Early Christians and Images

This second chapter of Early Christian Attitudes Toward Images sets out the Jewish attitude to images in Biblical and post Biblical times. It tries to show that Judaism is able to distinguish between idolatrous and non-idolatrous art and to make use of the latter for its own purposes.

This first chapter of Early Christian Attitudes Toward Images sets out the problem: Were the Christians of the first three centuries aniconic and iconophobic, that is without any images and opposed to them as idols? The Hostility Theory says yes they were on both accounts. Further chapters, will attempt to prove the Hostility Theory false.

Bryn Mawr, 2018

In late antiquity, both the nature of images and the treatment accorded to them generated deeply divisive debates. Portraits of human subjects were an accepted convention, but offering reverence to them might be controversial. Art historian Thomas F. Mathews here retells the story from the Acts of John about the apostle's rejection of the pagan-style honours-garlands, lamps, and an altar-given to the portrait secretly made of him, in gratitude for being raised from the dead, by the praetor of Ephesus Lykomedes. The third-century Platonist Plotinus, likewise the subject of a surreptitious portrait, went even further and questioned the very purpose and meaning of creating an image of an image: "Isn't it enough that I have to carry around the image that nature has clothed me with?" (Porphyry, Life of Plotinus 1). As for images of divine beings, Clement of Alexandria condemned the masterpieces of the sculptor Lysippus and the painter Apelles, leading Greek artists of the fourth century BC, as examples of a "deceitful art" that vainly seeks to emulate God's perfection ( Exhortation to the Heathens 4). Nevertheless, the gods continued to be depicted both in statues and on movable wooden panels. Clement specifically mentions lewd paintings of Aphrodite "hung on high like votive offerings" in pagans' bedrooms. Comparison is unavoidable with the emergent Christian genre of the icon. It is to documenting and speculating on these resemblances and possible continuities that Mathews addresses himself in this elaborate and sumptuously illustrated publication from the J. Paul Getty Museum.

2022

Our lives are saturated with images. They exert an unparalleled power in contemporary culture. However, the power of images is in fact nothing new. Although texts are often the most important historical sources for academics, the image played an enormous role for those who actually lived in these past societies. Images communicated all manner of concepts and messages to a much wider audience than theological texts. Throughout history, images frequently depicted God, human beings, and their relationship in a manner that was meant to teach theology and inspire awe. Historically speaking, most people who have done theological reflection have done so in intimate conversation with the images seen in sacred spaces. This volume explores how images themselves are theology, how they influence sacred texts and theological concepts in a way that words cannot on their own. In part one, the book presents five essays investigating the ways in which images have shaped sacred and theological texts. In part two, the book offers five discussions of the sort of theological work that images can perform that words are unable to do. The volume concludes by outlining areas for future research and exploration based on the insights achieved among the chapters. The collection is, in its totality, a celebration of how central the image has been in shaping theology and how it should continue to do so.

Eastern Christian Art, 2005

Journal For the Study of Religions and Ideologies, 2013

This study offers an overview of the opposing attitudes towards the image worship in the Early Christianity and the Late Antiquity. It shows that a dichotomy between creation and veneration of images on one side and iconoclastic tendencies on the other side persisted in the Christian tradition throughout the first seven centuries. While the representations of holy figures and holy events increased in number throughout the Byzantine Empire, they led to a puritanical reaction by those who saw the practice of image worship as little removed from the anthropomorphic features of polytheistic religious cults. Hence, as the role of images grew so did the resistance against them, and the two contrasting positions in the Christian context initiated the outbreak of the Iconoclastic Controversy, when the theological discourse concerning icons became ever more subtle, culminating in the development of the iconophile and iconoclastic teachings on the holy images. Both the iconophile and the iconoclasts based their apologia on passages from the Synoptic Gospels, evidence of the artistic tradition as well as florilegia or systematic collections of excerpts from the works of the Fathers and other ecclesiastical writers of the early period in support of their claim; much of this evidence is surveyed in this paper, although the Iconoclastic Controversy is not analysed.

Early Christian pictorial art arose within a Greco-Roman cultural environment, instinctively adapting the visual vocabulary of the world in which it appeared and developed. Yet, even while surviving examples of identifiably Christian art objects appear to have much in common with those made for polytheists, they also reveal differences that reflect evident and distinctively Christian practices of composing and viewing images. This involved more than transforming earlier pagan models, it signaled an intentional rejection of their form, content, and style. The results also aligned with certain exegetical strategies evident in early Christian sermons, commentaries, and catecheses and reflected the emergence of a characteristically Christian social identity that emphasized shared religious commitments and broadly understood interpretive approaches to biblical narratives.

2016

Early Christianity, with respect to the first five centuries, comprises a vast amount of historical data which continues to be unraveled to this very day. The keys to unlocking the "truth," or rather, the attempt to arrive at the most accurate representation of the past, given our limited knowledge and the available data, lies not only with certain texts but with copious amounts of art embodied through various different forms. These forms can be found through architecture (cathedral, church), iconography (icon, painting, fresco, mosaic), sculptures (Byzantine ivory statues, Catholic plague columns), wood carving, manuscript miniature, stained glass, oil on canvas and limited edition reproductions. Due to the nature and limitations associated with historical studies, one must make an inference to the best explanation. An inference to the best explanation involves ruling out multiply competing explanations for the best one. This is partially accomplished by analyzing the data contextually while using a critical approach (a practice of good hermeneutics). Due to the fact that no one, currently living today, was around to witness any of the events or formation of the available historical data, one must look at the preponderance of evidence.

The Routledge Handbook of Early Christian Art surveys a broad spectrum of Christian art produced from the late second to the sixth centuries. The first part of the book opens with a general survey of the subject and then presents fifteen essays that discuss specific media of visual art—catacomb paintings, sculpture, mosaics, gold glass, gems, reliquaries, ceramics, icons, ivories, textiles, silver, and illuminated manuscripts. Each is written by a noted expert in the field. The second part of the book takes up themes relevant to the study of early Christian art. These seven chapters consider the ritual practices in decorated spaces, the emergence of images of Christ’s Passion and miracles, the functions of Christian secular portraits, the exemplary mosaics of Ravenna, the early modern history of Christian art and archaeology studies, and further reflection on this field called “early Christian art.” Each of the volume’s chapters includes photographs of many of the objects discussed,...

In his treatise D,mon!tratio Evany,Jjca (Th, Proof of th' Gosp,l), Eusebius, the founhcentury bishop of Caesarea, defended Christian appropriation of Jewish scripture by claiming that those holy books belonged to Christians and that, when read with proper insight, offered certain proof that the Gospel fulfilled all that was promised in them. For example, he cited the account of Abraham 's three visitors at Mamre (Genesis 18:1-8) as a pre-Incarnation appearance of Christ. According to the Greek version of the text, when Abraham looked up from his tent door, he saw the Lord and two other "men." In Eusebius's theology, only the Divine Word (the second person of the Trinity) could take human form (the Almighty One being immutable). Thus, of the three visitors, only one could be a divine being: the preexistent Son, or Word. Supporting this interpretation, Eusebius drew his readers' attention to a picture (ypaq>~) that he had seen displayed at the actual manifestation site. The image depicted three figures seated at Abraham's table-the central one "surpassing the other two in glory. til So far as anyone knows, this image no longer exists. However, a wall painting discovered in a (ublCulum in R.ome's Via Latina Catacomb offers a rare, early (and arguably contemporary) example for comparison ( ). Here Abraham sits and raises his right hand in greeting to three standing young men who wear long tunics and palha. All three visitors are beardless and similar in appearance. The central figure is not made to look more important; if anything he is slightly shorter than the other two. The trio is elevated, as if they are standing on a rocky ledge or perhaps Roating above the ground. Abraham appears to be elderly and has a long beard; the calf that will soon feed his guests stands next to him.