Jesus v. Hercules

In The Clash of Gods (6-8), Thomas Mathewes describes the “staggering” revolution that took place in late antiquity when Christianity overthrew pagan art:

In effect, a highly nuanced visual language that had been developed over the course of a thousand years to express man’s sense of cosmic order, to deal with the forces beyond his control, to carry his aspirations and frustrations, to organize the seasons of his life and the patterns of his social intercourse, was suddenly discarded. The gods and goddesses, nymphs and heroes were roughly thrown aside; their mutilated and decapitated statues were interred in the foundations of Christian churches. Their battered remains still gave us eloquent testimony of the violence of their downfall.

They were placed with “a new language of images” that had been “laboriously composed, selected, assembled, rehearsed, and refined. The criteria of this process were many, but the inherent strength of the new image must have been one of the most decisive considerations in its eventual success. The new images should not be thought of as simply filling up the voids left by the overthrow of the old, but as actively competing with the old images. The lanky Good Shepherd of Early Christian art wrestled with the muscular Hercules and won.”