"Picturing the Bible explores the origins and emergence of Christian art from its very beginnings in the third century A.D., when Christianity was an outlawed, clandestine faith, through the fourth and fifth centuries, which saw it rise to become the state religion of the Roman Empire. What images did the early Christians use to express their faith? Were they the first believers to part with Mosaic law by creating "graven images"? What Jewish and pagan sources did they look to for inspiration, and what new meanings did they invest these subjects with? When did they begin to depict the life of Jesus? This illustrated book addresses these and other questions both through new discoveries and a reassessment of older evidence." "The essays are complemented by extensive new research on more than one hundred objects, drawn from major museums of America, Europe, and the Middle East. Frescoes, marble sculpture and sarcophagi, silver vessels and reliquaries, carved ivories, decorated crosses, and illuminated Bibles are all illustrated in new color photographs, providing an unprecedented introduction to the earliest Christian art."--Jacket.