SIMON SCHAMA ON THE SECOND COMMANDMENT IN 'THE STORY OF THE JEWS'

SIMON SCHAMA: THE SECOND COMMANDMENT IN ‘THE STORY OF THE JEWS – FINDING THE WORDS 1000BCE – 1492CE’ pp173-198

In his ‘The Story of the Jews – Finding the Words 1000BCE – 1492CE’ (pp173-202), Simon Schama describes the discovery in the 1930s of the remains of a synagogue dating from 240 CE at Dura Europos on the Upper Euphrates in what is now in Syria.  The archaeological find is significant because the walls of the synagogue are decorated lavishly with wall paintings illustrating Biblical scenes and characters alongside scriptural inscriptions ‘as objects of devotion’. 

Schama writes that after the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in 70 CE, the wall illustrations at Dura Europos in the 3^rd Century CE would have ‘resonated with specific messages of consolation and hope’.  Particular paintings illustrate the promise of redemption in the stories of Abraham, Isaac, Moses and David.

In the context of this 3^rd Century CE synagogue, Schama reviews the significance of the prohibition of the making of images and objects contained in the Second Commandment.  Schama then reviews archaeological evidence of synagogues in the 3^rd to 6^th Centuries CE that contain illustrations and statues. 

Exodus 20:4 and Deuteronomy 5: 8 use two Hebrew words to characterise the forbidden objects: pesel and temunah. 

The first word pesel refers specifically to the activity of carving in order to make cult objects of the kind that would have been common in the ancient Near East and the classical world.  These are the kinds of object that a religion of a formless deity such as Judaism would reject. 

The second word temunah is more complex.  It derives from a word meaning a species or a class of thing.  The implication is that the banned activity would have involved the making of a copy or a likeness in the manner of the painting of an icon.  The copying that was forbidden involved copying things in both earth and heaven, and the latter inclusion suggests that the concern was that if such objects were to be made they would be used as objects of idolatrous devotion.  Exodus 20: 5 shows that the main concern is the potential use of objects in idol-worship.

In the 2^nd / 3^rd Century CE law code of the Mishnah an aggadah (exemplary story) makes the distinction between ‘incidental ornament and idolatrous objects’.  The patriarchal sage Rabban Gamaliel is in the Bathhouse of Aphrodite which is decorated with statues in Ptolomais (Acre) when the Greek Peroqlos Pelopsos criticises him for disobeying the Second Commandment.  As the two men leave the bathhouse the sage responds, saying that he never entered Aphrodite’s bathhouse, but that Aphrodite came into his bathhouse.  The primary purpose of the bathhouse was for bathing, and the ornament was secondary, and thus the sage was exonerated.

Schama writes about the remains of the synagogue at Dura Europos on the Upper Euphrates, dating from 240 CE.  Schama writes that Dura Europos would have stood in a central place between the two poles of Rabbinical learning in Palestine and Mesopotamia and that the synagogue here would therefore have been exemplary. 

Factors that Schama discusses include: (a) the presence in Dura Europos of places of worship of other religions and cults which would have influenced the decoration of the synagogue including Temples of Adonis, Zeus and Mithras and a church; (b) the sparsity of prohibitions of images and sculpture in the Mishnah that began to be written in the 2^nd Century CE to codify Judaism; and (c) the widespread presence of mosaic decoration in synagogues in Palestine, the wider Mediterranean world and the Near East in the 3^rd to 6^th Centuries CE. 

Schama shows that in the period of the third to the sixth Centuries CE there was a strong tradition of using painted scenes in synagogues to illustrate Scripture.  Indeed, synagogue illustrations appears to have evolved partly to complement the development of the written Mishnah.