This belief that the Jewish law forbade images, strenuously maintained even to the point of martyrdom, may seem surprising to anyone who peruses one of the many picture books of late antique synagogue art. The numerous mosaic floors that survive from synagogues in Galilee and elsewhere, dating mainly from the 4th to the 6th centuries, not to mention the 3rd-century wall paintings of the synagogue of Dura on the Euphrates, now one of the treasures of the National Museum in Damascus, all testify to a love of religious imagery, including human forms within biblical scenes, and even pagan deities such as Helios, the "Unconquered Sun". Only the Jewish god is not portrayed directly, but symbolised by a hand coming down from heaven. (In the Bible, too, God's activity in the world is sometimes referred to as his "hand" or "arm".)
This paradox is explored, from many different points of view, in the essays collected in The Image and its Prohibition in Jewish Antiquity. The contributors are all specialist scholars, in a range of fields, and their essays represent the latest scholarship in English on this tantalising and complex subject. Inevitably, perhaps, no clear consensus emerges, but there are some very telling studies of specific topics. The affair of Herod's eagle, with its extreme appeal to martyrdom, is not addressed directly, and so we are not helped to understand whether or not the king was consciously flouting Jewish law in erecting the image of a bird (which contrasts sharply with his care generally to avoid images in Jerusalem), or whether the opposition was due to more to political factors or to religious zeal. The complexities of the question of images are well brought out in the book, however. Jewish abhorrence of images clearly had very deep roots. One of the ways the Jews differentiated themselves from the peoples around them was in refusing to worship their god through cult-images, and we have abundant polemic, from the Bible on, against those who pay divine honours to man-made objects. A very fine essay by Philip Alexander explores the history and rationale of this attitude, and interestingly points to the centrality of the word as a key factor in the rejection of images, even if later generations discovered that words, too, have their limitations. No less interesting, in the context of Herod's eagle, is a study by Sarah Pearce, the editor of the book, of the interpretation of the Second Commandment by Philo of Alexandria, whose life overlapped with that of Herod and who has left us the fullest extant account of Jewish thought at the time. Philo's interpretation is far from simplistic, and illustrates how hard it is to define all the terms precisely and to make sense of the ancient prohibition in a real-life situation where images caught the eye all around.
All the essays in this collection shed their own light on this central conundrum of Judaism, which is still controversial today. The book is published as a supplement to the Journal of Jewish Studies, which Geza Vermes edited for many years, and several of the contributors were his pupils and colleagues. Like The True Herod it evokes the memory of a fine scholar and much-loved teacher.
This paradox is explored, from many different points of view, in the essays collected in The Image and its Prohibition in Jewish Antiquity. The contributors are all specialist scholars, in a range of fields, and their essays represent the latest scholarship in English on this tantalising and complex subject. Inevitably, perhaps, no clear consensus emerges, but there are some very telling studies of specific topics. The affair of Herod's eagle, with its extreme appeal to martyrdom, is not addressed directly, and so we are not helped to understand whether or not the king was consciously flouting Jewish law in erecting the image of a bird (which contrasts sharply with his care generally to avoid images in Jerusalem), or whether the opposition was due to more to political factors or to religious zeal. The complexities of the question of images are well brought out in the book, however. Jewish abhorrence of images clearly had very deep roots. One of the ways the Jews differentiated themselves from the peoples around them was in refusing to worship their god through cult-images, and we have abundant polemic, from the Bible on, against those who pay divine honours to man-made objects. A very fine essay by Philip Alexander explores the history and rationale of this attitude, and interestingly points to the centrality of the word as a key factor in the rejection of images, even if later generations discovered that words, too, have their limitations. No less interesting, in the context of Herod's eagle, is a study by Sarah Pearce, the editor of the book, of the interpretation of the Second Commandment by Philo of Alexandria, whose life overlapped with that of Herod and who has left us the fullest extant account of Jewish thought at the time. Philo's interpretation is far from simplistic, and illustrates how hard it is to define all the terms precisely and to make sense of the ancient prohibition in a real-life situation where images caught the eye all around.
All the essays in this collection shed their own light on this central conundrum of Judaism, which is still controversial today. The book is published as a supplement to the Journal of Jewish Studies, which Geza Vermes edited for many years, and several of the contributors were his pupils and colleagues. Like The True Herod it evokes the memory of a fine scholar and much-loved teacher.
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