Cherubim: God’s Throne? - The BAS Library

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Abstract or metaphysical thinking was alien to the world of the ancient Near East. Philosophy as we know it was introduced by the Greeks in an unprecedented flowering in the fifth century B.C.E. Although ancient man understood concepts like omnipotence and omniscience, he did not express them in philosophical terms. Instead, he did so concretely. Man’s earliest attempts to express abstract, metaphysical concepts took a physical form. One such form, I believe, is the composite mythical creature known as the cherub. The cherub symbolized not only omnipotence and omniscience but, as we shall see, a kind of completeness that […]

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Footnotes

According to English dictionaries, “cherubim” (Hebrew plural for “cherub”) is reserved for the celestial beings mentioned in the Hebrew Bible, while “cherubs” refers to the rosy-cheeked infants of Western art; the singular “cherub” applies to both.

See Victor Hurowitz, “Did King Solomon Violate the Second Commandment?” Bible Review, October 1994.

If this ivory came from Arslan Tash, as I will suggest, it should be noted that other ivories from Arslan Tash featured the Egyptian lotus as well as the Mesopotamian palm (Phoenizische Eifenbeine, Bildhefte des Badischen Landesmuseum [Karlsruhe: 1973], pp. XVI, XVII).