June 10, 2005

"3170 illustrations complete; 33495 remaining."

An illustration for every verse of The Bible, that's the goal of Flaming Fire, an elaborate on-line project. (Via Drawn.) Each chapter has a page -- like this, for Genesis 1 -- where you see the citation for each verse -- 1:1, 1:2, 1:3, etc. -- with either a thumbnail of the completed illustration or the notation "not yet illustrated."

The artists are in a position to claim the verses they want to say something about, and they might hate rather than love the verse they choose. There's no enforcement of orthodoxy in the project. Let's check out a famously controversial verse.

The first one I think of is Leviticus 12:22: "Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination."

Here's the illustration. We can click on the artist's name and see a page of thumbnails of the artist's other contributions. That's interesting not only to see the illustrations but also to see the verses he claimed. The same artist, Mark Baldridge, has done Leviticus 18:19: "The nakedness of thy sister, the daughter of thy father, or daughter of thy mother, whether she be born at home, or born abroad, even their nakedness thou shalt not uncover." You look at the thumbnails and decide what you want to click!

IN THE COMMENTS: A reader draws attention to Aerick Duckhugger, who chooses verses of "disgusting horrors." Here's a striking example!

3 comments:

Ann Althouse said...

Thanks for calling attention to those. Really nice!

Troy said...

Pretty much as expected.... Some comfort in that. I too am grateful I was born in a country where I myself can choose to ignore certain kinds of post modern nonsense (or something).

Ann Althouse said...

Slac: Thanks for pointing those out. Man, they're bad. The artist praising himself for having talent? That's not right. There should be a way to bump bad ones with better ones. Why should the first guy to claim a verse get to own it?