Harvard Theological Review 2010-01

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T HR Harvard Theological Review

103:1

JANUARY 2010 ISSN 0017-8160

HTR

Harvard Theological Review 103:1 ISSUED QUARTERLY BY THE FACULTY OF DIVINITY IN HARVARD UNIVERSITY

The Harvard Theological Review is partially funded by the foundation established under the will of Mildred Everett, daughter of Charles Carroll Everett, Bussey Professor of Theology in Harvard University (1869–1900) and Dean of the Faculty of Divinity (1878–1900). The scope of the Review embraces history and philosophy of religious thought in all traditions and periods—including the areas of Hebrew Bible, New Testament, Christianity, Jewish studies, theology, ethics, archaeology, and comparative religious studies. It seeks to publish compelling original research that contributes to the development of scholarly understanding and interpretation. EDITOR

François Bovon EDITORIAL BOARD

David D. Hall, Jon D. Levenson, Kevin Madigan, and Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza A S S O C I AT E E D I T O R S

Members of the Faculty of Divinity MANAGING EDITOR

Margaret Studier E D I T O R I A L A S S I S TA N T S

Cavan Concannon, Brian Doak, Sarah Eltantawi, Aryay Bennett Finkelstein, Katharine Reid Gerbner, Jonathan Kaplan, Piotr Malysz, John Robichaux, Bryan L. Wagoner P R O D U C T I O N S TA F F

Anne Browder, Rebecca Hancock, Christine Thomas, Richard Jude Thompson, John Whitley

Manuscripts and communications on editorial matters should be addressed to the Managing Editor, Harvard Theological Review, Harvard Divinity School, 45 Francis Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02138. An updated style sheet is available upon request ([email protected]). For subscriptions (US): Subscription Coordinator, Cambridge University Press, 32 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10013-2473; tel: 800-872-7423 or 845-353-7500; fax: 845-353-4141. Email: [email protected]. Annual subscription rates for Volume 103, 2010: Individuals, print only: US $55 in the U.S.A., Canada, and Mexico; £36 in UK, elsewhere. Institutions, print only: US $166 in the U.S.A., Canada, and Mexico; £99 in UK, elsewhere. Institutions, electronic only: US $152 in the U.S.A., Canada, and Mexico; £90 + VAT UK, elsewhere. Institutions, print and electronic: US $182 in the U.S.A., Canada, and Mexico; £109 in UK, elsewhere. Prices include surface postage and are payable in advance or on receipt of invoice; only personal check or credit card accepted for individual subscriptions (corporate check also accepted for institutional subscriptions). Website: journals.cambridge.org. For subscriptions outside the US: Journals Marketing Department, Cambridge University Press, The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 1BR, UK. Tel: +44 (0) 1223 326-070; fax: +44 (0) 1223 315052. Email: [email protected]. VAT registration no: GB 214 1416 14. Payment in pounds sterling. Back issues of vols. 1 (1908) through 93 (2000) are available from the Periodicals Service Company, 11 Main St., Germantown, NY 12526; tel: (518) 537–4700, fax: (518) 537–5899. For more recent issues, contact the journal’s customer services at Cambridge University Press, 100 Brook Hill Drive, W. Nyack, NY 10994-2113; tel: 800-872-7423. The foreign language and transliteration fonts used in this journal are available from Linguist’s Software Inc., PO Box 580, Edmonds, WA 98020-0580 USA; tel: (425) 775–1130. Website: www.linguistsoftware.com. Typeset in the Harvard Theological Review OfÀces, Harvard Divinity School, Cambridge, Massachusetts Published by Cambridge University Press, New York, New York © Copyright by the President and Fellows of Harvard College, 2010

Married to an Unbeliever: Households, Hierarchies, and Holiness in 1 Corinthians 7:12–16* Caroline Johnson Hodge College of Holy Cross, Worcester

In his Advice to the Bride and Groom, Plutarch famously pronounces: “A married woman should therefore worship and recognize the gods whom her husband holds dear, and these alone. The door must be closed to strange cults and foreign superstitions. No god takes pleasure in cult performed furtively and in secret by a woman.”1 These comments represent a patriarchal ideology that the wife (along with the whole household) should follow the worship practices of the husband. It also suggests the possibility that this counsel was not always followed and that wives might bring their own gods into a marriage, attempting to maintain ritual practices in their honor, perhaps secretly. A number of early Christian sources tell us that sometimes whole households are baptized together. The typical pattern is that the head of the household, who is usually—but not always—a man, is won over by a particular teacher who is passing through town, and he and his whole household are baptized.2 This phenomenon is in keeping with the ideology Plutarch lays out. But what if a wife converted to Christianity and her husband did not? What options does she have? Does she *

Many thanks to colleagues and friends who have read and commented on drafts of this article: Denise Buell, Laura Nasrallah, Jennifer Knust, Shelly Rambo, Ann Braude, Carol Duncan, Fatima Sadiqi, Alex Cuffel, Katherine Shaner, Carly Daniel-Hughes, John Lanci, Mary Ebbott, Ellen Perry, David Karmon, Eugenia Lao. Sarah Bidgood was an invaluable research assistant. My thanks also to James Walters for inviting me to present an early version of this work for the Brown Lecture at Boston University, October 2007. 1 Advice to the Bride and Groom 140D (Moralia I.140D); ET: Plutarch’s Advice to the Bride and Groom and A Consolation to His Wife: English Translations, Commentary, Interpretive Essays and Bibliography (ed. Sarah B. Pomeroy; New York: Oxford, 1991) 7. 2 See Acts 11:14; 16:14–15, 31–34. HTR 103:1 (2010) 1–25

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remain in the household? Does she leave it? If she stays, does she practice this new religion in secret, as Plutarch describes? Or does she somehow incorporate Christian practices into the traditional religious practices of the household?3 Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, we do not have information from the women themselves about this predicament. We do have evidence, however, that Christian authors — mostly men as far as we know—were concerned about this situation, our earliest being Paul.4 In the context of a discussion of marriage and sexual practices, Paul advises men and women married to “unbelievers”5: (12) To the rest I say (I and not the Lord): if a brother (ENHIPJSb has an unbelieving wife (E?TMWXSR) and she agrees to live with him (SMNOIMDR QIX© EYNXSYD), let him not leave her. (13) And if a woman has an unbelieving husband (E?TMWXSR) and he agrees to live with her, let her not leave her husband. (14) For the unbelieving husband is made holy (L.KMZEWXEM) by the wife and the unbelieving wife is made holy by the brother (ENHIPJ[D). Otherwise your children are unclean (ENOEZUEVXE); but now they are holy (E_KME). (15) If an unbelieving man separates, let him separate; neither a brother (ENHIPJSb) or a sister (ENHIPJL) is enslaved in cases such as these.

3 For recent discussion of the nature of “household” and “family” religious practices, see Jonathan Z. Smith, “Here, There, and Anywhere,” in his collection of essays, Relating Religion: Essays in the Study of Religion (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004) 323–339, esp. 325–28; Stanley K. Stowers, “Theorizing Ancient Household Religion,” in Household and Family Religion in Antiquity (ed. John Bodel and Saul M. Olyan; Malden, Mass.: Blackwell Publishing, 2008) 5–19; Christopher A. Faraone, “Household Religion in Ancient Greece,” in Household and Family Religion in Antiquity, 210–28; Christiane Sourvinou-Inwood, “Further Aspects of Polis Religion,” in Oxford Readings in Greek Religion (ed. Richard Buxton; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000) 38–55; Deborah Boedeker, “Domestic Religion in Classical Greece,” in Household and Family Religion, 229–47; John Bodel, “Cicero’s Minerva, Penates, and the Mother of the Lares: An Outline of Roman Domestic Religion,” in Household and Family Religion, 248–75. Some of the issues relating to the deÀnition of household religion are whether there is a distinction between family religion (related more to ancestors) and domus or SM@OSb religion (related more to the space of the house and the possessions in it), and whether household religion is only that which occurs in the space of the house or also that which occurs in spaces outside the house (such as during funerary processions or at rituals marking boundaries of property). 4 Later texts include: 1 Pet 3:1–2; Justin Martyr, Second Apology 2.1–6; Tertullian, Ad Uxorem 2. In addition, the stories in the Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles often revolve around the conÁict between a recently converted wife and her unbelieving husband. 5 TranslatingE?TMWXSb as “unbeliever” is not entirely satisfactory for two reasons: 1) it does not adequately express Àrst-century understandings of this term; and 2) it contributes to a common but anachronistic perception of Àrst-century Christianity as a religion primarily of “belief” over and against “acts” (especially in Paul). As I argue elsewhere, E?TMWXSb could also be translated “untrustworthy,” or “unfaithful” (see If Sons, then Heirs [New York: Oxford University Press, 2007] 82). See also Will Deming, Paul on Marriage and Celibacy: The Hellenistic Background of 1 Cor 7 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995) 144–48. In the context of marital relations, however, these translations (especially “unfaithful”) are misleading because they imply marital inÀdelity, which is not Paul’s topic here.

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God has called you in peace. (16) For how do you know, woman, if you will save your husband? Or how do you know, man, if you will save your wife? (1 Cor 7:12–16)

Paul’s advice presents a striking contrast to Plutarch’s. Instead of addressing wives alone, he addresses both spouses, as though this might be an issue for both men and women. And Paul is not imagining that the whole household has converted with the head of the household, as we see in other early Christian texts. Furthermore, instead of counseling adherence to the husband’s gods and rejection of “foreign” gods, Paul advises both spouses to stay with their unbelieving partners as long as the latter are willing, advice which implies a certain amount of toleration for the situation. Indeed, Paul seems to imagine that this sort of “mixed marriage” could work, at least for the short term.6 While many factors may account for these differences, one in particular stands out: in the context of the gentile audience in Corinth, Paul’s teachings do not represent traditional gods and practices (which Plutarch associates with the husband), but rather a new and foreign tradition, like those Plutarch warns against. Awareness of this situation may account for his toleration of these “mixed marriages,” and may prompt his advice that believers accommodate their spouses. Indeed, much of Paul’s letter is aimed at addressing this issue: his goal is to guide these gentile believers in their new lives as a people of the God of Israel while still interacting with neighbors. Thus 1 Corinthians is full of advice on various social practices, such as eating, marrying, having sex, and worshipping. 1 Cor 7:12–16 has received a good deal of attention from scholars, mostly focusing on Paul’s views of marriage (speciÀcally intermarriage), or on Paul’s notions of purity and holiness. My goal is to add an additional, related question, one 6

Paul’s apocalyptic outlook informs much of his advice, including in 1 Corinthians 7 (see vv. 26, 29, 31). A number of scholars argue that Paul is Àrmly opposed to mixed marriages (and tolerates them only when a person converts after marriage). The two passages typically cited as evidence for this are 1 Cor 7:39 (widows may remarry, “only in the Lord”) and 2 Cor 6:14–18 (“do not be mismatched with unbelievers ...”). For examples of this view, see two excellent studies: Christine Hayes, Gentile Impurities and Jewish Identities: Intermarriage and Conversion from the Bible to the Talmud (New York: Oxford University Press: 2002) 92–98, and Kathy L. Gaca, The Making of Fornication: Eros, Ethics and Political Reform in Greek Philosophy and Early Christianity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003) 146–52. I am not convinced the case is so clear in either 1 Cor 7:39 or 2 Cor 6:14–18. Regina Plunkett-Dowling argues that this 2 Corinthians passage is not about marriage but about those who have defected from Paul’s teachings (“Reading and Restoration: Paul’s Use of Scripture in 2 Corinthians 1–9,” [Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 2001] 121–73). I would also caution against the anachronistic assumption that there is an established, “Christian” view of marriage and intermarriage that Paul echoes (or even argues for). Later Christian authors will use these passages to argue for Christian endogamy (as Hayes and Gaca both discuss), but this is not a concern of Paul. For Paul, marriage is a stop-gap for uncontrollable desire rather than as an end in itself. Furthermore, Paul does not think in terms of “Christians” and “non-Christians,” but in terms of Jews, gentiles, and members of both groups who are in Christ. In 1 Corinthians Paul advises gentiles-in-Christ on how to be true to their calling as God’s people and still interact with those outside the INOOPLWMZE

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that perhaps would have been on the minds of Paul’s readers: how would a believer and an unbeliever share a household? In the ancient world, marriage, religious practices, and children—the main topics of Paul’s passage—are inextricably bound together in the structure of the household. Agreeing to live together, as Paul puts it here, encompasses the whole range of responsibilities of a husband or wife in maintaining a household, including bearing and raising children, conducting business, producing goods, farming, and—important for our discussion—tending to the household cult. 7 Ancient listeners would have undoubtedly heard Paul’s advice in this context of the household and the various activities associated with it. Furthermore, despite Paul’s rhetoric of reciprocity, his comments have different implications and consequences for wives than for husbands. As the Plutarch quote above illustrates, the ideology of households, reÁecting the values of patriarchy, is such that the members of the household are expected to be loyal to the gods of the head of the household, who is often, although not always, a man. Because of the power dynamics of the household, the stakes are different for a wife, or any other subordinate member of the household, who is baptized into Christ apart from the head of the household. Such individuals face the tension of dual loyalties, to their new God and to the head of the household’s gods. In the following analysis, I will read 1 Cor 7:12–16 within the context of ancient households, with special attention to the implications for the lives of women and others in subordinate positions. My primary goal is not necessarily to understand Paul better, but to use his text to think through how members of the INOOPLWMZEM, not only in Corinth but throughout the empire, might have responded to and evaluated Paul’s comments (or perhaps what they did to prompt this advice in the Àrst place). To accomplish this, it is helpful to analyze this passage in the context of ancient households, both the physical spaces and the various hierarchies and social relationships that occurred there. This becomes especially relevant when we recognize that the household was a sacred space—at least parts of it were at certain times—and religious rituals were a part of daily activities. Furthermore, these ritual practices, in which all members of the household participated, were integral to power negotiations within the household. What are the implications for a subordinate member of the household who refuses to honor the gods of her husband and honors her own in their place? By tending to these questions within the larger context of the household, I hope to expose some of the possible stakes and options for women in this situation. To attain this perspective, I will present several snapshots of Roman-period households, based on archaeological and literary evidence. I want to call attention in particular to domestic religious practices, which would have been a part of daily 7

Cynthia B. Patterson argues that in Classical Athens, marriage is understood primarily as the establishment of a household. See Patterson’s “Marriage and the Married Woman in Athenian Law,” in Women’s History and Ancient History (ed. Sarah B. Pomeroy; Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, 1991) 47–72.

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life and would have involved women and slaves. I will then discuss household religious practices as a site for asserting power in the ancient world, on the part of both those higher in the household hierarchy and those in lower positions. This discussion of ancient households sets the context for an examination of 1 Cor 7:12–16, in which I will highlight some of Paul’s rhetorical aims and how these interact with discourses about and practices of ancient households. We will see how Paul’s advice here (to stay with unbelieving spouses) glosses over a variety of complicated issues that a mixed household might produce, especially for believing wives. Finally I will ask how “mixed marriages” and Paul’s advice about them might have been understood and evaluated by women.

Q Snapshots of Households If we were walking down the street in a city in the Roman empire in the year 50 C.E., we might catch an occasional glimpse of the activities inside the houses we passed, especially those of wealthier citizens.8 We could see through the front doorway, for example, into the atrium of the house, which served as a place to meet friends and business associates.9 The head of the household might be there, greeting guests and conducting business. We might see a slave standing guard in the doorway, or passing through the shadows on the far side of the atrium, on her or his way back and forth from the kitchen or work rooms, serving the various members of the family and the guests.10 We might also see the householder wife occupied with her various duties as household manager, coordinating the work in the house or receiving guests.11

8 In the following paragraphs, I draw from archaeological and literary evidence of household religious practices from different parts of the Roman empire. It is not my intention to offer a comprehensive discussion of households or domestic religious practices. There are many problems with such a task, including the variety of household practices in different places, and the relative lack of attention to households by scholars (in contrast to civic spaces and activities) until recently. Describing household practices in a place like Corinth, for example, is a complicated task. The material evidence from Corinth, a Roman colony with a long Greek history, yields a mix of Greek, Roman and foreign traditions, and scholars are just beginning to study this multiplicity. See Jorunn Økland, Women in Their Place: Paul and the Corinthian Discourse of Gender and Sanctuary Space (New York: T&T Clark, 2004) and the essays in Urban Religion in Roman Corinth: Interdisciplinary Approaches (ed. Daniel Schowalter and Steven J. Friesen; Harvard Theological Studies 53; Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Divinity School, 2005). 9 For descriptions of this view into houses and the social ritual of the salutatio, see John R. Clarke, The Houses of Roman Italy 100 BC–AD 250: Ritual, Space, and Decoration (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991) 1–12, and Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, Houses and Society in Pompeii and Herculaneum (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994) 12. 10 Michele George, “Servus and domus: The Slave in the Roman House,” in Domestic Space in the Roman World: Pompeii and Beyond (ed. Ray Laurence and Andrew Wallace-Hadrill; Journal of Roman Archaeology Supplementary Series 22; Portsmouth, R.I.: 1997) 15–24. 11 Susan Treggiari, Roman Marriage: Iusti Coniuges From the Time of Cicero to the Time of Ulpian (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991) 420–24.

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Depending on the house, we might glimpse a shrine in the atrium or garden beyond, a mini-temple that mimics the architecture of the sanctuary down the street.12 Statuettes of the gods might be perched inside this structure, or might be painted on the side, perhaps including the genius, or personiÀcation of the head of the household.13 If it were his birthday, we would see the household members making offerings at this shrine, a rite that signals their allegiance to him and their membership in the household. Passing another house we might witness the family gathered around a shrine, while a mother and daughter place offerings of cakes, wine and incense to Juno in a niche in the wall. It is the daughter’s birthday, and the mother coaches her in her prayers to the goddess.14 Or perhaps a new bride makes offerings to a Àgure of Aphrodite, asking for fertility and healthy children.15 In rooms hidden from public view, such as kitchens or other service areas, slaves might tend their own shrines, located in a less decorated niche in the wall above the stove. In a space that free, elite members of the household would not have frequented, slave men and women may have honored the gods of their owners, or perhaps more likely, they honored their own gods, such as those from their homeland.16 12 George K. Boyce, “Corpus of the Lararia of Pompeii,” Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome, 24 (Rome: American Academy in Rome, 1937) 12–14 and passim. 13 Clarke, The Houses of Roman Italy, 9; Daniel P. Harmon, “The Family Festivals of Rome,” ANRW 2.16.2 (1978) 1595; David G. Orr, “Roman Domestic Religion: The Evidence of the Household Shrines,” ANRW 2.16.2 (1978) 1569–75. 14 Tibullus offers a glimpse of a celebration of a birthday of a daughter, Sulpicia: “Juno of the birthday, receive the holy piles of incense which the accomplished maid’s soft hand now offers you. Today she has bathed for you; most joyfully she has decked herself for you, to stand before your altar a sight for all to see. . . . She is making an offering to you, holy goddess, three times with cake and three times with wine, and the mother eagerly enjoins upon her child what she must pray for” (3.12.1–4, 14–15). ET: amended Catullus, Tibullus, Pervigilium Veneris (trans. John Percival Postgate and rev. by George Patrick Goold; Loeb Classical Library; Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1988) 331. 15 Charles K. Williams II discusses the Àgurines of Aphrodite and other deities found in Corinth: “Roman Corinth: The Final Years of Pagan Cult Facilities along East Theater Street,” in Urban Religion in Roman Corinth, 221–47. These statuettes seem to have been part of domestic religious practices, and Williams argues that those of Aphrodite related to concerns of families and especially wives, a theory that coheres with the use of similar Àgurines in Egypt and Pompeii (“Roman Corinth,” 245–46). 16 Bodel, “An Outline of Roman Domestic Religion,” 264–68; Pedar Foss, “Watchful Lares: Roman Household Organization and the Rituals of Cooking and Eating,” in Domestic Space in the Roman World: Pompeii and Beyond (ed. Ray Laurence and Andrew Wallace-Hadrill; Journal of Roman Archaeology Supplementary Series 22; Portsmouth, R.I.: 1997) 197–218; Michele George, “Repopulating the Roman House,” in The Roman Familiy in Italy: Status, Sentiment, Space (ed. Beryl Rawson and Paul Weaver; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997) 316–17. Others have argued, however, that family members may have come to the “service areas” to worship, so that the religious practices in the household was not necessarily segregated. For this view, see David L. Balch, “Rich Pompeian Houses, Shops for Rent, and the Huge Apartment Building in Herculaneum as Typical Spaces for Pauline House Churches,” JSNT 27 (2004) 39–40.

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Attached to these elite houses we might notice shop fronts along the street. People working here might be dependents in the elite households, and we might glimpse an image of a god on an interior wall or a votive statue on a shelf.17 Just down the street we might see a larger building with multiple families living in discrete living units inside, like apartments.18 We can imagine people in these rooms, even in cramped quarters, still honoring the gods with meal time offerings and prayers.19 As is clear from these snapshots, ancient households should not be cordoned off, as though they were private retreats from work and public life. Instead, Roman-period households accommodated domestic, commercial, political and social activities. People slept, dressed, cooked, ate, procreated and raised children in households. People worked in households, sometimes in shops attached to the physical space of the house, contributing to the economic production of the household. People conducted business in households, as exempliÀed by the ritual of the morning salutatio, in which clients would visit patrons in atria, often on view for passersby. People also entertained in households, inviting friends as well as business and political associates to dine in their houses. A wide range of people could populate an elite household: immediate family members, extended family and dependents, slaves, other workers, tenants, nurses, teachers, and so on. Representatives of various social strata thus occupied households together, in what Andrew Wallace-Hadrill has called “housefuls.”20 Crucial for all of these activities and all of these people was proper devotion to the gods who saw to their prosperity. From the evidence that survives, both literary and archaeological, we can say that domestic religious practices were often connected to meal rituals, perhaps involving small food offerings to the gods before or during meals.21 Statuettes of a variety of deities have been found in houses, as 17

For evidence of religious practices in workshops, shops, depots, and hotels in Ostia, see Jan Theo Bakker, Living and Working With the Gods: Studies of Evidence for Private Religion and its Material Environment in the City of Ostia (100–500 AD) (Dutch Monographs on Ancient History and Archaeology, 12; Amsterdam; J. C. Gieben, 1994) 56–95; John R. Clarke, Art in the Lives of Ordinary Romans: Visual Representation and Non-elite Viewers in Italy, 100 B.C.–A.D. 315 (Berkeley: University of California, 2003) 85–87. 18 Wallace-Hadrill, Houses and Society, 132–33; idem, “Domus and Insulae in Rome: Families and Housefuls,” in Early Christian Families in Context: An Interdisciplinary Dialogue (ed. David Balch and Carolyn Osiek; Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2003) 3–18; Bakker, Living and Working with the Gods, 44–55. 19 Clarke, Houses of Roman Italy, 25–29; idem, Art in the Lives of Ordinary Romans, 75–78. On the living conditions of the poor in Roman cities, see C. Richard Whittaker, “The Poor in the City of Rome,” in Land, City, and Trade in the Roman Empire (Variorum Collected Studies, CS 408; Aldershot: Ashgate, 1993) art. VII, 8–12. 20 Wallace-Hadrill, Houses and Society, 103–16. Wallace-Hadrill gives Peter Laslett the credit for the distinction between household and houseful (92, 103): Household and Family in Past Time (ed. Peter Laslett and Richard Wall; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972). Also on the different status positions of household members see David Balch, “Rich Pompeian Houses,” 42. 21 Dale M. Martin, The Corinthian Body (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), 183; Andrew McGowan, Ascetic Eucharist: Food and Drink in Early Christian Ritual Meals (Oxford: Clarendon

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have small shrines or niches which may have held these images.22 Rituals may have included everything from sacriÀces, to prayers, to gestures made upon entering or exiting through the door.23 The goal of this tour of an ancient street has not been to offer a comprehensive description of households or household religious practices. Indeed, our knowledge of household practices is far from complete, and our most plentiful evidence is that of the Roman elite on the Italian peninsula, even as we have some evidence from places like Corinth, Ephesus, and Egypt. If we want to consider places throughout the empire, such as Corinth or Carthage or Asia Minor, or any other places where 1 Corinthians was read, then we need to imagine multiple religious inÁuences, including indigenous traditions, foreign imports, and those imposed by Rome.24 We are aided in this by increasing attention to domestic archaeology and by the efforts of scholars who have begun to think about models that allow for this sort of multiplicity.25 Furthermore, our surviving evidence underrepresents poor housing, so, as with most of our sources from the ancient world, we have to imagine the poor back into the picture, living in insulae or apartments, small shops, rented rooms, or perhaps as dependents or workers in larger households.26 Instead, the goal of this tour of an ancient street has been to evoke images from Roman-period domestic activities in order to call attention to the household as a Press, 1999) 47; Martin Nilsson, Greek Folk Religion, 73–74; Stanley K. Stowers, “Theorizing Ancient Household Religion,” 11. My thanks to John Lanci for access to his unpublished paper, “Many Gods and Many Lords: Perspectives on Indigenous Religious Culture in Corinth,” in which he also makes this point (21–22). 22 Frankfurter, Religion in Roman Egypt, 131–42; Williams, “Roman Corinth,” 221–247; Ursula Quatember “Ego Lar Sum Familiaris: Private Frömmigkeit und Religionsausübung im Hanghaus 2 in Ephesos,” Forum Archaeologiae—Zeitschrift für klassische Archäologie 13.XII (1999) http://homepage. univie.ac.at/elisabeth.trinkl/forum/forum1299/13lar.htm; Maria Aurenhammer, “Sculptures of Gods and Heroes from Ephesos,” in Ephesos: Metropolis of Asia: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Its Archaeology, Religion and Culture (ed. Helmut Koester; Harvard Theological Studies 41; Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Divinity School, 1995) 251–80; Thomas Fröhlich, Lararien- und Fassadenbilder in den Vesuvstädten. Untersuchunges zur ‘volkstümlichen’ pompejanischen Malerei (Mitteilungen des deutschen archaeologischen Instituts. Römische Abteilung, Ergänzungsheft 32; Mainz: Philipp von Zabern, 1991); George K. Boyce, “Corpus of the Lararia of Pompeii,” Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome, 24 (Rome: American Academy in Rome, 1937); David G. Orr, “Roman Domestic Religion: The Evidence of the Household Shrines,” ANRW 2.16.2 (1978) 1557–91. 23 Frankfurter, Religion in Roman Egypt, 136–138; Clarke, Art in the Lives of Ordinary Romans, 75–78. 24 Jorunn Økland includes a helpful discussion of the intersection and intermingling of Greek, Roman and other traditions in Corinth as a Roman colony (Women in Their Place, 74–77 and bibliography listed in her notes). 25 See Benjamin W. Millis, “The Social and Ethnic Origins of the Colonists in Early Roman Corinth,” in Corinth In Context: Comparative Perspectives on Religion and Society (ed. Steve J. Friesen, Daniel Schowalter and James Walters; Novum Testamentum Supplement 128; Leiden: Brill, forthcoming 2010). John Lanci discusses this issue as well in his unpublished paper, “Many Gods and Many Lords: Perspectives on Indigenous Religious Culture in Corinth.” 26 For an attempt to better understand the economic status of early believers, see Steven J. Friesen, “Poverty in Pauline Studies: Beyond the So-Called New Consensus,” JSNT 26 (2004) 323–61.

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context for reading 1 Cor 7:12–16.27 What are the implications of Paul’s advice for believers to stay with unbelievers, maintaining households together? We can see that many religious rituals are tied to daily activities (such as eating and drinking, coming and going) and are therefore not segregated from mundane tasks.28 Furthermore, household religious practices are local and often tied to the ancestors of the head of the household, or to those gods that are relevant to the speciÀc needs of a given household. Therefore, even as we Ànd broad similarities in household practices in different parts of the empire, domestic religious practices were various and adaptable, often accommodating a mix of deities.29 Finally, religious rituals are implicated in the power relations in the household, not only those perceived between divine and human, but also those among the various people living in the household. What are the consequences for subordinate members of the household if they refuse to worship the gods of the paterfamilias?

Q Mapping Power through Household Cult In recent work on Roman-period households, scholars have called attention to the household as an arena of power negotiation.30 Kate Cooper discusses the “spatial grammar” of the domus and calls it a “stage for the performance of authority by the dominus.”31 Kristina Sessa argues that the household was an “index of an individual’s public status” and was therefore subject to public scrutiny.32 These power dynamics might play out in a variety of ways, including the domestic cult. The connection between the authority of the head of household and the power of the gods was widespread in the Roman world. Indeed, the very notion of belonging to a household, whether as a slave or a family member, meant precisely that you tended to the gods who protected that household, the gods of the paterfamilias. In patrilocal marriages, such as were common in the Roman world, the bride moved into the household of her husband and took up the responsibility for worship of 27 Although I have included the evidence from Corinth in the material above, I am not focusing solely on Corinth because Paul was eventually read around the empire and believers adapted this advice to their particular situations. So while I am interested in imagining the responses of this Àrst audience, I am also thinking more broadly about how believers empire-wide may have reacted to this advice. 28 Jonathan Z. Smith remarks that the everyday-ness of domestic religion is one of the reasons it is not studied as carefully as civic, public religious traditions (“Here, There, and Anywhere,” 325). 29 Pedar Foss notes that there are more exceptions than patterns in the houses he studies in “Watchful Lares,” 217. See also John Bodel, “Cicero’s Minerva,” 251. 30 These scholars draw upon anthropological approaches to space such as those explored in Pierre Bourdieu. Bourdieu, “The Berber House,” in Rules and Meanings: The Anthropology of Everyday Knowledge (ed. Mary Douglas; New York: Penguin, 1973) 98–110; and Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space (trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith; Oxford: Blackwell, 1991). 31 Kate Cooper, “Closely Watched Households: Visibility, Exposure and Private Power in the Roman Domus,” Past and Present 197 (2007) 9. 32 Kristina Sessa, “Christianity and the Cubiculum: Spiritual Politics and Domestic Space in Late Antique Rome,” JECS 15 (2007) 176.

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the gods of her new household.33 Plutarch’s advice quoted at the beginning of this article illustrates this patriarchal ideology, as he admonishes wives to shun any gods but those of her husband. Not doing so amounts to a kind of “religious inÀdelity” not tolerated by Roman moralists.34 Notice that Plutarch invokes a spatial image of closing the door of the household against “foreign” gods, drawing a boundary between the physical space of the household, the wife’s obedience to her husband, and religious Àdelity to his gods on one side, and foreign superstitions on the other. An explicit example of this ideology put into practice is the cult of the genius of the paterfamilias, which might be described as his spirit or personiÀcation. The genius was honored by the household members on the birthday of the paterfamilias, an action that signaled allegiance to him.35 Augustus himself recognized the potential of this tradition when he reorganized the city of Rome around wards and neighborhoods that honored the Genius Augusti and the Lares Augusti.36 These changes transferred Augustus’s household cult to the city, Àtting for an emperor who was cast as the ultimate paterfamilias of the Roman empire. As the model of the household was useful to Augustus in the political arena, so it was useful to moralists and philosophers as a moral framework for discussions on a variety of issues: economic production and wealth-getting; proper comportment of men, women and slaves; health and healing; agriculture; leadership and management skills; and politics (the household as the model for the state).37 Authors of these discourses on “household management” are preoccupied with the proper distribution of power and status. Order, efÀciency, productivity and virtue depend upon each person knowing and occupying a speciÀc position in a larger hierarchy: some are meant to rule and some to be ruled.38 The household thus becomes a site 33 See Treggiari, Roman Marriage, 169; Clarke, Houses of Roman Italy, 10; Harmon, “Family Festivals,” 1599–1600. See Sarah Pomeroy’s important caution against conÁating Greek and Roman evidence, especially regarding the issue of whether brides left the gods of their natal households (presumably their fathers’) in order to pledge loyalty to their husbands’ gods (Families in Classical and Hellenistic Greece: Representations and Realities [Oxford: Clarendon, 1997] 70–71). 34 Jo Ann McNamara, “Gendering Virtue,” in Plutarch’s Advice, 154–55. See also Margaret Y. MacDonald, Early Christian Women and Pagan Tradition: The Power of the Hysterical Woman (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1996) 49–126. 35 Orr, “Roman Domestic Religion,” 1569–75; Harmon, “Family Festivals,” 1595. 36 Rolf A. Tybout, “Domestic Shrines and ‘Popular Painting’: Style and Social Context.” Journal of Roman Archaeology 9 (1996) 370; Mary Beard, John North and Simon Price, Religions of Rome. Volume I: A History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998) 184–85. On the relationship between the imperial cult and households, see Ittai Gradel, Emperor Worship and Roman Religion (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2002) 198–212. 37 For an introduction to the theme of household management, and for the text and an analysis of Xenophon’s Œconomicus, see Sarah B. Pomeroy, Xenophon: Œconomicus: A Social and Historical Commentary (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994). Chapter Àve discusses the various subjects covered in household management discourses and chapter six traces the authors that follow this genre into the Roman period. See also David L. Balch, Let Wives Be Submissive: The Domestic Code in 1 Peter (Chico, Calif.: Scholars Press, 1981). 38 We Ànd this thinking in Plato (Laws III 690A–D) and Aristotle (Politics I 1260a 9–14). See Balch, Let Wives Be Submissive, 63–116, on the ways in which later moralists continue this thinking.

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for mapping out various levels of superiority and subordination, and discourses about households serve as a means of deploying elite values. There are several recurring and intersecting themes in discourses on household management: unity of the husband and wife, the subordination of the wife to the husband (often put in friendly terms by philosophers), order and stability, and reverence of the gods on the part of both husband and wife, which resulted in divine sanction of the marriage and prosperity of the household. We Ànd this cluster of themes expressed by Xenophon, a Àfth-century B.C.E. Greek philosopher whose work on this topic, Œconomicus, becomes the model for Roman-period writers such as Cicero, Philodemus and Columella.39 The model head of household in this text is Ischomachus, who explains to Socrates that when he married his wife, she knew hardly anything about managing the household and that it was his job to teach her (she was only fourteen, after all). Before doing so, Ischomachus describes how he sacriÀced to the gods and prayed for his success as a teacher and for her ability to learn (VII.6-7). When asked if his wife sacriÀced with him and offered prayers, Ischomachus replies, “Oh yes, very much so, and she vowed and prayed fervently to the gods that she might become the sort of woman that she ought to be” (VII.8).40 According to the view of this text, the husband and head of household is a teacher and the wife a student. She eagerly follows his lead in honoring the gods and submitting to his instruction. Authors of household management discourses consistently link the proper hierarchies and functioning of a uniÀed household with devotion to the gods, a rhetorical move that claims divine sanction for their version of a proper household.41 We Ànd an intriguing extension of this theme in Cato’s second-century-B.C.E. farming manual, De Agricultura, a treatise written for elite men who might acquire a country estate. Cato views religious practices as a way of distributing power and maintaining control of slaves in an elite household. Here Cato addresses the head male slave of the household and farm. One of his duties is to supervise the head female slave, who may be given to him (by their owner) as a wife (143). She must clean the hearth daily, and decorate it on holidays: “On the Kalends, Ides, and Nones, and whenever a holy day comes, she must hang a garland over the hearth, 39

Pomeroy, Xenophon, 69–73. Translation from Pomeroy, Xenophon, 139. 41 Similar elite values are expressed centuries after Xenophon by Hierocles, a second-century C.E. Stoic proponent of marriage, who argues that, “the beauty of a household consists in the yoking together of a husband and wife who are united to each other by fate, are consecrated to the gods who preside over weddings, births and hearths . . . who exercise appropriate rule over their household and servants, take care in rearing their children, and pay attention to the necessities of life.” (On Duties: On Marriage 4.22.21–24; Moral Exhortation, A Greco-Roman Sourcebook [trans. Abraham J. Malherbe, Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1986] 102). Greek text of Hierocles (in Stobaeus): Ioannis Stobaei Anthologium (ed. Curt Wachsmuth and Otto Hense; 5 vols.; repr., Berlin: Weidmann, 1974). In this passage, Hierocles focuses less on gender hierarchy in order to foreground the notion of unity of the husband and wife—a unity determined by fate and consecrated by the gods—in all facets of household life. 40

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and on those days pray to the household gods (Lari familiari) as opportunity offers” (143.2).42 Decorating the hearth and offering prayers to the Lares on speciÀc holy days are thus among the duties the slave performs.43 Cato is careful to point out, however, that the slave’s role in religious rituals is limited and distinct from the roles of the dominus and domina: “She must not engage in worship (rem divinam facere) herself or get others to engage in it for her without the orders of the dominus or domina. Let her remember that the dominus attends to the worship (rem divinam facere) for the whole household” (143.1). Anxiety over unsupervised worship surfaces here as Cato outlines the limitations on the slave woman’s freedom to perform religious rites. This passage offers a glimpse of the role of both a slave woman and the free wife of the paterfamilias: the slave woman performs religious duties connected to the hearth which she tends daily, and the domina is responsible for ordering and overseeing these duties. The dominus, though, the male head of household, is in charge of the rituals of the whole household; his authority trumps that of both women. According to Cato, autonomy with respect to religious practices reÁects the power structure of the household, which is shaped by gender and status. Cato’s instructions echo the prevailing ideology of the power of the paterfamilias in the Roman household, as well as the intertwined gender and status hierarchies that order the subordinate members of the household. Yet his instructions also betray a recognition of the potential for destabilizing this structure. Cato seems to recognize the possibility that the slave woman might initiate religious practices herself, or get others to do so, acts which mimic and undermine the authority of the head male slave over her or the domina and dominus over both of them. Indeed, although our archaeological evidence is not conclusive, several scholars have suggested that slaves did have access to their own shrines in kitchens and service areas and may therefore have been able to exercise at least limited autonomy in their worship practices.44 We can thus imagine in households a tension similar to what we see in Cato’s instructions to the vilicus and in Plutarch’s 42

ET amended from Marcus Porcius Cato “On Agriculture”; Marcus Terentius Varro “On Agriculture” (trans. William David Hooper and rev. Harrison Boyd Ash; Loeb Classical Library; Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1934) 123–25. 43 We Ànd other instances of husbands directing wives in matters of domestic cult in Roman comedy. In a scene from Plautus’s Trinummus, Callicles calls to his wife: “I want our Lar to be decorated with a garland. Wife, pray (venerare) so that the Lar may raise this dwelling up to be upright, happy, fortunate and prosperous for us” (lines 39-42). And in a passage from Rudens, the dominus orders his wife: “... prepare (adorna) things for me to make an offering (rem divinam faciam) to the household gods (Lares familiares) when I return home, since they have augmented our household. We have lambs and pigs for sacriÀce (sacri) at home” (lines 1206–1208). Translation of Rudens amended from Plautus in Five Volumes (trans. Paul Nixon; Loeb Classical Library; Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1932) 4:409. My thanks to Mandy Wall for these references. 44 Pedar Foss, “Watchful Lares,” 218; R. A. Tybout, “Domestic Shrines and ‘Popular Painting’: Style and Social Context,” Journal of Roman Archaeology 9 (1996) 367–70; Michele George, “Repopulating,” 316–17.

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warning to wives about foreign gods: not only was power imposed on others by the head of the household, but subordinate members could assent to and resist their place in the social hierarchy through religious rituals.45 In a discussion of Foucault’s notion of power, Elizabeth Castelli offers the following evaluation: “What is most helpful about this conceptualization of power, it seems to me, is that it creates the possibility of agency for the occupants of the subordinate position in a hierarchical relationship: that is, rather than theorizing the powerful and the powerless, it suggests that power is multiply Àgured in social relationships, and creates the possibility for thinking that the weight of the hierarchy might shift.”46 Catherine Bell develops precisely this notion in her study of ritual and proposes a complex understanding of ritual, or “ritualization,” as an arena in which power is asserted, accepted and resisted.47 Building upon Foucault’s notion of bodies as sites of power, Bell argues that ritualization, as action mediated by the body, becomes a process of power negotiation: “Ritualization is a strategic play of power, of domination and resistance, within the arena of the social body.”48 We might read the household rituals described above, ancient households in general, as well as the literature prescribing household behavior (including 1 Corinthians) in this context; power relationships are mapped out in each. We can imagine that through daily rituals, women and slaves found ways to resist or appropriate power in the household. Cato, Plutarch—and perhaps Paul—may be responding to this possibility.

Q Paul’s Rhetorical Aims in 1 Cor 7:12–16 Although Paul is not interested in productive, procreative households, many of the themes in 1 Corinthians overlap with those of household management, including gender roles, eating practices, and relationships among members that are both harmonious and properly hierarchical. 1 Corinthians might be called “INOOPLWMZE management.”49 Instead of constructing a productive and continuing household, Paul hopes to construct a community of gentiles who belong to the God of Israel. This is an enterprise that takes some work, in his view, as he attempts to shape idolatrous, gentile bodies into gentile-bodies-in-Christ. In this process of redeÀning, certain themes are crucial: self-control, bodily boundaries, and proper versus improper mixing. In 1 Cor 7:12–16, Paul’s famous and famously puzzling “mixed marriage” passage, the issue of how to manage contact with those outside the INOOPLWMZEis 45 Kate Cooper describes the importance of the reciprocal (if asymmetrical) power in the Roman household in “Closely Watched Households,” 7. 46 Elizabeth Castelli, “Interpretations of Power in 1 Corinthians,” Semeia 54 (1991) 203. 47 Catherine Bell, Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992). 48 Bell, Ritual Theory, 204. 49 Jorunn Økland discusses the differences between “oikia space” and “ekklesia space” (Women in Their Place, 131–43).

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negotiated within the context of household and family. This passage has received an enormous amount of attention from scholars. My goal in the discussion that follows is not to evaluate this body of scholarship or to offer a thorough analysis of the passage. Rather, I focus on how Paul attempts to deÀne and control household relationships. In this context, Paul’s use of purity language is striking, for he uses it to explain why “mixed marriages” work. Yet as I will show, this very language also yields readings that might allow subordinate members of the household to exercise some power of their own. Scholars have long debated how to interpret Paul’s purity language in 1 Cor 7:14, where he justiÀes his advice to stay with unbelieving spouses: “For the unbelieving husband is made holy (L.KMZEWXEM) by the wife and the unbelieving wife is made holy by the brother (ENHIPJ[D). Otherwise your children are unclean (ENOEZUEVXE); but now they are holy (E_KME).” His argument seems to be that the unbelieving partner is somehow made holy by the believing partner, a process which is proven through holiness of the children.50 This logic rests on the assumption that if one of the parents were not holy, the children would be unclean. Since the children are holy (which seems to be a given), both parents must be holy also. I think it is probably fruitless to attempt to discern a coherent system of purity and holiness here, or in Paul as a whole, or in the Corinthian community, that would explain why the children are holy and exactly how spouses are made holy. Scholars have speculated that it has to do with the intimacies of marriage, namely intercourse, and that holiness was understood as heritable, so that children of holy parents were inherently holy. 51 As intriguing as these possibilities are, we simply 50 I have translated the Greek preposition INR as “by,” treating it as instrumental. See Rom 15:16 where the offering of the gentiles is “sanctiÀed by (INR) the holy spirit.” Another possibility is to read this INR as “in,” so the unbeliever is made holy “in” the believer. Dale Martin makes this argument, and compares this to believers being “in” Christ (The Corinthian Body, 218). I am not sure the two readings (INR as “by” or as “in”) are mutually exclusive, although I do not think the use of INR in 7:14 is quite the same as being “in Christ.” I have argued elsewhere that when Paul says that the gentiles are “in Christ,” he refers to a kinship ideology in which descendants are “in” their ancestors (If Sons, 93–107). See also Stanley K. Stowers, “Pauline Participation in Christ,” in RedeÀning First-Century Jewish and Christian Identities: Essays in Honor of Ed Parish Sanders (ed. Fabian Udoh; Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2008). 51 Many questions remain despite signiÀcant scholarly attention: by what mechanism is one made holy by one’s spouse? Why is it a given that the children are holy— have they been baptized? Are the children and the E?TMWXSb spouse considered members of the community? For discussion of these issues, see Hans Conzelmann, First Corinthians: A Commentary on the First Epistle to the Corinthians (Philadelphia, Pa.: Fortress, 1975) 121–23; Raymond F. Collins, First Corinthians (Sacra Pagina 7; Collegeville, Minn.: The Liturgical Press, 1999) 262–73; MacDonald, Early Christian Women, 189–95; Anthony C. Thiselton, The First Epistle to the Corinthians: A Commentary on the Greek Text (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2000) 527–30. Thiselton is less persuaded by the “contagion” theories, and argues (following Owen Roger Jones and Jerome Murphy-O’Connor) that Paul’s concept of holiness could have an ethical dimension, so that the behavior of the believing spouse could affect the whole household (First Epistle to the Corinthians, 529–30). For a connection between Paul’s “sanctiÀcation” language and later Jewish texts, see David Daube, “Pauline Contributions to a Pluralistic Culture: Re-creation and Beyond,” in Jesus and Man’s

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do not have enough information to settle the matter. Therefore, rather than trying to “uncover” a stable system accessible to Paul and to the Corinthians, which may not in fact exist, I will consider instead how purity language is being used rhetorically in this passage. How does Paul deploy purity language in certain situations, as he does here, and what are the issues at stake for him and for his audience? If we survey Paul’s letters, we Ànd that he repeatedly connects gentiles who are not in Christ with idolatry and TSVRIMZE (or sexual immorality) and then describes this state in terms of pollution and holiness.52 Before they are in Christ, gentiles are idolatrous, prone to acts of TSVRIMZE, and are ENOEZUEVXE, or unclean.53 This cluster of bad things, in Paul’s thinking, is a theological condition that characterizes people who are alienated from the God of Israel.54 In turn, Paul describes the transformation from this degraded state to becoming a people of God as being made holy. Just prior to our “mixed marriage” passage, Paul describes this change, offering a “before and after” moral assessment of the gentile believers. Some of you used to be sexually immoral, idolaters, adulterers (and so on),55 Paul tells the Corinthians, “But you were washed, you were sanctiÀed (L.KMEZWULXI), you were justiÀed in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God” (6:9b–11).56 Holiness marks a shift in identity for these non-Jews who have left behind their worship of the wrong gods and lack of self-mastery and have become loyal to the God of Israel.57 Hope (ed. Donald G. Miller and Dikran Y. Hadidian; Pittsburgh: Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, 1971) 223–45 and Yonder Moynihan Gillihan, “Jewish Laws on Illicit Marriage, the DeÀlement of Offspring, and the Holiness of the Temple: A New Halakic Interpretation of 1 Corinthians 7:14,” JBL 121 (2002) 711–44. For a study of Paul’s concept of holiness, see J. Ayodeji Adewuya, Holiness and Community in 2 Cor 6:14–7:1: Paul’s View of Communal Holiness in the Corinthian Correspondence (New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2001) chs. 5 and 6. 52 Jennifer Knust comments on this in Abandoned to Lust: Sexual Slander and Ancient Christianity (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006) 51–87. 53 On notions of purity in Paul, see Michael Newton, The Concept of Purity at Qumran and in the Letters of Paul (London: Cambridge University Press, 1985), but also the revisions of Jonathan Klawans, who argues that it is important to distinguish between ritual impurity and moral impurity, and that Paul is concerned about the latter in regard to gentiles (Klawans, Impurity and Sin in Ancient Judaism [New York: Oxford University Press, 2000] 150–56). 54 See Johnson Hodge, If Sons, 49–51. 55 The verse I paraphrase reads: “Those who are sexually immoral (TSZVRSM), idolaters, adulterers (QSMGSMZ), effeminate men (QEPEOSMZ), those who have sex with men (ENVWIRSOSMDXEM), thieves, the greedy, drunkards, revilers, robbers — none of these will inherit the kingdom of God. And this is what some of you used to be” (1 Cor 6:9b–11a). On the complications of translating QEPEOSMZ and ENVWIRSOSMDXEM, see Dale B. Martin, “Arsenokoitďs and Malakos: Meanings and Consequences,” in his collection of essays, Sex and the Single Savior: Gender and Sexuality in Biblical Interpretation (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2007) 37–50. See also Bernadette J. Brooten, Love Between Women: Early Christian Responses to Female Homoeroticism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996) 260. 56 See also Rom 6:19b: “For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to greater and greater iniquity, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness for sanctiÀcation.” 57 This kind of purity and holiness language is reminiscent of discussions of the temple among Jewish authors. Indeed, Paul makes this connection explicit a few verses later when he speaks of

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These holy bodies are not without constraints, however, as Paul will argue immediately following this passage. They must answer to the “body of Christ,” of which they are all members. Using the analogy of a man with a prostitute (TSZVRL),58 Paul challenges: “Do you not know that whoever is united (OSPP[ZQIRSb) to a prostitute (XLD TSZVRL becomes one body with her? For it is said, ‘The two shall become one Áesh.’ But anyone united (OSPP[ZQIRSb) to the Lord becomes one spirit with him. Shun TSVRIMZE!” (6:16–18a). With Genesis to bolster his argument, Paul asserts a contagion theory whereby impurity can pass from one to another through acts of TSVRIMZE, or sexual immorality.59 This is especially egregious since it threatens the body of Christ, the community, to which the believer’s body — here represented as male — is connected and subjected.60 Paul wraps up his argument with a reiteration of the relationship of the individual body to the corporate body, and makes explicit the individual Corinthians’ lack of power: “Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the holy spirit within you, which you have from God, and that you are not your own?” (1 Cor 6:14–15). 1 Corinthians 6 illustrates how Paul uses purity language to deÀne the status and limit the power of the Corinthians. Calling the gentiles “unclean” links them to idolatry, immoral behavior and the crisis, from Paul’s perspective, of being alienated from the God of Israel. In turn, “sanctiÀcation” and “holiness” signal a transformation from that degraded state to a new life in which gentiles belong to God and must live up to this standard. Part of this arrangement, as Paul states in 1 Corinthians 6, is that they no longer own their own bodies, and must now serve the corporate body of Christ. Purity language serves Paul’s aim of policing the bodies of the gentile believers, and thus the boundaries of the INOOPLWMZE. In the “mixed marriage” passage in 1 Corinthians 7, purity language once again marks the boundaries between believers and unbelievers. In contrast to 1 Corinthians the Corinthians’ bodies being a “temple” or “sanctuary” (RESZb) (1 Cor 6:19; see also 3:16–17). Thanks to my conversation partners Jonathan Klawans, Paula Fredriksen, James Walters, Jennifer Knust and others at the Brown Lecture Series at Boston University, October 2007, for a lively discussion on this point. 58 Jennifer Glancy argues that this prostitute is most likely a slave girl or slave woman in Slavery in Early Christianity (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002) 65. Kathy L. Gaca interprets this TSZVRL as a biblical harlot Àgure, a foreign woman who is devoted to other gods who is often negatively sexualized by biblical writers (The Making of Fornication, 170–72). 59 Christine Hayes, developing the work of Jonathan Klawans on purity categories in Judaism, argues that here Paul conÁates two types of impurity systems: 1) ritual impurity (which was contagious, usually connected to bodily processes, and either temporary or treatable); and 2) moral impurity (which was brought on by behavior, was associated with gentiles, and which could not be Àxed). Hayes calls this innovation “carnal impurity” (Hayes, Gentile Impurities, 92–98; 3–16 offers a helpful introduction to and outline of the argument). 60 Laura S. Nasrallah, An Ecstasy of Folly: Prophecy and Authority in Early Christianity (Harvard Theological Studies 52; Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Divinity School, 2003) 78–79. Nasrallah argues that the string of advice about bodies in 1 Corinthians (eating, marriage, sex, etc.) represent various attempts by Paul to subject individual bodies to the corporate body.

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6, however, where Paul claims that a contagious impurity threatens the “body of Christ,” in this passage a contagious holiness seems to be at work.61 Here, the status of the believer’s body — a member of Christ, a holy temple — trumps the status of the unbeliever’s: the holiness of the believer somehow transfers to the unbelieving spouse, at least enough to render their children not unclean but holy.62 Instead of the body of Christ, we have the household as the corporate entity here, and the status of each member is affected positively by the holiness of the one believer. Similar assumptions about contagion and power to transform are at work here as in the previous chapter, but they are turned on their head so that the insider transforms the outsider rather than the other way around. What is Paul up to here? It is possible that this passage is at least intended to serve his repeated admonition in 1 Corinthians 7 to “stay as you are.” Paul offers this advice to those who are married, to those who are not, to those who are widows, to those who are virgins, to the circumcised, the uncircumcised, and to slaves.63 Just prior to our passage, for example, Paul advises spouses not to divorce each other (7:10–11). When he turns to the issue of believers married to unbelievers, he also 61 In most Jewish texts, and elsewhere in Paul, it is pollution that is contagious, not holiness (Hayes, Gentile Impurities, 251, n. 13). For rabbinic exceptions, see Hayes (Gentile Impurities, 145–63) and E. P. Sanders, who describes clean water purifying unclean water (Judaism: Practice and Belief 63 BCE – 66 CE [Philadelphia: Trinity Press International, 1992] 226). Will Deming Ànds a parallel in Philo, On the SacriÀces of Abel and Cain 128 (see Deming, Paul on Marriage and Celibacy, 140–41). Forty or so years after Paul, the author of 1 Clement writes: “For it is written, ‘Unite with the holy ones (OSPPEDWUI XSMDb E.KMZSMb), for those who unite with them shall be made holy (E.KMEWULZWSRXEM)’ ” (46.2). The language of “uniting” (OSPPEDWUI) and “being made holy” or being “sanctiÀed” (E.KMEWULZWSRXEM) echoes Paul’s language in 1 Corinthians 6:16–17 and 6:11 (respectively). 62 Yonder Moynihan Gillihan offers an alternative reading in “Jewish Laws on Illicit Marriage,” 711–44. Using Qumran and Mishnaic sources, Gillihan argues that Paul engages in halaka here, commenting on and interpreting the law laid down by “the Lord.” He cites some fascinating parallels in which these other Jewish texts refer to licit marriage as the “sanctiÀcation” of the spouse. Gillihan therefore argues that Paul is using this purity language similarly: to argue that the marriage is sanctiÀed and therefore licit. It is through the marriage itself that the unbeliever is sanctiÀed, or made into a legitimate marriage partner. I Ànd the parallel language fascinating and Gillihan’s argument mostly convincing. I tend to agree with Christine E. Hayes, however, that there is still some sort of notion of contagious purity implied in 1 Corinthians 7:14. As Hayes points out, Paul is not saying that the marriage sanctiÀes or legitimizes the unbelieving partner, but that the believing partner does (Gentile Impurities, 251, n. 10; and see 94–96 for further discussion of Gillihan’s thesis). Furthermore, for Gillihan’s argument to fully convince, more needs to be said about the patterns of inÁuence and shared contexts between Paul and later mishnaic and sectarian texts. 63 Scholars do not agree on what Paul is saying about slaves in 7:21. The Greek is ambiguous, and some argue that Paul is encouraging slaves to seek their freedom. For discussion see: J. Albert Harrill, The Manumission of Slaves in Early Christianity (Hermeneutische Untersuchungen zur Theologie 32; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1995) 77–108; Glancy, Slavery in Early Christianity, 67–69; Collins, First Corinthians, 274–87; Conzelmann, First Corinthians, 125–29. If Paul is telling slaves to remain enslaved, then we might ask the same question we are asking about wives: does he expect that they, too, will continue to worship the gods of the slave holders? What choice do they have?

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counsels the spouses to stay together, and encourages the believers to accommodate the unbelievers: if the unbelieving spouse wants to separate, let him or her go. Paul explains why: “God has called you in peace” (7:15). Two verses later, he sums up the principle that governs each situation: “Let each of you lead the life the Lord has assigned, to which God has called you,” and further claims, “This is the rule in all the INOOPLWMZEM” (1 Cor 7:17). The call for inertia that dominates this chapter stands in stark contrast to Paul’s language of transformation in 1 Corinthians 6. He calls these gentiles to self-mastery and even upholds the celibate body as the ideal for bodies-in-Christ, yet he then tells them not to rock the boat, to stay as they are. Margaret Mitchell has demonstrated how Paul’s rhetoric here, and throughout 1 Corinthians, draws upon political and philosophical discourses of harmony and unity.64 This rhetoric—which is reminiscent of household management discourses that call for harmonious and proper familial relationships—masks difference, quells dissension and, as such, serves as an assertion of power by those for whom not rocking the boat is advantageous.65 In our passage, the potentially unharmonious issue of mixed households has been raised, perhaps initially by the Corinthians themselves, and Paul frames the solution in terms of purity and pollution. Paul’s purity language, by transforming the unbelieving spouse, attempts to dispense with conÁict, and, for the sake of stability, secure the holy status of the whole family. Thus the holiness language here is intended to operate almost as a quick Àx, serving the larger goal of encouraging sedation. Yet the passage does not entirely behave itself, for it leaves open the possibility of other readings that undermine Paul’s advice to “stay as you are.” As discussed above, the language of “being made holy” or “being sanctiÀed” marks the change that occurs at baptism (1 Cor 6:11, for example). It identiÀes members of the INOOPLWMZE over and against outsiders, or what these gentiles were before.66 Thus the notion of one spouse sanctifying another has implications for the boundaries of the community: was baptism by an established leader necessary or could one become a member of the INOOPLWMZE through marriage to a believer? Or through birth to believing parents? Does the believer serve as a kind of portal for the household to the community of believers? This individual power to inÁuence and transform other bodies, and possibly to grant access to the INOOPLWMZE, stands in tension with

64 Margaret M. Mitchell, Paul and the Rhetoric of Reconciliation: An Exegetical Investigation of the Language and Composition of 1 Corinthians (Louisville, Ky.: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1991). See also Castelli, “Interpretations,” 216. 65 As Laura Nasrallah points out, this conservative argument is employed by Paul in an attempt “to corral various somatic practices of the Corinthian community—whether celibacy or sleeping with a prostitute or speaking in tongues—and to construct the Corinthian identity” (Nasrallah, Ecstasy of Folly, 81). 66 Mitchell discusses this point in Paul and the Rhetoric of Reconciliation, 121–23.

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Paul’s earlier rhetoric about subjecting individual bodies to the corporate body in 1 Corinthians 6. This scenario is especially remarkable if the believer is a woman. Paul has granted—or perhaps acknowledged—the sanctifying power of the bodies of believing wives. This subverts traditional household ideologies, and the expectation that women and other subordinates will follow the loyalties of the male head of the household. Perhaps even more striking is that it also undermines Paul’s own efforts elsewhere in the letter to rein in the practices of female bodies (e.g., 1 Cor 11:2–16; 14:34–36).67 As many scholars have discussed, this is a chief concern of Paul’s in 1 Corinthians.68 It is intriguing to think about the possibilities of how wives might be responsible for a kind of household holiness that makes these mixed marriages acceptable.69 Paul’s “quick Àx” is thus a bit slippery and yields multiple readings. Furthermore, Paul’s contagious holiness solution prompts multiple questions having to do with the logistics of these mixed marriages in households. Pauline readers would have been negotiating these marriages in households where other gods were venerated, where complex social hierarchies were in place, and where subordinate members 67

Margaret Y. MacDonald argues that 1 Corinthians 7 is also primarily aimed at women, even where the advice is couched in symmetrical admonitions to men and women: “Virgins, Widows and Wives,” in A Feminist Companion to Paul (ed. Amy-Jill Levine with Marianne Blickenstaff; Cleveland: Pilgrim, 2004) 148–68. 68 Some examples of scholarship on this topic are the following: Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, In Memory of Her: A Feminist Theological Reconstruction of Christian Origins (New York: Crossroad, 1983) 218–36; Antoinette Clark Wire, Corinthian Women Prophets (Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress, 1990); MacDonald, Early Christian Women; Økland, Women in Their Place. 69 Some have argued that Paul encourages evangelizing on the part of wives. This interpretation is based on a particular reading of 1 Cor 7:16, which has been translated two ways. The Àrst communicates a more hopeful attitude, the sense of which is “perhaps you will win over your spouse.” Scholars in favor of this translation argue that verse 16 sums up the whole passage, the gist of which is that Paul has asked the believer to be patient and accommodating, following the will of the unbeliever. Verse 16 then provides the reason for this course of action: perhaps you will win him or her over (the NRSV chooses this option). The second translation, which I Ànd more convincing, expresses a certain resignation, the sense of which is “how will you ever know if you can win over your spouse?” This translation Àts well with the previous verse, providing further explanation for why one should let one’s spouse separate and also makes better sense of the grammar. If the passage expressed the more hopeful sense, we would expect IMNQLZ rather than merely IMN. It could then be translated “how do you know that you might not save your wife?” (Conzelmann, First Corinthians, 124). Thiselton discusses both translations and while he opts for the less optimistic one, he does not rule out the optimistic sense, arguing that Paul’s point is intentionally “open” (The First Epistle to the Corinthians, 537–40). Those who choose the more hopeful translation assume that Paul has a missionary purpose in mind (meaning that he wants his readers to evangelize to outsiders, and here, to an unbelieving spouse), whereas I do not see evidence of this attitude in Paul’s letters. Margaret Y. MacDonald identiÀes this text as the Àrst example of a strategy of the early INOOPLWMZE to gather new members by converting the wife in a household and then encouraging her to inÁuence everyone else (Early Christian Women, 30, 192, 195). I think this is a plausible theory for later Christian texts (1 Pet 3:1–2; Justin Martyr, Second Apology 2.1–6); in 1 Corinthians, however, Paul is more concerned with teaching the Corinthians to manage the situation they are in rather than evangelizing all the unbelievers.

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were expected to worship the gods of the household. Paul addresses none of these issues and indeed, scholars (perhaps inadvertently following Paul’s lead) have also not explored this advice from the perspective of households.70 In the Ànal section of this essay, I will consider how ancient readers may have responded to Paul’s advice. I will use some of what I have outlined about household religious practices, about purity and holiness, and about power dynamics within households to think about the possible viewpoints of wives on this topic.

Q Imagining Responses to Paul Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, who has long been a leader in reconstructing voices outside the written canon, suggests that when the Corinthians debated among themselves the issue of how to live out their new self-understanding in Christ, they may have written to several teachers to ask their advice, Paul being one. Discussion would have then continued once the letter had been received, evaluated, and compared to others.71 This reconstruction frames Paul’s letter not as the sole, authoritative voice among early Christ-followers, but as one of many that were subject to critique or embellishment by the Corinthians, and eventually believers from all over the empire. In what follows I will lay out a series of scenarios imagining how wives might have responded to (or perhaps prompted) Paul’s comments in 1 Cor 7:12–16. Paul’s rhetoric glosses over a whole host of issues related to the power dynamics and religious practices of ancient households. For example, Paul’s comments would not be terribly helpful if one were trying to maintain loyalty exclusively to the God of Israel. Given the religious life of ancient households—where offerings to multiple gods are made on a daily basis and images of the gods might populate domestic space—we can understand how difÀcult it would be to avoid traditional worship practices. Paul seems to imagine believers and unbelievers sharing domestic activities, but he does not comment on how to behave, for example, when offerings are made to various household gods before meals.72 Those believers who did not wish to honor other gods would have to look elsewhere for a solution to this problem.

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Margaret MacDonald is an exception to this in that she understands 1 Cor 7:12–16 as describing how Christians, through mixed marriages, can evangelize the household (Early Christian Women, 189–95). As I mention in the previous note, I disagree with MacDonald’s view that this is Paul’s motivation, although it is possible that believing wives were interested in converting their husbands. 71 I have paraphrased Schüssler Fiorenza’s proposal in Rhetoric and Ethic: The Politics of Biblical Studies (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1991) 120. 72 Presumably this would have been an issue also if they went to a neighbor’s house for dinner, as Paul discusses in 1 Cor 10:27. Here Paul does not object to eating sacriÀced meat as long it does not injure another’s conscience (10:28–29), but he does not comment on prayers or offerings to other gods.

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Furthermore, wives would hear Paul’s advice differently from husbands. On the one hand, Paul’s reciprocal language is striking and may appear to resist or to offer an alternative to the patriarchal household structure.73 The conditions, which Paul lays out in two parallel sentences (vv. 12–13), appear to be the same for the believing husband and the believing wife: if your unbelieving spouse agrees to live with you, stay together. Indeed, his phrasing seems to leave open the possibility that women (either believers or unbelievers) would in fact not follow their husbands gods, but would leave the marriage instead. On the other hand, as Elizabeth Castelli has pointed out, such reciprocal language does not necessarily translate to equal treatment in practice.74 For a woman to leave a marriage or to stay in a marriage, for example, could have profoundly different implications than for a man to do either. Given that loyalty to her husband was tied to loyalty to his gods, a wife’s avoidance of these practices may have been perceived as insubordination. She might be in the position that Plutarch imagined, accused of bringing “foreign superstition” into the household. Paul’s counsel simply to stay together may not have been realistic or helpful. It is possible that Paul’s advice was prompted in the Àrst place by believers leaving their marriages, perhaps because of some of the complications mentioned above.75 Some of the women may have shared with Paul the association of unbelieving gentiles with idolatry, a lack of self-mastery and TSVRIMZE, and thought their marriage to unbelievers constituted participation in these unclean things.76 Paul thus attempts to solve this problem with his logic of contagious holiness, reassuring them that they can stay in the marriage without compromising their new status. Believers might ask how this scenario plays out: do all these household members continue honoring the household gods, protected by holiness associated with the God of Israel? Would everyone have agreed to this? Schüssler Fiorenza suggests that Corinthian women may have understood that their new identity in Christ disregarded the social distinctions among them and even abolished old kinship and marriage ties. Some of the women may have thought that patriarchal marriage was no longer appropriate for them, and wanted to leave their husbands.77 Others may have agreed with Paul that a celibate body was the 73

This reciprocal language echoes that of 1 Cor 7:2–6. Castelli, “Interpretations,” 211 and eadem, “Paul on Women and Gender,” in Women and Christian Origins (ed. Ross Shepard Kraemer and Mary Rose D’Angelo; New York: Oxford University Press, 1999) 228. 75 For a later example of a Christian wife who leaves her unbelieving husband, see Justin Martyr, Second Apology 2.1–6. 76 Dale Martin argues that Paul shared with the non-elite in Corinth this concern with pollution and invasion of disease, in contrast to the elite view of disease in terms of imbalance (Corinthian Body, 139–97, esp. 159–64). 77 See Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, Rhetoric and Ethic, 155–56 and eadem, In Memory of Her, 222. Schüssler Fiorenza’s reconstruction is built upon two premises: that “initiation into Judaism dissolved previous kinship and marriage bonds” (In Memory of Her, 222) and that Gal 3:28 incorporates an earlier baptismal formula that abolishes patriarchal marriage (In Memory of 74

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ideal and sought to lead lives of celibacy. Ann Wire argues that this is a possibility for the “Corinthian women prophets,” who understood themselves as channels of God’s spirit and who rejected “sexual relations that involve the authority of one person over the body of another in order to devote themselves to prayer and prophecy.”78 These women would have thought that marriage with unbelievers was no longer viable and may have been voicing these opinions and acting on them.79 To each of these groups Paul’s “stay as you are” response aims to keep these marriages intact, as long as the unbeliever is willing. All of these reconstructions are based on the premise that a mixed household would be a problem and that women were rejecting them for various reasons. The evidence for household practices suggests another possibility: that some women actually did not Ànd mixed households a problem and did not want to leave them. Indeed, several scholars who have reconstructed the Corinthians’ positions—Wire, Martin, and Castelli among them—have argued that at least some among the Corinthians were in fact not concerned about purity and pollution, boundaries, identity, and proper gender and sexual behavior.80 Anxiety over these issues comes from Paul, not the Corinthians, and triggers his use of purity language. If this is the case, then perhaps some women were unconcerned about their proximity to an idolatrous unbeliever and wanted to stay in these marriages. Paul’s emphasis on accommodating the unbeliever’s wishes—if the unbeliever wants to separate, let him separate (1 Cor 7:15)—could hint at an unwillingness on the part of the believers to break up the marriage. Perhaps these women brought their new worship practices into the household and found this unproblematic or even advantageous. We have seen how households could include a variety of religious practices and spaces, and that people of different status participated in daily rites. Perhaps unbelieving husbands would not have minded if the God and messiah of Israel were added to the other deities honored in

Her, 205–231; Rhetoric and Ethic, 155–56). For this latter point Schüssler Fiorenza relies in part on David Daube, “Pauline Contributions,” 223–45. 78 Wire, Corinthian Women Prophets, 182. 79 The Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles illustrate that this was a popular theme in Christian literature beginning at least in the second century. In several of these texts, celibacy is central to Christian theology and practice. 80 Wire, Corinthian Women Prophets, 182; Castelli, “Interpretations,” 211; Martin, Corinthian Body, 34–36, 159–62 (for Martin, those not so concerned about pollution and invasion are the elite in the community, who tend to follow a balance/imbalance model). This suggestion that the Corinthians were not concerned about boundaries between insiders and outsiders coheres with James Walters’ argument that while there was considerable conÁict among believers in Corinth, there was also notably little conÁict with those outside the community (at least as far as Paul indicates). Walters relates this phenomenon to the larger context of Roman Corinth, which was experiencing a proliferation of religious groups at the time. See James Walters, “Civic Identity in Roman Corinth and its Impact on Early Christians,” in Urban Religion in Roman Corinth, 397–417.

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the household: more gods meant more protection and prosperity.81 It seems possible that this mixing of gods would not have bothered either spouse.82 If her husband did object to this foreign deity, perhaps the believing wife worshipped her God on her own, or in secret.83 As discussed above, archaeological and literary evidence suggests the possibility that subordinates in the household may have had some autonomy in their religious practices, with opportunities to follow or subvert their duty to the gods of the head of the household. Plutarch and Cato seem concerned about precisely this situation in their prescriptions for subordinates to carry out the wishes of the head of the household.84 If worshipping “foreign gods” is perceived by those in power as an act of “religious inÀdelity” to the marriage and household, then those in subordinate positions may view these practices as a form of resistance, an assertion of power. This sort of power could operate within the household, as one of the multiple strands of power that make up a social hierarchy. As discussed earlier, Elizabeth Castelli and Catherine Bell, both drawing on Foucault, emphasize that power does not operate in a one-dimensional fashion, exercised upon those of lower-status by those of higher status (by the paterfamilias on subordinate members of the household, for example).85 Instead, power is consensual, and, as Bell argues, “ritualization” allows those of the lowest status to claim some power, even as their subordination is reinscribed by the ritual itself.86 A believing wife in a polytheistic household might be in precisely this position, especially if she understands herself as able to sanctify her children and spouse, as Paul suggests. Yet whereas Paul, and perhaps householders as well, might perceive their power as based on status and gender, wives may have perceived their own power as Castelli and Wire suggest, as Áuid, available to different bodies regardless of gender and status, and uninhibited by the proximity of outsiders, and their gods and rites.87 A sort of power similar to that which authorizes prophecy, removing veils and speaking in tongues, may also empower believing women to make their households holy. Whereas some women may have heard Paul’s larger call for sedation, others may have recognized the power of their own holy bodies that Paul’s text implies. 81 One hundred and Àfty years after Paul, Tertullian complains about precisely this problem of the “tolerant husband” (Ad Uxorem 2.5.1.) in his condemnation of exogamous marriage. 82 Perhaps it would not have bothered Paul, either. He clearly does not raise the issue when speaking of these mixed marriages, and in other places he seems remarkably tolerant of other religious traditions (1 Corinthians 8:4–13; 10:23–33). 83 Tertullian addresses the difÀculties of this situation as well, describing the various Christian practices that might appear suspicious (Ad Uxorem 2.5.2–4). See also Apuleius, Metamorphoses 9.14 84 Plutarch, Advice to the Bride and Groom 140D (Moralia 1.140 D); Cato, de Agricultura 143. 85 Castelli, “Interpretations”; Bell, Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice. 86 Bell, 211. 87 Castelli, “Interpretations,” 209; Wire, Corinthian Women Prophets, 63–66.

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One hundred and Àfty years later, as Tertullian recounts, some women were reading Paul in precisely this way. In his vigorous denouncement of mixed marriages, he mentions that he has heard of several instances of women using 1 Corinthians, especially 7:14, which claims that believing wives make their husbands holy, as a scriptural warrant for marrying non-Christians (Ad Uxorem 2.2.1–2). Tertullian, of course, is appalled by this and uses Paul’s text to argue that mixed marriage is not advisable. In the process, he has left us at least a trace of his opponents’ views, women who seem to have been claiming the sanctifying power Paul speaks of for themselves.

Q Conclusion Much of the scholarship on 1 Cor 7:12–16 has focused on marriage and has considered Paul’s ideas an early articulation of what Christian marriage would eventually become after being shaped by later church writers. I have tried to offer a different entry point of analysis by shifting the focus to households and to the women who would have heard and responded to Paul’s words. Doing so helps us think about the complicated relationships among religious loyalties, gender, and social hierarchies in the ancient world, and the realities “on the ground” for early converts. Wives who had been baptized into Christ had to negotiate this new commitment in the context of the household, where they might be vulnerable to their husbands’ censure. The author of 1 Peter seems to recognize this precarious position of believing wives, advising them to “accept the authority” of their husbands “without a word,” (3:1) and “never let fears harm” them (3:6).88 Yet we have seen that domestic religion was multifarious, adaptable, and a part of daily life. Thus Christian practices may have mixed and mingled with traditional worship practices without much conÁict. Or, a wife may have been able to conduct her practices in secret. Either way, she may have derived some sense of agency and power from these practices, and perhaps even understood that her presence in the household exerted some beneÀcial inÁuence over the rest of the household. This analysis prompts us to consider some larger issues relating to the beginnings of Christianity and its place in the Roman world. The boundaries between traditional religious practices and this newcomer, Christianity, may have been more porous and Áuid than someone like Paul or Tertullian—or scholars of Christian origins—would typically conceive. The kind of historical situation implied by texts like 1 Corinthians, where Christian practices might exist along side many others in an ancient household, suggests that conversion to Christianity could happen in a 88 This is fascinating advice given the climate of ancient households in which “accepting the authority” of one’s husband meant worshipping his gods. Although not stated explicitly, the implication seems to be that the believing woman should continue to perform her wifely duties, which would likely include making offerings to the appropriate gods, lighting incense, and decorating the hearth and doorways. Like Paul, this author seems interested in not rocking the boat, even at the expense of honoring other gods.

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piecemeal fashion, where individuals or groups might adopt aspects of Christianity and perhaps integrate these into their traditional religious forms. In this paradigm Christianity does not arrive fully formed, but is gradually incorporated and shaped by its adherents, inÁuenced in part by interactions with outsiders. For a Christian wife married to an unbeliever, this piecemeal incorporation took place in the intimate and quotidian context of marriage and household.

Where the Spirits Dwell: Possession, Christianization, and Saints’ Shrines in Late Antiquity* David Frankfurter University of New Hampshire

With its clear-glass, brightly-lit, whitewashed interior, Harvard Divinity School’s Andover Chapel reÁects all the values of elite Protestant culture in New England history: quiet prayer, thoughtful sermons, an approach to God through the heart rather than the senses, and a minimum of iconic reminders that the space is Christian. And it was here, in April 2007, that this author beheld the Voudoun spirits Danbala and Ogoun arrive through several experienced mediums. The ceremony had not really been intended to call down the spirits, only to praise them in a kind of broad sampling of Haitian Voudoun songs.1 But the altar was full of their treats, the room was full, the drummers were good, the singing was loud, and the mediums were expert. So the spirits arrived: various Danbalas slithering across the Áoor and a very martial Ogoun hufÀng and pufÀng around the altar to get his rum. And they were greeted, with awed interest by the Harvard students, familiarity by the Haitians, and annoyed tolerance by one Adventist woman. Now, Andover Chapel is a relatively neutral place for Voudoun spirits, loas, to show up: neither intrinsically inviting nor forbidding. But what if it were a space for * This paper was Àrst presented at the SBL 2007 Annual Meeting (San Diego, Calif., S17–27) and subsequently proÀted from audiences at the Harvard Divinity School (29 February 2008), Hebrew University of Jerusalem (19 March 2008), and the University of Chicago Divinity School (8 May 2008). I am grateful to David Brakke, Peter Brown, Bruce Lincoln, David Shulman, and the Casablanca Group for comments and advice. Research for this paper was conducted during fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study as part of a larger study of the sites of Christianization in late antique Egypt. 1 Announced on posters as “Action de Grace: A Vodou Service at Harvard Divinity School, with Manbo Marie Claude Evans of Jacmel, Haiti and Mattapan, MA, Friday, April 13, 2007, 7pm–9pm, Andover Chapel, Andover Hall.”

HTR 103:1 (2010) 27–46

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demonstrating the power of Christ against such spirits? Would they then show up, or stay away? How would possession take place in that context? What spirits would appear under those circumstances, and how would they deÀne themselves? Holy spaces often serve as theaters of contestation between new religious ideologies and traditional religious formulations. In this case the chapel provided simply a backdrop (and even at that, hardly legitimacy) for the Voudoun loa. But in other, more historically fraught or culturally transitional situations, much can ride on the manifestations of spirits and their self-deÀnitions at shrines. Thus, in its most general scope, this paper asks how cultures that acknowledge ancestral spirits (like loa) as part of cultural experience and memory have negotiated the rise of Christianity. Have these spirits simply been demonized and expelled? Or have they assumed different functions and personalities, like the Voudoun loas?2 What might exorcism mean in cultures that live in perpetual relationship with spirits? Finally, what role does “place” have in the forms of possession? The primary focus of this paper is “demonic” possession in the development of Christian local religion, but the perennial appearance of possession phenomena in the history of religions recommends just such broader questions about the relationship of Christianization to indigenous spirit beliefs. The historical and regional focus of this paper is the late antique Mediterranean world and the encounter of Christian and native spirits in those lands. And in this context we must Àrst tackle the category daimĿn as an ancient evaluation of spirits. How diverse a Àeld of local spirits would have been covered over in the application of this category? In its most familiar literary usage in Roman and late Roman Christian texts daimĿn denoted those obnoxious, disruptive spirits, often linked to heathen cult and to the army of Satan, who provided such perfect literary foils to Jesus and apostles. It was a category constructed and wielded to dramatize the triumphant, even apocalyptic heroism of Christian holy men.3 But even as Greek and Roman writers applied it to virtually any supernatural being beneath the theoi, daimĿn was a strikingly impoverished term for representing ancient supernatural experience—the “lived religion” of the ancient Mediterranean world, in which local forms of great gods spoke as oracles, seers transmitted the words of spirits, and local cultures lived in familiarity with a great range of ancestral and landscape spirits, both named and 2 On the diversiÀcation, localization, and performative variations of loas in Haitian Voudoun, see Harold Courlander, The Drum and the Hoe: Life and Lore of the Haitian People (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1960), and Karen McCarthy Brown, Mama Lola: A Vodou Priestess in Brooklyn (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1991). 3 On the structually dramatic function of demons, especially in early Christianity, see Peter Brown, The Making of Late Antiquity (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1975) 18–23; Ramsay MacMullen, Christianizing the Roman Empire, A.D. 100–400 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1984) 21–29; and in ritual context David Frankfurter, Evil Incarnate: Rumors of Demonic Conspiracy and Satanic Abuse in History (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2006) 13–72.

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categorized.4 To comprehend this great range of supernatural beings we need an approach that does not depend on static, theologically-loaded terms like “demon” or “angel” (or “Holy Spirit”) as descriptive, second-order categories. We need to seek instead more neutral, dynamic, and Áexible categories that can “preserve the sense of indeterminacy [that] people represented for their communities in negotiating spirits and possession.”5 What we need in addition are sources that themselves reÁect this “sense of indeterminacy” around possessing spirits as people regarded them. And these are the texts this paper will tackle: texts mostly from the transitional epoch of the fourth and Àfth centuries C.E., the period of Christianity’s ofÀcial ascendance, that promote Christian supernatural hegemony, but in which “demons” serve not as forces of havoc or evil but as oracles and healing spirits. It is the thesis of this paper that such potent yet ambiguous spirits, which were enacted through possession, reÁected not a peripheral curiosity of late antiquity but rather a central feature of the Christianization of local cultures. Christianization itself involved the reorganization of traditional and institutional pantheons to bring Christianity into local relevance, as a source of authority, morality, power, and myth.6 This reorganization of pantheons was connected to the establishment of various religious centers, those new shrines of a nascent Christian landscape, for it was these sites that came to serve as theaters for the manifestation of spirits, indeed for the shaping of spirits in relationship to the Christian pantheon and to the predilections, beliefs, and needs of particular audiences.7 Finally, I will argue, this performative shaping of spirits’ characters through possession points to popular agency in the process of appropriating Christianity, not simply scriptural or doctrinal models.

4 Regarding gods speaking as oracles, see: Aude Busine, Paroles d’Apollon. Pratiques et traditions oraculaires dans l’Antiquité tardive (IIe–VIe siècles) (RGRW 156; Leiden: Brill, 2005). On the complexity of spirits and gods in the landscape see William Brashear, “Exkurs. Übergänge, Grenzen, Niemandsland,” Archiv für Papyrusforschung 36 (1990) 61–74; and more generally, Charles Stewart, Demons and the Devil: Moral Imagination in Modern Greek Culture (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1991). 5 Nancy Caciola, Discerning Spirits: Divine and Demonic Possession in the Middle Ages (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2003) xli. See also Jonathan Z. Smith, “Towards Interpreting Demonic Powers in Hellenistic and Roman Antiquity,” Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt 2.16.1 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1978) 425–39. I will thus use “spirit” as the main second-order category and “demon” as an historically contingent classiÀcation for a peripheral and generally hostile spirit. 6 See useful perspectives on this reorganization of pantheons and cosmos in Robert Marcus, The End of Ancient Christianity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), and Valerie Flint, The Rise of Magic in Early Medieval Europe (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1991) 87–199. 7 The variable function and representation of “demonic” possession in late antiquity has been insightfully sketched by both Peter Brown, The Cult of the Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981) 106–27, and Peregrine Horden, “Responses to Possession and Insanity in the Earlier Byzantine World,” Social History of Medicine 6 (1993) 177–94. This paper is indebted to their approaches.

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Q Holy Places, Vital Spirits Before shrines, of course, it was the ekklďsia, the religious assembly itself, that served as such a theater for the articulation of spirits. Already in the Àrst century, such gatherings seem typically to have led to possession by “angelic” spirits (1 Cor 13; Rev 1–3). But it is a letter of Firmilian of Caesarea (256 C.E.) that describes in especially dramatic terms the dynamics that we will see in late antique shrines. Firmilian notes how, in the wake of a series of disasters in the region, a woman in his group began to enter an ecstatic state and prophesy “as if stirred by the Holy Spirit.” The group seems to have attended closely to this spirit’s words about imminent signs and prodigies. The possessing spirit sanctiÀed the Eucharist, performed baptisms, walked barefoot in the snow, and announced it was returning to its home in Judea. The congregation, on its side, was rapt. When an outside exorcist showed up, however, he denounced the spirit as, rather, a “demon,” demonstrating (according to Firmilian) “that that which was before thought holy was indeed a most wicked spirit [nequissimum spiritum].”8 Firmilian tries to balance the spirit’s appearance of holiness (i.e., its behavior within the roles expected for holy spirits) with his subsequent recognition of its demonic identity. These oscillating perspectives were made all the more acute given that the woman was performing sacraments.9 But of most historical signiÀcance in this letter is Firmilian’s depiction of the real ambiguity of possessing spirits and the imprecision of people’s attempts to classify spirits as either “holy” or “demonic/wicked.” The possessed woman functioned with considerable authority for some time as the vehicle of a prophetic spirit, and even after the exorcist’s pronouncement there was probably some conÁict over the deÀnition of the spirit, reÁected in Firmilian’s own ambivalent tone. We note also the diachronic process of performance, negotiation, and interpretation through which the spirit gained one identity, then another, fulÀlled esssential roles like prophecy and then seemed to switch roles to embody the demonic itself—that is, to oppose the central spirit, Christ. This process, I would argue, is a perennial one, due to the inherent ambiguity of spirit possession (especially in new apocalyptic movements) and the urgency that polarized classiÀcations lend to the deÀnition of spirits. The appearance, authority, and interactions of this spirit would have owed much to the historical and social circumstances of ekklďsiai in third-century Caesarea: apocalyptic literature that implied the resurgence of biblical prophecy, ecstatic leadership in the New Prophecy movement, rumors of persecution and martyrdom,

8 Cyprian, Ep. 75.10.2–5 in Saint Cyprien: Correspondance (ed. Louis Bayard; 2 vols.; Paris: “Les Belles Lettres,” 1961) 2:296–98. 9 In his description of her performance Firmilian implies that the sacraments were done correctly, not deviantly. The affront lay in their performance by a demon-possessed woman. See G. W. Clarke, The Letters of St. Cyprian of Carthage (4 vols.; Ancient Christian Writers 47; New York: Newman, 1989) 4:267–68 nn. 56–58.

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and beliefs in the ekklďsia as site for human/angel interaction.10 All the same, the social dynamics of possession that are discernible in Firmilian’s letter do prepare us to comprehend phenomena of the following centuries that revolve around not congregations, but particular shrines. Thus we shift to mid fourth-century Egypt, where Athanasius of Alexandria was lamenting (370 C.E.) a new practice among Egyptian Christians in the countryside of congregating in tombs that had acquired reputations as sites of martyrs’ relics, for a curious ritual process. “Many people,” notes Athanasius, “who had unclean spirits gain healing in the martyria, claiming that the martyrs’ spirits come upon the demons [WXQF )J)FOEBJNXOJPO] . . . and the demons cry out.” However, he complains, people also “seek to see the demons [TFOBWJQFFVOBVFOEBJNXO],” apparently through possession at these tomb shrines. Then, with the demons manifest in devotees’ bodies, “these people give glory to them and ask them about what will happen [FUPVUFPPVOBVBVX FVKOPVNNPPVFUCFUOBWXQF] . . . they dare to question the unclean spirits!” They assume “the demons are the prophets of the martyrs. But the martyrs did not confess that they would speak through the demons! [FVNFFVFFOEBJNXOJPOKF NQSPGIUITOFONB SUVSPT BMMBOUBNNBSUVSPT)PNPMPHFJBOOOE BJNXOJPO KFFVOBWBKF)JUPPUPV].”11 Although he reports people going to tomb-shrines to experience demons, Athanasius is clearly not describing simply a cult of exorcism, of the expelling of spirits, nor does this seem to be the positive type of spirit possession that we know from the New Prophecy movement of Asia Minor and North Africa. There is clear ambiguity in these Egyptian Christian possession forms. As Athanasius depicts the situation it is demonic spirits that emerge at the shrines, due to the awesome spirits of the martyrs. Once they become manifest, however, the “demons” become oracular voices—even “the prophets of the martyrs”—to which devotees could address their questions. The spirit possession Athanasius observes evidently involved some Áuidity in function—that is, in social utility—between spirits deemed “demonic” and spirits deemed “martyrial.”12 Cf. Tertullian, An. 9.4 (early third century C.E.). On apocalyptic predilections for prophetic performance in second- and third-century C.E. Asia Minor see David Frankfurter, “Early Christian Apocalypticism: Literature and Social World,” in Jewish and Christian Origins of Apocalypticism (ed. John J. Collins; vol. 1 of Encyclopedia of Apocalypticism; 3 vols.; New York: Continuum, 1998) 415–53, esp. 426–30; and in general, Stephen Mitchell, The Rise of the Church (vol. 2 of Anatolia: Land, Men, and Gods in Asia Minor; 2 vols.; Oxford: Clarendon, 1993) 37–51. 11 Athanasius, Festal Letter 42, fr. 15 in L.-Th. Lefort, S. Athanase. Lettres festales et pastorales en copte (CSCO 150, Scriptores Coptici 19; Louvain: Peeters, 1955) 65; translation from David Brakke, “ ‘Outside the Places, Within the Truth’: Athanasius of Alexandria and the Localization of the Holy,” Pilgrimage and Holy Space in Late Antique Egypt (ed. David Frankfurter; RGRW 134; Leiden: Brill, 1998) 479–80. 12 It may be to this situation that Athanasius refers in Vit. Ant. 23.5, where the hermit Antony warns against demons’ pretenses “to prophesy and foretell what is going to happen [QERXIYZIWUEM OEM TVSPIZKIMR XE QIU© L.QIZVEb INVGSZQIRE]” (ed. G. J. M. Bartelink; SC 400; Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 2004) 200. 10

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Less than a century later (mid Àfth century C.E.) the abbot Shenoute of Atripe echoes some of these complaints about the popular relic cult, but he aims his sermon at those illegitimately establishing topoi (places) for relics, in or by churches, where people claim to have seen lights appear. After detailing how people “sleep in the tombs to gain visions and . . . question the dead about the living”—familiar and longstanding incubation practices—Shenoute refers to “other sorts of places—of divination [NNBOWJOF] or of mediumship [FHHBTUSJNVRPT>.” It would seem that the “places” are, again, shrines, while the word eggastrimythos denotes ecstatic speech, such as the medium of Endor provided for Saul in the Bible, but now provided, Shenoute says, by “Christians and clerics (who serve) in the house of God.”13 While in the biblical account the medium of Endor was supposed to have channelled the spirit of a dead Samuel, Christian writers of the second and third centuries debated whether such a voice would have to be intrinsically demonic, and Shenoute would certainly be commenting on the ambiguity of possession by spirits in his time: Are they dead martyrs or demons? Thus spirit possession of some sort appears to have arisen again (“in this time [FCPM)NOJLBJSPT]”), Shenoute says, and in connection with relic veneration and new martyr shrines.14 As we saw possession initially occuring in the social context of the sectarian congregation, so too in late antique Egypt the locus of possession and of the interpretation of spirits could shift between spontaneous activity at actual shrines, such as Athanasius and Shenoute report, and social bodies: in this case, the sociallyembedded clairvoyant powers of charismatic monks. One story from the fourth or Àfth century involves an Egyptian monk near the village of Boushďm in whom “a spirit of divination [QOBOQVRPT], that is [FUF] the demon of falsehood, came to dwell, so that he would tell people about numerous events that were going to happen to them: he would say ‘they will happen,’ and they happened, and he spoke about the waters of the Nile and about many other worldly events that he learned about

13

)NQIFJNQOPVUF does not necessarily mean that such acts take place in the church itself. Shenoute of Atripe, Those Who Work Evil in Œuvres I (ed. Émile Amélineau; Paris: Leroux, 1907) 220. See L.-Th. Lefort, “La chasse aux reliques des martyrs en Égypte au IVe siècle,” La nouvelle Clio 6 (1954) 225–30; and on the shortly post-431 C.E. date, Stephen Emmel, Shenute’s Literary Corpus (Louvain: Peeters, 2004) 649–50, 669–70 (§13.630). FHHBTUSJNVRPT is employed in Lev 19:31 and 1 Sam 28:8 (LXX) for ecstatic mediumship and was a topic of considerable discussion in early Christian exegesis regarding the location of souls and the nature of demonic deception: see K. A. D. Smelik, “The Witch of Endor: 1 Samuel 28 in Rabbinic and Christian Exegesis till 800 A.D.,” VC 33 (1979) 160–79, and Rowan A. Greer and Margaret M. Mitchell, The “Belly-Myther” of Endor: Interpretations of 1 Kingdoms 28 in the Early Church (SBL Writings from the Greco-Roman World 16; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 2007). On incubation practices in early Egyptian Christianity see Leslie S. B. MacCoull, “Duke University Ms. C25: Dreams, Visions, and Incubation in Coptic Egypt,” OLP 22 (1991) 123–32; and David Frankfurter, “Voices, Books, and Dreams: The DiversiÀcation of Divination Media in Late Antique Egypt,” in Mantikď: Studies in Ancient Divination (ed. Sarah Iles Johnston and Peter Struck; RGRW 155; Leiden: Brill, 2005) 233–54. 14

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from the spirits.”15 Once again this Coptic author communicates the ambiguity of a spirit, revered by local villagers yet reviled by certain church leaders. This phenomenon was hardly restricted to late antique Egypt, however. The same ambiguity of spirits’ functions—potentially both harmful and clairvoyant—appears in the west as well, in legends associated with the cult of St. Martin in Tours. The late fourth-century legend of Martin’s life describes a time of great public anxiety about imminent barbarian invasion, when Martin gave the order that a man possessed of a demon should be brought before him. He commanded [the demon] to state publicly whether [the news of imminent barbarian attack] was true. [The demon] then confessed that it was accompanied by ten demons who had spread the rumour throughout the population . . . that the barbarians were not planning an attack at all. And so, as soon as the unclean spirit had confessed these things in the middle of the church, the city was freed from the fear and confusion rife at the time.16

Here the possessing spirit provides a helpful service for a town in panic by clarifying the nature of a real crisis: the possibility of imminent invasion. Other places associated with Martin likewise continued to inspire these manifestations even in the sixth century. There is a “man accustomed to utter many words, frequently to speak the language of unknown people, to prophesy future events, and to confess crimes” whose demon is expelled shortly after arriving at Martin’s cell; while another demoniac announces in the middle of the Martin church that the Roman general (and later Frankish “king”) Aegidius had triumphed over enemies due to Martin’s assistance.17 Again, the oracles, albeit demonic in origin, answer questions, reframe misfortunes, and resolve social tensions. The Ànal two examples come again from the eastern empire: Constantinople and its environs. The Àfth-century church historian Sozomen reports (393 C.E.) that a “certain person afÁicted by demons arose in the temple of God [that is, the Theodosian shrine to John the Baptist’s head in the outskirts of Constantinople] and insulted John the Baptist” and then proceeded to give an oracle about the current war: “You conquer me and lay snares for my army,” as if in the voice of the enemy’s genius. “The persons who happened to be on the spot and who 15 Macarius, Hist. Laus. [copt.] in M. Chaîne, “La double recension de l’Histoire Lausiaque dans la version copte,” Revue de l’Orient chrétien 25 (1925/26) 245–48; trans. Tim Vivian, “Coptic Palladiana III: The Life of Macarius of Egypt,” Coptic Church Review 21 (2000) 96–97. Versions of this story are discussed in James E. Goehring, Ascetics, Society, and the Desert: Studies in Early Egyptian Monasticism (Harrisburg, Pa.: Trinity Press International, 1999) 128–30. 16 Sulpicius Severus, v. Mart. 18.1–2, in Early Christian Lives (trans. Carolinne White; London: Penguin, 1998) 150–51. See Jacques Fontaine, Vie de Saint Martin 1 (SC 133; Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 2004) 290–93. 17 Gregory of Tours, De virt. Mart. 1.2 in Scriptores Rerum Merovingicarum (ed. Krusch; Hanover: Hahn, 1969 (1885) 136–37), trans. Raymond Van Dam, Saints and Their Miracles in Late Antique Gaul (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1993) 202. Cf. Sulpicius Severus, V. Martini 17; Gallus 6 (ed. and trans. Jacques Fontaine, SC 510 [Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 2006] 311–13).

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were waiting impatiently to learn some news of the war, were amazed.”18 Such performances were not unusual in early Byzantine Constantinople, it seems, for the seventh-century Miracles of St. Artemios depicts a time when “there were a very large number of possessed [HEMQSRM[DRXEb] in many churches” in the city to whom one might go for oracles. In one story a man robbed of his clothes is advised to head to the St. Panteleemon shrine where “someone [XMRE] was there dispensing information [INTMZWXEWMRHMHSZRXE]” who might reveal the robber. But when he gets near and hears “the cry of the possessed one,” he balks, realizing that “now [he was] forsaking God and approaching demons” to resolve his robbery. Thus demon-possession—here of the afÁicted, residing hopefully in a healing shrine—had gained a perennial civic function, with some possessed becoming local manteis for the desperate.19 In these cases from across the Mediterranean world the possessed individual is not simply cured, the demon expelled, and the holy man or shrine victorious. Rather, the possessed person, in full embodiment of some otherworldly spirit, becomes a valuable mouthpiece for oracles and an instrument of divination. And he notably performs these services—enacts the spirits—in a shrine of some recent vintage. What does this phenomenon signify?

Q Literary and Phenomenological Considerations There is, of course, a literary character to these gnomic pronouncements by unclean spirits, reminiscent of the Gerasene demoniac’s utterance in the gospel of Mark, “My name is Legion, for we are many” (5:9). This literary character certainly informs the dramatic exorcism scenes in the Martin legends. Might such biblical typologies have so determined the many stories of oracular demons that no historicity can be assumed at all—that they were created out of whole cloth? This conclusion would be too extreme, for biblical typology does not in itself negate historicity; and indeed the persistence of the very motif of the prophetic demon in the literature of Christian thaumaturgy would have sanctioned the behavior itself in areas where such texts were read. But even more, the range and consistency of the witnesses under discussion suggest that we are dealing with a type of historical occurrence, not just a literary trope. Athanasius and Shenoute offer fairly direct witnesses to real oracular phenomena at martyria in late fourth- and early Àfth-century Egypt, while even the more legendary sources like the Life of Martin describe “demons” offering oracles that are immediately embedded in historical events and socially relevant.20 The late antique texts thus place demonic utterances in historical context, as if the possessed person were responding to actual situations of political anxiety. They 18

Sozomen, Hist. eccl. 7.24.8–9 (ed. Bidez and Hansen; Berlin, 1960) 338. On the Hebdomos see ibid. 7.21. 19 Miracles of St. Artemios 18 (ed. and trans. Virgil S. Crisafulli and John W. Nesbitt; The Medieval Mediterranean 13; Leiden: Brill, 1997) 114–15. 20 See Jacques Fontaine, Sulpice Sévère. Vie de saint Martin 2 (SC 134; Paris 1968) 853–62.

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reÁect, if not particular historical occurrences, a type of possession performance that authors and their audiences knew to exist.21 Assuming a degree of general historicity, then, let us consider the nature of the possessions themselves, and more speciÀcally their labelling as “demonic.” It would seem that for the authors and for their cultures the term daimĿn conveyed both censure, referring possession and mantic phenomena to an ofÀcial demonology, and a fundamental imprecision in the identiÀcation of possessing spirits in late antique Christianity.22 We certainly see this imprecision in the elision of martyrs’ spirits and “demons” in Athanasius’s complaint about possession at tomb-shrines. In a similar vein the fourth-century Cappadocian writer Gregory of Nazianzus celebrates the martyrs “by whom demons are expelled and diseases cured, by whom occur apparitions [INTMJEZRIMEM] and predictions [TVSVVLZWIMb],” a remarkable series of prodigies notable both for their diversity and for their dependence on the bodies of shrine devotees for their performative expression. A single ritual sphere thus serves as theater for both possession and useful prophecy, martyrs’ spirits and “demons.”23 The possession, therefore, is in every case ambiguous: socially beneÀcial, but brought by spirits at best peripheral to the Christian pantheon. Furthermore, as we have seen, the historical phenomenon we are describing involves both semi-spontaneous forms of possession, such as the texts describe among laity at saint-shrines, and a kind of beneÀcial spirit mediumship, an ongoing social role, like that of the prophetess in third-century Caesarea and the monk from the Egyptian village of Boushem. Further cases of this kind of mediumship appear in late antique Christianity: a Christian priest in GaballĿn, for example, whose great “signs and wonders” won him great regional renown—until his powers were reassigned to a demonic archontikon.24 Such individuals gained renown as regional oracles or prophets by virtue of their possession by, or familiarity with, certain spirits. At some point in the period when the hagiographer recounts them, the oracles and their spirits fell afoul of church authorities—unlike, for example, the late fourth-century Egyptian monk John of Lycopolis, whose “gift of prophecy” [TVSJLXIMZEbGEZVMWQE] allowed him to maintain a credible reputation with church and civil authorities for “reveal[ing] things hidden in the future . . . and predict[ing] the rise and fall of the Nile.” He too “used to foretell when some divine threat was going to [occur] and exposed those who were to blame for it.” But despite largely 21 See Raymond Van Dam, Leadership and Community in Late Antique Gaul (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1985) 266–68, on the abilities of possessed folk to respond to current socio-political situations; and, more generally, John Eade and Michael J. Sallnow, introduction to Contesting the Sacred: The Anthropology of Christian Pilgrimage (London: Routledge, 1991) 7. 22 DaimĿn loses its originally neutral associations in Christian literature of late antiquity: Lampe, Patristic Greek Lexicon (Oxford: Clarendon, 1961) s.v. 23 Gregory Nazianzus, Or. 4 contra Julianum 69 (PG 35:589). 24 Vita Maximi/Domitii in Histoire des monastères de la Basse-Égypte (ed. Émile Amélineau; Paris: Leroux, 1894) 273; see translation in Tim Vivian, “The Boharic Life of Maximus and Domitius,” Coptic Church Review 26 (2005) 44.

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identical claims and services to those deemed demonic, John’s spirit (or basis of clairvoyant authority) remained legitimate.25 Thus charismatic authority, especially when achieved through the claim or reputation of familiar spirits, tended to be evaluated in conÁicting and probably even oscillating ways. These latter “mediumship” cases in particular show us that the term daimĿn itself did not indicate a distinct form of possession performance but rather served as one possible evaluation of possessing spirits.26 These were spirits whose performance in possession evidently could Àt quite neatly into local needs and styles. And yet, like modern Middle Eastern zar and jinn demons, they were ambiguous enough to be potentially dangerous. They required either mastery or exorcism.27

Q Historical Considerations How do these phenomena Àt into the larger religious situation of the late antique Mediterranean world, whose landscapes were assimilating a newly institutional Christianity and its shrines? First of all, in accounts from places like Tours and Constantinople, spirit possession is explicitly linked to historical uncertainty or, in the cases of Athanasius and Shenoute, to larger conÁicts about the locus of the holy in a Christianizing landscape. It is no surprise that such social anxieties would precipitate a need to see and hear the spirits, to witness their clairvoyance and authority in settling matters of great social and political import. Yet it seems that the actual identity or class of the spirits that appear emerges only through a process of negotiation between possessed performer, audience members, institutional emissaries, and so on. What might begin as a martyr redivivus in one setting might end up as a dangerous archontikon; what might begin as an ancestral or earth spirit 25 Historial monachorum in Aegypto 1.11 in Lives of the Desert Fathers (trans. Norman Russell; London: Mowbray, 1980) 53. See also Augustine, Civ. 5.26, on John’s mantic abilities. Compare the man from Ascalon who had “a spirit of divination [OSF'WJOF],” which is later exorcised as an “unclean spirit.” Vita Maximi/Domitii in Monastères de la Basse-Égypte, 270. On the relationship of desert monks’ clairvoyant powers (and spirits) to oracles see David Frankfurter, Religion in Roman Egypt: Assimilation and Resistance (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1998) 184–93. 26 See Laura Nasrallah, An Ecstasy of Folly: Prophecy and Authority in Early Christianity (HTS 52; Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Divinity School, 2003), on discourses of evaluating ecstasy in the early Roman period vis-à-vis madness and rationality rather than type of spirit. In placing Pythian oracular possession in theological and natural context Plutarch (Def. orac.) uses both daimĿn and pneuma to classify the possessing spirit, but he does not represent local discourse on spirits. 27 See esp. I. M. Lewis, Ecstatic Religion: A Study of Shamanism and Spirit Possession (2d ed.; London: Routledge, 1989); Pamela Constantinides, “ ‘Ill at Ease and Sick at Heart’: Symbolic Behaviour in a Sudanese Healing Cult,” in Symbols and Sentiments: Cross-Cultural Studies in Symbolism (ed. Ioan Lewis; London: Academic Press, 1977) 61–84; Women’s Medicine: The ZarBori Cult in Africa and Beyond (ed. I. M. Lewis, Ahmed Al-SaÀ, and Sayyid Hurreiz; Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1991); Gerda Sengers, Women and Demons: Cult Healing in Islamic Egypt (Leiden: Brill, 2003); Celia Rothenberg, Spirits of Palestine: Gender, Society, and Stories of the Jinn (Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2004); and Mohammed Maarouf, Jinn Eviction as a Discourse of Power: A Multidisciplinary Approach to Moroccan Magical Beliefs and Practices (Leiden: Brill, 2007).

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might end up as a spirit of prophecy with full ecclesiastical sanction.28 And each such process of spirit-deÀnition would likewise culminate in a ritual performance: exorcism for the one, spirit mastery and oracular performance for the second.29 Thus the resolution of uncertainty would be sealed with drama. Secondly, the clustering of these witnesses in the late fourth and Àfth centuries reÁects quite immediately the religious changes occurring in local Christianities of the period. In Egypt, Gaul, and elsewhere a thriving local religious culture had persisted into the Roman period, with diverse shrines, demarcated points in the landscape, varieties of beneÀcial, ambivalent, and hostile spirits, and the ritual traditions to deal with these supernatural beings.30 But, with the decline of traditional cult centers, the development of an autochthonous Christian local piety, and the struggle of an institutional church for hegemony, much attention came to be directed to the locations and powers of holy places as sites that embraced local experience and that situated the new pantheon of Christian “spirits” in the landscape.31 Now, in the late fourth and Àfth centuries, new local religious cultures had to comprehend and mediate the new religious system in locally authentic ways, all in a system presided over by bishops. This brings us to the third historical factor in these cases of spirit possession after the third century: its predominant occurrence in shrines. We see spirits appearing in new, ad hoc tomb shrines in upper Egypt;32 in churches and shrines associated with Martin of Tours;33 and in the new “temple” [RI[Zb] of John the Baptist’s 28 Although I know of no late antique sources that capture this latter transformation (i.e., the ecclesiastical domestication of a traditional oracular spirit), there is sufÀcient evidence of ambiguous local spirits that maintain credibility in local Christian culture and of Christian seers (like John of Lycopolis) whose mantic services replicate those of traditional spirits to posit the likelihood of such cases. Of course, madness itself may serve as an evaluation of spirit possession at any stage, denying any spiritual possession: see Horden, “Responses to Possession,” and Nasrallah, Ecstasy of Folly. 29 Compare Plutarch, Def. orac. 433C. 30 See Frankfurter, Religion in Roman Egypt, 97–144, and Ton Derks, Gods, Temples and Religious Practices: The Transformation of Religious Ideas and Values in Roman Gaul (Amsterdam Archaeological Studies 2; Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 1998). On the geography of the demonic see also Stewart, Demons and the Devil; Anna Plotnikova, “Balkan Demons Protecting Places,” in Christian Demonology and Popular Mythology (ed. Gábor Klaniczay and Éva Pócs; Budapest: Central European University Press, 2005) 213–20; and on antiquity, Horden, “Responses to Possession,” 182–84; and Frankfurter, Evil Incarnate, 13–19. 31 See in general Marcus, The End of Ancient Christianity, 139–55, and Brakke, “ ‘Outside the Places’ ” 32 These martyria were based in tombs, as André Grabar argued in Martyrium. Recherches sur le culte des reliques et l’art chrétien antique (2 vols; Paris: Collège de France, 1946) 1:47–75, 82–84. See Ahmed Fakhry, The Necropolis of El-Bagawat in Kharga Oasis (Cairo: Government Press, 1951); and now, Peter Grossmann, Magdy Saad Salib, and Mohammed Salem Al-Hangury, “Survey of an Early Christian Burial Chapel at Tall Al-Yuhudiyya-Suez,” BSAC 44 (2005) 45–53. 33 On reconstructing sites of devotion to St. Martin of Tours see Van Dam, Leadership and Community, 230–54; May Viellard-Troiekouroff, Les monuments religieux de la Gaule d’après les œuvres de Grégoire de Tours (Paris, 1976) 311–23; and Charles Lelong, Vie et culte de saint Martin. État des questions (Chambray-lès-Tours: Cahiers du Livre et Disque, 1990) 99–117.

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head outside Constantinople (and the church of St. Panteleemon within). These were buildings dedicated to invoking the presence of the saints whose bones lay beneath. The eyes and postures in wall-paintings would signify saintly presence no less than the false-doors inside Egyptian tombs of another era, through which the soul of the deceased was supposed to enter and exit. Visitors were familiar with an iconography that mediated supernatural beings. Sermons and stories, too, not only brought martyrs’ sufferings to life but envisioned their heavenly bliss and promised their eternal contact. Through clouds of incense and the dim light of oil lamps the martyr’s spirit would become tangible to those crowded inside.34 And then, already brimming with the power of these new (if often home-grown) martyrs’ spirits, the martyria came to attract, as Athanasius describes it, the manifestation of other spirits.

Q The Performative Construction of Demons But who were these “other spirits”? There exist a few cases in which the spirits are said to identify themselves—as, say, Jupiter and Mercury in one description of demoniac possession associated with the Martin cult.35 But more generally these “other spirits”—these “demons” peripheral to the now-central Christian pantheon—were not recognized as the “old gods,” speciÀc ancestral spirits come to invade and depart via dramatic exorcisms. The “demons” that emerged at these Àfth- and sixth-century shrines reÁected, I would argue, the incoherent possession forms of a culture conscious of its abandoned gods but utterly invested in the 34 On the ritual world of fourth- and Àfth-century martyria in general see Brown, Cult of the Saints; Hippolyte Delehaye, Les origines du culte des martyrs (Brussells: Société des bollandistes, 1933) 115–31; and Richard M. Price, “The Holy Man and Christianization from the Apocryphal Apostles to St. Stephen of Perm,” The Cult of Saints in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages: Essays on the Contribution of Peter Brown (ed. James Howard-Johnston and Paul Antony Hayward; Oxford: Clarendon, 1999) 219–24. For Gallic saint-shrines see Van Dam, Leadership and Community, 230–49; and for Egyptian saint-shrines: Arietta Papaconstantinou, Le culte des saints en Égypte des Byzantins aux Abbassides. L’apport des sources papyrologiques et épigraphiques grecques et coptes (Paris: Centre nationale de la recherche scientiÀque [CNRS], 2001). On incense as indicating or cultivating the presence of the martyr-saint’s spirit see Franz Cumont, “Cierges et lampes sur les tombeaux,” in Miscellanea Giovanni Mercati (Studi e testi 125; Vatican City: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana 1946) 5:41–47; Béatrice Caseau, “EuĿdia: The Use and Meaning of Fragrance in the Ancient World and Their Christianization (100–900 AD)” (Ph.D. dissertation, Princeton University, 1994) ch. 5; and idem, “Incense and Fragrances: From House to Church,” in Material Culture and Well-Being in Byzantium (400–1453) (ed. M. Grünbart et al.; Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2007) 75–92, esp. 85–87; and Susan Ashbrook Harvey, Scenting Salvation: Ancient Christianity and the Olfactory Imagination (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 2006) 75–90. Archaeological evidence for incense in tomb-shrines is discussed in Fakhry, Necropolis of ElBagawat, 26–27. Cf. Plutarch, Def. orac. 437C, in which IYN[HMZE heralds the presence of the oracular spirit. Wall-paintings in tomb-martyria portrayed martyrs in what would have been understood as their “transÀgured” bodies, much as Roman Egyptian funerary iconography included images of the deceased in his or her “transÀguration body”: see Christina Riggs, The Beautiful Burial in Roman Egypt: Art, Identity, and Funerary Religion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005). 35 Sulpicius Severus, Gallus 6.4.

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power of the saint. They were fundamentally Christian performances, meant to articulate the power of the saint; but in constructing and Áeshing out the spirits of the periphery they also involved quite local acts of bricolage. That is, they drew from memories and anxieties of the local sphere, and from a folklore combining exotic biblical legends with familiar landscape spirits. Again, we might compare them to modern Middle-Eastern zar and jinn spirits, whose identities with peripheral lands and peoples are likewise constructed in performance and in counterpoint to the central power of sheikh or marabout. Possession allowed people to participate in Christianization, sometimes critiquing the displaced pantheon through mimesis of its spirits, sometimes inventing an antithesis of the new pantheon with some type of chaotic spirit. One might even acclaim the new pantheon, using the peripheral spirits—those rendered marginal and ambiguous through Christianization—as the voice of ancestral tradition itself. For example, one demoniac in Rome proclaimed “the God of St. Callixtus,” while in late fourth-century Nola (Italy) the demoniacs would declare that St. Felix was afÁicting them. Indeed, it seemed here that the demons themselves were announcing “that Christ shines out in the person of his saint—and they prove[d] it by trembling with shaking limbs and wagging heads.”36 By such spectacles local audiences could witness Christ’s (or a saint’s) reception, as it were, by the familiar spirits of neighborhood and village. There is inevitably a ludic, creative element in articulating through possession a shift in pantheons. Of course, there is also a distinct locative aspect to these phenomena, where the place of the martyr or saint becomes the place also of the demonic. For the early Christian laity the demonic was envisioned more in geographical than spiritual terms—as a threat revealed and distributed in landscape features, especially the urban landscape, where a casual visit to the baths or the theatre (obvious demon habitats) might precipitate demonic possession.37 In this worldview the holy topos of the martyr served not only as counterpoint to demonic spaces but also as the very resolution of a polarized landscape: here the demons would emerge and be vanquished. But on another level the new cult centers that Christianity brought to regional cultures had to accommodate the full range of local peoples’ supernatural experiences and potentialities. Just as at Delphi, where (according to Plutarch) an unprepared Pythia might get overtaken by a “mighty and baleful spirit [ENPEZPSYOEM OEOSYD TRIYZQEXSb]” instead of the oracular god,38 so too at the Christian shrines the declaration of Christ and his saints’ immanence through liturgy, paintings, and 36

On the St. Felix cult, see: Paulinus of Nola, Carmen 14.25–33 (The Poems of St. Paulinus of Nola [trans. P. G. Walsh; Ancient Christian Writers 40; New York: Newman Press, 1975] 78), with edition of Andrea Ruggiero, Paolino di Nola. I Carmi (2 vols.; Naples: LER, 1996) 1:222. On the St. Callixtus cult, see: Passio S. Callisti 3: “a temple virgin [or Bacchante apud Mombritius edition] named Juliana was seized by a demon and shouted out, ‘The God of Callixtus is himself the living and true God’ ” (ed. AASS, 440B–C). I am indebted to Kristina Sessa for this reference. 37 See, e.g., Tertullian, Spect. 26; Acta Andreae (Latin) 27. On demons of the landscape in general see Brashear, “Exkurs. Übergänge, Grenzen, Niemandsland.” 38 Plutarch, Def. orac. 438B.

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incense invited the complementary embodiment of other spirits: peripheral spirits, “demons.” The space of the saint became the space of all the spirits, in conÁict and collusion.39 There was obviously an element of spectacle in the construction of demons, for people went out to the shrines in order to experience the new pantheon and its powers through dramatic possessions; and naturally they expected some consequences of the demons’ appearance, whether exorcisms, oracles, or simply drama. Jerome describes his friend Paula’s experience in a late fourth-century saint’s shrine in Palestine, among “men howling like wolves, baying like dogs, roaring like lions, hissing like serpents, and bellowing like bulls”—a veritable theater of demoniac possession.40 Paulinus of Nola marvels at a demoniac who hangs upside-down from the balustrade next to St. Felix’s tomb, his robe miraculously staying up to cover his genitals.41 A man visiting St. Artemios’s shrine in Constantinople for a testicular condition turns out also to have an “evil spirit,” leading him to hang suspended before the icon of Artemios “as though his hands were tied by chains, hovering one cubit above the Áoor, and yelling loudly, so that all [those supplicants likewise incubating in the shrine] were astonished by the sight and were cowed by fear.”42 Such performances served as the authenticating spectacles of shrines, initiated through the centralizing experience of the shrine itself. Finally, behind these performative and architectural contexts for the deÀnition of these peripheral spirits, we must recognize the very agency of the local milieu in appropriating the shrine—often an ofÀcial structure—as the place of the spirits and declaring it to be the site for possession or the resolution of possession, with or without the systematic encouragement of bishops. The spirits at the shrine of St. Felix in Nola do not simply release their victims but amazingly seem to prolong their possessions. While Paulinus attributes this phenomenon to the saint’s effort to expiate more fully the victims’ sins, we may perceive some popular agency in maintaining the drama, not simply acquiescing to the power of Felix.43 Whether martyrs’ bones or John the Baptist’s head, St. Martin’s body or patriarchs’ remains, it was the possession of the laity and its experts, even more than the reading of martyrological passions, that served to articulate the praesentia and potentia of the relics inside. 39

Peregrine Horden notes that, in early Byzantine hagiographical materials, most supplicants to shrines or holy men seeking healing from demonic possession only manifest the demons when they get to the shrines or encounter the holy man (“Responses to Possession,” 178). Note that zar possession often (although not always) takes place at saint-shrines in modern Egypt: see Hani Fakhouri, “The Zar Cult in an Egyptian Village,” Anthropological Quarterly 41 (1968) 49–56; and Richard Natvig, “Some Notes on the History of the Zar Cult in Egypt,” in Women’s Medicine, 183–84. 40 Jerome, Ep. 108.13 = PL 22:889, trans. Philip Schaff, NPNF 2d series, 6:201. See Brown, The Cult of the Saints, 106–12. 41 Paulinus of Nola, Carmen 23.82–95, ed. Ruggiero, I carmi 2:98–100, tr. Walsh, Poems, 212. 42 Miracles of St. Artemios 6, ed./tr. Crisafulli/Nesbitt, Miracles of St. Artemios, 88–89. 43 Paulinus of Nola, Carmen 23.48–54, ed. Ruggiero, I carmi 2:96, tr. Walsh, Poems, 210–11.

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The focus in this paper on local audiences and pilgrims as principal agents in the representation of demons (whether oracular, heathen, or animal-like) obviously sets aside that central Àgure in early Christian literature, the exorcist. It is the exorcist who is typically credited with the authority to govern lay possession. Literature of the Roman period, from Luke-Acts to Philostratus, tends to focus on this Àgure as the essential dramatic counterpoint to the demonic. Through his technical ability to identify and subdue chaotic spirits, or simply through his representation of Christian power, the exorcist becomes both ritual expert and hero, and the literature depicts the possessed as acting largely in aggressive, then passive, counterpoint.44 Christian ritual manuals from the third, fourth, and later centuries outline such exorcisms in practical terms, yet the late antique materials discussed here ignore or diminish the role of exorcists in actually triggering demonic displays in others.45 Instead, they depict the forms of the possession state as initiated through the mere presence of holy men or saintly relics. It is possible that scholars have put too much historical emphasis on the roles of exorcists as instigators of possession states—that instead we should regard them as shapers of demonic possession, authorities in the deÀnition of spirits that laypeople initially construct themselves.

Q Towards a New Framework for the Christianization of the Mediterranean World The late antique spirit-possession phenomena described in this paper would not have required prior traditions of beneÀcial spirit possession, like shamanism, ecstatic oracles, or possession “cults.” Nor did they necessarily involve the resurgence of prior religious forms, as many have viewed (for example) New Prophecy in the context of Phrygian cults.46 To be sure, literature of the Roman period is rife with cases of individuals possessed by “spirits,” “holy spirits,” “pythonic spirits,” and sometimes “gods” who gained prestige as prophetic oracles.47 There were certainly areas of the ancient Mediterranean world that viewed the embodiment and mantic 44 See, e.g., Mark 1:23–28; 5:1–13; 9:17–29; Acts 19:13–17; Justin, 2 Apol. 6; Acts of Thomas 42–50, 62–81; Acta Andreae (Coptic) 10; (Latin) 5, 17, 27, with Jan N. Bremmer, “Man, Magic, and Martyrdom in the Acts of Andrew,” The Apocryphal Acts of Andrew (ed. Jan N. Bremmer; Leuven: Peeters, 2000) 24–32. See also Lucian, Philopseudes 16; Philostratus, v. Apollonii 3.38; 4.10. See in general Campbell Bonner, “The Technique of Exorcism,” HTR 36 (1943) 39–49. 45 For examples of Christian exorcistic spells see PGM 4.86–87, 1227–64, 2007–86; 36.275–88; 94.17; 114.1–14. Some form of the Testament of Solomon would also have circulated as a basis for exorcistic and apotropaic rituals by the fourth century: see Todd E. Klutz, Rewriting the Testament of Solomon: Tradition, ConÁict, and Identity in a Late Antique Pseudepigraphon (Library of Second Temple Studies 53; London: T&T Clark, 2005), and the important new study of manuscript diversiÀcation, Sarah L. Schwarz, “Reconsidering the Testament of Solomon,” Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha 16 (2007) 203–37. 46 E.g., Vera-Elisabeth Hirschmann, Horrenda Secta. Untersuchungen zum frühchristlichen Montanismus und seinen Verbindungen zur paganen Religion Phrygiens (Stuttgart: Steiner, 2005). 47 E.g., Acts 16:16–18; Lucian, Alexander, 43–44; Origen, Cels. 7.9; Eusebius 5.16.7–9.

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voice of an ancestral spirit as an essential role in society. There may well have been traditions of ecstatic mediumship in the regions of these saints’ shrines; but the approach in this article to the upsurge of demons in shrines does not depend on it.48 Rather, spirit possession in late antiquity was an historical epiphenomenon of the process of Christianization itself, involving three critical historical developments: Àrst, the increasing hegemony of a new, totalist pantheon that, second, polarized ancestral spirits as liminal and chaotic, and that, third, was “realized” in the landscape through the Àxity of particular places as the loci of spirits and the manifestation of spirits. In this Ànal section, these stages of Christianization will be explained in more detail, in light of both the late antique materials introduced above and current anthropological work on “conversion” and spirit possession. Let us begin with the supernatural world in advance of Christianization. What used to be called “paganism,” but which is better described as (Egyptian, Gallic, or other) local religion, involved perpetual negotiation with a range of ancestral and landscape spirits, as well as more well-known gods. A gold lamella from Romania adjures the “daimĿn menacing here” to go and instead(!) afÁict Julia Cyrilla; while a Sicilian Jew needs an elaborate amulet to protect him from the local Artemis.49 In Roman Egypt alone we Ànd one letter extolling “our ancestral gods [who] continually assist us, granting us health and safety” and another lamenting how “one of the gods sent [my daughter’s illness] in malice, and likewise let him remove it!”50 Here too, apotropaic gods like Bes, Toutou, and Horus stood against a range of chaotic and capricious beings, some of which we Ànd listed in magical and mortuary texts.51 For a woman of the Àrst century it was a local Osiris to whom one should address a complaint about a husband’s sexual reticence.52 Negotiating among these gods and spirits involved family and local traditions, individual selfdetermination, and the appeal to temples and ritual experts for aid. By what god are my children stricken? How can I assure my ancestor’s continued favor on my family? To whom should I place my vows for a successful trip to Alexandria? It is

48 On evidence for traditions of spirit possession in Pharaonic Egypt see Yvan Koenig, Magie et magiciens dans l’Égypte ancienne (Paris: Pygmalion, 1994), 217–18; and Philippe Derchain, “Possession, transe et exorcisme: Les oubliés de l’Égyptologie,” Göttinger Miszellen 219 (2008) 9–18. 49 Roy Kotansky, Greek Magical Amulets (P.Col. 22; Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1994) #24 (second century C.E.), #33 (third/fourth century C.E.). Number twenty-four was found in a workshop (idem, 96) but was probably intended to be deposited where the demon was imminens rather than left under Julia’s pillow (100). 50 Respectively, P.Oxy 6.935 (third century C.E.); P.Hermopolis 2 (fourth century C.E.). 51 See Frankfurter, Religion in Roman Egypt, 111–31. 52 Helmut Satzinger, “The Old Coptic Schmidt Papyrus,” JARCE 12 (1975) 37–50, republished in Religions of Late Antiquity in Practice (ed. Richard Valantasis; Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000) 230–31, reÁecting a traditional Egyptian sense that ancestors mediate inevitably in domestic affairs.

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this kind of culture of religious agency and the negotiation of spirits that we must imagine encountering Christianity.53 Now, any new religious ideology brought into this kind of local culture—by religious experts or holy men, for example—will propose and often bring about a reorganization of pantheon and cosmology as well as the classiÀcation and recognition of supernatural forces. Which spirits are beneÀcial, which harmful? By what ritual means are people truly protected, and which rituals amount to sorcery? This is a pattern repeatedly observable in ethnographic studies of religious conversion, but it especially covers the radically totalist Christianity of the fourth century, which made a profession of discerning and opposing the demonic.54 This reorganization often simply marginalized spirits associated with the landscape, ancestors, or divination, while the new transcendent spirits were centralized.55 Occasionally in history this marginalization has become more extreme, turning into a process of polarization in which missionaries, prophets, and religious reformers render ambiguous spirits (daimones, jinn, even orishas and loas in Afro-Caribbean cultures) as utterly and actively evil, to be shunned and exorcised for the sake of the central God. While exorcisms might eventually allow more innovative, even

53 The extent and diversity of spirits in the Egyptian Christian landscape alone is well-documented: see Sydney Aufrère, “L’Égypte traditionnelle, ses démons vus par les premiers chrétiens,” Études Coptes V (ed. Maggy Rassart-Debergh; Cahiers de la Bibliothèque copte 10; Paris: Peeters, 1998) 63–92; See also Frankfurter, “Syncretism and the Holy Man in Late Antique Egypt,” JECS 11, 3 (2003) 461–64. Beyond Egypt, see (e.g.) Lisa M. Bitel, Isle of the Saints: Monastic Settlement and Christian Community in Early Ireland (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990) 42–48, and Ken Dowden, European Paganism: The Realities of Cult from Antiquity to the Middle Ages (New York: Routledge, 2000) 25–148. 54 On holy men as instruments of Christianization, see Peter Brown, “The Rise and Function of the Holy Man in Late Antiquity” Society and the Holy in Late Antiquity (London: Faber & Faber, 1982) 103–52, and Authority and the Sacred: Aspects of the Christianisation of the Roman World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995); as well as David Frankfurter, “Syncretism and the Holy Man,” 339–85. On Christianity’s radical totalism see J. B. Rives, “Christian Expansion and Christian Ideology,” The Spread of Christianity in the First Four Centuries: Essays in Explanation (ed. William V. Harris; Leiden: Brill, 2005) 15–41. On the importance of exorcism see MacMullen, Christianizing the Roman Empire, 21–29; and Eric Sorensen, Possession and Exorcism in the New Testament and Early Christianity (WUNT 157; Tübingen: Mohr/Siebeck 2002). On the reorganization of pantheon and cosmology more generally see Robin Horton, “African Conversion,” Africa 41 (1971) 85–108; Birgit Meyer, “‘If You Are a Devil, You Are a Witch and, If You Are a Witch, You Are a Devil’: The Integration of ‘Pagan’ Ideas into the Conceptual Universe of Ewe Christians in Southeastern Ghana,” Journal of Religion in Africa 22 (1992) 98–132; Terence Ranger, “The Local and the Global in Southern African Religious History,” Conversion to Christianity: Historical and Anthropological Perspectives on a Great Transformation (ed. Robert W. Hefner; Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993) 65–98. 55 Cf. Lewis, Ecstatic Religion, 86–87, with J. Waardenburg, “Changes of Belief in Spiritual Beings, Prophethood, and the Rise of Islam,” Struggles of Gods: Papers of the Groningen Work Group for the Study of the History of Religions (ed. Hans G. Kippenberg; Religion and Reason 31; Berlin: Mouton, 1984) 260–90.

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helpful performances by these evil spirits, their initial experience among groups unprepared for the “domestication” of such spirits may be terror.56 The possession materials in this article demonstrate above all that, in receiving this reorganized or polarized Christian pantheon, people in local communities were not passively acquiescent. Instead, they actively engaged in the mimesis and articulation of the new conÀguration of spirits through ritual performance and possession. This is the crucial element of agency in the religious transformation of the local sphere. Rather than depending on missionaries and prophets, it is quite often laity themselves who demonstrate the new spirits in action, the old spirits in submission or resurgence, or combinations of both—an overall dramaturgy of religious transformation, Christ’s victory, and often the continued relevance and potency of ancestral spirits. Another aspect of this local dramaturgy is the opening up of new social roles: for possession specialists, like some Egyptian holy men, and for nonspecialists, whose possession often took the form of afÁiction. But the late antique materials show that possession is also a process. As the letter of Firmilian of Caesarea shows most vividly, initial possession states, especially among nonspecialists, have to be shaped and deÀned so that people recognize the possessing spirit as a “demon” rather than a “god,” or a “holy spirit” rather than an angel. But how do people distinguish the demonic from the holy in possession? While efforts to establish hard-and-fast rules for discerning spirits have considerable antiquity, the recognition of demons and holy spirits in fact has always involved a process of negotiation—sometimes over years—between the possessed person, the community, and (often) institutional experts.57 Out of that process emerges an established role for the beneÀcial spirit or else the dramatic exorcism of a demon—or in many historical cases the Àrst followed by the second.58 Numerous accounts of 56 This process is particularly evident in Pentecostal churches’ development in cultures with more complex cosmologies, often under Catholic aegis. See, e.g., John Burdick, Looking for God in Brazil: The Progressive Catholic Church in Urban Brazil’s Religious Arena (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993) 47–67; with Patricia Birman and Marcia Pereira Leite, “Whatever Happened to What Used to be the Largest Catholic Country in the World?” Daedalus 129 (2000) 273–74; Lionel Caplan, “The Popular Culture of Evil in Urban South India,” The Anthropology of Evil (ed. David Parkin; Cambridge: Blackwell, 1985) 110–27; and Birgit Meyer, “Beyond Syncretism: Translation and Diabolization in the Appropriation of Protestantism in Africa,” Syncretism/AntiSyncretism: The Politics of Religious Synthesis (ed. Charles Stewart and Rosalind Shaw; New York: Routledge, 1994) 45–68, and Translating the Devil: Religion and Modernity among the Ewe in Ghana (Trenton: Africa World Press, 1999); with Dulue Mbachu, “Christianity vs. the Old Gods in Nigeria,” (Associated Press, 4 Sept. 2007). On the “domestication” or familiarization of demonic spirits in Pentecostal exorcism see Stephen Hunt, “Managing the Demonic: Some Aspects of the Neo-Pentecostal Deliverance Ministry,” Journal of Contemporary Religion 13 (1998) 215–30. 57 Ancient rules for the discernment of spirits: Deut 18; Did 11. 58 This point is illustrated in D. P. Walker, Unclean Spirits: Possession and Exorcism in France and England in the Late Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1981), esp. 21–22, 31–32, 52–56; and Michel de Certeau, The Possession at Loudun (trans M. Smith; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), but its fullest theoretical statement appears in Caciola, Discerning Spirits, and Moshe Sluhovsky, Believe Not Every Spirit:

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spirit possession in early Christian literature show the debates involved in evaluating and labelling the spirits themselves over time—especially when those spirits (and their bearers) had gained some regional cachet before others pronounced them false or demonic.59 In the stories of the spirit-bearing monks mentioned above, possession led to credible service as a master of spirits, and it was only later ecclesiastical opponents who pronounced their spirits “demons.” This process of negotiation does not end if a spirit is pronounced—and then popularly regarded as—a “demon.” Rather, this recognition simply ushers in a whole new set of questions for audience and experts alike. Are demons simply to be expelled, or should they Àrst “perform” their evil, their allegiance to Satan, their afÀliation with heathen cult, or their erotic or violent natures? Perhaps the performance of demonic characters comes to serve as a regular shrine spectacle, as we saw at Nola and Tours. In one notable modern case young Sinhalese women journey to the Catholic shrine in Kudagama and there manifest demons to the fascination of the crowds: demons named after Hindu gods, who put the girls through vividly erotic performances.60 The persistent manifestation of demons at shrines thus can maintain the vitality of the enchanted landscape. It may not be vital in the old way, where tree- and house-spirits had their names, habitats, and modes of supplication, but even as evil demons, devils, and opponents of Christ, their acknowledgment in ritual and possession demonstrates to the community that a spirit world remains. We can learn from the many ethnographic studies of the Christian demonization of local spirits that the articulation of the demonic in ritual offers a real reassurance in the tangibility of spirits, even if they are only to be dominated and bound by the authority of a St. Martin, St. Antony, or St. Sissinios.61 If contemporary jinn and zar rituals can again shed light on these phenomena, the ranks of demonized spirits can still play a role in local culture, even lending themselves to healing and divination rites unattributable to the transcendent spirits of the central pantheon—to Christ or Allah. Indeed, their penetration of the lives of villagers often involves a moral dimension: popular values are afÀrmed through interaction with demonic spirits.62 Possession, Mysticism, and Discernment in Early Modern Catholicism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007). 59 Acts 16:16; Lucian, Alexander, 43–44; Origen, Cels. 7.9; Anonymous source on New Prophecy apud Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 5.16.7–9. 60 See R. L. Stirrat, Power and Religiosity in a Post-Colonial Setting: Sinhala Catholics in Contemporary Sri Lanka (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992) 78–98. In general, see Lewis, Ecstatic Religion, 86–87, 92–96. 61 The point is made clearly for early modern Latin America by Fernando Cervantes, The Devil in the New World: The Impact of Diabolism in New Spain (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), and for modern Christian Ghana by Meyer, Translating the Devil. In neither case was possession (evidently) involved in the demonization/preservation of local spirits; ideology, iconography, and (in Mexico) masquing were apparently enough. 62 On the utility of demonized spirits in post-conversion cultures see Waardenburg, “Changes of Belief in Spiritual Beings,” 282–86; Lewis, Ecstatic Religion, 116–19; Caciola, Discerning Spirits,

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Q Conclusion These texts show us that, even as cultures embraced Christianity, the supernatural landscapes of Mediterranean people and the ancestral spirits that permeated those landscapes persisted even through late antiquity. The spirits remained relevant, whether manifest as beneÀcial oracles or as “demons”—chaotic spirits that afÁicted from the margins, causing one couple’s divorce, appearing like a headless dog to another, or lurking under the roof beams of a house.63 The category “demon,” that is, so constantly reasserted in Christian texts and sermons, served to maintain a broader supernatural pantheon and even, through possession, the actual presence of ancestral spirits and their various functions. These were not free-Áoating phenomena, however, for the saint’s shrine lay at the historical and phenomenological center of these dynamics. In the fourth and Àfth centuries it was this new locus that provided tangibility and abode for those potent new spirits, the martyrs. Far more than liturgy, they were the axes of Christianity’s power in an evolving supernatural landscape. Whether these buildings were initiated at the behest of popular enthusiasm, as Athanasius and Shenoute suggest, or sponsored by ecclesiastical forces, like the St. Martin cult, they became theatres for the manifestation of spirits, the articulation of spirits, and the evacuation of spirits. Thus the spirits were not only preserved dramatically, even terrifyingly; they were also re-placed—from the periphery to the center, from the village to the regional shrine, from the theatre to the church, and from the wilderness to the body—shifts that in many ways continued perennial swings in the religious experience of ancient Mediterranean communities.

72–76; and Stewart, Demons and the Devil. 63 Respectively, P. London 5.1713; Ancient Christian Magic (ed. Marvin Meyer and Richard Smith; San Francisco: Harper, 1994), #20 (= PGM P10) and #24 (= PGM P15b), all ca. sixth century C.E.

A New Fragment of Athanasius’s Thirty-Ninth Festal Letter: Heresy, Apocrypha, and the Canon* David Brakke Indiana University

Athanasius of Alexandria’s thirty-ninth Festal Letter remains one of the most signiÀcant documents in the history of the Christian Bible. Athanasius wrote the letter, which contains the Àrst extant list of precisely the twenty-seven books of the current New Testament canon, in 367 C.E., during the Ànal decade of his life. Like many of his annual Easter letters, the thirty-ninth was fairly long, but only a small portion of the text survives in Greek.1 The Greek excerpt contains Athanasius’s lists of the books of the Old and New Testaments, which he calls “canonized,” and a list of a few additional books, like the Shepherd of Hermas, which he says are not canonized, but are useful in the instruction of catechumens. Most studies of the formation of the Christian canon, including very recent ones, examine only this Greek fragment and so discuss only the contents of the lists. But already in the late-nineteenth-century fragments of the much more extensive Coptic translation had been published, and a few scholars, such as Carl Schmidt and Theodor Zahn, used them to write penetrating studies of the letter.2 In 1955 Lefort published all * As I note below, the text and translation that I present here owe much to Stephen Emmel and Gregor Wurst, with whom I Àrst read the new fragment in a seminar at the University of Münster several years ago, in addition to discussing several problems with Professor Emmel in Münster more recently. The Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung supported both of my visits to Münster. I presented an earlier version of this paper to the annual meeting of the North American Patristics Society; the questions and criticisms of the colleagues there, as well as those of the anonymous reviewer, helped me to clarify my points. I am grateful to these people and institutions. 1 Périclès-Pierre Joannou, Fonti. Discipline générale antique (IVe–IXe s.) (2 vols.; Rome: Grottaferrata, 1963) 2:71–76. 2 Carl Schmidt, “Der Osterfestbrief des Athanasius vom J. 367,” in Nachrichten von der Königl. Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen, Philologisch-historische Klasse aus dem Jahre

HTR 103:1 (2010) 47–66

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the then-known Coptic fragments in his book of Coptic Athanasiana, and then in 1984 Coquin published another long fragment.3 These served as the basis for my 1995 translation and my 1994 article in this journal on the social context of canon formation in fourth-century Egypt.4 Since that time, however, another new fragment of the Coptic text has been discovered. This paper introduces the new fragment to Anglophone scholars, discusses some problems with its text and translation, assesses how it may affect our understanding of the context and purpose of the letter as a whole, and presents an English translation of all the known text. When I read the letter in the mid 1990s, I argued that Athanasius’s promotion of a biblical canon supported a parish-based, episcopally-centered spirituality in opposition to other forms of Christian authority, namely, the teacher and the martyr. I still think that this is the case, but the new fragment does suggest that I underestimated the speciÀcally anti-heretical intent of the letter and of Athanasius’s canon. That is, Athanasius promoted a biblical canon not only—as I argued earlier—to support one form of Christian piety, social formation, and authority in opposition to others, but also to refute the speciÀc teachings of persons and groups that he deemed “impious” and “heretics.”

Q The New Fragment: Text, Translation, and Contents The new fragment is preserved in the A. S. Pushkin State Fine Arts Museum in Moscow and was published by Alla Elanskaya in 1994.5 But Elanskaya did not recognize what her tenth- or eleventh-century leaf of Sahidic Coptic really was, and instead called it “part of a sermon against the Manichaeans.” In 2001 Enzo Lucchesi identiÀed it as a part of Athanasius’s letter, and he published a French translation of it.6 Alberto Camplani therefore could include it in his outstanding Italian translation of and commentary on the Festal Letters, published in 2003. Camplani’s book is now the starting point for anyone who studies the Festal

1898 (Göttingen: Horstmann, 1898) 167–203; idem, “Ein neues Fragment des Osterfestbriefes des Athanasius vom Jahre 367,” in Nachrichten von der Königl. Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen, Philologisch-historische Klasse aus dem Jahre 1901 (Göttingen: Horstmann, 1902) 326–48; Theodor Zahn, Athanasius und der Bibelkanon (Leipzig: Deichert, 1901) 1–36; idem, Grundriss der Geschichte des neutestamentlichen Kanons (Leipzig: Deichert, 1901) 58–60. 3 Louis-Theophile Lefort, S. Athanase. Lettres festales et pastorales en copte (CSCO 150; Leuven: Durbecq, 1955) 16–22, 58–62; René-Georges Coquin, “Les lettres festales d’Athanase (CPG 2102). Un nouveau complément: Le manuscrit IFAO, copte 25,” OLP 15 (1984) 133–58. 4 David Brakke, Athanasius and the Politics of Asceticism (Oxford Early Christian Studies; Oxford: Clarendon, 1995) 326–32; idem, “Canon Formation and Social ConÁict in Fourth-Century Egypt: Athanasius of Alexandria’s Thirty-Ninth Festal Letter,” HTR 87 (1994) 395–419. 5 Alla I. Elanskaya, The Literary Coptic Manuscripts in the A. S. Pushkin State Fine Arts Museum in Moscow (Supplements to VC 18; Leiden: Brill, 1994) 379–80. 6 Enzo Lucchesi, “Un nouveau complément aux Lettres festales d’Athanase,” AnBoll 119 (2001) 255–60.

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Letters.7 In 2005 Gabriella Aragione translated the complete known text of Festal Letter 39 into French.8 The Moscow fragment presents some textual and translation problems. The Coptic translation of our letter survives fragmentarily in two medieval manuscripts from the White Monastery, now designated MONB.AS and MONB.AT, which Lefort called “Codex B” and “Codex C” respectively. These manuscripts contained collections of Athanasius’s Festal Letters; because their contents parallel the Syriac translations of the letters (where they are extant) and the surviving Greek citations, there can be no doubt that they represent ancient translations of the genuine Festal Letters. Our fragment belongs to MONB.AT, or Lefort’s Codex C, and Àlls a lacuna precisely.9 Unfortunately, the original scribe did not do a great job: he had to do a lot of erasing, and he left out some letters. Moreover, the leaf appears to be poorly preserved. Short of going to Moscow or acquiring digital photographs, the best that one can do is examine the plates that Elanskaya helpfully included in her book.10 In my translation I have presented Elanskaya’s Coptic text, with some revisions, and numbered the lines for reference. The incomplete opening sentence of the fragment concludes Athanasius’s argument in paragraphs 23–24 that, even if the so-called “apocryphal books” contain some useful teachings, there is no need for any Christian to consult them because the entire Christian faith can be found in the canonized Scriptures. He explains that all the central doctrines, including the incarnation of the Word, the resurrection of the dead, and the Ànal judgment, can be found in the Bible. He turns, then, to argue—in paragraph 25—that passages from the Bible expose the impious or heretical character of certain deviant teachers and groups, namely, the Manichaeans, Marcion, the Montanists (“the people in Phrygia”), the Arians, and the Melitians (“parasites” of the Arians). The references to the Montanists as “Phrygians” and to the Melitians as “parasites” of the Arians are characteristic of Athanasius.11 Still, this type of brief catalogue of heresies is not common in Athanasius’s works; the closest parallels may be in the Life of Antony, where Antony warns against the Melitians, the Manichaeans, and the Arians, and in the Orations against the Arians, where Manichaeans, “Phrygians,” and other heretics 7 Alberto Camplani, Atanasio di Alessandria. Lettere festali; Anonimo. Indice delle lettere festali (Milan: Paoline, 2003) 498–518. 8 Gabriella Aragione, “La Lettre festale 39 d’Athanase. Présentation et traduction de la version copte et de l’extrait grec,” in Le canon du Nouveau Testament. Regards nouveaux sur l’histoire de sa formation (ed. Gabriella Aragione, Eric Junod, and Enrico Norelli; Le Monde de la Bible 54; Geneva: Labor et Fides, 2005) 198–219. 9 For a complete discussion of the transmitted text of the Festal Letters, see Camplani, Atanasio di Alessandria, 595–602; on our letter, see 503. Aragione provides a helpful summary table in “La Lettre festale 39,” 202. 10 Elanskaya, Literary Coptic Manuscripts, plates CXLI–II. 11 Phrygians or Cataphrygians: Athanasius, Orationes contra Arianos 1.3 and 2.43; 3.47; idem, De synodis 13. Meletians as “parasites”: Athanasius, Epistulae festales 41, in Lefort, Lettres festales, 62.

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appear together in a couple of dense passages.12 These other passages do not, however, include brief descriptions of each heresy’s distinct false teaching as the new fragment does. It is interesting that Athanasius appears to consider the status of the Creator-God to be the distinctive impiety of the Manichaeans. The last portion of the Moscow fragment, paragraph 26, conÀrms my earlier guess that Egyptian Christians cited 1 Corinthians 2:9—“What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the human heart conceived”—in support of their use of apocryphal books.13 We can now see a special edge to Athanasius’s earlier question about Jesus the true Teacher: “Who can convince those whom he teaches about ‘things that eye has not seen nor ear heard nor have arisen upon the human heart,’ except he who alone knows the Father and has established for us the way to enter the kingdom of heaven?”14 Most likely both Athanasius and his opponents knew a version of the Ascension of Isaiah, in which the words that Paul cites appear. The use of the masculine singular pronoun in lines 42 and 48 to refer to the person who makes this argument is strange. Who is this “he”? Lucchesi wonders whether it might refer to Marcion, the only individual in the preceding passage, and Camplani suggests that it might be “a generic heretic.”15 I believe Camplani has the better idea, but that it is likely the singular here is a mistake and that there should be a plural: “they have said” and “I will answer them.” The reference to “contentious persons” in line 49 may support this hypothesis, and in the next paragraph Athanasius in fact refers to “the heretics” as claiming that Paul cited apocryphal books. How does Athanasius respond to the citation of 1 Corinthians 2:9 in support of apocryphal books? Subsequently, in paragraph 27, a previously known section of the letter, Athanasius argues that heretics composed the apocryphal books recently and placed these words of Paul in one of their texts in order to make their work appear to be older than Paul. Here in lines 50–54, the awkward Coptic most likely does a poor job of translating the Greek, but Athanasius’s point seems clear enough. He has to deal with Paul’s citation as somehow biblical because Paul introduces it with the phrase “as it is written.” So Athanasius argues that Paul does not support or commend (WYRMWXEZREM) his arguments with simply any words; rather, he does so with words from the Scriptures.16 According to Athanasius, Paul, however, does not always quote the relevant biblical text exactly, but instead paraphrases, giving its meaning (RSYDb). And in this case Athanasius claims that Paul has paraphrased a portion of Isaiah 29, which refers to blind and deaf people and people without any hope.

12

Athanasius, Vita Antonii 68; idem, Orationes contra Arianos 1.3 and 2.43. Brakke, “Canon Formation and Social ConÁict,” 413. 14 Paragraph 9. 15 Lucchesi, “Un nouveau complément,” 259; Camplani, Atanasio di Alessandria, 515 n. 34. 16 For similar uses of WYRMWXEZREM as “commend” or “support,” see Athanasius, Epistula ad episcopos Aegpyti et Libyae 9, and this letter 39.16. 13

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Q Implications for the Interpretation of the Letter While the beginning and end of the fragment merely extend or supplement what we already knew of Athanasius’s argument, the brief catalogue of heresies with the biblical passages that refute them in its central section is genuinely new, and in the view of Alberto Camplani, it undermines the way in which I interpreted the letter back in 1994. In what follows I review my earlier position and then turn to the objections to it and the relevance of the Moscow fragment. In the letter as we now know it, including the new fragment, Athanasius makes a variety of arguments against the use of non-canonical books, but he devotes considerable attention to two particular themes. The Àrst is the irrelevance or even danger of human teachers. The Word of God is the only true Teacher—after all, he is Truth itself, and he never needed anyone to teach him. The Word’s truth is to be found completely and plainly in the Scriptures, and so there is no need to seek it in other books or from other teachers. The second theme is that no “apocryphal” books really come from Isaiah, Moses, Enoch, or any other authoritative ancient Àgure. They all published their teaching openly, and any “apocryphal” books attributed to them must be recent inventions of heretics. He accuses the Melitians speciÀcally of composing and promoting the use of apocryphal books. My reading contextualized these two themes by associating them with two forms of Christian spirituality, authority, and social organization that were traditional in Egyptian Christianity, but which Athanasius opposed. The Àrst, following Rowan Williams, I called academic Christianity, a tradition of study under the guidance of a learned and inspired teacher, which I traced back to Alexandrians such as Basilides, Clement, Valentinus, and Origen and saw exempliÀed by Arius in the fourth century.17 In an earlier Festal Letter, written in 352, Athanasius had similarly contrasted “the words of the saints” and “the fancies of human invention”; only the New Testament authors transmit the teachings of the Word “without alteration,” and thus “of these the Word wants us to be disciples, and they should be our teachers, and it is necessary for us to obey only them.”18 The second was an apocalyptically oriented mode of piety, found in the traditions that David Frankfurter studied in his book on the Apocalypse of Elijah and which I saw continuing into the fourth century in the cult of the martyrs and the use of so-called apocryphal books, both taken up most enthusiastically by the Meletians.19 In contrast to these, Athanasius offered an episcopally-centered piety, which valued adherence to the clergy and its sacraments and found revealed truth not through study under a learned teacher, 17 See Rowan Williams, Arius: Heresy and Tradition (London: Darton, Longman, & Todd, 1987) 82–91. 18 Epistulae festales 2.7 (which is actually no. 24, written in 352 C.E.), in The Festal Letters of Athansius: Discovered in an Ancient Syriac Version (ed. William Cureton; London: Society for the Publication of Oriental Texts, 1848) 24–25. 19 See David Frankfurter, Elijah in Upper Egypt: The Apocalypse of Elijah and Early Egyptian Christianity (Studies in Antiquity and Christianity; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993).

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nor through revelations at martyr shrines, but through a stable canon of Scriptures, interpreted by the ofÀcial catholic church. I summed up the differences among these competing modes of Christian spirituality in terms of three authoritative Àgures: the teacher, the martyr, and the bishop. In this view, it was not so much the speciÀc “heresies” named by Athanasius (“Arians” and “Melitians”) that prompted the letter and the promulgation of a canon, as much as the general forms of spirituality, social organization, and authority that they represented. My argument met with some criticism even before the appearance of the new fragment.20 Most criticism has been aimed at the distinction between academic and episcopal Christianities. One objection is that labeling Alexandrian Christians like Arius “academic” renders them “marginal” and places them in “elite and insular” schools.21 To the contrary, “academic” may be a marginal category in the contemporary United States and perhaps in some centers of late ancient Christianity, but it was not at all marginal or insular in Alexandrian Christianity. Rather, an academic mode of spirituality, one focused on the study of sacred texts under a learned teacher, was Alexandria’s most traditional form of Christian piety, shaping the ethos not of isolated schools in our sense, but of study circles, public lectures, and worshiping communities that overlapped and often included clerical leadership. To be sure, such a spirituality was frankly elitist, as any reader of Clement or Origen will readily see—some people are more advanced than others—but that does not mean it could not be genuinely popular and religious, as Arius by all accounts was. Another objection is that I have allowed the rhetoric of people like Irenaeus, Athanasius, and Epiphanius to shape my understanding of their opponents as charismatic teachers.22 It is true that many of the literary sources for our social information about ancient people (not only “heretics”) are prejudicial and characterized by polemical distortion or even outright lies. When Athanasius, Irenaeus, and others derided their opponents as “teachers”—which they tried to make into a term of disparagement—and ridiculed cultured study and theological speculation, they were trying to demean, and portray as non-Christian, activities that many Christians considered positive means toward contemplation of God and salvation. Especially when we have corroborating evidence from Arius’s own writings, I am inclined to construct in this case a sympathetic portrait from characteristics that hostile sources depict as negative. 20 Many scholars have also accepted the argument: for example, Christoph Markschies, “The Canon of the New Testament in Antiquity: Some New Horizons for Future Research,” in Homer, the Bible, and Beyond: Literary and Religious Canons in the Ancient World (ed. Margalit Finkelberg and Guy G. Stroumsa; Jerusalem Studies in Religion and Culture 2; Leiden: Brill, 2003) 175–94, at 189–92, although he rightly criticizes my imprecise (and Athanasian) use of the term “Arians.” 21 Robert C. Gregg, review of R. Williams, Arius, JTS n.s. 40 (1989) 247–54; J. Rebecca Lyman, “Historical Methodologies and Ancient Theological ConÁicts,” in The Papers of the Henry Luce III Fellows in Theology (ed. Matthew Zyniewicz; 6 vols.; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1999) 3:75–96, at 84–85. 22 Lyman, “Historical Methodologies,” 95 n. 57.

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Moreover, we must keep in mind the disingenuous self-representations of these bishops, who were themselves teachers and therefore doing some of the same things that their opponents were, as some of my critics have helpfully pointed out.23 Consequently, we should not doubt the activity of teaching itself, but we must investigate the differing social contexts of Christian teaching and the ways in which Christian authors package, spin, and (de-)legitimate this activity. As Athanasius and others like him present the matter, when legitimate ofÀceholders of the church (bishops) teach, they are faithfully passing on what Christ told the disciples, who subsequently informed their episcopal successors, and so they are not really teaching at all. Athanasius claims this about himself in our letter: “I have not written these things as if I were teaching, for I have not attained such a rank. . . . I thus have informed you of everything that I heard from my father,”24 that is, Bishop Alexander of Alexandria. Personal qualities of learning and insight do not legitimate what the bishop says, but rather his place in a trustworthy succession. When others teach, in contrast, they invent ideas and lead Christians astray. These claims, however, require interrogation and do not rule out that other Christian leaders taught in other contexts and legitimated their teaching in other ways, as I have argued Arius did. In his commentary on the Festal Letters, Camplani accepts my description of a shift in Alexandrian spirituality that Athanasius’s works both attest and promote. As Camplani phrases it, Origen and other early Alexandrians exhibit a pattern of spiritual growth in which an initial ethical distancing from the world facilitated increasingly advanced study of the Scriptures, which led to contemplation of God. Athanasius revised this pattern to place less emphasis on textual study and more on control of the body, and Christian spirituality took on a more explicitly social dimension in the form of a church inclusive of both monastic and married Christians, clergy and lay people. But Camplani objects to my mapping of these two forms of spirituality onto the social fabric of fourth-century Alexandrian Christianity. Arius, he points out, was a member of the clergy, and surely not all his supporters were learned; Didymus the Blind Àts my social role of “teacher” perfectly, but supported Athanasian orthodoxy.25 In Camplani’s view, then, the distinction between episcopally- and academicallyoriented spiritualities fails “to capture the substance of the Athanasian attitude.” Here, he says, is where the new fragment comes into play: It makes clear that a speciÀcally anti-heretical agenda formed the substance of what Athanasius was doing. The biblical canon was meant to expose and refute speciÀc heretical teachers and groups.26 Camplani goes on to describe the thirty-ninth Festal Letter as part of a wider “theological initiative” that Athanasius undertook in the years after he returned 23 24 25 26

Lyman, “Historical Methodologies,” 84–91. Paragraph 32. Camplani, Atanasio di Alessandria, 151–52. Ibid., 82–83.

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from his Àfth and Ànal exile in 366 C.E. In this period, according to Camplani, Athanasius proposed “a more comprehensive model of orthodoxy,” which included more than the right beliefs in matters of the Trinity and Christology that he had stressed earlier in his career. Instead, this new concept of orthodoxy embraced the whole of Christian piety, including a canon of Scripture, its orthodox dogmatic exegesis, proper observance of the cult of the saints, and a closer connection with the monastic movement. The small heresiological catalogue in the new fragment, which looks beyond the Arians to a wider range of heretical groups, indicates one facet of this new concept of orthodoxy. So, Camplani argues, it is not really an episcopal spirituality that Athanasius promotes, but rather an orthodoxy.27 Camplani’s general point is, I think, correct. In his Ànal years Athanasius sought to reform a range of existing practices in Egyptian Christianity and to consolidate the orthodox catholic church that he had promoted throughout his long career.28 He devoted less attention to international theological developments and more time and energy to Egypt. I agree too that my original formulation of this effort, especially as found in the thirty-ninth Festal Letter, did not recognize sufÀciently the speciÀcally anti-heretical dimension of his project. That is, Athanasius opposed not only general forms of spirituality and authority, but also speciÀc heretical teachings, such as Marcion’s rejection of the Old Testament. Still, Camplani’s notion of a more comprehensive conception of orthodoxy on Athanasius’s part, one that includes pious practices and not just doctrines, perhaps states in different terms my emphasis on Athanasius’s larger interest in conÁicting types of religious authority and their corresponding modes of piety and social formation. Athanasius’s lengthy critique of human teachers and of any teaching activity that is not simple exposition of the Scriptures, however, also indicates that he sees a particular culture of independent Christian instruction and study as the breeding ground for Arianism, Melitianism, and perhaps the other heresies that he names. Although I do not share Athanasius’s negative view of this spirituality, I do think that it existed and that Arius and Didymus are good fourth-century representatives of it. Arius may have been a presbyter, but evidence suggests that he legitimated his teaching by pointing not only to his clerical ofÀce—as Athanasius the bishop would—but also to his academic pedigree and learning—as Athanasius would not.29 Likewise, Didymus may have been a Àrm supporter of Athanasian trinitarian orthodoxy and the episcopate, but his overall approach to Scripture and its study 27

Camplani, Atanasio di Alessandria, 499–500. For my discussions of these efforts, see not only “Canon Formation and Social ConÁict,” but also Athanasius and the Politics of Asceticism, 100–2, and “‘Outside the Places, Within the Truth’: Athanasius of Alexandria and the Localization of the Holy,” in Pilgrimage and Holy Space in Late Antique Egypt (ed. David Frankfurter; Religions in the Graeco-Roman World 134; Leiden: Brill, 1998) 445–81. 29 Brakke, “Canon Formation and Social ConÁict,” 403–4. See now also the summary portrait in Edward J. Watts, City and School in Late Antique Athens and Alexandria (The Transformation of the Classical Heritage 41; Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006) 171–74. 28

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is not that of Athanasius. As Richard Layton has nicely put it, “the instruction of Didymus was supportive of, but not necessarily in service to, ecclesiastical authorities.”30 Didymus’s school demonstrates that Athanasius’s campaign of “revolutionary anti-intellectualism” did not succeed and that the bishop did not appreciate the possibility of a fully orthodox philosophical culture independent of the episcopate, perhaps with the exception of monks like Antony, taught only by God.31 Edward Watts has described how Athanasius’s Life of Antony contributed to this campaign by depicting the monk as a teacher of “a new kind of philosophy that derived not from suspect speculation and deceptive argumentation, but from the purity of scripture and the clarity of faith.”32 During the late-fourth century, he argues, Alexandrian Christian intellectual circles moved away from regular interaction with pagan philosophical culture, and Christian instruction increasingly came from monastically-oriented Àgures like Didymus and Evagrius Ponticus, whose authority was based on an ascetic self-control and pedigree as much as, if not more than, on mastery of traditional philosophy.33 Although Eric Junod believes that my anti-teaching hypothesis lacks supporting evidence in Festal Letter 39 and other Athanasian works,34 the substantive claim of his excellent recent article coheres with my argument—as even its subtitle (“De la construction savante du Nouveau Testament à la clôture ecclésiastique du canon”) indicates. Junod suggests that at the beginning of the fourth century the biblical “canon,” as found in Eusebius of Caesarea, was the still incomplete and speculative project of Christian intellectuals, but with Athanasius the canon became a Àxed and ecclesiastical institution. Junod’s argument closely parallels my distinction between the Áexible and indeterminate “academic canon” of independent Christian teachers like Origen and the bounded and unchangeable “episcopal canon” promulgated by bishops like Athanasius. In fact, I cited Eusebius as an example of the former. I called Athanasius’s list of books that were not “canonized,” but were useful for the instruction of catechumens, a “remnant of the academic canon,” the status of which was “awkward” in Athanasius’s program.35 Junod has provided a more speciÀcally historical argument for this last claim. Athanasius, Junod points out, knew that he was being innovative in deÀning a set canon: The bishop speaks of his “audacity” (XSPQLVMZE) in doing so. In comparison to the lists of Eusebius, Athanasius lacks the category of “disputed” works (ENRXMPIKSZQIRE), a category that Junod calls both “learned and ecclesiastically embarrassing,” for it indicates 30 Richard A. Layton, Didymus the Blind and His Circle in Late-Antique Alexandria: Virtue and Narrative in Biblical Scholarship (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2004) 18. 31 The phrase “revolutionary anti-intellectualism” comes from Watts, City and School, 181. 32 Ibid., 177–81. 33 Ibid., 181–86. 34 Eric Junod, “D’Eusèbe de Césarée à Athanase d’Alexandrie en passant par Cyrille de Jérusalem. De la construction savante du Nouveau Testament à la clôture ecclésiastique du canon,” in Le Canon du Nouveau Testament (ed. Aragione) 169–95, at 189–90. 35 Brakke, “Canon Formation and Social ConÁict,” 408–10.

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continued discussion among Christian intellectuals and a lack of unanimity within the church. Athanasius replaced this category with books that are not canonical, but are “to be read”; Junod plausibly suggests that Athanasius derived this list from the curriculum of the Alexandrian Catechetical School. Unlike Eusebius’s “disputed” books, Athanasius could present this new intermediate category (between “canonical” and rejected) as traditional and “integral to the life and teaching of the Church.”36 In other words, Athanasius marks a transition from one kind of canon, suited to a Christian intellectual culture of study and debate, to another, suited to a Christian episcopal culture of worship and orthodoxy. This last point restates part of my earlier argument about the signiÀcance of the thirty-ninth Festal Letter: Although most scholars remain focused on the lists of books, the greater importance of the letter is that it reveals the role of canon formation in supporting one form of Christian piety and authority and undermining others. Different scriptural practices accompany different modes of authority and spirituality, and we should not take the bounded canon of episcopal orthodoxy as either the inevitable telos of early Christian history or the only way that Christians construed and used sacred writings. The new fragment, however, makes clear that in establishing a deÀned canon Athanasius sought to undermine not only a general spirituality of free intellectual inquiry and its academic mode of authority, but also the speciÀc false doctrines to which he believed such a spirituality gave rise.

Q Translation (and Text of the New Fragment) Here follows a fresh translation of the entire letter.37 For the new fragment I include a revised version of Elanskaya’s text as well. The text and translation of the fragment presented here owe much to the deciphering and linguistic abilities of Stephen Emmel and Gregor Wurst, with whom I Àrst read it. The line numbers in the Coptic text have no relation to the lines in the manuscript, which arranges the text in two columns. The paragraph numbers are those that Camplani established in his translation.

36

Junod, “D’Eusèbe de Césarée,” 191–94. The Coptic text is attested as follows: White Monastery manuscript MONB.AS (Lefort’s Codex B) contains fragments of paragraphs 6–8 (Lefort, Lettres festales, 15–16), 11–23 (Lefort, Lettres festales, 16–21), and 32–34 (Lefort, Lettres festales, 21–22). MONB.AT (Lefort’s Codex C) contains fragments of paragraphs 6–8 (Lefort, Lettres festales, 58–60), 8–24 (Coquin, “Les lettres festales,” 138–44), 24–26 (Elanskaya, Literary Coptic Manuscripts, 379–80), and 26–29 (Lefort, Lettres festales, 60–62). In addition to adding the new fragment, I have revised slightly my translation of 1995 by correcting a few errors, adding some biblical references, using American spelling, and conforming the paragraphing to that which Camplani established. I have used the following editorial signs in the Coptic text: O indicates text restored in a lacuna; #KF)JUOOBJÎ indicates text deleted (e.g., to correct dittography); <S> indicates text added (e.g., to correct haplography); FCPM. dots under letters indicate an uncertain reading. 37

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6. [ . . . ] as Life, he came to those who are dead, and as God, he came to human beings. In this way those who did not seek him found him, and he was made manifest to those who did not ask him.38 So too he became a light for the blind when he opened their eyes,39 and he became a staff for the lame when he healed them and they walked.40 Once and for all he became a teacher for everyone in everything. 7. For the teaching of piety does not come from human beings; rather, it is the Lord who reveals his Father to those whom he wills because it is he who knows him.41 First he did this to the apostles; one of them, Paul, writes to the Galatians: “I am informing you, brothers and sisters, about the gospel that was proclaimed through me, that it is not of human origin, nor was I taught it; rather, it is according to a revelation of Jesus Christ.”42 Moreover, writing to those in Ephesus, he said: “If you have heard about the working of the grace of God that has been given to me for you, how in a revelation I was informed about the mystery, just as I wrote to you earlier in a little bit as you are able, you desire to understand my teaching in the mystery of Christ, which was not revealed to the generations of the children of humanity as it has now been revealed to his prophets and holy apostles.”43 8. Not they alone, brothers and sisters, are the ones to whom the Lord has become a teacher by revealing the mystery to them; rather, he is a teacher to us all. For Paul rejoices with his disciples that they have been taught about the gospel in this way: he prays in behalf of those in Ephesus that “the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, might give to you a spirit of wisdom and revelation in his knowledge.”44 The apostle knows that we all share in this prayer that he made for them (the Ephesians)—and not only at that former time when the Lord revealed the knowledge to human beings. No, it is he who “corrects until the end,” he who “teaches knowledge to humanity,” according to the word of the psalmist.45 It is he whom his disciples asked to teach them how to pray, and he who taught daily in the temple, as Luke said.46 It is he whom his disciples asked, “Teacher, when will these things happen, and what is the sign that all these things are going to be fulÀlled?”47 When his disciples asked him, “Where do you want us to prepare to eat the Passover?” he answered and said to them, “Behold, when you enter this city, a man will meet you carrying a jar. Follow him into the house that he enters

38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47

See Isa 65:1; Rom 10:20. See Isa 35:5; Matt 11:5; Luke 4:18. See Luke 7:22. See Matt 11:27; Luke 10:22; John 10:15; 17:25. Gal 1:11–12. Eph 3:2–5. Eph 1:17. Pss 17(18):35; 93(94):10. Luke 11:1; 19:47. Mark 13:4; Luke 21:7.

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and say to the master of the house, ‘It is the Teacher who says to you, “Where is my guest room where I will eat the Passover with my disciples?” ’48 9. Well indeed he spoke like this, for the name of Wisdom is Àtting for him because it is he alone who is the true Teacher. For who is to be trusted to teach human beings about the Father, except he who exists always in his bosom?49 Thus, who can convince those whom he teaches about “things that eye has not seen nor ear heard nor have arisen upon the human heart,”50 except he who alone knows the Father and has established for us the way to enter the kingdom of heaven? Therefore, he charged his disciples, just as Matthew said: “Let none of you be called ‘Rabbi,’ for your Teacher is one, and you are all brothers and sisters. And do not call for yourselves ‘Father’ on earth, for your Father in heaven is one. And do not be called ‘Teacher,’ for your Teacher, Christ, is one. And the great one among you will be your servant.”51 10. But it is not Àtting, brothers and sisters, that we should listen to the holy words carelessly. Therefore, why does the apostle in one place call himself “teacher of the Gentiles in faith and truth,”52 and in another place say about the Lord, “It is he who has made some apostles, and some preachers, and others pastors and teachers”?53 And James commands and says, “Let not many be teachers, my brothers and sisters: you know that we will receive a more severe judgment than you all.”54 He did not say this because there were no teachers, but because there were some, although it was not necessary that there be teachers. 11. And yet, although these people (Paul and James) speak in this way, it is written in the gospel that the Lord commanded that we not be called “Rabbi” and that no one be called “Teacher” except the Lord alone. While I was examining these (passages), a thought occurred to me that requires your scrutiny. What I thought is this: The task of the teacher is to teach, and that of the disciple is to learn. But even if these people teach, they are still called “disciples,” for it is not they who are the originators of what they proclaim; rather, they are at the service of the words of the true Teacher. For our Lord and our God Jesus Christ, because he wanted to inform us of this, said to his disciples, “What I say to you in the darkness, say in the light, and what you hear with your ears, proclaim upon the rooftops.”55 For the words that the disciples proclaim do not belong to them; rather, they are what they heard from the Savior. Therefore, even if it is Paul who teaches, it is nevertheless Christ who speaks in him.56 And even if he says that the Lord has 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56

Luke 22:9–11. See John 1:18. 1 Cor 2:9. Matt 23:8–11. 1 Tim 2:7. Eph 4:11. Jas 3:1. Matt 10:27; see also Luke 12:3. See Gal 2:20.

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appointed teachers in the churches,57 he (the Lord) nevertheless Àrst teaches them and then sends them out. 12. For the nature of everyone who is of the created order is to be taught, but our Lord and Demiurge is by nature a teacher. For he was not taught by someone else how to be a teacher; but all human beings, even if they are called “Teacher,” were disciples Àrst. For all people are instructed because the Savior supplies them with the knowledge of the Spirit, so that “they all might be taught by God.”58 13. But our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ—being the Word of the Father and having not been instructed by anyone—rightly he alone is the Teacher, so that the Jews were astonished when they heard him and said, “How does he know the Scriptures without having been taught?”59 Therefore, when he was teaching in the synagogue and healing the sick, the Jews persecuted him, and so “from their feet to their head they do not lack wounds or bruises”;60 rather, such punishment came upon them as a great madness. For “they have not understood,” as it is written, “nor have they learned wisdom; rather, they walk in darkness.”61 14. And, following them, those from the heresies who have caught up to them, namely the wretched Melitians, by denying him, have walked in waterless places and have abandoned the spring of life.62 Therefore, even if they talk about the Passover hypocritically for the sake of the glory of human beings, their gathering is a bread of mourning, for they take counsel evilly against the truth, so that whoever sees such a gathering speaks the word that is written as suited to them: “Why have the nations become arrogant, and why have the peoples worried about vain things?”63 For the Jews gather together like Pontius Pilate, and the Arians and the Melitians like Herod, not to celebrate the feast, but to blaspheme the Lord, saying, “What is truth?”64 and “Take him away! Crucify him! Release to us Barabbas!”65 For it is just like the request for Barrabas to say that the Son of God is a creature and that there was a time when he was not. As for them, it is no surprise that they have remained dead in their unbelief by being bound by their evil thoughts, just as the Egyptians were bound by their own axles.66 15. But for our part, let us now keep the feast according to the tradition of our ancestors, because we have the Holy Scriptures, which are sufÀcient to instruct us perfectly. When we read them carefully with a good conscience, we will be “like the tree that grows upon places of Áowing water, which brings forth its fruit in its 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66

See 1 Cor 12:28; Eph 4:11. John 6:45; Isa 54:13. John 7:15. Isa 1:6. Ps 81(82):5. See Matt 12:43; Luke 11:24; Jer 2:13; 7:13. Ps 2:1. John 18:38. Luke 23:18, 21. See Exod 14:25 in the LXX.

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season and whose leaves do not wither.”67 But inasmuch as we have mentioned that the heretics are dead but we have the divine Scriptures for salvation, and we are afraid that, as Paul wrote to the Corinthians,68 a few of the simple folk might be led astray from sincerity and purity through human deceit and might then begin to read other books, the so-called apocrypha, deceived by their having the same names as the genuine books, I exhort you to bear with me if, to remind you, I write about things that you already know, on account of the church’s need and advantage. 16. As I begin to mention these things, in order to commend my audacity, I will employ the example of Luke the evangelist and say myself: Inasmuch as certain people have attempted to set in order for themselves the so-called apocryphal books and to mix these with the divinely inspired Scripture, about which we are convinced it is just as those who were eyewitnesses from the beginning and assistants of the Word handed down to our ancestors, it seemed good to me, because I have been urged by genuine brothers and sisters and instructed from the beginning, to set forth in order the books that are canonized, transmitted, and believed to be divine, so that those who have been deceived might condemn the persons who led them astray, and those who have remained pure might rejoice to be reminded (of these things).69 17. There are, then, belonging to the Old Testament in number a total of twenty-two, for, as I have heard, it has been handed down that this is the number of the letters in the Hebrew alphabet. In order and by name they are as follows: Àrst, Genesis; then Exodus; then Leviticus; and after this, Numbers; and Ànally Deuteronomy. After these is Joshua, the son of Nun; and Judges; and after this, Ruth; and again, next four books of Kings, the Àrst and second of these being reckoned as one book, and the third and fourth likewise being one. After these are First and Second Chronicles, likewise reckoned as one book; then First and Second Esdras, likewise as one. After these is the book of Psalms; and then Proverbs; then Ecclesiastes and the Song of Songs. After these is Job; and Ànally the Prophets, the twelve being reckoned as one book; then Isaiah; Jeremiah and with it, Baruch; Lamentations and the Letter; and after it, Ezekiel and Daniel. To this point are the books of the Old Testament. 18. Again, one should not hesitate to name the books of the New Testament. For these are the four Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John; than after these, Acts of the Apostles and seven letters, called catholic, by the apostles, namely: one by James; two by Peter; then three by John; and after these, one by Jude. After these there are fourteen letters by Paul, written in this order: Àrst to the Romans; then two to the Corinthians; and after these, to the Galatians; and next to the Ephesians; then to the Philippians and to the Colossians; and after these, two to the Thessalonians;

67 68 69

Ps 1:3. See 2 Cor 11:3. See Luke 1:1–4.

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and that to the Hebrews; and additionally, two to Timothy, one to Titus, and Ànally that to Philemon. And besides, the Revelation of John. 19. These are the springs of salvation, so that someone who thirsts may be satisÀed by the words they contain. In these books alone the teaching of piety is proclaimed. Let no one add to or subtract from them.70 Concerning them the Lord put the Sadducees to shame when he said, “You err because you do not know the Scriptures or their meaning,”71 and he reproved the Jews, “Search the Scriptures, for it is they that testify to me.”72 20. But for the sake of greater accuracy, I add this, writing from necessity. There are other books, in addition to the preceding, which have not been canonized, but have been appointed by the ancestors to be read to those who newly join us and want to be instructed in the word of piety: the Wisdom of Solomon, the Wisdom of Sirach, Esther, Judith, Tobit, the book called Teaching of the Apostles, and the Shepherd. 21. Nevertheless, beloved, the former books are canonized; the latter are (only) read; and there is no mention of the apocryphal books. Rather, (the category of apocrypha) is an invention of heretics, who write these books whenever they want and then generously add time to them, so that, by publishing them as if they were ancient, they might have a pretext for deceiving the simple folk. Great is the hardheartedness of those who do this and who do not fear the word that is written: “You shall not add to the word that I commanded you, nor shall you subtract from it.”73 Who has made the simple folk believe that those books belong to Enoch even though no Scripture existed before Moses? On what basis will they say that there is an apocryphal book of Isaiah? He preaches openly on the high mountain and says, “I did not speak in secret or in a dark land.”74 How could Moses have an apocryphal book? He is the one who published Deuteronomy with heaven and earth as witnesses.75 22. No, this can be nothing except itchy ears, trading in piety, and the pleasing of women.76 Paul spoke about such people beforehand when he wrote to his disciple: “A time will come when they will not keep to the salviÀc teaching, but according to their own desire they will produce teachers for themselves, when their ear will itch, and they will turn their ears away from the truth and go after myths.”77 For truly the apocryphal books are Àlled with myths, and it is a vain thing to pay attention to them, because they are empty and polluted voices. For they are the beginning of discord, and strife is the goal of people who do not see what is beneÀcial for the 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77

See Deut 13:1; 4:2; Rev 22:18–19. Matt 22:29; Mark 12:24. John 5:39. Deut 4:2. See Isa 40:9; 45:19. See Deut 4:26; 30:19; 31:28. See 2 Tim 4:3; 1 Tim 6:5; 2 Tim 3:6. 2 Tim 4:3–4.

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church, but who desire to receive compliments from those whom they lead astray, so that, by publishing new discourses, they will be considered great people. 23. Therefore, it is Àtting for us to decline such books. For even if a useful word is found in them, it is still not good to trust them. For this is work of the wickedness of those who have conceived of mixing one or two inspired texts, so that, through such deception, they might somehow cover up the evil teachings that they have clearly created. Therefore, it is even more Àtting for us to reject such books, and let us command ourselves not to proclaim anything in them nor to speak anything in them with those who want to be instructed, even if there is a good word in them, as I have said. For what do the spiritual Scriptures lack that we should seek after these empty voices of unknown people? It is appropriate for us to cite the text that is written about them: “Is there no balm in Gilead nor physician there?”78 and again, “Of what proÀt to you is the road to Egypt so that you drink the troubled water from Gehon?”79 and again, “Of what proÀt to you is the way to Assyria that you drink the water from their rivers?”80 24. Therefore, if we seek the faith, it is possible for us to discover it through (the Scriptures), so that we might believe in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. If (we seek after) the subject of his humanity, John cries out, “The Word became Áesh and lived among us.”81 And on the subject of the resurrection, the Lord put the Sadducees to shame, saying, “Have you not read what is said to you by God, who says, ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob’? He is not the God of the dead, but of the living.”82 On the subject of the coming judgment, it is written, “We shall all stand OOB)SNQCINBNQFDTKFLBT before the judgment seat of Christ, FSFQPVBQPVBKJOOFCPM so that each may receive in his body )JUNQF'TXNBQSPTOFOUB'BBV recompense for what he has done, FJUFBHBRPOFJUFQFRPOi whether good or evil.”ii FSFNNBOJDBJPTPVPO)FCPM)JUOOBJ 25. It is through these #KF)JUOOBJÎKF)FOBTFCITO (passages) that the Manichaeans are FVTXUNFSPPVFVXWFCPMiii exposed as impious when they hear FUCFQOPVUFKFUBNJPNQLB) them proclaim about Godiv: “He

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

78 79 80 81 82

Jer 8:22. Jer 2:18 Ibid. John 1:14. Matt 22:31–32

i

That is, QFRPPV. Elanskaya suggests the inÁuence of BHBRPO. 2 Cor 5:10; see also Rom 14:10. iii The photographed text is mostly illegible here. Elanskaya reads FSPO . Camplani suggests FCPM (Atanasio di Alessandria, 514), which makes more sense. iv Alternatively, “when they (the passages) are heard proclaiming about God.” ii

DAVID BRAKKE

9 10 11 12 13 14

ORFOPVMBBVBVXPOKFOJN QFOUB'UBNJFOBJUISPVBVXPO FOOPFJKFOUBVTCUFOBJXO )NQWBKFNQOPVUFKFQFUOOBV FSP'OUB'WXQFFCPM )NQFUFO'WPPQBO

15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40

UBJPORFO# XÎ\O^UB'PVXO)FCPMO<$J>NBSLJPO KFO'OPFJBOKFQOPNPTPVBBC BVXUFOUPMIPVBBCBVX PVEJLBJPOUFBVXPVBHBRPOUF NBMJTUBFSFQTXUISKXNNPT KFFOFUFUOQJTUFVFFNXVTIT OFUFUOBQJTUFVFFSPJQF BQFUNNBVHBST)BJFUCIIUBVXPO KF)PU)UOOFHSBGIKFOBJ OFUSNOUSFFUCIIU PPVEFPOOFHSBGIFUPVBBC OFOUBVPVFOFU)OUFG<S>VBxi FCPMKF)FO<)BJ>SFUJLPTOF )NQUSFQFQOBFUPVBBCFJFQFTIU FKONNBRIUITBVXTFUBB' JTUT. OBSJEFPO NOOFVBSBTJUPTNNF<MJ>UJBOPT BVWJQFFSFJX)BOOITFQJOPFJ OUFVNOUBTFCITKFPVOPVPFJW WPPQFO'WPPQBOO$JQWISF F'BRFUFJEFNNPT)JUOUFJTNI KF)OUF)PVFJUFOF'WPPQ O$JQWBKFBVXQWBKFOF'WPPQ OOB)SNQOPVUFBVXOFPVOPVUFQF

v

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created the earth out of nothing”;v and also, “Who created all these things?”vi; and also, “We understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what we see was made from what does not exist.”vii In the same way Marcion was exposed as not understanding that “the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and just and good”viii especially when the Savior said, “If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote about me,”ix and also, “Search the Scriptures because it is they that testify on my behalf.”x In addition, it is the holy Scriptures that exposed the people in Phrygia as heretics when the Holy Spirit descended upon the disciples and they gave it to the Christians.xii Also, the Arians and their parasites, the Melitians, were put to shame when John considered their impiety, “There is a time when the Word was not,” and rejected it with this saying: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was

Isa 40:23. Isa 40:26. vii Heb 11:3. viii Rom 7:12. ix John 5:46. x See John 5:39. xi Elanskaya reads UFGVB. Lucchesi suggested the reading given here (“Un nouveau complément,” 258), which is certainly correct. xii See John 20:22–23; Acts 2:2–4; 8:17–18; etc. vi

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41 QWBKF 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52

BMMBQFKB'KFBQBVMPT KJPVNOUNOUSFFCPM)OOBQPLSVGPO F'KXNNPTKFOFUFNQFCBMOBV FSPPVNQFNBBKFTPUNPV OFUFNQPVBMFF)SBJFKNQ)IU OSXNF 5OBPVWCOB'KFQFJ)XC QB)FOSXNFQFOSF'5XO FSFQBVMPTTVO)JTUBBO OF'WBKF)JUO)FOWBKFBMMBxv OFUTI)OF#)OOFÎ)OOFHSBGI.

53 OBJOFOUBQBVMPTTFV)QFVOPVT 54 F)PVOB'T)BJTPV 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65

BVXPVOPVBOBWFJNFFQBJ )JUOOWBKFOOFQSGIUIT OFUTI)HBS)OITBJBTKFOBM OBTXUN)NQF)PPVFUNNBV FOWBKFNQKXXNFBVXOCBM OOCMMFFU)NQLBLFNOQF)MPTUO OBOBVFCPMBVXOFUFNOU

V )FMQJTNNBV)OOSXNFTFOBTFJ OPVOP'OBJOFUFNQFCBMOBV FSPPVOFUFNQFNBBKFTPUNPV NQPVBMFF)SBJFKNQ)IUOOSXNF

66 BWHBSOPVPFJWOUBPVCMMFIPVBM 67 )FMQJ[FFTXUNIFOBQOPVUF 68 F'

with God, and the Word was God.”xiii 26. But he has said that Paul took a testimony from the apocryphal books when he says, “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, things that have not arisen upon the human heart.”xiv I will answer him that this stuff is typical of contentious persons. Paul does not support his words through (merely other) words; rather, they are things written in the Scriptures. It is these (words in the Scriptures) whose meaning Paul gathered and wrote. And someone can understand this through the words of the prophets. For the things that are written in Isaiah—“The deaf will hear on that day the words of the book, and the eyes of the blind that are in darkness and fog will see, and those who have no hope among people will be Àlled with joy”xvi—these are “the things that no eye has seen, the things that no ear has heard nor have arisen upon the heart of human beings.”xvii For when did a blind person or a deaf person hope to hear or to see God [living]

among human beings? Who among those who have no hope could at all think that the Word would become Áesh?83 Have the things in God’s heart arisen upon the heart of human beings? When has anyone known his heart?84 [ . . . ] 83 84 xiii

See John 1:14. See Rom 11:34.

John 1:1. 1 Cor 2:9. xv Elanskaya mistakenly omits a line of text here, reading instead BOOF'WBKFBMMB. xvi Isa 29:18–19. xvii 1 Cor 2:9. xiv

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27. [ . . . ] Paul [ . . . ] and “these are the things that he proclaimed” [or “as] he said” [or] “Isaiah charges and says”85 and “as David says”86 and also “Moses says beforehand”87 and again “the Scripture says that Elijah.”88 Even when he says, “as it is written,”89 and does not make clear where the text is written or who proclaimed it, nevertheless we the readers know where it is written in the Scriptures. This text—“the things that no eye has seen . . .”—we do not Ànd written in the Scripture just as it is. But if it is written90 in the apocryphal books, as the heretics say, then those who invented these books stole Paul’s words and wrote it at a later time. 28. Therefore, inasmuch as it is clear that the testimony from the apocryphal books is superÁuous because it is unfounded—for the Scripture is perfect in every way—let the teacher teach from the words of Scripture, and let him place before those who desire to learn those things that are appropriate to their age. In the case of those who begin to study as catechumens, it is not right to proclaim the obscure texts of Scripture, because they are mysteries, but instead to place before them the teaching that they need: what will teach them how to hate sin and to abandon idolatry as an abomination, the teaching [ . . . ] 29. [ . . . ] is written: [ . . . ] his neighbor [ . . . ] in the one whose thought [...] 32. [ . . . ] in the Scriptures. I am satisÀed that this will remind you, so that, when you take for yourselves the saints as examples and administer well the words of the holy Scriptures, you will hear sometime, “Well done, good and faithful servant! Because you are trustworthy in small things, I will place you over great things.”91 I have not written these things as if I were teaching, for I have not attained such a rank. Rather, because I heard that the heretics, especially the wretched Melitians, were boasting about the books that they call “apocryphal,” I thus have informed you of everything that I heard from my father,92 as if I were with you and you with me in a single house, that is, “the church of God, the pillar and strength of truth.”93 When we gather in a single place, let us purify it (the church) of every deÀlement, of double-heartedness, of Àghting and childish arrogance. Let us be satisÀed with only the Scripture inspired by God to instruct us. Its books we have set forth in the words above: which they are and how many their number. For in this way we

85

See Rom 10:20. See Rom 4:6; 11:9. 87 See Rom 10:19. 88 See Rom 11:2. 89 Rom 1:17; 2:24; etc. 90 Leforts’s text reads FWKF'PO) (literally, “if it is alive”). Camplani translates “se poi si trova chiaramente.” My translation suggests that we should read FWKF'TI). In any event, the meaning is clear. 91 Matt 25:21, 23. 92 Bishop Alexander of Alexandria. 93 1 Tim 3:15. 86

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now celebrate the feast as is Àtting, “not with old leaven nor with evil or wicked leaven, but with pure and true leaven.”94 33. We will begin the holy Lent on the twenty-Àfth of the month of Mechir (19 February), and the great week of the saving Passover on the last of the month of Phamenouth (26 March). And we will Ànish the holy fast on the Àfth of the month of Pharmuthi (31 March). And next we will celebrate the seven weeks of the holy Pentecost, remembering the poor and sharing with one another and with the needy, in accordance with the word of Esdra.95 Once and for all we do everything, glorifying God, in accordance with the command of Paul in Christ Jesus our Lord, through whom be glory and power with the Holy Spirit for ever and ever. Amen. “Greet one another with a holy kiss. All the brothers and sisters with me greet you.”96 I inform you of this as well: that when the blessed Lampon, bishop of Darnei, died, [ . . . ] was appointed [ . . . ].

94 95 96

1 Cor 5:8. 2 Esd (Neh) 8:10. Rom 16:16 etc.; Phil 4:21.

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