I can't think of other sources or comparable traditions, though also I'd be interested to hear about them if anybody can tell us. As for Blake, I wouldn't be surprised if this were his own invention; it would seem to fit his idiosyncratic low-church (and non-churchgoing) Christianity.
Failing that, maybe it's worthwhile to say something about the meaning of this appearance of Jesus in the poem. Here's the whole lyric:
And did those feet in ancient time.
Walk upon Englands mountains green:
And was the holy Lamb of God,
On Englands pleasant pastures seen!
And did the Countenance Divine,
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here,
Among these dark Satanic Mills?
Bring me my Bow of burning gold;
Bring me my Arrows of desire:
Bring me my Spear: O clouds unfold!
Bring me my Chariot of fire!
I will not cease from Mental Fight,
Nor shall my Sword sleep in my hand:
Till we have built Jerusalem,
In Englands green & pleasant Land
It's helpful to read "And did those feet in ancient time" in its context in the preface to Blake's long poem
Milton. (Of course, it could also be interesting to look at its use and re-interpretation as an English hymn.) When the lyric speaker says "I will not cease from Mental Fight," it's clear that "Mental Fight" is contrasted with the "Corporeal War" named in the paragraph that precedes this lyric. The latter, physical violence, is associated with the "Stolen and Perverted Writings of Homer & Ovid;
of Plato & Cicero, which all Men ought to contemn," and we have to make some sense of Blake's distinction here between the classical and the Judeo-Christian traditions. I take the biblical text and the figure of Jesus here as a sanction for mental warfare; in the course of
Milton, Blake sets out to save Milton from the classics, to rewrite Milton's militancy as a mental combat, and to produce a representation that doesn't entail violence. So I read Blake's representation of Jesus' bodily presence as his initiation of a non-violent messianic nationalism. (Here, admittedly, I've been strongly affected by some other readings of Blake.) Jesus' physical form -- which stands to Greek and Roman sculpture in the same way that the Hebrew bible stands to those "Stolen and Perverted" classical writings -- is for Blake a human form, but a human form considered as the highest value and the source or standard of meaning.
It's probably important, too, that Blake invokes the physical presence of Jesus rather than something like his words; mental fight is predicated on bodily (and sexual) life, while a representation of Jesus that ignores his body is, for Blake, likely to lead to violence. The footstep of Jesus also recalls various kinds of class representation, especially Blake's ideas of art as craftsmanship. On the plate that precedes this lyric, Blake shows Milton's body and its gesture as a characteristic image of the artist's production of significant representation. I would say that the historical precedent of Jesus signifies a tradition of genuine image-making, a precedent that the true poet invokes without copying, and an image-making whose validity depends on the whole bodily activity of the poet or painter.
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