The Concept of the Image in the Old and New Testaments

Abstract

It is notoriously difficult to define the term image. Is it an idea, an artifact, an event, or another phenomenon altogether? W.J.T. Mitchell’s influential essay “What Is an Image?” developed a “family tree” of images, including graphic, optical, perceptual, mental, and verbal images (Mitchell, Iconology: Image, Text, Ideology. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1987). James Elkins, building upon this model, has suggested an even more diffuse genealogy of image types (Elkins, The Domain of Images. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999). Sunil Manghani synthesized both approaches and has proposed an “ecology of images”, through which one can examine the full “life” of an image as it resonates within a complex set of contexts, processes, and uses (Manghani, Image Studies: Theory and Practice. London: Routledge, 2012). For the purposes of this analysis, we shall accept this model of an ecology of images, encompassing the graphic, optical, perceptual, mental, and verbal images. The fundamental question, then, is this: How do the Old and New Testaments conceptualize the category of image? We shall examine the concepts of “graven images”, theophanies (appearances of God), and the “image of God” within the biblical canon, and argue that the conceptualization of image within the Judeo-Christian scriptures contains both a potent iconophobia on one side and iconophilia on the other.