Living Water: Images, Symbols, and Settings of Early Christian Baptism (Repost)

This study was prompted by the conviction that examination of early Christian art and architecture is essential to scholarly comprehension of how early believers practiced and understood their religious faith. In particular, I believe that a study of liturgical theology or ritual practice that focuses only on textual evidence and does not incorporate consideration of visual art and physical environment attends to only half of the story. At the same time, visual artifacts always are embedded in a context and serve a special purpose in that context. In many cases they fulill a practical function. Oten they also transmit messages or meaning. hus, in addition to enriching such work by adding non-textual data and dimension to the scholarly enterprise, the joint consideration
of material and documentary data reveals instances of discontinuity as well as complementarity, makes the story more complex, and demonstrates that historians can learn much by studying these two bodies of evidence in tandem. A study of early Christian art and architecture is immensely enhanced by knowledge of the history of theology and liturgy; at the same time a study of early Christian worship and doctrine is illuminated by attention to the physical settings and pictorial expression of the lived faith.