What is a graven image?

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Answer 1

an object of worship carved usually from wood or stone : IDOL

Answer 2

In it's most basic form, a graven image is one that is carved.

In a religious setting, it refers to an idol of some sort, but it doesn't necessarily need to be carved. It could be painted, or something else like that. It means anything that is worshipped instead of worshipping God.

Graven images appear in the Bible because back then people often worshipped little (or big!) statues that represented their personal gods. They made images of the deity they served, and worshipped that, or made sacrifices to it, instead of worshipping the one God of the the Bible.

Nowadays, the term can be used very broadly for anything that is place in a higher position than God. Some people who place money and riches above God in their scheme of importance could be accused of worshipping a graven image, even if they are not worshipping something concrete, but rather an idea; the concept of wealth and money.

Many people accuse Catholic people of worshipping graven images because their churces often include statues and symbols, such as a crucifix with an image of Christ on it. They don't understand that the crucifix is a symbol for Christ and his sacrifice, rather than an idol.

I hope this helps :)

Answer 3

A graven image per exodus 20 is the image anything that is in heaven, on earth or under the sea. for the purpose of worship.Before Islam there were over 350 Gods on the table in mecca. this merchant town invited people to place the image of their God to worship.

It is written that Satan will enter these Images regardless of who they depict , to be worshiped.

Answer 4

Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.

-- Exodus 20: 4 (KJV)
The Israelites were perhaps the least visual people in the ancient world, as they showed little interest in painting, decoration, or representations of any sort. Above all, they shunned depicting their God Yahweh in drawings or statues, thus obeying the commandment (quoted here) against "graven images."

Despite what God seems to say in the King James translation, he is not really forbidding representational art -- just representation of divine things. Among all ancient deities, Yahweh is uniquely abstract, and the most insistent not only on his ineffability but also on his singularity (all other gods are "false"). As he famously puts it in verse 5, "I the Lord thy God am a jealous God" -- a claim he will prove over and over again in the Hebrew Bible.

Other passages in Exodus (15: 11; 18: 11; and 32: 4, for example) suggest that the Israelites acknowledged pagan gods as real. Yet they saw Yahweh as a greater god and were monotheists in the practical sense, worshiping only him -- except, that is, on those all-too-frequent occasions when heathens enticed them into their loose rituals. And on the matter of "graven images" -- carved statues -- they were absolutely rigorous; no archeologist has ever excavated a statue of Yahweh.

Such rigor indicates not only a powerful sense of difference from other Near Eastern cultures (in which idol worship was widespread) but also a somewhat more interior notion of God (which, however, did not preclude sacrifices and burnt offerings to him). As time went on, the Israelite image of Yahweh grew even more abstract and less anthropomorphic, and those portions of the Hebrew Bible written later reflect a special contempt for pagan idols -- typical epithets, as listed in Harper's Bible Dictionary, include "powerless ones," "pellets of dung," and "shameful things." The relatively tame English phrase "graven image" dates to the 1388 revision of Wyclif's translation of Exodus (the original, from 1382, read "graven thing").

Answer 5

A graven image are things in the form of man, birds, reptiles or anything on earth that you worship and Idolized.

Answer 6

The graven image referred to in the 2nd commandment is not really about making statues of God or religious figures. In truth, the graven image is in our hearts and minds, and not necessarily in pictures or statuies

The admonishment against making a graven image refers to the strong tendency in humans to hold a fixed idea about God and then try to conform all other ideas and beliefs to conform to this image.

For example, many people believe that God is some angry being in the sky, Therefore, they fear God and usually harbor anger towards God and thereafter have great difficulties making spiritual progress.

Life is about movement, growth and self-transcendence. God as the author of Life is ever expanding and transcending and flowing in the River of Life that propels the spirit-matter cosmos forward.

God presumably gave the name I AM THAT I AM as a statement of Being to Moses. However, a better translation of this name from Hebrew is I WILL BE WHO I WILL BE. Meaning that you can not hold God in a fixed idea or one fixed matrix as God is always transcending and therefore reserves the right at any moment to have a different and expanded sense of identity.

God's plan is for all of us to flow and grow with him in the ever expanding River of Life. Any fixed idea that we have about God effectively dams up this River so that life comes to a halt - and where life stops lifes ceases to exist and one becomes spiritually dead.

To flow with this God's river, we need to expand our sense of idenity and understand that at inner levels we are One with God and we can increase that oneness inasmuch as we surrender our mortal sense of identity (which consists almost entirey of graven images).

Answer 7

A graven image is aything man made i.e. a picture, a statue and the like.

Answer 8

A 2-D image or 3-D sculpture that has been created in order to be idolized.

Answer 9

Barbra Streisand

Answer 10

An idol, anything that you worship above God. It could be any thing from a religious statue to the television set to the computer.