Iconoclasm or Idoloclasm? The Second Commandment in Modern Jewish Thought (original) (raw)
The Image-less Idol: How Iconoclasm leads to Idolatry
This paper examines the two seemingly opposed forces of iconoclasm and idolatry, positing that the two are not as diametrically opposed as is often understood. Rather, iconoclasm and idolatry are interrelated heresies that revolve around a common axis: an improper relationship with the image, stemming from an inadequate understanding of nature of God. Rather than being polar opposites, the one often evolves into the other; idolatry leads iconoclasm, and iconoclasm to idolatry. This paper will explore how these two forces have shaped the history of the image from the fall of Adam, through the iconoclastic controversy, the reformation, and into the contemporary era.
The project description in the introduction focused on the contents of the project, on its subject matter. The summary of our project examines the dynamics of the project: the types of argumentation, the relationship between contemporary positions and classical positions, their potential implications for views of other religions. These concluding observations, then, focus on what we have studied, with an eye to stating the principles, methodology, and ultimate significance of a contemporary discourse on idolatry. I would like to begin by reviewing our project in relation to the initial concept note, that served as an invitation to the project. What aspects of that concept note were addressed by our authors? Avodah Zarah or Idolatry One question raised in the invitation letter was the relationship, or possible tension, between the terms avodah zarah and "idolatry. " I do not believe that the conversation has advanced as far as possible clarification of the difference of appealing to one or the other term. All our authors refer to idolatry. Only four of them refer to idolatry and not to avodah zarah. In other words, for the most part, our authors use the terms interchangeably without considering possible differences between the appeal to one or the other term. No author offers an analysis of what constitutes idolatry, let alone one that is based on a semantic analysis. By contrast, several authors (Pedaya, Kimelman, Ben Pazi, Fisch) consider the meaning, emergence, and history of the Hebrew term as having significance for our reflections. Of all authors, Magid is the only one to explore both terms, suggesting the authors whom he studies actually discuss idolatry and not avodah zarah. What this tells us is that while the two terms are used mostly interchangeably, Jewish thinkers will prefer to enter into an analysis of avodah zarah and its associations with zar, strangeness, as a way of addressing wherein lies the problem with idolatry. Put differently, while for the most part the terms are not
1999
The concept of idolatry in the Bible is powerful and complex, diverse and problematic. Even though, as Halbertal and Margalit note, ‘the central theological principle in the Bible is [the refutation of] idolatry’ (10), it is ironic that the ‘category that is supposed to be the firmest and strictest of all... [exhibits] an astonishing fluidity’ (250). A theological treatment of the subject must consider the close association of idolatry with sexual immorality and greed and attempt to answer fundamental questions: What is idolatry? What constitutes a god?
This study presents a comprehensive biblical theology of idolatry, tracing the theme from Genesis to Revelation. It argues that idolatry is not merely the external worship of false gods but a deep, internal rebellion marked by self-deification—the attempt to displace God’s authority with autonomous human will. Through canonical exegesis, the paper explores how this heart-level rebellion manifests in Israel’s history, prophetic warnings, wisdom literature, and culminates in the New Testament’s warnings and eschatological judgments. The central thesis is that idolatry is a reversal of proper worship—where humans, created to reflect God’s glory, instead elevate themselves in His place, incurring divine judgment and necessitating redemptive intervention through Christ. Ultimately, it concludes that only the grace of God through Christ can confront and redeem humanity from the bondage of idolatry.
Figurations and Sensations of the Unseen in Judaism, Christianity and Islam, 2016
Prohibitions against the production and worship of images representing one's own or other deities (oft en referred to in the singular as 'image ban' or Bilderverbot)-as much as their seeming corollary, the so-called aniconic worship of a single supreme deityare commonly held to be distinctive characteristics of ancient Israelite and Judahite, Jewish and Islamic religion. Th e two aspects (the normative rejection of a given ritual practice and the realization of its opposite as alternative practice) are oft en considered as two faces of a coin. Yet the relation between the two is much more complicated. Th e terms image ban and aniconism are problematic and both certainly need to be properly defi ned and qualifi ed. 1 Scholars such as Tryggve Mettinger (1995 , 2006), Brian Doak (2015), Milette Gaifman (2012) and others have recently off ered important contributions to that end, focusing on fi rst-millennium-bce Israel, Phoenicia and Greece. Th e present chapter aims at continuing this conversation while putting it into a wider horizon, both disciplinary and theoretical. Neither programmatic prohibitions of cultic images nor de facto abstention from producing and using them in cultic rituals or imageless rituals are exclusive to early West Semitic traditions, Judaism and Islam (see the essays collected in Gaifman and Aktor 2017); 2 however, they distinguish these traditions from many others past and present. Moreover, both scholars and the wider public associate these traditions with the concept of monotheism. To be sure, none of the traditions studied by Mettinger, Gaifman and Doak should be considered monotheistic in any way. But the history of Western Asiatic and Mediterranean religion\s since late antiquity seems indeed to privilege an elective affi nity of sorts between the belief in a single, invisible, transcendent deity on the one hand ('monotheism') and the injunction not to represent that deity in a cultic image on the other hand. Monotheistic theologies have 102 Figurations and Sensations of the Unseen in Judaism, Christianity and Islam Th at Christianity as such (in toto) should range alongside Judaism and Islam in a discussion of imageless worship is therefore all but obvious. If it does so, nevertheless, this is largely due to the weight of Protestant assumptions in the contemporary discourse on ' Abrahamic religions'. If Protestant religious reformers of the sixteenth century claimed to recover the original purity of early Christian ritual from its distortion by Papist idolatry, they also considered reading, listening to and explaining scripture (Sola Scriptura) to be the most important element in the worship of the true God. It is along similar lines of thought that modern scholars of religion classify Protestant Christianity, particularly the Reformed and Calvinist traditions, among the 'aniconic' and even iconoclastic, thus ranging them close to Judaism and Islam in their rejection of cultic images and the valuation of scripture as the sole (or most eminent) medium through which the faithful may encounter God. Abraham From a historical, non-theological point of view, many aspects of the development of image-related ritual and theological discourse (that is, iconophile and iconolatrous positions) in early, medieval and early modern Byzantine, Catholic and Oriental Christianities may be regarded as creative receptions, perpetuations and reinterpretations of pre-Christian ('pagan') traditions and ritual practices. One would be hard-pressed to range these traditions among the anti-iconists. Early Islam originated in the late-antique Middle East as a kind of reformation movement directed against both domestic 'idolatry' and various forms of Jewish and Christian religion. Invoking Abrahamic descent (d î n Ibrahim) and the tradition remembering Abraham smashing idols worshipped by the society he had been born into served Muhammad to claim ritual and genealogical precedence over Jewish and Christian claims to true religion; a similar argumentative strategy had already served Paul to claim religious superiority for early Christian versus Torah-obedient Jewish faith. Should we then consider the matrix described above to represent something distinctively ' Abrahamic' in the fi rst place? Or does that label only serve as a convenient pretext for lumping together three religions which, aft er all, diff er considerably, internally and among each other, in their interpretation of a putative 'image ban' , 'aniconism' and the pre-eminence of the revealed word? From the point of view of a historian of religion\s, the label ' Abrahamic' is problematic if it obscures the many diff erences among the streams, sub-streams and confl uents of the three traditions. Th eir many entanglements, and the variety of practices with regard to images particularly within the Christian traditions, cannot easily be homogenized in a simple genealogical model as implied by the ' Abrahamic' metaphor. Historians of religion\s should therefore critically assess rather than step in and follow this ' Abrahamic' genealogical discourse, which is of very recent conjuncture and, in my view, of little analytical use. Biblical tradition concerning Abraham (most prominently, Genesis 12-25) does not relate Abraham to specifi cally 'aniconic' forms of worship, nor to any kind of 'image ban' (the latter is brought much later into the biblical narrative, when Moses and Israel meet Yahweh at Mount Sinai, Exodus 20). It was Jewish Midrash which