Through A Bible Lens
Biblical Insights for Smartphone Photography and Social Media
- Arts & Literature
- Publisher: Elm Hill (HarperCollins Christian Publishing)
- Published: 2019
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Publisher's Description
Through a Bible Lens: Biblical Insights for Smartphone Photography and Social Media by Professor Mel Alexenberg teaches people of all faiths how biblical insights can transform smartphone photography and social media into creative ways for seeing spirituality in everyday life. It develops conceptual and practical tools for observing, documenting and sharing reflections of biblical messages in all that we do. It speaks to Jews and Christians who share an abiding love of the Bible by inspiring the creation of a lively dialogue between our emerging life stories and the enduring biblical narrative. The author is an artist, educator and writer exploring the interface between biblical consciousness, creative process, and postdigital culture. His artworks are in the collections of museums worldwide. He was professor at Columbia University and research fellow at MIT Center for Advanced Visual Studies. In Israel, head of Emunah College School of the Arts and professor at Ariel and Bar-Ilan universities. He is author of The Future of Art in a Postdigital Age: From Hellenistic to Hebraic Consciousness. Through a Bible Lens speaks in the language of today's digital culture of smartphones and social media. It demonstrates to both young and old the most up-to-date thoughts on the interactions between The Bible and the impact of new technologies on contemporary life. Christians and Jews will enjoy sharing the book’s spiritual messages with their children and grandchildren. Professor Alexenberg draws on six Divine attributes in the biblical verse “Yours God are the Compassion, the Strength, the Beauty, the Success, the Splendor, and the Foundation of everything in heaven and earth” (Chronicles 1:29) to demonstrate how smartphone photographers become God’s partners in creation when photographing daily life through a Bible lens. He describes how the lives of biblical personalities exemplify these Divine attributes: Abraham and Ruth embody Compassion, Isaac and Sarah are models of Strength, Jacob and Rebecca represent Beauty, Success is demonstrated by Moses and Miriam, Splendor by Aaron and Deborah, and Foundation by Joseph and Tamar. There is a confluence emerging in the 21st century between biblical consciousness and a postdigital culture that addresses the humanization of digital technologies. Both share a structure of consciousness and its cultural expression that honors creative process and seeing with a different spirit, like Caleb who saw goodness in the Land of Israel while others could not (Numbers 14:24). We are fortunate to be living in age of digital technologies that gives us ways to experience invisible worlds becoming visible. These experiences give clues that help us appreciate the insightful imagination of ancient spiritual teachers who visualized invisible realms. Smartphones are gateways to the world that make invisible realms blanketing our planet become visible with a flick of a finger. Their imbedded cameras capture images, store them as invisible bits and bytes, and display them as colorful pictures. In all of human history, never has there been such a proliferation of images. A centuries-old Jewish method of Bible study called PaRDeS offers creative ways for looking beyond the surface of smartphone images by extending contemporary methods of photographic analysis to reveal spiritual significance. An exemplary blogart project, Bible Blog Your Life http://throughabiblelens.blogspot.com, turns theory into practice. The author and his wife Miriam created it to celebrate their 52nd year of marriage. For 52 weeks, they posted photographs reflecting their life together with a text of Tweets that relate to the weekly Bible portion. Selected blog posts from each of the first five books of the Bible demonstrate how to transform the ancient biblical narrative into a mirror for people today to see themselves. Fifty photographs from these posts are reproduced in color in the book.
Endorsements (18)
“Like anything in God’s world, smartphones and social media have the capacity for both blasphemy and blessing. Mel Alexenberg’s important new book, Through a Bible Lens, provides our generation the perfect model for the best usage of smartphones and social media to encourage greater appreciation for the Bible and the Land of Israel. Anyone who appreciates either will gain an important perspective from Alexenberg’s lens.”
“Through a Bible Lens offers a unique and personal challenge to the reader to integrate Bible Study, the creation that surrounds us, and our personal experience into a “living journal.” Dr. Alexenberg’s approach offers a fun, yes fun, path to integrate pondering the deepest questions of Scripture with modern living and a literally visual journey through life. Written from a Jewish Torah loving perspective, this book will be a joy to any lover of the Bible, Christian or Jewish. I not only endorse it, I look forward to integrating these ideas into my personal encounter with Scripture.”
Dr. Jim Solberg
“The iPhone has changed our culture and our ways of thinking and acting in the world. This book brings together spiritual thought, everyday practices of communication and interaction and profound insights about meaning and purpose in contemporary life in a brilliant and sustained exposition. Once again, Alexenberg has carved out a unique point of view that deserves the highest praise and a large readership. Great book!!”
Dr. Ron Burnett
“Who would have thought that there would be a way to connect smartphones to the ancient world of the Bible? Professor Alexenberg has the expertise and experience to do so. This is a unique and fascinating book.”
“This book’s wonderful synthesis between spirituality and technology, heaven and earth, is exciting and thought-provoking. A practical demonstration of Solomon’s wisdom: ‘Acknowledge God in all your paths.’ Alexenberg’s affirmation of the spiritual potential of the Internet, blogging, photography, new technologies, and social media, brings to mind the dictum of Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, the first Chief Rabbi of pre-state Israel: ‘The old will be renewed, and the new will be sanctified.”
“An intellectually exciting book that stimulates the sensory palate. Drawing from the Kabbalah and Hebrew traditions, Dr. Alexenberg shares in-depth, meaningful insights about encountering God in the creative process through photography. Using photography as the vehicle, we are guided, one idea at a time, to an understanding of what the author means by, ‘looking up, looking out, and looking inward.”
“For those of us familiar with the diverse and exhilarating work of Mel Alexenberg as an artist, educator, and profound thinker, this latest book offers precisely the four things we would expect. The narrative thinks brilliantly outside the box. It synthesizes the realm of the abstruse and transcendent with the realm of the concrete and immanent. It crisscrosses disciplines, from science and technology to philosophy and mysticism to art as both historical and creative phenomena. Finally, the entirety is managed in a style both accessible and inviting. Those with prior knowledge of any or all of the disciplines from which Alexenberg draws will smile again and again in affirmation, and those entering without prior knowledge will be thrilled to understand things that they thought might be beyond them. This is one of those books that other thinkers will wish they had somehow thought about how to write, and to which readers of diverse sorts will simply respond by saying: wow!”
Dr. Ori Z. Soltes
“In Through a Bible Lens, Mel Alexenberg continues his meandering journey seeking Beauty and the Divine within the commonplace. Gazing vertically and horizontally, across literary, cyber, aesthetic and earthly texts/spaces, the journey’s end point is always the same—sublime joy in the revelation of God in the World, God as the world.”
Dr. Randall Rhodes
“The most recent, and arguably one of art’s most complete and compelling integrations of the sacred and profane. Mel Alexenberg shows the way to the divine via digital imagery and heightened perception of its presence in the moving face of every person, place, and thing. The book is packed with wisdom and learning about Talmudic tradition, creative expression, and cyberangels. It reads like a swift and soulful breeze. I love every ‘byte’ of it.”
Dr. Shaun McNiff
“So inspiring on many levels. I really enjoyed it because it gives us an amazing perspective on our own existence, especially in the age of the interconnected iPhone culture.”
Professor. Michael Bielicky
“There are many parallels in Christian thought and deed that should allow this excellent book to resonate with many people of faith. When I picked up Prof. Alexenberg’s book, I happened to be reading a spiritual guide on contemplative prayer by an anonymous fourteenth-century Christian mystic whose words find a parallel in Alexenberg’s exhortation to seek the Divine out in the world in all that you see and photograph, and with love. He has succeeded in creating a program for photographers, on a daily basis, to explicitly weave their faith into their art and ultimately, back into their worldview with a fresh perspective.”
“Mel Alexenberg offers a scintillating experiment in creativity. His work is an invitation to deepen your spiritual sensibilities as you extend your imagination. An interesting and relevant approach to spiritual practice and creative expression.”
“In Through a Bible Lens, Alexenberg offers us a magnificent and original approach that interconnects art, creative processes, religion, and new media technologies. The book is an important contribution to the study of media and is a must read for anyone interested in our contemporary culture.”
Dr. Lucia Leao
“In his astonishingly innovative book, Mel Alexenberg quotes photographer Jan Phillips, who writes, “Everywhere I look, there God is looking back, looking straight back.” Alexenberg is able to perceive that Godly gaze not only in nature around us or the heavens above, but in the phone we hold in our hand.”
“If a picture is worth a thousand words, Through a Bible Lens offers a template, a guidebook on how to experience innumerable images of the Divine in every moment and use blogging technology to disseminate them worldwide. Professor Mel Alexenberg invites us to share the story of our own Divine journey through the wisdom found in this unique work.”
Bishop. Robert Stearns
“In his sophisticated and highly literate book, Prof. Alexenberg weaves in a playful way the threads between contemporary digital culture and traditional Jewish wisdom. In an original way, he invites us to connect the networked world of Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Instagram, WhatsApp and Blogspot, with the concept of the unseen God. Using the metaphor of the camera, he provides interesting and surprising intersections between new-media culture and theological issues.”
“Whether we see this book as a book of art—a mystical computer program for spiritual seeing—or a book about art, to actually see it, we must consult the beautiful blog at http://bibleblogyourlife.blogspot.com. Mel Alexenberg is a wonderfully accomplished worker on a great project: to make art a conduit for the Divine.”
“Alexenberg proposes that text and image—something as simple as photos taken with a smart phone, and multiplied in their resonance by the Internet—can be used as a consciousness-raising tool, at once personal and collective. With such simple means, we can attune ourselves to the sacred dimensions of our lives from moment to moment. In fresh, clear language, he brings his detailed knowledge of Torah texts and what he calls ‘the down-to-earth mysticism of the kabbalah’ to bear on daily life, showing how the annual round of sacred readings from that spiraling scroll provides prompts for deepening our personal and artistic practice.”
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