02_eichler_nuovoImpaginato+eliminata_nota24)_DEF_copiaaaaa_26_38 28/04/15 11:32 Pagina 28 28 RAANAN EICHLER creatures which men have seen” (Ant. 3.6.5). Of the sculptures over the ark in the Jerusalem temple he wrote that “nobody can tell, or even conjecture, what was the shape of these cherubim” (Ant. 8.3.3). II. Winged Human The first recorded attempt to identify the form of the cherub was made by R. Abbahu of Caesarea (c. 300), who employed a midrashic reading of bwrk as aybrk , which can be translated from Aramaic as “like a lad”, to assert that the cherub resembles a child (b. Ḥag. 13b, Sukkah 5b). Some skepticism regarding this identification is recorded under the names of R. Abbahu’s Babylonian contempo- raries, R. Papa (b. Ḥag. ad loc.) and Abaye (b. Sukkah ad loc.), but no alternative view is presented in the Talmud. What prompted this identification were probably the erotes and cupids, the boys, often with wings, that personified amorousness in Greco-Roman art. These figures, which “were omnipresent in later Hellenistic, Roman and Christian art” 2, adorned the main entrance of the Capernaum Synagogue 3 at around the same period in which R. Abbahu flourished and would likely have been familiar in his circles. This conclusion can also explain the existence of several pe- culiar Talmudic homilies attributing an erotic aspect to the cherubim of the Jerusalem temple (b. Yoma 54a-b). Midrash Hagadol, a medieval compilation of Jewish lore, con- tains an unprovenanced comment on Exod 25,18 asserting that the cherub resembles a human in all respects except that it has the wings of a bird. The anonymous exegete, unlike R. Abbahu, did not specify an age and presumably had in mind an adult. As evidence for his view he cited Ezek 1,10, which states that the primary face of Ezekiel’s four-faced “living beings” (twyx) was that of a human, and 2 E.R. GOODENOUGH, Pagan Symbols in Judaism II (vol. 8 of Jewish Symbols of the Greco-Roman Period; New York 1958) 3-5. 3 H. KOHL – C. WATZINGER, Antike Synagogen in Galilaea (Leipzig 1916) 12-13, figs. 17-18; online: http://sammlungen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/freimann/con- tent/pageview/3778653 [cited 15 June 2014]. The publishers of the find stated that the bodies of the erotes were hewn off, leaving the wings. Indeed, the bodies are indiscernible in the photograph and drawing that they provided. Their assumption that the creatures were originally erotes is justified because erotes are the only creatures in the art of the period that hold wreaths in the manner depicted.