PICTORIAL ILLUSTRATIONS OF SCRIPTURE

Seventh-Day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Thursday, March 4, 1880

FromThe Advent Review and Sabbath Herald, Advent Review and Sabbath Herald, Vol. 55, No. 10

PICTORIAL ILLUSTRATIONS OF SCRIPTURE.

At the close of the fervid exhortation of our excellent superintendent, the visitor peripatetic, said, “And now Elijah has gone to Heaven; but his red garment comes falling back to us through the air; who will put on the mantle?” And we asked, in the confidential moment, after meeting in the vestibule, “How did you know that Elijah wore red clothes?” He answered, nowise abashed, “Did I not see it in the lantern picture which you showed on the screen last autumn?”

Is it not worth while to inquire how much of our present conception of Scripture is due to the illustrations furnished? Look at our pictorial Bibles, for example; mark the cuts and engravings by which the various artists have sought to give vivid ideas of Eastern life and inspired imagery. You may think this is very small game to follow up with the hounds of criticism; but really it is oftentimes the largest we have, for these plates are frequently copies of what the first painters in the world’s estimation have done. And yet when mere uneducated and unperverted common sense examines them, it turns away with a smile. It sees them to be very elaborate, splendidly colored, and forcibly expressed pieces of nonsense. Most of them are only ridiculous things well done.

Now, where is there a name better established than that of Tintoret the Venetian. A pupil of Titian for awhile, he grew so rapidly that his teacher became jealous of his fame and turned him away from his school. And yet Tintoret, when he painted the Israelites gathering manna in the desert, represented the host as armed with guns. And Albert Durer, the pride of Nuremberg, when he had occasion to picture Peter’s denial of his Lord, put a short pipe in the mouth of a Roman soldier who stood beside the maid-servant in the hall. These persons are called “masters!”

We saw the other day, upon the walls of a gentleman’s parlor, a magnificent engraving of the largest size, a copy of Raphael’s cartoon in Hampton Court, “Christ’s Charge to Peter.” Anybody will recall that thrilling scene in sacred history, told of the night when they had been toiling with the net through all the long hours, and yet caught nothing. Having been in our poor way trying to preach on the subject, very lately, and so being a little better informed than usual as to matters of fact, we took the occasion of waiting to study his famous picture carefully. There they stood on the shore, and Immanuel was putting the searching question, which, for scores of generations, has gone echoing down through the valleys and over the hills of history: “Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me?” Well, we had not looked for a moment before we began to be glad none of our people were there. For we had told them from the pulpit that only seven of the disciples were out that night on the water; and Raphael had thrust all the eleven in, along in a row. We had taken great pains to clear up that unfortunate expression of our translators about Peter’s being “naked,” by describing minutely the fishing costumes of those oriental countries at that day. And there Raphael had set them all out in the beautiful robes of Galilean gentlemen, gracefully plaited and with a trailing train of half a yard long. We had also made, in our discourse, quite a melo-dramatic point, picturing Peter in particularly wet garments and draggled hair, he having, with his usual impetuosity, leaped overboard and waded ashore. But there Raphael had him kneeling at the very feet of the Saviour to take the big keys, his garments dry as could be, and his locks curled exquisitely round his temples. And not a shadow of disquiet or weariness on the face of any one of them showed that they had been out through the wild night upon the turbulent Gennesaret.

Now, we are bidden to admire this sort of caricature, and absolute abandonment of simplest fact, to accept traditional travesty instead of actual truth, on pain of being read out of critical circles.

D’Israeli tells us that he saw, in Holland, a Bible in which the man who picks out the mote from his brother’s eye is pictured with one end of a projecting beam in his own, the other end resting on the ground, as if he had accidentally run on a stake. And there, also, the same author says he was shown a painting in which Abraham appears ready to sacrifice his son with a blunderbuss; an angel, however, most opportunely frustrates his pious intention by dampening the powder in the pan. Now, when such wild ideas as these obtain a hold of what is mere history or unmistakable figure, is it any wonder that some are found who get as wild over doctrine as the artists do over simple fact? Men go wrong when taught wrong.

These exceedingly prosaic remarks are called forth by the sight of some new Bibles in monthly parts, going the rounds for subscriptions. It is likely some of them are good, suggestive, and true; but we feel pretty sure they all will need watching. If right, then right; if wrong, then wrong; but either right or wrong, illustrations of Scripture are among the most powerful of comments young people possibly can have.—London Sunday-School World.