Divine Images and Idol Polemic in the Ancient World
In both modern and
ancient discourse, the prohibition against crafting images in the Decalogue
(Exod 20:4; Deut 5:8) remains one of the most persistent rationales Jews and
Christians cite in their defense of an invisible God. When we look more closely
at this famous prohibition, though, it becomes clear that the primary issue is
not God’s visibility or lack thereof but God’s superiority in relation to
other gods. In Exodus and Deuteronomy, the prohibition of “idols”—itself a
pejorative term used to describe someone else’s divine images—is closely
connected with the prohibition of worshiping other gods besides the God of
Israel. The commandment, which immediately follows the commandment to have no other
gods before “the LORD your God” (Exod 20:2-3; cf. Deut 5:6-7), begins with “You
shall not make for yourself an idol . . .” and then goes on to say, “You shall
not bow down to them or worship them; for I the LORD your God am a jealous God”
(Exod 20:4-5; cf. Deut 5:8-9). As W. Barnes Tatum argues, the second
commandment is not anti-iconic but anti-idolic; the commandment is not against
images per se but against images that represent other deities (Tatum, “The LXX
Version,” 181). Furthermore, the explanation for this prohibition in Deut
4:15-18, the text does not prohibit the Israelites from making idols because
God lacks a form but because they did not see God’s form: “Since
you saw no form when the LORD spoke to you at Horeb out o the fire, take care
and watch yourselves closely, so that you do not act corruptly by making an
idol for yourselves, in the form of any figure . . . “ (Deut 4:15-16). Indeed,
Deuteronomy indicates that sight itself is still important in perceiving divine
revelation, for Moses claims just a few verses earlier that Israel saw God’s
voice: “you could see no likeness; only a voice [תמונה אינכם ראים זולתי קול]” (cf. “you did not
see a likeness, but rather a voice [ονοιωμα ουκ ειδετε, αλλ’ η φωνην]” LXX) (Deut 4:12).
Idol polemic found in
Scripture more broadly likewise indicates that God’s form remains a forbidden
object of material representation, not that God lacks a form altogether. A
number of texts, though, are certainly critical of idols. Second Kings and 2 Chronicles
describe the destruction of idols in the context of cult reformers under
Hezekiah and Josiah (2 Kgs 18; 22-23; 2 Chr 29-30; 34), and the prophets and
psalms critique foreign nations for their association with idols (e.g., Ps
106:38; Isa 10:10; 19:1; 46:1; Jer 50:38; Ezek 20:7-8). Idol parodies in
particular contrast Israel’s “living God” with lifeless idols, claiming that
such idols displace the Creator with the created thing as the object of worship
(e.g., Pss 115:4-8; 135:15-18; Isa 40:18-20; 44:9-20; 46:1-13; Jer 10:1-16; Hos
13:2-3; Hab 2:18-19). In none of these accounts, however, is there a suggestion
that God cannot be represented as an image because God is invisible or
formless. Moreover, there are times in Jewish Scripture when images appear in a
manner akin to “idols” but without any sense of critique. The ark of the
covenant, for example, is sometimes depicted as being functionally equivalent
to an idol since it is a physical object through which the God of Israel
becomes manifest (e.g., Num 7:89; 1 Sam 5:1-5). Some scholars even argue that
the Israelites had an iconic representation of YHWH in the Jerusalem temple,
maintaining that biblical references to “seeing God” connect to seeing the cult
statue (see Dick, “Prophetic Parodies”; Levtow, Images of Others;
Bonfiglio, “Images and the Image Ban,” 2c, “Idol Parodies in Prophetic
Literature”). Regardless, recent studies on scriptural aniconism demonstrate
that Israelite religion was not imageless, and although Israel’s aniconic
tendencies intensified over time, as Tryggve Mettinger argues in his landmark
work on this topic, scriptural texts preserve a variety of stances toward
images themselves (See Mettinger, No Graven Image?).
Scriptural accounts
of divine images becomes especially suggestive when we turn to Gen 1, for here
human beings are said to be made in the “image of God” (Gen 1:27). This first
creation account relates that God creates humans in God’s “image,” using a term
(צלם in the MT and εικων in the LXX) that
regularly refers to the statues or visible depictions of the divine (e.g., Num
33:53; 2 Kgs 11:8; Ezek 7:20; Amos 5:26). In his summary on this account, Mark
Smith notes that “[h]umanity is not only the representation of God on earth;
the human person is the living representation pointing to a living and real
God, perhaps unlike the lifeless images of other deities made by human hands”
(Smith, The Priestly Vision, 101). Zainab Bahrani and Stephen Herring
push this argument even further. Bahrani maintains that images in some ancient
Near Eastern contexts were viewed as constitutive of the reality they
represented, and Herring similarly concludes that images were not replicas, but
extensions of the referent’s very presence (Bahrani, The Graven Image,
esp. 121-48; Herring, Divine Substitution). As created in God’s “own
image” (צלם; εικων) and “likeness” (דמות; ομοιωσις) (Gen 1:26), humans
arguably reach this same level of confluence; in the words of Randall Garr,
humanity itself is akin to a theophany (Garr, In His Own Image and Likeness,
117). If humans are “visible embodiments” of God, then they might reflect not
only God’s “mind” or “reason” (as interpreters wed to an invisible God often
maintain) but also God’s very body. (Brittany E. Wilson, The Embodied God:
Seeing the Divine in Luke-Acts and the Early Church [New York: Oxford
University Press, 2021], 25-27)
