WEBVTT - Aniconism, Images and the Divine: Part 1 0:00:03.040 --> 0:00:05.280 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, the production of 0:00:05.360 --> 0:00:14.400 My Heart Radio. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow 0:00:14.440 --> 0:00:18.560 your Mind. My name is Robert lamp and I'm Joe McCormick. Joe. 0:00:19.840 --> 0:00:23.279 When I mentioned God, well, what do you imagine in 0:00:23.280 --> 0:00:25.319 your head? What do you see? What's the vision that 0:00:25.360 --> 0:00:27.560 comes to mind? I have to be honest and say 0:00:27.600 --> 0:00:30.120 it's not a great answer, but it is God from 0:00:30.280 --> 0:00:33.400 Monty Python and the Holy Grail, you know. So it 0:00:33.560 --> 0:00:37.239 is actually an incredibly an incredibly literal depiction of like 0:00:37.280 --> 0:00:39.680 an old man with a beard, wearing a crown, sitting 0:00:39.720 --> 0:00:42.400 in a cloud and saying something angry at people down 0:00:42.479 --> 0:00:45.640 on the ground. Now that that's probably not the full 0:00:45.720 --> 0:00:47.600 picture of God in my head, but that was the 0:00:47.760 --> 0:00:49.879 very first thing that came to mind. And it might 0:00:49.920 --> 0:00:53.000 be because you specifically asked me to picture God, which 0:00:53.040 --> 0:00:56.040 I don't normally do when I think about the concept. Yeah, 0:00:56.080 --> 0:00:57.960 absolutely me. And I feel like I have a similar 0:00:58.040 --> 0:01:00.520 situation going on, you know where if you just say 0:01:00.560 --> 0:01:03.120 all right, think about God, picture God right now? Uh, 0:01:03.160 --> 0:01:05.120 you know, kind of a gozer moment where you have 0:01:05.160 --> 0:01:07.280 to just just come up with a mental image. My 0:01:07.400 --> 0:01:12.400 mind does instantly go to this um old sky Daddy image. 0:01:12.520 --> 0:01:15.280 I think of the Sistine Chapel. I think of you know, 0:01:15.480 --> 0:01:19.360 various images of Zeus I guess and uh, and certainly 0:01:19.560 --> 0:01:22.200 things like like like the Monty Python God are very 0:01:22.240 --> 0:01:24.840 much in that vein. Um. There's also a sort of 0:01:24.840 --> 0:01:29.039 a Sistine Chapel Chapel God gag that Stephen Colbert does 0:01:29.080 --> 0:01:31.400 on his show, where like God appears on the ceiling 0:01:31.480 --> 0:01:34.880 of the theater and speaks to him. Um. So those 0:01:34.920 --> 0:01:38.319 are the images that are kind of initially hardwired into 0:01:38.360 --> 0:01:42.200 my brain. Though It's interesting because you know, growing up, uh, 0:01:42.200 --> 0:01:45.160 you know, in a Protestant church, those were not images 0:01:45.200 --> 0:01:47.720 that we were ever presented with. It's not like that 0:01:47.840 --> 0:01:51.040 was the illustration in the Bible or on the walls 0:01:51.120 --> 0:01:53.160 of the church. That's not what they were trying to 0:01:53.280 --> 0:01:56.800 inundate us with. But we were exposed to it at 0:01:56.840 --> 0:01:59.640 some point outside of the church. And then that's just 0:01:59.680 --> 0:02:03.280 what's dicks and that's what remains unless you know, obviously, 0:02:03.360 --> 0:02:05.880 like you, if I'm dealing with a more specific example 0:02:05.920 --> 0:02:07.960 of God or a deeper I think that you know, 0:02:08.000 --> 0:02:10.440 thoughts about the nature of God. I can go in 0:02:10.480 --> 0:02:14.160 any number of directions, but that initial gut response that 0:02:14.280 --> 0:02:17.720 that initial mental image is the old sky Daddy. Can 0:02:17.760 --> 0:02:19.840 I tell you the second image that came to my 0:02:19.880 --> 0:02:22.440 mind after Monty Python and the Holy Grail? And it 0:02:22.520 --> 0:02:24.880 was like, I don't know what this is from, but 0:02:25.000 --> 0:02:29.440 it is basically a a very poorly three D animated 0:02:29.520 --> 0:02:32.720 kind of late nineties c G I face of like 0:02:32.760 --> 0:02:35.880 a lady with red eyes in a computer background, very 0:02:35.960 --> 0:02:39.240 lawnmower man. I don't know why that, but that's in 0:02:39.280 --> 0:02:41.280 there too. Yeah, I mean, and that is kind of 0:02:41.320 --> 0:02:44.320 that's kind of goes Arian as well, right, because yeah, 0:02:44.760 --> 0:02:48.400 lots of corners and the cheeks in the forehead. Yeah, yeah, 0:02:48.639 --> 0:02:52.280 I'd say that I probably if I'm like my my 0:02:52.400 --> 0:02:55.639 post gut image, I probably go into like a much 0:02:55.680 --> 0:02:58.400 more sort of psychedelic kind of zone and abstract zone, 0:02:58.800 --> 0:03:01.640 and I think of things that are that are certainly 0:03:01.639 --> 0:03:04.799 not anthropomorphic, and I try to think of things that 0:03:04.840 --> 0:03:09.080 are just like geometrically based. Um. But yeah, that initial 0:03:09.200 --> 0:03:11.600 initial mental image is always going to be the sky Daddy, 0:03:11.600 --> 0:03:13.360 and I guess it's just stuck there. I don't guess. 0:03:13.480 --> 0:03:16.280 I guess it's just gonna remain there for the rest 0:03:16.280 --> 0:03:18.760 of my life. Yeah, you can't escape what gets put 0:03:18.760 --> 0:03:21.120 there in childhood. But I guess this should be a 0:03:21.120 --> 0:03:24.200 good indication that for this episode and for the next 0:03:24.200 --> 0:03:27.120 episode as well, we're going to be talking about the 0:03:27.160 --> 0:03:31.520 idea of representation of the divine in the history of 0:03:31.520 --> 0:03:34.320 of the religions of the world. Uh, specifically, we're gonna 0:03:34.320 --> 0:03:39.480 be talking about the concept of an iconism. Yes, an iconism, uh, 0:03:39.920 --> 0:03:45.440 discussing an iconic images. So the icon and there in 0:03:45.480 --> 0:03:48.480 that word of is referringled like the icon that is 0:03:48.880 --> 0:03:53.120 like the center of focus in religious ceremony, personal worship, 0:03:53.200 --> 0:03:55.800 that sort of thing. Right, So what is an an 0:03:56.000 --> 0:03:59.200 iconic religion or an an iconic cult. If something is 0:03:59.240 --> 0:04:04.120 an iconic, then it is symbolic or suggestive rather than 0:04:04.160 --> 0:04:07.400 a literal representation. It's not designed as a likeness. It's 0:04:07.440 --> 0:04:11.240 not an idol. It is not an anthropomorphic representation. It 0:04:11.320 --> 0:04:14.680 is not a humanoid. Uh, it is the opposite of that. Yeah, 0:04:14.680 --> 0:04:16.680 So this is one of those subjects where actually a 0:04:16.760 --> 0:04:20.240 lot of the interest can be found in trying to 0:04:20.400 --> 0:04:23.880 figure out what the definition of an iconic should be. 0:04:23.960 --> 0:04:25.640 It's one of those things where like just trying to 0:04:25.720 --> 0:04:28.680 define it actually raises a lot of really interesting questions 0:04:28.720 --> 0:04:32.719 about the subject matter itself. Um and I found a 0:04:32.760 --> 0:04:35.599 really good overview paper dealing with this question of how 0:04:35.720 --> 0:04:40.080 to define the concept an iconic or antichonicity that was 0:04:40.080 --> 0:04:44.080 written by a Yale University art historian named Milette Gaffman, 0:04:44.720 --> 0:04:48.240 and it was published in the Journal Religion in seventeen. Actually, 0:04:48.279 --> 0:04:52.039 this specific issue of the Journal Religion, uh is a 0:04:52.200 --> 0:04:55.320 themed issue that was all about anichonism and it and 0:04:55.400 --> 0:04:58.560 this paper goes significantly into the problem of how scholars 0:04:58.560 --> 0:05:03.279 have offered different and sometimes incommensurate definitions of these terms 0:05:03.320 --> 0:05:07.680 over the years. But this paper is the introductory essay 0:05:07.720 --> 0:05:10.159 to that themed issue of the Journal Religion, and I 0:05:10.160 --> 0:05:12.599 think we're actually going to cite several other papers from 0:05:12.640 --> 0:05:15.719 that same issue over the course of these episodes. So anyway, 0:05:15.880 --> 0:05:21.200 this article is called an Iconism Definitions, Examples and Comparative Perspectives. Again, 0:05:21.240 --> 0:05:24.280 this is from the Journal Religion in TV and it's 0:05:24.320 --> 0:05:28.360 by Millette Gafeman and uh So, the short simple definition 0:05:28.400 --> 0:05:30.800 of anichonism given at the beginning of this article is 0:05:30.839 --> 0:05:35.360 that it is the demarcation of divine presence without a 0:05:35.560 --> 0:05:39.159 figural representation. Now I'll get more into the details of 0:05:39.200 --> 0:05:40.560 that as we go on, but I thought it might 0:05:40.560 --> 0:05:44.279 be helpful to start with just an example, a concrete example, 0:05:44.960 --> 0:05:48.039 and this one is cited in Engafeman's paper. So what 0:05:48.200 --> 0:05:53.240 she looks at is a Cypriot copper coin created during 0:05:53.279 --> 0:05:56.760 the Roman Empire roughly seventy five to seventy six CE, 0:05:56.920 --> 0:05:59.520 so this would have been during the reign of Emperor Vespasian. 0:06:00.000 --> 0:06:02.880 And there's an image on the coin I've got for 0:06:03.000 --> 0:06:05.440 you to look at here, rob that is definitely not 0:06:05.600 --> 0:06:08.680 a human form. It is some kind of geometrical thing. 0:06:08.800 --> 0:06:11.240 It looks like there's maybe kind of a building or 0:06:11.320 --> 0:06:14.279 shrine of some kind. And then in the middle of 0:06:14.320 --> 0:06:18.000 the building or shrine there is just this shape that's 0:06:18.040 --> 0:06:20.599 not a human it's just a kind of like tapering 0:06:20.920 --> 0:06:24.880 or sort of triangular conical shape. And the evidence from 0:06:25.000 --> 0:06:29.400 the archaeological and historical context makes clear that this coin 0:06:29.640 --> 0:06:34.159 depicts an object that was worshiped at the shrine of 0:06:34.200 --> 0:06:39.039 the goddess Aphrodite in Pathos, which which was a city 0:06:39.080 --> 0:06:41.359 in in Cyprus that was sometimes believed to be the 0:06:41.440 --> 0:06:45.200 home and the birthplace of the goddess Aphrodite. Now I 0:06:45.240 --> 0:06:48.680 think we can agree that this image on the coin 0:06:49.279 --> 0:06:53.320 does not depict the same kind of Aphrodite that you 0:06:53.360 --> 0:06:56.320 find in a lot of other Roman art of Aphrodite, 0:06:56.320 --> 0:06:59.280 of course, was the goddess of love and beauty, and 0:06:59.560 --> 0:07:03.000 she's been shown in human form as a beautiful woman, 0:07:03.120 --> 0:07:06.920 often like reclining nude or posing gracefully as in you 0:07:07.000 --> 0:07:09.640 might find h you know, representations of her and a 0:07:09.680 --> 0:07:13.840 bunch of frescoes from POMPEII that you may have seen. Yeah, yeah, 0:07:13.880 --> 0:07:17.600 that the artistic depictions were accustomed to very much inform. 0:07:17.880 --> 0:07:20.280 I think in many of us, anyway, that that gut 0:07:20.320 --> 0:07:24.160 instinct image that comes to mind when we think of 0:07:24.240 --> 0:07:27.760 the name Aphrodite, right, and in these frescoes from Pompei, 0:07:27.800 --> 0:07:31.680 for example, afro Aphrodite is not only depicted in human form. 0:07:32.360 --> 0:07:36.840 I would say probably that she is aggressively humanoid, aggressively 0:07:37.000 --> 0:07:40.760 embodied in that her human shaped body is a major 0:07:40.800 --> 0:07:44.040 expression of her meaning as a divine presence, you know, 0:07:44.080 --> 0:07:47.160 as the goddess of love and beauty, she is supposed 0:07:47.160 --> 0:07:51.520 to represent beauty. So you might always expect Aphrodite's presence 0:07:51.800 --> 0:07:54.520 to be indicated by a painting or a statue of 0:07:54.560 --> 0:07:57.400 a humanoid female form that was thought, at least by 0:07:57.400 --> 0:08:01.080 the artist to be beautiful, but apparently that was not 0:08:01.240 --> 0:08:04.640 always the case. The object of worship at the cult 0:08:04.680 --> 0:08:08.280 center for the Cypriot cult of Aphrodite and Pathos looks 0:08:08.320 --> 0:08:12.240 more like a weird cone. It's Aphrodite in her dollic form. 0:08:13.440 --> 0:08:15.320 You almost want to give her an epithet. Remember we 0:08:15.320 --> 0:08:17.960 talked about the Roman epithets of different versions of God. 0:08:18.000 --> 0:08:20.960 So you've got you know, Jupiter, Pluvius or Jupiter whatever, 0:08:21.000 --> 0:08:25.280 a Jupiter who brings rain. This is sort of Aphrodite dolicus. Yeah, 0:08:25.320 --> 0:08:27.320 it's almost as if like this is the God in 0:08:27.360 --> 0:08:29.920 its true form that has arrived, and people are like, whoa, 0:08:29.960 --> 0:08:31.240 we don't know what to make of this, We don't 0:08:31.240 --> 0:08:33.000 we don't understand what you're trying to lay out here. 0:08:33.440 --> 0:08:35.640 And then the God realizes, oh, I need to take 0:08:35.679 --> 0:08:39.800 on a humanoid form that communicates at a base level 0:08:40.240 --> 0:08:42.800 with these humans what I represent. I'm going to have 0:08:42.840 --> 0:08:46.720 to speak to them through physical appearance and body language 0:08:46.760 --> 0:08:49.400 and facial expressions and pose and all of this other 0:08:49.440 --> 0:08:52.040 just sort of the innate communication stuff, as opposed to 0:08:52.080 --> 0:08:57.160 taking on my true form of the weirdly top comb. Yeah, 0:08:57.200 --> 0:08:59.559 it's almost like, you know, if they saw the cone form, 0:08:59.600 --> 0:09:01.720 it would I have the mad Then you know, we've 0:09:01.720 --> 0:09:04.640 got to represent ourselves. I mean, I want to be 0:09:04.720 --> 0:09:07.600 very clear. I'm not saying I think that was actually there. Uh, 0:09:07.960 --> 0:09:10.600 their their theology, there's no indication of that. But yeah, 0:09:10.920 --> 0:09:13.240 my mind goes to the same place. Yeah, and part, 0:09:13.280 --> 0:09:14.800 I mean part of that is, yeah, well, there's this 0:09:14.880 --> 0:09:18.640 long history at this point in like weird fiction and 0:09:19.160 --> 0:09:22.320 you know, science fiction and horror where you have the 0:09:22.400 --> 0:09:25.839 god whose true form you know, is just ineffable or 0:09:26.120 --> 0:09:28.880 it is too monstrous to behold. And the weird thing 0:09:29.040 --> 0:09:32.600 is those traditions they do get into this, maybe accidentally, 0:09:32.800 --> 0:09:35.360 they get into this idea of an iconism, you know, 0:09:35.520 --> 0:09:37.680 this idea of of like, well can you can you 0:09:37.679 --> 0:09:40.440 show what that real god is? Oh no, no, it's 0:09:40.520 --> 0:09:42.320 too horrible. We have to have some some other things 0:09:42.320 --> 0:09:45.200 stand in right, paying no attention to the cone behind 0:09:45.200 --> 0:09:49.680 the curtain um. But so the Roman historian Tacitus actually 0:09:49.679 --> 0:09:53.280 describes the shrine in Pathos, and he tells us that 0:09:53.600 --> 0:09:57.640 the Latin quote is simulacrum day non effigy humana, meaning 0:09:57.679 --> 0:10:01.559 the image of the goddess was not in human form, 0:10:01.600 --> 0:10:04.480 and then to quote Gaifman, additionally, he noted that the 0:10:04.559 --> 0:10:08.000 deity was represented by a circular mass that is broader 0:10:08.040 --> 0:10:10.960 at the base and rises like a turning post to 0:10:11.040 --> 0:10:14.400 a small circumference at the top. And it looks like 0:10:14.440 --> 0:10:16.960 this is the same thing that's depicted on this coin here. 0:10:17.600 --> 0:10:21.080 And so Giveman writes that all evidence suggests that what 0:10:21.200 --> 0:10:24.240 the cult of Aphrodite and path Fosse worshiped was a 0:10:24.400 --> 0:10:29.559 conical stone. And this is actually not even particularly unusual 0:10:29.760 --> 0:10:33.480 in its historical context. Apparently, at many sanctuaries and cult 0:10:33.520 --> 0:10:37.720 centers in first century Cyprus, rituals appear to have been 0:10:37.760 --> 0:10:40.920 focused around some kind of large stone. You would have 0:10:40.960 --> 0:10:43.800 a cult center, it might be a cult center identified 0:10:43.800 --> 0:10:46.760 with the named god that elsewhere would be represented often 0:10:46.840 --> 0:10:49.559 in the statue or a painting, is having a human form, 0:10:49.559 --> 0:10:52.600 but here it's represented by some kind of big rock. 0:10:53.960 --> 0:10:57.400 And this raises all kinds of interesting questions about, you know, 0:10:57.400 --> 0:11:00.480 when we want to understand the religion of these ancient people. 0:11:01.040 --> 0:11:03.240 So I want to read a paragraph here from from 0:11:03.280 --> 0:11:06.960 Gaifeman that gets into these questions. Quote, the information we 0:11:07.000 --> 0:11:10.120 can learn about the Cypriot cult of Aphrodite is illuminating, 0:11:10.200 --> 0:11:13.679 Yet it also illustrates a fundamental challenge for our assessment 0:11:13.720 --> 0:11:17.240 of an aniconic cult. Even if we can identify an 0:11:17.240 --> 0:11:20.560 example of an aniconic object, we may not be able 0:11:20.600 --> 0:11:25.080 to establish its significance in the eyes of worshippers. In 0:11:25.160 --> 0:11:28.640 the example of the Cypriot cult of Aphrodite and Pathos, 0:11:28.720 --> 0:11:31.760 we cannot know how participants in the rights at the 0:11:31.800 --> 0:11:36.280 site perceived the conical stone. Did pilgrims to Pathos see 0:11:36.320 --> 0:11:40.120 the stone as an embodiment of the deity? Did they 0:11:40.160 --> 0:11:43.000 hold it to be more venerable than the more familiar 0:11:43.080 --> 0:11:46.880 figural statues of the goddess of Love Like Tacitus, We 0:11:47.000 --> 0:11:50.640 only have an outside perspective, Baffled by the choice of 0:11:50.679 --> 0:11:53.920 object for the sanctuary's primary focus. We're reminded of the 0:11:54.000 --> 0:11:58.760 Roman historians assertion set Razzio in obscure a quote, but 0:11:58.840 --> 0:12:02.120 the reason is obscure. Uh so, yeah, we were left 0:12:02.160 --> 0:12:04.400 with all these questions. I mean, there there is no 0:12:04.440 --> 0:12:08.280 conclusive explanation for what the people who went to this 0:12:08.360 --> 0:12:12.160 cult center in Pathos thought this conical stone meant. It's 0:12:12.160 --> 0:12:16.360 clear that it somehow represented the presence of aphrodite. But 0:12:16.559 --> 0:12:20.120 yet did they think this is Aphrodite's true form? Did 0:12:20.160 --> 0:12:24.000 they think that it it indicated some quality of aphrodite? 0:12:24.120 --> 0:12:26.320 Did they think this is just what we have here? 0:12:26.400 --> 0:12:28.280 This is the closest we could get to the form 0:12:28.320 --> 0:12:31.000 of aphrodite. And to be clear, it seems that they 0:12:31.080 --> 0:12:34.920 also used other images of aphrodite as well. Right, well, 0:12:34.960 --> 0:12:38.040 there were other images of aphrodite, like throughout the Roman Empire, 0:12:38.080 --> 0:12:40.240 but I don't know about at this specific cult center. 0:12:40.280 --> 0:12:42.560 At this cult center, this might have been all they had. 0:12:42.679 --> 0:12:45.160 It's not clear. So, yeah, that does raise a number 0:12:45.160 --> 0:12:47.880 of interesting questions. Yeah, like is this just is this 0:12:48.160 --> 0:12:50.160 to a certain extent the best they could do. Was 0:12:50.240 --> 0:12:53.479 this the uh you know? Or was this a deliberate 0:12:53.800 --> 0:12:59.360 aesthetic choice based on various like theological concepts. Uh? This 0:12:59.440 --> 0:13:01.200 is gonna be an rising question for us to keep 0:13:01.200 --> 0:13:04.679 in our mind as we we look at different um 0:13:04.720 --> 0:13:09.480 and iconic traditions and values in different cultures. Yeah, and 0:13:09.720 --> 0:13:12.800 to the point of some of the difficulties in in 0:13:12.840 --> 0:13:16.080 the job of you know, studying comparative religions, gave mean 0:13:16.160 --> 0:13:19.000 also emphasizes an important point that I'd like to talk about. 0:13:19.240 --> 0:13:21.520 She writes this near the beginning of her essay, quote, 0:13:21.880 --> 0:13:24.839 what can the historian of religion gain from considering in 0:13:24.880 --> 0:13:28.280 tandem traditions such as the worship of trees in modern 0:13:28.320 --> 0:13:31.160 India which we'll get into later in this episode, the 0:13:31.240 --> 0:13:35.120 Dead Pillar of Osiris, and the biblical prohibitions on depicting 0:13:35.160 --> 0:13:39.920 the God of the Israelites. Examining together geographically and chronologically 0:13:39.920 --> 0:13:44.920 divergent religious practices is fraught with methodological pitfalls and intellectual challenges. 0:13:45.200 --> 0:13:48.199 At the very least, this exercise risks implying that all 0:13:48.240 --> 0:13:52.240 phenomena clustered under a single heading have a single meaning. 0:13:52.760 --> 0:13:54.960 And that's a very good point, because I love the 0:13:54.960 --> 0:13:57.680 study of comparative religions. I think it's it's great to 0:13:57.880 --> 0:14:00.360 compare different religions to each other and understand and their 0:14:00.400 --> 0:14:02.800 their similarities and their differences. But I think it's also 0:14:02.920 --> 0:14:06.400 important while you're doing that um to follow the standard 0:14:06.400 --> 0:14:09.839 guiding principles of empirical science, even when you're studying something 0:14:09.880 --> 0:14:13.520 like a complex social phenomenon like art and religion. Uh, 0:14:13.559 --> 0:14:16.839 And those principles would be things like, of course, correlation 0:14:16.920 --> 0:14:20.440 does not necessarily imply causation. You can't assume that because 0:14:20.440 --> 0:14:24.080 two different religious traditions share a similar feature that those 0:14:24.080 --> 0:14:28.080 features have the same underlying cause. Yeah, like like, for instance, 0:14:28.200 --> 0:14:30.640 it would be very tempting to just broad strokes to 0:14:30.680 --> 0:14:35.840 say something like, well, religions or cultures that that have 0:14:36.000 --> 0:14:39.960 actual anthropomorphic manifestations of their God, they have just more 0:14:39.960 --> 0:14:43.400 of a physical mindset, and whereas and uh and and 0:14:43.680 --> 0:14:47.880 iconic traditions have more of a spiritual mindset. Like that's 0:14:47.920 --> 0:14:50.920 just such a broad statement to make that it it 0:14:51.720 --> 0:14:54.320 runs a high risk of just being you know, completely 0:14:54.360 --> 0:14:57.840 untrue on both sides. You know, you're just everything is 0:14:57.840 --> 0:15:00.280 going to be a lot more nuanced than that. And also, 0:15:00.320 --> 0:15:02.920 as we'll discuss, you can't really talk about like, Okay, 0:15:03.000 --> 0:15:06.680 this religion is is an iconic and this one is iconic, 0:15:06.840 --> 0:15:09.360 because generally you're gonna see both trends in any given 0:15:09.360 --> 0:15:12.520 religion over the course of of its of its lifetime. 0:15:12.960 --> 0:15:15.400 That's exactly right. And you know, as we've already seen, 0:15:15.480 --> 0:15:18.400 there are clearly, you know, there are both kinds within 0:15:18.480 --> 0:15:21.320 Greco Roman religion. You know, you have an iconic Greco 0:15:21.440 --> 0:15:24.680 Roman religion and you have highly iconic Greco Roman religion 0:15:25.240 --> 0:15:28.840 existing side by side even at the same time, and uh, 0:15:28.840 --> 0:15:30.440 and that's true of many. I think we're gonna look 0:15:30.440 --> 0:15:32.440 at some of the spectrum in uh, some of this 0:15:32.480 --> 0:15:35.560 so worship in India and things. You'll you'll even see 0:15:35.600 --> 0:15:40.040 the same contrast within within similar branches of Christianity, more 0:15:40.320 --> 0:15:43.760 an iconic sort of forms of Christian worship versus more 0:15:43.880 --> 0:15:46.960 iconic ones. Yeah. Yeah, because again, that's what's so interesting 0:15:46.960 --> 0:15:50.080 about the sky God thing is because uh, in most 0:15:50.120 --> 0:15:53.080 like Protestant churches, you have a you know, at least 0:15:53.080 --> 0:15:56.360 the one I grew up in, it's very uh an 0:15:56.560 --> 0:15:59.440 iconic inside, you know, and for the most part, there's 0:15:59.480 --> 0:16:03.240 a there's a large uh shift, in a large trend 0:16:03.240 --> 0:16:06.640 in an iconism in there. But it's from elsewhere. It's 0:16:06.640 --> 0:16:09.320 from like the broader culture that you end up getting 0:16:09.360 --> 0:16:12.240 these iconic emblems of the sky Daddy. Now to the 0:16:12.280 --> 0:16:14.920 point of the difficulty in defining these terms and all 0:16:14.920 --> 0:16:18.479 the interesting questions that raises, uh, Gaifman sort of conducts 0:16:18.520 --> 0:16:21.320 a review in this essay about the many different ways 0:16:21.360 --> 0:16:24.120 that the terms an iconic and an iconism have been 0:16:24.280 --> 0:16:27.840 used in the history of religious studies. She notes that 0:16:27.880 --> 0:16:30.080 one of the earliest instances, at least in the modern 0:16:30.120 --> 0:16:33.640 world of these terms comes from the German archaeologist Johannes 0:16:33.760 --> 0:16:38.240 Adolf Overbeck, who lived eighteen twenty six to eight, who 0:16:38.280 --> 0:16:40.640 coined these terms. I think he was writing in German, 0:16:40.720 --> 0:16:43.760 so it's an ikon niche and an ikonsmas, and I 0:16:43.800 --> 0:16:47.360 guess those would be based on Greek formulations, but not 0:16:47.640 --> 0:16:50.280 terms that the ancient Greeks would have actually used too 0:16:50.640 --> 0:16:53.040 in the same way that they're being used here. But 0:16:53.400 --> 0:16:56.320 she says that Overbeck was trying to promote a particular 0:16:56.360 --> 0:16:59.840 perception of the earliest history of Greek art. So over 0:17:00.680 --> 0:17:06.200 had a speculative interpretation of what the prehistory of Greek 0:17:06.320 --> 0:17:09.639 art and Greek religion looked like, and in trying to 0:17:09.680 --> 0:17:13.320 describe that speculative interpretation, he used these terms. And his 0:17:13.400 --> 0:17:18.160 idea was that in prehistoric antiquity, the Greeks believed their 0:17:18.160 --> 0:17:21.480 gods did not have human forms and could not be 0:17:21.560 --> 0:17:25.280 represented anthropomorphically, and so as a result, they were not 0:17:25.440 --> 0:17:32.879 depicted directly, but rather indicated by mediating symbols, including trees, stones, pillars, spears, 0:17:32.920 --> 0:17:36.760 and scepters. Now not to say that Overbeck was necessarily 0:17:36.760 --> 0:17:39.040 correct about that, but that was the idea that he 0:17:39.119 --> 0:17:41.760 was trying to illustrate with this term. And I think 0:17:41.760 --> 0:17:43.960 this would be somewhat analogous to how you can't really 0:17:44.040 --> 0:17:47.159 like show a picture of a person to represent an 0:17:47.200 --> 0:17:50.959 abstract concept today, for example a nation, so you might 0:17:51.000 --> 0:17:56.000 instead represented symbolically with the flag. And Gaifman sites other 0:17:56.280 --> 0:17:59.240 uh much earlier uses of these words, not so much 0:17:59.240 --> 0:18:02.119 in religious at ease, But for example, she cites the 0:18:02.119 --> 0:18:05.600 early Christian theologian Clement of Alexandria, who's you know, considered 0:18:05.640 --> 0:18:08.800 one of the earliest known Christian church fathers. And and uh. 0:18:08.920 --> 0:18:12.520 In Clement's writings, he uses an an ancient ancestor of 0:18:12.560 --> 0:18:15.240 the term an iconic, but with a different meaning, the 0:18:15.280 --> 0:18:20.040 Greek word and I kissed on, which means basically not representable. 0:18:20.400 --> 0:18:22.920 It's a word that would mean something in English kind 0:18:22.960 --> 0:18:27.200 of like undrawable or unrepresentable. And St. Clement is saying 0:18:27.200 --> 0:18:29.840 there that it is impossible to indicate the nature of 0:18:29.880 --> 0:18:32.879 the divine in a representative form. He's essentially just saying, like, 0:18:32.920 --> 0:18:35.400 there's no way to draw God, you can't do it. 0:18:36.040 --> 0:18:40.560 I want to drive home something here that well, perhaps uh, 0:18:40.960 --> 0:18:43.560 elaborating something I said earlier, Like I thought I asked 0:18:43.560 --> 0:18:47.480 the question regarding the cone um of aphrodite, you know, 0:18:47.680 --> 0:18:49.960 asking what was this all they had? I don't want 0:18:50.000 --> 0:18:52.560 to imply that that is a question of is this 0:18:52.600 --> 0:18:55.240 all they could do? Because, as we've discussed on the 0:18:55.240 --> 0:19:01.560 show before, the creation of anthropomorphicum are of creating human 0:19:01.600 --> 0:19:04.479 and animal likenesses and combinations of the two. These are 0:19:04.600 --> 0:19:08.920 very ancient trends in in in human culture, in our 0:19:09.000 --> 0:19:12.679 in our in our crafting of our environment. So if 0:19:12.800 --> 0:19:16.320 if one is creating something that is abstract that does 0:19:16.359 --> 0:19:19.760 not embody some version of the human form or an 0:19:19.800 --> 0:19:22.399 animal form, like that is a that is a deliberate choice. 0:19:22.520 --> 0:19:25.240 It's not a situation of someone of a culture being like, well, 0:19:25.280 --> 0:19:28.080 we'd love to be able to draw the lion man God, 0:19:28.359 --> 0:19:30.320 but we just don't have the technology yet, so we're 0:19:30.359 --> 0:19:32.520 going to use a square. That's not how it works. 0:19:32.800 --> 0:19:36.040 Oh yeah. I mean, both both iconic and an iconic 0:19:36.200 --> 0:19:39.080 religious imageries appear to go way back into you know, 0:19:39.240 --> 0:19:42.640 deep prehistory. So both of these traditions have long been 0:19:42.680 --> 0:19:46.800 present and um and I could imagine a scenario where, say, 0:19:46.840 --> 0:19:50.480 for example, if you a cult, a local cult might 0:19:50.560 --> 0:19:53.320 say like, well, we can't afford to pay an artisan 0:19:53.440 --> 0:19:56.600 to create this kind of statue, but we have this 0:19:56.680 --> 0:19:59.480 other kind of statue. But but you definitely want to 0:19:59.560 --> 0:20:02.800 don't want jump from that possibility to thinking that the 0:20:03.400 --> 0:20:06.840 that an iconic versus iconic religion, that one is in 0:20:06.880 --> 0:20:09.639 any way superior to the other, because it's actually been 0:20:09.680 --> 0:20:12.639 written about both ways. Like some scholars have written about 0:20:12.640 --> 0:20:15.840 an iconic religions with a kind of um, a kind 0:20:15.880 --> 0:20:19.240 of preferential bias towards them, like, oh, they're more spiritually 0:20:19.320 --> 0:20:22.040 pure because they don't have to, you know, represent things 0:20:22.119 --> 0:20:25.159 figur eally um. And obviously that's not true. But you 0:20:25.200 --> 0:20:27.879 also don't want to think like iconic representation of God's 0:20:27.920 --> 0:20:30.680 is superior because I don't know it it takes more 0:20:30.760 --> 0:20:34.000 artistic skill or something like that, which it doesn't even necessarily. 0:20:34.960 --> 0:20:36.880 So yeah, we're we're not going to be pursuing an 0:20:36.920 --> 0:20:39.280 idea that one is in any way better than the other. 0:20:46.320 --> 0:20:48.760 But coming back to the history of the definitions of 0:20:48.800 --> 0:20:53.320 anticonicity um so, Gifman sites a few other ideas to 0:20:53.359 --> 0:20:55.439 illustrate some of the problems here. One is that there 0:20:55.480 --> 0:20:57.600 was a definition in the nineteen eighties by a scholar 0:20:57.680 --> 0:21:01.920 named Berkhard Gladigau who defined an iconic cults as cults 0:21:01.920 --> 0:21:04.960 in which quote no images are known or accepted as 0:21:05.000 --> 0:21:09.240 objects of worship, especially not in the form of anthropomorphic images. 0:21:09.920 --> 0:21:12.760 And this this, uh, this one comes in for some 0:21:12.800 --> 0:21:16.800 criticism here because it complicates things by saying like no images. 0:21:17.080 --> 0:21:19.520 So you know that's one problem, Like is the conent 0:21:19.560 --> 0:21:22.240 Pathos at the Pathos Shrine not an image? I mean 0:21:22.280 --> 0:21:24.600 it is an image, it's not, but it's not a 0:21:24.680 --> 0:21:28.520 figural representation of a goddess with like a human or 0:21:28.600 --> 0:21:31.879 animal body form, So it's not anthropomorphic, but it is 0:21:31.880 --> 0:21:35.159 an image. So this definition might seem to conflict with 0:21:35.200 --> 0:21:40.200 some other uses. And also it is specifically specifies objects 0:21:40.280 --> 0:21:43.760 of worship, which you know, you could get into complications there. 0:21:43.760 --> 0:21:46.359 In fact, I'll talk about a complication there in a second. 0:21:46.720 --> 0:21:49.440 There's another definition that was refined by a scholar named 0:21:49.480 --> 0:21:52.520 Mettinger in the nineteen nineties to argue that an iconism 0:21:52.600 --> 0:21:56.000 should refer to cults where quote there is no iconic 0:21:56.080 --> 0:22:00.359 representation of the deity, either anthropomorphic or theeomorphs it which 0:22:00.359 --> 0:22:04.480 means an animal form serving as the dominant or central 0:22:04.600 --> 0:22:07.240 cultic symbol. But here it would mean that for a 0:22:07.280 --> 0:22:09.640 cult to be an iconic if there is a central 0:22:09.720 --> 0:22:13.000 cultic symbol, that's the terminology. It can't take human or 0:22:13.040 --> 0:22:17.320 animal form. And these definitions are also complicated by what 0:22:17.520 --> 0:22:20.880 object or symbol you're actually talking about. What what actually 0:22:20.920 --> 0:22:25.960 counts as a central cultic symbol or an object of worship? Like, 0:22:26.000 --> 0:22:27.920 there are a lot of religious symbols that I think 0:22:27.920 --> 0:22:30.320