Theophany:
Manifestation of God that is tangible to the human senses. In its most restrictive sense, it is a visible appearance of God in the Old Testament period often, but not always, in human form. Some would also include in this term Christophanies (preincarnate appearances of Christ) and angelophanies (appearances of angels). In the latter category are found the appearances of the angel of the Lord, which some have taken to be Christophanies, reasoning that since the angel of the Lord speaks for God in the first person ( Gen 16:10 ) and the human addressed often attributes the experience to God directly ( Gen 16:13 ), the angel must therefore be the Lord or the preincarnate Christ. [Bible Study Tools]
Noted in “Divine Invitation,” Daniel Weiss, Archaeology (July / August 2018):
The text quotes at length from a prayer by Seth, a son of Adam and Eve, which is believed to have caused a theophany, or an appearance of God. “The user wants, if not a theophany, then at least the full attention of the divinity,” says Zellmann-Rohrer, “so the best way to achieve that will be to repeat the prayer that Seth is supposed to have used.”
