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!
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Hospitals are usually places where people are offered medical care. At their best they may also offer psychological and spiritual care for patients and support for families. Most of the information supplied by hospitals today has to do with visiting hours, procedures for complainst and information on how to use the TV. But in the 15th century one hospital offered, in addition to care for the bodies of its patients, a powerful warning about their eternal fate. The most important information it provided was a theological statement about the need for repentance to avoid the horror of being damned. There was no need for translation into different langauges (or to assume any standard of literacy) because this warning came in the form of a magnificent painting. Above the altar in the chapel of the Hospices de Beaune, within sight of all the patients, hung a magnificent painting by the flemish paínter Rogier van der Weyden, depicting the Last Judgement. The message of the painting was clear. Those who believed in Christ would, at the Resurrection, enter into a joyful life as fully individualised human persons in the eternal city of God, while those who rejected Christ, would find themselves lost in an undifferentiated chaos of broken humanity in an eternity of separation from God. The painting is not just visually striking but psychologically and spiritually profound. Anticipating the insights of modern depth psychology and existential philosophy Van der Weyden depicts the misery of the lost as the fundamental loss of human identity. While those who walk joyfully towards their eternal home with God become more fully human as they approach the gates of the city of God, those who are cast away to the darkness at the edge of the picture become less than human, lost amid a chaotic jumble of limbs and anguished faces. There is no devil and there are no monsters here. The tormentors are the monsters who live within us. Those declared righteous are judged suitable for heavenly bliss and head towards the new Jerusalem, the city of God to the left of the painting (Christ's right). Initially as they come out of their graves and begin to head toward the heavenly city they gaze up at Christ and in attitudes of faith, wonder and gratitude. As they make their way from their graves towards the heavenly city their gaze turns from Christ to the city itself. As they rise and move away from their graves they become more individual and "human". The damned on the other hand, emerge from their graves and as they move towards hell they become hunched, bowed and less human in form. Their individuality begins to disappear. They become part of a mass of undifferentiated humanity. In hell, the damned become a chaotic mass of limbs and body parts.
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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.
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