Hermeneutics of Ancient Near Eastern Iconography

koot van wyk (DLitt et Phil; ThD)

Visiting Professor

Kyungpook National University

Sangju Campus

conjoint lecturer of Avondale College

Australia

1 August 2011

Izak Cornelius of Stellenbosch University was a student of Othmar Keel in Germany and I was a student of Cornelius. For my honors classes I studied hermeneutics of iconography. What was formulated Othmar Keel and passed on by Izak Cornelius will be represented with alterations here and there to get closer to a proper hermeneutics for the science.

Cornelius said that before a piece of iconography can be analized, certain rules in the use of art of the Ancient Near East must be followed:

1. The own nature of the Ancient Near Eastern art must be taken into account, especially the aspect that art is to be read and not to be seen.

2. The pieces of art that are studied should be representative and not selective. Not only artwork that are fitting within a certain hypothesis should be considered. Cornelius felt that pieces that contradict a hypothesis or countered it, should also be considered. It may bring forward some interesting viewpoints, he said.

3. Cornelius felt that when the art was studied with a view on the Old Testament, the art of the whole spectrum of the Ancient Near East should be brought together, and not only, for example, Egypt like Görg did. Two hermeneutical rules of Keel are cited by Cornelius (Keel 1984: 16-17) namely:

a. that the primary horizon of understanding of the Old Testament art is the Old Testament self and Palestine.

b. other influences (from Egypt or Mesopotamia) is only helpful when data from the text itself cannot clear up the issue, or when the art of Palestine is insufficient to properly answer the issue. Knowing how Hugo Gressmann (1920's) operated with art in the Ancient Near East, it is important to highlight some more rules that Cornelius and Keel did not outline here. We will mention it later.

4. Cornelius said that the text is not used to read into the art and the art is not used to read into the text. There is an exception to this rule, from our perspective, and that is when text and art appear on the same zone or same space adjacent or near each other. If an obvious link exists between the text and image, it will be foolish to ignore the relation. Kuntillet `Ajrud inscription and image is one example. Most scholars connect the words and the image in this case. Careful analysis indicates that the text was written first and then the image drawn over it. It is thus not clear whether there is a relation and whether the same person did both. Therefore, the caution of Cornelius is valid. Then there is the case of Israelite seals or Moabite Seals in which text and image sometimes do have correlations. In this case the caution statement will not work. I have dealt with this in my book koot van wyk, Squatters in Moab [Berrien Center, MI: Louis Hester Publication, 1993]).

5. A very valid point of Cornelius is that the chronology of the art must be kept in mind before it can be compared to Old Testament material. Here is where we will differ with many scholars. Our insistence is that a proper chronology of the Old Testament must be also kept in mind. Authors wrote down painfully precise from their sources: diaries, annals, books, etc. detail of a time that exists when the characters existed. They did not anachronize the text to fit their own later times, for example the book of Chronicles was completed in the first year of Cyrus' proclamation 537 BCE. We do not have Persian period art in the book of Chronicles confusing the message or history. Our rule is modified as follows: it is important to keep the chronology of the image and chronology of the text strictly in mind and not with a methodology of Historical Criticism or Soure Criticism of a Wellhausinian kind.

Correctly Cornelius pointed out that a bronze figure of 2200-2000 BCE cannot be brought into connection with a Psalm 1000 years later (Keel 1984: 95). Cornelius feel that it can be done when a general impression of the time of the Old Testament is given but not when it relates to a specific verse and incidents in the text.

Cornelius knows that the text has to be also kept to chronology but he calls it an "unsolvable problem" in the Old Testament exegesis. He said that it is not the task of the art-historian to figure out the chronology of the text so the art-historian has to rely on the evidence from the one who does exegesis. But our approach is that it should be done also by the art-historian since it is not that difficult to do if one keeps the parameters of time in consideration as it is provided with mathematical harmony throughout the Scriptures. If one gets involved with critical scholarship then it will be impossible. But not if one works with a hermeneutics of affirmation with the biblical text.

6. Cornelius brought out another hermeneutical rule. The Sitz im Leben of the text as well as its Genre or Gattung, its literature kind, is important. A mythic image cannot be compared to a prophecy or history of the text. An esoteric myth may have been known to some priests or scholars of the past but not to the general population. On the other hand, the popular understanding may not have agreed with that of the priests. That is for non-Israelite texts and except for the problematic times of Israel when Baalism and Canaanitism were inroads into Israel's history, one could expect that priests and population followed the wrong ideas and that there is a link, as is told in the Books of Kings and Chronicles. Linking Ancient Near Eastern myths and the book of Revelation is done by scholars like Adela Yarbro Collins, much to the slaughtering of the text. In general, Ancient Near Eastern iconography cannot link to the Old Testament text since God was very particular to guard against importing Canaanite, Baal, other gods art and shapes and forms into the Israelite worship. Many taboos exist primarily for the purpose of creating a barrier against influence. Collins cannot be right and neither is anyone who wants to bring in ideas from Ugarit about the prophecies in Revelation or Daniel or any other prophecies. The Bible writer did not have these images in mind in writing the text. Cornelius feel that the Gattungen and Sitze may provide images that seems related in general but when specific exegesis is done, there is not correlation.

Cornelius felt that in the conceptual exegesis two steps are important namely a study of the text and a study of the image or piece of iconography. What we differ with Cornelius is that he states about the study of the text "the conventional critical linguistic-literary exegesis with all that it contains should be included". This is encouraging and following the hermeneutics of suspicion which is popular at the Calvinistic Seminary at Stellenbosch University, and elsewhere but that is not the method of the Seventh-day Adventist church who is doing exegesis with a hermeneutics of affirmation. The school of Othmar Keel will also follow the suggestion of Cornelius or Cornelius is following their suggestion.

Cornelius then cited Panofsky, 66 that three steps are necessary in the analysis of the art:

a) Pre-iconographical description: This is a clinical descriptive phase. A description is given of the iconographical components without any interpretation. It answers the question: what is it? (Style)

b) Iconographical Analysis: Here the possible interpretations of the art are investigated. Bibliographical sources are consulted but it should not serve as interpretation criterium. Comparisons of other pieces and statistics are also involved here. The question is: what can it mean? (Type)

c) Iconographical Interpretation (iconology): The synthesis of (a) and (b) is in mind here. The investigator arrives at a certain concept (fertility) or something else. The question that is answered here is: What does it mean? (Concept).

Cornelius admit that there is interactiveness involve sometimes with these three phases.

We bring some more rules to the fore.

1. Honoring the text with the chronology that is inductively analysed, one cannot bring art that is remote from the zone of the origin of the event in the text either in time or place to superimpose meanings on the text.

2. Even if the art is from Palestine, if the time of the art and the time of the text does not correlate then one cannot use it for comparison.

3. Isaiah thinks and describes art and vivid in his descriptions but one must be careful to allot a one to one basis for what he describes and the shape or form that was cognitive to him. He saw in vision and the vision angels will not compare to the Canaanite seals with influence from Egypt of winged figurines as we find it on the Baalnatan Moabite seal 16 of my book. It dates to the last half of the seventh century BCE and Isaiah died the first half of the seventh century BCE.