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The starting point for “robe of glory/light” in the Jewish terminology lies in Genesis 3:21: “and the Lord God made for Adam and his wife garments of skin (kotnōt ˁōr) and he clothed them”. The Septuagint and Peshitta have literal translation of the passage, but both Babylonian and Palestinian Targum traditions provide “garments of glory” (lbūšīn d-īqār), and according to Midrash, Genesis Rabbah 20.12 the Rabbi Meir had a manuscript in which, instead of “skin” (ˁwr) there stood “light” (ˀwr). According to the Christian and Jewish exegetical traditions Genesis 3:21 refers to God’s clothing Adam and Eve’s nakedness after the Fall, but there is also sufficient evidence that there was also another way of understanding the time reference of the sentence. If the verbs are taken as pluperfects, the actions refer to the status of Adam and Eve at their creation, before the Fall. The second interpretation was probably popular in the largely lost apocryphal Adam literature. In the Apocalypse of Moses, Eve says to the serpent: “Why have you done this to me, in that I have been deprived of the glory with which I was clothed?” The both interpretations of the Genesis passage were combined in the Christian and Jewish tradition. It is possible that the concept of Adam and Eve’s loss of an original “garment of glory” represents an interaction between Jewish and Mesopotamian ideas, because a “robe of dignity” (šubat bašti) was lost by the goddess Ištar at the seventh gate during her descent to the netherworld. The phrase “garment of light” has also parallels in Iranian texts, and subsequently became popular with both Mandean and Manichaean writers.
Sources (list of abbreviations) (source links will open in a new browser window)
Genesis 3:21
Midrash, Genesis Rabbah 20.12
Bibliography
| Brock 1992, XI 14 | Brock, Sebastian. Studies in Syriac Christianity, History, Literature and Theology. London: Variorum Reprints 1992. |
Amar Annus
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