Encyclopedia of Ancient Christianity

A scholarly encyclopedia of Christian antiquity faces the daunting task of drawing together the results of research on a vast field of study. The Dizionario patristico e di antichità cristiane (DPAC) was first published from 1983 to 1988 by Casa Editrice Marietti. Soon it became a prevailing resource for patristic scholars. It was evident that it needed to be translated into English.

 

So in 1992 the two-volume Encyclopedia of the Early Church (EEC) was published by James Clarke & Co. in Great Britain and Oxford University Press in the United States, translated by Adrian Walford with a foreword and bibliographic amendments by W.H.C. Frend.

The field of patristic studies has grown exponentially in the years since 1992, yet no comparable encyclopedia has appeared in English since that time.

 

For more than twenty years the 1992 English edition from James Clarke/Oxford remained the standard of the world of patristic studies. An ongoing process of revision by the original collaborators called forth the Italian publication of the second edition of the Dizionario in Italian during the years 2006 to 2010—the Nuovo dizionario patristico e di antichità cristiane (NDPAC); see the preface to the second Italian edition, which follows, for indications of the additions and changes that were made.

 

AARON (iconography).

 

The oldest known representation—before 256—is in the *synagogue of *Dura Europos (Kraeling, pl. 60), where Aaron and the tabernacle are depicted (Ex 29).

 

In early Christian art, Aaron appears in the episodes of *Moses, e.g., on the Servanne *sarcophagus (late 4th c.; Ws 15) bearded, in tunic and pallium—like a sacred figure—among the crowd of men and women, while Moses receives the law (Ex 24:12-18). This basic formula is embellished in the mosaics found in the right aisle of S. Maria Maggiore at Rome (mid-5th c.) in the scenes of the murmuring of the Israelites (Ex 16:1-3), the fall of quails (Ex 16:11-13), the battle with the Amalekites (Ex 18:8-13) and the return of the explorers (Num 13:26-31). Also at Rome, on the 5th-c. door of S. *Sabina (Jeremias, pl. 27), Aaron changes the rods into serpents before Pharaoh (Ex 7:8-13). The image of Aaron is also on ivory objects (very probably, scroll in hand, next to Moses who strikes the rock, on an object dated 420–430, preserved in the British Museum: Volbach, n. 117), in miniatures (Evangelarium of Rabbula, 6th c. [by himself in priestly dress]: Cecchelli, Rabb. Gosp., pl. 3v; the 7th-c. Pentateuch of Ashburnham [in various scenes beside Moses]: von Gebhardt 1883; the 9th-c. codex of *Cosmas Indicopleustes, the prototype of which is from the 6th c. [alone in priestly dress]: Stornajolo, pl. 15). Lost evidence includes that of the meeting between Aaron and Moses present in the decorative cycle of S. Paolo fuori le Mura (see Cod. Barb. Lat. 4406), and that of Aaron and Moses before Pharaoh on the right wall of S. Peter’s at the Vatican (see Cod. Barb. lat. 2733).