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| Jerusalem (Photo credit: ecstaticist) |
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| English: Isometric view of the Bloc L7 in Dura Europos with the Synagogue. After Kraeling 1956. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
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| English: page of book (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
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| Français : Cour, portique ouest et grande salle de la synagogue de Doura Europos. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
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| Ezekiels (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
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| Fresco at the Dura-Europos synagogue, illustrating a scene from the Book of Esther, 244 CE. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
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| Creation of the Sun and Moon by Michelangelo, face detail of God. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
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| Divine Countenance (Photo credit: Matt Brock ☀) |
In pagan religions, the
face of God might be viewed in a literal sense - the face of an idol in a temple.[1] In prayers and blessings, the concept was
more metaphorical,
indicating the favourable attention
of the deity. For example, in the Babylonian
blessing:[2]
"May Ea rejoice over thee!
May Damkina, the queen of the
deep, lighten thee with her countenance!
In the Book of Exodus 33:20 God
says "Thou canst not see my face: for there shall no man see Me and
live", echoed in the Christian New Testament in the Gospel of John 1:18:
"No man hath seen God at any time".
In Judeo-Christianity,
the concept is the manifestation of God rather than a remote immanence or delegation of an
angel, even though a mortal
would not be able to gaze directly upon him.[3] In Jewish mysticism, it
is traditionally believed that even the angels who attend him cannot endure
seeing the divine countenance directly.[4] Where there are references to
visionary encounters, these are thought to be either products of the human imagination, as in dreams or, alternatively, a sight
of the divine glory
which surrounds God, not the godhead itself.[5]
An important early
use of the concept in the Old
Testament is the blessing
passed by Moses to the children of Israel in Numbers
6:24–26[6]
"The LORD bless
thee, and keep thee:
The LORD make
his face shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee:
The LORD lift
up his countenance upon thee, and give thee peace."[7]
The name of the city
of Peniel literally means the
"face of God" in Hebrew.
The place was named by Jacob
after his wrestling
match there which is recounted in Genesis.
His opponent seemed
divine and so Jacob claimed to have looked upon the face of God.[8]
Islam considers Allah
to be beyond ordinary vision as the Qu'ran
states that "Sights cannot attain him; he can attain sights",[9] but other verses indicate that he
would be visible in the hereafter.[10] The Qu'ran
makes many references to the face of God but its use of the Arabic word for a
physical face — wajh — is symbolic and
is used in the tradition of Judeo-Christianity to refer to God's presence
which, in Islam, is everywhere: "wherever you turn, there is the face of
God".[11]
God is visible but
not with physical eyes but with inner eyes which the Quran states
006.104 YUSUFALI
begin_of_the_skype_highlighting
006.104
YUSUFALI FREE end_of_the_skype_highlighting: "Now have
come to you, from your Lord, proofs (to open your eyes hidden eyes): if any
will see, it will be for (the good of) his own soul; if any will be blind, it
will be to his own (harm): I am not (here) to watch over your doings."
God was represented
by the Hand of God,
in fact including the forearm but no more of the body, at several places in the
3rd century Dura-Europos
synagogue, presumably reflecting the usual practice in ancient Jewish art,
almost all of which is now lost. The Hand convention was continued in Christian
art, which also used full body depictions of the God the Son with the
appearance of Jesus for Old
Testament scenes, in particular the story of Adam and Eve, where God
needed to be represented.[12] The biblical statements from
Exodus and John quoted above were taken to apply not only to God the Father in
person, but to all attempts at the depiction of his face.[13] The development of full images of God the
Father in Western art was much later, and the aged white-haired appearance
of the Ancient of Days
gradually became the conventional representation, after a period of
experimentation, especially in images the Trinity,
where all three persons might be shown with the appearance of Jesus. In Eastern Orthodoxy the
depiction of God the Father remains unusual, and has been forbidden at various
church councils; many early Protestants did the same, and in the Counter Reformation
the Catholic Church
discouraged the earlier variety of depictions but explicitly supported the
Ancient of Days.
The description of
the Ancient of Days, identified with God by most commentators,[14] in the Book of Daniel is the
nearest approach to a physical description of God in the Hebrew Bible:[15]
.
...the Ancient of Days did sit, whose garment was white as snow, and the hair
of his head like the pure wool: his throne was like the fiery flame, and his
wheels as burning fire. (Daniel
7:9)
The
"countenance divine" appears in the lines of the famous poem, And did those feet in ancient time, by William Blake which first
appeared in the preface to his epic Milton
a Poem. Blake thought highly of Milton's work saying,
"I have the happiness of seeing the Divine countenance in ... Milton more
distinctly than in any prince or hero."[16]
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