The Mysterious Dog Collar

Many different avenues had to be explored in order to obtain the images I wanted for First Vespers. In two instances, the paintings that I “had to have” and wished to purchase copyright permissions for had been sold into private collections and no public images were available. They were Joseph’s Brother’s Dipping His Coat In Goat’s Blood by Horace Vernet (c. 1853), and Moses Changing His Staff Into A Serpent In Front of Pharaoh’s Magicians by Circle of Felice Gianni (San Sabastiano Curone, 1758 - 1823).  In both instances, I was able to find a talented artist through an agency in Panama (1^st Art Gallery) to paint identical and legal replicas of the original works of art.  Once the paintings were received from Panama, I had met a man at work who was an amateur photographer; Mark Spriggs. Mark photographed the high resolution photographs of the paintings that now appear in the book. Moses Changing His Staff into a Serpent In front of Pharaoh’s Magicians now resides over the fireplace in my home and Joseph’s Brother’s Dipping His Coat In Goat’s Blood was a gift to my niece, Leila Briggs for her help on many other copyright permissions.

A wonderful person and a gift from God, Pastor S. M. Davis also played a significant role in helping me to acquire the necessary images for First Vespers. Pastor Davis is a well known biblical speaker, family counselor, and collector of biblical art. Once I let Pastor Davis read my book foreword and a couple of my poems, he was all on board in helping me bring my vision to fruition. His only request was that I ensure no nudity was contained in any of the book’s artwork. I agreed as I had decided early on that First Vespers should be accessible to everyone. This was not an easy task, but we did manage to pull it off. Anytime I was unable to find an illustration or painting to illustrate a particular biblical event that remained true to the actual circumstances and times, Pastor Davis would always come up with two or three biblical illustrations that I could choose from; usually while he was on the road giving a lecture somewhere.

The next problem to overcome was color, many ancient Bible illustrations are pen and ink and I wanted all of the paintings and illustrations in First Vespers to be in color. Pastor Davis put me in touch with a very talented computer artist in India, Yogeshwarraj Gohil, or Yogi as we affectionately called him who had previously colorized many Bible illustrations for Pastor Davis’ collection and / or lecture presentations. After working with Yogi, I can honestly say he is the absolute best at what he does. After weeks of Bible study and countless e-mails between Pastor Davis, Yogi, and myself, Pastor Davis and I are convinced that we have produced the most accurate depiction of the “Tabernacle in the Wilderness” and “Holy of the Holies” ever made. We discussed every detail given in the Bible; from the red badger skins on the tabernacle roof, to the stones on the high priest’s garments, to the color of the curtains in the Holy of the Holies, to what was gold and what was brass; even how many loaves of shewbread were kept before God in the Holy.

When it came time to illustrate Sarai giving Hagar to Abram, I could not find a single illustration or painting without at least one of Hagar’s breasts being exposed. I turned to Pastor Davis for help and after a bit of a struggle, Pastor Davis found a single suitable illustration; the only problem was that it depicted Abram living in a walled-in room with tiled floors. This type of thing is common to many early illustrations before the invention of the printing press and easy accessibility to the Bible and other history books. Even Rembrandt painted biblical characters dressed in the garments of his own times. I explained to Yogi that Abram was a nomad who lived in the desert in a tent with sand floors and asked him to keep the characters in the illustration the same as they were, but to colorize them and place them in a tent in the desert, rather than in a walled-in room with tiled floors. It took days of going back and forth by e-mail to get the sand just right below their feet so that they were not sinking in it up to their ankles. Finally, Yogi sent me a draft of the final illustration and it was beautiful. He had even placed a camel outside the open flap of the tent door so that we knew that Abram was a nomad living in the desert. I told Yogi that I absolutely loved the picture and could not wait to paste it in the manuscript for First Vespers. Yogi told me that he wasn’t done and asked me to wait a couple of days for the final product; he still had a couple of finishing touches that he wanted to make. When I received the final product, I couldn’t do anything but smile. Yogi had placed a nice looking Labrador retriever in the tent with a nice red dog collar. I did not have the heart to tell Yogi that dogs were not domesticated house pets at the time and that if Abram did indeed have a dog, it was more than likely a herding dog of some kind that would have been tied-up or roaming around somewhere outside of the tent; certainly not setting smartly with a shiny new red collar. Although I worked very hard to make First Vespers as accurate and true to the Bible as humanly possible, I left that picture just as it was and intentionally included it just as it was because it made me smile. As far as I know, this is the only blatant inaccuracy in the entire book. 

 The original Bible illustration as it initially appeared.

After Yogi’s work and as it appears now in First Vespers, including the mysterious dog collar.