纪录片《大英博物馆世界简史》 044辛顿圣玛丽肖像(2)（在线收听）

But for the first two or three Christian centuries,the very idea of looking on the face of God,even of a god in human form,would have been inconceivable.Firstly because there was no record of Christ's appearance that artists could have based a likeness on,but even more because the Jewish inheritance of a god to be worshipped in spirit and in truth,but emphatically not to be represented in art,inhibited the early Christians from any such attempt.Yet now we all live in a world where the likeness of Christ is commonplace,a face that can be instantly recognised.How did we get there? The decision to try to show the face of Christ-probably taken because the Roman elite were so used to seeing their gods in statues,paintings and mosaics-was both a major theological step and one of the decisive turning-points in European visual culture.

在基督教兴起后的前两三百年里，望向神的脸庞，甚至仅仅是神以人的形象出现这件事本身，都是不可想象的。首先，没有关于基督外貌的记录，艺术家们没有创作依据。而更重要的原因在于，犹太人的传统 是用灵魂和真心去崇拜神，而非用艺术来表现神。因此早期的基督徒从 未尝试制作任何形式的基督像。但到了今天，基督像已随处可见，人们一眼就能辨出。这样的形象又缘何而起呢？很可能是由于罗马上层社会早已习惯用雕像、绘画及马赛克图案表现罗马神祇，因而人们最终决定 描画基督面容。这是神学上的重大一步，也是欧洲视觉文化的一个重要转折点。

This face of Christ from Dorset was made in the last century of Roman rule in Britain,which was in many ways a golden age.It was a lavish world,in which the ruling class could spend enormous sums of money,decorating their villas and putting their wealth on display in the form of spectacular tableware.In the cases around us you can see the hoards of silver vessels,spoons and even pepper pots,like the ones I talked about last week,that show a society that seems to have accommodated itself comfortably to both paganism and Christianity.The great silver dish found at Mildenhall in Suffolk shows Bacchus drunkenly cavorting with pliant nymphs,while the spoons found in the same hoard carry Christian symbols.A pagan dish with Christian spoons-that pretty well sums up Britain at this period,and it wouldn't have disconcerted anybody at the time.In Britain of the third and fourth century,Christ is merely one god among many others.

多塞特的基督像制作于罗马统治英国的最后百年之内。从很多方面来讲，这都是一个黄金时代。当时的社会物资极其丰富，统治阶层能花大笔的钱来装修自己的别墅，购买精美奢华的餐具。基督像附近的展柜 里陈列着许多银花瓶、银勺和胡椒罐。这些物品表明，当时的社会对基督教及其他宗教都能愉快地接纳。比如在萨福克郡米尔登霍尔发现的大银盘上，有喝醉了的酒神巴克科斯与柔美的仙女一起跳跃的图案，而同一地点出土的勺子上带有基督教的标记。异教的盘子配上基督银勺，这很好地概括了当时英国的情况，且在当时不会让任何人不快。在三世纪至四世纪的英国，基督只是人们信仰的众多神祇之一。