Touchstone Magazine Home  Subscribe to Touchstone today!
Cubist Scripture by Leon J. Podles  Cubist Scripture  Constant
reading of Scripture highlights the tendency of the writers to
examine an event from different angles, even if the angles do
not join seamlessly. At least two creation stories coexist in
Genesis; Samuel gives several accounts of David’s initial
encounter with Saul; Kings and Chronicles have the same story
told from different viewpoints; and four Gospels look at the
life of Christ—three from slightly different angles and one from
a totally different perspective. The Scriptures practice a form
of literary Cubism.  Painters noticed that the normal way of
depicting a three-dimensional object on the two-dimensional
plane of a painting did not allow the painter to show all sides
of it. Cubists like Picasso experimented with ways of showing
all sides of an object in the same painting. Although even
cubist paintings did not capture the richness of triple
dimensionality, they hinted at it, remindin