Art, Agency, and Anti-Idol Polemics in the Hebrew Bible

This article reexamines the assumptions about the nature and agency of art that motivate anti-idol polemics in the Hebrew Bible. These verbal attacks, which characterize idols as inanimate objects incapable of speaking, seeing, smelling, and breathing, have long been studied in relation to ancient Near Eastern image theology. In an effort to extend and revise this earlier research, this article draws upon the work of social anthropologist A. Gell and his insights into the mechanisms by which images become endowed with and/or are stripped of human-like agency. In light of Gell's theory, it is possible to understand biblical anti-idol polemics as a type of assault on the social agency of idols in a manner closely akin to the physical vandalism inflicted upon divine and royal images in ancient Mesopotamia. In both cases, the part of the image that is deliberately targeted – whether by hammer and chisel or verbal polemic – are those external features (eyes, ears, nose, mouth) that were thought to manifest and activate the image's agency in the first place.