Dem Dry Bones & the St. John's Bible

 

Ezekiel 37:1-14 St. John's Bible 

Dem bones, dem bones gonna walk around.
Dem bones, dem bones gonna walk around.
Dem bones, dem bones gonna walk around.

Now hear the word of the Lord.

             Chorus from Dem Bones 

The Hebrew scripture passage which tells of the prophet Ezekiel's vision of the Valley of the Dry Bones was read during worship this past Sunday and we even sang Dem Bones, a spiritual written more than a hundred years ago. This got me looking about for art images. The one you see above was created by Donald Jackson for the marvellous St. John's Bible, the first illuminated or illustrated manuscript created in hundreds of years. I've written about it before and I have a copy of the gospels with their fascinating calligraphy and illustrations. 

If you can look closely at the artwork you'll see the contemporary connections. Here is the description of the Dry Bones page from the bible: 

This illumination illustrates Ezekiel 37:10-14, in which God sets Ezekiel in the middle of a valley filled with dry bones, representing a destroyed society cut off from faith. Ezekiel preaches the word of God to the bones, and God promises the bones that He will “put my Spirit in you and you will live, and I will settle you in your own land.” You will find many human bones in this illumination, as well as the figurative bones of civilization.

In The Art of the Saint John's Bible, Susan Sink relates how Donald Jackson began work on this illumination with an Internet search, looking for documentary photos of human suffering.

“The skulls are based on photos taken of genocide and war in Armenia, Rwanda, Iraq, and Bosnia. The piles of broken glass suggest the broken windows caused by car bombs…. At the center is a pile of eyeglasses, a well-known image from the Holocaust. […] For Donald Jackson the waste of ecological disaster is part of the larger image…. The three automobile hulls are one sign of the spiritual death of society.” (Sink, vol. 2, p. 82)

Yet throughout the image we find glimmers of hope. Note the splash of oil on the right-hand page, with a rainbow sheen connecting the dry bones to the exultant rainbow at the top. Remember the gold squares from the Creatoin image?They are present here, indicating divine watchfulness.

Finally, note the seven menorahs, a sign throughout the Saint John’s Bible of creation and covenant. Sink notes: “Here the seven gold and black bars are intersected by arcs that end in points of light. Seven menorahs with seven points of light rise out of and transcend the wreckage and wrongdoings of humankind….” (Sink, vol. 2, p. 83)