Jacob's Dream Research Articles

Jacob's dream: Useful for, and enlightened by, current dream research

The biblical narration of Jacob’s dream is analyzed in the light of current significant issues of dream research, specifically: the usefulness of historical data for the study of dreaming; the continuity theory; the phenomenological relationship between the dream experience and its sources; the relationship between music and dreaming; the latent role of archetypes in the construction of dreams; the significance of dreams for the cognitive study of religions; and the multiple levels of analysis of historically important dreams. Dream-evocative features in the biblical narration are also described, which are given by word-root recurrences and by the use of a “hapax legomenon” to indicate Jacob’s vision. This analysis based on current dream research provides insights into Jacob’s dream. In addition, Jacob’s dream in itself is useful for dream research, because it highlights basic universal aspects of the dreaming experience.

Biblical Theology

Biblical Theology Fred W. Guyette, Christopher T. Begg, Thomas Hieke, Brent A. Strawn, and Atilla Bodor 875. [God Acting in History; Sinai] Craig G. Bartholomew, The God Who Acts in History: The Significance of Sinai (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2020). Pp. xxii + 265. $45. ISBN 978-0-8028-7467-2. In the Bible and in our liturgies we encounter claims that God is Creator and Ruler of the universe, and that God has acted in certain historical events in a decisive way. God's purpose in doing these things is to invite us into a relationship with him. On the basis of these actions, God wants us to join in the missio Dei. George E. Wright's book God Who Acts (1952) is one important landmark in the discussion. James Barr has probed and questioned these claims, however, and raised serious doubts about whether the miracles recounted in Exodus, particularly on Mt. Sinai, really happened. A similar argument is made by John Van Seters, "The Plagues of Egypt: Ancient Tradition or Literary Invention?" ZAW 98 (1986) 31-39. Benjamin Sommer examines both minimalist and maximalist approaches to the question of whether God speaks and acts in history in his Revelation and Authority: Sinai in Jewish Scripture and Tradition (2015). Maimonides (1138–1204) had his own pious and mystical reasons for believing that God did not "speak" at Sinai. B. Spinoza (1632–1677) read the Bible closely, and found that many of its rational ideas about law that had to be communicated by means of "events" that were imagined rather than historical. Kant, too, valued the Ten Commandments because they make us better human beings, but he doubted the historicity of the signs and wonders in Exodus. According to Michael Wyschogrod's book The Body of Faith: God in the People Israel, however, Scripture shows us a God who is a real character in a historically grounded narrative, with real emotions (anger, sorrow, great love), who engages in historical actions. B. gives special attention to the implications of Exodus 19–24, in which God enters into a covenant with Moses and Israel. Here, B. finds good reasons for concluding that God has spoken to us and that God does act in human history.—F.W.G. [End Page 315] 876. [God; Revelation] Richard Bauckham, Who Is God? Key Moments of Biblical Revelation (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2020). Pp. 120. $21.99. ISBN 97-1-5409-6190-7. This small volume originated as a lecture series delivered by B., a senior British NT scholar, in 2015 in Addis Ababa and in 2018 in Nova Scotia. In the introduction to the volume, B. gives (pp. 2-3) this account of the approach, content, and aim of his work: "The key moments of divine disclosure we shall reflect on in the book … are Jacob's dream at Bethel (Gen 28:10-22); the revelation to Moses at the burning bush (Exodus 3); the revelation to Moses on Mount Sinai (Exod 33:17–34:8); and the three key moments of revelation in the Gospel of Mark (1:9-11; 9:2-8; 15:37-39). In all these cases, our exploration of biblical theology will range more widely than these moments of disclosure themselves, but they will be our guiding stars by which to travel the related territory. "My approach in this book is to treat the Bible as a canonical whole. Here I do not engage in historical reconstruction behind and around the texts, though that is a task that greatly interests me and one I pursue elsewhere. Here I am interested in the texts as we have them and as belonging to the canon of Scripture—a collection of sacred writings that witness to God through the divine disclosures they contain. "I hope to show readers that the Bible's account of the identity of God is consistent both within and across the two testaments. I have no wish to discount the diversity of the various parts of Scripture, but I think that a theological interpretation of Scripture should seek the unity in the diversity. The approach is necessarily broad brush, but detailed exegesis is at its heart...

Biblical Exegesis By Persons With Intellectual or Behavioral Impairments

Painters and illustrators are good observers and exegetes of biblical texts. This article points to the exegetical relevance of Bible illustrations by non-professional illustrators who are handicapped by an intellectual disability or by behavioral problems. Special attention is given to the sociological and hermeneutical phenomenon of persons living in a secular environment with only scarce contact to a Christian church. Some of these handicapped persons show strong reactions when they hear a Bible story. Their unconventional illustrations are precious contributions noteworthy for nonspecialists and specialists. This article will present and discuss illustrations made by a Swiss adult and a child relating to two stories of the Old Testament: Jacob's dream about the ladder to heaven (Genesis 28) and Israel's wandering in the wilderness (Exodus).

Sacred Attunement: A Jewish Theology. By Michael Fishbane

Michael Fishbane's Sacred Attunement is fascinating not only in what it says explicitly, but also in what it does not say. On one level, he presents a series of innovative insights into the parallels between modes of textual interpretation and modes of spiritual–ethical “interpretation” of the concrete details of lived human existence. In laying out such parallels, he succeeds—in a way that will engage both specialists and nonspecialists—in translating into a contemporary idiom the classical rabbinic notion that engagement in the study of scripture can function as a self-transformative practice. At the same time, though, we might also understand his project as implicitly putting forth a fundamental reconception of the very idea of “doing theology”—whether Fishbane himself consciously intends such a challenge or not. Prior to presenting the “Jewish” side of his project, Fishbane's first chapter lays out his understanding of “theology” in a general sense. He thus explicitly frames the chapters that follow as a specifically Jewish instantiation of a humanly universal “attempt to speak of the reality of God and direct the self toward this truth” (1). In this account, a Jewish theology does not entail claims of exclusive access to divine truth; rather, a theology is Jewish insofar as it engages in the human theological endeavor by means of close readings and constructive re-readings of the particular traditions and textual sources of Judaism (44). In this opening chapter, he emphasizes that his primary concern as a writer lies not with abstract theoretical constructions of God's being, but rather in an attempt to stimulate the reader's sensitivity to the easily overlooked depths and ethical demands that are inherent in the particulars of earthly life. For Fishbane, God is precisely in the details. The second chapter of Fishbane's book constitutes the core of his project and is where he truly breaks new ground. Taking his cue from four traditional Jewish modes of interpreting scripture, he lays out a striking account of the ways in which different ways of reading texts can serve as spiritual exercises. The same practices that make for careful interpretation can, Fishbane asserts, shape a person's mode of viewing existence as whole, train the reader's mindfulness to the details of the created world, and enhance one's ability to make active and conscious judgments in response to the choices and responsibilities that confront us in each moment. Thus, for instance, he notes the way in which the mode of peshat (plain sense) interpretation helps attune a reader to scripture's contextual particularities. Through its demand for close attention to the fine points of the written text, engagement in peshat reading counteracts the tendency to skip over the text's details in an attempt to arrive too quickly at one's own desired interpretation. In requiring care and concern for scripture's syntactical configurations that exist independently of our interpretive will, this mode of reading is “an exercise in attentiveness to the details of the text and its modes of presentation; and it is an exercise in the patient subordination of the self to the otherness of the language which has been selected by the author, but which requires one's readerly engagement to come alive” (71). After leading the reader through a peshat interpretation of Jacob's dream of the “stairway to heaven” in Genesis 28, Fishbane shifts our lens from a reading of textual phenomena to a reading of the phenomena of nature and of existence. The development of attunement to the alterity of scriptural words and phrases, he argues, will better enable a person to respond with ethical responsibility and patience to the alterity of things and persons that one encounters in daily life.

Climbing Jacob's Ladder: Reconstructing the Ladder in African American Spirituals

And Jacob went out from Beersheba, and went toward Haran. And he lighted upon a certain place, and tarried there all night, because the sun was set; and he took of the stones of that place, and put them for his pillows, and lay down in that place to sleep. And he dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven: and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it. (Genesis 28: 10-12, The Holy Bible, King James Version, 1611) Jacob's Ladder-like the Garden of Eden, Noah's Ark, and the Tower of Babel-can be counted among the oldest images of western culture. Rooted in the oral traditions of Judaism of the second millennium BCE, the story of Jacob's Dream at Bethel recounts Jacob's flight from home, his arrival at a certain place in the wilderness, his pillow of stone, his dream of a ladder to heaven with angels ascending and descending, God's covenant with Jacob and his people, and Jacob's commemoration of the site as Bethel (Genesis 28, 10-22). Across the centuries, this brief story, with its powerful image of a ladder to heaven, has been interpreted and reinterpreted by religious communities in sacred text, visual imagery, music, and other forms of cultural expression. The complex history of Jacob's Ladder within American culture has only recently been addressed (Hummon, Envisioning Jacob's Ladder, Stein), and the varied ways that the image has been represented and interpreted at different historical moments are only partially understood. As Roger B. Stein perceptively notes in his essay on the origins and diffusion of the image in American culture, Jacob and his ladder would have been well known to seventeenth-century Puritans as typological symbols of Christ and the cross (3440). Drawing on the typological tradition of biblical exegesis, Puritans read and interpreted the Old Testament as a symbolic foretelling of the New Testament. Jacob, the type, foreshadowed the coming of Christ, the antitype; the ladder, with its angels ascending and descending, prefigured the cross with its promise of salvation and eternal life.1 During the Great Awakening of the mid-eighteenth century, Protestant evangelicals, such as George Whitefield (1714-70), revitalized this tradition, using Jacob's vision to preach Christ's atonement for man's sin on the cross, salvation through grace, and the promise of heaven through heartfelt conversion.2 Notably, in the new hymnody of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Protestantism, Charles Wesley (1707-88), John Newton, (1725-1807), William Cowper (1731-1800), and other anonymous writers would use Jacob's Ladder in more than a dozen hymns to symbolize grace and salvation of Christ, God's protection, and faith amid personal trial (Hummon, What Doth the Ladder Mean?). By the opening decades of the nineteenth century, even visual representations of Jacob's Ladder could be found in the illustrated Bibles and Protestant devotional literature for children (Hummon, Envisioning 10-14, 23-25). Thus, while nineteenth-century Protestantism would increasingly emphasize a New Testament, Jesus-centered gospel rather than an Old Testament, God-centered Christianity (Prothero 43-52), the typological significance of Jacob's Ladder would insure its spread and currency in American religious life.3 One particularly important though less wellunderstood chapter in the history of Jacob's Ladder in American culture involves the African American community's adoption and use of this Biblical image in the language of spirituals (see, however, Stein 44-47). This story is complex, situated at once within the emergence of spirituals as a form of song and religious practice and also within the broader encounter of the enslaved community with white evangelical Protestantism. Nor is it easily documented: spirituals, as part of oral tradition, were only transcribed and collected in the decades following the Civil War. Yet, it is a compelling and instructive story. In appropriating this ancient Biblical image, African Americans reconstructed the ladder, reworking its meaning and significance in terms of their experiences and aspirations in this world as well as the next. …

Jacob's Dream of a Ladder: Freudian and Jungian Perspectives

This article presents two interpretations of a piece of sacred text—Jacob's dream of a ladder reaching to heaven—one based on the psychological theories of Sigmund Freud and the other based on those of C. G. Jung. It purports to show that the Freudian interpretation leaves us with a reductionist view of ritual that is in accord with the notion that religion has no place in a modern scientific world—a view that leaves the reader with a feeling of something missing. The Jungian interpretation, however, enables a change in perspective and leads to a deeper worldview that encompasses both intellect and spirit.

Martha Graham's Legal Legacy

Martha Graham's artistic legacy is legendary, but after a lengthy series of court battles stretching over several years, her legacy for the legal complexities of the dance community are also signif...

THE FACE AS THE HEAVENLY COUNTERPART OF THE VISIONARY IN THE SLAVONIC LADDER OF JACOB

The study investigates the imagery of the heavenly counterpart of the visionary found in the Slavonic Ladder of Jacob. The text describes Jacob's dream in which the patriarch sees the celestial «Face» as the fiery anthropomorphic extent, which serves as the embodiment of the Deity. This fiery extent, labeled in some biblical and intertestamental texts as the «Face», is related to the glorious celestial entity known in theophanic traditions as God's Kavod. It appears that in the Ladder of Jacob the fiery Face not only embodies God's Glory but also seems to represent the heavenly counterpart of Jacob. The bust of fire, labeled in the Ladder as the Face, can be associated with the heavenly «image» of Jacob engraved on the Throne of Glory. The traditions about the heavenly «image» of Jacob found in the Slavonic Ladder of Jacob demonstrate some similarities to the traditions found in several targumic texts which entertain the idea of the heavenly twin of Jacob.

Leonaert Bramer (1596-1674) als ontwerper van decoratie op Delfts aardewerk

AbstractThe Delft artist Leonaert Bramer (1596-1574) appears to have been intensively involved in the decoration of Delftware. Hitherto four separate examples were known, mostly dating from the 1650s and 1660s (figs.1, 2, 4, 6). The article presents ten (perhaps eleven) new examples of 'Bramer ware' (figs. 8, 9, 11, 13, 15, 17, 19, 21, 23(?), 26; see also note 19) produced between possibly as early as 1630 and 1670. Furthermore, eight of his designs have been found in the archives of the Koninklijke Tichelaar Makkum pottery; the compositions were 'pounced' onto the pottery, i.e. stencilled by dusting powder through a pricked paper pattern (figs. 24, 25, 27, 28, 29, 31, 32). Two early series of drawings by Bramer from the 1630s (most of them in London-scenes from the Old Testament-and Bremenscenes from the New Testament), or derivations from them, seem to have frequently served as patterns for pottery painters (figs. 3-21). Oddly, one of these compositions, Joseph cast into the well by his brothers (fig. 10), occurs on a dish decorated with grotesques which is often regarded as Haarlem work (fig. 11). The use of a Delft artist's composition, combined with the fact that Marion van Aken-Fehmers (Haags Gemeentemuseum, The Hague) has traced a similar grotesque dish bearing the mark of the Delft pottery 'De Porceleyne Bijl' (see note 18), clearly shows that I laarlem did not have a monopoly on grotesques. A total of ten pounces are kept at Makkum: four drawings by Bramer (figs. 24, 25, 27, 29; two pricked repeats of the composition Jacob's Dream: fig. 28) and four pricked stencils (figs. 31, 32). Stylistically, the drawings can be dated to the late 1650s. All ten are pricked along the outlines; the four original drawings are 'matrixes', the others were used as stencils. The composition of Judah and Tamar (fig. 25) is virtually identical with Bramer's version of twenty years earlier. The Judah and Tamar pounce was used until well into the 18th century, judging by a plate dated 1783 in Paris (fig. 26). The coarse manner of painting demonstrates that the use of a pricked paper pattern based on the design of a professional artist was no guarantee for the quality of the result, which depends enti rely on the pottery painter. This accounts for the frequently mediocre standard of the painting on most plates. Nevertheless, a few plates and dishes display painting of such high quality and a manner so similar to Bramer's that it is not unlikely that they were painted by the Delft artist himself (figs. 2, 6, 21). 'Bramer ware' is unmarked. However, on grounds of circumstantial evidence three potteries can be identified where Bramer ware might have been produced: 'De Porceleyne Fles', 'De Grieksche A' and 'De Dissel'. 'De Dissel', where Abraham de Cooge worked, is a likely candidate, in view of a large series of drawings which Bramer made for De Cooge in 1646 (see note 7). In the past, much surprise has been evinced at the gap between the artists of Delft and the potters and decorators of pottery. Despite the heyday of both painting and the pottery industry in Delft in the mid-17th century, and despite the fact that artists and potters were members of the same guild, they seem to have operated quite separately. The material assembled here has brought artists and potters a little closer to each other.

François Venant. Enige aanvullingen

AbstractSince J. G. van Gelder was able to identify a number of works by François Venant (1591/92-1636) in 1938 (note 2) and Kurt Bauch and Astrid Tümpel added to these one painting and a drawing (notes 14 and 3), the artist has been known as one of the so-called Pre-Rembrandtists. Together with his contemporaries Claes Cornelisz. Moeyaert (c. 1590/91-1655) and Jacob Pynas (1592/93-after 1650) he was one of the younger artists of this group. Its style was dominated by Pictcr Lastman (1583-1633) and Jan Pynas (1581/82-1633), both of whom underwent the influence of Adam Elsheimer during their stay in Rome. Venant married a younger sister of Lastman in 1625. The latter's influence on his work had however set in well before that year. Jacob's Dream, signed and dated 161(7?) (note 10, fig. 2) testifies to this, as well as showing traces of Elsheimer's influence, possibly transmitted by Jan Pynas (notes 12 and 13, fig. 3). A somewhat later signed work, David's parting from Jonathan (note 5, fig.1), closely follows Lastman's version of the subject of 1620 (note 6) though the grouping of the two figures may be taken as typical of Venant's personal style. In an unsigned picture of Gideon's Scacrifice, which may also be dated to the early 1620s (note 14, fig. 4), the artist once more makes use of motifs from various works by Lastman. Two undated drawings would seem to represent a slightly later stage in the artists's development. The Baptism of the Eunuch (notes 16 and 18, fig. 5) betrays the attempt to emulate Lastman's pictures on the subject, especially one of 1623 (note 17), by enhancing the dramatic actions in the scene, and so does Gideon's Sacrifice (note 20, figs. 6 and 8), which seems to be based on Lastman's Sacrifice of Monoah of 1627 (note 21, fig.7). To these works, spanning a period from 1617 (?) to the late '20s, may be added two more, another drawing and a painting. The drawing of Daniel at Belshazzar's Feast was formerly attributed to Lastman (notes 25-33, figs. and 10). While the technique, notably the use of wash, differs from that in the drawings mentioned above, the similarities to these in linear rhythm and conception are such that they may all be attributed to the same hand. The technical differences may be accounted for by assuming a slightly later date and, more particularly, a different purpose; whereas the other drawings were in all likelihood self-contained products, Belshazzar's Feast appears to be a sketch for a painting. The last phase of Venant's career seems to be represented by the largest painting known to us and the only one on canvas, Elisha Refusing Naäman's Gifts (note 34, fig. 11). It shows the artist disengaging himself from Lastman at last, possibly after the latter's death in 1633. While the composition is still reminiscent of his carlier work, here Venant seems to have made a fresh start by allowing study from life to play a more important role than before. The landscape differs radically from earlier backgrounds and may well have been influenced by Barholomeus Breenbergh, who returned from Italy around 1630 and whose influence may also be detected in the heavy wash that marks the Belshazzar drawing. The artist's further development was cut short by his untimely death, probably of the plague, in 1636.

The Ladder of Jacob

One of the strangest texts to be included in recent collections of biblical pseudepigrapha is that known as the Ladder of Jacob. Known only from the Slavonic Tolkovaya Paleya, this text elaborates on the story of Jacob's dream at Bethel in Gen 28:11–22, adding details to the vision described there and containing a prayer and angelic revelation nowhere present in the biblical narrative. It is clear that the Slavonic text is a translation from Greek; it appears likely to me that the Greek is itself a translation from an original Aramaic or Hebrew text dating from, roughly speaking, the Second Temple period.

Where did Jacob dream his dream?

(1990). Where did Jacob dream his dream? Scandinavian Journal of the Old Testament: Vol. 4, No. 2, pp. 44-57.

Jacob's dream at Bethel as interpreted in the targums and the New Testament

Jacob's dream at Bethel as interpreted in the targums and the New Testament

(1) The Excavations at Ur and the Hebrew Records (2) Biblical Anthropology compared with and illustrated by the Folklore of Europe and the Customs of Primitive Peoples

(1) THOSE who know Mr. Leonard Woolley's “Sumerians” will turn with interest to his Arthur Davis Memorial Lecture on the bearing of his discoveries on Biblical history. Mesopotamia is, of course, a long way from Palestine, and “the periods with which we have to deal are sometimes far removed in time from those which interest most the Bible student”, yet the link is there. The two points of contact which concern us most would seem to be the flood narrative and the story of Abraham. Of the first we read that “such archaological data as we possess, and the traditions of the Sumerians themselves, are most easily explained and best reconciled by the assumption that the Flood was the epoch-making historical event which they believed it to be”. As for Abraham, the chief point of interest is “that living at Ur, so far from being a primitive Bedouin accustomed only to the wide spaces of the desert, he was the heir to an age-old civilisation sharing the complex life of a great trade centre”. Another interesting point is that “it would not be even fanciful to hold that Jacob's dream was based on tales he had been told of the ziggurat of Ur, where on festivals the priests went in procession up and down the long stairways which led from earth to Heaven”. (1) The Excavations at Ur and the Hebrew Records. By C. Leonard Woolley. Pp. 61. (London: George Allen and Unwin, Ltd., 1929.) 2s. net; paper, 1s. net. (2) Biblical Anthropology compared with and illustrated by the Folklore of Europe and the Customs of Primitive Peoples. By the Rev. H. J. D. Astley. Pp. vii + 262. (London: Oxford University Press, 1929.) 12s. 6d. net.