A Realistic Picture of God’s Word

Careful study of scripture should position our hearts closer to Jesus and increase our admiration of his excellency.

We find God’s word in its purest and most reliable form in the Bible. Our Lord inspired different situations and creative minds to communicate his words to us. Most English speakers have access to the world’s most valuable collection of ancient primary source literature. From God.

• What if our source for special revelation from God wasn't a collection of writings?
• What if the Bible was a collection of illustrations?
• What if God's word was only video?
• What if Christ assembled a GodGPT for us to engage with?

God used ancient technology to create the Bible

Writing systems, codexes, printing presses, scroll crafting technologies, and varieties of ink were advancements unknown to our first ancestors. Adam and Eve, along with their immediate descendants, didn’t have the linguistic tools to write scripture. Scribes eventually formalized writing formats and structure. Writing, following its previously required technologies, was invented around 3400 BC.

If you think about it, writing is the first recording technology. Parchment papers are the great granddaddy of all the data OpenAI and Google have vacuumed into their massive data models.

Tragically, until the new heavens and new earth, we won’t get any glossy vinyl records of David’s sick lyre skills or his voice singing the psalms. Standard western musical notation outlining his mysterious selahs and chords had not been invented yet. 

I imagine that King David’s chord progressions and vocal stylings would likely sound foreign to us. Acquired musical taste varies widely across time and cultures.

Providentially, we have the timeless lyrics of his psalms reproduced and copied carefully for us. God kept his words but removed the non-essential elements of style that would prove challenging to a future worldwide appreciation of the music. Additionally, we can reinvent the Psalms in any musical style today.

The earliest physical copies of the Psalms we have are among the Dead Sea Scrolls. The earliest physical copy of scripture is from 700 BC. It’s a benediction written on silver from Numbers 6:24-26.

God required recording tech

Recording is a material, technical, and intellectual advancement with an early invention date. By recording, I mean writing words or engraving them.  Ancient scrolls required specific storage conditions to prevent decay and damage. Though many thousands of ancient copies have been lost to decay and destruction, the ones we’ve found preserved were resistant enough to be found and photographed carefully.

Archaeologists and scholars rely on ancient, fragmented copies of scripture to verify our modern translations of scripture. We have ascertained the content of the original scripture from Jesus and the patriarchs due to these fragments. We’re blessed to have many ancient copies of scripture to examine, far more than other popular ancient works. Saved scripture fragments and copies are a reason we trust modern, properly researched bible translations.

Visual art in the Bible

• What about other visual means of transmitting the Bible's timless story?
• One that was more like a series of pictures on scrolls?

Visual art and creative designs are not only options God could have used to communicate his glory to us, but he actually used those avenues. God’s revelation uses visual art description as a significant element of his revelation. We read in the Old Testament about plenty of Israelite holy art. Pages of design are embedded in God’s word for us to read and consider.

The Lord’s many descriptions of art were included in ages when written scrolls were precious treasures. The length of an ancient scroll was limited by the scroll’s material and practical usability. In fact, the reason long Old Testament books are separated into two volumes is due to these limitations on a scroll’s length. According to this Dartmouth webpage, the longest scrolls made of papyrus in Egypt were 40 meters (131 feet), while the longest Greek scroll was only 11 meters (36 feet).

Every word in the bible was preserved and originally hand-copied into manuscripts. These copies came at a high cost! The labor, expertise, and materials for writing in the ancient world were not cheap. In societies mostly supported by families of farmers and laborers, scribes (literate writers) were a small intellectual minority.

All that to say, artistic designs from God were carefully preserved for our future consideration at a significant cost. 

Art and visual symbolism are not unimportant to God. In fact, it was so important in his communication to us that he included a generous amount of detailed, even bizarre, visual details. Artistic designs explained in scripture replace the knowledge that God deemed less valuable to communicate! Our infinitely good Lord condensed his possible range of scriptural information a lot. And that’s an understatement. Praise God, our canon of scripture is a fixed and manageable length. I’m thankful for the 1.6 MB to 4.5 MB of holy data (on Project Gutenberg), which is scripture.

Consider a Picture Book Bible

Images excel at sharing the concrete and visible. However, abstract concepts are very difficult to communicate clearly with pictures. Cryptic symbols might be fun for an escape room challenge but not for effectively communicating truth.

Written statements often clarify the meaning or context of a creative work in art galleries. The curator shares the title, provides historical context, gives a date and/or explains the visual elements. It’s very valuable to have this direction in considering any artwork.

God preserved precise biblical records of his commissioned art, in historical context. He gave specific descriptions for the ark of the covenant, the tabernacle, Solomon’s temple, prophetic visions, priestly garments and more.

Biblical art requires healthy study, historical context, and long term reflection. The designs we read in scripture are word pictures that inspire awe for our Lord, who communicates in various and creative means. 

We find the scripture descriptions are detailed enough for modern artists to make  recreations of some items. Though the actual artifacts have been long destroyed, we can still consult the most important design details. Building instruction and design blueprints from God have been carefully preserved for us over thousands of years.

Illustrating Picture Problems

As someone who teaches English with flashcards, it is easy to see issues with using non-standardized, complicated artistic images to share God’s character, his law, and his redemption of humanity.

For example, my 1st-grade students can quickly understand the foreign English word “watermelon” if they see a simple picture of the fruit.

There is a reason they say a picture paints a thousand words, and not just one. A complicated picture requires explanation. This helps the students prevent misunderstandings. Students might need to hear, “it’s a red and green watermelon cut into triangular pieces” or “it’s a whole round watermelon.”

More information in a picture is detail that needs to be clarified. God created our brains to connect familiar concepts together. Therefore, I can show students a picture of something they already know then add English information to the concept. Students attach an English word easily to a concept or item they already know.

Extra visual detail confuses students. If you drew someone eating a watermelon, the picture does not clearly show the verb eat or the noun watermelon. It’s showing both.

A bad example is embedded in the widely used 3rd grade English textbook, Let’s Try 1. The official flash cards include a cute illustrated picture of a round boar’s nose. Instead of teaching the word “nose” or “boar,” this image is subtitled with the adjective “round.”

The picture is inherently confusing. First off, round is a more abstract concept than nose or boar. Students are much more likely to think the picture communicates boar or nose, and much less likely to think the vocabulary means “round”. Secondly, most beginning vocabulary flashcards are for nouns, and this strange image is a first experience for many students with English adjectives (that aren’t colors).

Abstract concepts like verbs are usually introduced with human or animal characters acting in the prescribed manner. Adjectives are conveyed with caricatures or comparative pictures for the described traits. More advanced abstract concepts like salvation and sin would be incredibly difficult to make into any sort of universally intelligible picture.

Part of our understanding of pictures and literary symbols is culturally based. Pictures from modern America or Japan would likely need some kind of interpretation to make sense to other cultures. Any picture of an ancient culture would be very foreign to our modern aesthetic influences.

Needless to say, it would be hard for us to take a predefined meaning from picture scriptures. Each visual form would need significant analysis. Conceivably, no one would agree on a meaning without documented written clarification for the artwork.

Imagery can inflame idolatry.

One significant issue with sanctioned holy photos is that humans fixate on them and start to worship the image as God.

God elevates artistic pursuit and creation for his glory, but he absolutely forbids any manufactured visual image of himself. There are even biblical examples of divinely inspired art projects being worshiped instead of the Creator. Consider the idolatrous worship of Moses’ bronze snake later in Israel’s history.

There is a good reason God forbids us from making images of him, because they tend towards idolatry. We don’t create images capable of helping us understand him. There will never be a better physical representation of God than our fully human and fully divine Jesus. God already displays his image in humanity, and most supremely in Christ. (2 Kings 18:4)

Plot Twist

In fact, when compared to an imaginary picture bible, we have a larger, more impressive, and thoroughly engaging “image.” It’s so expansive, so large, and so obvious that we often overlook it. It’s a complicated, dreamy canvas and major inspiration for all our derivative works. We can’t help but copy it, remake it, wonder about it, and speculate about what might be.

The picture is reality. *Everything physical* is the picture that God has given to us. And just like the imaginary picture book bible, we have a desperate need for its explanation.

This is not because our Lord’s creation is bad, or communicates improperly. Christ can only create what is whole and good. Our sin is our problem with it. The book of Romans says that we should understand God’s eternal power and “divine nature” from the all-encompassing picture he has given to us. But not everyone does. No one who is not regenerated in their heart by the Holy Spirit understands.

Romans 1:18-23 ESV

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.

Through sinful and blind hearts, people are unable to see the obviously good God in his undeniably grand nature. 

Going beyond creation itself, our Heavenly Father explains the most important meanings of him and his world to us in his word.

Generations of our ancestors were waiting, and many tragically suppressing the truth. Indeed people today are still waiting, to hear the Gospel. As Paul says just before in Romans 1:16, “the gospel is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes.”

Faith in the gospel and Jesus is a key prerequisite to understanding The Artist’s explanation of himself and his creation. Romans states that unbelievers resist the truth. We by nature, until regeneration by faith and repentance, resist the definitive explanation to God’s everything.

We need a trustworthy and time tested document to make sense of this picture we have been given. We need guidance to navigate the picture we live in. Faith is required. We need God’s grace to change our hearts to accept his explanation. It is then we see the indescribably amazing news of Jesus, along with the ugly wrath of sin to be saved from.

Nature - A Big Picture

Nature is a powerful “holy” picture, indeed a whole experience that God intends to transmit the goodness and greatness of Himself to us. We can see him in the ant, the mountain, and the salamander. Essentially everything made is the picture collection.

We have the definitive picture version of God’s revelation. We always have. Quite literally, it’s everything good we see. Our conscience, when properly renewed by God’s word, also indicates to us the things we see that have been tainted.

Despite its grandeur and greatness, we lose sight of God’s great image in our worries, concerns, and self-image. The lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life blind us to the obvious. Somehow, we not only “miss the forest for the trees” but miss the forest and the trees.

God’s creation reveals his glory, goodness, love, and power. We have an abundance of God’s glory to behold with our eyes and, ultimately, with our hearts.

Have any thoughts about God’s visual works?
Let me know, I appreciate your feedback.