Painting by Lu Hsu Chia, “a Taiwanese artist living in Singapore who began her interest in brush painting after her marriage. Like many brush painters she enjoys the use of space as part of the composition and prefers a simple, uncluttered picture. Her art is directly related to her Christian faith and many of her works are based on a Biblical text.
“Her philosophy on commercial art is simple: ‘Many people like to make a lot of money and spend it on material goods. I was brought up to believe that money comes from God and goes back to God. Also, I have a deep sense of gratitude at possessing this artistic talent and my reward is the doing of the art. When I received my first scholarship prize, a rather large sum of money, without hesitation I gave it to the church. It seemed right for me to do so.'” (Source for this and the image: The Bible Through Asian Eyes by Masao Takenaka and Ron O’Grady 1991)
Detail of an artwork by Yoshihei Miya (宮芳平). “Miya was born in Japan in 1893 in the Niigata Prefecture. He studied in Tokyo Academy and taught in Suwa Girl’s High School. In 1966 he visited the Holy Land and his book of art and poetry from that trip became popular in Japan. He died in 1971 in Kyoto.”
“Ruth’s great love for Naomi — her Jewish mother-in-law, enables her to dedicate her young life to protect and support her. Naomi, herself a widow, was not so keen to go back to Bethlehem with a widowed daughter-in-law who belonged to another race. But Ruth embraced and clung to her… There was nothing in Ruth’s mind which could come between her and Naomi — least of all racial differences. She was totally committed to ‘the other’ in Naomi.
“Ruth’s selfless devotion to her mother-in-law challenges Boaz to a similar response — he takes them both under his wing. On the occasion of the birth of Boaz and Ruth’s son, Obed, the women of Jerusalem, too, find themselves overcoming their racist prejudices in acclaiming Ruth the Moabitess as ‘being better than seven sons.’ — Chitra Fernando (චිත්රා ප්රනාන්දු), Sri Lanka!”
(Source for this and the image: The Bible Through Asian Eyes by Masao Takenaka and Ron O’Grady 1991)
Painting by Ryohei Koiso (小磯 良平) (1903-1988). “[He] grew up as an active member of the Kobe church and had a strong ambition to be a painter. Although his family opposed this course his grandmother said, ‘If you are going to be a painter, you should make it your life’s ministry.’ After study in Europe Koiso returned to Tokyo and in 1959 become a professor at Tokyo Art College. His Christian art works provided the illustrations for the Revised Version of the Bible in colloquial Japanese (聖書新共同訳 ).
“His illustration of Gideon’s men at the river shows the research and planning which went into all his works. The painting is produced with a bamboo drawing nib and Chinese ink with a light wash of color.” (Source for this and the image: The Bible Through Asian Eyes by Masao Takenaka and Ron O’Grady 1991)
1987 artwork by Japanese artist Takako Horino (b. 1931). “Like many contemporary artists, Takako Horino of Japan is angered at the distorted sense of values in modern society. In her search for an explanation she has turned to the Old Testament and concentrated on the implications of three stories: the ark of Noah, the tower of Babel and the destruction of Sodom. Each of them is an expression of God’s wrath against human stupidity. The tower of Babel compares government fixation with scientific development and weapons of war with its neglect of the people’s welfare. The monolith of the tower and its missiles stands in stark contrast to the broken buildings, churches and institutions below. In the end, all is destroyed. No life exists. A solitary skeleton sitting in front of a television monitor marks the final symbol of humanity’s self-destruction.” (Source for this and the image: The Bible Through Asian Eyes by Masao Takenaka and Ron O’Grady 1991)
The following artwork is by Sister Marie Claire , SMMI (1937–2018) from Bengaluru, India:
For more information about images by Sister Marie Claire and ways to purchase them as lithographs, see here .
For other images of Sister Marie Claire paintings in TIPs, see here.
Drawing by Ismar David from H. L. Ginsberg 1969. For other images of Ismar David drawings, see here.
Following is an image of the Jonah Sarcophagus or the 3rd quarter of the 3rd century, housed in the Museo Pio Cristiano (photographed by Richard Stracke , shared under Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license):
Peppard (2024, p. 119ff.) analyzes the sarcophagus (click or tap here to see the analysis):
The textual version of the short story begins with God calling Jonah as a prophet to go east and preach repentance to the Gentiles of the great city of Nineveh (ancient Assyria; modern Mosul, Iraq). On the left the men load a boat, which Jonah has disobediently boarded to sail westward, away from Israel and away from God’s prophetic commandment (Jonah 1). Moving to the right, the men throw Jonah into the sea, in an attempt to quell the raging storm, which they (rightly) interpret has been caused by Jonah’s disobedience to his god. In this artistic version, he dives straight into the mouth of the great fish—portrayed here, as elsewhere, like a sea monster—and prays to God for salvation over three days and three nights (Jonah 2). He is then spit out onto shore and commanded again by God to preach repentance to Nineveh (Jonah 3). He does so but then becomes disgruntled when the Ninevites do repent and God does not enact his planned punishment. Despite having been saved himself, Jonah doesn’t think these others are deserving of God’s mercy. So God teaches him a final lesson (Jonah 4). While Jonah pouts alone outside of the city, God provides a large new plant to grow over Jonah, to protect him from the desert sun. This scene dominates the upper-right register, with Jonah reclining nude under bountiful shade, as if in a blessed afterlife. But as quickly as the plant grew, God sends a worm to destroy it, so that Jonah is again near death—first from a tempest-tossed ocean, and now from a sun-scorched desert. The story concludes with God delivering a prophetic sermon to his reluctant prophet: if Jonah is concerned over the life and death of just one plant that emerged and vanished so quickly, how much more should God be concerned with the fate of the thousands of lives in Nineveh, at that time the largest city in the known world?
The textual version of the story ends, like many prophetic oracles of the Old Testament, with a question. The question hangs in the air for ancient listeners and modern readers, opening up to reflection and discussion about the tension between justice and mercy, about God’s commitment to a chosen people while offering salvation to others, and about the persistent self-centered ways of even God’s chosen messengers. The earliest Christian textual interpreters seized on two aspects of the story. First, as represented by the Gospel of Luke, Jesus interprets “the sign of Jonah” for his generation to be a call toward repentance (Luke 11:29-32). Just as he began his ministry with, “Repent, for the Kingdom of God is at hand,” along with John’s baptismal ritual to enact such repentance, so, too, does he connect his preaching to the universalism of Jonah’s mission. Luke thus emphasizes chapters 3 and 4 of Jonah, but Matthew’s version of Jesus’ teaching draws from the action of chapter 2. Just as Jonah was in the belly of the great fish for three days, “so will the Son of Man be in the heart of the earth three days and three nights” (Matt 12:40). Matthew includes the same teaching of repentance as Luke but also adds the unique interpretation of Jonah’s “death” and “resurrection” as a foreshadowing of Jesus’ own. This second idea comes to dominate the subsequent reception history. Then, when the apostle Paul describes immersion baptism as a ritualized participation in death and resurrection (Rom 6:3-4), the resources are all present to close the loop on the Jonah cycle. The story of Jonah therefore portrays (for Christians) the necessity of repentance, the salvific role of immersion in water as a death and resurrection, and the universal message of the God of Israel for all people, whether Jews or Gentiles. No matter how wayward a son of Israel has been, no matter how wicked a king of the Gentiles has been, God’s mercy is available and boundless.
The artist of the sarcophagus surrounds the Jonah cycle with other stories to reinforce these meanings for the viewer. Looking closely at the water, between the sea monster and the reclining Jonah, one can see an inset Noah. Depicted in the “Jack-in-the-box” style typical of this era, Noah emerges from the ark to find the dove messenger returning with an olive branch (Gen 8:11), signifying the end of the flood and the salvation of those in the ark.- Early Christian artists often juxtapose various stories of salvation near or through water. One might even read the fisherman on the lower right, whose line casts near to where Jonah comes on shore, as a symbol of Jesus’ first metaphor for preaching and discipleship: “Come, follow me,” Jesus said to Simon Peter and Andrew while they were fishing, “and I will make you fishers of men” (Matt 5:19).
The upper left features Jesus’ raising of Lazarus, a “sign” performed in the Gospel of John that bears obvious connection to the “sign of Jonah” in the Gospel of Matthew. The center of the upper register shows two scenes that are open to multiple interpretations. One possibility is from the Old Testament: here depicts Moses drawing “water from the rock” to satisfy the thirst of the Israelites wandering the wilderness during the exodus (Exod 17 / Num 20); to its right might then be the rebellion of Israelites against Moses (perhaps Num 16).
Another possibility involves a different “water from the rock” miracle, that of Peter summoning a spring of water with which to baptize his repentant jailers. This is a non-canonical story about Peter’s life, but one apparently in very wide circulation, as there are at least 225 examples of it preserved from early Christian art. The scene to its right would thus be the arrest of Peter, another non-canonical but widely depicted story. Either option signifies God’s miraculous provision for salvation through water, whether through thirst-quenching or a new covenant with God. The upper right shows a shepherd guiding sheep out of a mausoleum-like structure, and this calls to mind various biblical images of a shepherd and flock as salvation from death: the “Lord is my shepherd” (Psalm 23), the parables of the lost sheep (Luke 15 / Matt 18), and the “good shepherd” and “gate” for the sheep (John 10), among others. Whoever “enters the gate” of death through Jesus will be saved, say the Gospel of John and the Jonah sarcophagus in unison. Both Jews and Gentiles will be “one flock” with “one shepherd” (John 10:16).
With these details in mind, we can zoom back out to see the big picture one final time. If you allow your eyes to be guided by the overall flow of the shapes and lines, you will see a curved arc of descent and ascent. Begin above the sail of the boat, where there stands in the sky what looks like a person peering through a circular portal in the heavens. In fact, this is the Roman sky god Caelus, who is often pictured this way during the Roman imperial era, with a billowing garment over his head. This personification of the sky or heaven (hence the word “celestial”) was adopted frequently in early Christian art as a way to communicate heavenly realms to the viewer (see also Figure 5.6 below). Some Roman writers even identified the God of Israel (as a sky god) with the Roman god Caelus, so we might imagine him here as a symbol of divine command over the drama below U His gaze looks down along the line of the sail and follows the halyard directly into the snout of the beast. The arc flattens at the center of the sarcophagus and then bends upward through the right-facing snout, upward along the reclining Jonah’s left arm, then his right arm, and above to the plant of his blessed afterlife. From its tiny details to its overall form, this artistic masterwork conjures a treasury of biblical stories and frames the hoped-for arc of salvation from death.
Following is a contemporary Coptic Orthodox icon of Jonah.
Orthodox Icons are not drawings or creations of imagination. They are in fact writings of things not of this world. Icons can represent our Lord Jesus Christ, the Virgin Mary, and the Saints. They can also represent the Holy Trinity, Angels, the Heavenly hosts, and even events. Orthodox icons, unlike Western pictures, change the perspective and form of the image so that it is not naturalistic. This is done so that we can look beyond appearances of the world, and instead look to the spiritual truth of the holy person or event. (Source )
In Spanish Sign Language it is translated with a sign that depicts “swallow (by a large fish).” (Source: Steve Parkhurst)
Painting by Sawai Chinnawong, used with permission by the Overseas Ministries Study Center (OMSC) at Princeton Theological Seminary. You can purchase this and many other artworks by artists in residence at the OSMC in high resolution and without a watermark via the OSMC website .
“Sawai Chinnawong of Payap University, Chiang Mai, Thailand, [is] an ethnic Mon whose Buddhist ancestors migrated to Thailand from Myanmar, Mr. Chinnawong committed his life to Christ while in his twenties. Today he is a member of the United Church of Christ of Thailand. His love for art began when he was a child in Thailand when he saw some old men painting on a Buddhist temple wall. He says he would watch them for hours each day. Sawai’s interest in art persisted into adulthood, and he studied art in a vocational school in Bangkok, Thailand. It was at this time that Sawai became a Christian. He says that a missionary was witnessing on the street one day, and soon after, he began to study the Bible every day after art class.
“After completing his art studies, Sawai attended the McGilvary Faculty of Theology at Payap University in Chiang Mai. He was deeply influenced by a series of lectures on the history of Christian Art given there in 1984 by artist and professor Nalini Jayasuriya, another of our OMSC artists. He began creating liturgical art while attending seminary, and designed the artwork for the chapel there. Today his art is appreciated in many places for its portrayal of Christian themes through a Thai graphic idiom that is inspired by Thai culture.
“‘My work represents influences from many styles…I believe Jesus Christ is present in every culture, and I have chosen to celebrate his presence in our lives through Thai traditional cultural forms. My belief is that Jesus did not choose just one people to hear his Word, but chose to make his home in every human heart. And just as his Word may be spoken in every language, so the visual message can be shared in the beauty of the many styles of artistry around the world.’ (Sawai Chinnawong).” (Source )
For more images by Sawai Chinnawong in TIPs see here.
Painting by Nalini Jayasuriya (1927 – 2014), used with permission by the Overseas Ministries Study Center (OMSC) at Princeton Theological Seminary. You can purchase this and many other artworks by artists in residence at the OSMC in high resolution and without a watermark via the OSMC website .
“Nalini M. Jayasuriya was an internationally known artist from Sri Lanka, who exhibited her soul-stirring paintings in Manila, London, Bangkok, Paris, Toronto, Tokyo, Jerusalem and New York. (…) While growing up in Sri Lanka, Nalini never took an art course. As an eight-year old assigned to draw a still life in drawing class, she ended up erasing a hole in her paper, and was told to take her books and leave. She spent the rest of the year’s drawing class time in the library. Her real talent was music; from about age four, she could play almost any piece of music that she heard. At about age fifteen, she wrote a number of poems that were published, and later wrote a secondary-level reader consisting of letters from her cat, Ingy.
“The direction of Nalini’s life changed when, as a young ESL teacher, she was offered an unsolicited British Council grant to study in England. She saw this as one of the many miracles in her life. For three years in London, she experienced a whole new world. She added evening classes to her schedule, including coursework in stained glass and enamel on metal, thinking that she would never again have such an opportunity. Later, she received seven scholarships and fellowships, (none of which she applied for) and she went on to live in thirty-six different countries.
“’I come from a land of rich, ancient, and diverse cultures and traditions. While I carry the enriching influences of both West and East, I express myself through an Asian and Christian consciousness with respect for all confessions of religious faith.’ Nalini Jayasuriya)” (Source )
