Fourth Century Christian Mosaics from Syria<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Whilst in Fort Worth in November, I had the time between lecturing to go see the various exhibits at the Kimble Art Museum because I had heard about a\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"noindex, follow\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Fourth Century Christian Mosaics from Syria\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Whilst in Fort Worth in November, I had the time between lecturing to go see the various exhibits at the Kimble Art Museum because I had heard about a\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/bibleandculture\/2021\/12\/13\/fourth-century-christian-mosaic-from-syria\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Bible and Culture\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" 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{"id":40907,"date":"2021-12-13T01:19:28","date_gmt":"2021-12-13T06:19:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/bibleandculture\/?p=40907"},"modified":"2021-12-07T15:43:38","modified_gmt":"2021-12-07T20:43:38","slug":"fourth-century-christian-mosaic-from-syria","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/bibleandculture\/2021\/12\/13\/fourth-century-christian-mosaic-from-syria\/","title":{"rendered":"Fourth Century Christian Mosaics from Syria"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Mosaics were popular throughout the Greco-Roman world, before and during the Christian era. what is interesting is that in Christian homes, and later in churches as well, their morals meant that many of the mythological mosaic motifs that frequent pagan homes such as in Pompeii were avoided. Instead, Christians developed their own symbolic iconography as we will now demonstrate.\u00a0 These mosaics are from an excavated household in Homs in Syria and are from the 4th or 5th centuries when Christianity was no longer an illicit religion and could be practiced openly.<\/p>\n

$\"\"$ <\/a><\/p>\n

In general, you would not depict Christian saints or Biblical figures on floors, as it was thought to be disrespectful to be treading on them. So they ended up on walls, and later in stained glass windows.\u00a0 What is missing in this collection is a mosaic of the phoenix, which for obvious reasons became the symbol of the resurrected Christ.\u00a0 In short, in Christian homes, the symbolic mosaics were not mere household decorations with no message, rather they were an indirect and subtle way of telling the Gospel and Christian story.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"