Jacob’s Face on God’s Throne: Jewish Religious Images in their early Byzantine context

Lecture from Alexei M. Sivertsev, Professor at the Department of Religious Studies, DePaul University, Chicago.  Held jointly with the Rothschild Fund Europe Network (London, Tübingen, Berlin).

The lecture explores a late antique Jewish motif of Jacob’s image engraved on the throne of God. We will trace the evolution of the motif from sixth-century liturgical poetry to the early mystical text of Hekhalot Rabbati. This evolution, I will argue, reflects broader trends in early Byzantine approaches to the function of images as objects of invocation and, later, veneration. These trends offer historical context to the outbreak of Iconoclasm in eighth- and ninth-century Byzantium.

Professor Sivertsev recently completed his term as the Fulbright Distinguished Scholar Fellow at the Department of Jewish Art, Bar-Ilan University. His current work focuses on the study of synagogue and church mosaics, and their material environments in the late Roman Near East. He is the author of several monographs, most recently Jews, Christians, and the Discourse on Images before Iconoclasm (2024).