1. Rabbinic texts depict a polymorphous God: for example, appearing to Israel as a “warrior doing battle” at the Red Sea and an “old man full of mercy” at Sinai (Mekhilta deRabbi Ishmael Shirata, 4); as an “old teacher” to Daniel and a “youthful lover” in the time of Solomon (Pesiqta de-Rav Kahana 12:24); as a “bridegroom entering his chamber” at the Tabernacle (Pesiqta Rabbati 33). See Wolfson, Through a Speculum, 33–41; Sommer, The Bodies of God and the World of Ancient Israel, 126–29. Wolfson maintains that the “polymorphous nature of the divine expressed in the aggadic . . . sources . . . may properly speaking be referred to as a docetic orientation, since the forms by which God is perceived, the theophonic images, are mental constructs or phantasma.” Wolfson, Through a Speculum, 36. Yair Lorberbaum, however, is unconvinced by Wolfson’s docetic reading. Lorberbaum, Tselem Elohim, 64–67. On seeing God in rabbinic literature more generally, also see Michael A. Fishbane, “Some Forms of Divine Appearance in Ancient Jewish Thought,” in From Ancient Israel to Modern Judaism: Intellect in Quest of Understanding, Essays in Honor of Marvin Fox, ed. Jacob Neusner, Ernst S. Frerichs, and Nahum M. Sarna (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1989), 261–70; Green, “The Children in Egypt and the Theophany at the Sea,” 446–56; Moshe Halbertal, Concealment and Revelation: Esotericism in Jewish Thought and Its Philosophical Implications (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2007), 13–17; Arthur Marmorstein, The Old Rabbinic Doctrine of God (Farnborough: Gregg, 1969), 94–106; Rachel Neis, The Sense of Sight in Rabbinic Culture: Jewish Ways of Seeing in Late Antiquity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 41–81.
2. Rabbinic texts refer to the shekhinah’s effulgence (ziv hashekhinah), a motif that closely resembles the biblical notion of the kabod’s blazing splendor (Wolfson, Speculum, 43–4); see, to name a few texts at random, Shemot Rabbah 3:2, Pesiqta Rabbati 21:4; cf. Bereshit Rabbah 3:4, Tanh. uma Buber Beha‘alotka 7 (See further Urbach, Sages, 44–7); many rabbinic texts simply equate the shekhinah with God (Scholem, Mystical Shape,147–8; Goldberg, Untersuchungen, 457–8); just as priestly texts identify God and the kabod. Some of these texts, precisely echoing P’s portrayal of the kabod, claim that the shekhinah dwelt on earth between the cherubs in the tabernacle and then the temple (e.g., Sifre Naso 58, Shir Hashirim Zuta 1:13, Pesiqta Rabbati 5:7, Tanh. uma Wayaqhel 7) ( See, e.g., the texts discussed in Urbach, Sages, 52–5, 57, and Heschel, Torah min Hashamayim, 1:54–64 = Heschel, Heavenly Torah, 94–103). The midrash in Tanh. uma (Buber) Naso 6, ed. Buber 16a (concerning which see the helpful remarks in Lorberbaum, Image, 437–8) presents a variant of this second notion: that God is in all places but the shekhinah is forced to leave a place where adulterers commit their sin. This notion is closer to panentheism, which is not at all the same as the idea of multiplicity of embodiment I have described; on the difference, see my remarks on p. 141 of this chapter. For another passage presenting something resembling panentheism, see further the teaching attributed variously to Rabban Gamaliel (in Mandelbaum, Pesikta de Rav Kahana, 1:4, and cf. his teaching in b. Sanhedrin 39a), and to Yehoshua ben Qorh. a (in Shir Hashirim Rabbah 3:21 ad Song 3.9). On the other hand, these texts may only intend to state that the shekhinah could manifest itself anywhere, not that it actually is in all places at all times.

The recurrence of the fluidity model in Judaism of the first millennium c.e. is even more pronounced in the mysticism of that period. We saw in Chapter 2 that some biblical passages display a notion of an “angel” or malakh who is a part of God but does not encompass all of God. These angels may have acted separately from Yhwh, but they also overlapped with God and could even be referred to as Yhwh. The idea of an angel whose self to some degree overlaps with Yhwh but did not exhaust Yhwh’s self is picked up in mystical texts of the rabbinic era – that is, in merkavah (chariot) mysticism, in heikhalot (palace) mysticism, and in the texts known as Shiur Qomah (measuring the height or the body [of God]). This biblical idea of the angel becomes evident in the figure variously called the “angel of the Presence” (malakh hapanim), the “prince of the Presence” (sar hapanim), Yahoel, and Metatron. Some texts identified this figure as a “little Yhwh,” a designation that attests at once to the figure’s overlap with God and the fact that this figure does not incorporate important aspects of God.