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The Clash of the Gods: A Reinterpretation of Early Christian Art. By THOMAS F. MATHEWS. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1993. x + 223 pp.
Although most suspect that images of gods and goddesses have strong influence on their worshipers, Mathews claims that no historian has carefully investigated what effect they have. Yet those images show whether the believers saw the divine beings as "warm and sympathetic or cold and remote, direct and forceful or dreamy and nebulous" (10-11). During this century, the revolution in early Christian art, particularly in images of Jesus Christ, has been interpreted within a theory which proposed that the Christian deity was depicted through imperial models. Ernst Kantorowicz, Andreas Alfoedi, and Andre Grabar developed the position. The latter's Christian Iconography: A Study of Its Origins (1968) most cogently argues the case.
Yet of the one thousand representations of Christ which Mathews has viewed, only two in his opinion employ strong imperial features. That lack of imperial imagery should have been expected since the relationship of Christianity and emperors had not been calm and supportive; even...