Visualizing Literacy: Images, Media, and Method
In: Biblical InterpretationSearch for other papers by Ryan P. Bonfiglio in
Current site
Google Scholar
While biblical scholars have long been interested in questions about textual literacy in the ancient world, relatively little attention has been given to the concept of visual literacy – that is, the extent to which images were produced and read as a type of language. The following article introduces this concept as it has been developed in recent work in visual culture studies and then offers a series of probes that attempt to assess the prominence of visual literacy in the ancient Near Eastern world. Though it is not possible to arrive at a precise rate of visual literacy, there is ample evidence to suggest that those who produced/commissioned art were highly concerned about questions regarding the readability of their materials and often privileged artistic motifs over epigraphic content in the design and implementation of certain mixed-media artifacts. These lines of evidence suggest that images functioned as a prominent vehicle of communication in the ancient world alongside, and sometimes in place of, text-based media. Research on visual literacy not only sheds new light on the ancient media contexts of the biblical world but also offers a more explicit rationale for how and why ancient images should be used in biblical interpretation today.
Purchase
Buy instant access (PDF download and unlimited online access):
Institutional Login
Log in with Open Athens, Shibboleth, or your institutional credentials
Personal login
Log in with your brill.com account
-
3
Jack Goody, The Power of the Written Tradition (Washington: Smithsonian Institute Press, 2000), p. 134.
-
4
Mark S. Smith, The Early History of God: Yahweh and the Other Deities in Ancient Israel (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1990), p. xxix.
-
10
W.J.T. Mitchell’s, The Language of Images (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), p. 3.
-
18
Christoph Uehlinger (ed.), Images as Media: Sources for the Cultural History of the Near East and the Eastern Mediterranean: 1st Millennium BCE (OBO 175; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2000), p. xv.
-
21
Nelson Goodman, Languages of Art: An Approach to a Theory of Symbols (New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1968), p. 9.
-
25
Uehlinger, “Introduction,” p. xxv, emphasis mine. For further discussion of the “media” aspect of ancient art, see idem, “‘Medien’ in der Lebenswelt des antiken Palästina?” in Christian Frevel (ed.), Medien im antiken Palästina: Materielle Kommunikation und Medialität als Thema der Palästinaarchäologie (FAT 2/10; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2005), pp. 31-61; and Frevel and Henner von Hesberg (eds.), Kult und Kommunikation: Medien in Heligtümern der Antike (Schriften des Lehr- und Forschungszentrums für die Antiken Kulturen des Mittelmeerraumes-Centre for Mediterranean Cultures 4; Wiesbaden: Reichert, 2007).
-
40
Irene Winter, “Royal Rhetoric and the Development of Historical Narrative in Neo-Assyrian Reliefs,” Studies in Visual Communication 7 (1981), pp. 2-38.
-
41
Irene Winter, “Royal Rhetoric and the Development of Historical Narrative in Neo-Assyrian Reliefs,” Studies in Visual Communication 7 (1981), p. 2.
-
42
Irene Winter, “Royal Rhetoric and the Development of Historical Narrative in Neo-Assyrian Reliefs,” Studies in Visual Communication 7 (1981), p. 29.
-
43
Irene Winter, “Royal Rhetoric and the Development of Historical Narrative in Neo-Assyrian Reliefs,” Studies in Visual Communication 7 (1981), p. 30.
-
44
Irene Winter, “Royal Rhetoric and the Development of Historical Narrative in Neo-Assyrian Reliefs,” Studies in Visual Communication 7 (1981), p. 2.
-
45
Irene Winter, “Royal Rhetoric and the Development of Historical Narrative in Neo-Assyrian Reliefs,” Studies in Visual Communication 7 (1981), p. 31.
-
46
Irene Winter, “Royal Rhetoric and the Development of Historical Narrative in Neo-Assyrian Reliefs,” Studies in Visual Communication 7 (1981), p. 30.
-
47
Irene Winter, “Royal Rhetoric and the Development of Historical Narrative in Neo-Assyrian Reliefs,” Studies in Visual Communication 7 (1981), p. 30.
-
48
Irene Winter, “Royal Rhetoric and the Development of Historical Narrative in Neo-Assyrian Reliefs,” Studies in Visual Communication 7 (1981), pp. 30-31.
-
50
Richard T. Hallock, The Persepolis Fortification Tablets (OIP 92; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969). Hallock studied a representative sampling of 2,087 tablets, though it is estimated that there are upwards of 30,000 extant clay tablets or tablet fragments in the archive as a whole.
-
64
Paley, “Cylinder Seals and Impressions,” p. 210. Although it is not certain that these seals were inscribed, the impressions clearly indicate that seals were applied in such a way as to leave only the central figure of the design visible in the impression.
-
72
Keel and Uehlinger, Gods, Goddesses, and Images of God, p. 11.
-
73
See for instance, Bonfiglio, “Archer Imagery in Zechariah 9:11-17 in Light of Achaemenid Iconography,” JBL 131 (2012), pp. 507-527.
-
74
Keel, The Song of Songs (trans. Frederick J. Gaiser; CC; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1994).
-
75
Keel, The Song of Songs (trans. Frederick J. Gaiser; CC; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1994), p. 27. However, for Keel and others who follow the concentric circles methods, it is rarely the case that an analysis of textual data is fully exhausted before turning to images.
-
77
Susan Niditch, Oral World and Written Word: Ancient Israelite Literature (LAI; Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1996), p. 1.
| All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 462 | 51 | 2 |
| Full Text Views | 314 | 8 | 0 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 205 | 19 | 1 |
Visualizing Literacy: Images, Media, and Method
In: Biblical InterpretationSearch for other papers by Ryan P. Bonfiglio in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
While biblical scholars have long been interested in questions about textual literacy in the ancient world, relatively little attention has been given to the concept of visual literacy – that is, the extent to which images were produced and read as a type of language. The following article introduces this concept as it has been developed in recent work in visual culture studies and then offers a series of probes that attempt to assess the prominence of visual literacy in the ancient Near Eastern world. Though it is not possible to arrive at a precise rate of visual literacy, there is ample evidence to suggest that those who produced/commissioned art were highly concerned about questions regarding the readability of their materials and often privileged artistic motifs over epigraphic content in the design and implementation of certain mixed-media artifacts. These lines of evidence suggest that images functioned as a prominent vehicle of communication in the ancient world alongside, and sometimes in place of, text-based media. Research on visual literacy not only sheds new light on the ancient media contexts of the biblical world but also offers a more explicit rationale for how and why ancient images should be used in biblical interpretation today.
| All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 462 | 51 | 2 |
| Full Text Views | 314 | 8 | 0 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 205 | 19 | 1 |