A Donkey-Headed Jesus
This may be the oldest known visual depiction of Jesus. It is a piece of graffiti scratched into a plaster wall near the Palatine Hill in Rome called the Alexamenos graffito. It depicts the crucified Christ with the head of a donkey. A boy is seen kneeling before Him with the words “Alexamenos worshipping his God” crudely scratched below.
Images like this were not uncommon in the early days of Christianity. Giving Jesus a donkey's head was a deliberate insult—mocking not only his humble ride into Jerusalem, but what people associated with donkeys: foolishness, stubbornness, and all the other reasons it’s not nice to be compared to a donkey.
It’s an image that persisted for some time. As Christianity began to take hold in the Roman Empire, a Jewish gladiator was famous for wielding a shield emblazoned with a donkey-headed Jesus on the cross to intentionally rally the crowd against him as a heel.
Since I first learned about the Alexamenos graffito and other early jokes about Christianity, they fascinated me. Not by their existence; I expected that, but by the form they take.
In our current climate, many people take issue with the idea that Jesus might be divine at all. Some even disagree that there was a historical Jesus. This wasn’t the case in the first century. Within the Roman Empire, in particular, hearing of a god called Jesus wasn’t surprising at all. The Roman Pantheon was polytheistic. Moreover, the Roman Empire was largely tolerant of other religions within its territories.
When they encountered other polytheistic cultures, they usually syncretized and determined that they worshipped the same gods by different names. When they came across more foreign religions, they generally left the locals to their own devices, as seen with the Pharisees wielding significant authority in the Bible.
People didn’t object to the idea that there was a god. People couldn’t imagine why anyone would worship a god like Jesus. Their conception of gods were beings of force and fury. What point could there possibly be in worshipping a god you could crucify? What kind of god cries when being tortured by man? Much better to fear a god who slings lightning bolts. Or a god that promises wealth and good times. So many people couldn’t help but laugh when hearing of Jesus of Nazareth. A poor carpenter from the backwater of Rome’s most provincial province who was killed like a thief. The punchline of schoolyard insults carved in stone.
And what fascinates me about all this is that while they laugh at it, on some level they get it better than I can put into words. I do worship a God who has known death. A God who has cried out in pain. A God who does not demand sacrifice but instead was sacrificed.
I worship the God of the meek, the God of the poor, and the God of kids like Alexamenos. A living God of love and not of fear. That’s why when I see things like that carving of a donkey-headed Jesus, I can’t help but swell with pride. And why I want to tell you about one last piece of graffiti.
The Alexamenos graffito is famous, but there is also a carving in the room right next door. Far less famous and far more important to me. It is much lighter than the Alexamenos graffito and written in another hand, lower down on the wall. It simply reads, “Alexamenos is faithful.”