A serpente e o bezerro: a idolatria como patologia simbólica. Um ponto de vista bíblico

The biblical point of view on the epistemological and ethical status of
mimetic symbolism and its artistic and religious pertinence – and im‑
pertinence – is discussed here on the basis of the crossed analysis of two
major narratives of the Pentateuch (adoration of the golden calf [Ex 32,
1‑20; Dt 9,15‑29] and exhibition of the bronze serpent [Nr 21, 4‑10]).
By discarding the traditional opposition between Jewish iconoclasm and
Christian iconophilism as reductionist, it is highlighted that the biblical
taboo of images of the divine is not an absolute refusal of mimesis (as
an analogical conversion of the contents of experience in its representa‑
tion), but a condemnation of its degeneration, both idolatrous (which
occurs in the case of fetishistic, pseudo‑denotative mimesis, unable to
distinguish between meaning and referent, between semantic content
and reality) and mythological (in its assumption as an exclusive and to‑
talizing discourse, substituting the theoretical knowledge of the truth).
The paper presents the following fundamental traits of symbolic signif‑
icance reconstructed by the biblical text, which theological reflection
can implement as binding criteria for the scrutiny of religious and ar‑
tistic symbolism, in a valuable critical‑hermeneutic exercise not only for
the experience of faith but also for the self‑understanding of the arts:
complementarity of image and rite (semantically binding association of
the mimetic representation and its performative effect); articulation of
symbolism as a strategy of decentralization of the original experience
and critical differentiation of the subject’s place in its finitude; epistemo‑
logical and ethical inconsistency of idolatry (as infidelity on the part of
religious and artistic experience to the ‘sanctity’ of the object itself, to the
mutual transcendence of the real and the subject).