The Art in Religion


 


Cave art in the cave of Lascaux. An important part of Paleolithic religion.









     Art and Religion have been intertwined since religion began. What is it about art that makes it so often paired with religion and vice versa? Not every piece of art is tied to religion but in many ways religion is often tied to some form of art. Often, art is not the main focus of a religion but it is present and even vital in many religions in some form.

     Art has played a surprisingly important role in all the religions we have studied so far. Visual art can be seen in the paintings on cave walls that appeared to be part of the rituals of paleolithic period people. The artistry of the Indian mounds was vital to the community rituals and beliefs of early Native Americans.  In the psalms, however, we don't see visual art represented, instead we are introduced to literary art as a tool in religion. The psalms are full of metaphors, similes and graphic descriptions. Literary devices may serve many purposes in the psalms. They make the psalms more interesting to read. They help one imagine the actions described in the psalms such as when the psalmist says that the Lord "will make them [your enemies] like a fiery kiln (Psalm 21 v. 10). They also emphasize important points that the psalmists are making with with graphic and perhaps some exaggerated statements as in Psalm 2 when the psalmist writes "You will smash them with a rod of iron,/ like a potter's jar you will dash them" (v. 9). They also make the psalms more understandable by evoking a mental image of the actions or scenery in the psalm.



An artist's depiction of Psalm 23



      Psalm 23 is particularly famous for it's imagery and metaphor. In this psalm, the LORD is depicted as a shepherd who brings his sheep to grassy meadows and quiet waters and protects his sheep when death looms all around. This imagery is particularly effective in communicating that followers of the Lord can trust in the Him to protect them and provide for them. In Psalm 17 also, the psalmist talks about being protected by the Lord by being concealed "in the shadow of your wings" (v. 8).

     Why do religion and art often go hand in hand? What causes this coexistence? Does it have to do with pleasing the gods of religion with the talents of the followers of the religions? Perhaps this is true to some extent. The art of the Indian mounds and the cave art may act as symbols to "establish powerful, pervasive...moods and motivations" that fit neatly with Geertz's definition of religion. They are created by men through rituals that reaffirm their beliefs. The literary art of the psalms may serve this purpose as well but I think that it serves it in a different way too. Many of the psalms were originally written to be sung or chanted by groups of people. Through the music and words, the psalms may have helped to create "powerful, pervasive and long lasting moods and motivations in men" as stated in Geertz's defintion. The art of the psalms, more so than serving the god of the religion, serves the followers of the religion by giving them something interesting and powerful to read and also something memorable to sing that incorporates their beliefs and stories. Overall, art enhances religion and makes it more meaningful to those who practice the religion.
(If you are interested in reading more about the relationship between art and religion check out this site: http://www.italianfuturism.org/manifestos/art-and-religion/ )

Translating the Psalms

As a text that was printed soon after the puritans settled in New England, the Bay Psalm Book text contains words and phrases more appropriate and consistent with it's time. In some instances the Bay Psalm book may even reflect the Puritans' move to America and their views of other people.  In Psalm 2 the Bay Psalm Book uses  

instead of as it appears in Alter's translation as "and your holdings, the ends of the earth" (vs 8). By using "coasts abroad" rather than ends of the earth, the puritan translation of the psalm is consistent in reflecting the puritan desire to find a land abroad (which could in this case be interpreted as America) in which to practice their religion. "Ends of the earth" is more vague than "coasts abroad" in that the ends of the earth is far away places where as coasts abroad may, in a way, represent where the puritans are when this translation was written in 1640, namely, America. Besides using the vernacular of the time, the Bay Psalm book uses the word "heathen" rather than "nations" as it appears in Alter's translation.

This may be a reflection of  the Puritan's particular views as well seen in their word choice. "Heathen" stresses that the people of these other nations are not part of the Judeo-Christian tradition, those that need to be converted to Christianity. The Puritans felt were very strict and felt strongly about non-believers.

       Beyond these two specific examples of word choice used by the puritans, the language itself reflects the time in which the psalms were translated. Although I am not sure if the people of that time actually spoke in the same vernacular seen in the psalms, the psalms reflect the spelling conventions of the time and the speech matches that which has been used for many years and to some extent can be seen in the King James version of the Bible which has been used in many churches until recent years.

     In Psalm 15, the Bay Psalm book often flips the order of words in phrases, instead of saying "The debased in his eyes is repugnant" (vs. 4) as it appears in Aster's translation, it is stated as in the Bay Psalm Book. The Puritans sought to translate the psalms as purely as possible at the risk of awkward sounding phrases with words out of order, another reflection of their particular beliefs. Although Robert Alter seeks to translate the psalms as accurately as possible he sometimes uses words that fit better and make more sense than the literal translation would.

      Through language we see that the social context for these two versions of the psalms is very different from one another.

A note about interpreting the past:

How accurately can humans of the present age interpret the past? The question of how people a thousand years from now would interpret our current society based on objects found in our lives has, believe it or not, crossed my mind before this week's class. How accurate could they be? Given that we have written language and record many aspects of our lives it might be easier for people of the future to interpret things in our society, provided that people are still speaking English or at least able to interpret English. But if they no longer spoke English or had access to any of our written language, would they be accurate in assessing the purpose of something like a toilet seat or a cellphone? You can look at the past and say that we have accurately assessed equivalent objects in the past, but how do you know that people have assigned the appropriate task to an artifact? In some cases, especially when dealing with prehistory and cultures that had no written language, it is sometimes impossible to ever know for certain. People of the future might mistake completely secular symbols as being religious in nature, perhaps monuments and statues may be seen as all being images of idols or gods that are to be worshiped, a plausible explanation but a flawed one nonetheless. Similarly, in considering paleolithic art that we talked about last week, I couldn't help but wonder: how do we know for certain that cave paintings were an element of prehistoric people's religion and not someone simply practicing drawing forms of cattle and bison in a secluded spot for fun or perhaps an ancient form of graffiti? How do we know that Indian mounds are tied to the religious views of the people who built them and not just a place to dispose of  their dead and then heap a whole bunch of dirt on top of it? Maybe when people got sick of the monotony of conical shaped mounds they started making cool designs and pictures of animals out of the mounds instead, for pleasure  rather than out of necessity.
Now, I realize that some of these ideas seem far-fetched or exaggerated and I'm not trying to discredit the evidence that archaeologists have found that support their claims about the purpose of the mounds or the cave art. In the case of the mounds it seems very plausible that the world views held by those who built the mounds and the belief system of the time is very closely tied to the mounds especially since they have found symbolism similar to that of the mounds pertaining to the upperworld and lowerworld depicted elsewhere on other Native American artifacts. Our current perceptions of the ways that people lived in prehistoric times may shape our own beliefs about the purposes of their artifacts. We may discredit them as being less intelligent and more primal than current humans, striving only for survival, but can we know for sure? The explanations that modern humans come up with to explain the past can never be completely accurate because there are many missing pieces. Perhaps we can't conceive of the original purpose of some artifacts because we no longer hold the same ideas and beliefs and conceptions of the world or because some elements have decayed and cannot be retrieved. I know it is impossible to have the whole story about how people of the ancient past really lived but it is all the more reason to take the conclusions of experts with a grain of salt.
Nevertheless, our tendency to try to explain the past and give meaning to things we don't know or don't immediately understand further proves our proclivity to making religions, to make up stories to explain the unknown.

Effigy Mounds: Religious Symbols

A man-mound found in Sauk county, Wisconsin.



Effigy mounds reflect the ideas and ideology of ancient Native Americans about the nature of the natural world and how to live in it. Effigy mounds act as important symbols in Native American religion and spiritual views. These symbols, like other symbols in other religions fit into Geertz’s definition of religion. These symbols “establish powerful, pervasive moods and motivations in men.”  These mounds act as symbols that seek to promote balance and harmony in the world in the ancient Native American belief system. The mounds dually act as a motivation for the people to maintain balance and harmony with the earth and also by making the mounds Native Americans may have believed that they were participating in restoring harmony to the world. In a time when social and economic changes were taking place Native Americans sought to keep in balance and harmony with the earth.  They believed they could do this through use of symbols such as effigy mounds. When building groups of effigy mounds they almost always have mounds representing both the upper and lower worlds, to maintain balance.

 The effigy mounds formulate conceptions of a general order of existence by emphasizing the importance of the natural world in their daily lives and also dividing their world into two main divisions. For the Native Americans who built these mounds, living off the land was how they survived. The placement of the mounds and rituals that took place around the mounds emphasize renewal and rebirth which would be important for these particular groups since they seem to have survived off of agriculture and hunting, both of which depend on the availability and abundance of animals and crops. Through the images depicted by the mounds, the world (both natural and supernatural) is divided into three categories which include elements of the air (or upperworld), elements of the earth and elements of the water (or lowerworld), distinctly represented in effigy mound construction through use of animal forms and other shapes that pertain to each division. Air is often represented by mounds in the shape of birds and raptors, earth is often signified by land animals such as bears and bison, water is often represented by water spirits, often depicted as long-tailed creatures.  The mounds were the symbols that were a big part of unknown rituals and ceremonies that were important in the religious views of early Native Americans. Where the different types of effigy mounds are located are often related to the division the mound belongs to. Bird effigies might be found on a hillside whereas water spirit effigy mounds may be found near a spring of water. The placement and content of the mounds are directly related to the conception of the order of existence  formulated by this group of people, with things of the upperworld seen as being more important and higher up in social status whereas the things of the lower world were sometimes seen as being bad or lower on the social scale.

Free Blog Week One

Whether because you believe that religion is evolutionarily advantageous or simply a byproduct of other advantageous human characteristics, the fact of the matter is that humans are predisposed to being religious.  To attempt to completely eliminate religion from human society would be pointless because we would have to first eliminate all the traits that make humans likely to turn to religion. Athiests may turn people toward science to feed their insatiable hunger for answers to why things happen but in order for their attempts to fully catch on in society, science would, in a sense, have to become a religion itself and perhaps, in a way, it already is a religion to many athiests. Science can provide answers to many questions about the way things are and perhaps the reason that religion has been around since the beginnings of human history is that it tried to answer the many of the same questions that science now tries to answer.
Nonetheless, science and scientific facts can never provide what religions require, and that is faith in something unseen. Faith requires that something be unproven. Belief in something also unites people under a common belief.
On a different note: reading the article about why people believe in a god was enlightening from a scientific biological, evolutionary and psychological standpoint and I really enjoyed reading it because it was neither particularly for or against religion, it just attempted to explain why it exists. It didn't promote a strong opinion one way or the other which I found to be refreshing. I felt like by the end of the article it was up to the reader to decide whether religion is something that should be paid attention to and taken seriously or taken as a flaw of the human mind or a mechanism that promotes survival in humans.

Religion: Ditch it or Keep it?

Although religion allegedly turns people's attention away from the most serious real world problems such as proliferation of nukes, genocide, poverty and the education crisis and turns people's attention toward less important topics such as the debate over gay marriage because religion is concerned with "what god wants" and on the afterlife, nevertheless, religion is beneficial to human cooperation and helps individuals come to terms and deal with difficulties in their lives and with the scary prospect of death. Since cooperation and social living is essential for human survival, one might argue that something that enhances cooperation is evolutionarily adaptive and therefore should be kept around.
Sam Harris points out that religion causes people to be more concerned with unimportant topics such as gay marriage rather than concerning themselves with problems that cause human suffering because of what god says. However, it is not religion itself that causes people to be concerned with trivial matters but rather the focus of those in the religion who choose to concentrate their energies on small bits of doctrine rather than the larger issues of the religion. In Christianity, which Sam Harris is refering to when he comments on the emphasis on gay marriage by religious people, God also tells people to love one another and to help one another. If people are loving one another and helping each other, they should be focusing on larger issues of the world such as human suffering, the education crisis, genocide and poverty.
In the article "Why Do We Believe?" Robin Marantz Henig describes how religion can be advantageous to human survival by promoting cooperative behaviors, thus enhancing group fitness. Although at first, it does not appear that Henig has a positive outlook on religion, she is actually merely explaining the evolutionary significance or insignificance of how religion came to be and why it is so natural for people to believe in a supernatural power and follow a religion. She explains how some scientists see religion as being adaptive either in the past or currently adaptive while others see it as a byproduct of other adaptive traits and as not being adaptive themselves. Henig is not "hating on religion" although some of the scientific explanations for why people have a tendency to follow religion do make religion look illogical. We are not told to ditch religion in this article, rather we are told how the phenomenon of religion came about. Take from it what you will.