The Power and the Glory: The Aesthetics of the Hebrew Bible

Abstract

No comprehensive account of the aesthetics of the Hebrew Bible has yet been written. This article sets out the fundamental principles of these aesthetics, arguing that the Bible articulates a unique system of thought in the history of aesthetics. The article examines the aesthetic language of the Hebrew Bible, and analyses its concepts of beauty and of art. In each case, it argues, Hebrew thought predates the concerns of Greek metaphysics. In keeping with its concerns with the social and religious life of ancient Israel, the Hebrew Bible expresses a developed system of aesthetics in which both beauty and art are understood as social and as religious phenomena. In the first volume of his Old Testament Theology (1957), Gerhard von Rad remarked, 'No aesthetic of the Old Testament.. .has as yet been written'.1 This remains true forty-five years later. To my knowledge, only four articles examine the Biblical understanding of beauty, and each of these focuses only on certain aspects of this understanding.2 There is almost no discus sion of the Biblical concept of art. The Hebrew Bible tends to subsume beauty into a range of related concepts, and it does not distinguish a category of fine art, or works whose end is the pleasure they arouse in those who perceive them. Nevertheless, in the development of its fundamental con cerns with the history, religion and ethics of ancient Israel, its authors arti culate a distinctive system of aesthetic thought. This is largely neglected by the history of aesthetics, but it constitutes a significant event in that history, especially inasmuch as Hebrew thought differs so considerably from that of the Greek philosophers with which histories of aesthetics typi cally begin. In this article, I will examine the fundamental principles of the aesthetics of the Hebrew Bible, analysing the aesthetic language available to its authors, and their concepts of beauty and of art. I will argue that these principles constitute a unique system of aesthetic thought, in which, in keeping with the Hebrew Bible's concern with the social and religious life of Israel, both beauty and art are understood as social and as religious phenomena. Literature & Theology, Vol. 18. No. 2. © Oxford University Press 2004; all rights reserved. This content downloaded from 157.55.39.4 on Fri, 09 Sep 2016 04:31:56 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 124 AESTHETICS AND THE HEBREW BIBLE The semantic range of the Hebrew terms for beauty and its perception gives an initial indication of the structure of the Biblical authors' aesthetic thought. The word for 'beauty' is y°pi, and the adjective yapeh means 'beautiful' or 'fair'. As the terms' frequent association with to'ar, 'form', and mar'eh, 'appearance', in phrases which literally mean 'beautiful in form' or 'beautiful in appearance', indicates, they refer primarily to external form. William Wilhams comments that, in most cases, the term is used 'without any hint of an inner beauty'.3 It is predicated most frequently of human beings, although never of God. In Isaiah 33:17 and Zechariah 9:17, the word is used in an eschatological sense, of the coming beauty of the messianic king and of the restored Israel. Beauty is semantically linked with the concept of glory in the synonymous nouns tip'ara and tip'eret, which mean both 'beauty' and 'glory'. These terms refer to beauty especially in the sense of adornment. At Isaiah 3:18, tip'eret denotes the numerous articles of jewellery and decorative clothing worn by wealthy women to enhance their beauty. The NRSV translates this as 'finery'. The terms also refer to adornment with jewels or fine clothing at Isaiah 52:1; Ezekiel 16:17, 39! 23:26; 2 Chronicles 3:6. The related noun pe'er denotes ornamental head-dress. Secondly, tip'ara and tip'eret mean 'glory', in the sense of that which brings honour or dignity to a person (Proverbs 20:29; 17:6; 19:11). They can also denote the 'glorying', or boasting in one's own achievements, of powerful nations or kings (Isaiah 10:12; 20:5). The two senses of the word are linked in the frequent expression 'teret tip'eret, a 'crown of beauty', or 'crown of glory', which is used figuratively of the restored Jerusalem (Isaiah 62:3) and of Wisdom (Proverbs 4:9), as well as literally (Jeremiah 13:18; Ezekiel 16:12; 23:42). The two concepts are also associated at Exodus 28:2, 40, where the sacred vestments for the high priest Aaron and his sons are made Fkabod uFtip'eret, for 'glory and beauty'. John Collins writes, 'The semantic link seems to be that the beauty is expressive of the dignity of the bearer and elicits ascriptions of glory'.4 The Hebrew terms most commonly used for the kind of perception that brings pleasure are the verb hamad, 'to desire, take pleasure in', and its cognate nouns, such as hemed, 'desire, delight', hemdâ, 'desire, delight', and mahtnad, 'desire; desirable, precious thing'. In the Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament, G. Walhs writes that this word-group expresses the notion of 'finding something desirable or precious on account of its form or splendour'.5 The nouns which derive from the root hmd all refer to the outward appearance of a thing, as the common expression mahmad 'ayin, the 'delight of your eyes' (Ezekiel 24:16, 21, 25; cf. 1 Kings 20:6; Lamentations 2:4), suggests. They can refer to the beauty of an object's form, such as that of 'handsome' young men (Ezekiel 23:6), or of'pleasant' fields (Isaiah 32:12), as well as to the enjoyable or pleasant qualities suggested by this form. They also frequently indicate the economic value of an object, such as that of'treasures' of gold and This content downloaded from 157.55.39.4 on Fri, 09 Sep 2016 04:31:56 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms