The Changing Face of Jesus in the Face of Changing Christianity

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of the tradition of Christological art it is important to begin that the Bible states the physical appearance of God and Jesus are related (John 14:9), God is invisible (1Timothy 1:17, Hebrews 11:27), and Jesus has no distinctive features or handsomeness unique from the crowd (Matt. 26:48-50). In the chronology of Jesus's imagery there are no discovered images in existence until the third century when figures arrived of Jesus as an allegorical, ambiguous shepherd figure in the catacombs of Rome. In the fourth century, Constantine employed the resources of the State to urge prominent artists to cease depicting pagan idols and instead create Christian representations (Debray, Prefix). As depictions diverged, the Catholic Church revealed primary source documentation of Jesus's face in items such as the Veil of Veronica, nearly eliminating the debate of artists' production of Christ's portraiture. Consequently, his appearance became dependent on region and denomination ...

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God makes this more explicit in Exodus 31 when highlighting the artisanship of Bezalel and Oholiab, filling them with the spirit of God to craft a tabernacle, and listing the goods they should produce; not promoting art of God but art important in the worship of God.
However, in Exodus 32 the people of Northern Israel cast a golden calf after they say to Aaron, "Come, make us gods who will go before us," and God cursed the people in response since the second commandment condemns the worship of idols and images. In their defense, the characters of Baal and Astarte were animal-like figures of God which derived from Greek and tribal-pagan iconographic histories, thus it is understandable ...

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