Please join Dean Harding for this special series of his Forum, January 25 through February 22, with guest-presenter Belton Zeigler. Fill out the form below and click submit to receive the Zoom link.

Description:

Painters like Rubens and Rembrandt, visionaries like Blake, illustrators like Tissot, and other artists down the ages have turned time and again to the later chapters of Genesis as subjects for their art.  And why should it be otherwise?  The stories they found there include the sale of Esau's birthright; Rebekka stage managing the theft of Esau's blessing;  Jacob's flight to Laban; his vision of angels ascending and descending on earth;  Jacob and Rachel's rapturous first meeting;  their family's later flight from Laban; and Jacob wrestling with the angel during the night before reconciling with his once murderously-minded brother Esau.  And then, in the next generation, come Tamar's seduction of Judah; Joseph's immature boasting of his future preeminence; Joseph's near murder and sale in to slavery by his jealous brothers; and their tearful reuniting in Pharaoh's Egypt. 

The masters of visual arts who drew and painted these scenes mastered also the theological and human nuances embedded in these stories. Their works cast an astonishingly fresh light on the meaning and depth of these chapters of Scripture. 

This offering will provide a retelling of these stories and a review of paintings and drawings they inspired to bring into focus the human and spiritual dynamics that were so insightfully captured by the artists.  The goal is to combine text and art to show how God advanced the story of Israel's salvation and called mature faith out of the disordered lives of his servants, Isaac, Rebekka, Jacob, Rachel, and Joseph. 

Participants should gain a new appreciation of the truths about God and humanity hidden in these chapters as discovered and revealed by the artists who sought to recreate these stories visually