Paul's Visual Piety

Abstract

This chapter gives a brief account of the occasion for, character, and significance of a study of Paul's visual piety, introducing issues to be explored in the rest of Part One. It emphasizes that this book is not chiefly about art, icons, or liturgy, but about visual practices of piety customary in everyday life, and how they transform the beholder. Since the 1970s, the significance of visuality broadly understood has been widely recognized in the humanities, but Biblical Studies has largely manifested a disciplinary blind-spot towards the visual; of this, the reception of Paul has been both source and symptom. Consequently, this book seeks to place Paul on the map of Visual Studies, showing that his motif of ‘metamorphosis of the beholder’ in 2 Corinthians 3:18 alludes to assumptions and habits of this-worldly viewing, which are formative for relationships to both God and neighbour.

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