ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the appearances in art and literature of a single commonplace type, that of Moses striking the rock to indicate the contributions which typology made to Victorian iconography. Representations of the smitten rock were both more commonly found and interpreted differently than in earlier art, during the Victorian period. At the lowest cultural levels, the theme appeared in chapbook Bibles, which depicted the event with crude woodcuts; and in more elegant illustrated Bibles, the subject was also common. Since the smitten rock was traditionally taken as a type of baptism, it appropriately appears on baptismal founts. The type of the smitten rock becomes a powerful meditative image, a window into the miraculous world of salvation. The linked images of manna and smitten rock define the positions of speaker and listener, rather than conveying Christian doctrine. The presence of the image of the smitten rock indicates that the speaker exists in the Christian as well as the Judaic universe.
