Visual Culture and Performing Arts in Ancient Israel

Objects and buildings that have aesthetic, expressive, or spiritual dimensions are valuable for appreciating a culture. The Bible considers artistic skill to be a form of divinely inspired wisdom (Exodus 31:1–4), and although it contains no visual illustrations, it has extensively detailed verbal descriptions of the Tabernacle and of Solomon’s palace and Temple.

Ancient Israel’s visual art includes the architecture of houses, palaces, temples, and tombs, sculpted figurines, ritual objects, miniature art forms (such as seals, ivory carvings, coins, and jewelry), painted murals and sketches, and clothing. Music and dance were also part of Israelite culture, and, although the sound of the melodies and the movement of the dances are lost forever, written references in the Bible as well as instruments and illustrations in the artifact record hint at their sound and appearance.

Artistic motifs and images are not easy to interpret. Did an image simply represent a natural object, or did it symbolize something else? Was it thought to have magical potency, or was it merely decorative? Nor is it always evident whether religious motifs were understood in their original sense or in some other way. It has been suggested, for example, that when the winged sun disk, a symbol of the Assyrian chief god Assur, appears in seal impressions on Judahite royal storage jars, it symbolizes Israel’s God YHWH as the guardian of Judah’s ruling dynasty.

Few, if any, aspects of Israel’s visual culture were original. In style and motif, the artifacts generally resemble those found elsewhere in the ancient Near East. Some objects were doubtless made by Israelite artisans imitating Canaanite or other foreign models, and others were probably made locally by itinerant foreign artisans, while still others were imported. The Bible mentions Phoenician artisans who helped build Solomon’s Temple (1 Kings 7:13–47), and King Ahaz had an altar built for the Temple inspired by one he saw in Damascus (2 Kings 16:10–16). Several passages disparage the use of foreign-inspired religious artifacts (Deuteronomy 12:4; 2 Kings 17:7–12), and the prophet Zephaniah criticizes “those who don a foreign vestment,” apparently referring to an idolatrous rite (Zephaniah 1:8). A few forms of visual culture, however, are more typically found in ancient Israel than elsewhere, such as “four-room” houses. The murals at Kuntillet Ajrud are, at least for now, the only painted murals known from the Levant in the Iron Age, although their themes, and those on jars found at the site, such as enthroned figures and horned animals facing each other and flanking a tree, were well known. In contrast, some art forms that were common in neighboring cultures were minimally present or entirely absent in Israel, such as figurines of male deities and stelas with images of gods.