Archaeologies and Agendas: Reflections on Late Ancient Jewish Art and Early Christian Art

2003 ◽  
Vol 93 ◽  
pp. 114-128 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jaś Elsner
Keyword(s):  
General Public ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Religious Art ◽  
Methodological Basis ◽  
Know How ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Jewish Art ◽  
Christian Art ◽  
History Of ◽  
Critical Historiography

There are (at least) two ways to approach the history of religious art in Antiquity. One is to study what was going on in the ancient world, to tell the story as they (the subjects of our inquiry) saw it and as they did it. Another is to ask how we know how they saw it and did it. The first might be called ‘history’, the second ‘critical historiography’. Both are crucial to the historical enterprise, and I in no way intend to demean the first by saying that this paper is largely of the second kind. My project is to examine what are the grounds for our assumptions in creating the generalizations of ‘Late Ancient Jewish Art’ and ‘Early Christian Art’ as real categories of visual production in Late Antiquity with specific and discrete audiences and constituencies of patrons and producers. Both fields are venerable, with long historiographies and complex guiding-agendas of the sort that are perhaps inevitable given the kinds of ancestral investments made by scholars and indeed members of the general public (which is to say, also adherents of the two faiths) in both fields. In addition to prising apart the history of some of these investments, I want to question the methodological basis for many of the assumptions about what can rightly be classified under either the heading of ‘Jewish’ art or of ‘early Christian’ art.

Syncretism and Allegory in the Jerusalem Orpheus Mosaic

Traditio ◽  
1967 ◽  
Vol 23 ◽  
pp. 1-13 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Block Friedman
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Old Testament ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Funerary Monuments ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Christian View ◽  
Long Time ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Visual Statement

The ingenuity of early Christian artisans in turning a host of pagan symbols and images to the service of a new ideology is one of the most conspicuous features of Christian art during the second and third centuries after Christ. It is responsible for the art of the catacombs in which Orpheus the charmer of wild beasts represents Christ the Good Shepherd, and the eagle, peacock, Dionysiac grapes, sun, stars, and other pagan funerary symbols of long standing express the state of the Christian soul after death. Yet as Christianity grew stronger in the Roman empire, as councils were held and creeds formulated, and as a distinctively Christian view of history evolved in which Old Testament figures replaced pagan heroes, we find a curious lag in the visual arts. The old pagan imagery continues to appear in Christian funerary monuments, often in conjunction with newer, wholly Christian, motifs, but significantly not replaced by them. This phenomenon is not due simply to the conservatism of the artisans, but owes much to the vigor of the old motifs and the persistence of the ideas they represented. It also points up the fundamental difference between a verbal statement, made up of words which may be freely rearranged and whose connotations shift mercurially from year to year, and a visual statement, which is less flexible and able to retain its symbolic appeal for a very long time. The difference, practically a commonplace in the study of the history of ideas, is nonetheless often overlooked in the study of the ideas and motifs of late antiquity, when words and pictures ostensibly representing the same ideas were often straining in opposite directions. Thus, while the Councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon sought to settle for all time the relation between the human and divine in the person of Jesus, Christian artisans were still depicting Christ the Good Shepherd in the aspect of Orpheus.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Marmodoro ◽  
Irini-Fotini Viltanioti
Keyword(s):  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Mutual Influence ◽  
The Other ◽  
Western Thought ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
History Of ◽  
Christian Thought ◽  
The One

This volume explores how some of the most prominent philosophers and theologians of late antiquity conceptualize the idea that the divine is powerful. The period under consideration spans roughly four centuries (from the first to the fifth CE), which are of particular interest because they ‘witness’ the successive development and mutual influence of two major strands in the history of Western thought: Neoplatonism on the one hand, and early Christian thought on the other. Representatives of Neoplatonism considered in this volume are Plotinus (...

The Comparative Study of “Scholasticism” in Late Antique Mesopotamia: Rabbis and East Syrians

AJS Review ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 91-113 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam H. Becker
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Comparative Study ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Great Distance ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Rabbinic Judaism ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Transmission Of Knowledge ◽  
History Of

Now is an appropriate time to reconsider the historiographical benefit that a comparative study of the East Syrian (“Nestorian”) schools and the Babylonian rabbinic academies may offer. This is attributable both to the recent, rapid increase in scholarship on Jewish–Christian relations in the Roman Empire and late antiquity more broadly, and to the return by some scholars of rabbinic Judaism to the issues of a scholarly exchange of the late 1970s and early 1980s about the nature of rabbinic academic institutionalization. Furthermore, over the past twenty years, scholars of classics, Greek and Roman history, and late antiquity have significantly added to the bibliography on the transmission of knowledge—in lay person's terms, education—in the Greco-Roman and early Christian worlds. Schools continue to be an intense topic of conversation, and my own recent work on the School of Nisibis and the East Syrian schools in general suggests that the transformations and innovations of late antiquity also occurred in the Sasanian Empire, at a great distance from the centers of classical learning, such as Athens, Alexandria, and Antioch. The recently reexamined East Syrian sources may help push the conversation about rabbinic academic institutionalization forward. However, the significance of this issue is not simply attributable to its bearing on the social and institutional history of rabbinic institutions. Such inquiry may also reflect on how we understand the Babylonian Talmud and on the difficult redaction history of its constituent parts. Furthermore, I hope that the discussion offered herein will contribute to the ongoing analysis of the late antique creation and formalization of cultures of learning, which were transmitted, in turn, into the Eastern (i.e., Islamic and “Oriental” Christian and Jewish) and Western Middle Ages within their corresponding communities.

Early Christian Art

Art History ◽  
2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katherine Marsengill
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Art History ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Near East ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Byzantine Art ◽  
Christian Art ◽  
Byzantine Period ◽  
Art And Architecture

Early Christian art history encompasses a range of material loosely dated from the first known appearances of Christian art in the late 2nd or early 3rd century and continuing through the 6th, 7th, and sometimes even into the early 8th centuries. Early Christian art history, however, has proven to be an inchoate term, often overlapping with, or including, Early Byzantine art history. In previous divisions of the field, Early Byzantine art tended to be too politically confining when one considers cities such as Ravenna before and after its inclusion in the Eastern Byzantine Empire. On the other hand, Early Christian art implied only the earliest centuries, usually through the 4th or mid-5th centuries, and usually centered on Roman art. Thus, many scholars today favor the term Late Antique in order to integrate the study of art and architecture of the Eastern Roman Empire and Western Roman Empire as well as to understand Christian art in dialogue with Jewish and pagan art. In terms of dating, scholars generally acknowledge the genesis of Christian art and architecture around 200 ce, although some pursue theories that Christians participated in visual culture in the early 2nd century, if they had not yet developed a distinctly Christian visual language. In terms of geography, the eastern and western Mediterranean, Palestine and the Near East, and sometimes even northern Europe and Britain are all included. One result of this large geographical span has been the separation of Early Christian art in Rome, the Eastern Mediterranean, Egypt, the Near East, and so on. In the last decade or so, however, scholars have generally recognized a more cohesive Mediterranean world and a more fluid transition from Late Antiquity to medieval art and culture. Questions of continuity between these periods have ultimately made dating the end of “Early Christian” or “Late Antique” difficult, if not impossible. Most scholars see the end of Late Antiquity as coinciding with the death of Justinian I or, for the convenience of a rounded date, the year 600. Others argue the end of the period occurred at the beginning of the 7th century with the spread of Islam in the Near East and across North Africa. Byzantinists sometimes recognize the beginning of the iconoclastic controversy in 730 as the end of Late Antiquity. Accordingly, “true” Byzantine-era art begins after iconoclasm in the 9th century, what some refer to as the Middle Byzantine period, which marks the beginning of a distinguishable Byzantine state and extends until the Latin conquest of Constantinople in 1204, then followed by the Late Byzantine period (until 1453). Those who assert the continuity of Late Antique traditions in early Islamic art have recently broached the year 800 as the cut-off point.

The Origins of Early Christian Graphic Signs

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ildar Garipzanov
Keyword(s):  
Early Development ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Final Section ◽  
Early History ◽  
Religious Communities ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Imperial Period ◽  
Symbolic Meanings ◽  
History Of ◽  
Christian Discourse

The first two sections delineate the early history of the nomina sacra, staurogram, and chi-rho, from the late first to third centuries AD as well as relevant early Christian discourse on the symbolic meanings of certain letters and graphic signs, and show how the staurogram and chi-rho developed from utilitarian abbreviation signs into symbolic visual proxies for God and Christological concepts. The next two sections provide an overview of the use of graphic signs as protective seals among various religious communities, with reference to artefacts such as the Bruce Codex and votive leaves from Water Newton, and compare the early usage of more acceptable Christian signs with the concurrent culture of the so-called ‘magical’ characteres. The final section underscores that the early development of Christian graphicacy should be seen in the context of a general predilection for apotropaic graphic devices in the Imperial period, and in late antiquity in particular.

Children of the Waters: Whirlpools, Waiora, Baptism and Missio Dei

2020 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-28
Author(s):  
Rev Hone Te Rire ◽  
Steve Taylor
Keyword(s):  
Oral History ◽  
Environmental Ethic ◽  
Missio Dei ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Christian Art ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
Treaty Of Waitangi ◽  
History Of ◽  
Waitangi Tribunal ◽  
The Church

Abstract From space, the Pacific glitters in ocean blue. What might the world’s largest ocean contribute to missio Dei? A spiral methodology is used to trace connections between the baptism of Jesus, early Christian art, recent legal (Treaty of Waitangi Tribunal) research and indigenous knowing, including ocean voyaging, ancestor understandings of whirlpools, Māori water rites and oral history of river beings (taniwha). The argument is that indigenous Oceanic (Māori) understandings of water, in conversation with baptismal narratives, present missio Dei as an immersion in God. Mission is located not in the activity of the church – and hence mission expansion as part of European colonisation – but in the being and becoming of God. Creation and redemption are interconnected and an environmental ethic is expected. Children of the waters (ngā tamariki o te Moana nui a Kiwa) listen to creation’s voice (taniwha speaking) and act for the life (waiora) of water.

The Early Church in North America: Late Antiquity, Theory, and the History of Christianity

2002 ◽  
Vol 71 (3) ◽  
pp. 473-491 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Brakke
Keyword(s):  
Annual Meeting ◽  
North American ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Early Church ◽  
History Of Christianity ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
The North ◽  
History Of ◽  
Number Of Publications ◽  
American Philological Association

By almost any measure, the study of ancient Christian history is alive and well, even if one limits one's view to the North American scene. Over the last three decades the number of publications in the field, both books and articles, has grown considerably, fueling (among other things) the astonishing success of theJournal of Early Christian Studies, founded by the North American Patristic Society (NAPS) a decade'ago. Each year the program of the annual meeting of NAPS features more papers and attracts more participants (even though they must stay in less than ideal, even appropriately monastic, dormitory rooms). The number of papers on early Christian topics at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion and the Society of Biblical Literature (as well as the American Philological Association) is very impressive.

The Staff of Jesus in Early Christian Art

2010 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 221-251
Author(s):  
Jefferson Lee M.
Keyword(s):  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Christian Faith ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
The Third ◽  
Reasonable Explanation ◽  
Christian Art ◽  
Art Historians ◽  
Christian Influence

AbstractWhen surveying examples from Christian art of the third and fourth centuries, a viewer will invariably encounter the puzzling image of Jesus performing miracles holding a staff or wand. Theologians, art historians, and even the current pope have interpreted Christ’s miracle-working implement as a symbol denoting Jesus as a philosopher or a magician. However, the most reasonable explanation of the staff can be discovered by examining the only other two staff-bearers featured in the corpus of early Christian art: Moses and Peter. Miracles and the figures who wrought them were the primary currency of faith in late antiquity. Such an emphasis is readily apparent in early Christian texts. This article will demonstrate the emphasis on miracles in early Christian art by focusing on the peculiar iconographic feature of the staff. The staff in Christian art of the third and fourth centuries is not evocative of magic, philosophy, or any other non-Christian influence. Instead, the staff is meant to recall the miracle worker Moses and to characterize Jesus and Peter as the “New Moses” of the Christian faith.

scholarly journals Review of: Aristotle and Early Christian Thought. London: Routledge, 2019. (Studies in Philosophy and Theology in Late Antiquity; 6). 226 p. ISBN 978-11-38-69799-7

2021 ◽  
pp. 366-374
Author(s):  
Дометиан Курланов
Keyword(s):  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Early Christianity ◽  
Philosophical Study ◽  
Sixth Edition ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Oxford University ◽  
Christ Church ◽  
History Of ◽  
Christian Thought ◽  
Early Christian Studies

Данная книга представляет собой историко-философское исследование о начальном периоде освоения Аристотеля христианами и является шестым изданием, вышедшим в молодой (с 2013 г.) серии «Studies in Philosophy and Theology in Late Antiquity» лондонского издательства Routledge. Автор книги (он же один из редакторов упомянутой серии) — тьютор по богословию колледжа Christ Church и профессор раннехристианских исследований факультета Теологии и религии Оксфордского университета М. Эдвардс — известен в первую очередь благодаря своим популярным работам по истории раннего христианства и патристической философии. This book is a historical and philosophical study of the early Christian reception of Aristotle and is the sixth edition of the young (since 2013) series Studies in Philosophy and Theology in Late Antiquity published by Routledge, London. The author (who is also one of the editors of the series), M. Edwards, the theology tutor at Christ Church College and professor of Early Christian Studies in the Department of Theology and Religion at Oxford University, is known primarily for his popular works on the history of early Christianity and patristic philosophy. DOI Название объекта Название объекта в переводе ФИО автора / список авторов Место работы автора ORCID Ключевые слова Аннотация

scholarly journals Phoenix and Delphinus Salvator: The History of the Forgotten Images of Early Christian Iconography

2020 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 9-26
Author(s):  
Józef Cezary Kałużny
Keyword(s):  
Early Christian ◽  
Christian Art ◽  
History Of ◽  
Christian Iconography ◽  
The Phoenix

Art in the 3rd and 4th centuries underwent transformations and adapted cer­tain representations which were typical of ancient iconography to the new needs and tasks of Christian art. Among the abundant examples of this pro­cess, many continue to be popular and recognizable, such as the representation of Hermes Kriophoros, which evolved to become Christ the Good Shepherd, or the sleeping Endymion, which became part of the “Jonah cycle.” The adaptation of patterns from antiquity for the purposes of Christian iconography was both popular and quite common, but only a fraction of the representations developed in that period survive today. This paper discusses the representa­tions that have been forgotten. Relying on the examples of the phoenix and the dolphin-rescuer, the paper analyzes factors that affected the partial (phoenix) or complete (delphinus salvator) disappearance of images which were typical of early Christian art and which relied on ancient imagery.

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