Transcript: Bible and Art Reframed, S1 E3 

Theme: Wisdom and Discernment 

Joost  0:00   

Hello, and welcome to Bible and Art Reframed. I'm Joost Joustra, and I'm an art historian. 

Michelle  0:06   

And I'm Michelle Fletcher, and I'm a biblical scholar. Together, we lead the Visual Commentary on Scripture, featuring over 1000 artworks and commentaries from experts around the world. It's the internet's premier place for the Bible and art. Thank you for tuning in to Bible and Art Reframed, where we choose some of our favourite works from across the site and bring them together to explore unexpected themes that pop up in the Bible. And don't forget to click on the link in the episode description, so you can check out the images that we're chatting about today. So, what are we talking about today Joost? 

Joost  0:38   

Well, Michelle, today's theme is wisdom and discernment, and I think putting our Bible hats on, that's more easy to define than if we put our art hats on. If you think of the Bible and wisdom, you think of God immediately, but also the wisdom literature in the Old Testament, the books of Proverbs, Job, and Ecclesiastes. Probably in the New Testament, you have to think of Jesus as the main source of wisdom. But when I started thinking about art and wisdom, it got a little bit more complicated. It's quite an abstract thing, and it's not easy to represent. You have to think of personifications, but of course, art is also a source of wisdom. Wisdom is not only contained in texts, but we can also get wisdom by looking at images, and I think that, for me at least, is what makes this topic very interesting. 

Michelle  1:29   

I've also got a proverb to kick us off in relation to the two of us working together with Bible and art. It's a Rwandan proverb, and it says wisdom is lifted up by two people, so I thought that would be a good foundation before we start our discussion. 

Joost  1:44   

That's a good start. I like that. 

Michelle  1:47   

So, what's our first artwork? 

Joost 1:49   

Well, we're first looking at a painting. I don't know if you really can call it a painting. I think it's more than that. It's by an Australian Aboriginal artist called Doreen Reed Nakamarra, and the painting is called Marrapinti. 

Michelle 2:04   

This painting allows us to really have a look at the idea of wisdom as an embodied concept, that sense of it's something that you're not born with. And one of the things that pops up a lot in the Bible in relation to wisdom is, where is wisdom, where is it found, and where does it come from? And this painting is very much about journeys that are carried out by groups of women to this watering hole, Marapinti Rock Hole, and it has that idea of receiving from the ancestors. So wisdom is something that comes from the people before you. You find out where the places are that you need to go to, and you learn from them in lived experience and through journeying. 

Joost  2:47   

Yeah, and you look at this painting, and you might at first think it's quite an abstract work, but when you think about that idea of ancestral wisdom and paths that have been walked before, you start seeing these pathways in this painting, and I really like that. But it also made me actively think about the wisdom of routes you've taken in life, and you often ask yourself, am I on the right path, and I think this painting really represents that. 

Michelle  3:16   

And actually on the site it's connected by our commentator Lieke Wijnia to Proverbs four in this idea of what path should you be on, my son. It's a chapter where the father is talking to the son and telling him about the way he should walk, choosing the correct paths to go on. And Proverbs is a text which offers this wisdom. It's the idea that we need to learn about how to live a good life, and what to choose, and so Proverb 4 starts off this discussion with the Father talking to the Son and giving him this advice that he should choose wisdom and the figure of wisdom. 

Joost  3:54   

That's a wonderful reading. I think more generally, you could say that we should all learn from our ancestors and keep in mind the wisdom of earlier generations that Nakamarra so beautifully captured in this work of art. I think the second work we're looking at today is quite a departure, and we're going back a few centuries in time again. A manuscript, we seem to love manuscripts, Michelle... 

Michelle  4:20   

We do we love a good manuscript. 

Joost  4:22   

and this one was done by an unknown German illuminator somewhere near the end of the 14th century, and the manuscript is called the Coburg Pentateuch. I would really encourage our listeners to take a closer look. What struck me most of all is the little dog in the lower left corner. Did you see this dog, Michelle? 

Michelle 4:44   

I did. The idea that Solomon is seated here in the centre, but beneath him is this animal on the bottom of his throne. We see a gryphon and a lion, but then beneath, on a little lead, is this dog. 

Joost  4:57   

and I don't know if I'm imagining things, but it even looks like the dog is urinating. Is that me, or? 

Michelle  5:04   

I'll leave that to your imagination. 

Joost  5:06   

I would definitely encourage you to take a closer look. And you wonder why an illuminator in a manuscript that is all about wisdom, this week's theme, has the inclination to depict a dog like that, but I do think it's a great way into the manuscript. It adds a sort of light touch to quite a serious subject, because what is this illuminator doing here? He is depicting King Solomon, and King Solomon is almost a personification of wisdom historically. King Solomon is also often connected to an encyclopaedic knowledge of the natural world, and not only the lion and the gryphon and the dog refer to that, but also the two scrolls that are flanking him, one is the Book of Exodus, and the other one is the Book of Leviticus. 

Michelle  5:58   

We have this idea of wisdom being something that was revealed to Solomon from God, he was given it in a dream. God comes to him in one Kings chapter three and says, What do you want? And Solomon says, I've got these people to govern. Give me a discerning mind that I can tell the difference between good and evil to govern the people. And it's told that he is then given what he has asked for. And then we see the fruits of this wisdom as he puts it into practice, and one of the things we see in One Kings Four is that he does have this idea of being able to understand the natural world, which is one of the facets of wisdom, wisdom being quite a universal concept. It's common in Mesopotamian and Egyptian literature of the time as well, but Solomon is able to understand the world but in Judaism, there's the idea that there's another source of revelation, which is Torah, which is given by God, and we've talked about revelation on Mount Sinai in some of our previous episodes, and here what we have is Solomon being able to understand through wisdom the world, but also using this wisdom to approach the revelation of Torah, so it has these two facets. 

Joost  7:14   

So you could say this is about wisdom through understanding and looking at the natural world, but also wisdom, as in God-given wisdom, and wisdom through actually studying the Bible. 

Michelle 7:27   

And it's basically showing Solomon as the ultimate wise guy. He is the personification of all things wise here. 

Joost  7:36   

When you say wise guy, I have to think of gangster movies, but you mean a different kind of wise guy. 

Michelle  7:41   

Well, no, because they are the wise guys. Think about it. We've talked about the ancestors in The Godfather. My father taught me many things: keep your friends close and your enemies closer. The idea that wisdom is passed on is part of this, the family, and carrying on traditions. 

Joost  7:56   

Solomon is the Don Corleone of this manuscript. 

Michelle 7:59   

He is the Don of Dons. So our next object takes us into a more female world of wisdom. It's a painting from the 17th century, which shows us an image of a widow staring at a painting, and in the painting we are seeing birth, and so within it we have the start of life and the end of life, so tell us more about it, Joost. 

Joost  8:24   

Well, I think this painting is interesting on multiple levels. If we think about the sources of wisdom, I think Leandro Bassano, this Venetian painter, depicted this very beautifully in the painting. This is a woman holding rosary beads for prayer. She seems to be seated or kneeling at a prie-dieu, a sort of prayer desk, but the most exciting thing about this painting is that it has a painting within the painting. There's a painting hanging behind her, and that indeed seems to be a scene of childbirth, and it might be even the birth of the Virgin Mary or an associated subject. There's an interesting mode of thought in Renaissance and early modern Europe, and that is exemplified in, for instance, the preaching of the Dominican Savonarola, who wrote a sermon on the art of dying well. Quite an interesting title, where he describes being around paintings and being around paintings actually gives you another kind of wisdom, it imbues a kind of positive effect on life, and I think that's what we're seeing here. 

Michelle  9:32   

And the biblical wisdom takes love to talk about the concept of death, because in the end, as Ecclesiastes seven tells us, it is something that comes to everyone. Ecclesiastes three, it's a time for living and a time for dying, and there's these huge questions that do come to us about how do we live, what is a life well lived, and the wisdom texts bring some questions, not necessarily answers.  But they allow us to intelligently continue to question these parts of life. This idea of suffering and loss in the book of Job and in Ecclesiastes, our speaker Kohelet, who is asking, what is the point, where is meaning from, and I think this painting is particularly wonderful because we have the image of a woman in the Bible. It's so often men speaking to men, or the figure of Solomon, as this figure, and we'll see later on a little bit more about the figure of wisdom and women, but here we have a woman whose life being reflected back on offers us a picture of a life well lived, a woman of faith, and a woman who is able to face up to life's biggest questions with a sense of serenity. I think that helps us to move to our next work, where we are looking at the Gospels and Jesus and his disciples, and they've got some pretty big questions to ask of Jesus in what is known as the farewell discourse in John 16. 

Joost  11:03   

Michelle, why do we call this the farewell discourse? 

Michelle 11:05   

Chapters 13 to 17 in the Gospel of John is where Jesus is talking to his disciples about the fact that he's going to leave them. He passes on this teaching to them, saying, I am going, the advocate is coming, I will be going to the father, and this sense that he is going to be leaving them, and so this is the time to teach them before the passion commences, the time of suffering and his death, as told in John's Gospel. 

Joost  11:33   

Yeah, and that is exactly what Duccio, the 14th century painter from Siena, is depicting in this small panel. It's the moment where Christ is speaking to his disciples and leaving him with the wisdom where he can leave them confidently. It is one of 26 predella panels that show the passion and resurrection of Christ, and this monumental altarpiece that Duccio created for Siena Cathedral is quite something to behold. It is, in fact, double-sided. It is massive, and because it was such a celebrated commission, it was brought to Siena Cathedral in a procession. So, there was great reverence for this work of art, perhaps also as a source of wisdom, 

Michelle 12:23   

And here we really are looking at this idea of wisdom as something that can be taught. Jesus is speaking to this group, it kind of takes us back to that idea of the teacher imparting wisdom, so he is the rabbi, and these are his disciples. And in this particular chapter, in John chapter 16, in verse 16, that we've connected this to on the site, Jesus says, a little while you will see me no more. Again, in a little while you will see me. And this really sounds like Hebrew Bible wisdom literature, this idea of a sort of analogy, something that we're not quite sure what he's talking about. It has a reveal and conceal dialectic. They say, well, what, what does he mean? And they're waiting for him to further reveal it, and he does indeed use an analogy from the natural world to help them understand what he's talking about. He says, like childbirth, when a woman gives birth, it's so painful, but afterwards, when the child arrives, they're actually no memory of the pain because of the joy, and so we've got this sense of Jesus as a figure who is very wise, he knows to look around at the world and give analogies to explain the difficult things that he's trying to convey to his disciples. 

Joost  13:33   

and I also think it doesn't only show Jesus as an incredibly wise man, but also his disciples, and in a very humble position, they are really intensively listening here, and you can see how Duccio painted all of them resting their heads on their hand. They are really listening to Jesus, and I think it's important to listen to other people when it comes to the subject of wisdom. The next work we're looking at is perhaps a bit more conceptual, but when I say conceptual, you might think of modern conceptual art. We're in fact looking at a 17th century Russian icon, and this icon is called Sophia, wisdom of God, and if you don't know about icons, it might be a difficult image to get into at first, so it requires close reading and some knowledge of the concept of what Sophia is. 

Michelle 14:36   

Yes, Sophia is the Greek word for wisdom. We've talked about the Hebrew Bible and wisdom traditions and Solomon receiving wisdom, which is the Hebrew word Hochma, but here we have this idea of Sophia, the same word in Greek, and this is a really complicated idea. Wisdom is something we're told to seek out that's not easy to pin down, and the icon of wisdom, Sophia, is something that you can seek out and try and figure out what it means. And you never will grasp all of it. It continues to be a mystery that has many, many facets to it. So, in essence, it's an excellent way to consider wisdom, but we do have some things we can hold on to here. We've got this female figure seated on a throne, and this is the personification of the figure of wisdom. Above her is Christ Pantocrator, ruler of all, and above that is a small empty throne, which indicates a presence of God the Father. Now, the figure of wisdom is connected sometimes to the figure of Christ, as you said earlier, the divine Logos, as mentioned in John one, but it's also connected to the spirit, which the believers will receive. And in one Corinthians two, Paul talks about the wisdom of the human versus this understanding that comes from God via the spirit, this greater sense of understanding, and we might want to think about the Holy Spirit in Christian theology being something akin to wisdom, and some people have said that this icon could actually be read as a reading of a Trinitarian person of God. 

Joost  16:12   

Yeah, and I think this icon actually inspires multiple readings. Things can be many things at once, and if you first see this, this figure of wisdom, the personification of wisdom as Sophia with wings, you might think you're looking at an angel type figure, but you also notice that this figure of Sophia is sitting on a throne. This is an enthroned depiction of wisdom being flanked by Virgin Mary on one side and John the Baptist on the other, but I think enthroned wisdom is really interesting, because it also speaks to the wisdom of rulers, perhaps the wisdom we need most in our current climate.  

Michelle  16:54   

The sense that wisdom is something that we need to live a life well in the world is most definitely at the heart of the teaching of wisdom in the Hebrew Bible. How do we go about living a good life? And wisdom is not something that is particular to one people, it is something that is universal. The Hebrew traditions say look to other cultures to find wisdom as well. Other nations may have wisdom, they don't have Torah, says Rabbi Sacks, but they do have wisdom, so we do want to think about the idea of this being something that is common to potentially all people, but actually something very, very difficult to find. 

Joost  17:32   

What strikes me most at this moment is that your cat seems to have joined us, Michelle.  

Michelle  17:37   

We might just need a little pause, 

Joost  17:42   

Maybe all that talking about the dog in the manuscript made your cat think, well, I better show up. 

Michelle 17:48   

Yeah, he's on my lap now. It should be okay. 

Joost  17:50   

So this icon of Sophia, wisdom of God brings us a depiction of wisdom on quite a theological high level, and it's one of the many facets of wisdom we've been talking about today. We started with that painting by Doreen Reed Nakamarra, the Australian Aboriginal artist that spoke to us about ideas of ancestral wisdom. We looked at the German manuscript where King Solomon is presented as the pinnacle of wisdom. We looked at the 17th century Venetian painting by Leandro Bassano, that is all about a woman's wisdom and particular kinds of female knowledge, and we looked at the very wise Jesus as he was depicted by Duccio in Christ taking leave of his disciples before we ended on the icon. Now, Michelle, you know which question I'm going to ask you. 

Michelle 18:50   

I do. You're going to ask me which one I might like to have as my own. 

Joost 18:56   

Yeah, which of these fives would you take home? 

Michelle  18:58   

I think I'm going to have to take the Doreen Reed Nakamarra, although I know that this is in the Metropolitan Museum, and we were allowed to have a high-resolution image of this work on the site, so I really will satisfy myself with that. But I love the idea that it is about collective women's experience, but also I think there's this idea that Rabbi Sacks talks of, of wisdom is how the world is, and Torah is how it ought to be, and I feel like this artwork allows us to stand in the middle of those two things, about how we experience the world, but also there's something else beyond it that can glow like this acrylic paint that we can actually look towards, so for me it's going to be that beautiful work. 

Joost 19:43   

Great choice. And of course, we talked about that work and the idea of ancestral wisdom, the wisdom you take from your forefathers and foremothers and four siblings. 

Michelle 19:51 

So, what are you going for?  

Joost 19:53 

Well, I was actually, I was going to go with Duccio originally...  

Michelle 20:01   

I never have guessed. 

Joost  20:04   

Purely because I love Duccio. But I changed my mind during the episode because all of a sudden when we were talking about the painting by Doreen Reed Nakamarra and the idea of ancestral wisdom, I had to think back to that painting by Leandro Bassano, the 17th century Venetian painter, and what I like about that is that it also speaks to ancestral wisdom. You might not see it in the painting, but Leandro Bassano came out of a family of painters. His father, Jacopo, was a painter, his brother Francesco was a painter, many painters in the Bassano family, and I think in artistic training there is an idea of passing on wisdom, passing on knowledge of how you do these things, which is implicitly captured in this painting, and that's why I like it very much. 

Michelle  20:56  

Good choice. Excellent, excellent choice. It's also another Renaissance, well, post-Renaissance painting.  

Joost  21:02 

I'm sorry, I'm sorry.  

Michelle 21:04 

Well, that was Bible and Art Reframed for this week. Thank you so much for tuning in and listening to us. Don't forget to subscribe and leave us a review, and to check out the episode description, where you can click on those links to see all these works and more on the site, looking at the concepts of wisdom and discernment, and we look forward to speaking to you next time.