Today"s Gospel in Art - They did the killing, you do the building

Elijah kills the prophets of Baal, by Gustave Doré ©Alamy / Christian Art

Source: Christian Art

Gospel of 14th October 2021 - Luke 11:47-54

Jesus said: "Alas for you who build the tombs of the prophets, the men your ancestors killed! In this way you both witness what your ancestors did and approve it; they did the killing, you do the building.

"And that is why the Wisdom of God said, 'I will send them prophets and apostles; some they will slaughter and persecute, so that this generation will have to answer for every prophet's blood that has been shed since the foundation of the world, from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah, who was murdered between the altar and the sanctuary.'

"Yes, I tell you, this generation will have to answer for it all.

"Alas for you lawyers who have taken away the key of knowledge! You have not gone in yourselves, and have prevented others going in who wanted to."

When he left the house, the scribes and the Pharisees began a furious attack on him and tried to force answers from him on innumerable questions, setting traps to catch him out in something he might say.

Reflection on the Engraving

In our Gospel reading today we hear the words 'killing, slaughtering, persecuting, blood, murder…' It is often a comment made to us Christians that the Bible is full of violence. At times, especially the Old Testament can be hard to reconcile with the God of Love revealed to us in the New Testament. One way of explaining the violence would be that our human language is limited. We tend to ascribe to God emotions which we experience in our own human lives. The Old Testament writers would have used their own experiences and projected them onto how God might think and act. This can be referred to as 'anthropomorphism', the attribution of human traits, emotions or intentions to God.

But probably a better way to explain the violence in especially the Old Testament is by looking at Origen of Alexandria. Rooting everything in Christ, Origen says that Christ alone provides the interpretive key to the Bible. As Christ revealed that God is the God of Love and Mercy, we need to read the Old Testament with that in mind. So according to Origen, the 'killing, slaughtering, persecuting, blood, murder…' must be read metaphorically. The language paints these metaphors for evil forces. Of course some of the battles and violent events did take place from a historical point of view, but the language built around it in the Bible goes beyond the purely historical. The language is there to describe also (and foremost) the great spiritual battles of the people of God.

Our engraving by Gustave Doré from 1865 depicts Elijah killing the prophets of Baal. One man is about to be beheaded. A headless corpse is falling down the cliff, whilst another body is already floating in the river. Soldiers and onlookers watch the cruel scene. The scene taken from the Old Testament is meant to convey spiritual truths about the necessity of eradicating sin. It is not a solely journalistic, historical account of what took place. The story needs to be read first and foremost in light of the spiritual truths it reveals.

LINKS

Today's story - https://christian.art/en/daily-gospel-reading/959
Christian Art - www.christian.art/