Jacob’s Dream: The Body and Its Image in Late Antique Jewish and Christian Narrative Spaces

Abstract:This article explores the theme of Jacob’s dream in Genesis 28:10–22 as interpreted in late antique Jewish literature. The way Jewish texts imagine the relationship between Jacob’s sleeping body and his image on God’s throne as seen in the dream is structurally similar to the description of several scenarios of relic veneration in contemporaneous Christian accounts. In particular, the veneration of the imagined body of Saint Demetrius in the city of Thessaloniki, portrayed in some visions as resting on a couch inside a shrine, offers intriguing parallels to how Jacob’s dream comes to be conceptualized in Jewish literature. Pilgrim ampullae depicting the crucifixion scene and tokens featuring the bust portraits of Saint Symeon Stylites the Elder (d. 459) and the Younger (d. 592) on top of a column may offer another, this time material, intertext to the interpretation of Jacob’s dream. Central to these scenarios is a common formula, a scripted situation that organizes the scenario’s space as a system of relationships. Such formulas, the article argues, offered a range of possibilities independently explored by literatures and visual arts of the time.