Beschreibung:
Using images of Jonah in early Christian funerary art as a case study, this article explores questions of reception and the nature of the relationship between the Hebrew Bible and images of Jonah, especially as they appear in the Roman catacombs. I will argue that while the images do not represent a straightforward interpretation of the biblical text qua text, this reception of Jonah is not as divorced from the text as one might suspect. Indeed, both the biblical book of Jonah, in particular the psalm uttered in Chapter 2, and the funerary images highlight Jonah’s position on borders between real and imagined social spaces, chaos and order, and death and life. As such, the images, when read as an entanglement of text, art, and ritual, reflect and support socio-religious crossings between Romans, early Christians, and Jews as well as ritual crossings between the living and the dead.