This brief article points out the important understanding of
color in the New Testament based upon the concept of color in the ancient world
basing the discussion particularly on Greek concepts of color. The value of
this article is that it points out something that is usually not considered
particularly important in New Testament studies and shows how color terms
should be taken more seriously – particularly in the gospels and letters.
The most important argument that this article presents is
precisely how rare color terms are used in the gospels and letters. Whenever
something is so rare, when it is used, it ought to be considered carefully. Further,
this is nuanced because colors in antiquity are used so differently than colors
are used now. Very rarely are colors simply used to provide descriptive detail
of a scene in the way of some modern literature. Instead, color is used to
suggest a different aspect. Garcia Urena calls this a different ‘reality:’
From this study, it can be deduced
that colour is used in the gospels and the letters not so much to allude to the
denoted colour of an object, but more to express another reality that
transcends literal meaning. Hence, colours are not used with a merely
descriptive function, but as a way of connoting another reality characterized
by that colour. One could, therefore, suggest that colours in the gospels and
the letters play an informative role, telling the listeners/readers about an individual’s
rank, his condition or nature, his age; even providing chronological
information or conveying a symbolic meaning, since the colour word can denote a
different reality.[1]
Color is used to nuance a topic to bring in an entire
spectrum of meaning that would be absent without it.
Take, for example, the feeding of the 5000 scene in the
Gospel of Mark. In Mark 6:39 reads “He directed them all to sit down in the green (Chloros) grass.” Why does the
author include the color here? What does it help to know that the grass is
green? The base level would simply suggest it provides a side detail, or that
it tells us the time of the year. However, if the goal was simply to be
descriptive, the rest of the Gospel of Mark would struggle in that this type of
needless side detail to present us a picture is not characteristic of the
Gospel. Further, if the author wanted to provide the time of the year, telling
us the grass is green is perhaps the most roundabout way of doing that.
Instead, something else must be going on. The green grass could be a deliberate
allusion to Psalm 23, showing Christ as the good shepherd who provides for his
sheep (this being directly before he actually feeds them all). Another possible
meaning is that it is an allusion to the eschatological banquet from Isaiah 35
where the desert has been made into green pastures. In some way both of these
meanings seem very probable.[2]
The color is used to stop and make us think – the Gospel of Mark does not use
unnecessary details – it is done to prove a point. On this point, Garcia
Urena’s work is an important contribution and a very helpful read.
Where Garcia Urena could have aided his reader is in the way
color was expressed in the ancient world. Color in the ancient world was very
different from color from today. The palette of colors was different and the way colors were presented was
fundamentally different. There was fundamental similarity between black-red,
light-white, blue-green, and yellow-green. There really was not a good sense of
terms for other colors and they were most all defined by how much or how little
translucent they were.[3]
Garcia Urena certainly knows this and applies this concept, but for the
audience, it would have been helpful to explain it. For example, Garcia Urena’s
very good discussion of “white” (leukos),
particularly as it is used to describe the transfiguration scene and the
angels/young man at the tomb, it would have helped to explain that the concept
of “white” is equally the concept of “bright” – note the language of Jesus’s
garment in Matthew 17:2 after the transfiguration: “He was transfigured before
them and his face shone like the sun and his garments became white like light.”[4]
Here, the author emphasizes how incredibly bright this white garment was.
However, the term itself – leukos –
already has that idea in it. The author uses the term to imply that was the
kind of color it was – a “bright white.” Again, Garcia Urena clearly knows this
and applies this good concept, but it could have been helpful to make this
aspect clear.
The second half of the article focuses on the Apocalypse of
John wherein color is used more frequently than any other place in the New
Testament. Garcia Urena argue that on the whole, the color is used for a
different purpose. In the Apocalypse, it seems that color is used in order to
provide the kind of detail and nuance details so that a clear and vivid picture
can be created in the mind from an aural presentation of the text:
In view of this study, it can be
concluded that the author of the Apocalypse uses colour adjectives for their
denotation: their colour. They are used to describe characters, objects and
events in a vivid and real way, achieving one of the effects of descrition ut pictura poiesis. The extent of this
is such that sometimes the seer recreates scenes in which colour is the
predominant element, either through the accumulation of colour adjectives (Rev
6.2-8), or by addition of lexemes which, by nature, express colour (Rev 6.12;
8.7). However, the function of colour adjectives in the Apocalypse goes farther
than this. Since this is a text to be read aloud, the repeated and systematic
use of colour creates an aural effect in the listeners/readers that gives extra
information to help identify the characters, making it easier for them to
follow the story.[5]
Here Garcia Urena makes two conclusions – that color is used
systematically and idiosyncratically in the Apocalypse. The argument is that in
contrast to the other books of the New Testament, color is used here far more
in the manner that modern readers are familiar with – color is used to “paint a
picture” in the mind of the hearer. This view is not entirely convincing.
Ancient authors rarely write in this way concerning color. However, the second
point is convincing – that the text uses color systematically. There certainly
seem to be clear patterns – different colors are paired with different concepts
and ideas systematically throughout. Therefore, whether or not this is specific
to an aural culture so the people could have a vivid image in their mind, the
far simpler solution is clearly the case – that certain colors anticipate
meaning and do so in the same way throughout the Apocalypse so that readers can
have a narrative “nod and wink” toward how they are supposed to judge an event
that is occurring.
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