Orthodox Israelite Yahwism seems to have been an aniconic religion (i.e. they did not directly portray their God but used symbols to mark His presence, for example the cherubs on the Ark), which by itself is not unique (a few of their neighbors seem to have aniconic tendencies as well). What set the Israelites apart was the active ban against direct portrayal of the divine.
The Israelites did not develop a unique art-style of their own or contribute anything of great importance or originality in the realm of arts and crafts, being content to borrow and adapt from their Levantine neighbors. The proscription in Exodus against making “carved idols” (
pesel, traditionally “graven images”; also cf. Deuteronomy 5:8), may have discouraged creativity in this area. Nonetheless, images did exist throughout the history of Israel until the postexilic period: for instance, Gideon fashions an
ephod of gold (Judges 8:27) and Micah’s mother contributed silver for the making of an idol (
pesel) in Judges 17:3. The Tabernacle and the Temple of Solomon themselves were, on the face of it, a direct contravention of the literal understanding of the commandment, yet the Biblical authors did not denounce them.
The prohibition in Exodus was not so much against the act of making of images themselves but against idolatry (i.e. making an image in the purpose of worshipping it) to which the art could lead. The Israelites did, in fact, fashion images, which the prophets regarded, in a concept unique to Israel, as “idols” (cf. Isaiah 30:22; Hosea 13:2).
We now need to qualify this prohibition against images. Obviously, cherubim, serpents, lions, oxen, humans, and other images of ‘nature’ and ‘mythology’ were at times exempt from the ban - and it would seem that the prohibition of representations was less rigid in the preexilic period compared to later periods. What seems to be forbidden is more often than not the depiction of the Deity Himself. We have as possible extant examples of such both the winged sun-disc symbol above the bull-calf on the top tier of the
Ta’anach cult stand and the winged disc/beetle symbol on the
seal impressionslmlk on the handles of royal Judahite storage jars.
http://creationwiki.org/images/thumb/f/f5/Lmlk_seal.jpg/250px-Lmlk_seal.jpg
LMLK stamp
Here we come to one of the unique features of ancient Israelite worship of Yhwh - its aniconic character. For example, in one of the most important artifacts of Israelite religion, the Ark of the Covenant, a direct representation of Yhwh is absent: His invisible presence is only indicated by His heavenly mounts, the two cherubim.
The absence of images of the deity and the concomitant prohibition against the representation of the divine in any form is anomalous in the ANE. The creation and use of images in the cultus was at that time commonplace for the religions of that time and place. For the most part in Israel, they were not present and were officially inveighed against.
The close tie between the command against
pesalim and the prior ban against worshipping other gods in the Decalogue suggests that the veto of images was directed toward any image that may be construed as an idol or cult artifact of another deity. The elaboration of this command in Deuteronomy 4:16-19 confirms that the commandment had in mind the ‘other gods’ of the previous one as at least the eventual understanding of this prohibition. Indeed the comprehensiveness of these formulations tended to make any kind of image, whether for purposes of worship or not, questionable.
We now need to distinguish between aniconism and iconoclasm, which might help clarify the issue of graven images. Aniconic cults are usually defined as those where there are no iconic representations of the deity (anthropomorphic or theriomorphic) serving as the dominant central or cultic symbol, while iconoclasm is the active, religiously motivated hatred of images, that is, the injunction against making or venerating images within a given religion, as well as the damaging and demolition of images of another religion. We can divide aniconism itself into two categories: (1)
de facto aniconism, a more fairly tolerant form, and (2) programmatic aniconism, which moves toward a rigorous iconoclasm but which developed out of the aniconic tendency of an earlier time.
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