What Are The Images On The Ignatius Bible?
I have a beautiful Ignatius RSV Bible. It has my name inscribed on it, but what really stands out are the images on the cover. You have Jesus in the center, but then you also have a man, a lion, an ox and an eagle surrounding him. What do these signify? In the Old Testament, these four images are found in one scene described in Ezekiel 1, which reads,
In the middle of it was something like four living creatures. This was their appearance: they were of human form. 6 Each had four faces, and each of them had four wings. ... 10 As for the appearance of their faces: the four had the face of a human being, the face of a lion on the right side, the face of an ox on the left side, and the face of an eagle; 11 such were their faces.In Ezekiel 10:20 we learn that cherubim, or angels, were being described. Some theologians take these descriptions to correspond to some attribute the cherubim have. Man for the power of rationality, the lion for majesty, the ox for strength and the eagle for agility or freedom of movement. For a few reasons found here, many church fathers associated the four evangelists or the four gospels with these descriptions, since each gospel emphasizes a different aspect of Jesus. St. Irenaeus says that John emphasizes Jesus' kingly sonship, so associates it with the kingly lion. Luke begins with a sacrifical offering of Zechariah, and so associates it with a sacrificial bull. Matthew emphasizes the genealogy and so associates with a man, and Mark emphasizes the coming of the Holy Spirit and so is associated with an eagle. Other fathers have given the associations in a different order, but that's the jist of why we see these images on the Ignatius Bible.
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