Introduction

Abstract

The aim of this book is to expound the Biblical argument against idolatry, in the Bible’s own terms, and also in those elaborated by later thinkers, rabbis and philosophers. This is not to suggest that idolatry is an idea that can be defined. It is rather an ‘umbrella concept’. The book begins with graven images but to idolatry there is more than meets the eye, I hope to show. Biblical and later vocabulary has at its disposal a variety of terms, none of which makes explicit mention of idols: for example ‘the worship of other gods’, ‘strange worship’, ‘the worship of the stars’ or of ‘the strange gods of the soil’. These expressions are all more or less synonymous — but only ‘more or less’ so, because each carries its own particular load of meaning which is certainly compatible each with the others but each of which also conveys a significantly individual emphasis. I hope to have conveyed something of the consequent ramifications by attempting to go ‘beyond’ the graven image. This latter can then be generalised and acquire even a symbolic character in such a way as to form part of a complex of ideas that encompasses such apparently disparate and unconnected matters as the feature of holiness, the art of memory, the respective functions of eye and ear in the process of learning, the role of symbolism in worship, varied modes in the manipulation of time, and so on. These and other topics take their place in a world-view, first formulated in the Bible but also open to the elaboration of later thinkers. Contact with the text is maintained. This procedure does make for a certain degree of repetition; I hope this will be justified through the continuity of outlook that is thereby shown to exist, or at least created. Past and present, no longer distinct, display their capacity to engage in an enduring exercise of mutual clarification and commentary.