
                           20050621.02

                Art, Artists and Brazen Serpents

Chapter 21 of the Book of Numbers tells the story:

             4 And they journeyed from mount Hor by the way of
     the Red sea, to compass the land of Edom: and the soul of
     the people was much discouraged because of the way.

             5 And the people spake against God, and against
     Moses, Wherefore have ye brought us up out of Egypt to die
     in the wilderness? for there is no bread, neither is there
     any water; and our soul loatheth this light bread.

             6 And the LORD sent fiery serpents among the people,
     and they bit the people; and much people of Israel died.

             7 Therefore the people came to Moses, and said, We
     have sinned, for we have spoken against the LORD, and
     against thee; pray unto the LORD, that he take away the
     serpents from us. And Moses prayed for the people.

             8 And the LORD said unto Moses, Make thee a fiery
     serpent, and set it upon a pole: and it shall come to pass,
     that every one that is bitten, when he looketh upon it,
     shall live.

             9 And Moses made a serpent of brass, and put it upon
     a pole, and it came to pass, that if a serpent had bitten
     any man, when he beheld the serpent of brass, he lived.

     The Yahweh-Moses directive to fashion a brazen serpent to
provide immunity against snake venom is all the more remarkable
in the context of the absolute prohibition against image-making
in the second of the Ten Commandments. If, as Emerson maintained,
a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, then
this, along with the numerous other divine inconsistencies with
which the Scriptures are replete, may yet be another proof of the
existence of God, whose mind, by definition, is of ultimate
dimension.

     In any event, the significance of this ophiolological
prophylaxis is that it prescribes homeopathy as a method of
obtaining immunity to potentially fatal injury or illness. If the
spectator, who merely looks upon the brazen serpent is thereby
secured against the raging serpent's poison, that benefit would
obviously accrue in the same, if not indeed to a greater degree,
to the artist who, now exempt from the image-making ban, fashions
the brazen serpent to save the life of the viewer, the hearer,
the reader.  Immunity to mental suffering, protection against
emotional illness, in the primary meaning of that term, it seems
to me, is conferred in some degree by all species of art; and
possibly the value of any specific artistic effort might be
assayed by the extent to which it fulfills this therapeutic
function, for the artist's public and for the artist him or
herself.

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