Christianity
According to Timo Eskola, early Christian theology and discourse was influenced by the Jewish Merkabah tradition. Similarly, Alan Segal and Daniel Boyarin regard Paul's accounts of his conversion experience and his ascent to the heavens as the earliest first person accounts we have of a Merkabah mystic in Jewish or Christian literature. Conversely, Timothy Churchill has argued that Paul's Damascus road encounter does not fit the pattern of Merkabah.
In Christianity, the man, lion, ox, and eagle are used as symbols for the four evangelists (or gospel-writers), and appear frequently in church decorations. These Creatures are called Zoë (or the Tetramorph), and surround the throne of God in Heaven, along with twenty-four elders and seven spirits of God (according to Revelation 4:1-11).
Read more about this topic: Merkabah Mysticism
Famous quotes containing the word christianity:
“Give me Catholicism every time. Father Cheeryble with his thurible; Father Chatterjee with his liturgy. What fun they have with all their charades and conundrums! If it weren’t for the Christianity they insist on mixing in with it, I’d be converted tomorrow.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)
“The want of education and moral training is the only real barrier that exists between the different classes of men. Nature, reason, and Christianity recognize no other. Pride may say Nay; but Pride was always a liar, and a great hater of the truth.”
—Susanna Moodie (1803–1885)
“What’s the greatest enemy of Christianity to-day? Frozen meat. In the past only members of the upper classes were thoroughly sceptical, despairing, negative. Why? Among other reasons, because they were the only people who could afford to eat too much meat. Now there’s cheap Canterbury lamb and Argentine chilled beef. Even the poor can afford to poison themselves into complete scepticism and despair.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)