Brooklyn Spiritual Technology and Iconography: Three Patriarchs

Brooklyn is filled with spiritual technology and architecture. Synagogues, churches, chapels, temples, store-front places of worship, cemetaries, art, imagery, ikons.

The word Icon (ikon) comes from the Greek word "eikon" which means image, the same word that describes the creation of man in God’s image and likeness.

Icons are attributed to the hand of Christian Saints (St. Luke) and many of the unsigned masters of the Byzantine era, St. Andrei Rublev, the acknowledged greatest iconographer of Russia, the famous post-Byzantine iconographer Theophane the Greek, Moscow’s Armory School founder Simon Ushakov, and many, many others.

The remarkable film director Andrei Tarkovsky's "Andrei Rublev" is a staggering epic of the fabrication of spiritual technology in the Byzantine era. One of my favorite films.

These are replicas of great art and great art treasures. This image of icons is from the exterior of the Three Patriarchs Greek Orthodox Church on Avenue P near E. 17th Street. I would assume these 3 patriarchs refer to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, known as the Patriarchs, are both the physical and spiritual ancestors of Judaism. They founded the religion now known as Judaism, and their descendants are the Jewish people.

Even the "Epistle to the Hebrews" in the Christian New Testament presents the Patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as examples of men of faith. They lived in hope. They lived with the promise of God's faithfulness.

Or, in this instance, the icon could refer to Patriarchs, which like Metropolitan, is a title of respect and authority in the Eastern Orthodox rite. The four Ancient Patriarchates of the Eastern Rite were Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem. The Primate of the OCA is the Metropolitan.

Brooklyn, in the unpretentious, everyday face that it shows to the world, is filled with art, spirituality and inspiration.

--Brooklyn Beat