Anthropoetics XX, 2 Anthropoetics XX, no. 2 Spring 2015 Peter Goldman - Originary Iconoclasm: The Logic of Sparagmos Adam Katz - An Introduction to Disciplinarity Benjamin Matthews - Victimary Thinking, Celebrity and the CCTV Building Robert Rois - Shared Guilt for the Ambush at Roncevaux Samuel Sackeroff - The Ends of Deferral Matthew Schneider - Oscar Wilde on Learning Outcomes Assessment Kieran Stewart - Origins of the Sacred: A Conversation between Eric Gans and Mircea Eliade Benchmarks Download Issue PDF Subscribe to Anthropoetics by email Anthropoetics Home Anthropoetics Journal Anthropoetics on Twitter Subscribe to Anthropoetics RSS Home Return to Anthropoetics home page Eric Gans /
[email protected] Last updated: 11/24/47310 12:58:33 index.htm[5/5/2015 3:09:12 AM] Goldman - Originary Iconoclasm Anthropoetics 20, no. 2 (Spring 2015) Originary Iconoclasm: The Logic of Sparagmos Peter Goldman Department of English Westminster College Salt Lake City, Utah 84105 www.westminstercollege.edu
[email protected] The prohibition of "graven images" in the Jewish scriptures seems to have no precedent in the ancient world. Surrounded by polytheistic religions populated with a multitude of religious images, the ancient Hebrews somehow divined that the one true God could not be figured, and that images were antithetical to his worship. It's true, of course, and significant, that every known culture has taboos regarding representations qua representations, often but not exclusively iconic figures.(1) But only the Hebrews derived a prohibition on images from the recognition that God is both singular and essentially spiritual, hence resistant to material representation.(2) In the ancient world, images were connected to the divine, either as the privileged route to god's presence, both dangerous and desirable; or as forbidden temptations to idolatry, the worship of "false gods," however defined.