Although entitled The Image and Its Prohibition in Jewish Antiquity, the ten essays in this collection edited by Sarah Pearce center as much on the power of the image as on its prohibition. From the remarkable wall paintings of the Dura Europos synagogue to the surprising floor mosaics featuring Helios and the zodiac, the richness of ancient Jewish art, particularly the art of Late Antiquity, is on display. Nearly half of the essays focus on the art of that period—a good choice, since much of the scholarly community, not to mention the general public, is still unfamiliar with its quality.

With the publication in the 1930s of the mid-third-century wall painting of Dura Europos, the notion that Jews did not make or appreciate figurative art was brought into question. Until that time, what had been considered Jewish aniconism was attributed to the second commandment. However, after the discovery of the Dura murals as well as the pagan-like figurative mosaics of the Galilean synagogues and the sculpture of the Jewish necropolis of Beth She‘arim, scholars scrambled to reexamine the biblical texts as well as Talmudic and Midrashic writing that could explain the profusion of this figurative Jewish art, some of which was “Hellenistic” in style. The writings in this collection are another contribution to that effort.

Philip Alexander’s essay reflects on the Biblical passages banning images and on how the Targum interpreted them. Though the biblical legislation is ambiguous, the prohibition against images could be understood to mean that one is proscribed from creating an image to worship; making an image for other purposes is permitted. Since the commentaries, however, were open to interpretation, Judaism was aniconic during certain periods, but at other times Jews accepted figurative imagery. Several essays in this book examine that vacillation.

H. G. M. Williamson returns to the time of Solomon and questions whether or not his temple might have harbored an image of the deity. Until fairly recently, he states, most scholars assumed the answer to that question was negative. However, an impressive number of scholars now hold that some kind of statue was present in the innermost shrine of the first temple. Williamson first lays out the affirmative side of the argument, but all too briefly. He reviews the archaeological material that seems to imply the presence of an image of the deity in the first temple and cites the biblical metaphors that appear to describe God anthropomorphically. He concludes that these many allusions in no way imply the existence of an actual figure of God in statuary form. From Williamson’s point of view the texts are merely referring to prophetic visions. The idea that an image of YHWH might have existed in the Holy of Holies is inconceivable for him. Readers interested in a fuller representation of the view that a cult statue did exist in the temple should look to the essays of Herber Niehr and Christoph Uehlinger in The Image and the Book: Iconic Cults, Aniconism, and the Rise of the Book Religion in Israel and the Ancient Near East (edited by Karel van der Toorn, Leuven: Peeters, 1997). For instance, Niehr interprets several Psalms and other biblical verses to show that it was possible that a statue of the divine existed in the first temple and that it might even have been carried in procession (Herbert Niehr, “In Search of Yhwh’s Cult Statue in the First Temple,” in The Image and the Book, 84–90). Williamson also acknowledges that there were temple processions with a statue. For him, however, those processions would have involved a statue of the goddess Asherah.

The synagogue murals in Dura Europos indicate that there was no stringent interpretation of the second commandment in that provincial town, and Tessa Rajak invites the reader to imagine that she or he is a non-Jewish visitor viewing these wall paintings. Rajak asks, how would an “outsider” react? Though the biblical narratives would be difficult to understand, a figure such as Moses was known to Christians as well as to Greeks and Romans, so the scenes of the important stages of his life featured in the Dura imagery would probably have been familiar to an outsider.

Rajak also tries to conceive how an outside visitor would have reacted to the graffiti on the Dura synagogue walls. The brief “texts” reveal that those who incised them reacted with awe to the Jewish scenes, especially to the resurrection and salvation iconography: the hand of God bringing life to the dry bones in Ezekiel’s vision; the widow’s baby being revived by Elijah; and the soldiers of Pharaoh’s army overwhelmed by the Red Sea. Rajak even suggests that the Christians of Dura would have been particularly attracted to the resurrection scenes, and that at this early period, before the “parting of the ways” between Jews and Christians, it is possible that the synagogue even received members of the Christian community. Dura was, after all, a place where ethnic groups mingled freely.

Sacha Stern’s essay shifts to the Galilee in the Late Antique period, a place and time that ongoing excavations reveal must have fostered a “Golden Age” of Jewish art. In the late third through the early sixth century there was a virtual explosion of figurative art, much of it due, in Stern’s opinion, to the development of a vibrant economy in the Galilee. Stern confronts and evaluates the challenges this proliferation of imagery posed to Jews concerned with the second commandment’s prohibitions.

Among the most problematic images for aniconic Jews to accept would have been the figure of the Greco-Roman divinity Helios, the sun god, riding in a four-horsed chariot and surrounded by a zodiac wheel and personifications of the seasons. The most fully preserved examples are at the synagogues of Hammat-Tiberias and Beth Alpha; the synagogue at Sepphoris displays the radiating sun itself in the place of the sun-god figure. Stern reviews the various theories as to how such imagery could have been tolerated in a synagogue. Was Late Antique Palestine dominated by a non-rabbinic Hellenistic Judaism willing to accept pagan imagery by judging it to be innocuous? The pagan motifs in Late Antique Jewish art must have been ordered by a Greek-leaning aristocracy. Were these Jews simply not dependent on rabbinical oversight? Stern’s view is that the rabbis were in general ignorant about paganism and more or less indifferent to its imagery. They merely sought to distance themselves from all things idolatrous. Thus they would tolerate the use of images as long as those images were not worshipped.

Zeev Weiss’s essay further explores the Hellenization of Jews in Galilee, specifically the Jews of Sepphoris during the third through the fifth centuries. On the one hand, the numerous ritual baths uncovered in the excavations indicate that these Jews were observant. On the other hand, apparently they were eager to adopt Roman figural art, for in Sepphoris, pagan Roman imagery is found on Jewish coins, sculpture, and mosaics. Weiss reiterates his long-held hypothesis that a dining room with a mosaic pavement featuring scenes from the cult of Dionysus might have belonged to the great Rabbi Judah the Patriarch. Rabbi Judah was a wealthy and prominent member of the Sepphoris community; his most momentous achievement was the compilation of the Mishna. However, this formidable accomplishment did not prevent him from maintaining a sympathetic stance toward Greek culture. He chose Bet She‘arim for his burial place, a Jewish necropolis where Greek mythological figures adorned some of the sarcophagi. The openness toward Greco-Roman culture revealed in the art commissioned by Galilean Jews presents a new and continually evolving perspective on the Jewish art of Late Antique Palestine.

A welcome addition to this volume would have been an essay on the striking figurative mosaic recently excavated at the synagogue at Khirbet Wadi Hamam, and published by Uzi Leibner and Shulamit Miller (“Appendix: A Figural Mosaic in the Synagogue at Khirbet Wadi Hamam,” Journal of Roman Archaeology 23 (2010): 238–64). The pavement is replete with narrative scenes including both animals and humans, some of which are well modeled in a three-dimensional “Hellenistic” style. In addition, the placement of the figures on various ground lines provides a sense of spatial ambiance. This arrangement is so far unique in synagogue mosaic compositions, and thus this site would have been worth including.

Margaret H. Williams contributes a study on the problem of the meaning of the menorah among Jews of antiquity in Judaea and Rome. Some menorahs were used to invoke the protective power of God. This can be seen in the rough painting on the walls of caves in the Judean desert occupied during the First Jewish War (66–73/4 CE) where the symbol, she believes, was employed prophylactically. The menorah is most widely seen, however, in the Jewish catacombs in Rome where, Williams argues, it often served as a protective amulet, especially when painted in red, a pigment widely believed to have an apotropaic function. The necropolis of Beth She‘arim also features menorahs, and again they are painted in red, probably meant to be amuletic. Williams argues that the great number of instances in which the menorah is strategically placed as a protective device reveals that the Jews of Late Antiquity, like the Greeks and Romans of their time, resorted to apotropaic magic.

In addition to the essays dealing with Jewish art, half of the essays in the volume revolve around texts relating to this art, and specifically to questions involving prohibition. Aron C. Sterk analyzes an epistle he believes to be written by an educated Jew in Rome in Late Antiquity and preserved in a Carolingian copy (early 800s). The text focuses on the vanity of worshipping idols and urges the gentile to lead a life more devoted to monotheism. Sterk suggests the epistle sheds light on the debate over the Christian use of images, given that at the time the iconoclastic controversy was raging in Byzantium. Though there have been attempts to “Christianize” the text, Sterk argues that it should be understood as a Latin Jewish work, and as such, it reveals something of the literary and theological influence of Jews in the Late Antique West.

Jane Heath presents an analysis of the Greco-Jewish Letter of Aristeas (second century BCE). The letter recounts Ptolemy Philadelphus’s dispatching an envoy to the Jewish High Priest in Jerusalem in order to procure a Greek version of the Jewish scriptures for his library at Alexandria. The Greco-Jewish author writes in the name of one of the envoys, Aristeas. Most of the letter is written as an ecphrasis, a long visual description of a work of art, in this case two works of art: a new Table of the Presence and a set of Tabernacle vessels sent to the Jewish high priest. Though Aristeas was a master of the Hellenistic Greek ecphrastic style, Heath points out some interesting Jewish twists in the letter. For example, the author took non-figurative art as his subject. Thus, though by writing an ecphrasis Aristeas is appealing to the eye in the fashion of a Greek, as a Jew he uses scriptural wording and biblical measurement whenever possible. The emphasis in the letter, however, is the appeal to the eye. The letter praises the craftsmanship of the temple cultic objects and makes clear that they would have given visual delight to both a Jewish high priest and to the Greek king who sent them.

Laliv Clenman undertakes a study of the complicated issue of molekh worship as set down in several places in the Bible, for instance in Leviticus 18:21: “And of your seed you shall not give to cause to pass to the molekh nor shall you profane the name of your God, I am the Lord.” Most scholars have interpreted the molekh as a faceless idol that receives the sacrifice of one’s children through fire. Clenman refutes this idea and instead argues that in the Talmud and Midrashim the molekh is interpreted as a gentile woman. That tradition is set down in the story of Zimri the Israelite who brings “before the eyes of Moses and the eyes of the whole community of the Israelites” the Midianite woman Kozbi, thereby introducing into the tribe a gentile idol worshiper. The suggestion in Numbers 25:6–15 is that because Zimri has sexual relations with such a woman, the people are threatened with plague. Zimri and Kozbi are slain during intercourse when a member of the priestly family puts a spear through her belly. The verbal imagery surrounding this story leads the reader through a maze of mass murder, gruesomely explicit sexual acts, and a grotesque stabbing, all of which are a result of worshipping the idol, the “figurative image.” Since the idol in the biblical text is not described, I found the addition of the seventeenth-century woodcut of the molekh a distraction that actually worked against the presentation of the horrific textual imagery.

Pearce writes about Philo of Alexandria’s On the Decalogue (first century CE), which includes an extended commentary on the second commandment. Philo asks, what is the purpose of the prohibition against the making and worship of images? His response is rooted in the Greek version of the Torah, the Septuagint, for it was in the context of Greek culture that Philo wrote. For him, the prohibition against the making of cultic images is complete. Those who make or worship them disable the rational element of their souls; thus they will never be able to know God.

These essays are well written and absorbing. The art-historical essays cut across several periods: Ancient Near Eastern, Roman, Late Antique, Early Christian, and Early Medieval. The texts dealing with the issue of the prohibition of the image are fully analyzed and clearly presented, not a small feat for those trying to make lucid the nuances of Greek and Latin writings. The ample bibliography invites the reader to probe more deeply into a number of subjects. The volume gives a fine overview of the struggles with and interpretation of the prohibition of the image in Late Antique Jewish art, and of some of the intriguing work that resulted in spite of that prohibition.