Sharon R. Chace - An Artistic Approach to New Testament Literature

T his book is for anyone who wants a short guide to the New Testament. My artistic approach is especially appropriate for high school and college students who are interested in the visual arts and want an imaginative supplement to more standard introductions to the New Testament. In a way, I write to my inner self, that eight-year-old girl in a sepia photographic portrait. I wore my best Sunday dress: a candy-striped taffeta blouse with an attached blue skirt. While quiet and dressed in a ladylike fashion for Sunday school, I always spoke my mind, often to the surprise of adults, who did not expect such directness from demure Sharon.

Once, at an evangelical church, I was almost asked to leave Sunday school. My question was upsetting to the Sunday school teachers, who had to caucus to decide how to answer. I asked if the red words in my Bible are really the exact words of Jesus, or are they extra quotation marks? The answer given to me was that they are the exact words of Jesus and they did not want to hear any more doubts. What I should have been told would have gone something like this: The earthly Jesus was a prophet and preacher but not a writer. His followers, some of them scribes with excellent memories, passed on his sayings by word of mouth and eventually wrote them down. Then the gospel writers collected materials about Jesus as well as his teachings and organized reports, stories, and instructions in their gospels. Sometimes in faithfulness to the person they knew Jesus to be and in the style of other writers in the ancient world, the New Testament authors put a few words into Jesuss mouth that they knew he would or should have said. The writers of the New Testament gospels were more like artists than news reporters. These writers painted pictures of Jesus with words and artistically presented Jesuss parables and stories. Other New Testament writers contributed artfully composed letters, sermons, and theological essays.

My focus on artistry developed over time. In 1966 I graduated from Albion College in Albion, Michigan, with an art major and English and religion minors. In 1998 I received a Master of Theological Studies (MTS) degree with a biblical concentration, from Weston Jesuit School of Theology in Cambridge, Massachusetts. During my college days, professors of biblical studies focused on historical criticism or examination of the time and place of writing, as well as on meanings in the original life situations of biblical people. They were also interested in source criticism, which is the study of the biblical writers sources of information and styles of writing. In art history and studio art courses, professors most often emphasized the formal art elements of line, form, color, and texture, whether the students preferred realism or abstract expressionism. In a personal fullness of time, I applied those formal elements to biblical literature.

By the time I entered graduate school, people in many scholarly fields looked at the Bible through their disciplines. Evolving approaches to biblical studies include the psychology of biblical studies, the sociology of biblical studies, and various feminist critiques. As an artist, I approach the Bible artistically. In short, I use artistic characteristics to describe biblical texts and will more fully explain an artistic approach in the second chapter, What is an Artistic Approach to the New Testament?