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Show How Old Testament People Pictured the God of Israel Portrait of 1200 B. C. Unearthed in Syria By EMILY C. DAVIS WHAT did Jehovah, God of Israel, look like as people of the Old Testament pictured Him? Biblical Israelites ventured no real portraits. Other nations might surround themselves with statues of their deities, or engraved pictures, or bas-reliefs. But the ten commandments com-mandments forbade graven images. And even though Israel gave in to temptation to make a golden calf, and even though some Israelites had a weakness for clay figurines of heathen goddesses, there was no known attempt to portray Jehovah. Bas-relief Found in Syria. Special interest, therefore, is aroused by discovery of a portrait which gives the modern world a fairly good idea of how the ancient world visualized Jehovah. The portrait por-trait is a bas-relief from the Twelfth century B. C, unearthed at Ras Shamra in Syria, where a Canaan-ite Canaan-ite city stood. French archaeologists, directed by Prof. Claude Schaeffer of the French National Museums, are finding ruins of Ras Shamra a veritable veri-table treasure city for evidences of lost history. The bas-relief shows the deity El, mentioned in the Old Testament as a name for absolute Deity, and later, lat-er, Prof. Schaeffer says, becoming God of Israel under the name of Jehovah, or Yahveh. Stern-Faced and Bearded. The Canaanite sculptor has carved a striking profile of a venerable, ven-erable, stern-faced individual wearing wear-ing a beard and dressed in ankle-length ankle-length costume and high peaked headdress. He sits stiffly on a high, richly ornamented throne with a footstool. Facing is the small king of the city, devoutly holding up his scepter and a pitcher containing some offering. Portraits of El have been known before, but none of so early a century, cen-tury, which pictures El at the very time when the Israelites were fighting fight-ing for their promised land under Yahveh's guidance. The bas-relief is unfinished. Enemies Ene-mies invading Ras Shamra from overseas rudely interrupted life in the Canaanite city. This portrait of El was buried in the sculptor's wrecked home, to wait 3,000 years for a public showing. |