Symbol of St Luke, (f.124v) The Book of Durrow, c.650 – c.700, Trinity College Dublin.
This page opens the Gospel of Luke in the Book of Durrow. It shows a calf, or perhaps an ox, in a very simple and naturalistic way. I love the way the animal is looking to the right where the gospel text will begin overleaf. But the highly decorated border leaves the reader in no doubt about the importance of the animal and this first page. The calf it shows was the symbol of St Luke. This symbolism has it origins in the interpretation of two biblical texts. In Ezekiel 1:4-11 the prophet has a vision of four living creatures. This same symbolism appears also in the Book of Revelation where four winged creatures surround Christ on his throne (Revelation 4:6-8). The first creature is like a lion. The second is like an ox. The third has the face of a man and the fourth is like an eagle in flight. St Irenaeus (130 -202 AD) interpreted these texts as representing the individual evangelists with St Luke symbolised by an ox. Later St Jerome (c.347 -420 AD) also assigned the ox to St Luke. The Book of Durrow is the oldest manuscript of its kind to survive and it contains within its pages artistic work of very high quality. But its age means that sometimes the intended meaning behind the symbolism used in their decoration has been lost. The ox or calf is thought to relate to the sacrifices offered in the Temple because St Luke’s Gospel begins and ends in the Temple and has Jesus present in the Temple as an infant and again as an adolescent. Therefore the symbol of the ox draws on the theological link between the Temple sacrifices and Jesus’ once and for all sacrifice on the cross. But I am not so sure about this because in the New Testament the sacrificial animal is the lamb. Pondering today’s gospel story with its focus on feasts and the prominence of feasts in Luke’s Gospel, I just wonder if the young beast on this page might be the fatted calf (Luke 15) slain for the feast which the father gives in great parable of the prodigal son, I just wonder if the intention here was to represent St Luke not by the generic ox or calf of sacrifice in the Temple, but by the parable’s fatted calf. After all without the calf’s meat, it would not have been a feast, for the folk of the parables are all carnivores; there isn’t vegetarian among them! This theme of a great feast and the question of who is to be invited is very much at play in the gospel text we heard last Sunday and this Sunday. And we must not forget that in these passages, the story teller is Jesus, who is the one who sacrificed himself so that we might each have a place at his table.
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