Arts, Literature, and Religion
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152 Journal of the American Academy of Religion ARTS, LITERATURE, AND RELIGION Vision of the Temple: The Image of the Temple of Jerusalem in Judaism and Christianity. By Helen Rosenau. London: Oresko Books, 1979. 192 pages, 166 figures. £10. ISBN 09-O5368-24-X. Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/jaar/article/XLVIII/1/152-a/687492 by guest on 28 September 2021 No ancient temple has excited so many attempts at archaeological reconstruction or has been so much the object of architectural imitation and profound theological study as the Temple of Jerusalem. The book brings to the fore much new visual material not previously assembled, and its analysis of the vision of the Temple in the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries offers many perceptive observations. The chapters dealing with the Temple in early and medieval art could have profited from the use of the well-documented essays of Ouellette, Cahn, et al., in my The Temple of Solomon: Archaeological Fact and Medieval Tradition in Christian, Islamic and Jewish Art (1976) and the excellent article by Carol Krinsky, "Representations of the Temple of Jerusalem before 1500" (Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 33 [1970]). All of these studies are briefly footnoted by Rosenau, but their rich source material is scarcely used. The existence of illuminated Hebrew manuscripts in antiquity, it should be noted, is not established fact (cf. J Gutmann, ed., The Dura-Europos Synagogue [197'3]). Similarly, the representations of a columned shrine or building on coins, paintings, mosaics, and gilt glasses need not necessarily represent or symbolize the Jerusalem Temple. One hopes that such errors as Via Montana (Via Nomentana), David Kimche (Kimchi), and the description of the Ashburnham Pentateuch (which does not show a frontispiece with the Ten Commandments in Greek letters) will be corrected in a second edition of this fine book. Joseph Gutmann Wayne State University The Catacombs: Rediscovered Monuments of Early Christianity. By J. Stevenson. London: Thames and Hudson, 1978.179 pages, 144 illustrations. $16.95. L.C No. 78-53052. The Catacombs is a most welcome publication as no recent scholarly work of these early Christian monuments exists. Lavishly illustrated and lucidly written, the book contains discussions of the creation, history, rediscovery, decoration, and choice of Old and New Testament scenes in the catacombs. Stevenson dispels popular ideas, including the common misconception that Christians worshipped and hid in the catacombs. He correctly observes that the earliest Christian catacomb paintings date from A.D. 200 and that their extensive decorative programs were probably commis- sioned by wealthy Christian patrons. Contrary to what we would expect to find, such central themes as the Passion, Crucifixion, and Resurrection are not encountered in early Christian art. Jews, Stevenson makes us aware, also decorated their catacombs. First examined by Antonio Bosio in the seventeenth century and systematically explored by G. B. de Rossi in the nineteenth, catacomb art has come in for renewed scholarly interest lately..