![]() Once pressed into the canvas they describe and signify the language and history of painting. In these paintings he has also applied prints from objects such as the human face, dolls, fruit and birds to create images in paint on canvas (thus re-appropriating the ready made into the made). 52 In addition to painting in oil on canvas, the artist applies ready-made objects to the painting. The artist has approached the text within the overall painterly tradition or approach of post-conceptualism that characterises the rest of his oeuvre. With these textual details in place, we turn to the painting, God on His Throne (1 Enoch 14:18-21). Much closer to 1 Enoch 14 is the description in Daniel 7:9-10: We are attempting to understand the unknown in terms of the known. When we try to imagine God on a throne we are making an assumption of a monarchical political organisation. 50 The angels in heaven are portrayed like courtiers, not priests in a Temple. God’s house in 1 Enoch 14 is like the palace of an Ancient Near Eastern or Hellenistic king it bears no relation to the architecture of the Temple in Jerusalem. This seems to reflect the total isolation that the Persian kings (beginning with Deioces) introduced into their dealings with their subjects. ![]() Only his most senior courtiers approach him. ![]() Secondly, the Enochic God is located in splendid isolation from both angels and human beings in a manner not evident in the other texts. Above all, it features the elaborate imagery of sun, ice and fire mentioned above, the product of a powerful visual imagination at work in the writing. Yet the picture in 1 Enoch 14:18-21 is very different from these. Above God stood the seraphim, each with six wings, with one calling to another, ‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts the whole earth is full of his glory.’ ![]() In Psalm 45:6 the psalmist proclaims that ‘Your divine throne endures for ever and ever,’ while Psalm 103:19 states that ‘The Lord has established his throne in the heavens, and his kingdom rules over all.’ In Isa 6:1-6 the prophet recounts a vision he has of the Lord sitting on the throne, but it is situated in the Temple. In 1 Kings 22:19, for example, the prophet Micaiah is quoted as saying: ‘Therefore hear the word of the Lord: I saw the Lord sitting on his throne, and all the host of heaven standing beside him on his right hand and on his left.’ Even earlier than this and possibly influencing the picture was the council of the gods depicted in the Ugaritic documents from Ras Shamra and other Ancient Near Eastern representations of divine dwellings. Underlying this image is the notion, quite common in the Hebrew Bible, of God on his throne in heaven. Later we learn that certain angels did approach God (1 Enoch 14:23), although we do not know how close they came. The sun-like roundness of God’s throne co-exists with imagery that paradoxically combines ice and rivers of fire. Should hit upon the sun, with the perfect roundness of its form, as providing a model for the divine throne. It is not surprising that the scribe or scribes responsible for 1 Enoch 14, originating in a tradition with a strong interest in astronomical phenomena, No angel could enter into this house and gaze on his face Because of the splendour and glory, And no human being was able to look at him (1 Enoch 14:18-21)įor some reason, commentators regularly (and grievously) mistranslate the third statement as ‘and its wheels were like the shining sun’, even though the Greek word for ‘roundness’ (τροχός trochos) is in the singular (as is the word kebab, also meaning ‘roundness’, in the Ethiopic translation) and later in the text, at 1 Enoch 18:4, the same words in Greek and Ethiopic are used of ‘the roundness of the sun’. Upon it sat the Great Glory His garments were like the appearance of the sun and whiter than abundant snow. And from underneath the throne flowed forth rivers flaming with fire, And I was unable to see. I was looking and I saw a high throne, and its appearance was like ice, and its roundness was like the shining sun, and the border was cherubim. It has a smaller antechamber, and adjacent to it, and visible through a door, lies a much larger room in which God is seated on a throne. Having passed through the outer wall of heaven, built of hailstones with circling tongues of fire, Enoch crosses a space and approaches a building that turns out to be God’s palace. In 1 Enoch 14, Enoch has a vision in which he is carried to heaven.
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