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Shedding Light on God's Body in Rabbinic Midrashim: Reflections on the Theory of a Luminous Adam

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 June 2011

David H. Aaron
David H. Aaron
Affiliation:
Wellesley College
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Extract

Paul Veyne wrote a book entitled, Did the Greeks Believe their Myths? Regarding rabbinic Judaism, one might similarly ask: Did the rabbis believe their imagery? Rabbinic literature is so replete with fanciful images of God and humans and anecdotes of epiphanies involving both, that one naturally wonders whether the midrashic authors believed that their imagery reflected some actual moment in the world's history. Some scholars have chosen to view the literature as containing parables and images that were composed as mere metaphors, sometimes used for political purposes, and other times to spawn further associations and religious teachings. The question is, can one differentiate true statements about happenings in the material world from symbolic statements whose relationship to that material world is more vague? The tension is especially acute when one considers cosmogony, the story of human origins, and other moments in primoridal history. Yet it is no less present in those simple midrashic “biblical scenes” that are not actually part of the Tanakh, but which the sages readily ascribe to the text. Does a given rabbinic image convey literal beliefs about material happenings or metaphorical metaphysics?

Type
Research Article
Information
Harvard Theological Review , Volume 90 , Issue 3 , July 1997 , pp. 299 - 314
Copyright
Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1997

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References

1 Veyne, Paul, Did the Greeks Believe their Myths: An Essay on the Constitutive Imagination (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988).Google Scholar

2 On the concept of history in rabbinic literature, see Yerushalmi, Yosef Hayim, Zakhor: Jewish History and Jewish Memory (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1982).Google Scholar For a different approach, including a critique of Yerushalmi, see Neusner, Jacob, The Presence of the Past, and the Pastness of the Present (Bethesda, MD: CDL Press, 1996).Google Scholar Also on the notion of midrash as a form of historiography, see Heinemann's, IsaakDarkhei ha-Agadah (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1974) 4ff.Google Scholar [Hebrew]; see Boyarin, Daniel (lntertextuality and the Reading of Midrash [Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 1990] viii–xii)Google Scholar for a critique of Heinemann.

3 By this question I do not mean to imply that for the literature as a whole, it is an either/ or proposition. Surely the literature could contain both literal statements and metaphorical statements; the question is simply, how does one know which is which? I have, moreover, presented the question in only its most basic terms.

4 Gottstein, Alon Goshen, “The Body as Image of God in Rabbinic Literature,” HTR 87 (1994) 171–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 Ibid. For other recent discussions of this issue, see Neusner, Jacob, The Incarnation of God: The Character of Divinity in Formative Judaism (South Florida Studies in the History of Judaism 63; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1992)Google Scholar; Stern, David, “Imitatio Hominis: Anthropomorphism and the Character(s) of God in Rabbinic Literature,” Prooftexts 12 (1992) 151–74Google Scholar; Boyarin, Daniel, Carnal Israel: Reading Sex in the Talmudic Culture (Berkeley: University of California, 1993)Google Scholar; Wolfson, Elliot, Through the Speculum that Shines (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994)Google Scholar especially chapters 1–2; idem, “Iconic Visualization and the Imaginal Body of God: The Role of Intention in the Rabbinic Concept of Prayer,” Modern Theology 12:2 (1996) 137–62Google Scholar; Aaron, David H., “Imagery of the Divine and the Human: On the Mythology of Genesis Rabba 8 § 1,” The Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy 5 (1995) 1–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6 Gottstein, “Body as Image of God,” 188 (my emphasis).

7 The “logic of the literature as a whole” goes well beyond a description of rabbinic theology—itself, a daunting endeavor. Very few authors have explored the theme systematically. Kadushin's, MaxOrganic Thinking (New York: Bloch, 1976)Google Scholar and The Rabbinic Mind (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1952)Google Scholar are among the most noteworthy early forays into this kind of approach to the literature. A more extensive consideration of the logic of the literature as a whole, using Chomskian linguistics as a metaphor for understanding the way statements attain meaning in rabbinic literature, is now being prepared by Jacob Neusner in The Theological Grammar of the Oral Torah (Binghamton: SUNY Press, forthcoming), passages of which the author has shared with me. While some of Neusner's most recent work has begun to explore broad patterns that might serve as the foundations for a more comprehensive “logic” in rabbinic literature, Gottstein does not cite Neusner's work. Also of relevance by Neusner, are his Judaism's Theological Voice (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995)Google Scholar and Symbol and Theology in Early Judaism (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1991)Google Scholar, both of which deal with broad structures that permeate rabbinic thought, making it clear that subject matter and logical structure are not one and the same. For a completely different approach, see Boyarin, Intertextuality and Carnal Israel. On the problem of indeterminacy in midrash, see also Stern, David, “Midrash and Indeterminacy,” Critical Inquiry 15 (1988) 132–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8 Gottstein, “Body as Image of God,” 188.

9 I deal with this issue at length in my forthcoming book, Biblical Ambiguities, but from a different angle. There I'm concerned with the problem of how scholars harmonize discrete passages that are in “logical conflict” by ascribing figurative meaning to otherwise literal statements.

10 Gottstein, “Body as Image,” 188 (my emphasis).

11 Midrash Rabbah: Leviticus (3d ed.; London: Soncino, 1983)Google Scholar; the translators are Jacob Israelstam (chapters 1–19) and Judah J. Slotki (chapters 20–37).

12 Margulies, Mordecai, Midrash Wayyikra Rabbah (2 vols.; New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1993).Google Scholar

13 While Gottstein did not change any words of the Israelstam rendition, he did alter punctuation. I reproduce here exactly what appears in Gottstein's article.

14 A11 midrashic passages are my own translations, unless otherwise noted.

15 Gottstein does not treat either of these philological conundrums.

16 Jastrow, Marcus, A Dictionary of the Targumim, the Talmud Babli and Yerushalmi, and the Midrashic Literature (New York: Judaica, 1989) 1379.Google Scholar

17 LSJ, s.v. “κρύσταλλος,” 1000b. I am unable to find a usage among the most common Greek sources of the third and fourth centuries that might connote an actual shining.

18 Jastrow, Dictionary of the Targumim, 303; The word appears in LSJ, 437a, as a diminutive form of δίσκος.

19 These are some of the occurrences in major midrashim: Qoh. R. 8.2; Tanḥuma. Aḥarey Mot 2 (Warsaw); Tanḥuma (Buber ed.). Aḥarey Mot 3 and Ḥuqot 17; Midrash Mishle 31; Pesiqta Rabbati 14.8; Pesiqta d'Rav Kahana 4.13, 12.2 and 26.8.

20 Qohelet Rabbah or (as earlier printings called it) Midrash Qohelet, is usually dated after Leviticus Rabbah. See Wachten, Johannes, Midrasch-Analyse: Strukturen im Midrasch Qohelet Rabba (Hildesheim: Olms, 1978).Google Scholar The logic of this particular reading is in many ways the most compelling of the versions. Apparently, this editor took it upon himself to improve those aspects of the parable and its resolution that seemed poorly done in earlier versions.

21 Ezek 28:12.

22 The reference is clearly to Gen 2:19–20.

23 Visotzky, Burton L., The Midrash on Proverbs (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992) 123.Google Scholar

24 Gottstein, “Body as Image,” 179; my emphasis.

25 This brackets for a moment the independent question of how one can know that rabbinic Judaism believed God's body to be “light.” It is, however, a serious problem.

26 In footnote 28, Gottstein notes that Adam's luminosity is not one of the themes “established” in Genesis Rabbah with regard to Gen 1:26, although he does cite as evidence of the notion Gen. R. 12.6, where appears the phrase (“the six things which were taken from the first man, and they are his splendor [or radiance], immortality, his stature, the fruit of the earth, the fruit of the tree and the lights”). The proof text regarding the abrogation of his ziv (“light,” “radiance”), is Job 14:20, (JPS translation: “You alter his visage and dispatch him”).

27 Gottstein, “Body as Image,” 179 n. 26.

28 Ibid., 180; my emphasis.

29 See the opening section of his article (ibid., 171–73).

30 Gottstein, “Body as Image,” 188–89.

31 David Stern (“Imitatio Hominis”) has argued that this question is less important than are the character portrayals of the divine personality typologies, so to speak. I do not see the two issues as mutually exclusive.

32 Pseudo-Clement Homily 17.7, in Roberts, Alexander and Donaldson, James, eds., Ante-Nicene Fathers (10 vols.; 1885Google Scholar; reprinted Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1950–51) 8. 319–20. I am reproducing the version as it appears in Gottstein, who has drawn the paragraph from Shlomo Pines, “Points of Similarity Between the Exposition of the Doctrine of the Sefirot in the Sefer Yezira and a Text of the Pseudo-Clementine Homilies: The Implications of this Resemblance,” Proceedings of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities 7 (1989) 64.Google Scholar The elipsis in Gottstein reads as follows in the 1951 edition: “Nor has He ears that He may hear; for He hears, perceives, moves, energizes, acts on every side.” The main thrust of the homily is to convince the audience that even though God is incorporeal, He can have an impact on the physical world.

33 See Quasten, Johannes, Patrology (3 vols.; Westminster, MD: Christian Classics, 1990) 1. 62.Google Scholar

34 The order of the ideas is not terribly significant. I have used the Qohelet Rabbah text as the base and simply indicated the parallels in the Homily, altering the order in which the items appear for the sake of this comparison. See n. 35 on the issue of order in a “haggadic matrix.”

35 Ezek 28:12.

36 I explored this issue in my article, “Imagery of the Divine and the Human.” Typically, the common midrashic form called petihta involves a cluster of discrete midrashic units strung together. Sometimes these discrete units appear in various midrashic anthologies; but at other times the discrete units appear to travel from one corpus to another clustered together with other parts of the petihta. I call such an occurrence a “haggadic matrix.” When considering the mythology behind Gen. R. 8.1, it was possible to show that the haggadic cluster offered by the darshan (“expositor”) actually surfaced in earlier texts, some nonrabbinic Jewish texts and other non-Jewish sources as well. When either of these instances is the case, we are no longer witnessing a mere “rabbinic parallel.” There is nothing radical in the claim that midrashic framers borrowed from prerabbinic and nonrabbinic sources. What no one had fully explored previously, however, was that these borrowings often involved clusters of thematic material rather than just specific literary allusions. Since these clusters were actually found in sources whose ideological underpinnings were at odds with rabbinic thought, they may provide significant insights into the formation of midrashic compositions. I am now preparing more materials on this theme and hope to publish them in the near future. I chose the term “matrix” (the core substance within which or from which other things originate or develop) rather than just “cluster”, for two reasons. First, the grouping of themes or discrete literary units was not always identical in every detail (some had fewer, or additions); second, the order of the units could be different, even if the components were all paralleled. Since the core of the cluster would be intact, however, it could be seen as part of a broader mythology.

37 This is not to say that the rabbis did not bifurcate the body and the soul; but the point is that their bifurcation did not function in the same manner as in Greek philosophy, at least as far as the midrashim cited here are concerned. See Boyarin, Carnal Israel, 31–60.

38 Gottstein, “Body as Image of God,” 195; my emphasis.

39 On this issue see Altmann, Alexander, “The Gnostic Background of the Rabbinic Adam Legends” JQR 35 (1944/1945) 371–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem, “A Note on the Rabbinic Doctrine of Creation,” JJS 7 (1956) 195–206CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Schäfer, Peter“Berešit Baraʾ ʾElohim: zur Interpretation von Genesis 1,1 in der rabbinischen Literatur,” JSJ 2 (1971) 161–66Google Scholar; and idem, The Hidden and Manifest God: Some Major Themes in Early Jewish Mysticism (Albany: SUNY Press, 1992) 19Google Scholar, 73, 114. With regard to incorporeal human beings, I have in mind the concept of Enoch as Meṭaṭron and other images of human beings becoming celestial in nature upon ascension, as depicted in the pseudepigraphic literatures.

40 Schäfer, Peter, Synopse zur Hekhalot Literatur (Tübingen: Mohr/Siebeck, 1981) § 160.Google Scholar

41 Wolfson, Through the Speculum that Shines, 86–87.