Art as Biblical Commentary: Visual Criticism from Hagar the Wife of Abraham to Mary the Mother of Jesus

by J. Cheryl Exum, Andrew Mein (Editor), Claudia V. Camp (Editor)

Overview

Art as Biblical Commentary is not just about biblical art but, more importantly, about biblical exegesis and the contributions visual criticism as an exegetical tool can make to biblical exegesis and commentary. Using a range of texts and numerous images, J. Cheryl Exum asks what works of art can teach us about the biblical text. 'Visual criticism' is her term for an approach that addresses this question by focusing on the narrativity of images-reading them as if, like texts, they have a story to tell-and asking what light an image's 'story' can shed on the biblical narrator's story.

In Part I, Exum elaborates on her approach and offers a personal testimony to the value of visual criticism. Part 2 examines in detail the story of Hagar in Genesis 16 and 21. Part 3 contains chapters on erotic looking and voyeuristic gazing in the stories of Bathsheba, Susanna, Joseph and Potiphar's wife and the Song of Songs; on the distribution of renown among Jael, Deborah and Barak; on the Bible's notorious women, Eve and Delilah; and on the sacrificed female body in the stories of the Levite's wife (Judges 19) and Mary the mother of Jesus.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780567685186
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	05/16/2019
Series:	The Library of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies , #676
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 0.69(d)

About the Author

J. Cheryl Exum is Emeritus Professor of Biblical Studies at the University of Sheffield, UK.

Table of Contents

Preface ix

List of Figures xiii

Part I Visual Criticism

1 Visual Criticism: Biblical Art as Biblical Commentary 3

2 The Blinded Samson and Scene from the Song of Songs: Paintings that Changed My Mind 15

Lovis Corinth's Blinded Samson 16

Gustave Moreau's Scene from the Song of Songs 30

Part II Hagar

3 The Abjection of Hagar 43

Israel as a Subject in Process in the Book of Genesis 45

The Accusing Look 49

4 The Rape of Hagar 72

5 The Theophanies to Hagar 89

After Abjection: Hagar's Bid for Subjectivity (Genesis 16.7-16 and 21.15-21) 91

Hagar and the Messenger in Art 102

Part III From Eve to Mary

6 Erotic Look and Voyeuristic Gaze: Looking at the Body in the Bible and Art 117

Bathsheba and Susanna 119

Joseph and Potiphar's Wife 142

Erotic Looking? The Song of Songs 148

7 Shared Glory: Salomon de Bray's Jael, Deborah and Barak 168

Three Heroes, One Victory, Two Versions 172

Jael: Femme Forte or Femme Fatalel 176

Deborah: Judge, Prophet, Singer, Mother in Israel 183

Barak: Out of the Shadows 187

Visualizing Textual Oppositions 191

8 Notorious Biblical Women in Manchester: Spencer Stanhope's Eve and Frederick Pickersgills Delilah 197

9 Ecce Mulier: The Levite's Wife, the Mother of Jesus and the Sacrificial Female Body 222

The Annunciation 222

The Levite's Wife 235

Bibliography 246

Index of References 262

Index of Authors 267

Editorial Reviews

In yet another thought-provoking and challenging volume, Cheryl Exum explores several gems from the repertoire of Western art to reflect on what is said – but more often left unsaid – in the biblical text. With meticulous attention to the detail of the paintings, she conveys with freshness, originality and wit how an artist can capture that very precise nuance of a text, or that exact trait of a character, that so often eludes traditional commentators. Through a judicious selection of artists and paintings, Exum skilfully and persuasively shows us that there are many ways of “seeing” and appropriating biblical stories. Most importantly, Exum has successfully championed an approach that is useful for everyone who values the artist's essential role in biblical interpretation.” —Martin O'Kane, University of Wales Trinity Saint David, UK

“Art as Biblical Commentary takes an increasingly popular branch of Biblical Studies to new levels, exegetically and methodologically, showing over and over again, for the benefit of ordinary readers as well as experts, what valuable, nuanced insights into the meaning of the Bible can be revealed by a careful study of works of art like a seventeenth-century Dutch Jael, Deborah and Barak, two nineteenth-century paintings of Eve and Delilah and a twentieth-century Blinded Samson.
” —John F. A. Sawyer, University of Edinburgh, UK

“A conversation between ancient texts, early modern visual responses, and contemporary teachers and their students is the most effective way to keep the past alive on behalf of today and tomorrow. Rather than the hopeless endeavour of reconstructing the past “as it was” Exum helps us talk with the past “as it is”. And in the process, she demonstrates that one can talk with images as much as with words. This is interdisciplinary cultural analysis at its best.” —Mieke Bal, Cultural Theorist and video artist, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands

From the Publisher