Blood & Stone: Violence in the Bible & the Eye of the Illustrator

Cross Currents, Summer, 2001 by Barry Moser

In every beginning there is darkness.

The darkness of chaos seems eternal,

Yet form emerges: light dawns, and life is born.

The Sixth Service of the New Union Prayerbook

Art always meditates on death, and thus creates life.

Flannery O'Connor

The big bad wolf huffs and puffs and blows down the houses of two little pigs. Pigs who had unwisely built their security of ephemera--straw and sticks. And as a result of their ill-contrived folly, the Wolf eats them.

Or so he does in the edition I illustrated. [1] In one scene we see the Wolf, resting, full-bellied amidst the ruin and rubble of his gluttony, wiping his sated mouth with the late pig's blue kerchief. We can feel a nap about to come over him as he kicks back in a landscape strewn with sticks, a bucket of picked-clean bones, a roll of paper towels, and empty jars of spicy, "no-cook" barbecue sauces.

This telling is taken from the classic unsanitized version of the tale, the one where the first two pigs are eaten and the wolf prevails--that is, until the end of the story when his improvidence and gluttony drive him to plunge down the chimney of the third pig's brick house and he becomes not merely scalded, but the main ingredient of a garlicky wolf-stew.

It seems likely that the original teller might have taken his cue from the Bible, given the similarities between the tales of myth and holy writ, and the morals they hold so dear: the clear distinction between good and evil, and the import and value of wisdom. And always, cohort and companion in these mythic or sacred stories, there is the preponderance, the vehemence, of violence.

Consider Second Chronicles 20:24. The writer shows us a landscape strewn with corpses. From a watchtower in the wilderness we see, with Judah, that the inhabitants of Seir have been utterly destroyed. Thousands of dead bodies have fallen to the earth. None escaped. This is but one of myriad biblical events that fulfill the Psalmist's joyous hope of the day when his people's feet will be dipped in the blood of their enemies. Blood, as Zephaniah says, that will pour out like dust (Zeph. 1:17). Blood, as the Psalmist says, that the dogs will lap up (Ps. 68:23).

Only Bible readers who wear the thickest rose-colored glasses can fail to notice all the blood and violence that fill its pages. But if we are observant and curious readers who do notice, how can we help but ask why? Why this abundance of violence and blood in the Holy Writ of two religions whose espoused, primary tenets are peace and good will toward others? Religions that tell us that redemption will come only "when we master the violence that fills our world?" [2]

Ironically, violence plays a mighty role in the birth of both Judaism and Christianity.

Judaism was born out of the violence that is slavery, and subsequently out of the violent deaths of thousands of helpless, order-following foot soldiers in Pharaoh's army, trapped (like the crew of the submarine Kursk) when Yahweh brought the walls of the sea down upon them. Sea water, turbulent, heavy with salt, crushing, rolling with violent undercurrents, ravaging foot soldiers, charioteers, and horses alike, as Moses and his people -- the ones fortunate enough to have made it this far -- escape unharmed into the promised land.

Likewise Christianity was born out of the violence that is the crucifixion, bought and paid for by the tortured body and the disembogued blood of Christ. Flesh and blood that will constitute sacramental sustenance for generations of believers to come.

But all sustenance, even the most common, necessarily begins with violence. We slaughter the steer. We quarter the hog. We pull living roots and vegetables out of the earth. Our common sustenance -- that which feeds our body and sates our pangs of physical hunger -- is born of death and violence. Our spiritual sustenance -- that which sustains the soul and essence--is also born of violence, but becomes, through transubstantive succor, a way to sate the violent, hungry magma of the self. The ironies of body and soul, of life and death.

Thus since blood & violence and blood & flesh are the paving stones of the Judeo-Christian paths, it should come as no surprise that the writings that underpin these two great religions are rife with ferocity and fury. I can only wonder if they were written that way to remind ancient congregations of the scope and reach of their violent history. Or to remind them of the grand and terrifying violence of which their God was capable. Or perhaps to help them celebrate their own might and power, which subjoined the force of their Yahweh.

Perhaps the answer is simpler than we expect. Perhaps in order to understand and accept the universal presence of the savage and the violent, the ancient writers posited a world of ruin and rebirth: A sense that out of eternal darkness "form emerges... light dawns, and life is born.... [That] ... Order reigns where chaos once held sway." [3] Perhaps, too, the human mind and heart, somehow able to perceive the very uproar and din of the universe's fierce creation, remembers. And in remembering, they write.