Document Type
Contribution to Book
Publication Date
2021
Publisher
Brill
Source Publication
Apocryphal and Esoteric Sources in the Development of Christianity and Judaism: The Eastern Mediterranean, the Near East, and Beyond
Source ISSN
9789004445925
Abstract
From a Jewish text, known to us as 2 Enoch,we learn interesting details about Adam’s creation. Both recensions of 2 Enoch 44 tell us “the Lord with his own two hands created humankind; in a likeness of his own face (в подобии лица своего), both small and great, the Lord created [them].” It is intriguing that 2 Enoch departs here from the traditional reading attested in Genesis 1:26–27, where Adam was created, not in a likeness of God’s face, but after His image (tselem). In view of this departure, the author of one of the English translations of 2 Enoch, Francis Andersen, observes that “2 Enoch’s idea is remarkable from any point of view … This is not the original meaning of tselem… The text uses podobie lica (in the likeness of the face), not obrazu or videnije, the usual terms for ‘image.’”
To clarify a possible background of such a conceptual paradigm shift in 2 Enoch we need to direct our attention to the Ladder of Jacob, another Jewish text preserved in Slavonic.
Recommended Citation
Orlov, Andrei, "Face as the Image of God in the Jewish Pseudepigrapha" (2021). Theology Faculty Research and Publications. 921.
https://epublications.marquette.edu/theo_fac/921
ADA Accessible Version
Comments
Accepted version. "Face as the Image of God in the Jewish Pseudepigrapha," in Apocryphal and Esoteric Sources in the Development of Christianity and Judaism: The Eastern Mediterranean, the Near East, and Beyond, Edited by Igor Dorfmann-Lazarev. Leiden : Brill, 2021: 206-218. Publisher link. © 2021 Brill. Used with permission.