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The Art of Faith 
 Exploring Sacred Images
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3 ~ Early Faith, Mystery Art

7/26/2012

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The Donkey Graffiti from Palatine Hill
One of the earliest forms of Christian art wasn’t a painting, a sculpture, or even a catacomb fresco. It was a patch of graffiti on plaster, discovered in the Poedagogium on Rome’s Palatine Hill and dated to around 200 A.D. Imperial teachers used the Poedagogium building to educate the emperor’s staff, and perhaps an idle student etched the crude artwork. The drawing depicted a man with an ass’s head, nailed to a cross. Viewed from behind, the crucified man turned to the left and looked down at a youth with a raised arm. An inscription underneath the cross figure claimed in Greek, “Alexamenos worships his god.”
        
Art historians disagree whether the scrawled words should be interpreted as a Christian’s profession of faith or a pagan’s scorn. On the one hand, Jesus rode on an ass, so this animal became an important symbol for early Christians. From this perspective, some suggest drawing the crucified Christ with a donkey’s head paid
homage to a hailed Savior. On the other hand, most observers recognized the inscription as a taunt from someone who mis- understood the new religion. In early Christianity, a rumor circulated Rome that Christians worshiped the head of an ass.
       
What was the true meaning? Only the graffiti artist knew for sure.
       
During the same era, pagans, Jews, and early Christians carved deep recesses in the soft tufa rock shaping the outskirts of Rome. From the third to fifth centuries, survivors often painted these catacomb walls with images that represented the deceased, and images of a person in prayer, the orans (Latin for “praying”), decorated several catacombs. The orans figure populated Late Antiquity, usually depicted as a standing, veiled woman with her hands outstretched and gazing toward heaven. It’s not always clear, however, whether an orans figure represented a pagan, Jewish, or Christian worshiper. Each religious group used this stance as a prayer posture. 
         
Old Testament Jews spread their hands in prayer. From the desert of Judah, David prayed, “I will praise you as long as I live, and in your name I will lift up my hands” (Ps. 63:4). When a pagan orans lifted up her hands, she expressed “the affectionate respect due to the state, to a ruler, to the family, or to God.” Because early Christians were Jewish, they naturally practiced this stance. The apostle Paul advised the earliest Christians: “I want men everywhere to lift up holy hands in prayer, without anger or disputing” (1 Tim. 2:8, NIV 1984), and early church literature recorded the widespread practice of this prayer position. 
        
Consequently, the famous orans in the Catacomb of Priscilla in Rome doesn’t own a clear interpretation of her origin or beliefs. As much as art historians argue one interpretation or the other, nobody knows for sure.
       
Like the Palatine graffiti and the catacomb orans, some of the earliest years of Christianity and its art linger in ambiguity. Even more mysterious, it doesn’t appear early Christians produced art for two centuries of the faith. As far as we know, with a few exceptions of signs and symbols, Christian art didn’t appear until the early third century. Nobody knows the exact reason for this omission, and at any moment a new archaeological discovery could prove this assumption wrong.
         
Just as we can’t precisely pinpoint why Christian art didn’t exist in the earliest years of Christianity, we don’t know exactly why it appeared around 200 A.D. But when paintings from this growing religion emerged from underground Roman catacombs, Christian art never turned up absent again.  

Some people feel uncomfortable that early Christian art sometimes shared images with other religions. They think this either proves Christianity as a “borrowed religion” or taints its purity. What do you think?
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2 ~ A Cross for the Darkness

7/19/2012

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Ancient Oil Lamps
Several years ago I visited a one-room biblical archaeology
museum attached to a small Christian university. The docent fascinated our group with ancient artifacts, handing them out so we could touch Scripture’s history. I remember examining a clay pot and holding facsimiles of iron nails used for a Roman crucifixion. The spike-sized nails evoked murmurs as they passed from one person  to another, but the object that stirred me most slipped into my hands quietly. It’s so small, I thought. The archaic oil lamp, in remarkably good condition, fit in the palm of my hand.

While reading biblical metaphors about oil lamps, or looking at them in museum catalogs, I’d imagined vessels much larger than this. How did a traveler find his way in the darkness with such a tiny, fluttering flame? How did a mother sweep a floor, straighten the house, or snuggle her children into bed? Obviously, these people knew something more than I did—something wise and almost mysterious—about navigating the night.

Later I thought about Old and New Testament references to lamp light. The Israelite psalmist wrote, “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light for my path” (Ps. 119:105). An ancient proverb claimed, “The light of the righteous shines brightly, but the lamp of the wicked is snuffed out” (Pr.  20:2). While telling the parable about a woman who lost a coin, Jesus asked, “Does she not light a lamp, sweep the house and search carefully until she finds it?” (Lk. 15:8). Most likely, early Christians understood lamp metaphors in  practical ways unfamiliar to me. Every day in shadowy rooms, every evening when the sun descended, they lit oil lamps to illumine shades of darkness.

Carving Out Religious Beliefs
As far back as 3500 B.C., oil lamps served as light sources
for civilizations. However, pottery lamps didn’t flourish until about the eighth or seventh century B.C. These simple, wheel-thrown vessels looked like saucers with turned-up edges, with wicks immersed in olive or vegetable oil and draped over the edges. Later the Greeks innovated by enclosing their lamps and adding spouts, handles, and  glazes. During the Hellenistic Age and the early centuries of Christianity, lamps created from molds of clay, stone, or plaster dispersed as much as those shaped on pottery wheels.

Aside from increasing production, molds allowed elaborate designs and three-dimensional figures to appear on lamps created for religious ceremonies or  wealthy patrons. At the same time, factories mass produced undecorated lamps,  either for humble homes or Jews whose religious tradition prohibited graven images. Pottery makers stamped the bottom of these popular firmalampen with the factory owner’s name. Archaeologists today still unearth these stamped lamps throughout the former Roman Empire, while digging up settlements and burial sites.

The Herodian lamp—named after the reign of Herod the Great—populated Palestine’s hill country and cities from about 50 B.C. to 70 A.D. It’s possible that this lamp evolved in Jerusalem or a nearby location. To create the Herodian lamp, potters shaped a circular, wheel-made body with a wide spout applied by hand. A hole in the middle of the base accommodated filling the lamp with oil, and the spout’s opening held the wick and its flame.

Jesus probably envisioned this lamp when he told the parable about ten maidens waiting for the bridegroom (Mt. 25:1-12), or explained to his listeners, “You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a  lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house” (5:14-15). Obviously, Jesus referred to the spiritual light that identified people as his followers. Still, almost 2,000 years later, actual oil lamps have helped archaeologists pinpoint ancient  Christian activity.

In late antiquity, oils lamps often expressed religious beliefs with symbols or inscriptions. Pottery workshops in Cyprus,  Greece, Egypt, North Africa, and Syria-Palestine manufactured lamps portraying pagan gods, Jewish menorahs, and Christian crosses. When archaeologists recover lamps with crosses, they tentatively assume a Christian community resided nearby. For example, researchers discovered lamps with crosses in an ancient  funerary complex at Tel el-Fûl, north of Jerusalem. The crosses indicated that Christians settled in that area 1,600 years ago.

Lamps with crosses flooded the Roman Empire in the fourth and fifth centuries, after Christianity became the religion of emperors. Constantine’s monogram of the cross was a  favorite symbol, either stamped on a lamp’s body or extended as the handle. Art historians theorize that these crosses symbolized the banishment of spiritual darkness. It’s an apt metaphor. As early Christians held out their lamps and stepped carefully into the darkness, they could see crosses guiding them. Literally, the sign of the cross was a light for their paths. But even more, Christ’s cross shed light on their world’s spiritually dark places.

Shining Into a Dark World
“The mystery of the cross shines bright,” wrote the Bishop of Poitiers in the sixth century. Listening to the newscasts, we might wonder about the veracity of that long-ago claim. The world seems full of so much darkness. But in our frustration, we can recall early Christians carrying their oil lamps, following the flickering cross-flames before them, casting light on their paths with each footfall. Perhaps they modeled how we can shed light into our world: not with bonfire ideas that blast into the darkness and eventually fade into cinders, but by faithfully inching along in the world’s darkness, extending the light of the cross. “People living in darkness [would see] a great light; on those living in the land of the shadow of death a light [would dawn]” (Mt. 4:16). They would see the accumulated light of the cross.

A few years ago I purchased an inexpensive replica of an oil lamp from fifth-century Alexandria. The lamp sits on my desk and its imprinted cross points at me while I work. It reminds me of the
lamp-light promises of Scripture. I want to believe the cross can shine light into any darkness. I need to light a lamp.

How do you need to light a lamp?

Read more about cross images in Judith Couchman’s book, The Mystery of the Cross, published by InterVarsity Press. Available at amazon.com in paperback and Kindle.




 
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1 ~ The Power of a Face

7/9/2012

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Sinai Christ Icon
According to some Christian traditions, the first-century King Abgar of Edessa in Mesopotamia suffered from a disease and sent his servant to return with the famous Miracle Worker or at least a painting of him. Elbowed out by crowds around Jesus, the messenger scrambled up a tree and began drawing the Healer’s face on a cloth. Soon Jesus noticed him and reached up for the linen handkerchief (mandylion). Jesus pressed the cloth against his face and handed it back to the astonished messenger. The messenger hurried the mandylion with the impression of Christ’s face to his king, and Abgar recovered.
        
Like most word-of-mouth stories, details about the Abgar-Jesus connection varied through the ages. The fourth-century historian Eusebius recorded that the king and the Healer communicated through letters, and after the Resurrection, the apostle Thaddeus visited Abgar and laid healing hands on him. Yet most versions of the tale focused on the Savior’s face, believing in the miraculous so generations could gaze upon his countenance.
        
In another story about a mystical cloth, Jesus imprinted his face on a woman’s veil. During the Lord’s excruciating struggle toward Golgotha, a resident of Jerusalem named Veronica offered him a cloth to wipe his brow. When Christ handed the fabric back to her, it reflected his face. Veronica took the cloth to Rome where Christains long venerated its image. A pier in Saint Peter’s Basilica honors the veil, and some scholars think the Mandylion of Edessa and the Veil of Veronica form versions of the same story.
        
Perhaps this was a catalyst for Christian art: wanting to see Christ’s face.
        
Whether we believe these ancient “face stories” as actual or legendary, they highlight the desire to visually witness the sacred. Consequently, early Christian artists painted images of Jesus to help people accept, follow, and celebrate their newfound beliefs. They also illustrated signs, symbols, saints, biblical stories, liturgical objects, and church furnishings to pass along their spiritual perspective and heritage. Still, they never strayed far from Christ’s face.
        
If we miss someone, we might say, “I want to see his face.” Gazing at a person’s face, we discern the true personality with thoughts, feelings, and intentions toward us. The face fosters relationships.
        
Early on, Christian artists grasped the power of a face. Through images, countless Christians found hope and courage, faith and absolution in the Lord’s face. They sought him as Friend, Healer, and Savior. Artists inspired believers to endure until they actually met Christ in glory, face to face. They still do today.
 

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    Judith Couchman is an author, speaker, and college art-history instructor. Her recent book release is The Art of Faith: A Guide to Understanding Christian Images (Paraclete Press). Scroll down to view the book cover and video trailer.


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    The Art of Faith: A Guide to Understanding Christian Images by Judith Couchman. Click on the photo to purchase the book through Paraclete Press.
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    The Mystery of the Cross by Judith Couchman. Inspirational readings about images of Christ's cross and how early believers used and respected this sign. Click on the photo to purchase from InterVarsity Press.
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