The Shadow of God - Dr. Wesley Muhammad

The Shadow of God:
Incarnation and the Divine Body in Second Temple Priestly Tradition
Wesley Williams © 2011
Brief Abstract
A sapphiric-bodied deity, that is to say a deity (often a creator-deity) with an anthropomorphic body
the color and substance of the mythologically significant semiprecious stone sapphire/lapis lazuli was a
common ancient Near Eastern motif. As participant in the shared ANE mythological tradition could Israel
envision her god similarly? We suggest that Israel could. By examining a number of biblical and postbiblical
Jewish literatures we seek to demonstrate the existence of a probably esoteric tradition of a
sapphiric-bodied Yahweh. We trace this tradition back to the priests of the Jerusalem Temple. We also
make an attempt to understand the mythological significance of a „sapphiric Yahweh‟ in the context of the
ancient Near Eastern tradition. While a much more comprehensive study is required in order to determine
whether this Jewish „Sapphiric God‟ tradition is indigenous or the result of some later syncretism, the
former seems more likely. If so, this tradition further demonstrates that the god of Israel and the gods of the
ancient Near East differed less than has been traditionally supposed.

Margaret Barker‟s work to reconstruct the mythic tradition of the Jerusalem Temple, while not
convincing in all of its details, is nevertheless noteworthy. 1 Particularly notable is Barker‟s suggestion that
incarnation had a place in this tradition. 2 Relying mainly on the allegorical exegesis of Philo of Alexandria
(Spec. I.81; QE II.85) and Josephus (Ant. III 151-186), both of whom explained the four colored fabrics
used in the manufacture of the temple veil and high priestly garments (Exod. 26:1, 31, 36; 28:6, 31, 33) as
symbols of the four natural elements and noting that the high priest wore the Tetragrammaton engraved on
his golden diadem (Exod. 28:36), Barker suggests that the veil and sacred vestments are “the earliest
expression of the idea of incarnation, the presence of God on earth in material form.” 3 A radical thesis, but
Barker is not alone in positing a Jewish tradition of incarnation. 4 In a fascinating article Crispin Fletcher-
Louis similarly outlined the “relevance of this Temple theology for the early Christian belief in the
incarnation.” 5 The symbolism of the high priestly garments play an important role in both reconstructions. 6
Exodus 28 prescribes for Aaron and his sons an elaborate costume whose outer vestments included a long
dark blue robe (me’îl), 7 the hem of which was lined with cloth pomegranates and flowers and gold bells; an
1 See especially Margaret Barker, Temple Theology: An Introduction (London: SPCK, 2004); The Great High Priest: The Temple
Roots of Christian Liturgy (London and New York: T&T Clark, 2003); On Earth as it is in Heaven: Temple Symbolism in the New
Testament (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1995); The Great Angel: A Study if Israel‟s Second God (Louisville, Kentucky:
Westminster/John Knox Press, 1992); The Gate of Heaven: The History and Symbolism of the Temple in Jerusalem (London:
SPCK, 1991); The Older Testament: The Survival of Themes from the Ancient Royal Cult in Sectarian Judaism and Early
Christian (London: SPCK, 1987).
2 Temple Theology, 30-31;On Earth, ix.
3 Gate of Heaven, 105; Temple Theology, 30, 58; Great High Priest, 136-140.
4 For various views on the place, or lack thereof, of incarnation in Jewish tradition see Alon Goshem-Gottstein, “Judaisms and
Incarnational Theologies: Mapping Out the Parameters of Dialogue,” Journal of Ecumenical Studies 39 (2002): 219-247; J. Andrew
Dearman, “Theophany, Anthropomorphism, and the Imago Dei: Some Observations about the Incarnation in the Light of the Old
Testament,” in Stephen T. Davis, Daniel Kendall, SJ, Gerald O‟Collins, SJ (edd.), The Incarnation: An Interdisciplinary Symposium
on the Incarnation of the Son of God (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002) 31-46; Alan Segal, “The Incarnation: The Jewish
Milieu,” in ibid., 116-139;Elliot R. Wolfson, “Judaism and Incarnation: The Imaginal Body of God,” in Tikva Frymer-Kensky et al
(edd.), Christianity in Jewish Terms (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 2000) 239-254; idem, “Neusner‟s The Incarnation of
God,” JQR 81 (1990): 219-222; Jacob Neusner, The Incarnation of God: The Character of Divinity in Formative Judaism
(Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1988); idem, “Is the God of Judaism Incarnate?” Rel. Stud. 24 (1988): 213-238.
5 “God‟s Image, His Cosmic Temple and the High Priest: Towards an Historical and Theological Account of the Incarnation,” in T.
Desmond Alexander and Simon Cathercole (edd.), Heaven on Earth: The Temple in Biblical Theology (Carlisle: Paternoster, 2004)
81-99.
6 On symbolizing these garments in Jewish tradition see Michael D. Swartz, “The Semiotics of the Priestly Vestments in Ancient
Judaism,” in Albert I. Baumgarten (ed.), Sacrifice in Religious Experience (Leiden: Brill, 2002) 57-80.
7 7 Since the demise of the tekhelet production industry ca. 500-750 CE, its dye source, method of manufacture and hue are unknown.
The modern attempt to rediscover these secrets began with Rabbi Gershom Henoch Leiner (1839-91), the Hasidic Rebbe of Radzyn,
Poland, who thought the source was a cuttlefish and its color blue-black (see his Sefrei HaTekhelet Radzyn [Bnei Brak, 1999]).
Today, scientists such as Irving Ziderman and Baruch Sterman have proclaimed the “miracle rediscovery” of the biblical tekhelet and
its source, though both have proffered differing hues for their “authentic tekhelet.” Sterman and P‟til Tekhelet, the Israel-based nonprofit
organization he co-founded which manufactures and distributes this tekhelet, argues that the source of the dye is the Murex snail
found in the Mediterranean off the coast of northern Israel and that the hue is a rather bright indigo blue. Ziderman, on the other hand,
posits the same source (the Murex snail) but argues that the authentic hue is violet or blueish purple (purpura hyacinthine). See Irving
Ziderman, “A Modern Miracle – The Rediscovery of „Blue‟ Dye for Tallit Tassels,” Israel Yearbook 1988, 287-292; idem, “Revival
of Biblical Tekhelet Dyeing with Banded Dye-Murex (Ph. Trunculus): Chemical Anomalies,” in Dyes in History and Archaeology
16/17 (2001): 87-90; idem, “First Identification of Authentic Tĕkēlet,” BASOR 265 (1987): 25-33; idem, “3600 Years of Purple-Shell
Dyeing: Characterization of Hyacinthine Purple (tekhelet),” in Howard L. Needles and S. Haig Zeronian (ed.), Historic Textile and
Paper Materials. Conservation and Characterization (Washington, DC: American Chemical Society, 1986), 190; idem, “Seashells
and Ancient Purple Dyeing,” BA June (1990): 98-101; Ari Greenspan, “The Search for the Biblical Blue,” Bible Review (February
2003): 32-39; Baruch Sterman, “The Science of Tekhelet,” in Rabbi Alfred Cohen (ed.), Tekhelet: The Renaissance of a Mitzvah,
(New York: The Michael Scharf Publication Trust of Yeshiva University Press, 1996). For critiques of both Ziderman‟s and Sterman
et al‟s tekhelet v. P.F. McGovern, R.H. Michel and M. Saltzman, “Has Authentic Tĕkēlet Been Identified,” BASOR 269 (1988): 81-84
and Ziderman‟s response BASOR 269 (1988): 84-89. The most serious challenge to Sterman et al, and Ziderman indirectly, is from
Mendel E. Singer, “Understanding the Criteria for the Chilazon,” Journal of Halacha and Contemporary Society (hereafter JHCS)
42 (2001): 5-29. See the debate that ensued between he and Sterman: JHCS 43 (2002): 112-124; 44 (2002): 97-110 and Rabbi
Yechiel Yitzchok Perr‟s contribution to the debate, “Letter to the Editor,” 44 (2002): 125-128.
Whatever the dye-source of tekhelet turns out to be (if ever that secret is rediscovered) it is clear that in rabbinic tradition the color
was dark blue, even blue-black. Rabbi Isaac Herzog demonstrated this in his D. Litt thesis submitted to London University in 1913 on
the subject tekhelet (now translated and published as “Hebrew Porphyrology,” in Ehud Spanier (ed.), The Royal Purple and the
Biblical Blue, Argaman and Tekhelet [Jerusalem: Keter Publishing House Jerusalem Ltd, 1987]). As he shows, the classic Talmudic
description of tekhelet as the color of the sky and sea must be understood against the background of its Palestinian-Mediterranean
locale where the cloudless Palestinian sky in bright sunshine is dark blue “closely bordering on black (ibid., 64, 67, 81, 89-90)” and
the Mediterranean along the Palestinian coast was likewise deep, dark blue appearing “almost black to the eye (Ibid., 90).” The early
Palestinian midrash Sifré to Numbers 115 describes tekhelet as like the “deep blue of the night.” See also Num. R. 2.7 where sapphiric
blue is described as black. Both Philo and Josephus, who lived during the Second Temple and therefore likely witnessed the curtains,

apron-like ephod (Heb. ’êphôd), made of “gold, of blue, purple, and crimson yarns, and of fine twisted
linen (Exod. 28:6)” upon which was fastened a breastplate (hōšen) consisting of twelve precious stones; a
turban with a golden frontlet or diadem (sîs zâhâb) engraved with the Tetragrammaton 8 ; and a sash. Once a
year (Yom Kippur) the high priest doffs this ornate and multicolored garment and wears instead a simple
white linen tunic (Lev. 16:4). Barker, following a long Jewish and Christian tradition, understands these
garments somatically as metaphor for the body of the high priest and the God whom he represented (she
says he “was”) in the Temple. 9 In this reconstruction particular attention is given to the white linen tunic,
which, we are told, signifies the heavenly body of light of God, the angels, and the resurrected. 10 What kind
of body then does the blue robe signify? A material body for sure, but if the white of the tunic symbolizes a
light-body, what somatic significance might the dark blue have? Barker and other commentators on the
somatic significance of these garments have failed to offer anything in this regard. 11 Might it signify a dark
blue body? What sense could this have? We offer here further evidence of an incarnational temple tradition
in which the high priestly garments play a prominent role. We suggest that the blue of the me’îl possessed
as much significance in this tradition of speculation on the Body Divine as did the white of the tunic. We
also suggest that this priestly tradition is rooted in the mythic tradition of the ancient Near East.
veils, and priestly garments themselves, describe tekhelet as dark or blackish blue. Josephus, The Jewish War Book 5, 212-13; Philo v.
Spec. I.85 and QE 2.123 where he describes the high priest‟s robe as “almost black, and black is the color of ink and is opaque.”
Rashi, in his commentary on Numbers (Bemidbar 15:41) said tekhelet resembled the blackened or darkened sky ריחשמ עיקר and in
Maimonides‟ commentary (Brachat 1:4) he compares its color to that of the gemstone tarshîsh, thus deep, dark blue (see below).
Thus, the contrast that R. Joseph B. Soloveitchik sets up between Rashi‟s “dark and punitive” night time blue and Maimonides‟ “clear
and unthreatening” midday azure blue is unwarranted. See Rabbi Abraham R. Besdin, Man of Faith, 2:26ff. Herzog thus concluded
that “the tekhelet colour was regarded by the Tannaites as well as by Philo and Josephus as akin to black” (“Hebrew Porphyrology,”
137, n. 292). Rabbi Leibel Reznick (“The Hidden Blue,” Jewish Action 52 (1991-92): 54), based on the same sources, reached the
same conclusion: “What color is the heavenly throne? Talmud Yerushalmi (Brachot 1:2)…says that it is like sapphire, dark
blue…Rambam (Hilchot Tzitzith 2:1) says that Techelet is the color of a clear, noonday sky. However, in his commentary to the
Mishnah (Brachot 1:4), he says that Techelet is similar to the gemstone Tarshish. All the Targumim (Aramaic translators of the
Torah)…say Tarshish is aquamarine. Rashi (BaMidbar 15:41) says that Techelet is the color of the darkening evening sky. That
would seem to be a black-blue.” The common description of tekhelet as “bright” or “sky blue” (e.g. Hebert Block, “The Missing
Thread of Blue,” JBQ 31 [2003]: 246-7) must therefore be qualified.
8 According to the normal reading of the MT (Ex. 28:36) the ßîß fastened to the mitre bears the words הוהיל שדק, usually rendered
“Holy to Yahweh.” In 1924 James Edward Hogg (“A Note on Two Points in Aaron‟s Headdress,” JTS 26 [1924-25]: 72-75) argued
that the proper reading of Ex. 28:36 is simply “and engrave on it (i.e. the ßîß) the holy name „YHWH‟.” He later supported this reading
with evidence from late Second Temple texts: “The Inscription on Aaron‟s Head-Dress.” JTS 28 (1926-27): 287-88.
9 On the somatic reading of these garments in Jewish and Christian literature v. especially Gary Anderson, Genesis of Perfection:
Adam and Eve in Jewish and Christian Imagination (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001) 117-134; idem, “The Garments
of Skin in Apocryphal Narrative and Biblical Commentary,” in James L. Kugel (ed.), Studies in Ancient Midrash, (Cambridge:
Harvard University Center for Jewish Studies, 2001) 110-125; Stephen N. Lambden, “From fig leaves to fingernails: some notes on
the garments of Adam and Eve in the Hebrew Bible and select early postbiblical Jewish Writings,” in Morris and Sawyer, Walk in the
Garden, 86-87 [art.=74-90]. On Philo see QG 1.53; Leg. All. 2:55-56; Somn. 1.43; Jung Hoon Kim, The Significance of Clothing
Imagery in the Pauline Corpus (London and New York: T&T Clark International, 2004) 44-52; April D. De Conick and Jarl Fossum,
“Stripped before God: A New Interpretation of Logion 37 in the Gospel of Thomas,” VC 45 (1991): 123-150, esp. 128-130; Wayne A.
Meeks, “The Image of the Androgyne: Some Uses of A Symbol in Earliest Christianity,” HR 13 (1974): 187-88.
10 Margaret Baker, “The Second Person,” The Way 43 (January 2004): 123 [109-128]; Gate of Heaven, 113-114; On Earth, 65-66.
11 Barker says simply “The veil and the vestment being made of identical fabric is key to understanding the role of the high priest and
the temple context of the concept of Incarnation. The vested high priest in the Temple was the Glory of the Lord in matter.” Temple
Theology, 30. In her exposition on the symbolism of the temple cult (On Earth) Barker discuses in a chapter entitled “The Robe
(Chapter Five)” the corporeal meaning of the white tunic, but says nothing of what this means in terms of the dark blue robe. In other
writings, Barker describes the blue robe as “the visible form” of the high priest (“Beyond the Veil of the Temple: The High Priestly
Origins of the Apocalypses,” SJT 51 [1998] 4; Great High Priest,190) and as a symbol of “incarnation” (“Time and Eternity: the
world of the Temple,” The Month January 2001: 21), but does not specifically speculate on the color of the robe. See also Hugh
Nibley, “Sacred Vestments,” in idem, Temple and Cosmos: Beyond This Ignorant Present, The Collected Works of Hugh Nibley:
Volume 12 Ancient History, edited by Dan E. Norton (Salt Lake City, Utah: Deseret Book Company; Provo, Utah: FARMS, 1992)
91-138, esp. 114-123 and John A. Tvedtnes, “Priestly Clothing in Biblical Times,” in Parry, Temples of the Ancient world, 649-704,
esp. 662-680; both authors, in exploring the symbolic (somatic) significance of the high priestly garments, discuss the white linen
tunic but not the blue robe.

1. The Body Divine in Ancient Near Eastern Myth
Ancient Israel stood in linguistic, cultural and religious continuity with her neighbors in the Levant. 12
Morton Smith suggested in a classic article that Israel participated in “the common theology of the ancient
Near East.” 13 However ill-defined this concept of an ANE „common theology,‟ it is clear that the God of
Israel and the gods of the ANE actually differed less than has been supposed. 14 The gods of the ANE and
Mediterranean were „transcendently anthropomorphic,‟ to use Ronald Hendel‟s term. 15 That is to say, the
gods possessed a form of human shape but of divine substance and quality. 16 One of the distinguishing
characteristics of this body divine is its dangerously luminous and fiery nature, the pulÉu melammû (Sum.
ní-melam) or fiery epiphanic glory of the Akkadian deities come to mind. 17 Characteristic of this
transcendent anthropomorphism was also a sapphiric body. That is to say, the leading deities of the ANE
also possessed bodies the color and substance of sapphire.
In biblical tradition and in ancient and medieval texts generally the term „sapphire‟ denoted the
semiprecious stone lapis lazuli. 18 Considered the “ultimate Divine substance,” sapphire/lapis lazuli
possessed great mythological significance in the ANE. 19 In its natural state lapis lazuli is deep blue with
12 nd
Mark S. Smith, The Early History of God: Yahweh and the Other Deities in Ancient Israel, 2 Edition (Grand Rapids,
Mich.: William B. Eerdmans Pub. Co., 2002) 19-31; Michael David Coogan, “Canaanite Origins and Lineage: Reflections on the
Religion of Ancient Israel,” in Patrick D. Miller, Jr., Paul D. Hanson, and S. Dean McBride (edd.), Ancient Israelite religion: essays
in honor of Frank Moore Cross (Philadelphia : Fortress Press, 1987) 115-124; John Day, “Ugarit and the Bible: Do They Presuppose
the Same Canaanite Mythology and Religion?” in George J. Brooke, Adrian H.W. Curtis and John F. Healey (edd.), Ugarit and the
Bible: proceedings of the International Symposium on Ugarit and the Bible, Manchester, September 1992 (Münster: Ugarit-
Verlag, 1994) 35-52.
13
“The Common Theology of the Ancient Near East,” JBL 71 (1952): 135-147.
14
Bernhard Lang, The Hebrew God: Portrait of an Ancient Deity (New Haven; London: Yale University Press, 2002); Nicholas
Wyatt, “Degrees of Divinity: Some mythical and ritual aspects of West Semitic kingship,” UF 31 (1999): 853-87; Edward L
Greenstein, “The God of Israel and the Gods of Canaan: How Different were they?” Proceedings of the Twelfth World Congress of
Jewish Studies, Jerusalem, July 29-August 5, 1997, Division A (Jerusalem: World Union of Jewish Studies, 1999) 47-58; J. J. M.
Roberts, “Divine Freedom and Cultic Manipulation in Israel and Mesopotamia,” in idem, The Bible and the Ancient Near East:
Collected Essays (Winona Lake, Indiana: Eisenbrauns, 2002) 72-85; E. Theodore Mullen, Jr. The Assembly of the Gods: The Divine
Council in Canaanite and Early Hebrew Literature (Harvard Semitic Monographs 24; Chico: Scholars Press, 1980).
15 Ronald S.Hendel, “Aniconism and Anthropomorphism in Ancient Israel,” in Karel van der Toorn (ed.), The Image and the
Book. Iconic Cults, Aniconism, and the Rise of Book Religion in Israel and the Ancient Near East (CBET 21; Leuven:
Uitgewerig Peeters, 1997) 205-228.
16
On transcendent anthropomorphism in ancient Near Eastern and Classical tradition see Hendel, “Aniconism and
Anthropomorphism”; Jean-Pierre Vernant, “Dim Body, Dazzling Body,” in Michel Feher, Ramona Naddaff and Nadia Tazi (edd.),
Fragments for a History of the Human Body: Part One (New York: Zone, 1989): 19-47. On ANE anthropomorphism generally see
Esther J. Hamori, “„When Gods Were Men‟: Biblical Theophany and Anthropomorphic Realism” (Ph.D. diss. New York University,
2004) 191-235; Mark S. Smith, The Origins of Biblical Monotheism: Israel‟s Polytheistic Background and the Ugaritic Texts
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001) 27-35.
17
E. Cassin, La Splendeur Divine (Paris and the Hague: Mouton, 1968); A. Leo Oppenheim, “Akadian pul(u)É(t)u and melammû,”
JAOS 63 (1943): 31-34.
18
Michel Pastoureau, Blue: The History of a Color (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001) 7, 21f; The Interpreter‟s dictionary
of the Bible: an illustrated encyclopedia identifying and explaining all proper names and significant terms and subjects in the Holy
Scriptures, including the Apocrypha, with attention to archaeological discoveries and researches into life and faith of ancient times 5
vols. (George Arthur Buttrick et al [edd.]; New York: Abingdon Press, 1962-76) s.v. “Sapphire,” by W.E. Stapes; Dictionary of the
Bible, ed. James Hastings (New York: MacMillian Publishing Company, 1988) 497, s.v. “Jewels and Precious Stones,” by J. Patrick
and G.R. Berry.
19
F. Daumas, “Lapis-lazuli et Régénération,” in Sydney Aufrère, L‟Univers minéral dans la pensée Égyptienne, 2 vols. (Le Caire:
Institut Français d‟Archéologie Orientale du Caire, 1991) 2:463-488; John Irwin, “The L§ã Bhairo at Benares (V§r§ÖasÊ):
Another Pre-Aśokan Monument?” ZDMG 133 (1983): 327-43 [art.=320-352]. This is not to suggest that sapphire/lapis lazuli does not
appear in ancient literature in more mundane, non-mythological contexts. It certainly does. In the Amarna letters lapis lazuli is listed
among the presents exchanged by oriental potentates (see Lissie von Rosen, Lapis Lazuli in Geological Contexts and in Ancient
Written Sources [Partille: Paul Åströms förlag, 1988] 34). The royal associations are prevelant, but it is not possible to definatively
determine whether the royal use of this and similar colors (e.g. „royal‟ purple) is meant to imitate the divine, or whether they are being
used to accord royal characteristics to the divine. The predominantly blue robe of the Jewish high priest (Exod. 28 :31) has royal
associations (see Thomas Podella, Das Lichtkleid JHWHs: Untersuchungen zur Gestalthaftigkeit Gottes im Alten Testament und
seiner altorientalischen Umwelt [Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 1996] 67-8), but at Qumran it was also associated with the
divine kābôd ( e.g. . in the 12 th and 13 th Songs of Sabbath Sacrifice 4Q405 20 ii-21-22; 23 ii; see Carol Newsom, Songs of the
Sabbath Sacrifice: A Critical Edition [Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1985] 315; idem, “Shirot „Olat Hashabbat,” in E. Eshel et al (edd.),
Qumran Cave 4: VI, Poetical and Liturgical Texts, Part 1 [DJD 11; Oxford: Clarendon, 1998] 352; Himmelfarb, Ascent to Heaven,
19-20. Crispin H.T. Fletcher-Louis, “Heavenly ascent or incarnational presence: a revisionist reading of the Songs of the Sabbath
Sacrifice,” SBL Seminar Papers Series 37 [1998] 367-399, esp. 385-99; idem, All the Glory of Adam, 346-50). In a number of
Rabbinic texts the „royal‟ garments of the high priest are specifically said to be „after the pattern of the holy garments,‟ i.e. God‟s own

fine golden spangles, recalling the “sky bedecked with stars” 20 ; thus the frequently encountered motif of a
sapphiric heaven. 21 This sapphiric heaven, as the „sky-garment‟ of the gods, was often associated with the
divine body, „garment‟ being an ancient and widespread metaphor for body. 22 The leading deities of the
ANE therefore had sapphiric-blue bodies. In Egypt, “The traditional colour of (the) gods‟ limbs (was) the
dark blue lapis lazuli.” 23 The ANE cult statue, i.e. the earthly body of the deity, 24 was ideally made of a
wooden core platted with red gold or silver, overlaid with sapphires, 25 all of which signified substances
„royal purple‟ garments (e.g. Exod. R. 38:8). Nevertheless, it is clear that in the mythological texts/contexts cited below the reference
to sapphire/lapis lazuli has cosmogonic significance and is not “merely (a) sign of regal fecundity and prosperity.”
20 On Lapis Lazuli v. Lissie von Rosen, Lapis Lazuli in Geological Contexts and in Ancient Written Sources; idem, Lapis Lazuli in
Archaeological Contexts (Jonsered: Paul Åströms förlag, 1990); Rutherford J. Gettens, “Lapis Lazuli and Ultramarine in Ancient
Times,” Alumni de la Fondation universitaire 19 (1950): 342-357.
21 Exod. 24:10; Ez. 1:26 (LXX); Pliny the Elder described lapis lazuli as “a fragment of the starry firmament” (Natural Hidtory, Book
37). Nut, the ancient Egyptian sky goddess, “glistens like lapis lazuli.” See J. Assmann, Liturgische Lieder an den Sonnengott.
Untersuchungen zur ägyptischen Hymnik I (MÄS 19; Berlin, 1969) 314ff. text III 4.
22 On the „sky-garment‟ of the gods see especially Asko Parpola, The Sky-Garment. A study of the Harappan religion and its relation
to the Mesopotamian and later Indian religion (SO 57; Helsinki, 1985); idem, “The Harappan „Priest-King‟s‟ Robe and the Vedic
Tārpya Garment: Their Interrelation and Symbolism (Astral and Procreative),” South Asian Archeology 1983 1: 385-403; A. Leo
Oppenheim, “The Golden Garments of the Gods,” Journal of Near Eastern Society of Columbia University 8 (1949): 172-193. This
designation arises from the golden star-like ornaments or appliqué work sewn into the garment recalling the star-spangled night sky.
On the somatic associations see the Egyptian Amun-Re who is “beautiful youth of purest lapis lazuli (Èwn-nfr n-Ésbd-mЗ#) whose
“body is heaven” (ht. K nwt). See J. Assmann, Sonnenhymnen in thebanischen Gräbern (Mainz: a.R., 1983) 5, #6:5; 124, # 43:14; A.I.
Sadek, Popular Religion in Egypt During the New Kingdom (Hildsheim, 1987) 14. See also Grey Hubert Skipwith, “ „The Lord of
Heaven.‟ (The Fire of God; the Mountain Summit; The Divine Chariot; and the Vision of Ezekiel.),” JQR 19 (1906-7): 693-4 and
illustrations in Othmar Keel, The Symbolism of the Biblical World. Ancient Near Eastern Iconography and the Book of Psalms
(London: SPCK, 1978) 33-4. In Manichaean tradition, the Mother of Life spread out the heaven with the skin of the Sons of Darkness
according to the testimony of Theodore bar Khonai, Liber Scholiorum XI, trns. H. Pognon in Inscriptions Mandaïtes des coupes de
Khouabir, II (Paris: Welter, 1899) 188. In the Greater Bundahišn, 189, 8 the cosmic body is said to have “skin like the sky.” See also
the anthropomorphic body of Zurvan, called Spihr, which is associated with both the blue firmament and a blue garment: see R.C.
Zaehner, Zurvan, A Zoroastrian Dilemma (Oxford, 1955; rep. 1972), 11f, 122. In Jewish tradition see Zohar 111, 170a: “The skin
represents the firmament which extends everywhere and which covers everything, like a cloak…as we see in the all-covering
firmament stars and planets which form different figures that contain hidden things and profound, mysteries, so there are on the skin
that covers our body certain figures and lines which are the planets and stars of our body.” The stars covering the garment signified
rays of celestial light emanating from the hair-pores of the divine skin (see below). Thus, in some depictions of this „sky-garment,‟ the
garment itself is missing and the stars are painted on the very skin of the anthropos. See e.g. the golden statue found in Susa and
published by R. de Mecquenem, Offrandes de fondation du temple de Chouchinak, (Paris, 1905) vol. II, Pl. XXIV 1a. See also
Oppenheim, “Golden Garments,” 182 Fig. 2. The the „garment-as-body‟ metaphore in antiquity see Geo Widengren, The Great Vohu
Manah and the Apostle of God: Studies in Iranian and Manichaean Religion (Uppsala: A.-B. Lundequistska Bokhandeln, 1945) 50-55,
76-83; J.M. Rist, “A Common Metaphor,” in idem, Plotinus: The Road to Reality (London: Cambridge University Press, 1967) 188-
198; Dennis Ronald MacDonald, There is no Male and Female: The Fate of a Dominical Saying in Paul and Gnosticism (Philadelphia:
Fortress Press, 1987), 23-25. On the garments of the gods motif see also Herbert Sauren, “Die Kleidung Der Götter,” Visible Religion
2 (1984): 95-117; Oppenheim, “Golden Garments”; David Freedman, “‘ub§t B§àti: A Robe of Splendor,” JANES 4 (1972): 91-5;
Alan Miller, “The Garments of the Gods in Japanese Ritual,” Journal of Ritual Studies 5 (Summer 1991): 33-55.
23 Lise Manniche, “The Body Colours of Gods and Man in Inland Jewellery and Related Objects from the Tomb of Tutankhamun,”
AcOr 43 (1982): 5-12 (10). The dark blue skin of the anthropomorphic deities was jrtyw or Ésbd (lapis lazuli), which is a blue-black:
See Caoline Ransom Williams, The Decoration of the Tomb of Per-Nēb (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1932) 52f;
J.R. Harris, Lexicographical Studies in Ancient Egyptian Minerals (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1961) 226. On the color of the god‟s
skin as indicative of its status and role, with the sapphiric-bodied deity as „king of the gods‟ v. Gay Robins, “Color Symbolism,” in
Donald B. Redford (ed.), The Ancient Gods Speak: A Guide to Egyptian Religion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002) 58-9;
Dolińsks, “Red and Blue,” (5-6). On the association of a deities skin color and character see also John Baines, “Color Terminology
and Color Classification: Ancient Egyptian Color Terminology and Polychromy,” American Anthropologists 87 (1985): 284
[art.=282-97]; G.D. Hornblower, “Blue and Green in Ancient Egypt,” Ancient Egypt (June 1932): 50 [art.=47-53].
24 On the ANE cult of divine images v. Neal H. Walls (ed.) Cult Image and Divine Representation in the Ancient Near East (American
Schools of Oriental Research Books Series 10; Boston: American Schools of Oriental Research, 2005); Zainab Bahrani, The Graven
Image: Representation in Babylonia and Assyria (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003); Michael B. Dick (ed.), Born
in Heaven, Made on Earth: The Making of the Cult Image in the Ancient Near East (Winona Lake, Indiana: Eisenbrauns, 1999); idem,
“The Relationship between the Cult Image and the Deity in Mesopotamia,” in Jiří Prosecký (ed.), Intellectual Life of the ancient Near
East: Papers Presented at the 43rd Rencontre assyriologique international, Prague, July 1-5, 1996 (Prague: Oriental Institute, 1998) 11-
16; T. Jacobsen, “The Graven Image,” in P.D. Miller Jr., P.D. Hanson and S.D. McBride (edd.), Ancient Israelite Religion: Essays in
Honor of Frank Moore Cross (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1987) 15-32, esp. 16-20.
25 When King Nabu-apla-iddina of Babylon (ca. 887-855 B.C.E.) restored the image (ßalmu) of the god Shamash, it was made of “red
gold and clear lapis lazuli”: L.W. King, Babylonian Boundary-Stones and Memorial-Tablets in the British Museum: With Atlas of
Plates (London: British Museum, 1912) 120-127, #36 IV 20. See also the lament of Ninšubur on the occasion of Inanna‟s „Descent to
the Netherworld” (II. 43-46). On Egyptian cult statues and lapis-lazuli see Daumas, “Lapis-lazuli et Régénération,” 465-67. On the
materials used for the construction of divine images v. Victor Hurowitz, “What Goes In Is What Comes Out – Materials for Creating
Cult Statues” in G. Beckman and T.J. Lewish (edd.), Text and Artifact – Proceedings of the Colloquium of the Center for Judaic
Studies, University of Pennsylvania, April 27-29, 1998, Brown Judaic Series, 2006 (in press). My thanks to professor Hurowitz for
providing a manuscript copy of this work.

from the body of the deity: “his (i.e. Re‟s) bones are silver, his flesh is gold, his hair genuine lapis-lazuli.” 26
But the hair too was a metaphor for rays of light emanating from the hair-pores covering the body and lapis
lazuli was considered „solidified celestial light‟. 27 The whole body was therefore depicted blue. 28 This is
particularly the case with deities associated with fecundity or creation. 29 Mediating between the gold flesh
and lapis lazuli „hair‟ or „surrounding splendor‟ of the creator deity is divine black skin, signified by the
hide of the black bovine (usually a bull), the paramount attribute animal of the ANE creator-deity. 30 The
black bovine was associated with the black primordial waters from which the creator-god emerged; 31 it thus
came to symbolize the material body that the creator-god will don, the black skin of the bovine signaling
26
Gay Robins, “Cult Statues in Ancient Egypt,” in Walls, Cult Image, 6; idem, “Color Symbolism,” in Donald B. Redford (ed.), The
Ancient Gods Speak: A Guide to Egyptian Religion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002) 60; Claude Traunecker, The Gods of
Egypt, translated from the French by David Lorton (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2001) 44; Dmiitri Meeks, “Divine
Bodies,” in Dimitri Meeks and Christine Favard-Meeks, Daily Life of the Egyptian Gods, trans. G.M. Goshgarian (Ithaca and London:
Cornell University Press, 1996) 57; Erik Hornung, Conceptions of God in Ancient Egypt: The One and the Many, trans. John Baines
(Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1982) 134.
27
Ad de Vries, Dictionary of Symbols and Imagery (Amsterdam and London: North-Holland Publishing Company, 1974) 39 s.v.
Beard; Marten Stol, “The Moon as Seen by the Babylonians,” in Diederik J.W. Meijer (ed.), Natural Phenomena: Their Meaning,
Depiction and Description in the Ancient Near East (North-Holland, Amsterdam, 1992) 255. See e.g.the hymn to the god Ninurta: “O
Lord, your face is like the sun god…the lashes of your eyes are rays of the sun god.” In T. Jacobsen, The Treasures of Darkness: A
History of Mesopotamian Religion (New Haven, 1976) 235-236. On lapis lazuli as “solidified celestial light” see Robins, “Color
Symbolism,” 60. On rays of light emanating from the divine hair pores see for example the Vedic text Śatapatha-BrāhmaÖa (hereafter
ŚB) 10, 4, 4, 1-2: “When Praj§pati was creating living beings, Death, that evil, overpowered him. He practiced austerities for a
thousand years, striving to leave evil behind him. 2. Whilst he was practicing austerities, lights went upwards from those hair-pits of
his; and those lights are those stars; as many stars as there are, so many hair-pits there are.” Trans. J. Eggeling, The Śatapatha-
Brāhmana according to the text of the Mādhyandina school. I-V. Sacred Books of the East (Oxford, 1882-1900) IV, 361. See also
Mahābhārata 5.129.11 which mentions “rays of light, like the sun‟s, [shining] from [KÜßÖa‟s] very pores.” Trans. James W. Lane,
Visions of God: Narratives of Theophany in the Mahābhārata (Vienna 1989) 134. On ANE parallels see Parpola, Sky-Garment, 74.
28
See e.g. Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica (III, 115a, 7) who quotes from Porphyry‟s lost Concerning Images concerning the
Egyptian deity Kneph: “The Demiurge, whom the Egyptians call Cneph, is of human form, but with a skin of dark blue, holding a
girdle and a scepter, and crowned with a royal wing on his head.” Trans. E.H. Grifford, 1903. See also the blue-bodied Amun;
Traunecker, Gods of Egypt, 44; G.A. Wainwright, “Some Aspects of Amūn,” Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 20 (1934): 139-53;
Monika Dolińsks, “Red and Blue Figures of Amun,” Varia aegyptiaca 6 (1990):3-7
29
John Baines, Fecundity Figures: Egyptian Personification and the Iconology of a Genre (Wiltschire: Aris & Phillips and Chicago:
Bolchazy-Carducci, 1985) 139-142.
30
See e.g. the black skin of the Egyptian deity Min, the „creator god par excellence.” Robert A. Armour, Gods and Myths of Ancient
Egypt (Cairo and New York: The American University in Cairo Press, 1986, 2001) 157; Veronica Ions, Egyptian Mythology
Middlesex: The Hamlyn Publishing Group Ltd., 1968) 110; DDD s.v. “Min,” 577 by K. van der Toorn; H.Gauthier, Les fêtes du dieu
Min (Le Caire, 1931; IFAO. Recherches d‟Archéologie 2); Wainwright, “Some Aspects of Amūn,” 140. On the mythological
significance of the black bovine skin see especially René L. Vos, “Varius Coloribus Apis: Some Remarks of the Colours of Apis and
Other Sacred Animals,” in Willy Clarysse, Antoon Schoors and Harco Willems (edd.), Egyptian Religion: The Last Thousand Years,
Part 1. Studies Dedicated to the Memory of Jan Quaegebeur (Leuven: Uitgeverij Peeters en Departement Oosterse Studies, 1998) 709-
18. The bull represented potency, fecundity, and primordial materiality, all essential characteristics of the creator-deity. Vos, “Varius
Coloribus Apis,” 715, notes that the bulls of Egypt “materialize upon the earth the creative forces of the hidden demiurge.” On the
creator deity and the bull v. also Harold Bayley, The Lost Language of Symbolism: An Inquiry into the Origin of Certain Letters,
Words, Names, Fairy-Tales, Folklore, and Mythologies 2 vols. (London: Williams and Norgate, 1912) I:323-4. On the symbolism of
the bull see further Mircea Eliade, Patterns in Comparative Religion, trns. Rosemary Sheed (1958; Lincoln and London: University of
Nebraska Press, 1996) 82-93; DDD s.v. “Calf,” by N. Wyatt, 180-182; Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics 13 vols. (James Hastings,
John A. Selbie, and Louis H. Gray [edd.]; New York: Scribner, 1955) 2:887-889 s.v. Bull, by C.J. Caskell. On the „attribute animal‟ of
ANE religion see Erik Hornung, Conceptions of God in Ancient Egypt: the One and the Many (Ithaca: Cornell University
Press, 1982)109-25; P. Amiet, Corpus des cylinders de Ras Shamra-Ougarit II: Sceaux-cylinres en hematite et pierres diverses (Ras
Shamra-Ougarit IX; Paris: Éditions Recherche sur les Civilisations, 1992) 68; “Attribute Animal” in idem, Art of the Ancient Near
East, trans. J. Shepley and C. Choquet (New York: Abrams, 1980) 440 n. 787.
31
Asko Parpola, “New correspondences between Harappan and Near Eastern glyptic art,” South Asian Archaeology 1981, 181
suggests that „the dark buffalo bathing in muddy water was conceived as the personification of the cosmic waters of chaos”. In the Œg
Veda the cosmic waters are cows (e.g. 4.3.11; 3.31.3; 4.1.11) and in PañcaviÒśa-Brāmana 21.3.7 the spotted cow Śabalā is addressed:
“Thou art the [primeval ocean].” On water and cows in Indic tradition see further Anne Feldhaus, Water and Womanhood. Religious
Meanings of Rivers in Maharashtra (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995) 46-47. The black bull (k" km) of Egypt,
Apis, personified the waters of the Nile which was regarded as a type of Nu, the dark, primeval watery mass out of which creation
sprang (See Émile Chassinat, “La Mise a Mort Rituelle D‟Apis,” Recueil de travaux relatifs a la philology et a l‟archeologie
egyptiennes et assyriennes 38 [1916] 33-60; E.A. Wallis Budge, The Egyptian Book of the Dead (The Papyrus of Ani). Egyptian Text
Transliterated and Translated [New York: Dover Publications, Inc. 1967] cxxiii). See also the Babylonian Enki, called am-gig-abzu,
„black bull of the Apsû (primordial waters).” See W.F. Alight, “The Mouth of the Rivers,” AJSL 35 (1991): 161-195, esp. 167. The
Babylonian Tiamat (primordial salt-waters) seems also to have been presented as a bovine in the Enūma eliš: see B. Landsberger and
J.V. Kinnier Wilson, “The Fifth Tablet of Enuma Elis,” JNES 20 (1961): 175 [art.=154-179]. On the black bull and the black waters of
creation see also Vos, “Varius Coloribus Apis,” 715, 718.

the black skin of the deity. 32 We should probably imagine the light of the „golden flesh‟ passing through the
hair-pores of the divine black skin producing the sapphiric „surrounding splendor.‟ The black bull, Ad de
Vries informs us, “mediated between fire (gold) and water (lapis lazuli), heaven and earth (inserts
original)”. 33
Now Biblical and Jewish myth owes a great deal to the mythology of the ANE. 34 Like the gods of her
ancient Near Eastern neighbors, the God of Israel was transcendently anthropomorphic; that is to say, he
possessed a body so sublime it bordered on the non-body. 35 It would therefore not surprise to discover that
Israel participated in this Blue Body Divine tradition. We hope to give evidence here of the existence of an
ancient, esoteric temple tradition concerning a sapphiric-bodied Yahweh. Evidence for such a tradition is
found in a number of Second Temple texts.
2. P and Ancient Esoteric Priestly Tradition
Gerhard von Rad in his Genesis commentary appropriately put any would-be interpreter of the first
chapter on notice:
Whoever expounds Gen., ch. I, must understand one thing: this is Priestly doctrine-indeed, it contains the
essence of Priestly knowledge in a most concentrated form…Nothing is here by chance; everything must be
considered carefully, deliberately, and precisely…Nowhere at all is the text only allusive, symbolic, or
figuratively poetic. Actually, the exposition must painstakingly free this bundled and rather esoteric doctrine
32 See Dieter Kessler, “Bull Gods,” in Redford Ancient Gods Speak, 30. In one description of the Babylonian kalū-ritual the slaying
and skinning of the sacrificial bull, „black as asphalt,‟ is mythologized as the god Bēl‟s slaying and flaying of the god Anu, whose
characteristic attribute animal was the black bull. See Werner Daum, Ursemitische Religion (Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, 1985) 204; E.
Ebeling, Tod und Leben nach den Vorstellungen der Babylonier (Berlin-Leipzig, 1931) 29; C. Bezold, Babylonisch-assyrisches
Glossar (Heidelberg: C. Winter, 1926) 210 s.v. sugugalu; Georgia de Santillana and Hertha von Dechend, Hamlet‟s Mill: An essay on
myth and the frame of time (Boston: Gambit, Inc., 1969) 124. On Anu see further Herman Wohlstein, The Sky-God An-Anu (Jericho,
New York: Paul A. Stroock, 1976). This association between divine and bovine skin is explicitly articulated, for example, in the ŚB 3,
1, 2, 13-17 with regard to the black tārpya garment worn by the royal sacrificer (dÊkßita) during the Vedic unction ceremony of royal
consecration (R§jasåya). During this ceremony the dÊkßita ritually impersonates the creator-god and divine king Praj§pati-VaruÖa
(See J. Gonda, “Vedic Gods and the Sacrifice,” Numen 30 [1983]: 1-34; Walter O. Kaelber, “ „Tapas,‟ Birth, and Spiritual Rebirth in
the Veda,” History of Religions 15 (1976): 343-386; Johannes Cornelis Heesternman, The Ancient Indian Royal Consecration: The
rājasūya described according to the Yajus texts and annotated [The Hague: Mouton & Co., 1957]). The tārpya garment represented the
god‟s own body (See Heesternman, Ancient Indian Royal Consecration on the somatic significance of the ritual garments).
Specifically, the black antelope skins used in the ceremony represent the black skin of the divine king VaruÖ a, who personifies the
primordial waters (on the black skinned VaruÖ a see ŚB 11.6.1 . On VaruÖ a and the black sacrificial garments see further Alfred
Hillebrandt, Vedic Mythology, trans. from the German by Sreeramula Rajeswara Sarma, 2 vols. [Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass
Publishers, 1999; reprint] 2: 41, 44-45. This divine skin/bovine skin identity is further illustrated by the chromatic assonance between
the black skinned deity Yamā, the primordial god-man, and his vāhana (animal attribute/vehicle) the black buffalo. See P. van Bosch,
“Yama-The God on the Black Buffalo,” in Commemorative Figures (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1982) 21-64; Parpola, Sky-Garment, 64-71.
See also the black-skinned Osiris, called the „big Black Bull,‟ and his earthly representative, the black bull Apis. On the black-skinned
Osiris as „big, Black Bull‟ see Vos, “Varius Coloribus Apis,” 716; idem, “Apis,” DDD 70.
33 Dictionary of Symbols and Imagery 69 s.v. Bull. As the „bull of heaven‟ the bovine has sapphiric associations as well. See e.g. the
statuette from Uruk, Jemdet Nasr period (c. 3200-2900 B.C.E.) with trefoil inlays of lapis lazuli: H. Schmökel, Ur, Assur und
Babylon: Drei Jahrtausende im Zweistromland (Stuttgart, 1955), plate 8, top. In the Epic of Gilgamesh (Old Babylonian Version,
Tablet IV 170-3) the Bull of heaven has horns of lapis lazuli. Nanna-Sin, moon-god of Sumer and Babylon, is the „frisky calf of
heaven‟ and the „lapis lazuli bull.‟ See Tallay Ornan, “The Bull and its Two Masters: Moon and Storm Deities in Relation to the Bull
in Ancient Near Eastern Art,” Israel Exploration Journal 51 (2001) 3 [art.=1-26]; Stol, “The Moon,” 255. On Nanna-Sin v. further
DDD, s.v. Sîn 782-3 by M. Stol. See also the sapphiric bearded bull in Jeremy Black and Anthony Green, Gods, Demons and
Symbols of Ancient Mesopotamia: An Illustrated Dictionary (London: British Museum Press, 1992) 44 s.v. bison.
34 Howard Schwartz, Tree of Souls: The Mythology of Judaism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), lxiii; Michael Fishbane,
Biblical Myth and Rabbinic Mythmaking (New York: Oxford, 2003).
35 Hendel, “Aniconism and Anthropomorphism,” 223, 225: “Yahweh has a body, clearly anthropomorphic, but too holy for human
eyes…Yahweh‟s body was believed to be incommensurate with mundane human existence: it has a different degree of being than
human bodies… It is a transcendent anthropomorphism not in form but in its effect, approachable only by the most holy, and absent in
material form in the cult…The body of God was defined in Israelite culture as both like and unlike that of humans.” On biblical
anthropomorphism and an anthropomorphic deity see Johannes Hemple, “Die Grenzen des Anthropomorphismus Jahwes im Alten
Testament,” ZAW 16 (1939): 75-85; Barr, “Theophany and Anthropomorphism”; Cherbonnier, “The Logic of Biblical
Anthropomorphism”; Uffenheimer, “Myth and Reality in Ancient Israel”; idem, “Biblical Theology and Monotheistic Myth”; Bar-
Ilan, “The Hand of God”; Jacob Neusner, “Conversation in Nauvoo about the Corporeality of God,” BYU Studies 36 (1996-97): 7-
30; Karel van der Toorn, “God (1) םיהלא,” in Karel van der Toorn, Bob Becking, Pieter W. van der Horst (edd.), Dictionary of
Deities and Demons in the Bible (2 nd ed.; Leiden; Boston: Brill; Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1999; hereafter DDD) 361-365;
Kugel, the God of Old, 5-107; Hamori, “ „When Gods Were Men‟ ”; Ulrich Mauser, “God in Human Form,” Ex Auditu 16 (2000):
81-100; idem, “Image of God and Incarnation,” Int 24 (1970): 336-356.

sentence by sentence, indeed, word by word. These sentences cannot be easily over interpreted theologically!
Indeed, to us the danger appears greater that the expositor will fall short of discovering the concentrated
doctrinal content. 36
Because Genesis I contains “the essence of Priestly knowledge in a most concentrated form,” and this
knowledge was esoteric, the Temple traditions represented by P are never explicitly communicated in these
materials. 37 Stephen A. Geller has observed that P “more than any other biblical author, reveals what he has
to say by how he says it.” 38 Instead of openly verbalizing his theological concepts, P employs a method of
„literary indirection‟ through placement, juxtaposition, and subtle allusion to impress these unarticulated
concepts on the structure of the Pentateuch. Employing the tools of literary analysis has allowed scholars
to shed light on a number of these „esoteric‟ themes. 39 Beginning with Martin Buber and Franz
Rosenzweig, scholars have discerned P‟s remarkable use of intratextuality between Genesis 1 (the creation
account) and Exodus 25-31 (instructions for the building of the Tabernacle) to suggest a correspondence
between the creation of the world and the building of the sanctuary. 40 The widespread ancient Near Eastern
(ANE) temple-as-cosmos motif undoubtedly lay behind this intratextuality. 41 In Exod. 25-31 God in seven
speeches instructs Moses regarding the construction of the Tabernacle and its furnishings as well as the
priestly vestments. Peter Kearny argued that these seven speeches correspond verbally and conceptually to
the seven days of creation of Genesis I. 42 Thus, in the first speech the newly appointed high priest Aaron is
instructed to tend the golden lampstand (menorah) at the evening and morning sacrifice (Tamid) (Exod.
30:7-8). This, Kearny suggests, corresponds to the appearance of light on the first day and the separation of
day and night (Gen.1:3-5). 43 In the third speech (Ex. 30:16-21) the command is given for the construction
36
Gerhard von Rad, Genesis: A Commentary, translated from the German by John H. Marks (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1961)
45.
37
On P as an esoteric doctrine see Israel Knohl, The Sanctuary of Silence: the Priestly Torah and the Holiness School (Minneapolis:
Fortress Press, 1995) 153; Menahem Haran, “Behind the Scenes of History: Determining the Date of the Priestly Source,” JBL 100
(1981): 321-333; Chayim Cohen, “Was the P Document Esoteric,” JANES 1 (1969): 39-44.
38
“Blood Cult: Toward a Literary Theology of the Priestly Work of the Pentateuch,” Prooftexts 12 (1992): 101.
39
See e.g. Mark S. Smith, “The Literary Arrangement of the Priestly Redaction of Exodus: A Preliminary Investigation,” CBQ 58
(1996): 25-50; Bernhard W. Anderson, “A Stylistic Study of the Priestly Creation Story,” in G. W. Coats and B.O. Long (edd.),
Canon and Authority: essays in Old Testament religion and theology (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1977) 148-162.
40
Martin Buber, Die Schrift und ihre Verdeutschung (Berlin: Schocken Verlag, 1936) 39-41; Umberto Cassuto, A commentary on
the book of Exodus. Translated from the Hebrew by Israel Abrahams (Jerusalem, Magnes Press, Hebrew University,1967), ad 39:32,
43; 40:33; Joseph Blekinsopp, “The Structure of P,” CBQ 38 (1976): 275-292; idem, Prophecy and Canon (Notre Dame and London:
University of Notre Dame, 1977) 56-69; Peter J. Kearney, “Creation and Liturgy: The P Redaction of Ex 25-40,” ZAW 89 (1977):
375-387; Michael Fishbane, Text and Texture: Close Readings of Selected Biblical Texts (New York: Schocken Books, 1979) 11-13;
Moshe Weinfeld, “Sabbath, Temple and the Enthronement of the Lord – The Problem of the Sitz im Leben of Genesis 1:1-2:3,” in A.
Caquot and M. Delcor (edd.) Mélanges bibliques et orientaux en l‟honneur de M. Henri Cazelles (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener
Verlaq, 1981) 501-11; Jon D. Levenson, “The Temple and the World,” JR 64 (1984): 275-298; idem, Creation and the Persistence of
Evil: The Jewish Drama of Divine Omnipotence (San Francisco: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1985) Chapter 7; idem, Sinai and Zion:
An Entry into the Jewish Bible (San Francisco: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1985) 142-145; Peter Weimar, „Sinai und Schöpfung:
Komposition und Theologie der Priesterschriftlichen Sinaigeschichte,“ RB 95 (1988): 337-85; Bernd Janowski, „Temple und
Schöpfung: Schöpfungstheologische Aspekte der priesterschriftlichen Heiligtumskonseption,“ in I Balderman et al., Schöpfung und
Neusschöpfung (Jahrbuch für biblische Theologie 5; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener, 1990) 37-70; Terence E. Fretheim, Exodus
(Louisville: John Know Press, 1991)268-272; Eric E. Elnes, „Creation and Tabernacle: The Priestly Writer‟s ,Environmentalism‟,“
Horizons in Biblical Theological 16 (1994): 144-155.
41
William Foxwell Albright, Archaeology and the Religion of Israel (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1946) 147-150; Göstra W. Ahlstöm,
“Heaven on Earth-at Hazor and Arad,” in Birger A. Pearson (ed.) Religious Syncretism in Antiquity (Missoula: Scholars, 1975): 67-
83; John M. Lundquist, “The Common Temple Ideology of the Ancient Near East,” in T.G. Madsen (ed.), The Temple in Antiquity
(Provo: BYU Press, 1984) 53-76. On the biblical/Jewish “temple-as-cosmos” tradition v. also Jon D. Levenson, “The Jerusalem
Temple in Devotional and Visionary Experience,” in Arthur Green (ed.) Jewish Spirituality, From the Bible Through the Middle
Ages, (New York: Crossroad, 1986) 51-53; C.T.R. Hayward, The Jewish Temple: A non-biblical sourcebook (London and New
York: Routledge, 1996) 8-10; Margaret Barker, “Time and Eternity: the world of the Temple,” The Month (January 2001) 15-21;
James R. Davila, “The Macrocosmic Temple, Scriptural Exegesis, and the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice,” Dead Sea Discoveries 9
(2002):1-19. Gregory Beale, “The Final Vision of the Apocalypse and its Implications for a Biblical Theology of the Temple,” in T.
Desmond Alexander and Simon Cathercole (edd.), Heaven on Earth: The Temple in Biblical Theology (Carlisle: Paternoster, 2004)
191-209; idem, The Temple and the Church‟s Mission: A Biblical theology of the dwelling place of God (Illinois: Inter Varsity
Press, 2005) 29-66.
42
“Creation and Liturgy.”
43
Kearney, “Creation and Liturgy,” 375, 380. But cf. Levenson, Creation, 83. On Aaron‟s mimicking in the Tabernacle God‟s
creative act of separation v. Frank H. Gorman, Jr., The Ideology of Ritual: Space, Time and Status in the Priestly Theology
(Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1990): 44, 51, 219-20; idem, “Priestly Rituals of Founding: Time, Space, and Status,” in M.
Patrick Graham, William P. Brown and Jeffrey K. Kuan (edd.) History and interpretation: essays in honor of John H. Hayes
(Sheffied, Eng.: JSOT Press, 1993) 50-54. Though not all of the specific correspondences uncovered by Kearney are convincing, the

of the bronze laver, which in the Solomonic temple is called simply the “sea” (I Kgs 7:23-26). This would
correspond to the creation of the sea on the third day in Gen. 1:9-11. Again, the seventh speech (31:12-17)
contains the command that Israel observe the Sabbath, and in Gen. 2:2-3 God rested on the seventh day.
The net effect of this intratextuality is the impression, not only that the Tabernacle is a microcosm and
the cosmos a sanctuary, but also that the liturgies carried out in the sanctuary reenact creation in the cultic
setting; and as Crispin H.T. Fletcher-Louis has observed, in this drama the high priest Aaron “acts in
imitatio Dei.” 44 “As God brought ’ôr (light) to darkness (Gen 1 2-3), so Aaron caused ma’ôr (light) to shine
throughout the night.” 45 The Aaronic high priest represented the creator god in this reenactment. 46 The
high-priestly garments prescribed in Exodus 28 are Israel‟s version of the ANE „garments of the gods.‟ 47
The biblical דופא, "êphôd is analogous to the splendid jewel-studded garments that adorned the idols. 48 An
Ugaritic cognate (‘iphd) maybe denoting a divine garment has been found. 49 This would make Aaron in his
ephod correspond to the god-statue in non-Israelite cultures of the ANE. 50 In the temple cult of the ANE the
priest, by wearing the garment of his god, represented that god‟s visible presence. 51 When we also consider
that the biblical high priest bears the name „Yahweh‟ on the front of his turban, is enveloped in Yahweh‟s
own fragrance (the „etheric robe of divinity‟ 52 ), and that he consumes Yahweh‟s own portion of leÈem
p§nîm („Bread of the Presence‟), 53 Aaron‟s imitatio Dei seems certain.
The various scholars impressed by this intratextuality used by P have paid little attention to the sixth
day which culminates with the creation of man “in the image and likeness” of God. 54 At first sight the
correspondence to the sixth speech of Exodus is not so obvious. The focus of the latter is Bezalel, the
master architect appointed by God and responsible for building the Tabernacle (31: 1-5). He was endowed
with wisdom (hokmâ), ability (t e bûnā), and knowledge (dă‘ăt), the tools used by God to create the cosmos,
and he was filled with the rû a h ’ĕlōhîm, “spirit of God,” an allusion to Genesis 1:2 (“and the Spirit of God
overall pattern cannot be denied. Though not all of the specific correspondences uncovered by Kearney are convincing, the overall
pattern cannot be denied.
44
Crispin H.P. Fletcher-Louis, “The Cosmology of P and the Theological Anthropology in the Wisdom of Jesus ben Sira” in C.A.
Evans (ed.), Of Scribes and Sages: Studies in Early Jewish Interpretation and Transmission of Scripture (2 vols.; SSEJC 8;
Sheffield; Sheffield Academic Press, 2004) 69-113 (77). Fletcher-Louis has without doubt most clearly and convincingly elucidated
the high priestly theological anthropology implied by this intratextuality. See also his “The image of God and the biblical roots of
Christian sacramentality,” in Geoffrey Rowell and Christine Hall (edd.), the Gestures of God: explorations in sacramentality
(London and New York: Continuum, 2004) 73-89; idem, “God‟s Image, His Cosmic Temple and the High Priest: Towards an
Historical and Theological Account of the Incarnation,” in Alexander and Cathercole, Heaven on Earth, 81-99; idem, All The Glory
of Adam: Liturgical Anthropology in the Dead Sea Scrolls (Leiden: Brill, 2002) 56-87; idem, “Wisdom Christology and the Parting
of the Ways Between Judaism and Christianity,” in Stanely E. Porter and Brook W.R. Pearson (edd.), Christian-Jewish Relations
through the Centuries (JSNTS 192; Sheffield; Sheffield Academic Press, 2000) 52-68; idem, “The High Priest as Divine Mediator in
the Hebrew Bible: Dan 7:13 as a Test Case,” SBL 1997 Seminar Papers 36 (1997): 161-193, esp. 186-193. On the ritual re-enactment
of cosmogonic myth in the ANE and elsewhere v. Benjamin D. Sommer, “The Babylonian Akitu Festival: rectifying the king or
renewing the cosmos?,” JANES 27 (2000): 81-95; Brian M. Hauglid, “Sacred Time and Temple,” in Donald w. Parry (ed.), Temples
of the Ancient world: Ritual and Symbolism (Salt Lake City, Utah: Deseret Book Company; Provo, Utah: FARMS, 1994) 636-645;
Mircea Eliade, The Myth of the Eternal Return, or, Cosmos and History, translated from the French by Willard R. Trask (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1954).
45
Kearney, “Creation and Liturgy,” 375.
46
According to Fletcher-Louis, “within the liturgy of the cult the high priest plays the role of creator of the universe (emphasis
original).”All The Glory of Adam, 74; Margaret Barker, “The High Priest and the Worship of Jesus,” in Carey C. Newman, James R.
Davila and Gladys S. Lewis (edd.), Jewish Roots of Christological Monotheism. Papers from the St. Andrews Conference on the
Historical Origins of the Worship of Jesus (Leiden: Brill, 1999) 93-111.
47
Fletcher-Louis, “The High Priest as Divine Mediator,” 188. On the „garments of the gods‟ v. also Parpola, Sky-Garment; Herbert
Sauren, “Die Kleidung Der Götter,” Visible Religion 2 (1984): 95-117; A. Leo Oppenheim, “The Golden Garments of the Gods,”
Journal of Near Eastern Society of Columbia University 8 (1949): 172-193; David Freedman, “‘ub§t B§àti: A Robe of Splendor,”
JANES 4 (1972): 91-5. See also Alan Miller, “The Garments of the Gods in Japanese Ritual,” Journal of Ritual Studies 5 (Summer
1991): 33-55.
48
Fletcher-Louis, “The High Priest as Divine Mediator,” 188; CTA 5.I.I-5; The Anchor Bible Dictionary (6 vols.; New York, NY:
Doubleday, 1992-; hereafter ABD) 2: 550, s.v. “Ephod” by Carol Meyers. On the ephod v. also Menahem Haran, Temples and
Temple-Service in Ancient Israel (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1978) 166-68.
49
ABD 2: 550, s.v. “Ephod” by Carol Meyers; W.F. Albright, “Are the Ephod and the Teraphim in Ugaritic Literature?” BASOR 83
(1941): 39-42.
50
Fletcher-Louis, “The High Priest as Divine Mediator,” 188.
51
Sauren, “Kleidung,” 96-7.
52
Words quoted by P.A.H. De Boer, “An Aspect of Sacrifice. II. God‟s Fragrance,” in Studies in the Religion of Ancient Israel
(Leiden: Brill, 1972) 27-47 (39). See also C. Houtman, “On the Function of the Holy Incense (Exodus XXX 34-8) and the Sacred
Anointing Oil (Exodus XXX 22-33),” VT 42 (1992): 458-465.
53
See Roy Gane “ „Bread of the Presence‟ and Creator-In-Residence,” VT 42 (1992): 179-203.
54
The exception being Fletcher-Louis, “The Cosmology of P,” 89-93.

moved on the face of the deep”). 55 This analogy, as Joshua Berman observes, may be read as a statement
that “Bezalel‟s creation of the Tabernacle is tantamount to God‟s creation of the universe.” 56 Most
commentators take the name to mean “in the shadow of God” לא לצב, but Richard Friedman‟s insightful
opinion is significant here:
Some have taken the name Bezalel to mean „in the shadow of God‟ (bĕsēl ’ēl). To me it also intimates „in the image of God
(bĕselem ’ĕlōhîm)‟ from the creation story…And Bezalel was filled with the „spirit of God,‟ which also comes from the
creation story (1:2). The allusions to creation are attractive because Bezalel, after all, as the great artist of the Torah, is the
creative one, who fashions the Tabernacle and its contents, including the ark. Being creative is the ultimate imitatio Dei. 57
On this reading Bezalel of the sixth speech corresponds, not only to the creator of the cosmos, but also to
the man of day six made in the divine image. In as much as he is demiurgic, Bezalel would also correspond
to Aaron, the creator analogue of this cultic drama. Through his high-priestly garments Aaron, like Bezalel,
also corresponds to the man made in the divine image. 58 Just as the creation of man on Day Six concluded
the cosmogony, the final task during the erection of the Tabernacle was the manufacture of the priestly
vestments (Ex. 39). 59 If the ephod connects Aaron to the god-statues of Israel‟s neighbors, this connection
further links Aaron with Adam made in/as the image of God, םיהלא םלצ, ßelem ’ĕlōhîm. 60 The Hebrew
םלצ means primarily “statute” and םיהלא םלצ is a cognate of the Akkadian ßalam ili/ilāni, the common
Mesopotamian term for god-statues. 61 Several scholars have now seen that this terminological congruence
contains conceptual congruence as well: Adam was created to be the living statute of the deity. “Adamic
beings are animate icons…The peculiar purpose for their creation is „theophanic‟: to represent or mediate
the sovereign presence of deity within the central nave of the cosmic temple, just as cult-images were
supposed to do in conventional sanctuaries.” 62 This priestly “man-as-the-true-idol/image” theology, which
55
See Elnes, “Creation and Tabernacle,” 149-151; Kearney, “Creation and Liturgy,” 378; Levenson, Creation, 84. Both Philo and the
rabbis remembered Bezalel‟s demiurgic function. Regarding Philo v. below. On the rabbis see b. Ber. 55a: “Bezalel knew the letters
by which heaven and earth were created, as it is written here [Exod. 35:31]: „He has endowed him with a divine spirit of skill [hokmâ]
ability [t e bûnā], and knowledge [dă‘ăt], and there [Prov. 3:19] it is written: „The Lord founded the earth by wisdom [hokmâ]/He
established the heavens by understanding [t e bûnā],‟ and it is written, „By His knowledge [da‘tô] the depths burst apart [Prov. 3:20].‟”
Similarly, Midrash Tanhuma Yelammedenu 11.3. See also Louis Ginzberg, The Legends of the Jews (7 vols; Baltimore: John
Hopkins University Press, 1911, 1939) 3:154-56.
56
The Temple: Its Symbolism and Meaning, Then and Now (Northvale, New Jersey: Jason Aronson, Inc., 1995) 16.
57
Richard Elliot Friedman, Commentary on the Torah (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2001) 277.
58
Fletcher-Louis, “God‟s Image” 96.
59
See Douglas B. Clawson, “Clothing From Heaven,” Kerux 12 (1997):3-9; Meredith G. Kline, Images of the Spirit (Grand Rapids,
Mi: Baker Book House, 1980) 42-47; idem, “Investiture with the Image of God,” Westminster Theological Journal 40 (1977): 46-51.
60
Ezekiel 28:11-19 seems to presuppose a primordial high-priestly Adam myth. V. 13, “every precious stone was (his) covering,” was
understood in the LXX as an allusion to the 12 stones on the high priests breastplate worn on the ephod. This may suggest a quite
early tradition picturing the primordial Adam as the Image of God bedecked in high priestly attire. See Dexter E. Callender, Jr., Adam
in Myth and History: Ancient Israelite Perspective on the Primal Human (Harvard Semitic Studies 48; Winona Lake, Indiana:
Eisenbrauns, 2002), Chap. 3; idem, “The Primal Human in Ezekiel and the Image of God,” in The Book of Ezekiel: Theological and
Anthropological Perspectives, eds. Margaret S. Odell and John T. Strong (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2002) 175-193. For
a high priestly primal man here and a generally cultic background to the imagery in this passage v. also Robert R. Wilson, “The Death
of the King of Tyre: The Editorial History of Ezekiel 28,” in Love & Death in the Ancient Near East: Essays in Honor of Marvin H.
Pope, eds. John H. Marks and Robert M. Good (Guilford, Connecticut: Four Quarters Publishing Company, 1987) 211-218.
61
Ludwig Koehler and Walter Baumgartner, The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament (hereafter HALOT) (5vols.;
Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1994-) 3:1028-29, s.v. םלצ; The Assyrian Dictionary (hereafter CAD; Chicago: Oriental Institute of the University
of Chicago, 1962) 16: 78b-80a, 84b-85a, s.v. ‘almu; E. Douglas Van Buren, “The ßalmê in Mesopotamian Art and Religion,”
Orientalia 5 (1936): 65-92.
62
S. Dean McBride Jr., “Divine Protocol: Genesis 1:1-2:3 as Prologue to the Pentateuch,” in W.P. Brown and S.Dean McBride (edd.),
God Who Creates: Essays in Honor of W. Sibley Towner (Grand Rapids, Michigan: W.B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2000) 16. See also
Andreas Schüle, “Made in the >Image of God

probably informed P‟s use of the term in Gen. 1:26, 63 together with the “ephod-as-garment-of-the-idols”
tradition, confirms P‟s literary identification of Adam and Aaron, an identification made later by Jesus ben
Sira and also found in rabbinic tradition. 64
2.1. Miqdāš ‟Ādām: Adam/Aaron as Divine Sanctuary
The description of the fabrication of the holy vestments in Exodus 39 invokes the seven divine
speeches of Exodus 25-31 and the ten creative acts of Genesis 1. 65 This suggests that the garments, like the
Tabernacle, reflected the created cosmos. This garments::cosmos correspondence appears in Philo (Spec.
1.95; Mos. II.117) and the Wisdom of Solomon (18.24), but its presence in P might indicate that it is not
Hellenic. 66 The chromatic and textile homology between the high priestly garments and Tabernacle
drapings also suggest a correspondence between the sanctuary and Aaron. 67 We thus have a
Cosmos::Tabernacle::Aaron/Adam homology: as the Tabernacle is a miniature replica of the cosmos,
Aaron/Adam is a microcosmic replica of the sanctuary. 68 This observation may illuminate an otherwise
enigmatic aspect of P‟s creation account (Genesis 1). The latter is regarded as a typical example of an ANE
cosmogony. 69 The apogee of these cosmogonies is the construction of a sanctuary for the creator god. 70
This is conspicuously absent from Genesis, or so it would seem. Some scholars have understood the ANE
temple to have been replaced by P with the Sabbath. 71 Others suggest that the construction of the divine
sanctuary was postponed by P until Sinai. 72 While both of these readings have their merit, we suggest that a
third alternative takes better account of the evidence of this intratextuality. P‟s creation narrative, we
submit, does conclude with the construction of the creator-god‟s sanctuary: Adam/Aaron. As Mircea Eliade
63
Kutsko, “Real ßelem "ÀlÙhîm,” 70-74. Pace Christian D. von Dehsen, “The Imago Dei in Genesis 1:26-27,” Lutheran Quarterly 11
(1997): 259-270 (265); John F.A. Sawyer, “The Image of God, The Wisdom of Serpents and the Knowledge of God and Evil,” in Paul
Morris and Deborah Sawyer (edd.), A Walk in the Garden: Biblical, Iconographical and Literary Images of Eden, (JSOT
Supplement Series 136; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1992) 66.
64
On Ben Sira v. below. On the rabbis v. Midrash Tanhuma-Yelammedenu, 11.2; Num. R. 12.13. Fletcher-Louis was therefore correct
when he predicted that “A longer discussion would demonstrate that the Adamic identity of Aaron is fundamental to the theology of
P.” “Jesus and the High Priest,” 5 n. 13, currently published online, http://www.marquette.edu/maqom/jesus/pdf.
65
See Casper J. Labuschagne, Numerical Secrets of the Bible. Recovering the Bible Codes (North Richland Hills, Texas: BIBAL
Press, 2000) 45-6; Kearney, “Creation and Liturgy,” 380.
66
It exceeds the current evidence to describe the HB as a “Hellenistic Book,” as did Niels Peter Lemche, “The Old Testament-A
Hellenistic Book?” SJOT 7 (1993): 163-93. (For various reactions to Lemche‟s article see Lester L. Grabbe [ed.], Did Moses Speak
Attic? Jewish Historiography and Scripture in the Hellenistic Period [JSOTSup, 317; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001]) or
to suggest that, for example the Primeval History was written by “a Jewish author (alternatively, leader of a group of authors) well
versed in Greek literature” (Jan-Wim Wesselius, “Discontinuity, Congruence and the Making of the Hebrew Bible,” SJOT 13 [1999]:
45.). On the other hand, there are noted correspondences between Greek and Hebrew historiography which might indicate a shared
intellectual milieu (See especially J. Van Seters, In Search of History: Historiography in the Ancient World and the Origins of
Biblical History [New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1983]: idem, “The Primeval Histories of Greece and Israel
Compared,” ZAW 100 [1988]: 1-22; S. Mandell and D.N. Freedman, The Relationship between Herodotus‟ History and Primary
History [Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1993]; F.A.J. Nielsen, The Tragedy in History: Herodotus and the Deuteronomistic History
[JSOTSup, 251; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1997]; Wesselius, “Discontinuity,” 24-77 (38-48): idem, The Origin of the
History of Israel: Herotus‟ Histories as Blueprint for the First Books of the Bible [Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, XXX]).
But it must be kept in mind that Homeric and Hesiodic myth owe not a little to the Semitic Near East. See e.g. Walter Burkert,
Babylon, Memphis, Persepolis: Eastern Contexts of Greek Culture (Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 2004); idem,
The Orientalizing Revolution: Near Eastern Influence on Greek Culture in the Early Archaic Age, trans. Margaret E. Pinder and
Walter Burkert (Cambridge and London, 1992); Robert Mondi, “Greek Mythic Thought in the Light of the Ancient Near East,” in
Lowell Edmunds (ed.) Approaches to Greek Myth (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990) 141-98.
67
On this homology v. Haran, Temples and Temple Service, 167, 171; idem, “The Complex of Ritual Acts Performed Inside the
Tabernacle,” Scripta Hierolymitana 8 (1961): 279-80; Philip Peter Johnson, Graded Holiness: A Key to the Priestly Conception of
the World (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1992) 105, 124-128.
68
See especially Kline, Images of the Spirit, 42-47; idem, “Investiture,” 46-51, who notes that Aarons garments were “a scaled-down
version of the Tabernacle (43;48).”
69
Alexander Heidel, The Babylonian Genesis (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963) 82-140; E.A. Speiser, Genesis (AB;
Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1964) 8-13; Clause Westermann, Genesis 1-11: A Commentary, trns. John J. Scullion [Minneapolis:
Augsburg, 1984] 43, 93-95.
70
Heidel, Babylonian Genesis, 127; Victor (Avigdor) Hurowitz, I have Built You an Exalted House: Temple Building in the Bible
in the Light of Mesopotamian and Northwest Semitic Writings (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1992) 93-96.
71
Arthur Green, “Sabbath as Temple: Some Thoughts on Space and Time in Judaism,” in Raphael Jospe and Samuel Z. Fishman
(edd.), Go and Study: Essays and Studies in Honor of Alfred Jospe (Washington D.C.: B‟nai B‟rith Hillel Foundations, 1980) 287-
305; Weinfeld, “Sabbath, Temple and the Enthronement”; Shimon Bakon, “Creation, Tabernacle and Sabbath,” Jewish Bible
Quarterly 25 (1997): 79-85; Edwin Firmage, “Genesis 1 and the Priestly Agenda,” JSOT 82 (1999): 110.
72
See e.g. Benjamin D. Sommer, “Conflicting Constructions of Divine Presence in the Priestly Tabernacle,” Biblical Interpretation 9
[2001]: 43.

pointed out, such a „house::body::cosmos‟ homology is ancient and quite common, 73 and it is well
documented in midrashic sources. 74 Richard Whitekettle was able to discern such a homology implied in
Lev. 15. 75 In addition to the correspondence between the high priestly garments and sanctuary drappings,
there are also verbal links between Gen. 1:26 and Exod. 25:8:
And God said: Let us make (השענ) Adam/man as our image, according to our likeness (ונתומדכ ונמלצב) 76 (Gen. 1:26)
And let them make me (יל ושעו) a sanctuary, that I may dwell among them, according to (כּ) all that I show you concerning
the pattern (תינבת) of the sanctuary (Ex. 25:8)
James Barr 77 and Tryggve N.D. Mettinger 78 have observed that both Adam and the Tabernacle, and only
these two according to P, are made according to a heavenly prototype (ßelem/tabnît). “The P source had
two great events in which something was made in an express analogy: firstly, man himself, created in the
image of God, and, secondly, the tabernacle, built by men after a pattern revealed by God.” 79 As Mettinger
notes, this can hardly be accidental. 80 He goes on to proffer the thesis that the heavenly prototype in
Genesis (the ßelem) 81 refers to the heavenly beings who carry out worship in the heavenly temple. 82 But it
seems to us that this “surprising analogy between man and the Tabernacle” 83 is more easily explainable by
the clear pattern we have discerned in P‟s use of this intratextuality. The Aaron/Adam::Tabernacle
homology suggests that P intends to present the first man as the first divine sanctuary.
Objections have been raised to Barr‟s and Mettinger‟s reading. Walter Gross, for example, noting the
terminological variation (ßelem-Gen. 1:26 vs. tabnît- Ex. 25:8), argues: “Die Behauptung der Parallele
zwischen Menschenschöpfung und Errichtung des Heiligtums kann sich auf keinerlei sprachliche
Argumente stützen.” 84 But the significance of this so-called “Fehlen sprachlicher Anklänge” is overstated.
As Peter Weimar has well pointed out:
Durch die nachdrückliche Betonung der Abbildhaftigkeit des Heiligtums vom Sinai will die Priesterschrift es allem
Anschein nach als Medium der Offenbarung Jahwes selbst verstanden wissen. Auch wenn sprachliche Gemeinsamkeiten
73 The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion (New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1961) 172-84.
74 See Raphael Patai, Man and Temple in Ancient Jewish Myth and Ritual (New York: KTAV Publishing House, Inc., 1967), 113-
17. C.R.A. Morray-Jones, “The Temple Within: The Embodied Divine Image and its Worship in the Dead Sea Scrolls and Other Early
Jewish and Christian Sources,” SBL 1998 Seminar Papers, 400-427 has discerned a five-fold homology in this early Jewish motif:
Divine Image::Body::Temple::Cosmos::Community (see graph on page 427).
75 “Leviticus 15:18 Reconsidered: Chiasm, Spatial Structure and the Body,” JSOT 49 (1991): 31-45.
76 We are convinced by the arguments in favor of reading the beth in ונמלצב as beth essentiae. See TLOT 3:1082 s.v. “םלצ,” by
Wildberger; TDOT 12:394 s.v. “םלצ” by Stendebach; D.J.A. Clines, “The Image of God in Man,” TynBul 19 (1968): 76-80. On beth
essentiae v. J.H. Charlesworth, “The Beth Essentiae And the Permissive Meaning of the Hiphil (Aphel),” in H.W. Attridge, J.J.
Collins and T.H. Tobin (edd.), Of Scribes and Scrolls: Studies on the Hebrew Bible, Intertestamental Judaism, and Christian
Origins, Presented to John Strugnell on the Occasion of His Sixtieth Birthday (Lanham: University Press of America, 1990) 67-78;
Cyrus H. Gordon, “ „In‟ of Predication or Equivalence,” JBL 100 (1981) 612-613; Lawrence N. Manross, “Bêth Essentiae,” JBL 73
(1954): 238-9. On the other hand, we understand the כּ in ונתומדכ as kaph of the norm; we therefore do not accept the synonymity of
these prepositions. In our view Clines‟ (“Image of God in Man,” 76-80, 90-93) argument is still persuasive: „...there is no reason why
ונ מלצב and ונתומדכ should be equivalent, and a perfectly satisfactory interpretation is gained by taking ונמלצב as „as our image, to be
our image‟ and ונתומדכ not as synonymous with ונמלצב, but a explanatory of the „image‟, that it is an image made ונתומדכ, „according
to our likeness, like us…תומד then specifies what kind of image it is: it is a „likeness‟-image, not simply an image; representational,
not simply representative (77, 91).” See also Ivan Golub, “Man – Image of God (Genesis 1:26): A New Approach to an Old Problem,”
in “Wünschet Jerusalem Friedmen”: Collected Communications to the XIIth Congress of the International Organization for the
Study of the Old Testament, Jerusalem 1986 (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1988) 227-28.
77
“The Image of God,” 16.
78
“Abbild oder Urbild? »Imago Dei« in traditionsgeschichtlicher Sicht,” ZAW 86 [1974]: 403-424, esp. 406-411; idem, “Skapad till
Guds avbild: En ny tolkning,” STK 51 [1975]: 49-55. See also Weimar, “Sinai und Schöpfung,” 350-352.
79
Barr, “The Image of God,” 16.
80
“Abbild oder Urbild?” 408
81
Mettinger reads ונמלצב as “according to our image” (beth of the norm) and thus understands ßelem as the prototype (“Abbild oder
Urbild?” 411). But as Phyllis A. Bird correctly pointed out (”Male and Female He Created Them”: Gen 1:27b in the Context of the
Priestly Account of Creation,” HTR 74 [1981]: 142 n. 34), ßelem/ßalmu is always the copy, not the original (unless, of course, you are
Philo). In our view, the divine model is alluded to in ונתומדכ “according to our likeness.” See Clines, “Image of God in Man,” 77.
82
(“Abbild oder Urbild?”, 407, 410-11; Mettinger, “Skapad till Guds avbild,”54.
83
Mettinger, “Skapad till Guds avbild,” 51
84
“Die Gottebenbildlichkeit des Menschen im Kontext der Priesterschrift,” Theologische Quartalschrift 161 (1981): 254. See alo
Erich Zenger, Gottes Bogen in den Wolken. Untersuchungen zu Komposition und Theologie der priesterschriftlichen Urgeschichte
(SBS 112; Stuttgart: Verlag Katholisches Bibelwerk GmbH, 1983) 84-86 n. 110.

fehlen, ist dennoch nicht zu verkennen, daß ein solches Heiligtumsverständis im Rahmen des priesterschriftlichen Werkes
eine Entsprechung in der Vorstellung vom Menschen als «Bild Gottes» (Gen 1, 26+27) hat. Ist zwischen der
Menschenschöpfung und der Errichtung des Heiligtums am Sinai ein derartiger Zusammenhang anzunehmen…” 85
A closer look at P‟s imago Dei theology will provide further support for our suggestion. Scholarly
interpretations of Gen.1:26-7 are numerous and divergent. 86 Recent studies, however, have made it clear
that P‟s ßelem is the Mesopotamian ßalmu. 87 The latter was distinguished by its ambivalent “god…not god”
identity: while the idol is clearly distinguished from the god whom it represents, it is treated as the god
itself. 88 The reason is that the ANE cult statue was not only a representative replica of the god; it was also
the dwelling place of that god‟s essence/spirit. “It was not considered to resemble an original reality that
was present elsewhere but to contain that reality in itself.” 89 It was the ßalmu‟s roles as both image and
divine abode that justified its treatment as the god for whom it was a representative.
The process by which the idol was „incarnated‟ by the divine spirit, the so-called mīs pî (“Washing-ofthe-mouth”)
and pit pî (“Opening-of-the-mouth”) rituals, is thought by a number of scholars to be behind
the imagery of Gen. 2:7b: “then the LORD GOD formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into
his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being (NOAB).” 90 Though the creation narrative of
Genesis 2 dose not use the term ßelem (or demut), there can be no doubt that the imago concept is present. 91
85 “Sinai und Schöpfung,” 350-51.
86 The literature is of course too vast to do justice to in a short note. For a history of interpretations up to 1982 v. Gunnlaugur A.
Jónsson, The Image of God: Genesis 1:26-28 in a Century of Old Testament Research (CB.OT, 26; Stockholm: Almquist & Wiksell
International, 1988) and the research cited there. Of special note see also sources sited above, esp. nn. 50-1 and further: R.McL.
Wilson, “The Early History of the Exegesis of Gen. 1.26,” Studia Patristica 1 (1957): 420-37; J. Jervell, Imago Dei: Gen. 1:26 in
Spätjudentum, in Gnosis und in den paulinischen Briefen (FRLANT 76; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1960); Meredith G.
Kline, “Creation in the Image of the Glory-Spirit,” Westminster Theological Journal 39 (1977): 250-72; Maryanne Cline Horowitz,
“The Image of God in Mam-Is Woman Included?” HTR 72 (1979): 175-206; Jarl Fossum, “Gen. 1,26 and 2,7 in Judaism,
Samaritanism, and Gnosticism,” JSJ 16 (1985): 202-239; Byron L. Sherwin, “The Human Body and the Image of God,” in Dan Cohn-
Sherbok (ed.), A Traditional Quest: Essays in Honour of Louis Jacobs (Sheffield: University of Sheffield, 1991) 74-85; Johannes C.
de Moor, “The Duality in God and Man: Gen. 1:26-27 as P‟s Interpretation of the Yahwistic Creation Account,” in Intertextuality in
Ugarit and Israel (OTS, 40; Leiden; Boston: Brill, 1998) 112-125; W.Randall Garr, “ „Image‟ and „Likeness‟ in the Inscription from
Tell Fakhariyeh,” IEJ 50 (2000): 227-234; J. Andrew Dearman, “Theophany, Anthropomorphism, and the Imago Dei: Some
Observations about the Incarnation in the Light of the Old Testament,” in Stephen T. Davis, Daniel Kendall, Gerald O‟Collins (edd.),
The Incarnation: An Interdisciplinary Symposium on the Incarnation of the Son of God (Oxford; New York: Oxford
University Press, 2002) 31-46; Yair Lorberbaum, Image of God, Kabbalah and Aggadah (Tel Aviv: Schocken Publishing House,
2004) [Hebrew].
87 See above nn. 50-1 and HALOT 3:1028-1029; DDD s.v. “Image,” by A. Livingstone, 448-450; Samuel E. Loewenstamm,
“„Beloved is Man in that he was created in the Image‟,” in idem, Comparative Studies in Biblical and Ancient Oriental Literatures
(AOAT, 204; Kevelaer: Butzon & Bercker; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1980) 48-50.
88 On this „god…not god‟ identity of the idol see especially T. Jacobsen, “The Graven Image,” in P.D. Miller Jr., P.D. Hanson and
S.D. McBride (edd.), Ancient Israelite Religion: Essays in Honor of Frank Moore Cross (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1987) 15-32,
esp. 16-20; Michael B. Dick, “The Relationship between the Cult Image and the Deity in Mesopotamia,” in Jiří Prosecký (ed.),
Intellectual Life of the ancient Near East: Papers Presented at the 43rd Rencontre assyriologique international, Prague, July 1-5,
1996 (Prague: Oriental Institute, 1998) 11-16. On the treatment of idols see Irene J. Winter, “ „Idols of the King‟: Royal Images as
Recipients of Ritual Action in Ancient Mesopotamia,” Journal of Ritual Studies 6 (Winter 1992):13-42; Curtis, “Man as the Image of
God,” 103-106. On this ANE practice and its biblical parody v. Michael B. Dick, “Prophetic Parodies of Making the Cult Image,” in in
Michael B. Dick (ed.), Born in Heaven, Made on Earth: The Making of the Cult Image in the Ancient Near East (Winona Lake,
Indiana: Eisenbrauns, 1999), 1-53.
89 Zainab Bahrani, The Graven Image: Representation in Babylonia and Assyria (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press,
2003) 127. See further K.H. Bernhardt, Gott und Bild. Ein Beitrag zur Begründung und Deutung des Bildererbotes im Alten
Testament (Berlin: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 1956) 17-68; David Lorton, “The Theology of Cult Statues in Ancient Egypt,” in
Born in Heaven, 123-210, esp. 179-184; Curtis, “Man as the Image of God,” 97-102.
90 Schüle, “Made in the >Image of GodImage of God

Thus, the composite narrative (Gen. 1-2) 92 presents us with a picture strikingly reminiscent of ANE cult
tradition: a ßelem is made for/by the deity from mundane materials into which that deity subsequently
enters and dwells. 93 This indwelling enlivens the ßelem, making it god and king. 94 Adam, as the ßelem of
God, is himself the very body of God. 95 We may thus have here the biblical justification for the later
tradition of Adam‟s heavenly enthronement and worship by the angels. 96 In the Latin Life of Adam and Eve
(Vita Adae et Evae) God commands the angels in heaven regarding Adam: “Worship the Image of Yahweh
(14:3)!” As the very Imago of God, Adam is here the object of cultic veneration, as the temple language
and imagery makes clear. 97
Crispin Flectcher-Louis describes Genesis 1 as an „incarnational‟ cosmology. 98 If our reading of P‟s
imago Dei theology is correct, this characterization would be justified. 99 What is important here also is that
Adam, as ßelem of God, is the abode of God as well: “the image of a god was to be looked upon…as a
temple, where this god could be both encountered and truly worshipped.” 100 Adam/Aaron is therefore the
first divine sanctuary. 101 It may well be this Priestly “Adam-as-Tabernacle” tradition that lay behind
Philo‟s and the NT‟s “Temple of the Body” metaphor, and not the Hellenism of the Stoics. 102 If so, the
Gospel of John‟s presentation of the possibly high priestly Jesus as “the living abode of God on earth, the
fulfillment of all the temple meant” 103 should not be seen as a “decisive break” with or “radical revision” of
92 As arranged by the final redactor. On reading Genesis I and 2 as parts of a (redacted) whole v. Sawyer, “Image of God,” 64-5.
93 On the divine “entering the form” of the statue v. Winter, “ „Idols of the King‟,” 23; Dick, “Relationship,” 113-114; Curtis, “Man as
Image of God,” 97-99.
94 On “made from dust” in Gen. 2 as a biblical metaphor for enthronement v. Walter Brueggemann, “From Dust to Kingship,” ZAW
84 (1972): 1-18. I. Engell already read Gen 1:26-8 as a description of a divine, enthroned Adam: see “Knowledge and Life in the
Creation Story,” in M. Noth and D. Winton Thomas (edd.), Wisdom in Israel and In The Ancient Near East Presented to Harold
Henry Rowley (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1955) 112. On the ritual attribution of the creation of the cult statute to the deity v. Walker and
Dick, “Induction”; Dick, “Relationship,” 113-116. On the materials for the construction of the idol see Victor Hurowitz, “What Goes
In Is What Comes Out – Materials for Creating Cult Statues” in G. Beckman and T.J. Lewish (edd.), Text and Artifact – Proceedings
of the Colloquium of the Center for Judaic Studies, University of Pennsylvania, April 27-29, 1998, Brown Judaic Series, 2006 (in
press). My thanks to professor Hurowitz for providing a manuscript copy of this work.
95 See Stendebach (TDOT 12:389 sv. םלצ): “The cult statue of a god is the actual body in which that deity dwells.” See further above
n. XXX.
96 D. Steenburg, “The Worship of Adam and Christ as the Image of God,” JSNT 39 (1990): 95-109; Pace Jarl Fossum, “The Adorable
Adam of the Mystics and the Rebuttals of the Rabbis,” in Peter Schäfer (ed.), Geschichte, Tradition, Reflexion: Festschrift für
Martin Hengel zum 70. Geburtstag Band I: Judentum (Tübingen : J C B Mohr, 1996) 529-539 (533) and Alexander Altman, “The
Gnostic Background of the Rabbinic Adam Legends,” JQR 35 (1945): 382.
97 As persuasively argued by Corrine L. Patton, “Adam as the Image of God: An Exploration of the Fall of Satan in the Life of Adam
and Eve,” SBL 1994 Seminar Papers: 296-98.
98 “Image of God,” 84, 99.
99 We thus need to amend Norbert Lohfink‟s statement that “P‟s conception of God‟s nearness in cult must be supplemented by the
New Testament‟s conviction of God‟s nearness in the person of Christ.” “Creation and salvation in Priestly theology,” Theological
Digest 30 (Spring, 1982): 5. P combines God‟s nearness in cult and person, the person of the high priest.
100 Frederick G. McLeod, “The Antiochene Tradition Regarding the Role of the Body within the „Image of God‟,” in Broken and
Whole; Essays on Religion and the Body (Lanham, Md: University Press of America, 1993) 24-25. See also ABD 3:390-91 s.v.
“Image of God (OT)” by Curtis. Gebhard Selz remarks as well: “Late texts provide evidence that the statue of Šamaš was considered
to be a place of ‘epiphany’ of the sun-god” 100 : the parallel with the Israelite Tabernacle/Tent of Meeting cannot be missed. “The Holy
Drum, the Spear, and the Harp. Towards an Understanding of the Propblem of Deification in Third Millennium Mesopotamia,” in I.
Finkel and M. Gellers (edd.), Sumerian Gods and Their Representations (Grönigen: Styx Publications, 1997) 183.
101 This may support Michael M. Homan‟s suggestion that Aaron‟s name, אהרן, be taken as an Egyptianized form of Semitic ,אהלtent,
with an adjectival or diminutive suffix –ōn; hence Aaron is the „tent-man.‟ See his discussion in To Your Tents, O Israel! The
Terminology, Function, Form, and Symbolism of Tents in the Hebrew Bible and the Ancient Near East (Leiden: Brill, 2002) 120-
23.
102 Pace K.G. Kuhn, “Les Rouleaux de Cuivre de Qumrân” RB 61 (1954): 203 n. 1 followed by Joseph A. Fitzmyer, “Qumrân and the
Interpolated Passage in 2 Cor. 6,14-7,1,” CBQ 23 (1961): 277. On Philo v. Somn. 1.21-34, 146-149, 225; Opif. 145f; Sobr. 62 (soul as
temple of God); see also R.J. McKelvey, The New Temple: The Church in the New Testament (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1969) 54-5. Paul: 1 Cor. 3:16; 6:19; Col. 1:19; see also McKelvey, The New Temple, 98-107; Jennifer A. Harris, “The Body as
Temple in the High Middle Ages,” in Albert I. Baumgarten (ed.), Sacrifice in Religious Experience (Leiden: Brill, 2002) 232-256.
Gospel of John: 1:14; 2:19-21; Alan R. Kerr, The Temple of Jesus‟ Body: The Temple Theme in the Gospel of John (JSOT
Supplemental Series, 220; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 2002); Mary L. Coloe, God Dwells With Us: Temple Symbolism in the Fourth
Gospel (Collegeville, Minnesota: The Liturgical Press, 2001); Jarl E. Fossum, “In the Beginning was the Name: Onomanology as the
Key to Johannine Christology,” in his The Image of the Invisible God (NTOA 30; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1995) 121ff;
McKelvey, The New Temple, 75-84; Harris, “The Body as Temple”; Lars Hartman, “ „He spoke of the Temple of His Body‟ (Jn 2:13-
22),” SEÅ 54 (1989):70-79.
103 D.A. Carson, The Gospel According to John (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1991) 182. Whether or not John presents a high priestly
Jesus is debated, but we are persuaded that he does. See Kerr, Temple of Jesus‟ Body, 314-370; Coloe, God Dwells, 201-206; John
Paul Heil, “Jesus as the Unique High Priest in the Gospel of John,” CBQ 57 (1995): 729-745. See also Fletcher-Louis, “Jesus the High

the cultic tradition of Israel. 104 Nor can we assume that „John‟ took this motif from earlier Christian
tradition. 105 If „John‟ was priestly, as has been argued, 106 it is likely that the precedent for his Temple
Christology was P‟s Aaron/Adam-as-Tabernacle tradition. Indeed, the early worship of Jesus by Jewish
Christians is probably predicated on the Jewish worship in Second Temple times of the high priest as the
Image and Glory of God, the latter phenomenon clearly based on P‟s imago Dei theology. 107 Relevant too
must be the ancient Near and Far Eastern tradition of the Temple as the anthropomorphic body of God. 108
Gary Anderson has done interesting work on a “theology of the tabernacle and its furniture” giving
evidence of a Second Temple theologoumenon in which the tabernacle and its furniture were identified
with the observable form of God so closely that “it was impossible to divide with surgical precision the
house of God from the being of God.” 109
The relevance of this Temple-as-(Divine) Body motif to our study is suggested by those traditions
identifying the tabernacle/temple veil and/or curtains with the divine flesh or skin. The
anthropomorphization of the temple veil is found in Philonic, 110 Gnostic, 111 Samaritan, 112 early Christian 113
and rabbinic literature. 114 The Epistle to the Hebrews (10:20) identifies the tabernacle veil (pārōket) with
the flesh of Christ. 115 As the pārōket is predominantly sapphiric blue (tekhelet), 116 might this suggest an
underlying blue-body divine tradition? 117
Priest”; Joseph E. Zimmerman, “Jesus of Nazareth: High Priest of Israel's Great Fall Festival--The Day of Atonement,” Evangelical
Journal 17 (Fall 1999): 49-59.
104
Characterizations employed by Kerr, Temple of Jesus‟ Body, 32, 133, 166, 373.
105
Coloe, God Dwells, 12. Mark Kinzer (“Temple Christology in the Gospel of John,” SBL 1998 Seminar Papers [Missoula, Mont.
Scholars Press, 1998] 447-463, esp. 458-60) was also unable to find a Jewish Temple tradition paralleling John‟s Temple Christology.
106
See esp. Kerr, Temple of Jesus‟ Body, 8-18; Kinzer “Temple Christology,” 461-63. By „John‟ I mean the anonymous author of the
Gospel of John.
107
See esp. Crispin H. P. Fletcher-Louis, “Alexander the Great‟s Worship of the High Priest,” in Loren T. Stuckenbruck and Wendy
E.S. North (edd.), Early Jewish and Christian Monotheism (London: T&T Clark International, 2004) 71-102; idem, “The Worship of
Divine Humanity”; Barker, “The High Priest and the Worship of Jesus.”
108
See e.g. Ragnhild Bjerre Finnestad, Image of the World and Symbol of the Creator: On the Cosmological and Iconological
Values of the Temple of Edfu (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1985); Stella Kramrish, “The Temple as Purusa,” in Pramod Chandra (ed)
Studies in Indian Temple Architecture, (American Institute of Indian Studies, 1975) 40-46.
109
According to Anderson‟s reading, the tabernacle and its furniture constitute the theophanic form in that seeing them was
tantamount to seeing God‟s very being. This research was apparently part of a 2004 paper presented at the Orion Center for the Study
of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Associated Literature and is currently posted on the latter‟s website:
http://orion.mscc.huji.ac.il/symposiums/ 9th/papers/AndersonPaper.pdf. This “temple-as-body of God” motif will later resurface in
kabbalistic writings: “Therefore the Holy One, blessed be He, said to Moses our master, peace be upon him: Tell the Israelite people
to bring me [gifts] (Ex. 25:2), they should make me a body and soul for [their] God and I will take bodily form („etgashem) in it.”
Elliot Wolfson comments: “According to this text, the Tabernacle functioned as the sacred space in which the divine assumed bodily
or concrete form.” See Through a Speculum that Shines: Vision and Imagination in Medieval Jewish Mysticism (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1994), 64 n. 51.
110
“The incorporeal world (i.e. the Holy of Holies/devir) is set off and separated from the visible one (i.e. the Holy Place/ heikhal) by
the mediating Logos as by a veil (QE II. 94).” As the mediating veil, the Logos is a duality whose very nature consists of both
“invisible (i.e. incorporeal) and visible substance (Ibid; see also Her. 205-206; Mos. II, 127).” The visible substance is no doubt
represented by the veil itself. According to Philo (QE II.56), the sense-perceptible sphere of existence has two sides: a light, upwardtending
substance (air, ether), and a heavy, downward extending substance (earth, water). The veil, he says, is (made of) the “ethereal
and airy substance (QE II. 91).”
111
In Orig. World NHC II.98. 21-24 Sophia “functioned as a veil dividing mankind from the things above.” On this veil and its Jewish
sources see Ithamar Gruenwald, “Jewish Sources for the Gnostic Texts From Nag Hammadi?” Proceedings of the Sixth World
Congress of Jewish Studies (3 vols.; Jerusalem: World Union of Jewish Studies, 1975-77) 3: 47-52 [art.=49-52]=idem, From
Apocalyptic to Gnosticism [Frankfurt am Main, etc.; Peter Lang, 1988] 207-220).
112
E.g. the angel Kebala. See Jarl Fossum, “The Angel of the Lord in Samaritanism,” JSJ 46 (2001): 51-75.
113
See e.g. Melito, bishop of Sardis, Hom. Pasch. 98 (S.G. Hall [ed. and trans.], Melito of Sardis on Pascha [Oxford, 1979] 54). For
a discussion of this and other examples of the personified veil in early Christian literature v. Fossum, “Angel of the Lord,” 59-60;
Marinus de Jonge, “Two Interesting Interpretations of the Rending of the Temple-Veil in the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs,”
Bijdragen, tijdschrift voor filosofie en theologie 46 (1985): 350-362; Campbell Bonner, “Two Problems in Melito‟s Homily on the
Passion,” HTR 31 (1938): 175-190.
114
B. Giã. 56b relates a Jewish legend in which the Roman general Titus, after having entered the Holy of Holies committing
fornication with a harlot on the outspread Torah scroll, pierced the veil with his sword and drew blood. As Fossum, “The Angel of the
Lord,” 59 observes: “This story apparently presupposes the idea of an anthropomorphic representation of God being mysteriously
linked to the veil before the Holy of Holies.”
115
On the difficult passage 10:20 v. Harold W. Attridge, The Epistle to the Hebrews Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1989) 285-87; N.H.
Young, “TOYT‟ EΣTIN THΣ ΣAPKOΣ AYTOY (Heb. X.20): Apposition, Dependent or Explicative,” NTS 20 (1973-74): 100-104.
116
Haran, Temples and Temple Service, 162. On tekhelet and sapphiric blue see Ben Zion Bokser, “The Thread of Blue,”
Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research 31 (1963): 13 [art.=1-31].
117
See also the Protoevangelium of James (11, 12), a second century Christian text. Mary is there pictured at the moment of the
Annunciation spinning a skein of purple wool in order to weave a new temple veil, an allusion to the flesh of the Christ child. On the

2.2. The High Priestly Garments and Divine Glory
The chromatic homology between the Tabernacle drappings and the high priestly garments has been
noted. In a number of ancient texts veil and garment are equated. 118 As the Syriac saint Ephrem (d. 373)
wrote: “The Firstborn wrapped Himself in a body, as a veil (to hide) His glory; the immortal bride (the
soul) shines out in that robe.” 119 “Garment” is a common metaphor for body in Jewish, Samaratain,
Christian, and Gnostic literature and the “body as garment of the soul” motif was widespread in late
antiquity. 120 There is no explicit indication in the Pentateuch that P intended this metaphor. There are
suggestive hints, however.
Firstly, as we have noted, these garments are the Israelite version of the ANE „garment of the gods.‟ 121
The high priestly dark blue robe (me’îl) and ephod with gold appliqué work bring to mind the sapphirc skygarment
of the pagan gods. 122 In the ANE and cognate Indian tradition this garment had somatic
significance: it represented the body or skin of the deity, the stars covering the garment signifying rays of
celestial light emanating from the hair-pores of the divine skin. This light seems to have produced a
„surrounding splendor‟ described as a „cloud.‟ Thus, the Akkadian nalbaš šamê („sky garment‟)
“denotes…the star-spangled sky…and the cloud-covered sky.” 123 „Sky garment‟ and „cloud‟ are therefore
metaphors for the divine body surrounded by splendor.
The high-priestly garments were given by God to be for “glory (דובכ) and beauty (תראפת) (Ex. 28:2,
40).” In P these terms have special significance denoting the fiery, anthropomorphic form of Yahweh
hidden behind a black cloud (ןנעו ךשׁח). 124 Elsewhere in the HB דובכ kābôd and its synonyms (דוה, רדה,
תואג etc.) are described as garments of the divine (Ps. 93:1; 104:1f). In the Akkadian pulÉu melammu “awe-
Prot. Jas. v. New Testament Apocrypha, Volume I: Gospels and Related Writings, edd. Wilhelm Schneemelcher and R. Mcl. Wilson
(Cambridge and Louisville, KY: James Clarke & Co. Ltd and Westminster/John Know Press, 1991) 421-439; Harm Reinder Smid,
Protevangelium Jacobi: A Commentary (Assen, 1965), esp. 75-83. For this reading of the Prot. Jas. v. Nicholas Constas‟ discussion,
“The Purple Thread and the Veil of the Flesh: Symbols of Weaving in the Sermons of Proclus,” in idem, Proclus of Constantinople
and the Cult of the Virgin in Late Antiquity (Leiden: Brill, 2003) 325-27; Margaret Barker, “The Veil as the Boundary,” in idem,
the Great High Priest: The Temple Roots of Christian Liturgy (London: T&T Clark, 2003) 211. On the temple veil and
incarnation in Christian theology and iconography v. Hélène Papastavrou, “Le voile, symbol de l‟Incarnation: Contribution à une
etude sémantique,” Cahiers Archeologiques 41 (1993): 141-168.
118 In the Testament of Levi 10, 3, for instance, the temple is personified as an angel and the veil is its ενδυμα. See Marinus DeJonge,
The Testament of the XII Patriarchs, 124; idem, “Two Interesting Interpretations”; Bonner, “Two Problems.” For other examples of
this veil=garment motif in ancient literature v. Blake Ostler, “Clothed Upon: A Unique Aspect of Christian Antiquity,” BYU Studies
22 (1982): 35-6. On the homology between the ephod and Tabernacle veil see Menahem Haran, “The Priestly Image of the
Tabernacle,” HUCA 36 (1965): 208ff.
119 Nisibis 43:21, trns by Brock, Luminous Eye, 95.
120 Jung Hoon Kim, The Significance of Clothing Imagery in the Pauline Corpus (London and New York: T&T Clark International,
2004); Nils Alstrup Dahl and David Hellholm, “Garment-Metaphors: the Old and the New Human Being,” Adela Yarbro Collins and
Margaret M. Mitchell (edd.), Antiquity and Humanity. Essays on Ancient Religion and Philosophy Presented to Hans Dieter Betz
on His 70 th Birthday (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2001) 139-158; April D. De Conick and Jarl Fossum, “Stripped before God: A New
Interpretation of Logion 37 in the Gospel of Thomas,” VC 45 (1991): 123-150; April D. De Conick, “The Dialogue of the Savior and
the Mystical Sayings of Jesus,” VC 50 (1996): 190-2; S. David Garber, “Symbolism of Heavenly Robes in the New Testament in
Comparison with Gnostic Thought” (Ph.D diss., Princeton University, 1974); see also above.
121 See above nn. 31, 33-4.
122 In some later representations of Aaron the robe and ephod are depicted in such a way as to recall the association with sapphiric
heavens. In the mosaic from the synagogue in Sepphoris (ca. fifth century) Aaron‟s robe is depicted dark blue with golden dots and in
a wall-painting at Dura Europos (3 cent. CE.) Aaron dons a wine-colored, jewel-studded cape, which some scholars take to be a
representation of the robe or ephod (See Ze‟ev Weiss and Ehud Netzer, Promise and Redemption: A Synagogue Mosaic from
Sepphoris [Jerusalem: The Israel Museum, 1996], 20ff; Swartz, “The Semiotics of the Priestly Vestments,” 63 n. 16; C.H. Kraeling,
The Excavations at Dura Europos: The Synagogue [Final Report vol. 8 Part 1] [New Haven: Yale University Press, 1956; repr. New
York: Ktav, 1979] 127; Erwin R. Goodenough, “Cosmic Judaism: The Temple of Aaron,” in his Jewish Symbols, 9:16). The yellow
jewels are similar to the gold dots on the priestly robe in the Sepphoris mosaic and both suggests the stars on the divine „sky-garment.‟
See Swartz, “The Semiotics of the Priestly Vestments,” 63 n. 16; Weiss and Netzer, Promise and Redemption, 45 n. 31. The parallel
between lapis lazuli, the ANE „sky-garment,‟ and these depictions of the high-priestly vestments is unmistakable.
123 Oppenheim, “Golden Garments,” 187 n. 25. See also Parpola, Sky-Garment, 35-37.
124 On the relation between the divine and priestly דובכ and תפארתsee John A. Davies, A Royal Priesthood: Literary and
Intertextual Perspective on an Image of Israel in Exodus 19.6 (London: T&T Clark International, 2004) 158-9. On the
anthropomorphic kābôd of P and priestly tradition v. Moshe Weinfeld (Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomic School [Oxford: The
Clarendon Press, 1972] 191-209, esp. 200-206; idem, TDOT 7:31-33 s.v. דובכ; Tryggve N.D. Mettinger, The Dethronement of
Sabaoth: Studies in the Shem and Kavod Theologies (CWK Gleerup, 1982) Chapters Three and Four; J. E. Fossum, “Glory,” DDD
348-52; Rimmon Kasher, “Anthropomorphism, Holiness and the Cult: A New look at Ezekiel 40-48,” ZAW 110 (1998): 192-208;
Andrei A. Orlov, “Ex 33 on God‟s Face: A Lesson from the Enoch Tradition,” SBL Seminar Papers 39 (2000): 130-147.

inspiring splendor,” which a number of scholars associate with the הוהי דובכ and its cloud, 125 we have a fine
parallel to the semantic nuances of the Hebrew kābôd: the pulÉu (=Heb. דובכ) is conceived of as a fiery
garment of the gods that also signifies the gods‟ „self‟ and corporeal shape. 126 The ןנעו ךשׁח, not unlike the
Akkadian nalbaš šamê, is a „garment‟ covering the fiery kābôd through which the latter shinned producing
a rainbow-like „surrounding splendor.‟ 127
This reading of P finds support from Second Temple evidence suggesting a priestly tradition of
interpreting these garments as metaphor for God‟s body. The (possibly) priestly author Jesus ben Sira
(second century B.C.E.), who seems to have known this theology behind P‟s intratextuality, presented the
high priest, probably Simon II, as a new Adam and cultic analogue to the creator deity. 128 In his cultic
function and clothed in his vestments of glory, the high priest (Aaron/Simon II) reflected the divine glory
of the creator. As Otto Mulder observed: “Simon mirrors God‟s glory in a worthy manner in his service and
his radiance as High Priest.” 129 A number of scholars have observed that Ben Sira seems to identify the
high priest in these garments with God‟s anthropomorphic Glory as seen by the priest Ezekiel (Ezek.
1:28) 130 : the rainbow-like appearance of the kābôd‟s surrounding splendor is reflected in the variegated
colors of the high priestly robe and ephod. 131
The priestly defectors from the Jerusalem Temple who established a yaÈad at Qumran seem likewise
to have identified the colored vestments of the high priest with God‟s rainbow-like glory. In the 12 th and
13 th Songs of Sabbath Sacrifice (4Q405 20 ii-21-22; 23 ii), Ezekiel‟s vision of the kābôd is reworked. 132
125
Weinfeld, “דובכ,” 29-31; George Mendenhall, The Tenth Generation. The Origins of the Biblical Tradition (Baltimore: The John
Hopkins University Press, 1973) 52-62.
126
Oppenheim, “Akkadian pul (u) É (t)u and melammu”; Mendenhall, Tenth Generation., 52-62.
127
On the cloud/garment association see Job 38:ותלתח לפרעו ושבל ןנע ימושב (“When I made clouds its garments, and thick darkness its
swaddling band (NOAB).” Here, clouds (ןנע) and thick darkness (לפרע) are parallel and are described as a garment (שבל) and
swaddling band (תלתח). On this black cloud/black garment association in biblical and rabbinic tradition see further H. Torczyner, “The
Firmament and the Clouds: Rāqî a „ and Shehāqîm,” Studia Theologica 1 (1948): 188-96. According to Freedman and Willoughby,
TDOT 11:255 s.v. ן נע „ānān, the theophanic cloud motif as found in Exodus “is rooted in the ancient tradition of describing God as
wrapped in a cloak of clouds or light.” In Rev. 10:1 the garment of the angel of revelation is a cloud. See further TDNT 4:902-10 s.v.
νεφέλη by Oepke. On the rainbow-like surrounding splendor see Ezek. 1:28.
128
In Chapter 50 of his „Wisdom‟ (Hebrew and Greek). As New Adam and embodiment of primordial divine Wisdom v Hayward,
The Jewish Temple, 44-67; idem, “Sacrifice and World Order: Some Observations on Ben Sira‟s Attitude to the Temple Service,” in
S.W. Sykes (ed.), Sacrifice and Redemption: Durham Essays in Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991) 27-29;
James K. Aitken, “The Semantics of „Glory‟ in Ben Sira-Traces of a Development in Post-biblical Hebrew?” in T. Muraoka and J.F.
Elwolde (edd.), Sirach, Scrolls, and Sages: Proceedings of a Second International Symposium on the Hebrew of the Dead Sea
Scrolls, Ben Sira, and the Mishnah, held at Leiden University, 15-17 December 1997, (Leiden: Brill, 1999) 3-24. On Simon II as
cultic manifestation of the Creator God v. Hayward (The Jewish Temple, 80) who suggests, regarding the Greek text 50:19, that “the
high priest‟s completion of the order, kosmos, of the daily sacrifice…belongs to the same sort of continuum as God‟s ordering of the
works of creation.” See also Fletcher-Louis, “The Cosmology of P,” 97-110; idem, All The Glory of Adam, 72-84; idem, “Some
Reflections on Angelomorphic Humanity Texts Among the Dead Sea Scrolls,” Dead Sea Discoveries 7 (2000): 293-95; idem,
“Wisdom Christology,” 56-59; Barker, “The High Priest and the Worship of Jesus,” 101-103. James K. Aitken, “The Semantics of
„Glory‟,” noted also “In the portrayal of Aaron in Sir. 45 we may also find divine attributes of God transferred to the priest (11).” On a
priestly Ben Sira see H. Stadelmann, Ben Sira als Schriftgelehrter (WUNT 6; Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 1980). On the common
priestly ideology between Ben Sira and P v. Saul M. Olyan, “Ben Sira‟s Relationship to the Priesthood,” HTR 80 (1987): 261-86. On
Ben Sira‟s familiarity with P‟s intratextuality see Fletcher-Louis, “The Cosmology of P, ” 69-113; idem, All The Glory of Adam, 74-
84; idem, “Wisdom Christology,” 52-68.
129
Regarding the Hebrew. Simon the High Priest in Sirach 50: An Exegetical Study of the Significance of Simon the High Priest
as Climax to the Praise of the Fathers in Ben Sira‟s Concept of the History of Israel (Leiden: Brill, 2003) 199. Mulder does not,
however, discuss this text in the context of this intratextuality nor Simon II as cultic creator, but as “builder” of the Temple (according
to Sirach 50:1-4). See ibid., 102.
130
In the Hebrew 50:5, 7 the high priest Simon II is compared to “a bow that appears in a cloud,” which seems to identify him with the
anthropomorphic kābôd seen by Ezekiel who was described “like the bow in the cloud on a rainy day (Ezek 1:28).” On this
identification v. Martha Himmelfarb, Ascent to Heaven in Jewish and Christian Apocalypses (New York: Oxford University Press,
1993) 19; Fletcher-Louis, “The Cosmology of P,” 40; idem, “Wisdom Christology,” 56; idem. All The Glory of Adam, 72; P. W.
Skehan and A.A. DiLella, The Wisdom of Ben Sira (ABC 39; New York: Doubleday, 1987) 552.
131
Ben Sira (Sir 50:5-21) is describing the high priest conducting the daily Whole-Offering (Tamid), or maybe during Rosh Hashanah
(as argued by Mulder, Simon the High Priest, 168-175), but not likely Yom Kippur as was commonly assumed. Thus, the garments
described are the glorious ornamented garments, not the simple linen tunic of Yom Kippur. See Hayward, The Jewish Temple, 49-51;
Featghas Ó Fearghail, “Sir 50,5-21: Yom Kippur or the Daily Whole-Offering?” Bib 59 (1978): 301-316. For recent arguments in
favor of reading Sir 50:5 Hebrew as evidence of the Yom Kippur background of this passage v. Daniel M. Gurtner, “The „House of
the Veil‟ in Sirach 50,” Journal for the Study of the Psuedepigrapha 14 (2005): 187-200. On the rainbow garment of the gods in
ANE iconography see M. van Loon, “The Rainbow in Ancient West Asian Inconography,” in Diederik J.W. Meijer (ed.), Natural
Phenomena: Their Meaning, Depiction and Description in the Ancient Near East (North Holland, Amsterdam, 1992) 149-168.
132
See the discussions by Christopher Rowland, “The Visions of God in Apocalyptic Literature,” JSJ 10 (1979): 142-145; Carol
Newsom, “Merkabah Exegesis in the Qumran Sabbath Shirot,” JJS 38 (1987): 11-30. James R. Davila, “The Dead Sea Scrolls and

The divine Glory is described as a “[ra]diant substance, with glorious mingled colors, wonderfully hued
(4Q405 20 ii-21-22 lines 10-11)” and “many-colored (המקור) as a work of a weaver (ישעמ; 4Q405 23 ii
line 7).” 133 These descriptions associate the Glory of God with the colors of the high priestly robe. 134
Whether or not the Songs intend to identify the (angelic/human?) high priests of the 13 th Song with God‟s
anthropomorphic Glory, as Fletcher-Louis has argued, 135 the divine appearance is certainly reflected in the
high priestly garments. 136
This identification of the high priestly robe with the kābôd may have been preserved in Syriac
Christian (SC) literature where this “blue-robe-as-body-of-God” metaphor is most systematic articulated. 137
Alexander Golitzin and Andrei A. Orlov have argued for a “kinship” between the Qumran sectarians and
early Syriac Christians based on studies of particular motifs found in both literatures. 138 The great extent to
which Jewish traditions appear in SC sources make these latter potentially helpful in understanding some of
the former. 139 The comparison of Christ‟s body to a royal/priestly purple robe was quite popular in some SC
circles, as Sebastian Brock has shown. 140 See also Clement of Alexandria (2 nd century) who notes a
tradition (“and they say”) in which “the robe prophesied the ministry in the flesh by which he (Christ) was
made visible (Stromateis V 39, 2).” If Clement was indeed influenced by Jewish esotericism, 141 and if SC
literature is capable of shedding some light on traditions evidenced in the Qumran literature, then these
Jewish and Christian sources give further evidence of a Jewish (priestly) tradition identifying the colored
high priestly garments with the body divine. Underlying this identification, we suggest, is the ANE bluebody-divine
motif.
Merkavah Mysticism,” in Timothy H. Lim et al (edd.), The Dead Sea Scrolls in Their Historical Context (Edinburgh: T&T Clark,
2000) 249-64.
133 On these passages and their association with the kābôd v. Carol Newsom, Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice: A Critical Edition
(Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1985) 315; idem, “Shirot „Olat Hashabbat,” in E. Eshel et al (edd.), Qumran Cave 4: VI, Poetical and
Liturgical Texts, Part 1 (DJD 11; Oxford: Clarendon, 1998) 352; Himmelfarb, Ascent to Heaven, 19-20. Crispin H.T. Fletcher-Louis,
“Heavenly ascent or incarnational presence: a revisionist reading of the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice,” SBL Seminar Papers Series
37 (1998) 367-399, esp. 385-99; idem, All the Glory of Adam, 346-50. Newsom took תוחור המקור(4Q405 23 ii line 7) as an ellipsis
for “spirits clothed with multicolored garments” (Songs, 336), but Fletcher-Louis rejects this reading (All the Glory of Adam, 366).
134 Ibid. As Newsom (Songs, 336) noted, ישעמ in 4Q405 23 ii line 7 is likely phonetic orthography of השעמ, used in connection with
the high priestly robe in Exod. 28:32; 39:22, 27. Newsom found it puzzling, however, that in the Songs the blue robe is described as
multicolored המקור. We find the same peculiarity in Philo; he too describes the robe as variegated: QE II, 107; Mos. II, 110. Such a
description probably takes into consideration the hem of the robe which is multi-colored.
135 “Heavenly Ascent,” 393-94; idem, All the Glory of Adam, 373-74.
136 Newsom, “Merkabah Exegesis,” 27; Himmelfarb, Ascent to Heaven, 19-20.
137 See especially Sebastion Brock, “Clothing Metaphors as a Means of Theological Expression in Syriac Tradition,” in Typus,
Symbol, Allegorie bei den östlichen Vätern und ihren Parallelen im Mittelalter (Eichstätter Beiträge 4; Regensburg 1982): 11-37.
138 Alexander Golitzin, “Recovering the „Glory of Adam‟: „Divine Light‟ Traditions in the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Christian
Ascetical Literature of Fourth-Century Syro-Mesopotamia,” in James R. Davila (ed.), The Dead Sea Scrolls as Background to
Postbiblical Judaism and Early Christianity. Papers from an International Conference at St. Andrews in 2001, (Leiden and
Boston: Brill, 2003) 274-308; idem, “Temple and Throne of Divine Glory: „Pseudo-Macarius‟ and Purity of Heart, Together with
Some Remarks on the Limitations and Usefulness of Scholarship,” in Harriet A. Luckman and Linda Kulzer, O.S.B. (edd.), Purity of
Heart in Early Ascetic and Monastic Literature. Essays in Honor of Juana Raasch, O.S.B., (Collegville, Minnesota: The Liturgical
Press, 1999) 107-129; Andrei A. Orlov, “Vested with Adam‟s Glory: Moses as the Luminous Counterpart of Adam in the Dead Sea
Scrolls and in the Marcarian Homilies,” Mémorial Annie Jaubert (1912-1980) Xristianskij Vostok 4.10 (2002): 740-755; Andrei Orlov
and Alexander Golitzin, “„Many Lamps are Lightened From The One‟: Paradigms of the Transformational Vision in Macarian
Homilies,” VC 55 (2001): 281-298. “Kinship” is a term used by Golitzin, “Recovering the „Glory of Adam‟,” 307.
139 On Jewish traditions in Syriac Christianity v. also Sebastian Brock, “Jewish Traditions in Syriac Sources,” JJS 30 (1979): 212-32;
idem, “Clothing Metaphors”; Frederick G. McLeod, S.J., “Judaism‟s Influence upon the Syriac Christians of the Third and Fourth
Centuries,” in Religions of the Book (Lanham, Md: University Press of America, 1996) 193-208; G. Rouwhorst, “Jewish Liturgical
Traditions in Early Syriac Christianity,” VC 51 (1997) 72-93; Robert Murray, Symbols of Church and Kingdom: A Study in Early
Syriac Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975); idem, “Some Themes and Problems of Early Syriac Angeology,”
in V Symposium Syriacum, 1988 ed. R. Lavenant (OCA 236; Rome; Pontifical Institute of Oriental Studies, 1990) 143-153; N. Séd,
“Les Hymnes sur la paradis de saint Ephrem et les traditions juives,” Mus (1968) 455-501; Tryggve Kronholm, Motifs from Genesis
1-11in the Genuine Hymns of Ephrem the Syrian, with particular reference to the influence of Jewish exegetical tradition
(Sweden: CW Gleerup Lund, 1978.
140 Brock, “Clothing Metaphors,” 18.
141 Guy G. Stroumsa, Hidden Wisdom: Esoteric Traditions and the Roots of Christian Mysticism (SHR 70; Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1996)
111-17; Margaret Barker, “The Secret Tradition,” in idem, Great High Priest, 1-33; J. Daniélou, “Aux sources de l‟ésotérisme judéochrétien,”
Archivio de filosofia 2-3 (1960): 39-46.

2.3. Adam/Aaron as Divine Schattenbild
The Akkadian ßalmu means both “image/statue” and “black,” the latter meaning deriving from its
verbal form ßalāmu, “to become dark, to turn black.” 142 This semantic duality is found also in the Hebrew
root ßlm (ßlm I: “image/statue”; ßlm II: “dark, darkness,” from ßālam II: “to be dark”). 143 In an exhaustive
philological study in 1972 I.H. Eybers suggested taking the Hebrew ßelem as ßel („shadow,‟ „dark image‟)
expanded by the enclitic mem. 144 Marshalling an impressive amount of comparative material Eybers
concluded: “Taking all the data into consideration the meaning of ßèlèm in Gen. 1:26-27 could be that man
is a „shadowy (and therefore weak) replica and creation‟ of God.” 145 Earlier, Pierre Bordreuil, also noting
the etymological relationship between the Hebrew ßelem and Akkadian ßalmu, 146 argued for a conceptual
link between Gen. 1:26-27 and the ANE (specifically Mesopotamian) characterization of the king as both
image of a god and as residing in that god‟s (protective) shadow. 147 Adam, therefore, was created “in tant
qu‟image d‟Elohim” and “dans l‟ombra épaisse d‟Elohim”. 148
The relation of ßlm II and ßel to each other and to Gen.1:26-27 has been disputed. 149 However, a
connection between ßlm II and ßel is probable 150 and comparative philological evidence makes a
connection with ßelem likely. 151 The fact that P‟s ßelem is the lexical and conceptual equivalent of the
142 CAD 16:70,77-85.
143 HALOT, 3:1028-1029 s.v. צלם; TDOT 12:396 s.v. “תומלצ” by Niehr.
144 I.H. Eybers, “The Root ‘-L in Hebrew Words,” JNSL 2 (1972): 23-36 (29-32). See also International Standard Bible
Encyclopedia 4vols. (Grand Rapids, MI: W. B. Eerdmans, 1979-; hereafter ISBE) 4:440 s.v. “Shade; Shadow,” by G. Chamberlain.
145 Eybers, “The Root ‘-L,” 32 n. 2.
146 The first to propose such as relation seems to have been the Assyrologist Friedrich Delitzsch who described íelem as a Babylonian
loanword: Prolegomena eines neuen hebräisch-aramäischen Wörterbuchs (Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs, 1886) 141. On denials of such a
relation v. below n. 154.
147 Pierre Bordreuil, “ „A L‟Ombre D‟Elohim:‟ Le theme de l‟ombre protectrice dans l‟Ancien Orient et ses rapports avec „L‟Imago
Dei,‟ ” RHPhR 46 (1996): 368-391.
148 Ibid., 390.
149 Two relevant issues were actually debated: (1) whether ßlm II “to be/become dark” ever existed in Hebrew or Northwest Semitic
(NWS) at all and: (2) if so, whether it was in any way related to ßelem. This discussion often focused on the much disputed term
תומלצ (Jer. 2:6; Pss. 44:20; 23:4; Job 16:16; 38:17; v. discussion in D. Winton Thomas, “תומלצ in the Old Testament,” JSS 7 [1962]:
191-200). After Friedrich Delitzsch‟s initial suggestion in 1886 of a ßelem/ßalmu (black) relation, he was disputed by his father, OT
scholar Franz Delitzsch (New Commentary on Genesis [Edinburgh, T. & T. Clark, 1888-89] 1:91. The longest lasting rebuttal came
from Theodor Nöldeke, first in a review of Friedrich Delitzsch‟s Wörterbuchs (ZDMG 40 (1886): 733-34) and latter in an article
devoted to the subject (“תומלצ und םלצ,” ZAW 17 [1897]: 183-187). Nöldeke doubted the existence of a Hebrew ßlm II “to
be/become dark” and derived ßelem from an Arabic ílm meaning “to cut off” (on the denial of a NWS ßlm II v. also J.F.A. Sawyer,
Review of W.L. Holladay, A Concise Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament in JSS 17 [1972] 257; D.J.A. Clines, “The
Etymology of Hebrew ‘elem,” JNSL 3 (1973):23-25; Walter L. Michel, “‘LMWT, „Deep Darkness‟ or „Shadow of Death‟?” BR 29
[1984]: 5-13). The weakness of this Arabic derivation has been adequately demonstrated (Bordreuil, “„A L‟Ombre D‟Elohim,” 368-
372; James Barr, “The Image of God in the Book of Genesis-A Study of Terminology,” BJRL 51 (1968): 18-22; idem, Comparative
Philology and the Text of the Old Testament [1 st ed.; Oxford, 1968; repr. With additions and corrections: Winona Lake, Indiana:
Eisenbrauns, 1987] 375-380; Eybers, “The Root ‘-L,” 31-32; Clines, “Etymology,” 19-21) and the existence of a NWS ßlm II “to
be/become dark” has been affirmed and accepted (Paul Humbert, Etudes sur le recit du paradis et de la chute dans la Genesis
(Mémoires de l‟Université de Neuchatel 14, 1940) 156; Baruch Margalit, A Matter of "Life" and "Death": A Study of the Baal-Mot
Epic (CTA 4-5-6) [Kevelaer: Butzon & Bercker; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1980] 72 n. 1; HALOT 3:1028 s.v. םלצ;
TDOT 12: 396 s.v. תומלצ by Niehr; Chaim Cohen, “The Meaning of תומלצ „Darkness‟: A Study in Philological Method,” in Michael
V. Fox et al (edd.), Texts, Temples, and Traditions: A Tribute to Menahem Haran [Winona Lake, Indiana: Eisenbrauns, 1996] 287-
309). James Barr (Comparative Philology, 375) noted in 1987 that by that time the derivation of תומלצ from a Hebrew root ßlm “to
be/become dark” had become “so completely accepted that some works have ceased to mention that the older tradition of meaning
(viz. „shadow of death‟) ever existed.” Cf. Michel, “‘LMWT,” 5.
150 Pace Nöldeke, “תומלצ und םלצ,” 185 and Clines, “Etymology,” 21-22. ‘el is thought to derive from the basic form ללצ “to
be/become dark”; cf. Ar. íll IV, Eth. salala II, Akk. ßillānû. See TDOT 12:372-73 s.v.לצ; B. Halper, “The Participial Formations of
the Geminate Verbs,” ZAW 30 (1910): 216. On ללצ v. further: The Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon (1906;
Peabody, Mass. : Hendrickson Publishers, 1996; hereafter BDB) 853 s.v. III ללצ; HALOT 3:1027 s.v. III ללצ; Lexicon in Veteris
Testamenti Libros, ed. Ludwig Koehler and Walter Baumgartner (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1985) 804b s.v. III ללצ. On the Ar. íll IV v. E.W.
Lane, Arabic-English Lexicon (2 vols.; Cambridge, England : Islamic Texts Society, 1984) 2: 1914 s.v. لظ . On the Akk. ßillānû v.
CAD 16: 188 s.v. ßillānû.
151 See e.g.: Akk. ßalmu “black::image/statue” and ßillu “shadow::likeness (in a transferred sense; v. CAD 16:190 s.v. ßillu); Old
South Arabic ílm/ßlm “darkness/black::image/statue” (see A.F.L. Beeston et al, Sabaic Dictionary (Louvain-la-Neuve: Editions
Peeters; Beyrouth: Librairie du Liban, 1982) 143, 172. Thus Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg could note simply: “Image-tselem in
Hebrew…At the heart of that word is the word „shadow‟.” In Bill Moyers, Genesis: A Living Conversation (New York: Doubleday,
1996) 19. See further Sawyer, “The Image of God, The Wisdom of Serpents and the Knowledge of God and Evil,” 66; Eybers, “The

Akkadian ßalmu suggests that we should expect the former to exhibit the same semantic range as the
latter. 152 Also, P‟s intratextual paralleling of Adam the “Image of God” with Bezalel the “shadow of God”
may further indicate that this semantic nuance was known by P. 153 Thus, Adam is both image and shadow
of God, his “shadow picture,” as N.W. Porteous said it. 154 This description of Adam as the „dark image
(shadow)‟ of God may be related to the biblical designation for the material from which Adam‟s body was
made, ’adāmāh (Gen. 2:7). This latter term suggests a dark reddish brown inclining towards black. 155
Jewish, Christian and Islamic tradition describes the material of Adam‟s body as a dark or black
substance. 156 A connection between ’adāmāh, ’ādām „human,‟ and the hue of the first man‟s skin has been
suggested. 157 There is also the widespread description of Adam‟s post-lapsarian body as black or
“darkened” after the withdrawal of the divine light. 158 These traditions must be rooted in the biblical
Root ‘-L,” 29-32; Barr, “The Image of God,” 21. Pace most recently Wildberger, TLOT 3:1080, s.v. “םלצ”; Stendebach, TDOT
12:388, s.v. “םלצ.”
152 Thus Barr (“The Image of God,” 21), preferring to see two different but homonymous Hebrew roots at work here, acknowledged
that by the time of P “the semantic content came to overlap, the component „image‟ and the component „dark, obscure reality‟ coming
to penetrate one another.” See also J.F.A. Sawyer, who in 1972 was doubtful of a Hebrew cognate to Akkadian ßalāmu (Review of
W.L. Holladay), argued in 1992: “It is much more likely that the term tselem is used here (Gen. 1.26-27) in its older sense of „shadow,
dream‟, as in two Psalms on the subject of human nature (Ps. 39.6; 73.20)”: “The Image of God, The Wisdom of Serpents and the
Knowledge of God and Evil,” 66.
153 We are reading לאלצב with Beth essentiae as the parallel with Gen. 1:26-7 suggests.
154 George Arthur Buttrick et al (edd.), The Interpreter‟s Dictionary of the Bible (New York: Abingdon Press, 1962; hereafter IDB)
2:3 s.v. “Image of God,” by N.W. Porteous. In his discussion of Poimandres in 1935 C. H. Dodd (The Bible and the Greeks [London:
Hodder & Stoughton, 1935] 157-8, n. 1), observing that the Greek terms ζκια and ειδος used with regard to the divine Anthropos
corresponded with the biblical םלצ and תומד used in the creation account of Adam (Gen. 1:26-7), noted: “…certainly there is an old
exegetical tradition according to which תומד and םלצ in Genesis mean „likeness‟ and „shadow‟ respectively, corresponding fairly
well with the ειδος and ζκια of Poimandres. Unfortunately, I cannot trace this tradition farther back than the Jesuit Cornelius a Lapide,
who died in 1637. Is there any evidence that it was known at a date which would make it possible that the Hermetist was acquainted
with this interpretation…?” We can now answer Dobb‟s question in the affirmative.
155 Cf. the Akkadian cognates adamātu, “dark red earth” and adamatu B “black blood.” CAD 1.94; TDOT 1:75-77 s.v. אדם ’ādhām by
Maass; ibid, 1:88-90 s.v. אדמה’ a dhāmāh by J.G. Plöger; ABD 1.62 s.v. Adam by Howard N. Wallace.
156 Jewish: see e.g. the haggadic tradition according to which Adam was made from dust taken from all four corners of the earth, and
this dust was respectively red, black, white and green-“red for the blood, black for the bowls, white for the bones and veins, and green
for the pale skin.” Ginzberg, Legends of the Jews, 1:55; cf. PRE 11 (Frielander trns., 77). The green here at times substitutes for
tekhelet, the dark blue of the high priestly robe. See Gershom Scholem, “Colours and Their Symbolism in Jewish Tradition and
Mysticism: Part I,” Diogenes 108 (1979): 94; Rabbi Alfred Cohen, “Introduction,” in idem (ed.) Tekhelet: The Renaissance of a
Mitzvah (New York: Yeshiva University Press, 1996), 3. See also Maimonides who describes the “substance of dust and darkness”
from which Adam‟s body was made. The Guide of the Perplexed, trns. M. Friedlander (New York: E.P. Dutton & Co., 1947) 3.8.
Christian: cf. St. Ephrem the Syrian‟s description of the “dark mass [of dust] šÈymwt"”; see discussion by Tryggve Kronholm, Motifs
from Genesis 1-11 in the Genuine Hymns of Ephrem the Syrian (Sweden: CWK Gleerup Lund ,1978) 53, 57; Edmund Beck, “Iblis
und Mensch, Satan und Adam,” Mus 89 (1976): 214. Islam: Qur"§n 15:28 and parallels: “I am going to create man from sounding
clay (ßalßāl), from fetid black mud (Èama’ maßnūn).”
157 ABD 1:62; Greenstin, “God‟s Golem,” 221. The latter‟s statement that Adam‟s “pinkish complexion and blood share their hue with
the reddish clay of earth” must be modified in the light of the Akkadian “dark red earth” and “black blood.” See also Josephus,
Antiquities I, 1.2: “He was called Adam…which signifies one who is red (אדם), because he was formed out of red earth”.
158 The post-lapsarian blackness of Adam is known from a number of Jewish, Christian, Gnostic and Muslim sources. The Iggeret
Baale Hayyim says of Adam: “Scarcely had he eaten of the tree of life, when his body became black and his countenance changed.
His garment of light fell from him and he was troubled by the heat of the sun.” See Angelo S. Rappoport and Raphael Patai, Myth and
Legend of Ancient Israel (New York: Ktav Publishing House, Inc., 1966). See also the Syriac Christian theologian Pseudo-Macarius,:
“In the day when Adam fell, God came walking in the garden. He wept, so to speak, seeing Adam and he said: „After such good
things, what evils you have chosen! After such glory, what shame you now bear! What darkness are you now! What ugly form you
are! What corruption! From such light, what darkness has covered you!…Therefore, darkness became the garment of his soul.”
Pseudo-Macarius, II, 30 (Eng. 190). Relevant too is the description in The Conflict of Adam and Eve with Satan of the fall of a
certain angel whose relationship to Adam is ambiguous: “(And God said): „Oh Adam, so long as the good angel was obedient to Me, a
bright light rested on him and his hosts. But when he transgressed My commandment, I deprived him of that bright nature, and he
became dark. And when he was in the heavens, in the realms of light, he knew naught of darkness. But he transgressed, and I made
him fall from heaven upon the earth; and it was this darkness that came upon him (13.1-5; see The book of Adam and Eve, also called
The conflict of Adam and Eve with Satan, a book of the early Eastern church, tr. from the Ethiopie, with notes from the Kufale,
Talmud, Midrashim, and other Eastern works, by the Rev. S. C. Malan [London [etc.] Williams and Norgate, 1882]).” In 10.5
Adam is said to have been a bright angel, and in 13.9 it is stated that the same darkness that came upon the fallen angel came upon
Adam, in contrast to 13.7. Gnosticism: Irenaeus (Against the Heretics 1.30.9) reports regarding his Ophites: “Adam and Eve formerly
had light and luminous and kind of spiritual bodies, just as they had been fashioned. But when they came to this world, there bodies
were changed to darker, fatter, and more sluggish ones.” Trns. By Dominic J. Unger and John J. Dillion, St. Irenaeus of Lyons
Against the Heretics, Volume One, Book One (Ancient Christian Writters, No. 55; New York: Newman Press, 1992). According to
the the Apoc. John (II, 1,23:26-32; BG 1, 61:19-62:3) the demiurge Ialtbaoth, after expelling Adam and Eve from the garden, “clothed
them in obscure darkness.” In Islamic tradition v. al-Tha#labÊ, #Ar§"is al-Maj§lis fÊ Qißaß al-anbiy§ who states concerning the

description of Adam‟s selem-body and its substance (’adāmāh). As ßelem (statue) of God Adam is also the
terrestrial body of God. As the luminous kābôd took up residence in the dark ßelem, we are probably to
imagine the light passing through the hair pits producing a sapphiric blue „surrounding splendor‟. This
would explain the association of the kābôd with the blue me’il of the high priest. This would be consistent
with ANE mythic tradition.
P‟s intratextuality implies a remarkable theological anthropology. Adam is implicitly presented as the
high priestly, demiurgic Image and Shadow of God ministering within the cosmic Temple. 159 This divine,
prelapsarian Adam is garbed in the ornate cosmic garments of the high priest. 160 Internal evidence along
with the evidence of Second Temple priestly traditions, some of which show a relation to P, suggests that
these garments might have a somatic significance in P. P‟s Adam is the divine sanctuary into which the
divine kābôd entered and took up residence, i.e. incarnated. 161 As the selem and tabernacle of God, Adam is
the earthly body of God. This body‟s appearance is somehow reflected in the long blue robe and golden
ephod of the high priest. This theological anthropology, in as much as it is never explicitly articulated but
subtly alluded to by means of P‟s characteristic method of „literary indirection,‟ suggests an esoteric
doctrine, 162 the contours of which are discernable as well in the writings of Philo of Alexandria.
3. Philo’s High Priestly Logos
With what we are now learning about the diversity of Second Temple Judaisms it is becoming
increasingly clear that the Logos doctrine of the first century Torah exegete and philosopher Philo of
Alexandria, Egypt was not simply the product of his intercourse with Middle Platonism as was commonly
assumed. 163 It seems instead to have been rooted in the same tradition of (Hellenistic) Jewish speculation
as that of the Prologue of John and the Epistle to the Hebrews. 164 What is more, this tradition is itself rooted
in, or at least cognate with, Jewish ditheistic/binitarian traditions widespread in Palestine and the Diaspora
(among Semitic and Greek-speaking Jews) during Philo‟s time. 165 Thus, Philo‟s deuteros theos or “second
God,” while described in the language of the philosophers, probably owes more to his Jewish (intellectual)
heritage than to his Greek education. 166 It is therefore the case that Philo can teach us something about pre-
Rabbinic Judaism, particularly as it relates to mediation. 167 Philo‟s value for reconstructing pre-Rabbinic
consequences of Adam‟s transgression: “The third (affliction) was that (God) weakened (Adam‟s) skin so that it became dark, after his
skin had been like brightness all over.” Trns. by William M. Brinner, #Ar§"is al-Maj§lis fÊ Qißaß al-anbiy§ or “Lives of the
Prophets” As Recounted by Abå Isȧq AÈmad ibn MuÈammad Ibn Ibr§hÊm al-Tha#labÊ (Leiden: Brill, 2002) 53.
159
High priest: Adam::Aaron correspondence. Demiurge: Aaron::Creator, Aaron::Adam, Adam::Bezalel, Bezalel::Creator. Shadow
of God: Adam::Bezalel.
160
According to Kim, Significance, 18, 21, 24 the high priestly garments „divinized‟ the wearer.
161
See the interesting discussion by Kline, “Creation in the Image”; idem, Images of the Spirit, 13-34.
162
Geller notes that P‟s theology is “hidden…from casual gaze by the veil of literary stratagem.” “Blood Cult,” 103.
163
See e.g Thomas H. Tobin, S.J., The Creation of Man: Philo and the History of Interpretation (Washington, DC: The Catholic
Biblical Association of America, 1983) 65-67. On Philo and Middle Platonism v. John Dillon, The Middle Platonists: 80 B.C. to A.D.
220 (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1977), 139-183, esp. 155-166.
164
On John‟s Prologue v. Thomas H. Tobin, S.J., “The Prologue of John and Hellenistic Jewish Speculation,” CBQ 52 (1990): 252-
269; David Runia, Philo in Early Christian Literature: A Survey (Minneapolis, 1993) 78-83. On Hebrews v. Kenneth L. Schenck,
“Philo and the Epistle to the Hebrews: Ronald Williamson‟s Study After Fifty Years,” The Studia Philonica Annual 14 (2002): 112-
135; Runia, Philo in Early Christian Literature, 74-78.
165
Daniel Boyarin, “Two Powers in Heaven; or, the Making of a Heresy,” in The Idea of Biblical Interpretation: Essays for James
Kugel (Lieden: Brill, 2004):331-370; idem, “The Gospel of the Memra: Jewish Binitarianism and the Prologue to John,” HTR 94:3
(2001) 243-84, esp. 248, 260. Boyarin argues that Logos-type figures were part of the “religious Koine of Jews in Palestine and the
Diaspora” during the first and second centuries. Margaret Barker therefore seems correct when she suggested “Philo drew his ideas of
the mediator from his people‟s most ancient beliefs, and only adapted them to Greek ways of thinking” (Great Angel: A Study of
Israel‟s Second God [Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1992)] 116; emphasis original). On the Alexandrian
mediator tradition as background to both Philo and Hebrews v. Ronald H. Nash, “The Notion of Mediator in Alexandrian Judaism and
the Epistle to the Hebrews,” WTJ 40 (1977): 89-115. On the non-Hellenistic background v. M. De Jonge and A.S. Van der Woude,
“11Q Melchizedek and the New Testament,” NTS 12 (1966): 301-326; Anders Aschim, “Melchizedek and Jesus: 11Qmelchizedek
and the Epistle to the Hebrews” in Newman, Davila and Lewis, Jewish Roots of Christological Monotheism, 129-174.
166
As argued by Boyarin, “The Gospel of the Memra,” 247-9. Cf. also Samuel Sandmel, Philo of Alexandria: An Introduction (New
York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979) 98-9. On Philo‟s Logos and Jewish binitarianism v. also Alan F. Segal, “Dualism in
Judaism, Christianity, and Gnosticism: A Definitive Issue,” in his The Other Judaisms of Late Antiquity (Atlanta: Scholars Press,
1987): 1-40; idem, Two Powers in Heaven: Early Rabbinic Reports about Christianity and Gnosticism (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1977),
passim; Charles A. Gieschen, Angelomorphic Christology: Antecedents and Early Evidence (Leiden: Brill, 1998) 107ff; Barker, The
Great Angel, 114-133; Jarl E. Fossum, The Name of God and the Angel of the Lord (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 1985)
197-204.
167
As demonstrated by N.A. Dahl and Alan Segal, “Philo and the Rabbis on the Names of God,” JSJ 9 (1978): 1-28.

Greek Judaism is known, 168 but it may even be the case that Philo sheds light on Jewish esoteric and
priestly tradition as well. Philo was likely of priestly lineage. 169 Margaret Barker has seen in Philo‟s Logos
a demythologization of one of Israel‟s ancient temple traditions. 170 Our research supports this suggestion. It
is our position that Philo‟s High Priestly Logos (HPL) doctrine demonstrates his awareness of a tradition
similar to that evidenced in the writings of P, a tradition involving speculation on the blue body divine.
3.1. Deuteros Theos
As is well-known, Philo‟s Logos is the deity in his accessible aspect 171 ; he is the Image of God through
which the latter may be seen 172 ; he is demiurgic-the instrument (organon) through which the universe was
created and ordered. 173 And he is anthropomorphic; God‟s man (anthropos theou) and “the Man after His
Image.” 174 Significant too is that the name YHWH (Grk. kyrios) seems to be that of the anthropomorphic
Logos, the “second God,” while the true, transcendent God is simply To On, „The Existent.‟ 175 This
suggests that for Philo the Logos is the anthropomorphic god of the HB, Yahweh. 176
Philo read the biblical passages describing the high priest and his cultic duties, particularly on Yom
Kippur, as allegories of the Logos in the cosmic temple, the universe. 177 Of particular significance for us is
Philo‟s treatment of the high priestly vestments. Philo was part of a tradition that allegorized the temple and
its paraphernalia, seeing in them symbols of the sensible, material world. 178 The four colors required for the
168
See Gregory E. Sterling, “Recherché or Representative? What is the Relationship between Philo‟s Treatises and Greek-speaking
Judaism?” Studia Philonica Annual 11 (1999): 1-30; idem, “ „Philo Has Not Been Used Half Enough‟: The Significance of Philo of
Alexandria for the Study of the New Testament,” Perspectives in Religious Studies 30 (Fall 2003): 251-268.
169
D.R. Schwartz, “Philo‟s Priestly Descent,” in F.E. Greenspahn, E. Hilgert, and B.L. Mack (edd.) Nourished with Peace (Chico,
1984) 155-171.
170
“Temple Imagery in Philo: An Indication of the Origin of the Logos?” in William Horbury (ed.), Templum Amicitiae. Essays on
the Second Temple presented to Ernst Bammel, (JSOT Supplement Series 48; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1991) 71-102;
idem, Great Angel, 118, 123-25.
171
According to David T. Runia (Philo of Alexandria and the Timaeus of Plato [Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1986], 449) the Logos is, in
general terms, “that aspect or part of the divine that stands in relation to created reality.” Cf. also David Winston, Logos and Mystical
Theology in Philo of Alexandria (Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 1985) for whom Philo‟s Logos is “the face of God turned
toward creation (50).”
172
De somniis (hereafter Somn.) 1.239; De confusione linguarum (hereafter Conf.) 97.
173
De specialibus legibus (hereafter Spec.)1.81; De Cherubim (hereafter Cher.) 125-128; Legum allegoriae (hereafter Leg.) 3.96.
While Philo may never have given the Logos the status of demiurgic creator, as argued by Runia (Philo of Alexandria, 449 and n.
244), he certainly served this function for Philo: “Whenever God is described as engaged in creative or providential activity, he does
so in the guise or through the agency of the Logos (ibid).” “It is God who creates, but he does so at the level of his Logos…or in the
guise of his creative power and through the agency of the Logos as instrument of creation (Ibid, 450; emphasis original).” See also
Tobin, The Creation of Man, 65-7.
174
Conf. 40-41, 62-63, 146-47. A.J.M. Wedderburn‟s argument (“Philo‟s Heavenly Man,” NovT 15 [1973], 316) that these passages
do not imply that the Logos was regarded by Philo as really (like) a man any more than he regarded the Logos as like a rock or wells,
symbols elsewhere used by our exegete, fails to take account of Philo‟s use of the Logos to account for the anthropomorphisms of the
biblical text from which God must remain aloof. Instead of allegorizing these texts, Philo attributes the anthropomorphism to the
Logos. Segal observes: “Thus, Philo can use his concept of logos both for philosophical argumentation and for explaining the
anthropomorphisms in the Bible. The logos becomes the actual figure of God, who appears „like a man‟ in order that men may know
His presence (Two Powers in Heaven, 165).” See also idem “The Incarnation: The Jewish Milieu,” in Davis et al, The Incarnation,
133; Barker, “Temple Imagery in Philo,” 89, 96, 98; idem, Great Angel, 121-2.
175
See Sandmel, Philo of Alexandria, 91-5. At times Philo also distinguishes between the anathrous and arthrous Theos (Heb.
’Ĕlōhîm), the latter denoting the true God, the former his Logos. Somn. I.228-30. See Segal‟s discussion, Two Powers in Heaven, 170.
176
Barker, Great Angel, 144-133; Dahl and Segal, “Philo and the Rabbis,” 27.
177
Somn. 1.215; Quis rerum divinarum heres sit (hereafter Her.) 185; Leg. 3.45. See Ronald Williamsom, Philo and the Epistle to the
Hebrews (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1970), 411. On Philo‟s spiritualization of the Temple and its cult v. Valentine Nikiprowetzky, “La
spiritualization des sacrifices et le culte sacrificial au Temple de Jérusalem chez Philon d‟Alexandrie,” Semia 17 (1967): 97-116; J.
Daniélou, “La Symbolique du Temple de Jerusalem chez Philon et Josephe,” in Le symbolisme cosmique des monuments religieux
(Serie Orientale Roma XIV; Rome: Instituto Italiano per il Medio ed Estremo Oriente, 1957) 83-90. On Philo‟s HPL v. Jean Laporte,
“The High Priest in Philo of Alexandria,” Studia Philonica Annual 3 (1991): 71-82; Barker, “Temple Imagery in Philo”; John M.
Scholer, Proleptic Priests: Priesthood in the Epistle to the Hebrews (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1991) 63-68; George L. Coulon, “The
Logos High Priest: An Historical Study of the Theme of the Divine Word as Heavenly High Priest in Philo of Alexandria, the Epistle
to the Hebrews, Gnostic Writings and Clement of Alexandria,” (Th.D. diss. Institut Catholigue de Paris, Paris 1966); Edwin R.
Goodenough, By Light, Light: The Mystic Gospel of Hellenistic Judaism (Amsterdam: Philo Press, 1969), Chapter IV.
178
Quaestiones et solutions in Exodum (hereafter QE) II. 85; Mos. 2.87-88. See also Josephus Judean Antiquities III 151-186; Clement
of Alexandria, Stromateis, V.6. On Philo‟s allegorization of the vestments v. Hayward, The Jewish Temple, 108-118; Coulon, “The
Logos High Priest,” 19-22; Margaret Barker, The Gate of Heaven: The History and Symbolism of the Temple in Jerusalem
(London: SPCK, 1991) 111-15. On Jewish interpretation of the vestments in general v. Michael D. Swartz, “The Semiotics of the
Priestly Vestments in Ancient Judaism,” in Baumgarten, Sacrifice in Religious Experience, 57-80; Robert Hayward, “St Jerome and
the Meaning of the High-Priestly Vestments,” in William Horbury (ed.) Hebrew Study From Ezra to Ben-Yehuda, (Edinburgh: T&T

production of the fabrics for the garments and temple drappings (curtains/veil; Exod. 26, 28) represented
the four natural elements: air (=blue [Heb. tĕkēlet]), water (=purple [Heb. ’argāmān] 179 ), fire (=crimson
[Heb. tôla‘at shāni]), earth (=linen [Heb. šēš]). These garments symbolized the material body of the
“immanent Logos.” 180 As Erwin Goodenough put it: “The priest in his cosmic robes (is) the Logos clothed
in the material elements.” 181 Since the high priest signified Philo‟s Logos, the high priestly vestments
signified the material body of Philo‟s “second God,” i.e. Yahweh. 182 This is significant, but as far as this
author knows much of its significance has gone unnoticed.
That Philo allegorized the priestly vestments as the material body is known. 183 What seems not to have
been explored, however, are the implications and significance of interpreting the long dark blue robe as the
body of (the second) God. Does the color of the robe have any significance in this garment-as-body
metaphor? The significance of the white linen tunic has been explored; it represents, we are told, a
heavenly light-form similar to that of the angels. 184 But the significance of the blue robe has not been
clearly elucidated in the scholarly literature. 185
3.2. Logos in a Blue Robe
Harry Allen Wolfson discerned three stages of existence in Philo‟s Logos. 186 David Runia prefers to
speak of three “levels” of operation. 187 In both systems, there is a transcendent Logos, nearly
indistinguishable from the incorporeal, ineffable deity; an immanent Logos, “incarnate in” or “permeating
through” the material cosmos; and an intermediate Logos bridging the two. The latter is the demiurge of
the material cosmos. 188 These three stages/levels of the Logos bring to mind the three Adams found in
various exegetical traditions of Gen. 1-2, 189 particularly in those texts termed „Gnostic.‟ 190 According to the
Clark, 1999) 90-105. On Clement‟s allegorization of the Tabernacle and high priestly vestments v. Salvatore R.C. Lilla, Clement of
Alexandria: A Study in Christian Platonism and Gnosticism (London: Oxford University Press, 1971) 173-181; Annewies van den
Hoek, Clement of Alexandria and His Use of Philo in the Stromateis: An Early Christian reshaping of a Jewish model (Leiden:
E.J. Brill, 1988) Chapter Five; Judith L. Kovacs, “Concealment and Gnostic Exegesis: Clement of Alexandria‟s Interpretation of the
Tabernacle,” StPatr 31 (1997): 414-437.
179
Philo equates the color purple with the blood of the “shell fish that bears the same name,” from which the dye was produced. See
De congressu eruditionis gratia (hereafter Congr.) 117; QE II. 85; Mos. 2.87-88.
180
De fuga et inventione (hereafter Fug.) 110; Somn. I.196-225; Leg. 2.55-6; De Migratione Abrahami (hereafter Mig.) 101-103.
Harry A. Wolfson (Philo: Foundations of Religious Philosophy in Judaism, Christianity and Islam [2 vols.; Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press, 1947], 1:232-35, 327-29) posited three stages in the manifestation of Philo‟s Logos: initially the Logos
existed within God as his mind; this is the preexistent, uncreated Logos. At a secondary stage, the Logos is given an independent
existence outside of God, “created” but not like mortals are. This is the “created Incorporeal Logos.” Finally, the Logos “incarnates”
in “the body of the world,” wearing the sensible/material world as a garment; this immanent Logos is the instrument of divine
providence. Wolfson‟s schema has been criticized as being artificial and overly systematic, but its overall correctness has been
acknowledged. See Runia, Philo of Alexandria, 450, n. 247. On the robe as symbol of the body in Philo v. also Kim, Significance,
44-52; Conick and Fossum, “Stripped before God,” 128f. Dennis Ronald MacDonald observes that, “One of Philo‟s favorite images
for the body is the garment.” There is no Male and Female, 24. See also Goodenough, By Light, Light, 116 (robe as symbol of
matter).
181
Goodenough, By Light, Light, 104. The human body is composed of the same elements represented by the four colors. See De
Opificio Mundi (hereafter Opif.) 146; Her. 283.
182
Barker notes (Gate of Heaven, 116): “Since the true high priest was a heavenly figure, he originally passed through the veil not to
but from the presence of God (i.e. from the Holy of Holies). As he passed through the veil so he took form from it and thus became
visible, robed in the four elements of the created order (emphasis original).” Cf. idem, “Temple Imagery in Philo,” 91. On the
veil/garment relation see idem, Gate of Heaven, 104.
183
See now Kim, Significance, 44-52.
184
For Philo, the white tunic, the „heavenly garment of light (Fuga. 110), represents the purified soul, that „fair and lovely form (ειδος;
De Ebrietate [hereafter Ebr.] 157; 85-6; Mut. 45-6),‟ „most radiant light (Somn. I.202, 216-17). See also Margaret Barker, On Earth
as it is in Heaven: Temple Symbolism in the New Testament (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1995), Chapt. V; idem, “Temple Imagery in
Philo,” 91; idem, Gate of Heaven, 113-115; idem, Great Angel, 125; Harald Riesenfeld, Jésus Transfiguré. L‟Arrière-plan du Récit
Évangélique de la Transfiguration de Notre-Seigneur (København, 1947) Chapitre VIII; W. Schwarz, „A Study in Pre-Christian
Symbolism: Philo, De Somniis I.216-218, and Plutarch, De Iside et Osiride 4 and 77,‟ Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies 20
(1973): 104-117; Haran, Temples and Temple-Service, 174. On the white robe as the luminous body of angels in rabbinic literature v.
Pesiqta Rabbati (hereafter PR) 51.8; Midrash Tehillim 104.4.
185
Other than the cosmological symbolism provided by Philo. See e.g. Harald Hegermann, Die Vorstellung vom Schöpfungsmitter im
Hellenistischen Judentum und Urchristentum (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1961) 4749.
186
See n. 183.
187
Runia, Philo of Alexandria, 450-51.
188
Runia, Philo of Alexandria, 451; Wolfson, Philo, 1:331
189
A connection made already by Coulson, “The Logos High Priest,” 77-78.
190
On the dubiousness of the label „Gnostic‟ to categorize the polymorphus movements so designated v. Michael Allen Williams,
Rethinking “Gnosticism”: An Argument for Dismantling a Dubious Category (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press,

Nag Hammadi tractate On the Origin of the World 117:29-33, “the first Adam is spirit-endowed
(pneumatikos), and appeared on the first day. The second Adam is soul-endowed (psychikos), and appeared
on the sixth day...The third Adam is a creature of the earth (choikos), that is, the man of law, and he
appeared on the eighth day”. 191 These three Adam‟s are not individual men; they are stages in the somatic
(d)evolution of Man. 192 This somatic tripartition, common in Gnostic texts, is based on a popular reading of
Genesis 1-2. The pneumatikos or spiritual first Adam, born on the first day, is associated with the light of
Gen. 1:3. The latter reading is based on a pun on the Greek word phōs, used in the LXX translation of Gen.
1:3. The word could mean both “light” and “man.” Thus, the product of God‟s command, “Let there be
light (phōs),” was a divine Light-Man, an anthropos enveloped within and consisting of light. This
interpretation is Jewish and can be found as early as the second century B.C.E. in the drama Exagoge of the
Alexandrian playwright Ezekiel 193 ; it may even go back to the prophet Ezekiel himself. 194 The second, soulendowed
(psychikos), or rather “soul-composed” Adam of the Sixth Day is the man made according to the
Image of God (Gen. 1:26f). His body, anatomically identical to a material body, is yet made of a psychic
substance. 195 The third Adam is the man molded from the earth (Gen 2:7), possessing now, along with the
above two bodies, a material body. This trisomatism in man reflects the same trichotomy in the celestial
sphere, for anthropogony mirrors and recapitulates theogony. 196 According to Tripartite Tractate (NHC I,
5: 118: 14-119:15), three races originate from this trichotomy in the demiurgic logos:
Mankind came to be in three essential types, the spiritual, the psychic and the material, conforming to the triple
disposition of the Logos, from which were brought forth the material ones and the psychic ones and the spiritual
ones…The spiritual race…(is)…like light from light…The psychic race is like light from a fire…The material race,
however…is dark, it shuns the shining of light. 197
This trichotomous anthropology may very well have been a popular Alexandrian tradition. 198 It was
known to Philo who elsewhere shows a number of points of contact with Gnosticism. 199 That Philo‟s Logos
1996). See also Karen L. King, What is Gnosticism? (Cambridge, Mass. And London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University
Press, 2003).
191 Translation of Hans-Gebhard Bethge and Bently Layton in James M. Robibson (ed.), The Nag Hammadi Library (New York:
HaperCollins, 1988) 183. On this passage and Gnostic exegesis of the Hebrew Bible v. Orval Wintermute, “A Study of Gnostic
Exegesis of the Old Testament,” in James M. Efird (ed.), The Use of the Old Testament in the New and Other Essays. Studies in the
Honor of William Franklin Stinespring (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1972) 241-270.
192 See discussion in Maria Grazia Lancellotti, The Naassenes: A Gnostic Identity Among Judaism, Christianity, Classical and
Ancient Near Eastern Traditions (Münster: Ugarit-Verlag, 2000) 75-86, 100-1. On the triple creation of man in Gnostic sources v.
Michel Tardieu, Trois Mythes Gnostiques (Paris: Études Augustiniennes, 1974) 85-139; Pheme Perkins, “Creation of the Body in
Gnosticism,” Religious Reflections on the Human Body, ed. Jane Marie Law (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University
Press, 1995) 21-35; Birger Pearson, Pneumatikos-Psychikos Terminology in I Corinthians. A Study in the Theology of the
Corinthian Opponents of Paul and its Relation to Gnosticism (SBL Dissertation Series, No. 12; Missoula, Mont., 1973) 65-80.
193 On traditions of Adam as the Phōs of Gen. 1:3 v. Elaine H. Pagels, “Exegesis of Genesis 1 in the Gospels of Thomas and John,”
JBL 118 (1999): 477-496; April D. de Conick, Seek to See Him: Ascent and Vision Mysticism in the Gospel of Thomas (Leiden: E.J.
Brill, 1996) 65-79; Jarl Fossum, “The Image of the Invisible God: Colossians 1.15-18a in the Light of Jewish Mysticism and
Gnosticism,” in idem, The Image of the Invisible God. Essays on the Influence of Jewish Mysticism on Early Christology
(GöttingenVandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1995) 13-39; idem, Name of God, 280; Gilles Quispel, “Ezekiel 1:26 in Jewish Mysticism and
Gnosis,” VC 34 (1980): 1-13.
194 On the possibility that Ezekiel‟s description of the anthropomorphic kābôd YHWH in Chapter 1 is the prophet‟s own interpretation
of Gen. 1:3 see Ben Zion Wacholder, “Creation in Ezekiel‟s Merkabah: Ezekiel 1 and Genesis 1,” in Evans, Of Scribes and Sages,
15-32.
195 E.g. in the Ap. John NHC II 15, 13-19, 10. On the creation of the psychic body in Gnosticism v. R. van den Broek, “The Creation
of Adam‟s Psychic Body in the Apocryphon of John,” in R. van den Broek and M.J. Vermaseren (edd.), Studies in Gnosticism and
Hellenistic Religions, presented to Gilles Quispel on the Occasion of his 65 th Birthday. (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1981) 38-57; Gerard P.
Luttikhuizen, “The Creation of Man and Woman in The Secret Book of John,” in Gerard P. Luttikhuizen (ed.) The Creation of Man
and Woman: Interpretations of the Biblical Narratives in Jewish and Christian traditions, (Leiden: Brill, 2000) 140-155; Richard
Valantasis, “Adam‟s Body: Uncovering Esoteric Traditions in the Apocraphon of John and Origen‟s Dialogue with Heraclides,”
SecCent 7 (1990): 150-162.
196 Lancellotti, Naassenes, 103; Ragnhild Bjerre Finnestad, “The Cosmogonic Fall in Evangelium Veritatis,” Temenos 7 (1971): 39-
49; Ingvild Saelid Gilhus, “The Gnostic Demiurge-An Agnostic Trickster,” Religion 14 (1984): 307 who described the “demiurge as
model of biological man”.
197 See also the Naassen divine anthropos of Hippolytus Ref. V. 1; Lancellotti, Naassenes, 75-86. On the three bodies/three races
association v. Pearson, Pneumatikos-Psychikos, 76-81; Francis T. Fallon, The Enthronement of Sabaoth: Jewish Elements in
Gnostic Creation Myth (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1978) 120-21.
198 Gilles Quispel ( “Hermes Trismegistus and the Origins of Gnosticism,” in Roelof van den Broek and Cis van Heertum [edd.], From
Poimandres to Jacob Böhme: Gnosis, Hermetism and the Christian Tradition [Amsterdam: Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica,
2000] 148) suggested that this trichotomy “can be traced back to and localized in a Hermetic lodge of Alexandria,” but one “clearly of

possessed all three „concentric bodies‟ 200 is demonstrated by his discussion of the “pure white, speckled,
and ashy-sprinkled” he-goats shown to Jacob in a dream (Gen 31:10–12; Somn. I.196-225). These, Philo
says, represent three “seals” that marked “the great High Priest,” i.e the Logos. The “pure white” is
analogous to the rational soul and is symbolized by the white linen tunic worn by the high priest on Yom
Kippur. The “speckled” is read by Philo as „variegated,‟ an allusion here to the blue robe (Somn. I.203-
208) 201 ; this symbolized the lower, irrational soul of the HPL. 202 While the rational soul is inward and
invisible, the irrational soul is outward and visible. 203 The “ash-sprinkled” is taken as a reference to the
high priest sprinkling himself with ash and water prior to offering sacrifices (Somn. I.209-212). The ash and
water, symbolized by the pomegranates and flowers that line the hem of the blue robe, are the two elements
brought together to make the earthly body of man. 204
According to Philo, the white tunic represented “most radiant light (Somn. 1:216-17),” which he
likened to “a cloudless ray coming from the sun‟s beams would appear in a clear atmosphere at noontime
(Somn. I.202).” Read somatically this tunic represents a „light-body‟ similar to that traditionally attributed
to the divine and angels. The substance of this pneumatic „body‟ of the Logos and the rational soul was
ether, the purest and most subtle of all matter. 205 As this ether is represented by gold (QE II. 63, 113), the
gold frontlet of the high priest and his golden ephod 206 seem also to have symbolized this pneumatic body.
207 The gold frontlet is a “likeness of the divine Logos (QE II. 123),” just as the light of Gen. 1:3 is an
“image (eikôn) of the divine Logos (Opif. 31).” 208 This all recalls the Light-Man (Phōs) read into Gen. 1:3.
pagan origin.” According to Elaine Pagels it “was widely known and shared among various groups of Genesis readers.” “Exegesis,”
479.
199 Quod Deterius Potiori insidiari soleat (hereafter Det.) 89; De Gigantibus (hereafter Gig.) 60-61. Hans Jonas pointed out the
similarity between the Gnostic and Philonic categories of men already in his Gnosis und spätantiker Geist, Vol. 1: Die mythologische
Gnosis (FRLANT N.f. 33; Göttengen, 1934) 212-214. On the trichotomy in Philo v. also Birger A. Pearson, “Philo, Gnosis, and the
New Testament,” in idem, Gnosticism, Judaism, and Egyptian Christianity (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1990) 179-81; idem,
“Hellenistic-Jewish Wisdom Speculation and Paul,” in Robert L. Wilken (ed.), .Aspects of Wisdom in Judaism and Early
Christianity, (Notre Dame: University if Notre Dame Press, 1975) 53-55. Louis Painchaud even suggested that the trisomatic
anthropogony of Orig. World cited above is inspired by Philo. See “The Redactions of the Writing Without Title (CG II 5 ),” SecCent 8
(1991): 226, 228. On the difficulty in determining the relationship between Philo and Gnosticism v. R. McL. Wilson, “Philo and
Gnosticism,” Studia Philonica Annual 5 (1993): 84-92; idem, “Philo of Alexandria and Gnosticism,” Kairos 14 (1972): 84-92; idem,
The Gnostic Problem (London: A.R. Mowbray & Co. Limited, 1958); Birger A. Pearson, “Philo and Gnosticism,” ANRW
II.21.1:295-342; idem, “Philo, Gnosis and the New Testament,” in idem, Gnosticism, Judaism and Egyptian Christianity, 165-182;
Karen L. King, “The Body and Society in Philo and the Apocryphon of John,” in John Peter Kenney (ed.), The School of Moses:
Studies in Philo and Hellenistic Religion, (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1995) 82-97.
200 According to Theodotus (Excerpts 59.1-4), the Aeon Jesus, on his descent through the cosmic heavens to earth in order to redeem
the pneumatics, put on (as successive envelopes) a “spiritual body” from the Ogdoad (eighth heaven), a psychic body from the
Hebdomad (seventh heaven), and then on earth (what appeared) as a corporeal body. As April D. De Conick observes: “So Jesus
seems to have three bodies: a spiritual body, a soul body, and a special corporeal body.” See ““Heavenly Temple Traditions and
Valentinian Worship: A Case for First-Century Christology in the Second Century,” in Jewish Roots of Christological Monotheism,
333.
201 On the robe as a variegated fabric v. QE II, 107; Mos. II, 110..
202 See also Dodd, Bible and the Greeks, 192.
203 On the white and blue robes as higher/inward and lower/outward parts of the soul v. Ebr. 85-6; Mut. 45.
204 See also Spec. I.263-6.
205 On the rational soul as ethereal v. Her. 283; Leg. III. 161. On the pneumatic body of Logos v. Fug. 133 and discussion in John
Dillon, “ASÔMATOS: Nuances of Incorporeality in Philo,” in Philon d‟Alexandrie et le langage de la philosophie. Actes du
colloque international organize par le Centre d‟etudes sur la philosophie hellenistiqu (Brepols, 1998) 99-110 (106-7). On Philo‟s
different levels of corporeality or incorporeality v. ibid.
206 On gold as the predominant ingredient in the ephod v. Haran, Temples and Temple-Service, 167.
207 A somatic interpretation of the gold frontlet was known to Theodotus and/or Clement of Alexandria. In his Excerpta ex Theodoto
27.1-2, Clement (or his Gnostic source) allegorized an otherwise unknown Yom Kippur ritual, the priest‟s removal of the gold frontlet
upon entering the Holy of Holies:
The priest on entering within the second veil removed the plate at the altar of incense, and entered in silence with the Name
engraved upon his heart, indicating the laying aside of the body that has become pure like the golden plate and nimble through
purification…the laying aside as it were of the soul‟s body on which was stamped the luster of piety…Now he discards the body,
the plate which had become weightless, within the second veil, that is, in the rational sphere…
As commentators have noted, the “body” here is not the material body, but a spiritual or psychic body discarded in the spiritual
sphere. Lilla, Clement of Alexandria, 178; Kovacs, “Concealment and Gnostic Exegesis,” 435 n. 96.
208 On the identity between the gold frontlet and the “transcendent Logos” v. Mig. 102-103. Goodenough identifies the gold plate with
the “higher” Logos, By Light, Light, 114, 116. See also discussion in Coulon, “The Logos High Priest,” 20; David D. Hannah,
Michael and Christ: Michael Traditions and Angel Christology in Early Christianity (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1999) 88.

The dark blue robe (“it is almost black,” QE 2.123) signifies a „dimmer‟ and therefore more senseperceptible
„soul-body.‟ 209 This lower soul-body is „aereal,‟ composed of the blue-black air of the sub-lunar
heavens. 210 This intermediate „body,‟ between the pneumatic/ethereal and the earthly, is associated with the
man of Gen. 1:26-7 made after the Image (Logos). 211 This man born on the sixth day of creation is thus
presented by Philo as aereal/psychic and associated with the blue robe of the high priest. Finally, as noted,
the earthly body made of dust, here the „ash-sprinkled,‟ was symbolized by the hem of the blue robe lined
with cloth pomegranates and flowers signifying the elements from which the earthly body was made. 212
Thus, the „bodies‟ of the three Adams are represented in Philo‟s exegesis on Jacob‟s dream by the white
tunic (1:3), the blue robe (1:26-27), and the hem (2:7). 213 Based on the above observations, and at the risk
of being overly systematic, we get the following associations:
Pure White = White Tunic = Light/Pneumatic Body = Gen. 1:3
Speckled = Blue Robe = Aereal/ Psychic Body = Gen. 1:26-27
Ash-Sprinkled = Hem = Earthly Body = Gen. 2:7
3.2.1. God’s Schattenbild
This areal/psychic body signified by the blue robe is in some way related to Philo‟s designation of the
demiurgic Logos as both God‟s Image and „Shadow‟ (Leg. III.96). Philo identifies the Logos with the chief
craftsman of the Tabernacle Bezalel. 214 The „tabernacle‟ that Bezalel constructs, says Philo, is the “soul”
(Leg. III. 95-96). As noted, Philo identified the soul with the man of Gen 1:26-7 215 ; this makes
Bezalel/Logos demiurge of the psychic man/body, a notion found in Gnostic sources as well. 216 This
„Adam-as-Tabernacle‟ motif recalls P. What is important here is that this psychic Adam made after the
Image, whom Philo associates with the blue robe of the high priest, is also called a „shadow‟ (Plant.27;
Somn. I.206). This association of “shadow” with “image” and with the (psychic) man/body of Gen. 1:26
parallels some Gnostic texts. In the Apocraphon of John (NHC II 15. 1-14), whose anthropogony is but a
(characteristically gnostic) midrash on Genesis 1 (particularly 1:26f. and 2:7), 217 as well as in the
Hypostasis of the Archons (89.26), “shadow” is a designation for the bodies of Adam and Eve made
according to the “image” of the Light-Man. 218 We might understand by this that, while the Logos is the
209
Ebr. 85-6; Mut. 45.
210
On the sub-lunar air as home of lower souls v. Plant. 14; Conf. 174; Somn. I. 134-5, 144-46. On the blue-black sub-lunar air as
signified by the blue robe v. Spec. I.85. On areal souls in Philo v. also A. Lemonnyer, “L‟air comme séjour d‟anges, d‟après Philon
d‟Alexandrie,” Revue des sciences philosophiqes et theologiques 1 (1907): 305-311.
211
Mut. 30 (Adam of Gen. 1:26 as „soul of intermediate stage‟); Somn. I.219; Spec. I.94 (robe as „intervening/intermediate‟); Ebr. 85-
6; Mut. 43-46 (robe as lower soul). Now Philo has interpreted the Man after the Image (Gen. 1.26) as both the rational soul (Plant. 18-
20; Spec. I. 81; Det. 83-87; Her. 230-1) and the lower, irrational soul (Mut. 30; Leg. III.95-6). This discrepancy can be resolved
however. According to Philo, the first person plural used here („Let Us make Adam‟) indicates that both God and lower powers (viz.
the Logos and other angels) participated in the creation of this man: God provided the immortal soul and the lower powers provided
the mortal soul (Fug. 66-70; Opif. 72-75; Conf. 179-182). That is to say, Gen. 1:26-27 actually alludes to the creation of both souls.
See also Fossum, “Gen. 1,26 and 2,7,” 203-208.
212
Somn. I:216-17; Spec. I.263-6.
213
Opif. 134-36.
214
The craftsman Bezalel would represent the Logos in the lower of the latter‟s two demiurgic functions. As Runia (Philo of
Alexandria and the Timaeus of Plato, 166) has pointed out regarding Philo‟s “building-of-a-city” metaphor used in Opif. 17-18, the
demiurgic process involves three functions and functionaries: the king, who calls for the city‟s establishment; the architect, who
designs the city; and the craftsman, who actually executes the creative activity. For Philo, the Logos functions as both the architect and
craftsman.
215
Spec. I.81, 171.
216
I.e. that the psychic body of Adam was the work of a lower demiurge. See above n. 203. On Gnostic and Philonic exegesis of Gen.
1:26-27 v. also Fossum, “Gen. 1,26 and 27,” 202-239.
217
On the Apocraphon of John and Gen. 1:26f and 2:7 v. Birger A. Pearson, “Biblical Exegesis in Gnostic Literature,” in idem
Gnosticism, Judaism, and Egyptian Christianity, 29-38. See also Gerard P. Luttikhuizen, “The Critical Rewriting of Genesis in the
Gnostic Apocryphon of John,” in Florentino García Martínez and Gerard P. Luttikhuizen (edd.), Jerusalem, Alexandria, Rome:
Studies in Ancient Cultural Interaction in Honour of A. Hilhorst (Leiden: Brill, 2003) 187-200; Søren Giversen, “The Apocraphon
of John and Genesis,” Studia Theologica 17 (1963): 60-76; Schenke, Der Gott „Mensch‟, 120ff.
218
On HypArch see Bently Layton, “Critical Prolegomena to an Edition of the Coptic „Hypostasis of the Archons‟ (CG II, 14),” in M.
Krause (ed.), Essays on the Nag Hammadi Texts in honour of Pahor Labib (Leiden: Brill, 1975) 98-99; idem, “The Hypostasis of
the Archons or the Reality of the Rulers,” HTR 69 (1976): 57; U. Bianchi, “Docetism: A Peculiar Theory about the Ambivalence of

Shadow/Image of God, the man of Gen. 1:26-7 is the shadow/image of the Logos, a shadow of a shadow,
as it were. It must be kept in mind, however, that Philo identified the Logos with both the Image (Urbild)
and the Man after the Image (Abbild). 219 This suggests some sort of identity between the demiurgic Logos
as Shadow/Image, the high priest garbed in his blue robe, and the psychic Adam of day six. 220 While we are
free to account for this apparent conflation by appealing to the diverse pre-Philonic exegetical traditions
that made their way into Philo‟s own exegesis, 221 or accuse Philo of some illegitimate exegetical
methods, 222 this is unnecessary. Behind Philo‟s exegesis may well be a tradition of the somatic devolution
of Phōs/Logos. As the Man after the Image of Gen. 1:26-7, the Logos has taken on an aereal/psychic body
called „shadow‟. 223 Thus we read in Opif. 31:
Now that invisible light (Phōs, Gen. 1:3-WW) perceptible only by mind has come into being as an image of the divine
(Logos) who brought it within our ken. It is a supercelestial star, fount of the perceptible stars, such as it would not be
inappropriate to call it „all-brightness‟ to signify that from which the sun and moon, and all the other planets and fixed stars
draw, in accordance with the capacity of each, the [degrees of] light befitting them; for that unmixed and pure radiance is
dimmed (amauroumenès) as soon as it begins to experience the change which is involved in the passage from intelligible to
sensible; for nothing in the realm of sense is absolutely pure.
As John Dillon has pointed out, the archetypal light, viz. the Logos (Somn. 1.75), 224 in its progressive
descent into the cosmos, “becomes somehow mixed with the „darkness‟ of matter, which leads to its
becoming sense-perceptible (i.e. visible)”. 225 This cosmic descent of the Logos is probably analogous to the
descent of nous (mind). 226 When the warm, ethereal mind descends from the upper heaven to the sub-lunar
sphere, it cools and, now enveloped by air, becomes (lower) soul. 227 Origen (second century CE), who took
his doctrine of the pre-mundane fall of souls from Philo, 228 understood the biblical account of the fall of
Adam and Eve as an allegory of the later stages in the fall of pre-existent, rational souls:
all rational creatures, incorporeal and invisible, if they be negligent, gradually slip to lower levels and take to themselves
bodies according to the quality of the places into which they descend; that is, first ethereal bodies, and then aereal. And
when they reach the vicinity of earth they are enclosed in denser bodies, and finally are bound to human flesh (Jerome,
Con. Joh. Hieros. 16). 229
the Presence of the Divine,” in Joseph M. Kitagawa and Charles H. Long (edd.), Myths and Symbols: Studies in Honor of Mircea
Eliade (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1969) 265-273; I.P. Culianu, “La Femme Celeste et son Ombre: Contribution à
l‟ètude d‟un mythologème gnostique,” Numen 23 (1976): 191-209. On „shadow‟ as a designation for matter in Gnosticism v. also
Einar Thomassen, “The Derivation of Matter in Monistic Gnosticism,” in John D. Turner and Ruth Majercik (edd.) Gnosticism and
Later Platonism: Themes, Figures, and Texts, (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2000) 13.
219
Conf. 146-47. See also Tobin, “The Prologue of John,” 261-62.
220
C.T.R. Hayward, “Philo, the Septuagint of Genesis 32:24-32 and the Name „Israel‟: Fighting the Passions, Inspiration and the
Vision of God,” JJS 51 (2000): 215-16, observed that in Philo the Logos, the high priest, and the first man (and Israel) stand in a
“theological continuum,” and R.A. Stewart, “The Sinless High-Priest,” NTS 14 (1967-68): 132 bemoaned that in Philo “the Logos, the
generic rational soul, and the Aaronic priest after the flesh, are not sharply enough differentiated.”
221
À la Tobin, The Creation of Man.
222
Wedderburn, “Philo‟s Heavenly Man,” 323. For Stewart, “Sinless High-Priest,” 134, the conflation is a symptom of Philo‟s
frequently “careless manner” of writing.
223
This designation of the soul-body as a shadow-image is not peculiar to Philo. As James G. Frazer demonstrated, it is a widespread
association (shadow/soul/image) in many indigenous and European societies (See his “The Soul as a Shadow and a Reflection,” in
idem, The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion, II: Taboo and the Perils of the Soul [London, 1911; third edition 77-
100]) and it was current in the Mediterranean countries in the first century as well (See e.g. P.W. van der Horst, “Peter‟s Shadow,”
NTS 23 [1976-77]: 204-212).
224
On the Logos as light in Philo v. Arkadi Choufrine, “F. Excursus: Philo‟s ontology of Light,” in his Gnosis, Theophany, Theosis:
Studies in Clement of Alexandria‟s Appropriation of his Background (New York: Peter Lang, 2002) 152-158; Tobin, “The Prologue
of John,” 262-65; Alexander Altmann, “A Note on the Rabbinic Doctrine of Creation,” JJS 7 (1956): 195-206.
225
Dillon, “Asômatos,” 105.
226
Sandmel declared that “The Logos never descends from the intelligible world into the sensible world (Philo, 95),” but this is
certainly wrong. See also Cher. 99-102; Somn. I. 75, 85-6; II. 242.
227
Her. 281-83; Leg. III. 161(nous/ higher soul ethereal); Somn. I.31; Her. 281-3 (cooling of mind to become aereal soul); Opif. 134;
Gig. 13f, 17f; Somn. I. 138 (descent of souls into bodies)
228
See Gerald Bostock, “The Sources of Origen‟s Doctrine of Pre-Existence,” in Origeniana Quarta; die Referate des 4.
Internationalen Origenskongresses (Innsbruck, 1987) 259-264.
229
On Origen‟s anthropology v. Manlio Simonetti, “Alcune Osservazioni Sull‟Interpretazione Origeniana di Genesi 2,7 e 3,21,”
Aevum 36 (1962): 370-381; C.P. Bammel, “Adam in Origen,” in Rowan Williams (ed.), The making of orthodoxy. Essays in honour
of Henry Chadwick (Cambridge, et. al.: Cambridge University Press, 1989) 62-93; Hermann S. Schibli, “Origen, Didymus, and the
Vehicle of the Soul,” Origeniana quinta (1989): 381-391; Lawrence R. Hennessey, “A Philosophical Issue in Origen‟s Eschatology:
The Three Senses of Incorporeality,” Origeniana quinta (1989): 372-380; Ugo Bianchi, “Origen‟s Treatment of the Soul and the
Debate Over Metensomatosis,” Origeniana quarta (1985): 270-280. On notions of corporeality and incorporeality with Origen v.

This anthropogonic descent also strikes a resemblance to Porphyry‟s description of the descent of the astral
body: “Originally of an ethereal substance, in the course of its descent the πνευμα is progressively darkened
and thickened as it absorbs moisture from the air, until it finally becomes fully material and even
visible.” 230 That this descent applies to the Logos is confirmed by the fact that the latter is said to dwell in
man (Fug. 117; Post. 122). While man‟s body is the abode of the soul, the soul is the abode of the Divine
Logos. 231 Once the archetypal, etherial light (the Logos) enters the sublunar world it darkens, becoming
areal and, finally, earthly. This accounts for the sense of identity, yet distinction, noted above between the
Logos as Urbild and Abbild, and the hight priest. We can therefore discern in Philo‟s writings the contours
of a probably pre-Philonic tradition of the somatic devolution of Phōs. 232 The intermediary stage of this
corporeal descent is the aereal/psychic body, schattenbild of the ethereal/pneumatic body. What is of
significance for our study is that this body was signified by the blue robe of the high priest.
There are remarkable parallels between P and Philo. The latter‟s HPL, the demiurgic Image and
Shadow of God drapped in high priestly garments, corresponds to P‟s high priestly demiurgic Adam, who
is also the Image and Shadow of God. As the tabernacle in P parallels both the cosmos and Adam, so it
does in Philo. The high priestly garments in P might signify the surrounding splendor as the light of
Yahweh‟s kābôd shines through the hair pores of his „dark image‟ or shadow, Adam. In Philo, the high
priestly garments signify the body divine. P‟s Adam subtly effaces the Creator/creature distinction, 233 just
as Philo‟s HPL stands on that border and whose nature mediates between the two. 234 Now these parallels
could of course be coincidental, but in our view, they are better accounted for by assuming Philo‟s
knowledge of a priestly tradition similar to, if not identical with that implied by P. Philo‟s HPL doctrine
couldn‟t be purely exegetical. That is to say, this doctrine is not based on an interpretation of the biblical
text, for which he used the Greek LXX, but obviously existed as an independent tradition and only
secondarily justified by or harmonized with his text. 235 Both P and Philo seem to be interacting with a Blue
Body Divine tradition. We get from Philo our first glimpse of the myth associated with this tradition:
Yahweh‟s blue body is the result of his cosmic descent. No such myth is clearly articulated by P but little of
P‟s theology is.
further D.G. Bostock, “Quality and Corporeity in Origen,” Origeniana secunda (1980): 323-337; Cécile Blanc, “Dieu est pneuma: Le
sens de cette expression d‟après Origène,” StPatr 16 (1985): 224-241; Gedaliahu Stroumsa, “The Incoporeality of God: Context and
Implications of Origen‟s Position,” Rel 13 (1983): 345-358.
230 Quote from E.R. Dodds, “Appendix II: The Astral Body in Neoplatonism” in idem, Proclus: The Elements of Theology (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1963): 318. Cf. Porphyry, On The Cave of the Nymph 62-66.
231 Opif. 139; Somn. I.26; Mig. 193 (earthly body as abode of the soul); Somn. I.113, 149; II. 248, 250; Cher. 98-100 (soul as abode of
God/Logos); Her. 225 (Logos as the 7 th part of man‟s heptadic soul); Spec. IV. 123 (the Divine Spirit [viz. Logos, Plant. 18] as
essence of the soul). On Philo‟s doctrine of the fall of areal souls into terrestrial embodiment v. John Dillon, “Philo‟s Doctrine of
Angels,” in David Winston and John Dillon, Two Treatises of Philo of Alexandria: A Commentary on De Gigantibus and Quod
Deus Sit Immutabilis (Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1983) 197-205; Bernard Barc, “Samaèl – Saklas – Yaldabaôth. Recherche sur la
genèse d‟un myth gnostique,” in idem (ed.) Colloque International sur les Textes de Nag Hammadi (Québec, 22-25 août 1978)
(Québec/Louvain: Les Presses de l‟Université Laval/Éditions Peeters, 1981) 133-34.
232 This „dimming‟ of the light of the Logos as it enters the sense perceptible realm recalls the Gnostic and later Jewish (rabbinic and
kabbalistic) myth of the dimming of the demiurge‟s light. See e.g. the Apoc. John NHC II, 1, 13.14-17: “Then the mother (Sophia)
began to move to and from. She became aware of the deficiency when the brightness of her light diminished. And she became dark
because her consort had not agreed with her.” See also the parallel Mandean myth of the demiurge Ptahil: “Ptahil-Uthra rose up, he
went and descended below the škinas, to the place where there is no world. He trod in the filthy mud, he entered the turbid water…as
the living fire (in him) changed/disappeared…His radiance has changed…has become deficient and imperfect…Arise, see how the
radiance of the alien Man has diminished…” (Right Ginza III, 98-100; translation by Kurt Rudolph in Gnosis: A Selection of Texts by
Werner Foerster [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974] II: 171-3.) See also Howard Schwartz, Tree of Souls: The Mythology of Judaism
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004) 58 who, drawing from rabbinic and Zoharic texts, narrates the following Judaic myth:
After the Temple had been destroyed and the Shekhinah had gone into exile, all the angels went into mourning for Her, and
they composed dirges and lamentations for her. So too did all the upper and lower realms weep for Her and go into
mourning. Then God came down from heaven and looked upon His house that had been burned. He looked for His people,
who had gone into exile. And He inquired about His bride, who had left Him. And just as she had suffered a change, so
too did Her husband-His light no longer shone, and He was changed from what He had been. Indeed, by some accounts
God was bound in chains.
233 McBride, “Divine Protocol,” 16-17.
234 Her. 205-6; Somn. II.188-89; Spec. I.116; Mig. 101-105.
235 Harald Hergermann was able to show that Philo‟s high priest symbolism was unoriginal and reflected pre-Philonic tradition: Die
Vorstellung vom Schöpfungsmitter im Hellenistischen Judentum und Urchristentum (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1961)
78ff.

4. Priestly Tradition and Rabbinic Literature
Echoes of this priestly/Philonic tradition appear in a number of rabbinic sources. Rabbinic ambivalence
towards priestly tradition is well-known. While the priesthood is conspicuously absent from the (Oral)
Torah chain of transmission (Pirqé Abot 1:1), a number of priestly traditions were preserved in rabbinic
literature. 236 The tradition behind P‟s intratextuality was preserved. Some rabbis explicitly articulated the
correspondences between creation and tabernacle implied by P.
R. Jacob son Issi asked: Why does it say; I love the habitation of Thy house, and the place where Thy glory dwelleth? (Ps.
26:8)”? Because the Tabernacle is equal to the creation of the world itself. How is that so? Concerning the first day it is
written: “In the beginning God created heaven and earth (Gen 1:1),” and it is written elsewhere: Who stretched out the
heavens like a curtain (Ps 104:2), and concerning the Tabernacle is written: And thou shall make curtains of goat hair
(Exod. 26:7). About the second day of creation it states: Let there be an firmament, and let it divide [mabdîl] the waters
from the waters (Gen. 1:6). About the Tabernacle it is written: And the veil shall divide [hibdîlâ] between you (Exod.
26:33). With regard to the third day it states: Let the waters under the heavens be gathered (Gen. 1:9). With reference to
the Tabernacle it is written: Thou shalt also make a laver of brass…and thou shalt put water therein (Exod. 18). On the
fourth day he created light, as it is stated: Let there be lights in the firmament of the sky (Gen. 1:14), and concerning the
Tabernacle it is said: thou shall make a candlestick of pure gold (Exod. 25:31). On the fifth day he created birds, as it is
said: Let the waters swarm with swarms of living creatures, and let the fowl fly above the earth (Gen. 1:20). And with
reference to the Tabernacle, He directed them to offer sacrifices of lambs and birds, and it says as well: And the cherubim
shall spread out their wings on high (Exod. 25:20). On the sixth day man was created, as it says: And God created man in
his own image, in the image of God He created him (Gen. 1:27), and about the Tabernacle it is written, a man who is a high
priest who has been anointed to serve and to minister before God. On the seventh day, The heaven and the earth were
finished (Gen. 2:1). And with regard to the Tabernacle, it is written: Thus was completed all the work of the Tabernacle
(Exod. 39:32). Concerning the creation of the world, it is written: And God blessed (Num. 2:3), and of the Tabernacle, it is
said: Moses blessed them (Exod. 39:43)…Of creation it says: [And God] hallowed it [i.e., the Sabbath] (Gen. 2:2), and of
the Tabernacle, he anointed and consecrated it (Num. 7:1) 237
While differences in detail exist between this midrash and the correspondences suggested by P, 238 the
overall agreement seems to confirm the insight of Blenkinsopp, Kearny and others. Some rabbis also
fleshed out, excuse the pun, the somatic significance of the tabernacle. See for example Bereshith Rabbati
ad Exod 26:33:
In the hour when the Holy One blessed be He said to Moses, „Make me a temple,‟ Moses said, „How shall I
know how to make it?‟ The Holy One blessed be He said: „Do not get frightened; just as I created the world
and your body, even so will you make the Tabernacle.‟ How [do we know] that this was so? You find in the
Tabernacle that beams were fixed into the sockets, and in your body the ribs are fixed into the vertebra, and
so in the world the mountains are fixed into the fundaments of the earth. In the Tabernacle the beams were
covered with gold, and in the body the ribs are covered with flesh, and in the world the mountains are
covered and coated with earth. In the Tabernacle there were bolts in the beams to keep them upright, and in
the body limbs and sinews are drawn to keep man upright, and in the world trees and grasses are drawn in the
earth. In the Tabernacle there were hangings to cover its top and both its sides, and in the body the skin of
man covers his limbs, and his ribs on both his sides, and in the world the heavens cover the earth on both its
sides. In the Tabernacle the veil divided between the Holy Place and the Holy of Holies, and in the body the
diaphragm divides the heart from the stomach, and in the world it is the firmament, which divides between
the upper waters and the lowers waters.
As implied by P, the building of the tabernacle is paralleled with the creation of microcosmic Adam: “The
Temple corresponds to the whole world and to the creation of man who is a small world.” 239 This
“World::Temple::Body” homology 240 which agrees with P and Philo is certainly related to, if not actually
the source of, the tendency observed in some rabbinic sources to read biblical passages referring to the
236
On the priesthood in rabbinic Judaism v. Steven D. Fraade, From Tradition to Commentary: Torah and its Interpretation in the
Midrash Sifre to Deuteronomy (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1991) 70-71, 232;Micheal D. Swartz, “Ritual
about Myth about Ritual: Towards an Understanding of the Avodah in the Rabbinic Period,” Journal of Jewish Thought and
Philosophy 6 (1997): 145-46 and sources cited in nn. 39, 40.
237
Midrash Tanhuma-Yelammedenu, 11.2 (Eng. 648); Num. R. 12.13; Ginzberg, Legends, I:51; Patai, Man and Temple, 105-07.
238
E.g. the menorah here is identified with the celestial lights created on Day Four, while in P‟s account it corresponds to the light of
Day One.
239
Midrash Tanhuma-Yelammedenu 3.
240
As demonstrated by Morray-Jones, “The Temple Within.”

sanctuary as metaphoric allusions to Adam. 241 As the Image/statue of God, Adam is paralleled with the
Tabernacle, also described as God‟s earthly Image/statue. 242 Here we may draw another parallel to the
Priestly and Philonic traditions: the Tabernacle (read: Adam), constructed by the demiurgic Bezalel, is the
Shadow of God. 243 Thus, like P and Philo, the Tabernacle/Adam is both the divine Image and Shadow.
According to the body::tabernacle::cosmos homology offered in Bereshit Rabbati the black 244 goathair
coverings of the Tabernacle (v. Exod. 26:7-11) correspond to the skin of Adam and the visible heaven.
The latter was usually designated ןולוי (“Veil,” Latin velum), the first of seven heavens. 245 As William
Brownlee pointed out, in Jewish tradition the visible heaven was “thought of as sapphire in color, and as
crystalline and transparent.” 246 In a number of rabbinic texts the „sapphiric‟ blue high priestly robe is
metaphor for Adam‟s prelapsarian body. 247 This might suggest a sapphiric body. This is significant for our
discussion of a possible priestly Blue Body Divine tradition because bodily descriptions of prelapsarian
man in rabbinic texts as a rule apply equally to God, for “Adam originally had a physical appearance which
was indistinguishable from that of God.” 248 Jacob Neusner has demonstrated this point well. 249 This, like
the Priestly and Philonic evidence, suggests an underlying Blue Body Divine tradition. 250
241 E.g. Gen. R. 21.1, 66.23 (Jacob; on the „Adamic‟ identity of Jacob v. below). On fallen Adam/Israel as destroyed Temple v. below.
242 In Exod. R. 35.6 God‟s command to Moses to build the Tabernacle according to the heavenly prototype shown him on Mt. Sinai
(Exod. 25:40) is compared to a king who had a fine image and who instructed one of his household to make a bust of him replicating
this image. The heavenly tabernacle is here God‟s fine image, and the earthly tabernacle His “bust,” which identifies it with Adam, the
statue/image of God. The similarity to our reading of P is not likely accidental. On Adam as Image/statue of God in rabbinic literature
v. Deut. R. IV.4; Morton Smith, “The Image of God: Notes on the Hellenization of Judaism, With Special Reference to Goodenough‟s
Work on Jewish Symbols,” BJRL 40 (195758): 473-512, esp. 475-478; idem, “On the Shape of God and the Humanity of Gentils,” in
Jacob Neusner (ed.), Religions in Antiquity: Essays in Memory of Erwin Ramsdell Goodenough Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1968) 315-326;
Alexander Altman, “Homo Imago Dei in Jewish and Christian Theology,” JR 48 (1968): 235-244; Alon Goshen Gottstein, “The Body
as Image of God in Rabbinic Literature,” HTR 87 (1994): 171-95.
243 Num. R. 12.3; Exod. R. 34.1; Cant. R. 2.1, §1.
244 The common domestic goat of Palestine and Syria was the usually black Capra hircus mambrica: ISBE 2:491-2 s.v. “Goat,” by
A.E. Day; ABD 2:1040-41 s.v. “Goat, Goatherd,” by Jack W. Vancil; Homan, To Your Tents, 182; Cant. 1:5; 5:11; 4:1; 6:5.
245 On the seven heavens in Jewish cosmology v. Adela J. Collins, “The Seven Heavens in Jewish and Christian Apocalypses,” in
Collins and Fishbane, Death, Ecstasy, and Other Worldly Journeys, 57-93.
246 Ezekiel 1-19 (Waco, TX: Word Books, 1986) 13.
247 See sources and discussion in Gary Anderson, Genesis of Perfection: Adam and Eve in Jewish and Christian Imagination
(Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001) 117-134; idem, “The Garments of Skin in Apocryphal Narrative and Biblical
Commentary,” in James L. Kugel (ed.), Studies in Ancient Midrash, (Cambridge: Harvard University Center for Jewish Studies, 2001)
110-125; Louis Ginzberg, The Legends of the Jews [7 vols; Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1911, 1939], 1:177, 332, 5:93;
Stephen D. Ricks, “The Garment of Adam in Jewish, Muslim, and Christian Tradition,” in Benjamin H. Hary, John L. Hayes and Fred
Astren (edd.), Judaism and Islam: Boundaries, Communications and Interactions (Leiden: Brill, 2000) 209; M.E. Vogelzang and W.J.
van Bekkum, “Meaning and Symbolism of Clothing in Ancinet Near Eastern Texts,” in Scripta signa vocis: studies about scripts.
Scriptures, scribes, and languages in the Near East, presented to J.H. Hospers by his pupils, colleagues, and friends (Groningen: E.
Forsten, 1986) 275. On the blue of the high priestly robe as „sapphiric‟ see e.g. Sifré to Numbers 115.2; b. Men. 43b; Num. R. 4.13,
17.5 and Ben Zion Bokser, “The Thread of Blue,” Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research 31 (1963): 12-13
[art.=1-31].
248 Fossum, “Adorable Adam,” 532.
249 He makes the point that, according to the theology of the Oral Torah, “God and man look exactly alike, being distinguished only by
actions performed by the one but not the other.” The Theology of the Oral Torah (Montreal and Kingston: McGill and Queen‟s
University Press, 1999) 364-65. This applies especially to Primordial Man. Neuser cites as a proof-text Gen. R. 7:10.1:
A. Said R. Hoshaya, “When the Holy One, blessed be He, came to create the first man, the ministering angels mistook
him [for God, since man was in God‟s image,] and wanted to say before Him, „Holy, [holy, holy is the Lord of
hosts].‟
B. “To what may the matter be compared? To the case of a king and a governor who were set in a chariot, and the
provincials wanted to greet the king, „Sovereign!‟ But they did not know which one of them was which. What did
the king do? He turned the governor out and put him away from the chariot, so that the people would know who was
king.
The clear point of this midrash is the corporeal identity between God and Adam. See also Jacob Neusner, Judaism When Christianity
Began: A Survey of Belief and Practice (Louisville and London: Westminster John Knox Press, 2002) 29-31.; idem, “Judaism,” in
God, ed. Jacob Neusner (Cleveland: The Pilgrim Press, 1997) 17-18; idem, The Incarnation of God: The Character of Divinity in
Formative Judaism (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1988) 14-15. See also David H. Aaron, “Imagery of the Divine and the Human: On
the Mythology of Genesis Rabba 8 § 1,” JJTP 5 (1995): 1-62. On rabbinic anthropomorphism generally v. also Wolfson, Through A
Speculum, Chapters One and Two.
250

5. Conclusion
If our reading of P and Philo is correct incarnation indeed had a place in Second Temple tradition as
argued by Barker and Flectcher-Louis. These two sources, P and Philo, seem to suggest the following
mytheme: The God of Israel with his fiery anthropomorphic form (kābôd) „incarnated‟ in Adam, his
terrestrial body made from the blackish substance ’adāmāh. This dark terrestrial body is called God‟s
„shadow,‟ which may suggest that it provided the rest of creation with some measure of relief from the
consuming effects of the kābôd. The latter‟s interaction with the black body (Adam) apparently produced a
„sapphiric‟-blue surrounding splendor symbolized by the blue high priestly robe. This „sapphiric‟ God of
Israel is thus in this regard not unlike the sapphiric gods of some of her neighbors.
While recognition and discussion of Yahweh‟s morphic luminosity is now quite common place, this
trope of the Blue Body Divine is, as far as this author is aware, unrecognized. Such imagery is antithetical
to a fundamental axiom of the monotheistic traditions according to which God is a god of light and
darkness participates none in his being. For sure, there is a hint of Gnostic dualism here, as argued by
Octavius A. Gaba, but the seeds of the negative valuation of darkness and its alienation from the Godhead
are found already in the Bible, particularly the New Testament (NT). 251 “God is light and in him there is no
darkness at all (I Jhn 1:5).” Yahweh‟s kābôd, Jesus as Logos, and Allah‟s Nūr (Light) all reinforce the
point: divinity is luminosity. 252 The recognition of this Second Temple Blue Body Divine trope forces us to
reevaluate this axiom, for the trope suggests that both light and darkness participate in the divine ontology.
This duality in the divine nature is continuous with ANE mythic tradition, reinforcing the point that the god
of Israel and the gods of the ANE differed less than has been supposed. Gershom Scholem therefore missed
the mark by suggesting that „pagan color symbolism‟ was nontransferable to the “unsensual” biblical and
Judaic God. 253
251 As demonstrated by Gaba as well: “Symbols of Revelation: The Darkness of the Hebrew Yahweh and the Light of the Greek
Logos,” in The Recovery of the Black Presence: An Interdisciplinary Exploration. Essays in Honor of Dr. Charles B. Copher, eds.
Randal C. Bailey and Jacquelyn Grant (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1995) 143-158.
252 On the luminous kābôd v. TDOT), 7:23-38, esp. 27-31 s.v. “דובכ,” by Weinfeld. On the Logos of John‟s Prologue see TDNT;
9:349-53 s.v. “φως IV. John‟s Gospel and Epistles” by Hans Conzelman; Gaba, “Symbols of Revelation,” 155-157. On Nūr Allah v.
Qur‟ān Surah 24:35; Encyclopedia of Islam, New Edition (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1986-) 8:122-23 s.v. “Nūr,” by Tj. De Boer.
253 Scholem, “Colours and their Symbolism,” 87-88.