Endnote 8 – P—Understanding the Priestly Source

The kavod, translated here as “substance” and by Moshe Greenberg as “majesty,” is a luminous manifestation by which God descends to earth and is made visible. The kavod resides in the Holy of Holies of the Tabernacle and the Jerusalem Temple. It is the precursor of the shekhinah, or Divine Presence, of later Jewish sources, but is not entirely identical in conception. On this phenomenon and its ancient Near Eastern parallels see Moshe Weinfeld, Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomic School (Oxford: Clarendon, 1972), pp. 201–205.