By MICHAEL OTTO
We don’t really know what Jesus looked like, and every image of him in the movies is “imagination”.
So said Te Kupenga Catholic Theological College assistant dean Fr Mervyn Duffy, SM, at a Theology on Tap event held at the Apothecary Licensed Eatery in Howick, East Auckland, on November 28.
Fr Duffy was speaking on “Representations of Jesus: The first 300 years” at the event organised by young people from St Mark’s, Pakuranga.
The Marist theologian and lecturer started by saying that there is very little in terms of imagery from the first years of Christianity. There are several reasons for this – there were very few early Christians, and most of them were not wealthy. And, with some exceptions, orthodox Judaism was opposed to depictions of people and animals.
“Christianity starts off like orthodox Judaism in not depicting people,” Fr Duffy said.
“But then they start arguing – you can depict Jesus because he became human. God is invisible – so you should not depict God – but Jesus is God made visible, so therefore you can have a picture of Jesus.”
But the “earliest portrayal of Christ is words – they tell the Jesus stories”. There is a period of oral transmission. Then the words get written down.
Fr Duffy noted that there are no documents that have survived that were in the handwriting of the four Gospel writers or St Paul. “What we have is copies of copies.”
The oldest surviving fragment of the New Testament is The Rylands Papyrus, which contains a very small part of John’s Gospel. Written in Greek, it is dated at about 125AD.
At this stage, there is not a single picture of Jesus, Fr Duffy said.
But grave markings, from catacombs and the like, tells us something. Christograms such as “Chi-Rho” the first two letters for Christ in Greek, are found, and they make a figure that looks like “PX”.
Other imagery on Christian graves involves people praying, and doves and olive branches, hinting at the biblical story of Noah and representing peace. A fish symbol is found on some grave markings. This is an anagram – the Greek word “Ichthys” (fish) standing for “Iota, Chi, Theta, Ypsilon, Sigma” which are the Greek first letters of “Jesus Christ God’s Son Saviour”.
“The word ‘fish’ is a cunning way of signalling you are a Christian. Because it is a word that is a picture that stands for a word that stands for a creed,” Fr Duffy said.
But what might be the first recorded image of Jesus is “a bit ambiguous and puzzling”.
A “graffito” image from an ancient army barracks in Rome shows a figure on a cross, but with the head of a donkey. A man is depicted praying to this figure, and what is scratched underneath is “Alexamenos worships his god”.
This image, dating possibly to about 200AD, is likely to be one soldier mocking the religion of another soldier, Fr Duffy explained.
“So here is a mockery of Christian belief. We have got so used to it [the cross], we wear little crucifixes around our necks. But the crucifixion was scandalous, it was shocking.”
“Alexamenos worships a god who got crucified. What sort of god gets crucified?”
Fr Duffy then spoke about the oldest Christian church found by archaeologists. This is in Syria. It is a house that was turned into a church, dating from the middle of the third century. This structure had a baptistry and paintings on the walls.
Figures like the Good Shepherd are depicted, as are Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, as well as Jesus healing the paralytic, and Jesus walking on the water.
“What do the people who gather in this house church believe about Jesus?” Fr Duffy asked.
“That he is miraculous, that he is a wonder-worker. . . . So Jesus has the power to heal, Jesus has the power to forgive, Jesus has the power to walk on water. Jesus is the wonder-worker.”
This depiction of Jesus healing the paralysed man is “the first clearly dateable picture of the Jesus of the Ministry”, the historical Jesus. The image can be dated to 232-252AD. Jesus is wearing a toga, has bare feet, spikey hair and is clean-shaven, Fr Duffy said.
There is no halo. He looks like a human being, Fr Duffy noted.
But later grave art did start to show Jesus with a halo. “It is a symbol of the emperor. Kings have halos. As well as calling Jesus ‘king’, they start giving him the attributes of a ‘king’.”
Summarising his talk, Fr Duffy said that nowhere in the four Gospels is there any description of what Jesus looked like, or what any of the apostles looked like.
“They are remarkably uninterested in his appearance. There are legends that St Luke was an artist, and legends that there are pictures of the Blessed Virgin Mary. . . . There is the legend of Veronica and the veil. . . It is not in the Bible. It is a Christian legend.”
“There are no photos of Jesus. Every movie you have seen is imagination. So really, we don’t know what Jesus looked like.”
Fr Duffy finished by stating that his talk covered representations of Jesus up to 300AD. Then everything changed.
“In 313 AD, [the Emperor] Constantine declares Christianity to be a tolerated religion, so it is no longer persecuted. . .. Suddenly, lots and lots of people become Christian, and the Church becomes wealthy, the art becomes public,” Fr Duffy said.
And then there are many, many depictions of Jesus in art.
Photo: Some of those at the Theology on Tap event.
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