 The theme of today is the prohibition of images, or, if you take it active, it is the act of demolition or destruction of images. You would speak of iconoclasm. And if it's passive you talk about an iconism. The root of the prohibition of images is the second commandment. The first one you see here reads, you shall not make for yourself a carved image. So literally it would be a carved image. And then any likeness of anything that is in heaven above or that is in the earth beneath or that is in the water under the earth. So, if you would take it literally, it would mean every living creature, an image of every living creature. But then it says, you shall not bow down to them nor serve them. It's about idolatry. An image is not of itself an idol. It's a prohibition of idolatry. And the second one of Leviticus where it says, do not make yourself false god is pretty clear about that. It's the prohibition of idolatry. Now remember that making images in those days was something different than what we mean by an artist making images. It was long before what we have seen, the differentiation of modernity and making images in those days was religious from the start you might say. So it especially refers to the image making of idols of the Gentiles within this Jewish context. Therefore, Orthodox Jews and later Orthodox Muslims would really obey this second commandment. But generally they will be, well, they won't have problems with images in another context and religious real, for example, in scientific books or so. But in the main Judaism and Islam obey to this second commandment. And when they make art, you will find calligraphy, you will find ornaments, you will find all kinds of art, but no pictural, figurative, representing art. Although this tradition, this commandment, is a little bit more pluralist than you might expect. For example, here you see indeed living creatures, people. And if you're looking for Jewish art, I hope it works, still doesn't, you will also find sacred art in the sense of ornaments. But as I said, the tradition is much more pluralistic than that. In 1930 and 1936, archaeologists found a synagogue. This one, the synagogue of Beit Alpha, it's Jewish, but it contains picture. What you see here is the sacrifice, Abraham sacrifices his son Yitzchak. And even the hand of God is pictured. So it's Jewish. There is a prohibition of images, but not the whole tradition is monolithic about that. So there are different strains in the tradition. Now, let's turn to Christianity. First thing you might say, that is that Christianity is indebted to Judaism. It knows the prohibition of images in the sense of the prohibition of idols. But there's a second element in Christianity, central to Christianity, which makes it very complex. And that is the idea, the principle of incarnation, of the word being God and becoming flesh in Christ. You might say, in Christ God made himself into a visible image among men. And in the story of the transfiguration in the Bible, Christ really reveals his divinity for the eyes of people. So the attitude of Christianity towards images is different from that of Judaism and Islam. No incarnation. And there's a third element. I called it the Platonic inclination. Well, Jerusalem is central for Christianity, but at least the first theologians were very much inspired by Athens, by Greek philosophy. And one of the most important philosophers, Greek philosophers, was Plato. They were very, very complex and ambivalent relations towards images. For Plato, the real reality, and I remind you to the story of the cave, real reality is not visible reality. Visible reality is only a faint copy of the real reality. And what does an artist do when he makes a work of art? He makes something visible when it is, for example, a portrait. It is a faint copy of a real face, but the real face is already a faint copy of real reality. So it's a kind of copy of a copy. For Plato, art mostly is a kind of copying in the second order. It's a kind of degenerated reality. But he makes exemptions when he says, well, but a work of art can, for example, poetry, by its beauty remind you of the real beauty. Now, this is a very difficult and complex relation, but it has a kind of iconoclasm in it.