The Shadow of God - Dr. Wesley Muhammad

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