Notice, in the frontispiece to the
1611 King James Bible pictured here, the four
seated men outlined in yellow. Each one
is holding a pen, and each one has a companion:
a man, a lion, an ox, and an eagle.
They represent the four authors of the Gospels – Matthew, Mark, Luke,
and John.
Very
frequently, when the four Evangelists are pictured in manuscripts of the Gospels, each one is accompanied by
his symbolic representative – A man (or angel) accompanies Matthew, a lion accompanies
Mark; an ox accompanies Luke, and an eagle accompanies John. These particular symbols correspond to the faces of
the cherubim in visions found in the Biblical books of Ezekiel and Revelation:
In Ezekiel
1:10, as the prophet describes a vision of the throne-chariot of God, revealed
as the sovereign Ruler of all nations, he states that each of the four living
creatures moving the throne (some interpreters might say that the
creatures themselves are the throne) had four faces: “Each had the face of a man; each of the four
had the face of a lion on the right side, each of the four had the face of an
ox on the left side, and each of the four had the face of an eagle.”
In Revelation 4:7, as John
describes a vision of God’s heavenly throne, he states that four living
creatures were there: “The first living
creature was like a lion, the second living creature like a calf, the third
living creature had a face like a man, and the fourth living creature was like
a flying eagle.” These seem to be the
same angelic beings described by Ezekiel, perceived by John in a form that is
different but nevertheless recognizable. Ezekiel called them cherubim; John referred to them as living creatures, or zōē, the Greek word from which we get the word “zoo.”
In the 180’s, the Christian bishop
Irenaeus of Lyons (in
east-central France; back then it was Lugdunum in Gaul) proposed that the
fourfold pattern of angelic faces implied that God similarly ordained that four
Gospels would be written to describe the incarnation of Christ. In
Against Heresies,
Book Three (preserved in Latin, but composed in Greek), 11:8, Irenaeus explained the basis for this idea in
some detail, beginning as follows:
“It is not possible that the
Gospels can be either more or fewer in number than they are. For since there are four zones of the world in
which we live, and four principal winds, while the Church is scattered
throughout all the world, and the pillar and ground of the Church is the
Gospel and the spirit of life; it is fitting that she should have four pillars,
breathing out eternal life on every side, and endowing men with new life.”
He seems to
be using two analogies, both drawn from Scriptural models. First, in
Ezekiel 37, in a vision in which
God miraculously revives the people of
Israel
– pictured as a valley of dry bones which, in the vision, stand up like a
skeleton-army and are then clothed with flesh – the breath of life is brought
to them
“from the four winds.” Second,
in
Revelation 21, as John records his vision of the heavenly city, New
Jerusalem, he mentions its shape: “The
city is laid out as a square; its length is as great as its breadth . . . Its
length, breadth, and height are equal.” Like the Holy of Holies, it thus has four corners at its base.
Irenaeus
continues: “From this fact, it is
obvious that the Word – the Designer of everything, who sits upon the cherubim,
and in whom are all things – He who was revealed to mankind – has given us the
Gospel under four aspects, but bound together by one Spirit. Just as David says [in Psalm 80:1] when
asking for God to manifest His presence, ‘You who dwell between the cherubim,
shine forth!’ For the cherubim were
four-faced, and their faces represented how the Son of God was
revealed. For it says, ‘The first living
creature was like a lion,’ symbolizing His effective working, His leadership,
and royal authority. ‘The second was
like a calf,’ symbolizing His sacrificial and priestly role. ‘The third had, as it were, the face of a
man,’ which clearly describes his coming as a human being. ‘The fourth was like a flying eagle,’
indicating the gift of the Spirit hovering with His wings over the Church.”
So far, Irenaeus’
main point is that a divine pattern, in which men (namely, Ezekiel and John)
have been brought into God’s presence with four cherubim in heaven, is
expressed when men read about God’s presence in the four Gospels on earth. But which angelic face represents which
Gospel? Irenaeus proceeds to resolve
this question:
“Thus the
Gospels fit the same pattern shown by the creatures among which Jesus Christ is
seated. For the Gospel according to John
describes his original, effectual, glorious generation from the Father, as he
declares [in John 1:], ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with
God, and the Word was God.’ And [in John
1:3], ‘All things were made by Him, and without Him was nothing made.’ And for this reason, that Gospel is full of
all confidence, for such is His person.
“But Luke’s
account, emphasizing priestly responsibility, commenced with Zacharias the
priest offering sacrifice to God. For now
the fatted calf was prepared, about to be slaughtered due to the return of the
younger son. [Irenaeus is referring to
the fatted calf in the parable of the Prodigal Son, in Luke 16:23 – a parable
which only Luke has preserved.]
“Matthew
relates His generation as a man, saying, ‘The book of the generation of Jesus
Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham,’ [in Mt. 1:1] and also [in Mt. 1:18], ‘The birth of Jesus Christ was as
follows.’ This is therefore the Gospel represented
by a man, and the thematic depiction of a humble and meek man is maintained through the
entire Gospel.
“Mark,
however, commences with the spirit of prophecy descending from on high to men,
saying [in Mark 1:1 ~ notice the textual variants here!], ‘The beginning of the
Gospel of Jesus Christ, as it is written in Isaiah the prophet’ – indicating
the winged aspect of the Gospel. And for
this reason, he made a summarized and cursory narrative, for such is the prophetical theme.
“Now, before Moses, the Word of God personally
conversed with the patriarchs, in accordance with Hid divinity and glory. Under the Law, He ordained a priestly and
formal order of worship. Afterwards,
when He had become man for us, He sent the gift of the heavenly Spirit over all
the earth, protecting us with His wings.
In this respect the course followed by the Son of God is like the form
of the living creatures, and the form of the living creatures is like the
character of the Gospel. The living
creatures are squarely arrayed, and the Gospel is squarely arrayed, and so is
the course that God has taken. For there
have been four principal covenants given to the human race: first, before the Flood, under Adam; second,
after the Flood, under Noah; third was the giving of the Law, under Moses. And the fourth is the one which renovates
mankind, and sums up everything else through the Gospel, carrying men and
bearing them upon its wings into the heavenly kingdom.”
Irenaeus
thus links John with the image of the confident lion, Matthew with the image of
the humble man, Luke with the image of the sacrificial ox, and Mark with the
image of the speedy eagle.
 |
Augustine of Hippo
(Hippo was a city in North Africa.) |
Augustine,
writing in North Africa in the year 400, agreed that the
four cherubim establish a pattern of divine expression that is maintained in
the divine inspiration of the four Gospels, but he did not agree completely
with Irenaeus about which Gospel went with which image. In The
Harmony of the Gospels, Book One, 6:9, Augustine wrote as follows:
“It appears
to me that among the various parties who have interpreted the living creatures
in Revelation as a symbolic pattern of the four Evangelists, those who have
taken the lion to point to Matthew, the man to Mark, the calf to Luke, and the
eagle to John, have made a more reasonable application of the figures than
those who have assigned the man to Matthew, the eagle to Mark, and the lion to
John. For the second set of
identifications has been chosen in accordance with just the beginnings of the
books, rather than according to the complete design of each Gospel in full
view, which is what should be the chief consideration.
“For surely
it is much more appropriate that the writer who has brought the kingly
character of Christ to our attention should be understood to be represented by the
lion. Accordingly, we find the lion
mentioned in a reference to the royal tribe itself, in that passage of Revelation [5:5] where it is said, ‘The lion of the tribe
of Judah has
prevailed.’ And in Matthew’s account,
the wise men are recorded to have come from the east, searching for the King,
in order worship Him whose birth was revealed to them by the star. There, too, Herod, who was also a king, is
stated to have been afraid of the royal Child, and it is reported that he
killed so many little children in order to ensure that the one might be
slain.
“No one
questions that Luke is signified by the calf, which refers to the pre-eminent
sacrifice made by the priest. For in
that Gospel, the narration begins with Zacharias the priest. It also mentions the relationship between Mary
and Elisabeth, and it records the performance of the proper ceremonies [i.e.,
circumcision] being carried out by the earthly priesthood in the case of the
infant Christ. With careful examination,
we would notice a variety of other points in this Gospel which made it apparent
that Luke’s purpose was to deal with the role of the priest.
“Accordingly,
it follows that Mark is plainly indicated by the man among the four living
creatures. For he has undertaken neither
to describe the royal lineage, nor to go into detail about the priesthood, either
concerning priestly status or consecration; he addresses the things which the
man Christ did.
“Those
three living creatures – lion, man, and calf – have their course upon this
earth. Likewise, those three Evangelists
chiefly describe the things which Christ did in the flesh, and report the
precepts which He delivered to men who bear the burden of the flesh, in order
to instruct them in the rightful exercise of this mortal life. John, on the other hand, soars like an eagle
above the clouds of human weakness, and gazes upon the light of permanent truth
with those keenest and steadiest eyes of the heart.”
“There are four rivers out of Eden, four quarters of the world, four seasons of the year, four watches in the night . . . . and four spiritual creatures which were composed of four faces, signifying the coming of the Messiah. One had the face of a man, because Christ was born a man in Bethlehem,
as Matthew teaches. One had the face of
a lion, as Mark proclaims him coming up from the Jordan, a lion king, as also
somewhere it is written, ‘The Lord has come up as a lion from the Jordan.’
[Epiphanius is recollecting Jeremiah 49:19 and 50:44, but these passages refer to
personifications of Edom
and Babylon, not to the Lord.]
 |
Jerome, prolific writer
and translator. |
"One had the face of an ox, as Luke proclaims
(and not him only, but also the other Evangelists) about He who, at the
appointed time of the ninth hour, like an ox on behalf of the world, was
offered up on the cross. One had the
face of an eagle, as John proclaims the Word who came from heaven and was made
flesh and flew to heaven like an eagle after the resurrection with the Godhead.”
The influential
translator-scholar Jerome adopted the same identifications that Epiphanius
proposed. In the preface to his
Commentary on Matthew, Jerome wrote as follows:
“The book
of Ezekiel demonstrates that these four Gospels had been predicted much
earlier. Its first vision has the
following description:
‘And in the midst
there was a likeness of four animals.
Their countenances were the face of a man and the face of a lion and the
face of a calf and the face of an eagle.’
The first face of a man represents Matthew, who began his narrative as
though about a man:
‘The book of the
generation of Jesus Christ the son of David, the son of Abraham.’ The second, Mark, in whom the voice of a lion
roaring in the wilderness is heard:
‘A
voice of one shouting in the desert:
Prepare the way of the Lord; make His paths straight.’ The third, of the calf, which prefigures that
the evangelist Luke began with Zacharias the priest. The fourth, John the evangelist, who, having
taken up eagle’s wings and hastening toward higher matters, discusses the Word
of God.” [This rendering was based on pages 55-56 of Thomas P. Scheck’s
Saint Jerome: Commentary on Matthew, Copyright © 2008 The Catholic University of
America Press.]
Jerome’s
explanation – Matthew=man, Mark=lion, Luke=ox, John=eagle – was applied by most
artists from the 400s onward, whether they were illustrating manuscripts or decorating churches.
This is why these symbols often accompany the Evangelists in miniatures (framed
illustrations) in medieval Gospels-manuscripts.
(The term “miniature” in this context does not have anything to do with the size of the
picture; the origin of the term seems to have something to do with the use of deep
red ink saturated with lead, called minium,
to sketch out the framework and outlines of the picture before the more
detailed drawing or painting was done.)
Sometimes, all four symbolic creatures are depicted with
wings (as in the
Lindisfarne Gospels). And, sometimes,
all four images have human bodies, and only the faces are different, with the result that Mark’s symbol looks like a Kzin,
Luke’s symbol looks like a minotaur, and John’s symbol looks a bit like the
ancient Egyptian deity Horus. Occasionally,
in Armenian manuscripts of the Gospels, the
initial letter at the beginning of a Gospel will itself be transformed into the
Gospel-symbol.
 |
This preparatory sketch
of Matthew in the
George Grey Gospels
(GA 1273) shows the
use of minium. |
Although practically all Greek manuscripts that contain the
Gospel-symbols use Jerome’s arrangement, in a few Old Latin copies, Mark is
represented by the eagle, and John is represented by the lion. This may be an effect of the “Western” order
of the Gospels, in which the accounts by the two apostles (Matthew and John)
were placed before the accounts by the apostles’ assistants (Luke and
Mark).
One possible explanation for this
is that somewhere in the Old Latin tradition, the Gospels were in the order
Matthew-John-Luke-Mark, accompanied accordingly by the symbols man-eagle-ox-lion, but when Vulgate copies invaded, so to speak, copyists
conformed their local
texts to the Vulgate standard but did not change the order of the illustrations. This has resulted in yet a fourth arrangement
(consisting of Irenaeus’ identifications, but not in the “Western” order),
found in the
Book of Durrow (made in about 675): Matthew=man, Mark=eagle, Luke=ox, and John=lion.
Another possibility is that the arrangement found in the
Book of Durrow represents the application of Irenaeus’
idea about how the Gospels
correspond to the four faces of the cherubim. Before Jerome produced the Vulgate translation, Fortunatianus, bishop of Aquileia (in upper eastern Italy) from 343 to 355, expressed the same idea in his Latin commentary on the Gospels. For a long time, scholars assumed that his commentary no longer existed, but a copy was recently discovered; its contents are being prepared for publication by Lukas
J. Dorfbauer.
On fol. 10v of the only surviving
copy of Fortunatianus’ commentary, Fortunatianus offers an interesting casual
comment: “Non inmerito, ut supra exposuimus, aquilae gerit imaginem, quia eum ad
caelum volasse demonstrate,” that is, “It is not without reason that he
[Mark] is holding the image of the eagle, as I explained before, because he
declares that he [Jesus] flew up to heaven.”
This not only shows that Fortunatianus assigned the eagle-symbol to
Mark, but also seems to indicate that Fortunatianus’ text of Mark – a witness
as old as Codex Sinaiticus – included 16:19.
Earlier in his commentary, Fortunatianus identifies the symbols as
follows: Matthew=man, John=lion,
Mark=eagle, and Luke=ox.
 |
The Evangelists'
symbols in the
Book of Durrow.
Similar imagery
is used in the
Book of Birr,
but the symbols
for Mark and John
are reversed. |
Sometimes, when an Evangelist and his Gospel-symbols appear
in a miniature, one or the other will hold a scroll; these scrolls typically
contain the text of the opening lines of the Gospel, or, in the case of Luke,
the first phrase of the fifth verse of chapter one (because the first four
verses of Luke were considered a preface, rather than the beginning of the
narrative). Sometimes they simply contain the Evangelists’ names.
So, the following proposals have been made regarding which angel, or angel-face, corresponds to which Evangelist:
Irenaeus (using the “Western” order), Fortunatianus, and the Book of Durrow (using the “Non-Western” order:
Matthew = man
John = lion
Luke = ox
Mark = eagle
Augustine:
Matthew = lion
Mark = man
Luke = calf
John = eagle
Epiphanius and Jerome (using the “Non-Western” order):
Matthew = man
Mark = lion
Luke = ox
John = eagle
Augustine’s
identification-scheme was his own personal idea; it never became popular. Irenaeus’ proposal persisted in the “Western”
tradition for a while, but examples of its artistic representation are
rare. The arrangement advocated by
Epiphanius and Jerome (which probably is earlier than them both) was
subsequently adopted by almost everyone who artistically depicted the Gospel-symbols,
in Greek manuscripts and in Latin, Ethiopic, and Armenian manuscripts.
In closing, three points may be drawn from all
this. First, we see that even the most
influential patristic writers of the early church disagreed among themselves
regarding some of the finer points of Biblical interpretation; yet they did not
castigate each other because of this.
Regarding such a minor concern, there was liberty.
The false claim that the unique authority of
the four canonical Gospels was only established in the fourth century can be
found at high levels of academia –
even at the website of the British Library –
but it is nevertheless a fictitious claim, and Christians who financially
support the educational institutions where it is promoted ought to cringe at
the thought that their gifts are being used to promote a pernicious
fabrication.
Second, we
see that as far as the Gospels were concerned, the canon was firmly established
before the end of the second century. On
this major concern, there was unity. Those
who try to give the impression that the apostolic Christian church ever
accepted dozens of heretical works, such as the so-called
Gospel of Thomas,
Gospel of Philip,
Gospel of Truth, etc., are either terribly misinformed, or else they are belligerent liars.
Third, we
see the drawbacks and benefits of looking for typological lessons in the
Biblical text. On the one hand, it is
clear that the early interpreters who interpreted the faces of the cherubim as
representative of the four Gospel-writers could, with a little imaginative
exercise, find reasons to justify whatever specific identifications they asserted. On the other hand, the appeal of the basic point being conveyed is difficult
to deny. God’s heavenly manifestation,
as revealed to Ezekiel and John, was accompanied by four cherubim, and God’s
earthly incarnation, as revealed in Christ, was portrayed in four Gospels: the Synoptic Gospels in one way or another
thematically depict Christ as a human being, as a royal lion, and as a sacrificial
ox. John emphasized the heavenly aspects
of Christ’s ministry, looking back from a greater distance of time than the
others, like a sharp-eyed eagle looking down on events from a high altitude.
And since we are called to be Christ-like, and to be messengers of the good news, may we have a fourfold aspiration: to be humble people, and to still be bold like
the lion, to bear burdens like the ox, and to still fly toward the presence of God, perceiving lessons which our physical eyes cannot see, squinting in the light as we approach the Scriptures.
