Christian Adaptation of Pagan Iconography

We are all familiar with the conventional images of what entities such as angels, cherubim, Jesus, and Satan are supposed to look like. What may come as a surprise is that these images were not always so well-established. In fact, much of what we think of as “Christian iconography” is freely adapted from pagan iconography.

When Christianity became the dominant religion of the Roman Empire and thereafter the Middle Ages, practitioners of the religion found themselves in a rather awkward predicament. You see, many of them desired to express their faith through art, but the young religion had little iconographic tradition to draw upon. These early Christian artists, therefore, did what made the most sense to them: they adapted elements of previously existing pagan iconography to Christian figures.

Angels

We often imagine angels as beautiful humans with white, feathered wings. This description, however, never appears in anywhere in the Bible. Biblical descriptions of angels are often vague, but, in Mark 16:5, the angel seen by the women at Jesus’s tomb is described as “a young man, dressed in a white robe.” The New Testament, however, never mentions anything at all about angels having wings. There are descriptions of winged cherubim and seraphim in the Old Testament, but these creatures are never actually identified as malakhim (the Hebrew word for “angel”).

The oldest known Christian depiction of an angel comes from the Catacomb of Priscilla and dates to the third century A.D. In this instance, the angel is shown without wings. In fact, all of the earliest known Christian depictions of angels portray them without wings. Where on earth did the notion of angels as having wings come from, then? Fascinatingly, the now widespread image of angels as having long, white, feathered wings seems to have originated from ancient Roman depictions of genii, which were spirits believed to protect particular human individuals. Genii were especially associated with the protection of specific Roman emperors and their families.

ABOVE: This detail from the base of a Roman column dating to the second century A.D. shows the Roman emperor Antoninus Pius’s genius with long, white, feathered wings ascending to heaven as part of his apotheosis.

The earliest surviving artistic depiction of angels with wings occurs on the Prince’s Sarcophagus, a Roman marble sarcophagus believed to date to the reign of Emperor Theodosius I (ruled 379 – 395 AD) that was discovered in the 1930s near Istanbul. The sarcophagus depicts two winged angels dressed in flowing robes and clutching a chi rho monogram encircled by a crown of thorns. Importantly, though, it belonged to a child of the royal family, meaning that the angels on it are fulfilling the traditional role of the genii as protectors of the emperor and his family.

ABOVE: The Prince’s Sarcophagus, the earliest known Christian depiction of winged angels

Over the course of the Middle Ages, portrayals of angels as robed, winged figures became the norm. With the Renaissance, winged angels became emblems of the ideal “sexless beauty.” Portrayals of angels by artists such as Leonardo da Vinci (lived 1452–1519) depicted them as mesmerizing, androgynous beings. By the nineteenth century, angels had taken on their fully modern appearance, as shown in the illustrations below.

ABOVE: Various illustrations showing scenes involving winged angels

Cherubim

Cherubs, or putti, are similarly inspired by traditional Greco-Roman art. In the Bible, cherubim are described as fearsome guardians, but, in art from the Renaissance onwards, they are shown as nude, male infants with white, feathered wings, often carrying bows and quivers of arrows. These depictions are directly inspired by Greco-Roman depictions of Eros/Cupid, the god of love, who was portrayed in exactly this manner in Greek and Roman art from the Hellenistic Period onwards.

ABOVE: On the left is a second-century A.D. Roman copy of a Hellenistic Greek statue of Eros, whom the Romans identified with Cupid. On the right is a painting from around 1633 showing the circumcision of Christ. In the top left and right corners are cherubim, depicted using exactly the same iconography as Eros/Cupid.

Jesus

Historically speaking, no one actually knows what Jesus really looked like because there are no reliable surviving descriptions of him from he was alive. Even the Synoptic Gospels, which were probably written several decades after his death, give barely even the vaguest clues to his physical appearance. We know that he was a Galilean Jew who lived in the first century A.D., so, in all likelihood, he would have probably looked quite Middle Eastern.

The fact that the gospels never describe what Jesus looked like is in itself an indication that his physical appearance was probably not particularly striking. There are also a number of references in several of the gospels to Jesus simply disappearing into the crowd (e.g. Luke 4:30), which would have only been possible if he was a not-particularly-remarkable-looking man of average or shorter-than-average height.

The gospels also claim that, when Judas betrayed Jesus to the Romans, he needed to identify him to them, indicating that, at least by the time the gospels were written, Jesus was commonly thought to have been so utterly average-looking that the authorities literally could not pick him out from a crowd of other Galileans (Mark 14:43–45; Matthew 26:47–50; Luke 22:47–48).

Here is a forensic facial reconstruction of what a typical Galilean man during the time when Jesus was alive would have looked like:

To be clear, this is not a reconstruction of Jesus’s actual face; it is merely a reconstruction of the face of a man who lived in the same time and place as him. That being said, this is probably much closer to what the real Jesus would have looked like than the tall, handsome, brown-haired, pale-skinned man we are so used to seeing in paintings.

Many groups of early Christians had strong objections to representing Jesus in art and early depictions of him are extremely rare. In fact, the earliest known depiction of Jesus is actually the Alexamenos graffito, a crudely drawn image of a man prostrated in worship before a crucified man with the head of a donkey, carved into the plaster wall of a room on Palatine Hill in Rome, dating to sometime between 100 and 300 A.D. The label underneath the graffito reads, in Greek: “Alexamenos worshipping his god.” The graffito was clearly drawn by a non-Christian with the intention to mock a Christian named Alexamenos. The fact that Jesus is shown with the head of a donkey is partially attributable to the satirical nature of the graffito and partially to the fact that many Greeks and Romans actually believed that the Jewish God had the head of a donkey and that that was the real reason why he was never shown in Jewish art.

ABOVE: The Alexamenos graffito, the earliest known depiction of Jesus

When Christians first began to depict Jesus in art, portrayals of him varied drastically. The earliest Christian representations of Jesus show him in his role as “The Good Shepherd,” carrying a sheep over his shoulder in the same way that Greek depictions of Hermes Kriophoros (“Ram-Bearer”) showed him carrying a ram over his shoulder. Some images show Jesus as a young, handsome, clean-shaven Greek man with long, curly hair, reminiscent of the Greek god Apollon. Other images show him as older and bearded.

ABOVE: On the right is a late Roman statue depicting the Greek god Hermes as the “Kriophoros” (“Ram-Bearer”), carrying a ram over his shoulder. On the left is a Christian statue of Jesus as the “Good Shepherd” from the early fourth century A.D. found in the catacombs of Domitilla.

The earliest known representation showing Jesus as an older man with long, flowing hair and a beard is this mural painting from the Catacombs of Commodilla, dating to the late fourth century A.D.:

Over time, the older, bearded Jesus came to dominate Christian art, especially in the Greek-speaking eastern Mediterranean. A slightly later icon of Jesus as Χριστὸς Παντοκράτωρ (Christòs Pantokrátōr; “Christ Almighty”) comes from Saint Catherine’s Monastery in Sinai, Egypt. The icon probably dates to the sixth century A.D., making it the oldest known representation of its kind:

Later eastern images of Jesus begin to strongly resemble the image that most of us have of him today. Here is a Byzantine mosaic of Jesus dated to around 526 A.D.:

Where did this image come from? Well, it seems to have originated from traditional Greco-Roman depictions of male deities, especially the gods Asklepios, Serapis, and Zeus. This makes sense when you think about it. People were used to portraying deities a certain way and, since Jesus was, after all, seen as God Incarnate, it only made sense to portray him the same way as other deities.

Here is an ancient Greek statue of Asklepios, a god associated with healing and medicine:

Here is an image of the Greco-Egyptian god Serapis:

Here is a statue of Zeus, the king of the gods in ancient Greek religion:

As you can see, Asklepios, Serapis, and Zeus do not look exactly like Jesus, but they bear a noticeable resemblance, especially to that earlier fresco of Jesus from the Catacomb of Commodilla. Like these deities, Jesus is often portrayed with long, flowing hair and a beard, which is very much a common trope in portrayals of Greek gods. Early Christians probably adopted the halo from depictions of the sun god Sol Invictus, who is shown here on a third-century A.D. Roman silver plate:

Depictions of the infant Jesus being nursed by his mother Mary are generally thought to be derived from Hellenistic Egyptian portrayals of the goddess Isis nursing her son Horus.

ABOVE: On the right is a Hellenistic Egyptian statue of the goddess Isis nursing her son Horus. On the left is what may be the oldest known Christian depiction of Mary nursing the infant Jesus. The icon comes from Saint Catherine’s Monastery in Sinai, Egypt and probably dates to the sixth century A.D.

Now, to be very clear, I am not saying that Christians invented Jesus himself out of whole cloth or that Jesus himself is a fabrication based on earlier pagan deities. As virtually all historians agree, Jesus was definitely a historical figure. (For further explanation of why historians agree on this, you can read this article I have written on the subject in which I give a detailed explanation.)

What I am saying, however, is that much of the traditional iconography of Jesus has been adapted freely from traditional Greco-Roman iconography. This does not mean that Jesus is simply Zeus under a new name or anything like that. After all, the American Founding Father George Washington (lived 1732 – 1799) has been portrayed with Zeus’s iconography and that does not make him Zeus:

ABOVE: George Washington, sculpted between 1832 and 1840 by the American sculptor Horatio Greenough in honor of the centennial anniversary of George Washington’s birth

ABOVE: Detail of The Apotheosis of Washington, painted in 1865 by the Greek-Italian-American painter Constantino Brumidi for the dome of the United States Capital Building

Interestingly, the widespread adaptation of pagan iconography in late antiquity to suit Jesus and other Christian figures does not seem to have sat well with some early Christians. A fragment of a lost hagiographical work by the Byzantine writer Theodor Lector records a legend that, supposedly, in around 465 A.D., Gennadios, the bishop of Constantinople, healed a painter whose right hand had withered after he had portrayed Jesus with long, curly hair and a beard in the manner of Greek depictions of Zeus. Clearly, this shows that some people were aware of the adaptation of pagan iconography and disapproved of it!

Satan

The most interesting example of Christian appropriation of pagan iconography, however, is Satan. Satan’s appearance is never described anywhere in the Bible or in early Christian literature and he never appears in any work of early Christian artwork. Not in the catacombs. Not on sarcophagi. Never.

The first depictions of Satan come from the ninth century A.D. The various features associated with Satan are a peculiar amalgam of iconographic traits lifted from a variety of Graeco-Roman deities. Satan’s horns, cloven hooves, hairy legs, tail, beard, pointed ears, flat nose, and horns are all derived from Pan, the ancient Greek god of the wild, the protector of shepherds and their flocks. Satan’s pitchfork is the trident of Poseidon, the Greek god of the seas. His fiery red hair is derived partly from the flaming hair of the Egyptian god Bes, a fearsome dwarf-god who was believed to protect children and pregnant women.

ABOVE: Pan, Poseidon, and Bes (from left to right), all of whom served as possible influences on medieval Christian iconography of Satan

No one knows why medieval Christians adapted so many features of Pan for their depictions of Satan, but it may have been because Saint Jerome had identified the Greek satyrs and Roman fauni, whom Pan bore a strong resemblance to, with demons. Based on this identification, it would not have been much of a step further to therefore conclude that Pan himself was none other than the Devil.

On the other hand, it is entirely possible that the artist simply chose those features because they were frightening and fitting for the “Prince of Demons.” Evidence indicates that Christian adaptation of pagan iconography was extremely chaotic and, in many cases, the Christian adapters misunderstood or misrepresented the works of their pagan forebears.

For instance, a carving on one of the capitals from the cathedral of Autun contains a scene showing a naked woman holding a rock and a demon clutching a knife, but is clearly derived from an ancient Roman carving showing Venus holding a seashell and Vulcanus wielding his hammer. This indicates that some medieval Christian sculptors may have been ignorant of the true nature of the Roman artwork available to them and may have actually thought that statues of Pan, Poseidon, Bes, and other deities were actually intended as sculptures of Satan.