#3 Early Christian and Jewish Art - Erwin R. Goodenough

7/29/2019 #3 Early Christian and Jewish Art - Erwin R. Goodenough

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Early Christian and Jewish ArtAuthor(s): Erwin R. GoodenoughSource: The Jewish Quarterly Review, New Series, Vol. 33, No. 4 (Apr., 1943), pp. 403-418Published by: University of Pennsylvania PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1451996Accessed: 12/09/2008 10:45

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EARLY CHRISTIAN AND JEWISH ARTBy ERWIN R. GOODENOUGH,Yale University

WE SHALLnever agree about the nature of art. Perhapswhen we have such a knowledge of unconscious motivationas does not now remotely exist, we may see that the artistwho talks of symbolism is often fooling himself for somereason with excuses for his love of line and color, and thatthe man who will speak of art only in terms of compositionis covering a furtive but passionate symbolism. Yet eachof these approaches to art deeply offends the protagonistof the other, whether artist or historian of art. Of theartist I speak only indirectly. Of the historian of art Ispeak with deeper feeling, for I find myself asked to reviewa book written by a man whose great competence in thefield is accompanied by a deep prejudice against whatinterests me. Professor C. E. Morey of Princeton has justpublished a fascinating account of early Christian Art'which symbolists will neglect at their peril, but whichexpresses, to say the least, slight interest in their work orways.

Morey has traced the ramifications, developments, anddisintegrations of the techniques and forms of Christianart, and given them an excellent running start from classicalart. He has even made very clear the thesis for which hispupils have long held him in reverence, that behind theOld Testament iconography of certain illustrated parts of

I Early Christian Art: An Outline of the Evolution of Style and Iconog-raphy in Sculpture and Painting from Antiquity to the Eighth Century.By Charles Rufus Morey. Princeton: PRINCETON NIVERSITY RESS,1942. Pp. 282, with 210 figures. 403


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THE JEWISH QUARTERLY REVIEW

the Bible from the Christian Middle Ages lay a LXXiconography which was probably pre-Christian in origin,that is, Jewish. These points, it seems to me, he has nowpresented in almost final form. And since this is whathis book set out to do, we cannot blame him too severelythat he is quite inadequate when it comes to setting theart of either the classical (though this he does slightlyattempt) or the Christian period in the background of theideas of their environments. It is more surprising that,after years of insisting that Christian Old Testamenticonography had a pre-Christian origin in LXX illumina-tion, he should dismiss with only a few passing allusionsthe Jewish Old Testament art which has finally appearedin the synagogue at Dura.

Hellenistic art, Morey points out, developed in twodirections. Classic Greek art had tried to express a faithin the superman: but "devised to express a man that wasmaster of circumstance, its occupation was gone whencircumstance encompassed man" (p. 16). So during theHellenistic Age in Greece, Asia Minor and Syria, the earlycreative urge gave way to imitation, what is called theNeo-Attic style, largely two dimensional. In the newlyfounded states of Alexander, notably in Alexandria itself,a new attempt was made, a new style formed, with theresult that a "three-dimensional pseudo-realistic manner"emerged (p. 16).

Neo-Attic art preserved the Attic types of figures, butput them into settings (as for example the figures standingbefore architectural niches on the troughs of sarcophagi)which limited the sense of space, curtailed the third dimen-sion. Neo-Attic art was early affected, however, by ori-ental tendencies, to a marked degree in oriental outpostslike Dura, much slower in being felt in such Greek centersas Antioch, but with the ultimate result of producing the

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EARLY CHRISTIAN AND JEWISH ART-GOODENOUGH 405

Byzantine style. Not that Antioch knew only the Neo-Attic style: its earlier mosaics are quite "Alexandrian,"a fact which shows, Morey says, that this latter termcannot be regarded as too strictly geographical. But thegeneral trend of art in Antioch was a steady elimination ofthe third dimension and a stiffening of the human figures;at the same time the early hellenistic arrangement, whichgrouped the figures in such a way as to throw the centralone into prominence, gave place to a rhythm of equallyaccentuated figures.

What Morey calls the "Alexandrian" style (the quota-tion marks are his), unlike the Attic and Neo-Attic, wasinterested in giving to a scene a specific setting. Thebackground shows mountains, buildings, trees. It is per-haps best represented in Pompeiian painting, where theEgyptian influence was in many ways marked. But Rome'scoming into world supremacy made art under the Augustiturn to the Neo-Attic masters. This combination cutdown, or eliminated 'altogether, the background, while itdeveloped descriptive narrative at the expense of whatwas properly representational: it was more concerned withthe continuum of time than with the proper artistic concernof space. Morey is particularly happy in describing thisart as it appeared on the spirally fluted column of Trajan."In such scenes we have the rapid enumeration of actionspreliminary or complementary to the main theme, such asoften open or close the chapters of Caesar: Caesar, castrispositis, milites cohortatus,concilio convocato,etcetera. Thesetend to become in the sculptor's hands increasingly con-ventional symbols, undifferentiated, and no more thanplastic ablative absolutes" (p. 52). This style, which in thesecond century had great power, rapidly degenerated untilit became mere representation of sequence, with all natu-ralism quite lost.


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It was in the period of such decay that Christian artbegan. The new sect had little interest in reviving olderskills by which the beauty of nature was presented, sinceChristianity was turning from natural to supernaturalbeauty, and the subjects presented from the external worldhad value only as they expressed a transcendental worldwithin the soul (p. 59). But the art forms of the HellenisticAge did not succumb to this new point of view until thepost-iconoclastic period in the East and the Carolingianin the West. It is then with developments up to this periodthat early Christian art is concerned.

The earliest preserved Christian art is that of the cata-combs, and Morey clearly is bothered by it. It has beenthe happy hunting ground, as he points out, for symbolistsfrom the earliest times, and Morey does not like this. Thatthe fish, anchor, dove, the palm, as well as the GoodShepherd and the frequent Old Testament figures, hadsymbolic meaning he does not deny, but says that thesymbolism must have been very simple since the Chris-tianity of these people was simple (a large assumption inview of the fact that early Christianity produced the lettersof Paul and the Fourth Gospel, to say nothing of the letterto the Hebrews). But those who try to get elaboratesymbolic meanings for catacomb art, he says, are caughtin their own evidence, since a given symbol, like Danielamong the lions, may represent, according to the Fathers,"the Resurrection, the Eucharist, prayer for the dead, thePassion of Christ, or an example of steadfastness in martyr-dom" (p. 61). Herein Morey betrays his failure to graspthe inherent meaning of symbolism. A symbol of anyimportance is never an alternative way of writing a singleword or conception, and limitation of its meaning to anyone conception, as non-symbolists are constantly tryingto do, is always impossible. To try, for example, to express

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the religious value of a Menorah to Jews in a single wordor idea which it "represents" will never satisfy more thana very few Jews, and those only in one mood. In Christiansymbolism of the present, do the cross, the "angel of death"with its wreath, the cup of the Eucharist, to take onlythree symbols, represent triumph or defeat, glory or humil-ity, death or life? Every "or" in that question is anabsurdity. Each symbol can and does represent the resur-rection hope, the Eucharist, prayer for the dead, the Pas-sion of Christ, and the victory and hope of martyrdom,precisely the list Morey scorns for Daniel among the lions.It is true that each Christian teacher has always projectedhis own feelings into the interpretation of these symbols,and still does; and that many of the interpretations ofsymbols given to children now in catechetical schools havelittle historical connection with what might be found tobe their original "meaning," or rather the meaning giventhem in some early Father's writings. Yet the Catholicsare entirely right in their sense of continuity with earliesttimes in using these symbols, a continuity much deeperthan the variant explanations. For that continuity isnever in a "simple" meaning such as Morey wants to find;it is always a highly complex, paradoxical appeal to theconflicting longings of the human spirit, which can besatisfied only in paradox. Death becomes life for theChristian in the cross, or in the wreath of the angel ofdeath, or in the cup of the Eucharist; humility is glorified,defeat is victory. These paradoxes, and the resolution ofthose desires, were as much a part of "simple" earlyChristianity as of scholasticism. The Christians put theparadoxical symbols on their graves because of the solacethey found in them.

They found the same solace, it is certain, in the OldTestament scenes, Daniel in the den, Moses drawing water


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from the rock, Jonah saved from the whale, or Noah com-ing intact from an ark which is obviously a sarcophagus.These same incidents were referred to in early Christianprayers, and Morey feels that he has explained theirappearance in the earliest Christian art by saying thatthey were painted because they were alluded to in theprayers. But why were they selected to be mentioned inChristian prayers? This Morey does not consider, but theanswer can only be: because the experiences of these Jewishpatriarchs were symbols of Christian hopes for life throughdeath. Morey does not discuss the fact that such earlyChristian prayers almost certainly go back to Jewishoriginals (what I pointed out in By Light, Light) as do mostof these Old Testament scenes in art representation.Morey skips hurriedly over the problem of the originof the Old Testament scenes in the Christian catacombs.He intended soon to come to the fact that he believes,with every justification, that behind the early medievalLXX illustrations lay originals which were Jewish, andhe mentions this Jewish art as a possible source for thecatacomb figures, but only to reject the suggestion. Hisreason for doing so is that the Old Testament scenes inthe catacombs are representations of single incidents, whilethe LXX art was continuous narrative of succeeding inci-dents. The early Christian scenes were devised, he thinks,by the several communities of the Dispersion, "each afterits own fashion," from written and oral history (p. 65).Yet in spite of the differences of detail in representationof these incidents, there is a standardization of idea whichdoes seem to me to indicate a common origin, an originwhich could only have been in Jewish art.

For it is by no means to be taken as natural that Christianart began with Old Testament scenes on its own initiative,

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or just because it was "a faith which in its early stages wasno more than an heretical offshoot of Judaism" (p. 65).This is to suppose that the'early Christians began theirart by inventing a symbolism or symbolic vocabulary inJewish terms only that they might laboriously at oncetranslate it into Christian typology. Christianity, un-prompted, would have begun with New Testament ico-nography, as surely as Bolshevism at once made its ownnew symbols. Christianity would have begun by adaptingOld Testament symbols to the new meanings and explana-tions only if the Old Testament symbols were already athand. And this is precisely what a glance at the catacombpictures shows was happening. For example, Jesus isclearly a figure adapted by Christians from representationsof Moses. One of the earliest, if not the earliest, representa-tion of Jesus to be evolved was of him as the giver of lifethrough his raising Lazarus from the dead. But in doingso Jesus is in these early scenes always depicted with a rod,and a glance at the scenes shows that the figure is takenfrom representations of Moses striking the rock with his rod.That is, the figure of Moses was already at hand. When, aswas relatively easy, one put the crude little house with theemerging mummy opposite this figure in place of the rock,behold one had the New Testament scene. The identityof the two figures in view of the rod is beyond debate.Moses is certainly the older use of this figure, for the rodis properly in his hands and the early Christian artist hadso little creative skill that he could not even eliminate itwhen it was, as with Lazarus, utterly inappropriate. Thatis, the early Christian artists in the catacombs were, aslater in mosaics and LXX illustrations, copying models,and these models, Old Testament ones, must also have beenJewish. We have not those models, any more than up to


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ten years ago we had any Jewish Old Testament illustra-tions from the period at all. But the fact that we did nothave them did not in the least affect the inevitability, asMorey himself made clear, that there had been such.Indeed, when discussing the multiplication of such scenesfor use on the Christian sarcophagi (p. 68), Morey hasrecourse to his manuscripts again. It is not apparent whyhe should so rigorously exclude the same sort of beginningto the Old Testament scenes in the catacombs, since thescenes on the sarcophagi are quite as isolated incidents, asfar from implying a rotulus composition, as the earlierfrescoes.

The latter part of Morey's chapter on the "Beginning ofChristian Art" is devoted to an interesting and convincingpresentation of his theory that an "Alexandrian" rotulustradition lay behind much of the early Old Testamenticonography, but at the end Morey returns to his point thatthe pictures in the Roman catacombs and the Dura syna-gogue had no connection with this tradition.

A solution to the problem might be suggested from thenature of the rotulus tradition itself. The painter of therotulus began not with his continuous movement of eventsbut with a few stock figures and artistic devices which heused over and over for his scenes. Most important was apeculiar figure for a supreme hero or saint or what Moreycalls the "Logos." We have just mentioned it as the figureof Moses which became the figure of Christ, but it is usedmuch more widely than that in both Christian and Jewishart. It was the peculiar, and instantly recognizable, figureclothed in a white robe with specially marked stripes whichfirst appears almost as a uniform in Egyptian mummyportraits of the Hellenistic and Roman periods. They wereusually abbreviated into shallow bust portraits where onlya bit of the robe and a few inches of the stripe would

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appear, but they are also preserved in full length.2 Therobe reappears in Pompeii for the priests of Isis, so thatit was presumably the white robe of Osiris, the one whichApuleius put on at his final initiation. The face above thisrobe might be bearded or not: that detail was not standard-ized. This is the figure which reappears in Jewish art forMoses, or for Abraham, or Joshua, or Samuel, or Ezekiel,or whatever patriarch was the central hero of a sacrednarrative, just as the type figure of "Christ" became recog-nizable in later art in every conceivable pose and situation.This holy figure is abundantly present in the mosaics ofSanta Maria Maggiora, in the LXX illustrations, in thecatacombs, as well as in the synagogue at Dura. It even re-appears, crudely distorted but still recognizable, for Abra-ham, in the synagogue at Beth Alpha.3 The Abraham atBeth Alpha, the one over the Torah shrine at Dura, as wellas the four isolated portraits just above this at Dura, showthat the Jews used the figure not only in rotulus art butfor isolated symbolic representations. So while it is truethat, when the figure appears for Noah or Moses or anotherin the catacombs, it shows no trace of having come from aLXX rotulus, it none the less seems to have been a basicunit of Jewish art. Like the Egyptians, Jewish artists seemto have been indifferent as to whether this figure wasbearded or not. With the same detail undecided, the figurebecame just such a unit in Christian art, first, as we haveseen, for Christ himself, then for angels, the "Logos," andfor saints in general.

2 A fine instance was published by Bauer and Strzygowski in theDenkschriften of the Vienna Academy, LI (1906), 149; another by R.Pagenstecher, Nekropolis, 1910, 92, A fine female counterpart,whose robe, most importantly for discussion of the robe as it appearsat Dura, is fringed at the bottom, is in the Metropolitan Museum ofArt in New York.3 Eleazar L. Sukenik, The Ancient Synagogue of Beth Alpha, 1932,Plate XIX.


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As to Morey's slight reference to the synagogue at Dura(p. 77), he is certainly right that the pictures there betrayan admixture of Asiatic and Neo-Attic detail which is farfrom pure Alexandrianism. He is right, too, in contrastingmost of the Dura pictures, with their episodic treatment,with the narrative cycle of the rotulus. But that continuouscycle treatment is certainly not without trace in Dura.The scene of the Migration from Egypt moves from rightto left (as do some of the reversed turns of the ViennaGenesis, for example p. 23), but is still a cycle, and full of"Alexandrian" details. The robe of the leader has alreadybeen mentioned. Egypt in the Dura picture, is a typically"Alexandrian" city wall, and the single little child heldthere by one hand by its mother reappears, inter alia, inthe Octateuchs.4Morey (p. 148) recognizes this child as animportant detail when it appears in Santa Maria Maggioraand the Paris Psaltar at the same place. The massing ofheads for the multitude is altogether "Alexandrian." Thepassing of the Red Sea at Dura, for all its differences, hasclearly a common ancestor with that in Santa MariaMaggiora.5 For the peculiar scene at the well which closesthis cycle, I have seen no "Alexandrian parallel," but thetechnique is quite the same as in the other two scenes.

From these we pass to the four figures of Moses, as Ipersist in calling them, which from having been Osirianmummy portraits are here Jewish saints; they were laterto become the standing portraits of the evangelists, whichMorey (pp. 80, 121, 166) takes to be an important con-tribution of the "Alexandrian"' school. These figures areso much like the "Alexandrian" representations of Moses,

4 Vatican, fol. 88 vo; Smyrna, fol. 79 vo.s Cf. Morey, pp. 73 and 141, together with the Paris Psaltar repre-sentation at his fig. 62, the Octateuch tradition at his fig. 63, and thesame tradition on a sarcophagus at his fig. 138.

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as we have them in Christian copies, that from the pre-liminary photographs of the first season I called the badlymutilated figure on the upper left "Moses receiving theLaw on Mt. Sinai," because of the pose of the legs, thelight streaks which seemed to represent the mountain,and high shoes beside him. When the Yale archeologistsreturned to Dura the following year to make more accuratestudy, they found in the faded upper right corner of thepicture traces of the table of the law being given Moses bythe dextra domini.6 In these cycles the giving of the lawis often followed, as is true I am sure at Dura, by the readingof the law to the people, though at Dura we have onlyMoses reading the law, not the crowd before him.7 Thefourth figure I have said was the ascension of Moses. Thislast identification must be discussed where there is morespace, but at least the figure itself is indisputably "Alex-andrian," as a glance at the Octateuch representations ofAbraham viewing the starry vault of heaven will show.

It is impossible to go the rounds of the Dura pictures topoint out all their "Alexandrian" features. But that a

6 For these details see for example the Constantinople Octateuch,fol. 209 vo.; the Paris Psaltar (Gr..139), fol. 422 vo.; Cosmas Indico-pleustes' Topography,ol. 45 ro., 61 vo. The latter is especiallyinterest-ing for showing the bush and the receivingof the law together, whilethe high laced boots belongto both scenes. In the AshburnhamPenta-teuch (fol. 76 ro.) the four successive"communicationswith God"beginwith the burningbush and end on Sinai.7 See the Bible of the Convent of Paol. at Rome,fol. 30 vo. The samecontinuity, as Morey notices (p. 148) appearedin the mosaicsof Santa

Maria Maggioraand the Octateuchs. The originalof these two sceneslay behind the double ascension scene of the ivory plaquefromMunichpublishedby Morey, fig. 144. HereJesus speakingto the womenbeforethe sepulchre was originally Moses giving the people the law, andbehind this figure as it is presented in the Bible of the Convent ofPaol. is an architecturalgable which corresponds o the tomb on theivory plaque. I should guess that a "tabernacle"of some sort stoodin the picture which lies behind both. This is another sample of thesort of thing Morey does not attempt, the tracing of New Testamenticonographyto its originalsin Jewish Old Testament iconography.


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scroll may have lain behind the Ezekiel cycle on the northwall seems incontestable.In view of a mass of such details as these, and of the

fact that Morey casually admits (p. 127) that the figureson Christian gold glass actually have their best parallelsamong the Old Testament figures of the Dura synagogue,it is strange that he finds it unnecessary to give thoseJewish pictures any serious attention for the light theymight throw on Christian art.8

The details of the development of Coptic peculiaritiesand the formation of the Asiatic style need not detain us.Morey has here a body of interesting material most con-vincingly assembled. In discussing the "Orientalizating ofLatin Style" he comes to the mosaics of Santa MariaMaggiora, and explains them as reproductions of LXXillustration after it had been cut up into codex miniatures.His evidence is wholly convincing. He even here makesfleeting concessions to the symbolists, for while he rightlyrejects the attempt of Richter and Taylor to connect thesescenes with the allegories of Justin Martyr, the symbolicstylization of the scenes is so much beyond dispute thatMorey even uses the phrase "Philonian abstraction" forone of the figures (p. 150). He and all students of the fieldwill understand this art better when they can refer to Philoless timorously. For example, he is perplexed at a possible

8 An interesting example of Morey's attempt to escape ideologicaldifficulties is in his translation (p. 128) of the 7rte 'Taats written onJewish and Christian gold glasses. The words mean "Drink, thoushalt live." This in view of the sacred setting commonly given thewords by both religions, at least suggests a sacramental cup anddrinking. But Morey simply says that the words mean "Drink and goodluck to you." For an excellent discussion of the phrase as it appearson Christian glasses (pagan instances are only dismissed, and Jewishones not mentioned at all) see "Pie Zeses," by Leclercq in Cabrol-Leclercq, Dict. d'archeol. chret. (1939), XIV, 1024-1031; see also F.Cumont, After Life in Roman Paganism, 1922, 204.

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source for one scene in which the boy Moses disputes withEgyptian teachers (p. 148); the scene, as I have pointedout elsewhere, is elaborately described by Philo (Vita Mosis,i, 20-24). Indeed that scene, highly important for thethought of Moses in hellenistic Judaism, may already havebeen painted in Philo's copy of the LXX, for there is ampleevidence that he was using, whether in rotulus or codexform, a LXX with these illustrations in it.Sufficient indication of this in itself is Philo's descriptionof the scene of the Burning Bush in Vita Mosis, i, 65, 66,which I quote in Colson's excellent translation.9

Now as he was leading the flock to a place where thewater and grass were abundant, and where there hap-pened to be plentiful growth of herbage for the sheep,he found himself at a glen where he saw a most aston-ishing sight. There was a bramble-bush a thorny sortof plant,Io and of the most weakly kind, which, withoutanyone's setting it alight, suddenly took fire; and,though enveloped from root to twigs in a mass of fire,which looked as though it were spouted up from afountain, yet remained a whole, and, instead of beingconsumed, seemed to be a substance impervious toattack, and, instead of serving as fuel to the fire,actually fed on it. In the midst of the flame was aform of the fairest beauty, unlike any visible object,an image supremely divine in appearance, refulgentwith a light brighter than the light of fire. It mightbe supposed that this was the image of Him thatIS; but let us rather call it an angel or herald, since,with a silence that spoke more clearly than speech,it employed as it were the miracle of sight to heraldfuture events.

The LXX and Hebrew account of this event simplysays that an angel of the Lord (&y'eXos Kvptov) was9 Philo, in the Loeb Series, VI, 311.0IThis is Colson's accurate translation. The fact that an acanthus

was a thorny plant comes out importantly in the succeeding allegory.The LXX simply tells us that Moses saw a 3T&roSn flames; Philo'sdescription of that "bush" is that it was aKav6SOes rL 4vr6v, "someplant like an acanthus."


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revealed to Moses in a burning bush, with the implicationthat the miraculous flame was itself the revelation ofdivine presence, the thing that was seen, for no attempt ismade at describing the angel otherwise. So only the flamingbush appears beside Moses in the Dura representation ofthe scene. And in the Bible the bush is only a bush, not,as Philo says, an acanthus bush," while Philo's descriptionof the fire gushing up from the ground into the bush asthough from a spring has no biblical warrant whatever.A glance at the accompanying picture from the VaticanOctateuch12 shows clearly all these details. The bush, evenin this medieval copy, still has the unmistakable acanthusleaves, and the fire might well be described as spoutinglike a fountain from the ground. Even more remarkableis the angel in the lower picture, whose truncated formshows that it must have originally been on the ground,and presumably within the bush. Also the upper pictureshows Moses leading his flocks beside a mountain, to besure (the Bible reads that he "came to the mountain"),but in a valley beside the mountain, the very valley whichPhilo adds to the story. I do not see how there can beany doubt that Philo had before him an illustrated copy ofthe LXX, and that he has here given us a description ofthis particular picture as he had it. I am convinced thatclose study would show that Philo was often drawing hisdetails from such a source which already was deeplyaffected by allegorical interpretation. What Morey, inspeaking of the mosaics in Santa Maria Maggiora, calls the"symbolic prepossession of the mosaicist" (p. 146) seems

I See the preceeding note.2 From the Octateuch at the Vatican Library, gr. 746, fol 157 ro.Reproduced by permission from the Princeton Index of Christian Art.See also Cosimo Stornajolo, Miniature delle omilie di Giacomo Monaco,

Rom, 1910, pl. 21.

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EARLY CHRISTIAN AND JEWISH ART-GOODENOUGH 417to go back to a long tradition of symbolism which, likethe art itself, antedates Christianity in Jewish usage, ante-dates Philo himself. The reconstruction of that symbolictradition is quite as important for history as the brilliantreconstruction of the continuity of art forms which Moreyhas produced.


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Moses: Burning Bush

#3 Early Christian and Jewish Art - Erwin R. Goodenough

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