From Michael Ruse:
It doesn’t come as a surprise that Christians in the 4th-7th c. would — from a mostly Roman and Levantine background of the Byzantine Empire — make mosaics, frescoes, and images to represent important Scriptural messages and beliefs and teachings from Apostolic tradition.
As Metropolitan Hilarion explains in this chapter, Orthodoxy has passed through a period of iconoclasm (destruction of icons). Likewise, we might be going through a similar kind of iconoclasm of traditions, beliefs and ideas that we thought couldn’t ever be challenged seriously or changed.
There are more than a few sections in the book that cover different topics that survive in Byzantium’s entrancing iconographical tradition:
1. The Icons of the 4th-6th c. and Sinai’s Encaustic Icons
2. The Canonical Image of Christ, Image Not-Made-By-Hands that is mentioned in the Teaching of Addai, and its connection to the Shroud of Turin
3. Iconoclasm and the Veneration of Icons that has received probably most of its inspiration from Islamic mindset. But there are deep theological currents behind the bloody conflict
4. Decorative Painting and Basic Iconographical Types
5. Byzantine Mosaics and Frescoes, 4th-9th c., 9th-14th c.
6. Book Miniatures
Join us all this Saturday at 4:00 and immerse yourself in Orthodoxy’s iconographical tradition; this class, and the next several classes) will be taught by an expert in the field of iconographical tradition.