Rafael Neis, "Seeing sages” Chapter 6

The Marginalia Review of Books, 2014

The Sense of Sight in Rabbinic Culture: Jewish Ways of Seeing in Late Antiquity, 2013

This chapter investigates Palestinian and Babylonian "visual eros" by considering the gendering of vision in the realm of desire. Tracing through different themes ranging from: "genitalia and the gender of the gaze," to "visual asceticism," and then to "beautiful men," the chapter situates rabbinic desire across Palestine and Babylonia and in conversation with Greco-Roman and Christian trends. Just as visions of God triggered anxieties about sexuality and idolatry, so too did the rabbis construct a visual opposition, in certain circumstances, between the erotic and the sacred in the field of vision. Even if looking at the divine was dangerous, it was laudatory in ways that looking at sexually arousing entities was not. Yet, it quickly becomes apparent that the rabbis thought in highly gendered terms about seeing sexually. Rabbinic ideas about visual erotics, particularly in the context of prohibition and visual asceticism, seem at first glance to rest on a basic binary: a gendered distribution of visual labor, with a masculine, penetrative gaze and a feminine visual object. Yet, the concerns triggered by the sexual gaze and the possible solution of male visual asceticism themselves had curious consequences. Withdrawing from the world of visual eros turned unseeing rabbis into visual objects desired by women, by other rabbis, and by gentile men and women. This effectively troubled a simple binary division of visual and erotic labor. Amidst these sexual dramas, we see that just as the visualization of God was shaped by the politics of a post-temple world and life under the Roman Christian imperium, so too did their cultural and political circumstances impact the rabbis’ sense of their own visible desirability.

The Sense of Sight in Rabbinic Culture: Jewish Ways of Seeing in Late Antiquity, 2013

The present chapter traces how the rabbis in the tractate of Hagigah developed the biblical commands concerning cultic pilgrimage into laws for a bygone Jerusalem temple pilgrimage to see and be seen by God. Our investigation points to how the desire for, and loss of, the sight of God’s face punctuates and centers the Babylonian Talmud tractate of Hagigah. The biblical commandment to "see the face of God three times a year" allowed the rabbis to conjure forms and narratives of pilgrimage in an age of Greek and Roman "visual piety" but without the Jerusalem temple. The chapter shows how in varying ways earlier and later rabbis construct a pilgrimage of reciprocal vision (in which pilgrim and god mutually behold and are beheld), particularly in the Babylonian Talmud which emphasizes "homovisuality."

Current Approaches to Religion in Ancient Greece. Papers Presented at a Symposium at the Swedish Institute of Athens, 17-19 April 2008. Edited by Matthew Haysom and Jenny Wallensten. Stockholm, 2011

A fruitful, but insufficiently explored, domain of Greek religious practice has to do with vision in the nexus of religious experiences. Drawing on recent studies on the theory and anthropology of vision and visual culture, this paper is based on the premise that vision is a culturally conditioned category of human behavior. The exploration of the cognitive and psychological dimensions of active vision and its objects involves the consideration of the multiple ways of seeing and being seen. The Homeric corpus, for example, points to the complexity of phenomena of vision in a period of intensive contacts and dialogues with the cultures of the Near East. Moreover, the importance of material culture in this inquiry can not be emphasized enough. It is of primary importance to ask how material objects were meant to be seen, by whom, under what circumstances, and to what ends.

Scottish Journal of Theology, 2007

There are several ways whereby medieval theories of vision may have contributed to the rise of practices some saw as idolatrous. A feature of much medieval art is the rise of naturalistic representation. This process was facilitated by the use of linear perspective, based ultimately on Euclid's visual cone. We are told its application led viewers to confuse a representation with its object. The theory of extramission influenced medieval piety profoundly. First, by suggesting that the eye emits a ray and 'touches' its object, it led worshippers to believe that seeing the Eucharistic host had a salvific effect. This may have led them to think that seeing images of saints or God had a similar effect. Second, by implying that the subject was active in the process of seeing, it underpinned Augustine's theory of vision, whereby one trained the eye to access the invisible through the visible. However, as he was aware, the untrained eye could linger on physical objects and want to possess them. Finally, there was much debate about how visual information was mediated. Some argued that it was transmitted by intermediate bodies. The parallels between their language and that used by iconophobes to describe the images they rejected are striking and merit further investigation. Others argued that the viewer had direct access to the object. This understanding, when combined with the idea that seeing equates to knowing, may have led worshippers to believe that seeing an image of God meant they might in some sense know him.

The first inter-disciplinary and crossdisciplinary work of its kind, this book focuses on the importance of visual culture in the study of classical, Roman, and Christian Antiquity. It explores the role of the visual in helping to create a vision of the gods and how commitment to the visibility of the divine affected ancient religious practices, rituals, and beliefs. The essays deploy a wide range of disciplines that include archaeology, iconology, cultural studies, visual anthropology, the study of ancient rhetoric, and the cognitive sciences to consider the visual aspects of ancient religion from a variety of angles. The contributors take up the role of the visual in multiple contexts including domestic art, the imperial cult, martyrology, ritual practice, and temples. This book, which includes essays by classicists, Roman historians, archaeologists, biblical scholars, and scholars of ancient Christian iconography, promises to advance the discussion of the importance and role of visual culture in shaping the religions of Antiquity in significant new ways. This book encompasses three sections and a total of twelve chapters, preceded by an introduction and closed by an index.

2005