But for the first two or three Christian centuries,the very idea of looking on the face of God,even of a god in human form,would have been inconceivable.Firstly because there was no record of Christ's appearance that artists could have based a likeness on,but even more because the Jewish inheritance of a god to be worshipped in spirit and in truth,but emphatically not to be represented in art,inhibited the early Christians from any such attempt.Yet now we all live in a world where the likeness of Christ is commonplace,a face that can be instantly recognised.How did we get there? The decision to try to show the face of Christ-probably taken because the Roman elite were so used to seeing their gods in statues,paintings and mosaics-was both a major theological step and one of the decisive turning-points in European visual culture.
在基督教興起后的前兩三百年里，望向神的臉龐，甚至僅僅是神以人的形象出現這件事本身，都是不可想象的。首先，沒有關于基督外貌的記錄，藝術家們沒有創作依據。而更重要的原因在于，猶太人的傳統 是用靈魂和真心去崇拜神，而非用藝術來表現神。因此早期的基督徒從 未嘗試制作任何形式的基督像。但到了今天，基督像已隨處可見，人們一眼就能辨出。這樣的形象又緣何而起呢？很可能是由于羅馬上層社會早已習慣用雕像、繪畫及馬賽克圖案表現羅馬神祇，因而人們最終決定 描畫基督面容。這是神學上的重大一步，也是歐洲視覺文化的一個重要轉折點。
This face of Christ from Dorset was made in the last century of Roman rule in Britain,which was in many ways a golden age.It was a lavish world,in which the ruling class could spend enormous sums of money,decorating their villas and putting their wealth on display in the form of spectacular tableware.In the cases around us you can see the hoards of silver vessels,spoons and even pepper pots,like the ones I talked about last week,that show a society that seems to have accommodated itself comfortably to both paganism and Christianity.The great silver dish found at Mildenhall in Suffolk shows Bacchus drunkenly cavorting with pliant nymphs,while the spoons found in the same hoard carry Christian symbols.A pagan dish with Christian spoons-that pretty well sums up Britain at this period,and it wouldn't have disconcerted anybody at the time.In Britain of the third and fourth century,Christ is merely one god among many others.
多塞特的基督像制作于羅馬統治英國的最后百年之內。從很多方面來講，這都是一個黃金時代。當時的社會物資極其豐富，統治階層能花大筆的錢來裝修自己的別墅，購買精美奢華的餐具。基督像附近的展柜 里陳列著許多銀花瓶、銀勺和胡椒罐。這些物品表明，當時的社會對基督教及其他宗教都能愉快地接納。比如在薩福克郡米爾登霍爾發現的大銀盤上，有喝醉了的酒神巴克科斯與柔美的仙女一起跳躍的圖案，而同一地點出土的勺子上帶有基督教的標記。異教的盤子配上基督銀勺，這很好地概括了當時英國的情況，且在當時不會讓任何人不快。在三世紀至四世紀的英國，基督只是人們信仰的眾多神祇之一。
來源:可可英語 http://www.ccdyzl.cn/Article/201506/381612.shtml
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