Second Commandment Ambiguity

Interpretations of the Second Commandment: Ambiguity and Clarity

Despite the tumultuous changes that have occurred over the last five thousand years one thing remains constant: Human hypocrisy. Early Jewish and Early Christian art is a prime example of human hypocrisy in action and both exist as a result of a necessary interpretation of the second commandment to help people understand the Jewish and Christian religion. While the Jewish people adopted a more abstract form of art, Early Christian art is distinctly different as it creates real and almost idol like images due to the influence of the Roman Empire.

Jewish artists made works that were more humble and abstract than other pieces found in that time period in order to follow the second

The third line indicates the reason that images are not to be made is because God does not want humans to worship them in place of him. From there Jewish artists created works that were not meant to be used as tools of idol worship, but rather to further peoples understanding of how God wants them to worship. Early Jewish art achieves this by purposefully using abstracted images that can be viewed without invoking a feeling of life and convey some message or piece of history in a visual representation . In the Synagogue of Dura-Europos is an image that shows the temple of Dagon after being passed by the Ark of the Covenant (Fig 1). The more detailed images created for the temple of Dagon serves as a juxtaposition to the ark’s very simple two-dimensional design. The breakdown of the idols before ark functions as a clever way to show that the focus of worship should be placed on God not images of God. Compared to incredibly naturalistic art of the Greek and Romans, which strive to find an ideal sense of beauty and balance, Jewish art attempts to be ambiguous so as not to break the tenants of their

The nature of the religion makes a blending of culture an eventuality and as such some of the ideas from other religions can stick around. Early Christian art begins to stray away from the Jewish interpretation and contains many Roman cultural and religious aspects, including to some extent idol worship. In Judaism, there is no central image that can worshipped as God is depicted as being formless and everywhere. Comparatively Christian art has a very central figure that can be idealized and produced. Jesus, the embodiment of God in the Christian Religion, is fully visualized preforming his miracles (Fig 2). The retelling of the story of Jonah is also displayed using a sea serpent instead of a whale. The sea serpent is a very roman creation and as such reveals the extent that Roman theology has influenced Christian art. As the religion became more accepted, and later adopted by the Roman Empire, increasingly realistic images of Jesus began to appear in greater quantity. The figure of Jesus appears at the center of almost every piece of Christian art and portrays an immensely stark contrast to Jewish works which purposely avoid a depiction of God. This shift in realism can be attributed to Roman idol worship as those converting over from Roman Polytheism would latch onto images of Jesus to help them better visualize what he represents without having to interpret some sort of