The Oxford Companion to Christian Art and Architecture
Peter and Linda Murray (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1996) xii + 596 pp., $49.95
The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church
Ed. by F. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1997, 3rd edition) xxxvii + 1,786 pp., $125.00
Biblical dictionaries teach us about the ancient world of the Bible, but these two dictionaries of Christian art and church elucidate the effect of the Bible on European civilization. Each article in the Companion to Christian Art and Architecture reviews the relevant Scriptural narrative and then the artistic representations of that biblical passage.
Jesus, for example, appears as a beardless young man with curly hair in early Greek art and later as an older, bearded teacher (like the Greek philosophers). The latter image developed into Eastern Christianity’s formal icons of Christ, with an austere face, large eyes, pointed beard and long dark hair. In the West this image was softened during the Gothic period into the more gentle, human, suffering Christ familiar in medieval and modern paintings. The apostle Paul was a thin, dark-bearded, partly bald man until the Renaissance, when he was given a shock of dark hair to make him more attractive and vigorous. Artistic representations of the Old Testament follow Christian interests. For example, 60 incidents from David’s life testify to his importance as the anointed forerunner of Christ. Isaiah, the prophet par excellence in the New Testament, is an old man with a long beard holding a scroll until Michelangelo makes him a handsome beardless young man of the Renaissance in the Sistine Chapel. Popular New Testament events include the nativity, miracles, the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus and, interestingly, 90 illustrations of the highly imaginative and symbolic Book of Revelation, many of them in manuscripts.
From Aaron to Zwingli, the Dictionary of the Christian Church furnishes crisp and concise accounts of the major people, events and topics of Western and, to a limited extent, universal Christendom. All the books of the Bible appear, of course, along with the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha, the Alexandrian Greek text of the Bible and countless additional topics, such as Allegory and Asceticism, near the beginning; Greek and Hebrew, Heresy and Hermeneutics, in the middle; and Sanhedrin, Wisdom and the Wrath of God, near the end. As a basic reference book for things Christian, the Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church shines.
The Oxford Companion to Christian Art and Architecture
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