Sapphiric God: - Dr. Wesley Muhammad

Draped in his blue robe, the high priest’s likeness is like that of taršîš. “His body is like taršîš” would thus
mean that the demiurge’s body is a dark blue body.
Some midrashic passages understand taršîš in Dan 10:6 as a reference to a long sea and therefore as an
indication of the great size of the angels. 83 This certainly works well with the gigantism of Shi#ur Qomah,
but most commentators, rightly it seems to me, assume that the stone is in view here. 84 Naomi Janowitz
insightfully observed that the Divine Body of Shi#ur Qomah seems to be “made of the mysterious element
‘tarshish’.” 85 This mysterious element is undoubtedly that ‘mysterious substance that robes the Eternal
himself,’ i.e. sapphire. Morray-Jones has tried to demonstrate the existence of a possibly second-third
century CE Heikhalot tradition connected with the enigmatic “Water Episode” found in several Heikhalot
and rabbinic sources in which the stone taršîš-sapphire was understood to be “solid air” with the look of
turbulent water. 86 The substance of this “solidified transparent air” is the stuff from which the heavenly
(Torah) tablets, the celestial pavement (firmament), the Throne of Glory, the bodies of angels and, most
importantly, the Body Divine is made. 87 This “stuff of heaven,” Morray-Jones argues, is known scripturally
under different designations: ריפס, שישרת and למשח. 88 Whether or not Morray-Jones is correct, Shi#ur
Qomah’s taršîš-bodied demiurge and the Apoc. Abr.’s sapphire-bodied Yahoel clearly derive from the
same or similar traditions of speculation on the body divine and may have some roots as far back as
Mesopotamia; 89 in which case we would be back at the ANE tradition of the divine sapphiric body.
3.1. Aquatic Bodies
Shi#ur Qomah’s dark blue demiurgic anthropos seems indeed to be rooted in the ANE myth of the
sapphiric-bodied deity, and I suspect that the use of the term taršîš instead of the traditional sapphire makes
Liturgy: A Comprehensive History, trns. Raymond P. Scheindlin (1913; Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society and New York:
Jewish theological Seminary of America, 1993): 219-271.
83
b. Hull.91b; Gen R. 68:12. See also M. Mishor, “Taršîš,” Leshonenu 34 (1969): 318-319 [Hebrew].
84
van der Horst, “Measurement of the Body,” 66; Cohen, Shi‘ur Qomah: Liturgy and Theurgy 209; Rowland, Open Heaven, 466 n.
62; Janowitz, “God’s Body,” 189, 197 n. 31; Christopher Morray-Jones, A Transparent Illusion: The Dangerous Vision of Water in
Hekhalot Mysticism. A Source-Critical and Tradition-Historical Inquiry (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 211.
85
Janowitz, “God’s Body,” 189.
86
Transparent Illusion, passim, but esp. 96, 109, 192-214. On the Water Episode in general, see ibid., passim.; Deutsch, Guardians of
the Gate, 109-123; idem, “Dangerous Ascents: Rabbi Akiba’s Water Warning and Late Antique Cosmological Traditions,” JJTP 8
(1998): 1-12; R. Reichman, “Die ‘Wasser-Episode’ in der Hekhalot-Literature,” Frankfurter Judaistische Beiträge 16 (1989): 67-100
and the sources discussed there.
87
Transparent Illusion, 90, 89-100, 201,205-214.
88
Morray-Jones, Transparent Illusion, 199-214.
89
On the possibility of Shi#ur Qomah being influenced by Mesopotanian and Egyptian mythology see Arbel, Beholders of Divine
Secrets, 122-138; idem, “Junction of Traditions in Edessa: Possible Interaction Between Mesopotamian Mythological and Jewish
Mystical Traditions in the First Centuries CE,” ARAM 11-12 (1999-2000): 335-356; Jackson, “Origins.”
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