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Correlation between text and image about hebel and death

  • Korean Journal of Old Testament Studies
  • Abbr : KJOTS
  • 2024, 30(4), pp.282-310
  • Publisher : Korean Society of Old Testament Studies
  • Research Area : Humanities > Christian Theology

LeeEunAe 1

1이화여자대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

Death can be said to be the basis for the declaration in Ecclesiastes that ‘everything is in vain’. Here, ‘all’ is not a universal category, but refers to the realities of the world that humans have to face, such as joy, human activity, wisdom, work, and wealth, all of which are in vain. This is because death is an inevitable thing that comes to everyone, and both the wise and the foolish will die, and it is the same for both humans and animals. In the end, it can be said that death confirms the hebel of life, that is, its futility, irrationality, and worthlessness. The understanding of death in Ecclesiastes can be summarized as the inevitability and universality of death. Ecclesiastes shows that not only are humans inevitably mortal, but that all humans are equal in the face of the reality of death(Eccles. 9:2-3). If chapter 8 of Ecclesiastes claims that compensation theology and causal retribution, which are universal principles of wisdom literature, do not apply to everything in the world, then chapter 9 of Ecclesiastes asserts that there is still fairness in the world, and that everyone is equal in the face of death by saying that everyone ultimately returns to death. The inevitability and universality of death, which appear as the basis of ‘hebel’ (vanity) in Ecclesiastes, were also accepted and applied to the Macabre phenomenon of death in the turbulent European society of the late Middle Ages. The influence of Ecclesiastes’ hebel on the Macabre of death can be said to be a visual expression of the original teaching of Ecclesiastes to be grateful and enjoy the portion of life given before death. In the ‘Macabre of Death’, death was now personified and combined with images, and it can be seen that it spread, changed, and developed throughout Europe. In addition, the ‘Dance of Death’, which represented the concept of the Macabre in the late Middle Ages, accompanied by texts on the inevitability and equality of death, played a role in religiously and socially awakening the inevitability and fairness of death against the secularization of individuals and society. This can be seen as a criticism of the status order of the time through the equality of death that comes to everyone while realizing that humans are beings who cannot help but die. In particular, the understanding of death in this period is closely related to the understanding of life that appears in the texts of the Hebrew Bible, especially in the Book of Ecclesiastes, which was written relatively later. The medium of cultural memory, which has a formal framework such as text and pictures, allows members of the community to share and empathize with the past beyond the individual level, because unlike historical records, it acts as a comprehensive medium of empathy that includes subjectivity and emotion.

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