For all the anthropomorphisms in the Bible, the theologians
of negation could not have been unaware of verses such as: “For your own sake,
therefore, be most careful—since you saw no shape when the LORD your God spoke
to you at Horeb out of the fire” (Deut. 4:15). A fertile soil for the growth of
the Neo-Platonic ideas in this matter was provided even in one of the most
anthropomorphic passages in the Bible—the account of God’s reply to Moses when
he requested God to show him His glory: “And He said, thou canst not see My
face; for man shall not see Me, and live. And the Lord said, Behold there is a
place by Me, and thou shalt stand upon the rock. And IT shall come to pass,
while My glory passeth by, that I will put thee in a cleft of the rock, and
will cover thee with My hand until I have passed by. And I will take away My
hand, and thou shalt see My back, but My face shall not be seen” (Ex.
32:20-23). To be sure this passage as it stands is anthropomorphic in the
extreme but once it came to be interpreted metaphorically-as happened in the
later Jewish teaching—it yielded ideas close to those of Neo-Platonists. Once a
term like “back” in the passage was treated metaphorically to convey the idea
that man can comprehend some aspects of divine manifestation, it followed that “face”
was to be interpreted to mean other aspects which can never be comprehended by
mortal man. (Louis Jacobs, A Jewish Theology [Behrman House, Inc.
Publishers, 1973], 46)
