Visualizing Literacy: Images, Media, and Method


While biblical scholars have long been interested in questions about textual literacy in the ancient world, relatively little attention has been given to the concept of visual literacy – that is, the extent to which images were produced and read as a type of language. The following article introduce...

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Bibliographic Details
Subtitles:Visual Rhetoric and Biblical Interpretation
Main Author: Bonfiglio, Ryan P. (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Brill 2017
In: Biblical interpretation
Year: 2017, Volume: 25, Issue: 3, Pages: 293-319
IxTheo Classification:AG Religious life; material religion
HB Old Testament
TC Pre-Christian history ; Ancient Near East
Further subjects:B iconography
 literacy
 media
 minor arts
 ancient Near East
 biblical methods

Online Access: Volltext (lizenzpflichtig)
Parallel Edition:Non-electronic
Description
Summary:While biblical scholars have long been interested in questions about textual literacy in the ancient world, relatively little attention has been given to the concept of visual literacy – that is, the extent to which images were produced and read as a type of language. The following article introduces this concept as it has been developed in recent work in visual culture studies and then offers a series of probes that attempt to assess the prominence of visual literacy in the ancient Near Eastern world. Though it is not possible to arrive at a precise rate of visual literacy, there is ample evidence to suggest that those who produced/commissioned art were highly concerned about questions regarding the readability of their materials and often privileged artistic motifs over epigraphic content in the design and implementation of certain mixed-media artifacts. These lines of evidence suggest that images functioned as a prominent vehicle of communication in the ancient world alongside, and sometimes in place of, text-based media. Research on visual literacy not only sheds new light on the ancient media contexts of the biblical world but also offers a more explicit rationale for how and why ancient images should be used in biblical interpretation today.

ISSN:1568-5152
Contains:Enthalten in: Biblical interpretation
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1163/15685152-00253p02