Quote:
Originally Posted by jibber
REALLY interesting subject if you look into it in any depth. A lot of my art history courses dealt with how early christian rulers took "pagan" iconography and transformed it into Christian subject matter to make the transition between religions go more smoothly. Early depictions of halos around the virgin mary and jesus were depicted as solid yellow discs, exactly the same as how many earlier Sun Deities were depicted.
Also, think of the common image of God in human form. Old man, long white beard...sound familiar? There's a reason why early Christian art (especially around Constantine's reign in the Roman Empire) actually visually portrayed God as a human form very similar to Zeus. Over time, once Christianity was established, portraying God as a human was phased out in art.
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Exactly. I've always been curious about influences between religions. Sometimes it's a complex matter and you have to read a lot of things about History, culture, social and psychological archetypes, etc. And sometimes it is simpler and easy to understand.
Some issues are almost like a child game. For example, to many ancient peoples the following beliefs are very simple: humans live on Earth; deities are in the sky; so intermediaries between the two are... are... errr...
winged beings, perhaps? Yes!
Obvious. In fact, the word
angel means "messenger" in ancient Greek. And once more, Jews and Christians weren't "original":
The Classical winged messenger:
Hermes for the Greeks or
Mercury for the Romans. And to be honest, it is disappointing to see how those ancient Middle-East shepherds changed an efficient, elegant and ergonomic design for a crude, flamboyant, kitsch and sexless chicken-frankenstein-like creature.
Culturally speaking, in my opinion (as an agnostic) Hermes/Mercury is more interesting than the Christian angels.
The so-called
fallen angels are also a Christian "copy" (iconographic and symbolic) of Classical myths, but that's another story...