Reflections on Using Biblical Art for Biblical Interpretation

Teaching, researching and publishing on the Bible in art raises significant challenges for the biblical scholar. In this paper we will address some of these challenges through the lens of our own experiences, highlighting changes in access to visual art that have taken place over the past twenty years and looking at some of the issues that remain. The first part of our presentation will focus on the need to make culturally contextualized visualizations more widely available, looking at how this might be achieved. The second part of our session will take the subject in a different direction, acknowledging that accessibility is of primary importance, but asking is it enough just to make images available? Who are the end users, and what kind of information could be provided about the images in a repository in order to make it more useful in teaching and research in global settings?