Divine Images

Although relatively obscure during his lifetime, William Blake has become one of the most popular English artists and writers, through poems such as “The Tyger” and “Jerusalem,” and images including The Ancient of Days. Less well-known is Blake’s radical religious and political temperament and that his visionary art was created to express a personal mythology that sought to recreate an entirely new approach to philosophy and art. This book examines both Blake’s visual and poetic work over his long career, from early engravings and poems to his final illustrations, to Dante and the Book of Job. Divine Images further explores Blake’s immense popular appeal and influence after his death, offering an inspirational look at a pioneering figure.

Theologian Ian McFarland claims that Christians have mainly misappropriated the "image of God" language for 2000 years and thereby missed a rich resource for our knowledge of God. What, then, does it mean to say that we are made in God's image, or that Christ is the very image or prototype of God? Rather than referring to some germinal divine element in humans, such as reason, McFarland claims that the image of God in us tells us something about God and how we know God. It tells us that God, though not identical with us, communicates Godself to us in creative love, in a way that offers precious clues about God's transcendence, immanence, triune life, self-disclosure, incarnation, and intentions for human life. Too, we "learn from Jesus something new about God." Gathered as Christ's body, the church too images God and sets us on a quest to discern the image of God in Christ's incarnate body. McFarland's careful and exacting work builds from this kernel a powerful Christian vision of God's life and our own destiny in Christ.

Although relatively obscure during his lifetime, William Blake has become one of the most popular English artists and writers, through poems such as “The Tyger” and “Jerusalem,” and images including The Ancient of Days. Less well-known is Blake’s radical religious and political temperament and that his visionary art was created to express a personal mythology that sought to recreate an entirely new approach to philosophy and art. This book examines both Blake’s visual and poetic work over his long career, from early engravings and poems to his final illustrations to Dante and the Book of Job. Divine Images further explores Blake’s immense popular appeal and influence after his death, offering an inspirational look at a pioneering figure.

Based on the visual and textual evidence, this volume concentrates on the artistic, intellectual, religious, and socio-political importance of divine images as media of communication in the polytheistic cosmos of ancient Greece and Rome.

Over 150 exquisite color illustrations and text make this account of one of North America's finest South Asian art collections an invaluable guide.

How Divine Images Became Art tells the story of the parallel ‘discovery’ of Russian medieval art and of the Italian ‘primitives’ at the beginning of the twentieth century. While these two developments are well-known, they are usually studied in isolation. Tarasov’s study has the great merit of showing the connection between the art world in Russia and the West, and its impact in the cultural history of the continent in the pre-war period. Drawing on a profound familiarity with Russian sources, some of which are little known to Western scholars, and on equally expert knowledge of Western material and scholarship, Oleg Tarasov presents a fresh perspective on early twentieth-century Russian and Western art. The author demonstrates that during the Belle Époque, the interest in medieval Russian icons and Italian ‘primitives’ lead to the recognition of both as distinctive art forms conveying a powerful spiritual message. Formalist art theory and its influence on art collecting played a major role in this recognition of aesthetic and moral value of ‘primitive’ paintings, and was instrumental in reshaping the perception of divine images as artworks. Ultimately, this monograph represents a significant contribution to our understanding of early twentieth-century art; it will be of interest to art scholars, students and anyone interested in the spiritual and aesthetic revival of religious paintings in the Belle Époque.

Although attempts to understand the growth of aniconism focus on the Pentateuchal legal material, scholars increasingly make reference to the prophetic literature to illuminate the debate. Jill Middlemas provides the first comprehensive analysis of the prophets with attention to rhetorical strategies that reflect anti-iconic thought and promote iconoclasm. After illuminating the idol polemics, which is the rhetoric most often associated with aniconism, she draws out how prophecy also exposes a reticence towards cultic symbols and mental images of Yahweh. At the same time the theme of incomparability as well as the use of metaphor and multiple imaging, paradoxically, reveal additional ways to express aniconic belief or the destabilization of a single divine image. Middlemas' analysis of prophetic aniconism sheds new light on interpretations of the most iconic expression in the Old Testament, the imago dei passages in Genesis, where God is said to create humanity in the divine image.

Although recent scholarship has examined gender issues in Judaism with regard to texts, rituals, and the rabbinate, there has been no full-length examination of the education of Jewish children in day schools. Drawing on studies in education, social science, and psychology, as well as personal interviews, the authors show how traditional (mainly Orthodox) day school education continues to re-inscribe gender inequities and socialize students into unhealthy gender identities and relationships. They address pedagogy, school practices, curricula, and textbooks, as along with single-sex versus coed schooling, dress codes, sex education, Jewish rituals, and gender hierarchies in educational leadership. Drawing a stark picture of the many ways both girls and boys are molded into gender identities, the authors offer concrete resources and suggestions for transforming educational practice.