Dur­ing our Octo­ber 2012 trip to Rome, I was might­i­ly inspired by the depic­tions of Bib­li­cal* sto­ries. I was tak­en with the incred­i­ble pieces of art that real­ly were telling the sto­ry with­out evan­ge­liz­ing. Or, at least, with­out being hell­bathedinthe­blood­oftherisen­lamb­fire evan­gel­i­cal. The beau­ti­ful imagery spoke of the immense pow­er of storytelling.

Grow­ing up in the south­ern Unit­ed States, there were end­less expe­ri­ences with Chris­tian­i­ty and Chris­tians, many of them pos­i­tive. How­ev­er, it was a rare time when the sto­ries told were told sim­ply for the enjoy­ment of the tale. All too often the com­plex­i­ty and won­der of tapes­try found in scrip­ture is lost because at the end of it, you know that you’ll get a bit of pros­e­ly­tiz­ing and maybe some guilt trip­ping. So when I returned, I decid­ed to use a new medi­um (rel­a­tive to oth­er art forms) to share my own vision of Bib­li­cal sto­ries. Maybe some that are famil­iar, maybe some that aren’t, but all of which pro­vide a small brick of the foun­da­tion of the Chris­t­ian faith.

The first was the sto­ry of Jael (Judges 5:26) who took in an ene­my gen­er­al and then slew him in a fair­ly grue­some man­ner. She is held up as one of the great women of the Old Tes­ta­ment, although not near­ly men­tioned today as often as Ruth, Esther, Sarah or oth­ers. I like her strength, her intel­li­gence and her abil­i­ty to change the tides of his­to­ry with one deci­sive move­ment. And that moment is what I pho­tographed in the scene below.

I hope to fol­low this with many oth­ers of scenes from the Old and New Tes­ta­ments. Con­tin­u­ing to tell the nar­ra­tive on its own, with­out any pre­tense except to share the myth itself.

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* Yes, I recognize that a great deal of “Biblical” stories are re-tellings of even older stories, or conglomerations of multiple stories from multiple traditions, but it gets the point across.

From the Song of Deborah

“She put her hand to the tent peg
and her right hand to the workmen’s mallet;
she struck Sis­era a blow,
she crushed his head,
she shat­tered and pierced his tem­ple.” Judges 5:26

The first of a series of Bib­li­cal Tales.