Judaism and Christian Art

Judaism and Christian Art PDF Author: Herbert L. Kessler
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812208366
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 456

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Book Description
Christian cultures across the centuries have invoked Judaism in order to debate, represent, and contain the dangers presented by the sensual nature of art. By engaging Judaism, both real and imagined, they explored and expanded the perils and possibilities for Christian representation of the material world. The thirteen essays in Judaism and Christian Art reveal that Christian art has always defined itself through the figures of Judaism that it produces. From its beginnings, Christianity confronted a host of questions about visual representation. Should Christians make art, or does attention to the beautiful works of human hands constitute a misplaced emphasis on the things of this world or, worse, a form of idolatry ("Thou shalt make no graven image")? And if art is allowed, upon what styles, motifs, and symbols should it draw? Christian artists, theologians, and philosophers answered these questions and many others by thinking about and representing the relationship of Christianity to Judaism. This volume is the first dedicated to the long history, from the catacombs to colonialism but with special emphasis on the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, of the ways in which Christian art deployed cohorts of "Jews"—more figurative than real—in order to conquer, defend, and explore its own territory.

Judaism and Christian Art

Judaism and Christian Art PDF Author: Herbert L. Kessler
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812208366
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 456

Get Book Here

Book Description
Christian cultures across the centuries have invoked Judaism in order to debate, represent, and contain the dangers presented by the sensual nature of art. By engaging Judaism, both real and imagined, they explored and expanded the perils and possibilities for Christian representation of the material world. The thirteen essays in Judaism and Christian Art reveal that Christian art has always defined itself through the figures of Judaism that it produces. From its beginnings, Christianity confronted a host of questions about visual representation. Should Christians make art, or does attention to the beautiful works of human hands constitute a misplaced emphasis on the things of this world or, worse, a form of idolatry ("Thou shalt make no graven image")? And if art is allowed, upon what styles, motifs, and symbols should it draw? Christian artists, theologians, and philosophers answered these questions and many others by thinking about and representing the relationship of Christianity to Judaism. This volume is the first dedicated to the long history, from the catacombs to colonialism but with special emphasis on the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, of the ways in which Christian art deployed cohorts of "Jews"—more figurative than real—in order to conquer, defend, and explore its own territory.

Between Judaism and Christianity

Between Judaism and Christianity PDF Author: Katrin Kogman-Appel
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004171061
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 501

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Book Description
The essays collected in this volume present a multi-faceted range of scholarship from late antique synagogues, Jewish funerary art, early Christian and Byzantine mosaics, to Byzantine and Jewish book art, and the representation of the Old Testament in Western manuscripts.

Jewish Images in the Christian Church

Jewish Images in the Christian Church PDF Author: Henry N. Claman
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description
"Beginning in the Third Century with frescoes in the catacombs of Rome, public art began to illustrate the doctrine of supersessionism. This analysis of a millennium of Christian art outlines the path by which Christians reinterpreted the Hebrew Scriptures to prove they foretold the ascendancy of Christianity. Starting with a solid introduction to the origins of Christianity and the beginnings of Christian art in the catacombs of Rome, Henry Claman skillfully demonstrates the development of the anti-Jewish message of Christian art. The study culminates with analyses of the majestic cathedral at Chartres, the public burning of the Talmud in Paris in 1248, and the expulsion of the Jews from France and England."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Interaction Between Judaism and Christianity in History, Religion, Art, and Literature

Interaction Between Judaism and Christianity in History, Religion, Art, and Literature PDF Author: Marcel Poorthuis
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004171509
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 641

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Book Description
This volume contains essays dealing with complex relationships between Judaism and Christianity, taking a bold step, assuming that no historical period can be excluded from the interactive process between Judaism and Christianity, conscious or unconscious, as either rejection or appropriation

Aesthetic Theology and Its Enemies

Aesthetic Theology and Its Enemies PDF Author: David Nirenberg
Publisher: Brandeis University Press
ISBN: 1611687799
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 255

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Book Description
Through most of Western European history, Jews have been a numerically tiny or entirely absent minority, but across that history Europeans have nonetheless worried a great deal about Judaism. Why should that be so? This short but powerfully argued book suggests that Christian anxieties about their own transcendent ideals made Judaism an important tool for Christianity, as an apocalyptic religionÑcharacterized by prizing soul over flesh, the spiritual over the literal, the heavenly over the physical worldÑcame to terms with the inescapable importance of body, language, and material things in this world. Nirenberg shows how turning the Jew into a personification of worldly over spiritual concerns, surface over inner meaning, allowed cultures inclined toward transcendence to understand even their most materialistic practices as spiritual. Focusing on art, poetry, and politicsÑthree activities especially condemned as worldly in early Christian cultureÑhe reveals how, over the past two thousand years, these activities nevertheless expanded the potential for their own existence within Christian culture because they were used to represent Judaism. Nirenberg draws on an astonishingly diverse collection of poets, painters, preachers, philosophers, and politicians to reconstruct the roles played by representations of Jewish ÒenemiesÓ in the creation of Western art, culture, and politics, from the ancient world to the present day. This erudite and tightly argued survey of the ways in which Christian cultures have created themselves by thinking about Judaism will appeal to the broadest range of scholars of religion, art, literature, political theory, media theory, and the history of Western civilization more generally.

Reframing Rembrandt

Reframing Rembrandt PDF Author: Michael Zell
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520227417
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 287

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Book Description
"This book embeds Rembrandt's art in the pluralistic religious context of seventeenth-century Amsterdam, arguing for the restoration of this historical dimension to contemporary discussions of the artists. By incorporating this perspective, Zell confirms and revises one of the most forceful myths attached to Rembrandt's art and life: his presumed attraction and sensitivity to the Jews of early modern Amsterdam."--BOOK JACKET.

Our Sacred Signs

Our Sacred Signs PDF Author: Ori Soltes
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 9780813342979
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
The art of the three Abrahamic religions—Christianity, Judaism, and Islam—has a tangled, interwoven history. Symbols cross back and forth among the three faiths, adapted to reflect that faith's specific spiritual needs. And much of this symbolic language predates any of the Abrahamic faiths entirely.In Our Sacred Signs, Ori Soltes traces the interconnectedness of religious symbols such as the Star of David, which isn't, it turns out, exclusive to Judaism at all. He shows that the various ways that Jesus is portrayed on the cross recall an artistic tradition that is in no way unique to Christianity. And he shows that religious architectural conventions as simple as the dome represent early “pagan” traditions.The narrative—essentially a series of overlapping stories—moves through the halls of museums and off to the holy sites of the three religions, tracing the millennia-long artistic trail that has endured even as the West moved toward secularization in the last three hundred years.Soltes shows us how art has long been used as an instrument to take us where words cannot follow. Our Sacred Signs is a breathtaking and revelatory journey through human history, its gods, and its art.

Art of Estrangement

Art of Estrangement PDF Author: Pamela Anne Patton
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 0271053836
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 220

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Book Description
"Examines the influential role of visual images in reinforcing the efforts of Spain's Christian-ruled kingdoms to renegotiate the role of their Jewish minority following the territorial expansions of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries"--Provided by publisher.

The Jews in Christian Art

The Jews in Christian Art PDF Author: Heinz Schreckenberg
Publisher: Burns & Oates
ISBN:
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 420

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Book Description
One of the fist works to consider art as a serious source of historical knowledge about the Jews and the ideological constructs developed around them by Christian thinkers and artists, this "picture atlas" demonstrates in a way no text can how Jews were seen through Christian eyes.

Cultural Exchange

Cultural Exchange PDF Author: Joseph Shatzmiller
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691176183
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 203

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Book Description
Demonstrating that similarities between Jewish and Christian art in the Middle Ages were more than coincidental, Cultural Exchange meticulously combines a wide range of sources to show how Jews and Christians exchanged artistic and material culture. Joseph Shatzmiller focuses on communities in northern Europe, Iberia, and other Mediterranean societies where Jews and Christians coexisted for centuries, and he synthesizes the most current research to describe the daily encounters that enabled both societies to appreciate common artistic values. Detailing the transmission of cultural sensibilities in the medieval money market and the world of Jewish money lenders, this book examines objects pawned by peasants and humble citizens, sacred relics exchanged by the clergy as security for loans, and aesthetic goods given up by the Christian well-to-do who required financial assistance. The work also explores frescoes and decorations likely painted by non-Jews in medieval and early modern Jewish homes located in Germanic lands, and the ways in which Jews hired Christian artists and craftsmen to decorate Hebrew prayer books and create liturgical objects. Conversely, Christians frequently hired Jewish craftsmen to produce liturgical objects used in Christian churches. With rich archival documentation, Cultural Exchange sheds light on the social and economic history of the creation of Jewish and Christian art, and expands the general understanding of cultural exchange in brand-new ways.