Tuesday, June 18, 2019

The Early Christian Use of the Staurogram in Manuscripts: A Visual Reference to Christ's Crucifixion?


Commenting on one plausible origin for the early Christian use of the Staurogram in manuscripts, Larry Hurtado wrote:

The tau-rho device may have been appropriated by Christians originally, not (or not simply) on the basis of numerical symbolism, but because it could function as a visual reference to the crucified Jesus. This is not an original suggestion, but was proposed earlier, notably by Aland and then supported strongly by Dinkler. In this proposal, the tau-rho device was appropriated initially because it could serve as a stylized visual reference to (and representation of) Jesus on the cross. The tau is confirmed as an early symbol of the cross, and it is proposed that the loop of the superimposed rho in the tau-rho suggested the head of a crucified figure. This very simply pictogram-reference to the crucifixion of Jesus fits with the simplicity and lack of decorative detail that characterize earliest Christian art. As Robin Margaret Jensen notes in her recent excellent introduction to early Christian art, the simple nature of the visual expressions of faith in the earliest material ‘suggests that communication was valued above artistic quality or refinement and that the emphasis was on the meaning behind the images more than on their presentation’. Commendably (and unusually among historians of early Christian art), Jensen takes note of the instances of the tau-rho device in the early papyri to which I draw attention in this essay, characterizing the combined letters as forming ‘a kind of pictogram, the image of a man’s head upon a cross’, and observing that the device ‘seems to be an actual reference to the cross of crucifixion . . ‘ . . . If [Dinkler’s] proposal is correct (and if the common dating of the papyri in question is correct), the tau-rho represents a visual reference to Jesus’ crucifixion about 150 to 200 years earlier than the late fourth- or fifth-century depictions that are usually taken by art historians as the earliest. (Larry W. Hurtado “The Staurogram in Early Christian Manuscripts” in Texts and Artefacts: Selected Essays on Textual Criticism and Early Christian Manuscripts [Library of New Testament Studies 584; London: T&T Clark, 2019], 152-53; click here for an online version of this essay)