The Kimbell Museum

We recently had a chance to visit an exhibit of "Early Christian Art" at the Kimbell Museum in Ft. Worth. If you are in the area, I would recommend it. The exhibit showed art from around 300-400AD, when Chrsitianity became the state religion of Rome. It was a fascinating look at the theology and ideas that were central to Chrsitians then, and how little has changed for us today.

One thing I found interesting was their extreme interest in baptism. Many of the images on their art recreated stories of Noah and the ark and Jonah and the big fish. The sculpture above shows the story of Jonah. Two parts of the story are shown; Jonah is being thrown out of the boat (on the right) and being vomited out on the left. The artists used the mythical Greek sea creature ketos in the Jonah story. "Ketos" is apparently Greek for sea creature or whale. Interesting.

But again, the early Christians used these stories to illustrate the ideas of salvation, resurrection, and baptism. They were concerned about the same things we are today...