12/18/2019 Depiction of Jesus - Wikipedia Depiction of Jesus There is no useful description of the physical appearance of Jesus given in the New Testament, and the depiction of Jesus in pictorial form was controversial in the early Church.[1][2] The depiction of him in art took several centuries to reach a conventional standardized form for his physical appearance, which has subsequently remained largely stable since that time. Most images of Jesus have in common a number of traits which are now almost universally associated with Jesus, although variants are seen. The conventional image of a fully bearded Jesus with long hair emerged around 300 AD, but did not become established until the 6th century in Eastern Christianity, and much later in the Mural painting from the catacomb of West. It has always had the advantage of being easily Commodilla. One of the first recognizable, and distinguishing Jesus from other figures shown bearded images of Jesus, late 4th around him, which the use of a cruciform halo also achieves. century. Earlier images were much more varied. Images of Jesus tend to show ethnic characteristics similar to those of the culture in which the image has been created. Beliefs that certain images are historically authentic, or have acquired an authoritative status from Church tradition, remain powerful among some of the faithful, in Eastern Orthodoxy, Anglicanism, and Roman Catholicism. The Shroud of Turin is now the best-known example, though the Image of Edessa and the Veil of Veronica were better known in medieval times. Contents Early Christianity Alexamenos graffito Before Constantine After Constantine Later periods Conventional depictions Range of depictions Miraculous images of Jesus Examples Sculpture See also Notes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depiction_of_Jesus 1/23 12/18/2019 Depiction of Jesus - Wikipedia References External links Early Christianity Alexamenos graffito A very early image which is believed to be an early anti-Christian graffito is the Alexamenos graffito, a unique piece of wall graffiti near the Palatine hill in Rome. The inscription has been ascribed dates ranging from the 1st to the 3rd centuries AD.[3][4][5][6][7] It was apparently drawn by a Roman soldier to mock another soldier who was a Christian. The caption reads, in Greek, "Alexamenos worships [his] God", while the image shows a man raising his hand toward a crucified figure with a donkey's head. This seems to refer to a Roman misconception that the Jews worshipped a god with the form of a donkey, so that the image would be at once antisemitic and anti-Christian. A small minority of Engraving of a crucified scholars dispute whether this image depicts Jesus, proposing that this [5] donkey believed to be an image may be a reference to another deity. early anti-Christian graffito, it reads: "Alexamenos worships [his] god." Before Constantine Except for Jesus wearing tzitzit—the tassels on a tallit—in Matthew 14:36[8] and Luke 8:43–44,[9] there is no physical description of Jesus contained in any of the canonical Gospels. In the Acts of the Apostles, Jesus is said to have manifested as a "light from heaven" that temporarily blinded the Apostle Paul, but no specific form is given. In the Book of Revelation there is a Incised sarcophagus slab with the vision the author had of "someone like a Son of Man" in spirit Adoration of the Magi from the form: "dressed in a robe reaching down to his feet and with a Catacombs of Rome, 3rd century. golden sash around his chest. The hair on his head were white like Plaster cast with added colour. wool, and his eyes were like blazing fire. His feet were like burnt bronze glowing in a furnace (...) His face was like the sun shining in all its brilliance" (Revelation 1:12–16, NIV). Use in art of the Revelation description of Jesus has generally been restricted to illustrations of the book itself, and nothing in the scripture confirms the spiritual form's resemblance to the physical form Jesus took in his life on Earth. Exodus 20:4–6 "Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image" is one of the Ten Commandments and except for minor exceptions made Jewish depictions of first-century individuals a scarcity. But attitudes towards the interpretation of this Commandment changed through the centuries, in that while first-century rabbis in Judea objected violently to the depiction of human figures and placement of statues in Temples, third-century Babylonian Jews had different views; and while no figural art from first-century Roman Judea exists, the art on the Dura synagogue walls developed with no objection from the Rabbis early in the third century.[10] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depiction_of_Jesus 2/23 12/18/2019 Depiction of Jesus - Wikipedia During the persecution of Christians under the Roman Empire, Christian art was necessarily furtive and ambiguous, and there was hostility to idols in a group still with a large component of members with Jewish origins, surrounded by, and polemicising against, sophisticated pagan images of gods. Irenaeus (d. c. 202), Clement of Alexandria (d. 215), Lactantius (c. 240–c. 320) and Eusebius of Caesarea (d. c. 339) disapproved of portrayals in images of Jesus. The 36th canon of the non-ecumenical Synod of Elvira in 306 AD reads, "It has been decreed that no pictures be had in the churches, and that which is worshipped or adored be not painted on the walls",[11] which has been interpreted by John Calvin and other Protestants as an interdiction of the making of images of Christ.[12] The issue remained the subject of controversy until the end of the 4th century.[13] The earliest surviving Christian art comes from the late 2nd to early 4th centuries on the walls of tombs belonging, most likely, Jesus in the Catacombs of Rome. Third-century fresco from the to wealthy[14] Christians in the catacombs of Rome, although Catacomb of Callixtus of Christ as from literary evidence there may well have been panel icons the Good Shepherd. which, like almost all classical painting, have disappeared. Initially Jesus was represented indirectly by pictogram symbols such as the ichthys (fish), the peacock, or an anchor (the Labarum or Chi-Rho was a later development). The staurogram seems to have been a very early representation of the crucified Jesus within the sacred texts. Later personified symbols were used, including Jonah, whose three days in the belly of the whale pre-figured the interval between Christ's death and resurrection; Daniel in the lion's den; or Orpheus charming the animals.[16] The image of "The Good Shepherd", a beardless youth in pastoral scenes collecting sheep, was the most common of these images, and was probably not understood as a portrait of the historical Jesus at this period.[17] It continues the classical Kriophoros ("ram-bearer" figure), and in some cases may also represent the Shepherd of Hermas, a popular Christian literary work of the 2nd century.[18] Among the earliest depictions clearly intended to directly represent Jesus himself are many showing him as a baby, usually held by his mother, especially in the Adoration of the The Healing of the Paralytic – one of the oldest possible depictions of Magi, seen as the first theophany, or display of the incarnate [19] Jesus,[15] from the Syrian city of Dura Christ to the world at large. The oldest known portrait of Europos, dating from about 235 Jesus, found in Syria and dated to about 235, shows him as a beardless young man of authoritative and dignified bearing. He is depicted dressed in the style of a young philosopher, with close-cropped hair and wearing a tunic and pallium—signs of good breeding in Greco-Roman society. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depiction_of_Jesus 3/23 12/18/2019 Depiction of Jesus - Wikipedia From this, it is evident that some early Christians paid no heed to the historical context of Jesus being a Jew and visualised him solely in terms of their own social context, as a quasi-heroic figure, without supernatural attributes such as a halo (a fourth-century innovation).[20] The appearance of Jesus had some theological implications. While some Christians thought Jesus should have the beautiful appearance of a young classical hero,[21] and the Gnostics tended to think he could change his appearance at will, for which they cited the Meeting at Emmaus as evidence,[22] others including the Church Fathers Justin (d. 165) and Tertullian (d. 220) believed, following Isaiah:53:2 (http://www.mechon-mamre.org/p/pt/pt1053.htm), that Christ's appearance was unremarkable:[23] "he had no form nor comeliness, that we should look upon him, nor beauty that we should delight in him." But when the pagan Celsus ridiculed the Christian religion for having an ugly God in about 180, Origen (d. 248) cited Psalm 45:3: "Gird thy sword upon thy thigh, mighty one, with thy beauty and fairness"[24] Later the emphasis of leading Christian thinkers changed; Jerome (d. 420) and Augustine of Hippo (d. 430) argued that Jesus must have been ideally beautiful in face and body. For Augustine he was "beautiful as a child, beautiful on earth, beautiful in heaven." After Constantine From the 3rd century onwards, the first narrative scenes from the Life of Christ to be clearly seen are the Baptism of Christ, painted in a catacomb in about 200,[26] and the miracle of the Raising of Lazarus,[27] both of which can be clearly Christ Pantocrator in a Roman identified by the inclusion of mosaic in the church of Santa the dove of the Holy Spirit in Pudenziana, Rome, c.