Justin J. White proposes to reconceptualize the relationship between image and text in ancient Israel. Characterizing both as mixed forms of media, White argues that texts evoked images as a core component of their rhetoric. He identifies three text-specific axes of visual rhetoric – ekphrasis, visual imagination and material agency – referring to them as the »poetics of visuality.« The poetics of visuality help demonstrate how ancient Israelite images and texts are represented through metaphor, simile and synecdoche and are indicative of the metaphysics endemic to the ancient Near East.
Justin J. White explores the nature of images in ancient Israel through a reconceptualization of the relationship between image and text. He proposes that in ancient Israel, texts evoked images as a core part of their rhetoric. Rather than conceptualizing texts and images as ontologically or functionally distinct media, he argues that both media are mixed media even while neither medium is reducible to the other. In order to make this argument, he focuses on the visual aspects of textual rhetoric—what he terms »the poetics of visuality.« He builds his argument across three text-specific axes of visual rhetoric: ekphrasis, the visual imagination and material agency. He makes the claim that each of these three axes are endemic to Israelite literature, and mutually contribute to the formation of a robust ontology of visual representation in ancient Israel.
Table of contents:
1. What Do Images Have to Do with Biblical Texts?
1.1 Introduction
1.2 The Approach of this Study
1.3 The Format of this Study
2. The Hebrew Bible and Visual Culture
2.1 »There Were Images in Israel«: The Rise of Iconographic Interpretation
2.2 Images as Texts: Panofsky's Iconology
2.3 Rethinking the Relationship between Image and Text
2.4 Conclusion
3. Ekphrasis and the Visual Imagination in Ancient Israel
3.1 What is Ekphrasis (for)?
3.2 Seeing the Ineffable through Ekphrasis: Ezekiel's Inaugural Vision
3.3 Ekphrasis and Representation in the
Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice
3.4 Conclusion
4. Imagetexts and Visual Rhetoric in the Hebrew Bible
4.1 Text and Image in the Hebrew Bible
4.2 Like the Egyptians: The Smiting God and King in Isaiah 10
4.3 Image in Text: The Ephah Vision of Zechariah 5:5-11 and Divine Representation
4.4 Dialectics of Resistance in Daniel 6
4.5 Conclusion
5. Visual Material Agency in the Hebrew Bible
5.1 What Power(s) Do Images Have?
5.2 Images, Agency, and the Ancient Near East
5.3 Image Agency in the Hebrew Bible
5.4 Conclusion
6. Conclusions: Image and Text in Ancient Israel 
