The Visual Commentary on Scripture

15 July 2024

This is the third of three blogs from our guest contributor The Revd Dr Ayla Lepine.
Ayla is a Visiting Scholar here at Sarum College who has contributed to a number of our courses. She writes as an art historian and theologian who serves as Associate Rector at St James’s Piccadilly in London. Ayla’s three blogs reflect on the intersection of arts and theology, drawing on her own experiences and her ministry.

Thinking about the interaction of culture and theology is central to our work in the College. Art, together with literature, poetry and music, expresses something of our concerns, values and beliefs as a society. It also gives us opportunity to employ our imaginations as we seek to explore our identity, our avenues for personal growth and flourishing, and the ways in which we can shape society for the better.

by The Revd Dr Ayla Lepine

The Visual Commentary on Scripture is a free online resource that makes connections between the Bible and art – both are enriched in connecting with one another. With over 1000 works of art, hundreds of commentaries, and the ambition to connect works of art with every passage in the Bible through accessible scholarly essays, the VCS is a project ideally suited to learning, teaching, preaching, and community engagement with biblical literacy, theology, contemplation, and art history.

Each passage is accompanied by a trio of images from across the world, and the juxtapositions are often intriguing and surprising, encouraging readers to encounter scripture and the visual arts afresh by creating a dialogue between them. As Ben Quash, the VCS’s Director, explains, “The virtual exhibitions of the VCS aim to facilitate new possibilities of seeing and reading so that the biblical text and the selected works of art come alive in new and vivid ways.”

Ellen F. Davis, the Amos Ragan Kearns Professor of Bible and Practical Theology at Duke Divinity School, focuses on Psalm 42’s yearning for God with the urgency of a deer longing for fresh water. The images Davis chooses are as apt as they are diverse: the Japanese nineteenth-century artist Hokusai’s print The Great Wave, Diane Paley’s 21st-century glass panels, and the 12th-century Tree of Life mosaic by an unknown artist working at the Basilica of San Clemente al Laterano in Rome. Across 800 years, multiple media, and three continents, this song of suffering and hope in the Hebrew Bible sings afresh through the interlacing of works of art with its texts through image-infused biblical scholarship offered to all.

Regarding Paley’s panels, Davis writes, “the figure of the deer is highlighted by converging lines, where the ridge of hills meets the billowing waters. Head down, it approaches a stream filled with eighteen fish, representing the most important prayer of the synagogue, the Shmoneh Esrei (‘eighteen’), which praises God in a lengthy series of blessings. In this context the fish symbol is deliberately ambiguous; for Christian worshippers it may recall the acrostic of one of the earliest Greek affirmations of faith: ICHTHYS: Iēsous Christos, Theou Yios, Sōtēr (Jesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour).”

Layers of interpretation draw the reader – regardless of faith tradition or level of knowledge – into a world of texts and images that speak of belief and belonging, within humanity and the whole of creation.

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The Revd Dr Ayla Lepine is leading a half-day online on 11 December – details via the link below:

Art for Advent: The Four Last Things

In the meantime, if you’d like to explore the intersection of art and theology further, there are a number of other forthcoming courses to consider:

Inspiration and Imagination: Creative Expressions of the Spiritual Life (9-12 Sept)
Environment, Art, Theology & Action (18 Sept)
Painting Icons Retreat (4-6 Oct)
Theology and Human Culture (14-17 Oct)
A History of Sacred Music by Women (17 Oct)
Creative Writing for Challenging Times (4-5 Dec)