A couple of ccomments:

1) It would not seem methodologically correct to apply the second commandment to the New Testament in any sense.

2) It would not seem appropriate in particular to apply it to Jesus AS God (so the Annie Vallaton illustrations which do not depict Jesus’ face probably do not do so to be faithful to the second commandment, but for some other reason—probably just a reluctance to suggest that anything is known about how he looked).

3) It would seem inappropriate to apply it to any imagery other than an image of God himself. The two parts of the 2nd commandment would seem to be a hendyadis, so that the first part actually refers to anything that is actually WORSHIPED as God, rather than any THING.

So really, the 2nd commandment would seem not to have anything to say to any Christian in modern times, except to someone who might go against 2000 years of Christain tradition and attempt to depict God (Jehovah?) by means of an image.

Lionel,

Please further correct “depict God (Jehovah?) by means of an image” to “worship an image of God (Jehovah?)”.

Lionel,

I wouldn’t be inclined, exegetically, to see any link at all with Col 1.15, except an accidental linguistic one with the KJV and those English translations which follow it. The MT has peşel (for want of the sub linear dot symbol!) ‘hewn idol’, and the LXX has eidōlon ‘idol’ in v.4a and only homoiōma in v.4b, while the NT has eikōn. The NT’s avoidance of homoiōma for the image of God theogoumenon may be telling in this respect. The use of eikōn in Rev almost certainly alludes not to Exo 20.4, but to the Pauline(?) notion, by then established, of Jesus as the eikōn of God.

Tselem, which would seem to be an exact Hebrew equivalent of eikōn,
is possibly used elsewhere in the OT for a graphic representation of a deity, but it is very unlikely that this is in view in Col 1.15. Tselem is also used in Gen 1.26,27 and 9.6 for man as the ‘image’ of God. Is it possible that these are in view in Col 1.15, ‘man’ now understood as the Son (v.13)?

NB Col 3.10 is not relevant in the present connection, since it refers to a believer as not to the Son. 2 Cor 4.4 is more apropos.

The problem with LXX Deut 4.16 in this context is that it does not actually parallel Exo 16.4, though it is clearly reminiscent of it, and seems not to refer to idolatry. You may have had MT in mind, in which the reference to idolatry is present. LXX 4.16 seems, interestingly, to be a (redactional?) reduction of the original prohibition of idols as objects of worship in Exo 20.4 to a mere prohibition of graphic representations of creatures—unless we take the hendyadis in Exo 20.4 to be paralleled and alluded to by means of Deut 4.20 (but that would be forcing the issue in my view). So I still don’t see any connections ponder on. I’m a bit on the back foot in this respect, because you haven’t actually mentioned what connections you yourself have in mind, apart from the shared word ‘image’.
The point I was originally making, probably too briefly, was that the prohibition in Exo 20.4 of idols as objects of worship would not seem to have any bearing on graphic representations of Jesus Christ, or indeed on any Christian liturgical graphic representation—and I would be so bold as to extend that even to Orthodox iconography. (Interestingly, I have just discovered that even the pioneer missionary to Tonga, John Thomas, a most rigorous sniffer out of all things idolatrous, came to see and acknowledge that even the heathen Tongans did not imagine that their gods dwelled within their idols or pray directly to them, but held that they were merely symbols of spiritual realities external both to the idols and to the idol houses.) Surely the key issue here is direct worship of a graphic representation of the deity, and setting aside the prior complex question of whether and how one of the Ten Commandments can validly be applied to a NT reality, to posit a link between Exo 20.4 and Christ as the image of God would seem inescapably to suggest what is hardly tenable, namely that the early Christians dared to think of Christ, even if only in some derived sense—and even if mediated and ameliorated by “eikon” in Deut 4.16 or Wis. of Sol. or both—as the “pesel of God”.
My notions of proper exegesis are not so atomistic as to exclude the use of verbal allusion or ‘implied reference’, especially where the allusion involves an unusual or uncommon combination of words or expressions, but I also believe that an allusion or implied reference of one text to another can only be regarded as intentional when the author states or implies in some other clearly recognisable way that it is so, and this would be especially so in the case of a one word allusion such as ‘image’. A good example of a single word OT allusion which we would have no exegetical warrant to see as such if the context had not given us that warrent is Mat 13.9: “Listen, then if you have ears”.  The text gives us that warrent in 13.14,15. No such warrant is given in Col 1.15 that I can see, and I think that in the case of such a profoundly important theologoumenon such a warrant is mandatory: nothing less is sufficient for its establishment and defense. The whole question is complicated further, in my view, by the fact that even when a NT writer alludes to an OT text, we might not subscribe to the precise nexus involved, though we may fully appreciate and even wonder at it (a case in point is Mat 2.15 and Hos 11.1). So even if Paul in Col 1.15 intended an allusion to Exo 20.4 in some way, we, in hindsight as it were, might not see it exactly so.

Lionel,
I agree that the hendyadis is clearer in Deu 5.8. However, I probably should not have got sidetracked into Deu at all, because what I was originally trying to point out was that I find it difficult, exegetically, to see a link between prohibitions of idolatry and Christian liturgical graphics—for want of a better expression—since it doesn’t seem to be the case that such graphics are actually objects of worship. How about we clarify this first, since it was the original issue, and you have not yet clarified that for me after several posts!

Do you mean that I would have to agree that eikon in LXX Deu 4.16 alludes somehow to that word in the creation narrative as a precondition to your sharing your view? I suffered excruciating agonies from both Bruce Chilton and Max Wilcox for making such connections! But let’s say for argument’s sake that it does!

Lionel,

Sorry! That was intended as a diplomatic way of saying that it doesn’t seem necessary, or logical, for there to be agreement between two persons on exegesis of a text, or exegetical principles, before one shares with the other how they understand that text. Certainly no one has ever required that of me before, and I have never required it of anyone myself. How likely is it anyway that any two persons would agree fully in their hermeneutics? It sounded to me like you were saying that you were not prepared to share your view if I was not going to agree with it! Also, I don’t see that not to have so agreed would have led us to go round in circles, as you suggested. I think I would have listened to your exegesis and views and tried to understand them as a package, probably without further response. As for my reference to Chilton and Wilcox, that was not so much name dropping as an attempt to express the fact that my approach to hermeneutics is not cavalier, but arrived at only after very embarrassing experiences at the hands of such scholars. I’m sure you have also learned from great scholars. So, again, I’m sorry if it sounded patronising. It was not intended to be. What I learned from such scholars, and from my own hermeneutical struggles, was that it is simply not safe methodologically to base an argument on so fragile a textual entity as a minimal verbal allusion when there is no accompanying warrant for it given in scripture itself. Incidentally, one of the most embarrassing corrections I received was when it was pointed out to me, quite contrary to my understanding at the time, that in an extended text one such allusion has little extra evidential force by being considered cumulatively in the light of another. Such methodological rigour!

Please post this clarification, but I look forward to discussing further the matter of idolatry in Christian liturgy after church tomorrow.