The Sarajevo Haggadah: Iconography of Death in Jewish Art and Tradition

Abstract

This paper seeks to demonstrate the influence of biblical texts and rabbinic literature (the Talmud and the Midrash) on Iconography of Death in Jewish art. The first part of the paper deals with the extensive biblical, Talmudic and Midrashic texts on death, life after death and the Angel of Death. Part two gives some examples from Jewish art, with particular reference to the miniatures in Haggadahs and the frescoes in the Dura-Europos Synagogue. These images helped to dispel the view of the prohibition against visual images based on Exodus 20:4: “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.”