of Christ's appearance, though any historical value.
The most fanu people of Jerusal the 12th century. ' There '. ' Lentulus, ' a
, beautiful, with :
the letter of ' Lentulus, president of the
the Koman .Senate, a forgery of about
appeared :
ppos' ■ ■ ■ - ■ " ■ '
venerable countenance, which they love and fear. His hair is waving and crisp, somewhat wine- coloured, and glittering as it flows down over his shoulders, with a parting in the middle, after the manner of the Nazarenes. His brow is smooth and most serene ; his face is without any spot or wrinkle, and glows with a delicate flush. His nose anil mouth are of faultless contour ; the beard is abundant, and hazel coloured like his hair, not long but forked. His eyes are prominent, brilliant, and change their colour. In den
with
but oftentimes t
His hands a
imbs are beautiful to look upon. In speech he is grave, reserved, modest ; and he is fair among the children of men.* This beautiful description was doubtless influenced by earlier works of art and enrbodied earlier traditions, as that, for instance, of St. John Damascene, the champion of images against Leo the Isaurian (c. 730) and the last of the Greek Fathers ; he described our Lord as beauti- ful and tall, with fair and slightly curling locks, dark eyebrows which met in the middle, an oval countenance, a pale com- plexion, olive-tinted, and of the colour of wheat, with eyes bright like His Mother's, a slightly stooping attitude, with a sweet and sonorous voice and a look expressive of patience nobleness, and wisdom (J. Dam. 0pp. i. 34U). In another place (id. 630) he indignantly reproaches the Manichees with the view once held by earlier Fathers, that the Lord waa lacking in beauty.
Thus we may safely conclude that there is no authentic portrait or description of Christ, while al 'tt'n„ tl at tie tyje a eitelfoi o e tl a a tl o a 1 years all tl at t CI ta ca le le s nee t tl at of a pe fe 1 1 m ty in 1 cl so fa a e coul I po t ay it tl e fulness of God 1 ell lol ly
( <103) g es for
316
deU Ilustr b hi o„t
CHRISTIAN
CHRISTIAN
V el Hfl I U- M ther Srtfr rf f ( (1 -il books c
CHRISTIAN (The Name) -The v oi 1 Cln i ti m
II in tl c N r ( 1 Ij 1 1 V n " 2fa 8 (al out 20 jtais Htoi) 1114 riie luthor of Vet
illudes to It 1 1 1 tieatise(Ll fa )
li)we\ei 1 utt til of le us i tnti
1 lent vlio e 111 tltist is tolouie I 1 j
me experiences auu lermiuoiogy of uiie Aposiouc age. In some other passages where it is apparently luentioned {e.g. Ac 5", Ja 2'), the ' name ' is not ' Christian ' but ' Christ,' -while the references in Josephus {Ant. XVIII. iii. 3) and the Pompeii in- scription {C'lL iv. 679), it may be noted in passing, are too uncertain to be used as evidence for the title. Other and later inscriptions, however, are accessible.
For the origin and primitive usage of the term we are thus thrown back upon the three lirst- named passages. Of these, the fontal reference in Ac IP" e.\plains that the name by which the re- ligion of Jesus has been known for nineteen cen- turies was coined by the pagan slang of Antiocli on the Orontes, a city which, like Alexandria, was noted for its nicknames. Yet the title is not a rough sobriquet. It expresses a certain contempt, but not derision, though .St. Luke does not inform us whether it was coined by tin- m-l, ,,i l,\ -M\ein- ment officials. 'Christian \ ii'l'ly
means 'a follower of ('liii~t, ni i , •nius
or Heroclktyius denotes 'afnlldH.r ^i i-iiii-.m of Pompey ' or ' of Herod.' ' Christ ' wiis thus taken as a proper name. It meant no more to these Syrian pagans than some leader of revolt or ob- scure religious fanatic in Palestine. His name was ever on the lips of a certain set of people, and it was but natural that these should, for the sake of convenience, be distinguished as ' Christ's ad- herents ' or the tit it- was ai^ili'- Antioi:li «i new religii
( hii tians.' Nor could the title have been coined 1 J the le^vs, who would never have admitted that lesu of Nazareth was the ' Christ.' To tliem 1 li X eri in Jesus were ' Nazarenes ' or ' Gali- 1 1 was the pagan community of Antioch th It would invent and apply this title. Now u implies life. Titles are not required unless I intil t definite, energetic fact emerges. And I I, nt td evidently felt for some such designation I C hristian' arose from two causes: {a) from the conspicuous extension of the new movement tliioughout the country and the city, and (6) more jarticulaily from the predominance of Gentile Chnstians, who could not be provisionally grouped, like most of their Jewish fellow-believers, with the community and worship of Judaism. Tliere V IS T, Je\iish ghetto at Antioch. But the local, heterogeneous paganism yielded an incomparably iicher harvest to the efibrts of the Christian ir,c ts so that the general success of the move- iiitiit piodnced, for the first time, a noticeable alteiation in the proportions of Jewish and Gentile ( hri-,tians — so noticeable, indeed, that, as the his- tonin joints out, it necessitated an attempt on the ])drt of the outside public to verbally cla.ssify the adherents of the new faith. The significance of thi> step is patent to the historian. He signal- izes me crisis. The Christianity he knew was overwhelmingly a Gentile Christianity, and in Ac 11-^ he is keen to mark its d^but, as well as to