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The Popular Image Of Jesus
WHERE DID THE POPULAR IMAGE OF JESUS COME FROM?
by Erik Jones
Artistic images portray Jesus as a pale, long-haired man. Yet
this image contradicts biblical clues about His appearance.
What is the origin of this image? It is the face known around
the world.
Though it sometimes
appears with different shades of skin, the general characteristics are
consistent: long hair, a beard, and a slender and somber face.
This face is
portrayed through paintings, sculptures, crucifixes and movies.
It is the face
immediately recognized as Jesus Christ.
But, as we show in
our article “What Did and Didn’t Jesus Look Like?” the Bible reveals very
little about the physical appearance of Jesus.
And what it does
reveal contradicts the popular image you may have in your mind — an image that
has been planted there by artists and filmmakers.
Instead of having
long hair, Jesus would have had short hair. Instead of having pale skin, He
would have had a tanned complexion.
Instead of being
thin and fragile, He would have been masculine and strong.
But if the popular
image was not derived from Scripture, where did it come from? Why do artists,
sculptors and film producers consistently portray Jesus with these features?
What history shows
may surprise you!
NO IMAGES IN THE EARLY CHURCH
The people closest
to Jesus left no artistic descriptions of His appearance. This wasn’t just an
oversight because they were busy.
The New Testament
is very deliberate in recording the most vital details about Jesus’ life — but notably
there are few about His appearance.
Nowhere do we find
an artistic image of Him drawn by one of His contemporaries.
Why is this?
Simply put, the
early Christians understood that while Jesus was ordinary in appearance (Isaiah 53:2), He wasn’t an ordinary
man — He was God in the flesh (John 1:1, 14; 20:28).
Since they
faithfully obeyed the 10 Commandments, they applied the Second Commandment to Jesus.
Jesus Christ was
God and should not be represented through images.
The apostle Paul expounded on this when he said, “We ought
not to think that the Divine Nature is like gold or silver or stone, something
shaped by art and man’s devising” (Acts 17:29).
In other words, God
is so great that reducing Him to an image is like putting Him in a box.
Paul relegated attempts
to portray God through images to “times of ignorance” (verse 30).
Paul was trying to
combat idolatry — a major element of the Greco-Roman world he lived in.
Historian Jesse Lyman Hurlbut wrote of the first century: “Idol
worship was interwoven with life in every department. Images stood in every
house to receive adoration; libations were poured out to the gods at every
festival; with every civic or provincial ceremony the images were worshiped. In
such forms the [early] Christians would take no part” (The Story of
the Christian Church, 1970, p. 41).
Secular history records, “The early Church had always been
strict in forbidding the adoration of images and therefore did not want
Christ’s face to be memorable” (Claudine Chavannes-Mazel, “Popular Belief
and the Image of the Beardless Christ,” Visual
Resources, Vol. 19, No. 1, p. 29).
It is clear from
scriptural and historical evidence that the early Church had no images of
Christ. So how did images and icons make their way into mainstream
Christianity?
HOW IMAGES CREPT INTO CHRISTIANITY
Many changes
occurred to Christianity after the end of the New Testament era.
After the death of
the original apostles, a small group of faithful Christians continued, but much
of Christianity gradually began to evolve into a religion that bore little
resemblance to the Church described in the book of Acts.
The earliest images
that have been uncovered supposedly portraying Jesus have been dated to around
A.D. 240-256.
Obviously, these
artists, who lived 200 years after Christ’s ascension to heaven, had never seen
Him or known any of His contemporaries.
Instead of trying
to directly portray Him, these early images represented Christ symbolically.
The most common was Christ portrayed as the “Good Shepherd,” holding a lamb.
In these images, He
is portrayed as young, physically fit and beardless. Most of these images were
found in catacombs in Rome — not in Judea or Asia Minor, where the majority of
early Christians lived.
The problem
historians have in positively identifying these images as Christ is that they
parallel Greco-Roman pagan art that used a shepherd image as a symbol of
philanthropy (André Grabar, Origins of Christian Iconography, pp. 218-219).
We will see that
borrowing from pagan art is a common theme of many of the familiar icons of
Christianity.
It wasn’t until
after Constantine (272-337) that detailed artistic representations of Jesus
began to be found in churches. Historian Paul Johnson wrote that “after the
conversion of Constantine all the barriers [to the use of images] were broken
down” (A History of Christianity, pp. 102-103).
In other words,
before this time there was resistance to artistic portrayals of Jesus — but
after Constantine accepted Christianity and started remaking it in the Roman
image, the Greco-Roman customs of worshipping deities through statues and
images became syncretized into Christianity.
“Towards the end of the fourth century, the use of images in the
churches became general. People began to prostrate themselves before them, and
many of the more ignorant to worship them. The defenders of this practice said
that they were merely showing their reverence for the precious symbols of an
absent Lord and his saints” (George Fisher, History of the Christian Church, 1915,
p. 117).
Though there
continued to be resistance, the use of icons and images won out and became
entrenched in the Christianity that emanated from Rome and Byzantium.
But the artwork of
this emerging form of Christianity did not come out of nowhere. These images
emerged from previous pagan imagery and traditions.
THE ORIGINS OF THE FACE OF “JESUS”
After A.D. 400,
images of Jesus began to be found all over churches, catacombs and even on the
vestments of priests.
Since the artists
had no knowledge of Jesus’ real appearance, they developed their own images of
Jesus with features that continue to influence art to this day.
The early images of
Jesus portrayed Him slightly differently from how He is usually depicted today.
Instead of being
slender with a beard, early art depicts Him as a youthful, physically fit,
clean-shaven, though somewhat effeminate, long-haired man.
Choosing to depict
Jesus with long hair was not a random decision on the part of these early
artists. They choose to portray Christ this way because the male gods of the
Greco-Roman pantheon almost always were depicted with long hair.
“In Greek and Roman art loose, long hair was a mark of divinity
… in letting his hair down Christ took on an aura of divinity that set him
apart from the disciples and onlookers who are represented with him” (Thomas
Mathews, The Clash of Gods, 1993, pp. 126-127).
Many historians
recognize that the early images of Jesus were directly based on the common
features given to the sun god Apollo. Notice these enlightening quotes:
“When Christ is given a youthful, beardless face and loose, long
locks it assimilates him into the company of Apollo and Dionysus. … Insofar as
he copied the look of Apollo or Dionysus, he assumed something of their
feminine aspect as well” (ibid., pp. 126-128).
“The clean-shaven visage more resembles the representations of
Apollo or the youthful Dionysus, Mithras, and such semi-divines or human heroes
as Orpheus, Meleager, and even Hercules. A youthful appearance recalls the
divine attributes most associated with personal savior gods” (Robin
Jensen, Understanding Early Christian Art, 2000, p.
119).
“Jesus’ representation as a version of Apollo/Helios in the
Vatican necropolis demonstrates the way the Roman gods were directly
challenged; Jesus usurps their place, often with iconographic attributes that
make him quite similar in appearance to various pagan deities” (ibid., p. 120).
Look at these
images of Apollo and note the similarities to many of the early artistic
portrayals of the youthful Jesus:
Later
artists wanted to capture the wisdom and power of Jesus as the “heavenly
judge.”
These
artists turned for inspiration to the more powerful and authoritative gods in
the Roman pantheon, such as Jupiter (the Roman version of Zeus), Neptune and
Serapis.
These
gods, like Apollo, wore long hair to distinguish them from mortals, but were
also distinguished by beards (which symbolized their wisdom and authority).
These characteristics found their way into artistic
portrayals of Jesus. Notice these quotes from historians:
“The representation of Christ as the
Almighty Lord on his judgement throne owed something to pictures of Zeus” (Henry Chadwick, The Penguin History of the
Early Church, 1967, p. 283).
“A full-bearded
face suggests authority, majesty, and power and may be seen in the portraits of
the senior male deities of the Roman pantheon — Jupiter and Neptune, or even
the Egyptian import, Serapis. … The mature and bearded figure perhaps
emphasizes Jesus’ sovereignty over the cosmos. Here Christ takes Jupiter’s
place in the pagan pantheon, and the iconography makes that displacement
explicit” (Jensen,
pp. 119-120).
“It was only after Constantine, about the time of Damasus,
that the picture of Jesus was changed from the youthful wonder-worker to the
royal or majestic Lord. At that time, Jesus shifted more to a bearded, elderly,
dominant figure” (Graydon
F. Snyder, Ante Pacem:
Archaeological Evidence of Church Life Before Constantine, p.
298).
Notice
the images of Jupiter, Neptune and Serapis:
Artists took the
most notable characteristics of divinity from the Greco-Roman world and
combined them into an image of a roughly 30-year-old man — devising the image
recognizable as Jesus today: the slender, pale, bearded, long-haired Jesus.
THE DANGER OF IDOLATRY
A consistent
biblical theme is God’s abhorrence of pagan idolatry.
God strictly
commanded His people not to make images of Him (or any made-up god) or to use
those images in worship. Ancient Israel went into captivity because they
embraced idolatry (2 Kings 17:15-18; Hosea 8:4).
The New Testament is filled with admonitions to “flee from
idolatry” (1 Corinthians 10:14) and to “keep yourselves from
idols” (1 John 5:21).
Would a God who
inspired these statements want to be worshipped and imagined through images
inspired by pagan idolatry?
Did the God who declares Himself “the same yesterday, today,
and forever” (Hebrews 13:8) suddenly change His mind about images in the fourth century?
VIEW CHRIST IN TRUTH
When we try to
portray God through a physical image, we lose sight of the full extent of His
power and grandeur, which can never be captured in stone or on canvas.
Instead of viewing
Him with the lens He gives us in His Word, we view Him through the lens of the
human imagination. In a sense, we remake Him in our image.
Not only do the
depictions of Jesus mischaracterize what He looked like, but they are images
based on false gods of ancient paganism.
The
best way to replace these images with the truth about Jesus is to diligently
study your Bible and fill your mind with the knowledge of His teachings — while
avoiding man-made images of Him.
Jesus Christ made a powerful statement recorded in John
4:23-24: “But the hour is coming, and now
is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for
the Father is seeking such to worship Him. God is Spirit, and those who worship
Him must worship in spirit and truth.”
Worship of Jesus Christ should be fully based on truth,
not false artistic renderings of His appearance.
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