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The following article represents the former section of a larger study regarding religious aniconism practiced in Ancient Israel. The aniconic movement is an alternative to the iconographic expression of divinity. Aniconism understands the configuration of the divine in a symbolic and abstract way, apart from the anthropomorphic and the theriomorphic representation. In this sense, the props used were stone and wood, especially unwrought, in their crude form, so that later, thanks to his insatiable aesthetic appetite, man could manufacture finished pillars, ornate columns, seals, chariots, thrones, obelisks, temples and pyramids, sacralized empty spaces. The aniconist movement is found throughout the Near East, mostly in Phoenicia and Syria, but aniconic artifacts are also found in Ancient Palestine too, according to archaeological findings. Thus, the history of Ancient Israel does not strike a discordant note in this cultural-religious course, on the contrary, although the official post-exilic propaganda was as prohibitive as possible towards these manifestations, considering them alien and idolatrous. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Migration, as the displacement of peoples, triggered throughout the centuries by wars, natural disasters, political oppression, poverty and famine, religious persecution is a profound human experience and an intimate part of the biblical saga from the beginning, along with the social, anthropological and spiritual issues it raises. The history of Israel is rooted in migration and the Jewish Diaspora is the most extensive and well documented migrations in antiquity. The wandering of the patriarchs, the Exodus, the exile, the dispersion and the return to Jerusalem are embedded in the consciousness of the people of Israel and helped define their character as a people and the nature of their relationship to God. For the Christian Church, migration was a phenomenon that configured its history and forced it to define itself and to specify the eschatological goal of its missionary. The patristic writings of the first centuries indicate that Christians have always considered themselves pilgrims to the heavenly homeland, not having a particular homeland here on earth, although they have always managed to adapt to the social and political conditions of the times. Starting from these historical, social and spiritual premises, the present study proposes a refection both from a biblical and patristic perspective on the migration phenomenon, trying to offer the premises of a debate in the space of orthodox theology on this current topic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]