Noah’s Newest Neighbor

4 Comments

This week paleontologists announced the newest dinosaur discovery: Kosmoceratops, a plant-eating, three-ton beast with an improbable arrangement of fifteen horns on its head. Any beast arising from the sea would be jealous. As Kosmoceratops jostles its way onto the ark, scientists debate the utility of all those horns – placed incorrectly for defensive purposes, they seem to have functioned to attract mates. Isolated on a fairly compact land mass, these Cretaceous ceratopsids bloomed into a distinctive species as showy as any other so far discovered. As evolution continues to stir debate in this country, its evidence keeps marching along.

Every semester, four terms per year, I have students work on a project that includes (in part) evolution and the Hebrew Bible. Every semester as I overhear discussion, I realize just how deeply the anti-evolutionary front has its claws in the American psyche. Otherwise intelligent undergraduates studying a variety of subjects: science, business, engineering, psychology, express their doubts about evolution. The reason: the Bible doesn’t affirm it. Nor does the Bible affirm atomic theory, free market economics, or microchips. Evolution hits, perhaps, a little too close to home.

The dinosaurs stomp in the face of Creationism. As much as the fundies try to embrace them, dinosaurs are just too outlandish to fit in any world other than evolution. The God of the Bible doesn’t seem to have a surfeit of humor to have wasted so much creativity on dinosaurs that no human ever got to see. We reconstruct, with amazement, species after flamboyant species, and yet the foes of science keep a finger firmly tucked in Genesis. Serious Bible scholars seldom have difficulties with letting science do its job, including evolution. The agitation arises from another quarter. And with all those horns in front of us, that quarter might be the apocalyptic sea after all.

Exorcists, Serpents, and Rainbows

4 Comments

Tuesdays are release days for many new media products. I’m not sure why, but I accept it. This past Sunday’s paper ran a couple of stories by Stephen Whitty concerning the Blu-ray release of The Exorcist, counted by some critics as the scariest movie of all time. The press around the original release of the film in the early 1970s was enough to prevent me from seeing it until I was in my forties. I’m done using the word “release.” In an interview with Linda Blair, the iconic Regan MacNeil of the film, Whitty quotes her as noting that the rumors of “curses” on the filming of the movie were without basis. “But other people seemed to be trying to find something that didn’t exist,” she said. That sage statement could refer to considerable aspects of a society hungry for religious answers, but ill-educated on the religious facts-of-life.

Although sorely critiqued at the time by those whose religious sensibilities had been offended (Blatty is no theologian), Whitty nevertheless notes, “It may be a film full of gross obscenity. But in the end, ‘The Exorcist’ is a recruiting poster for that old-time religion.” He correctly observes that beliefs in possessing demons and that challenged social conventions will lead to evil permeate the movie. Traditional Catholicism wins out over that foreign Pazuzu every time. Even for those with more progressive beliefs, the film is difficult to watch. Religion, in addition to criticizing films, also provides some of the best plots.

Not to be counted among those best, but illustrative of the point, is Wes Craven’s The Serpent and the Rainbow. Ever since my days at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh students have been after me to watch this film. Confused, dream-like, and at times difficult to follow, the movie opens with a claim to have been based on a true story. It isn’t the typical zombie movie either, although it features zombies. More of an attempted scientific thriller, the film explores the dangers of tetrodotoxin, “the zombie drug” when in the wrong hands. Understated in the movie, however, is the religious nature of Voodou. This is perhaps the most obvious failing point in the story. If the movie were to be really scary, the viewer has to believe that this is possible. The skepticism of science blocks the potential for unbridled religious expression. That is perhaps why The Exorcist has retained its power over all the years. Unlike more rational explorations of the world, it allows the audience to believe in personified evil that only old-time religion can cure.

Blessing Nature

3 Comments

Today is the traditional Feast of St. Francis of Assisi. Yesterday the local Episcopal Church celebrated this feast with the somewhat Anglophile practice of the blessing of the animals. This is not generally an event to which my family pays particular attention – although we are animal lovers the only pets we have are hermit crabs and the spiders and bugs that naturally make their home along with us. Yesterday also happened to be a beautiful day for the local street fair and my brother and his family joined mine for the event. His family includes a dog and we noticed a sign advertising the local blessing of the animals. As my brother noted that his dog might better do with an exorcism, we decided to pick up a free blessing while the offer was good.

Normally animal services are held outdoors. This in itself is a commentary on the true equality of species. Many people feel it sacrilegious to bring animals into churches. Biologically speaking, however, that would exclude us all. Perhaps for allergies or the price of carpet cleaning it may be more expedient to bless the critters outside. After all, animals do fend for themselves out-of-doors, right? As we sat in an informal circle, the priest emerged from his office with his own dog at his side. A makeshift card-table altar had a simple wooden cross atop it to sanctify the area. As soon as they reached the center of our circle, the priest’s dog squatted to defecate on the lawn. It was a lighthearted moment, but it also spawned some reflection.

When it comes to religious settings and ceremonies, many normal behaviors and actions are considered inappropriate. This invisible divide reflects the time-honored division between the sacred and the profane. There is no tangible way to distinguish between the two; sacredness is a matter of cultural taste. Absolutes for sacred and profane simply do not exist. A priest’s dog following the dictates of nature is about as sacred an example of life as experienced by all creatures on this earth as any other. Expelling of waste is one of the characteristics of life as we know it. While some may find dog droppings offensive in sacred settings, I have a feeling St. Francis would simply have laughed.

Your dog did what?

Just Druid

3 Comments

Suggestively between the autumnal equinox and fall’s cross-quarter day, yesterday British authorities announced that Druidism is now an official religion. Such an announcement, naturally, does not endorse or censure the belief system but only affects its legal status. That status relates to taxes, the handmaid of the One True God, Money. Tax-exempt, Druids are now free to worship nature free of charge.

In the recent resurgence of interest in paganism, the Druids have attracted a considerable New Age following. There is, however, no doubt that Druidism is an ancient religion predating the Christian conquest of Europe. The origins of the Druids are lost in obscurity, but they are one of any number of ancient nature cults that have become fashionable in a post-Christian society. What does it matter if a society recognizes a belief structure as a religion or not? (Apart for tax liabilities, of course!) One of the issues at stake is the perennial question of who determines what is a religion and what is not. In a society where religion is defined purely by belief, the doors are cast wide, if not blown completely off their hinges, when a group declares itself a religion. Who is the final arbiter? Today the world resoundingly answers “Mammon.” When you pass that collection plate, or basket, or gourd, does the government take its cut or not?

Religions will always struggle to convince the many that they each possess the one, true faith. Some will do it through magic, others through nature, and others through divine revelation. All will be subject to the scrutiny of government fleshpots greedy for a share whenever money changes hands. Druids have lurked in the shadows for thousands of years. By publicly receiving the blessing of tax-exempt status, they are free once more to disappear into the mists and attract the envy of more imperially minded religions.

A Druid attempting tax evasion?

Sacred Geography

Leave a comment

Pilgrimage. The concept that certain places are special is deep-rooted in the human psyche. So deeply rooted that we consider it a religious behavior. Even as scientists recognize the need of many animals to return to their birthplaces or areas that they sense beyond the range of human perception, as human beings they feel it too. Even scientists have the urge to revisit that special spot. Otherwise the travel industry would be in great trouble. Pilgrimage is considered a religious behavior, and the sacredness of place has been noticeably in the news this week. MSNBC reported on the find of a skeletal pilgrim to Stonehenge from 1550 BCE. Yesterday the New Jersey Star-Ledger ran a story about a temple/mosque dispute in Ayodhya, India. Both of these stories center on the sacred geography of the region.

Stonehenge has been a magnet not only for Druids and New Agers, but for anyone with a sense of connection to European prehistory. In the winter of 1990, under a chilly British sky and gusty winds across Salisbury Plain, my wife and I made our pilgrimage to Stonehenge. The low angle of the sun in the sky in a dusky British December only enhanced the experience of standing near a monument that has become an icon of the mysterious and the transcendent for modern domesticated citizens of a straightforward, technological world. The news story states that the skeleton unearthed was of a Mediterranean teenager, far from home, in the shadow of what was already a famous landmark. Even over two decades on, I can still feel the inarticulate sense of longing I felt at Stonehenge, so near the winter solstice, and I understand why that young boy went there to die.

Meanwhile in Ayodhya, the site of a mosque has been declared two-thirds under the ownership of Hindu plaintiffs who claim the site as the birthplace of Lord Ram, a Hindu god. Naturally objecting is the Muslim population that currently has a mosque on the site. Sacred sites raise emotions and tempers readily. Humans want access to their holy places – this is the power of sacred geography. It is certainly palpable in the Bible, and was obviously present the last time I was in Jerusalem. Whether it is hardwired in our biology or simply born of whimsy, sacred geography will never go away. Either we can learn to share it or fight to the bitter resolution, but no matter how much blood might be shed the site will only grow more and more significant because of that very blood.

Crimeless Victim?

2 Comments

Anyone who’s spent much time with the Dead Sea Scrolls knows the name of Norman Golb. Long-term Oriental Institute professor at the University of Chicago, Golb has been active in research on the Scrolls for decades. Tuesday the New Jersey Star-Ledger ran a confusing article about the trial of Golb’s son for identity theft. After reading the piece several times it is still not clear what Raphael Golb has done that is either newsworthy or illegal. It does involve the Dead Sea Scrolls, however, and that is always enough to draw the attention of the Associated Press.

Is the truth in there?

The Dead Sea Scrolls continue to fire the imagination of the general public in a way that is somewhat baffling. The scrolls themselves are largely obscure and fragmentary, the information they contain is often arcane, and the published pieces raise excitement mostly in scholars rather than a general readership. The fact that it is not too difficult to fill a class on Ancient Near Eastern religions at Rutgers University seems to indicate that people are still avidly interested in the past, particularly in that conflicted part of the world where civilization began. While the media report the more sensational finds, interest quickly peters out while new and more exciting stories hit the wires. It’s fun to imagine what the field of studies would be like if sustained media interest told the public what to find fascinating in the ancient world.

This article, however, represents the unfortunate reality that scandal is often the drawing point for ancient studies. People are attracted to scholars behaving badly, intellectuals receiving their timely comeuppance. It is disappointing that the subject matter itself doesn’t receive more attention. The Ancient Near East is, after all, the source of what we continue to recognize as culture. Reading the article over again, the most disturbing element is not that Raphael Gold has allegedly committed identity theft. The most disturbing element is that a professional journalist describes him, apparently without a hint of irony, as “a brainiac.”

Goldilocks Comes of Age

1 Comment

NASA's Goldilocks, image credit Lynette Cook

“Even a simple single-cell bacteria or the equivalent of shower mold would shake perceptions about the uniqueness of life on earth.” So writes Seth Borenstein of the Associated Press concerning GJ581g, a newly discovered “Goldilocks planet.” This extra-solar-system planet is just the right distance from its sun, which is neither too hot nor too cold, and just the right size, neither too big nor too small, to hold an atmosphere and liquid water. This is the necessary environment for life as we know it to evolve. Like the life in the grout in my shower. It is an exciting prospect. This discovery suggests that other planets contain the right stuff for primordial soup, and the implication is, once again, that the earth must relinquish its place at the center of the known universe.

It is a curious notion that we share, quaintly parochial, that the earth is somehow special. The idea is an inherently religious one. Ancient peoples, beginning at least with the Sumerians, understood their world as apparent reality. The sky moves around us, not vice versa. Human beings, the apex of primate evolution, see the universe through self-crafted lenses. Lenses that we keep close to our eyes at all times. If there is life out there, and they come here, they will be the outsiders. We were here first. The Bible helps to shore up this homocentrism; the crowning achievement of divinity, according to Genesis 1, is us. Even scientists have long been reluctant to release the idea that we might just be one among many, a single, relatively common occurrence of life in a vast, indeed endless, universe.

Our species evolved as a religious one, feeling that God somehow gave us opposable thumbs and flexible vocal cords for a reason. (Presumably because God has opposable thumbs and flexible vocal cords.) From the very earliest of times we have considered ourselves unique on this planet and unique in this universe. Although reason has long suggested otherwise, and although scientists would often be the last to admit that it is a religious idea, we have grasped tightly to human singularity and defied the universe to prove us wrong. Once we actually discover that life out there, what will we do? If our past track record is any indication, we’ll head to that planet with Clorox in our hands and a divine mandate in our heads.

Ask Your Local Agnostic

3 Comments

A study released by the Pew Foundation reveals something many may find surprising: the best informed citizens on religion tend to be those who do not believe. There are obviously exceptions to this trend, but for those of us who teach religion it certainly rings true. Over nearly the past two decades, I have repeatedly encountered students brimming with religious zeal, but who know very little about what they’re so excited about. The emotional charge is real enough, but few Americans know in any detail what their religion actually teaches. Some of us didn’t need the Pew report to tell us this – we have known this all along.

One of the flip assumptions that must fall by the wayside here is that non-believers don’t know what they’re missing. In fact, it seems, many of them consciously reject what they are brought up believing. This also fails to surprise those who spend much time with religious studies. Religions are developed in defined culturally and chronologically bound circumstances. The longer it takes the parousia to occur, the more human knowledge mitigates against it. In a pre-scientific first century many ideas held a currency that no longer bears weight in theological commerce. Those who study it closely realize this.

As political parties gear up for midterm elections and various contenders are sending out their feelers for the highest office (secular, in this country), they know something the electorate does not. Religion, poorly understood, is perhaps the greatest motivator known to the politically ambitious. People believe – and feel it strongly – but what exactly it is they believe, they are not sure. Anyone who has read the Bible soberly, on its own terms, without ecclesiastical lenses firmly in place, walks away with more questions than answers. Religious belief relies on answers, often at the expense of knowledge. So it is that the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life has discovered something that those of us who daily live with religion had already surmised from the evidence right before our eyes.

Dark Side of Religion

5 Comments

Back in August I received a book to review for Relegere, the new online journal for Studies in Religion and Reception. The volume I received was The Lure of the Dark Side: Satan and Western Demonology in Popular Culture, edited by Christopher Partridge and Eric Christianson. I found this assignment to be a felicitous one for many reasons: the book was very interesting, the topic is intriguing, the authors are scholars who take popular culture to be worth serious study, and it exposes the roots of many perceptions of Satan and the demonic in western society today. While I cannot present the whole review here – I would encourage interested readers to explore the appropriate issue of Relegere when it is published – I would feel remiss if I didn’t at least mention a few of the highlights here.

Scary cover

First of all, the book is a collection of essays that cover the media of music, film, and literature. Many of my students like to point out the propensity of death metal bands for choosing ancient Near Eastern gods and themes for their band names and songs. The first two essays in this book explore black metal and its self-proclaimed Satanic intent. What is interesting here is that what many black metal bands declare as their “religion” does not, in fact, fit with mainline Satanism at all. This aspect of the book is worth reading just to see how religious ideas, both unholy and holy, easily become distorted when transformed into an artistic medium. By far my favorite essays, however, were those that analyzed horror films according to religious themes and concepts. It was refreshing to see serious scholars discussing vampires without flinching, noting how they are part of the same fabric from which religion is cut.

One of the recurrent criticisms of academic writing is that it generally reaches only academic audiences. Certainly at the prices common at academic presses the average layperson would need to be exceptionally motivated to pay out the cost to read what are admittedly generally dry and technical books. Equinox has fortunately released an affordable paperback version of this volume, making the price less of an issue. The content is, for the most part, readily accessible to the general reader. The cover is a tad lurid; when I took it along to the DMV to renew my driver’s license I felt a bit self-conscious in the waiting room. Beyond that, this was a rare academic book that should find a wide readership. For me, the bibliographies and filmographies demonstrated my own deficiencies in keeping up with popular culture. I would recommend it for those with a sturdy constitution who want to know the correct way to dispatch a vampire in the twenty-first century.

From Bragg to Phelps

1 Comment

Religious freedom is proving to be a two-way street. The news is rife with stories of religious groups pushing the limits beyond their right to state an opinion into arguably unconstitutional behaviors. At Fort Bragg, the Army is sponsoring Rock the Fort, a Christian rock concert promoted by the Billy Graham Evangelical Association. Although Christian bands are spiritually minded, they do not perform for free, raising the question whether military (government) money is being spent to promote a particular religion, a particular strain of Evangelical Christianity. In offering this concert, is the government endorsing this one religion? Statements that other religions are free to send their rock groups to Army bases rings hollow when, with rare exceptions, such groups simply do not exist.

Meanwhile, Time magazine brings the curious Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kansas back to the headlines now that Supreme Court has been called in to argue whether their outspoken condemnation of the military is constitutional. Fred Phelps, the founder of the church, has led divine hate campaigns across the country. It is his protests at the funerals of soldiers killed in action that has forced the question of whether his group has the right to condemn indiscriminately. The question of good taste need not even be asked.

What these Evangelical groups are pointing out is that God apparently suffers from schizophrenia. Simultaneously the great general upstairs loves soldiers and wishes to convert them and also hates them and condemns them to hell. The jury, it seems, should be the taxpayers. We are the ones footing the bill for Christian concerts and paying the not-insubstantial salaries for Supreme Court justices to argue about the legality of religious hatemongering. In these days when many feel that Islam is a threat (as Christian clergy threaten to burn the Quran), it might be worth asking where the real threat to religious freedom comes from. Religious zealots often make excellent soldiers, no matter what the religion.

These guys love God, but is the feeling mutual?

Alternate Realities

2 Comments

Shutter Island and Inception share more than just Leonardo DiCaprio. Both films blend the conscious and subconscious worlds in such a way as to question what reality is. To many this issue is answered by what some philosophers label “naïve realism;” the world that our senses perceive is the world as it really exists. During a guest lecture this past week, a student repeated raised the question of how we know what we know. More than simply an attempt to get the teacher off the subject, this seemed to be a legitimate existential angst. Religious studies has a way of doing this to people.

Even physicists of the twenty-first century are increasingly forced to what looks more like science fiction than apparent reality to explain our world. The quantum world is a surreal environment and as scientists close in on a theory of everything, those of us who live in the macro world wonder where reality begins and fantasy ends. Perhaps the concept of reality itself is flawed. We live with many ineluctable truths; we function biologically, live, grow, and die. Beyond that we have no way of knowing, but we believe. And during that lifespan we experience both conscious and subconscious input. The closer we look at reality the more it appears to fracture.

Perhaps that is why movies such as Shutter Island and Inception have been so popular. Scorsese and Nolan have widely differing styles, but both are relegated to a world where apparent reality doesn’t seem to be enough. Only so much of life fits in a laboratory. The vast majority of it is simply experienced, whether wakefully or while asleep. Each at the time feels like real reality. Inception seconds the question raised by Shutter Island: what is reality, and, perhaps more importantly, what will we choose to do with it?

The Very Blustery Day

4 Comments

What is it with car service and religion? After a long drive to and from Montclair yesterday to teach my mythology classes, I realized the poor car was due for an oil change. I try to be religious about auto service since the gods of mechanics seem to have bypassed me when handing out their gifts. I am pretty good at taking things apart, but when it comes to reconstructing them, well, they seem to work in new and interesting ways when I’m done. I don’t trust too much auto repair to myself. At the same time, Jiffy Lube is not my favorite hangout. I always take a book along, but the waiting area always has a television going and stale coffee perking, and other people chatting. It is sometimes hard to concentrate. A Friday afternoon seemed like a good time to go since weekend warriors would not be spending their first free hours at the Lube.

I had a choice of seats. I sat behind a Plexiglass divider from the television, figuring it might muffle the sound a bit, and began trying to focus on my work. The TV was on ABC, an early news show was running. I hadn’t been reading ten minutes when I heard the Bible mentioned on the news. I scrunched forward to peer around the windshield wipers suspended from the rack on the other side of the Plexiglass. An official looking authority named Carl Druze of the National Center for Atmospheric Research was explaining to an unseen journalist how he’d discovered the miracle of the Exodus! The government scientist explained, with a fancy graphic illustration, how if the wind blew all night the Red Sea would part into a marshy bit of mostly dry land for up to four hours, giving the Israelites an opportunity to walk right out of Egypt. The woman tending the register was so curious about my bent-over posture that she came around to see what the story was about. When she saw, she gave me a doubtful smile. The story concluded by mentioning that Carl Druze is a devout Christian, but that had nothing to do with his research.

Scientists have long tried to explain mythological episodes. Over the years I have read many implausible conjectures of “perfect storm” conditions that could lead to a dried sea bed, a series of horrific plagues, a world-wide flood, or even the earth itself holding still on its axis for 24 hours. While clever, these scientific fictions miss the point. The Bible is presenting miracles as unaccountable acts of God. No formulas or figures can explain them. I was bemused since four hours would hardly be time enough for the (at least) three million Israelites cited by Exodus to have made it across marshy swampland with their considerable material goods. The fact remains that no archaeological evidence for the exodus exists, claims of chariot-wheel shaped coral in the Red Sea notwithstanding. If the Bible had been intending to be literal here, it would have been the end of Egypt since the army was completely wiped out. And this was on the eve of the invasion of the Sea Peoples. There is a reason I let automotive experts work on my car. It is always interesting when scientists tinker with the Bible, but I’m glad that such tinkering doesn’t involve a half-ton of metal that is capable of racing down the highway at speeds the fleeing Israelites would have been overjoyed to have achieved on the road out of Egypt.

Dive low, sweet chariot

Gas Station Sukkot

4 Comments

One of the largest culture shocks that attended moving to New Jersey was the fact that you don’t pump your own gas here. By the time I was driving regularly, pumping your own gas was a fact of life. I’ve lived in at least half a dozen states and in all of them you pumped your own fuel. Until New Jersey. Now when I visit other states I sometimes sit dumbly waiting for the attendant to come to the window and ask what I want. You get used to being waited on.

Yesterday morning I stopped for gas – I do a lot of driving between my various classes, so this is a sleepy ritual. The attendant came and began the usual refueling when another customer stepped up to the driver’s side window. “Are you Jewish?” he asked. Actually, it is a question I am asked not infrequently. The stranger then wished me happy Sukkot, which was nice; I’ve always enjoyed the Sukkot festivities I’ve attended. He then proceeded to tell me that the country was in a mess, but as long as we held up the name of Jesus everything would be alright in the end. “We just need to hold up the name of Jesus,” he repeated.

I drove away full of gas. I wondered how we’d gotten from Sukkot to Jesus so quickly – the transition usually takes longer than that. Back at Nashotah House, a local Jewish doctor frequently invited me to bring my Hebrew Bible students to Sukkot at his house. A kind of thanksgiving celebrated outdoors, we’d sit in his stylishly decorated booth, eat snacks, and shake the luvav. By the time we returned to seminary for evening prayer, it was back to Jesus. I’ve never been proselytized at the gas pump before. I may have to rethink what the largest culture shocks have been, moving to New Jersey.

Higher Ethics

2 Comments

As a part-time public servant (I teach part-time at two state schools, Rutgers and Montclair State) I am required to sit myself in front of the computer for over an hour each year to watch a slide show on the ethics expected of public servants. Probably the first time this was a good thing since I had seriously been considering taking a tip-jar to class with me to help meet the costs of living in New Jersey. You see, part-timers do not get benefits. Some, like me, teach twice as many courses as their “full-time” colleagues and get paid less than half of what their betters do. I am a bargain-basement public servant. I figured a tip-jar might just help to cover mileage (not reimbursed). As I listen to the stern-voiced lady spilling out all the unethical practices (like tip-jars) that can lead to the dismissal of bad public servants, my mind can’t help but to wander to what Bruce Springsteen famously called “the mansion on the hill.”

Froma Harrop, a journalist in Providence, wrote an op-ed piece on higher education that appeared in yesterday’s New Jersey Star-Ledger. After surveying the situation at her local Brown University, Ms. Harrop laments the seemingly endlessly escalating costs of higher education. In the past four decades tuition has increased an average of 15 percent, whereas incomes (at least some) increased at an average of 6.5 percent. She notes, however, that the money is not going to professors or academic programs. The lion’s share of university money goes to sports teams. Students who often have trouble passing my admittedly easy introductory-level courses are pampered, petted, and preened by the university. The average undergrad has plenty of stories to tell of how they have been forbidden goods and services that the university reserves for its sports stars. Ms. Harrop also cites the fact that the number of administrators has nearly doubled in the last 30 years. For all that, the schools haven’t become more efficient, just top-heavy.

So as I waste an evening looking blankly at my computer screen, I realize that I am a public servant. Strictly part-time. I also realize that many public servants – those who hold high political office come to mind – earn far more than they strictly need. In fact, the benefits package alone of some of these “servants” would easily support a family of three mere mortals. And they don’t even have to make their own car payments. As an undergrad I took enough courses in ethics to officially declare it a minor. I have studied religion, a discipline akin to ethics, all my life. As the stern-voiced lady tells me all the bad things I cannot do with state money, I wonder what the top public servants are doing tonight.

Bleached Angels

2 Comments

A friend recently asked why, in the canons of western art, angels suddenly made the shift from colorful to predominately white. What was behind this loss of color? The history of angel imagery is complex and a great deal of the complication derives from a generally iconoclastic sensibility in late Israelite religion. Images were frowned upon, so we do not get “Hebrew angels” recorded for us. The current-day perception of angels seems to go back to Mesopotamian Apkallu figures and Egyptian deities. In both ancient cultures various deities and demi-gods were portrayed as winged humans. The Egyptian figures, at least, were colorful. In the world of the Hebrew Bible angels are nowhere cited as having wings and they were likely imagined as being pretty much the same as humans in form. Many biblical characters mistake angels for people.

In Greek portrayals, Nike, goddess of victory, is a winged character. Eros, the god of love, also bears wings (and unlike Nike, he is generally bare all over.) In some vase paintings the Harpies are winged women. Since Greek pottery painting was generally monochromatic, we don’t have much color to go on. The earliest Christian angel portrayal comes from the Priscilla Catacomb in Rome. This angel is monochrome and wingless. The more familiar, and lavishly colored angels are Byzantine creations. Since my opinions on art history are not to be trusted, it is advisable not to make too much of this, but Byzantine art made flamboyant use of saturated hues to bring glory to God. This is part of the tradition behind Orthodox icon writing, and angels were simply following suit.

In the Middle Ages in Europe, angels were widely used to represent good and evil. It would stand to reason (if not to art-historical standards) that “good angels” would show their goodness by donning white apparel while “evil angels” would take on darker garb. This also fits with the growing tendency to represent Satan as dark red or black in color during this time period. As angels symbolized goodness, they became bleached of their former, Byzantine color. Symbolic value outweighed aesthetic sensibilities. Today angels retain their ancient legacy of Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Greece. Wings fit the view of angels as messengers, although ancient ideas of their colors depended more on the artistic conventions of the culture than any attempt to be true-to-life.

The earliest Christian angel (left)