186 Jonathan Cohen
example, who, more than Rosenzweig, was concerned with the “histori-
cal nucleus” of the biblical saga, believed that the experience of the “fl eet-
ingness” of the manifestation of God — the disappearance of God from a
particular place where He was seen or heard, His long absences, and His
sudden, unexpected reappearances “elsewhere” — can be traced to the no-
madic experience of ancient West Semitic tribes from whom the Israelites
derived.19 For them, God was the melekh of the tribe — the leader, adviser,
and judge who “showed them the way” — in both the immediate and larger
sense. Unlike the Be’alim and the Ashtarot of more settled tribes, the “God
of the way” was never identifi ed with a particular place, object, or region
or with a particular “natural” process. He was not to be identifi ed with
the fertility of the earth or with a particular volcano-mountain, although
His mysterious power and will might be tangibly felt by way of the bounty
yielded by the soil or by way of the fl ames, smoke, and tremors coming
from the mountain.
Rosenzweig, however, was also concerned that God not be identifi ed
permanently with any other being or “image.” In a brilliant article called
“On Anthropomorphisms,” he compares a graphic portrait of the god Kro-
nos, appearing in Homer, with an equally graphic description of the bibli-
cal God that can be found in a passage from the book of Samuel. Th e Ho-
meric text he quotes, from the Iliad, reads as follows:
Yes, and Kronos now nodded with gloomy brows.
Yet the ambrosaic hair of the protector fl owed around.
Th e immortal head, shaking great Olympus. 20Th e details of the description of Kronos’s head and head movements — the
nodding with gloomy brows, the ambrosaic hair that fl ows around, the
weight of the head that has the eff ect of shaking Mount Olympus — com-
bine to form what can legitimately be called a portrait, wherein a series of
attributes is presented with the kind of continuity that contributes to the
formation of a picture or an image. In a passage quoted from 2 Samuel 22,
however, we are presented with a description which, while no less vivid
and concrete, refl ects an entirely diff erent experience of the ways of the liv-
ing God:
When I was afraid,
I called to my God.