Seeing pictures

reading texts

pp. 48-67

in: David Jasper, Readings in the canon of scripture, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 1995

Abstract

It should be clear by now that one of the underlying themes of this study is the way in which the canon may act to reinforce certain assumptions — religious, racial, sexual and so on. Texts within the canon may come to be read as supportive of such assumptions as controls, though other readings remain possible, readings against the grain of canonical demands. In this chapter I will deal largely, though not exclusively, with ways in which visual art has "read" the Bible, and in particular has drawn our attention to the bodies, literally the flesh and blood, of participants in and victims of the scriptural narratives. From a Christian religion which celebrates the word made flesh we return with some unease to the violated and discarded bodies in the canon of salvation history.