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The Body and Voice of God in the Hebrew Bible |
29www.jrfm.eu
2016, 2/1, 23â33
widespread Jewish convention, persisting for hundreds of years, might be confirmed
by the Beth Alpha synagogue mosaics (cf. fig. 2), located near Beit Shean in northern
Israel, which date to the sixth century CE.23 The existence of these Jewish pictorial im-
ages from disparate times and settings may dispel too narrow an interpretation of his-
torical prohibition of visual images of God, for it appears that there has existed some
scope within Judaism to depict divine action pictorially and anthropomorphically.
As Jewish tradition developed through the centuries and into the medieval period,
influential sages like Maimonides (1135â1204) would re-emphasize a notion so clearly
indicated in the interpretation of the Targumim: any suggestion of Godâs body or hu-
man appearance is to be regarded as purely allegorical. The third of Maimonidesâ Thir-
teen Principles, a distillation of essential Jewish beliefs as drawn from Torah, stresses
Jewish belief in Godâs non-corporeality and that God is unaffected by any physical
occurrences, including movement, rest, or dwelling.24
Alongside this discomfort with divine corporeality, pronounced emphasis on the
voice of God and its authority remains central in this later period. The voice of God is
already powerfully present in the Hebrew Bible. Its accentuated prominence in the
Targumim is indicated by the common substitution of âthe Lordâ or âYHWHâ with
mÄmrÄ, âthe (divine) wordâ. In the rabbinical writings of the Tosefta, Mishnah, and
23 Again the hand of God appears here in a visual representation of the attempted sacrifice of Isaac. The
manus dei (âhand of Godâ) or dextera domini (âright hand of Godâ) was also a prominent motif in pre-
Renaissance Christian visual art.
24 For a full discussion of the Thirteen Principles and the complex history of their interpretation, see Sha-
piro 2004.
Fig. 2: Bet Alpha Synagogue â the hand of God prevents Abraham from sacrificing Isaac.
Stähli 1988, 63.
JRFM
Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 02/01
- Title
- JRFM
- Subtitle
- Journal Religion Film Media
- Volume
- 02/01
- Authors
- Christian Wessely
- Daria Pezzoli-Olgiati
- Editor
- Uni-Graz
- Publisher
- SchĂźren Verlag GmbH
- Location
- Graz
- Date
- 2016
- Language
- English
- License
- CC BY-NC 4.0
- Size
- 14.8 x 21.0 cm
- Pages
- 132
- Categories
- Zeitschriften JRFM