Sunday, January 2, 2011

Important Lecture #3 and Paper Topic (Due on Monday, Jan. 10 at 9 PM... Read within.

Lecture 3: Icons and Iconoclasm: From Moses to Milton
 
Read by Friday, January 7:

      
1.  Exodus 1-34 (Bible, King James Version)
2.  The King James Bible Commentary on Exodus 1 - 34:  Introduction, Outline, and Commentary
3.  Gabel, John and Charles Wheeler. The Bible as Literature: An Introduction.      4th edition. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.  Chapter VI.
4. Unit 3 Lecture Notes

Write the following:

First Formal Paper (25 points).  No rewrites allowed. 
Due Date:  Monday, January 10, at 9 PM

Send paper in a readable format (I only have Word 2003, so if you have a later version, then send your paper as both a Cut and Paste document and a rich text format attachment) to the following e-mail address:  kerryman2424@gmail.com


Write an essay on the following topic (minimum 500 words) using proper Academic Paper Format:

Question:  So far in the course, I have talked mostly about ambiguities of the Bible (the various meanings of the stories from Genesis and Exodus, for example).  Are ambiguous interpretations of the meaning of Bible stories a good or bad thing.  Why?

(Note:  This is a literature class, and I presuppose that you know how to write an effective academic paper.  Let me give you a hint how to do this.  Write a paper with a proper title, an introduction with a thesis statement (a thesis statement is the last sentence of your introduction paragraph and it contains your main idea and your organizational plan.  Example thesis statement for this paper:  Ambiguous interpretations of the Bible are good (or bad) because of ________, _____________, and ________________.  The blank spaces are your reasons for believing as you do.)


                                                           
Introduction:

Does God's second commandment to Moses prohibit all images, or at least all religious images? This lecture explores different answers to this question, one crucial to both western religion and the arts.  In addition, this follows up on an underlying theme we have been exploring throughout this course: the ambiguity (or is it just a seeming ambiguity) we find throughout the Old Testament.

Consider this. . .

What is the symbolism in Moses making the Israelites drink the water strewn with the ashes of the golden calf in Exodus 32?

Icons and Iconoclasm: From Moses to Milton

    I. There are ambiguities in the Hebrew Bible about whether or not image-making is ever acceptable.
    A. In Exodus 20, God categorically forbids the making of "any Graven Image."

And God spake all these words, saying,    I am the LORD thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.  Thou shalt have no other gods before me.   Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.  Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God. . . (Exodus 20:1-5, KJV)

B. Why this prohibition? There is a threat that people may idolize images when they are created. What is an idol? Technically, an idol is a material object that possesses power because a god lives in it. In a more general sense, an idol is anything that stands between man and a transcendent God.

C. In a later passage in Exodus, God says: 

Ye shall not make with me gods of silver, neither shall ye make unto you gods of gold. (Exodus 20:23, KJV)

In this chapter God tells Israel not even to make an image of Him. God generally insists on his invisibility, which makes him unique among the gods of the time. God also makes of Israel a nation of iconoclasts, that is, image-breakers. (Exodus 23:23-24)

D. It is important to note that while Moses is on Mount Sinai receiving the Ten Commandments, the Israelites are doing just what God has
 Forbidden:  making an Idol. The Israelites break both God's first and second commandments:

And all the people brake off the golden earrings which were in their ears, and brought them unto Aaron.
And he received them at their hand, and fashioned it with a graving tool, after he had made it a molten calf: and they said, These be thy gods, oh Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt. (Exodus 32:3-4, KJV)

E. Moses comes down from the mountain with the Ten Commandments.

And it came to pass, as soon as he came nigh unto the camp, that he saw the calf, and the dancing: and Moses' anger waxed hot, and he cast the tables out of his hands, and brake them beneath the mount. (Exodus 32:19, KJV)

Moses breaks the tablets to signify Israel's breaking of the covenant with Yahweh. Then Moses. . .

. . . took the calf which they had made, and burnt it in the fire, and ground it to powder, and strewed it upon the water, and made the children of Israel drink of it. (Exodus  32:20, KJV)

Thus Moses becomes the first Iconoclast (image breaker). Moses then returns to Mount Sinai and God reinscribes the Ten Commandments.

F. However, in seeming contradiction to God’s own edict against image idolatry, in Exodus 25, God instructs Moses to adorn the Ark of the Covenant with images of cherubim (fearsome heavenly beings).

And thou shalt make a mercy seat of pure gold: two cubits and a half shall be the length thereof, and a cubit and a half the breadth thereof.
And thou shalt make two cherubim of gold, of beaten work shalt thou make them, in the two ends of the mercy seat.
And make one cherub on the one end, and the other cherub on the other end: even of the mercy seat shall ye make the cherubim on the two ends thereof.
And the cherubim shall stretch forth their wings on high, covering the mercy seat with their wings, and their faces shall look one to another; toward the mercy seat shall the faces of the cherubim be. (Exodus 25: 17 – 19)

G. These cherubim were also placed by God at the gates of Eden when Adam and Eve were banished. They are fearsome creatures. Some scholars
         believe these may be winged lions or bulls. 

H. There are other apparent discrepancies in Yahweh's orders. In Numbers 21, Yahweh instructs Moses to create a serpent staff to cure those who have been bitten by snakes.

        And the LORD sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people; and much people of Israel died.
            Therefore the people came to Moses, and said, We have sinned, for we have spoken against the LORD, and against thee; pray unto the LORD,     that he take away the serpents from us. And Moses prayed for the people.
            And the LORD said unto Moses, Make thee a fiery serpent, and set it upon a pole: and it shall come to pass, that every one that is bitten, when he             looketh upon it, shall live.
            And Moses made a serpent of brass, and put it upon a pole, and it came to pass, that if a serpent had bitten any man, when he beheld the serpent             of brass, he lived.  (Numbers 21: 6-9)

In 2 Kings 18:4 that staff is broken because people are beginning to worship it.  So what are we to believe?

II. Because of the instances above and because Christ was certainly a living, breathing, icon the Medieval Church defended the proper use of images within church architecture.

A. Medieval theologians argued that Christ himself is an incarnation of God, thereby giving an image of Him and sanctifying the proper use of images.

B. The abuse of images is "idolatry," or worshipping the image as an idol. Proper use of the image is seeing the image as a sign that points to God.

C. Pope Gregory the Great (540-604 C.E.) called images the "books of the unlearned" (books for the illiterate.) For example, a painting of the last
    Judgment will inspire fear of that event.  Remember that most people could not read or write (neither in their own language nor in Latin, Greek, Aramaic, and Hebrew), thus they were excluded from direct knowledge of Holy Scriptures. 

 D. Images, it was maintained, should lead us to worship the invisible (God).

    III. According to John Calvin and Calvinistic "Puritan" groups in 17th century Britain and America, churches should not contain images
 stained glass, statuary, or paintings.

A. Many Protestant reformers believed that people eventually come to worship the images themselves, not God. The term "Puritan" originally referred to one who wanted to restore the church to its primitive purity.

B. During the Puritan Revolution and Commonwealth in England--1642 - 166O--church art was destroyed on a massive scale. In 1643 Parliament
passed legislation that all artwork in churches should be destroyed.  And they went about doing so on a massive scale.  This completed the task of iconoclasm started in the reign of Henry VIII who broke with the Roman church.

C. The Puritan iconoclast rallying cry, "Down with Dagon!," alludes to the story in 1 Samuel 5 about how the ark of the covenant (which contains the commandments), when placed in the Philistine temple of Dagon, brought down the statute of this pagan god.

And when they arose early on the morrow morning, behold, Dagon was fallen upon his face to the ground before the ark of the LORD; and the head of Dagon and both the palms of his hands were cut off upon the threshold; only the stump of Dagon was left to him.  (1 Samuel 5:4, KJV)

D. The poet John Milton echoes these themes. In fact, Milton supported the Puritan Revolution. In Book One of Paradise Lost the devil Dagon is
described as "one I Who mourn'd in earnest, when the Captive Ark I Maim'd his brute Image. . ."

IV. The Puritan distrust of artifice and visual imagery had an effect on the course of English poetry. We look briefly at passages from Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queen (1590), 2.12.83, and Wordsworth, "Tintern Abbey" (1798).

A. In The Faerie Queen, Book 2, we meet Sir Guyon, who represents temperance. This character finds himself in a paradise called the "Bower of Bliss." This bower is a construction of seemingly great beauty, but without natural leaf or flower. It has the taint of a graven image. Being an iconoclast Sir Guyon tears the bower apart:

But all those pleasant bowres and Palace brave,
Guyon broke downe, with rigor pittilesse;
Ne ought their goodly workmanship might save
Them from the tempest of his wrathfulnesse,
But that their blisse he turn'd to balefulnesse:
Their groves he feld, their gardens did deface,
Their arbers spoyle, their Cabinets suppresse,
Their banket houses burne, their buildings race,
And of the fairest late, now made the fowlest place.

(The Second Book of The Faerie Queene, #83)

B. The final literary example concerns William Wordsworth. For Wordsworth, the imaginative is that which is unimaged (contains no imagery). It seems the Hebrews, he believed, preserved the imagination through their abhorrence of idolatry. In “Lines Composed 8 Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey, on Revisiting the Banks of the Wye During a Tour, July 13, 1798,” Wordsworth writes an intensely anti-imagistic poem:

These beauteous forms,
Through a long absence, have not been to me
As is a landscape to a blind man's eye:
But oft, in lonely rooms, and 'mid the din
Of towns and cities, I have owed to them
In hours of weariness, sensations sweet,
Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart;
And passing even into my purer mind,
With tranquil restoration: - feelings too                       
Of unremembered pleasure: such, perhaps,
As have no slight or trivial influence
On that best portion of a good man's life,
His little, nameless, unremembered, acts
Of kindness and of love. Nor less, I trust,
To them I may have owed another gift,
Of aspect more sublime; that blessed mood,
In which the burthen of the mystery,
In which the heavy and the weary weight
Of all this unintelligible world,                                    
Is lightened: - that serene and blessed mood,
In which the affections gently lead us on, -
Until, the breath of this corporeal frame
And even the motion of our human blood
Almost suspended, we are laid asleep
In body, and become a living soul:
While with an eye made quiet by the power
Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,
We see into the life of things.

Can you find any images here?  I can’t.  It seems to defy all concrete imagery, all pictures in the mind, and that is precisely what Wordsworth set out to do. 

Summary:

The ambiguous attitude towards images in the Hebrew Bible, combined with the central Christian event of the Incarnation, allowed medieval Christian theologians to work out an elaborate defense of images as the "books of the unlearned" and as signs pointing towards God. Seventeenth-century English
Puritans, by contrast, proved themselves active iconoclasts, breaking down church art and architecture in England, and also fostering a literary style, realized most fully in John Milton and William Wordsworth, that is anti-imagistic, or opposed to poetic appeals to the eye.

THE MYSTERIES OF THE ARK OF THE COVENANT

Of all Israel's holy objects, the most sacred was the Ark of the Covenant, an elaborately decorated chest that represented the presence of God. Exodus 25: 10-22 provides God's instructions to Moses for building the Ark: it was made of shittim, or acacia wood, lined inside and out with gold, had a golden "crown" or rim around the top, and four rings for carrying poles. On top of the Ark sat the "Mercy Seat," a space that functioned as God's oracle and that was guarded by two "cherubim," or winged creatures. The Ark contained the Tablets of the Law given by God to Moses at Mount Sinai (Exod. 40: 18), a vessel containing manna that had sustained the Jews (Exod. 16:34), and Aaron's blossoming staff (Num. 17:10).The Ark disappeared during the Babylonian assault on Jerusalem in 587 B.C.E. Various traditions exist regarding its whereabouts. Second Macabbees 2 reports that Jeremiah, forewarned by God, hid the Ark in a cave on a mountain where Moses received a divine vision; some now believe that this means that the Ark is hidden on Mt. Nebo. The Talmud (rabbinical commentary on Jewish doctrine) contains a different story, saying that the Ark was hidden by King Josiah in a secret place prepared by Solomon in case of danger, so others believe the Ark is hidden on the Temple Mount or near the Dead Sea. Because the Crusaders brought many European visitors to the Holy Land, yet other writers believe that the Ark was discovered by the Knights Templar and may in fact be the real Holy Grail.  Ethiopian Christians claim they possess the Ark at Aksum; legend says it was brought there by a son of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. Still other theories about the fate of the Ark are no stranger and no less fascinating than the story told about it in the film Raiders of the Lost Ark.


        

CATHEDRALS: "BOOKS FOR THE UNLEARNED" Notre Dame de Paris and de Chartres

Two cathedrals, dedicated to the Virgin Mary under the title of "Notre Dame," or "Our Lady," one at Paris and the other at Chartres (a town southwest of Paris), offer excellent examples of how medieval art functioned as a tool to teach the laity about biblical narratives and religious beliefs. Notre Dame de Paris was built between 1163 and 1250, Chartres between 1194 and 1260. Both cathedrals are exquisite examples of French Gothic architecture, a style whose soaring pointed arches, lofty ribbed vaults, and towering spires were intended to lead the eye--and the mind--upwards to the divine realm. Much of the interior of Notre Dame de Paris was defaced or destroyed before and during the French Revolution, but one may still admire the stained glass rose window, carved guardian gargoyles, and flying buttresses; a significant number of carvings were restored in the 19th century. Chartres is better preserved, boasting both a large collection of the original stained glass windows and carvings on the exterior porches executed during the 12th century.





Web sites to Visit

1. Poets' Corner - Home Page- much of the poetry cited in this course can be found on this site.

6 comments:

  1. No need to post a comment here. Please make sure to do the writing assignment and turn in to the following e-mail address by Monday, January 10, at 9 PM.

    Thanks.

    Joe Ryan

    ReplyDelete
  2. Does the assigned paper have to correspond to the lecture in its content (give examples given here in the lectures), or is the paper only on the question posed at the beginning of this page?
    Thank you,
    Noa Gross

    ReplyDelete
  3. On one of your postings you say read The bible as Literature 5th edition, in another posting you say 4th edition. Which one are we supposed to get?

    Svetlana Gotlinskaya

    ReplyDelete
  4. Inspired by the repetition in Genesis...
    Where are the discussion questions we need to answer? More than likely they are somewhere obvious that I have overlooked, but with only five weeks I'd rather be embarrassed than sorry. :)

    Thanks,
    Jaime U

    ReplyDelete
  5. professor, what happens if i only have microsoft works? how do i send you the paper?

    thanks

    -Angel Aguilar
    aguilar90201@hotmail.com

    ReplyDelete
  6. Joe, I sent my homework to your email address I use in Memoir class, sorry. I sent it at 8:30. I resent it to the correct one. Hope u except it
    Pamela Crenshaw
    starr1crenshaw@yahoo.com

    ReplyDelete