Seeing the God: Ways of Envisioning the Divine in Ancient Mediterranean Religion 9781463234881

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Seeing the God

Perspectives on Philosophy and Religious Thought 5

Perspectives on Philosophy and Religious Thought (formerly Gorgias Studies in Philosophy and Theology) provides a forum for original scholarship on theological and philosophical issues, promoting dialogue between the wide-ranging fields of religious and logical thought. This series includes studies on both the interaction between different theistic or philosophical traditions and their development in historical perspective.

Seeing the God

Ways of Envisioning the Divine in Ancient Mediterranean Religion

Edited by

Jeffrey B. Pettis

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34 2013

Gorgias Press LLC, 954 River Road, Piscataway, NJ, 08854, USA www.gorgiaspress.com Copyright © 2013 by Gorgias Press LLC

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise without the prior written permission of Gorgias Press LLC. 2013

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ISBN 978-1-61143-251-0

ISSN 1940-0020

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A Cataloging-in-Publication Record is Available from the Library of Congress. Printed in the United States of America

TABLE OF CONTENTS Preface........................................................................................................5  Introduction ..............................................................................................7  Jeffrey B. Pettis  Seeing the God in the Greco-Roman World ....................................19  Jeffrey B. Pettis  Visions and Violence: Seeing God in the Nag Hammadi Codices .....................................................43  Celene Lillie  Seeing the Divine in Platonism; Plato and Plotinus..........................67  Sergey Trostyanskiy  Seeing the God and Early Christian Literature................................105  John A. McGuckin and Jeff Pettis  The Ambivalences of Seeing in the Gospel Narratives.....105  John A. McGuckin  Seeing the God and Paul .........................................................129  Jeffrey B. Pettis  To See God and Live in Late Antique Judaism..............................145  Jared C. Calaway  Seeing the God in the Syriac Tradition............................................187  Todd French  Seeing Divine Things in Byzantine Christianity .............................223  John A. McGuckin 

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PREFACE This book is the result of a one-day conference which took place in New York City, 2011. Working out of individual fields of specialization, selected authors presented and discussed papers based upon the theme, “seeing the God in the ancient world.” The content of the conference involved a comprehensive treatment examining varieties of Christianity as well as religio-spiritual thought and texts in the Nag Hammadi writings, Judaism, and Classical Hellenism. The papers have been gathered and edited into what we see to be an exciting and distinctive publication. Many thanks to the authors for their commitment and contribution to this project. Special thanks to John A. McGuckin for his wise counsel and unique seeing both in the making of this book, and as a friend and mentor across the years. Jeffrey B. Pettis 2012

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INTRODUCTION JEFFREY B. PETTIS When this idea was first proposed I suspect that many of the authors of this book quietly gasped. To mount a book project on “seeing the god” in the ancient world suggested a scope far exceeding reasonable boundaries for a single volume. Yet, none of the research team was able to resist the invitation. The subject of seeing the god in antiquity is too rich, too intriguing to pass by. This said, we narrowed our parameters to seven definitive religiohistorical trajectories: Greco-Roman cults, Gnostic traditions, Greco-Roman philosophy, Early Christian traditions, Judaism in late antiquity, Syriac Christian traditions, and the Byzantine tradition. By this means we fixed our attention on what is the final title of this monograph, namely: Seeing the God: Ways of Envisioning the Divine in Ancient Mediterranean Religion. The work is intended to examine varieties of divine encounter in the Greco-Roman world through the periods of Late Antiquity and Byzantium. The project derives from an observation of Robin Lane Fox who, in his Pagans and Christians, writes: “When people prayed, they expected their gods to come, from the age of Homer to the last Platonists in the fifth century A.D.”1 Our idea is to explore the concept of how the ancients “envisioned” the deities and the ways and various languages of “seeing the god” in the Greco-Roman world—both those traditions which appear to be vested heavily in terms of actual “seeing,” and those which found such direct visual analogies disturbing. We set out to ask how were such encounters or understandings of envisioning the divine distinctive within specific Robin Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1986), 117. 1

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religio-spiritual traditions? To what extent, for example, were phenomena including dreams, day or nighttime visions, face-toface encounters, prayer and invocation, and initiation rites perceived as media of divine experience? In my chapter, “Seeing the God in the Greco-Roman World,” seeing the god focuses across a very thin dividing line between the human and the divine. This occurs especially with the Roman worship of war heroes paraded in triumphal processions. Making a mimesis of the god Jupiter, the war general robed in purple with his face painted red rode his chariot into the heart of the city of Rome. Here he gave an offering of laurel at the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus. The identification of the emperor with the gods soon followed, so that Caesar wore the dress of a god on all public occasions. Deification of the emperor appears to have become a matter of humorous remark. It is said that Vespasian in his last days joked: “Oh my goodness, I think I am becoming a god.”2 The ancients perceived their gods literally to embody statues in a range of sizes, from colossal to those small enough to fit in one’s pocket. These statues appeared in public processions, temples and private homes, and as Robin Fox notes, they were sometimes anchored with chains to prevent escape. The Greco-Roman Mystery cults are also an important source for the notion of divine encounter, although we know relatively little about what went on inside the ancient Mysteries. Apuleius in his 2d century C.E. novel The Golden Ass offers a prelude to his initiation into the Isis Mystery cult. He gives a detailed description of what appears to be a dream-vision of the goddess Isis whom he sees “Rise out of the scattered deep” (11.3). She has an abundance of hair, a crown of interlaced wreaths and varying flowers, and just above her brow two vipers holding a mirror emitting a soft clear light (3). “Behold, Lucius,” she says, “moved by your prayer I come to you” (11.5). For a description of seeing the god Mithras of the Mithras cult we can turn to the Mithras Liturgy in the Greek Magical Papyri. The deity holds in his right hand a golden shoulder of a young bull—the Bear which “moves and turns heaven around, moving upwards and Mary Beard, John North and Simon Price, Religions of Rome (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 2.225. 2

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downwards in accordance with the hour” (PGM IV.701–03). Lightening bolts shoot from the eyes of Mithras and stars leap from his body (PGM IV.704). The Greek Magical Papyri also relates spells and charms for revelation evidencing a variety of perceptions of deities including Apollo Paian, Isis, a shadow, a god who is serpent-faced, and a Maiden with a torch. Gods are summoned through the spells and there is little doubt expressed that the gods will actually appear. Often there is a sense that the gods want to come forth to dwell in the company of the invoker, who then must dismiss the god. Finally, the examination of a dream encounter with the god Asclepius by Aelius Aristides, dedicated patron of the Asclepius cult, reveals the various nuances of seeing the god as bodily experience through which the god imparts a certain knowledge to be made conscious and used in the immediate world. In her chapter, “Visions and Violence: Seeing the God in the Nag Hammadi Codices,” Celene Lillie examines what she refers to as the changing narratives around the promise of Jesus’ continued post-resurrection/ascension presence. The first section of the chapter treats the subject of visionary encounter with the divine. Following a consideration of the Greco-Roman and New Testament context from which the Nag Hammadi material issues, six specific texts receive attention. In the Secret Revelation of John vision occurs on a mountain and Jesus appears in morphing forms, the teaching content of the work drawing especially from the Book of Genesis. In the First Revelation of James the resurrected Jesus appears in bodily form to James on the mountain called Gaugela. Through the encounter Jesus prepares James for his [James’] own suffering and martyrdom. The Second Revelation of James relates a priest’s report of James’ account of the Lord’s teachings. The treatise concludes with James being stoned to death as he recites a prayer to the Father for salvation. The Secret Revelation of James presents the appearance of the Savior to the twelve disciples, and includes his ascent with Peter and James. The two disciples tell of the experience: “We saw with our eyes and heard with our ears hymns, angelic praises, and angelic rejoicing.” In the Wisdom of Jesus Christ twelve disciples and seven women followers of Jesus ascend a mountain called “Prophecy and Joy.” Here the Savor appears to them “in invisible spirit…like a great angel of light” teaching them about the nature of God, the world, violent rulers,

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and salvation. Afterwards, Jesus disappears. In The Letter of Peter to Philip, Peter re-gathers the disciples on a mountain called Olivet. A divine voice manifests, Jesus then ascending amidst lightening and thunder from heaven. Lillie notes how the Savior here and in some of the other texts does not appear in bodily form, and that his manifesting is to bring comfort and address the issues of suffering and salvation in a hostile world. The second part of Lillie’s chapter examines the subject of visions and violence in the six Nag Hammadi texts considered in part one. Jesus resurrected/ascended appears in order to instruct and comfort believers as they, like him, face violence of persecution. This includes the telling of cosmogonic stories as a way of rooting Jesus’ followers within the universe and to explain the ruling forces against them. Lillie writes how the texts “emphasize the connection of the Savior’s followers with the true God and that through this connection they can overcome the power and violence of the world rulers.” The inner spiritual life of the followers is also emphasized, along with a disassociation with the body which will be harmed, so that in the First Revelation of James Jesus instructs James that by casting off the “bond to the flesh” he will become no longer James but the “One Who Is.” Lillie concludes by noting the close ties between vision and persecution in the Nag Hammadi corpus, which aims overall not toward escapism, but rather to present Jesus as a model for living with violence. The notion of the crossing between the human and the divine realms is quite telling of how deeply the ancients felt the need for contact with the gods. This need may be in part driven by an existential insecurity about one’s sense of place and significance in an overwhelming world. As E.R. Dodds notes in his Pagans and Christians in an Age of Anxiety, the ancient must have felt like “an alien and an exile.”3 Compounding this is an inability to make sense of such deep uncertainty, nor to bring to cognition just what it means “to see” and how and why the gods can and cannot be seen. This is where the Greco-Roman philosophers step in. The proper E.R. Dodds, Pagan and Christian in an Age of Anxiety: Some Aspects of Religious Experience from Marcus Aurelius to Constantine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965), 20. 3

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task of the philosophers, writes Sergey Trostyanskiy in his chapter, “Seeing the Divine in Platonism; Plato and Plotinus,” is the detachment from the senses so that one can “see” and thus know eide—divine realities, the archai of the universe. For Plato, each eidos may show itself as itself or as part of a collective and thus as “many.” In the Republic the “eye of the soul” which is able to see eide and thus know is “sunk in the barbaric slough” of incarnation. One therefore is prevented from seeing the “really real” and thus must be content to stay with images in iconic form. The pure becomes known by what is pure, and what is impure by nature is thus prevented seeing. Trostyanskiy notes: “Thus, it is suggested in the Phaedo that the acquisition of knowledge does not involve the ‘seeing’ of eide but, rather, the revival of the content of cognitions (visions) of eide which souls in their pure pre-incarnate form have had.” As illustrated in Plato’s allegory of the cave, humanity deprived of the “really real” can only see shadows and mistake them to be real. Even with the ascent of the soul, the seeing of light can be overwhelming and harmful to the eyes which, accustomed to the darkness of the cave, are blinded by the intensity. Special training is required to open up the eyes so that they can “see.” The soul ascends from the lowest levels of eikasia through the levels of pistis, dianoia, and ultimately the intelligible region of noesis. Here the “soul’s eye” can see eide and the idea of the Good and thus attain “vision” and knowledge. For the 3rd century C.E. philosopher Plotinus, the soul—which is the third hypostasis (the others being One, and nous)—may “wing” itself into a higher, inner phase, thus detaching from the senses and therefore become uncontaminated. This allows it to see and to know. The question of experiencing the One as the ultimate source which extends beyond knowledge and is thus unspeakable must also be considered. Trostyanskiy comments on Plotinus’ metaphor of light: “So if soul takes the light and holds it, it sees. However, the seeing has no content. It is rather the light itself that is seen, not the objects lit up by the light.” Trostyanskiy also makes it clear that the notion of the divine in Platonism is unlike the notion of theos rooted in the Jewish-Christian tradition. Rather, it is diffused through the universe. The New Testament writers’ understanding of seeing God is rooted in what John McGuckin in his treatment, “The Ambivalences of Seeing in the Gospel Narratives,” describes as an

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“intensely eschatological order.” This realization of transformation through the resurrection and return of the Christ distinguishes early Christianity from the Hellenistic notions of encounter. McGuckin examines two kinds of narrative clusters. One which is primarily Christological and didactic in nature teaches aspects of the theology of salvation—Jesus Soter. Four stories receive attention: Jesus’ exorcism at Capernaum, Jesus’ Baptism (as a Midrash on Isaiah 63– 64), John the Baptist and Nathanael stories, and the story of the blind man. In this group the questions arising around seeing and not seeing and the different “worlds” which may qualify are each considered. The second cluster of narratives concerns issues of non-seeing around the events of Jesus’ resurrection and his passing into Doxa, eschatological Glory. Three stories are examined: the Anastasis (Resurrection), the Metamorphosis (Transfiguration), and the experience of the Pneuma (Ascension and Pentecost). Within the overall examination of these clusters there occurs a flushing out of various themes and notions with regard to seeing the god. One of these, as McGuckin puts it, is the “shifting from an energeia of hearing into seeing” in the story of Jesus’ calling of Nathanael under the fig tree. “I saw you under the fig tree,” Jesus says to Nathanael (John 1.49), leading Nathanael to profess his belief in Jesus as the Son of God. Another theme is the notion of the heart which may serve as “the better organ for ‘seeing,’” as in the story of the disciples whom Jesus, returned from the dead, had accompanied to Emmaus. The disciples later speak of how their “hearts burned within them” even as their eyes deceived them. In the Metamorphosis of Jesus both hearing and the heart become important for Peter as a corrective to what is his delimited faculty for seeing the god. At the same time, and perhaps in Peter’s defense, there is also the notion of exousia, that is, the authority or “divine power-charge” that is so much part of who Jesus is and making him not so easily comprehensible. In the context of the Gospel of Mark, for example, this means, as McGuckin notes, “what you see is not exactly what you get.” Seeing the god does not come easily. In my own treatment, “Seeing the God and Paul,” divine encounter is also rooted, like the Gospel narratives, within an “intensely eschatological order.” For Paul, this order occurs inseparably from Jewish apocalyptic mysticism with the focus upon the journey of ascent. In 2 Corinthians 12.1–5 Paul speaks of

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someone he knows (meaning himself) who was “caught up in the third heaven, into Paradise.” The encounter as a whole appears to leave him in a state of uncertainty and disproportion. Paul “boasts” while at the same time speaks of being in weakness (5). One key aspect specific to Paul is the notion of seizure. Seeing the god happens to such an extent that Paul says that Christ “lives in me” (Gal. 1.20). There is a sense that he is taken hold of by the god. It is out of this orientation that Paul presents himself to the Greeks at Athens from the Areopagus in Acts 17, making it clear that the divine does not dwell in shrines. At the same time, Paul’s inner “knowing” is that he and his community are becoming transformed into the god: “We….are being changed into his likeness by one degree of glory to another” (2 Cor. 3.18; cf. Ro. 12.2; Gal. 14.19; Phil. 3.10–21). In Galatians 4.14 Paul even refers to himself as aggelon theou (“an angel of god”). There is then, in Paul, the blurring, if not breakdown of boundary between the human and divine. To me this makes Paul and his appeal irresistible before the Gentiles and the Hellenistic world. Like Paul, the pagan world inclined toward seeing the god as something viable, immediate, and embodied. Jared Calaway in his, “Seeing God in Ancient Judaism,” looks closely at the danger of divine encounter. From the start he recognizes the traditionally auditory focus prevalent in Judaism: “There is a commonplace that Judaism is a religion of hearing and not seeing, reducing the Jewish sense of God’s manifest presence to the Deuteronomic emphasis on audition.” At the same time, there exists what are the “rich ambivalences” of the Bible and later Jewish views on seeing God and living to talk about such encounter. Calaway examines a range of literary sources. In the Pentateuch Moses sees what is the “back” of God, for he cannot see the face of the Lord and live (Ex. 33.20). God also speaks to Moses face-to-face (Ex 33.11), as if the encounter is now both direct and immediate. In biblical narrative Hagar represents the first human figure to see God and live—something Calaway notes to be “a rare occurrence for a foreign woman.” Other biblical figures including Jacob, Gideon, Manoah and his wife, Abraham and Isaac are also considered. In the prophetic writings a central image is the enthroned God seen by Micah, Isaiah, Amos, and most definitively Ezekiel in his striking vision (Ezek. 1.1–28). Ezekiel states that he sees “the appearance of the likeness of the

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glory of the LORD” (Ezek. 1.28), as if he withdraws from speaking of a direct seeing of the LORD. This notion of “likeness” in Ezekiel comes, according to Calaway, from an heightened anthropormorphism connecting divine form with humans. It is found specifically in Genesis 1.26 where God creates the human in his image and likeness. Also examined are Hekhalot texts which recognize both the possibility and impossibility of vision experience. These texts give instructions on how to see God and live. A comparison of the Ma’aseh Merkavah and the Hekhalot Rabbati relates how, with the appropriate level of purity, righteousness, and the recitation of correct songs the mystic is able to survive seeing God. The Ma’aseh Merkavah begins with a question about a prayer one prays when he ascends to the merkavah. It gives instruction on how to have a vision and says little about the dangers of gazing upon the divine. As Calaway notes: “Gazing appears everywhere in the Ma’aseh Merkavah. One gazes upon God…upon the radiance of the Shekhinah (§570), the Merkavah (§579), and the curious passage, above the seraphim who stand above God’s head (§595).” As with the Ma’aseh Merkavah, the Hekhalot Rabbati begins with a question about which songs one should recite in order to ascend and gaze upon the merkavah. At the same time, emphasis is placed upon the dangers and impossibility of such ascent. Even to gaze upon the crown and garment of God will cause one’s eyeballs and person to incinerate! Other materials examined in this chapter include prophetic visions of the enthroned glory, vision distancing and buffering through mediation in the Targumim, and the Midrash with circumcision as a requirement for seeing God. In his Chapter, “Seeing the God in the Syriac Tradition,” Todd French examines the poetic hymns of the 4th century Ephrem the Syrian. For Ephrem, humanity has little access to seeing God. He exclaims in his Hymns of Faith, “Who, Lord can gaze on Your hiddenness” (51.2). The figure of the incarnate Christ becomes the means for seeing the divine, and in the visions of Christ one experiences the same divine presence as the Father. One may also see God by experiencing his “divine reality”—something always initiated by God who makes possible such experience. For Ephrem the inner eye through the light of faith occurs as an integral part of seeing. This eye “transports the mind” into an understanding of the Scriptures. French here notes: “Interaction

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between the divine and human spheres requires descent ‘from the heights’ so ‘short publicans like Zacchaeus’ and the rest of us can reach him.” At the same time, the brilliant light of the divine can be blinding—as it was to Paul, and even deadly, as it could have been for Moses. In both cases, God initiated and controlled the visionary experience. Ephrem says that God “puts on visibility” so that sinners might experience Him. French also examines The Cave of the Treasures, dated as early as 3d century C.E., having a focus on the creation of humanity in the likeness of God. Looking upon a human being becomes a means of seeing an “outline of God.” The text relates the angels who tremble at the beauty of the image and the glorious sight of Adam, and that “the spark of his eyes was like the rays of the sun.” Human beings formed in the glorious image of the divine relate this radiant beauty. Dramatic visionary experience is also the focus of the 4th century ascetic Aphrahat. In his Demonstrations he gives imagistic expression to Moses’ ascent of Mt. Sinai: The mountains shook and the heights were in motion. The sun and the moon altered their courses…Moses saw the splendor; he was terrified and began to shake. Trembling seized him because he had seen the Shekinah of the Most High, which rest on the mountains, the great power of the throne of God.

Aphrahat himself writes of having seen God in His temple, what Aphrahat refers to as the “treasure-house of the king.” He sees through an inner journey of ascent: “As I gazed upon it, it dazzled my eyes and took my thoughts captive.” For both Ephrem and Aphrahat the heart functions as the key organ of perception. It is through the heart as an instrument of seeing that the mystic comes into divine revelation. This, along with other faculties such as the physical eyes, hearing, and the mind are used—some perhaps more than others—in one’s journey to see God. By contrast, Isaac the Syrian states that true visions come only to ones who have been illuminated through “disciplines of stillness to the rank of purity.” For Pseudo-Macarius the Holy Spirit provides the wings for human beings, and the soul exists to receive in its fullest capacity the light of Christ. The soul is active through Christ who directs and moves it to see the “revelations of hidden mysteries.” John McGuckin in his “Seeing Divine Things in Byzantine Christianity” discusses the contributions of Origen of Alexandria

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and Evagrios of Pontos. Evagrios (245–399 C.E.), a disciple of Gregory Nazianzus and Gregory of Nyssa, significantly develops the ascetical theology of Origen. For both Origen and Evagrios prayer occurs as the telos of human life. McGuckin notes that prayer for each “amounted to the ability to recognize the consciousness (logos) active in the core interior consciousness (nous) of a person’s life.” This recognition enabled the ascetic to see and respond to the plan of God in the world. For Evagrios, vision of the Godhead requires a giving up of preconceived forms within one’s imagination. Understanding comes only through drawing close to Immateriality. For Origen the capacity for a range of levels of vision occurs within the context of the tragic, metaphysical collapse of humans from immaterial Noes into materially bodied Psychai. Yet, through the agency of the Incarnation of the Logos the Psyche may experience an eschatological ascent and purification into a renewed condition of Noes with the angels and a full range of Noetic vision. Makarios the Great, contemporary of Evagrios, retranslates this doctrine of ascent within eastern Byzantine monastic communities. In his Fifty Spiritual Homilies he writes that Christ can be seen “only with the eyes of the soul.” For the Middle Byzantine theologian and philosopher Maximos the Confessor the vision of God is inseparable from the true philosophical path. After the way of Origen, Maximos sets forth three levels of revelation in his interpretation of the Transfiguration. Here only the spiritually advanced as the elect souls are able to see and receive the hidden revelation on the mountains. McGuckin also discusses the late Byzantine travel books such as the Visions of Anastasia, The Revelations of the Monk Kosma, and the Visions of Dorotheos. These works relate tales of spiritual journeys between Heaven and Hades. They continue a rich tradition already seen in Hellenistic tales of journeys into Hades found in literature like Vergil’s Aeneid. However, unlike this Hellenistic material, the Byzantine hagiographic travelogues are distinguished by revelatory vision stemming from early apocalyptic literature such as Ezekiel, Daniel, and Enoch. In the West, Gregory the Great’s travelogue entitled the Fourth Dialogue is especially influential. In it he tells his Deacon Peter about three Roman Christians who died and then recovered to relate what they saw: smoky blackness, a narrow bridge, contests for souls between angels and demons, and the perfumed floral gardens of the righteous. This bi-partite model of Heaven and Hell

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eventually shifts to a tri-partite model of western travelogue which inserts Purgatory as an intermediary condition. The Visio Wetinni of 824 C.E. serves as a standard example of this. It is thought to be based upon dream narratives of Latin antiquity. These include the Passion of Perpetua and Felicity, the Dream of Jerome, and dream narratives of Sulpicius Severus, and Evodius. By late Byzantium the implicit value of experiential vision was widely recognized as a fundamental aspect of confessing the Christian faith. Looking back over the material constituting this book there is one specific thread which runs through the chapters: the cardinal notion of ascent. For Plato the soul ascends from the lowest levels of eikasia through the levels of pistis, dianoia, and ultimately the intelligible region of noesis. In the New Testament Gospels seeing and not seeing occur around the Anastasis and Jesus passing into Doxa. Paul speaks of being caught up in the third heaven, into Paradise. The Nag Hammadi codices have disciples ascended on a mountain-top where the resurrected/ascended Christ appears to them. In the Pentateuch Moses ascends Mt. Sinai and sees the “back” of God who also speaks to him face-to-face. The Ma’aseh Merkavah begins with a question about a prayer one prays when he ascends to the merkavah. In the Syrian tradition Aphrahat writes of having seen God in His temple, the “treasure-house of the king” which he sees through an inner journey of ascent. “As I gazed upon it, it dazzled my eyes and took my thoughts captive” he writes. For Origen of Alexandria, the Psyche may experience an eschatological ascent and purification into a renewed condition of Noes with the angels and a full range of Noetic vision. Makarios the Great retranslates this doctrine of ascent within eastern Byzantine monastic communities in his Fifty Spiritual Homilies. In the GrecoRoman world the desire to ascend and cross over into the divine realm is implicit to Jupiter-like war heroes and Mystery cult initiations as seen for example in the Mithras Liturgy. This kind of vertical orientation raises questions about the human condition and what is the propensity to reach to the gods and exist in the higher realms. Is there as part of the human experience a driving force to become refined from earth-life, material existence? Is it through the means of such reaching upwards that the prayers and spells and travelogues and sacred texts generate to become the irresistible medium of one’s flight to see eide, the “really real”? It seems also that somehow this quest for seeing has as its starting place the

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interior life, so that visions seen and voices heard are happening both to and within the prophet, the mystic, the practitioner. Seeing the god thus becomes an intensely personal thing. It also takes on a specialized quality where vision is granted to those who have been set apart to see: Moses, Plotinus, Apulieus, Christian apostles, Ephrem, Origen of Alexandria, Maximos the Confessor. These ones in their seeing and their knowing are different from the crowd of humanity which perhaps is not so keen to relate with the inner place. At the same time, this interior experience becomes, as discussed in these chapters, manifest on different levels and in variegated ways in the conscious world. The prophet speaks prophecy. The mystic reveals mystery. The initiate becomes reborn. The outside world moves and changes to the impetus of the inner experiences, these which are rich, disorienting and, it would seem, very real. Dreams and visions become the very stuff which make for religio-spiritual traditions and serve as orientations of the way we think and live.

SEEING THE GOD IN THE GRECO-ROMAN WORLD JEFFREY B. PETTIS The line between human and divine was barely perceived by the ancients. The tradition arose for crowds of people to gather in Rome to worship the war hero returned from battle. Like the god Jupiter the hero’s face was painted red. Robed in purple, he rode his chariot to make his offering of laurel at the Temple of Jupiter Capitolinus in the heart of the city. In time the association of the emperor as deity developed so that Caesar, unlike his predecessors, was allowed to wear the dress of a god on all public occasions. More so, the building and rebuilding program of the temples in Rome by Augustus reinstituted religion around himself to secure his own divine status. The notion of seeing the god occurs also as part of Greco-Roman Mystery cults. In his The Syrian Goddess, Lucian of Samosata (2d. c. C.E.) provides a glimpse into the temple of the goddess Hera, who is thought to have similarities with the Great Mother of Phrygia. Apuleius in his 2d century C.E. novel The Golden Ass, gives a detailed description of what appears to be a dream-vision of the goddess Isis who he sees “rise out of the scattered deep” (11.3). For a description of seeing the god Mithras there is the Mithras Liturgy from late antiquity. Lightening bolts shoot from the eyes of the god and stars leap from his body. The Greek Magical Papyri provide more insight into seeing the god in the Hellenistic world. Spells and charms for revelation evidence a variety of perceptions of deities. Gods are summoned through the spells and there is little doubt that the gods will 19

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JEFFREY B. PETTIS actually appear. Finally, the examination of Aelius Aristides’ dream encounter with the god Asclepius reveals the various nuances of seeing the god as liminal, bodily experience through which the god imparts a certain knowledge to be made conscious and used in the immediate world.

When the philosopher Protagorus of Abdera exclaims in his work, On Gods (Peri theon), that he does not recognize the existence of the gods, he is put on trial in Athens. The Athenians condemn him to death. Although Protagorus escapes, he is unable to elude the wrath of Poseidon, losing his life in a shipwreck. It seems that, in the eyes of the ancients, there is great danger for those who do not take seriously the gods. Lane Fox says that in the ancient world “the gods were held to be present, ready to uphold oaths or punish ‘impious’ acts, beliefs which were present both in the Greek and Latin world.”1 For the Hellenistic world much of the perception of the gods as being present and viable was come from Greek religion and culture. Consider Hesiod’s Theogony in the 9th century B.C.E., and too the divine appearances and workings of the gods in the mortal world in Homer. Rome adopted and integrated this rich legacy, while at the same time distinguishing its own gods and religions through the work of writers like Ovid and Virgil. Augustus and members of his family also built and rebuilt temples in Rome. There was the influx of religious cults from the East with their seductive, often mystical potencies which so fascinated even the Roman emperors. Star readers influenced all of Augustus’ successors in the 1st and 2d centuries C.E.2 Even Pliny the Elder, who looked down upon popular religion with a certain contempt, was led by dream revelation to write the histories of the Germanic wars.3 Robin Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1986), 98. 2 Samuel Dill, Roman Society from Nero to Marcus Aurelius (Cleveland: Meridian, 1961), 447. 3 Samuel Dill, Roman Society, 451. 1

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FACES OF THE GOD: WAR HEROES AND EMPERORS One of the noticeable features of the Hellenistic world entails seeing the god in literal, immediate terms. This includes military heroes who, returned from battle, entered the city of Rome through the Triumphal Gate. Plutarch writes about the 167 B.C.E. triumphal procession of Aemilius Paullus after his victory over King Perseus of Macedon.4 Every temple was open and filled with garlands and incense, and all of the people dressed in white clothes to watch the procession. On the third day the general appeared riding on a richly decorated chariot, “a man worthy of admiration…dressed in purple robe shot with gold, and he held a spray of laurel in his right hand.”5 His face was painted the color red after the statue of the god Jupiter.6 In the heart of the city the general made his offering of laurel to the god at the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus.7 The parading of the war-hero in the guise of a god sets the stage for seeing the Roman emperor as a god. A silver cup found at Boscoreale, near Pompeii, depicts the image of Tiberius’ triumphal entry in 12 C.E. In a chariot he stands erect, robed in the costume of Jupiter. Next to him stands a slave who holds a crown over the head of the general and supposedly whispers in his ear: “Remember you are a man.”8 In time the association of the emperor as deity developed so that Caesar, unlike his predecessors, was allowed to wear the dress of a god for all public occasions.9 In a funeral oration for his aunt Julia, Caesar declares that his ancestry traces to the God Venus: The family of my aunt Julia is descended by her mother from the kings, and on her father’s side is akin to the immortal Gods; for the Marcii Reges (her mother’s family name) go back Plutarch Life of Paullus 32–4. Plutarch Life of Paullus 34. 6 Mary Beard, John North and Simon Price, Religions of Rome (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 1.44 7 Mary Beard, John North and Simon Price, Religions of Rome, 1.44. 8 Mary Beard, John North and Simon Price, Religions of Rome, 2.147. 9 Cassius Dio Roman History 37.21.4. 4 5

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Add to this the building and rebuilding program of the temples in Rome by Augustus to reinstitute religion around himself and secure his own divine status among the people. In his Res Gestae 19–21 he lists fourteen Temples which he built or restored. Two of the temples are specifically dedicated to the deification of an emperor (Julieus and Augustus), and one is dedicated out of gratitude for Augustus’ near escape from a lightening bolt.10 Caesar’s divine status became formalized after his death in 44 B.C.E., something Cicero makes sure to point out in his biting address to Antony: “So you see, just as there is a flamen [priest] for Jupiter, for Mars and for Quirinus, so there is now a flamen for the divus Julius—Mark Antony himself.”11 Deification of the emperor appears to have become a matter of humorous remark. It is said that Vespasian in his last days joked: “Oh my goodness, I think I am becoming a god.”12 One source (Seneca?) portrays the gods having a debate of whether to admit the emperor Claudius into their group. The god Janus, addressing the council of the gods, says that “from this day onwards nobody should be made a god from those who ‘consume the fruits of the earth’ or whom the ‘fruitful Mary Beard, John North and Simon Price, Religions of Rome, 1.197. There are also images like the carving on the Belvedere Altar in Rome, 12–2 B.C.E., which depict the figure of winged Augustus hovering above the earth. Another carving depicts the apotheosis of Caesar (?) who is held now in the realm of the gods, witnessed by Augustus and Venus. See Mary Beard, John North and Simon Price, Religions of Rome, 1.187. In addition to architecture, Roman coinage served as a means for seeing the god. An image of Caesar's head occurs on coins at the end of his life. He wears a wreath and there is an adjacent star most likely symbolizing his divinity. See Mary Beard, John North and Simon Price, Religions of Rome, 2.224. 11 Cicero Phil. II.110–11. 12 Mary Beard, John North and Simon Price, Religions of Rome, 2.225. 10

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earth’ sustains. Anyone who…is made, spoken about or represented as a god shall be delivered up to the spooks and lashed with whips among the new gladiators at the next public spectacle.”13 The masses also are eager to have their gods present and viable. Much of the Greco-Roman populace worshipped statues of the gods in personal shrines in the home and through the shrines of Lares Augusti along traveled roadsides. Ovid writes: Give incense to the family gods, ye virtuous ones (on that day above all others Concord is said to lend her gentle presence); and offer food, that the Lares, in their girt-up robes, may feed at the platter presented to them as a pledge of the homage that they love. And now, when dark night invites to slumber calm, fill high the wine-cup for the prayer and say, “Hail to you! hail to thee, Father of thy Country, Caesar the Good!” and let good speech attend the pouring wine. (Ovid, Fasti II.637–38)14

The populace of the Roman world thrived on the god manifest, a craving which could be wet and created through the calculated actions and machinations of the powerful. Augustus’ widow Livia is said to have paid a senior senator a million sesterces to make public declaration to the senate that he saw Augustus ascending to the higher realm of the gods.15 Seeing the god in the face of a famous Roman figure was not limited to the West. The Greek historian Plutarch (c.46–120 C.E.) tells how the Chalcidians dedicate to the consul of 198 B.C.E. Titus Quinctius Flamininus for upholding the freedom of Greece against the claims of Philip V of Macedon. Titus received the largest and Seneca (?), Pumpkinification of Claudius 9. Saint Augustine writes how some Gentiles even identified the transcendent Jewish god with the Roman gods Saturn and Jupiter. See Augustine, Harmony of the Evangelists 1.22.30. The erudite Pliny the Younger (61 C.E.-c.a.112 C.E.) is said to have believed in apparitions and dreams, and writes to his friend Sura of a haunted house in Athens (Plin. Ep. 7.27). There were persons who did not believe in the death of Nero, and anticipated his reappearance for generations (Seut. Nero 57). 15 Mary Beard, John North and Simon Price, Religions of Rome, 1.208–9. 13 14

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most beautiful votive offerings in the city. His name appeared alongside the gods Heracles and Apollo, and libations, sacrifice, and a hymn of praise were offered up to him.16 Similarly, Pompey received honors as a “savior” at Samos and Mytilene, and it may be that temples were built to house his cult.17

SEEING THE GOD AND THE MYSTERIES Influence from the East became officially marked in Rome by the building of the Temple of the Magana Mater on the Palatine in the late Republic. The Great Mother goddess cult was introduced from Phrygia in 204 B.C.E. Augustus probably restored her temple after a fire in 3 C.E.18 According to the Roman historian Livy (59 B.C.E.–17 C.E.), Roman troops struggling during the Second Punic War prompted among the populace “a wave of superstition…and stories of unnatural phenomena.” Livy writes how the appearance of two suns had been seen. Daylight had appeared at night and a strange noise, accompanied by a frightful crash, had been heard in the temple of Juno Sospita at Lanuvium.19 The Sibylline Books were consulted because it reportedly had rained stones that year more than usual. A prophecy appeared and was confirmed by the Delphic oracles that bringing to Rome the Cybele Idaean Mother of the Gods would drive out the foreign enemy.20 News of the Mother’s immanent arrival reached the Senate, which assigned the young man Publius Scipio, accompanied by the married women of Rome, to receive the goddess at the mouth of the Tiber.21 Although we know of various practices attached to the cult— including castration and blood baptism—the inner-temple rituals and experience as part of the Mysteries remain obscure. In his The Syrian Goddess (De Dea Syria), Lucian of Samosata (2d c. C.E.) provides a glimpse into the sanctuary of the temple of the Syrian Plutarch Flaminius 16.3–4. Mary Beard, John North and Simon Price, Religions of Rome, 1.147. 18 Mary Beard, John North and Simon Price, Religions of Rome, 1.197. 19 Livy History of Rome 29.14. 20 Livy History of Rome 29.10. 21 Livy History of Rome 29.14. 16 17

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goddess Hera. According to Marvin Meyer, Hera is thought to have similarities with the Great Mother of Phrygia.22 Lucian speaks of entering into the ambrosial fragrant temple and the inner chamber where only priests who are close to the gods go. The statues of the gods reside in this chamber: In the interior, the temple is not a single unit, for a second chamber has been made in it. The entry ramp to it is also short. It is not furnished with doors, but on the front it is completely open. All enter the large part of the temple, but into the chamber only the priests go, and not even all the priests, but only those who are particularly close to the gods and to whom the overall service of the temple is entrusted. In this chamber are the gods. (Lucian The Syrian Goddess 31)

Lucian describes the experience of seeing the god Hera who sits enthroned supported by two lions. The goddess in a manner which is kaleidoscopic “presents many different forms,” foremost as Hera, but also having aspects of Athena, Aphrodite, Selene, Rhea, Artemis, Menesis, and the Fates. She is overlayed with gold and precious gems of fiery colors, and bears a stone on her head from which a great light illuminates the temple (32). If you look the goddess directly in the eye it looks back at you, and as you move, its glance follows you (33). Lucian explains how when a god desires to deliver an oracle it moves in its throne and the priests immediately lift it upon their shoulders and carry it as it moves them like a charioteer. If the god approves of something it leads the carriers forward, and “in this way they collect the divine utterance” (36). Another author, Apuleius, in his entertaining 2d century C.E. novel The Golden Ass, writes of having to carry on his back the statue of the Mother Goddess. The goddess is dressed in a silkvestment, and the priests wear turbans and colorful gowns and have their faces “ruddied with cosmetics” (6.27). Apueleius says how he in his journey also has a visual experience of the “gazing Marvin W. Meyer, The Ancient Mysteries: A Sourcebook: Sacred Texts of the Mystery Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean World (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1987), 130. 22

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eyes” of the goddess Isis. He relates his awareness of the goddess Isis in the night: About the first watch of the night I awoke in sudden fright and saw, just emerging from the waves of the sea, the full circle of the moon glistening with extraordinary brilliance. Surrounded by the silent mysteries of the dark night, I realized that the supreme goddess now exercised the fullness of her power, that human affairs were wholly governed by her providence; that not only flocks and wild beasts but even lifeless things were quickened by the divine favor of her light and might…. (Apuleius Metamorphoses 11.1)

Apuleius goes to the sea to purify himself and then he offers a prayer to the goddess asking for her support and for rest and peace and an end to the toils which beset his life (11.2). He writes: When I had thus poured out my prayer and added pitiable lamentations, my fainting spirit was the more engulfed and overwhelmed by sleep on the same couch. I had hardly closed my eyes when suddenly from the midst of the sea a divine face emerged, displaying a countenance worthy of adoration even by the gods. Slowly it appeared, until its whole body came into view, and the brine shaken off, a radiant vision stood before me. (11.3)

Apuleius gives a detailed description of what appears to be a dream-vision of Isis who he sees “rise out of the scattered deep” (11.3). She has an abundance of hair, a crown of interlaced wreaths and varying flowers, and just above her brow two vipers holding a mirror emitting a soft clear light. Her garment is dyed many colors and her pitch-black cloak enfolding her sprinkled with burning stars “shone with a dark glow” (3). “Behold, Lucius,” she says, “moved by your prayer I come to you—I the natural mother of all life, the mistress of the elements, the first child of time, the supreme divinity…I who govern by my nod the crests of light in the sky…” (11.5). We can be grateful to have detailed, if exaggerated accounts of the inside of things with regard to the Mysteries. As Didorus

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Siculus says, “It is not lawful…for any but the initiated to hear about the mysteries.23 Other accounts of the Mysteries and seeing the god are not always so vivid. There may be what is a seeing of a “great light,” the mega phos, spoken of by, for example, Plutarch on the Eleusinian mysteries (Moralia 10). For the Orpic mysteries we have Euripides’ The Bacchae, where Dionysus appears as “a god incognito, disguised as a man, beside the stream of Dirce” (5.4–5). Some sources address more the visible rituals of the Mystery cults, like Livy’s description of the Bacchic orgies ultimately shut down by the Roman Senate in the 2d c. C.E.24 A public record of the regulations for practicing the Andanian Mysteries addresses such things as caring for the statues, the taking of oaths, procedures for ritual processing, and the management of monetary funds.25 We do, however, have a description of seeing the god Mithras of the Mithras cult in late antiquity. Lines 475–834 of the Great Magical Papyri of Paris relate a syncretistic liturgical spell based on magic and astrology for ascending to the god. Divided into two parts—the ascent of the soul (lines 475–750), and instructions for the use of the liturgy (lines 751–834)—the liturgy presents seven stages of ascent: 1. The four elements 2. The lower powers of the air 3. Aion and his powers 4. Helios, the sun 5. The seven Fates 6. The seven Pole-Lords 7. The highest god, portrayed like Mithras26 Of particular interest is the initiate’s visual encounter of Helios and Mithras. One recites the spell, upon which he will hear thundering and shaking. “Open your eyes, and you will see the doors open and the world of the gods which is within the doors” (PGM IV.625–6). The initiate is to stand still and look intently, Didorus Siculus Library of History 5.48.4. Livy History of Rome 39.8–19. 25 See Marvin W. Meyer, The Ancient Mysteries, 51–59. 26 Marvin W. Meyer, The Ancient Mysteries, 212. 23 24

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then “at once draw breath from the divine into yourself” (IV.629– 30). After speaking another formula, the rays of the god Helios will appear: “Look into the center and you will see a youthful god, beautiful in appearance, with fiery hair, and in a white tunic and a scarlet cloak, and wearing a fiery crown” (IV.634–37). The initiate is to greet the god immediately with the “fire-greeting” (IV.638). Further on the liturgy tells how the subject sees the god Mithras himself: “look in the air and you will see lightning-bolts going down, and lights flashing and a bright appearance, youthful, golden-haired, with a white tunic and a golden crown and trousers” (IV.694–99). The god holds in his right hand a golden shoulder of a young bull—the Bear which “moves and turns heaven around, moving upwards and downwards in accordance with the hour” (IV.701–03). Lightening bolts shoot from the eyes of the god and stars leap from his body (IV.704). The physical and sensate experience of the encounter becomes even more heightened by the initiate who is to respond immediately by making a long bellowing song to excite the five senses. Through incantation, singing, intoning, breathing rituals, the closing and opening of the eyes, and descriptive imagery initiates are drawn into the experience of the god. These practices become accentuated by strong contrasts of darkness and torchlight within the temple space which contains ritual movements. These elements make for an indelible impression, which is ultimately the aim of writers like Livy and Pliny the Elder, Apuleius and Ovid, along with the religious cults and their interest to attract membership.

COMMENTS AND OBSERVATIONS One of the first things which stands out in these accounts examined above is a certain resplendence of imagery: flowing purple robes and redolent face, winged figures, crowns, gold overlay, lions, precious gems and fiery colors. Such visual stimuli mix with ritual offerings, processions, dances, and ascensions to create sensate impressions which move worshipers and spectators and cause persons to write and speak about these things. One can well imagine how the mixing of dramatic presentation and ritual movement might cause participants to experience some kind of altered state of consciousness. When things of the real world no longer appear so real, the mind affords other ways of seeing and experiencing. I am struck by what is this crossing over between the

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human and the divine. Roman generals dressed in the garb of the god and are perceived themselves, if only temporarily, to be the god. Emperors ascend into divine realms to receive the honors of immortality and the worship of the people. In all of this there is the physical, mortal person somehow transposing into numen. It seems that the admixture of human and divine was perceived by the ancient world to be too penetrating to allow for the distant, abstract god. As E.R. Dodds notes, a human is a mortal god, and a god an immortal human.27 The statues of the gods do not occur as mere objects, but rather they are visually experienced as gods “alive,” returning the gaze, changing form, glowing diffuse colors, sweating, and speaking oracles to those having access to their secrets. Conjoined with this manifesting is the raw desire of people to see the living god in a way which is immediate and tangible. The ancients perceived their gods literally to embody statues in a range of sizes from colossal to those small enough to fit in one’s pocket. These statues appeared in public processions, temples and private homes, and as Robin Fox notes, they were sometimes anchored with chains to prevent escape.28 Fox further notes: The identification of the god and image was very strong at all levels of society, and on some of their statue basis, the gods are made to answer the old forms of prayers which had “summoned” them. “I am come,” they say, “standing always beside” the citizens, the Emperor or the people in the city gymnasium. We can understand why ambassadors, when they left their cities, took images of their gods to assist them, shipping them from Alexandria to Rome, or from Miletus to Syria.29

Certainly the gods in the temples and in their statues occur as an extension of the human psyche, anima and animus archetypes E.R. Dodds, Pagan and Christian in an Age of Anxiety: Some Aspects of Religious Experience From Marcus Aurelius to Constantine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965), 74. 28 Robin Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians, 135. 29 Robin Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians, 134. 27

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being projected and concretized in stone and wood and clay. The priest in the temple chamber dancing with the goddess Hera is really dancing with some aspect of himself. I wonder if he isn’t more in touch with his own mind and the potentialities of human experience than one who has been purged of all “seeing of the god” through the sole focus on reason which is so much part of the post-Enlightenment world? There is also the work of superstition in the ancient world as part of the making of these texts. Samuel Dills writes: “The wrath of the Lemures, the darkness of the inner forest, the flash of lightning, the flight of birds, the entrails of a sacrifice, excited many a fear.”30 Fear of the unknown moves one to want the security and protection of the gods.

SPELLS, POTIONS, AND SEEING THE GOD For a moment I want to move away from Greco-Roman cults per se, and to consider more the yearning of the ancient world to see the god at the grassroots level. Accessing the Papyri Graecae Magicae (2d c. B.C.E.–5th c. C.E.) will provide, where the Mysteries cannot, more insight into notions of divine encounter in the Hellenistic world. The PGM relates perhaps like no other ancient source the plethora and variety of Hellenistic magico-religious rituals and practices. Implicit to the collection is the over-arching human concern to connect with the gods for guidance and protection. The PGM shows at what ends one will go in order to secure divine favor. I have chosen from the overall PGM collection about forty spells and charms to work with, most having as their focus seeing the god. One thing is clear from just this selection of spells: influencing the gods can be hard work and quite physical. Texts require holding, grinding, making, traveling, tying, writing, mixing, wrapping, and more. There is also the acquiring of specific potion ingredients of plant, mineral, animal, and human materia, along with the rigors of such practices as fasting, bathing, sprinkling, anointing, vigilance, dream incubating, pouring wine libations, and incantation. In one case the suppliant is to “go to your quarters, 30 Samuel

Dill, Roman Society, 446.

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and shut yourself in.”31 Elsewhere for a revelation the subject is to tie broad chords of papyrus to the four corners of a room to form an X and at the center perform lamp rituals.32 Another text instructs the practitioner: “Go to sleep with your head toward the south. / Use this [spell] at the time of sunrise, when the moon is in Gemini.”33 PGM material is rooted in religious experience. Gods are summoned and there is little doubt that the gods will actually appear. Often there is a sense that the gods want to come forth to dwell in the company of the invoker, who then dismisses the god.34 There are also instances when the god must be contained until he is dismissed: “When he [the god] comes in, after greeting him, step with your left heel on the big toe of his right foot, and he will not / go away unless you raise your heel from his toe and at the same time say the dismissal.”35 Some of the spells focus upon the phenomenon of seeing through acquiring direct vision.36 One such spell requires anointing the eyes: “In a bronze cup over oil. Anoint / your right eye with water from a shipwreck and the left with Coptic eye paint, with the same water. If your cannot find water from a shipwreck, then from a sunken skiff.”37 Many of the spells require the sacrifice of animals and plants. One spell for obtaining a personal angel instructs the subject to take equal portions of “mud from your sandal, / of resin, and of the droppings from a white dove, and while speaking [the invocation], burn them as an offering to the Bear” (PGM VII.485–87). In a spell for a revelation one is to dismiss the god with an offering of the skin of a serpent (PGM XII. 159–60). One text for the god’s arrival specifies a three-lobed white garlic pierced with three iron needles set before the god as an offering 31 PGM

IV.70. IV.1085–1101. 33 PGM II.79; c.f. PGM II.11–13 34 PGM III.699; PGM V.57; PGM XII.159 35 PGM IV.1054–56; c.f. PGM V.56 36 PGM IV.930–1114; PGM VII.319–34; PGM III.633–731; PGM V.54–69 37 PGM V.65–69; c.f. PDM xiv.115; PDM xiv.1078–89 32 PGM

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(PDM xiv.37–38). Various references to ritual offerings in the magical papyri also show an inseparable connection with the Homeric world. One spell for an oracle cites 216 verses from the Iliad and Odyssey (PGM VII.1–148). It concludes: “Here ends the verses of the Homer oracle. May it help you!” The PGM spells and charms for revelation examined above evidence a variety of perceptions of spirit-world figures. These include Apollo Paian, Isis, mighty daimons, Helios, Re, Osiris, Hermes, Michael, a shadow, a personal angel, a god who is serpentfaced, and a Maiden with a torch. When through the spell or charm the god does appear, it might do so in a way that overwhelms. One text reads: “Then the deity will come to you, shaking the whole house and tripod before him” (PGM III.193). In another spell the god will appear and stand there “threatening you with weapons” (PGM IV.71). By contrast, there is the arrival of the god in the likeness of a priest in sandals (PDM xiv.101). Once the god arrives, suppliants, according to various spells, are to be calm (PGM IV.72), to be seen by the god,38 give greetings (PGM XIII.609), light the goddess’s torch or give her a sword (PGM XII.9–10), let the god dwell for seven days (PGM III.697), and to keep secrecy (PGM IV.76). One spell for bringing forth a god requires obtaining a stool of olive wood having four legs and “upon which no person on earth has ever sat (PDM xiv.94–95).39 The god will then appear seated on the stool “in impenetrable darkness in the midst of the great gods” (PDM XIVa.1). He will speak truthfully with his mouth opposite the mouth of the suppliant “concerning anything which you wish” (PGM XIVa.11). At the core of the PGM collection there is a preoccupation with incarnation. Spirit and earth are brought into inseparable PGM III.714; PDM xiv.238 The spell continues: “When you wish to make a god’s arrival…put the stool in a clean niche in the midst of the place, it being near your head; you should cover it with a cloth from its top to its bottom; you should put four bricks under the table before it, one above another, there being a censer of clay before it; you should put charcoal of olive wood on it; you should add wild goose fat pounded with myrrh and…you should recite this spell in Greek…and you should go to sleep” PDM xiv.97ff. 38 39

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relationship. One spell for a revelation instructs the suppliant to insert a strip of papyrus inscribed with a spell into a dough figurine of Hermes “for the purpose of inspiration” (PGM V.380–385). The Sacred Book of Moses gives a formula to resurrect a dead body: “I conjure you, sprit coming in air, entice, inspire, empower, resurrect by the power / of the eternal god, this body; and let it walk about in this place” (PGM XIII.277–82). Compare the Corpus Hermeticus which relates how “man not only receives the light of the divine life, but gives it also…[the gods] are manifestly generated from the purest part of matter” (Corp. Herm., Asclepius, 23b). In none of the spells examined here, however, is there a detailed and personal account of the suppliant’s immediate, face-toface experience of a god. Rather, the spells in their chants and mixing of ingredients prepare and enable one for seeing the god. Such orientation is based upon previously perceived encounters which become the basis of the verity of the prescribed formulae. One of the most direct accessing of a god is through ancient dream accounts. Lane Fox notes how it is in dreams that “pagans of all classes and backgrounds kept the closest company with the gods.”40 It is at this point that I want to look at a particular dream encounter by Aristides.

SEEING IN A DREAM: ARISTIDES AND THE ASCLEPIUS CULT In the Greco-Roman world if there is one figure who particularly stands out as “seeing the god” it is Aristides. A Greek rhetorician and sophist, Aelius Aristides (117–171 C.E.) over the course of 25 years wrote 130 of his dreams which he placed into his work he entitled the Sacred Tales.41 He searched for healing from illness Robin Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians, 150; Fox says that he is drawing from the fourth chapter of E.R. Dodds, Greeks and the Irrational (Boston: Beacon Press, 1951). 41 See Bruno Keil, Aelii Aristidis Smyrnaei quae supersunt omnia, vol. II (Berlin, 1898, reprint Berlin, 2000); Aristides, Orations, translated by W. Dindorf (Leipzig, 1829; reprint 1964); C.A. Behr, Aelius Aristides and the Sacred Tales (Amsterdam: Adolf M. Hakkert, 1968). E.R. Dodds conveniently divides this material into what he calls “anxiety dreams, 40

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which plagued much of his life from age 12.42 At one point illhealth cut short his stay in Rome where he was to declaim before the royal court. After having a revelation from the Greek god Asclepius, he entered into the Asclepius temple at Pergamum. He spent two years there, recording his dreams and taking prescribed medical treatments. The Asclepius cult has as its core the notion/phenomenon of divine encounter. One enters into the abaton, or “dream chamber,” in order to sleep and be encountered by the god Asclepius in dreaming. Emma and Ludwig Edelstein collected over fifty references to Asclepius by Aristides. About twenty of the testimonies refer to some aspect of the cult itself: attendants, sacrifice, festivals, purification rites, sacrifice, etc. Some fifteen other testimonies make reference to medicine and healing. Other testimonies refer to sanctuary rites and the deification of Asclepius. This range of testimonies provides a helpful cross-sectioning of Asclepius cult practices. However, the following discussion also draws from the dream memoir Aristides’ Sacred Tales, since Edelstein’s presentation of Aristides is not exhaustive. In one of his dreams while at the Pergamum Asclepius sanctuary, Aristides records how he stood in the propylaea (front porch) of the Asclepius Temple—reference probably to a temple initiation ritual.43 In the dream Aristides sees clearly the remedy, apsinthion (wormwood), to treat his illness. The dream continues: I thought that I stood within the entrance of the temple and that many others had assembled, just as when a purification

megalomaniac dreams, and divine dreams.” E.R. Dodds, Pagan and Christian, 39–45. Aristides says that the god approved of his speeches, “calling them the Sacred Tales.” C.A. Behr, Aelius Aristides, 2.10. The Sacred Tales consist of Orations 47–52. 42 Aristides Oratio 52.1. From Emma J. Edelstein and Ludwig Edelstein, Asclepius: Collection and Interpretation of the Testimonies (Baltimore and London: John Hopkins University Press, 1998, 1945), T400, p. 202. Citations to the Edelstein’s Asclepius in this discussion here and below are to volume one. 43 Cf. Apueleius Metamorphoses 9.

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takes place, and that they were clad in white and otherwise too in suitable fashion. It [sc., the remedy] was revealed in the clearest way possible, just as countless other things also made the presence of the god manifest. For I seemed almost to touch him and to perceive that he himself was coming, and to be half way between sleep and waking and to want to get the power of vision and to be anxious lest he depart beforehand, and to have turned my ears to listen, sometimes as in a dream, sometimes as in a waking vision, and my hair was standing on end and tears of joy came forth, and the weight of knowledge was no burden—what person could even set these things forth in words? But if he is one of the initiates, then he knows and has understanding. After these things had been seen, when it was dawn, I summoned the doctor Theodotus. And when he came, I recounted my dreams to him. He marveled at how divine they were, and was at a loss as to what he should do, since he feared the excessive weakness of my body in winter time. For I lay indoors during many successive months. Therefore we thought that it was no worse to send also for the temple warden Asclepiacus. (Aristides, Oratio 48, 31–35)44

Aristides’ account references what is possibly an incubation dream45 in which he has been prepared and contained (“formed”) within the dream chamber abaton of the Pergamon Asclepius temple. This is the place where the god Asclepius himself sleeps and makes himself known. As location for dreams and the processes of dreaming, the abaton of the Asclepius temple materially and symbolically serves as a “vessel” or “womb” for dream experience.46 Dreamers submit themselves to the inner From Edelstein, Asclepius, T486, p. 278; T417, pp. 210–11. His reference to the temple attendant at the end of the dream suggest a temple-abaton experience. 46 Cf. the spell to establish a relationship with Helios which refers to the “womb of all knowledge” and is pregnant through the father’s begetting, PGM III.602ff. Cf. Ro. 9.22; Hermas Sim. 9.5.4; Vis. 2.4.2. In symbolic and material terms, Jung refers to the “natural vessel” of coniunctio. C.G. Jung, Mysterium Coinunctionis, translated by R.F.C. Hull 44 45

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chamber specifically designed to facilitate unconscious life. It is this processing to which Aristides refers and which has resonance only for those persons (ton tetelesmenon, “initiates”) who intimately know such Asclepius temple processes through personal experience. Even then, such knowledge will have its own unique characteristics from one experience to another. In the end, Aristides is ultimately alone in his encounter with the god in his dream, and one hears Aristides’ attempt to share as much as he can with the waking world his experience of seeing the god.

EPIPHANY “EXPERIENCE”: SEEING THE GOD Not unlike Apulieus and his dream-revelation of the appearance of Isis, Aristides speaks of some kind of dream “experience” in which something has happened to him, and has been revealed to him (edelothe). His description of the experience, which yields the remedy (wormwood), has two main emphasis. First, the experience has a personal connotation. A divine secret is given and brought to conscious awareness within the receiver/initiate. Aristides claims that he has had many of these “revelations” where “wondrous visions (thaumasta phantasmata) came repeatedly”47 over the course of his life. He notes that somehow his own struggle with health (and career) has procured many varied lives through the power of the god: I myself am one of those who have lived not twice but many varied lives through the power of the god, and consequently one of those who think that sickness for this reason is advantageous and who moreover have acquired precious gems in return for which I would not accept all that which is considered happiness among men.” (Oratio 23.17)

(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963), 460. Von Franz likens the vessel to the “belly of the ‘closed house,’” or the coffin of the Egyptian mummy undergoing the process of resurrection. Marie-Louise von Franz, Alchemy: An Introduction to the Symbolism and the Psychology (Toronto, Canada: Inner City Books, 1980, 1959), 159. 47 Aristides Oratio 52.1. From Edelstein, Asclepius, T400, p. 202.

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Aristides also says that the experience of the remedy happened in “the clearest way possible.” The use of the word “clear perception” (enargestata) connotes the impressionable quality of his seeing the god, and his words suggest the immediacy of the revelation which is still quite present with him.48 Much of Aristides’ writings as a whole are a testimony to the (collective) lingering impression of his Asclepius dream experiences in which he relates the images, interactions, instructions and prescriptions of the god. These kind of dream experiences have a poignant quality about them. They point to what Masud Khan calls a “good dream.”49 Similarly, in Homer’s Odyssey Penelope has a dream experience in which a phantom (hamauros) appears to her while she sleeps, and in the morning she knows something significant has happened to her.50 The dream of Aristides has shaken him, and one has the sense of its disorienting force which is quite alive even as he puts it into words.

BODY EXPERIENCE AND SEEING THE GOD For I seemed almost to touch him and to perceive that he himself was coming . . . and my hair was standing on end and tears of joy came forth . . . . (Aristides Oratio 48.1)

Of another dream he remarks: “I marveled at the precision of the dream.” Behr, Aelius Aristides, 5.50. 49 M. Masud R. Khan, “Beyond the Dreaming Experience,” in Hidden Selves: Between Theory and Practice in Psychoanalysis (New York: International University Press, 1974), 42. 50 She wakes, “and her heart was warmed with comfort, so clear a vision (enarges oneiron) had sped to her in the darkness of night” (Od. 4.840). The author of Hebrews speaks of the “active” (enarges) and living word of God (Hb. 4.12). The “clear perception” of revelation may include an element of shock and horror, as with appearance of the monster of the river to Deianiara (Soph. Tr. 11). 48

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Aristides’ dream occurs in inextricable relation with the body.51 In his description of his dream he seems to touch (haptesthai) the god, suggesting bodily form and shape of both deity and dreamer. The word hapto has the meaning of an intimate encounter which is brought to conscious recognition.52 The physicality of the dream experience becomes more apparent as Aristides’ hair in the dream is aroused and lifts straight up (triches opthai) from his body, telling of the sensual, responsive nature of the event.53 He also has tears of joy (dakrua sun chara) in the dream. Sensation of touch, sight, feeling, wetness (tears) and arousal constitute the content of the dream, which is itself an experience of the body. This physical aspect of Aristides’ dream occurs elsewhere in his recordings. He writes: “I was in the warm bath, and bending forward I saw that my lower intestinal tract was in a rather strange state” (1.8)54 . . . “I dreamed that some Parthians had got me in their power, and one of them approached me and made as if to brand me. Next he inserted a finger in my throat and poured in something . . .” (1.9) . . . “There was a dream that a bone was annoying me and there was need to expel it, and a notion of drawing blood from the ankles” (1.28). For Aristides, there is no separation between body and seeing the god. Knowledge of one happens through the other, and it is because of the body—here its breakdown and the threat to the For a reading of Aristides’ dreaming which ties more into oratory and text see Patricia Cox Miller, Dreams in Late Antiquity: Studies in the Imagination of a Culture (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994). 52 This nuance occurs also in Homer, e.g., where the old woman, Odysseus’ nursemaid, feels the scar on his leg, and with joy and tears “touched the chin of Odysseus (hapsamene geneiou), and said ‘Surely you are Odysseus, dear child’” (Il. 19.473). The bodily reference of hapto may also refer to the ingestion of food and drink. See Circe who inquires of Odysseus why he does not “touch” his food or drink (Od. 10.379); cf. Thucid. 2.50; Col. 2.21. For healing by the “touch of the hand,” Mk. 10.13; Lk. 18.15; Mt. 8.3; 17.7, etc. 53 Cf. the “rearing” (orthai) of the horse in Hdt. 5.171; 9.2. 54 Texts are from C.A. Behr, Aelius Aristides, pp.205–11. 51

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integrity of its existence—that he immerses himself in the Asclepius temple system to dream. The body functions as a vehicle, or locus for seeing the god. In the experience his dream-making unconscious interacts with soma, which in a way takes on properties of the psyche (and visa-versa). The cross-over between dream and reality, between unconscious and conscious suggests a transference where body is no longer body but has become psyche as well. Somewhere within this mixture healing experience occurs.

SEEING THE GOD AND ACTING OUT At the very beginning of his encounter Aristides makes reference to the “remedy” which is apsinthion (wormwood). He offers no details as to the constitution of the drug, but later talks of actually drinking it, as instructed by the god and confirmed by the dream of the temple warden, Philadelphus. Aristides may have diluted the drug with vinegar “so he would not be nauseated” (II.30).55 In modern times it has been used to make “absinthe,” which can cause madness or death with habitual use.56 Wormwood therefore has both restorative and harmful potential. It is both a curative and a poison. Healing occurs somewhere within these “opposites.” Just how prescriptions are to be carried out, such as the duration of patient exposure to these treatments, is not made clear. The drug wormwood has a visceral focus, being a known vermifuge used to expel worms and other parasites from the intestinal tract. Possibly Aristides suffered from some kind of Cf. Amos 5.7; 6.2; Dt. 29.17. The remedy “wormwood” identified by Aristides is a well-known Mediterranean biennial or perennial herb. It has a pungent odor and a strong bitter taste. The Greek philosopher and botanist Theophrastus (c. 372-c. 287 B.C.) speaks of its bitter stalk and leaf which are beneficial if ingested (7.9.5). By contrast, ancient Jewish writings connect a negative connotation to wormwood (la hanae, also meaning “hemlock”), and often used it figuratively to mean “bitter things. 56 The French and Swiss use wormwood to make absinthe, a potent spirit which is said to create pleasant sensations and inspire a sense of grandiosity. Habitual use however brings on a stupor, and can lead to death. See also Harold N. Moldenke and Alma L. Moldenke, Plants of the Bible (New York: Dover, 1952), 48–49. 55

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intestinal disorder, something he often complains about.57 It appears that he consumed the drug for its medicinal properties, rather than its hallucinatory effect. However, it is not unreasonable to speculate the use of some types of pharmakon to help sick patrons fall to sleep to dream in a temple abaton. Its uncertain to what extent hallucinatory drugs were used. Following his wormwood dream Aristides pursues the remedy, actually ingesting the wormwood potion, and in this way “acts out” his dream. There exists a willingness on the part of Aristides to hear unquestionably the message of the dream, and to be attentive to its revelation: Now we used the curative, and I drank as much as no one before, and again on the next day as the god gave the same signs. Why should one describe the ease in drinking it, or how much it helped?58

Aristides makes concrete in the waking world the experience of seeing the god, and this way reflects the Asclepius cult emphasis placed upon “doing” what the god in the dream is interpreted to say. Suppliants enter the dream chamber in order to obtain literal, applicable “treatment”—that is, to embrace some healing action. They come to Asclepius sanctuaries to undergo an act of “salvation” through dreams and the application of drugs and therapies.59 There appears to be no sense of merely relating with dreams as “symbols,” as might occur in modern dream interpretation and therapy. This “literal” use of dreaming is part of the ancient mindset which perceives the supernatural tangibly and immediately active in a “universe steeped in sacredness.”60 The For example, Behr, Aelius Aristides, 1.5, 9, 27, 45, etc. Behr, Aelius Aristides, 2.35–36. 59 This emphasis on “doing” according to the instructions of Asclepius occurs throughout the dreams in Aristides’ Sacred Tales. See for example, Behr, Aelius Aristides, 2. 18ff., 48ff., 80; 3.21, 24, 25, 27, 31, 36, etc. 60 Mircea Eliade, The Forge and the Crucible: the Origins and Structures of Alchemy, translated by Stephen Corrin (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1956), 143. 57 58

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deity Asclepius dwells in the abaton, presents himself in the sleeper’s dream, and brings about physical healing by physical, materia connection. For the ancients Asclepius has tangible presence in human life.61

SEEING THE GOD Aristides offers a personal, detailed account of seeing the god. Through this we are brought near to various aspects of encounter experience. He gives us a glimpse into his inner world as it is moved and contained as part of religious ritual and of taking seriously the unconscious realm in relation to the conscious world. In this way Aristides and the Asclepius cult are in keeping with the Mystery cults so present during the same time period, with their focus upon seeing the god through inner experiences contained and informed by ritual practices and liturgy. One key word which describes these cults and their practices, as well as the other GrecoRoman encounters examined above, is “dramatic.” The war hero appears as the god Jupiter paraded through the heart of Rome. The emperor is portrayed with wings ascending into the realm of the gods. The goddess Isis appears resplendent and terrifying. Elaborate rituals set out in the Greek Magical Papyri draw and hold forth the god and the divine revelation. Strong contrasts, bold colors, cosmic depictions, and perhaps most of all, the crossing over between god and human establish a religio-cultural context which is alive, anticipating, and potent. At the base level is the human need not to feel alone in the midst of an overwhelming world, giving expression not only to a deep need to have a greater awareness, but also to the realization of having access to immortality and seeing the god.

This includes speaking to Aristides through the dreams and visions of other persons, such as Philadelphus (see above, Behr, Aelius Aristides, 2.29–36). See also 3.14ff.; 4.23, 42. 61

VISIONS AND VIOLENCE: SEEING GOD IN THE NAG HAMMADI CODICES1 CELENE LILLIE Following a consideration of the Graeco-Roman and New Testament context from which the Nag Hammadi material issues, six specific texts receive attention. In The Secret Revelation of John vision occurs on a mountain and Jesus appears in morphing forms, the teaching content of the work drawing especially from the Book of Genesis. In the First Revelation of James the resurrected Jesus appears in bodily form to James on “the mountain called Gaugela.” Through the encounter Jesus prepares James for his [James'] own suffering and martyrdom. The Second Revelation of James relates a priest’s report of James’s account of the Lord’s teachings. The Secret Revelation of James presents the appearance of the Savior to the twelve disciples, and includes his ascent with Peter and James. In the Wisdom of Jesus Christ twelve disciples and seven women followers of Jesus ascend a mountain called “Prophecy and Joy” where the Savor appears to them. In The Letter of Peter to Philip Peter re-gathers the disciples on a mountain called Olivet Many thanks to John McGuckin and Jeff Pettis for inviting me to be a part of Seeing the God conference, and for the feedback of all of those who participated. Special thanks to Hal Taussig and Lisa Radakovich Holsberg for their encouragement, close editing, and critiques, with additional thanks to Jeff Pettis for his editing. All of these people have contributed greatly to this paper, all its faults are solely my own. 1

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CELENE LILLIE where Jesus then ascends amidst lightening and thunder from heaven. The subject of visions and violence in these six Nag Hammadi texts then receives attention. Jesus resurrected/ascended appears in order to instruct and comfort believers as they, like him, face violence of persecution. This includes the telling of cosmogonic stories as a way of rooting Jesus’ followers within the universe and to explain the ruling forces against them. The inner spiritual life of the followers is emphasized, along with a disassociation with the body which will be harmed.

The Gospel of Matthew closes with the risen Jesus speaking to the disciples on a mountain in Galilee. Jesus tells them to go “and make disciples of all the nations,” and in turn to teach the nations all he has taught them. His final words are, “And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age,” (Matt 28:16–20).2 While writings like that of Paul assumed the return of Jesus and the coming of the kingdom would be imminent, “the end of the age” did not come as soon as many expected. Over the next decades, the small group of Jesus followers grew, and their message and practice of community, table fellowship, healing, and encounter with the one God and his son Jesus, the Anointed One, spread throughout the Mediterranean. As this message spread to diverse groupings across the Roman Empire, stories of Jesus’ life, teachings, early followers, and crucifixion and resurrection were told and retold, elaborated and recast. Drawing on traditions, oral and sometimes written “histories,” recollections were added to and changed, making them relevant for their times and places. An important element in many of these changing “narratives”3 was the promise of Jesus’ continuing presence. This continuing presence was at times envisioned through encounters with the risen Jesus/Christ, and this essay seeks to explore “seeing God” through All New Testament quotations are from the NRSV unless otherwise noted. 3 I put the word “narrative” in quotations here to signal that this literature contains a wide variety of genres, including but not limited to narrative, epistolary, sayings, etc. 2

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these visions in the Nag Hammadi Codices. Unearthed in Egypt in 1945, the Nag Hammadi codices are a group of 52 texts primarily written between the 2nd and 4th centuries C.E. in the Coptic language. The codices contain a wide variety of texts (including a portion of Plato’s Republic) and are primarily “Christian”4 in nature. Some of these texts were previously known only through works of the early church fathers, such as Irenaeus, and others were entirely unknown. In order to explore divine encounters, seeing god, in this group of texts, I focus primarily on those which contain postresurrection visions of Jesus—often simply referred to as Savior or Lord. Here, I survey six texts that portray extended encounters with the risen Jesus/Christ: the Secret Revelation of John, the First and Second Revelations of James, the Secret Revelation of James, the Wisdom of Jesus Christ, and the Letter of Peter to Philip.5 I put the word “Christian” in quotes here not to distinguish these works from canonical texts, but because what was considered “Christian” at this point encompassed extremely diverse groups with wide ranging beliefs and did not constitute a coherent identity. See, for example, Daniel Boyarin, Border Lines: The Partition of Judaeo-Christianity (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004) and Judith M. Lieu, Christian Identity in the Jewish and Graeco-Roman World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). 5 All Nag Hammadi translations are from Marvin Meyer, The Nag Hammadi Scriptures: The International Edition (San Francisco: HarperOne, 2007). These were the texts with what I saw as the most explicit visions of Jesus in the Nag Hammadi codices. While the Book of Thomas and the Dialogue of the Savior appear to be post-resurrection dialogues, there is no vision in these texts per se. Other texts, like the Acts of Peter and the Twelve Apostles and the Revelation of Peter have visions, but in the first case, this is a very different type of narrative, and in the second, the visionary experience comprises little of the narrative account. Books like the Secret Revelation of Paul and Allogenes contain ascent narratives; for an excellent discussion of this see Karen L. King’s “Hearing, Seeing, and Knowing God: Allogenes and the Gospel of Mary,” in Early Christian Voices In Texts, Traditions, and Symbols: Essay’s in Honor of François Bovon, eds. David H. Warren, Ann Graham Brock, and David W. Pao (Boston: Brill, 2003), 319–331. Texts outside of Nag Hammadi, like the Gospel of Mary 4

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There are several themes that emerge from juxtaposing these six texts together. First, in each of these texts there is generally little anxiety in “the fact of” the divine encounter. While fear or awe may be associated with the vision or encounter, its occurrence is not shocking to the one experiencing it, and in several cases the vision is anticipated or brought about through prayer. Second, the actual visionary experience is unique to each text. For example, in one account, the Secret Revelation of John, the heavens open, all creation is lit up, the world shakes and the Savior appears as a single figure, morphing in form; in another, the Wisdom of Jesus Christ, he is “an invisible spirit, a great angel of light” that the writer, “must not describe as mortal flesh could not bear it;” in many other texts he simply “appears” with no further explanation, though several of these occur in the same type of location—on a mountain top. Third, while Jesus appears in different manners and forms, each of these texts is structured around some kind of dialogue between the risen Jesus and one or more of his followers— primarily apostolic figures familiar from New Testament sources, including Peter, Mary Magdalene, Philip, Judas, James and others. And fourth, all of these texts address the issue of persecution in some way, the encounters with the risen Lord giving an opportunity for him to teach, clarify, comfort and provide an example of life despite coming face to face with violent death, as Jesus himself had on the cross. Indeed, these texts underscore that crucifixion was not a singular event per se, but that it and other various forms of violence that occurred—in places from the arenas of the ancient world to areas where Roman legions were stationed to keep local populations under control—were part of the everyday lived realities of many peoples in the empire. This reality of violence, of perceived or actual bodily vulnerability, was a part of the lived experience of early Jesus/Christ communities. Why might divine encounter, specifically an experience of the risen Jesus, be paired with questions of persecution and violence? In order to explore these themes further, I first look at the and the Gospel of Judas were not included because of the scope of this essay.

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visionary experiences in these texts and how they are portrayed, contextualizing them both in terms of their Graeco-Roman milieu and other examples of encounters with the risen Jesus/Christ within the New Testament. Using this as a frame, the second portion of the essay addresses questions of violence within the Nag Hammadi texts, situating them within the cultural/social/historical contexts of the same period.

VISION: THE ENCOUNTER WITH THE DIVINE The works in Nag Hammadi containing encounters with the risen Jesus/Christ, as do all “texts,”6 draw on the resources of experiences, memories, stories, and histories, reflecting the social and cultural environments from which they emerge. The texts in this corpus portraying visions of the risen Jesus/Christ are quite varied, and the risen Jesus/Christ shows up in all kinds of ways. But despite the varied presentations of these visions, resonances can be seen with both the general Graeco-Roman and more specific “New Testament” milieus.7 As stated earlier, there seems to be little anxiety associated with having visionary encounters in the Nag Hammadi corpus, and while fear and awe may be associated within the experience of the vision, it does not seem to be shocking that the vision itself occurs. The number of visionary encounters in these texts attests to this and also reflects that various types of divine encounter were somewhat commonplace in popular religiosity—or at least not held as improbable. While certain philosophers speculated on appropriate forms of piety,8 for the populous at large, contact with beings from daemons to gods was ubiquitous. Whether through encounters with household deities, guidance from personal “Text” here is used in its widest possible meaning—from written documents to monuments and artworks to human beings. 7 The New Testament corpus was not finalized until the 4th century C.E., so using this term here is anachronistic. It is also important to note that the texts that would eventually comprise the New Testament were also formed in the Graeco-Roman milieu. 8 See Dale B. Martin, Inventing Superstition: From the Hippocratics to the Christians (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004). 6

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daemons, rites to receive guidance from Asclepius,9 or rituals to appease the Olympian or local gods, the spiritual realm was as present as the material, often with the spiritual and material mutually infused or confused with one another. Daemons had the potential to affect people and could, for instance, cause illness or cure it; the gods’ energies were manifest in the happenings of the cosmos. Communication with the gods, while not always deemed easy—people would often need to perform elaborate rituals and prove their purity and worthiness—was considered an ordinary working of the world.10 Visionary encounters, especially those with the risen Jesus are found throughout the New Testament as well. Each of the four gospels has some type of post-resurrection encounter between Jesus and various disciples,11 as do other many other New Testament texts like the Acts of the Apostles, several of the Pauline letters and the Book of Revelation. Just as in the Nag Hammadi texts, the encounters with the risen Jesus are often quite varied but do share some similar motifs that generally occur across the range of this material. In order to explore intertextual echoes and further situate the Nag Hammadi texts under consideration, I first look at the New Testament literature, specifically the gospels and Acts, and their post-resurrection accounts of Jesus/Christ. The longer ending of the gospel of Mark portrays Jesus as first appearing to Mary Magdalene (16:9–11) and then “in another form to two of them as they were walking into the country” (16:12).12 In both cases, when the witnesses report the encounter to other followers they do not believe. Finally, Jesus appears to the disciples (“he rebuked their distrust and hardheartedness because they did not believe the ones who saw him after he had been raised” See Jeffrey Pettis’s essay in this volume for a thorough investigation of seeing god/s in the Greco-Roman cult. 10 See Robin Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1987), especially chapter 4 “Seeing the Gods.” 11 Though the appearance of the risen Jesus in Mark 16:9–20 was a later addition. 12 In the shorter ending of Mark’s gospel (16:1–8), after encountering the angel at the tomb the women flee in “terror and amazement.” 9

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16:15)13 and sends them to proclaim the good news to “all the world” and “the whole of creation” (16.15). After this Jesus ascends into heaven, sitting at the right hand of God, while continuing “to work with them, confirming the word through the accompanying signs” (16:20). In this short account of Jesus’ postresurrection appearances, he appears differently to different people, and there is no indication what type of resurrection this actually is—no mention is made of the physicality of his form as occurs in the other three gospels. It is also interesting that while in the shorter ending of Mark the women flee the tomb “in terror and amazement,” (16:8) no fear accompanies Jesus’ visitation to the disciples—though they are chastised for their unbelief. Of note is the fact that though he has ascended, his ongoing presence continues to be manifest. In the Gospel of Matthew, as with Mark, the resurrected Jesus first appears to the women at the tomb, in this case Mary Magdalene and the “other Mary.” As they are running to tell the disciples of the empty tomb and the message from the angel, they encounter Jesus, grab his feet and worship him (28:1–9). Jesus tells them not to be afraid and then echoes the words of the angel at the tomb, instructing the women that the disciples should meet him in Galilee (28:10). In this gospel, the only one where the disciples apparently believe the women, they go to the Galilean mountain as Jesus directed them. Jesus comes to them there and gives them final instructions to “make disciples of all nations and baptize them” (28:19), and telling them, “remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age,” (28:20). Unlike the ambiguity of Mark, some kind of physical resurrection seems to be implied when the women grab Jesus’ feet, though this physicality is not stressed as much as it is in John and Luke. Here the disciples seem to believe the women’s words and do not need the further proof that is necessary in John and Luke. They follow the women’s instructions and, echoing scenes in the Hebrew Bible (and the location of the transfiguration where Jesus appearance morphs and becomes

13

My translation.

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dazzling as he speaks to Moses and Elijah),14 encounter the resurrected Jesus on a mountain top where he sends them to preach the good news and promises his continuing presence. Mary Magdalene is the first follower to encounter the risen Jesus in the Gospel of John. Like the “two in the country” in Mark, there is a case of mistaken identity as Mary in her distress mistakes Jesus for the gardener. When he calls her by name she turns and recognizes him, and Jesus tells her to announce to the disciples that he is ascending (20:11–18). Despite Mary’s witness, they do not believe and fearfully lock themselves in a house. While they are secured in the house, Jesus appears and stands among them saying, “Peace be with you,” then showing them his hands and feet. He commissions them saying, “As the Father has sent me, so I send you,” and breathes the Holy Spirit into them (20:19–23). Thomas, who for some reason is not locked in with the rest of the disciples, does not believe their story. He says will not believe unless he can see and touch Jesus’ wounds for himself. A week later Jesus comes to them again, this time with Thomas present, and again says, “Peace be with you.” He invites Thomas to touch his wounds and with this act Thomas believes that it is Jesus (20:24–29). In a final appearance, Jesus comes to his disciples by the Sea of Tiberias. Once again, there is a case of mistaken identity as Jesus gives them fishing advice from the shore. Following his advice they catch more fish than they can haul, and the “disciple whom Jesus loved” realizes it is “the Lord.” Jesus tells the disciples to come and have breakfast with him, and he gives them bread and fish (21:1– 13). Jesus then pulls Peter aside and tells him three times to “tend his lambs” and “feed his sheep” (21:15–17). Jesus then tells him that “when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will fasten a belt around you and take you where you Visions often happen on a mountain in both the First and Second Testaments of the bible, e.g. Moses encounters God through the burning bush on the mountain of Horeb in Exodus 3; God speaks to Moses and the Israelites from a mountain in Exodus 19; In Exodus 24 and 34 he receives the commandments from God on mountains; Jesus’ transfiguration in Mark 9, Matthew 17, and Luke 9 also occurs on a mountain. 14

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do not wish to go” (21:18). The narrator explains that Jesus “said this to indicate the kind of death by which he would glorify God.” Jesus closes by telling Peter, “Follow me,” (21:19). Peter then asks about the “disciple Jesus loved,” to which he replies, “If it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you? Follow me!” (21:20). The gospel ends with the narrator saying that “there are also many other things Jesus did; if every one of them were written down, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written,” (21:25). Similar to the Markan account, the Gospel of John contains both cases of mistaken identity and the refusal of the disciples to believe in the resurrection without proof. Unique to John, they demand physical proof that Jesus has risen which is provided by touching his physical body. The emphasis on physicality is more pronounced here than in Matthew, but less so than in Luke. Jesus offers them peace, and then, as in the other accounts, sends the disciples to teach—though to whom in this case is not specified. The Gospel of John also remains fairly ambiguous as to exactly what becomes of Jesus and his connection to the disciples after the resurrection. Their connection is highlighted before his crucifixion when Jesus tells them: “I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you,” (14:20). This connection is also emphasized with the introduction of the advocate or paraclete who “abides with you, and will be in you” (14:17) and will accompany them “forever.”15 At the gospel’s end, Jesus remains with the disciples and it is clear from his final exchange with Peter that he will certainly come again. Finally, in Luke, “two men in dazzling clothes” appear to Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James and “other women.” Again, as in Mark and John, when the women tell the apostles that the tomb is empty they do not believe them, and Peter runs to the tomb to see for himself. Upon seeing the empty tomb with the linens lying on their own he returns home, “amazed

Cf. John 14:16, 26; 15:26; 16:7. While in John’s gospel, the advocate/paraclete is sent to his followers by Jesus from the Father, it is interesting to note that in the letter of I John the advocate/paraclete for followers with the Father, is Jesus himself (2:1). 15

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at what had happened” (24:1–12).16 On the same day, Jesus appears to “two of them” who are traveling to Emmaus discussing all that has happened with Jesus (24:13–14).17 Then, Jesus “comes near” and begins to travel with them though, as with “the two in the country” in Mark and Mary Magdalene in John, “their eyes were kept from recognizing him.” He proceeds to ask about their conversation and they tell him about the trial, crucifixion and empty tomb (24:15–27). As they enter the village, Jesus acts as if he is going on ahead and they invite him to stay with them. They eat together and as Jesus breaks the bread and blesses it “their eyes were opened, and they recognized him; and he vanished from their sight,” (24:28–31). The two immediately return to Jerusalem to inform the eleven of their encounter, and as they are speaking with the eleven, Jesus is suddenly among them saying, “Peace be with you.” The disciples were “startled and terrified, and thought that they were seeing a ghost.” To prove to them that he is Jesus, literally “in the flesh,” he tells them to look at his hands and feet and to touch him, then eats a piece of fish in their presence (24:36– 43). Jesus then tells them to proclaim “repentance and forgiveness of sins” to “all the nations” and is carried up into heaven. Luke uses many motifs found in the other canonical gospel stories: mistaken identity,18 the offering of peace,19 and the sending of the apostles to the nations.20 While Matthew and John, to differing degrees, emphasize the physicality of the resurrected Jesus, Luke’s gospel places the most emphasis on his physicality, not only by allowing the disciples to touch him, but by taking in food. Of the four canonical gospel narratives, Luke’s Jesus departs with seemingly the most finality—though this is somewhat misleading as it is commonly held that Luke is only part one of the Some scholars think that 24:12 is an interpolation based on John 20. This is the first appearance of the risen Jesus in Luke, and the only account in which he does not first appear to the women. Cf. Mark 16:12– 13. 18 Cf. Mark and John. 19 Cf. John. 20 Cf. Mark and Matthew; again, while John commissions them, it is not specified to whom the disciples are sent. 16 17

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arc of Luke-Acts, and in the Acts of the Apostles the risen Jesus again plays a prominent role, thereby stressing the ongoing encounters between Jesus and his followers. In Acts 1:9 Jesus is lifted up into the heavens, but Stephen, Peter, Paul and others all have visions of him after his ascension, though not in the bodily form portrayed at the end of Luke. Filled with the Holy Spirit, Stephen sees the heavens open and Jesus standing at the right side of God just before he is stoned (7:55–56); Paul, at this point still Saul, sees a sudden flash of light from heaven as he approaches Damascus and he (as well as his companions) hears a voice from heaven, identifying itself as that of Jesus (9:3–7); “the Lord” also speaks to the disciple Ananias, telling Ananias of Paul’s arrival and how to heal his sight (9:10–16); and Peter, in Acts 10, goes to the rooftop of a house to pray and sees a vision of a tablecloth filled with unclean animals, hearing the voice of “the Lord” tell him to “kill and eat” what he wishes and that “what God has made clean, you must not call profane.” In Acts, while not explicitly stated as in the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus’ continuing presence is an integral part of the Acts narrative, though not stated as explicitly as in the gospel of Matthew. Much like the Gospel of John, his continuing presence is signaled by his actual presence within the narrative itself—not by merely stating he will “be with them always” but through his ongoing presence in the narrative. A unique feature of Acts is its inclusion of new instruction by the risen Jesus/Lord. While the four gospel accounts all give the instruction to spread the good news, there is no further clarification of Jesus’ teachings. Other “signs,” such as those at the end of the Gospel of John, are given but they do not generally provide new information regarding the instructions of Jesus for the continuing community. Peter’s vision of the table cloth descending, accompanied by the voice of the Lord, does just this—it provides a new community “commandment” regarding eating that has not previously been mentioned in the earthly ministry of Jesus, though can be argued to be in line with his earthly teachings. Overall, many commonalities and differences occur within the New Testament texts themselves. While they contain resonances with one another on some of the details, on others they diverge, using their own sources and stories. As with the broader GraecoRoman milieu, the New Testament texts narrate an ongoing

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interaction between the human and divine. In their more specific context of encounters with the risen Jesus/Christ they provide examples of his continuing presence, attested to through both Jesus’ own words as well as his physical (however this happens to manifest) presence. Acts in particular points to the continuation of new teachings by Jesus/Christ through continuing revelation of him by members of the Jesus/Christ community. These themes are found within the six texts from the Nag Hammadi corpus as well, and it is to these I turn now. The Secret Revelation of John is a post-resurrection revelation of Jesus more in the vein of something like the canonical book of Revelation although different in content. It is primarily a cosmogony helping its hearers/readers understand where they come from, their place in the world, and how salvation is attained. The book begins with John and his brother James, the sons of Zebedee, at the Jerusalem temple. A Pharisee approaches them asking, “Where is your teacher, whom you followed?” to which John replies, “He has returned to the place he came from.” The Pharisee then tells him, “This Nazarene really has deceived you, filled your ears with lies, closed [your minds], and turned you from the traditions of your ancestors,” (1,5–17).21 Upon hearing this, John departs and goes to “a mountainous and barren place,” (1,19). Distressed, he begins to ask questions about who the Savior was and why he came. As he was thinking about these questions, “the heavens opened, all creation under heaven lit up, and the world shook. I was afraid, and look, I saw within the light [someone standing] by me. As I was looking, it seemed to be an elderly person. Again it changed its appearance to be a youth. Not that there were several figures before me. Rather, there was a figure with several forms within the light. These forms were visible through each other, and the figure had three forms. The figure said to me, ‘John, John, why are you doubting? Why are you afraid? Aren’t you familiar with this figure? Then do not be fainthearted. I am with you always,’” (1,32–2,13). All page and line numbers for the Secret Revelation of John are taken from Codex II of the NHC. 21

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In this text, John initially states that Jesus has returned to the place that he came from indicating a post-ascension vision rather than one that is in closer proximity to the crucifixion, but there are few cues, other than John’s statement to indicate the vision’s timing. There are many resonances between this encounter and those found in the canonical gospels: the vision occurs on a mountain; Jesus is not immediately recognized and appears in morphing forms;22 the person experiencing the vision has both doubt and fear; and Jesus proclaims to be with the visionary “always.” As with, especially, the book of Acts, the Secret Revelation of John contains further teaching about the nature of the world and salvation, and while the specific contents of this teaching do not have direct parallels in the canonical New Testament literature, it draws from the Hebrew scriptures, particularly Genesis. The First Revelation of James begins before Jesus’ crucifixion and death. In this dialogue Jesus teaches James and tells him not to be afraid, although James, too, will be arrested as will Jesus (25,13– 14). After Jesus’ crucifixion, the disciples “were waiting for the sign of his coming,” which points to their anticipation of his return (30,16). James is walking with his disciples on “the mountain called Gaugela,” and though the crowd disperses, James “remained [behind and] prayed.” The Lord then appears to him and James “stopped praying, embraced him, and kissed him,” (30,18–31,5). During his post-resurrection teaching to James, Jesus prepares him for his own suffering and death, telling James how he will be saved (31,14–42,19). It is difficult to infer the specifics as there are many lacunae in the last several pages of the text, but it seems that it is James who departs after the Lord is finished teaching, rather than Jesus making a grand exit. James is then martyred, the last lines of

These first two features are particularly resonant with the Transfiguration. It is important to note that when I relate these texts, I do so with no attention to dating, priority, redaction issues, final manuscript forms, etc., but it is simply to mark common motifs between texts with no indication of dependency. 22

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the text echoing Luke 23:34, “[My] Father [in the heavens, forgive] them, for [they do] not [know] what [they are doing].”23 The resurrected Jesus appears in bodily form in the First Revelation of James just as he does in the gospels of Matthew, Luke and John. Jesus’ appearance is anticipated, and he shows up while James is praying on a mountain, similarly to Matthew’s gospel and the Secret Revelation of John. Jesus’ primary purpose in the First Revelation of James is to teach and comfort, crafting these teachings from a combination of traditioned materials and other sources. In particular, this text illuminates the path of martyrdom, first through Jesus’ crucifixion, then through his teaching to James, and finally through James’ own death. The Second Revelation of James is less narrative than the First Revelation of James (though it is not highly narrative either), and presents itself as a priest’s report of James’ account of the Lord’s teachings. It seems that some of the teachings he conveys may have been from Jesus’ “earthly ministry,” though it is hard to say as there are no explicit cues regarding this. Most of the teachings address the nature of salvation. At one point, James recalls an appearance of the Lord while he was “sitting and meditating,” (50,5–6). There is little information other than the dialogue between the two describing the appearance. The only additional information comes several pages later when, at the end of their conversation, Jesus kisses James and embraces him (56,14–15), then tells James to, “Reach out your [hand] and embrace me.” He does this and says, “At once I reached out my [hands], but I did not find him as I thought he would be,” (57,10–14). This is the final element described about the appearance. There is no ascension. It is primarily teaching. The text ends with James reciting a prayer to the Father for salvation while being stoned to death. The Second Revelation of James centers on, as does the First, the martyrdom of James. Here, again, Jesus appears in bodily form. But from James’ description that he “did not find him as I thought he would be,” something different is happening with this physical The end of the First Revelation of James was reconstructed from the Tchacos Codex. See Meyer, 330, note 39. 23

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encounter, though it is not explicitly stated what that difference might be. Again, the primary purpose of the encounter with the risen Savior seems to be to impart further teachings, again crafted from a combination of canonical and other sources. In the third of the James texts in this study, the Secret Revelation of James—framed as a letter written by him—“the twelve disciples were all sitting together, recalling what the Savior had said to each of them, whether in a hidden or an open manner, and organizing it in books,” (2,8–15). The Savior appears to them all “after he had left [us, while we] were watching for him…five hundred and fifty days after he rose from the dead,” (2,17–21). Here again, very little is said about the form of the vision itself, and the book consists primarily of a dialogue between James, Peter, and the Savior. The most descriptive part of the visionary experience occurs at the end of the text when the Savior ascends with Peter and James who accompany him at the beginning of the ascent. When the Savior leaves, Peter and James, “knelt down, gave thanks, and sent our hearts up to heaven. We heard with our ears and saw with our eyes the noise of wars, a trumpet blast, and great turmoil. When we passed beyond that place, we sent our minds up further. We saw with our eyes and heard with our ears hymns, angelic praises, and angelic rejoicing. Heavenly majesties were singing hymns, and we rejoiced too. Again after this we wished to send our spirits up to the Majesty. When we ascended, we were not allowed to see or hear anything,” (15,6–28). The other disciples call to them, pulling them back from their ascent. Then James, while remaining in Jerusalem himself, sends each of the disciples to a different location, presumably to spread the good news, (15,28– 16,11). In this text, again, the disciples are waiting for and anticipating Jesus’ return, with the dialogue centering around further teaching. The Secret Revelation of James draws on earlier and familiar forms where Jesus pronounces blessings and woes and speaks in parables. The themes of suffering, martyrdom and salvation are addressed here as well through both admonishment and comfort given by the risen Savior. The Wisdom of Jesus Christ begins with Jesus’ twelve disciples and seven women remaining his followers after the resurrection. The group of them goes to Galilee, and as in many of the other texts they go to a mountain, here called “Prophecy and

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Joy.”24 Gathering there, “they were puzzled about the nature of the universe, organization, and divine providence, and the strength of the authorities, and everything the Savior was doing with them in the mystery of the holy plan,” (91,2–9).25 The Savior then appears to them “not in his previous form but in invisible spirit. He looked like a great angel of light…” (91,10–12). Just as Greek gods in their true forms, or God of the Hebrew Bible, the narrator warns that, “I must not describe his appearance. Mortal flesh could not bear it, but only pure and perfect flesh, like what he taught us about, in Galilee, on the mountain called Olivet,” (91,14–19).26 The Savior then teaches his followers about the nature of God, the world, the violence of the rulers and authorities, and the salvation of humanity. Finally, when the Savior departs at the end of the text, he simply disappears (119,10), nothing further is said about how the vision is experienced. Like the Secret Revelation of John, the Wisdom of Jesus Christ primarily addresses cosmogonic questions and relies heavily on the Genesis story of the Hebrew Bible. The Letter of Peter to Philip opens with Peter writing to Philip because he has been separated from the other apostles and Peter has received “orders from our Lord, the Savior of the whole world, that we should come together to teach and preach,” (132,12–21). Philip rejoins them and Peter gathers the apostles who go together to the “mountain called Olivet,” (133,10–15).27 The apostles pray to the Father and the Son, and then “a great light appeared, and the mountain shone from the vision of the one who appeared. And a voice called out to them and said, ‘Listen to my This has resonances with the end of Matthew’s gospel. My translation. I have translated oikonomia first as “organization” and second as “plan” to get a sense of the semantic range this word would have encompassed. 26 Cf. for example the story of Zeus and Semele, where Semele demands to see his true nature and form and dies, in Robert Graves, The Greek Myths: Combined Edition (New York: Penguin Books, 1994), 56; or Exodus 33:18–23 where Moses asks to see the Lord’s “glory” and the Lord tells him, “you cannot see my face; for no one shall see me and live,” but shows him his back. 27 Cf. The Wisdom of Jesus Christ. 24 25

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words that I may speak to you. Why are you looking for me? I am Jesus Christ, who is with you forever,’” (133,18–134,18). Twice more this short text speaks of a voice calling out from the light or appearance (135,3–4; 137,18–19). When Jesus finally ascends there “came lighting and thunder from heaven, and what appeared to them there was taken up to heaven,” (138,3–7). After this, the apostles return to Jerusalem and along the way speak about the Lord and his suffering. In the midst of this, after his earlier ascent, the voice of Jesus interjects to teach them further about suffering (138,10–139,4). At the end of the book, the apostles are filled with the holy spirit and leave to preach about Jesus when he appears to them once more. Though no specific description is given beyond this, he says to them, “Peace be with all of you and everyone who believes in my name. When you go, you will have joy, grace, and power. Don’t be afraid. Look, I am with you forever.” And they part, to preach “in the power of Jesus, in peace,” (140,9–27). In the Letter of Peter to Philip, the disciples are once again found on a mountain, and as in the Wisdom of Jesus Christ, the Secret Revelation of John, or Acts, the Savior does not appear in bodily form. As with both the canonical texts and several others addressed in this study, Jesus comes to comfort and teach, offering the disciples peace and reminding them that he will be with them forever. Jesus’ teachings primarily address the issues of suffering and salvation in a world with hostile rulers and authorities. This section has looked specifically at the constitution of the visions in these texts, primarily putting them into conversation with one other and with New texts, but citing brief examples from other cultural Testament and social contexts and influences, like the Graeco-Roman world and the Hebrew Bible. Now I turn to a different set of questions, not what was the nature, texture or content of the visual/auditory experience, but what might have occasioned it. Expanding on the brief context provided for the individual texts, I pose broader questions about the content of the visions and what might have motivated or necessitated them.

VISION AND VIOLENCE Not much is known about the contexts in which the literature from Nag Hammadi was produced, but we do know that lives as well as texts are created socially. It is important to think about, to imagine, the situations that might have given rise to the writing of these

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texts, and to use the texts themselves as cues—to explore the issues that they address and the ways in which they address them—in order to think about the circumstances that influenced their production. If the texts comprising the Nag Hammadi corpus were composed primarily between the 1st and 4th centuries C.E., one feature of “Christian” life during this period was the threat of persecution and martyrdom. While it is now known that martyrdoms of early Christians were not as widespread as once thought, we do know from documents ranging from Pliny’s early 2nd century correspondence with the emperor Trajan to Eusebius’s 4th century accounts of 2nd and 3rd century martyrdoms, that persecution was at least a perceived threat to early Christian communities if not a physical reality. That many of these texts address questions of suffering and salvation in the midst of violence, if not martyrdom specifically, points to the ongoing threat of persecution as a possible social context for these writings.28 Among the many issues engaged and grappled with in the continually expanding corpus of Jesus/Christ materials, questions of persecution were ubiquitous. Almost every book in the New Testament addresses this theme in one way or another—from Jesus’ words in the Gospel of Matthew which say, “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when men revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account,” (Matt 5:10–11) to Hebrews 10:34–35, “But recall those earlier days when, after you had been enlightened, you endured a See for example, Karen L. King, “Martyrdom and Its Discontents in the Tchacos Codex,” in The Codex Judas Papers: Proceedings of the International Congress on the Tchacos Codex held at Rice University, Houston, Texas, March 13– 16, 2008, ed. April D. DeConick (Boston: Brill, 2009), 23–42; “Toward a Discussion of the Category “Gnosis/Gnosticism”: The Case of the Epistle of Peter to Philip,” in Jesus in apokryphen Evangelienüberlieferungen: Beiträge zu ausserkanonischen Jesusüberlieferungen aus verschiedenen Sprach- und Kulturtraditionen, eds. Jörg Frey and Jens Schröter (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010), 445–465; and Karen L. King and Elaine Pagels, Reading Judas: the Gospel of Judas and the Shaping of Christianity (New York: Viking, 2007). 28

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hard struggle with sufferings, sometimes being publicly exposed to abuse and persecution, and sometimes being partners with those so treated.”29 Threats or acts of violence by the Roman authorities were commonplace in the age of the Roman Empire, and the crucifixion of Jesus by the Romans was but one example of the violence inflicted upon the nations which composed it. As the movement entered the second and third centuries, persecution directed specifically against these early bands of Jesus/Christ followers, as noted earlier, was not as immediate or wide spread as once thought, though was certainly an issue of lived reality. Because they did not participate in public sacrifices or rituals to the gods, and used imperial titles to refer to Jesus, they became suspect, groups of interest for the Roman authorities. Some of the earliest evidence of this comes from letters between Pliny, the governor of Bithynia in Asia Minor and the Emperor Trajan dating to the early 2nd Century. Book 10 of Pliny’s letters contains a correspondence in which he writes to Trajan for further instructions on how to deal with those accused of membership in the cult/political society of Christians who were being brought before him. Those willing to make sacrifices and offer prayers to the gods and the emperor were let free, but others were tortured and punished—some for information and others as a consequence of their crimes (10.96–97). In addition, extant literature also attests to martyrdoms of those such as Polycarp, Justin Martyr, Perpetua, and those at Lyons, showing that persecution was more than an isolated incident. How could these groups of early Jesus/Christ followers make sense of their world and their place in it in the midst of this type of violence? And why might the encounter with the risen Jesus be paired with questions of violence? Most obviously this pairing occurs because Jesus himself suffered a violent death at the hands of Roman authorities. As early Jesus followers grappled with the crucifixion of their savior, they began to tell stories of their experiences with the risen Christ, of the one who moved from death to life, the one who would remain Cf. also on the theme of persecution in the New Testament, for example, Matt 3:18–23; Luke 21:12; John 15:20; 16:33; Acts 6:8–8:1; Rom 12:14; 2 Thess 1:4–5; Hebrews 10:32–33; 1 Peter 3:14; Rev 1:9. 29

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with them always. As outlined above, this continuing presence is attested through the Johannine promise of the Paraclete or Comforter, or the final lines of Matthew’s gospel where Jesus tells the disciples, “behold I am with you always until the end of the age.” The idea of the Paraclete is specifically mentioned in the First Revelation of James, while in both the Letter of Peter to Philip and the Secret Revelation of John Jesus reminds the disciples that he will always be with them. The proliferation of these encounters in the wide variety of “visionary” literature bears witness to Jesus/Christ’s ongoing relationship with the community of believers. Jesus’ death and resurrection also furnishes a model for both facing and overcoming violent death. Not only Jesus’ teachings, but the way in which he faces his own death and is resurrected becomes a model of and a model for his followers in facing persecution.30 The divine encounter with the risen Jesus also provides an opportunity for him to further teach his followers as they encounter the violence of the world. Each of the six texts from Nag Hammadi is dialogical in nature, providing some kind of further information and instruction for Jesus’ followers, as well as providing comfort for them as they face this violence. In several of the Nag Hammadi texts it seems as if Jesus appears explicitly because of the distress one or more of his followers are experiencing: in the Secret Revelation of John, Jesus appears when John is “distressed within” after his encounter with the Pharisee (1,8–20); in the First Revelation of James, James is distressed when he hears of how the savior suffered (30,13–15); the Wisdom of Jesus Christ shows the twelve disciples and seven women gathering because, “they were confused about the true nature of the universe, and the plan of salvation, and divine providence, and the power of the authorities, and everything the Savior was doing for them in the Karen King uses Clifford Geertz’s idea of “a model of and a model for” from his The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays (New York: Basic Books, 1973), see especially “Religion As a Cultural System,” 87–125, to talk about the ways Allogenes and the Gospel of Mary model the ascent to the divine in “Hearing, Seeing, and Knowing God: Allogenes and the Gospel of Mary,” 319–331. 30

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plan of salvation,” (90,14–91,10); and in the Letter of Peter to Philip, just before Jesus appears, the disciples pray together, “Son of life, son of immortality; you who are the light; Son, Christ of immortality; our Redeemer; give us strength; because they are searching for us to kill us,” (34,2–9). Jesus’ presence allows him to address these questions and concerns of his followers, and he uses some similar and some different strategies in the texts to do so. One of these strategies involves telling cosmogonic stories in order to address his followers’ place in the universe and to explain the powers that work against them. In some of the Nag Hammadi texts, such as the Secret Revelation of John, these stories are more elaborate than others, like that of the Wisdom of Jesus Christ or the Letter of Peter to Philip, but in each instance they serve to emphasize the connection of the Savior’s followers with the true God and that through this connection they can overcome the power and violence of the world rulers. The rulers and authorities of the world represent death, but just as Jesus overcame death through resurrection, so too can those who follow his path. Intimately connected with defining their place in the cosmological scheme of things is the emphasis on the inner, spiritual nature of his followers. Almost all of these texts point to a shoring up of the inner-self in some way and a dis-identification with the body that will be harmed. An example of this can be seen in the Secret Revelation of James where the risen Savior explicitly gives James and Peter teachings so that “you may know yourselves” (12,20–22). The First Revelation of James provides a striking illustration of this. In the first portion of the text, Jesus speaks to James before his arrest and crucifixion in order to prepare James for these events as well as his own eventual martyrdom. Jesus begins by telling him about the One Who Is, who in the beginning was the only thing in existence, and says that, “We both come from the One Who Is, but I am before you,” (24,19–26). After discussing their imminent deaths and the powers that rule over the universe Jesus tells James that only when he throws off “blind thought” and “the bond of flesh” that surrounds him will he be able to “attain the One Who Is, and you will no longer be James, but you are that One Who Is,” (27,2–10). Again the text addresses this issue when the risen Savior tells James that “you have set in motion great anger and wrath against yourself,” (32,9–11). At this, James became fearful and wept, deeply troubled.

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The risen Savior responds by saying, “James, this is how you will face these sufferings. Do not be sad. The flesh is weak, and it will get what is ordained for it. But as for you, do not be timid or afraid,” (32,17–22). James need not fear the suffering of the body for when his body is gone he will be “that One Who Is.” The Letter of Peter to Philip has a unique way of addressing questions of violence and shoring up the inner person. The letter begins with Philip separated from the rest of the disciples and Peter urging him to gather with them again so that “we might tell the good news,” (33,1–5). The risen Savior urges this coming together as a defense against the powers, telling them to join together to teach and pray and heal even though he often told them that, “you must suffer. You must be brought to synagogues and governors so that you will suffer,” (138,22–27). When the disciples ask Jesus how to fight against the rulers he says that, “the rulers fight against the inner person. You must fight against them like this: come together and teach salvation in the world with a promise. And arm yourselves with my Father’s power, and express your prayer, and surely the Father will help you as he helped you by sending me. Don’t be afraid. I am with you forever,” (137,21–138,1). Through coming together, preaching salvation, and Jesus’ continuing presence the disciples can overcome the reality of suffering. Another type of strategy can be seen in the Secret Revelation of James. In this text, the risen Savior pulls Peter and James aside to give them special secret teachings. Jesus teaches, castigates and encourages the two throughout the text, pushing and pulling their emotions from happiness in one moment to dejection in the next. Toward the end of the text Peter asks Jesus to explain why he encourages them one moment and admonishes them the next. To this Jesus replies, “I have offered you faith many times—and have revealed myself to you, James—and you have not known me. Now I see you often rejoicing. And although you are delighted about the promise of life, you are sad and gloomy when you are taught about the kingdom. Nevertheless, you, through faith and knowledge, have received life. So disregard rejection when you hear it, but when you hear about the promise, be joyful all the more,” (13,37– 14,13). Here, it is through the risen Savior’s very pedagogical style that Peter and James are taught how to reject the persecution of the world and shore up the true, inner self.

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The importance of persecution and suffering as occasions for seeing the Savior in these texts is clear. As is continually promised in these texts, the risen Jesus is continually with his followers, providing comfort and teaching, as well as modeling how to face suffering and death in the pursuit of life. The visionary character of the texts can be—at least in part—accounted for by the context of persecution and violence experienced by early Christians. In this examination of the close ties between vision and persecution, the Nag Hammadi corpus is not escapist literature, but a powerful part of early Christian claims of Jesus as a model for living with violence.

SEEING THE DIVINE IN PLATONISM; PLATO AND PLOTINUS SERGEY TROSTYANSKIY This chapter refers to Platonism as a movement in which the notion of “vision of the divine” is exemplified in antiquity. Here I make a distinction between entities whose very being is divine (theos kath’ huparxin), and those that are divine by derivation, by participation (theos kata methexin). I argue that, for Plato, essentially divine beings constitute primary realities, the archai of the universe, and are responsible for initiating causal chains. Based on this taxonomy I argue that the notion of divinity in Platonism is associated with the theory of forms (eide) or intellectual objects (noeta) and the notion of Nous; the one constituting the primary realities, and the other responsible for the initiation of causal chains within the universe. All other entities designated as theos are named in accordance with one of these two entities. Since the most foundational notions of the divine in antiquity are associated with immutability, stability, physical and metaphysical simplicity; the notion of vision in Platonism does not refer to the perception of shape, color, motion, etc, and thus to the faculty of sense perception or imagination. In other words, the divine is not a subject of sense perception or imagination. Neither is it a subject discursive reasoning (dianoia). The meaning of “vision” in Platonic thought is associated with the faculty of nondiscursive reasoning (noesis). The language of ‘the eye of the soul’ and that of ‘thea’ (vision) and ‘theoria’ 67

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SERGEY TROSTYANSKIY (contemplation) therefore significance in Platonism.

has

a

non-metaphorical

In the first part of this chapter I analyze the content of the middle period dialogues of Plato where the notion of “seeing” and that of “the objects to be seen” is posited as a philosophical problem. In the second part I elucidate the notion of Nous, the efficient cause (aition poietikon) of the universe, in Plato’s late period dialogues. The last part of the chapter is dedicated to the way the subject of ‘seeing the divine’ is presented in the Enneades of Plotinus. What is the divine in Greco-Roman philosophy? What is that which is designated as vision? Where do these two notions coexist within a coherent framework constituting a philosophical movement? These questions are not easy to answer due to an extraordinary complexity of the philosophical tradition of the ancients. The first question requires an all-embracing account of the divine in Greco-Roman philosophy. This task is beyond the scope of this chapter. However, the third question narrows down the scope of investigation and immediately directs us to Platonism where the language of “seeing” in general and of seeing of that which can be considered as of the divine origin in particular, along the line of many other philosophical and metaphorical accounts of “vision” can be found. Thus this chapter necessarily refers us to Platonism as a movement in which the notion of “vision of the Divine” is exemplified in antiquity. Here Plato and Plotinus will represent the movement both because of their brilliance and because of the scarcity of extant writings of the other Platonists. First of all, it is necessary to discern the notion of the divine in Platonism. A proper exegetical task here is not to read into Platonism any notions alien to it. As Cornford noted, “the temptation to read into Plato’s words modern ideas that are in fact foreign to his thoughts has proved too much for some commentators.”1 It is quite obvious for the reader of Plato that the word theos in antiquity does not have the same significance as the contemporary notion of divinity which is heavily indebted to its 1

Cornford. 1997 p. 34.

SEEING THE DIVINE IN PLATONISM; PLATO AND PLOTINUS 69 Jewish-Christian origin.2 The problem is further complicated by the use of the word theos as applied to various heterogeneous entities.3 It seems that we would not be mistaken to propose that the Divine in Platonism is spread or diffused through the universe (though the ‘diffusion’ does not have a material connotation). This diffusion, however, does not signify pantheism (even though the language might sometimes suggest it) as the clear distinction between the divine and non-divine is preserved. Thus, the common theme here is that there are various levels of divinity distributed among the entities whose being (ontological status) differs. Thus, the intellectual beings (nous and noeta) are divine; the soul is divine, individual souls are divine; the universe is divine, and so on. This picture is different from that of Jewish- Christian tradition and thus is not an easy one to grasp. The question might arise, namely, how is it that a being which is divine (theios) differs in degree of divinity from another being named by the same name (theos)? Are they of “The Greek word Theos and the English word God are by no means equivalent; their associations are obviously very different…Where the Christian says that God is love or that God is good he is first asserting, or taking for granted, the existence of a mysterious being, God, and making a qualitative judgment about him. He is telling something about God. With the Greek the order was frequently reversed. He would say that Love is god or Beauty is god; he is not assuming the existence of any mysterious divinity but telling us something about love and beauty, the reality of which no one could deny…By saying that love, or victory, is god, or, to be more accurate, a god, was meant first and foremost that it is more than human, not subject to death, everlasting… Our modern conception of the divine is, in fact, more definitely anthropo-physic than that of the Greek.” Grube. 1935 pp. 150–51. 3 The problem is complicated at the outset by Plato's very wide application of Theos. As M. Dids says, many things are called ‘Gods’ or ‘divine’: the Demiurge is a Theos, so is the created Universe (Tim. 34b, 92c), so are the stars and planets (Tim. 40d) and the gods of popular theology (Tim. 40e), and the (possible) plurality of good souls in the Laws X; the adjective Theios commonly applied to the Forms, and if the reading at Tim. 37c is to be kept, the Forms which are comprised in the noiton zoon are actually called gods. Hackforth. 1936 p. 6. 2

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the same divinity? Do they represent different manifestations of the same divine nature? Do they share the properties of divinity? What are the properties that constitute divine nature? For now it should be noted that participation in the source of divinity can provide the answer to this question. Thus, the distinction between entities whose very being is divine (theos kath’ huparxin), and these that are divine derivatively, by participation (theos kata methexin), and thus are not essentially divine (but are the images of the divine which share with the primary divine its name), should be taken into account. As Grube rightly pointed out, the question of the divine in Platonism is ambiguous. As a matter of fact, there is not one but two related questions here, namely, what is the ultimate reality, the arche (simple and immutable and thus eternal), and what is that which initiates the causal chain of events. One might also add the third question about the total sum of the universe. It follows then that the ancient Mediterranean understanding of the divine is quite alien to the Judeo-Christian consciousness and the idea of a personal God. In Graeco-Roman philosophy a personal deity will be some sort of a semi-divine being, an embodiment, exemplification or an image of the divine paradigm. Most scholars, however, agree that the notion of divinity in Plato’s natural theology is associated with the theory of forms (eide) and the concept of nous, one constituting the primary reality, and the other one responsible for the initiation of the causal chains in the universe. All other entities designated as theos are named after these two entities. It is obvious that all natural languages tend to use perceptional imageries to describe knowledge. Thus the language of seeing, beholding, etc.4 is used quite often in the discourse to designate Thus, as Herbert Schneider noted, “the mind does not have an eye, and yet we find it difficult to avoid the language of vision in speaking of mental processes. So deeply embedded in philosophical tradition are the idioms of “speculation,” of “points of view,” of “seeing” truth, of “introspection,” “circumspection,” and “inspection” that we are in danger of forgetting from time to time that this language is metaphorical.” 1948– 1949. p. 400. 4

SEEING THE DIVINE IN PLATONISM; PLATO AND PLOTINUS 71 knowledge. It seems that there is a certain overlap between the language of seeing in Platonism and a day-to-day ordinary language; both utilize the imageries associated with visual perception speaking of knowledge. However, while in, say, English, the notion of seeing does not have any ontological or epistemological implications, does not tell us much about the structure of the universe and its cognition, in Platonism the language of seeing has a special significance. What kind of faculty does vision refer to when spoken in relation to the divine in Platonism? Do we mean a vision of shape, color, motion, and so on, and thus the faculty of sense perception or imagination? This understanding will signify a violation of the most foundational notions of the divine in antiquity, the ones associated with immutability, stability, physical and metaphysical simplicity of the divine. In other words, the divine is not a subject of sense perception; thus the meaning of “vision” here does not imply shape, color, motion, etc. Here the subject is the archai, the first principles constituting primary reality. Who is the seer? Which faculty is responsible for the power of sight? In Platonism “vision” is associated with nous (which for now I will translate as Intellect and will review difficulties associated with this notion later on in this chapter) and with the power of noesis in the soul. Thus entities partaking of nous (soul and the souls) should also be taken into account. The use of the word “vision” here thus seems rather metaphorical, attempting to express direct knowledge of the divine by means of perceptional imageries, to denote contact with the immaterial by means of that which in fact belongs to sense perception. However, the language of “the eye of the soul” has also some non-metaphorical significance in Platonism (as will be seen) as objects of seeing are called eide, things to be seen or looked at. While in Plato’s dialogues “vision” seems to be equated with knowledge, it is not always the case in the Enneads of Plotinus. If the notion of “vision” is applied here to the intelligible realities, it is equated with knowledge. However, if that which is seen is the ineffable One, “vision” is not equated with knowledge but proceeds to the experience which falls beyond knowing. The vision of the One thus cannot be knowledge but some sort of experience beyond knowledge as the One is beyond Intellection.

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The weakness of some contemporary interpretations of the subject of vision is that they do not analyze the notion of vision but take it as a monolithic commonly accepted concept or as a purely metaphorical notion. However, these approaches to the subject matter seem to be missing the point. In some other cases, moreover, the notion of “vision” is identified with “beatific vision” (thea makaria), the notion of a different origin, an application of which to Platonism is doubtful. 5 Does it mean that one has a beatific vision by having an epistemological assent to the world of primary realities? Unfortunately it is impossible to avoid confusion in this case as there is no notion of the personal and omnipotent God (who can be “seen” by the faithful) in Platonism. Therefore the notion of beatific vision is not applicable here.

THE PRIMARY REALITIES: EIDE The language of seeing in antiquity was introduced by Plato. The middle period dialogues of Plato give us a good sense of his philosophical investigations concerning the issues of being and knowledge and present the notion of “seeing” and that of the objects to be seen as a philosophical problem. The issue of how knowledge is possible, taking the Heraclites’ flux as a starting point, provided Plato with a great stimulus to make philosophical inquiries into the subject of knowledge. The Heraclitian problem here is how it is possible to know anything if objects of knowledge are destined to constant change and mutation and thus do not have a stable set of properties. In addition, the task of finding an explanatory framework capable of discerning the issue associated with the actual experience of identity in difference, and thus the problem of “one over many”, was on Plato’s agenda at that time. In order to make knowledge possible and to explain the sameness in difference, Plato introduced eide as the archai of the universe (ultimately divine), ontologically foundational, unchangeable entities, shared by “the many” particulars, and functioning as paradigms based on which one makes judgments A good example is Brenk who spoke of beatific vision in MiddlePlatonism. 5

SEEING THE DIVINE IN PLATONISM; PLATO AND PLOTINUS 73 about the degree of incompleteness of particular beings that exemplify and manifest them. Here the etymology of the word “eidos” is of a considerable importance and should not be easily dismissed. The noun “eidos” (“eide” in plural) comes from the verb “eido”, meaning “see”. Another noun, “idea”, used by Plato simultaneously with eidos, is derived from the same verb “eido” through its infinitive form (idein). Thus, eide are things to be seeing, things that show themselves to the sight. As Sallis has noted, one can easily miss the point by ignoring the reference of “eide” and by translating it as “form” or “concept”, and the like. In this case the issue at stake in Plato’s dialogues will be completely unnoticed. The reason is that in these translations the meaning of eide is clearly associated with universal beings, while eidos in Plato does not have such connotation, or, at least, it cannot be easily extracted from the dialogues. Moreover, it completely removes the language of vision and the notion of knowledge as direct acquaintance, making Plato sound anachronistically modern.6 Eide auta kath’ auta (eide themselves by themselves) constitute the primary reality for Plato. However, in their pure form they do not normally present themselves to the one who sees. Rather, as the Republic suggests, they show themselves “in community with actions, bodies, and one another, each looks like many” (476a). Thus there seem to be two modes in which each eidos can show itself, namely, as itself and in combination with some other things and thus as “many”. The eidos of, say, beauty can be seen (blepein, theorein) in its pure form as itself or as many in many beautiful things (pragmata) that manifest beauty. As Chen pointed out, Plato has used four affirmative predicates to designate eidos in its pure form (katharon), namely, itself by itself (auto kath’ auto), with itself (meth’ autou), uniform (monoeides), and always being (aei on). These predicates and other descriptions of eide indicate that each eidos is a self-subsisting being, not a subject of generation and destruction, does not come to be or change, does not have contrary or contradictory characteristics, and

For a recent investigation of the issue of ontological status of eide see Grabowski (2008). 6

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thus is pure from any admixtures (Phaedo 66a, 78d-e; Symp. 211; Rep. 479a). Particulars (idion, idia) that represent natural kinds and crafts, on the other hand, partake or participate (metachein) in eide and through participation become eidola (images) or eikones or mimemata (imitations) of eide, and thus are named from eide (Parm. 131a). Thus, if a thing participates in the eidos of largeness or beauty, it becomes large or beautiful, exemplifies (with a certain degree of imperfection) the eidos of largeness or beauty and thus shares the name (onoma) with the eidos of largeness or beauty (Phaedo 100c). Here an important distinction of the paradigm-image is thus introduced. Eide are the paradigms for the particulars. For now we should say that the paradigm-image model substantiates the homonymy between eidos and the particulars partaking of it. Interestingly enough Plato insisted that that which is normally called “the real things”, as a matter of fact, do not represent the primary reality, but rather images of the primary realty (eidola, eikones). In addition, the Platonic universe has another level of reality which consists of images of the images (fantasma, mimemata). To this level belong reflections in water or mirrors, paintings, and the work of imitative art in general. Thus Plato introduced a threefold ontological structure which includes the types of beings represented by auta kat’ auta eide or eide in their pure form; things (natural kinds, crafts, etc.) as images of eide - eidola, eicones; and images of the images or phantasmata. The “really real”, eidos, and the two levels of its exemplifications in this case share the same onoma. While particulars can have contrary and contradictory characteristics and thus can be at once small and large, beautiful and ugly, have certain characteristics in respect of time and place, relation, etc., eide are always the same, not subject to context, relation, time, etc. The unconditional claim to the onoma of, say, beauty, thus can properly belong to the eidos of beauty, and only derivatively to its exemplifications in natural kinds and imitative arts. Thus, Helen of Troy can at times be beautiful and at times ugly; and the paintings of her can suffer a similar fate (being dependent on, say, the talent of the painter); only the eidos of beauty auto kath’ auto can have an unconditional claim to the onoma. Thus eidos is self-predicated. The eidos of beauty is itself beautiful; it exemplifies itself.

SEEING THE DIVINE IN PLATONISM; PLATO AND PLOTINUS 75 The paradigmatic nature of eide is also important as it allows one to make a judgment about particulars participating in eide and thus exemplifying eide with a certain degree of imperfection. Here the paradigm functions as a criterion of judgment of the degree of imperfection of particulars. This paradigmatic account of eide appears, arguably, in most of the middle and late period dialogues and thus has an exceptional significance for Plato.7 Thus, the one who sees the eidos of, say, beauty is capable of making a judgment of the particular instances of it. However, if the one sees the beauty of the ‘many’ particulars but not an absolute beauty (eidos) the impossibility of judgment immediately follows. The reason is the lack of criterion against which the particulars can be judged. Another important feature of eide in the middle period dialogues is an explanatory role played by eide. In the Phaedo, Plato, being dissatisfied with the theories of explanation offered by the Pre-Socratics (by Anaxagoras in particular), claimed that the only way to explain the origin of the particulars is through the theory “formal causation”. Here the notion of participation is used to explain the causal role of eide for the existence of the particulars. Thus, eide are the “formal causes” of the particulars capable of explaining how natural kinds and crafts possess certain characteristics (Phaedo 97c–100e). Thus, the “safest answer” to the question of why a particular object is beautiful is that “it is by beauty that beautiful things are beautiful” (Phaedo 100e). Thus the reason why many things are beautiful is the eidos of beauty which is the formal cause (aitia) of many beautiful things. The explanatory function of eide gives a certain hint of the answer to an open question regarding the range of eide. What is the population of the world of eide? What kind of entities is included in it? In the Republic (596a) the answer is quite clear: “we are in the habit, I take it, of positing a single idea (eidos) or form in the case of the various multiplicities to which we give the same name”. This “maximally eide generating” passage tells us that for any multitude of particulars sharing the same name there should be an eidos if we want to explain how “the many” share the same onoma. This A recent investigation of the paradigm-image schema in Plato can be found in Patterson (1985). 7

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approach, however, implies an existence of eide for the natural kinds, artifacts, negative and privative properties, vices, etc. These implications seem to lead Plato to “a bottomless pit of nonsense”. Thus, already in the Parmenides (130b-d) Plato shows a great deal of perplexity regarding the range of eide. He definitively affirmed the eide of virtues (rightness, goodness, etc.), beauty, and relatives (large-small, etc.), but became puzzled speaking of the eide of the natural kinds (man, water, fire, etc.), stuffs and mixtures (hair, dirt, mud) and “other trivial and undignified objects”. There is a certain consensus among scholars regarding Plato’s acceptance of the eide of virtues and relatives in the middle period dialogues. Thus, it seems that the explanatory function of eide and the question of the range of eide were intrinsically connected in the Republic but gradually led Plato to the state of perplexity.8 The two ways of seeing eidos or of self-showing of eidos to the one who sees (as itself and in communion with other) have certain epistemological implications. Thus, the contemplation of pure eide, the “vision” of it (thea, theoria) constitutes knowledge (episteme), while opinion (doxa) is a result of seeing eide in community with actions, bodies, and other eide. What one can “see” and thus know, contemplating eidos in its pure form, is its unity which is not spread across many things (participating in it) and thus is given as one and not as many. In the Republic the notion of synopsis (seeing together) perfectly expresses this sense of “seeing”. On the contrary, eidos which shows itself or is seen as in communion with other things is given in its iconic form, as an image of eidos auto kath’ auto. Thus, the ontological difference between being and becoming comes to the fore. Those who cannot “see” the “really real” and stay content with images are in the permanent state of eikasia, of seeing eide through images and believing that eidola are the “really real”. Here the claim to knowledge is substantiated by Plato. What is known is an immutable self-subsisting entity, eidos given to the one who sees in the synoptic vision or contemplation. Opinion, on the contrary, is a fate of these who cannot proceed beyond images and whose destiny is to see eide in the iconic form only. The question that naturally follows is: how can we see and thus know? 8

For more information on this issue see Gerson (1994).

SEEING THE DIVINE IN PLATONISM; PLATO AND PLOTINUS 77 Two notions are important in relation to the acquisition of knowledge in the middle period dialogues, namely, recollection (anamnesis) and vision (thea, theoria). It is said in the Republic that the “eye of the soul” through which a particular soul can see eide and thus “know” is “sunk in the barbaric slough” (Rep. 533d). In the Phaedo Plato attributed this unfortunate condition of the highest form of human cognitive power to the incarnation of souls and the subsequent loss of purity. It is also assumed that pure is known by the pure. The inference is that the impure composite nature of the incarnate souls prevents them from seeing “the really real” and leaves them no choice but to be content with images. It is interesting in this context to note that the principle of self-identity of human beings is soul; the body is excluded. Though the vision is not available to the incarnate souls, they still retain some memories of eide (which they “saw” in the preincarnate stage of their existence) that can be recollected from it. Thus, it is suggested in the Phaedo that the acquisition of knowledge does not involve the “seeing” of eide but, rather, the revival of the content of cognitions (visions) of eide which souls in their pure preincarnate form have had (Phaedo 72e–73b). This revival is accomplished through the use of dianoia (discursive thought). However, the starting point of dianoia is not the product of dianoia, which, in a sense, signifies a certain deficiency of discursive thought that is fully dependent on thea (vision). Dianoia proceeds by means of hypotheses through logoi, the stretches of reasoning. It starts with hypotheses and ends with hypotheses. However, the arche anhypothetos cannot be reached through dianoia but is supplied by thea and its recollected content. What is clear from these observations is an epistemological superiority of non-discursive knowledge over the discursive one. The latter one is meant to facilitate the recollection of that which is gained through the nondiscursive “vision” but does not itself give knowledge. In the Symposium and the Republic the “pessimism of the Phaedo”9 is overridden by the change of emphasis. Now that which prevents one from seeing is no longer the incarnate conditions of souls but rather the deception of senses the detachment from 9

For more information on this subject see Chen (1992).

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which is a proper task of philosophers. The sense data provides images of eide in the state of becoming (genesis) and change (metabole) where the particulars participating in eide can have contrary and contradictory characteristics and thus at one time have one property (by participating in a particular eidos, say, the one of smallness) and at the other time (or simultaneously) - its opposite (say, largeness). Thus the one who relies on sense perception is in the permanent state of doxa. It is a philosopher, who can “see” and thus know eide in their pure form. In the Republic the vision is attained through the gradual ascent from the lower epistemological levels signified by eikasia (imagination) and pistis (belief) to the higher epistemological levels by the use of the powers of dianoia (discursive reasoning) and noesis (intellectual vision). Here Plato makes an emphasis on the role of dialectic in the epistemic ascent. As it had been noted earlier, dianoia starts with and ends in the level of hypotheses never proceeding to the arche anhypothetos. Dialectic, on the contrary, starts from hypotheses and proceeds to the level of the arche anhypothetos. Its hypotheses, however, do not take the sense data as its object but employs eide. Thus dialectic starts with eide “moving on through eide to eide and ending with eide” (511b-c). Dialectic here is associated with the use of the power (dynamis) of noesis. This power finds its manifestation in stretches of discursive reasoning and synopsis (seeing-together) which presents many instances of the same eidos to the “eye of the soul” so that it can “see” them together in one eidos and thus allows “vision” to take place. In the Phaedrus the same manifestation of noetic power is called synhoran (seeing-together), the word which meaning is identical to the one of synopsis. Thus, two manifestations of noesis lead the soul from hypotheses as “underpinnings, footing, and springboards so to speak” (511b) through the stretches of reasoning that allow one to map out the world of eide and culminate in obtaining a synoptic view of the world of eide, and thus ends with the arche anhypothetos. The final step of the process is to move downward from the arche anhypothetos through the stretches of reasoning to validate the original hypotheses. The notion of the arche anhypothetos in the Republic has an intrinsic connection with the vision of the idea of the Good (Agaton). It is the idea of the Good that is the source of being (509b) and intelligibility (508e), and the ultimate principle of all

SEEING THE DIVINE IN PLATONISM; PLATO AND PLOTINUS 79 things (pantos arche), the one which is, however, beyond being and intelligibility. It is this arche anhypothetos towards which the soul of the philosopher strives to ascend to attain “vision”. The famous Simile of the Sun (508a–509c) illustrates this notion. Here Plato speaks of “the offspring of the Good”, the sun, to illustrate the idea of the Good. As the sun is the cause of being and of vision of all things visible by human eyes, so the Good is the cause of knowledge and truth for the things intelligible. “This reality, then, that gives their power to the objects of knowledge and the power of knowing to the knower, you must say is the idea of the Good, and you must conceive it as being the cause of knowledge, and of truth in so far as known” (508e). When this analogy is applied to the soul, it becomes clear that when the soul uses its power of noesis it “sees” the objects of knowledge, the noeta (eide), but when it detaches itself from the “domain where truth and reality shine” it loses its sight and slips to the region of darkness and cannot see and know but is destined to opine. Another allegory, the one of the cave, in the Republic provides a description of the epistemic ascent of the soul from the state of eikasia to the vision (thea) of the Good. It depicts original epistemic conditions of human beings who, having been deprived from the “really real”, can see shadows only and think of these shadows as being real. The story goes thus: “Picture men dwelling in a sort of subterranean cavern with a long entrance open to the light on the entire width. Conceive them as having their legs and necks fettered from childhood, so that they remain in the same spot, able to look forward only, and prevented by the fetters from turning their heads. Picture further the light from a fire burning higher up and at a distance between them, and between the fire and the prisoners and above them a road along which a low wall has been built…See also, then, men carrying past the wall implements of all kinds that rise above the wall, and human images and shapes of animals wrought in stone and wood and every material…tell me do you think that these men would have seen anything of themselves or of one another except the shadows cast from the fire on the wall of the cave that fronted them” (514a–515a)? What happens if the prisoners are released from the cave? Now when they suddenly turn their heads around and lift up their eyes to the light, can they see the real objects whose shadows they used to see? It seems that the first reaction of the newly released

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prisoners under these new conditions is pain as their eyes cannot sustain the “dazzle and glitter of the light”. Thus they are unable to have a sight of the real objects. Naturally then they would regard the shadows, which they are used to seeing, as the real objects and would mistakenly regard these shadows as being more clear than that which is now open to their eyes. There is a need for the special training to open up their eyes so that they can “see”. The prisoner “at first would most easily discern the shadows and, after that, the likenesses or reflections in water of men and other things, and later, the things themselves, and from these he would go on to contemplate the appearances in the heavens and heaven itself, more easily at night, looking at the light of the stars and the moon, then by day the sun and the sun’s light” (516a). Finally, at the higher point of the ascent the prisoner “would be able to see the sun itself and see its true nature, not by reflections in water or phantasms of it in an alien setting, but in and by itself in its own place” (516b). Thus, “the ascent and the contemplation of the things above is the soul’s ascension to the intelligible region” (517b) starting from the lowest epistemological levels of eikasia, proceeding through the level of pistis towards the state of intellection signified by dianoia, and finally, ascending to the level of noesis when the “soul’s eye” can “see” eide and the idea of the Good and thus attain “vision” and knowledge. Each of the four stages of the ascent is characterized by a particular set of objects reflecting the ontological levels of Plato’s universe. Thus, the epistemic states of eikasia and pistis have shadows, images, etc. as their objects (representing the world of becoming). Here the soul uses its powers of sense perception and imagination and thus opines (533e). The higher epistemic states, characterized by dianoia and noesis are associated with intellectual objects, eide (representing the world of being) and the soul here uses its intellectual powers and thus “sees” and knows (dianoia here being an intermediate stage between opinion and knowledge). The question of the ontological status of the Good raises some questions about its knowlegibility and the meaning of “vision” as applied to the Good. First of all the idea of the Good is beyond being (ousia) and thus is not a thing; that which is beyond being cannot be known; the Good is beyond being and thus intelligibility and thus cannot be known (505a). On the other hand,

SEEING THE DIVINE IN PLATONISM; PLATO AND PLOTINUS 81 the idea of the Good belongs to the world of eide and is thus one of the members of its population. Moreover, it seems that this very idea is the ultimate end of the epistemic ascent of the soul and is of a crucial significance for the philosopher who can “see” it with the “eye of the soul” and model an ideal state based on this “vision”. Thus, though “the good itself is not essence (ousia) but transcends essence in dignity and surpassing power” (509b), it is nevertheless an idea and thus can be seen and known. Under these conditions, as Demos noted, “a critic might perhaps be justified in holding that Plato fails to give an adequate account of the Good”10 One of the ways to get out of this aporia is to recall the assumption that pure is known by the pure which suggests that the epistemic deficiency of the souls regarding the Good are due to their incarnate conditions. Here again the need for purification (the detachment from senses) plays a key role as an epistemological requirement (which nevertheless is not a sufficient condition for attaining the “vision” of the Good). Nevertheless, it is clear that by means of dialectic a philosopher through the stretches of reasoning finds the way to the “very essence of each thing and does not desist till he apprehends by thought itself the nature of the Good in itself”; here “he arrives at the limit of the intelligible” (532b). A certain inconsistency of Plato’s thoughts regarding knowledge in the middle period dialogues was noticed and discussed by many scholars. The problematic part is associated with the passages from many middle period dialogues in which Plato argued for two conditions of knowledge, one associated with the vision of eide and the other one with the ability to give an account (Rep. 534b). Both propositional and non-propositional aspects of knowledge are thus linked together as necessary conditions of knowledge. Plato’s dialectic is a good example of how both aspects complement each other. However, in Plato one can also see a certain change of emphasis running through the middle to the late period dialogues associated with a tendency to consider these conditions as two independent models of knowledge. This tension was best described 10

Demos (1937), p. 257.

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by Teloh who pointed out that the visual model of knowledge in Plato naturally followed from the paradigmatic nature of eide in the light of their purity and uniformity. Isolation of an eidos from the particulars and the other eide in this case is a necessary condition for an eidos to be pure and uniform and thus to function as a criterion against which the particulars, participating in eide and thus exemplifying eide with a certain degree of imperfection, can be judged against. Eide here are the paradigms, isolated monads, individual self-subsisting beings open to the “eye of the soul” to be looked at. This paradigmatic account of eide and the following emphasis placed on the visual model of knowledge can, however, be hardly reconciled with the role of definition played in the dialogues. Thus, to give an account of something means to be able to define it. In the Republic we read the following: “Do you not also give the name dialectician to the man who is able to exact an account of the essence of each thing? ...the man who is unable to define (diorisasthai) in his discourse and distinguish and abstract from all other things the aspect or idea of the Good …the man who lacks this power, you will say, does not really know the Good itself …his contact with it is by opinion …” (534b-c). Can the paradigmatic account of eide accommodate this power? Can eide be defined under these conditions? The answer is negative. “An isolated, pure paradigm…cannot be an object of definition, for a definition presupposes either external relations to other things or connections between internal components. Without some form of complexity and connection, definition is impossible.”11 This consideration necessarily leads one to thinking that there should be a certain extensional identity between eide. This identity will allow for arranging eide into genus-differentiae schema and will thus substantiate the possibility of defining eide. In this case eide lose their isolated status and thus purity and uniformity. They become metaphysically complex, interconnected entities with contrary and contradictory characteristics. Knowledge of eide under this scenario is gained through logoi, the stretches of reasoning. Thus an emphasis is now placed on the propositional aspect of knowledge 11

Teloh (1981), p. 140.

SEEING THE DIVINE IN PLATONISM; PLATO AND PLOTINUS 83 while the non-propositional aspect is deemphasized. It follows, then, that as soon as the tendency to consider two complimentary conditions of knowledge as two independent models of knowledge explicitly shows itself in the dialogues, two incompatible accounts of eide immediately emerge, one associated with the paradigmatic nature of eide and the other one, manifesting the cancellation of Plato’s paradigmatism. Interestingly enough, in some dialogues one can see both conflicting models of knowledge presented simultaneously, which indicates that up until the time of the Parmenides Plato was not fully conscious of this conflict. Thus, in the Phado Plato spoke of threeness as being connected with oddness and of fourness as being connected with evenness (104a-b) which thus signifies a certain interconnection between eide. However, this strain of thoughts regarding “the nature” of eide in the Phado gives way to the paradigmatic account of eide and thus an emphasis is placed on the visual model of knowledge. Thus the use of logoi and the method of hypothesis do not result in knowledge but, rather, facilitate recollection of the content of thea attained during the pre-incarnate state of the soul’s existence. The propositional aspect of knowledge is deemphasized. The same situation of two coexisting and conflicting models with an empathetic stress on the visual aspect of knowledge can be seen in the Republic. The radical change of emphasis, however, comes with the Parmenides where the whole notion of eide associated with the visual model is put on trial. Here the purity of eide and the possibility of knowing eide are questioned. What is significant here is that after the Parmenides the visual language starts disappearing from Plato’s dialogues. It can be seen later on in the Timaeus. However, the general change of language and the twist towards favoring propositional knowledge over non-propositional is quite clear. In the Parmenides the central themes that run through the dialogue are associated with the nature of eide and their relation to the particulars. Here Socrates makes a point that “there exist, just by itself (auto kath’ auto), an eidos of likeness and again another contrary eidos, unlikeness itself, and that of these two eide you and I and all the things we speak of as ‘many’ come to partake?” (129a). Thus the paradigmatic account of the nature of eide is proposed here by Socrates. He then claims that there is nothing strange in the fact that the particulars have contrary characteristics by sharing in,

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say, the eidos of unity and in the eidos of plurality and by being thus at once one and many. “But if anyone can prove that what is simply unity itself is many or that plurality itself is one, then I shall begin to be surprised (thaumasomai). And so in all other cases, if the kinds (gene) or eide themselves were shown to have these contrary characteristics among themselves, there would be good ground for astonishment” (129c). Thus, eide here are pure, do not have contrary or contradictory characteristics, uniform, etc. For example, the eidos of likeness is always like and never unlike. It is always self-predicated. If, however, one can distinguish the eide by themselves, likeness and unlikeness, plurality and unity, etc., and then show that these eide “among themselves can be combined with, or separated from, one another” (129d), then a great amazement will arise. Eide here are simple, uniform (monoeidos), isolated entities in which the particulars participate and through participation are called after their names. Now Parmenides, a more mature philosopher, puts this account of eide on trial. First, there comes a part-whole dilemma. Do things that partake in eidos receive a part or a whole of it? The question here concern the possibility for such an individual entity (numerically one) as eidos to be shared by “the many” individual particulars. What follows is that if an eidos is present as a whole in a number of things, it will be separate from itself. If, on the contrary, an eidos is present as a part, it would be divisible into parts and thus will no longer be one but many. Thus eidos cannot be divisible. Moreover, many absurd consequences will immediately follow from the hypothesis of eide’s divisibility. Thus if a particular participates in the eidos of equality and receives a part of it which is less than the whole of it, will this part make the receiver equal to something else? Or, will a particular, taking part of the eidos of smallness, become smaller than the eidos of smallness (assuming that a part is smaller than the whole)? Thus it follows that an individual selfsubsisting eidos cannot be shared by “the many”. The point here is that no individual beings can be participated in. In order to be capable of being participated in and thus serve a universalizing function, eide themselves must be universal beings. However, as Teloh noted, “In Plato’s middle-period universe everything is either an individual that is ‘one in number’, or a particular, immanent, characteristic of some individual, and Aristotle’s notion of a

SEEING THE DIVINE IN PLATONISM; PLATO AND PLOTINUS 85 universal that is not ‘one in number’ is utterly foreign to Plato’s thought.”12 Moreover, the explanatory function of eide, as have been mentioned earlier, necessitates the positing of a single eidos “in the case of the various multiplicities to which we give the same name” (Rep. 596a). Here in the Parmenides this explanatory function of eide is again reviewed. Thus, “when it seems to you that a number of things are large, there seems, I suppose, to be a certain single character which is the same when you look at then all; hence you think that largeness is a single thing” (Parm. 132a). However, this way of positing eide for the “many” that share the same name leads one to the infinite regress of eide. There comes a renowned “third man argument”. Thus, if there is a set of particulars, say, large things, and the eidos of largeness, the “eye of the mind” will immediately see the unity between the set of particulars and the eidos after which these particulars are named. The principle of generating of eide requires positing just another overarching eidos of largeness capable of explaining this new unity (of many large things and the eidos of largeness). Thus, the second eidos of largeness will emerge “over and above largeness itself and the things that share in it, and again, covering all these, yet another, which will make all of them large. So each of your eide will no longer be one, but an indefinite number” (132b). One way to combat this argument is by referring to the paradigm-image schema which posits exemplifications of eide (particulars) as images and thus makes them ontologically different realities which cannot be combined with eide into one set of things. However, this attempt fails as image is always an image of its paradigm. Thus, if there is likeness of any kind between eidos and its instances, the principle of generation of eide will require positing just another eidos to explain a new multiplicity consisting of an eidos and its particulars. If, on the contrary, there is nothing similar between them, eide will not be able to explain anything and, as a result, there would be no reason to posit them at all. Moreover, there will be no knowledge of eide due to the ontological gap between them and the things in our world, assuming that 12

Teloh (1981), p. 116.

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knowledge is knowledge of something (being) and that particulars through which we ascend to the knowledge of eide have nothing in common with eide and thus make an ascent impossible. All of these difficulties make one question the possibility of the very existence of eide. However, if one removes eide, there will be “nothing on which to fix his thought, so long as he will not allow that each thing has a character which is always the same, and in doing so he will completely destroy the significance of all discourse” (135c) and do away with philosophy. Thus, in the Parmenides, Plato attempts to save eide by means of dialectic. However, that which is saved is quite different from the paradigmatic account of eide presented in the previous middle period dialogues.13 Now Plato posits the following hypothesis: “if one is the one cannot be many” and through the stretches of reasoning (deductions) tests this hypothesis, he arrives at the conclusion that “the one is not”. Thus, if one is and the one cannot be many, then the one is not. By the law of non-contradiction (or by the assumption that the eidos always is; is always being) this hypothesis is eliminated. The next hypothesis, “if the one is”, tested by the logoi, leads to the conclusion that the one is both one and many, having a host of contrary characteristics. The rest of the dialogue seems to confirm this conclusion. Thus, the eidos (of oneness in this case) is no longer simple and uniform (monoeidos) but is complex and have contrary characteristics. It can be known through the interweaving of logoi, and thus the knowledge of it is propositional. In the propositional model of knowledge an epistemological ascent does not seem to result in thea but starts with logoi and ends with logoi. The method of division and collection, introduced in the late period dialogues, substantiates this account of eide. The Parmenides raised many questions to which scholars seem to give different answers. The most interesting question is associated with the basis for the homonymy between eide and the particulars. Thus, what do eide share with their images and the images of the images? What is it that unites, say, the eidos of beauty, beautiful things, and their reflections in the mirror, and allows all 13

For a recent study of this subject see Rickless (2007).

SEEING THE DIVINE IN PLATONISM; PLATO AND PLOTINUS 87 these things to share the same name? This question is not an easy one to answer. Properly speaking, only an eidos itself has an unconditional claim to its name (assuming an imperfect exemplification of eide by the images). Thus, it is the eidos of, say, beauty that is beautiful without qualifications (according to the paradigmatic account of eide in the middle dialogues). It is selfpredicated. Self-predication seems to imply that the subject of this predication is self-exemplified. Thus the eidos of beauty is beautiful. Here the eidos of beauty (I suppose) exemplifies itself (assuming with Plato that all eide are beautiful). So does the eidos of sameness, as it is the same with itself. So does the eidos of divinity as it is itself divine (immutable, eternal, etc.). However, the eidos of, say, difference does not seem to be capable of self-exemplification as it is the same with itself. Neither does the eidos of largeness (as it would be quite nonsensical to claim a certain physical quality for a non-physical entity). Does it mean that non-self-exemplifying eide are not self-predicated? If it does not, the meaning of selfpredication is equivocal. However, if the eidos of largeness is not itself large and the picture or a statue of a large thing can be small, what can substantiate an assumed homonymy? Moreover, how, under these conditions, is an epistemological ascent possible from the particulars which exemplify a non-self-exemplifying eidos to this very eidos? In addition, that which is shared by “many” cannot be an individual thing. It is, rather, a universal (being) that can be participated in. Thus if an eidos exemplifies itself and is exemplified by many, there should be a certain nature (of it) capable of being shared. Thus many scholars assumed that the being of eide and their nature differ.14 The nature of eide is associated with the properties of simplicity (at least physical), immutability, eternity, divinity, etc. Do eide exemplify their nature? Yes, they do (each eidos is itself immutable, simple, etc.). Moreover, a unique characteristic/property/attribute that each eidos is an eidos of (beauty, largeness, justice, etc.), not being part of its nature (I take nature here as something which places limits on a set of individual things and thus as determining the limits of its being), should also 14

For more information on this subject see Gerson (1994).

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be classified as universal (as it is shared by many). Some eide exemplify their characteristics, some do not. It is precisely these characteristics that set up a basis of the homonymy between eide and their images. How do we understand the relation between eide, their nature, the characteristics they stand for, and the particulars? In the Parmenides the suggested answer is that the paradigmatic account of eide should be set aside and the new account of eide (now presented as impure and non-uniform and thus having an extensional identity with some other eide) should be taken into consideration. This new account seems to be capable of giving at least a partial explanation of the reason for the homonymy between non-self-exemplifying eide and the particulars. Here an eidos is presented as “the same with itself and the others, and also the other than itself and the others” (146b) because eidos itself and its being are two different things. This affirmation suggests that the being of eidos (which is an individual subsistence) and a property/characteristic exemplified by an eidos and the “many” are different things. Thus, non-selfexemplifying eidos of, say, largeness, through an extensional identity with some other eide, say, of difference (being large is being different from equal and small) shares a property with its images, though its subsistence (which is non-self-exemplifying) differs from the one of its images (by not itself being large). Thus, the only possible answer is associated with the extensional identity. However, as soon as the basis for the homonymy between eide and the particulars is established there immediately comes the thirdman argument.15 A vicious circle is thus initiated. Thus, the paradigmatic account of eide associated with the visual model of knowledge after the Parmenides gradually disappears and the new account of eide associated with the propositional model of knowledge takes its turn. The question that follows is what stands behind the visual model. What is it that made Plato think of knowledge as “vision”? There are various opinions regarding this matter among scholars. First of all, there are passages in Plato illustrating the juxtaposition of knowledge and true For the further information concerning the third-man argument see Vlastos (1954). 15

SEEING THE DIVINE IN PLATONISM; PLATO AND PLOTINUS 89 opinion by the reference to direct acquaintance with an object or a lack of it.16 The passage from the Meno (97a-b) in this case is normally quoted. Knowledge here is a direct acquaintance with the object. A direct acquaintance, in turn, implies visual evidence. Secondly, there seem to be certain features of the Greek language that might sustain the visual model. Thus, the verbs of knowing, believing, seeing, etc. take propositional clauses as well as direct objects. The latter case of direct objects following the verbs of knowing again seems to suggest that what is meant by “vision” is direct acquaintance with an object. Another way of explaining the visual model in Plato is by placing an emphasis on the metaphorical nature of the language of “vision” and thus by denying that this language should be taken for granted. A way out is to equate the language of vision with direct acquaintance and assume that whenever one reads “vision” what is “really there” is a direct acquaintance. The question that follows is, what stands behind the notion of direct acquaintance in Plato? Visual evidence, one might answer. Here a vicious circle seems to emerge. Thus, the visual model of knowledge is explained away by means of direct acquaintance and direct acquaintance, in turn, is explained away through the reference to visual evidence. Thus, these arguments do not seem to be conclusive. It seems reasonable to suggest that, if a good argument is to be found, it should be looked for in Plato’s metaphysics, not outside of it.

NOUS METAPHYSICS Another aspect of the divine in Plato is associated with the efficient cause (aition poietikon) of the universe, with that which initiates movement and the causal chains, namely, nous. According to Hackforth, nous in Plato has an exclusive claim for serving the role of deity as it meets two criteria of the divine, namely “God must (1) have independent, not derivative, existence, and (2) be the source, or cause, of all in the Universe that is good, orderly and

For more information on this topic see Gosling (1983) and Teloh (1981). 16

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rational, but not of what is bad, disorderly and irrational.”17 Thus, the notion of the divine in Plato cannot be understood without considering the role of nous played in the dialogues. One of the puzzling features of Plato’s philosophy is associated with the fact that nous metaphysics, introduced in the early-middle period (the Phaedo), does not seem to play an important role in Plato up until the late period dialogues. Nevertheless, some other notions associated with it (say, noeta and the power of noesis) have a prominent place in the middle period dialogues. The notion of nous, thus, appears in the middle period dialogues and then disappears just to reappear in the late period dialogues. The first unsuccessful attempt to find a proper place for nous in the metaphysics of the middle period dialogues was made in the Phaedo. Here Plato described his original attraction to the notion of nous in Anaxagoras who proposed that “it is nous that produces order and is the cause of everything…and arranges each individual thing in the way that is best for it” (96c). However, multiple inconsistencies of the Anaxagoras’ notion of nous, his inability to explain how nous causes anything and the subsequent lapse into mechanistic accounts of causality associated with air, aether, water, etc., left Plato disappointed and made him look for a safe resort, found in the causality of forms (“the second best explanation”). The Phaedo nous metaphysics played no significant role in Plato’s dialogues up until the time of the Philebus and the Timaeus where this notion is reintroduced and given its final shape. Here the hypothesis of the causality of nous comes to the fore once again. In the Philebus nous is presented as the fourth kind, along the line with the limit (the first kind), the unlimited (the second kind), and the mixture of these two (the third kind). Here nous “belongs to the kind of what we called the cause of all things” (30e). However, since the first, second, and fourth kinds already exist in the universe (and are without a cause), it is precisely the third kind associated with “all things”, things that come-to-be and must have a cause of their coming to be. Thus, nous is the cause of all things that come-to-be. This cause “puts an end to the conflict of 17

The Classical Quarterly, Vol. 30, No. 1 (Jan., 1936), p. 5.

SEEING THE DIVINE IN PLATONISM; PLATO AND PLOTINUS 91 opposites with one another, making them well proportioned and harmonious by the introduction of number” (25e). It is “the source of fair weather, and all other beautiful things, namely in a mixture of the unlimited with that which has limit” (26b). It “orders and regulates the years, the seasons, and the months” (30c). It establishes law and order in the universe. Thus, the role of nous is connected with its activity of ordering (kosmein, diakosmein)18 and producing the best. In the Timaeus the craftsman of the universe, the demiurge (gemiurgos), serves similar functions of ordering and producing the best and thus can be easily equated with nous. Here Plato ones again reminds us of the distinction between being and becoming, linking the former with nous and knowledge and the latter with sensation and opinion. That which becomes never is, and that which always is is not a subject of coming-to-be and passing-away. That which comes-to-be must be created by a cause. It is the creator or craftsman who creates and is a cause of things that come-to-be. When the craftsman looks to “the unchangeable and fashions the form and nature of his work after an unchangeable pattern” (28b), the work must be fair and perfect. If, on the contrary, when he looks to the created pattern and fashions his work after it, the result is not perfect. In the Timaeus the demiurge - nous looks at the uncreated pattern or eide and fashions the universe based on this pattern out of the pre-existent elements. He is called “the father and maker of the universe” which “has been framed in the likeness of that which is apprehended by reason and mind and is unchangeable, and must therefore of necessity…be a copy (eikonos) of the original” (29b). Thus, nous here is not a creator of primary realities (eide), but is rather a maker of images, things that come-to-be and pass-away; not of being but of becoming. However, these images are the most complete and resemble their intelligible pattern in the most perfect way. There seem to be multiple reasons for introducing the causality of nous by Plato. First of all, the formal causality of eide can explain the reason why many things share the same name by 18

For the recent study on this subject see Menn (1995).

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referring to an eidos in which they participate and through participation become images of it and thus share its name. This account is capable of explaining why the natural kinds and crafts possess certain characteristics. However, one significant limitation of this account is that it is incapable of explaining the “why” of each particular instantiation of an eidos. Thus, it does not explain the order of things that come-to-be. Why does a particular instantiation of, say, the eidos of beauty, have a particular place in the causal chain of things that come-to-be? The formal causation cannot answer this question. Thus, a type of causation capable of explaining the order and the organizing principle of things that come-to-be is necessitated. Here an efficient causation of nous appears to Plato as a great explanatory tool. Moreover, the nature of participation in the middle period dialogues remains vague. Here the cause of existence and intelligibility of things is found in eide. However, if the particulars participate in an eidos, do they share a part of it or a whole of it? The Parmenides shows all absurdities following from these modes of participation. But, are there any other modes? In general, how is the realm of primary beings connected with the realm of derivative beings? Once again an efficient causation of nous seems to be irreplaceable here as it can remove an account of mythological interventions of the divine, primary beings into the world of becoming. Thus, eide are not in the particulars, and thus cannot be immanent to them. The connecting link is provided by the nous and soul as a medium between these two realms. An efficient causality of nous-demiurge who looks at the uncreated pattern or eide and shapes the universe based on this intelligible pattern, giving it order and goodness, links the world of eide and that of the particulars and explains to a certain degree the nature of participation. The created universe is intelligent and nothing intelligent can come-to-be without soul. Thus, the demiurge “put intelligence in soul, and soul in body, that he might be the creator of a work which was by nature fairest and best” (30d). Soul and particular souls thus mediate the work of nous and connect an intelligible order with the sensible order. Soul and souls have a power of noesis, of knowing the intelligible realm directly. Thus, the vision of the intelligible realm takes place in nous and through nous in soul and in particular souls. Here noesis is again juxtaposed to dianoia and logismos. Soul in the Timaeus is made “out of the following

SEEING THE DIVINE IN PLATONISM; PLATO AND PLOTINUS 93 elements…From the being which is indivisible and unchangeable, and from that kind of being which is distributed among bodies, he compounded a third and intermediate kind of being” (35a). Thus, being made of two elements, soul has an epistemic relation to both realms. It has intellection and the power of noesis by participating in nous, by being an image of nous and thus becoming nous kata methexin. A question of the ontological status of nous is an interesting one here. Since the time of Cornford and Cherniss up until the recent decades it was quite common exegetical practice to identify nous with soul. However, it seems that this approach contradicts the textual evidence where it is clearly said that the World-soul is the creation of the nous-demiurge, a thing that comes-to-be.19 Thus, this approach was lately rejected by scholars. Now, if nous has its own subsistence, what kind of entity is it? One of the answers was given by Menn who insisted that nous is a virtue and thus eidos. He argued that the word nous in Plato has different meanings among which are the following: act of intellection, power of noesis, the internal object of noein, etc. However, the most frequent use of the word is associated with nous being the virtue of noein. Thus, a soul participating in nous, having the virtue of nous is itself ennous. Moreover, souls participating in nous have different degrees of intellection. It follows that nous is a virtue and thus eidos. Moreover, being the eidos of noein, it functions as a formal cause of souls participating in it and becoming ennous. However, for all things that come-to-be (including soul and souls) nous is also an efficient cause. The question which immediately arises regarding this understanding of nous is how to reconcile nous as the eidos of noein and thus a formal cause of souls participating in it and its role as an efficient cause of things that come-to-be (including souls). On the one hand some passages from the Sophist suggest that eide, intellectual objects (noeta), can function as efficient causes of knowledge by acting directly on souls to produce knowledge. On the other hand, this type of efficient causation does not make eide too active, so to say. On the contrary, the type of efficient causation of nous presented in the Timaeus depicts nous as having 19

For more information on this point see Prior (1985).

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certain inclinations, desires, and motives. This, in turn, leads one to thinking of nous as a possible subject of change and mutation. How under these conditions should we understand the subsistence of nous? If nous is understood as an eidos and eide constitute the arche, the primary reality, then there is noting that should prevent us from thinking of nous as being part of this reality. Moreover, the metaphorical language of inclinations is not itself sufficient for thinking that Plato meant to explain nous as a subject of change. One of the ways to explain away this difficulty is by thinking that “each eternal thing always retains the same causal inclinations toward changeable things, but changeable things are at different times better or worse disposed to receive this causality.”20 Finally, the question associated with the reason why Plato called many heterogeneous entities theos can be answered. What is divine? First of all eide are divine, being the primary realities, having a set of properties that designates divinity proper such as: simplicity, immutability, eternity, primary causality for all things etc. It is said that particulars participate in eide and are named after them. Does it mean that a thing that participates in the eidos of, say, largeness, is divine? The answer is negative. Thus, it seems that eide do not impart their nature, so to say, to the particulars, do not make them simple, immutable, etc. Thus, eide have a set of characteristics/properties that distinguish them from the other things that belong to the realm of becoming, including the property of being divine. Secondly, the divine is associated with nous/phronesis/sophia and thus intelligibility. An entity that mediates intelligibility for the things that come-to-be is soul and souls. Thus nous cannot cometo-be or, in other words, be instantiated in anything apart from soul and souls. Thus soul is the only medium between the divine and carnal. This privileged position of soul in Plato made some scholars identify nous with soul. Soul is made out of two elements, one being indivisible and unchangeable, and the other one being of a kind distributed among bodies. One part of it is intelligible and divine, touching the realm of eide, and the other one is perishable, akin to 20

Menn (1995), p. 56.

SEEING THE DIVINE IN PLATONISM; PLATO AND PLOTINUS 95 bodies. Thus, soul and souls, at least their higher elements, are divine. Are they divine by nature of participation? This question is a tricky one. However, it is clear that while the world soul can be understood as divine by its very being or nature, particular incarnate souls have nous and phronesis as powers that might or might not be used. Thus they have to participate in nous to activate, so to say, these powers and are divine by participation. It is said, moreover, that soul interfused everywhere (Timaeus, 36e). Thus, the entire universe is not deprived of nous and intelligibility. This seems to be the reason why many things are designated as theos. It is soul diffused through the universe that brings intelligibility and order into the world of becoming and makes things (participating in rationality and order) divine. Thus, it is soul that deifies, so to say, things that come-to-be. Is the universe divine? The total sum of the created universe is divine as a perfect image of its intellectual model and of its makernous. It is eternal (and possibly immutable, though not simple) and thus is divine by participation. However, the parts of this total sum are not necessarily divine even by participation. The healingly bodies are divine. All other beings that are said to be divine in Plato seem to be divine in a metaphorical sense only. Speaking of seeing the divine in Plato, we should first note that like is known by the like, and that pure is known by the pure. These epistemological assumptions of the ancients should not be easily dismissed here. Knowledge in Plato is the knowledge of primary realities. This knowledge can be propositional or nonpropositional or a combination of both, depending on a particular dialogue. However, the language of vision of the primary reality here is associated with the non-propositional account of knowledge and with the paradigmatic account of eide. The knowing subject here is the incarnate soul which through its power of noesis sees and knows eide, things to be seen. The soul’s ascent to eide ending in synopsis signifies the vision of that which can be designated a divine. This is as far as the story goes.

PLOTINUS ON VISION The language of vision of that which is divine is also a distinctive mark of another prominent representative of the Platonist movement, the founder of Neo-Platonism, Plotinus. In Plotinus’s discourse the distinction between non-discursive and discursive

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types of knowledge and the attribution of the former one to the primary reality is again of a considerable significance and should be reviewed here. What is divine in Plotinus? Plotinus’s metaphysics posits three hypostases, three self-subsisting entities: the One, nous, and soul. They signify the primary realities or principles of all (of things that come-to-be). Thus, all three are divine (though they vary in the degree of divinity). The first hypostasis, the One, Plotinus identified with Plato’s eidos of the Good and with the subject of the first deduction of the second part of Plato’s Parmenides. It is said to be a self-subsisting (hypostasis) entity (but not a thing) which is beyond being and intelligibility and is the ultimate source of all. “If one is the one cannot be many”. Thus the One is an absolutely simple, undifferentiated entity. It has no characteristics as no limits are placed on it. As a result, nothing can be said of the One. Even its name cannot be properly predicated of it. Whatever is said of the One designates not what it is but rather what it is not (Enneads V.5.6); any affirmations of the One are necessarily followed by the apophatic mark (hoion), as it were, indicating that what is said does not refer to “a thing”.21 Thus, the Principle before all principles, the One stands as a primal source (arche) of everything not as a thing among the other things. The One “is not, then, a member of the total” (V.3.11). It is not self-differentiated and self-disclosed, has no intellection and neither knows itself nor can be known by the other. It is rather nous which is self-differentiated and “in fact envelops the entire train of things” (V.3.11). Whatever has being is differentiated and thus is both one and many. Nous here is an entity which is one over many, the unity in diversity which is represented by its intelligible content (noeta, eide). Thus, the world of eide here constitutes an intelligible content of nous. Plotinus identified nous with the subject of the second deduction of the second part of Plato’s Parmenides. It is being. “What has being cannot be envisaged as outside limit, the nature must be held fast by boundary and fixity” (V.1.7). Nous emanates from the One and is the image of the One. The One is its source. Its “station towards the One establishes being” and the 21

For more information on this subject see Sells (1994).

SEEING THE DIVINE IN PLATONISM; PLATO AND PLOTINUS 97 “vision directed upon the One establishes the IntellectualPrinciple” (V.2.1). Here being and thinking are “co-existents” (V.6.6). The most important characteristic of the Intellectual-Principle is self-knowledge. Nous is identical with its intelligible content (eide) and is simultaneously thinking all eide. Thus, it is identity in diversity. Its thinking is self-thinking. Ultimately, it is the selfdisclosed and self-differentiated deity. It is intellective and thus knows itself and can be known by the other. The knowledge of it, however, is non-discursive; it is attained by “vision”. It is precisely this hypostasis to which the language of vision as knowledge is attributed. This hypostasis, in turn, engenders soul, the third hypostasis which is a perfect image of nous. “Yet the offspring of the Intellectual principle (nous) must be a Reason principle (dianoumenon), that is to say, a substantial existence (hypostasis) identified with the principle of deliberative thought” (V.1.7). Thus, if nous is intellective and non-discursive, soul’s intellection is characterized by dianoia, discursive reasoning. “The reasoningprinciple in the soul acts upon the representations standing before it as the result of sense-perception; these it judges, combining, distinguishing (V.3.2). However, the products dianoia, its concepts, abstractions, etc., are, in a sense, secondaries. They are imperfect images of primary realities (eide, noeta). The power of dianoia “may also observe the impressions, so to speak, rising from the Intellectual-Principle, and has the same power of handling these; and reasoning will develop to wisdom where it recognizes the new and late-coming impressions (these of sense) and adapts them, so to speak, to those it holds from long before—the act which may be described as the soul’s reminiscence (recollection, anamneseis)” (V.3.2). At this stage soul attains to nous and recovers the content of its own pre-incarnate “visions”. Thus dianoia is meant to facilitate the recovery of the content of soul’s “visions” but cannot as such grant knowledge of the primary realities. Here Plotinus directly follows Plato. Two things are important in understanding Plotinus: Firstly, knowledge is of primary realities, not of the derivatives (which is opinion). Secondly, knowledge cannot be attained if being of the knowing subject is detached from being of an object to which the power of knowing is directed. Thus, knowledge is necessarily a self-

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knowledge. This self-knowledge belongs to nous. What is interesting in this situation is that the soul’s being is different from that of the primary realities. However, in order to know the knower must be identical with the primary realities represented by nous and its intelligible content (noeta). How can souls see and know under these conditions? According to Plotinus the identification with nous is possible through the higher phase of the soul, the inner one, which “looks” upon nous. When soul is detached from senses and thus is uncontaminated, it uses its power of noesis, is purely intellective and thus sees and/or knows. On the other hand, the lower phase which is characterized by cognitions of the external and thus relies on dianoia, is intellective but does not grant knowledge. This lower phase corresponds to the soul proper, constitutes its “natural condition” so to say (V.6.1). A human being (the incarnate soul) thus becomes nous when, “ignoring all other phases of his being, he sees through that only and sees only that and so knows himself by means of the self. In other words, he attains the self-knowledge (V.3.4). Thus that which nous possesses, souls attain through their higher phases by the use of the power of noesis. Here the notion of a “double personality” of the self-knower is important. The selfknower throws “himself as one thing over into the superior order, taking with him only that better part of the Soul” (V.3.4). This part “looks” upon nous and is “winged” for noesis. The epistemological ascent in Plotinus more or less follows the steps of the Republic of Plato. Here the role of dialectic is of a crucial importance. Dialectic is once again (following Plato) associated with the use of the power (dynamis) of noesis which has two phases, one associated with logoi, and the other one with “vision” (thea, theoria). Thus, firstly “it (dialectic) establishes, in the light of Intellection, the affiliations of all that issues from these Firsts (eide), until it has traversed the entire Intellectual Realm: then, by means of analysis, it takes the opposite path and returns ones more to the First Principle (I.3.4). Thus, after having mapped out the world of eide through the stretches of reasoning, dialectician ascents to unity which he/she contemplates. At this point, however, the discursive powers are left behind. “It leaves to another science all that coil of premises and conclusions called the art of reasoning” (I.3.4). Dialectic, thus, has “no knowledge of propositions—collections of words—but it knows the truth”

SEEING THE DIVINE IN PLATONISM; PLATO AND PLOTINUS 99 (I.3.5), contemplates the truth. It provides the first un-hypothetic principles for dianoia. It is clear than that in Plotinus’s discourse both aspects of knowledge, propositional and non-propositional, are present. However, a definitive emphasis is made on the non-propositional aspect associated with “seeing” which thus becomes dominating throughout the Enneads. Is there something that can explain this choice? A possible answer can be found in Plotinus’s epistemology. There he introduces a renowned triad which consists of knowing subject, object of knowledge, and process of knowing (knower, known, and knowing). These three epistemological components constitute necessary conditions of knowledge (self-knowledge). As it was mentioned earlier, dianoia deals with the external; the products of dianoia are imperfect images of primary realities (concepts, abstractions, etc.). Here the knower is deprived of the intelligible content (it is given indirectly as something external through sense perception in the form of images). An identity of knowing subject and the object of knowledge is not there. Moreover, the knower is also deprived of nous and noesis and thus of the noetic self. Therefore, instead of granting knowledge and truth, dianoia gradually leads souls to aporia. Its significance for attaining knowledge/vision is merely propedeutic, being a preliminary stage in the epistemological ascent of the soul and facilitating the recovery of the content of “visions” (recollection). However, when the soul is directed to the external it opines. Can, then, that which is grasped by doxa (doxasta) be coherent? The question is necessitated by the fact that dianoia does not allow for seeing the self and its content at once (this belongs to nous). What is missing here is the self, the knowing subject. In this case Plotinus’s epistemological triad (knower, knowing, and known) is incomplete due to the lack of one of the components. The knowing subject here stands apart from its objects. Plotinus questions “how the knowing phase can know itself in the known when it has chosen to be the knower and put itself apart from the known” (V.3.5). In this case the knower is aware of the object but not of itself as the agent of knowing. It will thus not know its entire content as an integral whole. Moreover, the object here is not the primary reality but an image. However, even if the knower’s object was eidos, “It knows the phase seen but not the seeing phase and thus has knowledge of something else, not self-

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knowledge” (V.3.5). Therefore, Plotinus infers, “in order to perfect self-knowing the knower must bring over from itself the knowing phase as well: seeing subject and seen objects must be present as one thing” (V.3.5). It means, in turn, that the knower has to become identical with the object of knowledge. Here again the power of noesis that belongs to the higher phase of the soul takes its part and leads souls to “seeing” and thus knowing. Thus, it is through noesis that one can “see” as all elements of the integral knowledge are present and knowledge is thus self-knowledge. Noesis utilizes discursive powers as preliminary steps in the ascent which result in thea and thus self-knowledge. This self-knowledge, however, is non-discursive. The puzzling part of Plotinus’s theology is that the ultimate source of all is beyond knowledge and is thus unspeakable. However, does it mean that we are utterly deprived of the One? Plotinus suggests that though “we do not grasp it by knowledge…we hold it not so as to state it, but so as to be able to speak about it…we can and do state what it is not, while we are silent as to what it is (V.3.14). He speaks of those who are divinely possessed and have a grasp of it though unable to tell what it is. He uses the metaphors of light to express the experience of the One. If there is light it lights up, thus allowing for seeing. Can soul see the One? Here seeing is not knowing but some sort of experience beyond knowing. So if soul takes the light and holds it, it sees. However, this seeing has no content. It is rather the light itself that is seen, not the objects lit up by the light. “How is this to be accomplished” asks Plotinus. The answer immediately follows: “cut away everything” (V.3.17). What this cutting away might mean, however, is unclear. Another metaphor used by Plotinus to designate the contact with the One is a leap. Thus, it is only by a leap that we can reach the One. However, that which is reached is beyond being and intelligibility. What, then, is the meaning of reaching? Here Plotinus evokes an image of an “earlier light within itself, a more brilliant” (V.5.7) which is given in a “momentary flash”. This light is thus within the light of intelligibility but is beyond intelligibility. “At night in the darkness a gleam leaps from within the eye…this is sight without the act, but it is the truest seeing, for it sees light whereas its other objects were the lit, not the light” (V.5.7). However, that which is seen is neither image nor eidos (V.5.6). It is

SEEING THE DIVINE IN PLATONISM; PLATO AND PLOTINUS101 without intelligible content. That which is seen here is beyond being and intelligibility. Seeing thus designates some sort of unintelligible union or contact with the One. This experience is thus ineffable as there are no intelligible means to describe it or share it with the others. Here that which sees is nous (in its higher phase which “looks” upon the One and is thus bordering intelligible and unintelligible) or soul in its higher phase (which “looks” upon nous). After having a “vision” the seer is left wondering “whence it came, from within or without; and when it has gone, we say, ‘It was here. Yet no; it was beyond’” (V.5.8). Thus, there is no need to question about where the light comes from as there is no spatial location for it. It is neither transcendent nor immanent. There is no need to run after it. This experience seems to be recurring, but nothing can trigger it or provoke it to come about. The seer here is absolutely passive and receptive. The notion of seeing or vision is intrinsically connected with the notion of identity, with elimination or cancellation of duality and differentiation. “We had vision because we drew all into unity” (V.3.6). If “vision” of intelligibles (noeta) is a type of self-knowledge that implies differentiation, “vision” of the One signifies a complete unification. Here it indicates a path toward an absolute simplicity. That which is “seen” is absolutely simple and transcendent. It is obvious that this notion of vision of the One foreshadows philosophical constructs of Byzantine theology and gives way to the further development of the subject matter. This is as far as the story goes.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Burnet, J. Platonic Opera. Vols. 1–5 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1900–1907). Henry, P. & Schwyzer, H. Plotini Opera. Vols. 1–3 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1951–67). Plato. The Collected Dialogues. Edited by E. Hamilton & H. Cairns (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989). Plotinus. The Enneads. Translated by S. MacKenna (London: Faber and Faber Limited, 1960). Allen, R. E. Plato’s Parmenides. Revised edition (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997).

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Allen, R. E. “Participation and Predication in Plato’s Middle Dialogues.” In Studies in Plato’s Metaphysics, edited by R. E. Allen, 43–60 (New York: Humanities Press, 1965). Brenk, F. “Darkly Beyond the Glass: Middle Platonism and the Vision of the Soul.” In Gresh. Platonism in Late Antiquity (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1982). Chen, L. Acquiring Knowledge of the Ideas (Stuttgart: Steiner, 1992). Cherniss, H. F. Aristotle’s Criticism of Plato and the Academy. Reprint (New York: Russell and Russell, 1962). Cornford, F. Plato’s Cosmology. (Indianapolis/Cambridge. Hackett Publishing Company, 1997). _______. Plato’s Theory of Knowledge (Mineola, N.Y. Dover Publications, 2003). Dancy, R. Plato’s Introduction of Forms (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004). Demos, R. “Plato’s Idea of the Good.” The Philosophical Review. 46, no. 3 (May 1937), pp. 245–275. Emilsson, E. Plotinus on Intellect (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). Ferrari, G.R.F. The Cambridge Companion to Plato’s Republic (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). Gerson, L. Plotinus. Series: Arguments of the Philosophers (London: Routledge, 1994). ______. God and Greek Philosophy (London/New York: Routledge, 1994). Gosling, J. Plato (London/Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1973). Grabowski, F. Plato, Metaphysics and the Forms (London/New York: Continuum, 2008). Grube, G. Plato’s Thought (London: Methuen & Co., 1935). Hackforth, R. “Plato’s Theism.” The Classical Quarterly. 30, no. 1 (1936), pp.4–9. Malcolm, J. Plato on the Self-Predication of Forms: Early and Middle Dialogues (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991). Meinwald, C. Plato’s Parmenides (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991). Melling, D. Understanding Plato (Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press,1987). Menn, S. Plato on God as Nous (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press,1995).

SEEING THE DIVINE IN PLATONISM; PLATO AND PLOTINUS103 Patterson, R. Image and Reality in Plato’ Metaphysics (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1985). Prior, W. Unity and Development in Plato’s Metaphysics (London: Croom Helm, 1985). Rickless, S. Plato’s Forms in Transition. (Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007). Rist, J. Plotinus: The Road to Reality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967). Ross, W.D. Plato’s Theory of Ideas (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1951). Sallis, J. Being and Logos (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press International, 1986). Sayre, K. Plato’s Late Ontology (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press,1983). Schneider, H. “Metaphysical Vision.” Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association. 22 (1948–1949), pp. 399–411. Sells, M. Mystical Languages of Unsaying (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994). Silverman, A. The Dialectic of Essence: A Study of Plato’s Metaphysics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002). Taylor, A. Plato (London: A. Constable & Co., Ltd., 1922). Teloh, H. The Development of Plato’s Metaphysics (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1981). Welton, W. Plato’s Forms: Varieties of Interpretation (Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2003). Vlastos, G. Studies in Greek Philosophy. Vol. 2: Socrates, Plato, and Their Tradition (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995). ______. “Reasons and Causes in the Phaedo.” Philosophical Review 78 (1969), pp. 291–325. ______.“On a Proposed Redefinition of ‘Self-Predication.’” Phronesis 26 (1981), pp.76–79. ______. “The Third-Man Argument in the Parmenides.” Philosophical Review 63 (1954), pp.319–349 White, N. P. Plato on Knowledge and Reality (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1976).

SEEING THE GOD AND EARLY CHRISTIAN LITERATURE JOHN A. MCGUCKIN AND JEFF PETTIS THE AMBIVALENCES OF SEEING IN THE GOSPEL NARRATIVES John A. McGuckin This study considers the many references to seeing contained in the Gospel narratives, and notes how often they are presented as ambivalent and conflicted. It traces how the idea of exceptional vision is a core notion in the late apocalyptic genres that are the matrix of many evangelical ideas, before settling to look more precisely at several particular loci where vision becomes a major theological theme: the exorcism stories and the appearance of Satan to Jesus; the dream episodes in the Infancy Narratives; the various evangelical treatments of the Blind Man who is presented as the paradigm of the One ‘who sees’ the significance of Jesus; and the Baptismal theophany. These cardinal episodes are presented as ‘Category 1’ vision narratives. All the episodes are couched in apocalyptic form, and progress from the physical act of seeing to the way the mind begins to see a deeper soteriological significance behind the palpable forms. The essay ends with a consideration of three more extended theological narratives concerned with ‘seeing the glory’ (The Resurrection and Transfiguration accounts, and the narrative of the descending (Pentecostal) energy of the Spirit). In all there is a common theme of the text insisting on the veracity of the vision while 105

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PRELIMINARIES OF CATEGORIES The Christian evangelical literature is complex and subtle in its various theologies, though it goes without saying that there are major themes and a style of theological attitude common to all the texts. The last century of scholarly commentary has, perhaps, focused more on the disparities between the Gospels, in a strenuous effort to interpret the literature above all historiographically; but we would do badly to neglect the commonality of vision at the core of this central canon of texts, which are so clearly reading over one another’s shoulders. One of the core commonalities, undoubtedly, is the eschatological matrix of thought that binds them together. This, admittedly, is not straightforward, either as a macro-explanation, or a genre, or even as a single coherent ‘style’ of late antique Judaic thought. But I would suggest that it is at the core of the important theme of seeing and being deceived by the act of seeing, in the evangelical core narratives of vision. This core I take to be primarily narratives of an intensely eschatological order, where a tersely dramatic ‘moving forward’ of the Jesus story takes place. These narratives are often highly charged and frequently evoke the concept of seeing extraordinary events: or even more spectacularly characters ‘not seeing’ events which are nonetheless described to the reader. One prime example of this is the demon in the synagogue at Capernaum in the opening of Mark’s Gospel1 when the demoniac (the spirit speaks through the material body, but remains unseen) allows the Demon to be a protagonist in the exchange between Jesus and the forces of the Unseen World. Not only do the mortals present not see: they do not seem to hear either. The seeing and the hearing pass directly to the reader. We shall come back to this interesting text shortly.

1

Mk. 1.21–28.

SEEING THE GOD AND EARLY CHRISTIAN LITERATURE 107 Other occasions cluster around highly charged events such as the appearance of Satan to Jesus at the Temple2; the dream episodes attendant on the birth narratives3 (a moment when the New Testament most closely approaches Hellenistic idioms of seeing the gods); the locus classicus of the blind man4 who sees while the seeing cease to see (this, in its synoptic and Johannine variants); and that archetypal moment of the baptismal epiphany which opens the ministry accounts of the synoptic Gospels and is amplified in the Johannine Nathanael episode5. These are stories which I would assemble together taxonomically as ‘Seeing Category 1 Narratives’. They all have a primarily didactic character. They serve as Didache, that is, to the nature of Christ’s role and function. The aspect of demonology and or angelology6 present in many of them (deriving of course from Jesus’ important functions as an exorcist himself) gives them an eschatological coloring: but what stands out most is their teaching character; teaching aspects of the theology of salvation: Jesus Soter.7 Seeing is integral to such narratives; and seeing physically or mentally is the typos of the divine enlightenment that is being presently taught in the narrative.

Mt. 4.1–11. Mt. 1.20; 2. 12–13, 19, 22; 27.19. 4 Mk. 10.46–52; Mt. 9.27–28; Mt. 20. 30–34; Lk. 18.35–43; Jn. 9. 1–41. 5 Jn. 1.43–51. 6 In some cases angelology takes precedence over the demonological aspect (the latter being an expected proprium of an exorcism account) when the subtextual suggestion of Jesus’ angelic rank is advanced—that is, he has exousia over fallen angels as the archistrategos ton angelon. Both Son of Man, and Angel of the Covenant have a dominant use in early Christology: the one underpinning eschatological Christology (though being originally an angelic title—see Mt. 16.27; 25.31), the other having a parallel signification with Logos (the Logos being the Angel of the Presence and that of the Sinai epiphany). 7 Further see J.A. McGuckin. ‘Soter Theos: The Patristic and Byzantine Reappropriation of an Antique Idea.’ pp. 33–44 in D.V. Twomey & D. Krausmuller (edd). Salvation According to the Fathers of the Church. Four Courts. Dublin. 2010. 2 3

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At the very heart of the true core of eschatological narratives, however, is the nexus of stories concerned with seeing the events surrounding the Resurrection, Anastasis, of Jesus and understanding this particular event as a manifestation of the wider cluster of events concerned with the passing of Jesus into Doxa, eschatological Glory: that stasis of the heavenly life which is what the early Church would call the Basileia tou Theou. For many centuries it has been customary in Christian thought to envisage the Resurrection as synonymous with the ‘Glorification’ of Jesus. This neglects the obvious fact that the evangelical literature sees the Resurrection (Anastasis) as but one episode in the cluster of narratives it uses to depict the En Doxa of its Lord. That cluster would include: accounts of the seeing of angelic visitors at the empty tomb,8 the appearance of the walking dead in Jerusalem in the aftermath of the Anastasis,9 the complex and dramatic narrative of the secret epiphany to the chosen apostles when ancient prophets stand alongside Jesus in radiant metamorphosis,10 the seeing but not recognizing of the risen Jesus by those who most intimately knew him when alive,11 and ultimately the highly noticeable concern to move from the category of vision to depict the en Doxa, to that of ekstasis tou pneuma, being caught up ‘in the Spirit’,12 a move that sidelines categories of vision decisively. This nexus of stories I wish to assemble and designate as ‘Seeing Category II Stories’. I would like now to make as systematic a passage through Categories 1 and 2 as time will allow.

CATEGORY I: THREE DIDACTIC NARRATIVES OF SEEING Let us look, albeit not exhaustively, through some of the more dramatic seeing narratives of the first category. Mt. 28.2–10. Mt. 27.52–53. 10 Mt. 17.1–8; Mk. 9.1–8; Lk. 9.28–36. 11 Lk. 24.13–35; Jn. 20.11–18; Jn. 21.1–14. 12 The prime examples are the narratives of Ascension and Pentecost in The Synoptics and Acts (Mk. 16.19; Lk. 24.50–53; Acts 1.9–11; Acts 2.1–13), and the Johannine conflation of those (chronologically separated traditions in Jn. 20.1–23. 8 9

SEEING THE GOD AND EARLY CHRISTIAN LITERATURE 109 (a) The Demon in the Capernaum Synagogue Even in a dry scholarly context, this has to be a spectacular subheading. It is one that would have garnered immediate attention at any stage of its telling. Jesus has been engaged in three significant epiphanic episodes already in less than twenty verses of the opening of the Markan Gospel: the Baptism, the Temptation in the wilderness, and the mysterious summoning of the first four disciples13 (three of whom continue to function as seers in a special way for Mark thereafter). And then this highly charged narrative14 is thrown in the face of the reader as the first example of what Jesus’ preaching means. It is, I suggest, the Gospel in a paragraph; the essence of the kerygma. Let me give the stark girders of the story. Jesus entered the synagogue on Sabbath to teach and his teaching (didache) made a great impression on the congregation for he taught with authority (exousia). The evangelist adds in the aside—this was ‘unlike the scribes’. Here two terms function strongly: the first is that the people are ‘astounded’ (exeplessonto); not just impressed but put into that state akin to awe (thauma) which is attendant in apocalyptic narrative on the condition of the mortals of ‘This Age’ who are summoned into the presence of the beings of the ‘Next Age’ (usually angels15); the second is that Jesus emits exousia. This is not merely that his teaching is authoritative (in the sense of being interesting or having passion behind it); rather that it carries, since he himself is charged with it16, the exousia of God. The baptism epiphany explains why this exousia is infectious, and I will come to that shortly. Meanwhile let us simply note that exousia is like a

Mk. 1.16–20. Mk. 1.21–28. 15 As in the classic instance of Daniel 10. The angelic utterances here being used as the basis of the logia of the Risen Jesus in the Gospel accounts: ‘Do not be afraid’; this being a device of the angelic being stabilizing the life-force of the mortal (such as Daniel the seer) so that he can receive and bear witness to the epiphany without dying from the encounter with the divine ethos. 16 See the illustrative story of this energeia emitted in Mk 5.29–30. 13 14

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divine power-charge: it is like something from another world17, something that marks off Jesus as, perhaps, not being entirely comprehensible as a mortal safely ensconced within ‘This Age’. Or to put it more simply, it is something which reveals exactly the mysterious dynamic of what Mark is telling the reader: what you see is not exactly what you get. Then comes the statement of the conflict. A man is possessed by an unclean spirit. It cries out (anekraxen) for beings of the other world never speak simply. It shouts violently: ‘What do you want with us, Jesus of Nazareth?’ Thus it reveals that it is not merely ‘edgy’ but dangerous; not merely singular but also plural: it is a case of ‘them’; and this singular demon has the right to speak for the several others. We feel anxious. Things are not what they seem, and are getting worse. Who is this demon that can speak for others? 18 The questing has moved from the ostensible seeking out who is Jesus of Nazareth; to who is Jesus and who else is in this room? Both sides of this other-world divide demand clarification of the right (exousia) to speak for and on behalf of. In modern parlance it would be: ‘Whom do you represent? Whose power do you have in this negotiation?’ Then, “it” (for it has now reverted to singularity) tries to get in first by naming.19 Comparable to the divine force (which Daniel 10 itself mirrors) from the locus classicus of the Sinai epiphany. Here Moses and Israel learn that proximity to the divine epiphaneia can be fatal. ‘No man shall see my face and live.’ Ex. 33.20. 18 And who is this demon that speaks for others? It is deliberately not named; most likely because the reader remembers that it was named merely seven verses before Mk.1.13; and is no ordinary demon, as shall be suggested once again in Mk. 3.22–30. 19 We must understand that naming is the first act in the overthrowing of an other-world agent from illegitimate operation in this world. It is by naming, after having demanded the name of the demon, that the exorcists are able to cast out (see Mk. 5.9). It is by the name that the disciples of Jesus are known and empowered: Mk. 9.37; 9.41; Jn. 1.12; Jn. 14.13–14; Jn. 17.6. For the slaves of the Prince of this World, their loss of name is a mark of their degradation and subjugation. For the servants of the Father, their knowledge of the holy Name (Jn. 17.26) both empowers and 17

SEEING THE GOD AND EARLY CHRISTIAN LITERATURE 111 Here is a dramatic epiphaneia for ‘It’ says: ‘I know who you are’; and it does not mean Jesus of Nazareth, rather it tries to ‘name’ first: Hagios tou Theou, the Holy One of God. The intervening question is also revelatory for those who study the ways of the demons: ‘Have you come to destroy us?’ Matthew’s version of the Gadarene demoniac gives a clearer edge to this question: ‘Have you come to torture us before the time?’20 This ‘time’ is not incidental either. It is not just any time, but ‘The Time’ when the final battle will take place between the forces of God’s Host and the forces of the demons; it is the Eschaton that ushers in the glorious Basileia. Jesus then, as we recall, sharply silences the demon, and commands it to depart; which it does most dramatically, screaming and convulsing the man it had possessed. The exchange has taken place very rapidly: all has been laid bare. Now the story resumes as if it had never occurred at all. The evangelist enters the narrative once more at Mk. 1.27, to resume the keyword of didache: and has the crowd of mere mortals in the synagogue (whom we remember have ostensibly been witnesses to all of this) both reflect their exposure to the epiphaneia (‘the people were astonished’—ethambethesan) and demonstrate their inoculation against it: ’They said to one another What is this? Here is a teaching that is new.’ In other words it is here as if the narrative has broken off at Mk.1.22, which stated that Jesus taught authoritatively in the synagogue, and resumed at 1.27, with the wonderment of the congregation at his teaching (didache). It is, for all the world, as if the exchange with the demon has not occurred. And this is true; for so it did not occur for this world: because the mere mortals, those congregants, did not hear it. Only

liberates within the dispensation of the Kingdom. Further see: J.A. McGuckin. Authority, Obedience & the Holiness of God: The New Testament Sense of the Kingdom. In: F Soumakis (ed). Authority and the Use of Power in Orthodox Theology and History. Sophia Studies in Orthodox Theology vol. 3. Theotokos Press. New York. 2011. 20 Mt. 8.29.

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those belonging to the other world could hear it: Jesus and Satan;21 and we the reader, of course, who hear it precisely because it is not said, but passed to us in privileged silence in agia graphe. They have not heard, nor have they seen it. Only we have seen it who were not there. Mark’s readers are the gifted seers. And it is no small privilege: for in a Gospel that gives such narrative stress to the incomprehension, the unseeingness of the core apostolic band, the ‘observant’ reader is told in the first folio of the codex that Jesus is not simply Jesus of Nazareth, but rather the Hagios Theou, who is come to destroy the demonic power and usher in the eschaton. The evangelist completes the unit by a wonderfully ironic finial sentence: ‘And his reputation (akoue autou) rapidly spread everywhere.’22 But this is surely a reputation (akoue can also mean hearsay) among mortals who had neither heard nor seen what was revealed: not an information therefore, but a disinformation. The synopsis might even be this: mortal vision, mortal capacity of hearing, is worse even than that of a dog.23 The range of seeing and hearing necessary for other-worldly events, is beyond the normal capacity. Ordinary seeing, and ordinary hearing are not to be classed alongside epiphanic seeing and hearing. It is an important and an early lesson Mark underscores in his opening folio. (b). The Baptism of Jesus. Let me retrace a little now and look at the Baptismal Narrative. Seeing and hearing is critical here too: ‘No sooner he had come up out of the water than he saw the heavens rent apart, and the Spirit like a dove descending on him. And a voice came from heaven: You are my Son the Beloved. My favour rests on you.’24 This is, arguably, the major epiphany on which the Gospels are founded. It is the story of the vocation of Jesus, as the ‘One Sent’ the Shaliach, or Apostle, of God. It takes its force, of course, as a Midrash on For such is the implication of a ‘strong’ demon (see Mk. 3.27) who speaks for the others, in the light of this episode immediately following Jesus’ encounter with Satan in Mk. 1.13. 22 Mk. 1.28. 23 Who at least can hear a range of sounds beyond our capacity. 24 Mk. 1.10–11. 21

SEEING THE GOD AND EARLY CHRISTIAN LITERATURE 113 Isaiah 63–64 the great eschatological hymn where God is envisioned as coming once more in vengeance to save his people. The hymn reaches its culmination in the prophetic plaint: ‘Oh that you would rend the heavens and come down!’25 and celebrates the dawning of the eschatological act of the God of Israel (when the heavens of separation shall be rent) in Israel’s acknowledgement that: ‘No ear has heard; no eye has seen, any god but you act like this, for those who have trust.’26 The baptismal event, of course, takes place in an epiphany of seeing (the promised rending of the heavens, and the descent of the dove) and of hearing (the Bath Qol of the divine voice27). But even here a question is pinned into the core of the story. For who saw? And who heard? In the various Synoptic and Johannine accounts the question is conflicted. Was it a seeing of the rending and the descending Spirit by Jesus? Or by John? Or by the crowd? In Matthew28 the seeing is for Jesus; especially if we adopt the Sinaiticus b variant and the reading of the Byzantine Lectionary.29 The hearing of the voice is either for him too or, just possibly, for the bystanders. It is not clear. In Luke it is all for Jesus, an epiphany given to him in prayer made apart, following the baptism itself; both the seeing and the hearing for him alone. In John30 the seeing and hearing are all for John the Baptist, not Jesus or any of the people, except those who later hear the story recounted to them by the Seer.

Is. 64.1. The ‘rending of the heavens’ being explicitly used to evoke Isaiah in the New Testament, and pose the Baptism of Jesus as the fulfillment of the prophet’s hopes for the return of God. 26 Is. 64.4. 27 Mk. 1.11, which narratologically ties in this episode to the Metamorphosis account of Mk. 9.1–8, where it is heard once more, and another ‘seeing’ of doxa occurs. 28 Mt. 3.16–17. 29 ‘The heavens were opened [for him]…’ Mt. 3.16. 30 Jn. 1.29–34. 25

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(c). The Johannine Baptism and Nathanael Stories. The Johannine account, having thus dislocated the baptismal foundation midrash to such an extent that it has removed both the event and its attendant narrative, and retained only the allusion to the epiphany31 (an editorial process similar to what the evangelist will do in that extraordinary textual move when he removes the eucharistic institutional words from the Last Supper32) now has created the narratological space for composing an alternative vocational epiphany “for the disciples”. This is the Nathanael story, and it serves as one of John’s most dramatic seeing and hearing stories, where neither seeing nor hearing actually take place simply on the page, but which are the categories around which the whole narrative unquestionably revolves. The story is familiar enough to need retelling only briefly. Jesus is gathering disciples, showing things to them33, even renaming them.34 Philip subsequently initiates Nathanael to do what the others have done, namely ‘Come and See.’35 Nathanael makes a witticism about Jesus that the latter is not supposed to hear.36 When he comes to Jesus, he himself is the focus of a remark made by Jesus about him but not to him37 that he hears, almost obliquely, and which re-names him as a disciple. Accordingly he now responds to that ‘hearing event’ (of a word not addressed to him) and says something which the reader of the narrative immediately senses as dislocated in so far as it does not correspond 31

Jn. 1.34.

32Replacing

the institutional words with the narrative of the washing of the feet, and writing his own ‘eucharistic’ narrative in place. Jn. 13. 33 Jn. 1.39. 34 Jn. 1.42. 35 Jn. 1.39; Jn. 1.47. 36 Jn. 1.46. ‘Can anything good come out of Nazareth.’ The phrase for long was obscure; but in recent years archaeological finds of a massive bath-house in Roman Nazareth have made it clear that it was Nazareth itself that was the chief garrison town for the Roman legions stationed in Palestina. This gives force to Nathanael’s sardonic joke. 37 Jn. 1.47. ‘Here is an Israelite who deserves the name “incapable of deceit”.’

SEEING THE GOD AND EARLY CHRISTIAN LITERATURE 115 to the issues that are supposedly transpiring before our own eyes and within our hearing. He says to Jesus, on account of these words: ‘How do you know me?’38 to which Jesus replies, shifting from an energeia of hearing into seeing, ‘I saw you under the fig tree.’39 This word, now addressed directly, and heard directly, produces thauma in Nathanael, who gives a dramatic confession of faith as a result of it: ‘Rabbi you are the Son of God and the King of Israel.’40 Not bad for a neophyte we might have thought. But it is not what Jesus is impressed by. He raises the level of energeia here one more time: shifting once again from hearing to seeing: ‘Do you believe that because I spoke….I tell you most solemnly you will see the heavens laid open, and above the Son of Man the angels of God ascending and descending.’41 In this way John brings his baptismal epiphanic narratives to their teleiosis connecting Isaiah 64.1 with the great narrative of Jacob at Bethel42, and making a strong apocalyptic connection of the return of the Heavenly Son of Man, with the epiphany of the descending angels. In this combined midrashic vision, the angels descend and ascend over the anointed stone: the heart of the holy place on earth: the true archetype of what the Temple stands for. The stone at the centre of it all is the Ebn Dam (Stone of Blood) a metathesis play on the angelic title Ben Adam, Son of Man, and thus the literary key to why the Johannine narrative here trails before us the connection between seeing the angels ascending over the Son of Man (as the true locus of the Temple’s holy place) and the concept of the angels descending with the Son of Man as he returns in glory when the heavens are next to be ‘rent apart’: at the final Judgement. The Son of Man is the Stone of Blood (the New Temple): or in the Hebraic play John is presuming behind the Greek: Ben Adam, Ebn Dam. The connection with the ominous aspect of the holy temple stone, the holy of holies as locus of sacrifice, that is as ‘stone of blood’, is given to us quite clearly and deliberately in John’s Jn. 1.48. Jn. 1.49. 40 Jn. 1.49. 41 Jn. 1.51. 42 Gen. 28.11–12; Gen. 31.13; Gen. 35.7. 38 39

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overarching theme throughout his Gospel that Jesus becomes the Temple altar, the Shekinah’s resting place, in his Passion glory.43 Now there is a massive amount of seeing going on here that is not visible, or shall we say phenomenological. It is deeply mystical; to do with becoming a mystes, an initiate. One has to recognise the sacred symbols provided to our inner sight by the Hierophantic evangelist. He passes before our comprehension44 bi-lingual midrashim that we are meant to know; and in recognizing, to confess. This is how he understands the vision of Bethel to which he invites Nathanael; and which he lays out before our startled minds as we read the event afresh in the ever-renewed moment of the eschaton of this epiphaneia. Seeing, once again, is underlined as not being not ordinary looking, but rather a question of being mystically initiated. (d). The Blind Man. The symbol of the blind man45 stands well as a global cipher for the issue of seeing and not seeing in evangelical narrative. In the synoptic form of the story we find the character functioning powerfully in a didactic way. The tale is again familiar enough, I presume, to give it simply in digest. Jesus has given his disciples a threefold prophecy of the Passion. It has not been received well. Peter has even responded to one of the prophecies: ’God forbid,’ and has been rebuked as a Satan for thinking in men’s way not God’s.46 After the third warning, Jesus sets off for dangerous Jerusalem, a journey which oppresses the fearful disciples. He marches on ahead; they lag behind.47 Just at this point the blind man lumbers into the story; like an innocent blundering into the midst of a family argument and asking loudly how everyone is. He

By means of the connection of Jn. 3.14–21; Jn. 8.28. Or, we should say, before that of his own community who were bilingual, as Hellenized Jews. 45 Mt. 20.30–34 (two); Mk. 10. 46–52; Lk. 18.35–43. 46 Mt. 16.23; Mk. 8.33. 47 Mk. 10.32. 43 44

SEEING THE GOD AND EARLY CHRISTIAN LITERATURE 117 acclaims Jesus in a highly politically charged way.48 He asks to see, and he receives his sight. What then follows in Mark and Luke is the climacteric of the epiphany; for then he jumps to his feet and follows after Jesus along the road to Jerusalem, but which has now become revealed as the road to the Cross. He is able to accept the message that discipleship is the offer of the Cross49 because he is blind to the dangers. This in-sight has led him to a bravery that eludes the other disciples. He has entered into the heart of discipleship, walking alongside Jesus. The Blind Man has seen where the others have proved incomprehensibly blind even after three solemn and explicit Passion revelations. It is this paradox of faith which the Johannine variant50 of this Blind Man narrative brings out even more strongly, concluding: “For judgment I came into this world, that those who do not see may see, and that those who see may become blind.’51 In John the narrative is constructed much more consistently around a theme of Judgement (Krisis). The coming to vision, or remaining unseeing, is far from a neutral category: a question of high IQ, or mere luck. It is an issue of eschatological judgement. Those who see are the elect. Like the once-blind man in John 9, they make judgements and pass judgement. Those who do not see are those who either cannot, or refuse to, see. In this they have passed into Judgement. It has become the moment of the eschaton for them here and now. Seeing is thus, precisely, a seeing of the Son of Man coming in Glory. Whether or not that sight is one of liberation or terror is the heart of the judgement. The ‘seeing’, nevertheless is at the core: and once again it is not a seeing that is given easily or uncomplicatedly.

Mk. 10.47–48. ‘He began to cry out and say: Jesus Son of David have mercy on me!’ And many rebuked him, telling him to be silent; but he cried out all the more, ‘Son of David, have mercy on me!’. 49 Mk. 8.34. 50 Jn. 9.1–41. 51 Jn. 9.39. 48

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CATEGORY II. THREE NARRATIVES OF SEEING THE GLORY. What I mean by Category II types of seeing in the New Testament are those central eschatological events related to the experience of the Glorification of Jesus. I would elevate three episodic narratives as being constitutive of this: the Anastasis accounts themselves, or the varieties of Resurrection story; the Metamorphosis (Transfiguration) account, and the several varieties of accounts of the ‘descent’ or energeia of the Spirit as part of the Church’s en doxa experience of the glorified Messiah. (a) The Anastasis. The oblique Markan account of Resurrection (Mk. 16.7) has the angel tell the women: ‘He is risen. He is not here;’ the second phrase being anticlimactic one would have thought - a very obvious thing; but they need the evidence of their eyes to be confirmed. Then they are enabled to hear the stress of the angelic kerygma of Anastasis, namely: ‘Tell his disciples… He is going before you to Galilee. It is there you will see him, just as he told you.’ (Mk. 16.8). And wondering when they or we were actually told this, we find we have reached the ending of the narrative in the most enigmatic phrase of all: ‘They said nothing to a soul…ephobounto gar….’ which suggests something to follow which does not follow.52 The Lukan account (Lk. 24.1–8) repairs the ambiguities of this unsettling narrative. The women are instructed by a more prestigious and dazzling angelophany. And being instructed they remember. Even so, no one believes them. Peter is then introduced as having run to the tomb to see what had happened: ‘He bent down and saw the binding cloths but nothing else, and went back home amazed…’ His seeing of the cloths, not the Anastasis, induced in him a thauma which is usually only poorly translated as ‘amazed’ but which indicates in the Greek text that an epiphany of meaning has indeed taken place in some sense. Luke then leaves Peter and brings us into that dramatic narrative of Emmaus. Though generally rationalized to: ‘For they were afraid.’ It precisely means ‘They were afraid because…’ 52

SEEING THE GOD AND EARLY CHRISTIAN LITERATURE 119 Two disciples walk with the risen Jesus for seven miles and: ’Something prevented them from recognising him.’ (Lk. 24.16). In the face of their confessed incomprehension of all that had happened, Jesus rebukes their foolishness and slowness and explains all the prophetic texts that referred to himself (Lk. 24.27). But it was only in the evening upper room when they broke bread together while he said the blessing, that their ‘eyes were opened and they recognised him.’ (Lk. 24.31). And at that very moment, ‘He had vanished from their sight’ (Lk. 24.32). They are then able to correlate what they have seen by not seeing, with what they felt when the word was explained to them, in a burning of the heart, which they associated with Jesus’ teaching before the Passion. It is thus the heart that sees more truly, the text tells us, echoing the dominical logion: ‘Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.’ (Mt. 5.8.) Two other epiphanies of the Anastasis occur then in Luke. The apparition to the Apostles (Lk. 24.36–49) where he agitates them by appearing through a locked door and calms them by insisting on his reality (as distinct from phantasmagoriality) by eating with them. This passage echoes the Emmaus story, therefore, a similarity which is further endorsed by Jesus then teaching the Apostles the significance of the scriptures and ‘opening their minds’. Once again the Mind, as was the case with the heart, serves as a better organ for ‘seeing’ what is transpiring here. The final episode in Luke is seamlessly related to this manifestation for the appearance is concluded by him leading them all out to Bethany where: ‘He blessed them and withdrew from them and was carried up to heaven.’ (Lk. 24.51). The Gospel ends on the note that they worshipped him (when they could no longer see him, presumably) and returned to the Temple to await the promised descent of the Spirit. In the Matthaean account of the Anastasis (Mt. 28.1–20) physical seeing is equally ambivalent. The narrative comes in three episodes, the third of which is intruded into the middle of the second. The first is a well developed angelophany. Matthew cuts off the aspect of the arrival of the women with their news to the disciples altogether. The angel, as in Mark, shows the empty place in the tomb, and we also have the stress that this is a message to be told (Mt. 28.7). But at the moment this mission is in process of being obeyed, as they turn to run to the disciples, Jesus himself

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appears to their eyes, and they grasp his feet and worship him. The words associated with a revelatory angelophany (‘Do not be afraid’: Mt. 28.10) are then spoken to them; and the content of the message to the disciples (once again the delivery of the message is excised) is altered to include a place for seeing: ‘Go and tell my brethren to go to Galilee and there they will see me.’ (Mt. 28.10). At this point the evangelist Matthew introduces the third element of the story to cut the second pericope in two. For the Galilee account is broken into by the story of how the Jewish Elders subverted the tomb guards: a foil no longer to the Markan narrative of the disbelieving disciples, but to the wider world of disbelievers of the Anastasis kerygma. When we resume the climatic part of the Anastasis story, however, we do find the theme of the unbelieving disciples reprised in a very particular way. Here (Mt. 28.20) we find the fulfillment of the promise of a general vision. The Galilean ‘high mountain’ in a real sense links the epiphany to the Metamorphosis narrative: but this time all the apostles witness it, not simply the special three, for this time the epiphany of his Anastasis glory (revealed to be an issue of his attained authority— Exousia53) is for the world, and they are to be the shaliachim of that great commission (Mt. 28.19–20). Even so, at the very literary moment of the climactic vision, there are troubles: the seeing becomes ambivalent: ‘And when they saw him they worshipped him: but some of them doubted.’ It is in their going away (Mt. 28.19), away from the ambivalent seeing into the simple obedience to the word, that the Lord will truly be with his disciples: ‘Even to the end of the age.’ (Mt. 28.20). Faith thus, at the end of the narrative, is shown to be a matter of hearing and obeying; a matter of the following out of the kerygmatic command in fidelity across the generations: not a matter of seeing (which can evidently, even then, be doubtful). We have here the refusal to prioritize actual seeing and instead witness the elevation of spiritual pistis (trust, or faith) in its place; because of this, the evangelist reiterates that the latest disciples might even be as great as the first;54 and the Gospel becomes a matter of seeing in the heart and 53 54

Mt. 28.18. See Mk. 10.31.

SEEING THE GOD AND EARLY CHRISTIAN LITERATURE 121 spirit, a matter of the present kairos of God’s grace, rather than a matter accessible only to history and the original ‘seeing’ witnesses. (b). The Metamorphosis. Now, this theme of the superiority of spiritual insight over seeing historical events is manifested throughout the Markan narrative,55 not least in the manner in which Peter’s testimony (the pre-eminent ‘eye-witness’) about Jesus is regularly shown to be flawed on the basis of his physical seeing, and superior only in terms of his ‘inner seeing’. The Transfiguration narrative in Mark serves to develop a specific contrast between the three forms of Petrine ‘seeing statement’ (good, bad, and misinformed) at Mk. 8.29; 8.32–33; and Mk. 9.5–7). Peter’s greatest claim to leadership in matters of faith is his spiritual seeing of the truth that the Father has revealed to him when he acknowledges Jesus as the Christ.56 But the theological acclaim that he receives for this (Mt. 16.17) is deliberately excised in Mark’s account. His profession is not resisted, but it is met with silence by Jesus, not praise (as in Matthew). Indeed the Transfiguration narrative is then immediately set after this logion by Mark in order to clarify the issues that are at stake in this major eye-witness acting as a model of faith for the Church. Peter’s profession that Jesus is the Christ, is immediately qualified, or developed, by Jesus’ teachings that the Son of Man must enter into glory by suffering. This Peter cannot accept, and so, from being a model a few minutes before, turns into a ‘Satan’ whose example the Church must repel.57 The message that the disciple must be ready to carry his cross is made by Mark into the heart and core of the narrative of Transfiguration that immediately follows this difficult didache about the Passion. It is not so in Matthew, where the Transfiguration narrative continues to pose Peter as the leader of the band of disciples. In Mark, however, the climatic point of the Transfiguration—at least for those who are not led astray to look with only the eyes of the body, and see only As well as being a significant aspect of Paul (2 Cor. 4.18) and John (Jn. 20.29) 56 Mt. 16.16–17; Mk. 8.29. 57 Mk. 8.31–34. 55

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extraordinarily white clothes58—is the mystery of the appearance of the two prophets and the voice of God himself who finally interprets all that has transpired. It is, thus, Peter who is primarily addressed in the Bath Qol of Mk. 9.7: ‘This is my Beloved Son. Listen to Him.’59 But Peter, who in the moment of revelation in the Metamorphosis, once again comes up with the ‘wrong solution’,60 needs to learn that his ‘seeing’ is defectively focused. He must now learn to see with his ears and his heart, more acutely than with his eyes and his mouth. The Metamorphosis is the radical fusion, especially as Mark edits the story, of the theme of brilliant heavenly glory (such as manifested in the radiance of heavenly visitors in Anastasis stories) with the stern theme that the Son of Man must suffer and be rejected. As soon as the voice of God has revealed the truth, that the disciples must listen to the Son’s difficult teaching, all the phenomenal seeing is suddenly evaporated: it all disappears in an instant, almost as if to underline that the word remains. And with the simple word the simpler challenge remains also: will the disciples hear and obey that word that offered them the possibility of their own death as well as that of their master?61 Once again the evangelist has underscored a doctrine that faith’s perception is birthed by the revealed word and seen in the spirit; and that simply hearing the word, and visually seeing phenomenal events are not enough. (c). The Experience of the Pneuma (Ascension and Pentecost). The last major category of the New Testament articulations of the Glorification of the Lord, I would suggest, is that nexus of narratives of the post-resurrectional experiences of the Pneuma, the Holy Spirit of God, which falls on the disciples after the death and Mk. 9.3. The arguments are more extensively elaborated in J.A. McGuckin. The Transfiguration of Christ in Scripture and Tradition. New York. 1986. 60 ‘Master, it is wonderful for us [all] to be here…let us make three shrines, one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah.’ Mk. 9.5. 61 Mk. 8.34–38. 58 59

SEEING THE GOD AND EARLY CHRISTIAN LITERATURE 123 resurrection of Jesus, and precisely as a result of the glorification of their master. It is the sufflatio of the Spirit in the disciples which makes the reality of Church; itself the continuing proclamation of the Basileia Theou in and through history. This is Luke’s message, and it explains why the gift of the Spirit always entails the mission to proclaim the good news of salvation in and to the world. It will be revealing to look particularly at how ‘seeing’ is parsed within this set of narratives. The two Lukan narratives of the Ascension (Analepsis)62 and the Pentecost story,63 together form a conjoined theological discourse that demonstrates the effects of the glorification. The Johannine narrative concerning the promise of the Paraclete is akin to this Lukan tradition in many ways.64 Throughout the Lukan versions, which stand as the hinge between the Gospel and the Acts, both events of the Ascension and the Descent of the Spirit are ‘seen’, but the verbs associated with seeing are notably downplayed. In other words the ‘seeing’ as an epiphenomenal event is not stressed in any way. In the end of the Lukan Gospel narrative Jesus sends the Spirit upon them before the Ascension takes place on the Mount of Olives. It comes as ‘the promise’, but it comes nonetheless. This is the descent of the Spirit of God, which prefigures the ‘clothing with power’ which will come after the Analepsis. This important sequence of events is not regularly noted: commentators often tending to follow Luke’s own preference for tidiness in sequential events, and listing the sequence as: death, rising, appearances, cessation of appearances at the Ascension, and finally descent of the Spirit. But we should not forget that historical sequencing is an anachronism when recounting eschatological kerygma. A prime example of this truth is the manner in which all Lk. 24.49–51; Acts 1.6–11. Acts. 2.1–4. 64 Jn. 15.26–27; 16. 5–16 In the Johannine narrative the promise of the Spirit is the result of the Lord being taken away from their sight (an analepsis or as John would customarily put it an anabasis), leading to the aporetic paradox of: ‘A little while, and you will see me no more; again a little while, and you will see me.’ Jn. 16.16. 62 63

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the ‘glorification’ events which Luke so carefully tries to sequence linearly over forty days of historical spread (the rising from the grave, the appearances to disciples, the ascension, the descent of the Holy Spirit) are presented in the Johannine account as having occurred on one single ‘day of glory’.65 Because we may carelessly presume the sequencing of the history is more significant, we may also be led to ‘presume’ that the ascending Jesus at this instance in Luke promises the gift of the Spirit which will come later, at Pentecost. But this is not at all what Luke actually says: ‘And behold, I am sending the Promise of my Father upon you. But stay in the city, until you are clothed with power from on high.’66 The present tense of ‘I am sending send’ is not an anticipated future here. The kai idou, or ‘See this’ makes its present force doubly clear. Nor is the word ‘Promise’ another semantic anticipation, but rather a personal title of the Pneuma in this instance.67 The evangelist is certainly making a distinction; but it is one between the reception of the Spirit, here before the Ascension, and the experience of being ‘clothed with power from on high’ to effectualize the preaching kerygma after the Ascension: namely the kerygma of the sign of the Anastasis.68 The terms of the Lukan evangelical account of the Ascension, so baldly narrate the event that it is more or less semiotically equated with the blessing from the Lord’s hand (Lk. 24.51), and the Promise of the Spirit in turn is simply manifested as their joy and zeal in doxological prayer (Lk. 24.52–53). In other words, there is no stress here on seeing, or recording: all is aesthesis, the experiencing of the life-giving blessing of the Pneuma.

In John the rising, the appearances, the ‘ascending to my Father’, the gift of the Holy Spirit, and the commissioning, all occur on the same first day of the week. C.f. Jn. 20.1–23. 66 Lk. 24.49. 67 He is himself, in ways analogous to the Son, the Promise of the Father; the eschatological inbreaking of the Kingdom. 68 Peter gives us the content of that Pentecostal kerygma when he sums up the events of the Death and Resurrection of the ‘Lord of Glory.’ Acts 2.23–24. 65

SEEING THE GOD AND EARLY CHRISTIAN LITERATURE 125 In the account as it is paralleled in Acts, however, the event of Ascension is prefaced by a theological enquiry from the disciples whether or not this would be the time for the restoration of the Kingdom to Israel; a query whose answer is reserved by Jesus (Acts 1.6–7). It is not for humans to know eschatological times or reasons other than by God’s chosen means for eschatological experience. And so the next verse goes on to explain how, although their posing of the issue was misguided, God’s posing of the eschatological mystery will open their minds to it more fully: ‘It is not for you to know….but you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be my witnesses.’69 Luke’s text then goes on: ‘And when he had said this, as they were looking on, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight. And while they were gazing into heaven as he went, behold, two men stood by them in white robes, and said, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven? This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.’70

And here, by contrast, we do note that there is a stress on ‘seeing’. The initial tone is set (Acts 1.11) that the Ascension will be a prelude to the Eschatological Return of the Son of Man. The lifting up, which is both a physically vertical concept (going up into heaven as an ascension) and simultaneously a term connoting ‘glorification’ (that is a lifting up which is an exaltation) provides us with the energy behind a subtle play on the notion of seeing as witness within the text. For it is precisely as the disciples are in the act of ‘looking on’ this exaltation (which is the real event behind the symbol of the ‘lifting up’) that ‘a cloud took him out of their sight. The informed reader, of course, by now knows this not to be simply a meteorologically unfortunate event, but rather a cipher for the entrance of the Lord into the presence of God. The ‘cloud’

69 70

Acts 1.7. Acts 1.9–11.

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symbolizes this, being a biblical referent for the Shekinah of God.71 It is this ‘exaltation’ which is the Analepsis pure and simple; and it is this which therefore cannot be encompassed by merely ocular vision. So as to make sure that we do not miss this subtle underlining of the incapacity of our terms to embrace the mystery, Luke has drawn a double line underneath the episode by introducing the angelic witnesses of a typical Anastasis account (like angels at the tomb), who gently instruct the disciples, now characterised as staring aimlessly and dumbly into the sky (not the heavens), that they have work to do (as Church) which will last until the eschaton. In short, to convey his complex evocation of an eschatological mystery in this nexus of narrative, Luke basically tells us that the disciples saw something that could not really be seen; at a promised time in the apparent past which was suggested as being a future but was really a continuous present; and in a way which was only symbolically visualized by the words spoken. Once again vision more than falters in the fuller ‘roundedness’ of the experience of the multiple aspects of the mysterious glorification that so confounds categories of time and space.

CONCLUSIONS I hope that in this cursory treatment of a very important theme, namely how the idea of ‘divine seeing’ is involved in the Jesus witness of the New Testament, our exegesis has nevertheless brought out the subtle ways in which the writers insist on its veracity, even when they simultaneously elevate it as merely a symbol of something more significant, something that cannot be seen with the eyes of the body. The argument in this paper has tried to divide the two classes of narrative clusters, describing them in terms of Category 1 and Category 2 stories. The first are primarily Christological and didactive in character; focusing on the eschatological exousia of the Lord. The An evocation of the cloud of the Shekinah that covered Sinai when God was revealed to Moses; just as was the cloud that appeared in the Metamorphosis account. 71

SEEING THE GOD AND EARLY CHRISTIAN LITERATURE 127 second are more purely eschatological in style and grapple more directly with the issues of non-seeing at the core of the metaphysical events they wish to describe. However, both in terms of Category 1 and Category 2 narratives there is present in all the New Testament accounts of the ‘seeing’ of the glory of the Master, an unwavering sense (and often an explicit argument) that ‘seeing is not necessarily believing’: that believing is something much more spiritually elevated indeed.

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SEEING THE GOD AND PAUL Jeffrey B. Pettis Acts 9.1–22 (c.f. Acts 22.6–16; 26.13–18) serves as a starting place for Paul’s seeing the god, since he says very little about his encounter in his letters. According to the text, Paul is come upon by a voice and a light from heaven which make him fall to the ground and lose his sight. The encounter is quite physical, and it is through Paul’s blindness that he experiences the divine. The personal and intimate nature of encounter brings Paul close to the divine who imparts knowledge about resurrection and being transformed into spiritual bodies (1 Cor. 15.44–52). Similar notions of transformation occur in ancient alchemical texts and Egyptian funerary thought and practices. However, Paul himself is rooted in Jewish apocalyptic mysticism with the focus upon the journey of ascent. This tradition is founded upon dying/martyrdom and rebirth. In 2 Corinthians 12.1–5 Paul speaks of someone he knows—probably a reference to himself—who was “caught up in the third heaven, into Paradise” (2–3). The encounter as a whole appears to leave him in a state of uncertainty and disproportion, so that Paul “boasts” while at the same time he speaks of being in weakness (5). Paul’s orientation it seems, is “above” Temple Judaism and Temple practices. One key theme specific to Paul is the notion of seizure. Seeing the god happens to such an extent that he says Christ “lives in me” (Gal. 1.20). In this way Paul presents himself to the Greeks from the Areopagus in Acts 17, making it clear that the divine does not dwell in shrines. At the same time, Paul’s inner “knowing” is that he (and his community) is becoming changed into the god: “We….are being changed into his likeness by one degree of glory to another” (2 Cor. 3.18). Elsewhere Paul refers to himself as aggelon theou (“an angel of god” Gal. 4.14). There is, then, in Paul the blurring, if not breakdown of boundary between human and divine. To me this makes 129

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PAUL: SEEING THE GOD AS BODY EXPERIENCE Paul affords little detail about just what happened in his conversion and seeing Jesus. He speaks of the person he used to be, what he calls “my former life in Judaism, how I persecuted the church of God violently, and tried to destroy it” (Gal. 1.12). To the church in Rome he says he is “set apart” for the Gospel of God (Ro. 1.1). We must go to the author of the Book of Acts, an account written decades later. There are actually three accounts to draw from. I will work from Acts 9:1–22, Paul’s conversion narrated by the author of Luke-Acts, noting differences in light Acts 22.6–16 when in Jerusalem Paul is arrested and speaks to the crowd, and Acts 26.13–18 when Paul is before King Agrippa. Acts 9:1–22 reads: Now as he journeyed he approached Damascus, and suddenly a light from heaven flashed about him. And he fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” And he said, “Who are you, Lord?” And he said, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting; but rise and enter the city, and you will be told what you are to do.” The men who were traveling with him stood speechless, hearing the voice but seeing no one. Saul arose from the ground; and when his eyes were opened, he could see nothing; so they led him by the hand and brought him into Damascus. And for three days he was without sight, and neither ate nor drank.

While traveling Paul “suddenly” (exaiphnes) encounters a great light out of heaven, driving him to the earth (Acts 9.3–4). He hears a voice speaking to him, and dialogue issues between the deity and Paul (Acts 9.3–6). There is no indication that Jesus is actually seen, no physical description of the deity. Paul experiences the divine by

SEEING THE GOD AND EARLY CHRISTIAN LITERATURE 131 not seeing. He opens his eyes but does not see (ouden blepen) (9.8).1 The two men with Paul hear the voice, but also see nothing (medena de theorountas).2 In the second part of the account the Lord speaks to Ananias en horamati (“in a vision”) about Jesus’ ophtheis (“appearance”) to Paul: Now there was a disciple at Damascus named Ananias. The Lord said to him in a vision, “Ananias.” And he said, “Here I am, Lord.” And the Lord said to him, “Rise and go to the street called Straight, and inquire in the house of Judas for a man of Tarsus named Saul; for behold, he is praying, and he has seen a man named Ananias come in and lay his hands on him so that he might regain his sight.” (Acts 9.10–12)

Ananias’ response to the encounter is to resist. He reacts, saying “Lord, I have heard from many about this man, how much evil he has done” (13). However, he follows the command given to him in the vision to go into the street called Straight and find Saul. When he finds Saul he lays hands on him so that Saul might “look up” (anablepse) (9.12, 17) and have his sight. For Paul, as presented by the author, there are definitive repercussions come from seeing the god. Specifically, there is the loss of sight and overall breaking “down to the earth.” Paul’s contact with the god is such that he must afterwards be led by the hand (Acts 9.8). The men who are with Paul also become compromised—paralyzed and speechless at hearing the voice (Acts 9.7). The reactions are quite physical. One can observe the same kind of reaction with Zechariah’s loss of voice in Luke 1.20, and elsewhere in the New Testament Gospels with figures like Mary and Joseph and the disciples there is also some kind of physical reaction which occurs whether its feeling deep emotion, singing, falling to the earth in worship, running, or acting out dreams. Seeing the god has its price. One “feels” it, and one is compromised by it. No wonder that Origen of Alexandria says: “It

In Acts 22.9 Paul explains that his blindness is due to the intensity of the light, which according to Acts 26.13 is as “bright as the sun.” 2 In Acts 22.9 they see the light but do not hear the voice. 1

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is a hard thing to see the Creator and Father of the Universe.”3 The same might be said of experiencing the gods in the Hellenistic world which could also be difficult. Lane Fox writes: On one point, however, there is an obvious continuity: intimacy with a god was not easy...Even to their favorites, the gods might be present because they were angry and resentful…When a god did reveal himself, we can understand why so often he began with the words “Have no fear….”4

In Acts 9.18 Luke also speaks of “scales” (lepidos)—some kind of skin or covering over Paul’s eyes preventing ocular vision. They evidence what is the physicality of Paul’s encounter. The scales are the markings of contact with the god. Paul in Acts sees the god not merely as some vision disconnected from body sensation and the material world. For Paul the divine manifests rooted in bodily experience. Seeing the god occurs a something which is real and palpable and leaves a mark. Its in the body. Is this the “thorn in the flesh” (skolops te sarki) which Paul speaks of in 2 Corinthians 12.7? The author of Acts gives us details which are external to the person of Paul. He describes the things which happen to Paul, and this is very much in Lukan style to tell a good story. However, my understanding of Paul is that his encounter with the divine is a personal thing which for the most part he simply does not and probably cannot talk about. Although in his letters and work he brings to expression what is for him the meaning and implications of his encounter as one “called to be an apostle and set apart,” in the end the actual experience of seeing the god remains his own apokalupseos (“revelation” cf. Gal. 1.12, 16). He experiences on an inner level the god who ophthe, “manifests,” to him, after appearing to Cephas, the twelve, more than five hundred at a time, James and then all of the apostles (1 Cor. 15.4–8). Through this kind of intimacy with Christ raised from the dead Paul is imparted certain knowing about resurrection and the transfiguring from a mortal to immortal body raised en doxe (43). This process of transforming has

3 4

Origen CCels. 7.43. Robin Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians, 109.

SEEING THE GOD AND EARLY CHRISTIAN LITERATURE 133 to do with changing into a different kind of body, one which is not absent of material form and shape it would seem. He writes: It is sown a physical body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a physical body, there is also a spiritual body… Lo! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. (1 Cor. 15.44–52)

Paul has come into a divine knowledge. His understanding reflects what is a kind of organic regeneration by which life substance inherently changes (alagesometha). The same word, allasse, appears in Parable 9.5 of the Shepherd of Hermas where stones brought forth by virgins from the mountains to build the ascending tower (which is the Church) change (ellasson) their former colors and all become white.5 The inherent transformational process has parallels with ancient alchemy such as the 1st century text “Isis to Horus” where the goddess Isis comes into the intimate knowledge6 by which her son Horus will become spiritually transformed. One cannot rule out for Paul, either, the influences of ancient Egyptian It is as if the combining of the spiritual (virgins) and the rock constitutes a transfiguring. Paul might have something like this very much in mind. The body of flesh will become a body of spirit. Shape and form will not necessarily change, but the inherent constitution of substance will. 6 At the core of the text is the notion that nature (physis) has the inborn power to regenerate itself. Substance begets substance—a concept elsewhere translated as: “the impregnation of nature by nature.” See Marie-Louise von Franz, Alchemy: An Introduction to the Symbolism and the Psychology (Toronto, Canada: Inner City Books, 1980, 1959), 47. As with Paul depicted in Acts 9, physical contact with the divine being occurs as part of the process of imparting sacred knowledge. In the account the goddess Isis, after struggling with two angels who descend upon her, procures what she calls the pharmakou tes cheras (“drug of the widow”) (16). This is the “great secret.” See M. Berthelot and Ch.-Em. Ruelle, “Isis to Horus,” I, xiii in Collection des anciens alchimistes grecs (Paris: G. Steinheil, 1887–88), 28–35. The “Isis to Horus” text is one of several ancient alchemical texts which make up the collection of this important work. 5

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mummification practices and the notion of bodily resurrection and becoming transformed. Here again we have agricultural imagery of material and pneumatic regeneration, where Osiris becomes remade as the god of “the things in heaven and in the lower world” (Plutarch, Isis and Osiris 61E). However, I am unwilling to link too quickly Paul with either Greek alchemy or Egyptian funerary thought and practices. For me he is far too set within Jewish apocalyptic mysticism. First Corinthians 15 is part of the kerygma of the early Church, rooted in Paul’s apocalyptic-mystical world of Judaism, as Alan Segal notes.7 (I will say more below.) This tradition makes an inseparable connection between dying/martyrdom and rebirth to be experienced in part by believers in the immediate, post-resurrection world, and fully at the time of Christ’s return. Paul presents Jesus as the one who has become glorified, and at his return will bring about the glorification of believers.8 Alan F. Segal, Life After Death: A History of the Afterlife in the Religions of the West (New York: Doubleday, 2004), 423–24. 8 There are striking similarities between 1 Cor. 15.36ff. and John 12.24 with regard to seed, dying, and regeneration. Addressing the matter of resurrection of the dead, Paul refers to that which is sown (sperei), and how it “will not be made alive unless it dies” (ou zoopoietai ean me apothane). He speaks of the seed which is a “naked seed (gumnon kokkon)—perhaps wheat or some other grain” (37), and that the natural body which is sown is raised a spiritual—“ensouled”—body (speiretai sooma psuchixon, egeiretai soma pneumatikon) (44). There is no notion here of the Hellenistic separation between soul and body. Origen of Alexandria uses John 12.24 to affirm the value of the death of Christ, and the surety of resurrection for others (Cels. 43.2–3). Elsewhere he speaks of the potency in a grain of wheat, which “refashions and restores the grain, after its corruption and death, into a body with stalk and ear” (Princ. 2.10.3). Reference to the sown seeds which gradually dissolve into the earth and are raised up out of the state of dissolution (dialeuetai) occurs in 1 Clem. 24–25. The author also speaks of the phoenix which regenerates itself from its state of dissolution. In both of these images Clement emphasizes the cyclical nature of dying and rebirth (cf. 1 Clem. 20.4). Elsewhere he speaks of the presbyters who have “passed on” with a “fruitful and perfect departure 7

SEEING THE GOD AND EARLY CHRISTIAN LITERATURE 135 Dying therefore occurs inseparably from resurrecting: “For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures” (1 Cor. 12.3–4). In this way then Paul shows connection with New Testament Gospel traditions around seeds and regeneration, including John 12.24, where the seed must fall into the earth and die before it can bear much fruit. 9 from this life” (1 Clem. 44.5). Ignatius of Antioch speaks of “evil offshoots which produce deadly fruit” (Ig. Tral. 11.1; cf. Acts Pet. 15), and in his letter to the Romans he refers to himself as the wheat of God to be ground by the teethe of the beasts who become the tomb of his sacrifice. He writes: “I will then rise up, free, in him” (Ig. Rom 4.1–3; cf. Mart. Pol. 4; Dan. 3.25). The Shepherd of Hermas makes reference to budding trees as the upright who are about to dwell in the coming age (Herm. Sim. 4), although there occurs no mention of dying. References to the Synoptic seed parables occur in the The Apocryphon of James (I,2 7.22–35; I,2 8.16–27; I,2 12.22–30). See a parable of the mustard seed likened to the Kingdom of God (Mark 4.30–32), and the sower and the seed which falls into good ground and gives fruit rising up and manifold (Mark 4.1–9), and the seed which grows by itself to the surprise of the sower (Mark 4.26–29). 9 Mummification is part of ancient Egyptian belief concerning the afterlife. It entails preserving the body of one who has died for his/her journey into the next world. Initially provided for Egyptian Pharaohs, mummification is founded on religious fertility rites and notions of vegetative processes of regeneration. It is understood in relation to the natural ebb and flow of the Nile River agrarian life cycles. Extant ancient Egyptian instructions held in the Cairo Museum tell of the special care given to the procedures of dissection and embalmment which constitute mummification and the process of desiccation. Every part of the body receives a ritual anointing with special oils and plant derivatives. The spine is soaked with oil. The head is twice anointed. The fingernails are gilded, the fingers are wrapped with linen bandages, each of which is attributed to a single god. The entire body is contained in linen wrappings, excluding the inner organs. These are removed (with exception of the heart) and held in funerary vases called canopic jars. The jars are a sign of physical immortality and set (with other possessions of the deceased) alongside the mummy in the tomb. In later times, the organs were wrapped in linen

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Perhaps nowhere else in the Pauline epistles do we find this kind of personal religious encounter than in 2 Corinthians 12.1–5. Here Paul speaks of someone he knows who was “caught up in the third heaven, into Paradise” (2–3). He makes clear the paradoxical nature, the “between” of the event being either in-body or out-ofbody experience. Hence the mystery of it all, “something which only God knows.” It is not inconceivable that Paul is speaking here of himself, referencing some kind of religious experience by which he becomes “caught up” into the higher realm. He gives us all the main elements of a religious encounter: transcendence, being acted upon, disorientation, and the ineffable where what happens cannot be told or uttered (5). In this case encounter involves, as in Acts 9, sensate, auditory experience, specifically of hearing “words too wonderful to tell” (arreta remata) (2). The encounter as a whole appears to leave him in a state of uncertainty and disproportion. Paul “boasts” (1,5,6) while at the same time he speaks of being in weakness (5). The later Apocalypse of Paul, which is based upon 2 Cor. 12.1–5, expands the narrative details of Paul’s journey in 2 Corinthians 12.1–5. In this case we get a description of what he sees in the fifth heaven: “I saw a great angel in the fifth heaven holding an iron rod in his hand” (22.2–5; c.f. Rev. 19.15). The text continues to describe what is Paul’s journey into the seventh heaven where Paul sees an old man and a light and a throne “brighter than the sun by seven times” (22.23–23.1). The account ties in directly with the apocalyptic imagery of Daniel 7.9, 13, the thrones and the Ancient of Days who sits enthroned, his raiment as white as snow (see below). Central to Paul’s experience is the glory (doxa) of God. The word doxa occurs over seventy times in his letters. Romans 8.18 speaks of the present sufferings which are nothing compared to “the glory that is to be revealed to us.” In Romans 15.7 Paul speaks of Christ who has “welcomed us into the glory of God.” In 1 Corinthians 15.43 Paul declares: “that which is sown in dishonor is cloth and set back into the body. See Hdt. 2.76–88; Plut. On Isis and Osiris. Also Marie-Louise von Franz, On Death and Dreams: A Jungian Interpretation. Translated by E.X. Kennedy and V. Brooks (Boston and London: Shambhala, 1987).

SEEING THE GOD AND EARLY CHRISTIAN LITERATURE 137 raised in glory.” Second Corinthians 4.6 says that God has given “the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.” Paul in seeing the god encounters—comes face-to-face— with the doxa of God. He has entered into the raw and overpowering presence of the divine which makes one’s face shine. Like Moses, he too, it would seem, had and continues to have the burning bush experience. I am tempted to name Paul’s journey experiences specifically as interior journeys of the self. At the very least one may raise questions around the notion of the unconscious mind as having its own autonomy and voice manifesting in his state of mind. Is Paul in his experiences of “being encountered” hearing himself speak to himself? Even if this is so, does it exclude what is for Paul the validity of the “revelations” as divine? I also find it interesting that the kind of “rapture” experience in 2 Corinthains 12.1–5 where one ascends into the higher realms has strong associations with the lore around the figure Enoch and of being transliterated into the realms of the gods: And behold I saw the clouds: And they were calling me in a vision and the fogs were calling me; and the course of the stars and the lightnings were rushing at me and causing me to desire; and in the vision the winds were causing me to fly and rushing me high up to heaven. And I kept coming (into heaven) until I approached a wall which was built of white marble and surrounded by tongues of fire; and it began to frighten me. (1 Enoch 14.8–10)

Compare, too, the apocalyptic visions of Daniel and the righteous ones who become made into angels (stars) in the heavens.10 Strong

“And those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the firmament; and those who turn many to righteousness, like the stars for ever and ever” (Dan. 12.3). “I saw in the night visions, and behold, with the clouds of heaven there came one like a son of man, and he came to the Ancient of Days and was presented before him. And to him was given dominion and glory and kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him; his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall 10

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emphasis upon mystical ascent in these texts and in 2 Corinthians 12.1–5 connects to Qumran and also Merkabah mysticism associated with the early Rabbinic movement and the use of magical chants, spells and rituals for ascent to heaven.11 More so, seeing the god for Paul occurs inseparably from end-time processes and as part of an anticipation if not realization of world-changing event centered around the figure of Christ: For this we declare to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, shall not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the archangel’s call, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first; then we who are alive, who are left, shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. (1 Thes. 4.14–17)

For Paul the operative agency of his visions and transforming is the Spirit of the “living God” (2 Cor. 3.3). The Spirit dwells within (Ro. 8.11) and gives life (2 Cor. 3.6). It raised Jesus from the dead (Ro. 8.11). Paul in his person is his own testimony to the power of the Spirit come into him. The inner working of Spirit is not amorphous, not impalpable, but rather embodied in lifealtering transformation seen and expressed in the person of Paul who walks not after the flesh but after the Spirit (Ro. 8.4). He is the greatest proof of his mission to preach his God and experience.

UNIQUELY MADE Paul’s multiple references to huperbole apokalupsis, “abundance of revelation,” in 2 Cor. 12.7 (c.f. Gal. 1.12, 2.2; 1 Cor. 14.6; Ro. 16.25) suggests a predisposition to religious encounter. Is he one specifically designed to see the god? Do transcendent experiences, not pass away, and his kingdom one that shall not be destroyed” (Dan. 7.13–14). 11 Alan F. Segal, Life After Death, 410. See also 4QMa of the Dead Sea Scrolls. See also E.R. Dodds, Pagan and Christian in an Age of Anxiety (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968), 80.

SEEING THE GOD AND EARLY CHRISTIAN LITERATURE 139 trance, and altered states of consciousness come naturally to Paul, where for other persons this might not be so? It is upon such orientation that Paul bases his apostleship, that because he is one who does see the god, he subsequently has inside status as one of the chosen ones. Even so, he makes it a point in 2 Corinthians 12.5 not to boast, and to speak in terms of weakness, and my sense is that this is precisely the necessary response required as compensation for the knowledge imparted to him making him specially marked by the god. Based upon these things Paul really is, if not separate from, then “above” Temple Judaism and Temple practices. He presents himself “not from persons nor through persons (ouk ap’ anthropon oude di’ anthropou) but through Jesus Christ and God the Father who raised him from the dead” (Gal. 1.1). For Paul, the face has become unveiled (2 Cor. 3.18) to reveal the glory of God, and so the immediacy of the experience of encounter. This coming into the god is something happening and in progress, so that Paul speaks in 1 Corinthians 13.12 of seeing (blepomen) as if through a dark class but then seeing face-to-face, of knowing in part but then in full. Paul’s ongoing seeing of the god is part of (ek merous) a larger whole of “being fully known.” Paul understands himself then to have actually encountered Jesus just as the other apostles. For Paul however, knowing Jesus happens after Jesus’ death and resurrection. Alan Segal writes: Paul was essentially saying that he is among those few special prophets who received a vision of God—prophets like Abraham, Enoch, Noah, Job, Moses, Elijah, Isaiah, and Daniel, those same people who followed in the ancient Near Eastern tradition of Enmeduranki, Adapa, Etana, Gilgamesh, Dan’el and Aqhat. Implicit to this tradition is the conclusion that Jesus ascended to heaven to become the “Son of Man,” just like the heroes of ancient Biblical tradition. When he returns, the end will come upon all and only those in Christ will be rescued.12

12

Alan F. Segal, Life After Death, 406.

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SEIZURE I think if there is one theme which is specific to Paul it is seizure. Seeing the god is something which happens to Paul. In Acts he is come upon—taken by surprise and thrown to the ground by the god and told what to do. “Rise and enter the city,” he is instructed (Acts 9.6). The text makes it very clear: “This one is a chosen instrument to me…I will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name” (Acts 9.15–16). Paul’s encounter with Jesus leaves him with no choice. He has become claimed by the god, an instrument, skeuos, of divine purpose and mediation. For him it is only to get up off the ground and proceed. The notion of being taken is even more pronounced in 2 Corinthians 12.2 where Paul speaks of one being “grasped” (harpagenta) into the third heaven. The action is forceful. It has a sense of violence. This being taken is not simply an exstasis—a temporary altered state of consciousness with temporary after-effects.13 Rather, Paul’s encounters make a lasting, permanent impression upon him: “But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord” (Phil. 3.7–8). Seeing the god happens to such an extent that Paul says that Christ “lives in me” (Gal. 1.20). He speaks as one who has become possessed. It is as if some supernatural presence has descended into his person. Thus seized and worked over by his visions of transformation and the inner knowing received through his personal experience of Christ, Paul comes to the Areopagus of Athens and stands before the Greeks. The account occurs in chapter 17 of the Book of Acts: Men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious. For as I passed along, and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription, “To an unknown god.” What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. The God who made the world and E.R. Dodds, Pagan and Christian, 74–9. In pp. 71–72 Dodds refers to ekstasis as spiritual seizure which places one into a temporary state of “‘trance mediumship’ where the supernatural spirit descends into a human body.” 13

SEEING THE GOD AND EARLY CHRISTIAN LITERATURE 141 everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by humans, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all men life and breath and everything. (Acts 17.22–25)

It is exactly this “not knowing” which Paul refers to and the externalized, objectification of the gods who are seen as carvings in stone rather than experienced alive within, that Paul brings to the attention of the Greeks. He speaks of a deity who does not dwell in shrines (naois) made by human hands (24). Rather, Paul as presented by the author of Acts experiences the god as fully alive within oneself: “In him we live and move and we are” (28). The Paul of Acts makes it clear that this God raised Jesus from the dead” (31), something made known to him through his personal encounters with Christ. Even as Paul makes it clear that god does not dwell in stone, his understanding, his inner “knowing,” is that he (and his community) is becoming “morphed” into the god (Ro. 12.2; Gal. 4.19; Phil. 3.10–21). Paul speaks of actually becoming the god himself, as if his encountering occurs a part of a process of being made into the divine substance. “We….are being changed into his likeness by one degree of glory to another,” he writes (2 Cor. 3.18; cf. Moses in Ex. 34–35). Elsewhere, Paul actually refers to himself as aggelon theou (“an angel of god” Gal. 4.14). There is then the blurring, if not breakdown, of boundary between human and divine. To me this makes Paul and his appeal irresistible before the Gentiles and the Hellenistic world. Like Paul, the pagan world inclined toward seeing the god as being viable, present, and embodied. Athena is seen and worshiped through her statue residing in the temple, and emperors are perceived by the populace to be gods incarnate. Lane Fox notes: “Statues were not only the symbols of a god’s presence. From the first century A.D. onwards, we know of secret rites which were thought to ‘animate’ them and draw a divine ‘presence’ into their material.”14 The gods were experienced by the ancients to be immediately present and walking among the people. It is no wonder that the author of the Book of 14

Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians, 135.

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Acts relays how local townsfolk of Lystra perceive Paul and Barnabus themselves to be gods after Paul heals a man crippled since birth: And when the crowds saw what Paul had done, they lifted up their voices, saying in Lycao’nian, “The gods have come down to us in the likeness of men!” Barnabas they called Zeus, and Paul, because he was the chief speaker, they called Hermes. And the priest of Zeus, whose temple was in front of the city, brought oxen and garlands to the gates and wanted to offer sacrifice with the people. (Acts 14.11–14)

At the end of Acts there is another account where persons see the god in Paul. This happens on the island named Malta following his shipwreck. A poisonous snake latches onto Paul’s hand. The islanders there with him expect the venom to overtake Paul, but nothing happens to him. Unharmed, he shakes off the viper into the fire. Because of this, the people see him to be a god. The account is in the form of a travelogue: After we had escaped, we then learned that the island was called Malta…Paul had gathered a bundle of sticks and put them on the fire, when a viper came out because of the heat and fastened on his hand. When the natives saw the creature hanging from his hand, they said to one another, “No doubt this man is a murderer. Though he has escaped from the sea, justice has not allowed him to live.” He, however, shook off the creature into the fire and suffered no harm. They waited, expecting him to swell up or suddenly fall down dead; but when they had waited a long time and saw no misfortune come to him, they changed their minds and said that he was a god. (Acts 28.1–6) 15

I would go so far as to say that the serpent being attached to Paul’s hand may have associations with the serpent-yielding god Asclepius, especially in light of the popularity of the Asclepius cult at the time of writing Luke-Acts. Paul may make his own Even early Christians perceive humans to be endowed as angels (Acts 12.15). 15

SEEING THE GOD AND EARLY CHRISTIAN LITERATURE 143 inferences to the cult in 1 Cor. 12.12 where he writes: “For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one, so it is with Christ.” The imagery suggests votive offerings to the god Ascelpius at the Asclepius temple at Corinth.16 My guess is that the people on Malta would have been quite familiar with the cult and its snake-god, and so not indifferent to making the association with this Paul whom they were calling a god.17

SEEING THE GOD The one deeper thread coursing through Pauline texts and Acts around Paul’s seeing the god is the religio-spiritual relationship between interior and external change and manifesting. On the one hand, authentic relationship with the divine occurs for Paul through personal experience with one’s god. By his very nature and through his emersion in Jewish Ascent Mysticism Paul gets “caught up.” It happens to him, and he is changing from the inside-out. On the other hand, because of and through the inherent force of his visions, Paul experiences himself to be a work in the process of changing outwardly into a spiritual body, culminating in the raising See 1 Cor. 12.12–27. The archaeologist Carl Roebuck excavated the site in 1946. The Greeks built the temple in the 4th century B.C.E., and Julius Caesar rebuilt it about one-hundred years after Mummius’ sack of Corinth in 146 B.C.E. For a presentation of terra-cotta votive offerings in the shape of various body parts at the Corinthian Asclepius temple see Mabel Lang, Cure and Cult in Corinth: A Guide to the Asklepieion, American School of Classical Studies at Athens (Princeton, 1977). 17 The cult drew a lot of attention in the Hellenistic world, attested by a range of literary evidence gathered and examined by Emma and Ludwig Edelstein. See Emma J. Edelstein and Ludwig Edelstein, Asclepius: Collection and Interpretation of the Testimonies (Baltimore and London: John Hopkins University Press, 1998, 1945). As a cult, it represents an intersection between Greek (Roman) and early Christian religion—one which raises questions about spirit and body, and the tangible and intangible ways human beings relate to and with(in) each. See my, “The Sleeper’s Dream: Asclepius Ritual and Early Christian Rhetoric” (Ph.D. diss., Union Theological Seminary, N.Y., 2004). 16

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of bodies at the sound of the trumpet. As Tertullian says in his reading of 1 Cor 15: “They cannot deny that it is a body which arises, or that in the resurrection we are to make use of bodies” (Tertullian, On the Resurrection 1). However, somehow for Paul the inside and the outside are one of the same thing. They occur as part of a whole which Paul comes into through his visions and also on the way to Damascus that day. These experiences are part of the awakening of the Christimage already inside him. This goes to say that at bottom line, Paul was a Christian prior to his conversion. He just didn’t know it, or, in actuality, he did, and hence his fanatical resistance which he acted out against Christians. As I see it, Paul experienced Adam renewed, what Tertullian terms as the “restoration of Adam to his own Paradise” (Exomologesis 12).

TO SEE GOD AND LIVE IN LATE ANTIQUE JUDAISM JARED C. CALAWAY There is an uncritical assumption that often circulates in scholarship and popular belief that Judaism is a religion of hearing to the exclusion or ignoring of seeing. This assumption operates by pointing to Jewish aniconism and reducing Jewish encounters with the divine to the Deuteronomistic emphasis on audition. Did not God say that humans could not see God—or literally God’s face— and live (Exod. 33:20)? Nonetheless, this reductive maneuver ignores the rich ambivalences of the Bible and later Jewish views concerning whether and how one can see God and live. Some follow Exod. 33:20 and categorically claim its impossibility. In this case, numerous intermediary figures fill the ocular gap, allowing appearances of aspects of God—like God’s Memra, Shekhinah, Glory, or even God’s tefillin or phylacteries—or angels. Others, however, think a full and direct vision is possible for the especially righteous and humble. A few would claim that even the unrighteous can glimpse God, but they are those who see God and do not live. Some limit this visual ability to the righteous of the distant past, as a special dispensation for Moses or Enoch; others see these past figures as models to emulate and also achieve such a vision. This paper will illustrate these vistas of optic possibilities by investigating the denial, acceptance, occurrence, and accomplishment of divine visions in biblical narrative, prophecy, and apocalypses; how these biblical visionary stories were retold and interpreted in the Targumim and Midrashim; and the 145

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There is a commonplace that Judaism is a religion of hearing and not seeing, reducing the Jewish sense of God’s manifest presence to the Deuteronomic emphasis on audition.1 Did not God say that none could see God’s face and live (Exod. 33:20)? This assumption, however, simplifies the biblical texts and reduces Judaism to the Hebrew Bible, ignoring the rich ambivalences of whether, how, and who can see God and live.2 See, e.g., Robin Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians, 112, 377, 394. For a discussion, see Elliot Wolfson, Through a Speculum that Shines: Vision and Imagination in Medieval Jewish Mysticism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994) 13–16. 2 Scholars of ancient and medieval Judaism have offered ample evidence of the importance of divine vision. See, e.g., Wolfson, Speculum; Daniel Boyarin, “The Eye in the Torah: Ocular Desire in Midrashic Hermeneutic,” Critical Inquiry 16:3 (Spring 1990) 532–550. Boyarin argues that it is only under Hellenic influence that Jewish cultures evince anxiety about God’s corporeality and visibility, making the Hebrew Bible and Rabbinic Judaism less affected. David Stern, “Imitatio Hominis: Anthropomorphism and the Character(s) of God in Rabbinic Literature,” Prooftexts 12:2 (May 1992) 153, similarly argues that anthropomorphic depictions of God become a problem in Jewish thought mostly in the Middle Ages, particularly with the Aristotelian-influenced Philosophers, Saadiah Gaon and Maimonides, setting the framework for which scholars unto the present day would continue to look back to earlier expressions of Judaism; he argues that Rabbinic literature actually heightens anthropomorphic representations of God found in Biblical works. See further Alon Goshen Gottstein, “The Body as Image of God in Rabbinic Literature,” HTR 87:2 (1994) 171–195; David H. Aaron, “Shedding Light on God’s Body in Rabbinic Midrashim: Reflections on the Theory of a Luminous Adam,” HTR 90:3 (1997) 299–314; Arthur Marmorstein, The Old Rabbinic Doctrine of God, Vol. 2: Essays in Anthropomorphism (London: Oxford, 1937). I am less concerned with the elusive descriptions of God’s appearance, and more interested in the occasions and theoretical possibilities of seeing God. 1

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The biblical books, while denying one can see God and live, nonetheless depict various individuals who do so, sometimes remarking that they, surprisingly, have seen God and lived and sometimes mentioning it without comment, as if it were neither unlikely nor deadly. Moreover one cannot reduce the late-antique Jewish attitudes to the biblical narrative itself. For many writers, surviving a vision of God is simply impossible, following Exod. 33:20. In this case, numerous intermediary figures fill the ocular gap, allowing appearances of angels or of aspects of God—God’s Memra, Shekhinah, Glory, or even God’s tefillin. Others, however, indicate that the especially righteous and humble can endure a direct vision. Some limit this visual ability to the righteous of the distant past as a special dispensation for Moses, Moses’ generation, or Enoch; others see these past figures and later Jewish heroes, such as R. Akiva, R. Ishmael, and R. Nehuniah b. Ha-Kanah, as models to emulate to achieve such a vision. For nearly all of these sources, a divine vision is rarely impossible. They assume God is visible, but that his overwhelmingly splendorous appearance is potentially deadly. This essay will illustrate the vistas of optic possibilities by investigating the denial, acceptance, occurrence, and accomplishment of divine visions in biblical narrative, prophecy, and apocalypses; how these biblical visionary stories were retold and interpreted in the Targumim and Midrashim; and provided models for late-antique Jews to ascend to and gaze upon God on his chariot throne and participate in the heavenly liturgies in the Hekhalot literature.3 I have limited the essay to these sources due to space. The most obvious omissions include Philo of Alexandria and the late-antique speculations on God’s body, the Shi‘ur Qomah. For a recent extensive discussion of ancient Jewish mystical activity, see Peter Schäfer, The Origins of Jewish Mysticism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011). Our focuses overlap, but he discusses Ezekiel, the apocalypses, Philo, Qumran, limited Rabbinic literature, and the Hekhalot texts, whereas I include more biblical accounts and use different Rabbinic materials. His discussion also ranges more generally, whereas mine focuses solely on visions of God. I agree with his argument that there is no clear account of divine vision in the Dead Sea Scrolls (Origins, 152). 3

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BIBLICAL VISIONS AND PROHIBITIONS The biblical sources evince a range of seeing and not seeing the divine in the legends of the Pentateuch and Judges and the prophetic literature of 1 & 2 Kings, Isaiah, Ezekiel, and Jeremiah. These two types of accounts delineate the possibilities and limitations of visually encountering the divine that will be reinterpreted by and provide models for later interpreters and visionaries. The accounts from Genesis to Judges set the debate over whether one can see God and live in Midrash and Targum, while the prophetic visions set the pattern for later visionary accounts in the apocalypses and the Hekhalot texts.4 Pentateuch and Judges In the Pentateuch God states that none can see God’s face and live (Exod. 33:20), but it also includes stories of those who survive seeing the LORD or the angel of the LORD without distinguishing between them. Sometimes the viewer comments on the unexpected survival after a vision, sometimes not.

Moses and the Masses When Moses first encountered the divine presence at the burning bush, he averted his eyes, fearing to behold God (Exod. 3:6). The image of Moses hiding out of fear implies the possibility of seeing God—all Moses had to do was look—and its potential inadvisability. Yet it is unclear whether Moses’ fear was justified—if looking is deadly or presumptuous—or unjustified—if a glimpse would be a privileged divine blessing. Moses’ hidden face illustrates

These are general tendencies and not absolute. The apocalypses and Hekhalot literature are concerned with the possibilities and dangers of divine vision. They, however, attempt to overcome or provide unique exceptions to these dangers. Moses, moreover, provides a model for ascent to heaven in Hekhalot Zutarti §§335–374, where he is paired with R. Akiva. In general, see James Barr, “Theophany and Anthropomorphism in the Old Testament,” in Congress Volume: Oxford 1959 (VTSup7; Leiden: Brill, 1960): 31–38. 4

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an ambivalent posture concerning whether one can or should see the divine. While he hides in Exod. 3:6, in Exodus 33 he requests a glance of God’s glory, but the LORD responds, “you cannot see my face; for man shall not see me and live” (33:20). When God appears, he hides; when he requests to see, God does not fully allow it. This prohibition does not mean that seeing God is impossible, but that it is deadly. Moses cannot see the LORD’s face and live, but he can survive the sight of His “back” (33:23). Moses could not see God’s full splendor, but he did see something of God. Nonetheless, the same chapter also states, “the LORD used to speak to Moses face to face as a man speaks to a friend” (33:11). These regular, friendly meetings counterbalance the ominous tone of 3:6 and 33:20. “Face to face” could be a colloquialism for “directly” without clarifying the means of encounter, but this locution brings the visual register within the realm of possibilities. While Moses hid his face (3:6) and one cannot see God’s face (33:2), here the hidden faces of Moses and God come together— face to face (cf. Deut. 34:10–12).5 Num. 12:8 more clearly presents Moses’ exceptional visual perception of the divine. God does not appear to him merely in visions or dreams, but he speaks with him “mouth to mouth,” and Moses “beholds the very form of God.” While “face to face” has shifted to “mouth to mouth,” the visual encounter is intensified. Moses beholds God more directly than any other figure, and he alone can see the “form of the LORD.”6 The passage denotes the possibility of a human seeing the divine form, but limits that sight to one exceptional human.

I disagree with Schäfer (Origins, 46) when he states concerning Exod. 33:11 that “the text makes it absolutely clear that Moses does not actually see God.” To the contrary, I find the text ambivalent. Schäfer discusses the Moses passages that deny that one can see God (and live), but passes over the counter passages that claim that Moses or his contemporaries patently saw God (pp. 43–45). 6 Cf. Barr, “Theophany and Anthropomorphism,” 33. 5

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As Moses uniquely speaks to God face to face (Deut. 34:10– 12), only Israel hears God’s voice (Deut. 4:32–35), providing an example of a mass encounter with the divine: “Did any people ever hear the voice of a god speaking out of the midst of the fire, as you have heard, and still live?” (Deut. 4:33). Just as one should not be able to see God and live, one typically cannot withstand God’s voice. The Israelites en masse, however, have done so. Deut. 4:4–5, however, mitigates the encounter’s directness: The LORD spoke with you face to face at the mountain out of the midst of the fire, while I stood between the LORD and you at that time, to declare to you the word of the LORD; for you were afraid because of the fire, and you did not go up into the mountain.

At first this passage suggests an unmediated encounter between God and the people “face to face,” yet the rest of the passage denies its directness; Moses stood between the faces. Moreover, they were afraid to ascend the mountain, suggesting that they otherwise could have—like Moses at the burning bush; thus, the LORD had to speak to Moses and Moses in turn to the people. There are accounts of a direct, unmediated collective vision of God on the mountain. God states he will descend upon Sinai within the sight of all the people, although it is highly dangerous to the one who gazes (Exod. 19:11, 21). In Exod. 24:9–11, Moses, Aaron, Nadab, Abihu, and seventy elders climb the mountain, and the passage twice says that they saw God (vv. 10, 11), and God “did not lay his hand on the chief men of the people of Israel” (v. 11). The exceptionality of the scene is indicated by the rescinded threat—God did not, this time, lay his hand on them. Not only Moses, but also the top figures of Israel could see God, at least once, and live.

Genesis and Judges: To See God and Live In Genesis and Judges, others see God and lived, but are surprised that they survived. They assume one should not see God and live while doing just that, a trope that emphasizes the exceptionality of the encounter. Nonetheless, it is not always clear what exactly they see. Hagar is the first figure in the biblical narrative to comment on seeing God and living, a rare occurrence for a foreign woman.

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She encounters the angel of the LORD, but when the angel departs, the passage reads: “So she called the name of the LORD who spoke to her, “Thou art a God of seeing”; for she said, “Have I really seen God and remained alive?” Therefore the well was called Beer-lahair-roi; it lies between Kadesh and Bered” (Gen. 16:13–14). Although 16:7–12 consistently portrays her interlocutor as the “angel of the LORD,” 16:13–14 switches, indicating from the narrator’s perspective that she had spoken to and seen the LORD. The phrase “have I really seen God and remained alive” corrects the Masoretic Text, which reads, “Have I indeed seen after he sees me?”7 The corrected reading aligns with the name of the well: “the well of one who sees and lives.” This passage illustrates a slippage between seeing the LORD and the angel of the LORD. According to the narration and Hagar, when she saw the angel, she saw the LORD, and, to Hagar’s querying astonishment, she lived. Likewise when Jacob wrestled with a “man,” he names the place “Peniel,” because “I have seen God face to face, and yet my life is preserved” (Gen. 32:30). While the Moses passages use “face to face” ambiguously, here it refers to a direct visual and tactile encounter. Jacob identifies his unnamed “man” as God; like Hagar, he remarks that he has survived seeing God. Gideon encounters the angel of the LORD (Judges 6:11, 12, 21, 22) the LORD (6:14, 16, 23), or the angel of God (6:20). When it disappears: Then Gideon perceived that he was the angel of the LORD; and Gideon said, “Alas, O Lord GOD! For now I have seen the angel of the LORD face to face.” But the LORD said to him, “Peace be to you; do not fear, you shall not die.” (Judges 6:22–23)

Gideon transfers the astonishment of seeing and living from the LORD to the angel of the LORD. Nonetheless, the LORD tells Gideon he will not die. In the rest of the passage, the LORD communicates with him rather than the “angel of God” or the “angel of the LORD” (6:24; 7:2, 4, 5, 7, 9). It is possible that the Cf. Th. Booij, “Hagar’s Words in Genesis XVI 13b,” Vetus Testamentum 30:1 (1980) 1–7. 7

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LORD unmixed with references to the angel of the LORD occurs more when there lacks a clear visual component. Even so qualified, the attributes of seeing the divine personage are applied to the angel of the LORD; their characteristics are indistinguishable and the text does not fully differentiate between them. The most spectacular vision of the (angel of the) LORD occurs to Manoah and his wife (Judges 13:2–25). The “angel of the LORD” appears first to Manoah’s wife (13:3). She reports her encounter to her husband: “A man of God came to me, and his countenance was like the countenance of the angel of God, very terrible” (Judges. 13:6). The narrator calls the figure the “angel of the LORD” whereas Manoah’s wife circumspectly refers to him as a “man of God,” an aspect recalling Gen. 32:24, with the terrifying “countenance of the angel of God.”8 In this passage, the figure is called “angel of the LORD” (vv. 3, 13, 15, 16, 17, 18 20, 21), the “angel of God” (vv. 9), and “God” (v. 22).9 After the supernal being ascends back to heaven using the altar as a transportation device (Judges 13:20), Manoah and his wife bow down in reverence, recognizing that they were dealing with the angel of the LORD or God: And Manoah said to his wife, “We shall surely die, for we have seen God.” But his wife said to him, “If the LORD had meant to kill us, he would not have accepted the burnt offering and a cereal offering at our hands, or shown us all these things, or now announced to us such things as these.” (13:21–23)

While the passage previously may subtly differentiate between LORD and angel of the LORD, the ending elides the difference Another similarity with Genesis 32 concerns the angel’s name. When Jacob requested the “man’s” name, he refused; likewise, when they ask this “man” in Judges, he also refuses saying, “Why do you ask my name, seeing that it is wonderful?” (Judges 13:18). 9 There might be a subtle differentiation between “LORD” and “angel of the LORD” in the passage. For example, Manoah prays to the “LORD” for the “LORD” to resend his messenger, the “man.” Manoah also offers food to the “angel of the LORD,” who refuses but says that he can offer a sacrifice to the “LORD.” 8

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with the “angel of the LORD” and God sharing the same characteristics: one should not see him and live. Manoah’s wife reassures Manoah that they will remain alive because otherwise the LORD would not have accepted the offering, and the LORD would not give a message and then kill them before fulfilling it. God, the angel of God, the angel of the LORD, or the LORD appears to Israelite and non-Israelite, to men and women. While possible, the vision remains threatening; once the recipients of the vision realize who or what they saw, they are surprised that they remain alive or need reassurance that they will not die. These stories assume the impossibility of seeing God and living, while providing exceptions to the rule. They also elide the differences between the LORD and angel of the LORD and God and angel of God by using the terms nearly interchangeably. Sometimes the narrator interchanges the designations, sometimes the narrator uses the angel language while the recipient identifies the visitor as either LORD or God, but the narration never corrects the exchange of LORD for angel of the LORD, ultimately equating them.10 For all intensive purposes, to see the angel of the LORD is to see the LORD.11

Abraham and Isaac Abraham and Isaac have the least ambivalent divine visions. They see God and never comment that it is extraordinary or perilous. The LORD, though never described, repeatedly appears to Abraham (Gen. 15:1, 17:1, 18:1).12 Gen. 15:1 is the most circumspect, saying that the “word of the LORD came to Abram in a vision,” mixing sight and sound—Abraham sees the LORD’s “word”—and creating further distance by appearing in a vision This equation is set up in Judges 2, when the “angel of the LORD” speaks to the Israelites, saying, “I brought you up from Egypt…I said, ‘I will never break my covenant with you.’” (2:1, 2). The angel of the LORD says “I” regarding events in sacred history ascribed to the LORD, including the key element of establishing the covenant. 11 On this point, see Barr, “Theophany and Anthropomorphism,” 33– 34. 12 See Barr, “Theophany and Anthropomorphism,” 32. 10

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rather than directly (cf. Num. 12:7–8). Nonetheless, later the LORD directly appears to Abram (17:1), promising him progeny and land. In return, he circumcises himself. The LORD again appears to Abraham at Mamre (18:1).13 Likewise, the LORD directly appears to Isaac, informing Isaac that He is the God who appeared to Abraham (Gen. 26:24). Overall, when Abraham or Isaac has a divine encounter, there is little dithering or distancing: the LORD with one exception appears directly. There is no indication that this is impossible or deadly; it simply happens.

Conclusion The Pentateuch and Judges show a wide range of ocular possibilities. Although at some points it is a stated or presumed impossibility to see God and live, many people do just that. There is ambivalence surrounding the divine vision, its possibility, its exceptionality, and what exactly one sees, but both foreigners and Israelites, men and women, and individuals and groups are vouchsafed these visions. Later Jewish interpreters took up these traditions to debate whether one can see God, how one could see God, what one would actually see, and who could see God.

PROPHETIC VISIONS The prophetic call narratives in the Hebrew Bible offer prime accounts of divine encounters. They generally follow a similar pattern: God calls the prophet, the prophet resists, indicating with his mouth that he is unworthy or unable (speech problems, unclean lips, too young to speak), God reassures the prophet, and gives the prophet the message. The prophet or his vision also tends to be This passage has the complicating factor that the “LORD” appears and Abraham sees “three men.” On the one hand, they appear to be identified with one another, but in 18:22, the “men” go toward Sodom, but Abraham still speaks to the LORD. In 19:1, two angels appear in Sodom. In 18:1–15, there is no clear distinction between the LORD and the three figures, whereas the end of the chapter and chapter 19 imply that the LORD was one of the three figures while the other two were angels. 13

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related to the priesthood or the temple, the sacred locus of the divine presence. Despite the generic form, the calls of Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel demonstrate varying understandings of what the prophet sees from a direct divine vision to distancing language to a non-visual auditory focus. The tale of the prophet Micaiah b. Imlah sets the stage of how God is imagined in these works. 1 Kings 22:19 displays an archaic theology of God seeking the advice of his council: “I saw the LORD sitting on his throne, and all the host of heaven standing beside him on his right hand and on his left.”14 The prophet sees— how is not indicated—the LORD as king on his throne among the heavenly hosts. There is no hint of inability or immediate danger for the seer, but Micaiah is unique among his contemporary prophets in receiving this sight.15 The image of the enthroned God henceforth predominates Jewish visions.16 Isaiah, for example, “saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and his train filled the temple” (Is. 6:1). He further emphasizes the directness of the vision, saying that he has seen God with his naked eyes: “for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!” (Is. 6:5). Amos likewise sees God in the temple, although standing next to the altar rather than seated (9:1).

This story implicates God in a deception to kill off Ahab. The LORD wants to entice Ahab to go to battle so that Ahab will fail and die. A spirit in God’s council suggests that he will go down and deceive the prophets so that they will give a favourable oracle to Ahab. This story has a parallel in Greek literature in Iliad 2, where Zeus sends a false dream to Agamemnon, telling him that if he goes into battle he will succeed, in order for him to engage in battle and lose. The difference is Agamemnon does not die in battle. 15 This story, however, occurs within the Elijah-Elisha cycle. Famously, when the LORD passed by Elijah, He was not in the wind, an earthquake, or a fire, but in the “still small voice” or “sound of sheer silence,” negating the typical visual theophanic signs, such as fire, and mostly negating the auditory (1 Kings 19:11–13). 16 See Wolfson, Speculum, 16–24. 14

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While Micaiah, Isaiah, and Amos have a clear view, the most spectacular prophetic vision may use veiling language. Ezekiel sees an extraordinary luminous vision (Ezek. 1:1–28), and the entire episode is framed by Ezekiel stating, “I saw visions of God” (Ezek. 1:1). Given its detailed description, it would set the pattern for later Jewish visions of the enthroned God for centuries to come. Yet despite the willingness to give such a visually oriented account, he may back off from saying that he saw the LORD directly. Instead he saw “the likeness as it were of a human” (1:26) and the “appearance of the likeness of the glory of the LORD” (Ezek. 1:28). The language most strongly resembles the Exod. 24:16–17 (cf. Exod. 40:34), with the pyromorphic “appearance of the Glory of the LORD” on Sinai. The addition of “likeness” in Ezekiel’s account results from a heightened anthropomorphism that relates the form of God to the humans, ultimately referring to Gen. 1:26 where God creates the human in His image and “likeness.” As humans are in God’s likeness, so God has a human likeness. “Image,” “likeness,” and even “Glory” indicate God’s manifest presence, but also may shield the visionary from direct vision of the divine—“as it were.” Even if Ezekiel directly saw God, his language circumspectly indicates that his description should be taken as analogy.17 Alan F. Segal, Rebecca’s Children: Judaism and Christianity in the Roman World (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1986) 14; cf. Wolfson, Speculum, 22, 68–69, 120–121. Schäfer, (Origins, 43–48) sets up Ezekiel 1 as the counterpoint to Exodus 33, situating the unrequested vision against the denied request. His account, however, ignores the biblical narratives when Moses sees God and does not consider the potential buffering effect of Ezekiel’s language, although he does account for the spatial distancing of Ezekiel remaining on earth seeing into heaven. In fact, one could argue that the increased description is due to his “circumspect” language that potentially removes him (and the reader) from a direct visualization of the divine. The language, however, more directly recalls Exod. 24:16–17, where Moses encounters the “appearance of the Glory of the LORD” as a devouring fire on the mountain just after seeing the anthropomorphic figure along with the elders on the mountain in 24:9–11. The glory of the LORD was pyromorphic in Exod. 24:16–17 17

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By contrast, Jeremiah highlights the auditory. His call is not initiated by a vision of God on his throne, but when “the word of the LORD came to me” (Jer. 1:4). There is no suspicion of a visual aspect to the encounter until 1:9, when “the LORD put forth his hand and touched my mouth.” This opens up possibilities beyond the oral and aural. This verse may or may not indicate that Jeremiah sees the LORD, but it adds a rare tactile element. Despite a lack of a fixed plastic iconic representation of the deity in the temple, the prophets display a range of visual possibilities. But whether the vision is direct or indirect, the primary image that will shape future visions is the luminous LORD on his throne. Apocalyptic and Hekhalot literature will recombine the visions found in Isaiah and Ezekiel in new articulations to test the possibilities of the divine visions and model practices for future visionaries.

APOCALYPTIC VISIONS OF THE ENTHRONED GLORY Apocalyptic literature of the second temple period and beyond often has a legendary hero see the enthroned God.18 Other texts, however, show little concern with seeing God, suggest it is dangerous or impossible, or that it is limited to these figures of the distant past.19 rather than anthropomorphic, but that does not mean that the vision was less divine or direct. Indeed, even in Ezekiel’s vision, God’s body may be humanoid, “but its essence is fire” (Schäfer, Origins, 47). Both saw the fiery Glory of the LORD. The form the fiery glory takes is significant, but not in terms of whether or not they saw it. 18 Other apocalypses, such as 4 Ezra and 2 Baruch lack visions of the enthroned God. 19 For apocalyptic visions, see Christopher Rowland, “The Visions of God in Apocalyptic Literature,” Journal for the Study of Judaism in the Persian, Hellenistic, and Roman Period 10:2 (1979) 137–54. More generally, see idem, The Open Heaven: A Study of Apocalyptic in Judaism and Early Christianity (London: SPCK, 1982); John J. Collins, The Apocalyptic Imagination: An Introduction to Apocalyptic Literature (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998); Martha Himmelfarb, Ascent to Heaven in Jewish and Christian Apocalypses (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993).

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The earliest Jewish apocalypse, the “Book of Watchers,”20 contains a throne vision appropriating elements from Ezekiel 1.21 Enoch encounters the “great glory” upon the throne (1 Enoch 14.20–22; cf. 71:10–11), yet the same passage also states that no creature—angel or human—can behold God’s face, because no creature can endure God’s overwhelming glory. Paradoxically, while no creature can behold this sight, Enoch, though prostrate, describes his vision of it.22 Enoch is the exception to the rule, and the only exception: “I, Enoch, alone saw the vision…and no man shall see as I have seen” (1 Enoch 19.2). Enoch is completely unique, like Moses in Num. 12:8.23 In the second century B.C.E., the eponymous Daniel has a dream vision in which he sees multiple thrones (7:9) among which was the Ancient of Days with raiment like 1 Enoch’s Great Glory. Unlike Ezekiel and Enoch, however, Daniel shows no reticence concerning the vision, except that it occurs during a dream.24 In the Testament of Levi, Levi sees the Most High or Great Glory upon the throne in the heavenly temple in the highest heaven (T.Levi 3:4; 5:1–2). In a variation on this tradition, in the Apocalypse of Abraham Abraham’s mediating angel, Iaoel, who shares God’s name, takes the appearance of the Glory from Ezekiel (Apoc.Abr. 10–11).25 The It likely dates from the late third to early second century B.C.E. and would eventually form part of 1 Enoch, as is the case with the “Astronomical Book.” 21 For similarities and differences between 1 Enoch 14 and Ezekiel 1 and Isaiah 6, see Rowland, “Visions of God,” 140–142. 22 See Rowland, Open Heaven, 222; Wolfson, Speculum, 30. 23 See also 2 Enoch 20:3; 22:1–4; 39:1–6. In these passages, Enoch sees the indescribable face of God, emphasizing “face” to counter Exod. 33:20. The vision leads to Enoch’s transformation into an angelic being and the unique privilege of standing before God’s face forever (22:5, 8– 10). Upon angelification, Enoch’s own face becomes so luminous that no human could look at it, acquiring this divine characteristic (37:2). 24 Barr, “Theophany and Anthropomorphism,” 33, argues that dreams do not necessarily mitigate the directness of the divine appearance. 25 Cf. Apocalypse of Zephaniah 6:11–13. 20

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angel’s appearance is supposed to be frightening, but also temporary: his visibility will dissipate (11). Abraham eventually sees the celestial throne, upon which he sees an indescribable fire from which the divine voice issues forth (18–19). There is no visual anthropomorphizing; the divine glory speaks from fire above the throne to Abraham much like Moses at the burning bush (Exod. 3:1–6; cf. Deut. 4:12).26 Yet subsequently Abraham says that above the throne was the power of invisible glory—he saw nothing except the angels (Apoc.Abr. 19). God’s glorious presence remains unseen not because it is overwhelming, but because it is invisible.27 The greater emphasis, rather, falls upon the divine voice. There is a further apocalyptic tradition that, perhaps relying upon the tradition that one cannot see God and live, claims that upon death the righteous can see God. The Christian Ascension of Isaiah, which may rely upon a Jewish source, gives the righteous dead greater clout than the angels in the highest—seventh— heaven. The angels can merely glimpse God, but the righteous dead can gaze intently upon the Glory (9:37–38). While apocalypses feature a mediating, interpreting angel, who is the focus of revelation, many of them also highlight a hero’s vision of the enthroned God, picking up on earlier prophetic visions. Sometimes God is so glorious that no creature, whether human or supernal, can endure God’s sight or presence; sometimes the legendary adept sees the enthroned glory without danger; God’s manifest presence may be visible, but indescribable; or God is invisibly present above the visible throne. All of these visions are The Christian Testament takes up this imagery, including Jesus within the reference frame provided by the prophetic and apocalyptic descriptions. During Stephen’s martyrdom, “he, full of the Holy Spirit, gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God” (Acts 7:55). More extensively, the visions of John of Patmos reshape the prophetic/apocalyptic visionary tradition of the enthroned God (Revelation 4–5; cf. 22:1). See Rowland, “Visions of God,” 145–48. 27 Rowland, “Visions of God,” 150–152, emphasizes invisibility, but does not discuss the indescribable fire. See, however, Wolfson, Speculum, 32–33. 26

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attributed to figures of the remote past;28 sometimes the apocalypses denote the exceptionality of the hero, but sometimes there are no such clear limitations.

LATE-ANTIQUE READINGS: TARGUM AND MIDRASH Such a range of visual possibilities inherited from the Bible and apocalypses provided Jews reflecting on them exegetical breadth on the theoretical possibilities and dangers of seeing God. This essay will focus on targumim, midrashim, and, in the next section, hekhalot to illustrate the various trends late-antique Jewish thought and practice on the topic.29 Whereas the hekhalot texts tend to use Ezekiel and Isaiah interwoven with tales of more recent Rabbis to provide instructions on how properly to descend to the chariot, the targumim and midrashim tend to interpret the Pentateuch to debate the theoretical possibility of seeing God. The translations of the targumim mostly deny the possibility of a vision of God in his full splendor while providing mediating entities—God’s Memra, Shekhinah, and Glory—which one can see. The midrashim are more ambivalent about divine vision, yet generally allow that a particularly righteous figure, like Abraham or Moses, could see God, or that a unique event, like the dividing of the sea or the giving of the Torah on Sinai, provided an occasion for the Israelites to see God. On the other hand, the divine vision becomes nearly exclusively the prerogative of men, with the exception of Sarah. In fact, Abraham’s ability and women’s inability to see God may be tied to a key trope in the Midrashic texts: one sees God through circumcision. Targumim: Neofiti and Pseudo-Jonathan The Palestinian targumim translate the biblical texts into Aramaic likely for a liturgical setting. The process of translation led to shifts in wording, glosses, and lengthy additions. This essay will focus on The Revelation of John in the New Testament is an exception. While this literature derives from late antiquity, it was reshaped well into the Middle Ages, thereby disallowing a strict periodization between late-antique and early medieval. 28 29

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Targum Neofiti 1 and Targum Pseudo-Jonathan.30 Both tend to distance the recipient of a vision from the visual divine presence, increasing mediating terms; the Glory, Memra, and Shekhinah become the primary means of divine manifestation.31 However, this tendency varies with Neofiti most consistently and strongly denying that anyone saw God rather than a mediating aspect of God. While Ps.Jonathan does not always buffer the visions, in it God becomes the unseen one who sees. The degree to which the targumim mitigate previously unmediated visions is a barometer of the discomfort of one’s ability to see God.

Hagar and Jacob in the Targumim: Both Hagar and Jacob exclaimed that they saw God and lived, yet the targumim alter what they saw and Hagar’s exclamation. In Hagar’s story, the targumim, like the biblical text, consistently use the “angel of the LORD,” but remove any possibility that she may have seen the LORD. Targum Neofiti to Genesis 16:13 reads, “And she prayed in the name of the Memra of the Lord who was revealed to her: ‘You are the God who sustains all ages’; for she said: ‘Behold also now he has been revealed to me after he has been revealed to my mistress Sarai’” (trans. McNamara). This passage shows discomfort with two things: that the Lord could be Targum Neofiti 1 may originate as early as the fourth century C.E.; Targum Pseudo-Jonathan is likely from the ninth century C.E.. Martin McNamara, Targum Neofiti 1: Genesis: Translated, with Apparatus and Notes (The Aramaic Bible, Volume 1A; Collegeville, Minnesota: Liturgical Press, 1992) 44–45; Michael Maher, Targum Pseudo-Jonathan: Genesis: Translated, with Introduction and Notes (The Aramaic Bible, Vol. 1B; Collegeville, Minnesota: Liturgical Press, 1992) 11–12. The earliest known targumim from the Dead Sea Scrolls (11QtargJob and 4QtargLev) likely date from the second century B.C.E. All translations of Neofiti are by McNamara; Ps.Jonathan, Maher. 31 E.E. Urbach, The Sages: Their Concepts and Beliefs, trans. Israel Abrahams (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1975) 37–79, argued that such concepts as the Shekhinah aided late-antique Jews in balancing God’s transcendence and immanence. See also Wolfson, Speculum, 41–51. 30

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seen at all—rather his “Memra” has been revealed—and that Hagar would be vouchsafed a revelation before her mistress, Sarai, the progenitor of the Israelites. Similarly, Targum Ps.-Jonathan reworks Hagar’s response to the angelic visitor: “She gave thanks before the Lord whose Memra had spoken to her, and she spoke thus, ‘You are the Living and Enduring One, who sees but is not seen’; for she said, ‘Behold, here indeed the Glory of the Shekhinah of the Lord was revealed, vision after vision’” (trans. Maher). The passage relates to a midrashic tradition that Hagar continually received visions—”vision after vision.” Here it is a vision of the Glory of the Shekhinah of God, who is not to be confused for God. Taking up the “seeing” language of the Hebrew text, this targum denies that God can be seen; God is the unseen seer, whether being invisible, hidden, or unendurable is not explained. Unlike Hagar, the targumim partially retain Jacob’s exclamation that he has remained alive; like Hagar, however, they alter who or what he saw. In Neofiti to Gen. 32:30, Jacob wrestles not with a “man” or God, but with the angel Sariel. Jacob then exclaims that he has seen angels from before the Lord face-to-face and lived. Pseudo-Jonathan does not name the angel, but agrees it was an anthropoid angel. He similarly exclaims that he has seen “angels of the Lord face-to-face.” Both transfer the “seeing God and living” motif to angels, as the Hebrew text had done with Gideon.

Abraham and Isaac in the Targumim In the Hebrew text, Abraham and Isaac see the LORD without qualification or danger. God appears to them, they see God, and there is no further commentary. The Aramaic translators, however, evince discomfort with such a direct vision of the LORD, except with Isaac. Gen. 15:1 was the most mitigated passage in Abraham’s visions, since there the “word of the LORD” appeared to him in a vision. Targum Neofiti with extensive additions negates the vision. The language turns wholly auditory, reading, “there was a word of prophecy from before the Lord upon Abram the just.” The language has shifted from a combination of hearing and seeing to just hearing. The awkward locution of “a word of prophecy from before the Lord” places even the righteous Abram a further step removed from the Lord than in the Hebrew version. Ps.-Jonathan also has a lengthy addition to 15:1, but little revision on the key

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phrase: “a word of the Lord was with Abram in a vision” (trans. Maher with some alterations). Pseudo-Jonathan retains the strange vision of a word. In both, God assures Abram that his “Memra” will be a shield to him. For Genesis 17, Neofiti consistently alters the LORD to the “Memra of the Lord.” Ps.-Jonathan, however, retains the directness of the Hebrew: “When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the Lord revealed himself to Abram and said to him, “I am El Shaddai.” Throughout the chapter, Abraham converses directly with the Lord, except in v. 22, which reads “Glory of the Lord.” Nonetheless, Abraham cannot yet fully withstand the vision because he is not yet circumcised. In Genesis 18 in both targumim three angels appeared to Abraham.32 In Neofiti the “Memra of the Lord” is revealed to Abraham on the “plain of vision,” although some manuscripts read “a word of prophecy from before the Lord.” In Ps.-Jonathan, however, the “Glory of the Lord was revealed to him at the Vision of Mamre.” Both consider the place one of a great vision: for Neofiti Abraham sees the Memra; for Ps.-Jonathan, the Glory. Strangely, Neofiti and Ps.-Jonathan agree that Isaac saw the Lord. Neofiti to Gen. 26:24 reads, “and the Lord was revealed to him that night.” This is bold for Neofiti, which usually places the vision at a remove, and in fact a marginal gloss alters the text to “Memra of the Lord.”33 Ps.-Jonathan reads similarly. Moreover, Hagar’s epithet for God in Ps.-Jonathan as the unseen seer is repeated in the Ps.-Jonathan to Gen. 24:62, which relates that Isaac was heading toward the well of seeing and living (Beer-lahai-roi) where “the Living and Enduring One, who sees but is not seen,34 was revealed to him.”35 In the Hebrew text Hagar had her vision at Cf. Josephus Ant. 1.11.2 (197); Philo, De Abr. 23.110. Targum Neofiti1 is notable for its extensive marginal glosses; McNamara, Targum Neofiti 1: Genesis, 9. 34 See also Ps.-J Gen. 25:11; also j.Peah 9, 21b; b. Hag. 6b for similar language. 35 Targum Neofiti calls the well, “the well over which was revealed the One who sustains every age,” but is unclear about when and to whom the One was revealed. 32 33

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this well, but the targum redirects the revelation to Isaac. Isaac has a revelation of the Living and Enduring One—not the Memra or Shekhinah or Glory. The directness is uncharacteristic for the targumim and the sentence paradoxical: the unseen one is revealed.36

Moses in the Targumim While these two targumim differ with regard to Abraham—Neofiti disallowing a divine vision and Ps.-Jonathan partly allowing it—and agree that Isaac saw the Lord, they agree that Moses did not. At the burning bush, Neofiti states that above Mount Horeb the “Glory of the Shekhinah of the LORD” is revealed (3:1). The angel of the Lord is in the flames, as in the Hebrew text, but the Memra of the Lord calls out. Moses hides from the Glory of the Shekhinah of the Lord (3:6). Ps.-Jonathan mediates the vision differently. The Glory of the Lord is revealed on Horeb. Instead of the Memra, the angel Zagnugel speaks; nonetheless, the Lord calls to him. Then, as in Neofiti, Moses is afraid to look at the Glory of the Shekhinah of the Lord. The most telling shift in language is how God speaks to Moses. In the Hebrew text, Moses and God spoke “face to face.” In both targumim to Exodus 33:11, the Lord or the Memra of the Lord speaks to Moses “speech against speech,” making their relationship is completely oral. For Neofiti 33:20, Moses cannot see the “face of the Glory of the Shekhinah” but can see the “Dibbera of the Glory of the Shekhinah.” He cannot see the divine face or form, but can “see” the divine speech (Dibbera). For Ps.-Jonathan, Moses can hear the Dibbura, but cannot survive seeing the splendor of its face. He still can see the tefillin of the Glory of the Shekhinah, rabbinizing the manifest presence.37 Finally, in Exod. 24:9–11, the Hebrew text presents seventy elders who ascend the mountain and see God. In Neofiti they see the “Glory of the Shekhinah of the Lord,” although a marginal I am unsure why Isaac receives this prerogative, but it may relate to the akedah. 37 Cf. b. Berakhot 6a, 7a; Ma’aseh Merkavah, §550; Stern, “Imitatio Hominis,” 152. 36

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gloss more directly states, “the God of Israel.” Ps.-Jonathan includes a twist: only Nadab and Abihu saw the glory of the God of Israel, whereas Moses and Aaron did not (cf. Lev.Rab. 20:10). The alteration heightens the threat: “But, at that time, he did not send his plague against the handsome young men Nadab and Abihu. But it was reserved for them until the eighth day of ordination, when it would afflict them” (24:11). The verse takes up the theme of the dangers of seeing God, but turns it into a breach of etiquette: seeing the Glory does not automatically kill, but it is inappropriate. Death is the punishment for presumption.38 The targumim evince a tendency to distance figures from a direct vision of God, buffering the vision with mediating figures or aspects of God: God’s Memra, Shekhinah, Glory, or the supernal tefillin. While they mostly deny the possibility of a direct vision of God, there are some complicating passages or marginal glosses that retain the directness of the Hebrew text. The greatest exception, however, is Isaac. Both targumim oddly agree that the Lord, the unseen seer, was revealed to Isaac. These stories mostly remain visual encounters, however. Only what is seen has changed. Midrash and the Circumcised Visionary Midrashic collections are multivocal texts compiling biblical interpretations by different Rabbis of different times and places. They invite and record debate on law (halakhah) and legend (aggadah); thus, they include multiple understandings of whether and how one can see God. While some Rabbis deny that anyone ever saw God, there are some general trends that emerge among those who allow visions under certain conditions. In an increasingly gendered and phallocentric discourse, the primary requirement to see God and live is circumcision, excluding women and Gentiles.39 Even Abraham could not withstand the divine presence until he was circumcised. God gives revelations to women and foreigners, but indirectly through intermediary figures or dark Cf. Wolfson, Speculum, 42–43. Wolfson, Speculum, 5, argues, following Luce Igaray, that an ocular focus already indicates a “phallomorphic culture.” 38 39

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visions, incomplete speech, or dreams. Moses, furthermore, exemplifies the need for humility to see God and live, whereas presumptive glimpses of the divine lead to death. There remain, however, two major events in Jewish history in which God appears to all the Israelites: at the dividing of the sea and giving the Torah on the mountain. Yet these are unique events; that generation saw God more clearly than Isaiah, Ezekiel, or any other prophet.

Women and Gentiles Genesis Rabbah repeatedly excludes women from divine contact, stating that God never spoke to a woman except Sarah (20.6, 45.10, 48.20, 63.7). Sarah is uniquely righteous among women, but her exceptional status as the only woman to hear directly from the LORD is hardly flattering since God spoke to her to correct her when she denied laughing at the thought of giving birth to a son at an old age. Even then, some claim God spoke through an angel (45.7). Other instances where it seems God spoke to a woman, it was really an angel, such as with Hagar (Gen. 16:7–14) and Rebekah (Gen. 25:23). The use of the angel for Hagar is understandable, since it has a basis in the text itself; but the LORD, rather than the angel of the LORD, speaks to Rebekah telling her that two nations are in her womb. This repeated midrash flatly denies that Hagar “saw God and lived” or that the LORD spoke to Rebekah. While only Sarah hears God, others could see an angel (e.g., Gen.Rab. 45.10). Hagar regularly received revelations from angels, seeing multiple angels at once (Gen.Rab. 45.7). This is presented as proof of how earlier generations are greater than later, since she saw five angels at once and was unafraid whereas Manoah was afraid and said to his wife, “we shall surely die, for we have seen God” (Judges 13:22). The Judges passage is supposed to show how much greater Hagar was; however, the Rabbis, in this case R. Hiyya, do not explicitly deny that Manoah and his wife saw God. Numbers Rabbah 10.5, however, states that Manoah’s wife saw an angel, who visited her due to her righteousness.

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Not only do the midrashim deny women divine encounters, women inhibit theophany for others. The Israelites at Sinai had to separate from their wives for the fiery theophany to occur. Moses, who regularly spoke to God face-to-face had to separate from his wife permanently (Exod.Rab. 46.3).40 While women are mostly excluded, so are Gentiles. Both women and foreigners can only have an indirect revelation. Explaining why God appears to Abimelech in a dream, Genesis Rabbah 52.5 explains that God appears to Gentiles only in “halfspeech” rather than a full vision or speech. By contrast, God speaks to the Israelite prophets in complete speech. He speaks to others from afar; to Israel, near. For others he comes only in stealth, at night; for Israel God pulls the curtain back to see fully and directly (cf. Lev. Rab. 1.13).

Blessed are the Circumcised, for They Shall See God The midrashim never clarify why God does not speak or appear to women or Gentiles; however, the readings on how, when, and why God appears to Abraham provide a clue: a circumcised penis is necessary to see God. Abraham’s and other Jewish males’ excision of foreskin perfects the body and removes the membrane that separates divine and human.41 Some rabbis, noting how a “word of the LORD” comes to Abram in Genesis 15, question whether Abraham saw God or angels (Gen.Rab. 44.11), yet most take Gen. 18:1 to demonstrate

On the portrayal of women in aggadic midrash more generally, see Judith R. Baskin, Midrashic Women: Formations of the Feminine in Rabbinic Literature (Hanover, NH: Brandeis University Press, 2002). 41 Elliott R. Wolfson, “Circumcision, Vision of God, and Textual Interpretation: From Midrashic Trope to Mystical Symbol,” History of Religions 27 (1987) 189–215; idem., Speculum, 104, 249 n., 330, 342, 357, 397; Daniel Boyarin, “‘This we Know to be the Carnal Israel’: Circumcision and the Erotic Life of God and Israel,” Critical Inquiry 18 (1992) 485–88, 491–97. 40

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that he had direct visions of God.42 While Abraham was particularly righteous, the primary requirement to endure the direct sight and sound of God is circumcision. Genesis Rabbah 47.10 is representative: Abraham said: “When I was uncircumcised, travelers would visit me; now being circumcised, they may not visit me.” The Holy One, blessed be he, said to him: “When you were uncircumcised, humans visited you; now I in my glory come and will be revealed to you.” Thus it is written, “And the Lord appeared to him.” (translation mine)

As has been noted by Wolfson and Boyarin, this and parallel passages read a causal, rather than sequential, relationship between Gen. 17:1–14, which describes Abraham’s circumcision, and Gen. 18:1, when the LORD appears to him,43 ignoring Gen. 17:1 where the LORD appears to him before being circumcised. Circumcision marks the difference between human and divine visitation: when uncircumcised Abraham received human visitors; when circumcised, a divine guest. Similarly, interpreting Job 19:26—”and after my skin has been thus destroyed, then from my flesh I shall see God”—Genesis Rabbah 48.2 reads the destroyed skin as the foreskin and that circumcision, the destruction of the foreskin, allows one to see God while still in the body: Abraham said, “After I circumcised myself, many proselytes came to cleave to this covenant—‘from my flesh I shall see God’—if I had not done so, why would the Holy One, blessed be He, be revealed to me?” “And the Lord appeared to him” (translation mine).

The necessity of circumcision for divine vision recurs throughout this section of Genesis Rabbah (see, e.g., 48.1, 3, 4, 5, Nonetheless, Mekhilta de Rabbi Ishmael, Beshallah 1, seems to read Genesis 18 as referring to the ministering angels, but does not directly comment on Gen. 18:1. 43 Wolfson, “Circumcision, Vision of God, and Textual Interpretation,” 192–193; Boyarin, “This We Know to Be Carnal Israel,” 492. 42

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6, 7; cf. 42.8, 49.9), solidifying the relationship. This passage tacitly rejects the Pauline Christian position that claims that physical circumcision has been replaced by spiritual circumcision and baptism. Furthermore, many convert because of this sign of the covenant through which one, in the flesh, can see God. They are attracted to the circumcised—bare, uncovered, unmediated— vision.44 These passages do not indicate whether all circumcised can see God, or whether Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Moses are special cases. Some traditions indicate that Abraham was exceptional, because God would come to him in vision and speech rather than just one or the other (Gen. Rab. 44.6; Lev.Rab. 1:4; cf. Song of Songs Rabbah 1.14.3). Leviticus Rabbah 1.4 includes David and Moses among those who saw and heard God directly; Moses could also endure the divine speech longer than the Israelites. While Abraham may have been exceptional, there is a tradition that the circumcision-vision linkage was available to other Jewish males. A fascinating, erotic, and gender-blurring passage associates the theophany at Sinai with circumcision and the Song of Songs, identifying the circumcised male with the daughters of Zion who gaze upon the King (God) and Abraham with the female lover

Wolfson, “Circumcision, Vision of God, and Textual Interpretation,” 193–4; Boyarin, “This We Know to Be Carnal Israel,” 493. This explains why Abraham sits when God appears to him—he is still sore (Gen. Rab. 48.1, 7). Moreover, Numbers Rabbah 11.2 and Song of Songs Rabbah 2.9.2 claim that due to Abraham’s circumcised vision, God now visits all the synagogues and study houses. Elizabeth Wyner Mark, “Crossing the Gender Divine: Public Ceremonies, Private Parts, Mixed Feelings,” in The Covenant of Circumcision: New Perspectives on an Ancient Jewish Rite, ed. Elizabeth Wyner Mark (Brandeis Series on Jewish Women; Lebanon, NH: Brandeis University Press, 2003) xiii, draws attention to Gen.Rab. 49:2, where God literally gives Abraham a helping hand in circumcising him, making Abraham’s penis the locus of humandivine encounter. 44

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(Num.Rab. 12.8).45 Because the male daughters were circumcised, they were able to the see the divine presence as it entered the Tabernacle. Because they had removed the blemish of foreskin and had become whole, they were able to endure the sight of the divine presence as Abraham did after he was circumcised (Gen. 18:1), and not fall on their face as he did before he was circumcised.46 The act of circumcision is necessary before seeing the King, one’s lover, and before the wedding between Israel and God. The image of the “daughters of Zion” gazing upon the King applied to circumcised men startlingly eroticizes the divine vision. It feminizes the male member through circumcision so that the man can be made whole; through cutting off the unclean portion he becomes a “daughter” and a “beloved” of the King. As before, the passage causally relates Genesis 17 and Gen. 18:1, homologizing the relationship between God and Abraham (Solomon and the Beloved) and God and the Israelites (the King and the Daughters of Zion). The feminizing circumcision removes the membrane between human and divine, allowing one to receive divine visions. This midrash also indicates that the male body is imperfect with the blemish of the foreskin. Its excision removes the barrier between human and divine and makes the body whole. Although women do not have the offending blemish, making them appear naturally equipped for such a vision, it is a gender blurring moment that paradoxically can only occur with male members to the exclusion of Israelite women. If the circumcised male body is perfect, one cannot add, detract, or alter. Feminization is a male privilege. Although women do not have to worry about this blemish, only men can be daughters.47 The theophany at the sea, See Wolfson, “Circumcision, Vision of God, and Textual Interpretation,” 196–7; Boyarin, “This We Know to Be Carnal Israel,” 493–94. 46 See Gen. 17:3; cf. Ps-Jonathan to Gen. 17:3; Gen. Rab. 46.6, 47.3; Tanhuma, Lekh Lekha 20; Pirqei de-R. Eliezer ch. 29. 47 Boyarin (“This We Know to Be Carnal Israel,” 493–5) argues that since women do not have the “blemish,” they are naturally equipped for such a vision—as are males born circumcised. He suggests that the 45

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however, may help to complicate this gendered picture, since God supposedly appeared there before all Israel.

Moses and the Masses There are two occasions when all the Israelites of Moses’ generation sees God: at the sea and at Sinai. At least for the theophany at the sea, women should have been present for the divine appearance. Moreover, according to the Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael (MRI), the Israelites demanded to see God on Sinai, since seeing is greater than hearing, and God allowed them (Bahodesh 2). But if God appeared for such important moments, would God appear again in the same way? This is a difficult question, since the passages that affirm that all—not just Moses or particularly righteous individuals—saw God at the Sea and on Sinai, also state that they saw God in such splendor that not even Isaiah, Ezekiel, or any later prophets encountered. The most famous commentary on the Song at the Sea (Exod. 15:1–18) called the Shirta in the MRI, speaks of how God appeared to all the people: The LORD is a man of war. Why is it said, The LORD is his name? For at the Sea he revealed himself as a warrior making battle, as it is said, “The Lord is a man of war,” (while) at Sinai He revealed himself as an elder full of compassion, as it is said,

passages in which God appeared to the Israelites at the Sea would imply that both men and women saw God. I agree that the Sea passages open up this possibility, but the repeated rabbinic statements that no woman has ever heard the divine voice and that, at Sinai, one had to remove oneself from women in order to receive the theophany militate against his reading. Moreover, Num.Rab. 12:8, which Boyarin discusses at length, also indicates that once the blemish of foreskin is removed, the body with a circumcised penis is perfect: that is, uncircumcised is too much penis (blemish), but no penis is not enough (imperfect). It might be useful to see what the Rabbis say about eunuchs and divine visions, since they, too, would not have the offending blemish. For further discussion of circumcision and vision in medieval Kabbalah, see Wolfson, “Circumcision, Vision of God, and Textual Interpretation,” 198–215.

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JARED C. CALAWAY “And they saw the God of Israel” etc. (Exod. 24:10).—As for the time when they were redeemed, what does it say? “And the like of the very heaven for clearness (ibid.).—and it says, “I beheld till thrones were placed, and One that was ancient of days did sit” (Dan. 7:9); but it also says, “A fiery stream,” etc. (Dan. 7:10). Now, in order to give no opening to the Nations of the World to say, “There are two Powers, Scripture reads, “The Lord is a man of war, the Lord is his Name.”48

This interpretation of Exod. 15:3 sets to prove that the differing manifestations of God at the sea as a warrior and on the mountain as an old man are both the same God,49 representing God’s justice and mercy respectively. Thus, there are not two powers in heaven (cf. b.Hag. 14a). Rabbi Judah uses the same verse—Exod. 24:10—as a positive vision of God’s compassion that is used by other interpreters as a negative instance of human presumption.50 Nonetheless, the point remains that the polymorphic God appears in both places to the Israelites with no qualifications or restrictions on the vision. All of Israel saw God at the sea and on Sinai (Song of Songs Rabbah 2.9.1). Such an event, however, does not open up visual potential for later Jews. This event was special. In the MRI, all of Israel saw what even Isaiah and Ezekiel could not (Shirta 3). Deuteronomy Rabbah 7.8 further emphasizes that all were granted a greater vision than Ezekiel’s spectacular vision of the “appearance of the likeness of the glory of the LORD”; even the lowliest in Moses’ time saw the Divine Presence directly (cf. Numbers Rabbah MRI, Shirta 4; trans. Judah Goldin, Song at the Sea, 124, 126–129. MRI, Bahodesh 5, is nearly identical. Cf. Mekhilta de R. Simeon b. Yohai, Shirta XXX:I:2 (Nelson edition); Pesikta Rabbati 21 100b–101a; 33, 155b. See Alan F. Segal, Two Powers in Heaven, 33–57; Wolfson, Speculum, 33–41; cf. E. E. Urbach, Sages, 396–407. 49 Cf. Apocryphon of John 2:4–8. 50 This same verse is used earlier in the MRI to claim that the Shekhinah was enslaved and in exile with Israel, using the bricks under his feet to represent the bricks made in Egypt, but the clear sky as the later freedom from enslavement (MRI, Pisha 14). 48

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12:4). In the days of Moses, the LORD came down and appeared to them en masse (Exod. 19:11; cf. MRI, Bahodesh 9), and all the Israelites spoke with the Divine Presence face to face (Deut. 5:4). No one would again see as clearly as they saw. As the Exodus generation attained a privileged visionary status compared to later generations, Moses retains a more privileged status vis-à-vis the rest of the Israelites. When discussing Moses’ visions of God, the rabbis combine a set of contradictory verses to tease out their meaning: Exod. 3:6, where Moses hid his face, Exod. 24:9–11, where the elders, Nadab, and Abihu saw God, Exod. 33:20, where God says that no one can see God and live, and Num. 12:8, where God says that only Moses sees God’s form. From the combination of verses the Rabbis create a flirtatious interplay between hiding and revealing: Moses hides and God reveals; Moses seeks and God hides; while the elders do not play and arrogantly look without humility and with levity; thus they will be punished.51 There are differing evaluations of Exod. 3:6. In Exodus Rabbah 3.1, God wanted to reveal himself to Moses, but Moses hid. God wanted to have Moses see him, so Moses’ refusal carries a negative connotation. Yet when Moses asked to see God in Exod. 33:20, God refuses (cf. b. Berakhot 7a); nonetheless, God was ultimately pleased with the request and eventually granted Moses a vision, speaking with him face-to-face (Num. 12:8). On the other hand, the elders on the mountain in Exod. 24:9–11 looked without permission, and “did they not receive the death penalty for what they did?” Overall, however, Moses’ actions of hiding and seeking permission demonstrate his humility. In Exodus Rabbah 45.5, because Moses was humble, God exalted him; because the elders, Nadab, and Abihu were presumptuous, they were punished (cf. Lev.Rab. 1.5). In Ps.-Jonathan looking upon God is a punishable offence; in the midrashim, the offence is looking without humility For flirtation and eroticism in divine visions, see Boyarin, “This We Know to Be Carnal Israel,” 485, 493–94. Wolfson, “Circumcision, Vision of God, and Textual Interpretation,” places the motif of circumcision in the context of Kabbalistic eroticism. 51

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or permission. In another passage, the line from Exod. 24:11 that states that God did not lay his hand on the elders indicates that they deserved it because they looked without permission, did not cover their heads, and ate and drank with levity (Levi.Rab. 20.10). Moses, however, would be rewarded with a luminous face because he hid his face. The elders’ actions on Sinai did not immediately kill them, but it sealed their doom (Num Rab. 2.25; 15.24). The rabbinic commentators work around Moses seeing God and God telling Moses that none can see God’s face by fixating on the word “face.” One interpretation is the “face” refers to the “prosperity of the wicked” and Moses cannot see the wicked prosper. Others take a step back from direct vision and say that Moses saw God “symbolically” (b’siman) (Exod.Rab. 23.15). Another explanation is that Moses had a clearer vision than any other prophet: they saw dark visions, through specula that were modified through nine panes; Moses only saw through one pane. His vision was much clearer, but he still partially occluded by one pane (Leviticus Rabbah 1.14; b. Yevamot 49b). Or God condenses his glory, which stretches throughout the heavens and earth, to make it appear as if it were between the cherubim in the Tabernacle. Finally, the word “live” suggests that one can see God at death or in the afterlife. Or it means that the angelic “living creatures” cannot see God, but humans can.52 While many of the traditions side with one cannot see God and live; most are willing to allow that at least the humble Moses— as well as Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and David—did. Moreover, the elders on Sinai who presumptuously saw God did in fact see God, though it was inadvisable to do so. Some Rabbis went further to state that all of Israel saw God at the sea and on Sinai. Some traditions still appear to exclude women, on Sinai at least (Exod.Rab. 46.3), while most do not make such a gendered commentary.

E.g., Sifra on Leviticus 2:18; see Boyarin, “Eye in the Torah,” 544–45; Wolfson, Speculum, 44–46. 52

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Conclusion While there is some divergence over whether one can see God and live, the midrashim generally accept the concept more than the targumim. There is, however, a much stronger gendered element than in the biblical materials or in the Targumim. For the midrashim, the primary requirement to see God and endure the vision is circumcision, mostly excluding women and foreigners. God still indirectly gives revelations to women and foreigners through intermediaries or through dark visions, incomplete speech, and dreams. The other aspect that comes through is humility. Moses was able to see God in a playful game of hide and seek because he was humble and because he asked. Nadab, Abihu, and others presumptuously looked upon God and, thereby, sealed their doom. These events and figures all belong to the remote, legendary past. They are exceptional figures or belonged to exceptional times.

HEKHALOT: INSTRUCTING HOW TO SEE GOD AND LIVE Peter Schäfer, in Hidden and Manifest God, writes, “In Rabbinic literature the question of whether one can see God plays a minor role that above all is connected to the heroic past. That one is unable to see God at the present time and that God (no longer) reveals himself directly to man is more or less self-evident.”53 This essay has likewise found that many midrashim typically locate divine visions in the distant past for particular individuals. Nonetheless, there are Rabbinic and para-Rabbinic traditions, particularly from the Babylonian milieu, that present the possibilities and dangers for late-antique Jews also to see God. B.Berakhot 7a recounts a story of Rabbi Ishmael, who entered the holy of holies and saw God on an exalted throne: It is taught: R. Ishmael b. Elisha said: one time I entered, in order to offer incense, the innermost place, and I saw Achathriel Yah, the LORD of hosts, who was sitting on a high and exalted throne. Peter Schäfer, Hidden and Manifest God: Some Major Themes in Early Jewish Mysticism, trans. A. Pomerance (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1992) 162. 53

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It is a startling and familiar passage. Its familiarity results from being modeled on Isaiah 6. Its startling aspect is that the seer is someone of the more recent past, more contiguous with the rabbis who related the tale. That Ishmael saw God is casually mentioned in passing to get to the point: that God prays and to discuss the relationship between God’s mercy and justice. Nonetheless, its casualness speaks volumes about its acceptance that R. Ishmael could see and speak to God—even as a story used for the sake of making a halakhic point.54 By contrast, commenting on the mishnaic passage on forbidden topics, b.Hag. 11b–16b offers several tales of various Rabbis who speculate on the account of Creation and the account of Ezekiel’s Chariot vision, sometimes successfully and sometimes not. It is a dangerous and life-threatening exegetical experience. Included in this framework is the story of the four who entered pardes and gazed (14b).55 It is unclear what they saw, although in its current context it likely refers to the exposition of Ezekiel 1. Nonetheless, at least in the Babylonia version, the passage demonstrates that there is something more than biblical interpretation occurring—exegesis becomes entwined with supernal encounters. It most importantly demonstrates its perils— it can cause death (Ben Azzai),56 insanity (Ben Zoma), and apostasy (Aher). Only R. Akiva entered and exited unscathed (see especially 15b).57 These Talmudic stories, ranging from the casual to the perilous, are a foretaste of the extensive lore, practices, and teachings pseudonymously ascribed to R. Ishmael, R. Akiva, and See Wolfson, Speculum, 19 n. 37. Cf. t. Hag. 2:3f; y. Hag. 2:1/15f, fol. 77b; Schäfer, Origins, 196–203. 56 Though in the passage it is the death of the pious. It may not, therefore, be a punishment, but a reward. See Schäfer, Origins, 199. 57 For a full discussion of the exposition of the Merkavah—as primarily an exegetical rather than visionary endeaver—see David J. Halperin, The Merkabah in Rabbinic Literature (New Haven, CT: American Oriental Society, 1980); Schäfer, Origins, 175–242. Schäfer, however, makes allowances that the bavli demonstrates some influence of merkavah mystical ascent, while also offering a polemic against it. 54 55

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R. Nehuniah b. Ha-Kanah in the Hekhalot texts, where they serve as models for the merkavah mystics who attempted to descend to the chariot, see the enthroned God, and participate in the heavenly liturgies.58 There are five basic texts or “macroforms”:59 Hekhalot Rabbati, Hekhalot Zutarti, Ma’aseh Merkavah, Merkavah Rabbah, and 3 Enoch / Sefer Hekhalot.60 These complex documents contain multiple types of material that cannot be reduced to any aspect,61 but this essay For a survey of divine visions in Hekhalot literature see Ira Chernus, “Visions of God in Merkabah Mysticism,” Journal for the Study of Judaism 13 (1982) 123–146. 59 Peter Schäfer developed the terminology of “macroforms” and “microforms” in multiple publications. The most readable is his Hidden and Manifest God. To summarize, the microforms are autonomous units that comprise the larger macroforms, which provide an overarching framework. Yet the macroforms are quite fluid from manuscript to manuscript with microforms often appearing in different macroforms. 60 This is the chronological sequence proposed by Peter Schäfer, Hidden and Manifest God, 7f. Overall, their social location, date, and provenance are difficult to determine. Some elements may have originated as early as the second to fourth century C.E. and continued to develop until the Middle Ages. The macroforms were most likely para- or postTalmudic with continued redaction until the Hasidei Ashkenaz. See Gershom Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (Schocken Books, 1995) 1–79; Daphna Arbel, Beholders of Divine Secrets: Mystics and Myth in the Hekhalot and Merkavah Literature (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2003) 9–11, 142–46; Wolfson, Speculum, 74–81. 61 They include liturgies, ascents to heaven, Sar Torah (adjuration to cause an angel to give you knowledge of the Torah), apocalypses, Shiur Qomah (the measuring and naming of God’s body), and tales of different Rabbinic heroes. I agree with Schäfer (Origins, 32) that this complex literature cannot be reduced to the ascents and visions of the enthroned God, but I would go a step further and state that this highly complex literature cannot be reduced to any of its particular components, which I suspect is Schäfer’s ultimate point. Due to its provocative anthropomorphism, the Shi‘ur Qomah is relevant for this discussion, but I have omitted it due to considerations of space. Most commentators, however, note that the massive measurements of God’s body are so great 58

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will focus on the ascents to heaven to gaze upon the merkavah (chariot) and God enthroned upon it.62 A comparison between Ma’aseh Merkavah and Hekhalot Rabbati is instructive of the range of views on the dangers and possibilities of seeing God.63 In both, the mystic attempts to ascend (or “descend”) to the merkavah, have a vision of God, participate in the heavenly liturgy, and represent Israel in the divine court. Nonetheless, they show varying attitudes in the possibility of accomplishing this quest and the dangers of the ascent and of the vision itself. Hekhalot Rabbati shows more internal tension about seeing God than Ma’aseh Merkavah; the former emphasizes the patent dangers of such a quest and apparent impossibility of surviving it, while it gives examples of figures who did so; the latter simply tells what one should do to see God with little emphasis on dangers or difficulties. Both ultimately affirm that they preclude the possibility of vision (e.g., Scholem, Major Trends, 63–67; Schäfer, Hidden and Manifest God, 149–150). Cf. Wolfson, Speculum, 91. See Martin Cohen, The Shi‘ur Qomah: Liturgy and Theurgy in PreKabbalistic Jewish Mysticism (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1983); idem, The Shi‘ur Qomah: Texts and Recensions (Tübingen: Mohr/Siebeck, 1985). For a discussion of the adjuration texts, see Rebecca Macy Lesses, Ritual Practices to Gain Power: Angels, Incantations, and Revelation in Early Jewish Mysticism (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 1998). 62 The primary image of God is the enthroned King of the Universe, who is sovereign over all things above and below and past, present, and future (see, e.g., Hekhalot Rabbati, §§82–83, 107–120, 161–164). The section numbers are those assigned for various pericopae by Peter Schäfer, Synopse zur Hekhalot Literatur, in collaboration with M. Schlüter and H.G. von Mutius (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1981). 63 These two texts most frequently speak of humans seeing God; Chernus, “Visions of God,” 127. Hekhalot Zutarti §§350–352, however, directly addresses the question. It cites Deut. 33:20; 5:21–24; and Is. 6:1, which state God spoke to Moses face to face, focuses on the divine voice, and gives a direct vision of the enthroned God. They represent three views of the possibilities of a human-divine encounter with the final position being that of the merkavah mystic. Schäfer, Hidden and Manifest God, 57–60; idem, Origins, 288–89; Wolfson, Speculum, 45–46.

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that with the correct level of purity and righteousness and the recitation of the correct songs, one can survive the sight of God on His chariot throne and the sound of the heavenly liturgy.64 Ma’aseh Merkavah Ma’aseh Merkavah, one of better macroforms in terms of literary organization, instructs how to attain a divine vision with little emphasis on its dangers.65 The texts probably originated as liturgies—the earliest portions are songs66—but currently are a series of questions between teacher and student rabbis about which songs are necessary to ascend to heaven, gaze upon the merkavah, God, and all that occurs in the heavenly court: what songs should be recited to ascend and what should be recited once there. The text also emphasizes the purity, righteousness, and endurance necessary for one who gazes upon the King of the Universe. The text begins with a conversation between R. Ishmael and R. Akiva concerning this emphasis: Rabbi Ishmael said: I asked Rabbi Akiva a prayer one prays when he ascends to the merkavah, and I asked from him the praise of RWZYY, YHWH, God of Israel—who knows which it is? He said to me: Purity and holiness is in his heart, and he prays a prayer. (§544)

See Moshe Idel, Ascensions on High in Jewish Mysticism: Pillars, Lines, Ladders (New York: Central European University Press, 2005) 31. Cf. Schäfer, Hidden and Manifest God, 104; Ithamar Gruenwald, Apocalyptic and Merkavah Mysticism (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1980) 93–97. 65 Although when discussing this macroform, Schäfer discusses the divine appearance—primarily fiery—he does not discuss the issue of gazing or beholding as he does when he discusses other macroforms; see Hidden and Manifest God, 77–88. 66 Michael Swartz, Mystical Prayer in Ancient Judaism: An Analysis of Ma‘aseh Merkavah (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 1992); see also Naomi Janowitz, The Poetics of Ascent: Theories of Language in a Rabbinic Ascent Text (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1989). Scholem (Major Trends, 60) says the Hekhalot liturgies attempt “to catch a glimpse of God’s majesty and to preserve it in hymnic form.” 64

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Hekhalot Rabbati commences similarly, requesting what songs one should recite to ascend to the merkavah, but instead of recounting all of the ways such a journey and a possible vision may destroyer the beholder as Hekhalot Rabbati does, the text swiftly moves to gazing upon God: “Rabbi Akiva said: When I ascended and gazed at the Power, I saw all the creatures that are in all the paths of heaven” (§545). R. Akiva gazed upon all of the creatures of heaven and the Power, which sometimes may be an epithet for God and sometimes a semi-independent entity. He makes the statement in passing, getting to the primary focus of the songs he recited to ascend and those he heard the ministering angels recite once he ascended. R. Ishmael seeks further instruction on how to find out what RWZYY YWY God of Israel does and how one can gaze upon him (§547). At one point, Akiva exclaims on how he was able to view a knot in God’s tefillin (cf. Ps.-Jonathan to Exod. 33:20; b. Berakhot 6a, 7a), and for this glimpse, R. Akiva “gave praise for all my limbs” (§550). Other descenders to the chariot make appearances with direct visions of God—not just his tefillin—modeled off of prophetic calls: Rabbi Ishmael said: when Rabbi Nehuniah my teacher told me the secret of the chambers of the Hekhal and the Hekhal of the Merkavah…I saw the King of the universe sitting on a high and exalted throne, and all the chambers of the holiness of His name and His power were sanctifying His name in His praise, as it is said: “They called one to another and said, Holy, Holy, Holy is YHWH of Hosts, the whole earth is full of His Glory” (Is. 6:3). (§556)

R. Ishmael’s vision incorporates the visual and auditory elements of Isaiah 6. Like his models, Nehuniah and Isaiah, he has a direct vision. He sees the King of the Universe and the angels surrounding him. The disclosure of the “secret” that triggers the vision is handed down from teacher to pupil. As the passage continues, R. Akiva instructs that a man is particularly happy and blessed if he can stand with all his strength and offer a song before God, gaze at the merkavah, and see everything that occurs in the divine court, particularly the divine decrees sent forth (§557). While Ma’aseh Merkavah may not emphasize dangers, it indicates that one needs much strength to

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endure gazing upon God and his merkavah. One comes before the God of Israel and praises with all one’s strength to the point of trembling in all one’s limbs (§558). One needs strength, piety, purity, righteousness, and perfection.67 Gazing appears everywhere in Ma’aseh Merkavah. One gazes upon God as noted, upon the radiance of the Shekhinah (§570), the Merkavah (§579), the Shekhinah and all that occurs before the throne (§592), and, in a curious passage, above the seraphim who stand above God’s head (§595).68 Hekhalot Rabbati Hekhalot Rabbati is a much less organized work with much internal literary disparity and much greater ocular tension: a divine vision is highly dangerous—no creature, human or angelic, can look and live—and yet that is the goal of the merkavah mystic. As with most of the texts discussed, divine vision is not impossible, but highly deadly. One must attempt to approach God’s throne, gaze upon the King of the Universe to gain knowledge of what is going on throughout the world now and in the future. Hekhalot Rabbati, more so than Ma’aseh Merkavah, emphasizes the necessary fear of such a quest (§96). The tension created by having an impossible goal opens up a terrifying vista of the immense dangers of gazing. It may be impossible for any creature to gaze upon the divine countenance and live, but particularly righteous humans still do. As with Ma’aseh Merkavah, Hekhalot Rabbati begins with a question concerning the correct songs one should recite to ascend to and behold the merkavah (§81; cf. 94). While the question assumes that one can ascend to the chariot with the assistance of songs, the text emphasizes the dangers and impossibility of the quest. An early string of Qedushah hymns commences with the impossibilities and concludes with the implied accomplishment of such a vision (§§100–106).69 When the Cherubim and holy beasts The greatest dangers appear in the Sar Torah section of Ma’aseh Merkavah (§562). 68 What can be seen there is not stated; just that R. Ishmael accomplished this rare feat. 69 Chernus, “Visions of God,” 127–129. 67

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see anyone entering the seventh heaven, the ascender is terrified, faints, and falls back, “for no creature is able to attain that place” (§101). Interestingly, this passage is not directed, per se, to humans, but likely to angels.70 Speaking of God’s garment and crown, “the eye of no creature is able to gaze at Him, not the eyes of flesh and blood, and not the eyes of His servants, and as for the one who gazes at Him, glimpses, or sees it, his eyeballs emit and shoot forth torches of fire and these scorch him and they burn him” (§103).71 Even if one gazes upon God’s crown or glorious garment, one’s eyes burst forth in fire, and that fire consumes the beholder. Similarly, a later passage that speaks of God’s majestic face concludes with the consequences of beholding it: “He who gazes at Him is at once torn into pieces, and he who glimpses his Beauty immediately pours himself out as a vessel.” This too could apply to angels as much as humans. In fact, God’s servants cannot endure serving him but a day because they cannot endure the splendor of the divine Beauty (§160).72 Paradoxically, one knows these things will happen because R. Akiva descended to the chariot and learned these songs while he was before God’s throne where God’s servants sang them (§106). So, one learns songs about how a glimpse of God or even hearing the cherubim will kill any creature, heavenly or earthly, from an

Cf. §§184, 189; Schäfer, Hidden and Manifest God, 17. Schäfer, Hidden and Manifest God, 19. 72 On the divine Beauty so powerful and luminous that it destroys, see Schäfer, Hidden and Manifest God, 15–17. He focuses on §§159, 102, 104, 356. Wolfson, Speculum, 85–86. One also cannot withstand the voices of the cherubim, ophanim, and holy beasts. There are six voices that increase in intensity; they force one to prostrate oneself and cry out, confuse, create convulsions and death, break all the bones in one’s body, dissolve you into blood, and internal combustion (104). This is if you survive the attacks of all the angels in the lower heavens who come at you with iron rods and swords (219–224). 70 71

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account of R. Akiva, who discovered this by going there himself. Clearly he survived.73 Despite what seems to be a death sentence for those who glimpse God, there are those like R. Akiva who can ascend and descend peacefully. R. Nehuniah b. Ha-Kanah speaks of those who are worthy to gaze upon the King and His throne and all that surrounds Him in the heavenly court. One who is worthy is like a man who has a ladder in his house; he goes up and comes down and no creature can stop him (§§198–199, 201). There are requirements to be worthy. One must be pure, never have committed idolatry, sexual sins, murder, etc. One must keep every positive and negative commandment. There cannot be any hint of impurity (§§225–227). One has to be honest, upright, humble, have understanding and wisdom, be chosen, and separated out (§92). One has to have mastered the Mishnah, Midrash, Halakhot, and Aggadoth (§234).74 Being thus pure and erudite, one can learn all of the songs to ascend and the secret passwords to give to the angelic guards. R. Nehuniah also recounts exactly what one should say, how many times, and to whom. In fact, his speech within Hekhalot Rabbati is what the entire text is doing: instructing how to descend to the merkavah and gaze upon God and His throne.75 Once one is worthy, the threat dissipates. One can ascend and descend at will. The scene from §101, where one was blown back at trying to enter the threshold of the heavenly throne room, is directly countered in §§247–248. And whenever one wants to descend to the merkavah, ‘Anafiel the prince opens the doors of the entrance of the seventh palace for him. This man enters and stands on the threshold of Hekhalot Zutarti §421 also speaks of how God is hidden, yet paradoxically revealed to R. Akiva (cf. §§61, 384, 514, 598, 639). See Scholem, Major Trends, 63, 364 n. 80). See further Schäfer, Hidden and Manifest God, 19–20, 25; Arbel, Beholders, 122; cf. Wolfson, Speculum, 87–98. 74 Arbel, Beholders, 34. 75 Cf. §258, which differentiates between one fit and one unfit to enter. 73

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JARED C. CALAWAY the gate of the seventh palace. The holy beasts lift up upon him 512 eyes…. and that man is stricken and trembles and falls backward. And ‘Anafiel the Prince supports him, and sixtythree door-keepers of the gates of the seven palaces. And all of them help him and say to him: “Fear not, son of a beloved seed, enter and see the King in His beauty, and you will not be destroyed and you will not be burned.”

Instead of fainting terrified at the sight of God and the throne or having one’s eyes burst into flame and body burned, one survives. One begins to faint and fall as in §101, but Anafiel and the door keepers counter the threat, saying the descender, who is of the beloved seed Israel, will not be destroyed and not burn; he will enter and see the King in all His Beauty—the same beauty that no creature is supposed to be able to endure wears out God’s servants in a day.76 One has accomplished the impossible; one has seen God and survived.77 Cf. Schäfer (Origins, 280–81), who claims this promise remains unfulfilled in this section at least for the reader, moving rather to the participation in the heavenly liturgy. I agree that the climax of the ascent (or descent) is the participation in the heavenly liturgy and what he calls unio liturgica rather than unio mystica, but I do not think this excludes the vision of the enthroned God for the mystic. Instead, when the merkavah mystic enters opposite the throne of Glory (§250) just after being promised to see the King in his Beauty, the sequence indicates the King is on his throne during the liturgy though not physically described—an anticlimax for the reader to be sure, as Schäfer notes, but not for the mystic. Schäfer elsewhere affirms divine vision for other portions of the macroform (pp. 247–49, 255, 262–3, 268). See further his concluding comments in which he asserts that he does not think these texts deny the divine vision or that the mystic does not see God, but that his primary point is that the editorial strategy that persistently denies the conveying the contents of the vision of God to the reader (pp. 341–42), a nuanced position on literary strategy with which I think I agree and, in fact, think his detractors often misinterpret as denying divine vision completely. 77 Arbel (Beholders, 37–40) discusses the mystic’s characteristic fainting at the threshold of the divine court as a symbolic death and the angelic assistance as a ritual initiation into the secret practices and knowledge of 76

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CONCLUSION In his study, Through a Speculum that Shines, Elliott Wolfson has argued that divine vision was neither absent nor peripheral for medieval Jews; the same is true for ancient Jews. The interpretation of Genesis-Judges tended to focus on the theoretical possibilities of whether, how, and who could see God. The appropriation of the prophetic image of the enthroned God tended to provide models for later visionaries to reenact and re-envision what Ezekiel or Isaiah saw with some reconfigurations along the way.78 Many late ancient Jews reaffirmed the biblical denial of one’s ability to survive a divine vision or that such visions ever occurred, but there was a wider range of possibilities of a visual divine encounter. If one could not see God and live, then one could see God upon death or could see God’s manifest Glory, Shekhinah, or Memra. Other Jews affirmed direct visions. Particularly righteous men, like Abraham, Isaac, or Moses could see God directly once they were circumcised. The circumcision requirement occurs alongside a denial of any woman or foreigner ever hearing or seeing God directly, except for Sarah. A particularly important event, like the splitting of the sea or the theophany of Sinai, allowed greater numbers to see God, and may, in fact, open the doors to a more gender inclusive vision. Sometimes later interpreters saw these people, like Moses or Enoch, or events, such as the parting of the Sea or theophany at Sinai, as unique. Sometimes, though, they provided models for later would-be seers of God, such as R. Ishmael, R. Akiva, and R. Nehuniah b. Ha-Kanah, who could ascend and descend to and from the merkavah, gaze upon God and the merkavah, and participate in the heavenly liturgies, despite all of the dangers that pertain to such a journey and sight, the divine realm, being restored and transformed into a being who can endure the vision. 78 There are important differences between the prophetic, apocalyptic, and merkavah occurrences. For the first, it happens to the prophet on earth. For the second, it is still something that occurs to the visionary, but the visionary is brought to heaven. For the third, the mystic attempts on his own initiative to enter heaven and see the throne. Cf. Arbel, Beholders, 24, 48.

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providing models for late-antique Jews who sought to overcome the threat of death and see God.

SEEING THE GOD IN THE SYRIAC TRADITION TODD FRENCH Syriac Christianity represents a strong tradition of visionary experiences relating to the divine. Often going further than simply retelling any individual moment, many authors, such as St. Isaac the Syrian, went into depth attempting to explain the phenomenon. Commonly called, theoria, or divine vision, the ascetic was able to see God by diving down internally. The Divine might meet the monk within and lift the mind to the heavenly realms, showing all sorts of marvelous scenes. Aphrahat held that the possibility of seeing God was indeed real, but the example of Moses was not necessarily the most plausible for the ascetic seeker. For Aphrahat it was an internal mental exercise of the truly humble and pure in heart, rather than a physically oriented ascent. The concept of Jesus as image of God, as found in the Cave of Treasures, excited the watching angels and gave hope to humankind regarding the possibility of gazing upon the divine in human form. This incarnational vision is explored in Paul’s own experience, which is richly developed in Syriac authors. As a final example, visions of the Son within the Acts of Thomas, were rendered through bridal chamber imagery as well as other image driven encounters. Overall, one sees a vibrant array of vision-oriented encounters with the divine. Fitting these various texts with each other and with the broader attestations of ascetic experience in Syriac Christianity renders an intriguing tradition filled with practical belief and exemplary holiness. 187

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For the Syrian ascetic, prayer was more than simply an exercise of supplication, it was the channel by which the divine became visible. As Arthur Vööbus explains regarding the Syrian tradition, “Prayer is seen not only as a way for spiritual growth but also a means for supernatural experiences. Great are the expectations prayer produces—it leads to a rapture carrying one into the unfathomable depths of the eternal world whose bliss is to be tasted in a state of trance.”1 The sources utilized in this chapter will explore these unfathomable depths and the possibility of experiencing them through the visionary experience. The Syriac Christian tradition contains a treasure of extant texts concerning the theme of “Seeing God.” This rich tradition of sources continually refers back to its most influential literature, as found in the stories of Adam and Moses, with Christ’s inevitable presence marking these narratives as influential precursors to the Christian revelation. This chapter will begin with the notion of Adam’s creation in the image of God as presented in Ephrem. It will examine his commentary on the differences between Moses and Paul’s encounters with the divine. Collecting Ephrem’s concept of ‘seeing’ the gospel as a mirrored image of deeper insight in his letter to Publius and his remarkable passages on the inner eye, I will turn then to Aphrahat’s concept of Seeing God through the ascetic’s transformation of the body into God’s temple. Acknowledging Jacob of Sarug’s proposal concerning the interpretation of God’s backside, the chapter will examine Isaac the Syrian’s perspective on divine vision and its relation to prayer. I have interspersed the two anonymously authored texts, the Acts of Thomas and the Cave of Treasures, to provide some further context to visions of Christ and the image of God in humanity. Finally, I will touch on “seeing Christ” in the Book of Steps, and the perception of the soul in Pseudo-Macarius.2 Rather than attempting to extrapolate stylistic Arthur Vööbus, On the Historical Importance of the Legacy of PseudoMacarius: New Observations About Its Syriac Provenance (Stockholm: ETSE, 1972), 12. 2 All of the texts were chosen based on their prominent treatment of vision. The dates fall roughly within the fourth century except for a few 1

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developments in the few centuries here represented, I will simply show the prominence of our theme for ascetics and those Syriac speaking Christians who were dedicated to seeing the God.

EPHREM THE SYRIAN Ephrem composes his poetic hymns in the middle of the fourth century.3 As Sebastian Brock notes, “Ephrem is constantly aware of the sharp divide between Creator and creation.”4 It is this divide that requires significant theological explanation for Ephrem regarding how the Christian can experience the Divine. If it is the case that so deep a chasm, as exemplified in the Parable of Dives and Lazarus (Luke 16:26), divides the created from the Creator, then connection between the two is necessarily limited to particular modes of contact.5 The request of the rich man for a physical touch of cooling water is impossible. Vision across this chasm, however, is possible, and as a result quite poignant.6 Similarly, Ephrem envisions interaction with God that is paradoxically both limited and expansive. Ephrem explains: In the case of the Godhead, what created being is able to investigate Him? For there is a great chasm between him and the Creator. In the case of the Godhead, it is not that He is distant from his possessions, for there exists love between Him and creation. outliers. The Acts of Thomas and The Cave of Treasures were likely composed in the third century. Jacob of Sarug, writing into the sixth century, bridges the gap to Isaac the Syrian in the seventh century. 3 (c. 306–373) 4 Sebastian Brock, The Luminous Eye: The Spiritual World Vision of Saint Ephrem, Revised. (Cistercian Publications c/o Liturgical Press, 1992), 26. 5 Ibid. see also Letter to Publius 3 in Ephraem, Selected Prose Works, ed. Edward G. Mathews, Joseph P. Amar, and Kathleen E. McVey, The Fathers of the Church (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1994), 340–341. 6 The nature of physical vs. spiritual modes of ascent will emerge as an important theme in Aphrahat.

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TODD FRENCH None of those who try to investigate God has ever drawn near to Him. —yet He is extremely close to those who have discernment.7

As Brock notes, God makes himself available to those who look for him in the correct way.8 A recurring theme throughout Syriac literature is the notion of Jesus as divine. While this is not uncommon in the rest of Christian history, it factors into one’s encounter of the Divine in the Syrian context. Without trudging through the Christological quagmire that the claim represents, it is necessary to acknowledge that the theme of ‘Seeing God’ in the Christ figure is more prevalent than direct experience of the Father. In his Hymns on Heresies, Ephrem gives the reader some indication of how this incarnation happens: The Firstborn put on real limbs and was mingled in with humanity: He gave what belongs to Him and took what belongs to us, so that His mingling might give life to our mortal state.9

Obviously, many problems arise from Divinity taking human form, not least of which is the problem of testing what one is seeing. How would one know whether they indeed had encountered “true God from true God” or simply a phantom representation of the divine? In these visions, Christ always appears to represent the same divine presence as the Father. One who experiences ineffable, blinding light, is least concerned or able to parse it into hypostatic sources. Along these lines, in Ephrem, preconceived ideas about what Christ was to look like hinder the Jewish authorities who Hymns on Faith 69:11–13 from Brock, The Luminous Eye, 67. Ibid. 9 Heresies 32:9 in Ibid., 156–157. Pseudo-Macarius presents it slightly differently, stating, “He concealed his own divinity so that like may be saved by like.” Homily 15, Pseudo-Macarius, The Fifty Spiritual Homilies; and, The Great Letter (New York: Paulist Press, 1992), 125. 7 8

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“themselves had given birth to a messiah [in their minds] who did not exist, a fiction of their thought, conjured up by the mind.”10 Ephrem continues to admonish the listener not to “fashion some idol in the course of your investigation…lest you depict in your mind something conjured up by your own intellect.”11 For humanity, there is no easy path to seeing God. Since God is hidden (kasyuta) from sight, the human has only a few routes upon which they may embark on a quest to see God.12 The first, which remains rather esoteric, is the usage of points of revelation (galyata).13 God is revealed through various symbols and perhaps most fully in the incarnation. Ephrem explains: Who, Lord can gaze on Your hiddenness which has come to revelation? Yes, Your obscurity has come to manifestation and notification; Your concealed Being has come out into the open, with limitation. Your awesome self has come to the hands of those who seized You.14

Ephrem maintains some of his paradoxical expression here through interrogative forms. God remains hidden but is also being made manifest through the incarnation. The second path to encounter is by the experience of God’s “divine reality” or “what Ephrem calls ‘truth’ (shrara, qushta).”15 Whether through Christ or through God’s own revealing of his Being (ituta), it is always initiated from the divine side, fulfilling the hopes of the seeker who awaits the glimpses of divine glory.16

Hymns of Faith 44:9–10 in Brock, The Luminous Eye, 68. Ibid., 69. 12 I am indebted here to Sebastian Brock for his synthesis of Ephrem’s material. 13 Ibid., 27. 14 Hymns of Faith 51:2–3 in Ibid., 28. 15 According to Brock, this begins from God’s revealing of his objective existence. Ibid. 16 Ibid. 10 11

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Ephrem believes vision is a necessary part of the experience, but his concept of vision has symbolic undertones. The language of vision in Ephrem is often connected to his concept of the inner eye. Operating solely by the light of faith, the inner eye’s vision can be hindered by sin and distorted through incorrect belief.17 This eye, which operates by faith, “transports the mind” through the symbols of scripture to deeper understanding.18 In the well-known story of Moses encountering God on Mt. Sinai, the people of Israel are unable to look upon his face without a veil.19 This moment coupled with the revelation of the Apostle Paul on the road to Damascus hold sway in Ephrem’s writing as two of the most intriguing optically oriented experiences in the scriptural corpus.20 Paul encounters Jesus as a light from heaven and Moses experiences part of God’s intense brightness on Sinai. For Ephrem, the two experiences require a significant amount of theological explanation. Ephrem begins his discussion of Paul by contemplating the humble nature of the Lord’s voice. Attempting to overcome counterargument, Ephrem explains: Now, if someone should ask: “How did our Lord speak humbly with Paul if Paul’s eyes were seriously injured?” they should realize that this impairment did not (result) from our compassionate Lord, who spoke humbly there. Rather, (it was the result) of the intense light that befell Paul on account of the things he had done….If it was a brilliant light, Paul, how did a brilliant light become for you a blinding light? It was a light that shone according to its nature above (in heaven). It was not in its nature to shine below (on earth). So long as it shone above, it was pleasing. But as soon as it shed forth its rays below, it became blinding. The light was both harsh and

Brock, The Luminous Eye, 162–163. Paradise Hymns (5:3–4) in Ibid., 163. 19 Exodus 34: 33–35. See also Commentary on Genesis 15:2 in Ephraem, Selected Prose Works, 107. 20 Acts 9:1–9 17 18

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pleasing: harsh and intense to physical eyes, but agreeable and pleasing to (eyes) of fire and spirit.21

It was clearly not the intent of the Lord to do harm by his light, but rather it was the differentiation or inadequacy of the position of humanity that was incapable of receiving the intensity of the light. Ephrem next explores a metaphor of the Sun, relating that if the sun can do harm with its brilliance—and not by rage— here below, “how much more can a light from above, of the same nature as the things from above, do harm with its intensity to one who is below, who is not of its nature and who looks at it suddenly?”22 Working from this model, Ephrem explores the story of Moses and the warning he receives that “No man sees me and lives.”23 In a similar manner to Paul, it was not God’s intention to kill Moses, but his brilliance, if not abated in some way, would necessarily end a human’s life. Ephrem explains: And so, the Self-Existent One is deadly to those who see Him, not because of His severe wrath, but because of His intense brightness. This is why the one who let Moses see His glory in His great love, likewise in His great love prevented (Moses) from seeing His glory. This is not because the glory of His majesty was in any way diminished, but because frail eyes would not have been able to endure the overwhelming flood of its brilliance. This is why God, who out of love intended that the gaze of Moses be directed to the fair radiance of (His) glory, likewise out of love did not intend that the gaze of Moses be overwhelmed by the mighty rays of (His) majesty.24

From this model Ephrem posits that Moses saw without seeing and was protected by God. In a similar way, Moses, when he returns from God, veils his face so as to protect his countrymen. When Moses realizes that his fellow humans could not gaze on the “borrowed glory” of his face, he is “overwhelmed that he had Homily on Our Lord 26:2 in Ephraem, Selected Prose Works, 301–302. Homily on Our Lord 27:2 in Ibid., 302. 23 Exodus 33:20. 24 Homily on Our Lord 29:2 in Ephraem, Selected Prose Works, 304. 21 22

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dared to look at the glory of that essence in whose flood heavenly and earthly creatures submerge and emerge, neither fathoming its depths, nor reaching its shores, nor finding its boundary or limit.”25 Ephrem anticipates the subsequent questions that these observations reveal, by inquiring how it could be that Moses radiated light from the experience while Paul was denied this radiance while being blinded. The first explanation is that another power “graciously sustained” Moses’ eyes.26 A second explanation is that Moses saw with his interior eyes, which were Christian.27 Ephrem explains: Even though the eyes of Moses were physical, like those of Paul, his interior eyes were Christian. For “Moses wrote concerning me….”28 In the case of Paul, his exterior eyes were as open as those within were closed. The exterior eyes of Moses radiated because his interior eyes saw clearly. Paul’s exterior eyes were kept closed, so that by the closing of his exterior eyes those within would be opened. He who had been unable to perceive our Lord through His signs with exterior eyes, perceived Him with interior eyes once his physical (eyes) were closed. And because he took an example from his own experience, he wrote to those whose bodily eyes saw clearly: “May he enlighten the eyes of your hearts.”29 So, visible signs in no way helped the

Homily on Our Lord 29:4 in Ibid., 304–305. Homily on Our Lord 31 in Ibid., 306. 27 The theme of Moses as harbinger of Christ is common. Jacob of Sarug explains that the veiling of Moses’ face was necessary because, “The radiance of Moses was in fact Christ shining in him but He was veiled from the Hebrew so that they should not behold Him, for the Father knew that the People were not worthy to see the Son, and so with the veil He covered Him from them.” Lines 51–54 in Jacob of Sarug, Jacob of Sarug’s Homily on the Veil on Moses’ Face, trans. Sebastian P. Brock (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2009), 16. 28 John 5:46 29 Eph. 1:18 25 26

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exterior eyes of the Jews; faith of the heart opened the eyes of the hearts of the nations.30

Seeing God is thus contingent on the preparedness of the individual’s interior and exterior eyes. Moses was internally prepared for his meeting with God; Paul was not. In both instances, it was the divine who initiated and controlled the visionary experience. As Ephrem states later in the homily, “Glory to the Hidden One who put on visibility so that sinners could approach Him.”31 Interaction between the divine and human spheres requires descent “from the heights” so “short publicans like Zacchaeus” and the rest of us can reach him.32 In his Letter to Publius, Ephrem explores the notion of what the inner eye is capable of seeing in the “mirror” of the holy Gospel. One can see the kingdom of heaven depicted if they have a “pure eye.”33 For Ephrem the mirror foreshadows the entire journey of human life in relation to God. Ephrem traces the vision from gehenna to paradise, resurrection to judgment. The clearer the inner eye sees, the more convicted it becomes by the truth it encounters. In the end, Ephrem realizes his need for a humble spirit and a broken heart which is the “perfect sacrifice” for those things which the mirror had depicted.34 The possibility of envisioning the divine form is not, however, limited to the incarnation or the revelation of the gospel. A brief consideration of Adam holds another promising point of reflection. In the Garden of Eden lies the possibility for the human being to interact with various symbols of the divine. Adam and Eve’s encounter with the serpent and subsequent vision of the divine trees holds promise for attaining the likeness of God. Theosis, or divinization, is a prominent theme in Ephrem and is best exemplified in his explanation of the Eden story.35 He writes: Homily on Our Lord 32:3 in Ephraem, Selected Prose Works, 308. Homily on Our Lord 48 in Ibid., 323. 32 Homily on Our Lord 48 in Ibid., 324. 33 Letter to Publius 2 in Ibid., 339. 34 Letter to Publius 24 in Ibid., 355. 35 Brock, The Luminous Eye, 148–149. 30 31

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TODD FRENCH Two trees did God place in Paradise, the Tree of Life and that of Wisdom, a pair of blessed fountains, source of every good. By means of this glorious pair the human person can become the likeness of God, endowed with immortal life and wisdom that does not err.36

Although not strictly speaking a vision of God, becoming like God held real promise for humanity’s ultimate goal of unity.37 A complicating factor is certainly the notion that humanity is already created in the likeness of God. For this and further reflection on the theme, I will turn to the rendering of the creation story in the Cave of Treasures.

THE CAVE OF TREASURES Originally composed in Syriac, The Cave of Treasures was likely compiled in the third and fourth centuries with a final redaction occurring early in the sixth century.38 In its treatment of the creation story, it upholds the theme in Ephrem that humanity was intimately linked to God. The text relates the creators’ proclamation and the angels’ subsequent realization:

Paradise Hymns 12:15–18 in Ibid., 150. This notion is well attested. Theodoret of Cyrrhus explains concerning James of Nisibis, “While he wore down his body, he provided his soul unceasingly with spiritual nourishment. Purifying the eye of his thought, he prepared a clear mirror for the Holy Spirit; and with unveiled face, beholding as a mirror the glory of the Lord, in the words of the divine Apostle, he was ‘changed into his image from glory to Glory, as from the Lord the spirit.’ And so his familiar access to God increased every day, and his requests for what he needed to ask from God were granted immediately.” Theodoret of Cyrrhus, Historia Religiosa, I, 3; tr. 13, in Shafiq Abouzayd, Ihidayutha: Study of the Life of Singleness in the Syrian Orient from Ignatius of Antioch to Chalcedon 451 A.D. (Aram Society for SyroMesopotamian Studies, 1993), 299–300. 38 Serge Ruzer, Syriac Idiosyncrasies: Theology and Hermeneutics in Early Syriac Literature (Brill Academic Pub, 2010), 88. 36 37

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Let us make man in our image, as our likeness…And when the angels heard that, they became full of awe and told one another: the great wonder will be revealed to us today—[we are about to see] the very image of God our creator.39

It would seem from the surprised delight shown by the angels that they had never seen God and that God’s mystery was about to be revealed to them through the creation of humanity. This illuminating passage would suggest that some communities understood the human frame to be a direct likeness of the divine image.40 Gazing upon a human being, one could experience the necessary outline of God. As mentioned earlier, there is a strong connection between human form and the image of God. This notion likely fuels the continual emergence of the concept that God could be seen or experienced within the human form.41 The section on Adam’s formation connects what was known about the image of God through the story of Moses, the radiant light that is inescapable, and the newly formed human body. And when the angels saw the image and the glorious sight of Adam, they trembled because of its beauty. They saw the sight of Adam’s face, glowing with glorious light like the face of the sun, and the spark of his eyes was like the rays of the sun, while his body was like the glorious shining of crystal.42 Eastern recension of The Cave of Treasures 2.3–5 in Ibid., 98. The passage relates to Ezekiel 1:26, “and seated above the likeness of a throne was something that seemed like a human form.” See also Revelation 4:2. Jarkins notes that Aphrahat omits both of these from his Demonstrations. See Stephanie K. Skoyles Jarkins, Aphrahat the Persian Sage and the Temple of God: A Study of Early Syriac Theological Anthropology, 1st ed. (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2008), 185. 41 This is not, however, always the case for Pseudo-Macarius. He held that when Adam transgressed the commandment, he lost the image of God. In Homily 15, however, he uses the fact that “only man has been made according to the image and likeness of God” as proof that the soul is more precious than other creatures. Homily 12 and 15, PseudoMacarius, The Fifty Spiritual Homilies; and, The Great Letter, 97, 124. 42 The Cave of Treasures 2:13–14 in Ruzer, Syriac Idiosyncrasies, 98. 39 40

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Humanity is formed in the glorious image of the divine and radiates beautiful light. This interpretation contrasts Ephrem’s mirror symbol and relates more to divine substance than simply reflective material.

APHRAHAT Writing in the middle of the fourth century, Aphrahat considered the visionary experience of God an important aspect of the ascetic’s life.43 Whether through physical—although anomalous— or spiritual ascent, there was precedent for encountering God. Like most of our authors, Aphrahat makes use of the Moses story at Mt. Sinai. In a section on Virginity and Holiness, he explains: Then, on the third day, when they had been sanctified for three days, the Holy One revealed himself in a fierce storm, a great glory, a powerful voice, rolling thunder, a mighty trumpet, continuous brightness, and brilliant flashes of lightning. The mountains shook and the heights were in motion. The sun and the moon altered their courses. Moses ascended Mount Sinai, entered the cloud, and received the commandment. Moses saw the glorious splendour; he was terrified and began to shake. Trembling seized him because he had seen the Shekinah of the Most High, which rests on the mountain, the great power of the throne of God. When they minister to him, the myriads and thousands hide their faces from his glorious splendour. They hasten and fly with their swift wings; they cry out and sanctify and exalt his majesty. Watchful, prepared, swift in their courses, lovely, beautiful, I will follow Jarkins’ excellent final chapter on seeing God in Jarkins, Aphrahat the Persian Sage and the Temple of God, 139–193. The Demonstrations were published in three stages, 336–337, 343–344, and 345, as witnessed by the author himself. Early traditions associate the work with James of Nisibis, but his death in 337 would disprove this. The name Aphrahat—from Persian root meaning wise—does not get associated with the text until the tenth century. On the dating of the text and the author’s name, see Aphraates, The Demonstrations of Aphrahat, the Persian Sage, trans. Adam Lehto (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2010), 1, 4. 43

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desirable, and attractive, they hasten and sanctify and fulfill his commandment, ascending and descending in the air, like swift flashes of lightning.44

The swift ascent and descent of the myriads and thousands serves as a model for the human ascent and descent of Moses and the sage. The major difference remains that Moses did not have to veil his face from the Shekinah like the attendants of God. Three other passages from the demonstrations represent the possibility of seeing God in His temple.45 Of primary interest is Aphrahat’s own account of seeing the treasure house of the King. He explains: The Steward brought me to the treasure-house of the King, and showed me many good things there. When I saw them, my intelligence was captivated by the great treasure. As I gazed upon it, it dazzled my eyes and took my thoughts captive, and made [my] reflections wander in many directions. Whoever takes from it grows rich, and enriches [others]. It lies open and unguarded before all who seek it, and though many take from it, there is no deficiency.46

It is the duty of the sage, or anyone who encounters the King’s treasure house, to take freely as is needed. The responsibility is then to share with others freely through giving that which has been acquired, not withholding anything.47 Thus it was in the experience of God’s wisdom for Moses and the Sage. Although the experiences of Moses and the Sage mirror each other, there are significant differences. For Aphrahat, Moses is engaged in an “in the body” or physical ascent, whereas the sage engages in an “inner” ascent.48 Both rise to the experience of seeing Demonstration 18:4 in Ibid., 400–401. Demonstration 14:35, 23:59 and 10.8 see Jarkins, Aphrahat the Persian Sage and the Temple of God, 140–143. 46 Demonstration 10:8 quoted from Aphraates, The Demonstrations of Aphrahat, the Persian Sage, 257. 47 Demonstration 10:8 48 Jarkins, Aphrahat the Persian Sage and the Temple of God, 173. 44 45

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God, but the sage does so by first descending inward.49 Aphrahat endeavors significant detail on what the Sage experiences in this extended quote: The one whose heart has an open door finds it, and the one who extends the wings of his intellect inherits it. It lives in those who are diligent, and is planted in the midst of the heart of the one who is wise. The ligaments of [his heart] are set firmly in their sources, and in it he possesses hidden treasure. His thought flies to every height, and his reflection goes down to every depth. [Wisdom] paints wonders in the midst of his heart, and the eyes of his senses see across oceans. All created things are enclosed in his thought; the inclination [of his thought] is enlarged, in order to receive [all things]. He is the great temple of his Creator, and the High King enters and lives in him. [The King] carries his mind to the heights, and his thought flies to his sanctuary; he shows him all kinds of treasure. His intellect is absorbed with vision, and his heart is captivated by all its senses. [The King] shows him that which he did not know. He gazes on that place and examines it; his mind marvels at all that he sees: all the watchers pursue [the King’s] service, and the seraphim sanctify his glory, flying on their swift wings with white and beautiful garments. They hide their faces from his brightness, and their course is more swift than the wind. There the throne of the kingdom is set up, and the Judge is preparing the court. Seats are set up for the righteous to judge the wicked on the day of judgement. When the wise man sees in his mind the place of his many treasures, then his thought is elevated, and his heart conceives and gives birth to all good things, and he meditates on all that has been commanded. His form and his vision are on the earth, but the This certainly relates to the notion of “Descenders to the Chariot” which is a problematic concept within Merkabah mysticism. The one who would engage on the journey toward the throne of God must “descend” to the chariot. I am thankful to Alan F. Segal and his Comparative Mysticism colloquium for the insight into this curious language. See also Ibid., 25. 49

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senses of his intellect are above and below. His reasoning is more swift than the sun, and its rays fly [faster] than the wind, like a swift wing to all places. The wise man is strong in his mind, [even if] his vision is weak and failing, and [he] is infused and filled up more than a large treasure. In the night, the darkness is illuminated, and he sends his thoughts to all places. His mind explores every foundation and the treasure of knowledge is brought to him. What his ears do not hear he sees, and what his eyes do not see he senses. His contemplation crosses over every sea; strong waves are not a concern for him, since his mind [needs] no ship or sailor. Great and abundant is the storehouse of his merchandise: when he gives from what he owns, he loses nothing, and the poor become rich from his storehouse. There is no limit to the mind of the One who is contained and who lives inside of him. O place where the King lives and is served! Who can count His treasures in you? His revenues and expense are huge, like a king who needs nothing.50

Two aspects of the sage’s experience articulate the visionary encounter. The first is the notion that the “intellect is absorbed with vision” and the “heart is captivated by all its senses.” The heart, or that inner instrument of perception, as both Ephrem and Aphrahat attest, is the perceptive organ of choice for the mystical encounter of divine revelation. Vision with the physical eyes is conflated with mental reception of vision, yielding identical, if seemingly imagined, imagery. The intellect becomes occupied with the imagery, and the heart and mind operate in harmonious perception of the divine. The experience, which is described as absorbing and captivating, is a more abrupt than peaceful ascent. Aphrahat uses an interesting term, htap, to describe ascent of the mind to the divine realm. Meaning “take by force, plunder, do violence, seize, snatch or catch up,” the verb renders something

Demonstration 14:35 quoted from Aphraates, The Demonstrations of Aphrahat, the Persian Sage, 337–338. 50

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more sudden than “a gentle trip up to heaven” in a smoothly rolling chariot.51 A second integral aspect relates to the organs of perception. When Aphrahat explains “what his ears do not hear he sees, and what his eyes do not see he senses,” he enters into a curiously prominent theme in ancient Christian literature. Within Aphrahat and several of his contemporaries, there is an underlying acknowledgment that not everything perceivable is seen, and moreover, not everything seen is easily perceivable. Various faculties are necessarily engaged when embarking on a journey to see God; others are notably switched off.52 The human body is in constant tension with the realities that are beyond yet also, mystically within the physical. Jarkins’ pertinent study of the Temple imagery in Aphrahat maintains that it was a mental/spiritual ascent and not one of the physical. She attributes Aphrahat’s anti-corporeal stance to his careful choice of language that consistently emerges in his treatment of Elijah, as well as glaring omissions such as Paul’s relation of a man who was caught up to the third heaven in 2 Cor. 12:2.53 She posits that Aphrahat is presenting “a ‘corrected’ version of Jewish ascent spirituality.”54

JACOB OF SARUG Jacob supposedly wrote 763 mimre of which almost 400 are extent.55 His homily on the The Veil on Moses’ Face is sophisticated and symbolically charged. Of particular interest to this chapter is Jarkins, Aphrahat the Persian Sage and the Temple of God, 187–188. This theme will emerge prominently in the Acts of Thomas as well as Paul’s encounter on the road to Damascus. 53 Jarkins quotes Demonstration 6:5 where Aphrahat explains, “he [Elijah] put all his thoughts in heaven.” Jarkins, Aphrahat the Persian Sage and the Temple of God, 183. The Book of Steps argues that it was Paul himself, who felt the need to be humble in his perfection. Memra 21, Robert A. Kitchen and M.F.G. Parmentier, trans., The Book of Steps: The Syriac Liber Graduum (Kalamazoo, Mich: Cistercian, 2004), 235–236. 54 Jarkins, Aphrahat the Persian Sage and the Temple of God, 185. 55 Jacob of Sarug, Jacob of Sarug’s Homily on the Veil on Moses’ Face, vii. 51 52

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the question of how Moses encountered God and why the events transpired as they did. In his section on “The Bride and the Bridegroom,” Jacob relates: With the exalted eye of prophecy Moses beheld Christ, and how He and His Church would be one in the waters of baptism. He saw Him putting her on in the virgin womb and her putting on Him in the baptismal water. Bridegroom and bride are spiritually as one, and it was concerning them that Moses wrote ‘The two shall be one.’ But he supposed that the People were not capable of grasping this great mystery, And so he said it of a man and his wife that ‘The two shall be one.’ The veiled Moses beheld Christ, and called Him ‘man’, he beheld the Church too, and called her ‘woman’, as a device: to avoid speaking of the matter openly before the Hebrews he covered up his words by various means, hiding them from outsiders. And so he painted a picture inside the chamber of the royal Bridegroom; he called them ‘man and woman’, although he was aware that one was Christ and the other the Church, both being veiled, and they were announced as ‘man and his wife’ simply as a device.56

The exalted eye of prophecy witnesses Christ putting on the Church by becoming human flesh in the womb. In like manner the bride puts Christ on in baptism. The prophetic eye sees beyond the storyline of man and woman to the deeper veiled essence of Christ and Church. Moses’ ability to see to this depth is certainly connected to his foresight and prominent status with God. Jacob hinges Moses’ experience with God on his unique ability to foresee that Christ would be revealed to the world. In this 56

Lines 95–110 in Ibid., 22.

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homily, Jacob explains that Moses “asked to see the Father” because he had “perceived that after a time His Son would reveal himself to the world.”57 In an interesting twist, Jacob maintains that the Father did indeed show Moses his face, but “took on” a ‘front’ and a ‘back’ in order that he might only show Moses the back. This “taking on” of sidedness is tantamount to the taking on of human form that the Son would undertake. Moses anticipates the incarnation in the Father through the Father’s willingness to become ‘sided’ as in human form. Jacob explains, “The Father (took on) a ‘back’, and after a time His Son (took on) a body, so that the world might be assured that the latter was the Child of the former.”58 Following on this notion, the brightness that is witnessed upon Moses’ face is the brightness of the Son. The moment becomes interpreted as the Father’s indication through interaction in human form (taking a back side) and with human form (letting Moses see it) that the Son would eventually take on human form. The reason for the veil then becomes a matter of timing. The Son’s brightness “rested upon the personification of prophecy,” and required a veil so the onlookers might not see.59 Once again, the Christian author points to the unworthy nature of the people to behold it, citing their hatred of “prophecy’s symbols.”60 The coming of the Son as the “Crucified One, the Groom of prophecy,” eventually uncovers Moses and prophecy, who “bore the Son on her face,” and revealed the “mystery that had been hidden beneath the veil.”61 This symbolic retelling of the story of Moses displays how Syriac Christian writers integrated their belief system into the broader historical narrative. It reinscribes the belief that seeing the Son should parallel the possibility of seeing the Father, reminding us of the angels’ reaction in the Cave of Treasures.

Lines 295–296 in Ibid., 44. Lines 301–302 in Ibid. 59 Lines 304–305 in Ibid. 60 Line 314 in Ibid., 46. 61 Lines 315–326 in Ibid. 57 58

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ISAAC THE SYRIAN Isaac the Syrian’s collection of ascetical homilies cover a range of topics pertinent to the monk’s life in the late seventh century. 62 Of particular interest to this chapter is his extensive treatment of theoria or divine vision in the monk’s practice. Homily twenty-two begins with a rather esoteric section on the topic: Divine Vision is a non-sensible revelation of the intellect. Divine revelation consists in the mind’s being moved by spiritual intuitions concerning the Divinity. Yet the power to be moved at will [by intuitions concerning] the Divinity, without having received a revelation from divine grace, is not even implanted in the nature of angels. It is one thing to be moved by revelations concerning God’s operations, and another to be moved by revelations concerning the nature of His being. The first naturally comes to us through an occasion furnished by perceptible things. But the second does not take occasion from the intellect or from anything else. For, they say, this is the threefold and principal purity of the parts [of the soul], and it is not possible that even one in a thousand righteous men should be accounted worthy of this lofty [noetic] perception. And indeed, the theoria concerning our Lord’s incarnation and His manifestation in the flesh is also said to arise from theoria concerning the Divinity.63

According to Isaac, humanity is endowed with two different types of divine reception. The first comes from God’s operations and appears to be something in which all humans can participate. If the person can “revel in the divine vision of God’s judgements and of visible creation,” or assess the value of the ascetic life by one’s intellect, they are engaging in the more common form of Brock notes that the only fixed date of his life is his consecration as bishop of Ninevah by George, who was Patriarch of the Eastern Church from 661–681. St. Isaac the Syrian, The Wisdom of Saint Isaac the Syrian, trans. Sebastian P. Brock (Oxford: SLG Press, 1997), iv. 63 Homily 22, St. Isaac the Syrian, The Ascetical Homilies of Saint Isaac the Syrian (Boston, Mass: The Holy Transfiguration Monastery, 1984), 113. 62

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reception.64 Beyond this unexceptional form is that of the “nonsensible,” which is associated with “spiritual intuitions concerning the Divinity.” Isaac states that the ability to be moved at will is rare and not even naturally occurring in the angels or even in one thousand righteous persons. In homily twenty-two, Isaac examines the possibility of divine vision as the ability to see the incorporeal realms of the angelic beings. For this experience, one does not use eyes or any physical means. Rather, it is within the intellect that the pure person attains vision through spiritual intuitions. He explains: Our veracious vision of the angels consists in our being moved by spiritual intuitions concerning those things which pertain to them. It is, indeed, impossible for us to behold the spiritual powers outside the domain of our intellect. When a man is deemed worthy to behold them in their very nature and in their own realm and as it were in their spiritual created state, grace moves his intellect by the revelation of spiritual intuitions concerning them. When the soul is purified and has been accounted worthy of beholding her fellow servants, the vision of them is not received with these physical eyes. For the angels are not corporeal [so as to be seen] without the soul’s faculty of vision, which is true theoria, whereby they are seen as they are, without alteration; that is to say, they do not condescend from their nature in the visions [men have] of them. A man cannot receive this veracious vision without the second purification of the intellect.65

The model is considerably sound. Since the angels are not corporeal, it would make sense that one could not use corporeal faculties to see them. Isaac relates that the soul itself has “faculty of vision.” Moving in the same direction as Aphrahat concerning physically oriented visions of the Divine beings, Isaac denigrates this concept as a “dispensation” “for the comfort and

64 65

Homily 4, Ibid., 33. Homily 22, Ibid., 113–114.

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encouragement of the simple.”66 Since even impure humans see these visions, it would be impossible for these to approach any sort of profundity or be equated with true theoria. True visions, of “the first order” belong “to illumined and wise men who have been exalted by the glorious discipline of stillness to the rank of purity.”67 In homily twenty-three, Isaac takes on an odd and humble stance regarding the topic of divine vision. It is rare that an author who would dedicate himself to nearly eighty homilies on the proper way of living the ascetic life, would then take such a reserved stance regarding whether they had experienced such visions. This is a far different model from Aphrahat, who speaks of his own experiences in the first person. Isaac explains that the sinful nature of humanity should not even be allowed to speak of such mysteries as these topics represent. Working with the “divine vision of the Scriptures” and “instruction of the sublime Fathers,” however, he proposes that the ascetic can examine these mysteries without having experienced them. Isaac’s relationship to the topic is paradoxical in that he is expounding on the details of the experience but also notes, “by my own struggles I have not been vouchsafed to experience even one thousandth part of what I have written with my hands, and especially in this homily which I now compose for the kindling and enlightenment of our souls, and of those who come across it, with the hope that, perchance, some might rouse themselves by reason of their desire for what I speak of, and endeavour to practice it.”68 Marking the experience as untouchable by the vast majority, Isaac begins to relate how it differs from the ordinary life of prayer. Isaac delineates prayer in two forms. The “sweetness” of prayer is something quite different from the “divine vision” of prayer. The sweetness of prayer is represented by a moment in which “verses become sweet in a man’s mouth” and through the process of chanting, the lack of satiety allows the praying person to Homily 22, St. Isaac the Syrian, The Ascetical Homilies of Saint Isaac the Syrian, 114. 67 Homily 22, Ibid. 68 Homily 23, Ibid., 115. 66

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feast on the words “numberless times.” Moving on to the more extraordinary type of prayer Isaac explains how divine vision works: But sometimes a certain divine vision is born of prayer, and the prayer of a man’s lips is cut short, and stricken with awe by this vision he becomes as it were a body bereft of breath. This (and the like) we call the divine vision of prayer, and not, as fools affirm it to be, some image and form, or a representation of the imagination. And further, in the divine vision of prayer there exist measures and distinctions of gifts.69

Isaac obviously struggles with a concept of divine vision. He knows it occurs, and thus feels compelled to explain it—even without having experienced it. His explanation, however, is quite pointedly against a type of divine vision that takes part in imagery or imagination. For Isaac, divine vision approximates stillness rather than the circus-styled tableaux that Aphrahat experiences. When the mind is ready to pass beyond prayer, Isaac acknowledges that there is a place “where there is no prayer.” As long as one’s senses are engaged and lips are moving, one is in the pre-visionary prayer state. As one passes beyond prayer to the state above prayer, physicality is suspended. Isaac explains, “The movements of the tongue and the heart in prayer are keys; what comes after them, however is the entrance into secret chambers.”70 Entering into this post-prayer space is akin to diving down into the inner person found in Aphrahat and Ephrem. The difference, however, is that rather than igniting the intellect, Isaac holds that everything gives way to stillness. He eloquently describes it as a place where “every mouth, every tongue become silent.” Isaac continues, “And let the heart (the treasury of the thoughts), and the intellect (the ruler of the senses), and the mind (that swift-winged and most shameless bird), and their every device be still. Here let those who seek tarry, for the Master of the house has come.”71

Homily 23, Ibid., 116. Homily 23, Ibid. 71 Homily 23, Ibid. 69 70

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When the ascetic engages in pure prayer, it is still engaged in the free will of the human subject. Similar to Aphrahat, Isaac maintains that one chooses to engage in this activity. Made up of “sighs, prostrations, heart-felt supplications, sweet cries of lamentation,” all of these self-oriented activities have “their boundary and the extent of their domain in pure prayer.”72 When the mind crosses the boundary, all of these thoughts pass away. The weeping, desire, longing and even free will, pass away when the boundary is traversed. Isaac explains: For what pertains to prayer has ceased, while a certain divine vision remains, and the mind does not pray a prayer. Every mode of prayer originates from a motion, but once the intellect enters into spiritual movements, there is no longer prayer. Prayer is one thing, and the divine vision of prayer is another, even though each takes its inception from the other. For prayer is the seed, and the divine vision is the harvesting of the sheaves. Whence the reaper stands in ecstasy before the unutterable sight, how from the mean and naked seed which he sowed, such rich ears of wheat have suddenly burst forth before his eyes; then he remains entirely motionless in his divine vision.73

This experience of moving past pure prayer into divine vision is extremely rare. Isaac holds that to attain a state of pure prayer, the purity of the soul must be attained and this is rarely found in one person among ten thousand. The rarity is multiplied when applied to divine vision. Attainment of this “mystery which is after pure prayer and lies beyond it,” can scarcely be found “in a single man from generation to generation.”74 The ascetic engages in prayer as supplication and desire sourced in the human will. This is still associated with pure prayer so long as it is not commingled with an impure thought or allowed to wander. For Isaac, this is the test of pure prayer, if an impure thought is carried into prayer, it is likened to bringing “an unclean animal to the altar of the Lord, that Homily 23, Ibid. Homily 23, Ibid., 116–117. 74 Homily 23, Ibid., 117. 72 73

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is the heart, the notice altar of God.”75 The motion or thought of the pure supplicant is drawn by “the eye of faith” into “the veil of the heart” where alien ideas and interferences cease to exist.76 The distinct boundary of divine vision is that veil which blocks not only unworthy ideas, but every movement of the intellect and mind. Drawing on St. Dionysios, Isaac proposes that since the spiritual is free of movement, it cannot be easily understood. By its nature, descriptions of divine vision require the usage of parables, syllables and permissible names and words to describe that which cannot be described.77 Isaac is concerned to distinguish the “spiritual prayer” of the Fathers, from any type of prayer that involves movement of the human intellect or from the category of prayer itself. He makes an excuse for the Fathers’ usage of various appellations such as theoria, knowledge, and noetic vision. He explains: Do you see how the Fathers interchange appellations for spiritual things? For the exactitude of designations holds valid for things here, while there is no perfect or true name whatever for things of the age to come, but a simple [state of] knowing only, surpassing every appellation, every rudimentary element, form, colour, shape, and composite denomination. For this reason once the soul’s knowledge is raised out of the visible world, the Fathers employ whatever appellations they please to indicate that [state of] knowing, since no one knows its name with exactness.

The passage indicates that the soul’s knowledge is removed from the visible world and thus goes beyond form and color as well as any ability to describe it. It is within this Dionysian notion that one can envision a soul throwing herself “upon the rays of the unapproachable Light with sightless hurlings.”78 For Isaac, it is a place beyond sensory perception in which the soul is left floundering amidst unknowable power. Homily 23, Ibid. Homily 23, Ibid. 77 He cites On the Divine Names, 4.11. 78 Dionysios the Areopagite, On the Divine Names 4.11 in footnote 11, St. Isaac the Syrian, The Ascetical Homilies of Saint Isaac the Syrian, 118. 75 76

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Isaac’s interest in prayer is manifest in his careful deliberation on what the human being experiences leading up to the end of prayer. The ascetic who has entered the spiritual state is no longer considered praying because the natural aspects of prayer, such as supplication and weeping, no longer have any impulse. The source of their thought is shut off. Isaac explains, “So it is with us, at the time when the intellect is deemed worthy to perceive the future blessedness, it forgets itself and all things of this world, and no longer has movement with regard to any thing.”79 The person who had entered into prayer now is led “whither it knows not by some other power.”80 Throughout Isaac’s discussion of prayer, he seems intentionally to avoid the question of what is seen. Regardless of whether or not he is capable of seeing with this divine vision, he remains unwilling to explain what is seen. It may indeed be because he never experienced it, or simply that whatever could be seen was incomprehensible. In either case he indicates that something is certainly seen beyond pure prayer. In the final section of Homily 23 he closes his dialogue by indicating this “unknowing.” Isaac explains, “At that moment the intellect is yonder, above prayer, and by the discovery of something better, prayer is abandoned. Then the intellect does not pray with prayer, but it gazes in ecstasy at incomprehensible things which surpass this mortal world, and it is silenced by its ignorance of all that is found there. This unknowing has been called more sublime than knowledge.”81 Relying finally on apophatic language to support his claims, Isaac maintains that the ecstasy one witnesses is an unknowing rather than knowing, a concept that fits nicely with his belief that the intellect and senses cease to move or produce thought. Stillness reigns before the divine vision. As to the question of how these divine visions are mediated to the human being, Isaac points toward the function of angels as The usage of the word movement here and throughout Isaac’s homilies carries a double meaning in Syriac which could be rendered thought. Homily 23, Ibid., 119. 80 Homily 23, Ibid. 81 Homily 23, Ibid., 121–122. 79

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ministering spirits who reveal what God ordains acceptable to the lower orders. Isaac explains: When it is permitted by God, a mystery is revealed from a higher [angelic] order to a lower one, [[even unto the lowest]]; and in the same manner, when it is permitted by the Divine nod that a mystery should come even to human nature, it is transmitted by those who are wholly worthy of it. For by their intermediary the saints receive the light of divine vision, [leading] even to the glorious Eternal Being, the mystery which cannot be taught.”82

It is only in the next age that the angels’ function, as intermediary, will be defunct. Then the Divine will apportion appropriate vision to each according to their worthiness. When Isaac eventually takes on the chore of describing how a monk should go about attaining divine vision, he offers a guide of sorts for the diligent monk who has not yet received the vision. If the monk, after remaining in his cell is unable to acquire the “power of true divine vision,” Isaac suggests that he focus upon the two hymns: the troparia and the kathismata.83 Coupled to these should be thoughts concerning death and hope of future things. Isaac offers these ideas because they are capable of captivating the human intellect and channeling it toward lofty thoughts. Other avenues of thought may equally captivate, but could lead toward desire, rather than a proper contemplation upon the afflictions of the cross and chastity. Utilizing the metaphor of a monk’s cell as a ship, he warns of various harbors to which certain thoughts inevitably lead the monk. Focusing on chastity as the proper harbor, Isaac explains, “Thus you will discover that the intellect’s wings sprout up in the womb of chastity, and that on them the intellect ascends to divine love. And it is by love that a man ventures noetically to approach the dark cloud.”84 The dark cloud is where God dwells in unknowable mystery. By utilizing a structured avenue of thought, coupled with proper vision, Isaac proposes that Homily 28, Ibid., 140. Homily 34, Ibid., 156. 84 Homily 34, Ibid., 157. 82 83

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the monk can transform his cell into that cherished point of union between Christ and his Bride.85 Isaac continues, “Discipline practiced without eyes is done in vain, for it easily brings on despondency on account of distraction. Pray that you may acquire [vigilant] eyes in everything you do. From these things joy will begin to gush forth in you, and then you will find tribulations to be sweeter than honey [[and your mandra to be a wedding chamber.]]”86 We will now turn to the importance of this wedding chamber as seen in the earlier text, Acts of Thomas.87

ACTS OF THOMAS Likely originating in the Syriac speaking Eastern Church around the early third century, the Acts of Thomas is a fascinating link in the chain of Syriac Christian belief.88 Few allusions to Christ’s presence in the bridal chamber are more interesting than the rendering we encounter in chapter eleven.89 After his interaction with the flute player and cup bearer at the wedding banquet, Thomas sings a song The theme of Christ as the true Bridegroom is extremely common in Syriac literature. It stems from ancient creedal formulas and readily makes use of the term bridal chamber more readily than the wedding feast of the New Testament, where the idea is first broached in the parable of the wedding feast (Matt. 22, Luke 14). Vööbus, On the Historical Importance of the Legacy of Pseudo-Macarius, 18–19. 86 Homily 34, St. Isaac the Syrian, The Ascetical Homilies of Saint Isaac the Syrian, 157. 87 Far more could be said regarding Isaac’s notion of divine vision, particularly in Homilies 2, 26 and 29. 88 Albertus Frederik Johannes Klijn, trans., The Acts of Thomas: Introduction, Text, and Commentary, 2nd ed. (Leiden: Brill, 2003), 15. 89 There are many allusions to Christ as groom to the soul and the church in Syrian Christian thought. Macarius utilizes the theme on numerous occasions. In one of his more interesting examples he states, “So also a person whom Christ, the heavenly Spouse, has asked to be his bride in a mystical and divine fellowship. Such a one has tasted the heavenly riches and ought with great diligence to strive sincerely to please the Bridegroom, Christ.” Homily 15, Pseudo-Macarius, The Fifty Spiritual Homilies; and, The Great Letter, 108. 85

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describing the church as the bride of Christ and depicting the marvelous imagery surrounding the marriage.90 Thomas pronounces a judgment on the cupbearer after being smote on the cheek. When the cupbearer’s hand is returned to the feast by a dog, after having been torn apart by a lion at the well, the flute player breaks her flutes and announces that Thomas is either God or the apostle of God.91 At this point, of course, the reader is not aware of how charged this language is. The father of the bride demands that Thomas pray over his daughter. When Thomas reluctantly begins to pray for the couple, he describes the life of Christ and then says “Yes, Lord, I ask of you on behalf of these young people, that whatever you know to be beneficial for them, you will do for them.” Thomas then “laid his hand upon them, and said to them: “Our Lord be with you”, and he left them and went away.”92 When Thomas leaves the two in the bridal chamber, the groom opens the curtain to behold his bride. Instead of the bride alone, however, he sees the “Lord in the likeness of Judas,” chatting with the woman.93 Not recognizing it is the Lord, the groom asks how it is that he could have just left and still be in the chamber. The Lord answers, “I am not Judas, but I am the brother of Judas.”94 Accepting this, the groom and he and his bride sit and take instruction from the “twin.”95 The Lord proceeds to explain that the two can convert their bodies into holy temples if they forgo the filthy intercourse in which they are about to engage.96 Explaining to the couple the best possible outcomes of childrearing, the Lord finally explains the Chapters 6–7, Klijn, The Acts of Thomas, 28–29. Chapter 9, Ibid., 41. 92 Chapter 10, Ibid., 43. 93 Chapter 11, Ibid., 51. 94 Chapter 11, Ibid. 95 Klijn explores the historical significance of Judas vs. Thomas, as well as the nature of his twinning the Lord. He states, “We are dealing with the idea that Jesus is able to appear in whatever body he likes. He adapts himself to the particular circumstances.” Ibid., 6–7. 96 This is reminiscent of Ephrem’s temple language and Isaac emphasis on purity in chastity. 90 91

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payoff for accepting the life of purity. He states, “But if you will be persuaded by me, and keep yourselves purely to God, you shall have living children, to whom not one of these blemishes and hurts comes near; and you shall be without care and without grief and without sorrow; and you shall be hoping (for the time) when you shall see the true wedding feast; and you shall be in it praisers (of God), and shall be numbered with those who enter into the bridal chamber.”97 The couple consents and the Lord takes leave of them. Trouble obviously comes when the king learns of Thomas’s impact on the wedding. The two are dedicated to love, but not with each other. The groom thanks God for revealing God’s self to them and the king goes looking for the meddling holy man. Thomas surfaces in India, where he agrees to build a palace for a wealthy king. Distributing the building supply money to the poor, Thomas builds the man a beautiful palace not on earth, but in the kingdom of heaven. This change of building location does not set well with the king until his brother, returning from the dead, implores that he sell him this palace that Thomas has built. The king refuses, but shows his brother to Thomas who has built the marvelous place. Thomas prays for them and they agree to be baptized. The three have an extraordinary encounter when they enter the candle lit bathhouse. The Lord approaches them and says, “Peace be with you, my brothers.”98 The king and his brother are unable to see the Lord, but heard his voice only. The text explains that this was because, “till now they had not been baptized.”99 This fascinating encounter reminds one of Paul’s encounter of the Lord on the way to Damascus. Paul’s fellow travelers hear the voice, but are unable to see anything. Paul experiences the light but in a blinding fashion. In a similar manner, the light of God appears to Thomas and the others when they emerge from the water. The text continues, “And when they had come up out of the water, a youth appeared to them, and he was holding a lighted taper; and the light of the lamps became pale through its light. And when they had gone forth, he became invisible to them; and the Apostle said: “We Chapter 12, Klijn, The Acts of Thomas, 53. Chapter 27, Ibid., 76. 99 Chapter 27, Ibid., 77. 97 98

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were not even able to bear your light, because it is too great for our vision.”100 The vision of the Lord takes place, in this instance, only with those who are baptized. One wonders if the image would have been of Thomas himself, twin of the Lord, and moreover, if this was partially the reason they could not see them side-by-side. In the bridal chamber, Thomas leaves before the Lord appears.

BOOK OF STEPS This 4th century intriguing manual for spirituality in Syriac holds many pertinent passages relating to the human ability to see God. Perhaps most visible is its concept that the celestial church remains in the light associated with divinity. According to chapter eighteen, the “Lord shines openly, as the visible sun shines upon the visible church and upon these temples that are our bodies.”101 If one struggles and engages in combat with evil spirits, purifies his heart of evil thoughts and humbles himself, he may see the Lord who is in every place, but can only be “seen openly in that church in heaven.”102 In essence, the vision of the Lord is connected to the experience of the divine light as it is shone on the church. The text relates, “they [the worthy] experience the glorious light of his countenance. For our Lord said: Blessed are those who are pure in heart, for they shall see God.”103 This is an interesting take on the passage from Matthew 5.8, which could be taken either as a guarantee of afterlife with God, or revelatory vision in the current world.

PSEUDO-MACARIUS Likely writing in the second half of the fourth century, Macarius builds a model of spiritual experience that is largely dependent on

Chapter 27, Ibid. Chapter 18 in Book of Steps, Brian E. Colless, The Wisdom of the Pearlers: An Anthology of Syriac Christian Mysticism (Cistercian Publications, 2007), 121. 102 Ibid. 103 Ibid. 100 101

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the Holy Spirit.104 The human was built without wings, but relies on the wings of the Holy Spirit, which already fly the saints “up mentally to the realm of heavenly thoughts.”105 In distinction to Isaac, Macarius holds that this hidden world can be seen and experienced with the spiritual eyes. He explains, “There likewise is a land, luminous with the Godhead, where the camps and armies of angels and holy spirits walk about and find their rest.”106 Like the other writers so far, Macarius maintains that neither the world of Satan nor the luminous world of the Godhead are capable of being seen with human eyes.107 In distinction to Isaac, however, Macarius maintians, “To those who are spiritual, namely, who see with the eyes of the heart, both the world of Satan and darkness and also the world of divine light lie revealed.”108 Rather than entering a dark cloud, or a field of perception without physical faculties, Macarius represents something more akin to Ephrem’s notion of seeing the world of the Godhead with the eyes of the heart.109 Macarius likens the spiritual adept to a diver looking for pearls in the depths of the seas. Encountering great risk of death, they dive to the depths necessary to obtain treasures for royal crowns. Macarius continues, “They leave the world, stripped of everything, and descend into the depths of darkness. And from there they gather up and take back precious stones fit for the crown of Christ, for the heavenly Church, for a new world, for a lighted city and an There is significant confusion about to whom the Macarian corpus can be attributed. See Pseudo-Macarius, The Fifty Spiritual Homilies; and, The Great Letter, 6. 105 Ibid., 74. 106 Homily 14, Ibid., 107. 107 He also uses the term “bodily eyes,” which also represents the physical side in distinction to the “believing soul” of the saints to which is manifested “the beauties of the Godhead.” Homily 34, Ibid., 203. 108 Homily 14, Ibid., 107. 109 This appears to fall into contrast with the position that God is “without limits,” “incomprehensible” and “appears everywhere.” Macarius is arguing these things to prove God’s infinite nature. He even goes as far as claiming that darkness has its being in him but does not comprehend him. Homily 16, Ibid., 131. 104

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angelic people.”110 This commonly used metaphor fits well with the Syrian Christian concept of divine vision in prayer. The skilled ‘diver’ makes his way into the depths of his inner person, seeking great treasures that can be experienced and shared with others upon return. When Macarius envisions the soul, he sees a being that is capable of experiencing vision in every bit of its capacity. He explains that the worthy soul becomes “all light, all face and all eye;” there “is no part of the soul that is not full of the spiritual eyes of light.”111 One might call it a finely tuned receptor of divine light. It is concerned only with receiving the light of Christ and functioning as some sort of throne upon which Christ “mounts and rides.”112 A few paragraphs later, Macarius describes how God—through Christ—utilizes the soul as a throne. Christ “drives, guides, carries, and supports the soul about and adorns and decorates the soul with spiritual beauty.”113 One pictures an extremely active soul, and indeed, this is precisely what Macarius has in mind. This is not the soul of detachment and stillness. Rather, “At times he [Christ] leaves the body and leads and directs the soul toward Heaven by wisdom. And again when he wishes, he comes in the body and through thoughts directs the soul. At other times, he is so minded that he leads the soul to the ends of the earth and shows it the revelations of hidden mysteries.”114 For Macarius, the inner vision of God that the soul encounters is one that is constantly mediated by the Holy Spirit and made possible through the power of God in Christ.115 In a thoughtful description of how the physical eye relates to the spiritual eye, Macarius explores the difference between the size Homily 15, Ibid., 128. Homily 1, Ibid., 37. 112 Homily 1, Ibid. 113 Homily 1, Ibid., 38. 114 Homily 1, Ibid., 39. 115 Macarius speaks of Christ’s “beauty and ineffable glory,” and “incorruptible comeliness,” as capable of holding humanity captive in desire. These contemplations are possible through the Spirit. Homily 5, Ibid., 65. 110 111

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of the eye and its adept ability to perceive. He explains, “There is the example of the eye, little in comparison to all the members of the body and the pupil itself is small, yet it is a great vessel. For it sees in one flash the sky, stars, sun, moon, cities, and other creatures.”116 In the same manner, the mind functions to store imagery in the vessel of the heart. Macarius explains that in the heart there are poisonous beasts, rough uneven roads, and precipices, but “there is also God, also the angels, the life and the kingdom, the light and the Apostles, the treasures of grace—there are all things.”117

CONCLUSION In homily eight, Macarius speaks of what the ascetic encounters, “Doors are opened to him and he enters inside into ‘many mansions’ (Jn. 14:2). And the further he enters, again new doors open in a progression….He becomes rich and yet ever richer. Other new and amazing wonders are disclosed to him. Things are entrusted to him as a son and an heir which can never be explained by human nature or expressed in syllable by mouth or tongue.”118 The wisdom these ancients have left us is indeed a source of riches. They have experienced—personally and through their studies—the treasures of vision-oriented encounters with God. Intending to pass on these pearls of wisdom, in several instances as spiritual manuals, they have also left us a window into the theological and historical currents of their world. Beyond this history, however, lies the insightful beauty these texts often generate. Macarius maintains that the inner man experiences new worlds that give him new perspectives. Perhaps these new points of view represent the most remarkable vision any person, ascetic or otherwise, may encounter, the vision of a world devoid of judgment and filled with joy. He explains, “No longer am I a man that condemns Greek or Jew or

Homily 43, Ibid., 221–222. Homily 43, Ibid., 222. 118 Homily 8, Ibid., 83. 116 117

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sinner or worldling. Truly, the interior man looks on all human beings with pure eyes and finds joy in the whole world.”119

WORKS CITED Abouzayd, Shafiq. Ihidayutha: Study of the Life of Singleness in the Syrian Orient from Ignatius of Antioch to Chalcedon 451 A.D. Aram Society for Syro-Mesopotamian Studies, 1993. Aphraates. The Demonstrations of Aphrahat, the Persian Sage. Translated by Adam Lehto (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2010). Brock, Sebastian. The Luminous Eye: The Spiritual World Vision of Saint Ephrem. Revised (Cistercian Publications c/o Liturgical Press, 1992). Colless, Brian E. The Wisdom of the Pearlers: An Anthology of Syriac Christian Mysticism (Cistercian Publications, 2007). Ephraem. Selected Prose Works. Edited by Edward G Mathews, Joseph P Amar, and Kathleen E McVey. The Fathers of the Church (Washington, D.C: Catholic University of America Press, 1994). Jacob of Sarug. Jacob of Sarug’s Homily on the Veil on Moses’ Face. Translated by Sebastian P Brock (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2009). Jarkins, Stephanie K. Skoyles. Aphrahat the Persian Sage and the Temple of God: A Study of Early Syriac Theological Anthropology. 1st ed. (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2008). Kitchen, Robert A, and M. F. G Parmentier, trans. The Book of Steps: The Syriac Liber Graduum (Kalamazoo, Mich: Cistercian, 2004). Klijn, Albertus Frederik Johannes, trans. The Acts of Thomas: Introduction, Text, and Commentary. 2nd ed. (Leiden: Brill, 2003). Pseudo-Macarius. The Fifty Spiritual Homilies; and, The Great Letter (New York: Paulist Press, 1992). Ruzer, Serge. Syriac Idiosyncrasies: Theology and Hermeneutics in Early Syriac Literature (Brill Academic Pub, 2010). St. Isaac the Syrian. The Ascetical Homilies of Saint Isaac the Syrian (Boston, Mass: The Holy Transfiguration Monastery, 1984).

119

Homily 8, Ibid.

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St. Isaac the Syrian. The Wisdom of Saint Isaac the Syrian. Translated by Sebastian P. Brock (Oxford: SLG Press, 1997). Vööbus, Arthur. On the Historical Importance of the Legacy of PseudoMacarius: New Observations About Its Syriac Provenance (Stockholm: ETSE, 1972).

SEEING DIVINE THINGS IN BYZANTINE CHRISTIANITY JOHN A. MCGUCKIN This article considers how the Origenian tradition, one that begins in the 3rd century master’s work, but runs on through significant leading-edge Byzantine Christian theorists such as the Cappadocian Fathers, Evagrios, Maximus Confessor Ps. Dionysius, depicts the life of prayer as the quintessential task of the philosopher because it is part of the overarching strategy of the ‘ascent of human consciousness’ to the intimation of divine transcendence. This is posited as something that is the peculiar proprium of human awareness. In deep, but critical, dialogue with Plato’s ideas about Idea and Eidola, and in the Platonic theory of the differentiated parts of the human soul, the Christian Byzantines connect ‘seeing’ (theoria) with illumination (photismos) and make it the apex of their theory of identity. Seeing thus becomes a trope for understanding, and the organ of sight is relocated (with the aid of the Syrian patristic strands that are prevalent in the Byzantine synthesis) from the eyes and the mind, to the heart considered as the core of human beings’ higher psychic acuity. Accounts of visions in Byzantine hagiography, dream interpretations, and afterlife travelogues, become recognisable parts of the Byzantine literary corpus that continues this theme of ‘seeing and believing’. In the later writers, as represented by early hesychasts such as Symeon the New Theologian, the issue of being able to ‘see’ visions of things which are naturally invisible, and to tell of them poetically though they are apophatically beyond the scope of 223

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JOHN A. MCGUCKIN words, becomes a paradoxical medium of the very language of faith.

ORIGEN’S SETTING OF THE TERMS Even though he was retrospectively condemned by decree of the court of Justinian, in an edict of 543, later repeated and attached (retrospectively) to the Acts of the Fifth Oecumenical Council in 553,1 Origen’s theological authority continually ran high in Byzantium. He was the theologian’s theologian; even if one rarely cited him explicitly after the several Origenist controversies that had conflicted church history,2 and which ran to their climacteric in the 6th century condemnation of the Evagrian traditions: that mystical apprehension of Origen that had caught the attention of so much of ascetic Byzantine thought after Evagrios of Pontos3 had brought his theology to play in the core of the desert monastic communities. Evagrios himself, having been condemned alongside his (earlier) mentor and his own works ordered to be burned, also lived on, textually, under the pseudepigraph of St. Nilus of Sinai, and several more works were safely spirited away into Syriac, whence they have re-emerged in recent times, re-establishing his reputation in the wider church as a master of the early traditions of prayer. Both masters, Origen as well as Evagrios, saw prayer and the life of interior consciousness as the telos, the goal, of the truly In the form of 15 Anathemata against ‘Origenian’ propositions (many of which are drawn from the writings of Evagrios rather than directly from Origen). It is possible that at the opening sessions of the 5th Council the imperial lawyers presented to the delegates anathematisations of the Origenist Isochristoi of the desert monasteries, and that this became the basis for a later scribe to insert the Anathemata into a later redaction of the Acts of the Council. 2 Further see E.M. Harding (with bibliography). ‘Origenist Crises / Origenism’. In: J.A. McGuckin (ed). The Westminster Handbook to Origen of Alexandria. WJK Press. Louisville. Ky. 2004. 3 (345–399) Disciple of the two leading Origenian theologians of the late 4th century, Gregory of Nazianzus and Gregory of Nyssa, and himself a major developer of Origen’s ascetical theology. 1

SEEING DIVINE THINGS IN BYZANTINE CHRISTIANITY 225 human life on earth. For both of them it amounted to the ability to recognize the consciousness of God (logos) active in the core interior consciousness (nous) of a person’s life, and thereby to be able to recognize the plan of God in the world, and respond to it by an evangelically obedient and ascetically ascentive lifestyle. Prayer was philosophy for these ancient Christian thinkers; and far too much of late 20th century commentary has misguidedly divorced these fundamental terms. Accordingly, it should not surprise us that Evagrios spends much of his time asking what spiritual vision consists in. He tells his disciples that when a seeker who is engaged in deep prayer sees the light around turn blue, then this is a glimpse of the natural condition of the Soul-Psyche4, and ought not to frighten the practitioner. Now this is clearly not an abstract doctrine of spiritual vision, but rather a specific quest for clarification (often described as illumination: photismos) concerning the various types of divinelyaddressed vision available to humans looking intently. Evagrios is following up the lead Origen gives him5, which posits acuteness of vision as one of the central aspects of the ascetic-philosopher’s life. Evagrios sets the terms of our quest stringently, however, for whatever the vision is, it is certainly devoid of images drawn from material phenomena: He says in a typical phrase: When you are praying, do not try to envisage the Godhead within you in any form drawn from imagination. Do not let Evagrios of Pontus. On Discrimination. Text in: Palmer, Sherrard & Ware (edd.) Philokalia vol. 1, p. 54: ‘When the mind has divested itself of its fallen state and has clothed itself with the state of grace, then in the time of prayer it can even see its own inner condition which is something like a sapphire, or the azure blue of the sky. Scripture calls this the dwelling place of God, which the elders saw on Mount Sinai.’ (Ex. 24.10). 5 As P. Bertrand pointed out so long ago now (Mystique de Jésus chez Origène. Paris. 1951), Origen is the first and greatest of the Christian theologians who understood the religion as a mystical philosophy, a quest for the experience of truth: where mysticism and philosophy were not separate categories, but both advanced a common agenda through the twin methods of prayerful scrutiny of scripture, and acute reflection on science. 4

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JOHN A. MCGUCKIN your mind be cast in the mould of any particular figure. No, instead draw close to the Immaterial One immaterially. Only then will you understand.6

It was Origen who had first set the terms of this theology in the church, with his constant insistence that the life of the mind was itself the practical expression of ascesis and metanoia; by which he meant human repentance and the seeking after return to the divinely graced condition which the soul had lost in its cataclysmic fall from grace.7 Evagrios was the one who, above all others, translated this philosophic mysticism into practical terms of a doctrine of prayer as spiritual vision that electrified the intelligentsia among the early monastic communities, and ran on into many variations in later Byzantine mysticism. For Origen (who derived his doctrine predominantly from the Book of Psalms,8 which he used as a major gloss on the doctrine of Plato’s Idea and eidola9) the entire basis of our capacity for ‘vision’ (of which there are several graded levels ranging upward from ocular through intellectual and on into psychic and noetic perception) is to be set in the macro-context of our metaphysical collapse from the status of being pre-material, and pre-historical Noes, to lapsing into the status of materially embodied Psychai. In other words, once before a time, we were spiritual Noes like the Evagrios. Chapters on Prayer. 67. Peri Archon. 1–3; 2.9; 2.11.1. 8 Origen, in the course of his preaching career, comments on every one of the 150 Psalms, and elevates them (alongside the writings of John and Paul) as among the most important revelatory texts, in the hierarchy of the scriptures, for revealing the ‘mysteries’ of the economy of the Logos. 9 My colleague Sergey Trostyanskiy demonstrates in his chapter in this book how quintessentially important the notion of ‘seeing’ was to the Platonist apprehension of the ideal truth. Origen himself is not straightforwardly a Platonist disciple (more of a critic who has been much influenced by Plato’s agenda) but someone who eclectically synthesizes Platonist and Pythagorean insights with the overarching flow of scriptural oracular testimonies drawn from an acute reading of proto Christian reflections on soteriology. 6 7

SEEING DIVINE THINGS IN BYZANTINE CHRISTIANITY 227 angels. We saw like them, and lived like them in bodiless glory. But after our ontological collapse, which followed after our refusal to engage in divine contemplation10 and our consequent embodiment 11 and placement on this earth as our reformatory punishment,12 then we are no longer Noes, merely Psychai.13 Now all this often passes by many contemporary readers, who do not have anything like the subtle range of semantic terms to describe the differences the ancients, and particularly the Byzantines, saw clearly in operation in the different sections of human perceptibility. The unwary scholar can often read the ancient text in the Procrustean frame of a different (and limited) epistemological syntax, and thus make the most awful muddle by not distinguishing the great deal of subtle thought operative in post 3rd century Christian literature about the differentiation between Sarx, Soma, Psyche and Nous. Yet each of these basic human factors, has its corresponding mode of perception: sarkic, somatic, psychic and noetic. They are certainly not the same. For our purposes here, in reference to the semantic significations of vision of divine things, we need to be able to keep up with Origen and Evagrios’ agenda to clarify the range of the higher two terms. Plato had already suggested of course that the Psyche itself was differentiated into more than one reality—the higher and lower Psychai. But for Origen and the Byzantine Christian world following him, that difference had been resolved into the differentiation between Psyche and Nous. In the age after the Cappadocians of the late 4th century, serious efforts14 had been made to rescue Origen’s thought-world from an increasingly hostile set of critics. After Evagrios’ condemnation in the 6th century, the Byzantine world Which is termed in Origen and among the Byzantines: theoria—a noetic form of seeing. 11 Which Origen describes as a ‘cooling down.’ Peri Archon. 2.8.3. 12 Peri Archon. 4.4.9. 13 Peri Archon. 2.8.3; 14 Beginning with the critical edition of his exegetical works made by Sts. Basil and Gregory the Theologian, in the latter part of the mid fourth century, known as the Philokalia Origenis. 10

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definitively set aside Origen’s theory of the pre-cosmic fall of Noes into the state of embodied Psychai, yet it retained the difference in anthropology between Psychic and Noetic perception. Divine vision, properly speaking, was possible only in this last and most elevated form and mode of human consciousness. For Origen himself, of course, it made a massive difference that once we had a fully Noetic range of vision, and now we merely have to work largely with Psychic capacities. This sense of acute tragedy was what he used as the engine of his theology of salvation. The Incarnation of the Logos being, for him, a Physician’s act of pity towards the sick, whom he sets out to heal and restore. Origen’s vision in this soteriology is that the ascending Psyche, more and more purified of material phantasmata, will one day return to a stasis15 of perception akin to what it once had lost; a state which is eschatological in the sense that it anticipates even on earth the transfigured condition of its ascent to God when it will resume the range and condition of the blessed Noes in the company of the angels: and will then “See with unveiled face the glory of God”16 a concept which is basic to his exegesis of 2nd Corinthians17 in particular and his entire eschatology in general.18 Over all this ascent of the Logos presides, striving always by every means to elevate his fallen elect back to their original glory.

THE PATRISTIC CONTINUANCE OF THE VISION DEBATE Makarios the Great in the latter part of the 4th century, a contemporary of Evagrios, transmitted this doctrine decisively among the eastern Byzantine monastic communities; simplifying it

A stability of condition which eludes it on this earth. 2 Cor. 3.18. 17 Origen interprets Paul, above all else as the great seer of God’s mysteries after he had been mystically initiated by being caught up out of the range of mere material sight into higher ranges of spiritual vision as in: 2 Cor. 12.2. 18 The Origenian eschatology is dominated throughout by the motif of return to God, restoration to the divine vision lost in the fall: see—Peri Archon 1. 6.2; Ibid. 3. 6.1. 3. 15 16

SEEING DIVINE THINGS IN BYZANTINE CHRISTIANITY 229 in the Great Letter, and the Fifty Spiritual Homilies19 and repackaging it as a dense doctrine concerned with the nature of spiritual vision for monastics and the way to acquire spiritual diakrisis (discernment). For Makarios, vision of divine things demands that the soul must operate at its highest, namely its noetic, level of insight. At this stage it is able to see things that elude others who are not as advanced. When it is in this condition it returns to its naturally illuminated condition. It is wrapped in the light of the Next Age, and thus enabled to see things that Other Age light manifests to it in an exceptional way. He says for example: Even in this present time, the kingdom of light and the heavenly Ikon, our Lord Jesus Christ, mystically illuminate the soul. Although he reigns in the souls of his saints, Christ lies hidden from the multitude. Only with the eyes of soul can he be seen; and thus shall he remain hidden until the day of Resurrection. But on that day we shall bodily be covered with the light of the Lord. Our whole being will be radiant then— just as even now are souls are radiant.20

Like other Syrians, who continued Jesus’ linguistic tradition of Aramaic in their liturgy and spiritual writings of course, Makarios was well aware of the dominical tradition based upon Matthew 5.8. that it is the heart alone which is the organ empowered to see God.21 The Seventh century Syrian mystic Sadhona, also known as Abba Martyrios, continues that tradition of the heart’s core vision, which simultaneously illumines it with a light that enable vision to occur, when he says: Blessed are you O heart that is radiant with light; the dwelling place of the deity. Blessed are you O heart that is pure, and

A major influence on the young Wesley. Makarios the Great. The Fifty Spiritual Homilies. 2.5. 21 ‘Blessed are the pure in heart; for they shall see God.’ Further see J.A. McGuckin. The Prayer of the Heart in Patristic and Early Byzantine Tradition. pp. 69–108, in Prayer & Spirituality in the Early Church. vol. 2. edd. P. Allen, W. Mayer, & L. Cross. Queensland. 1999. (Australian Catholic University. Centre for Early Christian Studies). 19 20

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JOHN A. MCGUCKIN which can thus look upon the hidden essence (of God). Blessed are you O flesh and blood, who are the dwelling place of the Consuming Fire. Blessed are you, O mortal body made out of mere dust, because you are the dwelling place of the Fire that sets the Aeons alight.22

The next great Origenian inheritor, the Middle Byzantine theologian and philosopher Maximos the Confessor23 expressed this developing tradition most acutely in his doctrine that the ascetic had to recognise the Logoi in all material forms: that core instantiation of a Logos revelation in all of created life’s various aspects. The patterns of the Logos, his Epinoiai, or varied revelatory flashes within the phenomenal world, were thus the base material of the contemplative disciple. Only by Soul-Theoria, rising into Noetic perception,24 could the human being see through material disparity to the ultimate truth of the divine singularity at the core of all being. For Maximos and his monastic disciples, the mystical path was thus one and the same as the true philosophical path. The vision of God was co-terminous with the quest for perceptions of coherent reality in the Cosmos; and prayer could not dispense with science; or vice versa. I would like to follow up one aspect of this immense and far reaching doctrine that gives to all of Maximos’ works a profundity that is still difficult to exegete. To take a relatively discrete and approachable aspect of it, we might look at his exegesis of the Transfiguration narrative where the three chosen disciples are taken apart from the crowd, and apart from the other apostles, to be readied for a special vision of divine glory. Maximos closely follows the lead of Origen in dealing with this biblical narrative.25 He notes Sadhona. The Book of Perfection. 2.4.7. Especially in his major doctrinal and ascetical works: The Ascetic Life, the Chapters on Charity, The Ambigua, and the Questions to Thalassius. 24 As study, scrutiny, and speculation (theoria) are appropriate modes of perception for the Psyche; so wisdom, insight and enlightenment (Gnosis) are appropriate for the Nous. 25 Mk. 9.1 f. Origen of Alexandria. Contra Celsum. 2.64–65; Contra Celsum 4.16; 6.68; Homilies on Genesis 1.7; Commentary on Matthew. 12.36–43; 22 23

SEEING DIVINE THINGS IN BYZANTINE CHRISTIANITY 231 along with his mentor that a threefold division occurs in all the New Testament revelations. For the lowly minded Jesus speaks in the valleys and gives warnings; for the open hearted Jesus speaks on the plains and gives morally uplifting encomia; but for the spiritually advanced, the elect souls whom he draws apart to himself, he gives secret revelations on the mountains. These revelations are not meant for those who do not have the capacity to comprehend them. Passing before unenlightened eyes, they would not be fruitful soteriological epiphaneia, and might even lead people astray because of their immature inability to process them. Origen in his treatment of the Transfiguration is responding to Celsus a pagan intellectual of the 2nd century who had mocked the tradition. He explains to his readers that Celsus could not penetrate the mystery because he was defiled and uninitiated before it. Jesus, however, was always seen in different modes, according to the capacities of those who looked upon him.26 These are the Epinoiai of the Infinite Logos, by which he mediates his immensity according to the capacity for reception that various Psychai and Noes have for him.27 In a telling phrase Origen sums it up like this: ‘Jesus in his Anastasis was not given to all humans, only to those he knew to have already received eyes capable of seeing his Anastasis.’28 One thing in particular that Maximus singles out, however, is the issue of how this vision takes place. What can describe or characterize a vision that is not available to all? In explicit dialogue with Origen’s philosophical interests, and in a book to which he gave the title of ‘Difficult Studies’,29 Maximus poses this solution to the issue of how the disciples were enable to see the dead, and more importantly to see the other-worldly glory of divinity:

Further see: J.A. McGuckin. The Transfiguration of Christ in Scripture and Tradition. Mellen Press. Lewiston (New York). 1987. 26 Origen. Contra Celsum. 2.64–65. 27 See: J.A. McGuckin: The Changing Forms of Jesus According to Origen. Origeniana Quarta. Innsbrucker Theologischen Studien, Bd. 19, 1986, 215–222. 28 Origen. Contra Celsum. 2.65. 29 Liber Ambiguorum.

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JOHN A. MCGUCKIN It was because of their diligence in virtue that they were enabled to rise up the mountain of his epiphany… thus they passed over from flesh to spirit even before they had ended their life in this flesh. This happened in them by a change in the sensible operations (energeia) which the Spirit effected in them; lifting the sensory (pathemata) veils from their noetic powers. At that moment they were purified in the senses of both body and soul, and thus were taught the spiritual significations of the mysteries that had been revealed to them: they learned mystically… and were brought up to the glory of the Only Begotten Son of the father, full of grace and truth. This happened by means of an apophatic theological gnosis that is able to sing of him as wholly Uncircumscribable.30

In a shorter treatment later in the same book he returns to the theme and amplifies it succinctly in this way: As I have mentioned earlier, the thrice blessed apostles on the mountain were led mystically, in a way that cannot be expressed or known, by the luminous splendour of the face of the Lord to the very power and glory of God himself. And this is wholly beyond the capacity of all beings. Even so, they learned that the light which appeared to their senses was a symbol of a mystery obscurely hidden. But just as in this case the flashing of the light that came upon them overcame the power of their eyes, remaining incomprehensible to them; just so does God transcend all the power and working of the mind, leaving no trace upon the mind of any mortal who attempts to think about him.31

In this very subtle theologian we note that sensory vision is here an apophatic symbol of mystical comprehension. Even though God remains Wholly Uncontainable, the human noetic sense of him given by God’s own gift of energeia is a veritable Maximos the Confessor. Liber Ambiguorum. (Migne. Patrologia Graeca. 91.1125–1128). 31 Maximos the Confessor. Liber Ambiguorum. (Migne. Patrologia Graeca. 91.1160). 30

SEEING DIVINE THINGS IN BYZANTINE CHRISTIANITY 233 entrance into an authentic, if partial, Comprehension of the Incomprehensible. It is this paradox which, according to the Byzantine Christological tradition, transgresses the boundaries of normal anthropological limitations (what one can expect to see, and what cannot be seen) in what is nothing less that a major soteriological transgression initiated by the Incarnation itself: the deification of the human race by the Incarnation of the divine Logos as Man. This tradition henceforth dominates almost all later Byzantine theological writing. It leaches out from the largely dogmatic and soteriological parameters it has in the hands of the 4th and 5th century Fathers who deal in Christology, so as to become a major initiative of a transcendentalist anthropology.

VISION AS A THEOLOGICAL CATEGORY IN LATE BYZANTIUM Even if some Byzantine episcopal rhetoricians, even greats such as John Chrysostom, explained the relative paucity of visionary experiences in their contemporary Church on the grounds that these were things for ecclesial infancy, not the age of maturity, it is clear from the lively interest that continued to attach itself to the notion and experience of divine visions, that the Byzantine church at a popular level still regarded the concept as both a viable one and sufficiently normative to command a high place in its hagiographic literature.32 Visions (Optasiai) were generally understood as spiritual phenomena manifested to the saints of old (prophets and apostles) on account of their superior status as God’s servants.33 By divine grace, their normal capacities (Psychic visionary range) had been expanded to become Noetic visionary range. Thus they were able to see things less elevated humans could not; and were usually regarded as recipients of this grace on account of a special task of evangelization to which God had 32

P. Dinzelbacher. Vision und Visionliteratur in Mittelalter. Stuttgart.

1981. See A.P. Kazhdan (et al edd). The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium, vol. 3. Oxford 1991. ‘Visions’ pp. 2179–2180. 33

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appointed them. This standard way of reading the events recorded in the scriptures, became, therefore, a paradigm for explaining the possibility of visionary experience continuing in the Church. The first frescoes explicitly developing this theme of ecstatic visionary experience for the prophets are those of the church of Hosios David in Thessalonike painted around the year 500. It would also be a poor enough hagiographical Vita, of which the period saw multitudes being produced, that did not contain an account of the saint’s own appearance to his devotees. Often these are in the form of dream appearances. But, in the 7th century hagiographic Life of St. Basil the Younger we see the somewhat new development of a particular late Byzantine genre—the travelogue between Heaven and Hades34. In the Basilian Vita the character Theodora recounts all the things she has seen while poised between life and death, in the manner of a returning pilgrim. Soon there were more books of Visions produced such as those of the Visions of Anastasia, The Revelations of the Monk Kosmas, and the Visions of Dorotheos.35 These travel accounts in mystical territories resonated with the ancient Hellenistic tradition of tales of journeys down to Hades. A classic example is the highly satirical account in Lucian. Virgil also offers an influential account of the Descensus ad Inferos in the Aeneid Book Six.36 But one distinguishing feature with the Byzantine hagiographic travelogues is that they have introduced a specific stress on revelatory vision that has been given to them from early apocalyptic literature,37 and it is to this line of heritage they look rather than to the Hellenistic satiric traditions.

H.R. Patch. The Other World According to Descriptions in Medieval Literature. Cambridge. Mass. 1950; J.A. MacCulloch. Early Christian Visions of the Other World. Edinburgh. 1912. 35 A. Hurst (ed) Papyrus Bodmer XXIX: Vision de Dorothée. CologneGeneva. 1984; M Fantuzzi.’La visione di Doroteo.’ Atene e Roma. 30. 1985. 186–191. 36 Highly informative for Dante’s famous account. 37 Beginning with the visions of Ezekiel and Daniel, and continuing with the Book of Enoch, and the several Apocryphal Apocalypses. 34

SEEING DIVINE THINGS IN BYZANTINE CHRISTIANITY 235 In the West this genre develops especially after the late 7th century. The first example known is the Visio Baronti from 678 describing the sickness and death of the protagonist, the turmoil at his funeral procession when unexpectedly returns to life, and the account he then gives of his travels in the afterlife and the people he spoke with. The books customarily end with a moral encomium to the reader posed as a message to the dead man’s family and friends.38 The source which dominated almost all Latin Vision Travelogues from antiquity up to the time of Dante, was Gregory the Great’s Fourth Dialogue.39 In this section of his Dialogues Gregory explains to his Deacon Peter the different states of consciousness that souls have who die in error. The Pope adduces the cases of three Roman Christians who had been written off as dead, but then recovered to tell their tale of what they had seen between the worlds. Gregory’s elements of the vision are reproduced extensively in later texts: a smoky blackness into which condemned souls are thrown; a narrow bridge that crosses this black gorge and which serves as a dividing line between the just and the wicked; a dramatic struggle between the angels and the demons for possession of each soul entering; the wondrous dwellings of the righteous in perfumed floral gardens. At the same time that Gregory the Great was writing we see Gregory of Tours producing a separate textual traditio of the same type of vision-travelogue found in the Visio Baronti.40 Two later and influential Latin writers Boniface41 and Bede42 added a development that was taken up by most western writers after them: the division of the afterlife from the early bi-partite model of Heaven and Hell, sharply separated, into the tripartite model where Purgatory served as an intermediary condition. It was, of course, Augustine of Hippo mediated through Gregory the Great’s M. Aubrun. ‘Caractères et portée religieuse et sociale des “visiones” en Occident du VIème au XIème siècle.’ Cahiers de Civilisation Médievale. 22.2. 1980. 109–130. 39 Gregory the Great. Dialogues. 4.37–38. 40 Gregory of Tours. History of the Franks. 4.33; Idem. 7.1. 41 Boniface. Epistles 10 & 115. 42 Bede. Ecclesiastical History. 5.12–14. 38

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synopsizing work that brought this doctrinal element into the heart of the old Latin Church, and it is clear that after the time of Bede the vision travelogue is anxious to update itself according to the latest doctrinal orthodoxy. The stress on the nature of Purgatory becomes a standard element in the genre as visible in the Visio Wetinni of 824, which was popularized in a verse reduction by the poet Walafrid Strabo shortly afterwards. The vision travelogue has often been theorized as rooted in the dream narratives of Latin antiquity as these were mediated through such influential Christian exemplars as the Passion of Perpetua and Felicity,43 the Dream of Jerome,44 Sulpicius Severus45 and Evodius.46 But all these accounts are most closely related to the Dream narrative, and authors had long explained the various categories of dreams: which could be taken as spiritually suggestive, and which ought to be disregarded. The Christian taming of the Oneiromancy of the Late Antique world, so it seems to me, is significantly different from the notion of the genres of the inter-world vision which has grown from an apocalyptic soil quite different to the Dream Books (Oneirokritika) of the Hellenes. After the 9th century the Latin Vision Travelogue shows a marked turn into political criticism. In the time of the Carolingians the genre is given a new lease of life as a way of commenting on the vices and virtues of rulers. In this the tradition reaches back to a literary tradition that grows out of Lactantius’ 4th century blockbuster against persecuting pagan emperors, the De Mortibus Persecutorum, itself based loosely upon the Maccabean Books, and the vision of the afterlife offered in Technicolor via the Book of Revelation. In this, it is interesting to see early medieval Latin literature, in a sense, reinventing the apocalyptic genre: where vision was tantamount to ethical and religious judgement on a whole age; where vision was a matter of a few truth-seekers seeing the truth in a welter of self-referential propaganda.

Passio Perpetuae. ch. 11. Jerome Epistles. 22 & 30. 45 Sulpicius Severus. Life of Martin of Tours. 7.6. 46 Evodius of Uzalis. Epistle 158 to Augustine. 43 44

SEEING DIVINE THINGS IN BYZANTINE CHRISTIANITY 237 Grabar47 has argued that this tendency to enhance the notion of prophetic vision in Greek Byzantine iconography peaks in its interest around the 9th to the 10th centuries and is part of a revival of interest in things visionary associated with the Iconoclastic crisis. At that time anxiety about imperial repression of the Church allied itself with monastic impulses to revive the category of ‘seeing’ as a primary test of faith. It is something that is taken and developed by Iconodule defenders of the monastic life. While the vision travelogues work for the literary text, a similar movement can be seen happening in the iconographic design of churches in the Eastern provinces. The decoration of church apsidal arches in Cappadocia in this period reflects much of the theme of prophetic visionary experience. The combination of Vision (optasiai) and personal Experience (aisthesis) will run on from Symeon the New Theologian in the late 10th century to the Hesychastic movement of the 14th . It is a strong current which was renewed in later Byzantine writing by the transmission of a rediscovered stream of early Syrian writing (Isaac of Niniveh and Makarios the Great) which was forwarded to Constantinople through the translating efforts of the monks of Mar Saba, as the Syriac-speaking Church progressively fell before the advance of Islam in the 9th century. It is this new stream of thought on the need to experience the Spirit of God directly in the heart, that leads to writers such as Symeon the New Theologian and Niketas Stethatos, in the late 10th and early 11th centuries, who renew the themes of experiential vision as not being an exotic category (mysticism as a side-show) but rather as fundamental ways of expressing the Christian commitment. Niketas, writing as a highly placed Abbot of Stoudium monastery, one of the greatest literary scriptoria of the ancient world, reprises the theme in this way: When we reach the stage of illumination, our Nous is purified by divine fire. The psychic opening of the eyes of our heart then takes place. The Logos is then born within us. He brings us to mystical discernment in the highest order… Whoever 47

A. Grabar. Iconoclasme. p. 244.

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JOHN A. MCGUCKIN reaches this state by the mystical intuition of the Nous rides now like Elijah in the fiery chariot.48

At this stage in late medieval Byzantium we see the combination of all the streams of the river: the eschatological sense; the paradoxical aspects of the various stages of anthropological make-up of human beings’ perceptibility; the issue of liturgical and moral purification in the ascent to God; and the concept of the anabasis to union with the Logos in the heart of the created order. For the Byzantines, therefore, seeing was not an accidental category of faith, as some of the earlier episcopal preachers had tried to suggest. On the contrary—seeing was believing. To believe meant to be able to see and to claim that capacity as ‘Seer’.

48

Niketas Stethatos. Gnostic Chapters. 43. ( 2 Kings. 2.11–13).