Embracing Icons: the Face of Jacob on the Throne of God*
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Images 2007_f13_36-54 8/13/07 5:19 PM Page 36 RACHEL NEIS University of Michigan EMBRACING ICONS: THE FACE OF JACOB ON THE THRONE OF GOD* Abstract I bend over it, embrace, kiss and fondle to it, Rachel Neis’ article treats Hekhalot Rabbati, a collection of early and my hands are upon its arms, Jewish mystical traditions, and more specifically §§ 152–169, a three times, when you speak before me “holy.” series of Qedusha hymns. These hymns are liturgical performances, As it is said: holy, holy, holy.1 the highlight of which is God’s passionate embrace of the Jacob icon Heikhalot Rabbati, § 164 on his throne as triggered by Israel’s utterance of the Qedusha. §§ 152–169 also set forth an ocular choreography such that the For over a century, scholars conceived of the relation- gazes of Israel and God are exchanged during the recitation of the ship between visuality in Judaism and Christianity Qedusha. The article set these traditions within the history of sim- in binary terms.2 Judaism was understood as a reli- ilar Jewish traditions preserved in Rabbinic literature. It will be argued that §§ 152–169 date to the early Byzantine period, reflecting gion of the word in opposition to Christianity, a Jewish interest in images of the sacred parallel to the contempo- which was seen as a deeply visual culture. For raneous Christian intensification of the cult of images and preoccupation many scholars, never the twain did meet—Jews with the nature of religious images. were always “the nation without art,” or “artless,”3 while for much of their history Christians embraced Bear witness to them 4 5 of what testimony you see of me, icons, creating visual representations of the divine. of what I do to the features of the face of Jacob In less than a decade this constructed chasm has their father, been bridged by scholars presenting ever more which is engraved for me on the throne of my nuanced accounts of the formation of Jewish and glory. Christian identities as they pertain to the visual.6 For at the time that you say before me “holy,” Despite these important inroads, the depiction of * I owe a great debt of gratitude to Steven Fine for the eds. Adam H. Becker and Annette Yoshiko Reed, (Tübingen: exhaustive and constructive criticism and advice that he offered Mohr Siebeck, 2003) at each stage of this article’s production. My thanks go to 3 For these appellations see footnote 6. the participants of the Religions of Late Antiquity Workshop, 4 It should be noticed that the term icon, or eikon, is sim- Princeton University, on “Making Selves and Marking Others: ply one Greek word for image. It is intended here (and in Heresy and Self-Definition in Late Antiquity,” (Fall 2005) for much scholarly literature of this period) to refer to images of their responses to the earliest version of this paper. I am the sacred. especially grateful to Holger Zellentin and Peter Schäfer for 5 The literature on the role of images in Christianity is too their copious comments and encouragement. My apprecia- vast to cite here. For early Christianity see Robin Margaret tion goes to the anonymous readers of this article for their Jensen, Understanding early Christian Art, (New York: Routledge, helpful corrections and critique. Thanks to Rahanan Boustan 2000) and the bibliography in Paul C. Finney, The Invisible for his careful reading of this piece and for his generous God: The Earliest Christians on Art, (New York: Oxford University observations and conversation. Finally, many thanks go to Press, 1994) For Byzantine Christian art, see Robin Cormack, Madeline Kochen for helping me to clarify my thoughts and Byzantine Art, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000) Still the literary expressions thereof. All errors are mine. excellent resources are André Grabar’s, Christian Iconography: 1 Heikhalot Rabbati, § 164, Peter Schäfer, ed., Synopse zur a Study of its Origins, trans. Terry Grabar, (Princeton: Princeton Hekhalot-Literatur, (Tübingen: Mohr, 1981). University Press, 1968) and his Early Christian Art; from the rise 2 Indeed, the same thinking has often been applied to the of Christianity to the death of Theodosius, trans. Stuart Gilbert and relationship between Judaism and Christianity more gener- James Emmons, (New York: Odyssey Press, 1969). For a cor- ally speaking. See Daniel Boyarin, Dying for God: Martyrdom rective to the notion that Christians opposed images in the and the Making of Christianity and Judaism, (Stanford: Stanford first centuries due to inheriting a “rigorism” inherited from University Press, 1999) and Borderlines: The Partition of Judaeo- the Jews, see Finney. Christianity, (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 6 For recent work on Jewish visuality and art see Kalman 2004) for a deconstruction of the binary pair “Judaism/ P. Bland, The Artless Jew: Medieval and Modern Affirmations and Christianity.” See also the essays in The Ways That Never Parted: Denials of the Visual, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, 2000); Margaret Olin, The Nation Without Art: Examining Modern © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2007 IMAGES 1 Also available online – www.brill.nl Images 2007_f13_36-54 8/13/07 5:19 PM Page 37 embracing icons: the face of jacob on the throne of god 37 the Jew as iconophobe has proven remarkably In this article I suggest that a tradition in durable, particularly in analyses of Jewish culture Heikhalot Rabbati §§ 152–169, and particularly in the early Byzantine period.7 § 164, should be viewed as a Jewish “contribu- Starting in the sixth and seventh centuries, tion” to the Byzantine sixth and seventh century Christians debated about visual and material rep- preoccupation with images of the sacred. It is one resentations of the sacred. In some of the pro-icon that upsets the binary inaugurated by the con- dialogues and narratives that date to this period, temporaneous Christian texts. This tradition, in the Jew was invoked as an attacker of Christian which God relates to the image of Jacob’s face, images and image treatment.8 The Jewish icono- will be set within the history of similar traditions phobe was presented as attacking the veneration preserved in Rabbinic literature. of images on the basis of the Bible’s prohibition The figure of the Jew as iconophobe was a against idolatry. Even those scholars who have cast valuable tool in Christian identity formation and doubt upon these sources as accurate representa- the construction of orthodoxy.10 It is possible that tions of contemporaneous Jews have not necessarily the Heikhalot tradition is a Jewish attempt to appro- placed them next to Jewish articulations about the priate iconophilic imagery to make claims about investment of sanctity in images.9 Jewish legitimacy in the Byzantine world. It can Discourses on Jewish Art, (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, was the aniconic sensibility (in religious contexts) of the Islamic 2002). See relevant discussion and bibliography in the two powers. I would argue that the Heikhalot text under analysis latter works (Bland and Olin) on scholarly historical and art in the article supports Fine’s nuanced reading of the more historical binaries about Jews, Christians and art. See Catherine complex Jewish sensibilities regarding images in the Byzantine Soussloff, Jewish Identity in Modern Art History, (Berkeley: University period. See Lee Levine, “Between Rome and Byzantium in of California Press, 1999). Most recently Steven Fine has Jewish History: Documentation, Reality, and the Issue of reopened the discussion on the relationship between art and Periodization,” in Continuity and Renewal: Jews and Judaism in Judaism in late antiquity. See Steven Fine, Art and Judaism in Byzantine-Christian Palestine, ed. L. I. Levine, ( Jerusalem; Yad the Greco-Roman World: Towards a New Jewish Archaeology, Ben-Zvi, 2004): 7–48. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005). Fine under- 8 See e.g. Stephen of Bostra, Contra Judaeos, preserved in stands Jewish conceptions of art to have been fashioned John of Damascus in his Third Oration, PG 77, 217–220, differently in different periods and environments, allowing the and On the Divine Images, trans. David Anderson, (Crestwood: creation of shifting and permeable boundaries through the St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1997), 96–96; Pseudo-Athanasius categories of “idolatry,” “forbidden” and “permissible.” Using Quaestiones ad Antiochum Ducem, (Migne, PG, 28, 597–709); this understanding Fine has managed to get past the red her- N. Bontwetsch, ed, Doctrina Jacobi, 1910; Gustave Bardy, ed. ring that the prohibition against idolatry so often presents. “Tropaia kata loudaion en Damasko” Patrologia orientalis, In my own work I have examined visuality in Rabbinic vol. 15. (Paris 1927): 189–275, 245; A.C. McGiffert, ed., Culture in Palestine and Persia placing it within the history Dialogue of Papiscus and Philo, (Marburg, 1889). Two seventh of late antique visuality. See Rachel Neis, In the Eyes of the century narratives (one about a Christ icon, set in Beirut; the Rabbis: Vision and Visuality in Late Antique Rabbinic Culture, (Phd other about an icon of the Virgin Mary set in Egypt) tell of diss., Harvard University, 2007). Jews who damage icons, which then miraculously bleed. Both 7 By “early Byzantine period” 330—circa 700 CE is intended. tales end up with the conversion of the Jews. See Sermo de By “Byzantine” the eastern half of the Roman empire is miraculo Beryti edito, (PG 28:797A–805B) and W. H. Worrell, meant. Charles Barber takes the position outlined and accord- The Coptic Manuscripts in the Freer Collection, (New York, 1923), ingly would date the iconoclasm found in the synagogues of 370. See E. Kitzinger, “The Cult of Images in the Age Before Palestine (in particular, iconoclasm directed at living figures Iconoclasm,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 8, (1954): 83–149 (espe- in the synagogue of Naharan) to the same period.