This volume is composed of twelve essays that fall into three distinct categories: (1) methodology for “visual exegesis” and “rhetography”; (2) exegesis (of the New Testament) using Roman visual material culture; (3) visual exegesis of Christian artworks. The contributors are international—Australian, European, North American—and all were participants in a seminar at Emory University. Hence they constitute a circle of scholars with similar interests, in which the participants are in dialogue with each other and often refer to each other's work. Consequently there is a certain degree of repetitiveness in topics and ideas.
The project that inspires these essays reflects a move in contemporary biblical studies away from a concentration on interpreting the New Testament texts in light of their Jewish origins and toward more interest in the reception of those texts in the Roman-Hellenistic world. This permits a shift in emphasis from the purely textual to the inclusion of material culture. A unifying theme in many of the essays is provided by Robbins’ notion of “rhetography,” which he defines as “the graphic images people create in their minds as a result of the visual texture of a text.” (It is a sign of the close focus of the discussion that this definition is quoted verbatim at least a half-dozen times in different essays.)
Robbins begins the volume with a detailed survey of the contemporary literature directly connected with his ideas. Both his and others’ essays in this section of the book refer frequently to the use of scientific and sociological studies on how the mind and imagination work, stressing the importance of both immaterial and physical visual images. However, neither he nor most of the other contributors advert to the existence of a much wider field of studies of imagination in philosophical and theological aesthetics.
The second division of the book is devoted to three essays, each drawing on an aspect of Roman material culture to illuminate specific passages in the Pauline letters. The first essay examines the “imperial situation,” seen especially in statuary, and its implications for early Christianity. The second performs a detailed analysis of the statue of the “Galatian suicide” and suggests that it provides a way of reimagining Christ's crucifixion. The third looks at the specific armament referred to in Ephesians 6 in the light of the recent discovery of gladiatorial tombs.
With the exception of Christopher Nygren's essay on the difficulties of graphic exegesis, the contributions in the third section are essentially close examinations of the religious content of several artworks dating from the fifteenth to the seventeenth century. In portraying the contents of biblical texts, artists are of course interpreting them for an audience. However, they do not so much present independent exegesis as illustrate the conclusions of traditional textual exegesis. The authors point out that the artists examined frequently reflect patristic and medieval readings of the New Testament. Given the period of most of the artworks considered here, it is curious that none of the essays makes any significant mention of the reforms in art demanded by the Council of Trent, or of the extensive literature that attempted to provide guides for their implementation. This would be especially relevant to the essay by James Clifton, “Exactitude and Fidelity,” which examines paintings by Nicolas Poussin and Philippe de Champaigne.
The three fields of inquiry represented by these essays provide a certain amount of insight into the contexts of New Testament texts and their reception. The conclusions are necessarily limited, and the connections are sometimes tenuous and conjectural, especially in the second section. Most of the authors are concerned to make a strong case for the importance of the visual, and sometimes seem to presume a naïve understanding of the relation of texts and images they use or inspire. But L. Gregory Bloomquist introduces an important caveat: not everything invites (much less demands) visualization. And when texts do imply or at least permit visual images, those visualizations can differ. Bloomquist points out that imagination depends on memory, which is in large part socially and culturally conditioned. Hence visualization is local and cultural, not universal. And modes of envisioning differ not only between ages and cultures, but even between one person and another. Hence there are intrinsic difficulties in making large generalizations in this area. Furthermore, as Bloomquist notes, quoting Stephen Pinker, “visual thinking” is often strongly dependent on conceptual knowledge, and at some point, images must give way to ideas.
The explorations of the visual dimensions of rhetoric and of the rhetorical dimensions of vision, especially in artistic representation, draw our attention to an aspect of hermeneutics that has often been forgotten or neglected. But they also raise questions that go beyond the interests of the writers gathered here. For example, in interpreting images in terms of texts, or seeing them as texts, is there a danger of ignoring what is properly artistic in art? Again, as many of the essays point out, insights from empirical psychology and cognitive science can tell us a great deal about how rhetoric and images work to be persuasive. Should this make us wary of rhetoric and images as means of manipulation? Above all, how do rhetoric and visual imagination relate to the question of truth?
