Iconoclasm and the Preservation of Knowledge

“vita hominis plus libro valet.”

Rachel Caine, Ink and Bone (2015)

Suppose the Library of Alexandria had never been destroyed. Now suppose that it was kind of running the world. Suppose that it didn’t only collect literature, but also exercised complete control over people’s access to literature; suppose that it had a enforced monopoly on human knowledge, and owning original copies of written works, rather than official library ‘blanks’, were a crime. And stick all that in a sort of steampunk dystopia run on alchemy and clockwork, and you should have something approximating the world of Ink and Bone by Rachel Caine. Henceforth be spoilers.¹

 

A library - though this one’s at Trinity College Dublin rather than in Alexandria.

I was hooked on Ink and Bone right from the first chapter, when our young protagonist Jess Brightwell, the son of a professional book smuggler, successfully delivers the single surviving copy of the most valuable book in the world, Aristotle’s On Sphere Making, to a wealthy customer, only to witness the man tear out page after page and stuff them into his mouth. The man finds satisfaction, somehow, in obtaining what’s rarest and devouring it so that nobody else can ever have it, but to Jess – and indeed to us the readers – the thing feels like a horrifying outrage: This was like watching murder. Defilement. And it was somehow worse than either of those things. Even among his family, black trade as they were, books were holy things. Only the Burners thought different. Burners, and whatever this perverse creature might be.

The Burners mentioned are a radical political faction whose motto is vita hominis plus libro valet: a human life is worth more than a book. Burners resent the Library’s oppressive control of written knowledge, and protest it in various ways, including, when they get the chance, setting fire to original copies that the Library is hoarding for itself. The Library, of course, would never dream of destroying a book. Or then again, would it? Later in the story, Jess undertakes training in order to work for the Library, and on one occasion, after a day spent raiding illegal book stashes, one of his classmates, Izumi, raises the question as to what the Library actually does with all these books once they’ve been confiscated. If they’re unique, fair enough, they’ll be kept so that they can be alchemically transferred to blanks for people to read, but what if they’re duplicates? Why would the Library waste all that storage space? Izumi’s heard that, despite everything they teach, the Library takes confiscated books and destroys them in a furnace – by fire, just as the Burners do.

Another classmate, Portero, is outraged by the suggestion and immediately denounces it as a lie. Mind you, though, he’d displayed his own fair share of Burner-esque tendencies earlier on, during a carriage ride through the city:

Portero idly stared out of the window as the wide, clean Alexandrian streets rolled by. They’d all got used to the sight of the teal-blue harbour and white-sailed mountains of ships floating there, but Portero was staring out at the old Egyptian gods that lined the roadway, still mighty under the sun after so many thousands of years. He clicked beads between his fingers, and Jess finally realised they were part of a rosary.

‘Does it bother you?’ he asked Portero, and nodded out at the gods on the street. Portero shot him an unreadable look.

‘Shouldn’t it? They’re false gods.’

Jess shrugged. ‘Real enough to the Egyptians,’ he said. ‘And they’re beautiful, in their way.’

Portero was already sweating from the intense heat; even the carriage’s cooler interior couldn’t keep it all out, especially next to the windows. ‘They should have been pulled down ages ago,’ he said. ‘The Christians and Muslims agree on that much.’

Jess flashed back to the death of On Sphere Making, and felt a slow roll of revulsion. ‘That sounds like a Burner talking,’ he said. ‘Destroying what offends them, and never mind legacy.’

Portero turned on him angrily. ‘I said nothing of the kind! I would never harm a book! Never!’

‘Not all knowledge is books. Those out there, they’re history in stone. Men carved them. Men sweated in this sun to put them there, to make their city more beautiful. Who are you to say what’s worthy for men to see today, or tomorrow?’

‘You’re an irreligious bastard,’ Portero said. ‘I knew you would be.’

‘I’m as good a Catholic as you,’ Jess said. ‘I just don’t hold with making the world into copies of what I like.’

Jess seems on pretty solid ground here in his insistence that ‘book’ is not automatically a special category: other material objects are indeed also able to make contributions to human knowledge of what the world is and has been like, so there’s no logical reason to treat written documents as an exception to any rule. And as a result, the question that keeps raising its head here is: for what if any reason is it acceptable to destroy a physical vessel of human knowledge? For mere personal pleasure, like the customer who ate On Sphere Making? For political protest against an oppressive system that places too little value on human lives, like the Burners? For the straightforward convenience of not having to store multiple superfluous copies of one work, like the Library, according to Izumi’s hypothesis? For the purging of the trappings of idolatry from a monotheistic society, as Portero advocates?

For the purging of the trappings of idolatry, is it acceptable to destroy a physical vessel of human knowledge?

Last week, a good friend and I took a trip to the British Museum to see the exhibition ‘I am Ashurbanipal, king of the world, king of Assyria’.² It was a brilliantly curated tour through Ashurbanipal’s family, his reign, his empire, his warmongering and his garden-planting, his legacy in more recent culture – but then it finished with a section devoted to archaeology in Iraq, exposing the devastating destruction to which the standing remains have been subjected by the actions of Islamic State in recent years. I think the proportion of Nineveh irreparably lost was cited as 80%, though don’t quote me on that. While it was encouraging to get a snapshot of some of the efforts that are being made to train and equip Iraqi archaeologists so that they can address the damage and undertake further work to preserve their country’s heritage, to walk out of this stunning collection of ancient artefacts into a blank-white corridor where their cities of origin were said to have been almost obliterated was still a stark kind of heartbreaking. To be fair, given that trying to extract contributions to human knowledge from centuries-old artefacts is literally my day job, I probably find this stuff more moving than many. Still, it doesn’t seem unreasonable to assume that, contra Portero, the vast majority of us, regardless of religious persuasion, lament rather than advocate the wilful destruction of ancient sources, whether literary or material, that represent religious beliefs and practices contrary to our own.

So what, then, are we to make of those passages of scripture where people are commended, even upheld as exemplars, for destroying objects associated with idolatry? I’m thinking, for instance, of Hezekiah, who removed the high places and broke the pillars and cut down the Asherah and even crushed the bronze serpent that Moses had made according to God’s instructions for the relief of the plague of serpents back in the wilderness, because people had been sacrificing to it: In the LORD, the God of Israel, he trusted, and after him  none was like him among all the kings of Judah, and who were before him. For he clung to the LORD; he did not turn aside from (going) after him, but he kept the commandments that the LORD had commanded Moses. And I’m thinking of course of Josiah, who went through his kingdom on a destructive rampage of unprecedented scale, burning idols and pulling down altars and desecrating sites of pagan sacrifice: And like him was no king before him, who turned to the LORD with all his heart and with all his soul and with all his might, according to all the Law of Moses, and after him none arose like him. And I’m thinking of the new Christians at Ephesus who brought their expensive books of magic out of their houses and publicly burned them: Thus, according to the Lord’s power, the word increased and prevailed. How is it consistent to echo the Biblical authors in affirming these actions as right and praiseworthy, and then turn around and mourn the loss of the pagan artefacts at Nineveh or wherever?³

Well, I think it is consistent, and here’s the crucial difference between the two scenarios: Hezekiah and Josiah and the Ephesian believers – and everyone else throughout scripture who is commended for destroying idolatrous objects – were all acting against idolatry within their own covenant community. The objects in question were ones that people who were supposed to be serving the LORD their God, and worshipping him only, were using to serve and worship false gods instead. Hezekiah and Josiah were destroying idols and trappings of idolatry in current use by the subjects over whom it had been granted them to rule; the Ephesians were burning their own books. These were not trips out into the surrounding pagan world to tear down its idols. In fact, in that regard, consider Paul in Athens: his spirit was provoked within him as he saw that the city was rife with idols – as Portero’s was in Ink and Bone, but check out the difference between his response and Paul’s – so he reasoned therefore in the synagogue with the Jews and the worshippers, and in the marketplace every day with those who happened to be there.⁴ There’s a stark distinction, then, in the correct response to seeing idolatry in the world, and the correct response to seeing idolatry in one’s own covenant community. In the latter, absolutely, pull down the idols, desecrate the altars, burn the books; but in the former, do nothing more violent than starting a debate.

 

The Erechtheion, a temple in Athens dedicated to various deities, principally Athena. It was built in the 5th century BCE, so it would have been there in Paul’s day too.

For the purging of the trappings of idolatry, is it acceptable to destroy a physical vessel of human knowledge? Only if said vessel is yours to destroy. And if it is yours to destroy, then destroy it you must. But if it isn’t, you’re better off taking the reminder of how badly the world needs the gospel and starting a conversation about it. In which respect, there’s no prohibition on better equipping ourselves to start such a conversation through familiarising ourselves with the nature of the idolatry that surrounds us: if, for example, Daniel and his friends didn’t object to being instructed in the literature of Babylon, idol-endorsing as it doubtless was,⁵ neither need we shrink from studying the culture of the idolatrous world around us.

Hang on, back up: so you’re saying you would advocate the destruction of a book or an artefact, if it belonged to your fellow-believers and were being used by them for idolatrous purposes. Um, yeah, I would, actually. The preservation of my brothers and sisters in the faith of their salvation is to be counted as a smidgen more important than the preservation of material objects, however great a contribution said material objects may be able to make to human knowledge. A human life is, indeed, worth more than a book. But that said, I don’t think destruction of material objects is typically the main manifestation of the fight against idolatry in our church communities and our own individual hearts. A lot of the idols we most commonly find ourselves guilty of serving, I think, are things that aren’t inherently bad and are actually kind of necessary, like money and food and work and other human beings, and tearing down those altars is a far more complicated process than tearing down physical ones. But the ruthlessness with which Hezekiah and Josiah and the Ephesian converts carried out their destruction of idols still provides us with an example for the approach we’re to take in carrying out this work amongst ourselves.

The destruction of certain material objects may sometimes prove useful for our sanctification, but it isn’t ever going to bring about the process of repentance and belief. It isn’t ever going to raise dead spirits to life. And so iconoclasm is only to be carried out within the covenant community, not imposed on a world that isn’t in any way claiming or striving to adhere to the standards demanded by the scriptures. There’s no inconsistency in both applauding the actions of Hezekiah and Josiah and the Ephesian converts and so forth, and mourning the destruction of pagan artefacts, and with them the knowledge they contained. Still, when we see our world rife with idols, material or otherwise, it’s right that our spirits should be provoked within us, and that that should prompt us to preach the gospel ever more urgently – because the gospel and the gospel alone is what will bring about the process of repentance and belief, what will raise dead spirits to life. And only after that has happened can any idol of any sort be torn down in a way that gives glory to the true God.

Footnotes

¹ If you fancy a read, here it is on Hive, https://www.hive.co.uk/Product/Rachel-Caine/Ink-and-Bone/17352580, though personally I got it out of the library and then consulted it for this post using the Libby app, of which I’m a huge fan, and suspect you probably will be too if free ebooks sounds appealing at all: https://meet.libbyapp.com/.

² It’s on until 26^th February, so you’ve still got time to go and check it out if you fancy it: https://www.britishmuseum.org/whats_on/exhibitions/ashurbanipal.aspx. Student tickets are buy-one-get-one-free on Fridays.

³ Check out 2 Kings 18: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=2%20Kings+18&version=ESVUK, 2 Kings 23, https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=2+Kings+23&version=ESVUK, and Acts 19, https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Acts+19&version=ESVUK.

⁴ Acts 17 for that one: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=acts+17&version=ESVUK. The word I’ve given as worshippers is here best understood as a technical term for Gentiles who worshipped the God of the Jews.

⁵ And last scripture link of the post to Daniel 1: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=dan+1&version=ESVUK.