Gallery

“I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. The hired hand, who is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and runs away—and the wolf snatches them and scatters them…I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me.”

John 10:11–14

Jesus gently cradles one lamb in his hand while a second rests on his shoulder in an ivory statuette crafted in about 1600 in Goa, the port city on India’s southwest coast. Beneath Jesus’ crossed feet stand Mary (left) and St. John; between them, a gargoyle spouts water, an allusion to baptism. At bottom, a reclining Mary Magdalene reads scripture in a mountain cave, to which, according to early Christian legend, she retired after the crucifixion.

Shepherding is one of mankind’s oldest occupations, and many of the Bible’s characters, including Abraham, Moses and David, engaged in it. In Ezekiel 34:11–16, God describes himself as a shepherd. Jesus and his followers used the image of the shepherd to describe his mission, most dramatically in the passage cited above from John 10, in which Jesus announces his willingness to die for his flock. The shepherd image was carried over to the leaders of the early church, who were instructed to “tend the flock of God” (1 Peter 5:2).