YHWH’s Divine Images: A Cognitive Approach

[Ahanu]

Dan McClellan's open-access book is available here: YHWH’s Divine Images: A Cognitive Approach.

See below for a video about his approach.

 

[Ahanu]

@Thomas said:
His ‘divine image’ exegesis I find questionable, in the light of Leviticus 26:1 “Ye shall make you no idols nor graven image, neither rear you up a standing image, neither shall ye set up any image of stone in your land, to bow down unto it: for I am the LORD your God.”
Stones were raised by the Jews as memorials and markers, but not as Divine Images – that was pagan practice.
Neither architecture of the Temple nor or the Ark of the Covenant are a ‘Divine Image'.

Divine images did exist and were used in ancient Israel, especially in earlier periods.

The Ark of the Covenant is described as a "shrine model" that would have housed miniature divine images like the tablets of the law (which McClellan suggests were miniature standing stones with God's name on them), Aaron's rod, and the bronze serpent. McClellan believes that the shift away from these images occurred around the time of Josiah in the 7th century BCE.

 

[Ahanu]

An article posted on theTorah.com notes the possibility of Aaron's rod being connected to the asherah, a stylized tree often identified as a cultic object. Aaron’s rod was placed "in front of the Testimony."

After looking at this article, I am not sure if Aaron's rod was placed near the Ark of the Covenant or inside of it. Regardless, there's the idea of the Ark's vicinity containing objects that can be described as divine images . . .

 

[Thomas]

@Thomas said:
His ‘divine image’ exegesis I find questionable ... Neither architecture of the Temple nor or the Ark of the Covenant are a ‘Divine Image'.

I stand by that.

Divine images did exist and were used in ancient Israel, especially in earlier periods.

I don't dispute that at all. A wiki article touches lightly on the topic – Aniconism in Judaism " ... Jews were not under a blanket ban on visual art, despite common assumptions to the contrary, and throughout Jewish history and the history of Jewish art, created architectural designs and decorations of synagogues, decorative funerary monuments, illuminated manuscripts, embroidery and other decorative or artistic religious items."
So I would treat the ban as contextual, what image, and what is its provenance? I would have though a ban against pagan image and practice would be the object of these prohibitions. priestly robes were adorned with all manner of symbols, including floral motifs.

The veil in front of the temple at Jerusalem was supposed to display an entire cosmography.

But I see neither the Temple nor the Ark constituting a 'divine image' per se, any more than a synagogue, church, shrines or temples.

I think they all, in their art and architecture, offer a mystagogy, an ascent from the mundane realm.

The use of a mezuzah or a menorah, for example.

As Torah.com notes:
"Unlike Deuteronomy, the priestly literature—both P and H—expresses no hostility to asherim. Priestly literature has its own conception of what constitutes heterodox worship and condemns it. For example, it prohibits the use of idols and cast metal gods (Lev 19:4), and of idols (again), sculptures, standing stones, and stone reliefs (Lev 26:1). It condemns high places and “incense stands” (חַמָּנִים) (Lev 26:30). And it mandates the destruction of the Canaanites’ reliefs, cast metal images, and high places (Num 33:52). Nevertheless, it never mentions asherim.

As I understand it, cultic objects can be reverenced if they originate within Judaic practice and not imported from pagan belief. Whilst the asherim, a stylised device signifying a staff or tree, were common to the beliefs of the time, the Judaic practice refers to Aaron's staff specifically, of which the Lord God said, "Put Aaron’s staff back in front of the Testimony, to be kept as a sign to defiant people… " (Numbers 17:25).

So the asherim signifies a staff, Aaron's Rod, by which God showed his power and his mercy towards Israel. It's not a 'divine image' but an instrument of divine activity.

The Ark of the Covenant is described as a "shrine model" that would have housed miniature divine images like the tablets of the law (which McClellan suggests were miniature standing stones with God's name on them) ...

Any evidence of that, though?

Professor Thomas Römer argues that “clearly… the tablets of the law are a substitute for something else.” He proposed that “the original Ark contained a statue of Yhwh”,  which he specifically identifies as “two betyles (sacred stones), or two cult image statues symbolizing Yhwh and his female companion Ashera or a statue representing Yhwh alone."

He derives his argument from the studies of Professor Sigmund Mowinckel (1884-1965), who proposed the cultic image idea, but did not go so far as to suggest an image of the deity and his wife.

"Sigmund Mowinckel ... in an article that was published in 1929 in the French journal La Revue d’histoire et de philosophie religieuses. The title of the article (translated into English) was: “When Did the Cult of Yhwh in Jerusalem Become Officially a Cult without Images?”

He opposed the traditional view that the worship of Yhwh was aniconic from the beginning, quoting among others 1 Kings 12. According to this story, after the separation between the South and the North, Jeroboam established sanctuaries in Dan and Bethel, where Yhwh was worshipped as a young bull. He also focused on the Ark of Yhwh, which he saw as another indication of the existence of representations of Yhwh. The strange verse of 1 Kings 8:9, which concludes the installation of the Ark into the Jerusalem temple’ s Holy of Holies, indicates that the Ark did not originally contain the two tablets of the law. According to 1 Kings 8:9, “There was nothing in the Ark except the two tablets of stone that Moses had placed there at Horeb, where Yhwh made a covenant with the Israelites, when they came out of the land of Egypt.” This emphasis on the “nothing else” (אין בארון רק) makes it very likely that this statement about the Ark’ s contents has resulted from a relecture of its original function.

He ... ultimately envisaged the original Ark as containing a zoomorphic representation of Yhwh (as a bull) and having been taken (by Pharaoh Sheshonq c. 926BCE). The Jerusalemite priests then made a new Ark and placed within it two stones, as a more abstract representation of Yhwh (and maybe his spouse Ashera?) akin to the maṣṣebot. These stones were later identified by Deuteronomistic redactors with the tablets of the law, as in Deuteronomy 10 or 1 Kings 8. Mowinckel assumed that there were several arks, with each important sanctuary hosting its own. The ark of the sanctuary of Shiloh, mentioned in the opening chapters of the book of Samuel, was probably the oldest, but it is not very plausible that this ark was transferred to Jerusalem as the Bible would have us believe."
(The Mysteries of the Ark of the Covenant Thomas Römer, in the Nordic Journal of Theology, 2023)

McClellan believes that the shift away from these images occurred around the time of Josiah in the 7th century BCE.

So the relevance of this is some way removed – by 700 years – from Jesus' time.

And here McClellan seems to mislead his audience:
"... this is the logic of Divine Images that's going on here, and Divine Images were how people could see the god themselves while just looking at a piece of material media, and we see this in the Hebrew Bible as well and we see this in the archaeological data. The Temple at Arad, for instance, has a standing stone that is very clearly a Divine image in the holy of holies in the ancient Judahite Temple. So what Jesus is saying here is ..."
Hang on ...
The Temple at Arad was deconsecrated and destroyed in the Josiah reforms 700 years previously – so it's at best highly dubious and at worst a false equivalence to use something that was not the case for 700 years to equate to what Christ is saying in the here and now.

The massebot ('standing stone' or 'pillar') is not 'very clearly a divine image' at all – it's significance in cultic practices are unknown and disputed.

Too often McClellan presents his thesis as seemingly the only viable explanation when there are others.

Why no reference to Divine images at Jerusalem? Because there are none. The Holy of Holies is an empty space .... that, I would suggest, is the understanding of Jesus' contemporaries.

 

[Ahanu]

I stand by that.


I don't dispute that at all. A wiki article touches lightly on the topic – Aniconism in Judaism " ... Jews were not under a blanket ban on visual art, despite common assumptions to the contrary, and throughout Jewish history and the history of Jewish art, created architectural designs and decorations of synagogues, decorative funerary monuments, illuminated manuscripts, embroidery and other decorative or artistic religious items."
So I would treat the ban as contextual, what image, and what is its provenance? I would have though a ban against pagan image and practice would be the object of these prohibitions. priestly robes were adorned with all manner of symbols, including floral motifs.

The veil in front of the temple at Jerusalem was supposed to display an entire cosmography.

But I see neither the Temple nor the Ark constituting a 'divine image' per se, any more than a synagogue, church, shrines or temples.

A divine image, according to McClellan, manifests the presence of the deity for various purposes, not solely worship. So his definition is a bit broader than the one you might have in mind. The Ark was used in warfare, consultation for battle, and it was marched in front of the army, leading to the Philistines' fear that "the gods have come into the camp" upon seeing it - which are some examples that McClellan uses to show how it functions as a divine image. McClellan also describes Moses's descriptions of the Ark's movement: "You have Moses talking about, uh, the ark going out and coming in, and God is basically mirroring whatever movement and action the ark is doing, and so in every way I think it's also functioning as a Divine image."

McClellan's theory is that over time the ways in which the divine was perceived to be present (and the acceptable material forms for that presence) shifted.

 

[Ahanu]

McClellan's broader umbrella for what constitutes a divine image originates, I think, from his cognitive approach.

McClellan believes that humans have an innate tendency to detect agency in the world around them. This likely developed as a survival mechanism. This tendency contributes to the perception of unseen agents like spirits and deities.

The way we perceive and interact with the world is initially shaped by our intuitive cognition. People might intuitively feel the presence of a deceased loved one when interacting with a headstone or with clothing once worn by them. Similarly, ancient people intuitively experienced the presence of a deity through divine images.

Instead of traditional approaches that often try to define deity by a fixed set of attributes (omnipotence, omnipresence, and so on), McClellan uses prototype theory to explain how our understanding of deity is more fluid and experience-based than strict definitions allow.

So membership in a category (in this case, divine images) is determined by similarity to a prototype rather than adherence to a rigid definition. Whether an object is perceived by people as facilitating divine presence contributes to its categorization as a divine image.

Different things at different times can function as a divine image as long as the object facilitated a perception of divine presence or agency. The shift away from certain types of divine images and the increasing importance of text as a medium for divine presence can be seen as a change in the prototypical ways in which divine presence was manifested and experienced.

 

[Thomas]

A divine image, according to McClellan, manifests the presence of the deity for various purposes, not solely worship. So his definition is a bit broader than the one you might have in mind.

Then he should be more precise, and concise, which is one of my issues with his style.

Overall, I think he lacks dialectic and as such simply leads his audience by the nose.

+++

I'm not saying his conclusions are wrong, but nor am I saying they're right ... I'm saying they are not, in themselves, conclusive.

 

[faithforall]

I stand by that.


I don't dispute that at all. A wiki article touches lightly on the topic – Aniconism in Judaism " ... Jews were not under a blanket ban on visual art, despite common assumptions to the contrary, and throughout Jewish history and the history of Jewish art, created architectural designs and decorations of synagogues, decorative funerary monuments, illuminated manuscripts, embroidery and other decorative or artistic religious items."
So I would treat the ban as contextual, what image, and what is its provenance? I would have though a ban against pagan image and practice would be the object of these prohibitions. priestly robes were adorned with all manner of symbols, including floral motifs.

The veil in front of the temple at Jerusalem was supposed to display an entire cosmography. Bible Study: What Does The Veil Symbolize In The Bible?

But I see neither the Temple nor the Ark constituting a 'divine image' per se, any more than a synagogue, church, shrines or temples. Our Lady of the Ark of the Covenant Church reopens in the Holy Land, new altar dedicated

I think they all, in their art and architecture, offer a mystagogy, an ascent from the mundane realm.

The use of a mezuzah or a menorah, for example.

As Torah.com notes:
"Unlike Deuteronomy, the priestly literature—both P and H—expresses no hostility to asherim. Priestly literature has its own conception of what constitutes heterodox worship and condemns it. For example, it prohibits the use of idols and cast metal gods (Lev 19:4), and of idols (again), sculptures, standing stones, and stone reliefs (Lev 26:1). It condemns high places and "incense stands" (חַמָּנִים) (Lev 26:30). And it mandates the destruction of the Canaanites' reliefs, cast metal images, and high places (Num 33:52). Nevertheless, it never mentions asherim. Why Is Idolatry A Sin?

As I understand it, cultic objects can be reverenced if they originate within Judaic practice and not imported from pagan belief. Whilst the asherim, a stylised device signifying a staff or tree, were common to the beliefs of the time, the Judaic practice refers to Aaron's staff specifically, of which the Lord God said, "Put Aaron's staff back in front of the Testimony, to be kept as a sign to defiant people… " (Numbers 17:25).

So the asherim signifies a staff, Aaron's Rod, by which God showed his power and his mercy towards Israel. It's not a 'divine image' but an instrument of divine activity. What Is Christian Worship? (with Video) A Biblical Definition, with Examples and Guidelines


Any evidence of that, though?

Professor Thomas Römer argues that "clearly… the tablets of the law are a substitute for something else." He proposed that "the original Ark contained a statue of Yhwh", which he specifically identifies as "two betyles (sacred stones), or two cult image statues symbolizing Yhwh and his female companion Ashera or a statue representing Yhwh alone." Bible Mysteries: Who Helped Noah Build The Ark?

He derives his argument from the studies of Professor Sigmund Mowinckel (1884-1965), who proposed the cultic image idea, but did not go so far as to suggest an image of the deity and his wife.

"Sigmund Mowinckel ... in an article that was published in 1929 in the French journal La Revue d'histoire et de philosophie religieuses. The title of the article (translated into English) was: "When Did the Cult of Yhwh in Jerusalem Become Officially a Cult without Images?" Jerusalem's Size in Jesus's Time: How Big Was It?

He opposed the traditional view that the worship of Yhwh was aniconic from the beginning, quoting among others 1 Kings 12. According to this story, after the separation between the South and the North, Jeroboam established sanctuaries in Dan and Bethel, where Yhwh was worshipped as a young bull. He also focused on the Ark of Yhwh, which he saw as another indication of the existence of representations of Yhwh. The strange verse of 1 Kings 8:9, which concludes the installation of the Ark into the Jerusalem temple' s Holy of Holies, indicates that the Ark did not originally contain the two tablets of the law. According to 1 Kings 8:9, "There was nothing in the Ark except the two tablets of stone that Moses had placed there at Horeb, where Yhwh made a covenant with the Israelites, when they came out of the land of Egypt." This emphasis on the "nothing else" (אין בארון רק) makes it very likely that this statement about the Ark' s contents has resulted from a relecture of its original function. Bible Study: What is the New Covenant?

He ... ultimately envisaged the original Ark as containing a zoomorphic representation of Yhwh (as a bull) and having been taken (by Pharaoh Sheshonq c. 926BCE). The Jerusalemite priests then made a new Ark and placed within it two stones, as a more abstract representation of Yhwh (and maybe his spouse Ashera?) akin to the maṣṣebot. These stones were later identified by Deuteronomistic redactors with the tablets of the law, as in Deuteronomy 10 or 1 Kings 8. Mowinckel assumed that there were several arks, with each important sanctuary hosting its own. The ark of the sanctuary of Shiloh, mentioned in the opening chapters of the book of Samuel, was probably the oldest, but it is not very plausible that this ark was transferred to Jerusalem as the Bible would have us believe."
(The Mysteries of the Ark of the Covenant Thomas Römer, in the Nordic Journal of Theology, 2023) Moses's Afterlife: Did He Make It to Heaven?


So the relevance of this is some way removed – by 700 years – from Jesus' time. Christian History: When Did Jesus Die?

And here McClellan seems to mislead his audience:
"... this is the logic of Divine Images that's going on here, and Divine Images were how people could see the god themselves while just looking at a piece of material media, and we see this in the Hebrew Bible as well and we see this in the archaeological data. The Temple at Arad, for instance, has a standing stone that is very clearly a Divine image in the holy of holies in the ancient Judahite Temple. So what Jesus is saying here is ..." What Can We Learn From Jesus Cleansing The Temple?
Hang on ...
The Temple at Arad was deconsecrated and destroyed in the Josiah reforms 700 years previously – so it's at best highly dubious and at worst a false equivalence to use something that was not the case for 700 years to equate to what Christ is saying in the here and now. Bible Study: How Do Moses and Jesus Compare in Key Life Events?

The massebot ('standing stone' or 'pillar') is not 'very clearly a divine image' at all – it's significance in cultic practices are unknown and disputed.

Too often McClellan presents his thesis as seemingly the only viable explanation when there are others.

Why no reference to Divine images at Jerusalem? Because there are none. The Holy of Holies is an empty space .... that, I would suggest, is the understanding of Jesus' contemporaries. 12 Prayers for Divine Wisdom and Understanding

Hey Thomas, What an interesting deep-dive into ancient worship practices!

You make a really good point about the Holy of Holies being an empty space. This emptiness speaks volumes about how the Jewish understanding of God had evolved by Jesus' time. Unlike their neighbors who needed physical images to connect with their gods, the Jewish people had moved toward a more abstract understanding of the Divine.

I think what's happening with scholars like McClellan and Römer is they're projecting backwards from archaeological findings without considering the massive spiritual developments that occurred over those 700 years. That's a huge time gap! It would be like using religious practices from the 1300s to explain modern Christianity.

The psychological aspect here is important too. Humans naturally want something tangible to connect with - we're visual and tactile beings. The evolution away from physical representations shows a remarkable spiritual maturity in Jewish thought that was pretty unique in the ancient world.

When Jesus talked about seeing the Father through him, he wasn't setting himself up as a divine image in the pagan sense. He was establishing a personal, relational connection that transcended physical symbols altogether.

What I find most compelling about your argument is how you show the progression of understanding over time. Religious symbols always exist in context, and their meanings change. The way people understood the Ark in early Israel was probably quite different from how it was understood in Jesus' time.

 

[wil]

Religious symbols always exist in context, and their meanings change.

Makes me wonder what Jesus will think when he returns... the last of his first earthly incarnation was hauling that cross and then hanging there among the other crosses on Golgotha I imagine that would not be his preferred symbol of his life and teachings, the manner in which he was executed.

 

[Faithfulservant]

The cross is a reminder of what He did for us. Not who He is.

 

[TheLightWithin]

I think what's happening with scholars like McClellan and Römer is they're projecting backwards from archaeological findings without considering the massive spiritual developments that occurred over those 700 years. That's a huge time gap! It would be like using religious practices from the 1300s to explain modern Christianity.

To be fair, if you watched enough of McClellan, he's pretty aware of developments over time, as well as divine images - his book -

My Book, YHWH’s Divine Images, Is Available Now

My open-access book, YHWH’s Divine Images: A Cognitive Approach, is available for download here. Hardcover and paperback editions are forthcoming. Because the volume is open-access, the PDF i…

danielomcclellan.wordpress.com

https://www.sbl-site.org/assets/pdfs/pubs/9781628374407.pdf

 

[wil]

The cross is a reminder of what He did for us. Not who He is.

I just wonder what he would think...

 

[TheLightWithin]

To be fair, if you watched enough of McClellan, he's pretty aware of developments over time, as well as divine images - his book -

My Book, YHWH’s Divine Images, Is Available Now

My open-access book, YHWH’s Divine Images: A Cognitive Approach, is available for download here. Hardcover and paperback editions are forthcoming. Because the volume is open-access, the PDF i…

danielomcclellan.wordpress.com

https://www.sbl-site.org/assets/pdfs/pubs/9781628374407.pdf

I realize I just repeated the very thing that was the start of this thread.
I remembered it too, but for some reason, I don't know why, I thought I was responding on another thread....

 

[TheLightWithin]

There are no "innocent".

Other than the innocent animals in the Jewish ritual sacrifice system, and then Jesus.
Or, the idea of someone dying in someone else's place was a practice in the ancient world, as an earthly form of substitutionary justice.
But, the person dying had to be innocent of the crime in question.

In ordinary earthly terms, we can be innocent of what we are accused of, innocent until proven guilty, let 10 guilty men go free rather than punish one innocent man, etc.

 

[Ahanu]

The Temple at Arad was deconsecrated and destroyed in the Josiah reforms 700 years previously – so it's at best highly dubious and at worst a false equivalence to use something that was not the case for 700 years to equate to what Christ is saying in the here and now.

I think what's happening with scholars like McClellan and Römer is they're projecting backwards from archaeological findings without considering the massive spiritual developments that occurred over those 700 years. That's a huge time gap! It would be like using religious practices from the 1300s to explain modern Christianity.

To be fair, if you watched enough of McClellan, he's pretty aware of developments over time, as well as divine images - his book -

My Book, YHWH’s Divine Images, Is Available Now

My open-access book, YHWH’s Divine Images: A Cognitive Approach, is available for download here. Hardcover and paperback editions are forthcoming. Because the volume is open-access, the PDF i…

danielomcclellan.wordpress.com

https://www.sbl-site.org/assets/pdfs/pubs/9781628374407.pdf

By using the example of the Arad Temple, McClellan is showing the human cognitive tendency to connect with the divine through material presencing media. These presencing media evolve and change over time, but the cognitive tendency remains in place - even if 700 years have overlapped. To quote McClellan about divine images over time, the 700 year gap saw a "renegotiation of their nature and fuction." By the time we get to Jesus' time period, the divine name and texts like the Torah became "vehicles for divine identify and presence."

Unlike the view of @faithforall and @Thomas, I do not think this shift by the time we get to Jesus is a total rejection of earlier modes. There's a continuous cognitive framework, which includes a sensitivity to unseen agency, a material media for presencing divine agency, and so on. The cognitive inclination to engage with the divine in a tangible way persists.

Older and newer forms of presencing can even overlap. The later practice of wearing texts of the law as tefillin and placing them on doorposts as mezuzah can be seen as an adaptation of earlier practices involving amulets and the material inscription of divine presence.

To give another example of overlap, texts with the divine name were were treated with reverence, just like stelai. Worn-out scrolls have been found plastered into the walls of synagogues, similar to decommissioned stelai: "Disposal of texts bearing the divine name required special care, as well. If the divine name cannot be erased, then it also cannot be simply thrown in the trash. The Talmudic text Shabb. 115a states that in the case of a fire, all parts of the Hebrew Bible are to be saved, as well as the tefillin (phylacteries) and the mezuzot. Other texts and fragments bearing the divine name (or eighty-five coherent letters from the law) were known as shemot (“names”), and they, too, were required to be reverently disposed of. The method of disposal that became normative was storage in a genizah (“storing”), which was a special storeroom in a synagogue or a designated area in a cemetery where worn-out scrolls of the law as well as other heretical or disgraced texts could be held. The use of a cemetery cues one to the texts’ proximity to personhood (they were also sometimes buried with respected deceased persons), and in much the same way that decommissioned stelai are known to have been plastered into walls in Iron Age Israel and Judah, worn-out scrolls have been found plastered into the walls of synagogues (Schleicher 2010, 21). The law’s bearing of divine agency is also suggested by its protection of the deceased through the afterlife."

In McClellan's framework Jesus is simply a new form of divine presencing.

 

[Ahanu]

The massebot ('standing stone' or 'pillar') is not 'very clearly a divine image' at all – it's significance in cultic practices are unknown and disputed.

Well, the claim that it is "not very clearly a divine image at all" is strongly challenged by the evidence. The massebot (standing stone or pillar), with its upright stance, a possible connection to inhabiting as suggested by the etymology of related words, and Jacob's designation of it as the house of deity positions it as more than just some ordinary stone, don't you think?

"The word maṣṣēbâ, meaning “stood up,” or “erected,” reflects the upright orientation of the stones, which makes the stones stand out within the environment and cues the viewer to intention and agency.21 Beyond that orientation, the Ugaritic and Akkadian words for “stele”—skn and si-ik-ka-num—may derive from a verbal root meaning “to inhabit” (Fleming 1992, 75–79; Durand 1998, 24–29; Sommer 2009, 29; Scheyhing 2018, 95, 98). This terminology resonates with Jacob’s designation in Gen 28:22 of a stele he set up and anointed with oil as the bêt ĕlōhîm, “house of deity.” Anointing with oil (see also Gen 35:14–15) may represent a commissioning of sorts, as has been proposed for some Akkadian rituals (Fleming 2000, 86–87), although it is less elaborate than the complex rituals described above, and perhaps intentionally so.22 The shortened form, bêt-ēl, would later become a designation for “stele” that would be adapted in Greek as baitylos, “betyl.” By the seventh-century BCE, Assyrian sources identify a West Semitic deity named Bethel who also appears in later Aramaic and Greek texts (Sommer 2009, 28–29). In his first century CE text, Phoenician History (preserved in Eusebius’s Preparation for the Gospel), Philo of Byblos describes the betyls as lithoi empsychoi, “enlivened stones.”23 The terminology that was in usage suggests the concept of the divine animation of stelai enjoyed wide circulation around ancient Southwest Asia."

 

[Thomas]

Substitutional punishment is never moral or good.

No, nor do all Christians embrace the idea ... personally I think it barbaric.

 

[Thomas]

Thank God for that.

We are all created equal. Let those who hate their LGBTQ+ children know that.

They think God screws up on creating all souls perfect.

Impossible. Right?

Well, in a finite and contingent cosmos, nothing is perfect, nor can it be.

 

[Thomas]

In McClellan's framework Jesus is simply a new form of divine presencing.

I agree.

I just think he defines the possibility of that form within his own cognitive limitations.