Aesthetic Behaviour in the Jewish Scriptures: A Preliminary Sketch

Abstract

Although some biblical commentators nowadays do refuse an aesthetic disjunction between ‘art’ and ‘craft’, so allowing that ancient Israel’s ‘crafts’ might have aesthetic value, there seems to be little attention accorded the aesthetics—the aesthetic behaviour—presupposed in the canonical literature. In part this is due to the obsessions of our now questionable, socially restrictive ‘Enlightenment’ inheritance. But there is discernible in the canonical writings an aesthetics of abundance, intensification, plenitude, especially in much of the Psalter, and in concentration in Song of Songs. And this aesthetic celebration which we may discern here tallies well with much of the everyday aesthetic behaviour in which we ourselves engage.