William (Bill) Alexander was a German painter, art instructor, and television host. He was the creator and host of The Magic of Oil Painting television programs that ran on PBS in the United States from 1974 until 1982. His painting technique, known as wet-on-wet, departed from the usual method of waiting for the oils to dry before painting over them. He worked using this “alla prima” technique. He could then complete a painting in one sitting, so that in each episode he completed a realistic painting. He had a large following that could readily take control of a canvas with of immediacy and success.
Bill Alexander also taught his television students how to portray light, by contrasting it with dark; dark by contrasting it with light. Each painting came to life, a study in light and dark, achieved by “the almighty brush” he used to create each life-like scene. They were engaging and dynamic. Alexander's point about light and contrasts makes sense even in literature: each of the contrasting parts brings out the meaning of the other.
Contrasts create verisimilitudes in literature as well, contrasting good and evil, generous and penurious, peaceful and hostile, honor and shame. When using a literary form of “alla prima,” life-like stories can elucidate fresh meanings by contrasts giving vitality and clarity. Stories and paintings convey messages by means of contrasts.
The set of articles in the present issue of BTB exemplify how contrasts work in biblical literature.
Lesleigh Cushing Stahlberg, in “Sex and the Singular Girl”: Dinah, Tamar, and the Corrective Art of Biblical Narrative” contrasts the stories of two women in the Joseph cycle of Genesis, each story comparing with the other to produce tonal and life-like messages in its characters. The two portraits produce contrasting images of the women: one acting, the other acted upon.
Sun Wook Kim, in “An Investigation of a Cyclic Pattern in Mark 4:35–8:21 and Its Theological Significance,” proposes a dual cyclical structure based on geography—the first mostly to Jews, the latter for the Gentiles. With a geological contrast between west (Jewish) and east (Gentile) he identifies Jesus bringing light for both.
InHee C. Berg, in “The Gospel Traditions Inferring to Jesus’ Proper Burial through the Depictions of Female Funerary Kinship Roles,” draws on gospel stories depicting Jesus’ burial as in accordance with Jewish ritual despite his dishonorable death. Berg argues that the role of women fills in for the notable void of the immediate family. From the darkness of a shameful death to the light of a proper burial.
Stories depicting personal and thematic contrasts within the biblical narrative serve much the same function as light and darkness through the painter's brush, each with fresh application revealing dynamic contrasts in real life realities.
