How do religious icons read-and-write?

Loading...
Thumbnail Image

Date

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

Publisher

University of Stellenbosch, Department of Old and New Testament

Abstract

This contribution starts off with a broad understanding of icons and their communication, and the implications this has for religious discourse today. The focus then moves to icons within the Christian Orthodox traditions to indicate aspects of the interaction of text, image and presence. The final part returns to the implication of "seeing" icons for reading texts and hence for the possibility of again in our age encountering God in texts. Analysing the communicative dynamics of icons from the Reformed strand of Protestant Christianity, a tradition which exhibits a stronger inclination to biblical hermeneutics than to icons as operative faith impulses, combines these two interpretative traditions as a service to the unfolding post-secular intellectual and societal climate unfolding internationally.

Description

This contribution is a further development of a presentation at the Society of Biblical Literature international conference, 3-7 July 2023, University of Pretoria.

Keywords

Icons, Bible, Interpretation

Sustainable Development Goals

None

Citation

Lombaard, C. & Joubert, L. 2025, 'How do religious icons read-and-write?', Scriptura: Journal for Biblical, Theological and Contextual Hermeneutics, vol. 124, no. 1, art. 2234, pp. 1-14, doi : 10.7833/124-1-2234.