‘Biblical Images in the Traditional Culture of the Orthodox Peoples of Russia’: Exhibition of the Russian Museum of Ethnography for the 520th Anniversary The Gennady Bible (January — March 2021)

Abstract

The paper reveals the intention and its implementing through a museum exhibition. Based on thematically selected monuments of traditional and everyday culture, the exhibition touches on events, images of Christian historical memory. First of all, it is Annunciation, Christmas, Crucifixion and Resurrection, as well as a number of Old Testament stories — the Creation of the World, Noah's Ark, the Judgment of Solomon. The various thematic sections of the exhibition depict such significant images as the paradise tree of life, the lion, the archangels, as well as fish — the early Christian symbol of Jesus Christ, grapes (the symbol of the Church of Christ). The presented groups of objects are diverse in their place in folk life: ritual paraphernalia, nativity scene, house carvings, interior decoration items— ceramic products (plates, tiles), wooden painted utensils, woven and embroidered towels, decorative bone products, jewelry of the Eastern Slavs and Finno-Ugric peoples. The selecting of exhibits took into account that the ornamentation of objects of traditional and everyday culture had its source not always directly from the plots set forth in biblical texts, but also their folklore processing in the form of legends, beliefs; a number of sections display apocryphal Christian texts that were widespread among the people. The exhibition gave an idea of the integration of a number of key biblical subjects and images, especially the New Testament, into the worldview of Orthodox peoples. The fixation of certain images for specific categories of objects that had a specific purpose in everyday life created a single visible fabric of national Orthodoxy.