The Color of Prophecy: Visualizing the Bible in a new light

The graph contains over 10, connections, too many to be useful and thus made purposely faint as not to overwhelm the piece. The names On, So, and No were excluded since they are both names and words and I wasn't doing anything clever like named entity recognition when parsing the text. With the biblical names list already compiled and a copy of the King James Bible sitting on my desktop, another visualization was inevitable.

I settled on a classic distribution visualization, which shows where various people and places occur in the text. Much of the Bible is chronological, so there is a strong temporal ordering.

Visually, this is the entire Bible printed on a single piece of paper you'll need to look at the high-res version to see it. Floating above the text are the people and places that appear in the Bible - more than 2, names in total. These are positioned according to their average location in the text. Faded lines are rendered to show where they occur. Additionally, font size is proportional to the number of occurrences in the text - the larger the name, the more frequently it appears.

The names On, So, and No were excluded. I've provided the visualization in three color themes. Additionally, because the graph is so dense, I've included two extra versions for people who really want to study it up close. Skip to main content. Log In Sign Up.

The Pictorial Bible II: Seal Up the Vision and Prophecy. For permission to reproduce images in this catalogue thanks are due to: Photographic credits are due to: Jacqueline Harvey for no. All other photographs are by John Harvey. The county names given in this publication are those of the pre counties, by which they were known during the historical period to which some of the material refers. Seal up the Vision and Prophecy Introduction: The Pictorial Bible Series The Pictorial Bible series explores ways in which biblical texts can be visualized without recourse to figuration or illustration, within a non-iconic framework of religious art.

The series represents a coming together of two faculties believing and seeing ; two cultures the Bible and visuality ; and two disciplines Biblical Studies and Art Practice. Within the network of these interactions, the works are concerned with visualizing biblical texts with reference to a tradition espoused by Judaism and the Protestant Reformed Church that is predicated upon the illegitimacy of pictorializing spiritual concepts and scriptural stories and events.

The concept of an image that is at the same time word reflects the convergence of the textual, verbal, and visual in metaphor and experience in the Old Testament, and in the 1 incarnational theology of the New Testament John 1: The text-based images comprising Psalm The works in the first project in the series, Settings of the Psalms, translate Scripture into picture by bringing together the elements of word and image as an undifferentiated whole 1. The biblical texts determine the process and structure of the pictorial composition. Composition takes place within the framework of a grid, which serves as a shape or container into which the letters that make up the Psalm are inserted.

• Bible Cross-References.
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• Summers Embrace #1.
• From the Sublime to the Ridiculous.

The artworks convert time-based disclosure and assimilation writing and reading into a percept that can be experienced in a moment. In this sense, the works are no different from figurative illustrations of biblical texts. However, whereas figurative pictorializations of the Bible tend to portray biblical persons, things, events, or stories, the works in the series tend to deal with abstract subjects such as biblical ideas, concepts, motifs, metaphors, processes, structures, and culture. The source texts are never or rarely illustrated by figurative art because to all intents and purposes they cannot be illustrated.

In this way the abstract character of the artworks is appropriate to the nature of the subject. The prophetic books, especially Ezekiel, Daniel, and Revelation, are intensely Diagram visual 3. However, this is not the reason I chose to adapt texts from the prophetic books. There seems little justification for ploughing the same furrow when the vast Authorized King James Version majority of prophetic texts remain unconsidered from a visual point of view. Vision and prophecy are often synonymous in the Christian Bible. Visions were thus not only a medium of disclosure and reception the conduit of communication between the divine and the human but also a message — in the form of teaching, admonition, warning, and foretelling.

The artworks continue to explore the potential for biblical texts to yield procedural systems and structures as a basis for visual images. They engage further the delimitations and determinations of the source, deploy alphabetic and numerical sequences, codified letter-strands, architectonic proportions and shapes, recurrent patterns, exegetical processes, cross-referencing, and typographical abstractions.

At the same time, the works once again address the historical and cultural background of Old and New Testaments, and Protestant Reformation piety: The new works fall into four related categories: Some of the new works follow suit, but also connect with another, related, tradition of visual imagery that developed in response to the Protestant ban on icons. Seventeenth-century Protestant artists, while prohibited from making images as mediators of worship in church, depicted biblical stories and persons as an aid to religious instruction in the home.

They also portrayed the devotional habits of contemporary believers. In the domestic devotional scenes, the pictorialized Bible served as a visual emblem that signified a divinely inspired artefact; the relevance of its message for the present day; the liberation of the Scriptures following the Gutenberg revolution; and their availability in the vernacular.

Artists represented the Bible often at a distance from the picture plane or on a small scale, and with an eye to perceptual realism. Consequently, the text columns are rendered — out of focus, indistinct, and unreadable — as a series of either summary calligraphic marks denoting letters, or broken lines of different lengths corresponding to words 5. The process abstracts the letters, words, and sentences of the text, converting the literary source of spiritual contemplation into an 4 object of visual perception — a formal proposition without verbal sense.

In this instance, the work applies straightforwardly the synoptic methods used by Dutch painters. Where in Dutch painting the represented Bible pages are one element of the total picture, in the new works they constitute the entirety. The process of abstraction results from a combination of technical and conceptual processes such as enlarging, cropping, and codification, as well as sampling, scanning, and other forms of digital manipulation.

Inscription Images Even after the invention of printing, the Bible was reproduced by hand.

Variations Large and Small

These samplers were made chiefly by women and girls as a means of developing literacy, learning the Scriptures, and applying the lessons to their lives. Protestants commonly learned Scripture, consigning to memory large portions of the Bible by writing them out repeatedly. Writing or inscription was also the agency through which the 5 Scriptures were originally recorded by the prophets, apostles, and evangelists. Consequently, it Rembrandt was, by association, a sacred process; God himself, it is said, inscribed the Ten The Prophetess Anna [detail] Commandments on the stone tables with his finger.

He commanded the Israelites to write oil on panel portions of Scripture on doorposts, sticks, and the ground, and to bind the word of God to their fingers and foreheads. Written words were, in this sense, not only the medium of meaning but also a visual sign variously of covenant, judgement, and protection. The relationship between writing and image is evident in other ways. The new works compound these various traditions of Scripture writing.

Codified Images Several new works adapt the process that informed the writing up of visions and dreams see above , of converting an image into a text. The visual source is illustrations of significant events and persons from the Old and New Testaments in printed Bibles In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, these took the form of steel-plate engravings derived from famous religious paintings from the Renaissance to the Victorian period. In the new works, these engravings illustrating visions of the prophets are codified as a letter-strand.

This in turn serves as the starting point for visual translation, thereby converting the text back into an image, albeit of a very different kind from the original source. However, the coming together of the two fields is fraught [The Ten Commandments] with difficulties. Rarely do artists or art historians possess expertise in biblical scholarship or 19th century, 2nd half knowledge of Christian theology and church history.

Along with art practitioners, they tend to treat the Bible as little more than a pool of narratives, events, and characters to be illustrated. Little consideration is given to convictions about Scripture: Understandably, they possess neither the tools for a formal analysis of images, nor the requisite 7 cognizance of the aesthetic principles and practicalities bearing upon image-making.

Together they circumscribe the beliefs, practices, visual sensibilities, and artefacts either of a religious community and tradition in general or of a particular artist belonging to it. The tables itemize the affiliations, commitments, and interests that define the content of my own circles Tables 1, 2. Table 1 lists my ecclesial and theological affiliations. The descriptors do not denote a specific conviction about Scripture, although they suggest that I hold a high rather than low, a conservative rather than a liberal, view. Viewed as a whole, they are late Modernist, non-representational visual styles in that they do not seek to depict anything outside themselves.

In the case of Conceptualism, the works are images about ideas articulated sometimes through words. Minimalism represents the most ascetic aesthetic, and is characteristically simple, rational, and orderly in form, emphasizing the Table 1 relationships between the part and the whole. Closely allied to Minimalism is Systems Art, a ecclesial and theological affiliations mode of enquiry that is methodological and systematic in its procedure, and governed by a controlling idea.

The dominant mediums of expressing biblical and religious concepts are preaching, reading, hearing, spoken prayer, and music. Theologically, the culture is Christocentric; upholds biblical authority and inspiration; and stresses the doctrines of atonement, redemption, and conversion, and of missionary activity.

Its philosophy of Scripture is systematic, orderly, and rational, and emphasizes a belief in the unity of Scripture in diversity and in the light of a controlling principle, and the relation of its parts to the whole. What visual artefacts there were on the walls of homes tended to be utilitarian serving as a means of spiritual succour or as an evangelistic tract , to espouse a romantic-naturalist style, to be appended with scriptural texts, or to be prints of works by Protestant artists 8. The culture showed some appreciation of old master works but not of artists who depicted Roman Catholic themes and doctrine and a distrust of modern art, which was considered to be often anti-Christian in meaning and intent, and lacking religious utility.

However disdainful or fearful of images a religious community may be, it invariably Table 2 generates some sort of material and visual culture of its own, and conspicuously so in its places visual and art-historical affiliations of worship. These places are not culturally neutral but express religious values and ideals. Protestant Nonconformist chapels for many years the context of my own religious worship , for instance, possess no intrinsic sacredness.

In architectural or building design, the early examples tend to be simple, unadorned, spartan, and functional, orientated to and thereby emphasizing the priority placed upon preaching, hearing, and singing 9. Their whitewashed interiors anticipate the austere, monochromatic, pared-down austerity of Modernist art and architecture.

The recognition of this visual analogy between a theological space and an ideological style provided the catalyst for The Pictorial Bible series. Linked by a common bond of idealism, the aspiration to purity, and disdain for superfluities and excrescences of tradition and doctrine, early Nonconformity and late Modernity developed although with very different objectives and perspectives a corresponding formal rigour and rational practice The challenge I faced was to build a meaningful synthesis of the two cultures on the basis of their common ground in the form of viable art practice.

In realizing the endeavour, my historical research into the visual culture of Nonconformity gave me a sense of past precedent and future direction. Calvinistic Methodism was the dominant expression of Christianity in Wales where I have lived all my life. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries especially, Wales developed a culture that was strongly orientated to a biblical outlook and values, and predominantly Calvinist in theology. Inside places of worship, the Calvinistic ban on religious pictures, coupled with a theological emphasis on Scripture, led to the development of a decorative accessory that satisfied both imperatives: In the home, Nonconformists hung embroideries offset lithograph that showed, for example, the Ten Commandments — a picture of Scripture in a literally literal, rather than figuratively illustrative, sense Only the medium and context of presentation has changed: In removing the laws of the Decalogue from the printed page and their context in Exodus chapter 20, and by displaying them as an object or visual artefact the text is returned to its original condition as a surface inscription.

In the section where the circles overlap, I sensed there were opportunities other than those already explored by historic Protestant Nonconformity, of transforming biblical texts into visual images. This is represented by a third circle The shaded area now represents the fusion of three cultures.

At the interface of this trinity is the domain of perceived new possibilities, creative enterprise, and The Pictorial Bible series. The former endeavours to discern the thought St. Fagans, Glamorgan or sense of the original text and thereby to subordinate strict adherence or literal faithfulness to converted the objectives of comprehensibility and readability, and where possible to provide an unambiguous interpretation.

Formal equivalence is a methodology that seeks to maintain the linguistic forms including word order, idioms, rhetorical patterns, diction, ambiguities, denotative and connotative meanings, associative meanings, and nuances of the source text as far as possible, irrespective of whether the original meaning is maintained. In short, it is an attempt to translate the text word for word or literally. The works in The Pictorial Bible series result from a form of Bible translation where the source language is textual and the target language visual. The codified text-based images deploy a form of formal equivalence that in keeping with its usage in Biblical Studies similarly focuses on retaining the form of the source language in the translation, regardless of whether or not the original meaning is preserved in terms of readability.

It is a one-for-one, letter-for-letter or, rather, visual-for-letter value conversion in which morphemes parts of words , whole words, and the structure and connection between words grammar and syntax are surrendered.

The Color Of Prophecy - Richard McBee Artist and Writer

In terms of the relationship between text and image the concepts of equivalence and translation are, however, something of a misnomer. The languages of the verbal and visual are too different for there to be a formal correspondence. For while interlingual possessing a relation between two languages , they are also intersemiotic involving two sign systems. The 10 discontinuity between the two sign systems implies that the process of conversion from one to Hymn board the other with all the implications of a change of nature, form, and function is more in the c.

Nikolaikirche The text and, in some cases, the ways in which one text connects to other texts is the Leipzig, Germany point of embarkation for the image, the foundation and site of ideation, the object and subject of refurbished rumination and interpretation. However, the Son of Man must first suffer at the hands of men Those who rejected the Lord Jesus as the Messiah, the Son of Man, would mourn when they saw Him returning in the clouds:.

And then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in the sky, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of the sky with power and great glory Matthew His followers too must be alert and ready for His return In my opinion, the most dramatic reference of our Lord to His identity as the Son of Man comes as the Lord Jesus stands on trial before the Sanhedrin and the high priest:. What is it that these men are testifying against You?

In His response to the demand of the high priest, Jesus directly claimed to be the promised Messiah. Jesus quoted the words of Daniel 7: They surely knew this text to be messianic, but they had always applied it to the Gentiles. They believed that the Messiah would come to establish the kingdom, to bless the Jews and to condemn the Gentiles. Jesus applied this text to them, not as those who would enter into His kingdom, but as those who would be judged at His return.

No wonder His words stung and prompted them to act as they did. For the time, it was these Jewish leaders who were beastly, arrogant, and blasphemous, and because of this they would suffer divine judgment. The words of Daniel which applied to the beasts now found application to them.

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Wherever I see the Scriptures speak of the coming kingdom of God, I find suffering closely associated with it. Before the Israelites were delivered out of Egypt and brought into the land of Canaan, they suffered at the hands of the Egyptians. Our deliverance from the power of sin and the penalty of death has been accomplished by our Lord, who suffered in our place. Those who will reign with Christ are those who have suffered see Romans 8: Suffering is an inseparable part of the process which leads to glory.

So it was for our Lord 1 Peter 1: Prophecy is not a pep rally, which generates a great burst of short-term enthusiasm but does little to inspire faith and endurance in the midst of suffering. Neither is prophecy written to make us happy or to feel good. In the context of the coming of His kingdom and the suffering and trials which precede it, soberness is a vitally important quality which prophecy promotes:. We are not of night nor o darkness; 6 so then let us not sleep as others do, but let us be alert and sober. Therefore, gird your minds for action, keep sober in spirit, fix your hope completely on the grace to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ 1 Peter 1: The end of all things is at hand; therefore, be of sound judgment and sober spirit for the purpose of prayer 1 Peter 4: We could never predict the goals God has determined, nor the means He has ordained for history to reach them.

Prophecy reveals that which we would not and could not expect apart from divine revelation. We do not walk by sight, but by faith. We do not act on what we see so much as on what God has said. Abraham and Sarah were elderly and childless. Humanly speaking, it was impossible for them to have a child. And yet God said they would. As the boasting horn of Daniel 7 seems to be getting away with his blasphemies and his oppression of the saints, it seems to him he can do whatever he wishes, including the changing of times and law. As the wicked prosper in their sin, it seems as though they can continue in sin without any fear of divine judgment see Psalm Their perception is wrong, for suddenly and without warning their day of destruction will come upon them.

When that day comes for them, it is too late to repent. As the saints suffer at the hands of the wicked, it may appear all hope is lost. It may seem to them that their defeat is certain and that their hopes of entering into the eternal kingdom are lost. Things are not as they appear to be! When we expect it least, the Lord will return, the wicked will be punished, and the kingdom of God established forevermore. One of those gaps is found in Daniel 7. The coming of the Son of Man is represented as one coming, and not two.

We know that Jesus came the first time to die and that He will come again to subdue His enemies and establish His kingdom. We are told the Old Testament prophet could not see the distance between the first and the second coming of our Lord, just as one cannot see the distance between two mountains, when viewed from afar. The Old Testament prophet did not see the gap because he viewed the coming of Christ as God does. From an eternal perspective, the coming of Christ and His kingdom is but one coming.

We see a gap—an almost insurmountable gap—between suffering and glory; God does not. Suffering and glory are a part of one work. The process of having a baby involves the pains of childbirth. They are far from pleasant but an unavoidable part of the process. The woman endures in the view of the final outcome of the process. When the child is born, the pains of suffering are quickly lost in the joys of seeing a new life.

Child-bearing is a process which involves suffering and glory. Salvation is likewise a process involving suffering—and then glory.

Holy infographics: the bible visualised

Prophecy is revealed to men to change their perspective, to urge them to see things as God sees them rather than as they appear to the human eye. We are not to base our thinking and actions on circumstances, but upon the Scriptures. What God says, He will do. History has shown this to be true in the past, and prophecy assures us that it will be true in the future. Let us listen then, and be sober, enduring the sufferings and trials sent our way, looking expectantly and certainly for His kingdom to come.

In verse 1 Daniel indicates his vision came to him in the first year of the reign of Belshazzar. The vision recorded in chapter 8 took place in the third year of Belshazzar. The account of the writing on the wall and the death of Belshazzar obviously the last year of his reign is found in Daniel 5. Prophecy is not revealed in a historical vacuum. While most prophecies in the Bible reveal events which will take place after the death of the recipient of the prophecy, the prophecy is revealed for impact upon those to whom it was revealed. Prophecy is always practical and relevant to the person s receiving it.

At the outset of the account of his vision, Daniel wants his reader to know the historical context in which this prophecy was given and to consider its interpretation and application in the light of that context. Editing is often evident in the Bible see John Editing allows an author to set aside details which are not significant and focus on the essence of the message he is trying to communicate. Daniel boiled down his vision to its essence, so we would not fail to understand the message he meant to convey to us. First, the prophecies of Daniel are divinely inspired and revealed, and thus they are true and reliable.

Second, the prophecies of Daniel are to be understood in the light of the entire Book of Daniel, of the Old Testament, and of the Bible as a whole. Thirdly and most importantly , the prophecies of Daniel mean exactly what God says they mean, nothing more and nothing less. The prophecy of this chapter is divinely interpreted.

God has revealed in this interpretation what He wants us to know and has kept back that which we need not know. We dare not ignore that which is revealed nor do we dare go too far afield in speculating about what is concealed see Deuteronomy The chapter falls into two major parts. Verses contain the vision which God gave to Daniel.

Verses contain the divine interpretation of this vision. How was the fourth beast different from the first three? Each of the four beasts represent a king and thus a resulting kingdom. Each beast has its own unique characteristics. The fourth beast appears to differ from the other three in that he is more beastly, more powerful, more destructive, and more arrogant. This beast is also unique among the four in that he grows 11 horns. These horns are also kings, from whom kingdoms arise verse This fourth beast seems to regenerate in the form of subsequent kings and kingdoms.

His final offspring, so to speak, is the little horn which becomes the great blasphemer, whose life and kingdom is suddenly cut off by the Ancient of Days and the Son of Man. Are we supposed to discover their identity? Daniel was told that the beasts are kings, but he was not told the identity of any of the kings. There is fairly strong inferential evidence that Nebuchadnezzar was represented by the first beast, the winged lion. The point of this prophecy is not to tell us who future kings will be, but rather what they will be like.

These kings will rise to power and dominate the earth.

In the latter days, an unusually powerful and evil king will arise, who will blaspheme God and oppress the people of God. When his appointed time is over, God will destroy this king and his kingdom and establish His eternal kingdom on the earth. Who is the Son of Man? What role do they play in relation to the four beasts? The Ancient of Days is a designation for God, not found elsewhere in the Bible.

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This designation refers to God the Father in a way that stresses His eternality, dignity, and power. In Ezekiel, and even in Daniel 8: Usually it refers to a person as a human being. But here in chapter 7, as in Psalm When the iniquity of the blasphemous horn reaches full bloom and his appointed time to rule is fulfilled, God will destroy him, casting his body into the fire. It is at this time that all human kingdoms will become subject to God and to the saints in the eternal kingdom, which the Son of Man will establish when He comes to the earth to judge and to rule.

There seems to be a close connection between the vision of Nebuchadnezzar, which is revealed and interpreted in chapter 2, and the vision of Daniel in chapter 7. The statue has four parts; there are four beasts. Both the statue parts made of different metals and the beasts represent kings and kingdoms. Both series of four kingdoms begin well and end badly. Both sets of kingdoms are brought to a sudden end and are replaced by an eternal kingdom. It therefore seems that the two prophecies speak of the same four kingdoms by means of different imagery. The latter prophecy of Daniel 7 adds many more details than were revealed in chapter 2.

The blasphemous horn of Daniel 7, which goes so far as to oppose the people of God, is suddenly taken by death, and his kingdom is removed. In a similar way, Belshazzar becomes blasphemous and is suddenly removed by God for his wickedness. The death of this king brings about the end of his kingdom.

Daniel 5 is an illustration and a prototype of what will happen in the end times, as described in the prophecy of Daniel 7. Daniel is greatly distressed by the vision which he sees in chapter 7. We are not told precisely what it is that troubles Daniel. The fact that wicked men will prosper and prevail and that the righteous will suffer is hardly pleasant news.