Musings on Idolatry and the {real} 2nd Commandment

[Eutychus]

Musings on Idolatry

Why did not the early Christians make statues of Jesus and the other apostles first hand?

Why is it that we have no true likeness of Jesus, contemporaneous to that age, if it is was "historically" customary within Catholicism to have statues of Saints and Deity?

Could it be that the early Christians were not Catholic and the early Christians would not think to make a statue of Jesus or other martyrs of their time? Or did they completely understand the prohibitions of God against making images of God for use in worship and religion, thus the bible is silent on word images of Jesus { while living } appearance?

Without delving too deeply into Jesuit apologetics and excuses, this really IS a very interesting historical question, one worth pondering.

[Akalyte]

[img]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3e/Good_shepherd_m2.jpg[/img]

Second Century image of Christ the Good Shepherd


some more images from the catacombs

[img]http://www.arsmar.com/crimago/cr-epasv.jpg[/img]

Saints Peter and Paul

[img]http://www.arsmar.com/crimago/cr-epdv.jpg[/img]

The Ressurection of Lazarus


They had images in the early church. Just not as much as they do now, of course its kind of hard when being fed to lions and hiding from persecution.

They did indeed have images and it was not thought of as Idolatry. I've also read that the roman's would force christians to paint pictures of their god, but the christian would paint Jesus instead...

[OLAM Dad]

Akalyte pretty much put this one to bed.

The prohibition against graven images is in Exodus 20 and yet we find God commanding Moses to do this in Exodus 25.

[quote]18
Make two cherubim of beaten gold for the two ends of the propitiatory,
19
fastening them so that one cherub springs direct from each end.
20
The cherubim shall have their wings spread out above, covering the propitiatory with them; they shall be turned toward each other, but with their faces looking toward the propitiatory.
21
This propitiatory you shall then place on top of the ark. In the ark itself you are to put the commandments which I will give you.[/quote]

Did God command Moses to violate His own commandments by commanding him to make golden cherubim?

[eddieloudog]

Statues have more to do with communications modes. There is more than one mode to communicate. We all use body language and words. We also use symbols that we string together to form words. This collection of symbols represent words with distinct meaning to anyone who can read. So, following this, statues are a mode of non-verbal transmission of knowledge or thought. We see them and then a thought pops into our head or we get a certain feeling just like when we read. Now, given the fact that illiteracy rates were really high up until the 20th century, it makes since that statues were used as evangelization tools while people were being told about Christ through the Gospels. Remember that the Apostles spoke the gospel; they didn’t just hand out those little green Bibles.


PS. Cold over-reverence for the physical Bible (the one you hold in your hand, the tangible one man made on a printing press) be some type of Idolatry? I mean, we may be venerating the Bible and taking away from any other form of communication that God may be telling us.

[ReinnieR]

wow

[Justified Saint]

Shesh, these kinds of discussions are starting to get real boring. I wish we had more honest Protestants around.

[Mateo el Feo]

[quote name='Eutychus' post='1042501' date='Aug 13 2006, 05:59 AM']Without delving too deeply into Jesuit apologetics and excuses...[/quote]Since everyone has already provided such helpful answers, I wanted to take this opportunity to mention that phrases like this hint at someone who is more driven by emotions and prejudice rather than reason and fact.

[Eutychus]

I guess SIMPLE reading, like ...

[quote]Why is it that we have no true likeness of Jesus,[u] contemporaneous to that age,[/u] [/quote]


Is asking too much of Phatmassers.

Sorry for stressing your brains too much.

[i]{ in case people are still confused, AD 32 - AD 100 is the Apostolic age. AD 250 is as far removed from Jesus, as we are from George Washington. ++ a little help for those that were educated under the new math programs...++ } by then, the pagan rites and usages were already becoming established as the new communities having virtually zero Jewish messianics were formed and grew...[/i]

[Akalyte]

Also please note, there are many other images from the "Apostolic age" in the Vatican Museum. Many, Many other images. Again, your argument is in ruins. As it was before it was even debated by Protestants.

[ReinnieR]

do you believe in apostasy after the death of St. John??

[Mateo el Feo]

[quote name='Akalyte' post='1042763' date='Aug 13 2006, 06:31 PM']Also please note, there are many other images from the "Apostolic age" in the Vatican Museum. Many, Many other images. Again, your argument is in ruins. As it was before it was even debated by Protestants.[/quote]Ironically, the proof of our argument lies in ruins...mostly the ruins that anyone can see on a vacation to Rome.

[Socrates]

The Second Commandment was from the Book of Exodus in the Old Testament, and was clearly forbidding the worship of pagan idols.
However, in the same Book of Exodus, God commands the making of two golden cherubs for the Ark of the Covenant. (Exodus 37:8-9) Obviously, it was not the mere making of "graven images" in itself that was forbidden, but the worshipping of idols.

[Mateo el Feo]

[quote name='Eutychus' post='1042702' date='Aug 13 2006, 04:36 PM']I guess SIMPLE reading, like ...
Is asking too much of Phatmassers.

Sorry for stressing your brains too much.

[i]{ in case people are still confused, AD 32 - AD 100 is the Apostolic age. AD 250 is as far removed from Jesus, as we are from George Washington. ++ a little help for those that were educated under the new math programs...++ }[/i][/quote]I'm actually a bit confused about your mention of 250 AD. The first and only date mentioned in this thread was regarding images from the second century, in Akalyte's post. For someone who was apparently educated under the "old math programs", you should know that 250 AD is in the [i]third[/i] century.

I do hope you will drop the patronizing tone. It neither facilitates dialogue, nor does it reflect Christian charity.
[quote name='Eutychus' post='1042702' date='Aug 13 2006, 04:36 PM'][i]...by then, the pagan rites and usages were already becoming established as the new communities having virtually zero Jewish messianics were formed and grew...[/i][/quote]
If someone is concerned about the corruption of Christianity by the non-Jewish converts, wouldn't it be natural to show similar skepticism of the arguments of St. Paul when he stood against the judaizers (cf [url="http://www.usccb.org/nab/bible/acts/acts15.htm#v1"]Acts 15:1ff[/url])?

[Socrates]

[quote name='Socrates' post='1042887' date='Aug 13 2006, 07:19 PM']
The Second Commandment was from the Book of Exodus in the Old Testament, and was clearly forbidding the worship of pagan idols.
However, in the same Book of Exodus, God commands the making of two golden cherubs for the Ark of the Covenant. (Exodus 37:8-9) Obviously, it was not the mere making of "graven images" in itself that was forbidden, but the worshipping of idols.
[/quote]
Oops, I see OLAM Dad beat me to this. (Though Eutychus has not responded, choosing instead to simply throw out more of his customary silly insults.)

[CoffeeCatholic]

So, if Jesus really hated images of his face, why did he give us at least one directly?

Remember Veronica?

oh, and the shroud of Turin, but considering the possibility of falsification and that it's not mentioned in the Bible, i won't use that as an example.

ps: Prior to most people being able to write, simple drawing were common to explain a story. However, simple drawing are also easily lost, destroyed or otherwise unable to stand the test of time. Until better materials were used later in the centuries after Christ's death, and because of the lack of proper materials in Israel at that time, it is not unheard of to think that probably there were other artifacts of Biblical art of that period, but because of the small and increasingly persecuted size of the original Christian following they're missing. Along with this, most of the people had seen Jesus face to face somehow, and anticipated the second coming to be rather soon so they felt no need to spend time sculpting Him for later generations but rather converting the pagans of THAT generation.

and finally: Luther made up that second commandment, purely out of spite of a few Catholic churches spending too much of their money on pretty things and not enough on the poor people. Yes, they should have been giving their money to feed people first, but that's no excuse to go changing a 6000 year old document to fit whatever you please!