When we step onto the scales at home or the gym or our Weight Watchers sessions there usually isn't too much at stake. Yes, there might be disappointment (or joy!), and yes, the result might mean that we have to do without a few treats in the coming week to get back towards our target weight but usually the result won't have a huge impact on our daily life. But nearly 2000 years ago the writer of the Jewish comic novel the Testament of Abraham envisaged a weigh-in with eternal consequences for those who took part. This wasn't a physical weigh-in, assessing the intake of calories but rather, a spiritual evaluation, measuring not mass but moral worth. These scales measure the moral 'weight' or worth of the souls placed in the pans of the scale. The book describes how the souls of the dead are evaluated on balances wielded, not by God, but a fiery archangel called Dokiel and the judgement of his scales determines not the diet for the coming week but the fate of those souls for all eternity. Of course the image of an archangel holding the scales of judgement is one that anyone who is familiar with medieval and Renaissance art will recognise. In countless scenes of final or postmortem judgement, an angel is depicted weighing souls in the balances, the scales of divine justice. But in all of these scenes it is the archangel Michael (Abraham's guide in the Testament of Abraham) who takes centre stage, holding the scales in which the true worth of the dead is gauged. Dokiel disappears to be replaced by the warrior chief angel Michael and what is, in the Testament of Abraham, a postmortem judgement is (by and large) replaced in these scenes by the Final judgement at the second coming of Christ. In this post I try to explain where this image of being weighed in the balance might have come from and how it developed in later western Christian art. It's almost impossible to assess how much the Testament of Abraham influenced the later christian iconography of Michael with the scales but it seems to be the earliest literary reference to this idea and so provides a fascinating insight into how ideas of post mortem judgement developed in the first two centuries after the birth of Christ. Reading this post won't change your life (or make you thinner) but the next time you stand on those scales and see how much you way physically, you might also just wonder, as I do now, what the outcome would be if you were sitting in those angelic scales of justice instead!
0 Comments
Monsters have always fascinated us. For years in the 1960s and 70s every week on a Saturday night I and tens of thousands of British children were delighted and terrified by Daleks, Cybermen and other horrifying aliens in the BBC TV program Dr Who. We were terrified but we loved it and some of those 'monsters' have become part of our national culture! But even in adulthood we continued to relish the experience of being terrified and amazed by horrific depictions of 'otherness', such as aliens bursting out of human stomachs, flesh-eating zombies or the slasher killers such as Freddie Kruger and Jason. There is something about these 'inhuman' creations that continues to fascinate and draw us, partly, I am sure, not just because they represent in a 'safe' form the fear of the unknown, the 'monsters' and the dangers that lie just outside the warmth and safety of human homes and communities but also the darkness within, the monsters who lurk at the very core of human personality and experience. Fascination with monsters dates back to the very earliest human literature and is found in every culture. Jason fought his Minotaur and Beowulf fought Grendel. In the middle ages the artists of the period could indulge that need to thrill and scare their audiences by depicting the monstrous characters inspired by the mythology that surrounded the then prevalent Christian faith; the demons and devils believed to serve as the instruments of the Devil in his war against God and the church. Since the rather thin biblical evidence about such creatures had been the subject of endless speculation by writers and theologians, there was no limit to the kind of monstrosities that could be depicted. Whether depicted as fierce, furry and animalistic or totally bug-eyed and 'alien' these creatures represented the darkness that, in the minds of most people in the period, lay 'all around'. They usually had inhuman, merciless eyes, sharp teeth and bore some kind of terrifying weapon. They were intent upon ruining our path to heaven and dragging us down to the endless torments of hell. Worst of all, they were never very far away. I suspect my very real fear of meeting a cyberman when I went up to bed on a saturday night was not so different from the terror many people then would have felt in venturing too far away from hearth or home lest they encounter the demons and devils who, in that pre-scientic age, were believed to be the cause of human misery. One of the most brilliant depictions of this medieval 'bestiary of evil' comes from the brush of the German artist Stefan Lochner in his glorious Last Judgement. In this post I discuss this amazing picture and highlight some of the ways his version of the demonic hordes and its battle with the forces of good, reflect the prevalent mind-set of the day, in which, for some, the spiritual battle over human souls was terrifyingly real and its outcome dangerously unpredictable. "However they can be compared artistically, the really interesting differences to me are their theological differences. Lochner populates his picture with monsters, devils, demons, blue 'fighter angels' and the infernal city. Instead of a judgment, there is a battle. The serene Michael disappears to be replaced by a scene of violence and uncertainty. The fate of the dead is partly undecided (unless you are a Muslim, or overweight, or both!). Hell is all about torments and pain inflicted by the hellish hordes. Gone is the sense of personal emotional connection that the viewer makes with van der Weyden's characters. Lochner's painting doesn't challenge the viewer to engage with the scene but rather offers the "feel good factor" of seeing the heathen, corrupt churchmen and the corpulent rich consigned to the unspeakable horrors of hell."
|
Archives
April 2016
GalleryThis blog is as much about images as it is about text. Below is a slideshow of the pictures and images used in this blog. Click on any of the pictures to go to the post where that image is featured.
PostsLocating Paradise #1 In a Garden, Far, Far Away
The Testament of Abraham and the Threefold Judgement of God #5 'Stuck in the Middle With You'
The Resurrection According to Rahner
Today You Will Be With Me in Paradise
The Testament of Abraham and the Threefold Judgement of God #4 'And Who by Fire'
The Testament of Abraham and the Threefold Judgement of God #3: Held in the Balance
The Testament of Abraham and the Threefold Judgement of God #2: Once, Twice, Three Times a Sinner
The Testament of Abraham and the Threefold Judgement of God #1: The Broad and Narrow Gates
Daily Dante 7: Many Rivers to Cross
Daily Dante 6: 'You Gotta Serve Somebody'
In Hell Everyone Can Hear You Scream. The Vision of Tundale #3
Teeth, Spikes and Cleavers: At the Sharp end of Hell. The Vision of Tundale #2
'No Pain No Gain': The Vision of Tundale #1
'Hellzapoppin':
Illustrations from Le Livre de la Vigne nostre Seigneur, #2 'It's The End of the World as We Know It (and we feel fine)'. Illustrations from Le Livre de la Vigne nostre Seigneur, #1
Visions of Heaven. Botticini's Assumption of the Virgin #2 Blinded by the Light
Visions of Heaven. Botticini's Assumption of the Virgin #1: Glorious and Immortal
Daily Dante 5: What the gates said.
Daily Dante 4: When I find myself in times of trouble
Daily Dante 3: I'll take you there
Daily Dante 2: Fierce creatures
Daily Dante 1: If you go down to the woods today
In Seventh Heaven or 'What Enoch Did Next'
A World of Fire and Ice: Heaven according to Enoch
The Power and the Glory: Visions of God as king in the Hebrew bible
The Beautiful Bestiary of Catherine Cleves: Monsters and Demons in detail.
Heaven is for Real: Heaven as a physical space up above the sky
Resurrecting the Dead or Reviving the Flowers? The loss of resurrection faith in Judaism.
The Defeat of Death #1: The promise of resurrection in the Isaiah Apocalypse.
The Defeat of Death #2: Death as a hostile power and promise of God's victory in Isaiah
Scary Monsters and Super Creeps: The 'Last Judgement' according to Stefan Lochner
Hell in the Hospital: The 'Last Judgement' of Rogier van der Weyden in the Beaune altarpiece.
'Hell' in the New Testament #2: The gates of Hades shall not prevail
The Hours of Catherine Cleves: Imagining hell and purgatory in Catherine's prayer book
'On Earth as in Heaven': The kingdom of God as a revelation of heaven
'Hell' in the New Testament #1: Gehenna
Lost in Translation #1: How the King James version got it so wrong about hell
Heaven is not our home
Domes, Depths and Demons: The cosmology of the Hebrew world
A Bigger God
"See you in Sheol" - Sheol, the common destination of all
Heaven, Hell and Christian Hope
BooksBelow are some of the books which have helped me the most in the research and writing for this blog. Click on any image to find out more about that book at its page on Amazon uk.
Categories
All
|