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The Bible and Visual Culture
II
The European
Association of Biblical Studies, Technische Universität, Dresden,
Germany, 7-10 August 2005
Introduction
The first meeting of the Bible and Visual Culture seminar at the
EABS.
Biblical scholars are accustomed to engaging with the written
word of scripture that it becomes so easy for them to forget
that for most of - at least - Christian history, with the great
mass of the population illiterate, the majority of Christians’
primary experience of their faith will have been first and
foremost visual. Drama such as mystery plays, the visual impact
of churches, public buildings, frescoes, sculpture and paintings
would have been what inspired and directed their understanding
and engagement with the Bible.
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Throughout every part of Europe, in large cities and in
provincial villages, museums and art galleries are crammed with
artworks that offer rich and subtle visual expressions of the
biblical text; these visual artefacts are not simply
straightforward representations of the parallel biblical
narrative but are mediated to us through the artist’s reading
and reception of the text and through the specific and
distinctive tradition within which he or she worked.
Biblical scholars neglect so many
of the opportunities that these art works offer: they can help
scholars to see the biblical narrative in new and unexpected
ways, they question traditional interpretations and most of all
they engage the viewer in the bible’s subject matter in
immediate and startling ways. The word-image dichotomy is in
many ways a false one: rather we should regard the literary
artist and the visual artist as working towards the same goal of
bringing to light what lies hidden, helping us to imagine, to
see in our mind’s eye, things that are new to us and that
challenge us.
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Seminar Co-ordinator
Dr
Martin O'Kane (University of Wales, Lampeter, UK) |
Contributors and Papers
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