ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the early Jewish understanding of the divine Face as a crucial conduit of the embodied divine knowledge and presence. It demonstrates that the earliest Jewish apocalyptic accounts portray the divine Face’s theophany not only as the apex of the visionary experience but also as an embodiment of divine knowledge and presence. In later Hekhalot materials the divine Face continued to play a similar role and is understood as the “center of the divine event” and the teleological objective for the ascension of the yorde merkavah. Beholding the divine Face in these traditions was considered the pivotal heavenly or eschatological way of acquiring divine knowledge, because, according to Jewish lore, angels are sustained through their vision of the divine Countenance. Early and late Jewish traditions imagine the divine Face, similar to the divine image, as the hypostasis of divine knowledge. In many early pseudepigraphical accounts, speculations about the divine Face are unfolded in the midst of the exemplars’ inaugurations into their roles as the imago Dei. The chapter offers an in-depth exploration of Adam’s, Enoch’s, Jacob’s, and Moses’ roles as the embodiments of divine knowledge in the form of the divine Face.
