What Role Did the Arts Have in the Hebrew Civilazation
The following article assumes a certain amount of knowledge of contemporary scholarship concerning the origins and development of Judaism in the ancient world. Many scholars believe that the ancient Israelites were disparate tribes in the state of Canaan that came together to course a new people, and that polytheism and adherence to the cultic practices of the Canaanites around them was retained past some Israelites even later monotheism became the norm. Indeed, the Prophets of the Hebrew Bible repeatedly exhort the Children of State of israel to abandon their idols and alternate deities. These idols and practices are seen theologically by Jews today as examples of sins committed past their ancestors. To the author of this piece, however, they are among the examples of the prominence of art in aboriginal Israel. (To larn more than most this time period, visit the Ancient Jewish History section.)
Excerpted with permission from "The Arts in Judaism: The First 3,000 Years," published in Contemplate: The International Journal of Cultural Jewish Thought.
A "Jewish work of fine art" is either a piece of work by an creative person whose Jewishness conspicuously influenced his or her art, or a work by a Jewish creative person that has had a pregnant identify in Jewish culture.
The Bible provides detailed descriptions of works of fine art that played an important role in Israelite religio-cultural life. We can still encounter works that have survived from the Hellensitic, medieval, Renaissance, and Enlightenment periods. Jews, influenced by their surroundings, have been involved in all the artistic genres–painting, sculpture, mosaic, fresco, architecture, the design of religious and household implements, manuscript implementation.
Sculpture in Ancient Israel
The Bible, as the foundation and repository of Jewry's collective memory, features many descriptions of work of sculptures and figurative art.
At the entrance to Solomon's Temple in Jerusalem stood 12 cast oxen, bearing on their back the great bronze "bounding main," a huge open water tank described in I Kings seven:25. The walls of Solomon'south Temple were also hung with embroidered tapestries of cherubim. A statuary serpent, held to exist the work of Moses himself, is referred to twice in the Bible (Numbers 21:82, I Kings 7:29).
Prophets and biblical historians inform us that throughout the Biblical period, sculpture and carving were necessary crafts, practiced in every Israelite settlement. Figures of Baal, Ashtoreth, and Asherah [local deities, amongst those worshipped past Israelites in the nation'due south infancy] were erected alongside the chantry on rural loftier places and on sacred hills and under sacred trees. Homes had their teraphim, figurines of household gods of healing and welfare, which their owners would take with them on long journeys.
The figurative and plastic arts fulfilled an important function in Israelite religio-cultural life. The Bible mentions iii sculptors: Aaron makes the gilt bull; Betzalel, the churbim, Moses, the bronze serpent. Figurative fine art since then had decorated Temples to Yahweh [the name given to the monotheistic deity that became–and continues to be–the one God of Israel], private homes, bathroom-houses, and theaters. The decoration of synagogues in the Second Temple period was influenced by both Jewish tradition and by that of the artist's host country. Jewish art has always been receptive to outside influence.
Synagogues in the Hellenistic Era
The frescos in the Dura Europos synagogue and the flooring mosaics of other synagogues in Israel and the Diaspora bear witness to the fact that the rich figurative fine art tradition of the Biblical flow continued into the Hellenistic period and played a central role in Jewish religious life.
After the destruction of the Second Temple and specially after Hellensitic armies and culture had conquered the Middle East, the Canaanite cults [which many Israelites continued to worship] disappeared and with them the figures of their gods that had been a characteristic of Jewish population centers. Fifty-fifty prior to the Temple being destroyed, synagogues were already existence build throughout Israel and the Diaspora as communal centers for worship and study. It was long thought that figurative fine art was bars to floor mosaics, constitute in early on synagogues every bit early on equally the fourth century B.C.Due east. The discovery in the 1930s of the Dura Europos, dating to the third century C.E.–its walls painted with frescos on biblical themes, crowded with representations of biblical characters–profoundly altered that perception.
Hellenistic influence on Jewish art was also prominent in Herod's restoration of the Jerusalem Temple and in other Jewish public architecture (the synagogue at the Cave of Mahpelah in Hebron, Herodian ampitheaters in Bet She'an and Caesarea, etc).
There are numerous other examples of the penetration of Greek mythological elements into synagogue art. The synagogue at Hamat Tiberias (fourth century C.E.) displays a zodiac circle with Helios the su god and his chariot at the middle. The well-nigh complete representation of Helios at the center of a zodiac circle is in the floor mosaic of the Bet Alpha Synagogue, where Helios is shown driving the 4 horses of the sun chariot. In the zodiac circumvolve of the Tzipporit synagogue flooring mosaic, the lord's day itself is the driver, one of its rays penetrating into the chariot as though to drive the horses. The fact that these myths fabricated their way into Jewish folklore is evident in many passages of Talmud and Midrash.
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Source: https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/jewish-art-in-the-ancient-world/
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