“In Western culture the question of how to picture divinity has a history longer than Christianity’s. Plato chewed on it while his Greek contemporaries had no qualms about personifying deities in statuary and vase painting. Eventually Christianity, Judaism and Islam all codified their own prohibitions against imaging divinity, though all tolerated breaches of the rules at various times for various reasons. Over the centuries disputants in the matter filled libraries with esoteric arguments for and against likenesses of deity.”