Image Details

Photograph by Erich Lessing

ON THE COVER: God reaches down from the heavens to pass Moses the Tablets of the Law in this 12th-century stained-glass window from a German monastery. God’s first appearance to Moses and the Israelites is recorded twice in the Bible: in Exodus 19–24 and in various passages throughout Deuteronomy. However, the two accounts do not agree on the details of what took place. In “From Storm God to Abstract Being,” Victor Hurowitz explains that the discrepancies reflect a new understanding of God as increasingly abstract.