shall come down and shrink my presence [‫ ]ומצמצם שכינתי‬among you below.” As it is written: “There I will meet with you” (Exodus 25:22).21

This time it is Moses who finds God’s request to build the tabernacle incomprehensible. The reason, however, is the same as in the case of Romanos’s Gabriel. As the midrash puts it, “‘behold, heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain you’ (1 Kings 8:27), and yet you have said: ‘And let them make Me a sanctuary that I may dwell among them’ (Exodus 25:8).” Moses’s question echoes that of the archangel: “The whole heaven and the fiery throne do not hold my master, so how can this simple girl conceive him?” Both Romanos and the midrash invite their audiences to engage the same paradox by focusing on the contrast between the heavenly expanses unable to contain God and the modesty of space through which God’s presence is rendered accessible on earth. By the early 21

Pesiq. Rab. Kah. 2:10 (Mandelbaum, vol. 1, 33; trans. Neusner, vol. 1, 29, with modifications). The tradition circulated in multiple recensions with some variations between them. On this text and its versions in other midrashic collections, see Goldberg, Untersuchungen, 47–50, and Kuhn, Gottes Selbsterniedrigung, 56–59.

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sixth century, this paradox becomes an established rhetorical trope. A homily of Jacob or Serug, a Syrian writer who also wrote at around the turn of the fifth and sixth century, opens with an elaborate excursus on the mystery of God’s dwelling in Mary’s womb. Throughout this excursus, Jacob repeatedly invokes the paradox of God, who is simultaneously too great to be contained by heaven and sufficiently small to reside in Mary’s womb.22 The paradox thus acquires not only metaphysical but also rhetorical value, as it serves to construct the discourse on the mystery of God’s human birth. Moses’s amazement is another version of fundamentally the same rhetorical strategy working across linguistic divides and intended to create a conceptual language, both “a figure of speech” and “a habit of thought,” which could accurately mold and communicate one of the key themes in late antique culture.23 The midrash constructs its version of this broader rhetoric by stringing together verses from originally unrelated parts of the Hebrew Bible. It complicates an otherwise unambiguous promise of God’s dwelling in the tabernacle, made in Exodus 25:8, by juxtaposing it with Solomon’s rhetorical question in 1 Kings 8:27: “But will God really dwell on earth? Even the heavens and the heaven of heavens cannot contain you, how much less this House that I have built!”24 Several things are worth noting here. First, the choice of a prooftext distinguishes Pesiqta from the midrashim discussed earlier in the chapter. Both Sifra and Genesis Rabbah use Jeremiah 23:24 to describe God’s cosmic greatness and thus call into question the nature of God’s presence at the ark. Whereas the message of Jeremiah 23:24 and 1 Kings 8:27 is fundamentally the same, the choice of Solomon by Pesiqta may be reflective of the increasing prominence of the king’s figure in the world of late Roman 22

23

24

See Bedjan, S. Martyrii, 662–65. This theme is ubiquitous throughout Jacob of Serug’s homilies. See 615, 638, 651, 672, 756, and 803, in the same edition. See Maguire, Art and Eloquence, 53. On the theme of God’s human birth as a formal technique in late Roman and Byzantine rhetoric, see 54–59 in the same work. Cf. 2 Chronicles 6:18.

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symbolism.25 The author of the Hagia Sophia’s rededication anthem opened the third stanza of his hymn with a similar reference to Solomon’s prayer probably to provide a symbolic connection to Emperor Justinian present at the event. Such a direct beckoning to an actual imperial figure was most likely not the case in Pesiqta, but the midrash’s choice of prooftext could very well be reflective of King Solomon’s cultural significance. Moreover, by combining into a single text the two verses that originally deal with the tabernacle (Exodus 25:8) and Solomon’s temple (1 Kings 8:27), the midrash blurs distinction between the two buildings. As we shall see later in the chapter, such an approach is typical of late antique exegesis, Jewish as well as non-Jewish, which tends to see the tabernacle and the Temple as phenomenologically one entity. Second, and more importantly, by combining the verses from Exodus and 1 Kings, our midrash creates a new narrative absent from either of the two biblical texts, but very much in line with the conceptual universe of late antiquity. Exodus 25:1–22 offers an optimistic and entirely unproblematic view of God’s ability to dwell in the tabernacle. 1 Kings 8:27 challenges this view by asking the rhetorical question whether God can truly dwell on earth. Once posed, however, this question never gets fully answered within the broader context of Solomon’s prayer that follows immediately afterward.26 Throughout the prayer, God is repeatedly portrayed as dwelling in his heavenly abode, whereas the temple serves as a place in which Israel offers its prayers and supplications.27 The implication of 1 Kings 8 seems to be that God indeed dwells in heaven, not in the temple. Through the rhetoric of paradox, the midrash combines the two verses to come up with a new solution and a new hermeneutical concept: By performing the act of tzimtzum, that is, by shrinking his presence, God will be able to dwell in the tabernacle. 25 26 27

See Tougher, “Wisdom of Leo VI,” 173–74, for a helpful summary of sources. 1 Kings 8:28–53. Cf. 2 Chronicles 6:19–42. See, for instance, 1 Kings 8:32, 34, 36, 39, 43, 45, and 49, and the version of this text in 2 Chronicles 6:19–42.

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The author of Hagia Sophia’s rededication anthem uses the parallel version of Solomon’s prayer in 2 Chronicles 6:18 to introduce his reading of the Byzantine paradox: “But will God really dwell with men on earth? Even the heavens and the heaven of heavens cannot contain you, how much less this House that I have built.” Unlike the midrash, the anthem does not offer a conflicting verse from elsewhere in the Bible to frame the paradox. But the main message of both texts is the same: God’s dwelling within a circumscribed space is at the center of a new epistemic culture defined by one’s ability to engage with God’s simultaneous greatness and smallness. Both Jewish and Christian applications of this shared cultural theme use the rhetorical question at the beginning of Solomon’s prayer to introduce the theme to their audiences. Both Jewish and Christian authors answer Solomon’s question by pointing to a new reality in which God finds “localized residence” by either “fencing himself around with the living temple of a virgin and born ‘God with us’” (so the anthem), or “coming down and shrinking his presence among you below” (so the midrash). All these texts, situated at various points during what could be described as the long fifth century, operate within the conceptual and semiotic universe already prominent in the early fifth-century Syriac madrasha of Mar Balai. The madrasha celebrates the dedication of a newly built church in the city of Qenneshrin: “the firmament above cannot contain Him, but He dwells in the house that contains Him. His countenance disquiets the house of Gabriel, but Mary bore Him and was serene.”28 Balai contrasts the heavenly expanses that cannot contain God with the seeming smallness of the church building, celebrated in the madrasha, and the narrowness of Mary’s womb, symbolized by the church. The language he uses to express this paradox is the same as the language used by Romanos and the Pesiqta. In all three cases, the audiences are invited to consider both dimensions of divine existence 28

Balai, Madrasha, 47 (Overbeck, 255–56; trans. McVey, “Sogitha,” 365). Cf. Jacob of Serug in Bedjan, S. Martyrii, 761, on God looking for a house, since heavenly expanses are too small for him.

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simultaneously, despite these dimensions’ seemingly incommensurate nature. The God who is circumscribed and made available through the media of the church building, the Theotokos, and the tabernacle is the same God who at the very moment cannot be contained by “the firmament above” (according to Balai), “the heavens and the heavens above the heavens” (according to the midrash), or “the whole heaven and the fiery throne” (according to Romanos). The two aspects of the paradox are intended to be contemplated simultaneously, not in a sequence. Indeed, the tabernacle and the Theotokos were easily interchangeable in late Roman and Byzantine symbolism. Jacob of Serug compares Mary to the ark inhabited by God in several of his homilies.29 The symbolic identification of Mary with Jerusalem’s temple is one of the key themes running through Romanos’s hymn On the Nativity of the Virgin Mary.30 The same theme appears in the fifth- or sixth-century Akathistos hymn, a quintessential statement of early Byzantine Mariology, in which Mary is referred to as “a living temple, for the Lord who holds all in his hands dwelt in your womb,” and consequently “the Tabernacle of God and the Word.”31 In Hagia Sophia’s rededication anthem, the construction of the church is modeled on the mystery of God’s human birth from the Virgin. Having described how God, in establishing a precedent for his own circumscribed dwelling, “fenced himself around with the living temple of a virgin,” the author of the anthem then talks about God’s dwelling in the church of Hagia Sophia: Having once resided in flesh the Word consents, by the operation of the Spirit, to reside in temples built by hand, assuring his 29 30

31

See Bedjan, S. Martyrii, 649 and 671. See Romanos, On the Nativity of the Virgin Mary, strophes 2–5, and 7 (Maas-Trypanis, 277–79). For the subsequent development of this theme in Byzantine iconography, see Ousterhout, “Virgin of the Chora,” 100–1. Akathistos, strophe 23, lines 2–4 and 6 (Trypanis, 39; trans. Peltomaa, 19). For brief but useful introductions to the Akathistos, see Jeffreys and Nelson, “Akathistos Hymn,” 44, and Limberis, Divine Heiress, 89–97. Peltomaa, Image of the Virgin Mary, 40–48, provides a good review of the earlier scholarship.

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The anthem’s central paradox, that God “who cannot be contained, nor even approached, by the whole universe lives by grace among mortals,” is already articulated in Balai’s madrasha, one of the earliest known texts that, according to Kathleen E. McVey’s convincing argument, uses the language associated with the mystery of the incarnation to describe the interior space of an individual church building.33 Balai savors the paradox between the infinite God and the seeming finitude of a church’s interior: “He is without limit, but we [have] a limit. He built for us the world, and we [built] a house. It is a great thing that people have built a house for the enduring power that transcends the universe.”34 By contrasting the limitless and limited states of God’s presence, Balai and the anthem echo the central paradox of Pesiqta of Rav Kahana almost verbatim: “the heavens and the heavens above the heavens cannot contain” God, and, at the same time, “there will be twenty boards’ breadth at the north, twenty boards’ breadth at the south, eight at the west,” for God to “come down and shrink my presence among you below.” All these texts operate within a single epistemic and, perhaps, rhetorical matrix to convey different variations on what McVey has aptly referred to as “the paradox of the presence of the infinite Deity in a finite place.”35 32

33 34 35

On the Inauguration of St. Sophia 4 (Trypanis, 142–43; trans. Palmer, 140–41). On the language of the contained uncontainable and its broader Neoplatonic context, see Schibille, Hagia Sophia, 180–81. McVey, “Sogitha,” 349–51. Balai, Madrasha, 32 (Overbeck, 254; trans. McVey, “Sogitha,” 363). McVey, “Sogitha,” 337.

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Several elements central to Christian applications of this shared theme, however, are absent in the midrash. For one thing, the midrash makes no attempt to engage the feminine imagery so prominent in the Christian discourse. Within the late antique Christian rhetoric, two symbolic vocabularies, those associated with Mary’s body and the architecturally framed ecclesiastical space, become closely intertwined as early as the fifth century, and, consequently, the Virgin’s body becomes an important architectural category constantly referenced in thinking about a church’s interior space.36 This process reaches its high point in the concept of the church of Hagia Sophia, designed as a visual representation of the mystery of God’s birth from the Theotokos. In comparison, the symbolic vocabulary of Jewish texts used to convey the paradox of the tabernacle as the locus of the circumscribed God lacks feminine symbolism. Whether this was a conscious choice on the part of the midrash’s authors and editors, tantamount to the tacit acknowledgment and intentional avoidance of Christian rhetoric, must remain a moot issue. Schäfer, for one thing, convincingly demonstrates that late antique midrashim did not shy away from exploring feminine imagery, its potential Christian meanings notwithstanding.37 In the case of Jewish and Christian adaptations of the theme of impossible space, we may be dealing simply with a range of independent scenarios that actualized different possibilities contained within the single cultural matrix. The choice of one possibility over another could have been motivated by a variety of aesthetic, rhetorical, and cultural factors and did not have to involve polemical considerations. Second, the language of the incarnation, that is, God’s human body, so prominent for Christian discourse on God’s finite form, finds no parallel in Jewish texts on the tabernacle, although, as we shall see later in the chapter, late antique midrashim sometimes explore incarnation-related topics elsewhere. For all the shared semantic koine, there is hardly any 36 37

See McVey, “Sogitha,” 349–51. See Schäfer, Mirror of His Beauty, 79–102.

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traceable direct influence of Christian discourse and its theological categories in Pesiqta of Rav Kahana. Jewish and Christian participation in the Byzantine rhetoric of paradox represents a range of different scenarios developed independently within the parameters of the same symbolic structure but without explicit dialogue with, or even acknowledgment of, one another.

Tzimtzum and Kenosis Pesiqta of Rav Kahana participates in the late Roman and Byzantine discourse on the uncontainable and circumscribed deity in another significant way as well. To convey the paradox, it uses the language of the voluntary “shrinking” (tzimtzum) of God’s presence. The midrash opens by observing that “there were three statements that Moses heard from the mouth of the Almighty, on account of which he was astounded and recoiled.” The first command has to do with the building of the tabernacle. The two other commands that Moses finds equally incomprehensible are related to the first one. Moses is surprised at God’s request to “present to me at stated times the offering of my food, as offerings by fire of pleasing odor to me” (Numbers 28:2). Moses asks a rhetorical question, whether an entire wildlife if collected can produce enough offering to serve as a single meal for God. God’s response follows in line with Numbers 28:3–4, namely that merely two lambs offered in the morning and at dusk would suffice. The final request deals with an expiation offering (Exodus 30:15). Moses protests that no one can give enough money to redeem his soul; to which God responds that a half-shekel coin would be sufficient to effect the expiation. The shared theme of all three commands is God’s decision to “come down and shrink my presence [‫ ]ומצמצם שכינתי‬among you below,” that is, the self-imposed limitation of the divine being.38 38

Pesiq. Rab. Kah. 2:10 (Mandelbaum, vol. 1, 33–34). On the meaning of the term tzimtzum in its midrashic (as opposed to later cabbalistic) context, see Goldberg, Untersuchungen, 477.

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It would be helpful at this point to compare Pesiqta of Rav Kahana’s language, used to describe the circumscribed deity, to the language of Cyril of Alexandria. In the context of his debate with Nestorius, outlined earlier in the chapter, Cyril notes that the process of the incarnation involved what he calls kenosis, “emptying out” or “self-emptying” of the deity. To become human, God had to accept limitations that were not part of the divine nature. Cyril’s own definition of “emptying out” reads as follows: And what is this “emptying out” [kenosis]? It is his life in the form of a slave, in the flesh which he assumes; it is the likeness to us of one who is not as we are in his own nature, since he is above all creation. In this way he humbled himself, economically submitting himself to the limitations of the manhood.39

Elsewhere Cyril talks about “the limitations of the self-emptying” (ton tes kenoseos onta metron) as a way of describing the incarnate nature of Christ’s divinity.40 God circumscribes himself, makes “the limits of the manhood his own,”41 and thus empties himself out. The incarnation necessarily entails self-limitation or self-emptying of the transcendental deity  – voluntarily abandoning its original qualities to conform to the limited human condition. To become contained, the divine uncontainable had to go through the process of self-emptying and enter a new circumscribed state of being. Pesiqta of Rav Kahana echoes Cyril by observing that, when God descends to the tabernacle, “there will be twenty boards’ breadth at the north, twenty boards’ breadth at the south, eight at the west,” into which God will come down and “shrink my Presence among you below.” The key category used by the midrash is that of “shrinking” (tzimtzum). The divine Presence conforms to the measurements of human space by shrinking itself down to size, just as Cyril 39 40 41

Cyril, On the Unity of Christ, 742b, 10–15 (Durand, 394–96; trans. McGuckin, 86). Cyril, On the Unity of Christ, 727d, 32 (Durand, 344; trans. McGuckin, 66). Cyril, On the Unity of Christ, 728b, 15 (Durand, 348; trans. McGuckin, 67).

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speaks of God “economically submitting himself to the limitations of the manhood” in the process of the incarnation. God makes “the limits of the manhood his own” and accepts “the limitations of the self-emptying.” In both instances, the transcendental deity goes through a process of “shrinking” (so the midrash) or “submitting to the limitations of the manhood” (so Cyril). Both texts talk about God conforming to the limitations of spatial measurements to convey the same concept of divine residency in the human world. Both narratives share the same fundamental premise of the divine fullness being mysteriously contracted to conform to the human condition. In other words, both texts speak the common symbolic language and most likely represent Jewish and Christian facets of an idiom originating in the Byzantine intellectual milieu.

God’s Impossible Form It is important to remember, however, that for Cyril and Christian theologians after him, the moment of divine self-contraction and self-emptying did not contradict God’s ineffable greatness. The paradoxical nature of self-contraction was further enhanced by the fact that in the incarnate state, God was transcendental as well as immanent, divine as well as human: We must not think that he who descended into the limitation of manhood for our sake lost his inherent radiance and that transcendence that comes from his nature. No, he had this divine fullness even in the emptiness of our condition, and he enjoyed the highest eminence in humility, and held what belongs to him by nature (that is, to be worshipped by all) as a gift because of his humanity.42

The mystery of the incarnate God that would captivate the imagination of Byzantine civilization for centuries hinged precisely on this 42

Cyril, On the Unity of Christ, 770c–d, 25–31 (Durand, 488; trans. McGuckin, 123).

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dialectic between human and divine, transcendental and immanent, infinite and limited. The paradox of two ontological states becoming one was central to Byzantine intellectual and aesthetic discourse. Throughout his writings, Cyril rhetorically savors this paradox over and over again, talking about [God’s] revelation in the flesh, even though in terms of his own nature he is invisible; his abasement in the human condition for the economy of salvation, even though he has the transcendent name; his humbling to manhood, even though he is raised high above the Thrones; and his acceptance of servile limitations, even though he is by nature the Lord.43

For Cyril and subsequent authors, it is not enough to emphasize the mystery of God’s self-emptying. This mystery has to be enhanced by the idea of the incarnate God maintaining fully transcendental nature at the time of utmost humility. Cyril’s God is an impossible form. By the sixth century, the early Byzantine culture had fully internalized Cyril’s rhetoric of paradox. Once again, a sixth-century hymn by Romanos illustrates a poetic and liturgical application of Cyril’s theology by describing “Christ who is carried in your [Mary’s] womb here below, who on high shares the throne with the Father, who sucks at your breast and yet from on high dispenses divine nourishment to mortals, who on high inhabits the firmament as a tent, and who down below is bedded in a grotto.”44 God’s circumscribed presence on earth comes to be seen as the means through which God’s transcendental greatness makes itself manifest, indeed, in Romanos’s words, Mary bears Christ “in mortal womb, in a manner uncircumscribed.”45 Jacob of Serug’s Syriac homilies explore a somewhat different set of images to express 43 44

45

Cyril, On the Unity of Christ 721c, 17–21 (Durand, 324; trans. McGuckin, 58). Romanos, On the Annunciation II, strophe 13, lines 1–5 (Maas-Trypanis, 293; trans. Carpenter, vol. 2, 24). Romanos, On the Annunciation II, strophe 1, line 4 (Maas-Trypanis, 290; trans. Carpenter, vol. 2, 20).

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fundamentally the same idea.46 Linguistic and literary differences notwithstanding, early Byzantine authors writing at the turn of the fifth and sixth centuries speak a common conceptual language. They invite listeners to consider and marvel at the effect of circumscribed and transcendental aspects of God’s ontology viewed simultaneously and through each other’s media. While defying simple logical analysis, the paradoxical nature of divine kenosis would become an object of intense contemplation in late Roman and Byzantine cultures. Pesiqta of Rav Kahana invites its audience to ponder the same paradox. The Lord of the Worlds, who cannot be contained by “the heavens and the heavens above the heavens,” is the same one who comes down and shrinks his presence to fit “twenty boards’ breadth at the north, twenty boards’ breadth at the south, and eight at the west.” Just as in the case of Cyril and Romanos, these two aspects of God’s being are intended to be contemplated simultaneously in a single act of synthetic viewing. Divine self-contraction does not negate divine transcendence. The shrinking of God’s presence to fit the tabernacle’s size does not contradict God’s transcendental magnitude, which cannot be contained by the heavens. Indeed, just as in the case of early Byzantine Christian authors, the circumscribed presence of God in the tabernacle is seen as a medium through which the uncontained deity shines into the world. One can rephrase Romanos to say that the tabernacle bears God “in a manner uncircumscribed.” Another tradition, which appears in slightly different versions and within different editorial settings in several late antique midrashic anthologies, makes explicit what Pesiqta of Rav Kahana implies: The two modes of God’s presence in heaven and on earth are intended to be viewed simultaneously as two aspects of a single paradox. Goldberg refers to this tradition as “Emanationstheorie,” which views the divine presence in the tabernacle as an emanation 46

See, for example, Bedjan, S. Martyrii, 547, 740–41, and 760–61.

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from God’s heavenly presence. He also sees it as an alternative to the “Kontraktionstheorie” that emphasizes God’s self-contraction, or tzimtzum, in the process of his descent to the tabernacle.47 This distinction may be a bit too rigid. In reality, the two scenarios could often complement each other and appear together to produce a combined effect of viewing God at once in his circumscribed and uncontained modes of existence. The most elaborate version of the “emanation” scenario comes from the sixth- or seventh-century midrashic anthology known as Pesiqta Rabbati: It is written: “Behold, heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain you” (1 Kings 8:27). Yet here Scripture says: “And the glory of the Lord filled the Tabernacle” (Exodus 40:34). R. Joshua of Siknin explained in the name of R. Levi: To what this can be compared? To a cave opening on the edge of the sea. When the sea rushes up, the cave is filled, yet the sea loses nothing. So, too, though it is written, “And the glory of the Lord filled the Tabernacle,” yet the worlds above and the worlds below lost nothing of the radiance of the glory of the Holy One, blessed be He, as is written: “Do not I fill both heaven and earth, says the Lord?” (Jeremiah 23:24).48

The comparison of the tabernacle to a seashore cave and the interpretation of this comparison – in a sense that, in the wake of God’s descent to the tabernacle, his presence outside the tabernacle is not diminished – are common to all versions of the midrash. However, the specific reference to “the worlds above and the worlds below” losing “nothing of the radiance of the glory of the Holy One, blessed be He” is unique to Pesiqta Rabbati. A version of the midrash in Song of Songs Rabbah simply notes that “the tent of meeting was

47 48

See Goldberg, Untersuchungen, 45–47, and 478. Pesiq. Rab. 5:23 (Ulmer, vol. 1, 63; trans. Brody, vol. 1, 106, with modifications). The tradition circulated in multiple forms. On this text and its versions in other midrashic collections, see Goldberg, Untersuchungen, 44–47, and Kuhn, Gottes Selbsterniedrigung, 50–51.

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filled with the radiance of the presence of God [‫]זיו השכינה‬, while the world was undiminished of the presence of God.”49 The cave parable offers a variation on the broader Neoplatonic concept of “remaining, procession, and return,” summarized by the fifth-century philosopher Proclus as follows: “Every effect remains in its cause, proceeds from it, and reverts upon it.”50 Pseudo-Dionysius describes God’s manifestation in the created universe by slightly modulating the same language: “Of course this ray never abandons its own proper nature, or its own interior unity. Even though it works itself outwards to multiplicity and proceeds outside of itself as befits its generosity … nevertheless it remains inherently stable and it is forever one with its own unchanging identity.”51 In a similar manner, the expansion of God’s glory into the tabernacle does not affect the inherent stability or inner identity of God’s being in the cave parable. Like the Dionysian ray, the glory “never abandons its own proper nature, or its own interior unity.” Both the glory and the ray can be read as appearances of transcendental reality, aptly described by Perl as “different modes in which reality may be given to cognition,” but which make no impact on the reality’s own existence.52 Indeed, the sea imagery, chosen by the parable, echoes the language of “overflowing” regularly used by both Proclus and Pseudo-Dionysius to describe the deity’s outward procession: “It permeates the whole world without ever departing from its own identity. It goes out to all things. It gives of itself to all things in the way they can receive it, and it overflows in a surplus of its peaceful fecundity.”53 Certainly for 49

50 51 52 53

Song Rab. 3.10.1 (Dunsky, 273; the reading is consistent across manuscripts, see the online Midrash Project of the Schechter Institute of Jewish Studies: www.schechter​ .ac.il/mifalhamidrash). See Pesiq. Rab. Kah. 1:2 (Mandelbaum, vol. 1, 4) for an even more succinct statement of the same parable. Proclus, Elements, 35; trans. Dodds, 39. CH 1.2 (Heil and Ritter, 8; trans. Luibheid and Rorem, 146). Perl, Theophany, 20. DN 11.2 (952A; Suchla, 219; trans. Luibheid and Rorem, 123). Cf. Proclus, Elements, 98, for similar language. See Perl, Theophany, 24, and 27, and Wear and Dillon,

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Proclus and Pseudo-Dionysius, and possibly for the cave parable, the imagery of “overflowing” conveys the notion that God’s outward diffusion does not affect its source, which remains forever unchanging and self-contained. As we shall see later in the chapter, other Jewish texts will seek to nuance this concept of God’s transcendental root. The cave parable represents one of many adaptations of Neoplatonism’s symbolic language across a variety of linguistic and ethnic communities in the late Roman Empire. In the Syriac milieu, Balai’s early fifth-century madrasha uses a similar set of codes to describe God’s simultaneous presence in heaven and inside the newly built church celebrated by the author. After referring to the church as “heaven on earth since [heaven’s] Lord [dwells] in it,” Balai continues, “A dwelling on high, a house below, yet He is undivided and sufficient for the universe.”54 The description reads almost like a paraphrase of the parable’s statement that, as a result of God’s descent into the tabernacle, “the worlds above and the worlds below lost nothing of the radiance of the glory of the Holy One, blessed be He” (so Pesiqta Rabbati), or “the world was undiminished of the presence of God” (so Song of Songs Rabbah). Like Balai’s madrasha, the parable invites its audience to simultaneously view God as being circumscribed by the spatial confines of the tabernacle and as being totally omnipresent. Like the madrasha, the parable presents the tabernacle as another example of “heaven on earth,” a special kind of space within which the simultaneous viewing of God’s two modes of existence is made possible. Indeed, Balai concludes this section of the madrasha by explicitly denying the power of human reason to grasp the mystery of God’s existence: “But if you investigate Him, He will be entirely on high, and if you beseech Him, He will be entirely below.”55 The mystery of God’s presence requires a

54 55

Dionysius, 51, for further references to the language of “overflowing” in Proclus and Pseudo-Dionysius. Balai, Madrasha, 4–5 (Overbeck, 251; trans. McVey, “Sogitha,” 359). Balai, Madrasha, 5 (Overbeck, 251–52; trans. by McVey, “Sogitha,” 359). Balai further expands on this theme in line 7 (Overbeck, 252).

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special kind of knowledge, the one based on “beseeching” rather than rational “investigation.” The cave parable stops short of drawing this particular conclusion, leaving it to other midrashic texts to further explore the paradox of God’s spatial dwelling.

A Poetic Synthesis The tradition on God’s tzimtzum, as it appears in Pesiqta of Rav Kahana, and the tradition on God’s simultaneous presence in heaven and on earth, as it appears in Pesiqta Rabbati, had a wide circulation in Jewish literature between the fifth and seventh centuries. The two of them were likely seen as complementary, as becomes clear from their simultaneous inclusion into one of Yannai’s piyyutim, the qedushta for the holiday of Hanukkah.56 The piyyut’s version of the cave parable runs as follows: You have caused the Shekhinah to dwell among the chosen people // And heavens did not lose it. Your fearsome power is in heavens // And among those who seek you in squares57

The immediate context of these lines deals with the correspondence between the tabernacle, God’s earthly residence, and the heavenly realms. A comparison of the two modes of God’s dwelling, between the tabernacle’s boards and among the seraphim’s heavenly retinue, follows immediately afterward and may be a reference to the tzimtzum tradition of Pesiqta of Rav Kahana.58 The tabernacle becomes an earthly icon of heaven, just as the circumscribed presence of God in the tabernacle becomes the spatially framed medium of God’s absolute 56 57 58

Rabinovitz, Liturgical Poems, vol. 2, 239, lines 40–41, and 240, lines 46–47. Rabinovitz, Liturgical Poems, vol. 2, 239, lines 40–41; my translation. Rabinovitz, Liturgical Poems, vol. 2, 239–43, lines 42–90. On the comparison between the tabernacle’s boards and the seraphim, see line 43. For a detailed commentary on these lines, see Bronznick, Liturgical Poetry, vol. 1, 414–16, and vol. 2, 231–34.

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majesty. The reference to the Shekhinah’s simultaneous dwelling “among the chosen people” and in heavens serves to introduce this broader theme. I shall say more about the piyyut’s representation of the tabernacle as a replica of God’s heavenly realm in Chapter 5. For now, I want to emphasize that the piyyut combines Pesiqta Rabbati’s reference to “the worlds above and the worlds below losing nothing of the splendor of the glory of the Holy One, blessed be He,” in the wake of God’s descent to the tabernacle, with a reference to God’s dwelling between the tabernacle’s boards as it appears in the tzimtzum midrash of Pesiqta of Rav Kahana. The fact that both scenarios are combined within the context of public liturgical performance, for which Yannai’s qedushta is likely intended, makes them part of a well-known and liturgically established tradition in the late antique Jewish setting. Another fifth- or sixth-century Byzantine liturgical poem, the Akathistos hymn addressed to Mary, exalts the Theotokos by using similar language: The uncircumscribed Word was present wholly among those below, Yet in no way absent from those above, For a divine condescension occurred, Not a descent according to place, And a birth from the Virgin, seized by God.59

Similar to the piyyut, the Akathistos goes on to praise Mary with a series of epithets inviting listeners to contemplate the paradox of the “container of the uncontainable God” (theou achoretou chora).60 Similar to the piyyut’s tabernacle, Mary is described as earthly 59 60

Akathistos, strophe 15, lines 1–4 (Trypanis, 35; trans. Peltomaa, 13). Akathistos, strophe 15, line 6 (Trypanis, 35; trans. Peltomaa, 13). As noted in Ousterhout, “Virgin of the Chora,” 105, n. 5, this epithet goes back to the writings of Cyril of Alexandria. Cf. Gregory of Nazianzus, Epist. 101 (PG 37:117B), who applies a similar epithet to Christ and not yet to the Theotokos. See Ousterhout, 97–98, for other appearances of this phrase in Byzantine liturgical poetry and their broader semiotic context.

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container of God’s heavenly majesty, “all-holy chariot of him who is above the Cherubim” and “excellent dwelling place for him who is above the Seraphim.”61 Similar to the piyyut’s rhetoric, the rhetoric of the Akathistos is based on the simultaneous viewing of the circumscribed and uncircumscribed aspects of God’s existence, indeed, on the viewing of God’s infinite glory shining through the circumscribed body of the Word. The language used by the Akathistos to introduce the theme of God’s spatial contraction and transcendental glory also echoes the language of Pesiqta Rabbati almost verbatim. In the Akathistos, “the uncircumscribed Word was present wholly among those below, yet in no way absent from those above.” According to Pesiqta Rabbati, as the glory of God filled the tabernacle, “the worlds above and the worlds below lost nothing of the radiance of the glory of the Holy One, blessed be He.” The two texts represent Mary and the tabernacle as finite containers of God’s infinite greatness by stressing God’s simultaneous presence in “the worlds above and the worlds below,” in the Pesiqta, and among “those below” and “those above,” in the Akathistos. In both cases, the language is designed to demonstrate that God remains uncontained even while dwelling in the confined space of the tabernacle or Mary’s womb and to uphold the paradoxical dialectic of God’s infinite finitude. Both texts invite their audiences to approach God as an impossible form by contemplating God’s heavenly glory precisely through the circumscribed nature of God’s presence on earth.

Angelic Opposition Revisited There is one strand in Jewish traditions on God’s self-​contraction that seemingly contradicts the paradoxical vision of God as being simultaneously circumscribed and uncontained. A series of 61

Akathistos, strophe 15, lines 10–11 (Trypanis, 36; trans. Peltomaa, 13).

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midrashim interpret the story of God’s descent to the tabernacle through the prism of rabbinic tradition on angelic opposition to God’s intimacy with the humans.62 One version of the story on angelic opposition to the divine descent to the tabernacle appears in Pesiqta Rabbati: Another comment: “And there was woe on the day that Moses had made an end of setting up the Tabernacle” (Numbers 7:1). Who said Woe? The angels said Woe! They said: Now the Holy One, blessed be He, will leave the upper regions and go down and dwell on the earth below. But the Holy One, blessed be He, appeased the [dwellers in] the upper regions, saying to him: By your lives, the source will still remain above [‫]העיקר למעלן‬, as is written, “His glory covers the heavens, and the earth is full of his praise” (Habakkuk 3:3). R. Simon said in the name of R. Joshua [ben Levi]: The Holy One, blessed be He, jollied them along in saying that the Source will remain above, for it is written as follows: “His glory is upon earth and heaven. For He has lifted up a horn for His people” (Psalm 148:13–14) – first upon the earth, and only afterwards in heaven. For this reason, the angels said Woe! “And there was woe on the day that Moses had made an end.”63

According to the midrash, angels lament the completion of the tabernacle because they fear that God will abandon the heavens entirely and go down to dwell in the tabernacle. God tries to calm these fears by quoting a verse from Habakkuk 3:3, which indicates that while the earth praises God, God’s glory remains in heaven. Hence, as the midrash puts it, “the source will still remain 62 63

For a detailed and nuanced analysis of this tradition, see Schäfer, Rivalität. Pesiq. Rab. 5:29 (Ulmer, vol. 1, 69; trans. Brody, vol. 1, 110–11, with slight modifications). The tradition, once again, circulated in multiple recensions. On this text and its versions in other midrashic collections, see Goldberg, Untersuchungen, 64–67, Schäfer, Rivalität, 161–64, and Kuhn, Gottes Selbsterniedrigung, 44. Goldberg, 66, maintains that Pesiqta Rabbati contains the earliest version of the tradition. Schäfer, 162–63, is more cautious.

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above” (‫)העיקר למעלן‬. The midrash, however, then goes on to quote R. Simon and R. Joshua b. Levi, who nuance God’s seemingly unambiguous statement by quoting another biblical verse, this time from Psalm 148:13–14. The rabbis interpret the verse to mean that God’s glory dwells both upon the earth and in heaven. Moreover, the earth holds seniority in this partnership as the glory’s primary location. Hence, God’s response to the angels is merely an attempt to “jolly them along,” whereas, in fact, the angels’ fears are well founded, and the “source” of God’s glory will also be on earth. The midrash never claims that God is no longer present in heaven.64 Instead, it rejects the notion that God’s presence in the tabernacle is somehow inferior or secondary to God’s heavenly presence. The latter line of reasoning could be potentially warranted within the broader Neoplatonic context of the day. Proclus’s “cause” and Pseudo-Dionysius’s deity are ontologically superior to the effects they produce in the universe. God’s outward procession does not affect its self-contained source (arche), which always remains in a transcendental state of “resting” (mone): “It is the Cause and source beyond every source for every being and it transcendently draws everything into its perennial embrace.”65 Indeed, the cave midrash, discussed earlier in the chapter, may be understood to suggest that the divine presence in the tabernacle (the water flowing into the cave, according to the parable) is secondary to and derivative from God’s unchanging presence in heaven (the sea water, according to the parable). God’s attempt to appease the angels plays off precisely this logic by stating that “the source will still remain above,” even when the tabernacle is completed. The implication is that God’s dwelling in the tabernacle 64

65

Cf. Goldberg, Untersuchungen, 66 and 478–79, and Schäfer, Rivalität, 163, for a similar observation. CH 7.4 (Heil and Ritter, 32). For a full list of references to God as the arche in Pseudo-Dionysius, see Heil and Ritter, Pseudo-Dionysius, 275. For the broader context of the theme, see Wear and Dillon, Dionysius, 29–30, and 51–52.

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will be secondary to “the source” that remains in heaven. The rabbis’ response targets this argument. The divine presence in the tabernacle is as much “the source,” God’s true self, as God’s heavenly presence. One can no longer privilege God’s transcendentalism as being truer to God’s nature than God’s earthly presence in the tabernacle. Another version of the midrash on angelic opposition to God’s descent appears in Solomon Buber’s recension of Tanhuma, a late antique or early medieval midrashic anthology belonging to the polymorphous Tanhuma-Yelammedenu corpus. The midrash opens by describing the enormity of the heavenly realm and the distances that separate one firmament from the next. To do so, it draws on the traditional rabbinic descriptions of multiple heavens and the distances between them.66 The description is purposefully intended to defy comprehension and further illustrate the paradox of divine self-contraction. Next, the text introduces an already familiar theme of God’s love for Israel that makes him forsake the grand expanses of heavenly realms and settle in the tabernacle under “tent cloths of goats’ hair.” After a digression about why the building of the temple was beneficial for non-Jews, the midrash returns to the paradoxical nature of divine descent: When the ministering angels heard that, they said to him: Sovereign of the World, why are you leaving heavenly beings and descending to earthly beings? Your glory is that you [dwell] in the heavens, “You who have spread your majesty over the heavens” (Psalm 8:2). The Holy One said to them: By your lives, I am doing just as you said. Habakkuk said: “God is coming from Teman” (Habakkuk 3:3). Then afterwards: “His splendor fills the earth” (Habakkuk 3:3). The Holy One said to them: Now how are you surprised over this? Look at how I cherish the earthly beings, so as to descend and dwell under 66

Cf. the descriptions of heaven in Gen. Rab. 6.6 (Theodor-Albeck, vol. 1, 45–46); y. Berakhot 1:1 (2c); b. Hagigah 13a, and Pesahim 94a–b. See Kuhn, Gottes Selbsterniedrigung, 42–43.

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Angelic Opposition Revisited tent cloths of goats’ hair. Thus it is stated: “You shall then make tent cloths of goats’ hair” (Exodus 26:7).67

Once again, the midrash uses the theme of God’s self-contraction in the tabernacle as a backdrop for the dialogue between God and the ministering angels who vehemently oppose this move. The dialogue may be read to imply that by descending to earth, God empties the heavens of his presence, but this interpretation is not the only possible one. By opposing God’s move to the earth, the angels argue that the heavens should remain the only place of God’s dwelling, for “your [God’s] glory is that you [dwell] in the heavens.” God responds by pointing to Habakkuk 3:3, which is interpreted this time to describe the transition of God’s glory from heaven to earth. The midrash does not necessarily imply that this transition empties the heavens of God’s glory. Rather, I would argue, the midrash invites its audience to consider the heavenly greatness of God simultaneously with his descent to “dwell under the tent cloths of goats’ hair.” The elaborate description of heavenly expanses earlier in the midrash adds spatial dimension to the paradox. The tent cloths of goats’ hair expand into the incomprehensible vastness of heavenly realms, whereas the heavens find themselves contained under the tent cloths. One further remark about the story of angelic opposition to the divine descent in Tanhuma is now in order. The midrash implies that the failure to comprehend the paradox of God’s self-contraction is not just a human failure; it is an angelic failure as well. The earth can hardly grasp the meaning of what is about to happen, but heaven has trouble understanding it too. The divine decision to dwell on earth surpasses both heaven and earth. There is no privileging of 67

Tanh. Terumah 8 (Buber, 94). I use a shorter version of the midrash from Buber’s edition of Tanhuma, rather than a more “complete” version of the same midrash that appears in the standard Tanhuma edition. On the latter, see Goldberg, Untersuchungen, 65, Schäfer, Rivalität, 161, and Kuhn, Gottes Selbsterniedrigung, 44. The relationship between the two versions of the midrash remains unclear.

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the heavenly minds of ministering angels over the earthly minds of human beings. Once again, the Akathistos hymn provides parallel to this idea, when it hails the Virgin as follows: Hail, height hard for human thoughts to scale; Hail, depth hard even for the eyes of angels to pierce. Hail, since thou are the chair of the king; Hail, since you bear him who bears all.68

The mystery of the Virgin, who is “the chair [kathedra] of the King” and “bears him who bears all,” is akin to the mystery of “the tent cloths of goats’ hair,” under which God, uncontainable by the heavenly expanses, chooses to dwell. Similar to the tabernacle, the Virgin is hailed as the “depth hard even for the eyes of angels to pierce.” A little further on, the hymn notes that “all the ranks of angels marveled [kateplage] at the great work of your Incarnation, for they saw God whom none can approach as a human approachable by all, dwelling among us.”69 There is no opposition, just amazement and difficulty in comprehending, but the general theme is the same: God’s desire to live among human beings baffles the angels. The paradox of the unapproachable God “dwelling among us” is central to the rhetorical program of both the Akathistos and the midrash.70 From this standpoint, both heaven and earth as they presently exist are obsolete, or as Jacob of Serug puts it in one of his homilies, “neither men nor angels are sufficient for you [Christ], because your miracle is more sublime than earthly beings or heavenly ones.”71 Both heaven and earth should strive for a new kind of wisdom that far surpasses either angelic or human knowledge in their present form. Indeed, the Akathistos hails the Virgin as the embodiment of precisely such a wisdom, a new wisdom about the world that 68 69 70

71

Akathistos, strophe 1, lines 10–14 (Trypanis, 30; trans. Peltomaa, 5). Akathistos, strophe 16, lines 1–5 (Trypanis, 36; trans. Peltomaa, 15). On the rhetoric of paradoxical knowledge in the Akathistos, see Limberis, Divine Heiress, 93–96. Bedjan, S. Martyrii, 662; trans. Hansbury, 65.

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makes the old wisdom of the philosophers (and, one might add, angels) foolish.72 There is a drastic break here with the spiritualizing mindset that prioritizes the heavenly or angelic knowledge over the earthly or human one. Instead, both heaven and earth are deemed inadequate. Their wisdom fails the mystery of God’s ultimate intent to bring about the new creation understandable only through a new set of epistemic categories. When faced with God’s plan, the heavenly wisdom of ministering angels is no more useful than the earthly wisdom of human beings. Both belong to the old state of affairs characterized by separation between heaven and earth, intelligible and physical beings. Both operate within the epistemic parameters conditioned by this dichotomy and take them for granted. Both see the divine desire to transcend the dichotomy as a baffling paradox. Only when the heavenly expanses and earthly realm converge in the moment of new ontological reality will they be able to approach the true meaning of the divine intent. Uplifting earth to heaven and mankind to angels will not do. Both heaven and earth are in need of the new creation that will belong neither to heaven nor to earth in their old state but to a reality that surpasses both of them and causes each part of the heaven–earth dichotomy to be reborn through the other.

A New Wisdom The construction of Hagia Sophia was intended to visually express the paradox that stood at the very heart of Byzantine culture, indeed, a culture-anchoring paradox (Figure 4). The reference to wisdom in the name of the church was significant. For a sixth-century Byzantine audience, Wisdom meant the original wisdom, through which, according to Proverbs 8:22–31, God creates the present universe, but also and, perhaps, more importantly, the Word made 72

An entire strophe 17 of the Akathistos (Trypanis, 36–37), is devoted to this subject.

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Figure 4  Interior of Hagia Sophia, Wikimedia Commons

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flesh in the person of Christ through whom the redeemed universe is ushered in. The result was, in the words of Fabio Barry, “that any church dedicated to Wisdom automatically enjoyed a range of references spanning from the cosmos to Christ’s own body, and broached the contingent themes of Creation, Incarnation, and Christ’s two natures.”73 The building symbolically encapsulated a new type of knowledge that transcended both human and angelic thinking and around which the Christian Roman Empire wanted to shape its own unique identity. The church of Hagia Sophia, not the created universe, displayed the true wisdom of God, as the rededication anthem of 562 shows in its paraphrase of Proverbs 9:1: “For in truth the Wisdom of the Father built for herself a house of Incarnation and dwelt among us, above understanding.”74 The true realization of God’s creative potential was possible only within the parameters of this new wisdom, not the old one. The new wisdom first became manifest in “a house of Incarnation,” that is, the Theotokos, through whom God “dwells among us, above understanding.” In the eyes of the Byzantines, Hagia Sophia’s space visually expressed the paradox of God’s birth from the Theotokos but also foreshadowed a new creation, in which heaven and earth met to frame the mystery of the circumscribed and yet uncontainable deity dwelling among human beings.75 The rededication anthem proclaims the superiority of the new creation embodied by Hagia Sophia as follows: This sacred church of Christ evidently outstrips in glory even the firmament above, for it does not offer a lamp of merely sensible light, 73 74

75

Barry, Painting in Stone, 168. See also Schibille, Hagia Sophia, 37. On the Inauguration of St. Sophia 1, lines 6–7 (Trypanis, 142; trans. Palmer, 140). The theme of the incarnation also features prominently in Paulus Silentiarius, Descr. S. Sophiae, 429–37 (Friedländer, 239), and 682–719 (Friedländer, 246–47). For a helpful comparison between Paul’s ekphrasis and the anthem, see Macrides and Magdalino, “Architecture of Ekphrasis,” 76–78. See Pentcheva, Hagia Sophia, 29–30, Schibille, Hagia Sophia, 34–36, and Barry, Painting in Stone, 168–69.

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God’s Impossible Form but the shrine of it bears aloft the divine illumination of the Sun of Truth and it is splendidly illumined throughout by day and by night by the rays of the Word of the Spirit, through which the eyes of the mind are enlightened by him [who said] “Let there be light!”, God: THE LIFE AND RESURRECTION OF ALL.76

As the dwelling place of God on earth, the church surpasses the beauty of heavenly lights. Instead of the created lights of heavenly luminaries, the church is illumined by the uncreated light of God himself. The new universe has God as its Sun, thus surpassing the old universe that was illumined by the inferior “sensible lights.” Within the new universe, the intelligible light, “through which the eyes of the mind are enlightened,” and the sensible light become one and the same. The poem continues in stanzas 7 through 9 by further elaborating on the ontological superiority of Hagia Sophia over the heavenly firmament. Heavenly waters that serve as a foundation for the created universe have their parallel in “a mystic vision of holy waters conjured up by the spiritual thoughts which are lifted up” in the church, that is, liturgical ceremonies carried out inside the church walls and bridging the gap between the earthly and heavenly realities.77 The new universe finds its basis not in the physical firmament of heavenly waters but in the Christ-centered liturgical mystery. Instead of the heavenly luminaries, the spiritual luminaries of prophets, apostles, and teachers are “fixed to the divine firmament” of the church. They serve to guide people through “the ocean of sin, which has been bereft of power by the Incarnation of Christ.”78 Overall, the microcosm of the church 76

77

78

On the Inauguration of St. Sophia 6 (Trypanis, 143; trans. Palmer, 141). On this stanza see Schibille, Hagia Sophia, 37–39, and 200–1. On the Inauguration of St. Sophia 8, line 1 (Trypanis, 144; trans. Palmer, 141). On the motif of waters in Hagia Sophia’s decorative program, see Barry, Painting in Stone, 191–207, and Pentcheva, Hagia Sophia, 121–49. Cf. Paulus Silentiarius, Descr. S. Sophiae, 512–32 (Friedländer, 241–42), on the superiority of Hagia Sophia’s dome over the work of nature. See further Macrides and Magdalino, “Architecture of Ekphrasis,” 57. On the Inauguration of St. Sophia 9 (Trypanis, 144; trans. Palmer, 142).

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creates the vision of a perfect cosmos destined to rival the old creation and presumably replace it in the future. At first glance, this description of Hagia Sophia constitutes another example of a much older literary topos that symbolically interpreted the tabernacle and the temple in Jerusalem as artistic replicas of the cosmos. Back in the days of the Second Temple, both Philo and Josephus used this topos widely in their writings.79 The idea that the tabernacle is modeled on the universe becomes a standard theme in the Antiochene school of Christian exegesis from the fourth century onward. In sixth-century Byzantium, it was revisited by the anonymous author of Christian Topography, known as Cosmas Indicopleustes by the eleventh century, who considered the outer tabernacle to be a man-made miniature replica of the physical universe’s current temporal condition.80 A sixth-century Syriac anthem celebrating the building of another Hagia Sophia church, this time the cathedral church in the city of Edessa, also contains the detailed description of the church as a new tabernacle, as well as a replica of the created universe.81 And yet, despite apparent similarities with the cosmic temple topos, the underlying message of the rededication hymn is different. The purpose of the church is not to replicate the already existing 79

80

81

See, for example, Philo, Life of Moses 2.88, and 102–5 (Colson, vol. 6, 492, and 498– 500), and Josephus, JA 3.180–87. On these and other passages, see Klawans, Purity, Sacrifice, and the Temple, 114–19, and Kominko, The World of Kosmas, 132. For the cosmic temple in rabbinic and medieval Judaism, see Klawans, 123–28. As Klawans, 125, notes, “for the most part, however, the developed temple-as-cosmos analogy that we find in Josephus and Philo (and in the literature of the ancient Near East) seems unknown in later rabbinic sources.” Cosmas, Christian Topography, 2.36 (Wolska-Conus, vol. 1, 343), and 3.51–53 (Wolska-Conus, vol. 1, 487, and 489). On Cosmas’s cosmology, see Wolska, Topographie Chrétienne, 37–39, and 113–20, Saradi, “Space in Byzantine Thought,” 88–91, and Kominko, The World of Kosmas, 42–85. For a good introduction to what is known about the person behind the work, see Kominko, 10–23. Sogitha on the Church of Edessa 4–8, and 20 (McVey, “Sogitha,” 353–54, and 355). McVey, “Domed Church,” 91–121, provides a detailed analysis of both the hymn itself and its literary context.

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creation but to start a new one. In that sense, Hagia Sophia’s architecture reflects the broader sixth-century understanding of the universe and its transformation from the present to future age. According to Cosmas, the tabernacle divided by the veil into an inner and an outer area symbolizes the present and future conditions of the universe. The outer tabernacle’s square shape corresponds to the physical realm in its current state. The spherical shape of the tabernacle’s inner area symbolizes the universe’s future redeemed condition that will be revealed with Christ’s second coming at the end of time. Cosmas understands the ark of the covenant, a rectangular domed structure, with its top in the form of a spherical vault resting on the square foundation, to be a symbolic representation of the universe’s future transformation and renewal in Christ.82 The universe in its present condition served as a stage on which the incarnation took place. The result of the incarnation, however, was a completely new world, centered on the paradox of Christ’s human and divine natures combined in one person but also the intelligible realm of heaven reborn in the physical realm of earth.83 The boundary between the upper and the lower worlds, symbolized by the tabernacle’s veil, would now become permeable. “When the veil of the Temple was rent in half at the Passion of the Lord,” Cosmas notes, “The inner tabernacle, which was invisible and inaccessible to all, and even to the priest, had become visible and accessible to humans.”84 Hagia Sophia was conceived as a Christian tabernacle, perhaps, considering the unique nature of 82

83 84

See Cosmas, Christian Topography, 5.20–21 (Wolska-Conus, vol. 2, 39, 41, and 43), and 5.27–29 (Wolska-Conus, vol. 2, 49, 51, and 53). On the Cosmas’s interpretation of the tabernacle, see Kessler, Spiritual Seeing, 54–60, and 88–103, and Kominko, The World of Kosmas, 130–32. On the intellectual and literary context of Cosmas’s cosmology, including the symbolism of the dome, see Baldwin Smith, Dome, 87–94, Wolska, La Topographie Chrétienne, 39–47, and 127–43, and McVey, “Domed Church,” 113–18. See Kominko, The World of Kosmas, 22. Cosmas, Christian Topography, 5.24 (Wolska-Conus, vol. 2, 47; trans. McCrindle, 148, with slight modifications).

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the project, the Christian tabernacle. It offered spatial and semiotic foretaste, an eikon, of the new reality, Cosmas’s second or future condition, which would be universally experienced only in the wake of Christ’s second coming.85 The purpose of the church’s space was to transcend traditional boundaries between heaven and earth, the intelligible and the material, by bringing about the union between the two and translating the intelligible reality of the upper worlds into the language of human senses. This vision represented a Byzantine development of the classical cosmic temple theme of the earlier centuries. It also reflected an ongoing fascination with the exact nature of God’s human birth. Hagia Sophia’s architectural program was an attempt to imagine a new kind of space shaped by the union of human and divine natures in the person of Christ.86 “What was most new about this building,” sums up the historian of Byzantine liturgy Robert F. Taft, “far more than its startling architecture, was the vision created by its marvelous interior. This vision was to have a formative influence on the spirit of the ritual Hagia Sophia was built to house.”87 The combination of the vastness of the nave with the brilliance of lighting created the impression of an entirely new kind of space that truly embodied heaven on earth. The round shapes of the dome, semidomes, and the ambo alluded to a circular dance of heavenly beings around God. It was through this dance, according to Pseudo-Dionysius, that the highest ranks of angels received their most direct knowledge of God 85

86

87

On the church and its sacraments as an eikon of the second condition, see Cosmas, Christian Topography, 5.4 (Wolska-Conus, vol. 2, 15, and 17). On Christ’s second coming, see Cosmas, Christian Topography, 5.184, 247, and 254 (Wolska-Conus, vol. 2, 281, 359, and 371). On Cosmas’s eschatology, see Kessler, Spiritual Seeing, 88–103, and Kominko, The World of Kosmas, 184–87. On the symbolic meaning of domed church architecture in the middle Byzantine period, cf. Mathews, “Churches and Their Contents,” 191–214. On the impact of contemporaneous theological discourse, see Barry, Painting in Stone, 168–69. Taft, Byzantine Rite, 36. See Schibille, Hagia Sophia, 51–70, for an in-depth introduction to the topic.

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and then passed it on to the lower ranks.88 The space under the dome, to quote Pentcheva, shaped “a radiant spherical void, which embodies the Neoplatonic luminous sphere: the vehicle capable of receiving the Demiurge.”89 Hagia Sophia’s architectural forms created a spatial articulation for the heavenly universe and invited the humans to mirror this universe and participate in it through a series of liturgical performances.90 The architectural program was enhanced by the mosaic decoration, which, Cyril Mango notes, “was entirely non-figural and imitated the effect of shimmering silks enlivened with abstract patterns.” The cumulative effect of such decoration was the one of “hypnotic abstraction.”91 The main purpose of Hagia Sophia was to construct a new language of impossible forms, through which the paradox of God who is simultaneously circumscribed and uncontained could be meaningfully evoked. The cosmos of Hagia Sophia was the redeemed cosmos of a new creation. It was the cosmos that bridged the gap between heaven and earth, intelligible and sensible, in the new state of existence in which the two poles of existence, Christ’s two natures, realized themselves through the union with one another. To achieve the required effect, Byzantine architects focused their attention on the transformative qualities of space itself. The goal was to create a new spatial arrangement that would literally uplift the earthly realm and lower down the heavenly world. The two key structural elements that form Hagia Sophia’s interior are the basilica and the dome. The spatial dynamic between the two establishes what Richard Krautheimer describes as “the principle of a design which proceeds by statement and denial [and] acts with equal force throughout the

88 89 90 91

CH 7.4 (Heil and Ritter, 31–32). Pentcheva, Hagia Sophia, 22–25. Pentcheva, Hagia Sophia, 39, and, more broadly, 22–29. See Pentcheva, Hagia Sophia, 153–69. Mango, Byzantium, 262–63. Cf. Pentcheva, Hagia Sophia, 165–66, 177, Schibillle, Hagia Sophia, 109–25, and Barry, Painting in Stone, 183.

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building.”92 The synthesis between the soaring dome, semidomes, and rounded arches, on the one hand, and the horizontal lines of side galleries, on the other, captures and visually expresses the synthesis between heavenly and earthly worlds brought together within the framework of new creation. The Neoplatonic philosopher Proclus, writing his Commentary on Euclid in the fifth century, interpreted straight lines and circles as reflecting the two fundamental principles set up by the demiurgic Intellect: “The one acting in a circular fashion to perfect all intelligible essences, the other moving in a straight line to bring all perceptible things to birth.”93 By combining straight and circular lines, the architects imagined space, within which the sensible and the intelligible would achieve the perfect union. As argued by Pentcheva, the dynamic between a cross and a circle or, more precisely, the visual formula of a cross inscribed in a circle “structures the visual field in Hagia Sophia.”94 This combination was displayed most vividly through a monumental mosaic cross in the apex of the main dome, but it was also reiterated in the motif of cross-in-circle design invoked throughout the building. The purpose of interior decoration in this context was to create a semiotic medium between the two worlds and make the observer lose oneself to a new reality that no longer followed earthly conventions. The combination of enormous domed expanses, light reflecting from the mosaic-covered interior, and aniconic designs induced a profoundly otherworldly feeling and provided a proper

92

93 94

Krautheimer, Early Christian and Byzantine Architecture, 216. Cf. Barry, Painting in Stone, 186: “Functionally, it synthesizes a processional and basilical space with a cosmological and domical one. It is as though a basilica had mated with the Pantheon.” Proclus, In Eucl. 108; trans. Morrow, 88. Pentcheva, Hagia Sophia, 89, and, more broadly, 39–40, 89–93. On various structural elements that helped circular and square forms in the church’s interior to transition into one another, see Cutler, “Structure and Aesthetic,” 27–35. On cross-in-circle design as a reference to the four cardinal directions holding together the world, see Maguire, Earth and Ocean, 29, and 77–78.

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setting for the mystery of liturgical performance unfolding within this space.95 All major descriptions of Hagia Sophia produced in the course of the sixth century focus on the church’s ability to overwhelm the viewer and bring him or her into the state of silent bewilderment.96 Procopius of Caesarea captures this paradox of heaven on earth embodied in the building when he observes that the edifice “seems somehow not to be raised in a firm manner, but to soar aloft to the peril of those who are there; and yet, it is supported with quite extraordinary firmness and security.”97 The bewildering paradox of being simultaneously in heaven and on earth, under control and beyond the laws of gravity, constitutes the basis of his ekphrasis. To quote Krautheimer again, “statement and denial are at the basis of Procopius’ description just as they are at the basis of the architects’ design.”98 Procopius continues: Rising above this circle is an enormous spherical dome which makes the building exceptionally beautiful. It seems not to be founded on solid masonry, but to be suspended from heaven by that golden chain and so cover the space. All of these elements, marvelously fitted together in mid-air, suspended from one another and reposing only on the parts adjacent to them, produce a unified and most remarkable harmony in the work, and yet do not allow the spectators to rest their gaze upon any one of them for a length of time, but each detail readily draws and attracts the eye to itself. Thus the 95

96 97

98

On the role of light in the construction of Hagia Sophia’s liturgical space, see Isar, “‘Χορός of Light,’” 215–42, and Barry, Painting in Stone, 169–71. On liturgical performances, see Pentcheva, Hagia Sophia, 25–44, 116–20, 150–69, and Barry, Painting, 185–86. See Schibille, Hagia Sophia, 24–26, and Barry, Painting in Stone, 184, and 189–90. Procopius, De aedif. 1.1.34 (Dewing, vol. 7, 16; trans. Mango, Art, 74). On Hagia Sophia’s “effect of defamiliarization and disorientation,” see Pentcheva, Hagia Sophia, 112, and, more broadly, 111–20. On wonder as a rhetorical topos in early Byzantine epigraphy and literature, see Leatherbury, Inscribing Faith, 155–59. Krautheimer, Early Christian and Byzantine Architecture, 216.

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A New Wisdom vision constantly shifts round, and the beholders are quite unable to select any particular element which they might admire more than all the others. No matter how much they concentrate their attention on this side and that, and examine everything with contracted eyebrows, they are unable to understand the craftsmanship and always depart from there amazed by the perplexing spectacle.99

Procopius’s description captures the aesthetic effect of Hagia Sophia’s inner space where architectural form transcends physical matter. It is the immaterial qualities of the building – empty space, colors, and light within the structure – that produce this effect. The sensorial aspects of services that took place inside the building added a further dimension to the overall picture. Indeed, as argued by Pentcheva, liturgical performance was part of the building’s architecture. By enacting “circularity, dissolution of the linear dimension of time, and obfuscation of speech,” the two brought about “an aesthetic experience beyond the semantic.”100 The spectator’s inability to focus on any particular element within the construction helps create the holistic impression of amazement, perplexity, and self-loss within the immateriality of the church’s grand interior. In Hagia Sophia, this impression was achieved through a masterful combination of empty and airy space with the effects of pure light reflected by the interior of the building. On the sensorial level, reverberation inside the building muddled “comprehension of the semantics as it randomized time, disturbing the semantic chains.”101 At the same time, however, other elements in the design, some of them compared by Procopius to “precipitous mountain peaks,” made the structure seem solid and firmly grounded.102 The interior 99 100

101 102

Procopius, De aedif. 1.1.45–49 (Dewing, vol. 7, 20–22; trans. Mango, Art, 75). Pentcheva, Hagia Sophia, 119, and 117. See also Kiilerich, “Aesthetic Viewing of Marble,” 23, and Leatherbury, Inscribing Faith, 146–48. Pentcheva, Hagia Sophia, 117. Procopius, De aedif. 1.1.38 (Dewing, vol. 7, 18; trans. Mango, Art, 74). Cf. Cosmas, Christian Topography, 2.12–15 (Wolska-Conus, vol. 1, 317–21), on immobility as

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space of Hagia Sophia was not merely intended to replicate heavens through, in the words of Slobodan Ćurčić, the “dematerialization of walls” and the denial of “the physicality of form,” although this was certainly part of its program.103 Rather, through a combination of material and immaterial elements, Hagia Sophia was designed to put the beholder into the presence of uncontainable yet circumscribed God and display the mystery of God’s human birth. “The idea of Christ’s Incarnation, the Word made flesh,” notes Barry, “is enacted across the whole volume of the church and infiltrates its materiality, all the way from dome to altar.”104 The resulting experience was essentially apophatic, that is, transcending human ability for rational expression or discriminative viewing. Just as the late fifth- or early sixth-century Byzantine author Pseudo-Dionysius considered the silence of awe to be the most appropriate way to approach God, so too was the new church architecture intended to transport one beyond words and reasoning into the state of speechless enchantment.105

Conclusions Hagia Sophia, Nadine Schibille notes, may be considered “the materialistic expression of Justinian’s Solomonic wisdom, which is a reflection of divine wisdom inasmuch as Justinian’s wisdom just as Solomon’s wisdom was given by God.”106 The rededication

103 104 105

106

a key characteristic of the earth. Paulus Silentiarius, Descr. S. Sophiae, 489–549 (Friedländer, 241–43), notes a similar effect from the simultaneous viewing of the two kinds of space brought together. See Ćurčić, “Architecture as Icon,” 21–22. Barry, Painting in Stone, 185. See MT 3–5 (Heil and Ritter, 146–50). For a good introduction to the topic, see Lossky, Mystical Theology, 23–43, Rorem, Pseudo-Dionysius, 184–213, and, more recently, Cohen, Formes théologiques, 149–73, and Schibille, Hagia Sophia, 191–94, 220–26. Schibille, Hagia Sophia, 146. For further details, see 31–32, and 39 in the same work.

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hymn, with which this chapter began, contains one explicit reference to the emperor. The “believing Basileus” appears in stanza 12 as a new Bezalel.107 He outshines his forerunner, the master craftsman charged with the construction of the tabernacle in Exodus 31 and 35, just as Hagia Sophia, “this divinely constructed temple” that “transcends everything,” surpasses and supersedes the tabernacle itself.108 Through this construction, directed by Justinian, the hymn asserts, “we have obtained from God the assurance of knowledge, the wisdom of faith.”109 The new incarnate wisdom finds its cosmic expression in the human birth of God and its architectural embodiment in Hagia Sophia, “a divine creation mediated by the emperor,” in Schibille’s words.110 This wisdom is also embodied in the emperor’s own divinely endowed knowledge and, more specifically, his skill as an architect. Chapter 5 follows the hymn’s lead to further explore architectonic elements, through which an impossible space designed to house the wisdom of a circumscribed deity could be imagined in late antique Jewish and Christian texts. 107 108

109 110

On the Inauguration of St. Sophia 12 (Trypanis, 145; trans. Palmer, 142). On the Inauguration of St. Sophia 12, and 14 (Trypanis, 145, and 146; trans. Palmer, 142, and 143). On the Inauguration of St. Sophia 12 (Trypanis, 145; trans. Palmer, 142). Schibille, Hagia Sophia, 39.

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In what follows, I set out to examine the symbolic means used by fifth- through eighth-century Jewish and Christian authors to imagine sign systems in relation to which the transposition of God could take place. Such sign systems would include, among other things, the structural elements of interior design, the properties of light and color, as well as a variety of objects “not made with hands.” All these would serve as material renderings of the intelligible, the “dissimilar similarities” that make the intelligible universe conceivable in the language of human senses and human spatial categories. This chapter, in other words, deals with a range of forms that helped construct a semantic and morphological field, in which the divine and human realms, the intelligible and the material, could become legible to one another. Once again, the chapter argues that Jewish traditions that attempt to identify and explore such forms should be approached as one among many dialects spoken within the framework of late Roman and early Byzantine culture, dialects that represent, in a slightly modified wording of Michael Roberts’s description, various points on the pagan, Jewish, and Christian continuum.1

The Tabernacle’s Space in Midrash The construction of a proper spatial stage on which the paradox of the uncontained and circumscribed God could be performed 1

See Roberts, Jeweled Style, 14.

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in front of a liturgical audience plays an important role across the late Roman and Byzantine semiotic koine. The building of Hagia Sophia, “the largest and most expensive religious theater imaginable, built and furnished for the semi-private performances of the divine and imperial liturgy,” in the words of John Beckwith, is, perhaps, the most striking and visually captivating example of this effort, but Hagia Sophia serves merely as the high point and a kind of summary of contemporaneous cultural tradition.2 It offered architectural expression to epistemic and rhetorical models already prominent in late antiquity. The tabernacle imagined by Jewish midrashim and piyyutim represents another adaptation of fundamentally the same line of thought. These texts composed between the fifth and eighth centuries invite Jewish audiences to contemplate the mystery of the uncontainable and circumscribed deity, framed by the tabernacle’s interior space, just as the architects of Hagia Sophia invite Christian audiences to contemplate the same paradox, framed by the architecture and design of Hagia Sophia’s interior. The imagined space of the tabernacle, like the architecturally realized space of Hagia Sophia, provides viewers with forms and categories necessary to visualize the paradox and savor it. Pesiqta of Rav Kahana, the fifth- or early-sixth century exegetical collection introduced in Chapter 4 in connection with the theme of God’s self-contraction inside the tabernacle, offers a good entry point into my argument. Another midrash in the same anthology further explores the paradoxical nature of God’s earthly dwelling by interpreting the tabernacle’s interior design as an attempt to make the sign systems of heaven and earth, the suprasensible and sensible worlds, mutually transparent and translatable. In parallel to Hagia Sophia, the tabernacle offers a stage set on which God’s desire to dwell with Israel and the shrinking of God’s presence can be successfully performed. 2

Beckwith, “Byzantium,” 49–51.

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Moses builds this stage set by symbolically projecting heavenly expanses into the earthly realm: R. Joshua of Sikhnin taught in the name of R. Levi: When the Holy One, blessed be He, said to Moses, “Make me a tabernacle,” Moses might have brought four poles and spread over them the tabernacle. This teaches, however, that the Holy One, blessed be He, showed Moses on high red fire, green fire, black fire, and white fire, and said to him: “Make me a tabernacle.” Moses said to the Holy One, blessed be He: “Master of the worlds, where am I going to get red fire, green fire, black fire, or white fire?” He said to him: “After the model [‫ ]בתבניתם‬that is being shown you on the mountain” (Exodus 25:40). R. Berekhiah in the name of R. Levi: A king appeared to his courtier clothed in a garment covered entirely with precious stones. He said to him: “Make me one like this.” He said to him: My lord king, where am I going to get a garment covered entirely with precious stones?” He said to him: “You in accord with your signs [‫]בסימננך‬ and I in accord with my glory [‫]בכבודי‬.” So said the Holy One, blessed be He, to Moses: “Moses, if you make what belongs above down below, I shall leave my council up here and go down and shrink my Presence so as to be among you down there.” Just as above “Seraphim stand” (Isaiah 6:2), so down below “Boards of shittim cedars stand” (Exodus 26:15). Just as above are stars, so down below are the clasps. Said R. Hiyya bar Abba: This teaches that the golden clasps in the tabernacle looked like the stars fixed in the firmament [‫]ככוכבים הקבועים ברקיע‬. 3

The notion that the tabernacle constructed by Moses follows the heavenly pattern is a common theme in Jewish interpretive tradition. It goes back to God’s demand in Exodus 25:9 to make the 3

Pesiq. Rab. Kah. 1:3 (Mandelbaum, vol. 1, 7–8; trans. Neusner, vol. 1, 6–7, with modifications). The traditions circulated in multiple forms with some variations between them. On this text and its versions in other midrashic collections, see Goldberg, Untersuchungen, 50, Kuhn, Gottes Selbsterniedrigung, 53–54, and Mirsky, Origin of Forms, 18–28.

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tabernacle “in accordance with all that I show you concerning the pattern [‫ ]תבנית‬of the tabernacle and of all its furniture,” and the reiteration of this demand in Exodus 25:40. During the Second Temple period, the interpretation of the tabernacle as an earthly copy of the heavenly prototype remained a recurrent feature in Jewish literature.4 The Pesiqta’s interpretation develops some of the earlier themes but also introduces ideas that become fully understandable only within the broader context of the Pesiqta’s own time. The construction of the tabernacle by Moses, as imagined in the Pesiqta, and the building of Hagia Sophia by Justinian serve a similar purpose. Both structures offer a visual form that allows the viewer to contemplate the circumscribed state of God’s presence on earth as a transposition of God’s cosmic greatness. Central to the midrash is God’s promise that “if you make what belongs above down below, I shall leave my council up here and go down and shrink my Presence [‫ ]ומצמצם שכינתי‬so as to be among you down there.” The transposition of God’s infinite being within the spatially circumscribed parameters of the tabernacle is not inferior to the original. Rather, it involves an alternative articulation of God. By replicating heavenly realities on earth and bringing “what belongs above down below,” the tabernacle’s interior creates new semiotics that allow for such an articulation and, consequently, for the transposition of the divine within a new set of signs. The transposed version of God’s presence, however, is in no way inferior in status to the original. Instead, it adheres to the broad principle of model–copy relationship prevalent in late Roman and Byzantine art. As noted by Vikan, “the Byzantines believed that the power and sanctity of revered iconic archetypes resided collectively and individually in all copies, regardless of medium, style, aesthetic merit, or expense.”5 A copy, therefore, was not deficient in comparison with its model. The distinction itself would be largely meaningless. As Vikan puts it, for the Byzantines, “there are no better 4 5

See, for example, Wisdom of Solomon 9:8, and Hebrews 8–10. Vikan, “Ruminations,” 50.

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or inferior icons; no originals or copies.”6 The midrash goes to some lengths to make a similar point as unambiguously as possible, just as the traditions about angelic opposition to God’s descent, discussed in Chapter 4, do. The tabernacle is a case of what Bornert calls “le symbolisme sacramentel efficace,” which “réalise ce qu’il signifie.”7 In this context, the function of the tabernacle is not to provide a secondary material copy of the perfect heavenly prototype but to serve as an alternative semiotic system through which the prototype can be reinscribed in accordance with the rules of material signification. The parable of a king who once “appeared to his courtier clothed in a garment covered entirely with precious stones” further expands on this understanding of the material tabernacle as a sign system. In late antique art and rhetoric, the topos of an emperor wearing a jewel-encrusted consular toga was often used to represent the emperor’s public appearance as a performance of mediating space between the suprasensible universe and the world of senses.8 The parable’s king demands that another garment, like the one he is wearing, be made for him. In response to the courtier’s bafflement over where to find another such garment covered with precious stones, the king tells him to make a replica of the garment and the royal glory, rendered visible through the garment, “in accord with your signs [‫]בסימננך‬.” 9 In a similar fashion, Moses has to construct the likeness of the heavenly glory by using forms available to him on earth, such as boards of cedars, golden clasps, and the material equivalents of four heavenly fires shown to him by God. The third-century commentary on the Song of Songs by the Christian 6 7

8

9

Vikan, “Ruminations,” 51. Bornert, Commentaires, 118: “The sacramental symbolism characterized by its efficacy,” which “makes real what it signifies” (my translation). For a useful summary and analysis of visual and literary parallels to this scene, see Roberts, Jeweled Style, 112–14. Braude and Kapstein, 11, translate ‫ בסימננך‬as “with whatever materials you have,” and Neusner, 7, translates it as “in accord with your raw materials.” The semiotic nature of the task assigned to Moses gets lost in both translations. On the garment as a sign system intended to invoke protective powers, see Dölger, Sphragis, 37–38.

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Dissimilar Similarity Revisited

thinker Origen envisions a similar process, in which the material gold, used in the construction of the ark of the covenant and the temple, offers a semiotic form to translate the heavenly experience into the language of human senses. The translation was both necessary and inadequate, notes Origen, echoing Pesiqta of Rav Kahana, since “the visible gold itself, just because it was visible, was not the true gold, but the likeness [similitudino] of that true and unseen gold.”10 In viewing the “visible gold” as the inferior likeness of the “true and unseen gold,” however, Origen differs from the Pesiqta in a fundamental way. For Origen, the translation of the spiritual into the language of the material always implies that a material symbol is of lower ontological status than its spiritual prototype.11 This is not a message of the Pesiqta’s garment parable, especially, when we consider the parable within the broader context of the Pesiqta’s tabernacle midrash, where it belongs. The parable emphasizes an alternative mode of rendering that transcribes the king’s garment “in accord with your signs,” without, however, losing any of the garment’s original value. Like a garment, expected by the king from his courtier, the tabernacle establishes a new sign system. Within this system, the divine Presence can be articulated through a new set of signifiers, without, however, becoming inferior to the Presence’s original heavenly version. The hierarchy of the superior spiritual prototype and the inferior material image found in Origen is the exact opposite of what the Pesiqta attempts to say.

Dissimilar Similarity Revisited To better understand the difference between how the Pesiqta and Origen understand the status of the earthly tabernacle or ark of the covenant vis-à-vis its heavenly prototype, one has to say more 10

11

Origen, Cant. 2.8.20 (Brésard and Crouzel, vol. 1, 418; trans. Lawson, 153). On the statement’s broader cultural context, see Janes, God and Gold, 79. See Crouzel, Origène, 31–35.

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about the conceptual universe that the midrash inhabits. Composed between the fifth and early sixth centuries in early Byzantine Palestine, the Pesiqta shares some of the themes current in contemporaneous Roman aesthetics. In what follows, I will attempt to situate the tabernacle midrash within the broader search for a semiotic middle ground between the suprasensible and the sensible characteristic of the period. The boards of cedars, golden clasps and material equivalents of four heavenly fires, required according to the Pesiqta to replicate the heavenly tabernacle down below, resemble the function of material images in the early sixth-century system of heavenly and earthly hierarchies formulated by Pseudo-Dionysius. In the Dionysian terminology, the tabernacle’s furnishings are “visible things” that “are truly the manifest images [emphaneis eikones] of things invisible.”12 They are signs that render the heavenly reality present on earth by creating a field within which the intelligible and physical realms can be translated into each other’s language: For it is quite impossible that we humans should, in any immaterial way, rise up to imitate and to contemplate the heavenly hierarchies without the aid of those material means capable of guiding us as our nature requires. Hence, any thinking person realizes that the appearances of beauty are signs of an invisible loveliness. The beautiful odors which strike the senses are representations of a conceptual diffusion. Material lights are images of the outpouring of an immaterial gift of light.13

Both Pseudo-Dionysius and the Pesiqta predicate their discourse on the assumption that, in the words of Bornert, “il existe une correspondance secrète entre le monde visible et le monde invisible,” and, therefore, “la contemplation du premier conduit à la vision du 12 13

Ep. 10 (Heil and Ritter, 208; my translation). CH 1.3 (Heil and Ritter, 8–9; trans. Luibheid and Rorem, 146). For Neoplatonic parallels to this passage, see Cohen, Formes théologiques, 109–10, n. 36.

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Dissimilar Similarity Revisited

second.”14 Because human nature is composed of matter and spirit, it needs “material means” to guide it to the contemplation of the suprasensible. These material means are symbols: “the perceptible tokens of intelligible things [which] both show the way to them and lead to them.”15 Among material symbols that guide human beings to suprasensible realities Pseudo-Dionysius singles out the Scripture and liturgy. Just as in the Pesiqta’s parable the king’s garment made of precious stones has to be reproduced by a courtier in accord with the signs available to him, so too liturgical rituals and material substances used in them serve to “clothe” suprasensible realities “in numerous material figures and forms so that, in a way appropriate to our nature, we might be uplifted from these most venerable images to interpretations and assimilations which are simple and inexpressible.”16 These “material figures and forms” include “beautiful odors,” orders and ranks of the ecclesiastical hierarchy, and, finally, the Eucharist itself. Pseudo-Dionysius specifically singles out “material lights” as “images of the outpouring of an immaterial gift of light,” just as Pesiqta of Rav Kahana has Moses search for material equivalents to translate heavenly fires into the language of human senses. The quotation from Exodus 25:40, instructing Moses to construct the tabernacle “after the model [‫ ]בתבניתם‬that is being shown you on the mountain,” finds parallel in the Dionysian reference to “material figures and forms [hylaiois schemasi kai morphotikais],” intended to assimilate intelligible realities to the corporeal world. Pesiqta’s tabernacle is, indeed, one of such “figures and forms,” another symbol that renders the material and intelligible realms mutually transparent. 14

15

16

Bornert, Commentaires, 62: “There is a hidden correspondence between the visible and invisible worlds,” and, therefore, “the contemplation of the former leads to the vision of the latter” (my translation). See, in general, 62–64 in the same work. EH 2.3.2 (Heil and Ritter, 74; trans. Luibheid and Rorem, 205). See Bornert, Commentaires, 67. CH 1.3 (Heil and Ritter, 8; trans. Luibheid and Rorem, 146). For a further explication of this passage, see Rorem, Pseudo-Dionysius, 53.

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To further understand the midrash’s context, one has to revisit the Dionysian concept of “dissimilar similarities,” discussed in Chapter 1 of the present work. Interpreted within the Dionysian and more broadly Neoplatonic frame of reference, the tabernacle’s space consists of a series of “dissimilar similarities derived from the matter” and “applied to those beings which are both intelligible and intelligent,” in other words, a series of material signs that are at the same time similar and dissimilar with intelligible forms they serve to replicate.17 “Forms, even those drawn from the lowliest parts of the matter,” continues Pseudo-Dionysius, “can be used, not unfittingly, with regard to heavenly beings. Matter, after all, owes its existence to absolute beauty and keeps, throughout its material order, some echo of intelligible seemliness.”18 The material form offers a semiotic situation in which “the intelligible seemliness” can be transcribed through a new set of signifiers. As noted by Averincev, the concept of dissimilar similarity would eventually develop into the Byzantine theory of an icon, “en tant que reflet qui est distinct de son prototype par une certaine différence importante, mais qui permet aux ‘énergies’ du prototype d’être réellement présentes dans ce reflet.”19 It was through dissimilar similarity between the individual elements of God’s heavenly court and the tabernacle that the transposition of one system into the other could take place. Whereas none of the material forms, when taken individually, provides a meaningful replica of the corresponding suprasensible form – that is, the boards of cedar do not actually resemble the seraphim – the position of these forms within the tabernacle’s structure establishes them as signs pointing to corresponding elements within the structure of the suprasensible universe. The translation takes place between the relational sum total of the tabernacle’s 17

18 19

CH 2.4 (Heil and Ritter, 13–14; trans. Luibheid and Rorem, 151, with modifications). For the Neoplatonic context, see Struck, Birth of the Symbol, 218–26. CH 2.4 (Heil and Ritter, 15; trans. Luibheid and Rorem, 151–52, with modifications). Averincev, “L’or dans le système des symboles,” 56: “As a reflection which differs

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space and the relational sum total of the heavenly court’s space, rather than between individual elements within each of these structures. The midrash fixes our attention, to quote Gombrich, “not on likeness of elements but on structural relationships within a scale or matrix.”20 Hence, material objects inside the tabernacle become meaningful representations of their heavenly counterparts, or, in the words of Pseudo-Dionysius, “share what cannot be shared” with the structural elements of the intelligible universe,21 not individually, but by being situated within the parameters of the whole. What emerges as a result is a formal system that consists of material objects as its modules but acquires full meaning only in relation to the structural norms of the intelligible realm. This system does not mimic either the upper or the lower worlds but rather creates a field within which one world can be articulated in the language of the other. The tabernacle’s interior “creates types for the typeless” and “gives shape to what is actually without shape,” by offering a range of “the permitted forms of the marvelous and unformed sights,” the forms that allow for an act of translation between the two radically incommensurate structures of meaning.22 Some of these forms were ubiquitous across the fifth- and sixth-century cultural koine. As noted by Novick, the parallelism between the golden clasps in the tabernacle and the stars fixed in the firmament (‫ )ככוכבים הקבועים ברקיע‬depends “on visual resemblance, more characteristic of earlier, poetic compositions on the temple,” rather than “verbal links across prooftexts, a mechanism from its prototype in some significant way, but which allows the ‘energies’ of that prototype to be really present in the reflection” (my translation). 20 21 22

Gombrich, Art and Illusion, 370. DN 9.7 (Suchla, 212; trans. Luibheid and Rorem, 118). CH 2.2 (Heil and Ritter, 11; trans. Luibheid and Rorem, 149). For almost identical language used by the late third- and early fourth-century philosopher Iamblichus, cf. Struck, Birth of the Symbol, 219. Here and later in the chapter, my argument develops in dialogue with the analysis of the principles of Byzantine iconography offered in Bychkov, Vizantiiskaia Estetika, 159–63, and Uspensky, Semiotics of the Russian Icon, 33–35.

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characteristic of rabbinic exegesis.”23 However, the starry firmament, mimicked by the tabernacle’s golden clasps, was also a common element in the artistic program of the Christian churches of the time. In a language that makes it sound almost like a quotation from Pesiqta of Rav Kahana, the sogitha on Hagia Sophia in Edessa compares the church’s ceiling “decorated with golden mosaic” to “the firmament with shining stars.”24 The gilded mosaic cross in a starry sky figured prominently at the Ravenna’s fifth-century mausoleum of Galla Placidia and in the apse of the sixth-century church of Saint Apollinaire in Classe. The ceiling mosaic in S. Vitale, another one of Ravenna’s sixth-century churches, features a lamb set in a medallion against the background of the fixed stars. It would be worth recalling Thomas F. Mathews’s observation that the heavenly dome of Byzantine church architecture represents the realm of fixed stars above and beyond the physical universe, the planets, and the signs of the zodiac. The heaven of Byzantine churches was not a physical heaven of the created cosmos but the immovable realm of intelligible beings.25 Its role within the program of the church’s interior, like the role of the golden clasps in the tabernacle, was to “make what belongs above down below” – frame a paradoxical space that is simultaneously infinite and circumscribed and, in the process of doing so, create art forms that would make human senses perceptive to the presence of the spatially circumscribed God. The realm of fixed stars may serve as a good example of a visual as well as rhetorical form that could find its expression through a variety of media, both artistic and literary, and as diverse as mosaics and midrashim, but still conveyed fundamentally the same set of meanings across an entire range of its linguistic and artistic adaptations. Finding material equivalents of intelligible beings, however, was only part of the story. As one of the midrashim preserved by the 23 24 25

Novick, Piyyut and Midrash, 55. Sogitha on the Church of Edessa 5 (McVey, “Sogitha,” 353; trans. McVey, 356). Mathews, Clash of Gods, 149. See also Schwarzenberg, “Colour, Light, and Transparency,” 16.

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Dissimilar Similarity Revisited

eighth-century exegetical anthology of Tanhuma makes explicit, it was establishing the structural relationship among the tabernacle’s parts that required most effort: They built the tabernacle but did not know how to set it up. Each and everyone took his work and went to Moses. Each and every one would say: Here is my hook. Here is my board. Here is my bolt. But the Holy Spirit rested upon Moses, and he erected the tabernacle. Still you should not say [that] Moses [did it]. Rather the tabernacle arose by itself, as stated: “The tabernacle was set up” (Exodus 40:17).26

The midrash distinguishes between two seemingly related activities, namely, the construction and setting up of the tabernacle. In the context of the narrative, the former refers to the manufacturing of the individual elements of the tabernacle’s design, such as hooks, boards, and bolts, whereas the latter implies the establishing of the tabernacle’s overall structure within which these individual elements must be set. Whereas the Israelites are able to produce individual construction items, setting these items within a meaningful system of structural relationships poses a problem. Only Moses, inspired by God, can create such a system. Indeed, the midrash continues, the tabernacle as a structure “arose by itself” (‫)מעצמו עמד‬, that is, without any human involvement, Moses or not, whatsoever. At this point, the text introduces us to the theme of the tabernacle’s “non-man-made” origin, which I examine in detail later in the chapter. For now, it is important to note that, in the midrash’s narrative, what requires a direct intervention from God and, as a result, possesses a non-man-made quality is not the tabernacle’s individual fixtures but rather the formal system of relationships among those fixtures. It was the sum of relationships within the system and not individual hooks, boards, and bolts that established the tabernacle as a dissimilar similarity of the intelligible realm. When read 26

Tanh. Pequde 8 (Buber, 133; trans. Townsend, vol. 2, 181–82, with slight modifications).

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in its Byzantine cultural context, the construction of the tabernacle constitutes another facet in a broader search for a semiotic system, through which the paradox of the circumscribed God could be made commensurate with the language of human senses.

The Tabernacle’s Space in Yannai’s Poetry Whereas Pesiqta of Rav Kahana’s description of the tabernacle’s interior is relatively succinct, the sixth-century Yannai’s piyyut for Hanukkah, mentioned in Chapter 4, offers a more elaborate as well as significantly more structured version of the same theme. Aharon Mirsky situates the piyyut toward the end of the long line of midrashic adaptations.27 The relationship between the genres of piyyut and midrash, however, has recently been a matter of debate. Instead of approaching the two as monolithic entities related through some sort of linear progression, I would argue that midrashic and poetic modifications of the same motif are best seen as a horizon of independent witnesses to a structurally important scenario. These modifications reflect some of the possible ways in which the same idiom could be realized within the parameters of a late antique Jewish milieu, appropriately characterized by Lieber as “an exegetical culture (or subculture) – a world richly infused with Scripture and its interpretation.”28 After reiterating in several modalities the basic theme that God dwells among the chosen people, while, at the same time, maintaining his presence in heaven and the rest of the creation, Yannai concludes the qedushta with a silluq that describes the structural elements of the tabernacle in relation to their heavenly 27

28

Mirsky, Origin of Forms, 24–28. For a recent careful adaptation of Mirsky’s argument, see as well as Lieberman, “Hazzanut Yannai,” 234–44, and Novick, Piyyut and Midrash, 54–57. Lieber, Yannai, 157. On the complex relationship between piyyut and midrash, see 142–46 in the same work, and Novick, Piyyut and Midrash, 9–11, 53–59, with the literature cited there.

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counterparts.29 The silluq consists of the metrically balanced lists of items “below” and “above” and reads like an expanded version of the Pesiqta’s list of dissimilar similarities: Clasps fixed below correspond to stars fixed in heaven; the cherubim in the tabernacle have their counterparts in the heavenly cherubim, as well as in the heavenly chariot and the Throne of Glory; the seven-branched candelabra or menorah corresponds to the seven planets; covers spread in the tabernacle correspond to clouds; and the curtain partition corresponds to the raqia, the highest heaven and God’s dwelling place in Jewish tradition.30 Like Romanos’s kontakia, designed to provide a literary component within a cross-referential semiotic system, known as Byzantine liturgy, Yannai’s poem creates a verbal dimension within the multilayered and cross-referential semiotics of the synagogue’s liturgical space, saturated with allusions to the Jerusalem temple, the tabernacle, and the zodiac.31 The liturgical setting and the associated need to guide an audience’s gaze upward might have influenced the payyetan’s decision to use the tabernacle’s structural elements as the starting point in the analogy and then proceed to these elements’ heavenly prototypes. By contrast, progressing in the opposite direction, from heavenly prototypes down to the prototypes’ equivalents in the tabernacle, appears to be typical of the motif’s adaptation in midrashim, as well as the early seventh-century liturgical poetry of Qillir.32 29

30

31

32

On God’s simultaneous presence in heaven and among Israel, reiterated in several ways, see Rabinovitz, Liturgical Poems, vol. 2, 239–40, lines 40–49. See discussion in Chapter 4. Rabinovitz, Liturgical Poems, vol. 2, 241–42, lines 59–80. For a detailed exposition of these lines, including, proposed restorations of missing sections, see Bronznick, Liturgical Poetry, vol. 1, 416, and vol. 2, 232–33. For a recent summary of temple- and tabernacle-related motifs in the pictorial program of late antique Palestinian synagogues, including detailed bibliographic references, see Levine, Visual Judaism, 260–77, 337–48, and 357–59. On the zodiac, see 319–36 in the same work. See Mirsky, Origin of Forms, 26–28.

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As argued by Mirsky, the two balanced lists of corresponding structural units “below” and “above” reflect rhetorical mechanisms characteristic of (and, according to Mirsky, originating in) rabbinic midrashim. The latter use highly structured and, sometimes, metrically balanced chains of analogies to elicit new meanings from biblical texts juxtaposed within novel sets of syntactic relationships.33 The silluq’s lists, however, also offer an example of “patterning by enumerative sequence,” a technique identified by Roberts as a ubiquitous compositional feature of late antique poetry and art. Each list is organized as an enumerative sequence of design fixtures present inside the tabernacle and in heaven. In each sequence, there is a “tendency toward exhaustivity,” through the meticulous enumeration of elements within a given structure, and a resulting “crowded effect.” The lists are then juxtaposed with one another on purely formal grounds, not unlike the fish “arranged in a series of roughly concentric enumerative sequences” on the Antioch Tethys mosaic from Dumbarton Oaks, analyzed by Roberts. Within this juxtaposition, compositional units relate to each other “thematically and schematically, not realistically,” each element of the tabernacle being associated with a corresponding element of heavenly architecture, thematically by a shared meaning, and schematically by a shared abstracted form. The resulting effect seems to be intended for an audience whose eyes have been trained to see the world within the aesthetic horizon characteristic of late antique rhetoric and art.34 Yannai concludes the list of analogies between God’s court above and the tabernacle below as follows: And your Shekhinah in the tabernacle below, Is like the dwelling of the Shekhinah above. For of everything that you have above, You also have likenesses below.35 33 34 35

Mirsky, Origin of Forms, 18–26. Roberts, Jeweled Style, 78, see also 59–63 and 84–85, in the same work. Rabinovitz, Liturgical Poems, vol. 2, 242–43, lines 81–84; my translation.

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Yannai’s silluq is unique among other adaptations of the motif in Jewish literature in using the word “likenesses” (‫ )דמיונים‬to describe the relationship between the heavenly court and the tabernacle.36 This choice of vocabulary may reflect Yannai’s broader interest in the properties and function of demut, traced throughout the present study. For Yannai, as for his contemporaries, “likeness” implies “participation.” On the level of language, the relationship of participation is reflected in the modulations of the same root, first, used to describe the tabernacle’s structural unit situated “below,” and, then, the corresponding aspect of the court “above.”37 The tabernacle’s space, constructed in the likeness of God’s heavenly dwelling, sets a stage on which the presence of the simultaneously infinite and circumscribed God can be spatially performed or, in Yannai’s words, “the Shekhinah in the tabernacle below” can become “like the dwelling of the Shekhinah above.” Within the tabernacle’s interior, the limitless heaven becomes coextensive with the tabernacle’s finite space. Yannai concludes the piyyut with the description of Israel’s and angelic choirs joining together in the praise of God’s presence in heaven and on earth.38 The praise frames the paradox of the uncontainable and circumscribed God inside the space formed by the choirs. The tabernacle and the choirs create a visual setting in relation to which God can now become localized. Yannai uses the term shekhinah, here and elsewhere in the piyyut, to refer to the spatially delineated modality of God’s existence, the modality within which God can be recognized and meaningfully described in relation to space and objects populating that space.39 So too does the Pesiqta’s midrash discussed earlier in the chapter. In both cases, the term shekhinah denotes God’s spatial 36

37 38 39

Mirsky, Origin of Forms, 28. On the range of meanings associated with the word, see Zulay, “Matters of Language,” 183–84, and Bronznick, Liturgical Poetry, vol. 1, 416. See Mirsky, Origin of Forms, 25, and Novick, Piyyut and Midrash, 57. Rabinovitz, Liturgical Poems, vol. 2, 243, lines 86–90. Cf. Rabinovitz, Liturgical Poems, vol. 2, 239, lines 40–41, translated and discussed in Chapter 4.

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transposition. “Der Terminus Schekhinah,” notes Goldberg, “bezeichnet die Gottheit nur wie sie im Raum, sei im Himmel oder auf der Erde da ist, niemals aber das Wesen Gottes.”40 The shekhinah, Goldberg adds later in the chapter, plays the role of God’s image (“das Gottesbild”) through which God becomes accessible to human imagination, even though God’s essence (“das Wesen Gottes”) always remains transcendental.41 Although, in light of the argument made so far in this book, I find such a rigid dichotomy between God’s image and God’s essence problematic, I fundamentally agree with Goldberg’s understanding of the shekhinah as God’s image. The concept of the shekhinah, at least partially, shares in function with the concept of image as it developed in the course of the sixth and seventh centuries. Both, in Bornert’s words, “sont à la fois des figures et des accomplissements, des symboles et des réalités.”42 The shekhinah designates God’s relational mode, the sign situation in which God exists, that is, becomes legible, in relation to a system of spatial coordinates. The space of God’s heavenly court, as rendered in the structural relationships of the tabernacle’s material space, serves to construct such a system. The introductory proem of the sixth-century rededication anthem for Hagia Sophia, discussed earlier in the book, echoes Yannai’s piyyut almost in full detail: O Lord, thou hast demonstrated at once both the splendor of the firmament above and the beauty of thy dwelling here below, this holy tabernacle of thy glory; make firm the latter for ever and ever and accept the prayers which we offer in it unceasingly, by the intercession of the Mother of God, to thee: THE LIFE AND RESURRECTION OF ALL.43 40 41 42

43

Goldberg, Untersuchungen, 533. Goldberg, Untersuchungen, 534. Bornert, Commentaires, 61: “Are at the same time the prefiguration and its fulfillment, the symbol and the reality” (my translation). On the Inauguration of St. Sophia (Trypanis, 141; trans. Palmer, 140).

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The anthem refers to Hagia Sophia as the “holy tabernacle” of God’s glory. As in Yannai’s piyyut, the coextensive relationship between “the splendor of the firmament above and the beauty of [God’s] dwelling below” offers a setting for the paradox of God’s simultaneous presence in heaven and on earth. Both hymns invite their listeners to contemplate the uncontained and circumscribed conditions of God’s existence by simultaneously viewing the infinity and finitude of space through which God’s presence is displayed. In both cases, heaven is made present on earth through the medium of artistically fabricated likeness. In the words of another hymn on Hagia Sophia, this time by Romanos, “the very home of the church is being built with such skill that it imitates heaven [hos ton ouranon mimesthai], the divine throne, which supplies eternal life.”44 One is immediately reminded of the tabernacle’s furnishings that imitate heaven and Ezekiel’s chariot in Yannai’s piyyut. Indeed, Yannai’s reference to the seven lamps of the menorah below made in the likeness (‫ )נדמו ל‬of the seven planets above finds parallel in the description of cross-shaped chandeliers (otherwise known as polycandela) in Paul the Silentiary’s ekphrasis of Hagia Sophia: “thus hangs the circling choir of bright lights. You might say you were gazing on the effulgent stars of the heavenly Corona close to Arcturus and the head of Draco.”45 Archaeological evidence suggests the widespread use of 44

45

Romanos, On Earthquakes and Fires, strophe 23, lines 6–10 (Maas-Trypanis, 471; trans. Gador-Whyte, 162–63). Cf. Paulus Silentiarius, Descr. S. Sophiae, 489–532 (Friedländer, 241–42), on the dome, which “is like the firmament which rests on air,” as translated by Mango, Art, 83. Paulus Silentiarius, Descr. S. Sophiae, 830–33 (Friedländer, 250; trans. Mango, Art, 90). On the context of this reference, see Schibille, Hagia Sophia, 70–75. For Yannai’s reference to the seven lamps of the menorah, see Rabinovitz, Liturgical Poems, vol. 2, 242, lines 71–72. On Yannai’s uses of the menorah’s symbolism, including a brief discussion of this line, see Fine, Art and Judaism, 159–62. For a more detailed treatment of the same theme, cf. the fragmentarily preserved silluq of Yannai’s qerova for Numbers 8 in Rabinovitz, Liturgical Poems, vol. 2, 39–40, lines 25–50, esp. 48–50. See Schwartz, Imperialism, 269–70, for translation and analysis. On the menorah as a symbol for the planetary system in Philo and Josephus, cf. Goodenough, Jewish Symbols, vol. 4, 82–88, and, more recently, Fine, Art and

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polycandela in Byzantine synagogues. Within a synagogue’s space, the polycandela, the menorahs (present in the form of pictorial renderings, as well as three-dimensional objects), and, possibly, the representations of the zodiac functioned as cross-pollinating metaphors for heavenly luminaries.46 In the early eighth century, the visual program of the Great Mosque of Damascus served to construct the material likeness of Paradise through interplay between hanging glass lamps, used to illuminate the mosque’s interior and also routinely compared to “pearly stars” in early Islamic literature, and mosaic representations of pendant pearls on the mosque’s walls.47 The effect was the material translation of heavenly luminosity accomplished through a series of metaphorical associations. Semiotic principles there at work were similar to those in Paul’s description of Hagia Sophia’s polycandela and Yannai’s tabernacle phantasy. In all these scenarios, the artistically manufactured “likeness” transcribes heavenly realms through material signs available on earth and, in so doing, constitutes a visual framework in relation to which the performance of the paradox can now be set.

Heaven on Earth In the fourth-century panegyric of Paulinus, bishop of Tyre, Eusebius of Caesarea praises the church built under the bishop’s patronage as “an intelligible image on earth of what is beyond the

46

47

Judaism, 151–52, and 160. For both Yannai and Paul the Silentiary, the symbolism of the menorah and polycandela was probably multivalent and could refer to the angelic hosts surrounding God, as well as planets and constellations. On Paul, see Isar, “‘Χορός of Light,’” 218–26. On synagogue polycandela as a metaphor for the zodiac, see Goodenough, Jewish Symbols, vol. 8, 169. For an introduction to available archaeological data, see Hachlili, Ancient Synagogues, 330–33 and Fine, Art and Judaism, 190–92. See Flood, Great Mosque, 35–56, and Pentcheva, Sensual Icon, 61.

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heavenly vaults.”48 By the sixth century, Syriac and Greek texts begin to refer to the material space constructed to frame God’s circumscribed presence and visually represented by the church’s interior as “heaven on earth.” In the words of Hagia Sophia’s rededication anthem, And this wonderful precinct shall become known above all others as the most sacred residence of God, the one which manifestly exhibits a quality worthy of God, since it surpasses the whole of mankind’s knowledge of architectural technology. Both [by its form] and by its function in God’s worship it is seen to be – yes, and proclaimed – a kind of heaven on earth, which God has chosen for his own habitation; and in the Spirit hast thou buttressed it, thou: THE LIFE AND RESURRECTION OF ALL.49

The hymn emphasizes the unity of two elements in the church building: its spatial design and liturgical ceremonies conducted within it, just as the conclusion of Yannai’s piyyut does. Together these two elements form a space that “exhibits a quality worthy of God” and serves to house the divine presence within “a kind of heaven on earth, which God has chosen for his own habitation.”50 “And our temple was to you like the heavens, and the heavens of heavens,” the concluding verses (silluq) of Yannai’s qedushta to Numbers 15:1 echo the anthem.51 Yannai continues by listing the seven heavens that constitute “the heavens and the heavens of heavens.” The priests, the Levites, and Israel worshipping God in the temple, he notes, mirror the angelic orders worshipping God on high.52 The Greek anthem and the Hebrew poem search for rhetoric 48 49 50

51

52

Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. 10.4.69 (Schwartz, vol. 2, 882; my translation). On the Inauguration of St. Sophia 5 (Trypanis, 143; trans. Palmer, 141). The phrase “heaven on earth” will become an established cliché in the subsequent centuries. See Bornert, Commentaires, 158, and 177. Rabinovitz, Liturgical Poems, vol. 2, 56, lines 50–51; trans. Novick, “Who Resembles You,” 280, with modifications. Rabinovitz, Liturgical Poems, vol. 2, 56, lines 51–54.

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to construct the same typology of space, “a kind of heaven on earth,” that could serve as a visual frame for imagining God, who at once is uncontainable and contained, transcendental and spatially circumscribed.53 The beauty of the Byzantine architectural vision, whether in the form of Hagia Sophia or in the form of the tabernacle, is that of a captivating paradox that transcends the natural laws of either heaven or earth. As Yannai moves through the parts of the tabernacle in his piyyut for Hanukkah, each part accrues meaning not in relation to the tabernacle’s other structural elements or the tabernacle’s own space but in relation to a corresponding part of God’s heavenly court. The compositional arrangement of the tabernacle’s implements in Yannai’s poem roughly corresponds to the compositional arrangement on a third-century fresco in Dura Europos, where the tabernacle’s “individual implements and figures were placed without any spatial relationship among the various items.”54 The same indexlike arrangement, in which individual items are situated without a clear spatial relation to one another, also characterizes the distribution of temple implements on fourth- through eighth-century mosaics in Palestinian synagogues.55 In what looks like a poetic extension of the same principle, Yannai seeks to reveal the parameters of each segment of the tabernacle’s interior design by reading the tabernacle’s architectural forms as both semantically and morphologically continuous with the corresponding architectural forms of the heavenly court. In this mode of imaginary viewing, the relationship among the parts of the tabernacle’s physical edifice becomes less important than the relationship between them and the corresponding heavenly types. Yannai approaches the earthly and heavenly settings as two isomorphic and 53 54 55

See Rabinovitz, Liturgical Poems, vol. 2, 56, lines 48–49. Weitzmann, in Weitzmann and Kessler, Frescoes, 61. A fifth-century synagogue mosaic from Sepphoris offers a good example of such an arrangement. See Weiss, Sepphoris Synagogue, 55–104.

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thus mutually translatable structures. As a result, the individual elements and figures of the earthly tabernacle become important not within their own context but in relation to the heavenly structure they seek to articulate on a new semiotic level. Yannai’s poem, in other words, conforms to “a tendency to fragmentation and miniaturization of the compositional plane at the expense of the organic composition of the whole,” identified by Roberts as fundamental to late antique art and literature.56 The human mind processes the tabernacle’s space by viewing it analytically in relation to the structure of God’s heavenly dwelling, rather than within the more illusionistic structure of the tabernacle’s own physical appearance. The sixth-century Syriac anthem celebrating the building of the cathedral church in the city of Edessa calls for a similar kind of viewing. Similar to the typological relationship between the inner space of Yannai’s tabernacle and God’s heavenly court, the church’s “smallness is like the wide world, not in size but in type (tupsa)” (line 4). Like Yannai, the anthem goes through the architectural elements of the church by portraying them not in relation to one another but in typological relation to other spaces: “Its ceiling is stretched out like the sky and without columns is arched and simple, and it is also decorated with golden mosaic, as the firmament with shining stars. The lofty dome, behold, resembles the highest heaven! And like a helmet the upper [part] is firmly placed on its lower [part]” (lines 5–6). The anthem continues by comparing the church’s arches to the four ends of the earth, the rainbow, and mountain crags (lines 7–8). Porticoed courts that surround the church portray “the tribes of Israelites who surrounded the tabernacle” (line 11). On each side, the church has the same façade: “the form of three of them is one, just as the form of the holy Trinity is one” (line 12). The trinity is also made typologically present by a light that “shines forth by three open windows” in the church’s sanctuary (line 13). The bema in the middle of the church is typologically related to the Upper Room at Zion, whereas 56

Roberts, Jeweled Style, 97. See also 55–58 and 115 in the same work.

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the column behind the bema “portrays Golgotha in its form” (lines 15–16). Finally, the bishop’s synthronos (or, possibly, the church’s altar), with nine steps leading to it, “portrays the throne of Christ and the nine orders of angels” (line 19). “Exalted are the mysteries of this temple,” the anthem sums up, “in which heaven and earth symbolize the most exalted Trinity and our Savior’s Dispensation” (line 20).57 Further developing Bornert’s category of “une theoria liturgique,” McVey characterizes the genre of the Edessa anthem as “architectural θεωρία, a contemplation of the church building,” related to late antique and early Byzantine scriptural and liturgical commentaries.58 Yannai’s description of the tabernacle in the piyyut for Hanukkah, as well as the contemplations of artwork elsewhere in his piyyutim, probably belongs to the same genre.59 The two poems invite their audiences to follow fundamentally the same model of viewing. In both cases, individual architectural elements accrue meaning not as parts of the continuous architectural space immediately perceived by the gaze but in semantic and morphological relation to the elements of a different and not sensorily perceptible space. In the case of Yannai, this space is the space of God’s heavenly court. In the case of the anthem, it is simultaneously the space of the physical cosmos, the spaces associated with the earthly ministry of Jesus, and the space of Christ’s heavenly court. The poems reconfigure the visual systems of the tabernacle and the cathedral so as to reflect the structural laws of the intelligible world. What emerges as a result is a new visual space, within which the structures of the intelligible world are displayed with the help of structural elements from the material universe.60 57

58 59

60

Sogitha on the Church of Edessa 4–20 (McVey, “Sogitha,” 353–55; trans. McVey, 356–58). See Talgam, Mosaics of Faith, 230–31, for a helpful summary of similar texts. McVey, “Domed Church,” 110. The most extensively researched example of Yannai’s theoria is the description of the menorah in the qerova for Numbers 8 in Rabinovitz, Liturgical Poems, vol. 2, 35–40. See Fine, Art and Judaism, 159–62, and Schwartz, Imperialism, 269–70. This section develops in dialogue with brief but thought-provoking remarks in Bychkov, Vizantiiskaia Estetika, 144.

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Sensing the Intelligible In the eyes of late antique authors, Jewish and Christian alike, the tabernacle imitates not just the individual elements of heaven, such as stars or angelic hosts, but, more broadly, the noetic and ultimately apophatic nature of the intelligible realm made commensurate with the realm of senses. To accomplish this task, God commands Moses to imitate four heavenly fires (or, according to some versions of the story, heavenly colors) by using their earthly equivalents (“signs”) to construct the tabernacle. In keeping with the principles of late antique aesthetics, the midrash understands fire/color as a form that belongs simultaneously to the worlds of the intelligible and the sensory and, as a result, negotiates the epistemic gap between the two.61 The divine command issued to Moses has to be read within a broader context of the Neoplatonic theory of colors, prevalent in the intellectual and aesthetic discourse of the late antique and early Byzantine world. The philosophy of Plotinus would provide several categories crucial for understanding the semiotic and semantic matrix within which our midrash operates. In the words of the Enneads, And the simple beauty of color comes about by shape and the mastery of the darkness in matter by the presence of light which is incorporeal and formative principle and form. This is why fire itself is more beautiful than all other bodies, because it has rank of form in relation to the other elements; it is above them in place and is the subtlest of all bodies, being close to the incorporeal.62

Similar to the midrash, Plotinus uses the terms “color” and “fire” as semantically interchangeable.63 For him, both color and fire 61 62 63

See James, Light and Colour, 70, and 99–100. Plotinus, Enneads 1.6.3; trans. Armstrong, vol. 1, 241, with slight modifications. As Elizabeth James notes, for the Byzantines, “colour is essentially a flame or light emanating from the coloured body.” See James, Light and Colour, 54, and Pentcheva, Sensual Icon, 102–20.

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are materialized manifestations of “the presence of light which is incorporeal and formative principle and form.” As a result, both color and fire find themselves on the border between the corporeal and the incorporeal, offering an intermediate semiotic field within which the two realms become mutually transparent. The earthly signs used by Moses to replicate heavenly fires/colors fall within the same category: Like Plotinus’s fire, they are “the subtlest of all bodies, being close to the incorporeal.” These signs offer the means by which the incorporeal universe of Moses’s vision can be rendered within the parameters of a corporeal sign system. The four fires/colors revealed to Moses closely resemble a list of primary colors, known in classical Greek literature and later inherited by the Byzantines. Such lists identified fundamental colors, usually four in number, from whose mixtures in varying proportions all other existing colors originated.64 In the words of Gervase Mathew, “the 6th-century ideal of kosmesis consisted of the use of a precious material which conveyed multiple colours in a mathematical proportion. The four colour groupings that were considered to bring most delight were White, Green, Purple and Gold.”65 Although specific fires/colors revealed to Moses change from one version of the midrash to another, their range represents a variation of primary colors’ list. In both cases, colors help articulate the intelligible ideal of kosmesis (“ordering,” “arrangement,” but also “adornment”) in material forms. These colors, as Erkinger Schwarzenberg reminds us, “recalled the elements, before time involved them in the corrosive process that shaped the world as we know it.”66 Nature would combine the four 64

65 66

See James, Light and Colour, 47–62, 66–68 (on classical Greek tradition of primordial colors), 72–80 (its development in Byzantium), and 94–95 (on the specific case of colors in the rainbow). Mathew, Byzantine Aesthetics, 88. Schwarzenberg, “Colour, Light, and Transparency,” 17. See also Schibille, Hagia Sophia, 107. By the fifth century, Christian exegetes had fully domesticated the belief in correspondence between the colors used to construct the tabernacle and manufacture

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elements, just as painters mixed the four primary colors. The resulting mixture defines the world’s present condition. To identify the primary colors, “before nature had begun to mix them,” one must go back to the moment of creation.67 This moment could be mimicked in making a mosaic, that is, “building up the picture with small blocks of pure colour,” through a technological process that, by its very nature, precluded the mixing of colors within individual cubes.68 Moses could very well be engaged in something similar, as he was replicating the revealed fires/colors in the construction of the tabernacle. For a Byzantine audience, colors were a result of the materialization of originally pure and immaterial light, and that light’s adaptation to the physical conditions of the human world and human senses. In the words of James, for the Byzantines, color was “light materialized,” “the most material aspect of light.”69 According to Pseudo-Dionysius, the “divine ray can enlighten us only by being upliftingly concealed in a variety of sacred veils which the Providence of the Father adapts to our nature as human beings.”70 In line with this observation, the colors used to construct the tabernacle offer another example of veils needed to adapt the intelligible divine light to the human capacity of perception. The intelligible light was entirely immaterial and hence colorless. The further this light penetrated into the physical universe, however, the more material and, hence, pluralized and colorful it became. “We see our

67

68 69

70

the vestments of the High Priest in Exodus 25–28 and the four elements. See James, Light and Colour, 105, and Janes, God and Gold, 86, for a helpful review of sources. Schwarzenberg, “Colour, Light, and Transparency,” 17. For the broader aesthetic program of the time, see Roberts, Jeweled Style, 70: “In late antiquity, as opposed to the classical period, both art and literature are expected not merely to imitate nature but to exceed it.” See James, Light and Colour, 2. Cf. Roberts, Jeweled Style, 70–76. James, Light and Colour, 100. See also Mathew, Byzantine Aesthetics, 5. For the application of this principle in Byzantine art, see Pentcheva, “Performative Icon,” 640–48. CH 1:2 (Heil and Ritter, 8; trans. Luibheid and Rorem, 146). In addition to Rorem’s work mentioned earlier, see Louth, Denys, 39–40.

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human hierarchy as our nature allows,” Pseudo-Dionysius notes in his work on the church hierarchy, “pluralized in a great variety of perceptible symbols lifting us upward hierarchically until we are brought as far as we can be into the unity of divinization.”71 According to some versions of the midrash, by replicating heavenly colors on earth, Moses indeed pluralized the original unity of the intelligible light. In the words of Yannai’s qerova for Numbers 8:1, when Moses constructed the menorah after the pattern shown to him by God, “one gold was as in the vision, and the image of three golds was seen.”72 One color of gold originally seen by Moses in his heavenly vision of the menorah was translated into the material form through a medium of three different colors: “The calyxes were formed in green gold, the bulbs in red and the flowers in white.” The three hues here were not simply colors. Drawn out of the undifferentiated unity into the spatially identifiable parts of the menorah, they also served to create form. A person who looks at the painted image, notes Gregory of Nyssa in his commentary on the Song of Songs, “does not stop with the contemplation of the colors that have been painted on the tablet; rather he looks only at the form [eidos] which the artist has made manifest through colors.”73 In a similar manner, the menorah’s three hues coalesce into individual forms: the calyxes, the bulbs, and the flowers. Color and form are interrelated, as one reveals the other. As the single color seen in the vision was multiplied into a range of hues, the different parts of the menorah “were not welded 71

72

73

EH 1:2 (Heil and Ritter, 65; trans. Luibheid and Rorem, 197). See Rorem, Pseudo-Dionysius, 92–95. Rabinovitz, Liturgical Poems, vol. 2, 37, lines 12–13; trans. Fine, Art and Judaism, 160. For the use of a similar formula elsewhere in Yannai’s work, see Zulay, “Matters of Language,” 183. For midrashic parallels, see Lieberman, “Hazzanut Yannai,” 242, and the discussion later in this chapter. On gold as an image of light in late antique art, see Averincev, “L’or dans le système des symboles,” 53–60, and Janes, God and Gold, 72–78, 147–52. Gregory of Nyssa, In Canticum Canticorum, Oratio I (Langerbeck, 28; trans. James, Light and Colour, 128, with modifications). On the link between form and color in Classical Greek and Byzantine literature, see James, 58–63, and 128–38, and Schibille, Hagia Sophia, 120–21.

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together, but made from a [single] ingot.”74 The original unity expanded into the plurality of colors and discrete spatial forms. Space and color became coextensive, just as, according to Gervase Mathew, “it would seem from the contemporary descriptions that in 6th-century Hagia Sophia changing colors were coterminous with the space that they covered.”75 Color becomes a function of space, one more way in which finite space finds itself infinitely expanded. To use the Dionysian terminology, Moses pluralized the ineffable divine light “in a great variety of perceptible symbols,” thus creating a semiotic field in which the immaterial and the material could become commensurate and mutually translatable.

Moses as a Byzantine Architect As most midrashic traditions insist, Moses finds his construction task difficult to fulfill. The act of translating the intelligible reality into the earthly forms baffles him. The challenge that Moses faces is also a very Byzantine one. “How does the bodily agree with that which is prior to body?” exclaims Plotinus. “How does the architect declare the house outside beautiful by fitting it to the form of house within him?”76 The architect mediates between the intelligible and the material, seeking to articulate the structural principles of the former in the language of the latter. This task defines, in the words of Averincev, “la dignité théurgique de l’artiste.”77 The human being who envisions or builds the tabernacle, or does both, must 74

75 76 77

Rabinovitz, Liturgical Poems, vol. 2, 36, line 9; trans. Fine, Art and Judaism, 160. Cf. the observation that vessels on the menorah “were drawn out of it” in line 11 (with Rabinovitz’s comments on 36–37). The language used by the payyetan consistently projects the sense of undifferentiated unity expanding into legible forms. Mathew, Byzantine Aesthetics, 91. Plotinus, Enneads 1.6.3; trans. Armstrong, vol. 1, 241, with slight modifications. Averincev, “L’or dans le système des symboles,” 53. On artist’s self-understanding in late antique and Byzantine society, see 50–53 in the same work.

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be someone who knows how to bridge the gap between the incorporeal and the world of senses, just as any true artist was expected to do in a culture shaped by the Neoplatonic understanding of art. As Bente Kiilerich notes, “by exploring the aesthetic properties of the material world, the Byzantine artists gave form and colour to the spiritual one.”78 As he assumes the role of a Byzantine architect, Moses attempts to create an intermediate semiotic space allowing for the meaningful communication between the two otherwise incommensurate realms. Unlike Pesiqta of Rav Kahana, which only hints at difficulties encountered by Moses in creating the earthly likenesses of heavenly fires, the Pesiqta Rabbati’s version of the same tradition provides further details on the ineffable nature of Moses’s heavenly vision and his subsequent attempt to artistically express that which defies any expression: When Moses finally arrived on high, the Holy One, blessed be He, opened the seven firmaments and showed him the Temple on high, showed him also the four colors which He used for the tabernacle, as it is said: “Then set up the tabernacle according to the fashion of it that you were shown on the mountain” (Exodus 26:30). Moses said to God: “Master of the universe, I do not know the image [‫ ]דמות‬of these four colors.” God said: “Turn to your right.” Thereupon he turned and saw a company of angels wearing garments resembling the sea [‫]דומה לים‬. God asked: “What do you see?” Moses replied: “I see men wearing garments resembling the sea.” God said to him: “This is the hue of blue [which I require in my tabernacle].” Then God said: “Turn to your left.” Moses turned and saw men wearing red garments. God asked: “What do you see?” Moses replied: “Men wearing red garments.” God said: “This is the hue of purple.” God said: “Turn back.” Moses turned back and saw a company wearing garments neither red nor green, [but a blend of 78

Kiilerich, “Aesthetic Viewing of Marble,” 24.

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Moses as a Byzantine Architect the two]. God said: “This is the hue made from the scarlet worm.” Moses turned frontwards and saw before him companies wearing white garments. “This is the hue of fine twined linen.”79

Pesiqta Rabbati does not specify what colors God used for the heavenly tabernacle. It states merely that, when Moses ascended, God “opened the seven firmaments and showed him the Temple on high, showed him also the four colors which He used for the tabernacle.” Baffled by the vision, Moses responded that he did not know what could serve as the material image (demut) of these four colors. Only then did God identify blue, red, white, and the blend of red and green as the earthly equivalents of unnamed heavenly colors. In contrast to Pesiqta of Rav Kahana, which implies that red, green, black, and white were the actual fires observed by Moses on Sinai, Pesiqta Rabbati introduces the four colors as sensible images of otherwise ineffable heavenly prototypes. Here, the heavenly reality cannot be simply translated onto earth. The colors of the tabernacle provide semiotic forms that render otherwise inexpressible heavenly substances transparent to the language of human senses. The four bands of angels parading in front of Moses echo the display of colors by the four chariot factions in a story told by the sixth-century historian John Malalas. Romulus, the legendary founder of Rome, so the story goes, built the hippodrome and devised chariot-races “in honor of the Sun and the four elements subject to it.”80 In parallel to the four bands of angels wearing garments of four primary colors, the contest involved “four-horse chariots corresponding to the earth, sea, fire, and air.”81 As God identified to Moses colors worn by each band, so too Romulus 79

80

81

Pesiq. Rab. 20:19 (Ulmer, vol. 1, 432–33; trans. Braude, vol. 1, 410, with important modifications). Braude translates ‫ דמות‬as “earthly counterparts,” thus failing to communicate the semiotic connotations of the term. Malal. 7.5 (Dindorf, 175; trans. Jeffreys, 93). Cf. Malal. 7.4 (Dindorf, 173), for a slightly different wording of the same statement. Malal. 7.5 (Dindorf, 175; trans. Jeffreys, 93).

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“gave names to these four elements: that of the Green faction to the earth, because of its greenness; the Blue faction to the sea, that is, water, because of its blueness; the Red faction to fire, because of its redness; the White faction to air, because of its whiteness.”82 The result was the creation of four chariot factions, prominent in Constantinople’s internal affairs through most of the Byzantine history. Like the Pesiqta, Malalas’s narrative is structured around the association between the factions and primary colors or elements. In both cases, the garments of each chariot faction or group of angels serve to display a particular color in a choreographed spectacle: A chariot race in the hippodrome, the latter being modeled after the universe, according to Malalas, or a parade of four angelic bands before Moses. In both cases, the spectacle offers a sensually perceptible model of transcendental reality.83 Pesiqta Rabbati was certainly not alone in recognizing the difficulty faced by Moses as he attempted to translate his vision into the language of human senses. In the words of stanza 10 of Hagia Sophia’s rededication anthem, The divinely inspired book tells that Moses of old, the man privileged to see God, inaugurated a tabernacle of Witness and that he had examined the design of it mystically on the mountain, but because he was unable to teach through words the likeness of things beyond words, he had it executed by someone endowed with the wisdom [of] God, Bezalel, who used all kinds of skills to construct [what] had been described in symbols, according to the instructions of the God, who had spoken: THE LIFE AND RESURRECTION OF ALL.84 82 83

84

Malal. 7.5 (Dindorf, 175–76; trans. Jeffreys, 93). On the cosmic symbolism of the hippodrome, see Malal. 7.4 (Dindorf, 175, and, more broadly, 173–75). On the Inauguration of St. Sophia 10 (Trypanis, 144; trans. Palmer, 142). Other Christian interpretations do not mention difficulties experienced by Moses. See, for example, McVey, “Domed Church,” 116–17, on Jacob of Serug’s homily.

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The Moses of the anthem has the same problem as the Moses of Pesiqta Rabbati. He is invited to examine the tabernacle’s design “mystically on the mountain,” just as in Pesiqta Rabbati he is invited to view “the seven firmaments,” “the Temple on high,” and “the four colors used for the tabernacle.” In either case, however, Moses cannot adequately translate his vision of the heavenly tabernacle into the sign system of the material world and by doing so use this vision as a blueprint for the tabernacle’s earthly replica. In the anthem, Moses is “unable to teach through words the likeness of things beyond words.” In the midrash, he does not know the earthly “image” of heavenly colors, shown to him by God. In both cases, it is the apophatic, inexpressible nature of the vision that precludes Moses from adequately translating it into the categories of earthly semiotics. Indeed, Moses’s bafflement echoes the rhetoric of disorientation and bewilderment, deemed to be a proper response to divinely inspired art in late antique ekphrases, as well as the minimalism of early sixth-century Christian Neoplatonist PseudoDionysius, according to whom the kataphatic human language can never penetrate the luminous darkness of mystical vision.85 In the anthem, Moses has to call on his chief architect and master builder Bezalel’s technical expertise “to construct [what] had been described in symbols, according to the instructions of the God.” Bezalel originally appears in Exodus 31:1–11 and 35:30–36:1, where God chooses him to construct the physical tabernacle and its furnishings.86 In the anthem’s interpretation of the story, Bezalel is charged with the artistic implementation of Moses’s vision. He establishes a sign system that renders the apophatic reality revealed to Moses tangibly manifest on earth. Whereas Moses is a mystical visionary, unable to adequately articulate his vision in human language, Bezalel is an architect who symbolically expresses the inexpressible through his art. A tradition preserved in Tanhuma deals 85 86

See MT 3–5 (Heil and Ritter, 146–50). On the figure of Bezalel in Jewish tradition, see Fine, Art and Judaism, 100–2.

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with the menorah, rather than the entire tabernacle, but still offers another version of fundamentally the same scenario: R. Levi said: A pure menorah descended from the heavens. For the Holy One, blessed be He, said to Moses: “You shall also make a menorah of pure gold” (Exodus 25:31). He said to him: How shall I make it? He said to him: “Of hammered work shall the menorah be made” (Exodus 25:31). Nevertheless Moses had difficulty; when he descended he forgot its construction. He went up and said: Master of the Universe I have forgotten it. He said to him: “Observe and make it” (Exodus 25:40). Thus he took a pattern of fire [‫]מטבע של אש‬ and showed him its construction, but it was still difficult to Moses. The Holy One, blessed be He, said to him: Go to Bezalel and he will make it. Moses went down and spoke to Bezalel, and he made it immediately. Moses began to wonder and say: In my case, how many times did the Holy one, blessed be He, show it to me; yet I had difficulty in making it. And you who did not see it made it from your own knowledge. Bezalel [‫]בצלאל‬, were you perhaps standing in the shadow of God [‫ ]בצל אל‬when the Holy One, blessed be He, showed it to me?87

Both the midrash and the anthem interpret the biblical tavnit, the pattern of the tabernacle shown by God to Moses in Exodus 25, as an ideal preexistent form that Moses has to reproduce on earth. The midrash describes this form as “a pattern of fire,” through which God teaches Moses the construction of the menorah. The word ‫ מטבע‬used here is otherwise associated in rabbinic literature with coinage, or standardized formulas to “mint” prayers and documents.88 God shows Moses a stamp, an impression, for minting the menorah. Similarly, the anthem talks about the archetypal form as “the likeness of things beyond words,” through which Moses 87

88

Tanh. Beha‘alotekha 11 (Buber, 49–50; trans. Townsend, vol. 3, 78, with slight modifications). See Jastrow, Dictionary, 765. On Yannai’s use of the root ‫טבע‬, and its broader Byzantine context, see Chapter 3 of the present study.

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examines the tabernacle’s “design, mystically on the mountain.” The midrash and the anthem, therefore, understand Moses to be a Byzantine artist whose business it is, in Vikan’s words, “to imitate and thereby perpetuate his model” through the continuous replication of the model’s copies.89 Like his Christian counterpart, however, Tanhuma’s Moses is unable to translate the vision of “pure menorah” (‫)מנורה טהורה‬ descending from heaven into a material form. In a truly apophatic fashion, Moses “forgets” the menorah’s construction the moment he comes down from the mountain. His vision is ineffable and untranslatable into a kataphatic language of material construction. In both cases, God eventually commands Moses to call on Bezalel’s craftsmanship “to construct what has been described in symbols,” as the anthem puts it. The anthem and the midrash characterize Bezalel by using a similar range of formulas, which derive from and further develop the biblical description of the master builder as someone endowed by God with “a divine spirit of skill, ability, and knowledge in every kind of craft” (Exodus 31:3; 35:31). Bezalel is “endowed with the wisdom of God,” according to the anthem. He “was standing in the shadow of God” when God showed Moses the construction of the menorah, according to the midrash. Both scenarios emphasize the divinely inspired nature of Bezalel’s craftsmanship as a necessary condition for his ability to translate heavenly forms into their earthly transpositions. As Fine suggests, however, Bezalel’s status in Byzantine Jewish literature was more ambiguous than among contemporaneous Christian authors, and as a result, “some traditions preserved in Byzantine-period collections suggest that tradents were discomforted by Bezalel’s prominent role.”90 In contrast to Tanhuma, and in line with Fine’s argument, Pesiqta of Rav Kahana, Pesiqta Rabbati, and Yannai’s piyyutim do not mention Bezalel at all. 89 90

Vikan, “Ruminations,” 57. Fine, Art and Judaism, 101.

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Instead, these works portray Moses as both the visionary, who had seen the tabernacle’s heavenly prototype, and the craftsman, who expressed this vision through the media of materials available to him on earth. For a variety of reasons, discussed by Fine, Jewish authors felt more comfortable using the Moses-centered version of the scenario, rather than the one that emphasized Bezalel’s prominence. Whether he was Moses or Bezalel, however, the tabernacle’s human maker had to face the same daunting task of translating the vision of the tabernacle from heavenly into earthly semiotics. He went about performing this task in accordance with the principles established by the early Byzantine theory of representation.

Colors, Marbles, and the Immaterial Matter According to the sixth-century ekphrases of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, one way to address the challenge faced by Moses was by using multicolored nonfigurative mosaics and marbles to perform the construction. The two offered another variation on the theme of primary colors, discussed earlier in the chapter.91 In their descriptions of Hagia Sophia, Procopius of Caesarea and Paul the Silentiary emphasize the captivating effect that the combination of light, precious metals, embroidered cloths, and space, “changeful form,” and “chameleonic color,” in Pentcheva’s terminology, could have on a viewer both during the daytime and at night.92 The combination of light and color served to collapse 91 92

See Schibille, Hagia Sophia, 118–20. Pentcheva, Hagia Sophia, 133, and, more broadly, 128–41, as well as Schibille, Hagia Sophia, 16–27, and 97–99. See Paulus Silentiarius, Descr. S. Sophiae, 806–83 (Friedländer, 250–52), on artificial lights at night. In other sections, Paul describes the visual effects of precious metals and embroidered cloths during the daytime. See Descr. S. Sophiae, 668–72 (Friedländer, 246), 720–54 (Friedländer, 247–48), on golden and silver fixtures, and 755–805 (Friedländer, 248–50), on embroidered cloths. On the importance of light imagery for Paul’s ekphrasis, see Macrides and

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the sense of spatial and temporal orientation and make the viewer feel present simultaneously in the sensible and intelligible realms, as if being at the same time both within and outside one’s body and one’s human self. The immaterial materiality of space and artwork, established through the display of abstract forms, colors, and light, provided the key for achieving this goal. As Ruth Macrides and Paul Magdalino observe in their analysis of Paul the Silentiary’s ekphrasis on Hagia Sophia, the poem’s “delight in light, color, texture, and organic form” serves “as a vehicle for a theological message that is in essence very unclassical and abstract.” They continue: “It is surely significant that when Paul invites his audience ‘to see,’ he generally uses the ambiguous word noein, denoting both physical and intellectual perception.”93 Along with light, color, and other abstract forms, multicolored marbles served to construct the material semiotics of the intelligible. Procopius describes the marble adornment of Hagia Sophia as follows: Who could recount the beauty of the columns and the marbles with which the church is adorned? One might imagine that one has chanced upon a meadow in full bloom. For one would surely marvel at the purple hue of some, the green of others, at those on which the crimson blooms, at those that flash with white, at those, too, which Nature, like a painter, has varied with the most contrasting colors. Whenever one goes to this church to pray, one understands immediately that this work has been fashioned not by human power or skill, but by the influence of God. And so the visitor’s mind is lifted

93

Magdalino, “Architecture of Ekphrasis,” 64 and 72–73. See also Procopius, De aedif. 1.1.29–30 (Dewing, vol. 7, 16) and 54–61 (Dewing, 24–26). On the lighting system of Hagia Sophia, see Bouras and Parani, Lighting in Early Byzantium, 31–36. See also Isar, “‘Χορός of Light,’” 215–42, for the discussion of the lighting of Hagia Sophia in the context of Neoplatonic and, specifically, Pseudo-Dionysian aesthetics. Macrides and Magdalino, “Architecture of Ekphrasis,” 60. Cf. Kiilerich, “Aesthetic Viewing,” 24, Schibille, Hagia Sophia, 24, and Barry, Painting in Stone, 164. On the visual program of Hagia Sophia’s mosaics, see Schibille, 109–14.

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Articulating the Impossible up to God and floats aloft, thinking that He cannot be far away, but must love to dwell in this place which He himself has chosen.94

These colors of marble echo not only the list of primary colors but also the list of colors/fires used by Moses in the tabernacle. “The stones were vital and elemental,” notes Barry; “they represented rock and earth, sky and sea.”95 In a similar manner, the colors/ fires shown to Moses were elemental rather than representational. Like marbles, “they imaged their own elemental substanceness, not ulterior images.”96 Procopius compares the marbles to “a meadow in full bloom.” This impression is created by “the purple hue of some, the green of others,” along with crimson, white, and other colors, produced by Nature, which is compared by Procopius to a painter.97 In the midrash, angels wear the earthly equivalents of heavenly colors required for the tabernacle. Those include a hue of blue, a hue of purple, a hue “from the scarlet worm,” and a white hue of “fine twined linen.” Whereas Procopius compares the marbles to a blossoming meadow and, by doing so within the semiotic context of late antiquity, conjures up an imaginary middle ground between the earthly and heavenly realms, the midrash speaks of the groups of angels dressed in the garments of different colors and strolling in front of Moses. In doing so, the midrash pursues what Schibille has identified as “the aesthetic strategy of breaking up a composition into individual units (segmenta).”98 The result is an iconographic program that undermines “any naturalistic portrayals for the benefit of a more universal decorative and visual 94

95 96 97

98

Procopius, De aedif. 1.1.59–61 (Dewing, vol. 7, 26; trans. Mango, Art, 76). On this text and the ekphrasis of Hagia Sophia’s marbles by Paul the Silentiary, see Kiilerich, “Aesthetic Viewing,” 9–28, and Schibille, Hagia Sophia, 20–22, and 99–109. Barry, Painting in Stone, 180, and, more broadly, 178–80. Barry, Painting in Stone, 180. Cf. Paulus Silentiarius, Descr. S. Sophiae, 617–46 (Friedländer, 244–45), for a similar exposition of the colors of “the marble meadows gathered upon the mighty walls and spreading pavement of the lofty church” (trans. Mango, Art, 85). Schibille, Hagia Sophia, 114, in conversation with Roberts, Jeweled Style, 116–18.

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quality.”99 The procession of primary colors witnessed by Moses is programmatically mechanical and nonillusory. It is a sequencing of elemental building blocks for the redeemed universe, rather than a throwback to the language of nature, as Procopius would have it. In this sense, Pesiqta Rabbati is more medieval than classicizing. It looks forward to the decorative program of the Dome of the Rock and the Great Mosque of Damascus.100 Polychromy translates into polymorphy. “The polymorphic capacity” of the marbles, notes Pentcheva, makes the solid dissolve “into a multiplicity of sparkling appearances.”101 The result is “the sense of saturation and disorientation on which transcendence is predicated.”102 Human senses are transformed to perceive the divine. The rhetoric of Procopius and the midrash constantly oscillates between the material and immaterial properties of colors. The ambiguity is intentional. Procopius, when speaking of marble colors, concludes by saying that “one understands immediately that this work has been fashioned not by human power and skill, but by the influence of God.” In a similar way, in the words of Pesiqta Rabbati, God “opened the seven firmaments and showed [Moses] the Temple on high, showed him also the four colors which He used for the tabernacle.” The intended effect in both cases is presumably also the same. To quote Procopius again, “the visitor’s mind is lifted up to God and floats aloft, thinking that He cannot be far away, but must love to dwell in this place which He himself has chosen.” By accepting marble’s polymorphy “as isomorphic with the celestial,” the visitor to Hagia Sophia makes a transition from 99

100

101

102

Schibille, Hagia Sophia, 123. For a broader context, see Roberts, Jeweled Style, 44–55, and Kiilerich, “Aesthetic Viewing,” 19–20. On some of the connotations invoked by the meadow imagery, see Saradi, “Space in Byzantine Thought,” 86–88, 99–100, Pentcheva, Hagia Sophia, 135–36, and Barry, Painting in Stone, 171–75. Pentcheva, Hagia Sophia, 128–29. See also Roberts, Jeweled Style, 73–76, and James, Light and Colour, 115–17, and 119. Pentcheva, Hagia Sophia, 133.

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the man-made to the uncreated, from the sensible to the intelligible, from the realm of earth to the realm of heaven.103 In accordance with the principles laid out by Pseudo-Dionysius, the elemental and nonrepresentational quality of marble colors strengthens this experience by leading the viewer away from the world of senses and to the apophatic world of transcendental reality. The earthly equivalents of heavenly colors shown to Moses are intended to create the same kind of intermediary semiotic space, “the twilight zone between the material and the intelligible realms,” as Schibille puts it, in which heavenly and earthly sign systems become commensurate and mutually transparent.104 In his analysis of the term acheiropoieton, eventually used to refer to icons “not made with hands,” Ernst von Dobschütz identifies a range of meanings associated with this term in late antiquity. Works of nature, understood to be made by God rather than by human skill, provide one possible meaning.105 The four colors shown to Moses and the marble colors described by Procopius belong to the same category of natural objects made without human participation. Indeed, the transcendental and not man-made quality of marble colors was a recurrent theme in Byzantine ekphrases. “Like a picture made without hands is the marble with which its walls are suitably overlaid,” notes the sogitha celebrating the building of the church of Hagia Sophia in Edessa.106 In his ekphrasis delivered at the dedication of Saint Stephen in Gaza between between the 530s and 540s, 103 104 105

106

Pentcheva, Hagia Sophia, 152. Schibille, Hagia Sophia, 184. Dobschütz, Christusbilder, 37. See Barry, Painting in Stone, 181–84, for further reflections on the subject. Sogitha on the Church of Edessa 9 (McVey, “Sogitha,” 354; trans. McVey, 357, with slight modifications). The phrase describes the natural property of the marble covering the church’s walls and does not imply any reference to the famous Edessan Mandylion, that is, the image of Christ “not made with hands.” At the same time, in the words of McVey, “it does witness to the currency in mid-fifth-century Edessa of the notion of an object ‘made without hands’” (McVey, “Sogitha,” 331). See, further on the subject, McVey “Domed Church,” 100–1, and Palmer, 128–29, and 160.

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The Menorah as an Acheiropoieton

the rhetorician Choricius deliberately blurs the epistemic boundary between the hand-made and the non-hand-made, when he observes that the bands of marble covering the church’s walls “are so joined together as to appear to be a work of nature, and so variegated with their natural colors as to resemble altogether a handpainted picture.”107 The marble, “this anagram of the divine mind,” as Barry calls it, offers a suitable sign system to translate the intelligible world into the world of senses precisely because its form is both material and not man-made, just like the image of the colors shown to Moses.108 Both the marble and the colors provide variations on the same theme of “a picture made without hands” as they attempt to convey the same idea of the uncreated, immaterial, and intelligible realm made accessible to human senses by forms that blur the boundaries between the intelligible world and the world of senses. Since they are at the same time part of the world of senses and not made with human hands, the marble and the colors help create the intermediary semiotic space between intelligible and material forms. The search for forms that are simultaneously material and intelligible finds its further development in the discourse that emphasizes the unmade quality of material objects.

The Menorah as an Acheiropoieton George of Pisidia, the seventh-century poet at the court of Constantinople, offers one of the earliest expositions of meaning for an icon “not made with hands.” “The Logos, which forms and creates all, appears in the image as a form without painting,” says George, as he describes an acheiropoietos that the emperor Heraclius took with him on the Persian campaign in 622. The Logos, the poet continues, “Once took form without seed and now 107 108

Choricius, Laudatio Marciani 2.40 (Foerster and Richtsteig, 38; trans. Mango, Art, 70). Barry, Painting in Stone, 184.

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without painting, so that by both these forms of the Logos the faith in the Incarnation might be confirmed.”109 The acheiropoietos offers a form that mediates between the corporeal and the incorporeal, the human and the divine, just as the incarnation does. The latter, notes Hans Belting, “is repeated in God’s becoming an image in the earthly material of the printed cloth.”110 A version of the tabernacle midrash in Tanhuma reflects the same interest in the mediating morphology of a material object “not made with hands,” when it introduces the tabernacle’s menorah as an acheiropoieton: When Moses ascended, the Holy One was showing him on the mountain how he would make the tabernacle. When he showed him the making of the menorah, Moses found it difficult. The Holy One said to him: See, I am making it before you. What did the Holy One do? He showed him white fire, [red fire,] black fire, and green fire, and made from them the menorah, its bowls, its pomegranates, its blossoms, and the six branches. Then he said to him: “This is the making of the menorah” (Numbers 8:4). When the Holy One showed him by the finger, he nevertheless found it difficult. What did the Holy One do? He engraved it [‫]חקקה‬ on his hand. He said to him: Go down and make it just as I have engraved it on your hand. Thus it is stated: “Observe and make them following the pattern [‫( ”]בתבניתם‬Exodus 25:40). But where is it shown that he engraved it on his hand? Where it is stated: “He stretched out the pattern of a hand [‫( ”]תבנית יד‬Ezekiel 8:3). Now “pattern” can only be for the making of the menorah, concerning which it is stated: “Observe and make them following the pattern” (Exodus 25:40). Even so, he found it difficult and said: “With difficulty will the menorah be made” (Exodus 25:31). How difficult was it to make? The Holy One said to him: Cast the gold into the fire, and it will 109 110

George of Pisidia, Exped. Pers. I, lines 140–48 (Pertusi, 91; trans. Belting, 497). Belting, Likeness, 55. On acheiropoietos as a reenactment of the incarnation, see further Koch, “Theologie,” 283, and Kitzinger, “Cult of Images,” 120–21, and 143–44.

234

The Menorah as an Acheiropoieton be made on its own. So it is stated: “With difficulty will the menorah be made” (Exodus 25:31). Meaning, it was made of its own accord.111

In what looks like another version of the story of difficulties encountered by Moses when he was trying to implement the heavenly pattern of the tabernacle on earth, Tanhuma focuses on problems associated with the construction of the menorah. The story emphasizes the fact that Moses was unable to manufacture the menorah himself even when shown its heavenly prototype. We have seen a similar scenario, also transmitted by Tanhuma, earlier in the chapter. There, Moses had to call on his master builder Bezalel to make the menorah. The present version of the story, however, does not mention Bezalel. Instead, Moses’s failure to replicate his heavenly vision on earth sets a stage for the appearance of the menorah “not made with hands.” Compositionally, the midrash ties together a series of scenarios, each of which, as I shall argue, is independently attested within the overarching theme of acheiropoieton in late Roman and early Byzantine literature. From the story of heavenly colors shown to Moses, to the menorah’s image engraved on Moses’s hand, to the menorah made “of its own accord,” the midrash unfolds in three narrative registers. This sequencing of registers allows the central theme of the menorah as an object “not made with hands” to be reconfigured from a series of vantage points, each opening up another aspect of fundamentally the same theme. Since each of the registers uses an alternative vantage point and, therefore, an alternative set of codes to describe the same situation, the intended audience is expected to read the central theme by reconfiguring it, first within one set of parameters, and then another. Each narrative register functions as a semantically self-contained unit with its own unique plot. At the same time, the midrash also integrates the three 111

Tanh. Shemini 11 (Buber, 28–29; trans. Townsend, vol. 2, 232, with slight modifications).

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registers into a single compositional whole centered on the theme of Moses’s failure to manufacture the menorah. This model of reading is in many ways similar to the principle of a split or dynamic visual standpoint prominent in late antique and Byzantine iconography. The reader is expected to process the same theme in multiple sets of codes, just as the artist in late antique and medieval art is expected to combine multiple vantage points and several angles of vision into a single act of complementary viewing. “He grasps a scene,” as P. A. Michelis summarizes the artist’s mode of operation, “then looks around, then up, then down, and so he interprets rather than records.”112 In the case of our midrash, the dynamic standpoint brings together and displays side by side, within the single editorial framework, a range of interpretations associated with the menorah as an object “not made with hands.”113 The midrash starts with a slightly altered variation on the story of four heavenly fires seen by Moses. Like other versions of the story, the fires offer semiotic means to make the otherwise ineffable heavenly realm commensurate with human senses. This time, however, God uses fires to create a form, which Moses is then expected to replicate on earth. The fires are no longer the abstract and formless substances that they are in other versions of the midrash. Instead, they coalesce into the menorah, another example of Barber’s “abstract figuration,” which mediates between the material and the immaterial, the intelligible and the sensible, heaven and earth.114 In a similar manner, Yannai’s description of the menorah discussed earlier in the chapter also visualizes a polychromic object. 112 113

114

Michelis, “Neo-Platonic Philosophy,” 34. See Grabar, “Plotin,” 21–22, 26, 32–33, but cf. Michelis, 32–34, for a perceptive critique of Grabar’s argument. See also Mathew, Byzantine Aesthetics, 29–33, Bychkov, Vizantiiskaia Estetika, 160–63, and Uspensky, Semiotics of the Russian Icon, 31–33, 35–39, 60–67, esp. 65–66. On the use of similar techniques in late antique rhetoric, see Roberts, Jeweled Style, 37. Barber, Figure and Likeness, 105.

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Its “calyxes were formed in green gold, the bulbs in red and the flowers in white,”115 notes the payyetan, just as according to the midrash God makes “the menorah, its bowls, its pomegranates, its blossoms, and the six branches” from “white fire, red fire, black fire, and green fire.” As argued by Fine, the actual images of menorahs in late antique synagogues were probably polychromic, sometimes gold and studded with jewels, designed to project both glow and color.116 Like the late tenth-century enamel icon of the archangel Michael, vividly described by Pentcheva, the menorah “constantly transforms before the viewer: light into matter, matter into light, dematerialized by the scintillating glitter of gold.”117 According to a series of medieval reports, the (sixth-century?) altar top in Hagia Sophia produced a similar visual effect of continuously changing color and brilliance.118 The transmutation of hues and matter was central to the aesthetics of the altar, just as it was to the aesthetics of the menorah. The unstable nature of material form mediated between the earthly and heavenly realms. A golden jeweled cross common in late Roman and Byzantine decoration offers another morphological parallel to the menorah made of multicolored gold or fires. The mid-sixth-century apse mosaic in S. Apollinaire in Classe, dominated by a golden gem-studded cross, which is set against the backdrop of a starry sky, suggests a possible visual counterpart to the menorah shown by God to Moses. Judging from the iconographic program of the Dome of the Rock, the Umayyad art of the 690s developed its own visual form of a jeweled tree in direct response and, perhaps, indirect indexing of the jeweled cross. In all these cases, multiple colors coalesce through a series of transmutations to create a form that

115 116 117

118

Rabinovitz, Liturgical Poems, vol. 2, 37, line 13; trans. Fine, Art and Judaism, 160. See Fine, Art and Judaism, 161, and Menorah, 60–63. Pentcheva, Sensual Icon, 111. For a broader context and possible visual effects invoked in the piyyut, see 97–138 in the same work. For a helpful summary and discussion, see Barry, Painting in Stone, 186.

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serves as a bridge between the intelligible realm and the world of the senses. Moses’s difficulty has to do with the fact that he is unable to manufacture the earthly replica of this form.119 Confronted with Moses’s inability to imitate heavenly form, continues the midrash, God engraves the menorah on Moses’s hand and tells him, “to go down and make it just as I have engraved it [‫ ]חקקה‬on your hand.” The midrash, in other words, understands biblical ‫תבנית‬, the menorah’s heavenly pattern shown to Moses in Exodus 25, to be the engraving of the menorah’s outline drawn by God on Moses’s hand. According to Kessler’s argument, further developed by Pentcheva, schematic delineation was crucial to the Byzantine concept of acheiropoietos. One of the most famous Byzantine acheiropoietoi, the Holy Face of Edessa, “was constructed as a preparatory sketch, a σκιαγρφία [sic], literally, a shadow picture,” notes Kessler, “a copy of the Archetype himself, not of any representation, made without the use of drawings, it was itself then a kind of preliminary sketch awaiting ‘the grace of color.’”120 Tanhuma also observes that, before engraving the menorah, God had showed it to Moses “by the finger.” Tanhuma’s observation is echoed by Yannai: “By the finger you [God] showed him, and by

119

120

On the golden jeweled cross in Christian art, see Janes, God and Gold, 123–24, Thoby, Crucifix, 20–22, 26, Mango, Silver from Early Byzantium, 194–95, Hellemo, Adventus Domini, 108–12, Schibille, Hagia Sophia, 129–39, and Jensen, Cross, 97–111, and 120–22. On semiotic and functional parallelism between the menorah and the cross in late antiquity, see Levine, Visual Judaism, 345–47. On potential isomorphism between the menorah and the cross in late antique Christian art, see Fine, Art and Judaism, 156–57, and Menorah, 73–74. On parallels between the jeweled tree in the Umayyad art and the jeweled cross, see Rosen-Ayalon, Early Islamic Monuments, 56–60. Kessler, Spiritual Seeing, 73, and, in general, 64–87 in the same work. For a further development of Kessler’s argument, see Pentcheva, “Performative Icon,” 634–36, and Sensual Icon, 75–76, 83–88. For a broader literary context, see Kazhdan and Maguire, “Byzantine Hagiographical Texts,” 8–9. In contrast, James, Light and Colour, 125–38, emphasizes the role of color as opposed to an outline in the Byzantine aesthetics of form.

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the mouth you instructed him.” Unlike the midrash, however, the payyetan never mentions the engraving.121 In almost literal parallel to Yannai and Tanhuma, a hymn performed on the Feast of the Holy Face describes the image as “delineated by the Father’s immaculate finger.”122 Although the hymn is a Middle Byzantine composition and thus most likely postdates Yannai and Tanhuma by several centuries, the overlap in concepts and language is remarkable. The menorah of Jewish texts offers another example of schematic rendering that allowed image “to remain suspended between the world of sense and the realm of spirit, with its delicate coloring evoking a state of becoming.”123 The menorah thus belongs among other Byzantine acheiropoieta, whose delineated figuration was, in the words of Boustan, “a distinctive visual idiom … that was intended to evoke the notion of form without substance,” and, I would add, create a liminal semiotic space between the spiritual and the material.124 Indeed, the verb haquq, used to describe the act of engraving in our midrash, is otherwise associated with the image of Jacob engraved on God’s throne, an image that, as argued by Boustan, offers “a prime example of the Jewish engagement with the notion of the holy face,” the quintessential acheiropoieton of Byzantine tradition.125 “Even so,” the midrash continues, “he found it difficult.” Unlike midrashim discussed earlier in the chapter, Tanhuma is not optimistic about Moses’s ability to replicate the intelligible pattern shown to him. Eventually, the menorah had to be made “of its own accord,” that is, miraculously and without human intervention. This view of the relationship between a human artificer 121

122

123 124 125

Rabinovitz, Liturgical Poems, vol. 2, 36, line 7; trans. Fine, Art and Judaism, 160, with slight modifications. For a helpful review of midrashic parallels, see Lieberman, “Hazzanut Yannai,” 242. Dobschütz, Christusbilder, 126**, lines 2–4; trans. Kessler, 75. On the hymn’s possible date, see Dobschütz, 119**. Kessler, Spiritual Seeing, 75. Boustan, “Jewish Veneration,” 74. Boustan, “Jewish Veneration,” 77.

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and a religious artifact reflects a broader Byzantine approach. In the words of Dagron, “a cult image can only be recognized as true and, therefore, valid if the artist and the art disappear,” so that “the image creates itself.”126 The Greek Acts of Thaddeus – the work of uncertain date likely composed at some point between the later sixth and the eighth centuries and detailing the role of the apostle Thaddeus (Syriac Addai) in establishing the church of Edessa – has another artist, Ananias (Syriac Hannan), cope with a set of challenges very similar to that faced by Moses.127 The Acts of Thaddeus begins with a story of the Edessan ruler Abgar dispatching his messenger Ananias to Jerusalem to deliver a letter to Jesus. Abgar also instructs Ananias “to record Christ’s exact appearance, what he looked like, his stature, his hair, and everything in detail.”128 When Ananias arrives in Jerusalem, the story continues, he gazes intently at Jesus but is unable “to grasp him,” just as Tanhuma’s Moses “finds it difficult” to replicate the menorah’s pattern.129 By the later sixth century, pilgrims to Memphis were invited to personally experience the failure to “grasp” a portrait of Jesus imprinted on a piece of linen. The Piacenza pilgrim reports his inability “to concentrate” on the portrait, “since, as you went on concentrating, it changed before your eyes.”130 In Tanhuma and the Acts of Thaddeus, the inability of a human artist to replicate what he sees brings about an acheiropoieton. In the case of Moses, God commands him “to cast the gold into the fire,” so that the menorah can be made “on its own” (‫ )תיעשה מאליה‬or “of its own accord” (‫)תיעשה מעצמה‬. In the case of Ananias, Christ 126 127

128 129 130

Dagron, “Holy Images,” 23. On the Acts significance, history, and uncertain date, see Cameron, “History of the Image,” 83 and 86, Palmer, “Une version grecque,” 135–38, and Guscin, Image of Edessa, 145–46. On other, slightly different, versions of the legend, which appear in roughly contemporaneous Syriac texts, see Drijvers, “Image of Edessa,” 23–31. Acta Thaddaei 2.11–12 (Lipsius and Bonnet, vol. 1, 274; trans. Guscin, 146). Acta Thaddaei 3.13–15 (Lipsius and Bonnet, vol. 1, 274). Itinerarium 44 (Geyer, 152; trans. Wilkinson, 149).

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The Menorah as an Acheiropoieton

takes a towel, washes his face, and wipes it with the towel, on which his image remains miraculously imprinted.131 Both the imprint of Christ’s face on the towel and the menorah “made of its own accord” constitute an act of transfer from one sign system to another. Both are achieved, in Belting’s words, “by an exact match between likeness and original, the intervention of an artist being unwanted.”132 The public display of a material artifact “not made with hands” reenacts the moment of revelation, for the artifact is always revealed, never created through human agency.133 By occupying space between the worlds of the created and the uncreated, the artifact offers mediating morphology between the sensible and the intelligible, the corporeal and the incorporeal, the body and the image, the human and the divine. The Acts of Thaddeus represents an important stage in the development of the Abgar legend, known in its early version already to Eusebius in the fourth century.134 At that early stage, the role of Ananias is limited to delivering Abgar’s letter to Jesus. At a somewhat later stage, reflected in the Syriac Doctrine of Addai, Ananias for the first time is introduced as an artist who, upon delivering the letter, paints the portrait of Jesus and brings it back to Edessa. There is no indication, however, that the process of making the portrait is in any way miraculous. The Doctrine’s version of the story knows nothing of Jesus’s image “not made with hands.” There, the image is manufactured by the Abgar’s court artist. It is only at the stage reflected in the Acts that the man-made painting of Jesus is finally replaced by a miraculously rendered acheiropoietos. By the time of John of Damascus, writing in the first half of the eighth century, 131 132 133 134

Acta Thaddaei 3.15–17 (Lipsius and Bonnet, vol. 1, 274). Belting, Likeness, 53. See Koch, “Theologie,” 437–40, and Kessler, Spiritual Seeing, 63. For a good introduction to the legend’s history, especially in connection with the evolving concept of Christ’s portrait, see Cameron, “History of the Image,” 80–94, Drijvers, “Image of Edessa,” 13–31, and Guscin, Image of Edessa, 141–64, with the literature cited there.

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this version of the story had become dominant enough to be referenced as an argument in support of icon veneration.135 The legend of the Edessan acheiropoietos, then, belongs to the body of lore that began to proliferate at the turn of the sixth and seventh centuries and, to use Cameron’s felicitous phrase, worked “on the premise that knowledge is not to be found through secular learning but by direct revelation.”136 Within the new system of knowledge, the artist acquires an additional role. He now also becomes a dramatic actor, whose elaborately performed failure to translate a supernatural visual experience into an artistically created form introduces the audience to a miraculous object “not made with hands.” Ananias and Moses both occupy the same niche and convey the same message, as their failed attempts to construct semiotic forms that would mediate between the human and divine worlds set the stage for the triumphal entry of non-man-made objects.

The Umayyad Epilogue Many of the tabernacle traditions discussed in this chapter took their present form in the period that marked the transition of the late antique Near East from the variations of Greek and Aramaic to Arabic cultural milieu. The midrashic anthologies of Pesiqta Rabbati and Tanhuma-Yelammedenu, from which much of the material for the present discussion originates, can be traced back to the seventh and eighth centuries. The textual development of Tanhuma, in its multiple recensions, continued well into the Middle Ages. It would make sense, therefore, to conclude this chapter by situating

135 136

See Guscin, Image of Edessa, 151–52. See Cameron, “Language of Images,” 30. On the historical and cultural context of icons “not made with hands,” in addition to literature mentioned earlier in the chapter, see Kitzinger, “Cult of Images,” 109–15, Belting, Likeness, 49–57, and Cameron, “Images of Authority,” 23–24.

242

The Umayyad Epilogue

the tabernacle materials within the aesthetic environment of the emerging world of Islam. The semiotics of light, color, and geometric form prominent in the midrashic representation of the tabernacle also characterizes the decorative scheme of early Islamic architectural monuments. Not unlike Hagia Sophia, the interior space of the Dome of the Rock, a commemorative octagonal canopy built in the late seventh century atop the temple esplanade in Jerusalem, is shaped by a combination of Pentcheva’s “polymorphous materials,” that is, light, gold, multicolored mosaics, and marbles.137 In the words of Oleg Grabar, the Dome’s interior appears “as a series of shining designs, the perception of which follows a movement of the eye compelled by the very shape of the building and by the movement of the sun’s light through the windows.”138 Individual decorative forms include a broad range of stylized vegetation motifs and jewels, but, as Grabar notes, “the mosaic program is more immediately effective as a lush field of colors and shapes than as the sum of individual motifs.”139 Light, color, and form dominate the onlooker’s perception, whereas individual shapes and discrete motifs, which require more discerning reading, take the back seat in the overall experience of the shrine’s space. In this sense, the Dome’s semiotics is very Byzantine in its nature. It overwhelms the onlooker, just as Hagia Sophia does, or the midrash’s tabernacle was imagined doing. In all three cases, the effect is achieved through the combination of nonfigural designs, colors, and light, some of the most immaterial elements of the material realm. The original function of the Dome remains somewhat of a mystery. A series of octagonal churches built across the region by the seventh century offer the closest architectural parallel.140 Most of 137 138 139 140

Pentcheva, Hagia Sophia, 145. Grabar, Dome, 93. Grabar, Dome, 108. See Creswell, Early Muslim Architecture, 101–23; Grabar, Dome, 98–106.

243

Articulating the Impossible

these churches were martyria designed to commemorate a particular event in sacred history, or a material relic associated with that event, or both. The Dome was designed to encase one such relic: a rocky outcrop with an underground room (originally, a natural cave) beneath it. In its shape and function, therefore, the Dome resembled a contemporaneous Christian ciborium, not unlike the one discussed in Chapter 4 in connection with Saint Demetrius. Like inscriptions associated with Christian relics and images, the inscription inside the Dome is an invocation of God’s powerful presence. It is a statement of triumph and call for submission marked, to quote Grabar again, with “magical and symbolic significance.”141 The Dome also resembled a reliquary, that is, a container designed to house and frame physical traces associated with a particular person or event. Saint Theodota’s reliquary, shown to the Piacenza pilgrim in the Church of Mount Sion in Jerusalem, was not all that dissimilar: “I saw a human head enclosed in a reliquary of gold adorned with gems, which they say is that of Saint Theodota the martyr. Many drink out of it to gain a blessing, and so did I.”142 Both the Dome and Saint Theodota’s reliquary were frames that encased a relic, a stone in one case, a human head in the other. In both scenarios, materialized light was central to the frame’s decorative program. Precious metals and jewelry created a luminous aura that mediated between matter and spirit, heaven and earth, this world and the next. The materialized light formed the space that displayed the relic. The Dome’s function as a reliquary determined its iconography. Light and colors were made material through a variety of isomorphic motifs. Combinations of multicolored floral and winged designs, marbles, jewels, and precious metals shaped the Dome’s 141

142

Grabar, Formation of Islamic Art, 66, and, more broadly, 61–67. On the Dome as a ciborium and reliquary, see 58 in the same work. On the broader context of circular inscriptions and their use in late antique interior designs, see Leatherbury, Inscribing Faith, 148–55. Itinerarium 22 (Geyer, 141; trans. Wilkinson, 140).

244

The Umayyad Epilogue

interior and (now largely unrecoverable) exterior.143 A contemporaneous Christian viewer would probably recognize allusions to Heavenly Jerusalem, a shiny city built from various kinds of jewels, as portrayed in Revelation 21:10–27 and later Christian literature and art. In a similar manner, early Islamic authors imagined Paradise as a space formed by various combinations of light, color, trees, fruits, and precious stones, the space that straddled a fence between the material and the immaterial, the organic and the artificial.144 The Dome’s iconography was likely intended to combine both themes and serve as a material replica of Paradise, as well as an invocation and foreshadowing of Messianic Jerusalem, a vision that emphasized, just as a model Byzantine garden would, the redeemed matter and, therefore, “jewels rather than vegetation.”145 Along with Hagia Sophia and the midrash’s tabernacle, the Dome was another “heaven on earth,” the transcription of the immaterial by means of material signs. The midrash’s understanding of image (demut) as a series of four colors/fires is similar to the way in which the combinations of gold, blue, and green provided a common visual formula for mosaics and marbles inside the Dome, as well as some other Umayyad construction projects, such as the Great Mosque of Damascus.146 With the narratives of the tabernacle’s construction in Pesiqta Rabbati and Tanhuma, and the Umayyad building projects in 143

144

145 146

On the exterior decoration, see Creswell, Early Muslim Architecture, 97–100. For a detailed review of the interior decoration and its individual motifs, see Van Berchem, “Mosaics,” 246–312. For morphologically related mosaics in the eighthcentury Kathisma church near Jerusalem, see Talgam, Mosaics of Faith, 399–400. For a sixth-century Byzantine parallel to the crown motif in the Dome’s interior decoration, see Maguire, Earth and Ocean, 65. See Rosen-Ayalon, Early Islamic Monuments, 46–55, Grabar, Dome, 116–18, and Flood, Great Mosque, 25–41. For a Byzantine broader context, see Janes, God and Gold, 128–29, 140–42, 164, and Barry, Painting in Stone, 134–47. Schwarzenberg, “Colour, Light, and Transparency,” 17. Cf. Janes, God and Gold, 100, for a similar observation. See Van Berchem, “Mosaics,” 309–12; Rosen-Ayalon, Early Islamic Monuments, 17, and 22–23. On the use of polychrome marble in the Great Mosque of Damascus, cf. Creswell, Early Muslim Architecture, 174–77, and Flood, Great Mosque, 199–201.

245

Articulating the Impossible

Jerusalem and Damascus, we slowly cross over into the medieval universe. The aesthetics of materialized light and colors will remain prominent throughout the Middle Ages. These aesthetics will find expression in the decorative schemes of medieval reliquaries but also, from the twelfth century onward, in the stained-glass windows of Gothic cathedrals. Light and color, some of the most immaterial of all material substances, continued to feature prominently in the search for sign systems that would allow for translation between the intelligible and the sensible, spirit and matter, heaven and earth.

246

Conclusions

In 386, John Chrysostom delivered a series of eight sermons against the Jews. The sermons revealed the extent to which Chrysostom’s congregation and the Antiochene Jews inhabited the universe of common gestures.1 Frankfurter’s understanding of gesture as “a medium of social affiliation, embodied communication, and memory” is appropriate here.2 Many of the activities that Chrysostom unleashes against belong to the order of such behaviors. His parishioners would occasionally celebrate holidays with their Jewish neighbors, observe Jewish fasts, and admire various aspects of synagogue ritual performance. For Chrysostom’s audience, in other words, the synagogue was a recognizable space, filled with what Sizgorich describes as “common signifiers,” that is, practices “whose general significance was universally comprehensible” for both communities, even if the specific meanings attached to the practices by each community might vary.3 The church and the synagogue were isomorphic structures. Someone who knew how to navigate one space would also feel comfortable navigating the other. This helps explain the belief by imperial legislators, pointed out by Martin Goodman, “that synagogue buildings could easily be converted into churches.”4 On the Jewish side, a regulation from 1

2 3 4

For a good introduction to the subject, see Sizgorich, Violence and Belief, 24–30, and Levine, Visual Judaism, 198–201, with literature. Frankfurter, Christianizing Egypt, 23. Sizgorich, Violence and Belief, 26. Goodman, “Sacred Space,” 11. On the broader tendency to view synagogues as “a Jewish equivalent of pagan shrines,” see 9–12 in the same work.

247

Conclusions

the collection of halakhic rules from early medieval Byzantium envisions a scenario of “a woman who perfumes herself and goes to the houses of idolatry.”5 This is an almost verbatim repetition of Chrysostom’s attack on, to quote Sizgorich again, “troubling semiotic continuity” between the two communities, that is, Jews and Christians sharing in the common economy of signs and gestures.6 Material evidence confirms this impression. Between the fourth and seventh centuries, churches and synagogues were built en masse in cities and villages across Roman Palestine, Syria, and Arabia. The two types of buildings shared key elements of common morphology. These included the use of the basilican plan, the organization of interior space in accordance with the structural principles of differentiated sanctity, marked, among other things, by chancel screens separating the nave from the altar, and the use of common mosaic motifs.7 It is likely that the same regional craftsman guilds were involved in the construction of both synagogues and churches, thereby becoming, to paraphrase Frankfurter, producers of Judaism and Christianity through the shared “material accoutrements.”8 The craftsmen used a vocabulary of set formulas, semiotic clichés, and narrative types to create products that could be easily adjusted depending on a commission. They learned to copy and rearrange a limited number of stereotypical scenes so as to fit them into different frames and, by doing so, convey different meanings. These scenes are akin to Barthes’s encyclopedic Word that “contains simultaneously all the acceptations from which a relational discourse might have required it to choose” and is, therefore, “reduced to a sort of 5

6

7

8

Mann, “Book of the Palestinian Halakhic Practice,” 12; trans. Fine, “Non-Jews,” 207. On this collection of rules and its possible settings, see Newman, Ma‘asim, 1–119, Brody, Geonim, 110–11, and Irshai, “Confronting a Christian Empire,” 244–45. Sizgorich, Violence and Belief, 28. On gestures as a central element in the construction of embodied identities, see Frankfurter, Christianizing Egypt, 22–23, 111–26. See Schwartz, Imperialism, 242, 258, Hachlili, Ancient Mosaic Pavements, 219–42, and Levine, Ancient Synagogue, 617–23, with literature. Frankfurter, Christianizing Egypt, 160. On shared production loci for Jewish, Samaritan, and Christian artifacts, see Fine, Art and Judaism, 155–58, with literature.

248

Conclusions

zero degree, pregnant with all its past and future specifications.”9 We do not have any pattern books from late antiquity, nothing that would compare in scale and sophistication to the thirteenth-century pattern book of Villard de Honnecourt, for instance, but the widespread use of formulas begs the question whether there were any. Synagogue and church communities sought to articulate themselves in a complex symbolic environment that was shaped by visual and epigraphic models, as well as individual tastes of donors.10 The first century of Muslim rule witnessed a third group of actors claiming its part in the shared spaces of religious performance and material production. Legal traditions traceable to the Umayyad period, notes Suliman Bashear, routinely address the scenario of Muslims praying in churches and, less frequently, synagogues.11 The practice is usually allowed with some caveats. Occasionally, but not always, a tradition expects sweeping or splashing with water to take place ahead of prayer, so as to mark difference within otherwise shared spaces. In his responses on legal matters, Jacob, bishop of Edessa (c. 633–708), anticipates a similar kind of routine interaction between Christians and Muslims taking place within the framework of shared ritual spaces and offers a similar kind of advice for ways to mark difference between the two groups.12 It is possible that following the southern qibla toward Mecca and away from the eastern direction of prayer associated with local Christian communities was another attempt to negotiate between semiotic isomorphism and difference.13 In the realm of gesture, as well as material production, the Umayyad period witnessed a range of experiments that resulted in a new visual culture constructed, to quote Finbarr Flood, through “the displacement (both material and conceptual) 9 10

11 12 13

Barthes, Writing Degree Zero, 48. See Levine, Ancient Synagogue, 218, Hachlili, Ancient Mosaic Pavements, 243–80, and Talgam, Mosaics of Faith, 170–74 Bashear, “Qibla Mushariqqa,” 273–82. See 280 for potential references to synagogues. See Hoyland, “Jacob and Early Islamic Edessa,” 16–17. Bashear, “Qibla Mushariqqa,” 267–68, and 280–82.

249

Conclusions

of selected elements, changes in emphasis, and the rupture in traditional syntactic structure.”14 Against the backdrop of this broadly tolerant approach, however, Muslim legal authorities consistently single out pictures and statues as being problematic.15 Their presence, the argument goes, makes praying in churches (and, presumably, synagogues) undesirable, if not outright impossible. At some point in the early eighth century a widespread destruction of figural mosaics took place across churches and synagogues in several regions of the former Roman provinces of Palestine and Arabia.16 The destruction (which in itself spanned a range of methods from disfigurement to outright removal) has sometimes been interpreted as a reaction to the iconoclast edict promulgated by the Umayyad caliph Yazid II in 723.17 It is also possible, however, that figural representations could be removed to adjust potentially sharable ritual spaces to a new set of semiotic expectations by the ruling power.18 The two explanations are complementary rather than exclusive, as Yazid’s decree was one aspect of a much broader process of negotiating the grammar of a new symbolic koine. The destruction of images was done both carefully and deliberately, suggesting that local Christian and Jewish communities were prime actors in the process. Specific ways in which the disfigurement and removal took place were broadly in line with aesthetic principles laid out in Muslim traditions on images.19 Under certain 14

15 16

17 18 19

Flood, Great Mosque, 234. On the category of “syntactical structure,” see Grabar, Formation of Islamic Art, 137. Bashear, “Qibla Mushariqqa,” 275–81. For a good summary of archaeological evidence, see Schick, Christian Communities, 180–219, and, more recently, “Destruction of Images,” 132–43. See also Hachlili, Ancient Mosaic Pavements, 209–17. On synagogues, in particular, see Fine, Art and Judaism, 94–97, and Levine, Ancient Synagogue, 364–68. See Sahner, “First Iconoclasm,” 38–42. See Bowersock, Mosaics, 109–11, and Sahner, “First Iconoclasm,” 53–54. See, for example, Sahner, “First Iconoclasm,” 52. Some legal authorities distinguished between acceptable and unacceptable images, based on their exact location vis-à-vis the direction of prayer. See Bashear, “Qibla Mushariqqa,” 280.

250

Conclusions

circumstances, in other words, these traditions could be considered authoritative by at least some non-Muslim communities. The implementation of the practice varied from one region to another, which indicates a widespread but certainly not universal adherence to the new visual program that eschewed figural representations in favor of geometric and floral designs. The isomorphism of gestures and iconographic programs extends into the realm of literary production as well. Designed to be performed in the synagogue’s liturgical setting, Yannai’s poetry was a type of gesture. It used image as a rhetorical formula to invoke divine presence and also to shape the identity of listeners through this invocation. Yannai’s toolkit of metaphors and corresponding syntactic sequences, a kind of premanufactured building blocks, repeated with limited variation throughout his poetic oeuvre, was akin in its function to molds and stamps used by artisans to mass-produce a potentially infinite number of copies. The creation of such poetry, a poetry “understood in visual terms” according to Roberts, was akin to other modes of craftmanship through which the material production of Judaism and Christianity became possible.20 Along with and often in conversation with other types of embedded verbal representation, such as epigraphy, liturgical poetry was a material form through which community announced and maintained itself. Like any other artifact, the poetry implied agency on the level of socially and culturally involved actors, such as Yannai and the authors of midrashim, who engaged and creatively refurbished a variety of idioms current in their day. These actors inhabited the universe of meanings whose boundaries were delineated, in Sizgorich’s words, by a common “lexicon of signs, 20

Roberts, Jeweled Style, 65. Much of what I say in this paragraph develops in conversation with Frankfurter, Christianizing Egypt, 20–31 and 104–83. On the use of similar techniques and aesthetic norms in the production of literary texts and artwork in late antiquity, see Roberts, 9–13, 52–55, 66–121. Yahalom, Poetry, 14–20, emphasizes the importance of Roberts’s observations for the study of piyyutim.

251

Conclusions

symbols, narratives and associations.”21 That lexicon served to establish a horizon of imagination, a network of structural relationships, within which certain things could become possible, certain artifacts could be produced, and certain meanings could develop. Image, this book has argued, was one such meaning. 21

Sizgorich, Violence and Belief, 275.

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275

Index

Abraham, 53, 78–80, 140, 141 acheiropoietos, 103, 233, 234, 238, 241, 242 Acts of Thaddeus, 139, 240, 241 Agathias Scholasticus, 91, 92, 139, 140 Akathistos, hymn, 162, 174, 175, 180 Ambigua to John, 53 ampullae, pilgrimage, 11, 101, 114, 126, 132, 133, 135–37, 143, 145 Artemius, Saint, 123, 126, 127 Athanasius of Alexandria, 69

energeia, 29, 41, 52, 54, 140, 142 Eucharist, 10, 42, 47, 49, 53, 58, 97, 142, 201 eulogiai, 126, 134–38, 143, 145

Balai, 161, 163, 172 Basil of Caesarea, 69, 70 Bezalel, 193, 224–27, 235 bowls, magic, 85–87, 89, 143

Hagia Sophia, 24, 27, 29, 39, 46, 52, 148, 149, 157, 160–62, 164, 181, 183–88, 190–92, 195, 197, 204, 210–14, 221, 224, 228, 229, 231, 232, 237, 243, 245 Hekhalot Rabbati, 65, 66, 93–102, 104, 105, 139, 144 Heraclius, Emperor, 115, 233 hierarchy, 24, 26, 29, 33, 37, 38, 59, 199, 201, 220

Cairo Genizah, 15 Cherubic Hymn, 32 colors, 92, 191, 217–23, 225, 228–32, 235, 237, 243, 244, 246 Cosmas Indicopleustes, 185–87 Cyril of Alexandria, 121, 154–57, 166–69 Demetrius, Saint, 11, 89–92, 101, 103, 104, 107, 112, 114–19, 122–26, 128–31, 135–39, 144, 146, 244 demut, 9, 10, 19, 25, 28, 44, 49, 55, 56, 58, 65, 66, 81, 96, 105, 106, 146, 209, 223, 245 dissimilar similarity, 27–29, 34, 36, 202, 205 Dome of the Rock, 231, 237, 243 dreams, 123, 146 eikon, 21, 24, 49, 65, 88, 187 elohim, 16, 18, 19, 21, 31, 56, 58, 59

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Genesis Rabbah, 65, 72, 120, 130, 150, 152, 154, 159 Great Mosque of Damascus, 212, 231, 245 Gregory of Nyssa, 39, 40, 103, 220

Iconoclasm, 1, 2, 4–6 image, 27, 31, 38–41, 45, 46, 49, 54, 56, 58, 210, 225 incarnation, 10, 60, 73, 148, 180, 183, 184, 192, 234 iqonin, 65, 67, 70, 106, 110, 129, 130 Israel, 31, 35, 43, 45, 46, 48–50, 52, 53, 55, 56, 58, 63, 64, 74, 77, 81, 83, 92 name of Israel, 74–76, 79, 80, 83 Jacob, 71–74, 77 image of Jacob, 2, 10, 65–71, 81–85, 87, 91–95, 99–101, 104–9, 111, 122, 124–26, 128–32, 137, 139, 140, 142, 143

Index Jacob’s dream, 11, 107, 108, 110, 111, 119, 120, 124, 126, 128, 131, 138, 146, 147 ladder of Jacob, 109, 110, 125 Jacob of Serug, 162, 168, 180 John Chrysostom, 70, 85, 247 John Malalas, 223 John of Damascus, 41, 88, 241 John of Scythopolis, 57–60, 64 Justinian, Emperor, 148, 160, 192, 193, 197

Pesiqta Rabbati, 7, 170, 172–76, 222–25, 227, 231, 242, 245 Piacenza pilgrim, 101–3, 240, 244 Plotinus, 54, 217, 221 Proclus, 27, 57, 171, 177, 189 Procopius of Caesarea, 190, 191, 228–32 Pseudo-Dionysius, 5, 9, 21, 23–25, 27–29, 32–34, 36, 37, 42, 56–58, 171, 177, 187, 192, 200, 202, 203, 219, 225, 232

kenosis, 166, 169

qelaster panim, 66, 100, 101, 104, 105 Qillir, 14, 66, 93, 143, 207

Lamentations Rabbah, 65, 67, 68, 70, 82, 100 light, 24, 26, 33, 35, 40, 54, 56, 76, 100, 104, 108, 183, 184, 189, 191, 194, 200, 201, 210, 215, 217–21, 228, 229, 237, 243–46 marble, 229–32 Martin, Saint, 110–12 Maximus Confessor, 5, 9, 22, 37–43, 46–51, 53–58, 78–81, 85, 98 Mekhilta of R. Ishmael, 17 Melchizedek, 53 menorah, 13 mirrors, 25, 26, 54 Moses, 13, 62, 92, 129, 151–53, 158, 165, 176, 185, 196–98, 201, 205, 217–28, 230–32, 234–40, 242 Mystagogy, 37–39, 43, 47, 48, 50, 53, 57, 98 Neoplatonism, 34, 36, 172 Oneness (God’s attribute), 30, 33, 42–48, 50–53, 80 Origen, 199 Passover, 30 Paul the Silentiary, 211, 228 Pesiqta of Rav Kahana, 7, 61, 157, 159, 161, 163, 165, 166, 169, 173, 195, 199, 201, 204, 206, 222, 223, 227

Romanos the Melodist, 5, 60, 148, 156–58, 161, 162, 168, 169, 207, 211 seal, 55, 85, 87, 123, 126, 127, 142, 143 Shekhinah, 60, 173, 174, 208, 209 Shema, 43, 44, 46, 47, 49, 51–53, 67 Shemini Atzeret, 52 Sifra, 150, 151, 153, 154, 159 Sifre on Deuteronomy, 21, 67 signs, 4, 12, 23, 26, 34, 36, 39, 87, 107, 127, 128, 139, 146, 196–98, 200–2, 204, 212, 217, 218, 245, 248, 251 Solomon, King, 61, 62, 86, 148, 149, 159–61, 178, 192, 197 Song of Songs, 31, 62 Song of Songs Rabbah, 8, 31, 62, 64, 170, 172 tabernacle, 12, 13, 64, 149–54, 158–60, 162, 164–66, 169–80, 185–87, 193, 195–212, 214–17, 219, 221–28, 230, 231, 234, 235, 242, 243, 245 Tanhuma, 8, 35, 178, 179, 205, 225, 227, 234, 235, 238–40, 242, 245 Theotokos, 12, 59, 64, 99, 156, 157, 162, 164, 174, 183 throne, 10, 11, 65, 67, 68, 70, 81, 87, 91–93, 99–102, 104, 107, 109, 116, 120, 124–26, 129–31, 138, 143, 146, 157, 158, 162, 168, 211, 216, 239

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Index Torah, 14 tzimtzum, 12, 149, 151, 154, 160, 165, 166, 170, 173, 174 tzurah, 66, 143 unification, 41, 43, 45–49, 51, 52

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Yannai, 7–10, 14–16, 18–21, 23, 25, 28–32, 34–38, 43–53, 55, 56, 58, 65, 66, 71, 74–81, 83–87, 89, 91, 92, 95, 96, 100, 105, 106, 109–12, 122, 125, 131, 138–41, 143, 145, 173, 174, 206–16, 220, 227, 236, 238, 239, 251