Copyright © Sower and the Seed, Aidan Hart with contributions from Donald Jackson and Sally Mae Joseph , Copyright 2002, The Saint John’s Bible, Saint John’s University, Collegeville, Minnesota USA. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Sower and the Seed
Mark 4:3-9
Primary artist : Aidan Hart with contributions from Donald Jackson and Sally Mae Joseph
This illumination is created in an Eastern iconographic style that depicts Christ in contemporary blue jeans sowing seed. The gold halo and cross behind Christ’s head help us to identify him.
Below Christ, we see four distinct mounds of soil: solid, rocky, shallow and fertile. The farmer sows the Word of God without judgement of the type of soil.
Christ the farmer sows the seeds and is Himself the Word being sown. The artist has Christ spilling the seeds outside the border of the illumination, aiding the tracking of the viewer’s eye to the words (SaintJohnsBible, 2013).
On this same page of the Bible is an error. The scribe missed a line of text, which is corrected using a line drawing of "a bird lifting the line of text into place" (Explore The Saint John's Bible: Mark 3:1 - 4:4, 2019; Sink, 2013, p. 61).
Explore The Saint John's Bible : Mark 3:1 - 4:4. (2019). Retrieved from https://www.saintjohnsbible.org/Promotions/Explore/#book/891
SaintJohnsBible. (2013, August 21). The Saint John’s Bible: Aidan Hart-Iconographer [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y9SnyGUhr0I
Sink, S. (2013). The art of The Saint John's Bible: The complete reader's guide. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press.
