Divine Images:Aniconism In The Hebrew Bible And Its Ancient West Asian Context

The Hebrew Bible’s official position on the proper approach to God is that of imageless worship,i.e.,all images of God are forbidden as tokens for worshiping Yahweh.However,idols and the signs and symbols that represent them are essential elements of religious phenomenology and human culture,and it can even be argued that other religions,whether through ordinary traditions of worship,ritual celebrations,or devotional art,revolve around and express idols and their symbols.A knowledge of idol traditions is therefore crucial to our understanding of the anti-idolatrous teachings of the Israelite religion.It is indisputable that Yahwistic religion originated and developed in Ancient West Asia,and that Israelite religion and culture are closely related to those of Ancient West Asia,so knowledge of the iconographic traditions of Ancient West Asia should facilitate a better understanding of fundamental Israelite religious concepts.The idols,as earthly representations of the gods,served primarily as intermediaries for human communication with the gods.The iconographic tradition is a complex system of religious worship in which every aspect is closely connected to the sacred,from the revelation of the iconographic form,the preparation of the materials for its production,the selection of the artisan the process of its production,and finally the ritual of transforming the icon into a deity.In other words,from the very beginning,the idol is a vestige and a stage of the existence of the divine,and each process is its manner of approaching the divine.Therefore,to deny the existence of the idol is to deny the divine power inherent in it.When the image is washed and opened,the image sits in the temple like a king,which implies that the principal function of the image is the manifestation of divine rule on earth.In addition,the king,as the image of the god,also has the same attributes as the idol:the idol represents the rule of the god on earth,and the king is the upholder of this form of rule;the idol is a product of the god,and the king has a "divine lineage" and,last but not least in importance,the king himself has a statue of his own.Thus the divine rulership of kings and gods fundamentally shaped the relationship between the image and the gods.In addition,idolatry satisfies the innate need and consequent desire for visualization.Image intuition is an appeal to the externalization of the sacred that is engrained in human nature,hoping that mysterious forces,causality,intentionality,and will in nature can find their corresponding images in intuition to satisfy people’s concern for survival and the expectation of good fortune.By combining relevant archaeological evidence and documentary research,this dissertation delves into the textual background of beliefs and practices concerning idols,pro and con,and provides an analysis of the paradigm of sacred kingship and the image of the people of Israel in the Ancient West Asian iconographic tradition.It recognizes that the counterintuitive view of God developed in Israelite religion was above all a result of the attempt to preserve Yahweh’s dominion in the context of the exile.On the one hand,Yahweh’s dominion must be based on the belief in one God,which means first denying the sanctity of any God other than Yahweh.After analyzing the process of idol formation,it is found that the biblical scriptures are purposefully and systematically polemicized against the process of idol formation and its related themes.The purpose is to establish the exclusive power of Yahweh on this basis.On the other hand,Israel’s natural desire for images of the divine created a great rift between them and the imageless Yahweh,which ultimately led to the disaster of the broken temple and the fall of the nation.But image intuition is intrinsic to human nature,so discovering a way to thread the needle of revealing through images a God beyond images,without thereby encouraging idolatry,is essential.Hence,the establishment of Yahweh’s dominion consists of two key points:breaking the divine kingship free from the idol tradition,and responding to Israel’s appeal to figurative intuition.The recognition of these two points brings the study of Israel’s ideally imageless worship to a new starting point and height.The Israelite view of imageless divinity opposed any establishment of divine kingship other than Yahweh’s:in Ancient West Asia the idols and kings were the representatives of divine rule on earth,and a kingship centered on the idols not only strained the relationship between man and God,but also juxtaposed the status of kings with that of God.If the idols were made by human hands and had no divinity to speak of,what would happen to the objects they represented and to the establishment of the corresponding dominion on earth?Thus,only the dominion of Yahweh is unique.Israel’s imageless view of God implies a reconstruction of Israel’s relationship with Yahweh:the manifestation of Yahweh is united with a divine essence that seemingly resists overt manifestation.The introduction of the concept of "Man as the Image of God" in Genesis 1 brings Yahweh’s dominion down to every Israelite,making them the earthly representatives of Yahweh’s ruling kingship.The book of Ezekiel explores how Yahweh appeared to Israel in the absence of a temple,in conjunction with themes common to Ancient West Asian iconographic traditions.The Israelites were,by Ezekiel’s lights,directly subject to Yahweh’s command and authority,and though compelled to live in an alien land they would not be seduced by the habits and spoils of others.