The Shekhinah as Redemption Incarnate

• In Event: Kabbalistic Texts as Evidence of Medieval Jewish-Christian Intellectual Exchange

Abstract

Building on work by such scholars as Art Green, Elliot Wolfson, Ruth Kaniel, and Daniel Abrams, this paper investigates the development of the concept of the Shekhinah over the 12th and 13th centuries within the context of Iberian Christianity, specifically the doctrine of the incarnation, the Marian revival, and aggressive conversion attempts. During this period, the Shekhinah received its clearest expressions as feminine and embodied divinity, and was also most closely linked with and even merged with the figure of the Messiah. I argue that these three expressions are in fact three facets of a single ideological development of the Shekhinah as the divine-incarnate vehicle for redemption, a development made in response to Christian teachings in the immediate surroundings.

Author

• Jeffrey Amshalem, Independant Scholar