The Prayer of Joshua and the Dial of Ahaz: Paratactic Scriptural Illustration in the Lempereur, Vorsterman, and Van Liesveldt Bibles

Walter S. Melion

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Chapter 1 The Prayer of Joshua and the Dial of Ahaz

Paratactic Scriptural Illustration in the Lempereur, Vorsterman, and Van Liesveldt Bibles

In: Manipulating the Sun

Author:

Walter S. Melion

Walter S. Melion
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Type:: Chapter

Pages:: 13–55

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004677654_003

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Abstract

The woodcuts that mark key passages in the three most prominent illustrated Bibles published in sixteenth-century Antwerp – Martin Lempereur’s La saincte Bible of 1530 and 1534, Willem Vorsterman’s Tgeheele oude ende nieuwe Testament of 1532, 1533/34, 1542/43, and 1545, and Jacob van Liesveldt’s Den Bibel met grooter neersticheyt gecorrigeert of 1532, 1534, 1535, and 1536 – consist for the most part of figural scenes, with the startling exception of the diagrammatic Dial of Ahaz, positioned at the start of Isaiah 38. Whereas the majority of woodcut illustrations in these Bibles eschews allegory, showing either historical scenes or portraits of the authors of the various biblical books, the Dial of Ahaz is decidedly allegorical. The image of two sundials shown side-by-side invites sustained exploration of the exegetical meanings that nest within this complex visual allegory about the nature of divine agency. This curious image – part mimetic in that it purports to depict dial faces, part diagrammatic in that it consists mainly of geometrical forms, linear marks, and numerical signs, part exegetical in that it conjugates a string of biblical texts, and wholly allegorical in its compilatory method of construction and argument – constitutes one pregnant example of how preachers and their congregations, and the exegetes trained in the kinds of reading codified by the Glossist and Nicholas de Lyra, would have reckoned with the divine significance of the sun’s motion, when viewing it through the lens of allegory. The Dial of Ahaz thus offers a glimpse of a pre-Copernican hermeneutics of the sun’s relation to time.

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Manipulating the Sun

Picturing Astronomical Miracles from the Bible in the Early Modern Era

Series: Nuncius Series, Volume: 13

E-Book ISBN:: 9789004677654

Publisher:: Brill

Print Publication Date:: 29 Nov 2023

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Front Matter

Part 1 The Horologium Ahaz and Joshua Stopping the Sun in Early Modern Printed Material

Part 2 The Horologium Ahaz and Joshua Stopping the Sun on Early Modern Scientific Instruments

Part 3 The Horologium Ahaz and Joshua Stopping the Sun in Art and Architecture in Specific Locations

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African Studies	Education	Media Studies
American Studies	History	Middle East and Islamic Studies
Ancient Near East and Egypt	Human Rights and Humanitarian Law	Musicology
Art History	International Law	Philosophy
Asian Studies	International Relations	Religious Studies
Biblical Studies	Jewish Studies	Slavic and Eurasian Studies
Biology	Languages and Linguistics	Social Sciences
Book History and Cartography	Life Sciences	Theology and World Christianity
Classical Studies	Literature and Cultural Studies

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Chapter 1 The Prayer of Joshua and the Dial of Ahaz

Paratactic Scriptural Illustration in the Lempereur, Vorsterman, and Van Liesveldt Bibles

Abstract

Citation Info

Share link with colleague or librarian

Manipulating the Sun

Picturing Astronomical Miracles from the Bible in the Early Modern Era

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