But this one's from Leo Ibi, a great friend of ours, and I have an audio clip of it. And David will start to answer it after the audio clip. David, you mentioned numerous times in your books, how the Renaissance pictures misrepresent the way the early Christians looked and dressed. And I understand that. And so my question is this. Most of our literature today, Bible story books, commentaries depict the apostles and prophets and the early Christians as the men having beards.
Is that a true representation of early Christianity and Christianity itself, of Jesus having a beard, his apostles having a beard, and the early Christian church fathers having beards? Or is that a misrepresentation of the way things were? According to your dictionary on early Christian writings, it seems like the church fathers all endorse the fact of maintaining the beard.
Along with the beard question, a lot of our modern day Anabaptist publishers are putting Bible teaching material, picturing the apostles with the partial beard or the peace beard with the mustache shaved off. Does that misrepresent the apostles in the early church? And also, Brother David, as a giant in Christian historical orthodoxy, why would you shave your beard off? Okay. Okay. So the question is, yeah, should a Christian wear a beard? The early Christians talk a lot about it.
So, Leo, you've asked a very good question. I think most of you who have researched it have seen the various quotes beginning, I think, with Clement of Alexandria. He's got quite a few. And then there's Tertullian, Cyprian, Lactantius. Yeah, they all say, yeah, we should wear a beard. A couple of them quote the passage in Leviticus to not shave around the corners of the mouth and that sort of thing.
And so somebody reading that, and I've set them out in the dictionary of early Christian beliefs, someone reading that would feel like, well, I guess they were all in favor of the beard. All the early Christians must have worn a beard. And yeah, Leo, you asked, what about all these pictures of the early Christians? Are they accurate or inaccurate? Because they always show them with beards. Well, let's look at some pictures drawn by the early Christians.
The ones you're talking about, I think, are pictures drawn by modern-day artists. If we can connect that with the PowerPoint, okay, so here's a picture. These are from the catacombs, okay? These are Roman Christians painting these. This is supposed to represent Jesus and the twelve apostles. And you notice neither Jesus nor the apostles have beards in the picture. Okay, let's go to another one. This is Jesus talking to the Samaritan woman. These are not professional artists. They are, you know, somewhat crude.
Very instructive though. You can see the kind of dress that they're putting Jesus in the kind of dress that they wore, which probably is similar to what Jesus wore, but they're showing Jesus without a beard. Now, I'm not intimating that Jesus didn't have a beard. I'm saying this is how the Roman Christians pictured him. And these are from like around the year 200 to 300, these paintings, these particular ones from the catacombs. Let's go to another one.
Okay, this one is, well, is representing Jesus doing the miracle of the loaves and fishes. And again, not a clear picture of the faces that are much harder to draw, but you can see a beardless Jesus there. And I think we've got one final one. And this is Jesus healing the woman with the flow of blood who touched the hem of his garment. And if you look at his face, yeah, no beard. And there are many more.
If you do a search on the internet, you will see a lot of pictures of Jesus or of early Christians and Jesus without a beard from the catacombs. Now, there are also pictures in the catacombs showing Jesus or the apostles with a beard. So I think the ones who are a little bit more educated, you know, realize that somebody in Judea would have worn a beard. But the number of pictures we have of them and of other Christians, there's a few of just early Christians themselves, so often they show them without a beard.
Now, this is significant because, like I say, this is a nonverbal testimony that we have from drawings. And see, this is in Rome. And this is the problem when people take those quotes. The quotes are Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, Lactantius, Cyprian, all of those men were from North Africa, where to this day, men wear beards. Men wore beards back then. In those countries, they wear beards today in those countries. And the apostolic constitutions are from the Middle East. Again, people wore beards.
In Rome, they didn't wear beards as a normal rule. Some men did, but generally the Romans shaved themselves totally clean. And this is how the early Christians apparently practiced things from the pictures we have from the catacombs. And the interesting thing is we go back to Acts 15. I said at the beginning that it's going to be a key verse. There's nothing mentioned there. See, the question was put, okay, what things in the law do the Gentiles have to follow?
And of course, a beard would have been something mentioned in the law. It would have been something Jews practiced wearing a beard. And the apostles said nothing about that. That was not one of the things mentioned. When Paul writes to the Romans, he doesn't even bring up the subject. In fact, it doesn't even come up in the New Testament anywhere that I can think of any dispute about the beard.
So you had Roman Christians, Gentiles who didn't wear the beard, and no doubt Jewish Christians in Rome and other places did wear a beard. There doesn't seem to have been any dispute about it. So, yeah, when we had the church in Texas I was talking about and we thought, well, let's follow what the early Christian writings have to say. I grew a beard because there were so many writings that, you know, recommended the beard. And I actually liked the way that I looked in a beard.
And so during those years, I had a beard. Ironically, when I was an Anglican, I was wearing a beard, and then later on I became an Anabaptist. I didn't have a beard. But it's because of the transition in between. Like I say, during those years, we were trying to follow what the early Christians, the practices that they had, and even on the beard, we were aware that it wasn't something all the early Christians followed.
But since there's so many writings that talk about it, and probably most of the early Christians in most countries of the world would have worn a beard, we felt like," Yeah, let's follow that practice." But when I saw how everything got so crazy, and pretty soon, like you say, we were missing the important doctrines of Scripture, the important teachings of how Christians should live, and worrying about these things from the early Christian practices. Yeah, when I dumped it, I dumped it all.
That's when I shaved my beard. He's like," Okay, I'm not going to fast Wednesday and Friday. I'm not going to do any of these things. I'm going to shave my beard. I'm going to just get back to what is commanded in Scripture." And maybe I overreacted on that, but that would still be my position. If it's not a commandment in Scripture, it's not a commandment. Now, it may be a very commendable and good thing to wear a beard.
I mean, obviously that is how God created man, but he didn't make it a requirement in the New Testament. So where he didn't think something was important to make it a law, then, yeah, I don't think we should make it a law today. Of course, I don't think we should forbid it as a law. You know, forbid wearing a beard. I would say that would be uncalled for as well. There's certainly no scripture warrant for forbidding it, for requiring someone to go beardless.
And then, yeah, the strange thing, you talked about the pictures that show Jesus and the apostles with beards, which would be accurate, but then without a mustache as just part of their beard being shaved off, which is forbidden in the law to cut around the corners of your mouth. And so, yeah, we have, you know, dear Anabaptist friends who teach, you must wear a beard, but you have to mar your beard. You can't wear it the way it was prescribed in the Old Testament.
But then they go to the Old Testament as their only justification of why you should do it. It doesn't make sense. I'm not belittling anyone, but it's not very consistent. So Leo, hey, if you wear a beard, my friend here, Daniel, he's got a beard. Praise God. I think it's no justification is needed. It's how you were made. On the other hand, there's not a commandment. And for some other personal reasons, I've chosen not to wear a beard. And so that's the reason why I've made that decision.
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