Exploring artwork from five major world religions in a single exhibition is no mean feat. The Ashmolean and the British Library have come together as part of the Empires of Faith Project to look at different means of expression and to draw attention to the continuous interactions between faiths in the first millennium AD, focusing on the visual evolution of the big 5: Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism and Christianity. Each religion has key symbols or images which act as a source of identification, whether that is in the form of a or deity or spiritual leader such as Buddha, or in a more abstract form such as images of the menorah or Muhammad’s tomb. These images are seemingly distinctive in modern times, and indeed, the exhibition opens with five examples of art from each religion which are well known as indicators of each religion to the modern viewer. However, that’s where the familiar comes to an end.

Take the Statue of Kriophoros (ram-bearer) from 200-400 AD which shows a man with a ram wrapped securely around his shoulders. In the classical context, this represented the god Hermes who is said to have carried around a ram to avert a plague consuming a city. The Christians in the Roman Empire appropriated this image, giving it a new identity as the ‘good shepherd’ Jesus. It is not known whether this particular statue was intended to be Jesus or Hermes but its dual character shows the gradual transformation of the Roman art into Christian iconography. Throughout the exhibition the objects demonstrate the fluidity of the aesthetic representation of these now established religions in the context of their emergence.

The exhibition is separated into sections on each faith, beginning with Christianity in the Roman Empire then onto Judaism, where you can see an incantation bowl, described as a ‘demon mousetrap’ by our guide and curator Stefanie Lenk, which could have been owned by Jews, Christians, Mandaeans or Zoroastrians. Onto Hinduism which focuses on the development of the cult of Vishnu in the first millennium, which saw the integration of pre-existing heroes and gods (including Buddha or Narasimha, the man-lion) as being avatars of Vishnu, and so reducing their significance as unique deities by incorporating them into the persona of Vishnu. The section on Buddhism draws works from the two locations Mathura and Gandhara from which Buddhism emerged and displays the sudden switch from non-iconographic artwork (Buddha’s footprints, empty spaces) to an influx of the image of the cross-legged Buddha we know today. Although this section was visually impressive, the viewer isn’t offered an explanation or any theories about why Buddhists suddenly embraced the use of the figure of Buddha. This would have been an excellent opportunity to engage with the visitor on an intellectual level but this was sadly missed.

The Islamic section is split into two parts: the incorporation of visual culture from the lands muslims conquered, showing the visual culture of the conquered and how it was adopted into Islamic art, and the reaction to visual cultures through the art of calligraphy in the Qur’an. Here the issue of iconoclasm was explored and challenged through the display of the Sculpture of Tantric goddess; carved in a beautiful Islamic motif on one side, the other side displaying a goddess who has been carefully altered to remove attributes which would help with identification rather than simply destroyed, displaying some appreciation of the former artist’s work.

Finally, the exhibition ends on familiar ground: early Christianity in the British Isles. Look out for the amazing family tree showing King Alfred the Great’s ancestral links, including being descended from Adam, Noah and pagan god Woden (Odin).

I found that although I am more familiar with the Christian and Islamic practices and principles, I was most surprised by the origins of the well-known imagery and how interwoven the objects were with the societies and art of those surrounding them. I was particularly astounded by the three Jupiter statues at the very beginning (which themselves had borrowed characteristics from Egyptian gods) and their similarity to conventional images of Jesus e.g. long wavy hair and a beard. Preconception of the big five religions as fixed entities will be changed for the better through this exhibition.

While not as vivid as last year’s exhibition Power and Protection: Islamic Art and the Supernatural, this exhibition prompts questions about our perception of religions in isolation from the areas the believers lived in and the gods that were worshipped there. While it’s easy to focus on the importance of the text when discussing religions, Imagining the Divine helps to unearth the significance of the visual in the way it shapes our understanding of different faiths.

The aim of Imagining the Divine is to “show how the exchange of ideas and objects in the first millennium influence our thinking about the Divine today”. In fact, it’s a bit of disappointment – it doesn’t absorb your attention or provoke questions in the way that last year’s Power and Protection: Islamic Art and the Supernatural exhibition did.

Part of the problem is a failure to distinguish adequately between syncretism (the merging of religions, cults and their associated ideas) and the transfer of artistic styles between different contexts.

The exhibition begins, for example, with three versions of the Roman god Jupiter - vanilla-flavoured Jupiter, Jupiter Serapis and Jupiter Ammon. The latter have features of the original Jupiter combined with symbols of the add-on cult – the ram’s horns of the Egyptian god Ammon in the latter case.

It’s a similar story in the Indian sub-continent when the cult of Vishnu absorbs local gods, folk heroes and even Buddah. In both cases, the iconography is intrinsic to the cult with the images as objects of worship or repositories of divine power – something dramatically emphasised by Hindu statuettes that have been defaced by Muslims in a deliberate attempt to destroy their power.

On the other hand, there’s the simple borrowing and adaption of artistic styles by masons, metal workers and calligraphers - for things that are not essentially religious or carriers of religious ideas. We learn, for example, that the complex decorative patterns that we think of as typically Islamic were adapted from the art of the Sasanian Empire and that both Muslims and Jews imitated a particular style of Byzantine coloured paper. What we do not learn is how either of these borrowings influences contemporary thinking about “the Divine”.

Other borrowings include images of the life of Christ borrowed from the tradition of Roman narrative carving; the movement of styles along the trade routes of India and the familiar interlacing of “pagan” Saxon and Norse carving that reached its apogee in the earliest British illuminated manuscripts.

I’d been looking forward to Imagining the Divine, but found it to be tired, lacklustre and occasionally muddled. Others have described it as “unmissable” – reluctantly, I would have to disagree.