Que disent les images bibliques de l’identité chrétienne, aux III^e et IV^e siècles ?

Research on the early Christian images have often responded to the need to identify Christian community through art, in roman society. In the catacombs, on sarcophagi or objects of domestic life, the development of a biblical iconography is the field of a double investigation: First, to identify the social level of Christian artistic patronage, and, secondly, to clarify the meaning of some iconographic choices within Christian culture. The question of religious identity is central in historiography on the early Christian images, but the significance of this notion of identity is also correlated with the methods of art historians and their perspective on their subject. Since the 90s, a shift occurs on this topic and it is now possible to reformulate some statements: is the notion of «identity» relevant to understand the first biblical pictures? Some images belonging to the period of cultural and iconographic transition, during III^rd and IV^th centuries, as Jonah’s, can now be thought outside of categories strictly depending on religious identity.