Aseneth's Gastronomical Vision: Mystical Theophagy and the New Creation in Joseph and Aseneth

Abstract

This article contends that Joseph and Aseneth establishes a model for an elite Jewish unit, set apart from the general populace, who mediate between God and humanity. They serve as the medium through whom God transfers his regenerating, recreating Spirit to humankind. As pneumatic intermediaries, the unit obtain a state of existence higher even than that of other Jews. Aseneth is exemplary of this defeat of the old ontological condition and entry into the new. She is also prototype of those who dispense God's Spirit to others so that they too can participate in the new creation. To obtain this mediatorial role and attain to this exalted condition, one must commit to the via mystica modelled by Aseneth, at the end of which lies a visionary ‘meal’ experience—a gastronomical vision—in which the initiate ingests the presence of God. Like Aseneth, initiates into this elite unit therefore engage in sustained, ritual asceticism. Their principal aim in doing so is to prompt the visionary-cognitive encounter with the divine. Upon beholding God directly, the initiate takes possession of the Spirit of life and undergoes an ontological transformation such that he or she comes to possess the existence of the new creation. God's pneumatic presence is so thoroughly permeating that the authors cannot but think of its reception and regenerating effects as anything other than an experience of ingestion, or what this article calls ‘mystical theophagy’.