:The Good Shepherd: Image, Meaning, and Power

Jennifer Awes Freeman presents a compelling case for the reinterpretation of the image of the Good Shepherd in early Christian images and texts. Many art historians, including Theodore Klauser, Henry Chadwick, R. Grigg, and Robin Jensen, have discussed images of the Good Shepherd as representing the humility and modesty of the early grass-roots movement of Christianity. This traditional interpretation juxtaposes this early humble shepherd imagery with the later imperially sponsored images of Jesus-as-emperor situated on a throne within the spaces of church apses. Awes Freeman charges that these interpretations assume that the Good Shepherd is a Christian invention and overlook understandings of shepherd imagery from the ancient world. The author draws on the work of Thomas F. Matthews, specifically The Clash of Gods (Princeton University Press, 1993), to challenge prevailing scholarship. She argues that early Christian writers were employing an image and idea of the Good Shepherd that drew on earlier understandings of this imagery, which “ carried connotations of divinity and empire ” (4) and was not associated with the humility and modesty that inform current interpretations. Instead of housing a static and straightforward anti-imperialist meaning, the Good Shepherd changes meaning over time and includes con-flicting meanings related to power and violence. This book situates the Good Shepherd within the art and literature of the Ancient Near East and Greco-Roman worlds and demonstrates the flexibility and fluidity of the image and its meaning through the Early Middle Ages. This is an ambitious project of recontextualizing a familiar image type across several thousand years of history and several thousand miles of geography. She describes the particular cultural and geographical meanings of the Good Shepherd through time and place, offering appropriate context without getting lost in any particular contextual tangent. Awes Freeman succeeds in presenting a compelling case for reinterpretation that remedies this literary and art