First GOD paintings

Answer 1

A:No paintings of God survive from ancient times, but there is a depiction of God on a coin. The coin, a unique silver quarter-shekel now in the British Museum, is inscribed yhd, Yehud, in Aramaic lapidary script and assigned to the early fourth century. On the reverse a bearded deity carrying a falcon or eagle on his outstretched left hand sits on a winged wheel. Mary Joan Winn Leith (The Oxford History of the Biblical World, lsrael among the Nations) says this must have been someone's idea of Yahweh/God.

If not for the inscription, the iconography would suggest a Greek deity such as Zeus or an eastern Mediterranean god identified with him. The inscription, however, demands a Jewish context for the image, and the winged wheel naturally evokes Ezekiel's vision of God's 'glory' (Ezekiel 1:4-28). It could not have been of Persian origin, and if Judah issued the coin, the Jerusalem priesthood would have had veto power over the imagery.