Placed in Paradise: The Messianic Age Imagery of a Lion Facing a Bull in the Byzantine Church Floor Mosaics of Jordan

This paper is a multifaceted study of the Messianic Age motif of a lion facing a bull as found in 5th to 8th-century church floor mosaics in Jordan. At Ma‘in, Jordan, this motif is related to Isaiah’s description of the Messianic Age by an inscription. Scholars have variously interpreted the Messianic Age motif as found in the mosaics as the Eucharist, as baptism, as a reflection of the peace desired between the Nestorians and Monophysites, as relating to the future paradise of heaven, and as an admonition of restraint and vegetarianism for monks. Based on the dating of the mosaics and contemporaneous textual evidence, this study proposes a new interpretation that the lion-bull motif was a reminder that the Messianic Age had already begun and was functioning on the earth through the Church.