Page "Icon" Paragraph 16

Elsewhere in his Church History, Eusebius reports seeing what he took to be portraits of Jesus, Peter and Paul, and also mentions a bronze statue at Banias / Paneas, of which he wrote, " They say that this statue is an image of Jesus " ( H. E.

7: 18 ); further, he relates that locals thought the image to be a memorial of the healing of the woman with an issue of blood by Jesus ( Luke 8: 43-48 ), because it depicted a standing man wearing a double cloak and with arm outstretched, and a woman kneeling before him with arms reaching out as if in supplication.

John Francis Wilson thinks it possible to have been a pagan bronze statue whose true identity had been forgotten ; some have thought it to be Aesculapius, the God of healing, but the description of the standing figure and the woman kneeling in supplication is precisely that found on coins depicting the bearded emperor Hadrian reaching out to a female figure symbolizing a province kneeling before him.

When asked by Constantia ( Emperor Constantine's sister ) for an image of Jesus, Eusebius denied the request, replying that " To depict purely the human form of Christ before its transformation, on the other hand, is to break the commandment of God and to fall into pagan error ".