Paul's Visual Piety

This book is at the interface between Visual Studies and Biblical Studies. For several decades, scholars of visuality have been uncovering the significance of everyday visual practices, in the sense of learnt habits of viewing and the assumptions that underpin them. They have shown that these play a key role in forming and maintaining relationships in religious devotion and in social life. The "Visual Studies" movement brought issues such as these to the attention of most humanities disciplines by the end of the twentieth century, but until very recently made little impact on Biblical Studies. The explanation for this "disciplinary blind-spot" lies partly in the reception of St Paul, who became Augustine's inspiration for platonising denigration of the material world, and Luther's for faith through "scripture alone." In the hands of more radical Reformers, the Word was soon vehemently opposed to the Image, an emphasis that was further fostered in the philologically-inclined university faculties where Biblical Studies developed.