Heresy and Identity in Late Antiquity Edited by
Eduard Iricinschi. and Holger M. Zellentin
Mohr Siebeck
EDUARD IRICINSCHI, born 1968; MA in Philosophy from Bucharest University, and MA in Religious Studies from New York University; is finishing a doctorate in the Department of Religion at Princeton University. HOLGER M. ZELLENTIN, born 1976, is an Assistant Professor of Rabbinics at the Richard S. Dinner Center for Jewish Studies at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California.
ISBN 978-3-16-149122-1 ISSN 0721-8753 (Texts and Studies in Ancient Judaism) Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliographie; detailed bibliographic data is available in the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de. © 2008 Mohr Siebeck, Tiibingen, Germany. This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, in any form (beyond that permitted by copyright law) without the publisher's written permission. This applies particularly to reproductions, translations, microfilms and storage and processing in electronic systems. The book was printed by Guide-Druck in Tiibingen on non-aging paper and bound by Buchbinderei Spinner in Ottersweier. Printed in Germany.
Preface The colloquium held on January 16-18 2005, "Making Selves and Marking Others: Heresy and Self-Definition in Late Antiquity," follows in the steps of two earlier Princeton colloquia and volumes, which have gained wide academic attention. The series of colloquia was initiated by Peter Schafer in 2000, with generous funding from the Princeton University Graduate School, and continued in the following years under his tutelage.* Each year, two graduate students in the Department of Religion at Princeton University choose a topic of interdisciplinary interest and organize a semester-long workshop on the selected theme, followed by a colloquium. During the workshop, graduate students present their papers to colleagues and faculty from a variety of fields, and rework them into a formal presentation. At the concluding colloquium, the participants discuss their revised work with recognized scholars from Princeton University and other institutions, invited by the organizers to present their views on the same topic. We take this opportunity to express our sincere gratitude to our contributors, and to all who so generously supported the colloquium and this publication. As representative of all those who ensured our success, we have space to name only the most prominent ones. It is hardly possible to exaggerate Peter Schafer's initiative and support for this project. Annette Yoshiko Reed has considerably facilitated our task by providing us with invaluable academic and editorial advice. Bam Saul and Lorraine Fuhrmann have ensured a pleasant stay at Princeton for all participants of the colloquium. At Princeton University, the Center for the Study of Religion, the Department of Religion, and the Program in Judaic Studies generously provided office space and funding for the colloquium and the publication. Finally, Henning Ziebritzki and Tanja Mix from Mohr Siebeck guided the project to its present form. Holger Zellentin and Eduard Iricinschi * Adam H. Becker and Annette Y. Reed, eds. The Ways that Never Parted: Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, TSAJ 95 (Tiibingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003); and Ra'anan Boustan and Annette Y. Reed, eds., Heavenly Realms and Earthly Realities in Late Antique Religions (Cambridge, UK; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004). See now also Gregg Gardner and Kevin L. Osterloh, eds., Antiquity in Antiquity: Jewish and Christian Pasts in the Greco-Roman World (Tiibingen: Mohr Siebeck, forthcoming); and the colloquium organized in January 2007 by Philippa Townsend and Moulie Vidas, "Revelation, Literature, and Community in Antiquity."
Table of Contents Preface ...................................................................................................... V EDUARD IRICINSCHI & HOLGER M. ZELLENTIN
Making Selves and Marking Others: Identity and Late Antique Heresiologies .................................................................. 1 KAREN L. KING
Social and Theological Effects of Heresiological Discourse ..................... 28 WILLIAM E. ARNAL
Doxa, Heresy, and Self-Construction: The Pauline Ekklesiai and the Boundaries of Urban Identities ..................................................... 50 AVERIL CAMERON
The Violence of Orthodoxy .................................................................... 102 Y ANNIS P APADOYANNAKIS
Defining Orthodoxy in Pseudo-Justin's "Quaestiones et responsiones ad orthodoxos" ............................................................... 115 CAROLINE HUMFRESS
Citizens and Heretics: Late Roman Lawyers on Christian Heresy .......... 128 RICHARD LIM
The Nomen Manichaeorum and Its Uses in Late Antiquity ..................... 143 KEVIN LEE OSTERLOH
Judea, Rome and the Hellenistic Oikoumene: Emulation and the Reinvention of Communal Identity ............................................ 168 JOHNG. GAGER
Where Does Luke's Anti-Judaism Come from? ...................................... 207 PHILIPPA TOWNSEND
Who Were the First Christians? Jews, Gentiles and the Christianoi ...... 212
VIII
Table of Contents
ELAINE PAGELS
The Social History of Satan, Part III: John ofPatmos and Ignatius of Antioch - Contrasting Visions of "God's People" .................................. 231 EDUARD IRICINSCHI
If You Got It, Flaunt It: Religious Advertising in the Gospel of Philip ........................................................................... 253 ANNETTE YOSHIKO REED
Heresiology and the (Jewish-)Christian Novel: Narrativized Polemics in the Pseudo-Clementine Homilies .................... 273 BURTON L. VISOTZKY
Goys '5I'n't Us: Rabbinic Anti-Gentile Polemic in Yerushalmi Berachot 9: 1 .................................................................... 299 GREGG GARDNER
Astrology in the Talmud: An Analysis of Bavli Shabbat 156 ................. 314 HOLGER M. ZELLENTIN
Margin of Error: Women, Law, and Christianity in Bavli Shabbat 116a-b ............................................... 339 ISRAEL JACOB YUVAL
The Other in Us: Liturgica, Poetica, Polemica ........................................ 364
List of Contributors ................................................................................. 387 Modern Author Index ............................................................................. 389 Subject Index ..........,................................................................. :.............. 397
Making Selves and Marking Others: Identity and Late Antique Heresiologies EDUARD IRICINSCHI & HOLGER M. ZELLENTIN
"The Other may not be very other at all." Kwame Anthony Appiahl
As influential catchwords, "heresy" and "identity" have recently acquired the sense of entitlement and hazard that only a dominant academic paradigm would impart. In a famous manifesto of the 1970s, for instance, sociologist Peter Berger associates modernity with the "universalization of heresy." According to Berger, the freedom to choose among different versions of plausibility characterizes the post-Enlightenment person. Under these new .circumstances, heresy surrenders itself to the imperative of multiple worldviews and becomes the very label of modern religious life: "For premodern man, heresy is a possibility - usually a rather remote one; for modern man, heresy typically becomes a necessity."2 Academic success has not been easy on "identity" either. In the last three decades of shifting cultural geographies, identity has become an everpresent theoretical tool in the Humanities and Social Sciences to the point where Sinisa Malesevic has invoked the utopia of an identity-less world. 3 A number of social scientists and historians concur that the birth of
* We would like to thank Adam Becker, Ra'anan Boustan, Gregg Gardner, Martha Himmelfarb, Annette Yoshiko Reed, Jeffrey Stout, Philippa Townsend, and Moulie Vidas for their careful reading, insightful critiques, and helpful suggestions for improving this text. 1 Kwame Anthony Appiah, The Ethics of Identity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005). 2 Peter L. Berger, The Heretical Imperative: Contemporary Possibilities of Religious Affirmation (Garden City, NY: Anchor Press, 1979), 28. Closer to our disenchanted twenty-first century, Arthur Versluis identifies the origins of totalitarianism in "the emergence of historical Christianity," more precisely, in its incipient heresiology and the unabated history of witch-hunting in Christianity; The New Inquisitions: Heretic-Hunting and the Intellectual Origins of Modern Totalitarianism (Oxford: OUP, 2006), ix. 3 Sinisa Malesevic, Identity as Ideology: Understanding Ethnicity and Nationalism (Basingstoke U.K.; New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 13-14.
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"identity" must be located at the advent of modernity.4 Anthony Giddens, for instance, argues that it was only "late" or "high modernity" that brought with it "transformations in self-identity."5 This raises the question: How legitimate is the search for identity formations in pre-modern texts?6 What are the benefits of projecting modern theoretical concepts of "identity" back into the Mediterranean and Near Eastern worlds of Late Antiquity? And, if modernity is indeed an age of heresy, then how might this skew our images of those deemed "heretics" in our pre-modern sources? What is the work that the categories of "heresy" and "identity" do, when applied to times so distant from our own? To these questions, the essays in the present volume offer a broad array of answers, drawing on sources ranging from Second-Temple Jewish and New Testament literature to late antique Christian and Rabbinic writings. They explore, in particular, how discourses of "heresy" relate to the formation of religious identities by Jews, Christians, and others. Taken together, they map the multiple functions of the discourse of "heresy" in late antique religions and their shifting relationships to "identity." Some essays focus on the ways in which (re)imagined dissenters are perceived, described, grouped, categorized, and/or disqualified in our late antique sources. Others consider the power of labels such as "heretic," "min," "Jew," "Christian," "gnostic," and "Manichean." The volume thus seeks to open a vista onto the varied ways in which late antique groups and communities defined their own socio-political borders and secured in-group identities by means of discourses about "heresy" and "heretics." The papers collected here put to work the methodological tools provided both by the recent scholarly emphases on textuality and by the social study of heresiology in order to reach a more 4 Roy F. Baumeister begins his research on basic conceptual issues with Descartes' dubitative formula and expands it to the development of the "hidden self' in the sixteenth century; see his Identity: Cultural Change and the Struggle for Self (Oxford: OUP, 1986), 11-50. 5 Anthony Giddens, Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991), 33. Critics of the now-popular notion of "identity" have drawn attention to its lack of analytical value. Malesevi6 holds that the malleability and vagueness of this "conceptually, operationally and politically seriously troubled idiom" causes identity to be just an "operational phantom" (Identity as Ideology, 56). In the most thorough critique to date, Rogers Brubaker and Frederick Cooper advocate a complete dismissal of the project that attempts to strike the right chord between a "hard," essentialist conception of identity and a "soft," constructivist version of it ("Beyond 'Identity'," TS 29.1 [2000]: 1-47). See also Mervyn F. Bendle, "The Crisis of 'Identity' in High Modernity," BJS 53.1 (2002): 1-18; and Richard Jenkins, Social Identity (2d ed. London: Routledge, 2004). 6 On pre-modern attempts at self-understanding and identification, see e.g. Judith M. Lieu, Christian Identity in the Jewish and Graeco-Roman World (Oxford: OUP, 2004); and discussion below.
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integrative understanding of late antique religious movements. They shift the focus away from "heretics" and "heresy" to heresiological discourse, by adopting literary approaches and by contextualizing the late antique Jewish and Christian groups that produced our extant literature. In the following section, we review recent developments on ancient heresiology and orthodoxy, connecting them to current discussions on the concept of "identity" in the study of religion. Finally, we introduce the papers in this volume with a focus on their novel approaches.
Hairesis in Modern Scholarship Early Christian hairesis emerged in part from the broader context of Greek Hellenistic culture. John Glucker describes the word's development, beginning with the classical Greek verb haireomai, "to choose." Its root underwent a series of different modifications. For instance, in the third century BCE, hairesis could mean a person's "attitude" or "disposition," and often had political connotations, while later Polybius applied the term to individuals as well as groups. 7 Heinrich von Staden traces the transition from individual to group applications first in the medical schools, then in philosophical schools of Hellenistic Alexandria. According to von Staden, in the Ptolemaic Alexandrian medical hairesis literature: [A] group with a fairly coherent and distinctive theories, with an acknowledged founder [ ... ], and with publicly identifiable leaders who articulate (a) their rejection of rival theories through theoretically founded polemics, as well as (b) their own systematic alternatives, would qualify as a hairesis. [ ... ] It is worth noting that, no later than the second century BCE, hairesis begins to occur in non-medical literature, too, as a designation for a group that is thought to be doctrinally distinctive, especially for a philosophical schooL ... In some of these non-medical texts "doctrine," "school," and "sect" all might be defensible translations of hairesis, but in each case it refers to a group phenomenon, not to individual choice. 8
The Alexandrian classification left a lingering imprint on the term hairesis. From the second century BCE onwards, hairesis had mostly referred in Greek literature to a group, usually associated with its founder. The term hairesis appeared in the titles of books concerning the opinions of philosophers or their respective doctrines, yet it did not initially signify the institutionalized schools. 9 The meaning of the term "heresy" as 7 John Glucker, Antiochus and the Late Academy (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1978), 168, 172-3. 8 Heinrich von Staden, "Hairesis and Heresy: The Case of the haireseis iatrikai, " in Jewish and Christian Self-definition, v. 3, Self-definition in the Greco-Roman World (ed. Ben F. Meyer and E.P. Sanders; Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1982),76-100, esp. 80. 9 Glucker, Antiochus and the Late Academy, 174-5.
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"philosophical school" became more common in the subsequent decades, and by the first century BCE it came to characterize precisely these philosophical institutions. 10 As early as 1979, Marcel Simon registered the similar use of orthodoxy and hairesis in Judaism and incipient Christianity. He pointed to the trajectory between the New Testament book of Acts (24: 14 and 26:5) and Justin Martyr's Dialogue with Trypho, and most notably to a passage in the latter that describes Justin's branch of Christianity as a Jewish hairesis (Dial. 62.3; ca. 140-150 CE).l1 Semantically, hairesis remained an open term all through third century CE, according to Simon. Yet the consequences of such "choice" varied from case to case. For Origen, hairesis designated the necessary tools of paideia in the most relevant areas of human life, such as medicine, philosophy and Judaism; in the writings of Clement and Hippolytus, pagan philosophical schools receive a clearly better assessment than Christian heresies; finally, in Hellenistic philosophical writings, hairesis designates a highly qualitative choice. 12 Von Staden suggests that the relational character of haireseis in early Christian contexts divorced it from its more independent uses in Alexandrian medicine or in philosophical schools, such as "doctrine," "school," or "sect." Whereas these neutral descriptions underlined the discrete character of each philosophical or medical group and its leader, hairesis received new meanings in Patristic writings that described degrees of separation from the true church, such as "falling away," "breaking away," "separation," "estrangement," "alienation. "13 Even after hairesis developed into "heresy" in early Christianity, one of the term's most important denotations remained Hellenistic philosophy and its numerous schools. Consequently, ancient Greek thought provides modem scholars with one of the main contexts for most of the research on heresy. Understanding "heresies," however, in connection to philosophical schools has led scholars to describe them as real and concrete social movements, rather than as perceptions of a specific religious group or individual. In this sense, the history of the term "heresy" has long directed most scholars' analysis towards the study of genuine, discrete groups. 10 Glucker, Antiochus and the Late Academy, 182-184, cf. Alain Le Boulluec, La notion d 'heresie dans la litterature grecque, IT -IIT sieeles (Paris: Etudes Augustiniennes, 1985),47. 11 Marcel Simon, "From Greek Hairesis to Christian Heresy," in Early Christian Literature and the Classical Intellectual Tradition: In Honorem Robert M Grant, TMologie historique 54 (ed. William R. Schoedel and Robert L. Wilken; Paris: Editions Beauchesne, 1979), 101-116, esp. 105-6. 12 Origen Contra Celsum 3.12-3; cf. 2.27; 5.61, Diogenes Laertius used it as a praise in Vito Phi/os. Introd; see Simon, "From Greek Hairesis to Christian Heresy," 108-111. 13 Von Staden, "Hairesis and Heresy," esp. 81,97-98.
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This approach to heresy changed a few decades ago, as Averil Cameron notes in the present volume. Currently, students of late antique MeditelTanean religions question the existence of heresies as deviant from orthodoxy .. The category of heresy, however, continues to fascinate scholars.
Heresiology and Difference Two works stand as milestones of scholarship on heresiology in the last century: Walter Bauer's Rechtgliiubigkeit und Ketzerei im iiltesten Christentum I4 and Alain Le Boulluec's La notion d'heresie dans la litterature grecque. I5 Bauer's book challenged the ecclesiastical understanding of heresy as a late offshoot of orthodoxy, and made room for reevaluating chronological priority in the study of local churches. Bauer's major thesis was that heresy mainly characterized Christian communities in the Roman provincial peripheries - that is Syria, Egypt, and Asia Minor, while orthodoxy grew out of a particular form of the Church of Rome. I6 Contesting early heresiological truth-claims put forward by ecclesiastical writers as well as later theological approaches to the study of ancient religions, Walter Bauer made the "contingent character of heresy" the cornerstone of historical reconstructions of Christian origins. 17 Bauer's Rechtgliiubigkeit und Ketzerei broadened the spectrum of possibilities for re-imagining early Christian groups, allowing later scholars to deemphasize the "history-of-ideas" mode of historical reconstruction and focus instead on social history. Positive German reviews of the first edition (1934) commended the ingenious approach and boldness of Bauer' vision; they joined, however, the more critical ones in underlining Bauer's use of the "argument from silence" and excesses of interpretation. 18 14 Walter Bauer, Rechtglaubigkeit und Ketzerei im altesten Christen tum (Tiibingen, Mohr Siebeck, 1934 [1964]); Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity (trans. by a team from the Philadelphia Seminar on Christian Origins, ed. by Robert A. Kraft and Gerhard Krodel; Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1971). 15 Le Boulluec, La notion d'heresie. 16 Bauer, Orthodoxy and Heresy, "Introduction" and ch. 5. 17 See Alain Le Boulluec, "Orthodoxie et heresie aux premiers siecles dans l'historiographie recente," in Orthodox ie, Christianisme, histoire (ed. Susanna Elm, Eric Rebillard, and Antonella Romano; Rome: Ecole Fran<;aise de Rome, 2000), 303-319, esp. 307-8. 18 See Georg Strecker, "The Reception of the Book" (rev. and augmented by Robert A. Kraft), in Bauer, Orthodoxy and Heresy, 286-316, esp. 290-295. Frederick W. Norris contests-the validity of Bauer's historical reconstruction, yet concedes to his critique of former theories of heresy ("Ignatius, Polycarp, and I Clement: Walter Bauer Reconsidered," VC 30.1 (1976): 23-44, esp. 41-44). See also D. J. Harrington, "The
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The discovery in 1945 of the Coptic documents at Nag Hammadi and their subsequent publication provided support for Bauer's earlier views, and did away with some of the accusations leveled against his use of the argument from silence. Scholars applied the methods of form and redaction criticism to some of the Coptic texts,19 looked carefully for their "social and political implications" by reading them together with the heresiological writings,20 and stressed new and innovative use of gender images in these ancient Christian texts. 21 Bauer's book and the discovery of the Nag Hammadi texts provided the major principles for a reevaluation of early Christian heresiologies. 22 The translation of the Nag Hammadi texts into modern languages, mostly during the 1970s, prompted scholars to inquire about ways to understand their mythological content and theological debates, and, in a parallel move, to reconstruct their social and political contexts. Attempts at locating more than theological dogmas and philosophical ideas in the heresiological treatises and the Nag Hammadi texts allowed Elaine Pagels, for instance, to describe heresiological writings and Valentini an mythological texts as performing different argumentative tasks in strengthening
Reception of Walter Bauer's Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity during the Last Decade," HTR 70 (1980): 289-298. More recently, see Lewis Ayres, "The Question of Orthodoxy," JECS 14.4 (2006): 395-398, as well as Walther Volker's 1935 review of Bauer's book in JECS 14.4 (2006): 399-405, trans. T. P. Scheck. 19 Helmut Koester, Ancient Christian Gospels: Their Hist01Y and Development (Philadelphia: Trinity Press International, 1990). 20 Elaine Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels (New York: Vintage Books, 1979). 21 Karen King, ed., Images of the Feminine in Gnosticism (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1988), eadem, The Gospel of Mary of Magdala: Jesus and the First Woman Apostle (Santa Ro~a, Calif.: Polebridge Press, 2003). 22 The publication of the texts discovered at Nag Hammadi led gradually to the consolidation of "Gnosticism" as an established academic category, a trend that described it as a religion in its own right, with two branches, Valentinianism and Sethianism. For "gnosticism" as a historical category, see Ugo Bianchi, ed., Le origini dello gnosticismo: Colloquio di Messina 13-18 Aprile 1966 (Leiden: Brill, 1967); Proceedings of the International Colloquium on Gnosticism, Stockholm August 20-25 1973 (Stockholm, Leiden: Almquist & Wiksell, E.J. Brill, 1977); Bentley Layton, ed., The Rediscovery of Gnosticism; I: Valentinian Gnosticism; II: Sethian Gnosticism (Leiden: Brill, 1981); and Alan F. Segal, Two Powers in Heaven: Early Rabbinic Reports about Christianity and Gnosticism (Leiden: Brill, 1977). Recently, careful reconsiderations by Michael A. Williams, Karen King, and Elaine Pagels have led scholars to question the usefulness of such a category as "gnosticism." See Michael A. Williams, Rethinking "Gnosticism": An Argument for Dismantling a Dubious Category (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996); Karen L. King, What Is Gnosticism? (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2003); and Elaine Pagels, "Irenaeus, the 'Canon of Truth,' and the Gospel of John: 'Making a Difference' through Hermeneutics and Ritual," VC 56 (2002): 339-371.
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or contesting ecclesiastical and spiritual authority.23 Furthermore, Pagels stressed that theological and political issues were not only connected but had remarkable relevance in early Christian communities. 24 Much of the recent research in this area looks for inspiration outside of the field of Religious Studies and the literature of Late Antiquity. Pierre Bourdieu and Michel Foucault number among those theorists to whom scholars of late antique religions have turned for new perspectives on the historical categories of heresy and orthodoxy. As a result, the theological perspective on Christian Origins and the rise of orthodoxy, heavily influential until the 1970s, is being gradually displaced by sociological, textual, and historical approaches, marked by a strong emphasis on local diversity. If past studies typically assumed a clear-cut distinction between the winning orthodox party and losing heretical factions, more recent studies seem to signal a shift of interest from heresy toward heresiology. Moreover, they understand competition between diverse Christian groups as contentions between the competing orthodoxies and heresiologies within each of the respective groups. This shift is perhaps clear from the newlydeveloped vocabulary found in recent works, which includes terms such as "heresiological representations," "discourse," "insider/outsider," "identity formation," "ethnicity," "gender," "sexuality," "dissension," "exclusion," and "territoriality." The most prominent representative of this trend, Alain Le Boulluec, took into account some of the critiques aimed at Bauer and shifted the focus toward "the presuppositions of the heresiological discourses."25 Le Boulluec also took Bauer's efforts to de-legitimize the ecclesiastical position on the origins of heresy one step further and confined his analysis to the sole study of "heresiological representations." This approach reduces the risks of value judgments and, at the same time, makes clear the constructed character of "heresy." When seen from this new perspective, "heresy" becomes a discursive structure rather than an historical object. 26 23 Elaine Pagels, "The Valentini an Claim to Esoteric Exegesis of Romans as Basis for Anthropological Theory," VC 26 (1972): 241-258, eadem, '''The Demiurge and His Archons': A Gnostic View of the Bishop and Presbyters?" HTR 69.3/4 (1976): 301-324; eadem, The Johannine Gospel in Gnostic Exegesis: Heracleon's Commentary on John (Nashville & New York: Abingdon Press, 1973), esp. 56-7. 24 Pagels, "Demiurge and His Archons," 301-324; eadem, "Visions, Appearances, and Apostolic Authority: Gnostic and Orthodox Traditions" in Gnosis: Festschrift fur Hans Jonas (ed. B. Aland; Gottingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1978), 415-430; eadem. "Gnostic and Orthodox Views of Christ's Passion: Paradigms for the Christian's Response to Persecution?" in The Rediscovery of Gnosticism (ed. Bentley Layton; Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1980), vol. 1,262-283, and conference discussions at 283-288. 25 Le Boulluec, La notion d'heresie, vol. l. 26 Ibid., 1.19.
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The influence of Foucault, in particular, becomes clear in LeBoulluec' s examination of early Christian "institutional structures," "norms of belonging," and "sacramental disciplines" as well as in his purpose of detecting the reasons behind the "invention of a regulative and reductive scheme to master dissensions. "27 Le Boulluec proposes that Justin Martyr "invented" heresy around the mid-second century, by positing common traits between Christian "heresies" and "philosophical schools." This innovation was based in two models: the depiction of "schools of thought" in Greek historiography and the identification of the demonic origins of dissensions, the latter of which was applied to the biblical trope of the "false prophet." In addition, Le Boulluec presented Justin as the inventor of a new literary genre: his Against Heresies was the first example of what would become the Christian genre ofheresiology.28 Critics of Le Boulluec' s work have noted that he focuses on the "idea of heresy," leaving aside the question of ritual practice. 29 They have also objected to Le Boulluec' s identification of the beginnings of heresiology in Justin's writings. Rebecca Lyman, for instance, has placed Justin's heresiology in the context of middle-Platonic universalism. She points out that the claim to a single true hairesis might not be original to Christian heresiology; rather, it may have flowed out of Greek philosophical and Roman political constraints on religious debate. 3D To this, we might add that Le Boulluec mentions "Jewish precedents" to Justin's literary use of hairesis only in passing. 31 Since Justin explicitly describes Christianity as heresy from a Jewish point of view and compares Christian heresies to the Jewish ones that he claims to know, one might argue that Justin's budding 27 Ibid., 1.11-15, translated by the authors. 28 Ibid., 1.11 0-112, see also 42. 29 For instance, Elaine Pagels remarks that, despite the utter absence of the word "gnostic" in Justin's writings, Le Boulluec portrays Justin's heretics as "gnostics," thus importing the problematic tacit assumptions of this notion; see Elaine Pagels, "Irenaeus, the 'Canon of Truth,' and the Gospel of John," esp. 340-3. Extending Pagels' objection, one could question Le Boulluec's detection of ancient origins of heresy in Justin's work based solely on the occurrence of new meanings for hairesis. Le Boulluec identified nascent aspects of ancient Christian "heresy" in Justin Martyr's use of haireseis for false Christians as comparable to Greek philosophical schools. Yet, based on the' single reference and the ambiguous context, one could hardly be sure that Justin's lost treatise against haireseis made reference to Christian heresies rather than simply to contemporary philosophical schools, to which Justin devoted a considerable amount of his educational efforts; cf. Le Boulluec, La notion d'heresie, 1.37; see Justin, 1 Apol. 26, where Justin speaks about "Christian" heretics and explicitly draws the comparison to philosophical haireseis. See also Eusebius' discussion of Justin's treatise against all heresies (Hist. eccl. 4.11.10). 3D Rebecca Lyman, "2002 NAPS Presidential Address: Hellenism and Heresy," JECS 11.2 (2003): 209-222. 31 Le Boulluec, La notion d'heresie, 1.37.
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heresiology may have been formed in interaction with Jewish models, as Daniel Boyarin has recently emphasized. 32 Acknowledging the culturally-constructed character of heresy and orthodoxy, scholars of late antique religions have now applied Le Boulluec's insights to later periods and extended his approach to such categories as rhetoric, body, and gender. In Christianity and the Rhetoric of Empire, for instance, Averil Cameron examines the making of Christian totalizing discourse through her analysis of ancient rhetoric, a focus on symbols of virginity, and on, ideas about representation. 33 Similarly, scholars such as Susanna Elm and Virgina Burrus have investigated the social and discursive connections between orthodoxy and heresy, as well as their reciprocal construction through "practices of bodily markings."34 The methodological shift from "heresy" to "heresiology" also raised the question of the ideological stakes of writing and reading heresiological literature. Cameron, for instance, proposes that Byzantine Christian heresiological writings were informed by earlier defensive rhetorical strategies against the Christians' Jewish and Gentile neighbors. In the 32 Daniel Boyarin, Border Lines: The Partition of Judaeo-Christianity (Philadelphia: U. of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), 41. Justin used the term hairesis only seven times in his extant work, almost exclusively in the Dialogue with Trypho, apart from the reference to his Refutation in the First Apology. Most of his uses of hairesis seem to describe heresies from a Jewish perspective. According to this hypothesis, the search for the origin of heresiology points beyond Justin Martyr, toward the Jewish heresiology of or before Justin's time. 33 Averil Cameron, Christianity and the Rhetoric of Empire: The Development of Christian Discourse (Berkeley: U. of California Press, 1991), and review by G. Woolf in JRS 83 (1993): 257-258. See also Averil Cameron's earlier review article, "Redrawing the Map: Early Christianity Territory after Foucault," JRS 76 (1986): 266-271, for the restructuring of the late antique studies. Also Peter Brown, Power and Persuasion in Late Antiquity: Towards a Christian Empire (Madison: U. of Wisconsin Press, 1992), and, more recently, Fergus Millar, A Greek Roman Empire: Power and Belief under Theodosius II (408-450) (Berkeley: U. of California Press, 2006). 34 Susanna Elm, "Pierced by Bronze Needles: Anti-Montanist Charges of Ritual Stigmatization in Their Fourth-Century Context," JECS 4:4 (1996): 409-439. Harry O. Maier's inquiry into Leo's anti-Manichaean polemics employed other Foucauldian topoi, such as power, discipline and punishment; see Harry O. Maier, "'Manichee! ': Leo the Great and the Orthodox Panopticon," JECS 4.4 (1996): 441-460. Likewise, Virginia Burrus has explored the function of gender metaphors in "the construction of an orthodox subjectivity" in the early works of Ambrose; see Virginia Burrus, The Making of a Heretic: Gender, Authority, and the Priscillianist Controversy (Berkeley: U. of California, 1995); eadem, "Equipped for Victory: Ambrose and the Gendering of Orthodoxy," JECS 4.4 (1996): 461-475; and "The Heretical Woman as Symbol in Alexander, Athanasius, Epiphanius, and Jerome," HTR 84 (1991): 229-248. See also, for a nuanced correlation of heresy, gender, and magic, Todd Breyfogle, "Magic, Women, and Heresy in the Late Empire: the Case of the Priscillianists," in Ancient Magic and Ritual Power (ed. Marvin Meyer and Paul Mirecki; Leiden: Brill 1995), 435-454.
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process of constructing their own and others' identities, the authors of heresiological literature adopted verbal vituperation as a way to label the "heretics," and to prepare a cognitive niche for theological otherness in the "mutations" of the Christian system of knowledge. 35 Similarly, Herve Inglebert regards the history of heresies as a "way to write Christian history," similar to the ancient genres of biography and doxography. He thus situates the classical origins of heresiological genealogies within the larger process of integrating Greek paideia into doctrina Christiana. According to Inglebert, Greek paideia deeply informed the organizing system of the heresiological discourse through the genealogical model of Greek philosophical doxography.36 More recently, Denise Kimber Buell has called attention to early Christian identity-building through discursive practices and ethnoracial reasoning. According to Buell, early Christians employed ethnicity, race, and religion as social conventions with both a fixed and a fluid character, reflecting real or claimed kinship and descent. 37 Buell argues that the authors of the heresiological texts allowed fluidity for their own definition of race and ethnicity, to keep their doors open for converts, while assuming that their Christian rivals have a "fixed" race/ethnicity.38 The present volume calls into question the value of a distinct notion of "heresy" for the study of Late Antiquity and aims at repositioning heresiological discourse within the broader context of religious identities. As such, the papers proceed from the assumption that late antique "heresy" reflects the limits of its discursive construction by authors and groups who 35 Averil Cameron, "Apologetics in the Roman Empire - A Genre of Intolerance?" in "Humana sapit": etudes d'antiquite tardive offertes if Leilia Cracco Ruggini (ed. JeanMichel Carrie and Rita Lizzi Testa; Turnhout: Brepols, 2002), 219-229; see also Averil Cameron, "Jews and Heretics - A Category Error?" in The Ways That Never Parted: Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (ed. Adam H. Becker and Annette Yoshiko Reed; TSAJ 95; Ttibingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003; reprint by Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2007); and Averil Cameron, "How to Read Heresiology?" in The Cultural Turn in Late Ancient Studies: Gender, Asceticism, and Historiography (ed. Dale Martin and Patricia Cox Miller; Durham: Duke University Press, 2005), 193-212. 36 Herve Inglebert, Interpretatio christiana: Les mutations des savoirs, cosmographie, geographie, ethnographie, histoire, dans I 'antiquite chretienne, 30-630 apres J.-C, Collection des etudes augustiniennes (Paris: Institut d' etudes augustiniennes, 2001), chapter 5, "L'histoire des heresies," 393-461, esp. 395-399,409,458. 37 Denise Kimber Buell, Why This New Race: Ethnic Reasoning in Early Christianity (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005); eadem, Making Christians: Clement of Alexandria and the Rhetoric of Legitimacy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), esp. 18, 81. Similarly, Susan Wessel's detailed analysis of the Nestorian controversy focuses on the rhetorical means through which its actors carried theological debates and reached their polemical purposes; see Susan Wessel, Cyril of Alexandria and the Nestorian Controversy: The Making of a Saint and of a Heretic (Oxford: OUP, 2004). 38 Buell, Why This New Race, 118, 145.
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made claims to orthodoxy and power and are shaped by social and cultural tensions. Hence, the heresy-making discourses under analysis in this volume will be best understood as representing specific late antique worldviews. Although we cannot ,posit a direct or self-conscious notion of religious identity in the late antique world, heresiological discourses provide us a lens for understanding Jewish or Christian identities as discursive and enduring processes of cultural negotiation with the "other."
Ancient Jewish and Christian Identity in Modern Scholarship Whereas the work of Bauer and Le Boulluec helped to open many new directions in research on early Christianity, scholars of Second Temple and Rabbinic Judaism did not initially engage with their views nor accept the applicability of the Christian categories of "heresy" and "heresiology" for the study of Judaism. Nevertheless, similar questions about difference, exclusion, and self-definition, have been richly explored in the context of the lively discussion of identity in the study of early Jewish self-definition as well as in the study of Jewish-Christian relations. This too is part of a broader trend: recent studies of Jewish-Christian relations have increasingly investigated the formation of religious identity as an ongoing negotiation and internalization of the "other." Blurring boundaries of the ancient "never-parting" ways between Judaism and Christianity, articulating a working definition of the religious "other," and taking advantage of postcolonial theories of difference and hybridity these strategies have led to the rise of a fertile field of research where ancient answers received completely new questions. 39 This approach to studying Jewish, Christian, and "pagan" traditions in concert draws on broader theoretical discussions of identity as well as critiques of older models for comparative research in the field of Religious Studies. In this, one of the most influential voices has been that of Jonathan Z. Smith.40 Smith sketches three main models of the "other" common in 39 See, for instance, E.P. Sanders, ed., Jewish and Christian Self-definition, vol. 1, The Shaping of Christianity in the Second and Third Centuries (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1980); Jacob Neusner and Ernest S. Frerichs, eds., "To See Ourselves as Others See Us": Christians, Jews, "Others" in Late Antiquity (Chico, Calif.: Scholars Press, 1985); Becker and Reed, eds., The Ways That Never Parted; Judith Lieu, Christian Identity. 40 See his latest collection of essays, Jonathan Z. Smith, Relating Religion: Essays in the Study of Religion (Chicago: U. of Chicago Press, 2004). See also Malesevi6, Identity as Ideology, which sketches the trajectory of "identity" in the last century from logic and analytical philosophy, through neo-Freudian psychoanalysis and cultural studies, to contemporary social sciences and humanities. Malesevi6 argues that identity arrived on
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the fields of Religious Studies and Anthropology: [1] "the 'other' represented metonymically in terms of the presence or absence of one or more cultural traits"; [2] "the 'other' represented topographically in terms of center and periphery"; and, finally, [3] "the 'other' represented linguistically and/or intellectually in terms of intelligibility."41 According to Smith, these metonymical, topographical, and linguistic models of the "other" render it incomprehensible. By placing difference in specific political and economic terms, articulated by social interaction and reciprocity, Smith suggests reforming otherness as a relational and situational category - "a political and linguistic project, a matter of rhetoric and judgment. "42 The reconceptualization of identity and difference - as dynamic processes rather than static or self-evident categories - has proved fruitful when applied to early Jewish and Christian texts and authors. Research has progressed along two main lines: the examination of parallel developments in Jewish and Christian cultures and the investigation of the place of exclusion in the construction of Jewish and Christian identity. This doubled interest is already clear in the three volumes on Jewish and Christian Self-Definition, the result of E.P. Sander's 1978 project at the stage of social sciences as a replacement of three other key notions that had fallen in disrepute: "race," "national character," and "social consciousness." Whereas race or class consciousness compromised their theoretical legitimacy through their ideological associations with Nazism and, respectively, Communism, national character has been successfully replaced in its American context by Erik Erikson's notion of "identity." Malesevic concludes that it was the elusiveness of identity, its omnipresence and high rate of adaptability to social change that propelled it to the forefront of social sciences and humanities: '''Identity' is a fuzzy term for fuzzy times" (p. 16). 41 Jonathan Z. Smith, "Differential Equations: On Constructing the Other," in idem, Relating Religion, 230-250, esp. 231. 42 Jonathan Z. Smith, "What a Difference a Difference Makes," in idem, Relating Religion, 251-302, esp. 275. Conceptual haziness has not always been the main attribute of identity. Martin Heidegger's philosophy heralds a strong concept of "identity," charged with requirements such as unity, continuity, and authenticity. See Martin Heidegger, Identity and Difference (trans. and Introduction by Joan Stambaugh; New York: Harper & Row, 1969 [originally published in 1957]); as well as Andre Gingrich's critique of Heidegger's use of identity and difference in "Conceptualizing Identities: Anthropological Alternatives to Essentializing Difference and Moralizing about Othering,:' in Grammars of IdentitylAlterity: A Structural Approach (ed. Gerd Baumann and Andre Gingrich; New York: Berghahn Books, 2004), 3-17. Kenneth Burke's entry on "Identity, Identification," in his 1937 "Dictionary of Pivotal Terms," marks an important strand of the American discussion of identity; see Kenneth Burke, Attitudes toward History (3d ed.; Berkeley: U. of California Press, 1984), 267-269 and idem, A Rhetoric of Motives (Berkeley: U. of California Press, 1969), 19). See also Beth Eddy, The Rites of Identity: The Religious Naturalism and Cultural Criticism of Kenneth Burke and Ralph Ellison (Princeton: Princeton University Press), 2003, esp. 27, 55. We are indebted to Jeffrey Stout for calling our attention to this reference.
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McMaster University that brought together scholars of Judaism, Christianity, and Greco-Roman traditions to discuss ancient identity-formation. Sanders called attention to comparable tendencies toward regulative self-definition in both early Judaism and Christianity.43 Accordingly, participants analyzed these trends through a close look at the theological, social and political mechanisms of exclusion in the making of heresy and orthodoxy, Second Temple Judaism, and early Christianity. In spite of keeping their inquiries on Judaism, Christianity, and "paganism" distinct, the authors stressed that normative self-definition operates through separation, exclusion, and a heightened sense of religious identity, and regarding religious conflict and polemical attitudes as conducive to religious self-definition.44 In the three decades since the McMaster project, subsequent scholarship further applied the categories of identity and heresy to early Jewish texts and early Christian representations of Jews as well as charting the analogous historical formative processes in Judaism and Christianity. Following Smith, recent studies have tended to consider identity as a relational and situational category and focused, accordingly, on the rhetoric of difference and the process of differentiation. One notable example is Judith Lieu's recent analysis of the formation of Christian identity in the first three centuries. Lieu reads the representation of "the Jews" and "heretics" not as a direct reflection of social reality, but as rhetorical construction. 45 Lieu processes "otherness" in early Christian discourse by taking into consideration the convenient construction of a domesticated Jewish or heretic "other," stripped of threatening characteristics. Through "mystification of alternative voices within an actual diversity," the invention of these "others" amounts to effacing the similarities 43 E.g. E. P. Sanders, "Introduction" to Jewish and Christian Self-definition, 1.ix-x. See also E.P. Sanders, A.I. Baumgarten, and Alan Mendelson, eds., Jewish and Christian Self-definition, vol. 2, Aspects of Judaism in the Graeco-Roman Period (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1981); Ben F. Meyer and E.P. Sanders, eds., Jewish and Christian Selfdefinition, vol. 3, Self-definition in the Greco-Roman World (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1982). 44 R.A. Markus, "The Problem of Self-definition: From Sect to Church," in Jewish and Christian Self-definition, 1.1-15; Alan F. Segal, "Ruler of This World: Attitudes about Mediator Figures and the Importance of Sociology for Self-definition," in Jewish and Christian Self-definition, 2.245-268; John M. Dillon, "Self-definition in Later Platonism," in Jewish and Christian Self-definition, 3.60-75. 45 Lieu, Christian Identity. On the discursive construction of the "other"· in Late Antiquity, see also Elizabeth A. Castelli, Martyrdom and Memory: Early Christian Culture Making (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004); Aaron P. Johnson, Ethnicity and Argument in Eusebius' Preparatio Evangelica (Oxford: OUP, 2006); and David Frankfurter, Evil Incarnate: Rumors of Demonic Conspiracy and Ritual Abuse in History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006).
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between Jews and Christians as well as the similarities among various Christian groups. In Lieu's study, propaganda and textuality receive a critical role in early Christianity: "The creation of otherness is a literary enterprise, reproduced no doubt in worship and homily."46 Similarly, Lieu argues, early Christian authors waged hermeneutical battles for the right to read the Hebrew Bible and to remember Jewish textual pasts in ways suitable for various social and political settings. 47 Significantly for our purposes, the "other" has also received a number of important treatments in recent scholarly reconstructions of Second Temple and Rabbinic Jewish identities. In her work on Philo's construction of Jewish Diaspora identity in the Hellenistic setting of Egypt, for instance, Maren Niehoff argues that the Roman Empire provided Philo the blueprint upon which he envisioned first-century C.E. Egyptian-Jewish identity.48 According to Niehoff, Philo elevates Jewish values by aligning them to the contemporary Roman appropriation of the Greek past while harboring a sense of superiority toward the Greek present. 49 Similarly, in a survey of the use of the term Ioudaismos in Hellenistic and Rabbinic Jewish literature, Shaye J.D. Cohen suggests that a considerable degree of fluidity and elusiveness characterize the "uncertainty of Jewishness."50 The main cultural, ethnic and religious elements of Jewish identity (birth, marriage, the Hebrew Bible, and ritual) came together and reached canonical authority, according to Cohen, only in Rabbinic Judaism. 51 Even though questions of identity have been richly explored in research on Judaism, it is only recently that the themes of identity and heresiology have been brought together in scholarship on Rabbinic Judaism. In a 1980 article by Cohen we find an initial attempt to connect heresy and selfdefinition. Cohen's analysis set the ground for comparing Rabbinic Jewish and early Christian ideas of "heresy" in relation to each other; it also approached the study of heresiology with the purpose of illustrating the negotiation of ancient religious identities. 52 According to Cohen, Christian and Rabbinic heresiologies took shape in a similar manner, under the 46 Lieu, Christian Identity, 297. 47 Ibid., 33-35, 255. 48 Maren R. Niehoff, Philo on Jewish Identity and Culture, TSAJ 86 (Tubingen: Mohr Siebeck,2001). 49 Niehoff, Philo, 48, 54-58, 62. 50 Shaye J.D. Cohen, The Beginnings of Jewishness: Boundaries, Varieties, Uncertainties (Berkeley: U. of California Press, 1999). 51 Cohen, Beginnings, 343. See also John J. Collins, Between Athens and Jerusalem: Jewish Identity in the Hellenistic Diaspora (2d ed.; Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2000). 52 Shaye J. D. Cohen, "A Virgin Defiled: Some Rabbinic and Christian Views on the Origin of Heresy," USQR 36.1 (1980): 1-11.
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influence of Hellenistic models of disputation among philosophical schools: "The fathers of the early Catholic church and of Rabbinic Judaism proposed nearly identical theories of self-definition and authentication. "53 Invoking the difficulties of dating Rabbinic texts, however, Cohen did not further explore the question of the primary location of this discourse or its subsequent adaptation in either Christianity or Rabbinic Judaism. 54 The 1990s saw a renewed interest in the question of Rabbinic heresiology, partly inspired by Cohen's suggestions. In a 1994 article, for instance, Richard Kalmin challenged the historicity of Rabbinic tales about minim, confirming for the study of ancient Judaism the pertinence of the findings of Le Boulluec and others for early Christian heresiology.55 In a 1996 article, Martin Goodman similarly highlights the parallels between Rabbinic representations of minim and their treatment of other "ambiguous" groups such as androgynous males and women. 56 Goodman proposed that the indeterminate character of minut stems from the Rabbinic intellectual impulse towards classification. Although Goodman did not go so far as to analyze the relevance of this indeterminacy for the making of Rabbinic identity, this question was picked up and explored by Naomi Janowitz, in a 1998 article. Janowitz proposed that "Constructing the 'min' constructs in turn a shield which deflects notice away from the fact that other rabbis hold the same opinion [as the heretic],"57 The question of Rabbinic and Christian heresiologies has been explored, most comprehensively, by Daniel Boyarin in his 2004 book Border Lines. This book examines ancient religious borders, limits, and labels in both Jewish and Christian literature. 58 For Boyarin, heresiology defines Christian identity not merely as the illustration of a third genos, but rather as a completely new ideological, political, and social formation, a religion. He further contends that the very process of creating in-group Christian borders through heresiological segregation and alienation led to the simultaneous and interdependent creation of the Christian religion as a 53 Cohen, "Virgin Defiled," 8. 54 In a similar analysis, Reuven Kimelman showed that early Rabbinic heresiology seems to have explicitly targeted only Jewish Christians as "heretics," overlooking the possibility of any relationship between Rabbinic and orthodox Christianity heresiology; "Birkat ha-Minim and the Lack of Evidence for an Anti-Christian Jewish Prayer in Late Antiquity," in Jewish and Christian Self-definition 2.226-44, 391-403. 55 Richard Kalmin, "Christians and Heretics in Rabbinic Literature of Late Antiquity," HTR 87 (1994): 155-169. 56 Martin Goodman, "The Function of Minim in Early Rabbinic Judaism," in Geschichte-Tradition-Reflexion: Festschrift fiir Martin Hengel zum 70. Geburstag (ed. H. Cancik, H. Lichtenberger and P. Schafer; Tiibingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1996), 1.501-510. 57 Naomi Janowitz, "Rabbis and Their Opponents: The Construction of the 'Min' in Rabbinic Anecdotes," JECS 6 (1998): 449-462, esp. 460. 58 Boyarin, Border Lines.
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category, and of "Judaism," as the "other" of the newly created religious formation. 59 Boyarin reads the incipient Jewish-Christian relations as "dialogical relations between texts and traditions," between Jewish and Christian authors who claim the right to appropriate the Hebrew Bible. In a parallel movement, he argues, Rabbinic writers adopted similar heresiological strategies in their own attempts to define - and exclude from their midst - a Christian "other." Yet, Boyarin states, Rabbinic authors "only occasionally, ambivalently, and strategically" defined Judaism as religion. 60, Along with Cohen and Boyarin, the present volume extends the discussion begun in the McMaster project on "pagan," Jewish, and Christian self-definition. In doing so, the papers collected here reflect the effort to situate the developments they document in increasingly detailed and specific historical and intellectual settings. In recognizing the specificity of the discourses they discuss, however, the authors also suggest that the pairing of heresy and identity makes visible the integration, though not equivalence, of late antique Jewish and Christian discourses.
Ancient Heresy and Society Recent scholarship on heresiology and identity has also opened the way for new perspectives on the social history of Late Antiquity. Already in the late 1960s and early 1970s, for instance, Peter Brown's essays on the Pelagian controversy move beyond texts and discourses to place Pelagian theological debates in the social context of the fourth- and fifth-century Roman aristocracy.61 59
Ibid., 11.
60 Ibid., 224, cf. 13. See also Ra'anan Boustan's review in JQR 96.3 (2006): 441-446. A noteworthy ancient descriptive use of the "Other" occurs within the Rabbinic practice of referring to Elisha ben Avuya as Aher [Hb. "the Other"]. According to Boyarin, the heresy of which R. Elisha was guilty - tantamount to apostasy - was a type of binitarian theology which the rabbis yielded to Christianity and used as benchmark of Rabbinic orthodoxy (ibid., 142f). 61 Peter Brown, "Pelagius and His Supporters: Aims and Environment," JTS (1968): 93-114; idem, "The Patrons of Pelagius: The Roman Aristocracy between East and West," JTS (1970): 56-72. Both articles have been reprinted in Peter Brown, Religion and Society in the Age of Saint Augustine (London: Faber and Faber, 1972), 183-226. The importance of social dynamics to the formation of heresiology was further highlighted by sociological research in the early 1980s. George Zito, for instance, argued for the usefulness of the concept of heresy as a discursive procedure in a contemporary secular society; see his "Towards a Sociology of Heresy," Sociological Analysis 44.2 (1983): 123-130. Similarly, sociologist Lester R. Kurtz described heresy as having social
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That "heresy" consists of more than theological polemics is also shown by Elizabeth A. Clark in her 1992 book on the Origenist controversy. Clark employs network-theory to unravel the highly dense relations of "kinship, friendship, hospitality given and received, literary and financial patronage, religious mentorship, traveling companionship" which blended in the fourth- and fifth-century clash between Jerome and Rufinus. 62 The social implications of heresy dramatically changed as a result of the Christianization of the Roman Empire. In a 1999 article, Richard Lim presents the picture of an eclectic "religious landscape" in which the very isolation of marginal, "heretical" groups assured their survival. 63 In Constantine's time, orthodoxy had mostly a nominal character, as becomes clear from the spatial diversity of beliefs and practices across the Roman Empire. After Theodosius I, however, orthodoxy came to be defined in terms of "bishops," "creeds," and "councils." According to Lim, "heresy" did not vanish; it became intensely localized, and took advantage of theological rivalries between important urban centers. 64 Similarly, Caroline Humfress illustrates legal aspects of the procedural formation of orthodoxies in a 2000 article. Humfress here illuminates the links between theological positions on heresy and Roman juridical adaptations and innovations. 65 These legal categories enhance the "orthodox" cognitive capacity to name, define, classify, and legally origins and providing control over social arrangements; cf. Lester R. Kurtz, "The Politics of Heresy," AJS 88/6 (1983): 1085-1115. See also idem, The Politics of Heresy: The Modernist Crisis in Roman Catholicism (Berkeley: U. of California Press, 1986). Such a sociological approach attributes to the "orthodox" party the creation of heresies, with the direct result of strengthening early Christian and Rabbinic in-group identities. 62 Elizabeth A. Clark, The Origenist Controversy: The Cultural Construction of an Early Christian Debate (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992). In an analogous study of the early Rabbinic movement, Catherine Heszer uses network-theory to situate the rise of the Rabbinic movement with reference to the concrete circumstances of travel, discipleship, economy, and power, as seen against the background of various intra-Jewish competitors for social and religious prestige; see Catherine Hezser, The Social Structure of the Rabbinic Movement in Roman Palestine, TSAJ 66 (Tubingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1997), and also Seth Schwartz, Imperialism and Jewish Society, 200 BCE to 640 CE (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), 103-28. 63 Richard Lim, "Christian Triumph and Controversy," in Late Antiquity: A Guide to the Postclassical World (ed. G. W. Bowersock, Peter Brown, and Oleg Grabar; Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1999), 196-218, esp. 197-198. Earlier in the twentieth-century, A.H.M Jones had raised the question of the connection between heresies and national identities: "Were ancient heresies disguised social movements?" Jones' negative answer conveys skepticism concerning the difficult task of translating theological arguments into social causes. See A. H. M. Jones, "Were Ancient Heresies National or Social Movements in Disguise?" JTS 10.2 (1959): 280-297. 64 Lhn, "Christian Triumph and Controversy," 200-208. 65 Caroline Humfress, "Roman Law, Forensic Argument and the Formation of Christian Orthodoxy (III-VI Centuries)" in Orthodoxie, Christianisme, histoire, 124-147.
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categorize religious beliefs. The result was legal categorization of religious belief.66 The concept of a "weak" orthodoxy led an international team of scholars, including Susanna Elm, Eric Rebillard, and Antonella Romano, to explore the composite and constructed character of "orthodoxy" in 2001.67 According to these scholars, negotiation, process, and ecclesiastical geography are precisely those conjectural features of "orthodoxy" that enable it to become a criterion of differentiation for insiders and a boundary-setting device vis-a.-vis outsiders. They argue that social and political crises, expressed through theological arguments, made room for a constant redefinition and negotiation of boundaries and limits of orthodoxy in early Christianity. 68 In a 2005 article by Harry O. Maier, a focus on heresy similarly allows for the exposure of elements of continuity amidst these many changes of Christianity's first five centuries. Maier delineates the "territorial" character of Church and State after Theodosius, which forced dissenters to retreat into the privacy of their households. He contends that, in the fourthand fifth-century, the official ecclesiastical topography and confinement of public worship to private households thus led to a "topography of heresy [ ... ] that has its origins in the domestic patterns of meeting and organization of earliest Christianity."69 In Karen King's What is Gnosticism?, the connections between heresy, identity, and social history are brought to bear on both ancient "gnostic" texts and modern scholarship about them.7° For King, "the ancient construction of heresy and the modern construction of Gnosticism" can be read as two similar processes whose theological intersections give birth and strength to contemporary persistence of mislabeling ancient Christian groups as gnostic. 71 The puzzle that confronted early Christian authors was how to be different from other late antique religious groups, yet without being perceived as newcomers. According to King, these writers employed 66 Humfress, "Roman Law," 131. 67 See the papers of project carried at the Ecole Fran9aise de Rome between 1996 and 1998 in Elm, Rebillard, and Romano, eds., Orthodox ie, Christianisme, histoire. 68 Susanna Elm, Pierre-Antoine Fabre, Antonella Romano, and Claire Sotinel, "Introduction" to Orthodoxie, Christianisme, histoire, viii-xxv. 69 Harry O. Maier, "Heresy, Households, and the Disciplining of Diversity," in A People's History of Christianity, vol. 2, Late Ancient Christianity (ed. Virginia Burrus; Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2005), 213-233, esp. 222. See also Harry O. Maier, "Religious Dissent, Heresy, and Household in Late Antiquity" VC 49.1 (1995): 49-63, esp.49-50. 70 Karen L. King, What is Gnosticism? (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2003). 71 Ibid., 21,53.
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several distinct "theological, political and rhetorical tools" to fashion early Christian self-definition. As new categories of outsiders, "Jew" and "pagan," received their conceptual double in the "heretic," the antagonist Christian insider who errs by adopting outside traditions from either side of this heresiological construct. More than an intellectual category, King argues, heresy itself fulfils the role of an assessment tool that distorts religious proximity and sameness into textual difference and social exclusion. 72 Most recently, Daniel Boyarin and Virginia Burrus portray Christian and Rabbinic heretics as the product of orthodox attempts to create clear insider/outsider categories. By engaging with Homi Bhabha's "Of Mimicry and Man," they further suggest that the idea of the heretic opens the possibility of a hybrid space, a third possibility between the self and the other, ancient Judaism and Christianity - or, in Bhabha's words, "a difference that is almost the same, but not quite. "73 In line with Boyarin and Burrus' insight, we might notice that Irenaeus and Tertullian's heresiological accounts of Marcion and Valentinus proceed by what James Boon designates as a "cultural exaggeration" in anthropological research, an intensification of perceived cultural differences within a shared discursive space. 74 Complementary to this, Rabbinic heresiology acknowledges the proximity of the heretic arguably to secure its community boundaries through narrative and legal exclusion of the interpellated min. To paraphrase Franz Fanon: The heretic is comparison. 75 As the ultimate other, the concept of the "heretic" allows for the comparison, distortion, and dissimulation of "real" Jews and Christians, turning their caricature into an ideological tool whose main role is to evaluate and craft orthodox identities. Asking "cui bono?" reminds us that theological categories are never devoid of social context; that ancient heresiologies and vivid Nag Hammadi mythologies put their performative features of creating heretics
Ibid., 22-25, esp. 24. Daniel Boyarin and Virginia Burrus, "Hybridity as Subversion of Orthodoxy? Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity," Social Compass 52.4 (2005): 431-441. Homi Bhabha, "Of Mimicry and Man: The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourse" October, Discipleship: A Special Issue on Psychoanalysis 28 (1984): 125-133. 74 James A. Boon, Other Tribes, Other Scribes: Symbolic Anthropology in the Comparative Study of Cultures, Histories, Religions, and Texts (Cambridge: CUP, 1982), esp.26. 75 "The Negro is comparison. There is the first truth. He is comparison: that is, he is constantly preoccupied with self-evaluation and with the ego ideal"; Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks (New York: Grove Press 1967), 211. See also Diana Fuss, Identification Papers (London: Routledge, 1995), 144. Our thanks to Anthony Pietro who called our attention to this title. 72 73
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at work in very detailed social and political contexts of late antique societies. Thus, the ancient act of naming "heretics" provides scholars with an open window onto the formation of recently Christianized and, respectively, rabbanized state apparatuses (in Althusser's description of ideological functions) in the post-Constantinian period. 76 From the very same perspective, the act of "interpellating" late antique individuals with comparable religious practices and ideas within a heresiological context transforms them into the "other" and, at the same time, identifies them as "heretics. "77 The lines of research sketched above point to the power of naming to shape the perception and organization of social space, political status, and group boundaries. The present volume builds on the premise that one profitable way to approach heresiological writings is as "performative discourses" that strive to bring "the heretic" into being by the "social magical" act of naming - whether performed from within ecclesiastical structures of power or as expressions of fantasies of such power,78 In our view, the main tasks of ancient heresiologies included comparing and assessing similar ideological/religious formations. In the process, ancient heresiological discourses re-read similarity as difference; they turned religious formations akin to their own into utterly different configurations through appellation, the construction of hybrid genealogies, andlor the exaggeration of existing differences. To study such processes thus requires critical self-reflection on the part of the scholar, as Boyarin, Buell, King, and others have shown. Particularly in its incipient stages, the modern study of pre-modern religions was arguably shaped by the very modes of heresiological thinking and writing that we find in our late antique sources. Just as heresiology is a tool that generates comparisons and thrives on them, so ancient heresiological discourses readily served as a blueprint for modern attempts to understand a whole range of patterns in the history of religion. In some cases, modern scholars thus preserved and reproduced the image of the "heretical other"
76 Louis Althusser, "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (Notes towards an Investigation)," in idem, Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1971), 127-186. 77 "I shall then suggest that ideology 'acts' or 'functions' in such a way that it 'recruits' subjects among the individuals (it recruits them all), or 'transforms' the individuals into subjects (it transforms them all) by that very precise operation which I have called interpellation or hailing." (Althusser, "Ideology," 174). 78 Pierre Bourdieu, "Identity and Representation: Elements for a Critical Reflection on the Idea of Region," in idem, Language and Symbolic Power (Cambridge: Polity and Basil Blackwell, 1991),220-228, esp. 223-4.
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in colonial projects in non-Western regions,?9 As a result, however, the question of the relationship of heresy and identity in our late antique sources is arguably an important and timely question, with the potential to touch upon theoretical issues beyond the confines of specialist scholarship.
Making Selves and Marking Others This volume originated in a conference convened at Princeton University on January 16-18, 2005, on the topic of "Making Selves and Marking Others: Heresy and Self-Definition in Late Antiquity." In organizing this conference, we sought to explore the ways in which different late antique groups and communities defined their own socio-political borders and secured in-group identities by means of discourses about "heresy" and "heretics." Moreover, we sought to explore the value and challenges of bringing Jewish and other Greco-Roman materials to bear on the scholarly study of heresiology, which has previously been dominated by questions and considerations related specifically to Christianity. In this, our project extends the conversation of the earlier conferences in a series of books, as organized within the Department of Religion at Princeton University under the guidance of Peter Schafer. The previous two conferences explored the shared discursive contexts of Jews, Christians, and "pagans" in Late Antiquity.80 For the conference on which this volume is based, we sought to continue these inquiries with a sustained consideration of the ancient construction of the "other" as "heretic" in various religious formations. 79 Karen King has already established that modern students and defenders of the category "Gnosticism" follow in the steps of the ancient heresiologists; see What is Gnosticism? 18-19. Jonathan Z. Smith announced the end of comparison in the study of religion, not without connecting the dots between ancient and medieval heresiological discourses and early modern comparative explorations of the non-European religious landscapes; "Epilogue: The 'End' of Comparison: Redescription and Rectification," in A Magic Still Dwells: Comparative Religion in the Postmodern Age (ed. Kimberley C. Patton and Benjamin C. Ray; Berkeley: U. of California Press, 2000), 237-241; idem, "Classification," in Guide to the Study of Religion (ed. Willi Braun and Russell T. McCutcheon; London; New York: Cassell, 2000), 35-43, esp. 39-40; see also idem, "Religion, Religions, Religious," in Critical Terms for Religious Studies (ed. Mark C. Taylor; Chicago: U. of Chicago Press, 1998),269-284. 80 Adam H. Becker and Annette Y oshiko Reed, "Introduction: Traditional Models and New Directions," in Ways that Never Parted, 2. See also Ra'anan Boustan and Annette Yoshiko Reed, eds., Heavenly Realms and Earthly Realities in Late Antique Religions (Cambridge: CUP, 2004); and Gregg Gardner and Kevin Osterloh, eds., Antiquity in Antiquity: Jewish and Christian Pasts in the Greco-Roman World, TSAJ (Tiibingen: Mohr Siebeck, forthcoming).
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The present volume grows out of the rich and varied discussions of this topic at the conference. The contributions draw from multiple literary corpora and genres, bringing a variety of late antique perspective to bear on the question of the association between heresy-making discourses and constructions of identity which we sought to sketch above. In addition, they reflect on how heresiology and self-definition create ideological boundaries through rhetorically immutable yet historically alterable names and metaphors. 81 The structure of this volume reflects the dual focus of the Princeton University colloquium. Whereas the first part problematizes ancient heresy and orthodoxy in light of critiques of the categories by Bauer and Le Boulluec, the second part investigates the predicament of identity from the perspective of different Jewish and Christian texts and traditions. The first three papers introduce the reader to problematic applications of labels and names, by exploring the social, political, and theological conditions of ancient discourses on heresy and orthodoxy. Karen L. King's paper explores the social and literary implications of heresiology by considering the "Social and Theological Effects of Heresiological Discourse." She argues that one cannot read ancient heresiology based on modern conceptions of objectivity or authorial intent. Instead, one should understand each heresiologist in light of the group dynamics and rhetorical effects which informed his own literary goals and strategies. In her main example, she proceeds to a close reading of Against Heresies by Irenaeus of Lyon together with the Secret Revelation of John. This allows her to reevaluate the two texts' real differences by weighing them against a large number of convergences. She insists on placing ancient heresiology within the social framework of identity-formation, but at the same time shows that a real, if distorted, dialogue took place between ancient factions on relevant matters such as body symbolism, the nature of justice, human and divine governance. William E. Arnal, in "Doxa, Heresy, and Self-Construction: The Pauline Ekklesiai and the Boundaries of Urban Identities," broadens the definition of heresy to a thoroughly social category. This move allows him to consider Paul and his communities in light of recent sociological attempts to define orthodoxy, heterodoxy, and heresy. Despite the scarcity of sources, Paul can be seen as heterodox vis-a.-vis Judaism, yet still within it. For Arnal, however, the far more important context against which he understands Paul's heterodoxy is that of the Roman Empire. He places Paul's figure within the model of Roman urban identities, which he presents as the underlying structure of imperial culture and politics. Amal also shows that Paul's attempt to redefine mostly disenfranchised 81
Cf. Lieu, Christian Identity, 98-99.
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foreigners as part of a universalized Judaism challenged the very foundations of Roman society. Adapting Bourdieu's notion of doxa, the unspoken agreements on whose self-evident nature a society is built, Arnal portrays Paul's communities as heterodox in relation to the Roman Empire's view of ethnicity. Averil Cameron, in "The Violence of Orthodoxy," explores the shift which led the study of heresy from a plainly "social" to a more nuanced literary and "discursive" approach. She asks what happened to "orthodoxy" in the recent focus on "heresy,"· and shows that orthodoxies are not only the result of heresiology, but also a center of violent self-affirmation. She calls for a reevaluation of the constructed character of orthodoxy, presented here as a process in which rhetorical and social violence present more relevance for the historian than the recently scriptural fundamentalism or an exclusive focus on heresiology. Her paper suggests that any attempt to the critical study of heresiology to question the construction of the "orthodox" center producing heresiological discourses. The next three papers apply this approach to the specific situation of the Christianizing Roman Empire. They illustrate the making of orthodoxy in ancient classrooms and law courts, and by pointing to the difficulties of "assigning" heresy to Manichean texts. Yannis Papadoyannakis' "Defining Orthodoxy in Pseudo-Justin' s 'Quaestiones et responsiones ad orthodoxos'" shares Cameron's recommendation and illuminates the late antique Byzantine search for new directions in the making of "orthodoxy." Away from the imperial centers of Roman orthodoxy, he finds the making of orthodoxy also in a school setting of questions and answers. His paper captures the historical process by which school "debates, polemics, and discussions" brought Christian orthodoxy to fruition as a new, specialized form of knowledge in the time of a Christianized empire. Papadoyannakis shows that Christian orthodoxy, even when it confronted dissenters with the imperial power of the state, continued to negotiate its own identity in response to those who objected and challenged it, and that the newly gained power did not entirely replace more dialogical forms of contact. Caroline Humfress' "Citizens and Heretics: Late Roman Lawyers on Christian Heresy" describes how, after Constantine, state-sanctioned orthodoxy adopted a more concrete and legal form of persecuting heresy. Her attempt to uncover the "criminalization of heresy under the Christian empire" engages with the legal practices of Late Antiquity. She explores the new legal strategies at work after heresy became an infamia perpetrated by religious offenders, as well as the social and economic consequences of the official attempts at penalizing heretics. Post-Constantine imperial bureaucracy did not produce these laws, but adapted Roman antecedents on
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dealing with matters of citizenship, religious disturbance, and governing structures. Richard Lim investigates the branding and classification of heretics in his paper, "The Nomen Manichaeorum and Its Uses in Late Antiquity." Lim examines the uses of nomen Manichaeorum as a sectarian label, circulated mostly by those who sought to suppress this religion. Yet, the efforts of the Roman Church and Empire to classify socially dangerous groups and religious orientations have rarely been met by an equally clear "heretical" self-designation. He further argues that late antique Manichean identity was regularly crafted by orthodox Christian writers with the purpose . of classifying and condemning it, while those labeled "Manicheans," in their own records, tended to represent themselves as "Christians" in the Pauline tradition. Lim shows how the processual character of "orthodoxy" influenced the fashioning of "Manichean" religious identities. The next cluster of papers shifts the focus toward identity and the "intimate enemy," and grounds the discussion in the historical frame of Second-Temple Judaism, Jesus movement, and early Jewish Christianity. In "Judea, Rome and the Hellenistic Oikoumene: Emulation and the Reinvention of Communal Identity," Kevin Lee Osterloh looks at the formation of Jewish identity and its relationship to Hellenistic and Roman cultural and political systems. He advances the hypothesis according to which the "communal reinvention" of Jewish identity in 1 and 2 Maccabees took place within a "shared Seleucid-Judean and pan-eastern Mediterranean discourse." Osterloh interprets Judean elite's redefinition of their collective identity as thoroughly consistent with similar efforts in the Hellenistic world of the second century CE, and in particular as an emulation of Roman elite self-understanding through the "cooption and subversion of Greekness." The Jewish encounter with Hellenism and the invention of Jewish national identity in the time of the Maccabees through conflict with Hellenistic neighbors established several key concepts of later discourses on Christian and Jewish heresy. John G. Gager develops an insight of Lloyd Gaston about the "close enemies" in "Where does Luke's Anti-Judaism Come from?" Scrutinizing Luke-Acts' efforts at self-definition as an expression of anti-Judaism, Gager looks for an answer not among Luke's Jewish neighbors but among Jewish-Christian (or Christian-Jewish) groups. Gager argues that one of the greatest threats to the self-understanding and identity of the early Jesus movement, as it is expressed in Luke-Acts, did not come from any Jews outside it. It originated instead from the "intimate enemy," namely similar Jewish Christian groups whose internal disputes have been projected outward as anti-Jewish writings.
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In order to trace the possible genesis of the term "Christians," Philippa Townsend's "Who Were the First Christians? Jews, Gentiles and the Christianoi" pays attention to the earliest members of the Jesus movement who did not view themselves as part of Judaism. Re-examining classical passages as well as Roman imperial history, she argues for a history of the term "Christianoi" which can be outlined as follows: the Pauline designation hoi tau Christou (which Paul used in 1 Corinthians and Galatians) is employed by Paul and his followers to designate their group. The term cannot easily be translated into Latin, but the most obvious Latin rendering is christiani; this then is the term Roman authorities would most likely have used to designate such Gentile Jesus-believers. Later, the Latin term was re-appropriated by Gentile followers of Jesus, such as the author of Acts and Ignatius, who re-translated the Latin term into Greek: Christianoi, a term which now included a self-definition distinct from Judaism. Elaine Pagels suggests in "The Social History of Satan, Part III: John of Patmos and Ignatius of Antioch - Contrasting Visions of 'God's People' " that in Revelation 12, John of Patmos combines the Leviathan and Satan traditions to show his readers that they have to fight against insiders among Jesus' followers and against the outsiders epitomized by the Roman Empire. Engaging in current discussion of boundaries between Jews and Christians in antiquity, Pagels agrees with those who show that John of Patmos sees himself asa Jew devoted to Jesus Christ. Pagels also sees Johns' denunciation of insiders as secret allies of "the beast" aimed against such converts who, in his view, neglect "the commandments" and, as he caricatures them, teach people to "eat meat offered to idols" and "practice fornication." Comparing John's ecclesiology with that of his near contemporary Ignatius of Antioch helps Pagels show how these two polemicists offer contrasting views of Jesus' followers, making antithetical claims about who really are "God's people." The next cluster of papers explores the ways in which heresy-making discourses relate to the interstitial category of "Jewish Christianity," and the rhetorical roles played by the "Hebrews" and "minim" in establishing it. Eduard Iricinschi, in "If You Got It, Flaunt It: Religious Advertising in the Gospel of Philip," explores the rhetorical role of the "Hebrews" and their connection to the origin myth of the double names in this text found at Nag Hammadi. He suggests that the author of the Gospel of Philip attempted to attract converts to his community by representing rival Pauline groups as "Hebrews." These other communities used the same Pauline proselytizing language as the Gospel of Philip, but according to this Gospel's author, the words of the rival group do not match their heavenly meanings. The author of the Gospel attempts to explain issues related to resurrection and to the rituals of baptism, chrism, and the bridal
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chamber in terms of appropriate access to the primordial language. Iricinschi's paper contributes to the study of a text once considered heretical, and reads it against the complex social fracturing of secondcentury Antioch. Annette Yoshiko Reed, in "Heresio10gy and the (Jewish-)Christian Novel: Narrativized Polemics in the Pseudo-Clementine Homilies," explores the literary making of an "orthodoxy" and its respective heresio10gy in a so-called "Jewish-Christian" text. Scholars have studied the authors/redactors of the Pseudo-Clementine Homilies mostly in terms of the "heresy" of the Ebionites. She argues, however, that these fourthcentury "Jewish-Christians" stand firmly within the heresio10gy and historiography of their time, sharing rhetorical and discursive aims with Christian heresio10gists, such as Epiphanius, no less than with tales about the disputation between Rabbis and minim in Rabbinic sources such as Bereshit Rabbah. Burton L. Visotzky, in "Goys '.5I'n't Us: Rabbinic Anti-Gentile Polemic in Yerusha1mi Berachot 9: 1" gives a detailed study of the aforementioned Rabbinic literary genre - "conversation with a min," the refutation of heretical stock characters by witted rabbis. Starting from the point of view that such conversations mainly serve Rabbinic self-affirmation, Visotzky differentiates between two levels of the passage in question. On the microlevel, Visotzky argues, only the first part of the passage deals with Christianity in its reference(s) to Biblical trinitarian testimonies, whereas the second part deals with patronage in a Gentile Greco-Roman setting. Re-eva1uating the redaction history of the text, he concludes that on the macro-level, the entire passage was composed to refute Christian claims and that in the present form the entire text answers to Christianity: the min in the first part is understood as representative of Christian concerns just as well as the statements on patronage in the second part aim at the image of Christ as universal ruler. With the l'lst group of papers, we tum to the question of the construction of otherness in Rabbinic literature. Gregg Gardner, in his "Astrology in the Talmud: An Analysis of Bavli Shabbat 156," looks at deviant insiders of Babylonian Rabbinic Judaism: astrologers. He employs source criticism to highlight the cultural differences between the Babylonian Talmud and its Palestinian Rabbinic sources with respect to Jewish astrologers. Gardner shows that the redactors of the Talmud ridiculed astrologers, and used astrology as a _boundary marker between Israel, whose people are immune to the power of the stars as long as they fulfill the commandments, and the Gentiles, whose subjection to stars is acknowledged. Ho1ger M. Zellentin revisits a classic Talmudic passage in "Margin of Error: Bavli Shabbat 116a-b as Polemics, Apology, and Heresio10gy." He
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shows that its author had an intimate knowledge of Christian writings such as the Gospel of Matthew and its Syriac interpretation, and was familiar enough with this material to play out the former against the latter. The result of this analysis.suggests the possibility of a Talmudic parody whose heresiology equally works on the level of Jewish apologetic and antiChristian polemic. According to Zellentin, the Talmud attacks an interior enemy of the rabbis, symbolized by a rabbi's erudite sister, about whom it implies to have approached Christianity for mere social and financial benefits. The text simultaneously refutes some major Christian claims about the abrogation of the Torah and the exile of the Jews, and undermines Christian triumphalism by exposing internal Christian incongruence and moral corruption. Israel Jacob Yuval, in "The Other in Us: Liturgica, Poetica, Polemica," works at the nexus of Jewish heresiology and anti-Christian polemics. He looks at the history and meaning of a number of passages in the Jewish Morning Prayer (or Shaharit): the opening section, Pesukei de-Zimra, (especially its added subsection Ashrei); and its conclusion, Tahanun, (especially its opening Vehu Rahum and Psalm 20) and Uva Ie-Zion. Each time, Yuval demonstrates that these prayers have developed in response to Christian theology or liturgy, and have changed their meanings accordingly over the centuries. His contribution shows once more how from Late Antiquity to the early Middle Ages the opponents which most threatened to blur Jewish identity from within and without were perceived as close to Christianity and its theology, liturgy, and exegesis. Challenged to rethink "heresy" and "orthodoxy" in a relational, contextual, and discursive perspective, the contributors to this volume engaged the above questions, found themselves in disagreement with some positions, refined others, and opened new views on heresy and identity in Late Antiquity. What the essays share is an attempt to de-familiarize their readers from the safe topoi of Jewish and Christian history. They invite us to explore the discursive construction of the "other," unravel the "imagined communities" and "ethnic identities," and re-create the multiple voices textured in the intense dialogue between the "orthodox" and "heretical" writers. In the process, they expose ideological hideouts of modem repercussions of ancient heresiology - spots usually shadowed by ethnic reasoning, theological preconceptions, and scholarly anti-Semitism.
Social and Theological Effects of Heresiological Discourse KAREN L. KING
In taking up the topic "Making Selves and Marking Others," our conveners have asked us "to consider the different functions of 'heresy' -making discourse, as a simultaneous process of perceiving, describing, and disqualifying groups of (re )imagined dissenters, often by branding them with labels." This formulation recognizes that orthodoxy and heresy are not essential qualities that groups or ideas possess, but correlative and mutually reinforcing categories belonging to the dynamics of socialpolitical and intellectual processes of boundary-setting and identity formation. The question I want to raise here concerns the social-historical and theological-historical effects of this kind of discourse. If heresymaking discourse "makes and marks" both self and other, what difference does it make to approach the task of reconstructing ancient Christian history and theology from such a perspective? First of all, an author's inscribed perspective is not taken as the definitive expose of the situation. Rather, the work's goals and strategies become sites for interrogation and analysis. It becomes apparent that the "others" inveighed against by the heresiologists are always represented according to selective strategies and varied ends. l A polemical writer like Irenaeus, for example, can be quite forthcoming and specific about his goals, opponents, and strategies. In his major work, Against Heresies, he explicitly tells readers that his goal is to set out and defend the apostolic truth and the unity of the one true church. He readily gives us the names of his opponents, describes their objectionable teachings and reprehensible deeds, and pointedly depicts what is at stake for salvation should these heretics be believed: eternal damnation. His strategies are clearly set out when he puts in place a rule of faith and appeals to apostolic lineage or when he limits the number of gospels that should be considered 1 This is not to claim that the effects of such discourse are always the result of conscious intention on the part of an author; such discourse can have effects that extend in unintended directions. An example would be the impact of a particular theological position after a significant shift in historical-political positionality; one specific example discussed below concerns the acceptability of Irenaeus' and SRJ's (Secret Revelation of John) portrait of imperial power.
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authoritative. Yet because Irenaeus is seeking to persuade us to see the situation and the issues at stake as he constructs them, we come to mistrust the transparency of his presentation. Indeed as scholars have assessed the adequacy of Irenaeus' portraits of his opponents, his partiality and tendentiousness have become more clear. Moreover, his tone of derogation and ridicule are judged antithetical to modern canons of impartiality and even appear unseemly, intolerant, and uncivil. Not only his accuracy but his moral character have come into question. This approach thus can give rise to a new difficulty by impugning the character of authors and with it the trustworthiness of our sources as well as their transparency. The problem of trustworthiness can turn on a debate over the guilt or innocence of the author or over whether mistakes arise from purposeful misrepresentation or from ignorance. There are several reasons, however, why a moral test of character is not the best way to frame the issue of historical reliability. First of all, it does not seem appropriate to judge ancient authors by canons they would very likely reject as unprincipled. Would any of the early Christian polemicists have thought that truth was a matter of impartial objectivity? Did they not rather argue that verity was a matter of taking a stand on the side of God revealed by the Savior? It is not necessary to give up modern commitments to impartiality in order to see that Irenaeus does not share them. Instead we might ask, what difference does it make to represent truth through a discourse of orthodoxy and heresy rather than one of impartial objectivity? Second, it does not seem good to base historical reliability on authorial intentionality. Critics like Michel Foucault and Roland Barthes have argued that identifying the psychology of persons from their literary work is a slippery slope; they have pointed out that the notion of the "author" has its own history that has to be taken into account; and they have noted that appeal to authorship sometimes appears only as a modern strategy whose aim is to freeze a mono logical reading of a text as its one true meaning by extracting it from the flow of history.2 Moreover, the process of establishing authorial intent (through circular logic) by identifying it with a text's inscribed goals merely works to re-categorize one type of data (literary goals) as evidence of something else (the mentality of an individual). Rather, a text's inscribed goals and strategies (including its depiction of "heretical others") are better considered as reliable historical evidence of a particular positionality within a dialogical complex of voices that shift over time and place. From this perspective, the fact that the 2 See, for example, Michel Foucault, "What is an Author?" in Textual Strategies: Perspectives in Post-Structuralist Criticism (ed. Josue V. Harari; Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1979), 141-160; Roland Barthes, "The Death of the Author," in idem, Image, Music, Text (trans. Stephen Heath; New York: Hill and Wang, 1977), 142-148.
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evidence Irenaeus offers is not an objective and transparent account of the "others" he attacks does not mean that it is not reliable evidence of something. The question is what are our textual remains evidence of? One aspect of this problem lies in determining the social-historical status of such rhetorically constructed "others." Are they merely rhetorical tools to think with, imaginary entities whose fleeting existence is only an effect of polemical argument? Are they evidence of independent or identifiably distinct social groups, the phenomena of early Christian diversity? But even if such others existed, are heresiological representations so distorted that they cannot be taken as objective description of the phenomena they are constructed to control intellectually and politically?3 This is not to say that heresiologists like Irenaeus offer nothing of importance about their opponents' views and practices; it is to say that what they tell us (i.e., what the evidence is evidence of) cannot be assessed without understanding each work's particular discursive goals and strategies, as well as its carefully constructed theology and social-historical positionality. In order to understand the dynamics of group definition, scholars recognize that we need to analyze the specific kinds of discursive strategies at work in order to inquire into their possible social effects.4 The issue is important not only for learning about these "others," but also in properly understanding the heresiologists themselves. It is widely recognized that Irenaeus formulated his own theological positions in the context of his refutation of other early Christian views. In so doing, he became one of the most significant theologians of the second century, and his constructive response to his opponents shaped the direction that many aspects of future orthodoxy would take. We can only appreciate the enormity of what he accomplished in relation to the multiform struggles in which he participated. 5 Yet if, in reconstructing Irenaeus' theology as a 3 This problematic applies as well to boundary setting vis-it-vis non-Christians, especially in the Christian invention of "paganism" and a "usable Judaism" (see the discussion in Karen L. King, What is Gnosticism? (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2003), 20-54. 4 Although my language here may sound as though I am pursuing issues of causality ("strategy causes social effects"), the goal is rather to analyze the nexus of discursive practices of polemics ("heresiology") with other kinds of practices of identity formation. Neither should this analysis be viewed in terms of identifying authorial intent since not all effects of discourse are consciously intentional, given the subconscious workings of habitus (in the sense of Pierre Bourdieu, The Logic of Practice, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990) and given the multiple fragmentations beyond any author's control. 5 Adolf von Harnack, for example, insists that "the theology of Irenaeus remains a riddle so long as we try to explain it merely from the Apologists and only consider its antithetical relations to Gnosis" (History of Dogma, vol. 2 [trans. from the 3d. German ed., New York: Dover Publications, 1961], 231, n. 1).
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response to his opponents, they are merely reinscribed from his own rhetorical construction of them, the historical account has not moved beyond Irenaeus' own partial perspective. In moving beyond this impasse, scholars have focused in particular on analyzing the rhetorical strategies of the discourses of orthodoxy and heresy employed in each case, and on assessing the polemical treatises with regard to external social-historical data and especially new textual finds, like those from Nag Hammadi and elsewhere, which represent positions similar to the persons and/or groups he was arguing against. Such work offers considerable insight not only into the theological perspectives of the heresiologists and those they opposed, but it also lays bare the complex and passionate ferment in which Christians engaged each other in their multifarious doings. Ancient Christian discourses of orthodoxy and heresy deployed a limited number of strategies, variously used to various ends. 6 These included inter alia: contrasting the unity of the true Church with the divisiveness of heretics; attacking the character of one's opponents; devising competing genealogies (e.g., from Christ versus Satan); alleging that heresy is produced by outside contamination of an originally pure faith; asserting that orthodox truth is chronologically prior to the inventions of the heretics; and institutionalizing certain structures of authority (delimiting the canon of Scripture to certain texts, limiting who was allowed to interpret Scripture and how, establishing a rule of faith, rationalizing a hierarchical leadership structure, regulating ritual practices, and so on). In practice, early Christian discourses of difference operated by treating differences differently. Some are emphasized or even created (e.g., to sharpen boundaries). Others are harmonized to make them disappear (e.g., to give the appearance of internal uniformity). Others are simply ignored, never rising to the level of discursive employment (these are differences that didn't make a difference). Where do we see these discursive strategies operating in early Christianity and what specific effects did they produce?7 6 See Alain Le Boulluec, La notion d'hiresie dans la litterature grecque Ir-IIr siecies (Paris: Etudes Augustiniennes, 1985); King, What is Gnosticism? 7 I focus here only on the practices of the early polemicists, especially Irenaeus, without consideration of how their rhetoric continues to produce suspect categories such as Gnosticism; see Morton Smith, "The History of the Term Gnostikos," in The Rediscovery of Gnosticism: Proceedings of the International Conference on Gnosticism at Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, March 28-31, 1978, vol. 2: Sethian Gnosticism (ed. Bentley Layton; Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1981), 796-807; Frederik Wisse, "Stalking Those Elusive Sethians," in Layton, The Rediscovery of Gnosticism, vol. 2, 563-576; Bentley Layton, "Prolegomena to the Study of Ancient Gnosticism," in The Social World of the First Christians: Essays in Honor o/Wayne A. Meeks (ed. L. Michael White and O. Larry Yarbrough; Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995),334-350; Michael A.
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Two brief examples will suffice here to illustrate the kind of approach I am suggesting.
The Call to Unity and the Production of Division One strategy with multiple effects involved rhetorically contrasting the unity of the true Church with the divisiveness of heresy by fabricating heretics. It would appear, for example, that Epiphanius invented whole cloth groups that never existed, such as the Stratiotics and Socratites. Not only are these groups mentioned nowhere else in ancient literature, but his presentation of eighty heresies to match the profligacy of Solomon's concubines suggests creative hermeneutics rather than careful sociological description. 8 In this case, the lack of corroborating external evidence for these groups' existence, along with the appeal to allegorical interpretation of Scripture, supports a judgment that these (and perhaps other) groups may have been invented solely to multiply the role call of heretical groups and thereby create the rhetorical impression of error by emphasizing a chaos of conflicting beliefs and disunity. Another creative effect of this discourse may have been to turn multiform phenomena into monolithic entities. An example here would be the Ebionites. Taylor has suggested that the patristic term "Ebionites" functioned to mass together a variety of persons or groups "who followed Jewish customs for various reasons and in various ways in order to present a precise identifiable heresy .... It is by no means the case that they would have defined themselves as sectarian or given themselves a name."9 From this perspective, the production of "Ebionism" as a monolithic entity would appear to be the effect of heresiological polemics, not sociological description. But in contrast to Epiphanius' Stratiotics or Socratites, Ebionites do not appear to have been invented whole cloth. As Taylor documents, there is widespread evidence of a range of Jewish practices within Christian communities. Indeed defining the proper relationship to Judaism was one of the most hotly contested issues among Christians in Williams, Rethinking 'Gnosticism ': An Argument for Dismantling a Dubious Category (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996); King, What is Gnosticism?; or Jewish Christianity, see Joan E. Taylor, "The Phenomenon of Early Jewish-Christianity: Reality or Scholarly Invention?" VC 44 (1990): 313-34; Adam H. Becker and Annette Yoshiko Reed eds., The Ways that Never Parted: Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (Tubingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003); Karen L. King "Which Early Christianity," in The Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Studies (ed. Susan Ashbrook Harvey and David Hunter; Oxford: OUP), forthcoming. 8 See Epiphanius, Pan arion 1.35,3,5. 9 Taylor, "The Phenomenon of Early Jewish Christianity," 324.
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the first centuries. The construction of "Ebionites" may then be a sign that some Christians wanted to construct clear boundaries of who was in and who was out in situations that were in fact ambiguous, or at least contested. In this light, polemic against "Ebionites" seems to be evidence not of a well-defined group or groups of Jewish-Christians (however defined),l0 but evidence of the variety of contested ways in which Christians were defining the relationship to Jewish Scripture, practices, and worshiping communities.l 1 We see here, too, that a sharpening of the boundaries with outsiders requires a reciprocal tightening of conformity within. Another effect of this discourse may have been reform. Einar Thomassen has recently argued that at some point in second-century Rome, the "idea of the unity of 'the church' " led some Christians, such as Hermas, Marcion, and Va1entinus, to regard "the existing diversity among Christians ... as intolerable." This dissatisfaction led, he suggests, to attempts at reform that were intended to institute moral, ritual, and/or doctrinal uniformity.12 These efforts may have had the concomitant, but perhaps unanticipated effect of accentuating differences and hardening lines of division. In this way, the rhetoric of church unity itself may have contributed to division. Along similar lines, Peter Lampe has argued that until the episcopacy of Victor (c. 189-199 CE), Christianity in Rome was made up of "topographically separate house churches" (a condition he calls "fractionation"). As Lampe points out, despite the fact that beliefs and practices might differ among these churches, "hardly any Roman Christian group excluded another group in the city from communion of the faithful apart from a few significant exceptions."13 Lampe has argued for the Roman situation that "fractionation into house congregations does not exclude that the Christian islands scattered around the capital city were aware of being in spiritual fellowship with each other, of perceiving themselves as cells of one church, and of being united by common 10 For more on the problematic designation "Jewish-Christianity," see Taylor, "The Phenomenon of Jewish-Christianity," esp. 319-320, where she notes that in third-century Egypt, Origen of Alexandria refers to people who attend the synagogue on Saturday and the Church on Sunday; in Syria, Ephrem notes Christians who shared the Passover supper with Jews; and in the fourth century, John Chrysostom wrote eight homilies to discourage Christians from celebrating the Jewish festivals. See also the discussion of Jewish Christianity in Becker and Reed, Parting of the Ways, 1-24. 11 See King, "Which Early Christianity? 12 See Einar Thomassen, "Orthodoxy and Heresy in Second-Century Rome," HTR 97.3 (2004): 241-56. 13 Peter Lampe, From Paul to Valentinus: Christians at Rome in the First Two Centuries (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003),385.
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bonds. "14 How and why did this change? He agrees with Thomassen that some (Marcion, Cerdo, and some Christians who maintained certain Jewish practices) may have withdrawn in the interest of reform or purity but these in his view only constitute "the significant exceptions. "15 The major change to the situation of inclusivity apparently occurred when Victor attempted to institute a monarchical episcopate over the previously favored system of collegial presbyterial governance by excommunicating dissenters.16 Here practices of institutionalization come to the fore in conjunction with a discursive emphasis on unity. Although Victor's actions had significant consequences for the eventual shape of Christian orthodoxy, it would probably be wrong to think that the motives of Victor differed significantly from the impulses of other reformers who aimed to bring real unity to the churches. The excommunications by Victor were similarly directed at the formation of a hierarchical institutional order which claimed both to embody and to protect that unity. Only the strategies differed. Again, one effect of the early Christian rhetoric of unity and uniformity may have been the production of division. Although differences had existed from the first century and continued to exist, division would not necessarily have resulted from those differences apart from the discursive emphasis on unity, at least in the forms it took by Victor in Rome. The reason is that a particular kind of unity was being imagined. As the case in Rome illustrates, difference per se and even some social distinctiveness did not in that case disturb unity (although there are limits to tolerable difference, as we will see below). It was only when unity was understood to require an enforced uniformity that charges of heresy could be made and exclusive social divisions produced. Another kind of case would be Montanism. 17 While this movement has long been a regular item in the usual heresy lists, scholars are unsure exactly why, given that there is no sound evidence of sharp doctrinal or behavioral "deviation." The supposed problem is said to be their "spiritual enthusiasm" (e.g., that their discipline was too strict and they were too eager for martyrdom). Yet it is hard to say why long fasts, eschewing second marriage, or specifying the exact length of women's veils would be so problematic as to lead to charges of heresy and exclusion. Moreover, 14 Lampe, From Paul to Valentinus, 398. 15 Ibid, 392-394. 16 Ibid, 397-408. 17 For sources and a general introduction to Montanism, see Ronald E. Heine, The Montanist Oracles and Testimonia (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1989); William Tabbemee, Montanist Inscriptions and Testimonia: Epigraphic Sources Illustrating the History of Montanism (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1996); Christine Trevett, Montanism: Gender, Authority and the New Prophecy (Cambridge: CUP, 1996).
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Tabbernee has argued that "the attitudes of the Montanists to martyrdom did not differ substantially from those of their orthodox opponents,"18 so why was their "enthusiasm" so roundly condemned? Some scholars have suggested that the primary problem may have concerned authority, given that Montanists gave great authority to prophets and allowed women's leadership, as funerary inscriptions from Phrygia have confirmed. 19 It would, nonetheless, seem that over the years, the rhetorical condemnation of Montanists was extremely effective; Montanists apparently did become increasingly separate from other forms of Christianity. In this case, the rhetorical charge of heresy did not merely describe schism but may have actually produced it. The situation is somewhat different with what might at first glance appear to be a similar case: Valentinians. Our earliest evidence suggests that in the second century they were part of the mix of Roman Christianity, until polemicists worked so hard to paint them as heretics and exclude them from shared fellowship. The last we hear of a Valentini an institution is a report of monks burning a Valentinian church in 388. 20 Here again it would seem that polemics (and the violence that could accompany them) were highly effective. In contrast to the Montanists, however, the Valentini an case is less one of magnifying minor differences than of deciding where the limits of tolerable difference lay. Elaine Pagels has recently argued that issues of practice were crucial in determining which doctrinal differences might be problematic. She points out that as long as Christians could affirm the same central beliefs and practices, a certain latitude in how certain doctrines were conceptualized or precisely how certain practices were performed did not require schism. Even Irenaeus "encouraged his fellow believers to tolerate certain variations of viewpoint and practice," for example in accepting not just one but four variant gospels, and not insisting that all Christians celebrate Easter on the same day. The problem, she argues, came with the Valentinians' practice of a second baptism because it introduced division within congregations. 21 At this point, the difference became intolerable - at least for Irenaeus. But to further complicate matters, it is clear that his refutation was not universally 18 William Tabbernee, "Early Montanism and Voluntary Martyrdom," Colloquium 17 (1985): 43. 19 See Trevett, Montanism, 146-150; Tabbernee, Montanist Inscriptions. 20 Klaus Koschorke, "Patristische Materialen zur Spatgeschichte der valentinianischen Gnosis," in Gnosis and Gnosticism: Papers Read at the Eighth International Conference on Patristic Studies (Oxford, September 3rd_S 1h , 1979) (ed. Martin Krause; Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1981); Einar Thomassen, The Spiritual Seed. The Church of the 'Valentinians' (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2006), 491-508. 21 Elaine H. Pagels, Beyond Belief The Secret Gospel of Thomas (New York: Random House, 2003), 131-141.
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effective, for in the fourth century we find Valentinian texts still in the hands of (supposedly) orthodox Pachomian monks, as the discovery at Nag Hammadi illustrates. 22 For the fourth-century monks of Egypt, perhaps adherence to ascetic practice proved more pertinent to unity than arcane baptismal rituals. In this case, we may very well have to distinguish between the existence of sectarian groups of Valentinians and a much wider circulation of Valentini an texts that either ignores such borders or provides evidence of a continued intermingling and muddied identity among Christians of various stripes well into the fourth century. The point is that these matters were not settled once and for all; we have to contend with the continuing contestation over which differences should make a difference. In conclusion, we can see from this brief sketch that at least one discursive element - the emphasis on unity - could have been a factor in producing division. It also illustrates how the real problem in drawing boundary lines could often be similarities. Even where fundamental - and intolerable - differences exist, similarities worked to muddle clear boundary-setting. To clarify the lines, it was necessary for discursive rhetoric to establish clear differences and as much as possible to erase similarities. This leads to the next line of approach: If we want to understand the theological arguments in which Christians engaged, we have to understand that the rhetorical efforts to produce clear social boundaries could work to obscure what the early Christians were arguing about and what was at stake. Here is where the new texts help.
Deploying Body Symbolism: Irenaeus and the Secret Revelation of John In Against Heresies (AgHer),23 Irenaeus' rhetoric works hard to draw sharp lines of differentiation between himself and his opponents. In the process, those theological views he shares with them are obscured and differences are accentuated, producing a highly polarized portrait. He sets the agenda of the debate in how he characterizes these "others." Generally speaking, Irenaeus condemns his opponents as heretics because, he claims, they 22 See the discussion of James E. Goehring, Ascetics, Society, and the Desert: Studies in Early Egyptian Monasticism (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press, 1999), 173-179. 23 All references to Against Heresies from the critical edition of Adelin Rousseau and Louis Doutreleau, Irenee de Lyon, Contre les heresies, 5 vols. (Paris: Les Editions de Cerf, 1979); English translation (sometimes modified) from A. Cleveland Coxe, The Apostolic Fathers with Justin Martyr and Irenaeus, vol. 1 of The Ante-Nicene Fathers, (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1885, repr. 1979).
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rejected the God of the Hebrew Bible as the true God and creator of the cosmos. Against what he saw as the clear evidence of Scripture, they denied the divine goodness of both the creator and the creation. The heretics practiced asceticism, but only as hatred of the flesh. Moreover, they undermined salvation and the meaning of the eucharist by denying both that Jesus had a physical body and that believers would physically rise from the dead even as Jesus had. Instead, Irenaeus claimed, the heretics presumptuously claimed that only a spiritual elite would be "saved by nature" owing to their heavenly origin; salvation came not by faith in Christ but through knowledge revealed only to them. In Irenaeus' view, such a position was arrogant as well as erroneous. 24 Due to discoveries in the Egyptian desert, we now possess copies of one work that Irenaeus opposed: The Secret Revelation of John (SRJ).25 If we were to try to formulate its response to Irenaeus, our interlocutor might say something like: Irenaeus has mistaken the world creator, whom Scripture clearly shows to be a jealous, violent, and vengeful pretender-God (Satan), for the true God. Thus he has denied the divine goodness of the true God and Creator who is purely goodness, light, compassion, and truth by falsely attributing to God all manner of evil and all the ills of the world: suffering, death, unjust rule, violence, jealousy, and their like. By insisting that the physical body is the self, such people as Irenaeus have forgott~n that the flesh is manifestly perishable while God is imperishable. While the body can indeed be purified and perfected from passion, ignorance, and sin, it is not immortal even though it has been stamped with the divine image. Irenaeus further impugns the goodness of God by condemning the majority of (carnal) humanity to eternal death, suggesting that he and those who agree him alone possess the Spirit and have been destined for salvation, while in fact Christ teaches that the true God saves all (except those few apostates who blaspheme the Spirit). Such people as Irenaeus wrongly and arrogantly claim that only they have the true teaching of Christ that leads to salvation. 26 Although this imaginative exercise in mirror-imaging illustrates some important points about the differences between Irenaeus and SRJ, it focuses our understanding of the conflict solely on differences. It may also falsely impute a kind of mutuality and reciprocity of interests that is misleading; that is, what is at stake for Irenaeus may be different from See the discussion of King, What is Gnosticism? 26-27. See Karen L. King, The Secret Revelation of John (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006), 7-24. All references to SRJ follow the numbering of the translation in King, The Secret Revelation of John; corresponding numerations of the four manuscripts are provided in an appendix. 26 Irenaeus can speak of the "genus" of those who were saved from the beginning (Ag Her IV.28.2). 24 25
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what is important to SRJ. If comparison of the two were to include both similarities and differences, a more complex dynamic appears and other issues come to the fore. A full list of similarities would require more space than can be allotted here, but certain striking features stand out. Irenaeus and SRJ share a basic theological and cosmological schema. For both the divine sphere is headed by a Divine Triad with numerous lower divine beings (angels, archangels, lights, aeons). Both describe the fall of a heavenly being .(Satan or Sophia/Yaldabaoth) as crucial to the nature and origin of evil. Both affirm that humanity was created in the image of God, and understand salvation as perfecting that resemblance to God though the reception of the Spirit, baptism, and moral purification. They agree that the true revelation comes through Christ, and that the human self (body, soul, and spirit) is the primary site of divine revelation in the world. Both divide those who will be saved into three groups, and both exclude those who are lost as apostates. Within this shared schema, notable differences appear. For example, the Divine is gendered as male or neuter in Irenaeus (Father/Son/Spirit), while it is male and female in SRJ (Father/Mother/Son). While both agree that the true God is the creator of all that truly exists, Irenaeus assumes this to include creation of the lower world by the true God while SRJ attributes it to the fallen being, Yaldabaoth. For Irenaeus, the world is thus the perfect creation of God, while for SRJ it is a parodic imitation of God's true heaven above. For Irenaeus, human salvation requires the resurrection of the flesh; while for SRJ, the flesh has no part in eternal life in the Divine Realm. Numerous other points could be made, but these are sufficient to show substantive differences incapable of harmonization even by the most skilled hermeneut. Although no theological "system" is ever totalizing in logic or practice, the inclusivity of alternative voices has limits. It is hard if not impossible to see how any group could hold at once the view that the true God both did and did not create the world; that the fleshly body is both resurrected and has no part in eternal life, and so on. But admitting these limits to tolerable difference only raises more sharply the question of what was at stake in how one viewed God, creation, and the body. Surely Irenaeus would not have spilled so much ink, so much passion, and such vituperation if his opponents' views did not seem plausible or even preferable. I want to suggest that more was at stake here than Irenaeus lets us see. Comparing these two works shows that both are committed to a portrait of God as good and just; both are fundamentally interested in addressing the problem of human suffering and salvation; and both understand the human body to be fundamental to revelation and salvation.
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Differences arise primarily from where they focus when conceptualizing justice and in their very different deployments of body symbolism. We can start with Irenaeus' allegation that heretics claim God is not able to vivify the flesh with immortality (e.g., AgHer V.3.3). That is of course quite provocative since it suggests that the heretics limit God's power. 27 But at least SRJ says no such thing. In an elaborate discourse on God as the transcendent One, it affirms that the God and Father of All cannot be limited, but exists as a monarchy with nothing ruling above It (SRJ 4.2, 13). God "is the immeasurable light, the pure one who is holy and unpolluted, the ineffable one who is incorruptibly perfect" (SRJ BG 4.20-21). In contrast, matter and the flesh are associated with limitation, corruption, and suffering. Far from thinking that God is not able to vivify the flesh, SRJ does not seem to think one would want a fleshly resurrection. To return to God means to leave the flesh behind, for God transcends the material realm. Moreover, God's goodness would preclude corruptibility and death - and hence the physical body - from the Divine Realm. Irenaeus agrees in characterizing God as transcendent and in associating the flesh with suffering, subjection, and corruptibility, but he insists that justice requires recompense must be given in kind. Because unjust suffering and endurance in trials such as martyrdom occurred in the body, the righteous should be rewarded in the body. For it is just that in that very creation in which they (the righteous) toiled or were afflicted, being proved in every way by suffering, they should receive the reward of their suffering; and that in the creation in which they were slain because of their love to God, in that they should be revived again; and that in the creation in which they endured servitude, in that they should reign. For God is rich in all things, and all things are His. It is fitting, therefore, that the creation itself, being restored to its primeval condition, should without restraint be under the dominion of the righteous (AgHer V.32.1).28
But Irenaeus goes further and argues that suffering is positively useful. It can be pedagogical and work to edify one's moral and spiritual character. Even death and the dissolution of the body are viewed this way. So also our bodies, being nourished by it [eucharist], and deposited in the earth, and suffering decomposition there, shall rise at their appointed time. The Word of God grants them resurrection to the glory of God, even the Father, who freely gives to this mortal immortality, and to this corruptible incorruption, because the strength of God is made perfect in weakness, in order that we may never become puffed up, as if we had life from 27 A third-century text offers a counter-claim: Against those who believe in the resurrection of the flesh, The Testimony of Truth 37.5-9 reads, "They do not know the power of God, nor do they understand the interpretation of the Scriptures on account of their dou.ble-mindedness." 28 Coxe, Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. I, 561. Irenaeus then cites Romans 8.19-21 in support.
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ourselves, and exalted against God, our minds becoming ungrateful; but learning by experience that we possess eternal duration from the excelling power of this Being, not from our own nature, we may neither undervalue that glory which surrounds God as He is, nor be ignorant of our own nature, but that we may know what God can effect, and what benefits man receives, and thus never wander from the true comprehension of things as they are, that is, both with regard to God and with regard to man (AgHer Y.2.3).29
If reward must come in the same coinage for the recompense to be fitting, and suffering is necessary to instruct humanity in the truth, then the fleshly body is necessary to salvation. This is why Christ came in the flesh. For Irenaeus, the body is necessary to perfect humanity's likeness to God. 30 True humanity is composed of spirit, soul, and body (AgHer V.6.1). Created in the divine image and likeness, the likeness to God was lost due to apostasy (by the sin of Adam and Eve through the temptation of Satan). Yet all human beings, body and soul, retain the image of God and hence in some sense are the fleshly revelation of God in the world. But this revelation is imperfect because the likeness to God was lost. Christ, who is the perfect revelation of God, came to restore that full likeness by granting humanity a vision of God revealed in the incarnation of Christ and in his ministry, death, and resurrection: [F]ollowing the only true and steadfast Teacher, the Word of God, our lord Jesus Christ, who did, through His transcendent love, become what we are, that He might bring us to be even what He is Himself '" For in no other way could we have learned the things of God, unless our Master, existing as the Word, had become human. For no other being had the power of revealing to us the things of the Father, except His own proper Word. For what other person "knew the mind of the Lord," or who else "has become His counselor?" Again we could have learned in no other way than by seeing our Teacher, and hearing His voice with our own ears, that, having become imitators of His works as well as doers of His words, we may have communion with Him, receiving increase from the perfect One, and from Him who is prior to all creation ... Since the Lord thus has redeemed us through His own blood, giving His soul for our souls, and His flesh for our flesh, and has also poured out the Spirit of the Father for the union and communion of God and humanity, imparting indeed God to human beings by means of the spirit, and on the other hand, attaching humanity to God by his own incarnation, and bestowing upon us at His coming immortality durably and truly, by means of communion with God - all the doctrines of the heretics fall to ruin (AgHer V. preface-I. 1),31
29 Coxe, flnte-Nicene Fathers, vol. I, 528.
The discussion of Irenaeus' theology is extensive; see, for example, Eric Osborn, Irenaeus of Lyons (Cambridge: CUP, 2001), 211-231; Jules Gorss, The Divinization of the Christian according to the Greek Fathers (Anaheim: A&C Press, 2002), 120-131; Ysabel de Andia, Homo vivens: Incorruptibilite et divinisation de /'homme selon Irenee de Lyon (Paris: Etudes Augustiniennes, 1986). 31 Coxe, Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. I, 526-527. 30
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Salvation takes place through reception of the Spirit perfecting the body and soul. As Irenaeus emphasizes, "This does not take place by the casting away of the flesh, but by the impartation of the Spirit ... (which) will render us like unto God, and accomplish the will of the Father; for it shall make humanity after the image and likeness of God" (AgHer V.7.1; see also V.1.3; VJ.8.1; V.36.3). The transformation of humanity to be like God means that the corruptible flesh will become immortal; suffering and death will not pertain to the resurrected body. While this position overcomes SRJ's difficulty with Irenaeus including the limitations of the material body in the immortal realm, it simultaneously requires Irenaeus to redefine the material body fundamentally. Irenaeus discursively deploys the ancient conceptualization of the body to symbolize corruption and change, but in two contrasting modes: on the one hand, bodily suffering and death symbol human sinfulness; on the other hand, bodily changeability is refigured as the possibility of ultimate transformation to a state beyond all change and beyond mortality itself. For Irenaeus, the history of salvation is the history of bodily creation, fall, and restoration. 32 Thus in Irenaeus' hands, the body symbols both the mutability of human degradation and the capacity for divine immutability. Irenaeus would have his readers believe that in contrast to his positive representation of the body's capacity for divine transformation, heretics hate the body, polluting its divine likeness through sin and error. Denying that human flesh was created by God, they could never understand the potency of Christ's incarnation nor the effectiveness of baptism, the eucharist, and bodily practices of virtue. If we were to follow his perspective, we might expect these heretics to show little preoccupation 32 These states are at times presented as sequential episodes in the history of salvation, but in other contexts they appear as stages in a soul's progress: "The presbyters, the disciples of the apostles, affirm that this is the gradation and arrangement of those who are saved, and that they advance through steps of this nature; also that they ascend through the Spirit to the Son, and through the Son to the Father, and that in due time the Son will yield up His work to the Father" (Irenaeus, AgHer V.36.1-2; Coxe, Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 1, 567, modified). Or again, Irenaeus writes of salvation as "the Spirit indeed working, and the Son ministering, while the Father was approving, and humanity'S salvation being accomplished" (AgHer V.20.6). Donovan understands these stages as different ways in which God can be seen: "These differ in kind through time, and also according to which of the Three (God, Spirit/Wisdom, or Word/Son) is acting. . .. The Spirit prepares human beings in the Son of God, and the Son leads them to the Father ... Prophetic seeing is a preparatory seeing under the guidance of the Spirit. Adoptive seeing happens through the ,agency of the Son, and there Irenaeus intends the incarnate .Son. Paternal seeing has to do with the state of glory, where the Father gives eternal incorruption, the final gift to those who see God" (Mary Ann Donovan, One Right Reading? A Guide to Irenaeus, Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1997, 117).
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with the body, except perhaps to condemn it. This proves not to have been the case. An extensive portion of SRJ - almost a quarter of the longer version - is taken up with describing the human body. The discursive deployment of body symbolism, however, differs markedly from Irenaeus' use. SRJ follows the ancient pattern in which the human body is represented as a microcosm of macro cosmic reality. In SRJ, materiality is itself an indissociable effect of power dynamics. 33 The human body came into being only in the play of the forces of power to control the Spirit, and in that sense, it is the effect of a power struggle. This fact is apparent in the body's double genealogy - made in the image of the First Human who appears in a luminous male form on the waters below, and formed in the likeness of Yaldabaoth and his minions. Thus Adam is perfect insofar as he is the image of divine perfection, but he is simultaneously flawed by possessing the characteristics of the world rulers who formed him. Their power over his psychic and physical body penetrates all of its parts, including the senses, the material elements, and the passions. This bodily SUbjection is the basis. of all human suffering. And yet the bodily nature is not itself the problem, for Christ says that when the first human body received the Spirit of Sophia and moved, it was free from wickedness, wiser than the rulers, and luminous. In the end, the flesh itself is not an impediment to salvation. As Christ tells John: Those upon whom the Spirit of the Life will descend and (with whom) it will be powerfully present, they will be saved and will become perfect. And they will become worthy of the great realms. And they will be purified in that place from all evil and the concerns of wickedness. Then they will not take care for anything except the imperishability alone, attending to it from this point on without anger or envy or jealousy, or desire or greed of anything at all. For they are not restrained by anything except the reality of the flesh alone, which they bear while fervently awaiting the time when they will be visited by those who will receive (them). For such as these are worthy of the imperishable eternal life and the calling (SRJ II 23 .4-11).
While the flesh is a constraint, people can overcome evil by concerning themselves with what is imperishable. In the end, despite all the temptations and violence to which humanity is exposed, and all the sins and impurities they commit in ignorance of the truth, humanity will be saved and brought back to the Light Aeons that have been prepared for them from eternity. This hope is based on creation in the image of God. The task of salvation is to conform fully to that pure image by overcoming 33 See, for example, Judith P. Butler, Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of "Sex" (New York: Routledge, 1993). Some of the discussion which follows uses her approach (esp. pp. 2-3) as a cipher for reading bodies and sexualities in The Secret Revelation of John.
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humanity's likeness to the world-rulers. The real struggle is not the spirit against the body; rather the human body is the battlefield upon which the opposing forces of the true Spirit and the counterfeit spirit struggle. In SRJ, salvation is not understood as the atonement of Christ for human sin, but as a restoration of proper order to the divine household. The Divine Realm is represented on the model of the patriarchal household: Father, Mother, and Son, along with various other relatives and associates of the extended ancient familia. 34 It is thus an entirely traditional, if somewhat idealized model of the perfectly ordered household; its harmony and unity are ensured by proper lines of ruling and obedience following the hierarchy of origin, power, and preeminence. Sophia disrupts this order by acting without the consent of the Father or her male partner. Salvation therefore requires the "restoration of primordial household order," which, as Michael Williams points out,35 is one of Pronoia' s declared purposes for her descent in the final hymn of the longer version (SRJ II 26.12-13). For SRJ as for Irenaeus, the body manifests both the image of God in the world and reveals the nature of evil in the world. It is an important site of divine revelation. In SRJ, the suffering of the body and the human experience of injustice expose the truth of the world rulers' nature: they are evil and ultimately destined for dissolution. In ethics, too, the body reveals the nature of good and evil by exposing the lower creator gods for what they are: malignant rulers and false gods who seek only to dominate that which is superior to them through lies and violence. SRJ here discursively deploys the body to symbolize corruption and subjection; while the body may be cleansed and freed, it is not fundamentally transformed. Yet the human body is also simultaneously the revelation of the image of God in the world and the site of salvation through its capacity for purification from sin and passion. Bodily practices of baptismal ritual, instruction, and moral virtue manifest the presence of the Spirit laboring for the salvation of her seed. To say that SRJ considers the body to be evil by nature misses the complexity of the text's presentation of the human body as both map and territory,36 as both revelation and battleground, as the soul's ally and the demiurgic weapon against which it must struggle. 34 On the topic of "family as divine image," see the important discussion of Williams, Rethinking "Gnosticism," 154-157. He suggests that SRJ provides a model for reordering relationships of the social family into a greater likeness to the divine. 35 Williams, Rethinking "Gnosticism, " 155. 36 See Paula M. Cooey, Religious Imagination and the Body: A Feminist Analysis (Oxford: OUP, 1994), who talks about the body as site and as sign, linking the two by what she calls "mapping." The point is precisely not to give priority to the physical as a "given-real" and see signification as secondarily added on by culture; rather the body is always both site and sign. Or to put it another way, from this theoretical perspective, the
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We can now see the considerable similarities between Irenaeus and SRJ and start to consider the implications of their differences. For both, elaboration of the Genesis doublet "image and likeness" shapes their articulation of the human condition and human salvation. "Image" stands for the divine character of humanity, a status never lost to any person, and the basis for hope in ultimate salvation. "Likeness" stands for what went wrong and needs to be fixed. In these ways, both Irenaeus and SRJ inscribe directly onto the human body the tensions between image and likeness, creation and fall, spiritual perfection and sin, life and death. It is in explicating "likeness" that the major difference appears. For Irenaeus, "likeness" refers to the perfection intended by God at creation but lost through arrogant disobedience and sin. Salvation requires the restoration of that likeness by following the model of the incarnate Christ, in whom both the divine image and likeness appear in unsullied purity and power. At the final judgment, the perfect will be separated from the imperfect. 37 The perfect are those "who have had the Spirit of God remaining in them, and have preserved their souls and bodies blameless, holding fast the faith of God, that is, that faith which is directed toward God, and maintaining righteous dealings with respect to their neighbors" (AgHer V.6.1).38 The imperfect is a person in whom the Spirit is wanting, "who is such of an animal nature, being left carnal, possessing indeed the image in his formation but not receiving the likeness through the Spirit" (AgHer V.6.1). The flesh of believers will be transformed, its mortality being rendered immortal. 39 body is not a blank slate onto which culture writes its messages or constructs social order. 37 Irenaeus divides the perfect into three groups, graded according to their worth: those who are· worthy of an abode in heaven, those who shall enjoy the- delights of paradise, and others who shall possess the splendor of the city (Irenaeus, AgHer V.36.12). So, too, SRJ distinguishes among souls based on how well they do, dividing them into three categories: those who are perfect; those who are not perfect, but whom the Spirit strengthens and keeps from wickedness; and those who are purified from wickedness only after reincarnation (23.1--40). 38 Coxe, Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. I, 532. 39 It is less clear what happens to those who are condemned. It may be that the carnal do not receive the resurrection, but have death as their eternal punishment: "But on as many as, according to their own choice, depart form God, He inflicts that separation from himself which they have chosen of their own accord. But separation from God is death, and separation from light is darkness; and separation from God consists in the loss of all the benefits which He has in store. Those, therefore, who cast away by apostasy these fore-mentioned things, being in fact destitute of all good, do experience very kind of punishment. God, however, does not punish them directly of Himself, but that punishment falls upon them because they are destitute of all that is good. Now, good things are eternal and without end with God, and therefore the loss of these is also eternal and never-ending" (AgHer V. 27.2 Coxe, Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. I, 556).
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For SRJ, "likeness" refers to the arrogant wickedness of the world creator and his rulers, whose ignorance and disobedience are the whole cause of injustice and suffering. When humanity was formed in their counterfeit likeness, the luminous divine image of humanity was obscured by the darkness of fleshly passions and sin. Salvation requires overcoming that likeness by following and perfecting the model of the divine image in which one was created, as revealed by Christ and other divine messengers sent by the Mother. Christ teaches John that the human psyche and the material body are perfectible by -conforming to the image of God in which they were created, which is their true spiritual identity. The Mother sends the Spirit of Life to awaken the spiritual nature that people already possess and perfects them by making them truly human, spiritual people and members of the immovable race. 40 In the end, the spiritually perfected soul is taken up from the mortal flesh to eternal rest in the places that have been prepared for it. 41 What is at stake in how body symbolism is deployed? One major issue concerns the nature of justice. Both Irenaeus and SRJ are deeply invested in negotiating the moral terrain of social and political relations in the world. SRJ's cosmology is structured toward a radical social critique of power relations in the world below. The critique operates by sharply contrasting the ideal realm of the divine with the mundane world. The portrait of the transcendent Deity represents the utopian commitments of the SRJ, while the lower god and his minions exemplify everything that is wrong. The breach between them marks the nearly unbridgeable gap between the imagination of how things were supposed to be and how they were experienced. Christ repeatedly represents evil as hierarchy overturned, both in the deadly sway of the passions over the soul and in the inverted governance of the cosmos and the rulers' malicious attempts to deceive and entrap humanity. In this mythic economy, the inferior wrongly attempt to rule the superior. They rule not for the good of the governed but to satisfy their own arrogance and corrupt desire to dominate. Their repeated resort to deception and violence to maintain their illusory power merely underscores again and again the illegitimacy of their right to rule. This portrait leads ineluctably into a foundational critique of power relations in the world. 42 The path of salvation is modeled in SRJ by the 40 Wolf-Dieter Hauschild, Gottes Geist und der Mensch: Studien zur fruhchristlichen Pneumatologie (Munich: Kaiser Verlag, 1972),235,247. 41 These places are designated by four Aeons: Adam belongs to the aeon of Harmozel; Seth, to Oroiael; the seed of Seth to Daveithe; and the souls of those who didn't repent immediately but eventually did, to Eleleth (see SRJ9.1-14). 42 The reading of "gnostic" myth as social criticism is not new. Hans Jonas (Gnosis und spatantiker Geist: 1. Die mythologische Gnosis, 3d ed., Gottingen: Vandenhoek & Ruprecht, 1964, 214-215, 226-227), Hans G. Kippenberg ("Versuch einer
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disciple John. At the beginning of the story he is filled with doubt and perplexity. By the end he is confident, knowing the truth. Like John, those who gain salvation know who they truly are, where they belong, and how to gain peace and stability in a world of violence and deception. They know that they are the undimmed light of the world, the light that shines in the darkness and the darkness cannot overcome it. Their goal is to be freed, no longer a pawn and dupe of the powers that rule the world, but purified from all sin and evil. Baptismal ritual conveys the power of the Spirit, sealing and protecting humanity against the evil machinations of the world rulers and against all suffering. In contrast to this position, Irenaeus insists that all governance comes from God for human benefit. At AgHer V.24,43 he argues that the devil lied at the beginning when he claimed that the power to appoint the rulers of the kingdoms of this world belonged to him. It is not Satan, but God who appoints rulers - and not merely angelic powers or invisible principalities, but actual human authorities. Because of human anger, greed, and violence, God imposed "the fear of man upon man since they did not acknowledge the fear of God, in order that, being subjected to the authority of men, and kept under restraint by their laws, they might attain to some degree of justice, and exercise mutual forbearance through dread of the sword suspended full in their view." Even rulers who rule with deception, disgrace, and pride are from God. Nonetheless, all magistrates must answer for their conduct to God, with the result that those who subvert justice will perish in the end. In this schema, Irenaeus insists that Satan's power extends only so far as he is an apostate angel who works "to deceive and lead astray the mind of man into disobeying the commandments of God, and gradually to darken the hearts of those who would endeavor to serve him, to the forgetting of the true God, but to the adoration of himself as God." He does this "with greater and greater determination, in opposition to humanity, envying his life, and wishing to involve him his own apostate power." (Notably, this is essentially the same function as that served by the counterfeit spirit in SRJ). God, however, grants humanity the strength to deprive Satan of this power by returning again to God through repentance. Like suffering and death, violent and unjust government is pedagogical and punitive for Irenaeus. In very sharp contrast, SRJ contrasts God's goodness with the violence and injustice of the lower world rulers. For SRJ, justice soziologischen Verortung des antiken Gnostizismus," Numen 17 [1970]: 211-231), Kurt Rudolph (Gnosis: The Nature and History of Gnosticism, San Francisco, Harper and Row, 1983,264-268,292), and Walter Wink (Cracking the Gnostic Code: The Powers in Gnosticism, Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1993) have made similar suggestions, albeit for "Gnosticism" as a whole. 43 Coxe, Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. I, 552-553; see also AgHer IV. 28.1.
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consists in the restoration of the proper rule and order of God's household, not the rule of the righteous in the world below. Some have said "Gnosticism" faded away or merely hardened into anachronism because it was too negative about life in the world to not support a positive new order. 44 I don't think that's quite right. It isn't because SRJ was too "otherworldly," but because such an uncompromising critique of ruling power in the world below could ever have been compatible with the radical shift in the political condition of Christianity from persecuted sect to imperial favor, such as was established after the Emperor Constantine converted to Christianity in the fourth century. In an oration given at the celebration of Constantine's Tricennalia, the church historian Eusebius extravagantly praised the Emperor's sovereignty as a mirror of God's heavenly monarchy.45 Such a theology could never have squared with Christ's revelation in SRJ. Irenaeus' insistences that all governing power comes from God and that God holds those in power responsible were much more palatable to imperial rule. But Irenaeus and SRJ were writing in an earlier age, a time when Christians were dying for their "atheism" and "treason" in refusing'to give divine honors to the emperor. Indeed through the four hundred year period from the Republic to the Empire, judicial punishments in general became increasingly savage and increasingly public. Because' those with class privilege and ruling power could exercise arbitrary viciousness with impunity under the name of "law and order" over those who suffered without recourse, oppressive violence was associated with ruling power and privilege. 46 It was in this period that Irenaeus and SRJ produced their theologies. Irenaeus seems to have focused on the issue of martyrdom and formulated the issue in terms of God's justice: that suffering in the flesh is recompensed by reward in the flesh. He states that the whole reason for the Father revealing the Son is justice: justly to admit those who believe to 44 For a nuanced and articulate example, see Jonas, Gnosis und spiitantiker Geist, 1:227,n.2. 45 Laus Constantini (appended to Eusebius, Life of Constantine), cited from the discussion of Frances Young, "Christianity," in The Cambridge History of Greek and Roman Political Thought (ed. Christopher Rowe and Malcolm Schofield; Cambridge: CUP, 2000), 651-653. 46 See Ramsey MacMullen, "Judicial Savagery and the Roman Empire," in idem,' Changes in the Roman Empire: Essays in the Ordinary (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), 214-217. MacMullen notes that the habit of punishment was tied to the distance of rank and status that set apart those who ordered punishments and those who suffered them, a situation which allied violence with rank. Some scholars have been led by this to suggest that those who wrote and read the Secret Revelation of John were part of the elite classes who might be expected to exert power but who in the face of Roman imperium were relatively disenfranchised (see Rudolph, Gnosis, 288-292; Kippenberg, "Versuch einer soziologischen Verortung").
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eternal life, and justly to condemn those who do not. God here is the judge who mercifully saves and justly condemns. The main issue of justice for SRJ focuses instead upon a critique of unjust power relations in the world, and its theology distinguished sharply between the gracious rule of God and the impious attempts at domination by the world ruler. The main theological issue therefore was not, as Irenaeus would have it, a matter of heretics denying the power of God to vivify the flesh. The more fundamental issue was the nature of God's goodness and justice. Irenaeus was not oblivious to this fact. He argues against other Christians whom he claims look to God's acts of compassion in coming to save those who receive Him, but keep silent about God's judgment of those who have not followed His commands. Instead, he says, they "try to bring in another Father" (AgHer IV.6.5, 7). For SRJ, the "other Father" is precisely the lower god, who is the author of violence and injustice. Irenaeus tries to protect the notion of God's goodness by insisting that God does not punish sinners himself directly, but rather "that punishment falls upon them because they are destitute of all that is good" (AgHer V. 27.2).47 Nonetheless, SRJ demonstrates that not all Christians could square God's goodness with the notion that he sponsors wicked rulers to chastise a sinful humanity and institutes suffering as spiritual pedagogy. Some Christians apparently did not believe that martyrdom, death, and other suffering were always so clearly deserved or so spiritually useful. The comparison of Irenaeus and SRJ shows too that they are mobilizing the symbolizing and structuring potential of human bodies to do different kinds of work, to articulate different kinds of theological positionalities. It is not that one has a favorable view of the body and the other a negative view. For SRJ the body is map and territory of the cosmos, the revelation of the structure and substance of all that exists, and the ground on which the battle between the true Spirit and the counterfeit spirit is waged. The physical body, including sexuality, is perfectible through the reception of the Spirit, but ultimately will not be saved. For Irenaeus, the flesh is the creation of the true God, made in the divine image, but it requires the Spirit to perfect it, the Son to reveal its likeness to God, and the Father to grant it incorruptibility and glory. To reduce this complexity of bodily symbolism to a static polarization makes it impossible to see the dynamic intersections of sameness and difference that lie behind the struggles and negotiations of early Christian theological polemics. Here the discursive polemics of orthodoxy and heresy have worked to obscure the similarities between Irenaeus and SRJ both in substance and in strategy, as well as where the differences lie and what was at stake. By examining these, it becomes possible to see where 47 Coxe, Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. I, 556.
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there was (perhaps mutual?) incomprehension, where they simply have different theological foci or where they side-step, ignore, or simply fail to be cognizant of the interests of the other.
Conclusion In contrast to approaches to "orthodoxy and heresy" or "early Christian diversity" that define the task' of reconstructing early Christianity as a matter of identifying the lines of theological difference and social division, our conveners have asked us "to consider the different functions of 'heresy' -making discourse, as a simultaneous process of perceiving, describing, and disqualifying groups of (re )imagined dissenters, often by branding them with labels." This kind of approach suggests that the task is not merely to identify more precisely divisions that were simply there, but rather to ask about the social and theological effects of discursive rhetoric. The two examples above offer an initial indication of how these questions might be investigated. To what degree did such rhetoric produce divisions, hide theological similarities, or obscure the issues under debate and what was at stake in them? What difference does it make to represent truth through a discourse of orthodoxy and heresy rather than one of impartial objectivity? All this might then lead us to discuss early Christian diversity not in terms of a sociology of heresy, but within a general framework of early Christian identity formation - one in which discourses of orthodoxy and heresy are perceived as social and intellectual activities in need of analysis as much for their effects on early Christian life as for what they reflect of it.
Doxa, Heresy, and Self-Construction The Pauline Ekklesiai and the Boundaries of Urban Identities WILLIAM E. ARNAL
More and more, I am convinced, these [indigenous] people are "marginal" to history and modernity in nobody's eyes but our own. Indeed, at the point of the social action, the field on which indigenous people struggle to encompass what is happening to them in the terms of their own world system, theirs is the encompassing move on a peripheral culture of modernity. - Marshall Sahlins 1 Victi victoribus leges dederunt. - attributed to Seneca, On Superstition2
Introduction It is something of a common-place that imposing the categories of "heresy" and "orthodoxy" onto the earliest period of the Jesus-movements is extremely misleading - perhaps even impossible. Since "heresy" must be viewed as a relational term, that is, as existing in a structural position with respect to an "orthodoxy" in terms of both its identification and its contents, "we cannot assume that heresy has a fixed, immutable, ahistorical essence. Accordingly, the definition of heresy cannot be predicated on its contents."3 Heresy requires an orthodoxy, and both phenomena assume a fixed ideological standard against which to evaluate 1 Marshall Sahlins, Culture in Practice: Selected Essays (New York: Zone Books, 2000),9-10. 2 According to Augustine, The City of God Against the Pagans [William H. Green, LCL], 360. This quotation was brought to my attention in Jack N. Lightstone, The Commerce of the Sacred: Mediation of the Divine among Jews in the Graeco-Roman Diaspora, Brown Judaic Studies (Chico: Scholars Press, 1984),92. 3 Jacques Berlinerblau, "Toward a Sociology of Heresy, Orthodoxy, and Doxa," HR, 40 (2001): 331. See also, for example, Jeffrey Burton Russell, "Heresy: Christian Concepts," in Encyclopedia of Religion, vol. 4 (gen. ed. Mircea Eliade; New York: Macmillan, 1987),276.
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ideas, whereas no such standard actually existed - at least for the "religious" beliefs of the Jesus-people - in the first or even second centuries, in which the churches were instead radically diverse and lacking in any central authority to impose theological conformity.4 The retrojection of much later standards of acceptable belief is poor historical method. It treats the eventual and perhaps fortuitous ascendancy of particular groups, along with their favorite texts and doctrines, as somehow pertinent for the ages prior to that ascendancy. 5 And to assess "heresy" or "orthodoxy"
4 That the normative forms of later Christian orthodoxy were not dominant from the earliest historical periods - and hence that "heresy" cannot be described as a deviation from the first century's core doctrines - was famously argued by Walter Bauer, Rechtglaubigkeit und Ketzerei im altesten Christentum (Tubingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1934, repr., 1964); on which see Hans Dieter Betz, "Orthodoxy and Heresy in Primitive Christianity," Interpretation, 19 (1965): 310. "Orthodoxy in these terms is simply the final stage of a syncretistic process which after adaptations, influences, modifications, and the like, comes to a kind of 'establishment' "; and especially Rudolf Bultmann, Theology of the New Testament (trans. K. Grobel; New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1951-55), 2:137-38: " ... by the triumph of a certain teaching as the 'right doctrine' divergent teachings were condemned as heresy ... the 'great church' is only the most successful heresy .. , the differentiation of the various shades of teaching did not first arise in the post-apostolic period but was already present in the time of Paul ... " The diversity of even the most ancient forms of "Christianity" is emphasized also by Helmut Koester, "GNOMAI DIAPHOROI: The Origin and Nature of Diversification in the History of Early Christianity," in James M Robinson and Helmut Koester, Trajectories through Early Christianity (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1971), 114-57; idem, "The Structure and Criteria of Early Christian Beliefs," in J. M. Robinson and H. Koester, Trajectories through Early Christianity, 205-31. See also Rowan Williams, "Does It Make Sense to Speak of Pre-Nicene Orthodoxy?" in The Making of Orthodoxy: Essays in Honour of Henry Chadwick, (ed. Rowan Williams; Cambridge: CUP, 1989, repr., 2002), 1-23. More recently, such terms as "Gnosticism" have been called into question as retrospective and polemical constructs; see especially Michael Allen Williams, Rethinking "Gnosticism ": An Argument for Dismantling a Dubious Category (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996); Karen L. King, What Is Gnosticism? (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2003). Even in the second century, the development of a discourse of exclusion and inclusion did not straightforwardly take the form of the exclusion - institutional or rhetorical - of those ideas which later generations found unacceptable. The process was much more complex, and occasionally was initiated by the "heretics" themselves. For a fascinating discussion of Valentinus' relations with the church at Rome, and an explanation for that church's failure to eject him, see Einar Thomassen, "Orthodoxy and Heresy in Second-Century Rome," HTR 97 (2004): 241-56; for the role of Justin Martyr in "inventing" Christian heresiology, and an interpretation of his work as an effort to conceptualize Hellenistic universalism, see Rebecca Lyman, "2002 NAPS Presidential Address: Hellenism and Heresy," JECS 11 (2003): 209-22. 5 So. also Russell, "Heresy: Christian Concepts," 276: "It is thus intellectually impossible (as well as morally undesirable) to judge a person's orthodoxy or heresy by the standards of another period, although tendencies to do so have marred both Catholic
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apart from the explicit "insider" discourse thereof runs the risk of imposing a normative judgment of one's own, insofar as it implies that later or extraneous standards are essentially correct, and so can be used to evaluate the validity of conceptions and practices that they were· not formulated to assess. 6 Presumably, it is for reasons such as these - and no doubt others besides - that so few of the papers for this colloquium deal with firstcentury "Christian" materials. Such considerations, however, need not require that a discussion of heresy be obsolete, unproductive, or inapplicable to the first-century Jesusmovements. Clearly enough, a discourse of heresy and orthodoxy appears within the Christian movement in later periods, even when these terms are not explicitly invoked, and even if not always in the same terms, or with the same norms and suppositions, from one period to another. 7 If such a discourse can be analyzed, then it may also be possible to analyze its ostensible referents or functions. And indeed, this discourse does seem to refer to a genuine sociological phenomenon, one that is broader than the discourse's own quite particular frame of reference. Once we strip away the distinctively "religious" and late antique Christian (and, later, Muslim [bid 'a, "innovation"]) terminology through which the phenomenon receives its distinctive and quite narrow expression, what emerges is the reality of group insiders who redeploy "our" values and discursive tropes
and Protestant historical writings for centuries." Cf. Lyman, "Hellenism and Heresy," 210. 6 As is shown by Elaine Pagels, The Gnostic Paul: Gnostic Exegesis of the Pauline Letters (Harrisburg: Fortress Press, 1975, repr., 1992), esp. 158-163, the claim of the orthodox upon Paul and his letters as theologically authoritative was a later development, following from and endeavoring to repudiate gnostic (and especially Valentini an) exegesis of Paul's Letters. The subsequent appropriation and canonization of Paul cannot be used as evidence that these gnostic readings were invalid, or that the much later orthodox reading of Paul is the correct one. Cf. also the dismissal of dogmatic or theological judgments of "orthodoxy" or "heresy" offered by Kurt Rudolph, "Heresy: An Overview," in Encyclopedia of Religion, vol. 4 (trans. by M.J. O'Connell; gen. ed. Mircea Eliade; New York: Macmillan, 1987),271. 7 Paul himself in fact uses the term that later comes to mean "heresy" - hairesis - in 1 Corinthians 11: 19 and Galatians 5 :20, in both cases to denote factionalism as such (in Gal 5:20, the term is included in a list of vices, and is bracketed by dichostasiai [dissensions], on the one hand, andphthonoi [envy, jealousies] on the other) rather than "incorrect" opinions, though the former reference (1 Cor 11:19) does suggest that the presence of factions will illuminate who is "genuine." Cf. also the interesting (if nonPauline) use of hairetikon anthropon at Titus 3: 10, which the NRSV translates as "anyone who causes divisions." We can hardly regard these uses of the term, however, as being invested with its later significance, and thus cannot speak of Paul engaging in a discourse of "heresy" within his own ekklesia{
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in unacceptable ways.8 Obviously, such a description of "heresy" views it as a social fact like many others, one whose boundaries are artificially circumscribed by neither "religious" subject-matters nor by explicit invocation of the relevant terminology;9 in any instance in which we have such insider departure from the institutionalized norms or assumptions about behavior or belief, we have, de facto, heresy.lO This redefinition 8 The importance of "insider" identity is apparent even in the term used ("faction" implies a break from within), and is stressed as definitional by various scholars. See, e.g., George V. Zito, "Toward a Sociology of Heresy," Sociological Analysis 44 (1983): 125. "In heresy, the speaker employs the same language as the parent group, retains its values, but attempts to order its discourse to some other end," in contrast to apostasy, in which one leaves the groups and as a result "speaks some other language." Cf. Berlinerblau, "Sociology of Heresy," 335. This distinction is maintained in emic uses of the terminology as well; thus: "A heretic had to be a Christian; Jews, pagans, atheists, Muslims, or other non-Christians were held to be guilty of 'infidelity' rather than heresy," in Russell, "Heresy: Christian Concepts," 276. 9 Antique (and perhaps all) religion can be seen as a discourse of social self-definition - inclusion and exclusion - and so its own discussions of proper "religious" belonging (i.e., heresy and orthodoxy) are simply one aspect of a larger phenomenon. As Zito argues, heresy" ... is not, strictly speaking, a religious phenomenon, but an institutional phenomenon. It arose first within religion only because of the religious institution's central position in governing the discourses of a particular historical moment," Zito, "Sociology of Heresy," 126; cf. Berlinerblau, "Sociology of Heresy," 334. Cf. also Bourdieu's application of the language of heresy and orthodoxy to (secular) academic discourse in Pierre Bourdieu, "Vive la Crise! For Heterodoxy in Social Science," TS 17 (1988): 773. The centrality of "religious" discourse for social self-definition is also stressed by Martin Goodman: "It has long been claimed, with some justification, that the rites which enshrine human attitudes to the divine played a special role in reinforcing the norms of human relations. Although ancient societies possessed other devices to indicate the limits of membership, it was often primarily by common participation in, and adherence to, a particular series of religious rituals, that a social group defined its identity and excluded those who did not belong, and the nature of the rituals reflected or symbolized the social structure either as it was or as those responsible for such rituals believed it should be." Martin Goodman, Mission and Conversion: Proselytizing in the Religious History of the Roman Empire (Oxford: OUP, 1994, repr., 2001), 16. While some may claim that it is precisely in this period that "religion" emerges as a distinctive sphere of life (so, e.g., Goodman, Mission and Conversion, 17-18), I have argued elsewhere (William E. Arnal, "Definition [of Religion]," in Guide to the Study of Religion [ed. Willi Braun and Russell T. McCutcheon; London and New York: Routledge, 2000], 21-34), following Talal Asad (Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam [Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1993], esp. 28, 39-43, 47-48), that "religion" as we currently understand it is a distinctively modern concept, and that its distinction from other social realms is itself a social act of political self-definition. 10 So Zito, "Sociology of Heresy," 125: "It is clear that heresy is not merely a 'difference of opinion,' although some dictionaries make this claim. Heresy includes an attack, veiled or quite open, upon an institutionalized way of speaking about the world. It is therefore a thing of a distinctly social kind, directly related to social deviance."
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allows us to speak more broadly, and genuinely socially, about a phenomenon which, if restricted to its emic referents, is "protected" by its religious subject-matter, and reduced to simple disputes about the correctness of (often obscure and highly technical) ideas. Such a redefinition of heresy as a sociological rather than exclusively ideological (and "religious") phenomenon returns the first-century Jesuspeople to our consideration, since we no longer need compare their ideas to a Christian religious orthodoxy (which did not exist at the time), but can instead examine whether any given first-century group of Jesus-people appears to have transgressively redeployed identity-language. As it happens, there are some compelling reasons to think that the concept of heresy - counterintuitive though such an application might seem - would be positively helpful for understanding Paul and the reception of his activity. In the case of the Pauline ekklesiai, we have direct, primarysource evidence, not only for overt and emphatic hostility directed against the foundation of these groups on the part of their social compatriots (that is, both ethnic Jews and urban authorities in Paul's case [e.g., 2 Cor 11 :2326], and fellow urban citizens in the case of his adherents [e.g., 1 Thess 2:2; 3 :3-4]), but also of a proliferation of identity-language on Paul's part, deployed in odd ways. Paul seems to have been engaged in a process both of creating new groups 11 and redefining extant ones,12 and this action, in 11 That is, his ekklesiai, which he describes in language that strongly implies that he himself has actually founded or established these groups as groups. It must be stressed, however, that this rhetorical presentation, too often taken as accurate social description, in fact serves Paul's argumentative ends and is invoked for this very reason. Moreover, Paul's "foundation" language seems to apply only to the groups' constitution as ekklesiai, and not necessarily to their constitution as groups in the first place. Some recent work has begun to call into question the sufficiency of this Pauline presentation. Burton Mack, for instance, asserts that, "planting" and "foundation-laying" language not~ithstanding, Paul did not found the Corinthian church (Burton L. Mack, Who Wrote the New Testament? The Making of the Christian Myth [San Francisco: Harper, 1995], esp. 104, 126); Jonathan Z. Smith goes so far as to speculate that the group Paul is addressing in Corinth is a not a "church" at all, but a collection of displaced peoples of various ethnic backgrounds attempting to remain in communion with ancestral and homeland practices, a group from which Paul gains a hearing and henceforth (deliberately?) misunderstands as a "church" (Jonathan Z. Smith, "Re: Corinthians," in Relating Religion: Essays in the Study of Religion [Chicago: U. Press of Chicago, 2004], esp. 340-61). More straightforwardly, and in my view, extremely plausibly, Richard Ascough has suggested ("The Thessalonian Christian Community as a Professional Voluntary Association," JBL 119 [2000]: 311-28) that, at least in Thessalonica, what Paul has done is provide an existing trade association with a new patron deity: Christ. For my purposes here, it hardly matters whether Paul is genuinely constituting new groups more or less ex nihilo (an implausible and unrealistic scenario, on the face of it), or is assigning new identities to extant groups; the point is that Paul is deeply engaged in reconceiving and manipulating identities of various sorts. Indeed, it is likely enough to be
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turn, seems to have elicited hostility from Gentiles - possibly including civic authorities - and from his fellow Jews (whether synagogue authorities or Jewish Jesus-people). Paul was - clearly and unquestionably - redeploying identity language, and it may have been a perception that this redeployment was transgressive of taken-for-granted assumptions that prompted opposition to him; in short, Paul may have been a "heretic" within the social frameworks of both first-century Jewish assumptions about ethnic identity, and first-century Graeco-Roman assumptions about civic identity. In what follows,· I aim in part to test the applicability of "heresy" as a productive analytic category in a case in which it is not explicitly invoked, but seems to be sociologically indicated; and in the process I hope to shed some light on my substantive subject-matter, the Pauline ekldesiai.
Bourdieu, Doxa, and Heresy Before wading into such murky waters, however, it would probably be wise to spell out as explicitly as possible precisely how I am defining "heresy," how it functions socially, and how it relates to "orthodoxy." Here I draw on the conceptions provided by Pierre Bourdieu,13 whose his obviously strong and repeated interest in the discourse of identity that has led to the almost-universal view of him as a creator of new groups. 12 As is evident from Paul's references to "his" groups as ekklesiai, a term which has ambiguous and prodigal connotations. Obviously, Paul is also recasting his followers in terms of Jewish identity by making them (honorary or adopted) heirs of Abraham, a point especially emphasized in Galatians, albeit with rather thin logic. 13 My wording here is carefully and deliberately chosen: I am not adopting Bourdieu's sociological approach in general nor the whole package of conceptions with which he works, instead opportunistically appropriating those conceptions (and their theoretical baggage) that strike me as most likely to be productive for this investigation. It does seem to me that Bourdieu's emphasis on discourse as practice, and as determined (to some degree) by both its own internal logics and extra-discursive practice - sthat discourse is intentional and meaning-making, on the one hand, and involves rationalization and contestation of power-relations, on the other - is extremely useful, and helps avoid simplistic (idealistic "vulgar materialist") reductions of discourse to a distinct epiphenomenon of practice (no less a figure than Joseph Stalin asserts emphatically than language cannot be an aspect of the superstructure; see Marxism and Problems of Linguistics (Moscow: 1954; repr., U. Press of the Pacific, 2003), 7-15; this reference would never have come to my attention had it not been cited in Jonathan z. Smith, "When the Chips Are Down," in Idem, Relating Religion, 3). At the same time, I remain rather suspicious of Bourdieu's treatment of status as practically an entity in itself, and his tendency to treat cultural operations as distinguishable from and parallel to economic operations (cf. Bourdieu's treatment of "symbolic capital," e.g., in Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice (trans. R. Nice; Cambridge: CUP, 1972, repr.,
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social theories have focused to a tremendous degree on the reproduction of dominant discourses, and who has, as a result, formulated analytic tools that may allow us a more genuinely systematic and sociological understanding of heresy and its relationship both to orthodoxy and to social change. 14 While it is Bourdieu's notion of habitus that is theoretically central, and that has garnered the most attention from commentators, for my purposes it is his concept of doxa - developed in connection with orthodoxy and heterodoxy and drawing its name from what they have in common - that will be of most use. Doxa, for Bourdieu, is the "universe of the undiscussed,"15 that which is taken utterly for granted within a given social formation and hence is not subject to differing opinions or even explicit articulation. 16 This undiscussed doxa receives its force not only from its undiscussed status - that it "goes without saying because it comes without saying"17 - but also and equally from its conformity to external or objective structures; doxa can remain unquestioned because it "fits" with the world as it is perceived and experienced. 18 Bourdieu himself frames the matter most elegantly:
1977), 171-83; and the chart in idem, Practical Reason: On the Theory of Action (Cambridge, UK: Polity 1998), 5; in idem and LOIC J. D. Wac quant, An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology (Chicago: U. of Chicago Press, 1992), esp. 173-74, Bourdieu accounts for and partially justifies this conception with reference to the near-universal inferior of status of women, without appearing to recognize that the fundamental and irreducible difference between men and women is precisely their differential productive capacities - i.e., the inability of men to reproduce society itself by bearing children rather than any necessary symbolic difference). For a sympathetic presentation and defense of "symbolic capital," however, see Bridget Fowler, Pierre Bourdieu and Cultural Theory: Critical Investigations, (London; Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage, 1997), 20-40. 14 Karen King offers similar reasons for drawing on Bourdieu; see King, What Is Gnosticism?, 241: "Discourse analysis, it seems to me, provides a method to understand the processes of the regulated practices of habitus in operation. Bourdieu's work is more useful than Foucault's in understanding the practical aims and effects of discursive formations in the material and social world. Bourdieu emphasizes not only the regularity of practice, but also its improvisational character and rhetorical logic. Moreover, Bourdieu's social theory allows for a framework that rejects both essentializing and functionalist approaches to the study of religion." And cf. David Swartz, "Bridging the Study of Culture and Religion: Pierre Bourdieu's Political Economy of Symbolic Power," SR 57 (1996): 71-86, for another assertion of the value of Bourdieu's work for analysis of religion. 15 Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice, 168. 16 In general, see the discussion in ibid., 165-71; idem, Practical Reason, 56-57; cf. also Berlinerblau, "Sociology of Heresy," 346. 17 Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice, 167. 18 Ibid., 165-67.
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In a determinate social formation, the stabler the objectiv~ structures and the more fully they reproduce themselves in the agents' dispositions, the greater the extent of the field of doxa, of that which is taken for granted. When, owing to the quasi-perfect fit between the objective structures and the internalized structures which results from the logic of simple reproduction, the established cosmological and political order is perceived not as arbitrary, i.e., as one possible order among others, but as a self-evident and natural order which goes without saying and therefore goes unquestioned, the agents' aspirations have the same limits as the objective conditions of which they are the product. 19
Doxa is thus the realm in which opinions are not possible; or rather, it is the framework within which' opinions, discourse, arguments must operate. 20 Once a view about the world becomes subject to discussion, a matter of opinion, a point sufficiently visible to be argued about, it ceases to be doxa. There are at least two different ways of understanding the relationship of heterodoxy and orthodoxy to doxa, even in Bourdieu's own work21 ; they might be thought of as two distinct and incompatible theories of the development of heretical discourses, but it may be more useful and generous to think of them as different and potentially supplemental models for such development. 22 According to one such model - and this seems to be the one that Bourdieu has first and foremost in view when he formulates his concept of doxa - heterodoxy and orthodoxy share doxa, it represents the common ground and shared values which are not a matter of opinion. 23 Indeed, what is doxa at any given moment may represent a suppression and removal from discourse of opinions that were contested in the past today's orthodoxy becomes tomorrow's doxa. 24 According to such a Ibid., 165-66. See the graphic rendition of this conception in ibid., 168. 21 As Berlinerblau says, "Bourdieu's discussions of doxa ... [are] somewhat obscure ... " ("Sociology of Heresy," 330). 22 If different theories, then (at least at the most basic level) they are incompatible: at best, one is wrong and one is right (at worst, both are wrong, though still incompatibly with one another). If different models, then both can be equally valid, but applicable to different phenomena, describing different types of heretical developments, different stages of the same phenomenon, or even adopting different heuristics vis-a-vis precisely the same data. 23 See Berlinerblau, "Sociology of Heresy," 346. 24 See Bourdieu, Practical Reason, 56-57: "It should not be forgotten that such primordial political belief, this doxa, is an orthodoxy, a right, correct, dominant vision which has more often than not been imposed through struggles against competing visions. This means that the 'natural attitude' mentioned by the phenomenologists, that is, the primary experience of the world of common sense, is a politically produced relation, as are the categories of perception that sustain it. What appears to us today as self-evid~nt, as beneath consciousness and choice, has quite often been the stake of struggles and instituted only as the result of dogged confrontations between dominant and dominated groups." 19
20
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conception, views characterized as heterodox participate in doxa just as much as the "approved" views identified as orthodox, essentially by definition, since once a view becomes open to dispute and discussion even a "correct" orthodox view supported by a repressive apparatus - it moves out of the realm of the taken-for-granted and undiscussed. 25 As Bourdieu puts it: The truth of doxa is only ever fully revealed when negatively constituted by the constitution of a field of opinion, the locus of the confrontation of competing discourses whose political truth may be overtly declared or may remain hidden, even from the eyes of those engaged in it, under the guise of religious or philosophical oppositions. It is by reference to the universe of opinion that the complementary class is defined, the class of that which is taken for granted, doxa, the sum total of the theses tacitly posited on the hither side of all inquiry, which appear as such only retrospectively, when they come to be suspended practically. 26
In addition, this perspective implicitly places orthodoxy prior to heterodoxy, both temporally, as heresy is a departure from an alreadyconstituted orthodoxy; and conceptually, as heterodoxy is identifiable only as a deviation from orthodoxy and indeed only in terms of orthodoxy's repressive activity.27 Put slightly differently, orthodoxy and heresy both differ from doxa in being explications of deeper and shared norms which remain unexplicated as such: orthodoxy is the dominant representation of 25 An excellent example of this movement back and forth between doxa and orthodoxy - and one which meshes with intuitive understandings of orthodoxy, as well as being defined in precisely such terms - is afforded by the centuries-long development of trinitiarian doctrine within Christianity. A matter that was at first genuinely open to dispute eventually became quite strictly defined, with opposing views labelled as heretical. Since the matter was still under discussion at this point, the prevailing trinitarian doctrine was merely orthodox, with countervailing views being at least conceptually possible. With the passage of time, however (certainly by the Middle Ages), this orthodoxy became doxa - the undisputed basis of agreement among theological disputants. The reformers and the papacy, for instance, agreed on (or at least did not dispute about) trinitarian matters and took them for granted while bitterly disputing other points. Since the Enlightenment, in isolated instances from Thomas Jefferson on, trinitarian doctrine has been called into question again, with various popular rejections of the divinity of Jesus. While, in clearly Christian contexts, such a view has not prevailed, the fact that it has come under discussion renders trinitarian doctrine once again an orthodoxy, a matter potentially under discussion and no longer part of the undisputed universe of discourse. 26 Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice, 168. 27 Similarly, Berlinerblau, "Sociology of Heresy," 334-35, who stresses, " ... the importance of identifying some fundamental sociological criteria to account for where the heresy/orthodoxy nexus can be said to exist," and who finds such a criterion in the existence of a repressive or ideological apparatus of some sort: "In order for heresy to 'arise' there must exist an authoritative political apparatus (i.e., an orthodoxy), one capable of identifying heretics and effectively 'managing' them."
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doxa, while heresy endeavors a redeployment or differing rendering of the very same assumptions; here we have more a disagreement about expression than a rejection of shared values, or a battle for control over their expression, which is just as we would expect given that the heretic is an "insider" by definition.28 This model of heterodoxy seems valid enough, but may not get at what is most distinctive and intriguing about Paul's identity-language, or, indeed, about heresy as social phenomenon in general. For the sake of clarity, I will henceforth reserve the term heterodoxy for such departures ,from orthodoxy as are described by this model. Happily, Bourdieu somewhat inconsistently provides a different model for the relationship of doxa to orthodoxy and heresy - and heresy is the term I will use henceforth to distinguish this conception from the heterodoxy described above. Here both the temporal and analytic priority of orthodoxy to heresy is reversed, with heresy becoming the more basic pole of the opposition. If we are to regard heterodoxy as a departure from orthodoxy, then we will need to see heresy as a departure from some elements of doxa. According to this view, there is a much stronger linkage between orthodoxy and doxa than was posited in the first model: orthodoxy is an explicit retrenchment of a challenged doxa,29 which has of 28 Such an approach is taken by the extended definition of heresy provided in Berlinerblau, "Sociology of Heresy," 340. An illustrative example from our own time and experience is the doxic field ofthejamily, an example Bourdieu himself cites: "The nearperfect match that is then set up between the subjective and objective categories provides the foundation for an experience of the world as self-evident, taken for granted. And nothing seems more natural than the family; this arbitrary social construct seems to belong on the side of nature, the natural and the universal," Bourdieu, Practical Reason,67. The debate over gay marriage - one that has, in different ways, marked political discourse in both the United States and Canada over the past few years - has tended not to call into question the value of marriage or family at all, but to interpret or render that value differently. Both sides of the debate claim that they are defending the family and the institution of marriage: one side by entrenching its traditional parameters, the other by extending it. Clearly the (for now) orthodox view is that which asserts that marriage is heterosexual by definition, and the heterodox view is that marriage can also apply to two men or two women. But neither side is questioning the value of being married, or the restriction of marriage to people (as opposed to animals), or to two people (as opposed to several), or to adults (as opposed to children) - the rhetoric of some defenders of traditional norms notwithstanding. And proponents of the heterodox view are defending it by claiming that it adheres to shared values about family, child-rearing, love and commitment, and the like. Of course, this example also illustrates the limits of this particular way of viewing the relationship between heresy and doxa (on which see further below): the heterodox view that homosexuals can marry has called into question and ren4ered discuss-able the formerly doxic assumption that marriage is exclusively heterosexual. 29 So also Bourdieu, Practical Reason, 56-57.
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course ceased to be doxa by virtue of its exposure to disputation. This model places doxa temporally first (however initially established), being maintained by its fit with objective social structures. Social circumstances change over time, however, as social circumstances always do, and this fit is disrupted, at least for certain social groupings, exposing belief as belief, exposing social structures as artificial by virtue of their inconsistency and lack of self-evidence. 3o This breakdown in doxa is precipitated by circumstance, not by thought, as thought itself cannot penetrate doxa, since it is precisely what is not thought, not thinkable: "The practical questioning of the theses implied in a particular way of living that is brought about by 'culture contact' or by the political and economic crises correlative with class division is not the purely intellectual operation which phenomenology designates epoche, the deliberate, methodical suspension of naive adherence to the world."31 From such a context arises heresy: the intentional redeployment of socio-cultural tropes and other symbolic signifiers (still socially shared, of course) to reconfigure fundamental beliefs about the world by those groups for whom shared assumptions have lost their self-evident quality. 32 Heresy functions at a rather more subliminal level than does heterodoxy, as it constitutes an attack on "what 30 For Bourdieu's stress on the necessity of fit between objective social structures and internalized conceptions of the world (as well as the internal consistency of the symbolic order) to sustain a doxic field, see, inter alia, Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice, 167-69; idem, Practical Reason, esp. 55-57, 67, 81. On the consequences of the exposure of belief as belief, see especially id., Outline of a Theory of Practice, 170: "The boundary between the universe of (orthodox or heterodox) discourse and the universe of doxa ... represents the dividing-line between the most radical form of misrecognition and the awakening of political consciousness"; likewise ibid.,168-69: "The critique which brings the undiscussed into discussion, the unformulated into formulation, has as the condition of its possibility objective crisis, which, in breaking the immediate fit between the subjective structures and the objective structures, destroys self-evidence practically. It is when the social world loses its character as a natural phenomenon that the question of the natural or conventional character (phusei or nomo [sic]) of social facts can be raised." 31 Ibid., 168; cf. also Craig Calhoun, "Habitus, Field, and Capital: The Question of Historical Specificity," in Bourdieu: Critical Perspectives (ed. C. Calhoun; E. LiPuma, and M. Postone; Chicago: U. of Chicago Press, 1993),80. 32 Note that such an understanding of heresy and doxa redefines the import of the heretic's "insider" status. In both models, heretics are by definition insiders, and share extensive elements of the discourse with their orthodox opponents. But in the first model, which stresses the solidary aspects of a social body, it is fundamental values and epistemic assumptions that are held in common. In the second model, by contrast, which stresses the fractured nature of the social body (at least the way I have described it), values and epistemic assumptions are not held in common (at least not wholly); what is common is the use of a shared symbolic language. Situationally, heretics are marginal insiders.
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cannot be said for lack of an available discourse,"33 and so is forced to construct a discourse from extant symbols to express something those symbols have not hitherto been used to express. Heresy is radically subversive for this reason: it is not only that "the subversive power of the heretic is predicated on the fact that she or he is 'one of us,' "34 but additionally that the heretic renders explicit - if sometimes only obliquely - what has up to that point derived its stabilizing and hegemonic force precisely from remaining unarticulated. 35 Heresy can (and as conceived here, in opposition to heterodoxy, must) thus arise without a concomitant orthodoxy - it is a deliberate disruption of doxa predicated on the antecedent disruption of the circumstances to which that doxa conformed;36 and heresy's articulation or, better, exposure of doxa can precede its positive articulation, at which point doxa is no longer doxa, but orthodoxy. This perspective also is advanced by Bourdieu himself: The dominated classes have an interest in pushing back the limits of doxa and exposing the arbitrariness of the taken for granted; the dominant classes have an interest in defending the integrity of doxa or, short of this, of establishing in its place the necessarily imperfect substitute, orthodoxy ... [Then] the arbitrary principles of the prevailing classification can appear as such and it therefore becomes necessary to undertake the work of conscious systematization and express rationalization which marks the passage from doxa to orthodoxy. Orthodoxy, straight, or rather straightened, opinion, ... aims, without ever entirely succeeding, at restoring the primal state of innocence of doxa ... 37
Put differently and somewhat paradoxically, then, heresy creates orthodoxy, by forcing the articulation of what had up to that point remained unnecessary to say.38 Doxa, by this model, is disrupted and 33 Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory ofPractice, 170. 34 Berlinerblau, "Sociology of Heresy," 335. 35 And as a result, "the group thinks it punishes the heretic for the violation of the symbol, when in reality the crime is against group unity," Berlinerblau, "Sociology of Heresy," 344. Cf. also Georg Simmel, Essays on Religion (trans. H. J. Helle and L. Nieder; New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), esp. 114-15. 36 Note that Bourdieu is advanced by Berlinerblau as a way of bridging the gap between agency-oriented sociology (a la Weber) and a structure-oriented sociology in which the agents are not conscious of what they are doing (a la Durkheim). The formulation I offer here retains both such elements. This is discussed clearly and explicitly by Bourdieu in "Vive la Crise!," 780-84, with reference to his concept of habitus; and cf. Berlinerblau, "Sociology of Heresy," 341-45; Fowler, Bourdieu and Cultural Theory, 2-3. 37 Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice, 169. See also Berlinerblau, "Sociology of Heresy," 347; and somewhat less helpfully, Bourdieu and Wac quant, Invitation, 25051. 38 Similarly, Pierre Bourdieu, Homo Academicus (trans. Peter Collier; Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 1988), 116: "On the side of the institution, the lector finds himself obliged to erect as orthodoxy, as explicit profession of faith, the doxa of the doctors, their
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dissolved by heresy, and reaffirmed in the form of orthodoxy, but in the process is transformed by the loss of its implicit self-evidence. This second model - which I have chosen to distinguish from the first by referring to it as heresy, rather than heterodoxy - promises considerable insight into the real ramifications of heresy as it is actually encountered, including how it is actually presented in Paul. In spite of my phrasing in terms of ideas and conceptions, what is really at issue for both the heretic and those who aim to suppress heresy is a way of living, a set of structured assumptions built into social practice to the benefit of particular groups of people, which heretical ideas or, better, expressions,39 threaten to disrupt. It is for this reason that genuine heresy elicits such a strong repressive reaction, rather than what would appear to be a more commensurate response: a rejection or disputation at the level of discourse alone. Instead, as Zito asserts: What we recognize in a statement as heretical is its ability to produce in the faithful a cry of outraged hostility. This had led in the past to vindictive persecution of the heretic, who is then literally or figuratively burned at the stake ... The true believers sense that in some way their innermost selves have been violated, their moral values usurped, their very existence as a moral community placed in jeopardy.40
Zito's explanation for this is that: The true believer finds, in the case of heresy, that the beliefs he has devoutly held may lead to quite other [i.e., non-doxic] consequences than [the unstated assumptions of] his faith has led him to expect. A heresy accordingly places the true believer in a state of cognitive dissonance, imbalance, or incongruity. Heresy plays with the cognitive base upon which beliefs and meanings are erected and from which action is presumed to flow. 41
These observations are thoroughly explicable in light of what Bourdieu has said about doxa. It is heresy's violation and exposure of doxa, and the implications of this sacrilege for social practice and identity, that generate the sense of outrage, the sense that the heresy is an overt assault on self and society. But Zito' s comments also draw our attention to the reaction such infractions elicit, and such a reaction meshes with what we know about how Paul was received. 42 Paul certainly complains of extensive hardship silent beliefs which have no need for justification: challenged to produce in broad daylight the unconscious thoughts of an institution." 39 Since the necessarily subliminal character of heresy's departure from doxa may manifest itself more concretely in behaviors than in speech alone. 40 Zito, "Sociology of Heresy," 126. 41 Ibid., 128. 42 A similar claim is made by John M. G. Barclay, "Deviance and Apostasy: Some Applications of Deviance Theory to First-Century Judaism and Christianity," in
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and opposition with reference to himself and his adherents, using terms denoting affliction and persecution (e.g., Rom 5:3; 8:35; 12:14; 2 Cor 1:48; 4:7-12,17; 7:4-5; 8:2; 12:10; Gal 5:11; 6:12; 1 Thess 1:6; 2:2; 3:3-7), as well as describing what appear to be judicial punishments (e.g., 2 Cor 11:23-26; Phil 1:7, 12-14; Phlm 1, 9-10); indeed, he indicates (e.g., 1 Cor 15:9; Gal 1:13,23; Phil 3:6) that he himself saw reason to "persecute" the Jesus-movement. Paul attributes hardships, including persecution, to the intervention of Satan (e.g., 2 Cor 12:7; 1 Thess 2:18; 3:5) or to the opposition of all things worldly to all things godly (2 Cor 4:7-12, 17-18; 12:8-10); that these claims constitute no acceptable explanation for the phenomenon is so obvious that it is almost never stated outright, but unfortunately this neglect also extends to the provision of an explanation for a phenomenon that Paul himself saw as sufficiently important, and sufficiently extraordinary, to account for in extravagant theological terms. The "persecution" of Paul and his adherents is most frequently treated as a product of simple disagreement, and "explanation" consists of an elaboration of what that disagreement is, rather than why disagreement over the points in question elicited repressive measures. 43 If we understand heresy, however, as an attack on doxa, in Bourdieu's formulation, the persecution of the Pauline ekklesiai may point to heretical aspects of these novel formations, thus providing both an explanation for the hostility engendered by Paul's practices, and directing our attention to those aspects of Pauline thought and practice - particularly those concerned with identity, with making selves - that violated contemporary unspoken sensibilities about social belonging. 44 Modelling Early Christianity: Social-Scientific Studies of the New Testament in Its Context (ed. Philip F. Esler; London: Routledge, 1995), esp. 122-23, i.e., that Paul was a deviant of some sort on the grounds that he was clearly perceived as such. Unfortunately, the treatment does not go beyond this simple claim, and, moreover, erroneously and anachronistically describes Paul as an apostate, a very different status than that of heretic, and one that the evidence simply does not support. 43 See, e.g., Lloyd Gaston, Paul and the Torah (Vancouver: U. of British Columbia Press, 1987), 32; E. P. Sanders, Paul: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: OUP, 1991, repr., 2001), 6-11. 44 Bourdieu's approach also has the following advantages with respect to analysis of Paul: 1) His emphasis on the embodiment of power relations and discourses (i.e., habitus) at least meshes with, and at most may go some way to accounting for, Paul's negative obsession with "the body" in general and his own body in particular - for the centrality of which see, e.g., Krister Stendahl, Final Account: Paul's Letter to the Romans, (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993, repr., 1995), 1-2; 2) his careful mediation between agency-oriented and structural analyses of social phenomena means that we can pay attention to Paul's own intentions and self-presentation, but without having to assume that he is conscious of or, better, intends the social results of his actions; 3) by viewing Paul as a heretic in this framework, we can appreciate and understand what is distinctive
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Identity in the Roman W orId Given this theoretical model, it would probably be ideal to precede a discussion of Paul with a consideration of the doxa of Paul's world, particularly as it applies to issues of identity. Such an approach, however, will be constrained both by the length of this paper and by the profusion of data that could potentially be applied to this issue. It should also be noted that Paul's lifetime was a period of intense reconfiguration and alteration of social identities, an integration of the massive political changes that had occurred over the past few centuries - in the consolidation of Roman control over the eastern Mediterranean, and the past few decades - in the consolidation of one family's control over the Roman state, these features together establishing the imperial Principate. Nonetheless, a few salient generalizations can be made. 45 about Paul, but without thereby making him inexplicable or "unique"; 4) Bourdieu directs our attention to the nexus of discourse and practice, rather than one to the exclusion of the other, and thus focuses our attention on the practical and applicative aspects of Paul's theology, rather than his ideas in the abstract; indeed, I think that a strong case can be made that it is practice and application that is "heretical" about Paul, not the basic ideological building blocks, which are in fact drawn from a variety of contemporary discourses (e.g., Jewish beliefs about Abraham, adoption practices and beliefs regarding Caesar, etc.). In all of these respects, Bourdieu provides a superior analytic framework for understanding Paul in particular. This paper is of too limited a focus, insufficiently steeped in Bourdieu's overall approach, and simply too short, to fulfill all the promise suggested here, but it is to be hoped that a more systematic application of Bourdieu's sociology to the Pauline ekklesiai might be forthcoming at some point. 45 These generalizations are intended only to be suggestive: what really needs to be done is to study the civic ideology of the individual poleis with which Paul corresponded and indicate the ways in which they differed from one another as well as their ideological commonalities. In addition, both to flesh out these descriptions and to use Bourdieu properly, more deductions need to be drawn from concrete data, particularly the architecture of civic buildings and public areas, city layouts, and the like, but also data from inscriptions and other archaeological remains. A great deal of excellent work has already been done both on local histories, e.g., Peter Lampe, From Paul to Valentinus: Christians at Rome in the First Two Centuries (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003); Richard S. Ascough, ed., Religious Rivalries and the Struggle for Success in Sardis and Smyrna, Studies in Christianity and Judaism (Waterloo, Ont.: Published for the Canadian Corporation for Studies in Religion, 2005); Magnus Zetterholm, The Formation of Christianity in Antioch: A Social-Scientific Approach to the Separation Between Judaism and Christianity (London: Routledge, 2004); Terence L. Donaldson, ed., Religious Rivalries and the Struggle for Success in Caesarea Maritima, Studies in Christianity and Judaism (Waterloo, Ont.: Published for the Canadian Corporation for Studies in Religion, 2000), and on the ideological consequences of the shaping of civic space, see especially now Harry O. Maier, "Barbarians, Scythians and Imperial Iconography in the Epistle to the Colossians," in Picturing the New Testament: Studies in Ancient Visual Images,
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Corresponding to the two primary social institutions of early Imperial Roman antiquity - family and state 46 - were two essential sorts of affiliations marking fundamental aspects of identity: ethnic affiliation, rooted in the family; and political affiliation, rooted in the state, principally at the level of the polis. Cross-culturally and trans-temporally, these two forms of primary identity often overlap, as when the state appeals to ethnicity for its legitimacy or for the legitimacy of its particular boundaries. In such instances, the state of course does not supplant the family (however conceived), but it does appeal to common ancestry (often rendered "self-evident" by possession of a common language) as its normative basis. 47 The rough identity of state and nationlethnos was a feature of several ANE temple-states, most clearly and notably, Egypt and Israel (and to more limited degrees, Mesopotamian states). In the case of ancient Israel, appeal to a fictitious common ancestor (Abraham, Jacob) WUNT (ed. A. Weissenrieder, F. Wendt, and P. von Gemunden; Tubingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2005). Pursuing this material, however, would tum an already too-long paper into a book. 46 The identification of the primary social role of family and state in antiquity, with other types of social practice or affiliation being embedded in these two institutions, is the great contribution of those approaches to antiquity that identify with "cultural anthropology," particularly as promoted by Bruce Malina. For the nature of religion as "embedded" within family and/or state, see, e.g., among many others, K. C. Hanson and Douglas E. Oakman, Palestine in the Time of Jesus: Social Structures and Social Conflicts (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1998) 132-33; and Stephan J. Joubert, "Managing the Household: Paul as Paterfamilias of the Christian Household Groups in Corinth," in Modelling Early Christianity (ed. P. F. Esler), 213. 47 Many modem nation-states - particularly in Europe - are ostensibly based on ethnicity, and indeed the conception of "nation" (i.e., ethnos) here is foundational for the state; one is e.g. German by virtue of ancestry, i.e., being born into a German family, as evidenced by speaking German as one's first tongue, and the German state is then roughly coextensive with the regions in which this characterization applies to the majority of the people. As the example chosen here suggests, too, when the borders of modem states do not correspond to ethnic (and secondarily, linguistic) boundaries, this can be a source for conflict, and specifically for claims that the borders of the state should be redrawn. Thus the belief that the German state should correspond more closely to the distribution of the German nation (i.e., ethnos) served as a rationale for Hitler's creation of a "Greater Germany" (absorbing German-speaking Austria, and predominantly German regions of Czechoslovakia and Poland); similar reasoning has been invoked more recently for the partition of Czechoslovakia, the breakdown of the Soviet Union, separatist sentiment in Quebec, and - most perversely - "ethnic" warfare in Yugoslavia. The identity of ethnos and state is more problematic in Canada and the United States, as both countries are somewhat ethnically heterogeneous, and since both are dominated by non-indigenous populations. Since, however, both ethnicity and indigeneity (closely related as they are) are artificial, i.e., socially-constructed and synthetic notions, the factual status of Americans and Canadians as of heterogeneous descent is no real obstacle to a future construct of Canadian or American ethnicity.
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was used transparently to fabricate or express the existence of a people, and to rationalize the existence of a state "representing" that "ethnic" group. In such cases, religion is used to foster the linkage between ethnicity and the state: the Davidic line, for instance, is chosen by God "the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob." In the case of the great empires of a later period - those of Persia, of Alexander and his generals, and of Rome - such a complete fusion of state and ethnos was not possible, as the state was comprised of a multinational and multicultural empire embracing various peoples speaking various languages. State power in these empires tended therefore - albeit inconsistently48 - to focalize at levels both higher and lower than that of the ethnos/nation. This was certainly the case for the Roman state in our period, in which ultimate power over multiple nations was vested in the imperial capital, Rome, while the political power that tended to affect people most at the quotidian level- criminal and civil law, tax collection, maintenance of public order - was vested in the polis, at a level of specificity below that of the nation. 49 In terms of "religion," i.e., cultic devotion to deities, sacrifice, etc., this meant that even political religion had a more centrifugal social effect than was ideal, as it tended to focus and express loyalty to the individual city and its deities (even in the case of the imperial cult, which was organized at the civic level and with city honor in mind 50 ), or at the familial-ethnic level, tended to highlight 48 The characterization of the great empires as focusing power both above and below the ethnic-national level applies better to Rome than to either of the others, as Persia appears to have used claims to ethnic identity as a basis for provincial administrations and local law; see now Lisbeth S. Fried, The Priest and the Great King: Temple-Palace Relations in the Persian Empire (Biblical and Judaic Studies, vol. 10; Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2004), and as at least one of the successor-empires of Alexander, the Ptolemies, appears to have been closely associated with - though certainly not identical to - a particular national identity, i.e., Egyptian. 49 In other words, several cities may be "Greek" or "Jewish," etc., but not under the de facto control of any central ethnic-national power. Ironically, this basis in the polis is true of the supra-ethnic imperial power as well, which is, after all, vested in Rome (a city, first and foremost) rather than a broader ethnos (however conceived: Italy, Latinspeakers, descendants of some eponym, etc.). The social wars of the late Republic appear in part to have been fought over this very point: to preserve Rome's privileged standing as a city over against the unifying and potentially nation-building aspirations of Rome's Italian allies. The situation here, however, is' not clear-cut: both sides employed ethnic tropes in different ways, and there was always - including in our period - some ambiguity or ambivalence regarding the standing of Rome as polis or ethnos. 50 The apparent origins of the imperial cult in the independent actions of eastern cities (on which see John Dominic Crossan and Jonathan L. Reed, In Search of Paul: How Jesus's Apostle Opposed Rome's Empire with God's Kingdom (San Francisco: Harper, 2004), 59; my understanding is that the first temple erected to Roma was established in Smyrna in 195 BCE) underscores its civic focus in practice, in spite of its "theological" orientation to Rome itself. The situation would have been different had the imperial cult
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differences between individuals under the same political umbrella (whether city or empire).51 In any case, unlike the ANE norm, in our period political identities and ethnic identities are capable of considerable distinction from one another, and, at least in urban settings, ethnicity tended to be rooted more exclusively in the family than in state and citizenship. Consider the (fictional) character of "Paul" in Acts of the Apostles - a man invested with a Jewish ethnic background, by virtue of his birth family, ancestral language (as reflected in his name, Saou/, Acts 7:58; 8:1; 9:4,17; etc.), and upbringing; but who was actually born outside of Palestine, in Tarsus (Acts 22:3), possessed Tarsian citizenship (Acts 9: 11; 21 :39), and had also (inherited) Roman citizenship (Acts 16:37-39; 22:22-29).52 Other types or aspects of identity and social organization did of course exist in this period, and were founded on actual bases other than state and family, including occupational contacts, neighborhood ties,53 and cultic connections. 54 Thus, for example, voluntary associations - intensely
actually been established in the city of Rome, or involved the adoption of Roman civic deities. 51 Nowhere is this more clear than in the deployment of religion during the successive Jewish revolts of 66-73, 115-117, and 132-135 CE, where religious ideology was used to express and enhance the division of Judea from the empire as a whole, and of Jewish residents from the remainder of the populace of individual cities in which they resided. See, e.g., Philip F. Esler, "God's Honour and Rome's Triumph: Responses to the Fall of Jerusalem in 70 CE in Three Jewish Apocalypses," in Modelling Early Christianity (ed. P.F. Esler), 239-58, for a description of the deployment of apocalypses as expressions of ongoing conflict even after the cessation of military hostilities in the revolt( s). 52 Note that Acts 22:22-29 stresses Paul's inheritance, rather than purchase, of Roman citizenship, which seems in this story to be a status issue. Paul thus inherits both his ethnic standing as a Jew and his political standing as Roman by virtue of his birth; nonetheless, the two are in no way confused by Luke, who clearly does not regard Paul as an ethnic Roman. I want to stress that my point here is not in any way to suggest that Paul himself, as an actual historical figure, possessed any of these traits. Indeed, most of them - especially the "Jewish" name, education in Jerusalem, and possession of both urban and imperial citizenships - fit too well with Lukan redactional interests to take seriously as historical data, especially as Paul's own Letters nowhere confirm such information. I treat the "Paul" of Acts as a fictitious character created by the text's author. My point, however, is that a writer of the late first or (more likely) early second century could regard such features as unexceptional and in no particular need of explanation or justification. 53 As distinct from city of birth, which I am treating as an essentially political affiliation. 54 See the excellent discussion of social networks offered in Philip A. Harland, "Connections with Elites in the World of the Early Christians," in Handbook of Early Christianity: Social Science Approaches (ed. A.J. Blasi, J. Duhaime, and P.-A. Turcotte; Walnut Creek, Calif.; Oxford: AltaMira Press, 2002), 389-91, preparatory to defining the pre-existing social ties that influenced group formation, particularly that of voluntary
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studied of late, especially in relation to Pau15 5 - may have been modeled on civic or familial associations, and may even have had civic or familial bases in many cases, but could also be organized around pre-existing neighborhood or occupational connections. 56 One might also cite patronclient connections as potentially identity-creating, though it would seem that such structures were very closely associated with household and family relationships. And in fact, this ultimate reliance on either ethnicfamilial or political (and especially urban, polis-based) definitions of identity remained the dominant mode of expressing social placement in spite of the existence, especially in large urban centers, of alternative possibilities for actual interpersonal contacts. Religious behaviors and the social contacts created by these contacts were not conceptualized as a distinct realm of social practice, and were so integral to many expressions of identity that they necessarily remained embedded in either family or civic life. The so-called "mystery cults" - whose proliferation and multiplicity appears as a distinctive feature of the Hellenistic and Roman worlds - tended to fall back or rely upon civic institutions (e.g., public temples to such deities as Asklepios, Artemis, Dionysos, etc., in Greece and Asia Minor) or ethnic affiliations (e.g., cultic groups oriented toward Serapis, Yahweh, Isis, the Great Mother, etc., all associated with specific national-ethnic groups; family links, as well, played a part in decisions to become an initiate in a particular cult), at least in their communal manifestations. Obviously a significant portion of activity that we might describe as "religious" involved practices oriented toward specific associations. In this segment of the article Harland identifies five types of such ties: familial, occupational, neighborhood, cultic, and ethnic. 55 Among many other studies, see, e.g., Richard S. Ascough, "Translocal Relationships Among Voluntary Associations and Early Christianity," JECS 5 (1997): 223-41; idem, What Are They Saying About the Formation of Pauline Churches (New York: Paulist Press, 1998); idem, Paul's Macedonian Associations: The Social Context of Philippians and 1 Thessalonians, WUNT (Tiibingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003); Philip A. Harland, Associations, Synagogues, and Congregations: Claiming a Place in Ancient Mediterranean Society (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003); John S. Kloppenborg and Stephen G. Wilson, eds., Voluntary Associations in the Graeco-Roman World (London: Routledge, 1996). 56 See especially Harland, "Connections with Elites," 391-94, for a discussion of Christian groups organized upon these lines or influenced by such connections. For an identification of (some of) Paul's ekklesiai as occupationally-based groups, see especially Ascough, "Thessalonian Christian Community"; idem, Paul's Macedonian Associations. Note that I have set aside consideration of "religious" (cultic, sacrificial, etc.) bases for group developments, as there are considerable complications here, since a great many religious practices or institutions allude to or are associated with ethnic, familial, or political institutions - thus association with a particular cult, and the connections between people thereby generated, may ultimately reduce to a form of political or ethnic association, at least symbolically.
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personal goals (health, love, curses upon enemies, prosperity, and the distinctive "magical" practices or functional deities associated with these specific goals) and did not necessarily have a strong social component. Neighborhood and occupational roles either were not cited as fundamental for one's place in the social body, or were coordinated with and appeal to other more established types of belonging to anchor, reinforce, or rationalize their identity-creating function, invoking linguistic and other symbolic reference to ethnos or polis. 57 Ethnic identity appealing to descent and family origin remained a fundamental expression of belonging; identity in the city (the actual locus of social life for the vast majority of ancient urbanites) continued to be expressed in the differential and multiple terms of ethnic affiliation and related aspects of social identity linked to descent and family, and in terms of belonging in the city itself, most clearly expressed by taking up a particular civic political role, but evident as well in the urban fractions of neighborhood, occupational, or even cultic identity. Ethnic subcultures in urban contexts also assumed this fractional role, thus mixing the two primary forms of social identification but not fusing them, for the two exist in a clearly distinct and hierarchical relationship, with ethnicity articulated as a subculture or subgroup within a given city and hence subordinate to it. 58 Structurally, this subordinate 57 See the discussion of neighborhood and occupation-based associations in Harland, Associations, Synagogues, and Congregations,36-41, where he points out that neighborhood associations were actively involved in civic celebrations or underwrote honors to civic functionaries, and that occupational groupings intersected with family and household ties, both devolving from them (as occupations tend to be inherited) and influencing them (as occupational contacts may lead to marriages and other links between families). Harland also notes inscriptional evidence from Philadelphia suggesting both that occupational groups were fundamental to the civic constitution, and that this role was fused with ethnic classifications ("the sacred tribe [phyle] of the woolworkers [eriourgon]"), drawing together and confusing occupation, civic role, and ethnic-familial identity (ibid., 105-06). In addition, see Robert Jewett's description of the civic usurpation of the Cabirus cult in The Thessalonian Correspondence: Pauline Rhetoric and Millenarian Piety (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1986), 130-32, as an example of the tendency of an occupational organization - of course using cultic devotion to express its identity - to be absorbed by civic institutions and consequently dominated by the local political elite. Similar is the absorption of the Asklepios cult - in which physicians had a special role - into the overall civic religion of Athens. 58 I am speaking here primarily of those ethnic groups alien to the ethnos of which the city in question is itself a part, thus Jews in Corinth, Egyptians in Athens, Tyrians in Puteoli, and so forth; I am not referring to the status of Greeks in Athens, Syrians in Antioch, Jews in Jerusalem, and the like, although it should be noted that even in these instances, e.g., with Romans in Rome or Jews in Jerusalem, "tribal" and similar descentbased groupings serve as fractions of the polis. When it comes to urban subcultures comprised of Greeks or Macedonians and their colonies in the east (including Alexandria), or of Romans anywhere in the empire, the situation could be quite different,
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posItIon corresponded to the dominated position of the nations that constitute the empire - city microcosm reproduced imperial macrocosm. It is around this last point that I think the unspoken doxa of identity in the Roman period was organized. Because of the extreme diversity and flux that normally accompany ethnic and political identities in an imperial situation - especially as multi-layered and complex an imperial situation as that of the Roman Empire in the eastern Mediterranean59 - it is extremely difficult to fasten upon a single definition of identity, or to define even a limited set of acceptable mechanisms for expressing identity in the polis, or indeed simply to find just about any generalization for which there are no exceptions, so multiple, nuanced, and situationally contingent were the circumstances in which identity was worked out from one location to another. This is clear even within Paul' s (genuine) letters themselves, written as they were by a single person, and - ostensibly - to a single type of institution,60 yet betraying an almost unlimited set of strategies for
for reasons I will endeavor to explicate as aspects of the doxa of imperial identity. Note that this sub-cultural or subgroup expression of ethnic bodies was one (among several) impediments to trans-local associational links, though these links did exist more commonly than is typically recognized; see Ascough, "Translocal Relationships." 59 The history of the region fostered this complexity, as Roman domination was laid on top of multiple layers of previous domination and other forms of interaction. In any given locale, there may be millennia-old traditions of interaction between different groups, upon which is overlaid a history of eastern imperial domination (i.e., Persian), which in its tum has been supplanted by Greek-influenced Macedonian domination, shifting domination by Alexander's successor empires, and finally seizure by Rome, itself culturally influenced by Greece. To trace out in detail the shifting identities and allegiances such a complex history might generate is obviously beyond the parameters of this paper; it would require a book to exhaust the issue in even a single locale, not to speak of the entire "east." 60 I say "ostensibly" because there are good reasons for thinking that "Paul's" ekklesiai might have been pre-existing institutions of various that Paul redirected toward his own gospel. Thus for instance Ascough, "Thessalonian Christian Community," suggests that the Thesssalonian church was originally a trade association of which Paul effectively seized control. Smith, "Re: Corinthians," similarly, suggests that the Corinthian group may have been a multi-ethnic association devoted to honoring the ancestors in a context in which the ancestors' graves and monuments were no longer present, which Paul attempted to reorient toward his gospel. See note 11, above. Considered together, these two claims, if both valid, would point to differing social and organizational bases for two separate groups, both of which Paul himself - rather misleadingly - designates with the singular term, ekklesia. Such a conclusion is inherently plausible, it seems to me, and helps explain some of the glaring social differences between Paul's Thessalonian and Corinthian congregations. I also note that in the one instance in which Paul writes to a group for which he himself claims no foundational role - Romans, which is universally treated as addressed to a church - Paul never uses the term ekklesia, and in fact completely fails to identify the actual group
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marking and elaborating the identity of their recipients. Outside of such a strictly limited corpus, examples of practically every conceivable form of identity-transition, maintenance of multiple identities, and mutual influence and cross-fertilization can be found, from the "barbarian" to the Greek, the Greek to the Roman, and vice-versa, and employing mechanisms ranging from the formal conferral of citizenship or civic office and the legal adoption of individuals - or their enslavement - into new families with the concomitant identification with the ethnic background of those families; to semi-formal mechanisms such as crosscultural relations of benefaction or clientage, sub-group participation in civic life or the organization of public festivals and other cultural performances for those associated with a minority ethnic identity; to the wholly informal processes of personal friendships, exchange of ideas, and ad hoc appropriation of individual features of ethnic culture. 61 Very tentatively, however, certain unstated norms can be identified lurking underneath this extraordinarily diverse range of discourses. My hypothesis for the purposes of this paper - a conjecture that obviously still requires more detailed working out - is that the doxa of first-century imperial identity discourses appears to be the unspoken but loosely and circumstantially enforced double-standard by which ethnic and political identities are related to one another, a double-standard dictated, of course, by the concrete power relations that governed the empire, specifically Roman imperial domination of multiple ethne. According to this unspoken double-standard, ethnic identities are fractions of urban political identity, on the one hand, kept distinct from it and subordinate to it. The various forms of activity by which these ethnic subgroups participate in civic life reinforce this subordination and distinction, and the allowable influences, transitions, and relationships are those in which subordination and distinction are expressed or at least maintained. On the other hand, however, Roman ethnic identity was thoroughly assimilated to political power, essentially coextensive with it, its gods and religious rites never absorbed as a fraction within the dominant cultural fabric of foreign lands but instead standing at its pinnacle, its people and institutions theoretically
basis of this apparently collective entity (I am treating chapter 16 here as a fragment of a Letter from Corinth, on the basis of both manuscript evidence and internal indications). 61 See, as but one example of the types of cross-cultural or polyethnic links that could be made in antiquity, Shaye Cohen's typology of the possible Gentile engagements with Judaism, ranging from the most informal and uncommitted - interest in Jewish ideas - to the most formal and committed - outright conversion: Shaye J. D. Cohen, "Crossing the Boundary and Becoming a Jew," HTR 82 (1989): 13-33. The same basic range should probably be posited for any number of other cross-group contacts, with appropriate changes in details.
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never subject to cultural absorption.62 In short, forms of identity, including the possibilities for cultural and ethnic expressions of identity, were to reflect the political supremacy of Rome, and, in an imperial situation, the social supremacy of political identity, which was in fact Roman ethnic identity. The power and supremacy of Rome itself, of course, was an obvious feature of the socio-political landscape, and there is nothing particularly surprising about these conclusions. But they encode a set of assumptions that - differentially applied, albeit without saying so fostered both multicultural integration in urban centers and Roman supremacy at the same time. The genuinely multicultural aspects of the empire, the very real differences in practice and belief that existed among the different subunits of this far-flung state, were permitted - even promoted - and used as a vehicle and outlet for a continued sense of identity within long-standing cultural entities, now constructed, however, as aspects of the imperium. Relatedly, the state could make use of local traditions - and the elites whose positions were justified by those traditions - to rule through mechanisms already in place and acceptable,63 and so establish a sovereignty that was total, in lieu of a genuinely totalitarian hegemony (a goal which has remained practically unfeasible until now). In such a system, the maintenance of ethnic identity and its symbolic markers served as an actual technique of rule. But this technique could only be sustained so long as each of the ethnic constituents of empire recognized first its status as a fraction, rather than a totality; and relatedly its consequent subordination to an international and hence superior, nonfractional, overarching political order, focalized in the cities but imperial in character. Thus while ethnic identities could be and were freely expressed and embodied, they had to be discursively subordinated to the political structures of the empire. Conversely, the actual ethnic and fractional basis of the empire - the fact, that is, that its rulers were not actually representative of the social totality of the state, but were themselves a fraction of it - had to be discursively repressed in order to 62 This is not to say, of course, that Roman citizens or even formal Roman institutions were not actually subject to external cultural influences, but simply that the operative theory is that they were not. When external influences did make a strong impact on Roman people and Roman culture, those influences were absorbed by Roman culture and became hallmarks of Roman identity, rather than signs of foreign influence. Again, this characterization is at the level of ideology, and is theoretical: I am attempting to capture the prevailing attitudes about culture and identity, not the realities of such phenomena as viewed from without. 63 Indeed, in so doing, the state makes such mechanisms more popularly acceptable, as structures and institutions that might previously have been viewed as oppressive or subject to critique now assume the guise of vehicles for self-expression under an imperial hegemon. Thus do restrictions appear as liberties.
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maintain the convenient but false distinction between ethnicity and politics; in order, that is, to conceal the extent to which the political structures did privilege a particular ethnicity, to conceal the fact that the Romans who ultimately controlled the political apparatus were themselves an ethnos. 64 Put simply, the doxa of identity construction in the Roman period is the same old ideological contrivance whereby a (hegemonic) part 64 This became decreasingly the case over time as the empire became more and more culturally integrated, and, partly as a result, its actual ruling classes less and less Roman. Eventually Roman citizenship itself became a purely political marker, indicating simply a subject of the Roman state, with no ethnic signification at all (when the citizenship was extended to all free residents of the empire in 212 CE by Caracalla). The point I am making here may be illustrated by modern analogues, as this type of ideological maneuver seems to mark systems of domination across and between historical epochs. As many feminist theorists have noted, gender distinctions do not represent a balanced and reciprocal type of classification, but rather a marking of one group women - as defined by gender, and the other group - men - as undefined by it, as, essentially, lacking gender. In the terms of such a system of classification, it is never necessary overtly to assert the superiority of men to women; one simply assumes that men, because they are not marked by or classified according to gender, are the universal or paradigmatic human type and hence can speak for all of "mankind," whereas women are a deviation from the generic human type, and hence constitute a subgroup capable only of speaking for itself. This doxa of gender differentiation not only accounts for the perverse insistence on maintaining exclusive language in popular discourse, but even more obviously for the peculiar belief that describing God in feminine terms is limiting or sexualizing, while describing "him" in masculine terms is universalizing and maintains "his" transcendence! The same technique is still used for ethnic identities as well. For instance, in the violently racist settler culture of Western Canada in which I live, European ethnic identity of nearly all types remains unmarked; white, Europeanderived Canadians living here are simply "people," and so can speak for the totality of the culture, for "human" norms, for law, decency, and the Canadian way - and this is true even for individuals like myself, who were not born in Canada and who have only recently come to live here. By contrast, the indigenous Cree, whose ancestors have lived in this region for centuries, and compared to whom all other Canadians living in this region are the most recent of immigrants (permanent white/European settlements were only established here by the 1870s), are constituted discursively as an ethnic subgroup. As such, they are "managed" in part by being encouraged to maintain ancestral customs and various traditions of self-rule; but always at the cost of being constructed as a fraction of the total political culture, a culture which is de facto a white and European fraction itself. Because of the unstated and taken-for-granted character of this doxa, the actual double-standard is very difficult to see or even to describe (I assume that it is in part my status as an outsider who has lived most of his life elsewhere that allows me some insight into it). It can be viewed, however, in extremely pointed fashion, by considering patterns of the disposition of children. While it is routine for white/European couples to adopt or foster Cree children (many of whom have been forcibly taken from "unfit" Cree parents), we hear little of the adoption by Cree couples of white babies - as an ethnic fraction, the Cree are only permitted authority over their ethnic counterparts; whereas because whites are unmarked and therefore not perceived as a fraction, they are permitted universal authority.
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is misrecognized as a social whole, the social totality represented by a concealed synecdoche, offering an implicit but unstated rationalization for the rule of some over all - a rationalization which derives much of its power from not needing to be said (and therefore submitted to examination or contestation). It is, I think, for reasons such as these that Juvenal, for example, speaking as a Roman to Romans, presents adherence to Jewish customs as being as contemptible and ridiculous as homosexuality: from Juvenal' s perspective, both of these practices represent a failure to maintain the norms of dominance, in one case with respect to the codes of manliness and gender dominance, and in the other with respect to the codes of Roman-ness and political dominance. 65 Acts of the Apostles, similarly, asserts that adoption of Jewish customs by Romans is actually illegal. Acts 16:20-21 presents Paul as being brought before the magistrates in the Philippian forum and accused (falsely, from the author's perspective) of attempting to impose Jewish customs on Romans: "These men are Jews, and they are disturbing our city. They advocate customs which it is not lawful for us Romans to accept or practice." And while this doxa primarily serves the interests of Rome, the subcultures that participate in it - and indeed owe their continued existence and their carefully-circumscribed but still-powerful authority to it - obviously have an investment in it as well. Their very identity is at stake in the arrangement; a careful self-policing is necessary to protect what remains of communal existence; in the presence of individual members of the community who repudiate this modus vivendi, communal destruction is a genuine possibility: "If we let him go on thus, everyone will believe in him, and the Romans will come and destroy both our place and our nation."66 Josephus provides an excellent example of this defensive and accommodating attitude in his Jewish War, where he offers a description - and rationalization - of the events leading up to the war and the ultimate resolution of the. hostilities in the Roman victory and the destruction of the temple. In this account, Josephus goes to great lengths to demonstrate that the Roman victory is a function, not of the defeat of the Jewish God, but of that God's decision to abandon his 65 For Juvenal's characterization of homosexuality (or, more precisely, the adoption by men of the passive role in anal sex), see Decimus Junius Juvenal, The Satires of Juvenal (trans. H. Creekmore; New York: New American Library, 1963), 35-36 (book 2, lines 9-22); for his views on the influence of Judaism, alongside other foreign cults, see Satires of Juvenal, 112-14 (book 6, lines 511-564); also note his characterization of Egyptian religion in Satires of Juvenal, 230-34 (book 15, lines 1-83). 66 John 11 :48, as supposedly spoken by the synedrion regarding Jesus; cf. also John 19: 12-16, where the dominated ethnos must make a display of loyalty to the emperor and empire that is more extravagant than that of the actual Roman political functionary, Pilate.
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impious people, thereby turning the Romans into an instrument of divine judgment. 67 In so doing, Josephus saves his own God, but at the cost of a complete surrender to the validity of Roman rule and the use of extreme and violent force to maintain that rule. And so both the representatives of the Roman state and the representatives of subaltern identities within that state have a shared interest - one imperial, the other defensive - in maintaining the status quo boundaries of the doxic field of identity construction, with their continued subordination of ethnic to political identity. The concomitant segregation of subaltern identities as, precisely, ethnic in their basis (and hence overtly fractional), is established through, inter alia, fixing such identities as only capable of articulation in terms of familial relationships.
The Pauline Ekklesiai, Ethnicity, and Identity When we turn to Paul's letters with these aspects of urban identity in mind, we can see a complex interaction in them with the norms of urban identities and the various possibilities for altering or effecting transitions between these identities. 68 In this respect, at least, Paul is firmly a product of his time and environment, an ethnic outsider operating within cosmopolitan and polyethnic Greek and Asian cities, and attempting to establish or manipulate group identities in precisely that context. While there is no doubt that Paul himself is an ethnic Jew and identifies himself as such (see especially Phil 3:4-6), the field of his activity appears to be almost exclusively Gentile. His letters indicate that he is writing to people who live in the large cities of Greece and Asia Minor and who do not come from a Jewish background,69 and is operating in those cities himself (i.e., 67 See the brilliant treatment of Josephus' agenda offered recently in Nicole Kelley, "The Cosmopolitan Expression of Josephus's Prophetic Perspective in the Jewish War," HTR 97 (2004): 257-74. Interestingly, the author of the Gospel of Mark offers a similar "explanation" for the defeat of the Judean "insurgents" by the Romans, i.e., their abandonment by God (symbolized by the tearing of the temple curtain in Mark 15:38) due to their impious actions (in the treatment of Jesus). This motif is actually one promoted by the Romans themselves, who at times identify their dominance as a function of their superior piety (so Crossan and Reed, In Search of Paul, 58-59, citing Cicero). The Roman practice of evocatio, whereby the gods of an enemy are entreated to abandon them, is discussed in John Kloppenborg, "Evocatio deorum and the Date of Mark," JBL 124.3 (2005): 419--450, with reference to the Gospel of Mark's appeal to this practice. 68 The most thorough recent discussion of Paul in terms of Roman urban life is Crossan and Reed, In Search of Paul, which addresses these aspects of urban life much more concretely than is done here, and situates Paul firmly within this context. 69 See Paul's various statements in the Letters (e.g., 1 Thess 1:9; Gal 4:8) to the effect that his auditors have turned to the living God, or were formerly enslaved to non-gods,
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Ephesus, Corinth, Athens, Thessalonica, Philippi, etc.). His own selfpresentation is as an apostle expressly called by God to a distinctive mission to the Gentiles (see, e.g., Gal 1:15-16; 2:8-9; Rom 1:5; 15:15-18). The influence of Acts - which for its own theological purposes presents Paul's mission and church-founding activities as originating in the Levant, as taking place preeminently in synagogues, and as going to Jews first and only to Gentiles subsequently - as well as the polemics of the Reformation over "works versus faith" have obscured this critically important point, with the result that Paul's theology as expressed in his letters, his polemics against circumcision, his apparent hostility to the Jewish Torah, have all been understood as essentially universal and abstract comments on the validity of the "Jewish religion," rather than as comments specifically directed to Gentile adherents, as in fact they were. 70 This recognition will mean, on the one hand, that Paul is at least partially "saved" for Judaism,71
statements that would have been inaccurate and insulting addressed to Jews. Likewise, many of the issues Paul deals with are issues that simply would not have occurred to, or been relevant to, Jews. The most obvious example of such an issue is the question which occupies the bulk of Galatians and is also raised, albeit far less extensively, in Philippians 3:2-3 - whether the adherents of the ekklesiai need to become circumcised. Obviously, if this is in question, these adherents are not circumcised, and hence, presumably are not Jews by descent or by conversion. Likewise, the question of "meat sacrificed to idols" (ta eidolothyta), dealt with in 1 Corinthians 8-10, implies a Gentile audience, as such a question would already have been addressed within a Jewish community. The examples could be multiplied. Perhaps the clearest indication of the composition of Paul's groups - as well as the sources of hostility directed against such groups - occurs in 1 Thess 2:14: "you suffered the same things from your own countrymen (hypo ton idion symphyleton) as they did from the Jews/Judeans." Birger Pearson, however, has argued influentially that this text is a post-70 interpolation in Birger A. Pearson, "1 Thessalonians 2:13-16: A Deutero-Pauline Interpolation?" HTR 64 (1971): 79-94. The article makes some solid points, but none of them are unanswerable; for a defense of the authenticity of the text, see John C. Hurd, "Paul Ahead of His Time: 1 Thess 2: 13-16," in Anti-Judaism in Early Christianity (ed. Peter Richardson and David Granskou; Waterloo, Ont.: Published for the Canadian Corporation for Studies in Religion by Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1986), 31-36; and Abraham Smith, "'Unmasking the Powers': Toward a Postcolonial Analysis of 1 Thessalonians," in Paul and the Roman Imperial Order (ed. Richard A. Horsley; Harrisburg, Pa.: Trinity Press International 2004), esp. 58-60 and accompanying notes. 70 This is an extraordinarily important point, and its increasing recognition throughout Pauline studies represents a major shift of direction in the field. Prominent scholarship promoting this new perspective on Paul includes Stendahl, Final Account; Stanley K. Stowers, A Rereading of Romans: Justice, Jews, and Gentiles (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994); Gaston, Paul and the Torah; and John G. Gager, Reinventing Paul (Oxford: OUP, 2000). 71 See Gaston, Paul and the Torah, 15-34; Gager, Reinventing Paul, 17-18, 54-57. Note especially ibid., p. 57 (emphasis original): "In the end, are-Judaized Paul leads to a
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since we can no longer read his apparently negative comments on circumcision or "works of the Law" as outright and principled condemnations of these institutions, but rather as rejections of their applicability to Gentiles. This conclusion applies particularly to Paul's expression of "the curse of the Law," which has now been convincingly reinterpreted as Paul's view that the Law stands as a curse against the Gentiles, precisely by virtue of their not possessing it. 72 On the other hand, these conclusions - and this has not yet been sufficiently recognized - will also lead to a "de-Judaization" at least of Paul's letters, since we are now forced to understand those letters as addressed, precisely, to Gentiles, and so interpret them within Gentile frames of reference. Thus for example debates about the allusive import of the term ekklesia - is the term an allusion to the assembly of Israel, as per the LXX, or to the body of citizens, as per standard urban usage?73 - must take into account that Paul's auditors would certainly have heard in this term a reference to the political structures with which they were most familiar before detecting an allusion to Israel, even if one were intended by Paul (as I think was in fact the case). The appeal to "God-fearers" (theosebeis) as Paul's primary audience and the main constituents of his groups74 seems to me an attempt to have it both ways: to establish Paul's primary audience as ethnic Gentiles but (more or less) ideological Jews, and to retain the Acts' presentation of Paul's focus of activity as the synagogue while rejecting the supersessionist implications of that presentation. I remain unconvinced by this suggestion, however. It owes too much to the exceedingly tendentious - and in my view, fictitious - presentation of Paul in Acts/ 5 which is in reversal of the law noted earlier: Christian readers no longer feel compelled to insulate Paul from Judaism, while Jewish readers no longer strive to protect Judaism from Paul." 72 So Gaston, Paul and the Torah, 28-33; Gager, Reinventing Paul, esp. 58, 86-89. 73 See, e.g., Wayne A. Meeks, The First Urban Christians: The Social World of the Apostle Paul (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983), 79. 74 So, e.g., Gager, Reinventing Paul, esp. 51,63,67-68; Crossan and Reed, In Search of Paul, 34-41; Lampe, Paul to Valentinus, 69-72; and many others. For critical discussion of such proposals, see Ascough, Formation of Pauline Churches, 11-28. 75 Crossan and Reed rather disingenuously imply that this motif is not compatible with the authorial redaction of Acts: "We do not accept that Paul always went first to the synagogue and tried to convert Jews to Jesus as Messiah. But we do accept something that Acts tells us in that very same context, because it is neither derived from nor congruent with Luke's own Jew/Gentile dichotomy" (In Search of Paul, 35, emphasis added). In fact, the motif is as important to the author of Acts as the more basic claim that Paul's preaching took place primarily in synagogues. Indeed, the author of Acts uses this device to explain precisely how it could be that Paul was a devout Jew preaching in synagogues and yet acquired a Gentile following (a function it continues to serve for those scholars who assert that Paul's mission was to Gentiles, and yet wish to link this
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fact the only place we are told that Paul engages in evangelization in or around synagogues, and is the only place in which he is regularly confronted with hoi phoboumenoi ton theon (Acts 13: 16, 26; cf. 17:4: ton te sebomenon hellenon; and 17: 17: en te synagoge tois ioudaiois kai tois sebomenois; etc.); Paul himself says nothing of the sort, and we would hardly think of it were it not for Acts,?6 Conversely, there is some positive evidence against such a view, or in favor of alternative scenarios irreconcilable with ekklesiai comprised of synagogue hangers-on. One such consideration is that "god-fearers" as a sizable and well-delineated group may not have existed at all: the specific terminology of Acts is nowhere duplicated, and the inscriptional evidence is ambiguous. 77 Another consideration is that some of the very comments in the Pauline corpus that prevent us from identifying his adherents as Jewish seem almost as unlikely to have been directed at anyone devoted to the Jewish God. Paul's assertions that the Thessalonians, in welcoming him, "turned to God from idols, to serve a living and true God" (1 Thess 1:9), or that the Galatians "did not know God [and] were in bondage to beings that by mission with synagogue Judaism). But more than this, the author of Acts is particularly concerned to present the Gentile church of his own day as a legitimate and especially a continuous development out of Judaism - the "god-fearers" are one device for so doing. That this is precisely the way the author is using these figures is most readily apparent from his depiction of the first Gentile convert, Cornelius - a convert of Peter, not Paul being precisely such a "devout man who feared God" (eusebes kai phoboumenos ton theon, Acts 10:2; cf. 10:22). Similarly, see Ascough, Formation of Pauline Churches, 17-18. 76 Gager, Reinventing Paul, 51, essentially cites this fact as an advantage of the hypothesis: it allows one to avoid jettisoning the historicity of Acts' presentation altogether. I am not quite sure why this is an advantage, why the burden of proof should rest on denials, rather than assertions, of historicity. Equally weak is the effort of Crossan and Reed to find indirect evidence for a Pauline mission to hoi phoboumenoi in his own Letters, asserting that only people already familiar with Jewish practice and Scripture would have been able to follow Paul's arguments as they appear in the Letters (Crossan and Reed, In Search of Paul, 39). Aside from some generalities, which constitute a very basic core of Pauline belief, Paul's arguments seem to me - with the possible exception of Romans - to assume very little by way of specifically Jewish theological content. 77 See especially A. Thomas Kraabel, "The Disappearance of the 'God-Fearers,' " Numen 28 (1981): 113-26; and Ascough, Formation of Pauline Churches, 16-20, who note particularly that the inscriptional evidence is significantly later than Paul, and in any case fails to establish those honored as theosebeis to be a distinctive class of Gentile synagogue-adherents, as per Acts. For an argument that inscriptional evidence does support the existence of "God-fearers," see Crossan and Reed, In Search of Paul, 23-25. They focus, however, on the same third-century inscription from Aphrodisias whose late date constitutes an obstacle for Kraabel and Ascough. It is not to be doubted, of course, that some Gentiles were attracted to Judaism; what is open to question, in my view, is whether such Gentiles constituted a large, distinctive, and identifiable class of people more or less formally associated with Jewish synagogues.
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nature are no gods" (Gal 4:8) prior to their acceptance of Paul's gospel, do not really apply to people who had already demonstrated a commitment to the Jewish God, and might even be construed as offensive to such people. It is also difficult to see what possible advantage hangers-on at the Jewish synagogues could possibly derive from adherence to the Pauline ekklesiai that they did not already possess by virtue of being "god-fearers" - if anything, joining up with Paul would have meant a more tenuous and dubious relationship to Judaism than they already had. Moreover the circumstances behind Galatians, at least, in which some of Paul's adherents there were actually being circumcised (see, e.g., Gal 1:1:6; 3:13), seem rather unusual for people who were initially constituted as an identifiable group (i.e., "god-fearers" rather than converts) precisely by their very unwillingness to accept circumcision! Finally, alternative models have been suggested for Paul's missionary activity that have better grounding in his own statements and in the apparent characteristics of his adherents, most notably the assertion that Paul's workspace was a major locus for the proclamation of his gospel.78 Richard Ascough' s development of the claim that the Thessalonian church, at least, was originally an occupational association79 would seem to rule out a group primarily constituted by "God-fearers"; Ascough goes so far as to suggest that the evidence does not permit us to assume any institutional or organized Jewish presence in Macedonia during Paul's time at al1. 80 Since it appears that Paul's ekklesiai are heterogeneous in their social constitution (i.e., one ekklesia is constituted differently than the next), and since at least in the case of Romans it is wholly unclear just who is being addressed, it would be a mistake to claim that none of Paul's adherents were former (or still!) synagogue hangers-on, or even that none of his ekklesiai may have been primarily constituted by such individuals. But it would equally be a mistake, and for much the same reasons, to conclude that all of his ekklesiai must have been constituted primarily of theosebeis. This seems especially true of some groups, such as those in Thessalonica or Galatia, which, on the basis of what Paul says to these people in his letters, were very likely to have been comprised of Gentiles with little commitment or exposure to formal Jewish institutions prior to their "conversion. " 78 So, e.g., Ronald F. Hock, The Social Context of Paul's Ministry: Tentmaking and Apostleship (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1980); Meeks, First Urban Christians, 29; Sanders, Very Short Introduction, 24-25. 79 So Ascough, "Thessalonian Christian Community"; idem, Macedonian Associations; idem, "A Question of Death: Paul's Community-Building Language in 1 Thessalonians 4: 13-18," JBL 123 (2004): 509-30. 80 Idem, Macedonian Associations, esp. 191-212.
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To invoke the heterodoxy versus heresy typology I described earlier, in the context of a proclamation to and for Gentiles it is quite clear that Paul is politically heterodox,81 and sufficiently so as perhaps to account for the opposition he and his adherents encounter, without our needing to invoke the murky realm of doxa and heresy. Paul's implicit and overt opposition to or, better, repudiation of the Roman imperium has been neglected in most traditional scholarship (focusing as it does on "religious" issues more or less in isolation), but has lately come under quite extensive scrutiny, especially by Richard Horsley,82 and now most recently by John Dominic Crossan and Jonathan Reed. 83 One need only consider the implications of Paul's apocalyptic message in his earlier letters,84 especially for nonJewish listeners, who would not hear in such material simply groupaffirming echoes of an old national epic, nor visionary scenarios in the heavens, but instead a real threat and promise to destroy all forms of earthly rule. 85 Urban Gentiles could not fail to hear in Paul's statements a brazen and direct substitute for and counter to imperial eschatology.86 81 I actually think that the recognition that Paul is addressing his comments to Gentiles - and Gentiles as such - makes his message more politically charged than if it had been addressed to Jews. For in a Gentile context the apocalyptic and anti-worldly aspects of his message would have their most obvious application as a genuine repudiation of actual worldly structures rather than as mere familiar theological tropes. 82 See especially the three recent anthologies he has edited: Richard A. Horsley, ed., Paul and Empire: Religion and Power in Roman Imperial Society (Harrisburg: Trinity Press, 1997); idem, Paul and Politics: Ekklesia, Israel, Imperium, Interpretation (Harrisburg: Trinity Press, 2000); idem, Paul and the Roman Imperial Order (Harrisburg: Trinity Press, 2004). 83 Crossan and Reed, In Search of Paul. 84 I am assuming here a particular sequence of Paul's Letters, namely (from earliest to latest): 1 Thessalonians, 1 Corinthians, most of the fragments of 2 Corinthians (which I believe to be comprised of at least four and probably five letter fragments, of which 2 Cor 6:14-7:1, if genuinely Pauline, is the only one to predate 1 Corinthians), Galatians, Romans (minus chapter 16), Philemon, most of the letter fragments from Philippians (which I believe to be comprised of three letter fragments, the two of which dealing with Epaphroditas are probably to be dated roughly to the same time as Philemon, and in any case as among the latest of Paul's surviving Letters; the remaining fragment may be somewhat earlier). I do not regard any of the disputed "deutero-Paulines," i.e., 2 Thessalonians, Colossians, or Ephesians, to be authentic. While Paul's apocalypticism has been made much of, it seems to me that it is concentrated in his earlier Letters, and fades significantly with time. I do not see the same centrality of apocalypticism in, say, Galatians or Romans as is encountered in 1 Thessalonians or, already to a more attenuated degree, 1 Corinthians. I cannot therefore treat apocalypticism as the generative fount of Pauline thought, though in places it is influential. 85 See especially the discussion in Neil Elliott, "The Anti-Imperial Message of the Cross," in Paul and Empire (ed. Horsley), 176-83. 86 So, e.g., Neil Elliott, "The Apostle Paul's Self-Presentation as Anti-Imperial Performance," in Paul and the Roman Imperial Order (ed. Horsley), 67-68. See also
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Paul's message redeploys and appropriates to his own ends terminology associated with imperial ideology: good news,87 parousia, 88. son of God,89 Lord,90 and so on. In 1 Thessalonians 5:3, Paul assures his auditors that "when people say, 'there is peace and security' " - pax et securitas, the eschatological blessings of imperium91 - "then sudden destruction will come upon them." Likewise in 1 Corinthians 15:24, Paul asserts that after Christ, at his parousia, makes alive those who belong to him, "then comes the end, when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power." In 1 Corinthians 2:6-8, Paul describes "the rulers of this age" (ta archonta tou aionos) both as "doomed to pass away" and as having "crucified the Lord of Glory."92 This last claim - that it was the "rulers of this age" who crucified Christ - directs us to another subversive feature of Paul's gospel: the centrality of crucifixion, as such, to his version of the story of Jesus. The political implications of this aspect of Paul's gospel are frequently overlooked because two thousand years of Christian history have made it unthinkable to imagine Jesus without thinking of the cross; the term now serves merely as a metonym for Jesus' death. But in a context in which the cross would be understood first and foremost as a Roman method of execution, and without the "natural" association we make between crucifixion and Jesus, there is nothing innocuous about describing Jesus' death in this way - the use of the term makes it explicitly clear that it was the Romans who executed Jesus. 93 There is little in the logic of Paul's myth that requires that the mode of Jesus' death be specified, nor, for that matter, was Helmut Koester, "Imperial Ideology and Paul's Eschatology in 1 Thessalonians," in Horsley, ed., Paul and Empire, 166: "Paul envisions a role for the eschatological community that presents a utopian alternative to the prevailing eschatological ideology of Rome. In doing so, he radicalizes traditional apocalyptic topics." 87 So Dieter Georgi, "God Turned Upside Down," in Paul and Empire (ed. Horsley), 148-49. 88 Koester, "Imperial Ideology," 158-59. 89 So Abraham Smith, "Unmasking the Powers," 57, with reference to the emperor as divifilius. 90 Ibid., 60 and n. 60. 91 So Koester, "Imperial Ideology," 162; Abraham Smith, "Unmasking the Powers," 48. 92 It is unfortunate that a single Pauline text from an uncharacteristic Letter - namely, Romans 13:1-7 - has been used to control the interpretation of Paul's politics, when so many other indications point in exactly the opposite direction. I think it is important to consider here that Paul is writing to a group he is unfamiliar with and has not established, or even met, himself. For an interesting - if, to my mind, not completely convincing reinterpr~tation of Romans 13: 1-7, see Georgi, "God Turned Upside Down," 156. 93 See the excellent discussion in Elliott, "Anti-Imperial Message." Cf. also Crossan and Reed, In Search of Paul, 40.
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attention to this detail universal among the earliest Christians. 94 Burton Mack has argued that Paul's basic myth of Christ is a derivation from an earlier martyr-myth, which understood Jesus as a figure whose death is "for" a specific group of people, and so establishes a community that in turn memorializes that death. Such a story, according to Mack, requires only the virtuous death of the righteous one, and not a specification of either the manner of death or the identity of the tyrant who is responsible for that death. But Paul, says Mack, adds precisely that gratuitous specification by virtue of adding and emphasizing the detail that Jesus was crucified. 95 We may view the Christ-myth operative in Paul's ekklesiai as having relatively innocuous analogues of various sorts: heroes who die for their cities, or "mystery" deities whose mythic tribulations are ritually enacted and mirrored by initiates. What distinguishes Paul's Christ from these other myths and legends is the identification of the hero's or deity's adversary as the very state under which Paul and his adherents live. As with other initiation deities, Christ's ultimate enemy is a transcendent entity, or an abstraction - death itself (so 1 Cor 15:26: "the last enemy to be destroyed [by the returning Christ] is death"), as is also the case for, e.g., Demeter, whose story represents a victory over death and winter, or Isis, who battles death and chaos. 96 Unlike these other deities, however, the 94 Neither Q nor the Gospel of Thomas presents Jesus' death in terms of crucifixion, although both are aware of it (see Q 14:27; Thomas # 55). For Thomas, Jesus' death is not especially theologically important, and for Q, while Jesus' death is exemplary of the fate of the prophets, the actual mode of his death is irrelevant. 95 So Burton L. Mack, "Rereading the Christ Myth: Paul's Gospel and the Christ Cult Question," unpublished manuscript, 2004. It is interesting that Paul does not specify that Jesus was crucified in his earliest Letter, 1 Thessalonians. It is possible that Paul had not yet developed this specification in the formulation of the martyr myth he inherited by this point, and allowed apocalyptic scenarios - more prominent here than in any of the later Letters - to bear the weight of his condemnation of "this age." As the apocalyptic elements of Paul's message fall by the wayside in his later Letters, however, the more pointed assertion that Jesus died specifically by crucifixion comes to carry the weight once borne by these elements. 96 The term thanatos occurs 44 times in the authentic Pauline corpus, though many of these instances do not have a theological or mythological referent. I note that Jonathan Z. Smith warns about comparisons between Paul and the so-called "mysteries"; see particularly his Drudgery Divine: On the Comparison of Early Christianities and the Religions of Late Antiquity (Chicago: U. Press of Chicago, 1990). I think, however, that it makes a certain amount of sense to set Paul's mythology within the context of other initiation cults which focus on a myth of deity or hero who encounters and vanquishes tribulations, though the point is well-taken that such figures should probably not be characterized as "dying and rising gods"; and in any case, my conclusions here are rather congruent with (though not identical to) those of Smith. Where he finds a departure, in Paul's "utopianism," from the locative orientation of both other forms of Christianities and the "mysteries," I find a departure, in Paul's specification of the Romans as the
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agent of that metaphysical entity - the agent of death itself - is Rome. A group constituting itself by virtue of allegiance to and identification with a criminal executed by the state power - executed in a manner restricted to non-citizens,97 slaves, or traitors - is heterodox at the very least. The structure of the Christ myth itself, even without an explicit reference to crucifixion and hence to state power, should not be ignored in any discussion of the politically heterodox implications of Pauline mythology. The outline of the myth, especially as it relates to social characteristics of those who have adopted it, may reveal a great deal about its implications and functionality. Here comparison with analogous mythic structures may be useful. The one I have in mind - culled from Jonathan Smith's work - involves the myth of Hainuwele, or "coconut girl."98 Among the many fascinating features of this story is its symbolic reconfiguration of a concrete social reality: the presence of Europeans among the Pacific islands and particularly the excessive and over-abundant consumer goods which mark their special status. Hainuwele is presented as producing such goods by defecation. The image stands as a striking condemnation of this alien super-abundant wealth (such wealth is shit), as well as a sense of befuddlement and disapproval as to its origins (it is not produced by work or growth, but essentially springs into being magically and ex nihilo). The decision of the other women to kill coconut girl also expresses disapproval of "unnatural" wealth, and at the same time attempts to assimilate commercial wealth to the natives' own, traditional, understanding of wealth as food: Hainuwele is not simply killed, but afterwards, as tubers arise from her dismembered body, becomes a source of a new and - from the native perspective - better kind of wealth. enemies of Christ, from the lack of such specification in the "mysteries" and the efforts on the part of other Christianities to avoid such a specification - witness the efforts of Q and Thomas to direct attention away from crucifixion, and the efforts of the gospel writers, at extreme cost to logic and plausibility, to explain away the crucifixion as ultimately the responsibility of (other) Jews. Paul alone both focuses on crucifixion and foregoes any effort to explain it away. To some degree I am guilty of homogenizing the "mysteries" to use as a foil for Paul; it remains to be seen whether the generalization I have offered here stands up to scrutiny. 97 See Elliott, "Anti-Imperial Message," 168. This strikes me as an extremely significant point. The adherents to Paul's ekklesiai belong to the group by virtue of an adherence to and identification with a man whose manner of execution not only marks him as an enemy of Rome, but also as, specifically, a non-citizen. It is details like this that convince me that Acts' claim that Paul was a Roman citizen is a tendentious invention on the part of the author. 98 Jonathan Z. Smith, "A Pearl of Great Price and a Cargo of Yams," in Idem, Imagining Religion: From Babylon to Jonestown (Chicago: U. Press of Chicago, 1982), 90-101. The interpretation of the Hainuwele story that follows is entirely either reiteration of, or extrapolation from, points made by Smith in this article.
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Overarchingly, the narrative may be imagined to suggest also an inversionary restoration: by the end of the story, excrement has been transformed into food, rather than, as is the usual state of affairs, food becoming excrement. One of the most striking features of at least 1 Corinthians - a feature that extends to the other letters as well, if less blatantly - is its rather excessive language of inversion, and more specifically, its inversionary characterization of the transformation of the adherents of the ekklesia from lowly to lofty standing: Consider your own call, brothers: not many of you were wise according to the flesh, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are, so that no flesh might boast in the presence of God. (1 Cor 1:26-29)
This is applied also to Paul's own central myth: God decided, through the foolishness of our proclamation, to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to the Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For God's foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God's weakness is stronger than human strength. (1 Cor 1:21-25)
And indeed this sort of imagery - applied by Paul both to himself and his adherents - coheres very well with the fundamental Pauline myth of Christ's death and resurrection. That story traces out a movement from worthlessness, physical and social degradation (execution as a criminal), and indeed the non-being (ta me onta) of death, to infinite value, exaltation, and new life. The Christ myth and the social self-perceptions of Paul are evidently parallel to each other. What is striking here is how extensive and detailed an analogy this Pauline Christ myth makes to the story of Hainuwele, especially when the former is coordinated with Paul's description of the supposed "social" transformation it effects on its adherents. Both are accounts of a kind of rectifying inversion; an imaginary transformation that benefits the tradents of the respective stories by restoring to them some highly prized item that is currently elusive - appropriate wealth in the case of Hainuwele, appropriate status or identity in the case of Christ. Both stories revolve around contradictory juxtapositions of value with debasement: wealth with excrement, or what is "low and despised," foolishness, with wisdom and power. We might say that in the Hainuwele story, wealth is shit, while in the Christ story, shit is wealth, i.e., what is degraded in the world is exalted in the eyes of God. The Hainuwele story can be and has been understood as an effort to assimilate or make sense of alien, incomprehensible, and
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detrimental social changes - changes that can be identified with some specificity. I see no reason not to understand the Christ myth analogously, with comparable social processes at work. 99 A similar analogy might be found in my own part of the world with the Ghost Dance phenomenon of the later nineteenth century, a pan-Indian, thoroughly syncretistic theological innovation, which predicted and aimed to initiate a spiritual intervention that would lead to the destruction of colonial power and the renewal of the old ways of life. loo In this case, the reaction is almost as important as the initial phenomenon. Although - as with most ancient Christianities - the prophets of the ghost dance were appealing to, and apparently relying upon, supernatural interventions rather than their own revolutionary behavior, United States military personnel determined that the movement constituted a rebellion, and acted accordingly, outlawing the Ghost Dance and, famously, perpetrating a massacre of Ghost Dancers at Wounded Knee, North Dakota in 1890. The "religious" nature of the movement was insufficient to prevent a recognition of its political content. Presumably, examination of a variety of colonial situations would yield any number of analogues to Paul's theological opposition to the Roman imperium, and analogues, as well, to the reaction thereto. This is, however, mere heterodoxy, a more or less open polemic proffered directly against the Roman state. Moreover, it is a relatively unthreatening one, in which the overthrow of the present order is predicated on the intervention of God, and is only manifested in the 99 For a similar kind of comparison between the Pauline groups and colonized indigenous groups, specifically Melanesian "cargo cults," see, e.g., John G. Gager, Kingdom and Community: The Social World of Early Christianity (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1975); Jewett, Thessalonian Correspondence. 100 Instituted according to the prophecies of Wovoka, a Paiute from Nevada, the dance and its corresponding doctrines spread - with changes - to other western aboriginal groups, most famously (and disastrously) the Sioux of the Great Plains. The syncretism of the movement is perhaps most visible in its prediction that the performance of the dance would result in the return of the dead, accompanied by a cloud-like figure associated with Jesus. One wonders whether Wovoka had been reading 1 Thessalonians! Eventually, in its Sioux manifestations, the ultimate results of this return of the dead would be not only the reestablishment of large game, particularly the buffalo, but also the driving away or extermination of the white settlers. In terms of the actual situation of the proponents of this movement; in terms of the use of tradition, syncretism, and innovation; in terms of ideology and structure; in terms of evangelization and the spread of the message; in terms of the variety of its various manifestations; and in terms of the reaction of the ruling military powers, I can think of no better analogue to ancient Christianities. I continue to hope that as careful a study and comparison of the Ghost Dance with ancient Christianity as has been offered with Melanesian cargo cults will be some day forthcoming.
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present time in spiritual and relatively private ways.101 As the example of the Ghost Dance indicates, it would foolish to claim that such a message as Paul's could not have generated active and even formal opposition. Certainly it is possible to understand Paul's beatings (see 2 Cor 11 :25), his imprisonment (see Phil 1:7, 12-14; Ph1m 1), or the hostility he suggests was endured by both himself and the adherents of his ekklesiai (l Thess 2:2; 3:3-5; Phil 1:28), as elicited quite naturally by an openly subversive message,102 though it would remain difficult under such a scenario to account for the obstacles he encountered with his fellow Jews. 103 Still, I would like to explore a further ramification of Paul's activity, one characterized by a major difference between his action and theology and that of the analogous purveyors of the Hainuwe1e myth or the tradents of the Ghost Dance.104 What that significant difference is should be immediately obvious, and I have already alluded to it: Paul's fundamental project is to constitute Gentiles - as such - as members of a Jewish polity. In so doing, his potentially subversive political agenda is extended beyond the nostalgic and ethnically-circumscribed "national" imaginations so effectively co-opted and channeled into de facto submission by the Romans and their system of rule. Paul turns the world upside down, 101 It is clear that Paul is not interested in human social reform, at least not of society at large outside of his ekldesiai, but expects some kind of divinely-initiated transformation of the world. The members of his groups are thus encouraged to live quietly and set positive examples for outsiders (e.g., 1 Thess 4:11-12; 1 Cor 14:23), and not engage in open rebellion against the civic authorities (e.g., Rom 13: 1-7). 102 So also Georgi, "God Turned Upside Down," 157: "The difference between Paul's arraignment and the later persecutions (and convictions) of the Christians would be that Paul's crime was not passive resistance (refusal to sacrifice to the emperor). Rather, it was an active one, an act of political aggression." 103 In fact, it seems to me that an inability to account for Jewish persecution of Paul is perhaps one major defect of nearly every analysis of his message and activity that I have seen, save perhaps that of Crossan and Reed, who account for such opposition on the grounds that Paul was stealing away Gentile hangers-on and potential benefactors from the synagogue, see In Search of Paul, 39--40; cf. Gerd Theissen, The Social Setting of Pauline Christianity: Essays on Corinth (trans. J.H. Schlitz; Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1982, repr., 1989), 104. Such an explanation, however, while reasonable enough, depends on the view, in my opinion untenable, that Paul's primary missionary target was the "God-fearers." Gaston appears to recognize at least one aspect of this problem of Jewish "persecution": "If Paul's central theological concern was not a negative disparagement of the significance of the Torah for Israel, then what did he have against other Jews? If what I have sketched is correct, Paul says nothing against the Torah and Israel but simply bypasses them as not directly relevant to his gospel" (Gaston, Paul and the Torah, 3233). 104 I am bearing in mind here Jonathan Z. Smith's point (Drudgery Divine) that what is most instructive in comparing analogous entities are the differences between them, rather than their similarities.
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discursively at least, by making the Roman oikoumene itself into a vehicle for the subjection of the entire world under the rule and protection of the Lord God of Israel, rather than the entity to which that world "naturally" belonged, Rome, her emperors, her gods. Such a move is typical enough for a Paul who is constantly invoking inversions, sometimes extravagant, to explore and elaborate his own vision,105 but it offers an instructive contrast to the Hainuwele story or the Ghost Dance movement, as an effort not simply to overturn the hierarchy of domination or to shake off the yoke of foreign rule, but actually to colonize the colonizers. An ethnic alien in a foreign polis, Paul takes his own ancestral traditions (i.e., being the chosen people of the creator of the world) so seriously as to apply them to a situation to which they were not obviously applicable, seeing in his ancestry a gift or requirement to be extended to his "foreign" neighbors, rather than seeing in himself a foreigner who is to remain segregated and submissive until privileges are extended to him by the "natives."I06 In so doing, Paul reorganizes notions of identity as such by
105 For instance, the Christ myth itself, as discussed above. See also Paul's various invocations of his own weakness, ill-health, and social standing; the social standing of his converts; the equation of persecution and hardship with success by divine standards; and so on. 106 That Paul seems to do this so naturally and thoughtlessly may account for the failure of so many historians to consider the disadvantages and subordinate status of being a Jew in a Greek, Italian, or Asian city in terms analogous to those of other foreigners. As usual, of course, we moderns in hindsight and also for theological reasons tend to privilege Judaism in ways we would never dream of doing for Syrians, Arabians, Phoenicians, or Egyptians residing in, say, Thessalonica. For the latter we might hear about minority status and the political, social, and even economic costs of that status, with very little consideration of the advantages of foreign origins. Yet for Jews we tend to hear very little about the disadvantages, and a great deal about how "Gentiles" (the "other" category only for Jews, and not for most urban residents, who would instead divide the world into Greeks [et al.J and barbarians) must have been attracted to Judaism, how being Jewish allowed one to tap social and even economic links otherwise unavailable, and so forth. In addition to what I suspect is the enduring belief that Jewish claims of superiority were true, and therefore natural, and therefore not to be imagined for non-Jews (e.g., Phoenicians), we also have the evidence of Paul, whose application to foreign poleis of an ethnic sense of superiority is, I am arguing, extremely unusual. I want to stress that I am not intending here to invoke the stale and tendentious old dichotomy of a universalizing and liberal Christianity over against a narrowly nationalistic and parochial Judaism. For one thing, the Paul I am describing in this paper is not a Christian at all. In addition, the terms I have in mind here are essentially political rather than "religious," and should be understood not in terms of parochial versus universalistic, but rather in terms of submissive (being willing to restrict Jewish identity to the familial sphere) versus aggressive (being unwilling to do so, and instead seeking to extend the sphere of Israel wider and wider). I would therefore claim that the dichotomies with which Christian exegetes are accustomed to congratulate themselves are not exactly
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synthesizing ethnicity and political identity in Jewish terms, and thus in a way fundamentally at odds with the contemporary doxa I have attempted to describe. Paul is involved in the project of making Jews, but this project is defined precisely by its failure to make Jews in strictly and circumscribed ethnic terms. It is not as though Paul is unaware of or unconcerned with Jews in the ethnic sense; he carefully describes both himself and some of his opponents as Jews in this restricted and specific sense, and regards ancestry as a still-meaningful mark of distinction even among Christ-adherents. 107 But being the people of the Jewish God is for Paul no longer confined to an ancestral and thus familial practice - it is an identity extended to all nations,108 with blessings should they accept it, and curses should they not: "Weare the temple of the living God; as God said, 'I will live with them and move among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people (laos)' " (2 Cor 6:16). In so doing, Paul has created a synthetic, multi-ethnic, politeuma (Phil 3 :20: "Our commonwealth [politeuma] is in heaven"), one that mirrors and replaces that of the Greco-Roman polis, 109 ironically and inversionarily casting nonread into the text ex nihi/o, or simply invented, but represent a misinterpretation (albeit a fairly gross one) of something that is, in fact, there. 107 For examples in which Paul defines Judaism at least in part via lineage, see, e.g., Philippians 3:4-5 ("If any other man thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews"; regarding the link between circumcision and birth lineagy, see further below); Galatians 1:14 ("I advanced in Judaism beyond many of. my own age among my people [en to genei mou], so extremely zealous was I for the traditions of my fathers [ton patrikon mou]"); Galatians 2:15 ("We ourselves, who are Jews by birth [hemeis physei ioudaioi] and not Gentile sinners"); 2 Corinthians 11 :22 ("Are they Hebrews? So am 1. Are they Israelites? So am 1. Are they descendants of Abraham? So am I?"); etc. For discussions of achievement-oriented versus ascriptionoriented definitions of Jewish belonging, see Stowers, Rereading of Romans; and Caroline E. Johnson Hodge, " 'If Sons, Then Heirs': A Study of Kinship and Ethnicity in Paul's Letters" (Ph.D. diss., Brown University, 2002; now published as If Sons, Then Heirs: A Study of Kinship and Ethnicity in the Letters of Paul, Oxford: OUP, 2007). 108 For readers who fear I am slipping again into the old assertions about the universality of Christianity over against the particularism of Judaism, see note 106. 109 Harland notes inscriptional occurrences of the term politeuma: "There were associations of Lycians (from both Kaunos and Pinara) and Pisidians (from Termessos) living in Sidon in Syria in the Hellenistic era (Macridy 1904:549-56 [po liteuma]) , and there were associations of Lycians, Cilicians, and Ionians (some of them soldiers) in Hellenistic and Roman Egypt (SB 6025, 6664, 7270 [politeuma]; OGIS 145--48, 157 [koinon]; SB 8757 = IGR I 1078) ... A group of Sardians met regularly in Rome (IGUR 85, 86, 87), as did the Ephesian shippers and merchants, for instance (IGR I 147; cf. IGUR 1355, 1491, 1563). The "corporate body" (politeuma) of Phrygians devoted to the Great Mother at Pompeii (IGR I 458 ... ) had its counterparts at Rome, where these associations consisted, in part, of freedmen and slaves of Phrygian background who belonged to the imperial household." Harland, Associations, Synagogues, and
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Jews as welcome and subsumed "foreigners,"ll0 in lieu of an acceptance of Jewish strangeness in the imperial polis. There has, of course, been extensive and excellent discussion of the motif of ethnicity in Paul,lll and I do not presume to correct or supplement that scholarship here so much as briefly discuss a few of its implications with respect to the unspoken norms of ancient identity-construction. I think such an approach has the potential to draw together the important insights of those like Stowers who argue that the issue of ethnicity is absolutely essential for understanding Paul,1.12 and those like Horsley who emphasize the anti-imperial implications of Pauline theology and activity. I am somewhat inspired in this regard by an article by Wayne Meeks - "The Corinthian Christians as artificial aliens"l13 - in which he argues that The household groups organized by Paul under the patronage of Stephanus, Gaius, Prisca, Chloe, and others, all together gathering occasionally at Gaius's place as the "civic assembly of God in Corinth," was like an association of, as it were, artificial immigrants - made aliens by their conversion to the God of Israel and baptism into Messiah Jesus. While their form of community was in many ways necessarily unique, it
Congregations, 35-36. The replication of this language - as also with the use by various associations of such terms as ekklesia and the other nomenclature of the Greco-Roman city administration - should not divert us from what is distinctive about Paul's ideology. The issue here is not, as is sometimes simplistically claimed, that Paul appropriates political terminology; such usage, as Harland makes exceptionally clear, can reflect accommodation just as much as appropriation. The difference here is that the politeuma to which Paul refers is not subordinated to that of the city or the imperial order, is not constructed as familial or otherwise as a constituent of this larger order, but is presented as itself the larger order to which all other identities are subordinated. Related to this presentation, as I will consider below, is the apparent exclusivity of the Pauline ekklesiai. 110 On the irony of Paul's construction of identity, see Stowers, Rereading of Romans, 271: "Medea stood for foreigners who corrupted the purity of the citizen body ". I find great irony in the fact that Paul the Jew resonates these allusions back to Greeks and Romans who apparently now see themselves as Gentiles, outsiders to Judaism described as immoral foreigners." Stowers is referring specifically to the use of a particular rhetorical trope, but his comment applies equally to the more general inversion by Paul of insider versus outsider identity. 111 See, among many others, Hodge, "If Sons, Then Heirs"; Stowers, Rereading of Romans; Daniel Boyarin, A Radical Jew: Paul and the Politics of Identity (Berkeley: U. of California Press, 1994). 112 On the topic of the construction of ethnicity in Paul, I am drawing mainly from three sources: Stowers, Rereading of Romans; Hodge, "If Sons, Then Heirs"; and a very suggestive article: Pamela Eisenbaum, "Paul as the New Abraham," in Paul and Politics (ed. Horsley), 130-45. 113 Wa,yne A. Meeks, "Corinthian Christians as Artificial Aliens," in Paul Beyond the Judaism/Hellenism Divide (ed. Troels Engberg-Pedersen; Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001), 129-38.
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drew from its closest model, the Jewish immigrant associations of the Diaspora cities, probably including the one closest at hand, in Corinth itself.114
But I think Meeks has put the cart before the horse, using theological convictions to explain social circumstance, rather than the reverse. I would argue, by contrast, that Paul has assembled associations of real aliens, individuals who are already without meaningful lineage, without a communal sense of identity, without homeland, subsumed under the aegis of the polis but without citizenship rights or other benefits of municipal identity;1l5 and he has turned them into artificial Jews. Paul appears to accomplish this remarkable feat via his myth of Christ, who is with some consistency invoked as the spiritual (kata pneuma, en pneumati) ancestor of the adherents of Paul's ekklesiai. As Stowers presents it, Paul imagines Jesus, an ethnically-Jewish and human messianic figure with divine powers and the Spirit of God, come to judge the world and free his people from domination (by both the unrighteous Judeans and the Gentile Romans) - and thus also to condemn the Gentiles, who stand under the curse of the Law - as having instead and unexpectedly, in faithful obedience to God's righteousness and promises, chosen to act passively, to refrain from subduing the wicked world, thus allowing himself to be crucified. In so doing, Christ's faithfulness and love for those alienated from God delayed God's wrathful judgment against the world, giving time for the Gentiles to be incorporated into God's people. It is in this fashion that Jesus' faith "saves us from the wrath to come" (l Thess 1:10), and it is for this reason that Jesus' death can be described as/or the Gentiles. In return for his faithfulness, God not only will, as Jesus trusted, "allow him to fulfill his messianic role in the future," but in addition has, via the resurrection, exalted Jesus to the spiritual realm, thereby "making 114 Meeks, "Artificial Aliens," 137-38. 115 Obviously I am assuming here a fairly low social status for the bulk of the membership in Paul's ekklesiai, with allowance for variations between ekklesiai in different cities. I want to stress that I am not denying that some of Paul's adherents may be well-off economically, but in these cases I would expect considerable "status inconsistency." Presumably some members of the ekklesiai will have fairly high status, at least at the local level, but I think that we should agree with Paul (1 Cor 1:26-27) in seeing such individuals as anomalies rather than the norm. The evidence of prosopography has, I think, been somewhat distorted; the presence of Roman or Latin names among the adherents of the ekklesiai - including Paul's own - hardly need indicate high social status, or even actual Roman descent. The fact that Paul himself, with his Roman name, is clearly and emphatically not of Roman descent should make us suspicious of any such conclusions (cf. also the Greek and Roman names among those whom Paul identifies as "relatives" [syngenes] in Romans 16:7, 11,21). It would be more in line with what we otherwise know about the constituency of the ekklesiai if such individuals were instead understood as descendants of slaves or freedmen of Romans, taking on the names of their former owners upon manumission.
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him the pioneer of the world's renewal."II6 This renewal - that is, the inclusion of the Gentiles within God's people - is effected through the resurrection of Christ, just as it was the goal of his death. By virtue of his new existence in the spiritual realm - and this is precisely what resurrection means for Paul - Christ can now serve as a mechanism and means for the creation of new forms of existence and hence identity. Those who are "in Christ" constitute a new, spiritual, social reality, in which prior social identities in the flesh are now irrelevant, as is expressed in the famous text of Galatians 3:27-28: "For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus." As Christ himself is a descendent of Abraham, this implies participation in Abraham's lineage as well, and so the text continues: "And if you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to the promise" (Gal 3 :29; cf. verse 26, where the Galatians are also described as "sons of God"). Moreover, as Stowers notes, the conception of being "in Christ" and "one in Christ" itself seems indebted to the metaphor of lineage: Gentiles have kinship with God and with the lineage of Abraham by incorporation into Christ by his generative faithfulness. Paul's language of belonging to Christ, being in Christ, and belonging to his body treats Christ and his family as one entity.II7
A linkage akin to that of birth but quite distinct from it - especially in Paul's mind - is created spiritually. As Christ possessed the spirit of God, so Paul and his adherents possess the spirit of Christ (e.g., Romans 8:911), and in some instance it appears even that his adherents possess the spirit of Paul himself (see, e.g., 1 Cor 5:3-4), thus establishing a lineage based not on birth, that is, kata sarka, but based on transmission of spirit. It is, I think, for this reason that Paul so frequently employs parental metaphors for his role - most striking are those in which he appears to cast himself as the spiritual mother of his adherents: "I fed you with milk, not solid food; for you were not ready for it; and even yet you are not ready, for you are still of the flesh" (1 Cor 3:2-3; cf. 1 Thess 2:7-8). The brotherhood of the members of the ekklesiai, denoted by Paul's frequent vocative address, adelphoi, is not "fictive" at all, for those he addresses are of the same lineage in Christ and share common descent from the spirit of GOd. II8 The ekklesiai do not join the ethnic nation of Israel kata sarka, through physical descent or incorporation into individual families, but 116 The summary is from Stowers, Rereading of Romans, 213-15; the two direct quotations are from p. 214. What follows represents my own extrapolation from Stowers' presentatjon, though there are many points in common. 117 Stowers, Rereading of Romans, 230, emphasis added. 118 So also Hodge, "If Sons, Then Heirs," 219.
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spiritually and collectively, via the spirit of Christ. And unlike the Judean nation according to the flesh, which is in colonial slavery to the Gentiles and the unrighteous, the spiritual people of God are free: Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia; she corresponds to the present Jerusalem, for she is in slavery with her children. But the Jerusalem above is free, and she is our mother ... Now we, brethren, like Isaac, are children of promise. But as at that time he who was born according to the flesh persecuted him who was born according to the spirit, so it is now. (Gal 4:25-26, 28-29)
Paul's desire to reinforce this particular conception of descent goes some way to explaining his aversion to circumcision, which is very strongly linked in Paul's mind to notions of physical descent. When Paul describes his own Judean identity "in the flesh," in Philippians, he does so partly in terms of his having been circumcised (Phil 3:4-5), a familial act and one described here as such by Paul. As Boyarin points out, this association makes a great deal of sense symbolically: Paul thinks of lineage in patriarchal fashion as descent from male ancestors,119 and the penis is the instrument of such fleshy generation; therefore, an identity-marker inscribed on the penis itself is of preeminent import to "fleshy" identity.1 20 By becoming circumcised, as commentators have long recognized, Paul's Galatian adherents are adopting Judean identity according to fleshy or "literal" membership in the lineage of Abraham - they are seeking to become the people of God by familial or generative incorporation into the Judean ethnos; whereas according to Paul's proclamation, adoption as God's people has been accomplished spiritually, through Christ, and brings with it all the promises to Israel, so that his adherents become "children of Abraham" according to the promise, but not children of Abraham in terms of physical genealogy, as implied by circumcision: The purpose was to make [Abraham] the father of all who believe without being circumcised and who thus have righteousness reckoned to them ... The promise to Abraham and his descendants, that they should inherit the world, did not come through the Law but through the righteousness of faith ... That is why it depends on faith, in order that the promise may rest on grace and be guaranteed to all his descendants - not only the adherents of the Law but also to those who share the faith of Abraham, for he is the father of us all, as it is written, "I have made you the father of many nations. (Rom 4:11,
13,16-17)121 119 So, most emphatically, Stowers, Rereading of Romans; and Hodge, "If Sons, Then Heirs." 120 So, with a little creative extrapolation on my part, Boyarin, Radical Jew, 68-69. 121 Abraham seems to represent for Paul a nexus between "natural" or fleshy ethnicity and descent, on the one hand, and the promises of God resulting from faithfulness, on the other. Like circumcision itself, Abraham is invoked by Paul as a sign of physical or fleshy ethnicity (see Rom 4: 1; 11: 1; 2 Cor 11 :22). Yet Paul is at great pains to stress that Abraham's own faith and God's grace were what established his descendants as God's
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Christ - and even Paul himself122 - operate in a fashion akin to Abraham, his call by God and his faithfulness to that call establishing a lineage allied to God. Adoption into the people of Judea at the familial - "natural," "fleshy" - level via the markers of ethnic subculture such as circumcision or the Law undoes the whole point of the new spiritual lineage and so - as Paul himself explicitly states - nullifies the value of Christ's death: "if justification were through the law, then Christ died to no purpose" (Gal 2:21; cf. 5:2-5; Rom 4:13-15). The Gentiles who comprise the ekklesiai, therefore, are a reconstituted "people" generated by a spiritual lineage and so turned into "spiritual Judeans" under the rule and protection of God, but without being drawn into Israel as a physical ethnos: "because you are
people (on which see further below). Eisenbaum, "Paul as the New Abraham," argues quite convincingly that Paul views both the Judeans and those Gentiles who belong to his ekklesiai as relatives and God's children by virtue of common descent from Abraham, but via different lineages and so still constituting two distinct entities. This argument is similar to the one I offer here, but differs in details. It should be stressed that while the figure of Abraham is of great significance in unraveling what Paul thought about ethnicity, and so is rightly emphasized by Eisenbaum, "Paul as the New Abraham"; Stowers, Rereading of Romans; Hodge, "If Sons, Then Heirs" and others; Paul's own Letters do not suggest that he himself placed the figure of Abraham in a position of prominence. Aside from Romans and Galatians, where Abraham is central to the specific arguments, he is referred to only in 2 Corinthians 11 :22, and then only as an ancestor of Paul. This limitation applies to the very notion of the Law itself, which, like Abraham, appears to be associated by Paul with the "natural" lineage of the Judeans (see Phil 3:46, where Paul associates and conflates identity drawn from descent, from circumcision, and from legal obedience). Each of Paul's Letters addresses different groups with different sets of issues, often with ad hoc argumentation, abandoned in later epistles. It is for this reason that I am not convinced of the centrality for Paul of the opposition he constructs in Galatians and Romans between "works of the Law" and "faith." Paul's concern with sidelining the Judean Law in Galatians arises out of a specific and identifiable context - the adoption by his adherents of circumcision, apparently at the behest of outside influences (my own view is that Paul's ekklesiai were being approached by emissaries of Peter and/or James). In the case of Romans, which is often treated as a systematic exposition of Pauline thought, but which is just as context-bound and audience-oriented as any of Paul's other Letters, I do not feel sufficiently confident in that audience's identity or situation to treat its motifs as representative. In any case, most of Paul's Letters either do not contain any reference to the Law at all (1 Thess, 2 Cor [which does, however, mention Moses], Phlm) , or treat it perfunctorily and even as a source of positive injunctions (1 Cor, Phil). "Freedom from the Law" is an implication of the central motifs of Paul's thought, not actually one of those motifs; and it is an implication that emerges only when challenged. On the other hand, the consistency with which Paul addresses himself to Gentiles strikes me as likely enough to emerge out of a somewhat systematic set of principles, or at the very least out of an enduring central conviction. 122 So especially Eisenbaum, "Paul as the New Abraham."
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sons, God has sent the spirit of his son into our hearts" (Gal 4:6).123 As we might expect from a figure so fond of inversions as Paul, and who habitually treats things spiritual as reversals of things fleshy, lineage, descent, and kinship in his ekklesiai are derived not via birth but through death - the death of Christ reenacted in baptism (e.g., Rom 6:3-11). Paul has not simply chosen one of the options for the Gentiles then available in Jewish thought - eschatological extermination, or eschatological incorporation 124 - but has rather, no doubt in part because of his conviction that the eschatological events have already in some degree come to pass, in effect created a new laos of God, united "spiritually" with Judeans but still ethnically distinct from them. 125 While I have referred to this process as one of creating "artificial Jews," a construction of a "people" by virtue of divine fiat rather than "natural" descent, its artificiality should not be exaggerated or viewed as utterly unique and unaccountable. Ethnicity itself, though appealing to "natural" characteristics as the basis for identity, is itself as much a social fabrication as any other form of identity-construction. 126 More than this, Paul himself seems to recognize that while the status of Judeans as an ethnos may be attributable to descent, the status of this particular ethnos as the people of God is due only to God's mercy and grace in his arbitrary call to Abraham (as well as Abraham's faithful response to that call):
123 Again I must stress how telling it is that Paul's adherents in Galatia are apparently so attracted by the prospect of circumcision. This indicates, as I argued above, that we are by no means in the presence here of "God-fearers" or people attracted to Judaism for merely philosophical reasons. In addition, the ease with which these individuals seem to accept circumcision suggests to me an interest or already-present sense within the group of being part of Israel. This in tum supports my claim that such belonging is precisely what Paul is promising his ekklesiai, and that it is for this reason that circumcision appears to be such a natural next step for these people. 124 See the discussion in Gager, Reinventing Paul, 60-63. 125 Paul preaches the inclusion of Gentiles, but Gager raises precisely the critical question: inclusion in what? His answer - acceptance and redemption by God, but without inclusion in Israel (ibid., p. 53) strikes me as essentially right, but with the caveat that Paul's failure to incorporate the Gentiles into the people of Israel applies only to that entity conceived in terms of "natural" or "fleshy" ethnicity. As noted by Hodge, "If Sons, Then Heirs," 219-20, many of the specific interests and terminology of ethnic groups are lacking in Paul's assemblies, which she attributes to "a conscious effort to distance the assemblies from traditional ethnic groups" (ibid., p. 219). I believe that this effort at distance, combined with the emphasis on ethnic conceptualizations of Paul's groups as is also noted by Hodge, is explicable precisely in light of Paul's spiritual versus fleshy distinction: we have here two different kinds of "ethnicity," which Paul is at pains to keep distinct. 126 For an amusing case in point, see Hodge, "If Sons, Then Heirs," 223-26.
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Not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel, and not all are children of Abraham because they are his descendants; but "through Isaac shall your descendants be named." This means that it is not the children of the flesh who are the children of God, but the children of the promise are reckoned as descendants. (Rom 9:6-8; cf. 9:10-13; Gal 4:21-31)
If a people of God can be created in this fashion, Paul seems to reason, then a similar mechanism can be applied to nations other than Judeans. The fact that Christ himself is a descendent of Abraham lends the schema further legitimacy, as well as an appealing symmetry. Paul does, therefore, constitute a nation or people amongst his ekklesiai, of a different kind than would be effected by the incorporation of individual Gentiles into the Judean ethnos, but joined with Jews in sharing the promises to Abraham and the rule of God. As a result, the novel "nation" thus created is no longer rooted in and restricted to actual familial relations, even though the metaphor of adoption is used by Paul to express the relationship of the ekklesiai to GOd. 127
Paul's groups thus come to represent a Judean culture within the polis that is no longer appropriately fractional in its self-presentation and selfconception, an identity with free-floating and independent import: de facto, an overarching or potentially hegemonic identity genuinely in competition with the doxic hegemony of the imperium and its local political articulations. Paul may express himself in terms of a kind of "spiritual ethnicity," but what this really means is a national identity not based on physical lineage, and so Paul has in fact created entities of a national and political character. Moreover, Paul reflects this political identity in his copious use of political terminology to characterize his groups, ranging from the nomenclature of ekklesia itself128 to the identification of Jesus as Kyrios. 129 It is one thing to proclaim the superiority of your gods and traditions - to invert Graeco-Roman versus "barbarian" superiority and proclaim your own people superior to all outsiders - behind closed doors and amongst a naturally restricted group with a self-limiting definition of identity; it is quite another to do so in an association with open and avowedly universal membership, an association· marked by active 127 Albeit not very frequently: the term huiothesia occurs only four times in the entire authentic corpus: Romans 8:15, 23; 9:4; Galatians 4:5. 128 I suspect that the ambivalent nuances of this term - as referring to the civic assembly, and/or to the congregation of Israel- are quite intentional on Paul's part: he is deliberately (if subtly) saying that his groups are both of these things. 129 See Joubert, "Managing the Household," 217: "Apart from Paul's use of kinship terminology to describe the Corinthians and Jesus' relationship to God, he also referred to Jesus by means of a term borrowed from the political sphere, namely 'Kyrios' (1 Cor 8:6; 12:3). Oriental-Hellenistic deities such as Serapis, Isis and Osiris were also addressed as Kyrios/Kyria, as well as the Roman emperors."
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recruitment and open contempt for civic norms, one which offers itself as a replacement of the civic order, which is now "imperially Jewish" rather than a constituent element of the Roman world. The extreme violation of the taken-for-granted norm of Roman universality, or of the ostensibly non-ethnic character of Roman identity, and its replacement with a contradictory and subversive notion of Jewish universality130 implied in Paul's ideology and activity is perhaps most evident in his "collection for the saints" (see, e.g., Rom 15:25-26; 2 Cor 9:1; etc.).131 We may conceive of the symbolic payload of this extended project as either an incorporation of the nations into Israel by virtue of honoring its God and becoming subject to a kind of replacement "temple tax," or as an inversion of the tribute paid to by Jews to Rome now being paid by Gentiles to Jerusalem, or both.132 In any case, the result is an inversion of the "natural" political order and a replacement of implicit Roman sovereignty with the sovereignty of a dominated constituent of the empire. Something similar is implied by the "religious" exclusivity of the Pauline ekklesiai, an exclusivity too often misunderstood as merely an aspect of Jewish theology and without any consideration of its import for the Gentiles newly adopting it. But at the level of the polis, "the gods brought the citizens together in a glow of proud social unity, as they had always done,"133 and so a repudiation of these gods is an overt repudiation of the authority or jurisdiction of civic institutions. Again, it is one thing for a circumscribed ethnic group to reject such affiliation on the basis of family membership and ancestral tradition; it is quite another for various 130 See the similar claims of Elliott, "Anti-Imperial Message," 176: "We should marvel ... that [Paul's] indictment goes beyond Pilate [because he does not mention him] to include all the powers of heaven and earth together that stand hostile to God ... Far from 'denationalizing the cross,' Paul has, so to speak, internationalized it. He insists that the Roman colonists of Corinth, thousands of miles from the troubles in Judea, must mold their lives into a constant remembrance of one particular crucifixion in Judea, because through that crucifixion God has revealed the imminent end of the Powers and has begun to bring 'the scheme of this world' to an end (1 Cor 7:31)." 131 Political implications of the collection are also discussed, albeit from a rather different perspective, by Sze-kar Wan, "Collection for the Saints as Anticolonial Act: Implications of Paul's Ethnic Reconstruction," in Paul and Politics (ed. Horsley), 191215. 132 After the Jewish War, Vespasian made the original temple tax payable to Jupiter Capito linus, "which was a very transparent statement of the superiority of the Roman god over the Jewish one" (Esler, "God's Honour," 245). Decades prior to this, Paul asserts Jewish superiority by having Gentiles pay tribute to their God, justifying it thus (Rom 15 :27): "They were pleased to do this, and indeed they owe it to them; for if the Gentiles have come to share in their spiritual blessings, they ought to be of service to them in material things." 133 Goodman, Mission and Conversion, 17.
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people of various ancestry to do so for ideological reasons, and without the warrant and constraint of a specific minority ethnicity,134 Even more fascinating, in 1 Corinthians 8-10 Paul rather condescendingly permits participation in aspects of polytheistic worship, provided that the participant recognize the meaninglessness of such worship: As to the eating of food offered to idols (ton e idolo thy ton ), we know that an idol has no real existence (ouden eidolon en kosmo) and that there is no God but one. For although there may be so-called gods (eisin legomenoi theoi) in heaven or on earth - as indeed there are many gods and many lords -·yet for us there is one God, the Father ... and one Lord, Jesus Christ ... However, not all possess this knowledge. But some, through being hitherto accustomed to idols, eat food as really offered to an idol; and their conscience, being weak, is defiled ... Take care lest this liberty of yours somehow become a stumbling block to the weak. (1 Cor 8:4-7, 9)
In yet another breathtaking inversion of normal practice, Paul allows an essentially private maintenance of civic religious observances - as if such observances represented a tolerated ethnic subculture! If the foregoing analysis is at all correct, then the offense Paul produced with his communities of "artificial Jews" - unrooted in actual familial identity and so uncontained by fractional ethnicity - was really an offense first and foremost to Gentiles, not Jews; to the Roman political order, not the Jewish religious order.135 And indeed we do not actually hear of Jewish persecution directed against Paul's adherents or ekklesiai, but against Paul himself; the persecution endured by these adherents appears to come from their Gentile compatriots. 136 Paul himself is "shamefully treated," 134 So Crossan and Reed, In Search of Paul, 40: "Pagans might have disliked the idea of pagan sympathizers with Judaism, but they would have disliked even more the idea of pagan converts to Christianity. Judaism as 'superstitious atheistic misanthropy' with an ancient country was bad enough, but Christianity as 'superstitious atheistic misanthropy' without any country was surely worse. No wonder, therefore, that Paul was attacked on both sides, by both Jews and pagans"; and: "As Jews they would be recognized, accepted, and protected by Rome, but as Christians they were followers of a leader executed by those same Romans." 135 See Jonathan Z. Smith, "What a Difference a Difference Makes," in idem, Relating Religion, 275: "While the 'other' may be perceived as being either LIKE-US or NOT-LIKE-US, he is, in fact, most problematic when he is TOO-MUCH-LIKE-US, or when he claims to BE-US. It is here that the real urgency of a 'theory of the other' emerges. This urgency is called forth not by the requirement to place the 'other,' but rather to situate ourselves. It is here, to invoke the language of a theory of ritual, that we are not so much concerned with the drama of 'expulsion,' but with the more mundane and persistent processes of 'micro-adjustment.' This is not a matter ofthe 'far' but, preeminently, of the 'near.' A 'theory of the other' is but another way of phrasing a 'theory of the self'." And it is precisely this - the regnant ancient theory of the self - that Paul is threatening, claiming simultaneously civic and Jewish identity for his ekklesiai. 136 Clearly so in 1 Thessalonians 2: 14, which is however of disputed authenticity; less clearly so in such texts as 1 Thessalonians 1:6 and 2:2, both of unquestioned authenticity.
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apparently by Gentiles, in Philippi; he is subjected to CIVIC corporal punishment (2 Cor 11:25); he is imprisoned by Gentiles (Phil 1:12-14; 2 Cor 11 :23); and states explicitly that he has been "in danger from Gentiles" (2 Cor 11 :26). In addition, and because of his own ethnic Judaism, Paul is "in danger from [his] own people" (2 Cor 11 :26), and beaten in the synagogues (2 Cor 11 :24), by those Jews who wish to "hinder us from speaking to the Gentiles" (1 Thess 2: 16). One might surmise that the motivation for Jewish persecution of Paul (and Paul alone) is precisely the threat his message poses to the modus vivendi that allows such subcultures to continue to exist meaningfully under foreign domination. The problem is not that Paul threatens particularistic Jewish pride by "allowing" Gentiles to participate in Jewish identity, as the old story has it; it is that Paul threatens continued Jewish existence as such by seeking to extend this identity beyond the parameters allowed by Rome. In any case, the clearest evidence we have for Paul's persecution is indicative of state opposition to his message, rather than Jewish opposition. However much Paul may complain about travails, it is his factual assertions of imprisonment (and perhaps a death sentence; see Phil 1: 12-26) - which must be imposed by the political authorities and not his fellow Jews - that are least subject to dispute or rhetorical exaggeration. Paul's supposedly "theological" message of Gentile inclusion in the people of God has brought to bear against him the coercive power of the state, because this message violates and so exposes the contemporary doxa of differential application of identity-markers that fosters multi-cultural integration in the cities (at the level of ethnicity) and Rome's supremacy (at the level of politics),137 And Paul himself seems to be aware of this. He explicitly states that being circumcised allows the followers of Jesus to avoid persecution in general (which, I am claiming, is encountered more frequently and concretely by Paul and especially by his adherents from Gentiles, not Jews): "It is those who want to make a good showing in the flesh that would compel you to be circumcised, and only in order that they may not be persecuted for the cross of Christ" (Gal 6: 12; cf. 5: 11). Paul's activity, then, and his chief offense, is to use the myth of God's 137 All of this is really just another way of articulating - and, in this case, drawing out the political dimensions of - Jonathan Z. Smith's typology of locative versus utopian religion, with the chief exemplar of the latter being Paul; see Drudgery Divine. This typology has, happily, been somewhat clarified in his recent essay, entitled - with inspiration from Dr. Seuss - "Here, There, and Anywhere" in Relating Religion, 323-39. In this essay, Smith describes the religions of "anywhere" as a kind of "new polity," and further notes their appeal with the displaced (332-33). He is careful to note, unfortunately, that he does not intend the "here, there, and anywhere" typology to be understood as exactly commensurate with the "locative versus utopian" typology. See Smith, "Here, There, and Anywhere," 335 n. 9.
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resurrection of Christ as a vehicle for the creation of a new and nonfractional identity for those who lack identity, the ones "who are not," thereby threatening and calling into question the identities of those "who are": "God chose what is low and despised in the world, the things that are not (ta me onta), to bring to nothing the things that are (ta onta)" (1 Cor 1:28).138 While not directly relevant to Paul himself and his particular ekklesiai, the subsequent history and self-expression of the Jesus movement - as well as the reactions to it by outsiders - would seem to support these conclusions. As Lampe has shown, the Christian communities of Rome tended to cluster in immigrant areas. 139 Later Christians, as well, invoked much more explicitly than Paul an "artificial" ethnic identity as a "third race," and this at times in explicit opposition to political or ethnic identity: If heroic enough in facing martyrdom, a Christian like a deacon from Vienne named
Sanctus might even profess his faith alone in answer to an official request to name his nationality and city (Euseb. Hist. Eccl. 5. 1. 20). Non-Christians are usually described in the texts of the early Church as outsiders - 'nations' or ethne (cf. Euseb. Hist. Eccl. 5. 7. 5), the equivalent of goyim for the Jews. 140
And of course the official and semi-official reactions to Christianity in the second century and beyond do what orthodoxy always attempts in the presence of heresy: to retrench as the only acceptable course the assumptions and norms that previously had been unstated and unchallenged. The fact that this orthodox reaction took the form of efforts to force Christians to offer symbolic homage to the emperor supports my claim that the doxa in question - something that went without saying before the Christian challenge - was precisely the monopoly held by Rome and Romans over political universality.
138 Cf. also Romans 4: 17 (kathos gegraptai hoti patera pollon ethnon tetheika se [Gen 17:5], katenanti hou episteusen theou tou zoopoiountos tous nekrous kai ka/ountos fa me onta has onta), where Paul actually links the call to the Gentiles with both the characterization of God creating "the things which are not" and the resurrection. It may worth noting that Paul uses participial forms of onta in three ways: 1) to indicate a state; 2) to indicate location; and 3) to indicate belonging (to the day, to the flesh, to the circumcision, to one's members, etc.; see, e.g., Rom 8:5, 8; 12:3; 1 Thess 5:8). 139 I.e., the fringes of the city, outside the pomerium. See especially Lampe, Paul to Valentinus, 42-46. For Lampe, this is evidence of the originally Jewish nature of the Christian groups. But in fact, as he recognizes, it is most unassailably evidence of their immigrant status. 140 Goodman, Mission and Conversion, 14.
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Conclusions To return to the theme of this symposium, and in conclusion, I have endeavored to show how Paul had constructed a movement that was "heretical" as a function of his interest in identity-construction. While I have not pursued this motif here in as much detail as it deserves, I should also add that I believe the attractiveness of this message must have been a function of the already-constituted identity-problematics of those who heard his message. That is, to put it as bluntly as possible, it was precisely those whose identity was denied - ta me onta - who were called to a new conceptualization of this standing as "the people of God." By imputing an essentially Jewish identity to the displaced of the empire, Paul and his adherents called into question the unspoken doxa of the imperial order and so became heretics, and were persecuted as such. Such a conclusion, if it can be sustained, tells us a great deal about Paul. Most usefully, it allows us to construct his theology as a comprehensible social intervention, rather than as a set of abstract "religious" ideas. Paul's activity emerges as meaningfully social and political, but not at the cost of treating his theological conceptions as mere ciphers. 141 But there are also methodological or theoretical implications here, implications that may be sustained even if my central thesis is found wanting. I have attempted to suggest - or better, to illustrate - how we need not presume that the discourse of heresy is simply invoked as an identity-creating gesture, but how nearly the reverse may be true: that it is the already-uncomfortable or anomalous distinctions of identity, and especially the efforts to formulate, justify, rationalize, codify, or entrench those distinctions, that generate a situation in which the label of heresy makes intuitive sense, and in which the previously-silent assumptions of doxa require retrenchment via an explicit orthodoxy. At least one of the specific circumstances from which such a situation can arise occurs when the self-recognition of a subaltern and previously unrecognized social reality - a social role submerged, that is, within a false totality in which its members do not actually fully participate - becomes the occasion for explicit articulation of a distinctive and separate identity, with the 141 At the same time, Paul is subject to doxa too. While he rejects in practice and thereby exposes the unspoken assumption of the non-ethnic character of the political order, or rather inverts it, at the same time he unable to think of establishing a new order without invoking adoption, sonship, and other familial metaphors. Paul does violate the doxa of Roman imperialism, but he also seems unable to imagine even the political constitution of his ekklesiai without adoption by God. This specific metaphor is actually not an especially frequent one in Paul, but it is telling nonetheless that it was precisely adoption by the god Julius that (discursively) justified Augustus' placement at the pinnacle of political power.
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implication that such a group need no longer be subsumed under the dominant identity, thus threatening the organization and self-conception of that dominant order. Here heresy is not invoked to make selves or mark others; instead, it is the existence or creation of a new identity that leads to heresy, as indeed the very word implies. In this manner, we might then understand heresy as an actual social entity or operation, rather than as only an empty discursive tag. I do not, finally, want to fall into the abstract and theoretical trap so attractive to academics today" in which we discover, reconstruct, or celebrate discursive subversions because real change seems out of reach. I am not, therefore, holding up Paul as a shining example of radical liberation. The phenomena I have described here are mainly discursive, and their liberating potential is accordingly restricted. Paul did not manage to overturn the imperium, he did not liberate anyone from its real domination, and in fact his message was used - with appropriate changes to defend and entrench that imperial order and its heirs for centuries since. Paul, like so many intellectuals, brought words to a gunfight, and suffered the predictable consequences. I should also stress, however, that his words were accompanied by concrete community organizing, and that this is the only reason they have survived and come down through the ages for us to analyze. What value there might have been in Paul's heretical ideas was realized, to whatever extent it was realized, only through the effective embodiment of those ideas in the actual life of actual communities. 142
142 I ,cannot resist noting that Paul's response to the death of Jesus thus seems to conform to the dictum given by Joe Hill at the time of his execution: "Don't mourn. Organize."
The Violence of Orthodoxy AVERIL CAMERON
Not so long ago it was possible to write about heresy as though it was something that really existed and to debate whether "it" was a social or a religious phenomenon. A.H.M. Jones's famous article, "Were Ancient Heresies National and Social Movements in Disguise?" springs to mind though indeed that was written over half a century ago now. 1 But so much has changed since Jones's article and the debate surrounding William Frend's work on the Donatists,2 that it now seems a contradiction in terms to give a book a title such as A History of Heresy, 3 as several authors have done recently. In contrast, the conference on which this volume is based defined itself in terms of discourses and construction, or self-definition, and in the description of its scope the words "heresy" and "heresies" were surrounded by quotation marks. What has happened? Have discourse 1 A.H.M. Jones, "Were Ancient Heresies National or Social Movements in Disguise?" JTS 10 (1959): 280-298, now available in Orthodoxy, Heresy, and Schism in Early Christianity: A Collection of Scholarly Essays, Studies in Early Christianity (ed. Everett Ferguson; New York: Garland, 1993), 314-332; see also W.H.C. Frend, "Heresy and Schism as Social and National Movements," in Schism, Heresy and Religious Protest (ed. D. Baker; Cambridge: CUP, 1972), 37-56; R.A. Markus, "Christianity and Dissent in Roman North Africa: Changing Perspectives," ibid., 21-36. See also the notion of "popular" heresy in the bibliography on medieval heresy, e.g. J. Nelson, "Society, Theodicy and the Origins of Medieval Heresy," ibid., 65-77; Jeffrey B. Russell, Dissent and Reform in the Early Middle Ages (Berkeley: U. of California Press, 1965); Malcolm Lambert, Medieval Heresy: Popular Movements from Bogomil to Hus (New York: Holmes & Meier Publishers, 1977). 2 W.H.C. Frend, The Donatist Church (Oxford: OUP, 1952), on which see Peter Brown, "Religious Dissent in the Later Roman Empire: the Case of North Africa," History 46 (1961): 83-101, repr. in his Religion and Society in the Age of Saint Augustine (London: Faber and Faber, 1972), 237-59. The Donatists and North Africa tend to be left out of the large bibliography on heresy and identity in the early Christian period (for which see below), but for similar approaches in this field and for a successful deconstruction of the "circumcellions," frequently viewed as leaders of social and economic protest, see Brent Shaw, "Who Were the Circumcellions?" in Vandals, Romans and Berbers: New Perspectives on Late Antique North Africa (ed. A. H. Merrills; Aldershot; Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2004), 227-58, with ample bibliography. 3 David Christie-Murray, A History of Heresy (Oxford: OUP, 1989); G.R. Evans, A Brief History of Heresy (Oxford: OUP, 2001); cf. G. Liidemann, Heretics: The Other Side of Early Christianity (London: SCM Press Ltd., 1996).
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theory, postcolonialism and other such rhetorical tropes between them made heresy the great unmentionable? In a world in which we no longer speak of Christianity but of Christianities, the forging of identity and the processes of self-definition have become the key topics of discussion. 4 It is the new orthodoxy to point out that heretics are made, not born; that the "genealogies of heresy" traced in early Christian authors such as Clement of Alexandria and others are devices by which the prevailing group can contrast the supposed pedigrees of their rivals with their own. 5 Apologetic techniques in early Christian literature also incorporated not only defensive explanations but also strategies of separation whereby Jews and heretics were labeled as "other."6 As for Late Antiquity, to quote only from a recent paper by Fergus Millar, no postmodernist himself: "It perhaps hardly needs to be stated that the characterization, and naming, of groups within Christianity as 'heretical' represents a process of construction by others, and, as expressed by contemporaries (and indeed by modems), can never be taken as constituting simple reports on observable realities."7 The extent to which early Christian heresy can be objectified in modern scholarship is limited indeed. Only, it would seem, if the central orthodoxy - the "dominant ideology" - is capable of being formulated, can "heresy" be defined; yet the identification of heresy by early Christian authors was part and parcel of their own attempts to formulate Christian orthodoxy, a 4 See for example Rebecca Lyman, "The Politics of Passing: Justin Martyr's Conversion as a Problem of 'Hellenization, '" in Conversion in Late Antiquity and the Early Middles Ages. Seeing and Believing (ed. Kenneth Miles and Anthony Grafton; Rochester, NY: U. of Rochester Press, 2003), 36-60, with extensive bibliography on theoretical approaches. 5 From many examples see Virginia Burrus, The Making of a Heretic: Gender, Authority, and the Priscillianist Controversy (Berkeley: U. of California Press, 1995); D. Kimber Buell, Making Christians: Clement of Alexandria and the Rhetoric of Legitimacy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995); eadem, Why This New Race? Ethnic Reasoning in Early Christianity (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005). 6 See for instance Judith M. Lieu, Image and Reality: The Jews in the World of the Christians in the Second Century (Edinburgh: T &T Clark, 1996); idem, Neither Jew nor Greek? Constructing Early Christianity (Edinburgh: T &T Clark, 2002); eadem, Christian Identity in the Jewish and Graeco-Roman World (Oxford: OUP, 2004); M. Edwards, M. Goodman, S. Price, eds., in association with C. Rowland, Apologetics in the Roman Empire: Pagans, Jews and Christians (Oxford: OUP, 1999). 7 Fergus Millar, "Repentant Heretics in Fifth-Century Lydia: Identity and Literacy," Scripta Classica Israelica 23 (2004): 111-30; cf. also idem, "Christian Emperors, Christian Church and the Jews of the Diaspora in the Greek East, CE 379-450," JJS 55 (2004): 1-24. For Late Antiquity see also for example the papers in section two of W. E. Klingshim and M. Vessey, eds., The Limits of Ancient Christianity: Essays on Late Antique '{hought and Culture in Honour of R.A. Markus (Ann Arbor: U. of Michigan Press, 1999), and on identity, R. Miles, ed., Constructing Identities in Late Antiquity (London: Routledge, 1999).
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pedagogic device which at the same time signaled both a real struggle and a dynamic and interactive process. Christian orthodoxy is still fought over. If it is "something" at all, it took time and effort to develop in Late Antiquity and after, and this development was part of a complex cultural process. In our own day traditionalist Christians and true believers might look to an unchanging core of Christian belief, but most scholars will reject that as a satisfactory methodology, and even were it to be accepted, the problem remains of agreeing what that core actually is or on what it is based. In Late Antiquity, both before and after the reign of Constantine, orthodoxy was highly contested, as is shown by the numerous synods, church councils, depositions and polemical writings by Christians. It is now amply apparent from the deluge of modem work on the subject that the struggle over orthodoxy which was given impetus by the Christian empire was already well underway in the earlier period. Lyman writes of the multiple identities and necessary negotiation of a figure such as Justin, and scholars such as Judith Lieu have drawn attention to similar issues in relation to Christians and Jews in the second century. 8 Tessa Rajak memorably renamed Justin's "dialogue" with Trypho as "Talking at Trypho."9 The so-called dialogues written by Christians and purporting to record discussions between Christians and Jews were very far from being innocent or inclusive; their outcome was predetermined, and their tone often enough normative and even harsh. Writing of Paul, Daniel Boyarin asks why it was that Paul's "universalism," the desire to unite everyone in the faith of Christ, in fact has seemed to be "conducive to coercive politico-cultural systems that engage in more or less violent projections of the absorption of cultural specificities into the dominant one," and of the effect of "coercive discourses of sameness" to deny difference. 10 The logic is inexorable: if faith in Christ is necessary for all, then all must be converted, brought to believe. 11 There is no room here for difference. There is a good deal at stake here for today's world. This paper approaches the question from the point of view of early Christianity. Boyarin comes to it in a further book from the perspective of Judaism, in which he writes movingly in the preface about the personal cost to him of
8 In addition to the works cited at n. 6 see Judith M. Lieu, "The Forging of Christian Identity," Mediterranean Archaeology 11 (1998): 71-82. 9 Tessa Rajak, "Talking at Trypho, Apologetics as anti-Judaism in Justin's Dialogue with Trypho the Jew," in Edwards, Goodman and Price, eds., Apologetics in the Roman Empire, 59-80. 10 Daniel Boyarin, A Radical Jew: Paul and the Politics of Identity (Berkeley: U. of California Press, 1994), esp. 228,233. 11 Ibid., 232.
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adopting a constructivist view of Jewish orthodoxy.12 He has much to say on the techniques of heresiology, and is right to see the latter's usefulness for this process of construction, controlled by '~religion police" and "border-guards" (p. 14), but his argument is about the (late) separation which produced "Judaism" and "Christianity," with the theme that it was the latter which in fact stimulated the former to become "orthodox Judaism." My paper is confined to early Christianity, and is therefore open to challenge from those who, like Boyarin, would put early "Christianity" and "Judaism" on a continuum from Marcionites at one end to Jews for whom Jesus meant nothing on the other.13 It is salutary therefore to be reminded of this wider context in which the concept of "orthodoxy" operates. In tracing the development of what Boyarin calls "the discursive institution of orthodoxy" (p. 29), the study of labeling and naming is enormously fruitful. I would want to stress the important role of lists and classification in the process of developing a Christian knowledge which would indeed be all-embracing; that is, one way in which the other is defined as unacceptable is by imposing a name on it. This process is brought out extremely well by Herve Inglebert in his book Interpretatio Christiana. 14 He traces the many different ways in which Christians in Late Antiquity developed an all-embracing scheme of knowledge which could subsume every branch of intellectual activity, and at the heart of which was redefinition, or renaming. Within all this strenuous intellectual effort the labeling of "heresies" was only one element, but it was a key one. The listing and naming, or name-calling, of heresies, formed part of every Christian writer's repertoire, whether it was to trace th,e genealogy of heresies, or their inter-relationships, or to collect them like Epiphanius of Salamis in an artfully contrived and elaborate calling-to mind of biblical numbers. Writing was a central technique. I have elsewhere called heresiology, the literary form which resulted from this impetus, "the Cinderella of early Christian literature."15 However, Cinderella it is no longer. Great strides forward have been made in a very short period to understand what often seems to be an unpleasant and indeed tedious body
12 Daniel Boyarin, Border Lines: The Partition of Judaeo-Christianity (Philadelphia: U. of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), xii-xv. 13 Ibid., 17. 14 H. Inglebert, interpretatio Christiana. Les mutations des savoirs (cosmographie, geographie, ethnographie, histoire) dans l'Antiquite chretienne 30-630 apres J.-c. Collection des etudes augustiniennes (Paris: Institut d'etudes augustiniennes, 2001). 15 Averil Cameron, "How to Read Heresiology," JMEMS 33.3 (2003): 471-492 (repr. in Dale Martin and Patricia Cox Miller, eds., The Cultural Turn in Late Ancient Studies: Gender, Asceticism and Historiography, Durham: Duke University Press, 2005).
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of material,16 and the existence of this volume bringing together the work of scholars not just of early Christianity but also of Judaism and of late antique religion more generally, is an indication of that heightened consciousness. So the study of "heresy" has moved, like so much else, from social history into the study of discourse. 17 But one cannot have heresy without orthodoxy. It is indeed to mark something which is held to contrast with generally received views that the word "heresy" is generally used today, for instance in a lively book of essays by the political scientist John Gray, which is simply entitled Heresies. 18 Science has also advanced through the gradual acceptance of theories that were when first put forward regarded as heresies, in the process called paradigm change. In contrast, religious orthodoxy of its nature seeks to suppress or deny difference, and the religious orthodox, today's fundamentalists no less than the orthodox Christians of Late Antiquity, take their stand on tradition, literalism and continuity; their stance is thus diametrically opposed to the prevailing intellectual currents which emphasize postcolonialism, hybridity and difference. More recently therefore I have been turning my mind from heresy to the concept of orthodoxy,19 and to the related topics of promotion, enforcement and repression. 2o Seen from this perspective, the discourses of orthodoxy in early Christianity would count as 16 See the discussion of heresiology in relation to late antique North Africa by Shaw, "Who Were the Circumcellions?" 232-50, an excellent discussion of the corpus of material and its success in constructing heresy and blackening the record of the supposed enemies of orthodoxy. This material is making things difficult for historians by doing violence to the real situation and Shaw has some trouble with it, as can be seen from his description of Augustine's De haeresibus as "a turgid list" and "a re-canned work quickly put together from other existing sources" with "a few supernumerary heresies" added to the earlier list by Filastrius (p. 238); but Shaw's main argument is that the heresy lists "are not an innocent phenomenon. They are linked to the specific power aims of the central Church" (238). 17 At any rate for historians, though more is at stake for theologians. Cf. Rowan Williams, "Does It Make Sense to Speak of pre-Nicene Orthodoxy?" in The Making of Orthodoxy: Essays in Honour of Henry Chadwick (ed. Rowan Williams; Cambridge: CUP, 1989), 1-23. 18 John Gray, Heresies (London: Granta Books, 2004). 19 Boyarin's argument in Border Lines is that in Late Antiquity Christianity, but not Judaism, became a "religion," defined as "an orthodoxy whereby heterodox views, even very strange opinions, would make one an outsider" (13). This orthodoxy is about belief; he does not allow that like Judaism, orthodox Christianity as a "religion" included a bundle of practices as well as a set of beliefs. In fact Christian heresiology was very interested in differences of practice, some of them seemingly rather trivial. 20 See Averil Cameron, "Enforcing Orthodoxy in Byzantium," in Discipline and Diversity in the Church, Studies in Church History (ed. Kate Cooper and Jeremy Gregory; forthcoming).
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"deformations," in the language of Edward Said, moves in "border wars," denials of difference and "expressions of essentializations. "21 What therefore was this "orthodoxy" which was so contested in early Christianity, and why did identifying orthodoxy seem to matter so much? In Late Antiquity all Christians who asked themselves the question called themselves orthodox, no matter what their position; indeed the aspiration to universalism was not given up even when the reality of division seems to us to have been undeniable. To describe oneself as a heretic is in essence a logical contradiction. Late antique Christians shared the belief that there was indeed such a thing as a "true" faith, and believed that their version corresponded to it. The bottom line must be that our academic talk of constructing "the other," or defining heresy and so on, bypasses the problem that orthodoxy mattered in Late Antiquity because the question was seen as a matter of truth. Some methodological questions are therefore in point. Triumphalist explanations of the rise of Christianity are certainly out of fashion in academic history, and sectarian interpretations are frowned upon in secular educational contexts. It is not difficult to offer instead a materialist explanation of the importance placed on the definition of orthodoxy in early Christianity, or an explanation of particular forms of alternative beliefs in terms of social history. Yet this seems ultimately inadequate to the issues. Peter Berger seems to be coming nearer to it when he says in The Sacred Canopy that if late antique Christianity had not been able to provide a formula which accounted for both the divine and the human natures of Christ it could not have fulfilled the requirement of providing an adequate explanation of the Incarnation in terms of theodicy.22 However this line of argument also fails when one takes into account the nonChalcedonians at both ends of the christo logical spectrum. Weare still left wondering why orthodoxy - even an orthodoxy defined in doctrinal terms - mattered so much. Living as we now do in an age of religious fundamentalism, is there not an imperative to ask what was really going on in all this late antique argument? I hope to extend the same questions in another study to the study of Byzantium, a society in which orthodoxy somehow grew into Orthodoxy, and in relation to which social or reductionist explanations of "heresy" seem particularly unhelpful. And I want to ask how attitudes to heresy in Late Antiquity differed from, or 21 Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism (New York: Knopf 1993), 310-11; cf. Boyarin, Border Lines, 13-22; for hybridity see Romi Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London; New York: Routledge, 1994); against this prevailing ambivalence and diversity,. orthodoxy inserts itself as a "fact-stating discourse," ibid., 239. 22 Peter Berger, The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1967),67.
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resembled, the ways in which the issue was approached in the late medieval and Reformation West. In their attitudes to heresy and heretics, did people in Late Antiquity place most emphasis on converting the heterodox, or on developing their own self-understanding? And did they think, like their later successors, that recantations must be obtained at all costs, in order to save souls that would otherwise be damned? Or that they would be doing God's will in putting unrepentant heretics to death? At what point, if at all, did Late Antiquity become a persecuting society (to use the well-known term),23 and if it did not, why didn't it? Meanwhile I suggest that we need to change tack somewhat and think harder about what was meant by orthodoxy and why and how it was developed and maintained in late antique Christianity. Though it had much to do with hermeneutics, it was not about Scriptural fundamentalism. Its development started long before there could be any question of biblical literalism; indeed, when the canon was eventually established, even the most "literal" late antique exegesis was willing to preserve the integrity of the Scriptural text by imaginative sleights of hand which modern fundamentalists would hardly accept. It has been tempting to say that the process really got going only once the state entered the scene, since more was clearly now at stake in terms of which groups would gain in the competition for power and influence. But that does not account for early writers like Justin, or Irenaeus or Clement, each of whom had a well-developed taxonomy of heresy. 24 I still want to ask, therefore, why did the concept of orthodoxy matter so much? What really hung on it? It seems important not to lose sight of the fact that orthodoxy (despite its appropriation of the Greek word for "opinion") was felt to be about truth. This is a problem for modern scholarship. Historians of Late Antiquity currently tend to think of heresy not as a deviation from the truth but as something constructed for the sake of identity, or for branding the "other" in a one-way relationship because truth, after all, became problematic quite a long time ago; many scholars writing today have now grown up, as it were, with the idea that truth is not an absolute. Late antique studies have drawn on the constructivism which has also taken over in other disciplines and periods, from anthropology to history.25 Thus the search for identities and construction is both an expression of late 23 R.1. Moore, The Formation of a Persecuting Society: Power and Deviance in Western Europe, 950-1250 (London: Blackwell, 1987; repr., 2007); see for Late Antiquity, S. Elm, E. Rebillard, E., and A. Romano, eds., Orthodoxie, christianisme, histoire (Rome: Ecole Fran~aise de Rome, 2000). 24 The classic account is by A. Ie Boulluec, La notion d'heresie dans fa litterature grecque Ir-IIr siecles 2 vols. (Paris: Etudes Augustiniennes, 1985). 25 For history, see Elizabeth Clark, History, Theory, Text: Historians and the Linguistic Turn (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2004).
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twentieth-century postmodernism and an obvious tactical move in something as awkward and unpalatable for modern historians as the study of heresy. But to collapse heresy into the search for identity risks losing sight of orthodoxy altogether. This is a problem for academic theologians as much as for historians, and faced with this dilemma, some Anglican theologians in Cambridge have initiated a movement known as Radical Orthodoxy, which represents an attempt to rescue orthodoxy and get round their dissatisfaction with the relativism of philosophy in its postmodem state. 26 The solution they have found is to return to a pre-modern and preReformation world-view, presented as Augustinian or even Platonist, which is comprehensive and unifying, and harmonizing rather than agonistic for the very reason that (in their eyes) it is based on certainties. It is "orthodox," and at the same time "radical," because it literally goes back to roots. It engages directly with political liberalism, from whence it has naturally provoked a hostile reaction. 27 In a complete reversal, Radical Orthodoxy even turns things on their head and calls the arguments of secular (post-Enlightenment) rationalism "heresy." The agendas here are religious ones. Nevertheless, one of the more arresting aspects of Radical Orthodoxy is its claim that orthodoxy in this sense brings peace, against what its advocates see as the violence and power politics inherent in postmodemism. This is an extraordinarily paradoxical claim. While the scholars in question may assert an Augustinian vision of heavenly peace or order, historians know that the search for orthodoxy in Late Antiquity brought anything but peace, indeed quite the contrary. Christians attacked each other, in words and competition, and even literally in outbreaks of physical violence. 28 When the arm of the law was added to the mix, it brought both real and metaphorical violence in its train.29 The voices of Radical Orthodoxy want 26 See John Milbank, Theology and Social Theory: Beyond Secular Reason (Oxford: OUP, 1990); Catherine Pickstock, After Writing: On the Liturgical Consummation of Philosophy (Oxford: OUP, 1997); John Milbank, Catherine Pickstock and Graham Ward, eds., Radical Orthodoxy: A New Theology (London: Routledge, 1999). 27 See Christopher. J. Insole, "Against Radical Orthodoxy: the Dangers of Overcoming Political Liberalism," Modern Theology 20.2 (2004): 213-241. 28 See Richard Lim, Public Disputation, Power, and Social Order in Late Antiquity (Berkeley: U. of California Press, 1995); Brent Shaw, "War and Violence," and Richard Lim, "Christian Triumph and Controversy," in Late Antiquity: A Guide to the Postclassical World (ed. G.W. Bowersock, Peter Brown and Oleg Grabar; Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999) 130-69; 196-218. 29 Cf. Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003), 256: "The judicial process is an institution integral to every kind of state, and it is always based on coercion .... it punishes transgressions (of commission and omission) by the exercise of violence."
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to see orthodoxy as a unifying force. 3o Yet they are themselves far from displaying peaceful toleration of their critics, who must after all, in their view, qualify as heretics and are even described as such by them. There is a logical as well as a commonsense problem with the notion of orthodoxy as bringing peace. It can seem inevitable that a religion based on revelation, with sacred books in need of exegesis, and with an overt philosophical terminology for describing the deity, should develop the notion of correct and incorrect doctrine. 31 But if the revelation is held to be true, and Christians are enjoined to "believe," to have faith, how then can they be tolerant of others who disagree? This is a problem with which fundamentalist Christians are still struggling. Alongside questions of orthodoxy and heresy in early Christianity, the subject of religious toleration has also been receiving attention. 32 Some have argued for toleration, for instance Harold Drake writing on Constantine. 33 But toleration is not the natural accompaniment of a belief in the absolute rightness of one's beliefs, neither does it sit easily with a developing theory of heresy. To quote from Graeme Clarke, what remained after the apparently tolerant Edict of Milan was "an unresolvable factor the exclusivity of Christianity."34 According to Wolfgang Liebeschuetz, intolerance was one of the chief contributions of Christianity to the Roman Empire. 35 It is necessary to work quite hard to dismiss the superficially very intolerant statements of late antique Christian writers when faced with heretics or indeed Jews, and to maintain an argument for tolerance on their part. One of the most striking kinds of Christian writing, though the least attractive to modern sensibilities, is the very large body of polemical works, or even casual asides, addressed in Late Antiquity towards heterodox Christians, or towards Jews, with whom the former are often 30
See R.R. Reno, "The Radical Orthodoxy Project," First Things 100 (2000): 37--44.
31 On the violence inherent in the Christian appropriation of Jewish and orthodox Scriptures see G. Stroumsa, "The Christian Hermeneutical Revolution and Its Double Helix," in The Use of Sacred Books in the Ancient World (ed. L.V. Rutgers, P.W. van der Horst, H.W. Havelaar, and L. Teugels; Leuven: Peeters, 1998),9-28. 32 See for example Graham N. Stanton and Guy G. Stroumsa, eds., Tolerance and Intolerance in Early Judaism and Christianity, (Cambridge: CUP, 1998); Lellia Cracco Ruggini, 'Tolleranza e intolleranza nella societa tardoantica: il caso degli ebrei', Ric. di St. Soc. eRe!' 23 (1983): 27--44; P.F. Beatrice, ed., L 'Intolleranza cristiana nei confronti dei pagani (Bologna: EDB, Edizioni Dehoniane Bologna, 1993). 33 H.A. Drake, Constantine and the Bishops: The Politics of Intolerance (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University, 2000). 34 Graeme Clarke, "Third-Century Christianity," Cambridge Ancient History XII (Cambridge: CUP, 2005), 587-669, esp. 661. 35 J.H.W.G. Liebeschuetz, Continuity and Change in Roman Religion (Oxford: OUP, 1979),293.
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conflated. 36 If we move into later periods, this trait becomes even clearer: the heresiological literature of the Byzantines is an abusive literature which developed a highly stylized and technologized repertoire of vituperation, caricature and polemic. This was of course a strategy of separation, but "textual wars" were hard fought, and orthodoxy was the territory fought over. 37 The notion of tolerance as a late antique Christian virtue is counter-intuitive, not to mention anachronistic, arising from liberal academic agendas, and indeed the discourse of heresy became more abusive the more highly developed it became. Christian disagreement could indeed at times also produce actual violence or rioting. 38 As Peter Brown has written, "religious toleration was, at best, a fragile notion. "39 It is indeed ironic to find the proponents of Radical Orthodoxy arguing in favor of orthodoxy against the violence that they see as basic to postmodernism. My suggestion in this paper, therefore, is that instead of assuming orthodoxy and reading heresy as a discourse of the "other," it could be useful to start from the concept of orthodoxy itself. What makes orthodoxy orthodox, and how is orthodoxy violent? First, words. The very concept, "orthodoxy," is verbal; it recalls Platonic philosophical debate about truth and falsehood, and insofar as doxa implies "belief," it also implies that that belief can be stated in words. But the first part of the word "orthodoxy" also implies drawing a line, between true and false, between correct and wrong. In other words, "orthodoxy" claims to be true, and condemns everything else to the realm of falsehood. It is not benign; it entails demarcation and condemnation. The words in which orthodoxy is expressed impose themselves on and condemn all else to the realm of falsehood. Words were also inherent in early Christian and late antique techniques of confirming and stating orthodoxy. Why else did early Christians and 36 For the latter cf. e.g. Averil Cameron, "Blaming the Jews: the Seventh-Century Invasions of Palestine in Context," Travaux et Memoires (Melanges Gilbert Dagron) 14 (2002): 57-78. 37 Averil Cameron, "Texts as Weapons: Polemic in the Byzantine Dark Ages," in Literacy and Power in the Ancient World (ed. Alan Bowman and Greg Woolf; Cambridge: CUP, 1994), 198-215; Rajak, "Talking at Trypho," 80, makes a similar point about religious identity in an earlier period. 38 See H.A. Drake, ed., Violence in Late Antiquity: Perceptions and Practices (Aldershot, England; Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2006); there was certainly an element of wishful thinking about some of the more violent prescriptions in the legal sources: see Peter Brown, "Christianity and Religious Conflict," in The Cambridge Ancient History XIII (Cambridge: CUP, 1998), 632-664, esp. 638-641; trouble could easily happen, cf. p. 646 on "the decade of violence" (the 380s-390s). 39 Ibid., 643.
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Christians in Late Antiquity feel impelled to write so much? Books and books, on every conceivable theme, letters and homilies, treatises, commentaries. The books were not innocent; they were written to persuade, to castigate, to reprove, to chasten. While seemingly scholarly in its approach, exegesis served similar purposes. Elizabeth Clark has shown just how powerfully exegesis could be put to the service of a religious agenda. 40 Christian writers used exegesis to promote their own versions of orthodox belief, and visual art was used in the same way. The Christian art of Late Antiquity and Byzantium is exegetical and doctrinal; it does not reflect the spiritual creativity of the artist, so much as the concept of orthodoxy as understood by the artist or patron. At times it did so overtly, by depicting, from the eighth century onwards, the sequence of councils at which orthodox doctrine was laid down.41 During the arguments about Byzantine iconoclasm, the respective merits of words and images were debated precisely in terms of how closely either came to expressing orthodox doctrine. Contemporaries were uneasily aware that both texts and images could mislead - that is, either might fail in their attempt to convey orthodoxy. No uncertainty could be allowed, no room for doubt or disagreement must remain. But this means that the words or images must IMPOSE the message of orthodoxy on a recalcitrant and dangerous pluralism. The fact that Christianity had sacred texts which were often obscure or contradictory necessitated the search for orthodox interpretation. Late antique Christians were not like modem fundamentalists: they were only too well aware that the Scriptures were often obscure and contradictory. But they shared with modern fundamentalists the idea that everything must be there, if only it was expounded correctly. To preach or expound orthodoxy in this sense was as much of an imperative as to promote asceticism; in fact orthodoxy WAS asceticism, the asceticism of words and belief whose imperative was the rejection of all else. 42 It is only too clear from the sheer effort involved in trying to expound it, and to condemn the alternatives, that the search for orthodoxy did violence to the varieties of religious expression and experience that actually existed. Thus the concept of orthodoxy itself becomes an instrument which does violence to actual pluralism. It then engendered 40 E.A. Clark, Reading Renunciation: Asceticism and Scripture in Early Christianity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999). 41 C. Walter, L'iconographie des conciles dans la tradition byzantine (Paris: Institut Fran9ais d'etudes byzantines, 1970). 42 G. Harpham, The Ascetic Imperative in Culture and Criticism (Chicago: U. of Chicago Press, 1987); see also Derek Krueger, Writing and Holiness: The Practice of Authorship in the Early Christian East (Philadelphia: U. of Pennsylvania Press, 2004).
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more violence as generations of later Christian writers struggled to expound, explain and promote this elusive central concept. The violence of the verbal struggle could also be turned on its head. Several emperors tried to command silence - which is itself a violent infringement of speech and writing. Constantine himself started off by exhorting Arius and Alexander to keep their disagreement to themselves and stop arguing. 43 Zeno attempted to quell discussion with his Henotikon of 482. Actual imposition of silence was tried, for example, by the seventh-century emperors who tried to impose Monotheletism as the new orthodoxy. The so-called Ekthesis promulgated by Heraclius in 638 forbade talk of "energies" and decreed the doctrine of one will; it was followed by threats of deposition and excommunication for clergy who disobeyed. Ten years later his successor issued a Typos which forbade all debates about energies or wills, again with sanctions. 44 These attempts may seem like desperation, but were in fact dictatorial interventions, the verbal equivalent of the book-burning practiced for the same reasons by the same emperors. The more obvious kind of violence is of course the violence of enforcement,45 or at times, of persecution. A well-known unpublished paper by Geoffrey de Ste Croix which is soon to appear in print, claims that more Christians were persecuted by other Christians in Late Antiquity than ever Christians by the pagan state. 46 I would not want to go so far, but it is nevertheless true both that the concept of orthodoxy gave rise to a kind of discourse that was authoritarian and intolerant in the extreme, that emperors in Late Antiquity resorted at times to actual persecution and that heresy became a crime, just like paganism. 47 The rise of the
43 Eusebius, Vita Constantini II.71; this letter has attracted attention recently, and is discussed by Boyarin, Border Lines, 44. Like him I see it as preventing discussion, which is to be confined to Arius and Alexander themselves, not opening it up. 44 See the discussion by W. Brandes, "Orthodoxy and Heresy in the Seventh Century: Prosopographical Observations on Monotheletism," in Fifty Years of Prosopography: Rome, Byzantium and Beyond (ed. Averil Cameron; Oxford: OUP, 2003), 103-18, esp. 106-8, 114. 45 See for the later part of the period Pauline Allen, "The Definition and Enforcement of Orthodoxy," Cambridge Ancient History XIV (Cambridge: CUP, 2000), 811-854. 46 See J. Streeter and M. Whitby, eds., Christian Persecution, Martyrdom and Orthodoxy (Oxford), forthcoming, chapter five. 47 For Constantine, see Elaine Pagels, Beyond Belief The Secret Gospel of Thomas (New York 2005), chapter five, "Constantine and the Catholic Church," 143-185; also Millar, "Christian Emperors, Christian Church." It is also relevant, though often forgotten, that Gibbon's Constantine is a Christian tyrant. For the legislation against heresy see Caroline Humfress, "Citizens and Heretics: Late Roman Lawyers on Christian Heresy," in this volume.
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institutionalized church certainly fostered the process, but I think it is too simplistic to make that the whole explanation. To conclude, then, the concept of orthodoxy implies not only intolerance but also violence. Given the current tendency to define "heresy" as a construct, how can one fail to do the same with "orthodoxy," or to place the word "orthodoxy" in the same inverted commas? But then orthodoxy falls prey to just the ontological doubts which assail the notion of truth. Historians of our period face a dilemma. Neither orthodoxy nor heresy can any longer be treated as objects of study in themselves, that is, essentialized. If it is an effect of postmodernism that "heresy" is now a contested term, then the same must be true of "orthodoxy." But any view, such as that of Radical Orthodoxy, which wants to return to orthodoxy as an essence must fall into the trap that such a concept is itself inherently violent. Such views are not "radical," but reactionary, and Christians through the centuries have indeed harried, tortured, and burned others in the name of this elusive orthodoxy. The dilemma, I would contend, leaves historians with a challenge: not how to read "heresy," but how to understand the mirage of "orthodoxy."
Defining Orthodoxy in Pseudo-Justin' s "Quaestiones et responsiones ad orthodoxos" Y ANNIS PAP ADOYANNAKIS Debate and disputation played an important role in late antique society and were integral parts of the process that led to the formation of Christian orthodoxy.1 From the wealth of material that has come down to us from that period, this paper will focus on a very-little studied collection of questions and answers, probably from early fifth-century Syria, the "Quaestiones et responsiones ad orthodoxos" (hereafter QRO). Falsely attributed to Justin, the QRO is a collection of 161 questions and answers (in the longer recension) dealing with a wide range of problems, including cosmology, biblical exegesis, Christology, apologetics, magic, medicine, demonology and so forth. While various suggestions have been made concerning its authorship, the question has to remain open pending a more detailed study of the text, which still lacks a critical edition. 2 This collection of erotapokriseis is valuable not only as a glimpse into the process of the formation of Christian orthodoxy,3 but also because it highlights features of this process which are not easily recoverable from 1 See Averil Cameron, "Dispute Poems and Dialogues in the Ancient and Mediaeval Near East," in Dispute Poems and Dialogues in the Ancient and Mediaeval Near East: Forms and Types of Literary Debates in Semitic and Related Literatures (ed. G.J. Reinink and H.L.J. Vanstiphout; Leuven: Peeters 1991), 91-108. Idem, "Texts as Weapons: Polemic in the Byzantine Dark Ages," in Literacy and Power in the Ancient World (ed. A.K. Bowman and G. Woolf; Cambridge: CUP, 1994), 198-215; see also Richard Lim, Public Disputation, Power, and Social Order in Late Antiquity (Berkeley: U. of California Press, 1995). 2 On the authorship see Adolf von Harnack, Diodor von Tarsus: Vier pseudojustinische Schriften als Eigentum Diodors nachgewiesen, TU 21.4 (Leipzig: J.C. Hinrichs, 1901), 33-44. Franz Xavier Funk, "Pseudo-Justin und Diodor von Tarsus," in Kirchengeschichtliche Abhandlungen und Untersuchungen, vol. 3 (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schoningh, 1907), 323-50. See, recently, Christoph Riedweg, "Iustinus Martyr II (Pseudo-justinische Schriften)," Reallexikon fiir Antike und Christen tum, 19, 1998, cols. 848-873, esp. 868-869. For the purposes of this paper I use the edition of A. Papadopoulos-Kerameus (St. Peterburg, 1895, reprint, Leipzig, 1975). All translations of the QRO are my own. Much remains to be done for a complete study of this corpus of literature. that merits wider attention. This paper forms part of a broader book-length study that I am preparing on late antique and Byzantine collections of erotapokriseis. 3 On this see also Averil Cameron, "The Violence of Orthodoxy," in this volume.
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other, more formal, accounts and sources. In cognitive terms they illustrate not only how religious instruction operated, but also some of the mechanisms that shaped religious views and opinion. The collection seeks to provide orthodox teaching on ethical, theological, liturgical and scriptural problems that arose in the religious environment within which its author lived. The main concern of many Christian authors in the fifth century was how Christian the empire had become. 4 This concern permeates the QRO.5 From this perspective, the inquiries on theodicy, cosmology, exegesis among others cease to be isolated instances and, emerge as essential parts of the process of the restructuring of religious belief.
Nature of the Work With regard to its literary form, the work belongs to the early Christian question-and-answer literature of erotapokriseis. 6 The form was widely used in Greek and Roman literature because of its great didactic potential and value. In Christian literature it was used first - interestingly enough by Marcion, Apelles, Tatian and their students, to raise objections to passages in the Bible.? Thus the erotapokriseis were associated with debate, polemics and apologetics, but also instruction and catechesis. 8 Origen, Basil and Eusebius employed the literary form of erotapokriseis to solve exegetical and philological problems in Scripture. Other important authors such as Theodoret, Cyril of Alexandria, and Zacharias of Mytilene,
See Robert Markus, End of Ancient Christianity (Cambridge: CUP, 1990),31-35. See for instance Q. 143, p. 132. 6 See Gustave Bardy, "La litterature patristique des 'Quaestiones et responsiones' sur l'Ecriture Sainte," Revue Biblique 41 (1932): 210-236; 341-369; 515-537; 42 (1933): 14-30; 211-229; 328-352. Also Lorrenzo Perrone, "II genere delle 'Quaestiones et responsiones' nella letteratura cristiana antica fino ad Agostino," in "De divers is quaestionibus octoginta tribus," "De diversis quaestionibus ad simplicianum," di Agostino D 'Jppona (Rome: Citta nuova editrice, 1996), 11-44. For the most recent approach to this literature see Annelie Volgers and Claudio Zamagni, eds., Erotapokriseis: Early Christian Question-and-Answer Literature in Context (Louvain: Peeters, 2004). 7 Bardy, "La litterature patristique des 'Quaestiones et responsiones' sur l'Ecriture Sainte," Revue Biblique 41 (1932): 217-224. 8 For the didacticism and the catechetical dimension of these collections, see Yannis Papadoyannakis, "Instruction by Question and Answer in Late Antiquity: The Case of Late Antique and Byzantine Erotapokriseis," in Greek Literature in Late Antiquity: Dynamism, Didacticism, Classicism (ed. Scott Johnson; Aldershot, forthcoming), 91105. 4 5
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made use of erotapokriseis and dialogue to refute criticisms and give solutions to various problems that were posed to them. As it has been recently shown in the case of Eusebius' s Solutiones, the questions read like exercises in tackling difficult and not always easy to solve questions, a feature that ties them to their philosophical and philological predecessors. 9 This accounts for a certain openendedness of some answers which are rather tentative, perhaps only intended to be suggestive. The question of the literary form and process is thus relevant not only for understanding the' collection as a whole, but also for the mechanisms and rhetorical strategies employed for the formation of orthodox belief and practice in general. When assessing the QRO it is worth noting that we are dealing with a miscellaneous collection. Each pair of questions and answers is numbered by the ancient editor. Sometimes the questions are linked in sequence by some common theme: eschatology, cosmology, demonology, or magic. At other times they are unrelated. Some questions are more complex and closely-argued than others. The answers are of varying lengths and can take the form of longer disquisitions. 10 Throughout the collection, the kind of language employed is meant to create the feel of the classroom for the reader even if we are dealing with a written collection of these aporiai. This is obvious not only from the requests of the inquirers to the teacher (didaxon: teach [us], mathomen: let us learn, diasaphenison: clarify this for us and so forth)l1 but also from the answers that are given. There are also indications as to the proper procedure and the limits for the exercise of curiosity. For example in Q. 41 a question deals with the ability of certain people to cause rain through the manipulation of the clouds: Q.: If the clouds send forth the rain to the earth by means of a divine command, why do the so-called cloud-impellers prepare some incantations whereby they want to hurl forth hail and heavy rain? 12
To this the author of the collection responds: A.: This is not attested in the Scriptures and is therefore not to be believed. And you who asked this question, [you] did nor ask the question based on what you saw happening, but based on hearsay. 13
9 See Allan E. Johnson, "Rhetorical Criticism in Eusebius' Gospel Questions," Studia Patristica 18.1 (1989): 33-39. 10 For instance Q. 41, p. 49 is of the shortest while Q.161, p. 146-150 is the longest. 11 Q. 31,11-12, p. 40, Q. 37,24, p. 45, Q. 77,10-11, p. 74, Q. 83,2, p. 79, Q. 58, 17, p. 61, Q . .103, 21, p. 94. 12 Q. 41, 13-16, p. 49. 13 Q. 41, 17-20, p. 49.
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Although the focus keeps shifting from one question to another, there is an overriding use of certain techniques and arguments. In Q. 159, we see the anonymous Christian teacher at work as he tries to steer the inquirer through the lessons he has to teach about the rules of inquiry: This question is unbecoming of either a Christian or a Greek (pagan). [ ... ] One must not construct an inquiry from things that are agreed upon (homo10goumenon) but from disputed issues. 14
Features such as the rich dialogical elements, and the seemingly random way in which the questions arise - so as to suggest a feeling of free association - and the seeming extemporized solutions offered to some aporiai imitate the actual performance of the teacher. In fact, this may be as close to the process of Christian schooling as we can get. On account of this, it is plausible to assume that pseudo-Justin's QRO developed from some pedagogical process, for example as versions of a lecture notebook containing problems for discussion or alternatively of notes from classroom discussion. 15
Content In terms of content the QRO is a very mixed bag. As mentioned already, the questions range from exegesis of difficult biblical passages to explanation of specific terms,16 religious practice and contemporary issues. Several questions echo well-known objections to Christianity that ultimately go back to Celsus, Porphyry and Julian, while others aim to refute heretical and Manichaean arguments. Following the literary precedent of other early Christian authors, a good deal of pseudo-Justin's erotapokriseis aim at refuting these criticisms and accusations using the rhetorical method of anaskeue and kataskeue. 17 On account of this, there is a strong apologetic dimension in these questions and answers directed not
14 Q. 159, 7-11, p. 146. For this mode of argumentation that goes back to Aristotle see Ann Blair, "The Prob1emata as a Natural Philosophical Genre," in Natural Particulars: Nature and Disciplines in Renaissance Europe (ed. A. Grafton and N. Siraisi; Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1999), 171-204. For a similar use of argumentation by Christians see Henriette M. Meissner, Rhetorik und Theologie: der Dialog Gregors von Nyssa De anima et resurrectione (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1991), 115-175. 15 See Harnack, Diodor von Tarsus. Vier pseudojustinische Schriften, 19. 16 For instance Q. 98, p. 91. 17 See A. E. Johnson, "Rhetorical Criticism in Eusebius' Gospel Questions," 33-39.
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only against pagans but also against heterodox Christians, Jews and Manichaeans. 18 These questions referred to commonly known problems that needed to be addressed and were, therefore, intended for wider circulation: hence the indices that preface the collection making it easier for consultation. 19 In fact G. Dagron, the only scholar who has recently touched briefly upon this text, has shown that especially the questions that deal with historical issues, paganism and heresy stand in tension - and at times in stark contrast - with evidence from contemporary hagiography. 20 Dagron has also argued persuasively that on the basis of these collections we can get closer to the realities of the fifth and sixth centuries.
Challenges to Orthodoxy While QRO is made up of many strands, I will draw on select issues to highlight the process rather than the overall content of the collection. Confrontation with, and responses to, challenging inquiries are what led the author to define Christian orthodoxy. Question 16 deals with the persistence of heretics, Greeks and Jews. The objection raised reads as follows: Q.: If God abolished the ancient worship, because it did not please Him, and introduced that of the Christians because He liked it and [if] only orthodox Christians are pleasing to God, how are they less in number than the Greeks, Jews and all the heretics? How is the fact that error is not uprooted not proof of the lack of power since He chose this worship over the other? Why is the abolition of this error not useless since a different error prevails in the world?21
To this our anonymous author responds that instead of accusing God of lacking power, it would make more sense to blame for their negligence those who did not care to believe or to understand the teachings of Christianity properly. To a similar question, Q. 143, where the inquirer asks about the numerical superiority of the pagans, heretics and Jews taken together, the anonymous author replies:
18 See Giancarlo Rinaldi, "Tracce di controversie tra pagani e cristiani nella letteratura patristica delle 'quaestiones et responsiones,' " Annali di Storia deU'Esegesi 6 (1989): 99-124. 19 For indications of the popularity (or so the author of the collections wants us to believe) of at least some questions see Q. 31, 12, p. 40 20 Gilbert Dagron, "L'ombre d'un doute: L'hagiographie en question, Vle-Xle siecle," Dumbarton Oaks Papers 46 (1992): 59-68. 21 Q. 16, pp. 29-30.
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To rule earthly things in the present life in the manner of a king, is not the legacy of true Christians ... He who wants to know the power of the true Christians has to look to the future condition. For the power in the present over things material is not a recompense for the faith of the Christians, but rather a [form of public] service according to God's plan (diataxis) for the constitution of a well-ordered human polity that has been handed down to people, sometimes to Christians, sometimes to heretics, and sometimes to the Greeks. For as long as the Christians struggle for the sake of virtue and they walk on the "narrow" and "hard path" [Matt 7. 14], they are set before all [lie exposed] (prokeimenoi) as assistance to anyone who wants to press them into service they are not considered rulers.
This is a stunning statement in light of the triumphalism more typically encountered in contemporary Christian sources. 22 Pseudo-Justin's reply connects the QRO with contemporary debates over the role of the Church in the empire, as well as with discussions about the spread of Christianity. Similar arguments are employed by Antiochene authors, such as John Chrysostom, whose view partly coincides with and partly departs from the author's view. 23 Another contemporary author, Theodoret of Cyrrhus, is sensitive to what seem to be criticisms of the spread of Christianity due to imperial patronage. Theodoret's approach has affinities with pseudo-Justin's in that neither takes the alliance of the Church with imperial authority for granted. In their view, Christianity is not co-terminous with the empire. 24 Occasionally questions that may reflect concerns about the impact of imperial legislation against heretics 25 find their way into the collection: Q.: If heretics have striven with all their power to know and safeguard the truth of the doctrines without being able to, why is it not unjust to subject them to punishments for having (allegedly) strayed from the truth?26
22 For evidence that supports this non-triumphalist view and the existence of uncertainty see also Fergus Millar, "Christian Emperors, Christian Church and the Jews of the Diaspora in the Greek East, CE 379-450," JJS 55 (2004): 1-24, esp. 15-16. 23 For Chrysostom's view see Isabella Sandwell, "Christian Self-definition in the Fourth Century AD: John Chrysostom on Christianity, Imperial Rule and the City," in Culture and Society in Later Roman Antioch: Papers from a Colloquium, London, 15 th December 2001 (ed. Isabella Sandwell and Janet Huskinson; Oxford: Oxbow Books; Oakville, CT: David Brown Book Co., 2004), 58-84. I discuss the fifth-century debate about the expansion of Christianity in Y. Papadoyannakis, "Therapeia" and "Politeia": The Apologetics of Theodoret of Cyrrhus against the Greeks (PhD diss., Princeton University, 2004), ch. 3,46-67, and ch. 4, 68-89. 24 Ibid., 57-58. 25 On heresy and Roman law see Caroline Humfress, "Citizens and Heretics: Late Roman Lawyers on Christian Heresy," in this volume. 26 Q. 19, p. 32.
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Attachment to the old gods attracts the attention of the author at least as much as heresy. The relationship between Christianity and Hellenism was no less contested and debated. Q.: If God is the Creator and Lord of the creation, how do Apollonius's miraculous works have potency on the parts of the creation? As we see, they prevent/hinder the winds and the inroads of mice and wild beasts. And if the miracles that the Lord performed lay only in the narratives, whereas most of his [Apollonius' miracles] are proven by the facts, how does he [Apollonius] not deceive those watching? And if on the one hand this was done by divine permission, how is it that this divine consent does not lead to Hellenism? If this is not so, how are these things done with the power of the demons? Then again if God played a role in this, - pleased because what happened was good - why did these things not happen through the prophets or the apostles? If He was not pleased because this was bad, for what reason did He not immediately prevent this or did put an end to this after a short time but instead allowed this to prevail for the duration of the time of this creation.
The question is elaborately constructed, and contrasts the miracles of Jesus that happened in a distant past with the continuing miraculous activity of Apollonius in the present. Apollonius stood for the hallowed traditions of Hellenism and for patterns of religiosity from the past that were still active in the Christian present. 27 What gives the inquirer pause is the co-existence of an alternative religious system that is still active, despite Christian claims to exclusivity. Another question reveals an even greater concern with the past, and illustrates the complexity of the task that the Christian authors were faced with when struggling to re-structure the attitudes of people as they were trying to come to terms with religious change. Q.: If God rewards the pious with eminence in this life, just as [He did] with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and their people [rewarding them] with wealth, children, and abundance of crops, how is Hellenism not proven more holy [divinely sanctioned, pious]? When it prevailed in the cities, all the cities and the countryside were prospering and flourishing (while they were not fought against more often). But after the Christian teaching prevailed they (cities) lost their houses and their tenants and the entire prosperity and only the remains of the buildings built by the Greeks demonstrate that
27 On the differing attitudes of pagans and Christians towards Apollonius see Wolfgang Speyer, "Zum Bild des Apollonius von Tyana bei Heiden und Christen," Jahrbuch fur Antike und Christentum 17 (1974), 47-63. For the popularity of Apollonius in Late Antiquity and Byzantium see Maria Dzielska, Apollonius of Tyana in Legend and History (trans. P. Pienkowski; Roma: "L'Erma" di Bretschneider, 1986). Also Christopher Jones, "Apollonius of Tyana in Late Antiquity," in Greek Literature in Late Antiquity: Dynamism, Didacticism, Classicism (ed. S. Johnson; Ashgate, 2006), 49-64; and W. L. Duliere, "Protection permanente contre des animaux nuisibles assuree par Apollonius de Tyane dans Byzance et Antioche: Evolution de son my the," BZ 63 (1970): 247-77.
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these were cities; the former prosperity and the latter devastation are offering each one of them the reasons for the [practice] of these two religions. 28
The appeal to historical events and arguments from history had an indisputable allure in ancient society, especially as a way of legitimizing religious claims. Interestingly enough, the contrast that is articulated here is between Hellenismos and Christianismos as two competing religious systems. Elsewhere the term Ioudaismos is employed to the same effect. 29 As an interesting testimony to the fact that people thought in these categories, the inquiry juxtaposes an immemorial belief in the divine reward for piety and punishment for failure to uphold the old ways as well as an inextricable link between the practice of religion and fertility, growth of the crops and the livestock. Both cohere very forcefully. Against this time-honored pattern of thought, pseudo-Justin argues that instead of focusing on such external arguments from history (which even on that level do not favor Hellenism), one should focus on the fact that God rewards the good moral intentions with which Christians have chosen to act in their religious practice as opposed to Greeks who sacrificed to lifeless idols and demons. The same relentless scrutiny on the historical implications of religious practice resurfaces in Q. 55: If demons do not hold sway over parts of the created world, why, when the oracles were not heeded by the Greeks, did they [demons] bring punishments upon them, whereas when the idols were reverenced they put an end to the punishments and they [demons] provided goods instead? Whence did their power come for either act?30
In the light of this evidence, what seem to be isolated concerns or hesitations in fact echo continuing debates about the role of Hellenic and Jewish past in a Christian present. The question of "how much of the past could be allowed to be put in the past, and how much could be allowed to linger in the present"31 was a challenge that faced Christians both in the East and the West during the fifth century. The intense focus on unremitting inquiry comes across elsewhere too, in questions on the resurrection and the final judgment. "If both Christians and pagans are punished in the Second Coming in a similar manner, what is the benefit for the Christian as opposed to the Greek [viz. pagan]?"32 "If, 28 Q. 136, pp. 125-126. On this see also Walter E. Kaegi, Byzantium and the Decline of Rome (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968), 74-75, 158-160. 29 Q. 16, p. 29. 30 Q. 55, 17-21, p. 58. 31 Peter Brown, "Conversion and Christianization in Late Antiquity: The Case of Augustine," in The Past Before Us: The Challenge of Historiographies of Late Antiquity (ed. Carole Straw and Richard Lim; Turnhout: Brepols, 2004), 103-117, esp. 116. 32 Q. 18, p. 32.
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as you said, there is no recompense for the [good] works, what is the benefit for the robber, his soul having been introduced in paradise, and how much more when paradise is sensible, while the essence of the soul is intelligible?"33 Some inquiries deal with gaps in the Gospels, such as Q. 127: If the Lord rose from the tomb and left His burial clothes in the tomb, how is it that after His resurrection the Scripture did not depict Him as been seen naked or wearing a tunic from elsewhere? If He did not receive clothes from elsewhere, and He did not appear naked to those who saw Him, how is it true that He left His clothes in the tomb?34
In his reply the author tries to refocus the inquiry, claiming that, Since many are the things that the Lord said and did, the accounts of which the Holy Scripture does not contain, one of which is the clothes of the Lord, it is not reasonable to inquire into the cause of something that has not been recounted from all the things that have not been recounted. One must not construct an inquiry about the garment of the Lord from something that has not been recounted but [one must take faith] from His power. 35
Other inquiries such as Q. 72 and 73 illustrate competing cosmological and anthropological conceptions and the difficulties encountered by early Christian authors in creating a cosmology in opposition to Greek cosmology. Central to the definition of orthodox Christianity is the focus on correct practice as seen in Q. 129, which deals with the question of the theological significance of the East, and why Christians should face the East when praying. The author of the collection feels the need to defend the practice, arguing for its apostolic origin. 36 At issue here is the legitimacy of this practice that is questioned indirectly by the anonymous inquirer. In the same vein a question is posed about baptism and the practice of anointing with oil. 37 Equally indicative of the desire to define Christian ritual unambiguously against heretics, is what we find in Q. 27, where the question deals with admission of heretics, back to the Orthodox church. If the baptism that is provided by heretics is false and not valid, why do the orthodox Christians not baptize the one who seeks refuge to the orthodoxy but instead they accept the baptism as valid? If this person [viz. the ex-heretic] was ordained and they [viz. the
33 Q. 88, pp. 82-83. 34 Q. 127, pp. 118-119. 35 Ibid., pp. 118-119. 36 See Alexander Podossinov, "Himmelsrichtung," Reallexikon fur Antike und Christentum, 15, 1991, cols. 233-286, esp. cols. 273-274. Also E. von Severus, "Gebet I," Reallexikon fur Antike und Christentum, 8, 1972, cols. 1134-1258, esp. cols. 12161218, 1228-1229. 37 Q. 154, p. 142.
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orthodox] accept this ordination as valid (bebaia), why are both the one who was admitted [to the church] and the ones who accepted him blameless?
In his reply the author lays out what looks like standard procedures for the admission of a former heretic in the Orthodox church. Provided that the person has changed his or her mind away from false belief, these procedures involve, for those baptized by heretics, the anointing with holy myrrh by the orthodox; for those ordained by heretics, the laying of hands by the orthodox. 38 After these procedures the error from heretical rituals is dissolved. 39 The same concern with correct practice and its origin is evident in Q. 126 on the practice of genuflection. If the practice of genuflection during the liturgy attracts God's grace more, why do the faithful not genuflect during the period between the Easter Sunday and the Pentecost? In his answer the author of the collection employs a traditional argument taken from Irenaeus who provided a justification for the practice. 40 The practice of circumcision is the focus of Q. 113: Why was the foreskin of the Jews circumcised as redundant, if God created nothing redundant in the human body? And if the practice had some usefulness why is this operation not practiced today by Christians?41
The question, that echoes Julian's critique in his Contra Galilaeos,42 entwines an historical and exegetical interest in both the legitimacy of the practice and also Christianity's departure from it. The author in his response seeks to place the practice in its historical context, arguing that precisely because it is attested as an historical event in the history of the Jews, it is not binding for Christians who now, following the words of apostle Paul, have "put on the Lord Jesus Christ" (Rom. 13, 14).43 Here, as 38 See the discussion by Cyril Vogel, "Handauflegung," Reallexikon fur Antike und Christentum, 13, 1986, cols. 482-493, esp. cols. 486, 488; Miguel Arranz, "Les sacrements de l'ancien euchologe constantinopolitain," Orientalia Christiana Periodica 49(1983): 42-90, esp. 48-60, 80-84. 39 Q. 27, p. 38. 40 See Franz D6lger, "Das erste Gebet der Tauflinge in der Gemeinschaft der Bruder: Ein Beitrag zu Tertullian de baptismo 20," Antike und Christentum: Kultur- und Religionsgeschichtliche Studien 2 (1930) ': 142-155, esp. 145, n15. Also E. von Severns, "Gebet I," esp. cols. 1216-1218, 1228-1229. 41 Q. 113, p. 105. 42 Flavius Claudius Iulianus, Contra Galilaeos (ed. Masaracchia), fr. 85, 351A. G. Bardy in his article, "La litterature patristique des 'Quaestiones et responsiones' sur l'Ecriture Sainte," Revue Biblique 42 (1933): 214-215, mentions Harnack's view according to which this criticism derives from either Marcion's Antitheses or the Syllogisms of Apelles. 43 Q. 113,26-27, p. 105. Given the existence of flourishing Jewish communities in Antioch and in northern Syria as well as of Judaizers who felt the attraction of Judaism,
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in other inquiries, the author is defining Christianity explicitly against alternative opinions. In another interesting issue that is raised, we see the manner in which orthodox religious practice is demarcated in opposition to heretics. Question 118 deals with the use of liturgical chanting. The inquirer asks why chanting is used in the churches of the orthodox, given that the practice was initially introduced by heretics and Jews. 44 The reply defends the practice, with reference to the uplifting effect of chanting in the church, claiming that it is orthodox because of the exclusion of dancing and of all musical instruments. 45 In question 111, an objection is raised that miracles occur in heretical churches toO.46 In his answer, the anonymous author is willing to concede that miracles are not necessarily the touchstone of true faith, and that their occurrence does not separate true from false faith. The QRO bring into sharp focus in their concreteness (and in their casuistry) the tensions that run through the religious culture of the early fifth century, as well as a sense of its infinitely variegated array of differing beliefs, which come alive in the text's echoes of contemporary preoccupations. They make us realize the extent to which these issues remained unresolved, only to be settled by debate and disputation. As this collection shows, the transition from a pagan society to a Christian one was neither as sudden nor as complete as has been assumed. 47 What sets the QRO apart is that, instead of being a formal, finished, static, unchanging treatise, it represents a collection of problems - some of them recurring (hermeneutic) - with their answers. The objections represent different viewpoints that are not glossed over. Instead, they stand on their own as carefully crafted arguments sharpened by debate, and they allow us to see more clearly what the author is responding to and how he arrives at the more orthodox positions.
the inquiry may have had a contemporary relevance. For the attraction of Judaism in Antioch see Robert L. Wilken, John Chrysostom and the Jews: Rhetoric and Reality in the Late 4th Century (Berkeley: U. of California Press, 1983), 66-94. 44 Discussed also by Johannes Quasten, Music and Worship in Pagan and Christian Antiquity (trans B. Ramsey, Washington, D.C.: National Association of Pastoral Musicians, 1983), 74-75. 45 Q. 118,22-24, p. 110. 46 For the debates on the role of miracle see Francesco Mosetto, I miracoli evangelici nel dibattito tra Celso e Origene (Rome: LAS, 1986). 47 On. this see also Peter Brown, "Christianization and Religious Conflict," in The Late Empire: 337-425, The Cambridge Ancient History, vol. 13 (ed. Averil Cameron and Peter Garnsey; Cambridge: CUP, 1998),632-664.
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Dagron makes the point that some of the questions sound like provocations. 48 But more than provocations, they are problems in the true sense of the word, namely "something difficult to overcome or 'to solve, a knotty problem".49 Such a view of the QRO as a text that continually poses questions and answers has various implications. It requires us to see the definition of Christian orthodoxy as an ongoing process, in which pseudoJustin's "questions and the answers" represent a particular, significant, stage. Contrary to other catalogues of correct and wrong belief, and despite evidence of literary patterning, the QRO preserves the voices of orthodox and heterodox posed in questions and objections. They help us to understand the kinds of perplexities that were being raised in the Christian communities of Late Antiquity as they negotiated a lively and contentious religious and social landscape, and they highlight the multifarious issues which Christian leaders had to be prepared to deal with in their pastoral, pedagogical, and apologetic work. At the same time the QRO must be seen as an attempt by Christian authors to work out how Christianity was to define its position with regard to Hellenism and Judaism in a period still characterized by considerable fluidity and change. 50 More than a literary process aimed at refuting objections or illuminating difficult Biblical passages, collections such as pseudo-Justin' s highlight a pedagogy with significant cognitive implications. For through the interaction between the author and the inquirer( s) over exegetical, ritual, historical issues, we see the way that Christianity was defined, practiced, defended, and understood, and the importance that accrued to this process. This accords well with what has been described as a broader cognitive process: that of reformulating and controlling human knowledge on the
48 Dagron, "L'ombre d'un doute," 61. 49 Blair, "The Problemata as a Natural Philosophical Genre," 171-204, discusses the etymology and the development of the term thus: " 'p ro ballo, ' 'to set out as an obstacle,' was probably first used in an intellectual rather than its original military context by Plato when describing the tactics of the Sophists defending themselves. By extension, the problema became something difficult to overcome or to solve, a knotty problem." 50 Dagron remarks: "Le ps.-Justin des Quaestiones ad orthodoxos, qui est peut-etre Theodoret de Cyr lui meme, en toute cas l'un des ses contemporaines [.. ] nous place, comme les Vies du ye siecle, au carrefour de deux mondes, entre un paganisme qui n'est plus un rival, mais une composante culturelle encore mal assimilee, et une foi nouvelle qui explore un autre corpus de textes et a decouvert la voie parallele d'une histoire veterotestamentaire." See G. Dagron, "Le saint, Ie savant, l'astrologue: Etude de themes hagiographiques a travers quelques recueils de 'Questions et reponses' des ye-Ylr siecles," in Hagiographie, cultures et socifites: IVe-XIJe siecles: actes du colloque organise a Nanterre et a Paris, 2-5 mai 1979, Centre de recherches sur l' Antiquite tardive et Ie haut Moyen Age, Universite de Paris X (Paris: Etudes augustiniennes, 1981), 144.
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nature of God, anthropology, cosmology and morality, and of defining deviance in terms of what Christianity was not to be. 51 Orthodoxy is sometimes described by historians as if it were merely the sum of successive imperial interventions. The QRO illuminates the creation of orthodoxy instead as the outgrowth of low-visibility cognitive processes, whose existence has been alluded to, but not sufficiently taken into account, by historians of the formation of Christian orthodoxy.
Conclusion In its engagement with critical issues, the QRO interweaves a set of disparate problems. Clearly the QRO does not work by trying to cover the whole range of possible problems. However the processual nature of this text is striking, and reminds us that Christian orthodoxy arose to a large extent as a response to objections and challenges. This is not to overlook or downplay the importance of other factors, such as the role of Church and imperial politics, councils and the theological stature of the figures involved, but these are only part - albeit perhaps the better known one - of the picture. What can be said of pseudo-Justin's attitude towards orthodoxy is akin to what Andrew Louth has recently stated when speaking of John of Damascus: When we think of Byzantine Orthodoxy, the theology of the Oecumenical synods [ .... ] we are apt to think of a somewhat triumphalist progress of Orthodoxy, protected by the Emperor, and both able and willing to call on the power of the State to persecute those who opposed what they called orthodoxy. There is some truth in this, and it is a truth that is often ugly. But it is a truth that does not apply at all to the theological task in which John of Damascus was engaged. 52
The attempts at refining and defining Christian orthodoxy that the pseudoJustin is engaged in emphasize a different aspect of the process that led to the formation of orthodoxy than do the more formal or triumphalist narratives on which standard accounts of Christianization have traditionally rested. This process of defining orthodoxy took place in the context of debate, polemics, and discussion. What we see in pseudoJustin's QRO is orthodoxy in the making.
51 See Averil Cameron, "Education and Literary Culture," The Late Empire: 337-425, The Cambridge Ancient History, vol 13, 665-707, esp. 702-703. See also idem, "How to Read Heresiology," JMEMS 33 (2003): 471-492. 52 Andrew Louth, St. John Damascene: Tradition and Originality in Byzantine Theology (Oxford: OUP, 2002), 14.
Citizens and Heretics Late Roman Lawyers on Christian Heresy CAROLINE HUMFRESS
Introduction: Roman Citizenship and "Catholic" Christianity In Roman myth, at least, the idea of a potentially universal and timeless community of Roman citizens dates back as far as the city of Rome's very foundation. In 212 CE, however, the Emperor Caracalla apparently took the concrete step of granting citizenship to all the free inhabitants of the Roman Empire. l The famed third century jurist U1pian merely comments that: "Everyone in the Roman world has been made a Roman citizen as a consequence of the enactment of the Emperor Antoninus."2 As it stands, chopped up by the Emperor Justinian's legal commissioners in the early sixth century, and divorced from its context in the rest of U1pian's text, this statement is inaccurate: even leaving to one side the vexed question of application, not everybody was transformed into a citizen either in the year 212 CE or indeed subsequently. 3 Slaves were not made free and Caracalla apparently took this exclusion as being so obvious that he did not need to spell it out in his text. On the other hand, peregrini dedicitii, technically 1 For discussion see Catharine Edwards and Greg Woolf, "Cosmopolis: Rome as World City," in Rome the Cosmopolis (ed. Catharine Edwards and Greg Woolf; Cambridge: CUP, 2003), 1-20. On the changing forms of Roman citizenship see Claude Nicolet, The World of the Citizen in Republican Rome (London: Batsford Academic and Educational, 1984). 2 Digest 1.5.17, Ulpian ad edictum: In orbe Romano qui sunt ex constitutione imperatoris Antonini cives Romani effecti sunt. 3 The following discussion is indebted to Peter Garnsey, "Roman Citizenship and Roman Law in the Late Empire," in Approaching Late Antiquity: the Transformation from Early to Late Empire (ed. Simon Swain and Mark Edwards; Oxford: OUP, 2004), 133-55, esp. 138 and 143-45. On the dating and (fragmentary) papyrus text of the Constitutio Antoniniana see Heinrich Wolff, Die Constitutio Antoniniana und Papyrus Gissensis 40 I (Diss., Cologne, 1976); for its local impact see James G. Keenan, "The Names Flavius and Aurelius as Status Designations in Later Roman Egypt," ZPE 11 (1973): 33-63; and 12 (1974): 183-304; and Dieter Hagedorn, "Marci Aurelii in .Agypten nach der Constitutio Antoniniana," Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrologists 16 (1979): 47-59.
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free men but lacking all public rights and citizenship, were explicitly excluded from Caracalla's grant. Likewise peregrines (or "foreigners") finding themselves on imperial territory after 212CE had no right of automatic citizenship merely by force of domicile. Lastly, individuals who had been deprived of their citizenship because they had fallen foul of the law did not get their slates automatically wiped clean in 212CE. Thus even if we boldly presume that the majority of the inhabitants of the late Roman Empire did have Roman citizenship and chose to assert it, they remained liable to lose its benefits - either wholesale or in part. The idea of a universal and timeless community of Christians, on the other hand, is rooted in the texts of the New Testament. In the mid-second century CE Celsus famously baited his Christian contemporaries with the taunt that they could only dream of a day when their lex (their "law" or way of life) would be diffused throughout the habitable world (oikoumene).4 For Celsus, the Christians of his day were idle dreamers in supposing that their lex could ever be catholica, general or universal. Certain of Celsus' Christian contemporaries, however, were already developing the idea of a lex catholica in quite different terms. In the late second-century the Christian apologist Tertullian spelt out a rather technical argument, whereby those who followed the lex christiana (the general or universal "way of Christ") could be distinguished from those Christians who did not. For Tertullian, adherence to the lex catholica marked out true "catholic" Christians from heretics. 5 Only catholic Christians, according to Tertullian, had any legal title to use and interpret Scripture; and only the universal catholic church was de facto in communion with the apostolic church. With these arguments Tertullian took his place within a specifically Christian evolution in the meaning of the term catholicus: the word was nothing less than a title to Christian orthodoxy. 6 Almost exactly one hundred years after the Emperor Caracalla's "grant of citizenship" the Emperor Galerius issued his so-called "grant of toleration." Galerius' measure, posted at Nicomedia on 30 April 311, marks the winding down of a Tetrarchic period of Christian persecution and the beginning of an era in which the practice of Christianity was officially declared to be compatible with Roman citizenship. 7 Galerius Origen, Contra Celsum 8.72 (PG XI, 1580). Tertullian, De praescriptione haereticorum 30.2, with reference to the heresies of Marcion and Valentinus. 6 Compare Clement of Alexandria, Stromata, VII, 17 (PG IX, 552) and Cyprian of Carthage, Ep. 25 (ed. Hartel, II, 600). 7 Lactantius, De morte persecutorum 33. 11-35.I; Eusebius, Historia ecclesiastica 8.16.1 and 8.17.1-11. For discussion see Simon Corcoran, The Empire of the Tetrarchs 4 5
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permitted his Christian subjects to worship their god and assemble together openly, provided that they kept the civil peace. In this sense Galerius adhered to traditional Roman policy: "The crux for conformity was the link between Roman citizenship and Roman religion."8 Under the Republic and the early empire matters concerning religion were classified as part of the ius civile, specifically under the branch of Roman public law: Public law is concerned with the Roman "state," while private law is concerned with the interests of individuals, for some matters are of public and others of private interest. Public law comprises religion, priesthoods, and magistracies. 9
David Johnston has recently highlighted the fact that the Classical Roman jurists were notoriously uninterested in defining the ius publicum. However, Johnston goes on to note that the jurists did at least use the expression: Roman jurists used the expression ius publicum in various senses: sometimes to denote the whole legal order of Rome, sometimes to refer to rules of law which were inderogable, and then sometimes in contexts clearly of private law: so, for example, institutions such as marriage, dowry, and tutors are said to belong to public law, but by this what appears to be meant is that they serve the public good: they are particularly important for the maintenance of civil society. 10
Whatever we are to make of Ulpian's celebrated attempt at parceling out the ius civile into "public" and "private" spheres, his definition clearly demonstrates an intimate connection between sacred and temporal matters within the sphere of public law. Correct relationships between men and gods were part of the utilitas publica, as was the correct handling of res sacrae - even if the classical jurists seem not to have been particularly interested in working this branch of Roman law out for themselves. 11 (Oxford: OUP, 2000), 186-87; and Timothy D. Barnes, Constantine and Eusebius (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1981),39. 8 Rebecca Lyman, "Hellenism and Heresy, 2002 NAPS Presidential Address," JECS 11.2 (2003): 209-222, esp. 214. 9 Digest 1.1.1.2, Ulpian Institutes bk. 1: ... pUblicum ius est quod ad statum rei Romanae spectat, privatum quod ad singulorum utilitatem; sunt enim quaedam publice utilia, quaedam privatim. Publicum ius in sacris, in sacerdotibus, in magistratibus consistit. 10 David Johnston "The General Influence of Roman Institutions of State and Public Law," in The Civilian Tradition and Scots Law: Aberdeen Quincentenary Essays, Schriften zur Europiiischen Rechts- und Verfassungsgeschichte, Bd. 20 (ed. David L. Carey Miller and Richard Zimmermann; Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1997), 87-101, esp. 88. 11 We know that books of Roman sacral law existed, we also know that certain important jurists wrote commentaries on them - but Justinian's Digest excerpted none of this material. For discussion see Aldo Cenderelli, Varroniana, Istituti e Terminoiogia
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In the texts of thirdcentury CE jurists public law was increasingly connected with the maintenance of civil society and the public good or public interest (utilitas publica). 12 Hence the jurist Marcian advises that it is the duty of provincial governors to track down and punish those who commit sacrilege against the gods, as well as thieves, kidnappers and hijackers - all four threaten the peace and security of the province: It is laid down further in the mandata (imperial mandates) on sacrilege that provincial governors are to track down those who commit sacrilege, brigands and kidnappers, and punish each according to the degree' of his offense. And so it is provided in the constitutions, that those who commit sacrilege are to be punished with a fitting penalty extra ordinem. 13
The Emperor Constantine's personal conversion to Christianity, however, upped the stakes: ensuring the public good now necessitated that a correct relationship was maintained between the inhabitants of the Roman Empire and the Christian God. An imperial constitution of 407, nominally addressed to a Prefect of the City of Rome, states the traditional principle succinctly with reference to certain groups of heretics: "In the first place, it is Our will that it [their heresy] shall be considered a public crime, since whatever is committed against divine religio rebounds to the detriment of all. "14 Just as third century imperial officials could be expected to track down and punish those who committed sacrilege against the gods, so too could the officials who worked under Christian emperors be expected to track down and punish Christian "heretics."
Giuridica nelle Opere di M Terenzio Varrone (Milan: A. Giuffre, 1973), 101-09, ch III "Norme e Istituzioni Sacre"; also Ittai Gradel, Emperor Worship and Roman Religion (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2002), esp. 9-10 on the juristic development of lex sacra. 12 Johnston, "The General Influence of Roman Institutions," 89. See also Max Kaser, "Ius publicum und ius privatum," Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung fur Rechtsgeschichte (Romanistische Abteilung) 103 (1986): 1-101. 13 Digest 48.13.4.2, Marcian Institutes Book 14: Mandatis autem cauetur de sacrilegiis, ut praesides sacrilegos latrones plagiarios conquirant et ut, prout quisque deliquerit, in eum animadvertant. et sic constitutionibus cauetur, ut sacrilegi extra ordinem digna poena puniantur. Compare Digest 1.18.13pr, Ulpian On the Office of Proconsul, Book 7 = Basilica 6.1.46: Congruit bono et gravi praesidi curare, ut pacata atque quieta provincia sit quam regit. Quod non difficile optinebit, si sollicite agat, ut malis hominibus provincia careat eosque conquirat: nam et sacrilegos latrones plagiarios fures conquirere debet et prout quisque deliquerit, in eum animadvertere,receptoresque eorum coercere, sine quibus latro diutius latere non potest. 14 Theodosian Code (henceforth CTh) 16.5.40.1: Ac primum quidem volumus esse publicum crimen, quia quod in religion em divinam conmittitur, in omnium fertur iniuriam.
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Religio Post-Constantine: the View from the Imperial Bureaucracy As a result of the Emperor Justinian's sixth century hatchet job on Classical juristic texts, it is easy for legal historians to forget that things human and divine were an important part of Roman law from the archaic all the way through to the postclassical periods. 15 We should not view post-Constantine Roman law as a "secular" legal system in search of (a) religion - nor does it make sense to speak of late Roman law as a "pagan" system which was "Christianized," except from a perspective which is already inherently christianizing. In other words, Christianity entered the late Roman law codes within an already existing framework of understanding; and the late Roman drafters of imperial constitutions, whatever their personal beliefs,16 did not necessarily assume a harmonious or easy fit between the utilitas publica and the fides catholica. Legal officials under Christian emperors were placed in a tricky situation: how far should they go in attempting to balance the welfare of the Christian faith against the welfare of the empire as a whole? Could their concerns extend to defining "Catholic" doctrine, for example? The latter question was, of course, not simply an ideological battleground for "Church"/"State" relations, but was frequently forced by concrete events on the ground. For example, in 383 the Praetorian Prefect Cynegius was petitioned by two priests who had been accused of suspect doctrinal positions. The bewildered Prefect sought clarification from the Emperor Theodosius I, who replied that "the emperor cannot add even a jot to divine law"; a pious response, but presumably not much help to Cynegius. In 404 the Emperor Honorius had occasion to remind his brother and coEmperor Arcadius that "the interpretation of matters divine is the concern of bishops, compliance with religio is ours." There was, however, apparently still some confusion in the year 445 about whether a ruling by the Pope in Rome applied to the Church in Gaul, without imperial
15 Book XVI of the CTh should thus be understood in its original context as a book concerning right relations between Romans and god(s), in the spirit of the traditional lex sacra, rather than the later medieval sense of a book about the Christian religion per se. It is worth noting in this context that the text chosen to head CTh Book XVI at title 1.1 under the rubric de fide catholica - reads in its entirety: Quisquis seu iudex seu apparitor ad custodiam templorum homines christianae religionis adposuerit sciat non saluti suae, non fortunis esse parcendum (Valentinian to Symmachus PD, 365). 16 See CTh 16.5.40, section 7 (given at Rome, February 22 407): against governors deferring the trials of Manichees, "Phrygians" and "Priscillianists" through connivance or favoritism.
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endorsement. 17 Alongside their duties of ensuring "compliance with religio," the emperors' bureaucrats also had a duty to ensure that the church did not detract from the public good. In 439 a quaestor drafting laws for the troubled Western Emperor Valentinian III could flatly assert that there were too many Christian clerics for the public goOd. I8 The idea that there could be "too many Christian clerics for the public good," is a salient reminder that, in the minds of late Roman legislators, the interests of the Catholic religion had to be constantly weighed against the interests of public utilitas. The extant late Roman legislation agrees, in principle, that heresy is detrimental to the peace and security of the Catholic faith; and it also recognizes that the safeguarding of the Catholic faith is essential to the peace and security of the empire. Late Roman legal rhetoric thus exhibits a traditional Republican concern with the dangers of pollution and contagion in the religious sphere - but the offenders who are now to be exiled from the cities (or in extreme cases deported from Roman soil) are no longer disruptive devotees of the cults of Bacchus or Isis, but "heretical" Christians. I9 An Eastern constitution issued in 388 is typical in this respect: We command that the Apollinarians and all other followers of diverse heresies shall be prohibited from all places, from the walls of the cities, from the congregation of honorable men, from 'the communion of the sacred' ... They shall go to places which will seclude them most effectively, as though by a wall, from human association. 2o
Heretics are polluted and contagious; according to the drafter of this imperial constitution they are to be excluded from both Roman civil society and the communio sacrorum (once again a term taken from the traditional vocabulary of Roman religious law2I ). A 379 constitution, 17 Theodosius I and Cynegius, Collectio Avellana 2a; Honorius and Arcadius, Collectio Avellana 38.4; Imperial endorsement of papal rulings, Valentinian Novels 17.1.2. 18 Nov. Val. 3pr (439, to Maximus Praetorian Prefect) noted by Tony Honore, Law in the Crisis of Empire 379-455AD: The Theodosian Dynasty and its Quaestors (Oxford: OUP, 1998),262. See also CTh 16.2.3 (320), CTh 8.5.46 (385) and CTh 14.4.8, 1 (408). 19 For discussion of the periodic exclusions of "religious" groups under the Republic and early Empire see John Scheid, "Le delit religieux dans la Rome tardo-republicaine," in John Scheid ed., Le delit religieux dans la cite antique, Collection de l'ecole fram:;aise de Rome, 48 (1981): 117-171. 20 CTh 16.5.14 (given March 10, 388): Apollinarianos ceterosque divers arum haeresum sectatores ab omnibus locis iubemus inhiberi, a moenibus urbium, a congressu honestorum, a communione sanctorum. Adeant loca, quae eos potissimum quasi vallo quodam ab humana communi one secludant. 21 For other examples of late Roman legislators using religious vocabulary (and concepts) inherited from an earlier age see Giuliano Crifo, "Considerazioni suI linguaggio religioso nelle fonti giuridiche tardo-occidentali," Cassiodorus 5 (1999): 123-
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issued at Milan to the Praetorian Prefect Hesperius, restates the principle "All heresies are forbidden by both divine and imperial laws and shall forever cease." However, it continues: "If any profane man by his punishable teachings should weaken the concept of God, he shall have the right to know such noxious doctrines only for himself but shall not reveal them to others." Likewise he who performs second baptisms" .. .shall know such doctrines for himself alone, and he shall not ruin others by his nefarious teaching."22 In time-honored fashion, the late Roman imperial authorities were primarily interested in the social reproduction of deviant belief and its effects - the Christian heretic was permitted to know such doctrines for him/her self, but not to "infect" civil society with them. 23 From the late fourth century onwards various groups of heretics were also excluded from specific branches of imperial service. 24 A constitution from 410 states that Montanists, Priscillianists and other types of "nefarious superstition" are to be excluded from imperial service, however the text goes on to state that any individual who has the birth status of a decurion, or who is obliged as a member of a municipal senate is not to be released from his obligations. And here is where the balancing act between excluding heretics from Roman society, whilst still maintaining the interests of public utilitas, comes into sharp focus: 142. Elisabeth Magnou-Nortier, Le Code Theodosien, Livre XVI et sa Reception au Moyen Age (Paris: 2002),218, interprets the phrase differently, however: "Les empereurs expriment ici leur volante de voir les Mretiques 'ecartes de la communion des saints,' autrement dit excommunies par les eveques orthodoxes." 22 CTh 16.5.5 = CJ 1.5.2 (given at Milan, August 20, 379): Omnes vetitae legibus et divinis et imperialibus haereses perpetuo conquiescant. Quisquis opinionem plectibili ausu dei profanus inminuit, sibi tantummodo nocitura sentiat, aliis obfutura non pandat. Quisquis redempta venerabili lavacro corpora reparata morte tabificat, id auferendo quod geminat, sibi salus talia noverit, alios nefaria institutione non perdat. See also CTh 16.6.2, section 1 (given at Constantinople, October 17, 377): Quod si errorem suum diligunt, suis malis domesticoque secreta, soli tamen, foveant virus impiae disciplinae. 23 Compare CTh 16.5.44 (given at Ravenna, November 24, 408 and addressed to the proconsul of Africa): The "new and unaccustomed audacity" of Donatists, heretics and Jews is a " ... pestilence and a contagion, if it should spring forth and spread abroad more widely." On the medical terminology see Ferdinanda Zuccotti, "Furor Haereticorum": Studi sui Trattamento Giuridico della Follia e sulla Persecuzione delle Eterodossia Religiosa nella Legislazione del Tardo Impero Romano (Milan: Giuffre, 1992), esp. 233259. 24 See CTh 16.5.25 (given March 13, 395 at Constantinople, addressed to Rufinus, Praetorian Prefect), Eunomians have no right to enter the imperial service; CTh 16.5.29 (given at Constantinople November 24, 395 and addressed to Marcellus, Master of Offices) orders the rooting out of "heretics" (Eunomians?) within the imperial service; and CTh 16.5.42 (given November 14, 408 addressed to Olympius, Master of Offices and Valens, Count of the Troops), orders that no person hostile to the Catholic sect is to perform Palatine service.
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We command that they [the heretics] shall continue to be bound to such services, in order that they may not elicit for themselves the support of a desired exemption from them, under the color of a condemned religion. For it is our pleasure that they shall not be released from the compulsory services of imperial service on the gubernatorial office staffs or of the municipal councils in accordance with the law which was promulgated in the Western part of the Empire and which so condemned the aforementioned cults that it forbade their adherents to enter into any contracts and almost removed them from association with the Roman world. 25
If we read between the lines here we can uncover the chain of events which lies behind the issuing of this text: certain heretics in the Eastern half of the empire have claimed exemption from municipal obligations and imperial service on the grounds of being heretics. They have cited an earlier Western law, which makes no mention of exemptions or obligations to official duties, but does state that heretics "shall have no customs and no laws in common with the rest of mankind."26 Obviously, on the basis of this Western law, one cannot be both a heretic and, (for example) a functioning member of a municipal council. Deliberately pleading a "heretical" identity thus takes its place as one among many of the brilliant ruses developed by late Romans to get out of their compulsory munera. Given the legislative rhetoric about heretics being mad, bad and dangerous to know we cannot blame such "heretics" for effectively trying it on. The Praetorian Prefect, Anthemius, was obviously unsure about the correct course of action in response to a plea of "heretical exemption," so he relayed his concerns to the Eastern court. The imperial quaestor duly replied that heretics must fulfill their civic obligations and bureaucratic functions. In other words, the needs of the cities and the imperial administration outweighed the dangers posed by the individual heretics. The same scenario was replayed during the reign of Justinian in the early sixth century. The preamble to Justinian's Novel 45 upbraids the then Praetorian Prefect, John of Cappadocia, for accepting certain heretics' pleas that they are exempt from curial obligations "because of the detest which they are held in by imperial constitutions." The drafter of Novel 45 points out, rather curtly, that if this were the case there would be an uncontrollable flood of converts to heretical doctrines. 25 CTh 16.5.48 (Given February 21 at Constantinople, addressed to Anthemius Praetorian Prefect): ... si quos vero ex his curialis origo vel ordinum nexus aut cohortalinae militiae inligat obsequiis et functionibus, his adstringi praecipimus, ne sub colore damnatae religionis eliciant vacationis cupitae sibi suffragia. Nec enim placet ex lege, quae in occidentalibus partibus promulgata praedictas caerimonias ita insecuta est, ut ab omni contractu eos et propemodum Romana conversatione submoverit, cohortalis militiae vel curiarum eos necessitatibus liberari. 26 Thi~ text was most probably the constitution later excerpted and included at CTh 16.5.40 (given at Rome, February 22, 407).
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Individual heretics were to be tolerated in the practical day-to-day interests of the municipalities and the fabric of the empire, but convocations of heretics were not. 27 Roman authorities had always maintained an uneasy relationship with voluntary associations, and traditionally kept a tight rein on any so-called "rights" to voluntary assembly. In the later Empire, curtailing the rights of certain heretical groups to assemble openly in public extended to forbidding the building or ownership of churches, as well as curtailing the ability of groups of "heretics" to meet each other (in private) in municipal dwellings or rural estates. 28 However, the legislators' overall concern was to stamp out any kind of assembly - "heretical," "orthodox" or even "schismatic"29 - which threatened the public peace. Hence, having carefully restricted the right of voluntary (religious) assembly, a 386 constitution goes on to specify that: If those persons who suppose that the right of assembly has been granted to them alone should attempt to provoke any agitation against the regulation of our Tranquillity, as authors of sedition and as disturbers of the peace of the church, they shall pay the penalty of high treason with their lives and blood. 30
In other words, those who had been granted the right of assembly could lose it (and their lives), if they failed to keep the civil peace.
27 On the exclusion of named groups of heretics from cities and villages see: CTh 16.5.3 (372, Manichees); CTh 16.5.6 (381, Photinians, Arians, Eunomians); CTh 16.5.7, section 3 and CTh 16.5.9 (381 and 382, Manichees and "fake" Manichee sects); CTh 16.5.12 and CTh 16.5.13 (383 and 384, Eunomians, Arians, Macedonians, and Apollinarians expelled from Constantinople in particular); CTh 16.5.18 (389, Manichees expelled from Rome in particular); CTh 16.5.34 (398, Eunomians and Montanists); CTh 16.5.62 and 64 (425, Manichees, heretics, schismatics, astrologers and "every sect inimical to Catholic religio' expelled so that the ... cities might not be contaminated by the contagious presence of criminals"). 28 See for example CTh 16.5.2 (326, Novatians are condemned, but they can possess church buildings and property); CTh 16.5.3 (372, houses and dwellings where Manichees meet to be appropriated to imperial fisc); CTh 16.5.8 (381, Eunomians, Arians and followers of Aetius have no right to build churches, any existing or future properties appropriated for imperial fisc); CTh 16.5.10 (383, Tascodrogitae should not be evicted from their dwellings, but crowds of them cannot convene at any church); CTh 16.5.11 and 12 (383, naming Eunomians, Arians, Macedonians and Apollinarians); also CTh 16.5.20 (391) and CTh 16.5.65 (428). 29 See CTh 16.4.6 (given at Constantinople, November 18, 404): Rectores provinciarum moneantur, ut conventus eorum arceantur illiciti, qui orthodoxarum religione subfulti spretis sacrosanctis ecclesiis alio convenire conantur. 30 CTh 16.1.4 (given at Milan, January 23, 386), this particular section is also excerpted at CTh 16.4.1: His, qui sibi tantummodo existimant colligendi copiam contributam, si turbulentum quippiam contra nostrae tranquillitatis praeceptum faciendum esse temptaverint, ut seditionis auctores pacisque turbatae ecclesiae, maiestatis capite ac sanguine sint supplicia luituri.
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The tendency for emperors to grant and revoke rights of assembly to individual bishops (often, of course acting in accordance with the decisions of Church councils, as in CTh 16.5.35) created a complex situation on the ground, which could not be controlled through imperial legislation alone. "Heretics" did not embroider the scarlet letter 'H' on their togas or tunics. A passage - styled as a first-hand account - from Epiphanius' Panarion gives us some sense of how the identification of so-called "heretical groups" might have operated on the ground. Whilst fleshing out his rhetorical categorization of the "gnostic sect" Epiphanius explains that he happened on this group himself and was "actually taught these things in person, out of the mouths of practicing gnostics." After a (rhetorically prescribed) period of madness, seduction and flirtation with the "gnostics," Epiphanius states: I lost no time in reporting them to the bishop there, and finding out which ones were hidden in the church, they were expelled from the city, about eighty persons, and the city was cleared of their tare-like thorny growth. 31
According to Epiphanius, at least some members of the so-called "gnostic sect" were flushed out from the bishop's own congregation - which begs the question of how distinct or readily identifiable this "gnostic group" really was, before the eighty or so expulsions took place. 32
Citizens and Heretics in Court: the Penalty of Infamia And the definition of a crime and misdemeanor is what? The proof of it in a court of law. 33
All criminal convictions under Roman law carried the sentence of infamia and late Roman convictions for the public crime of heresy were no exception. In essence, a sentence of infamia prevented an individual from accessing the legal rights of Roman citizenship; in reality the people and the offences to which it applied varied widely from case to case. When a Epiphanius, Panarion, Section II 26.17. 1-8. On Epiphanius and the gnostics see Gerard Vallee, A Study in Anti-Gnostic Polemics: Irenaeus, Hipp0 lytus, and Epiphanius (Waterloo, Ont.: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1981), 63-91. Heresiological handbooks could be used to instruct catechumens and baptized Christians in how to spot a "heretic" (essential if you are entering an unfamiliar city, for example, and need to ask for directions to the "church" as Cyril of Alexandria and Augustine both point out, how can you know which "church" you are being directed to?). For further discussion of the heresiological literature see Judith MyClure, "Handbooks against Heresy in the West, from the Late Fourth to the Late Sixth Centuries," JTS 30 (1979): 186-97. 33 Libanius, Oration XLV.2, AD 386 (Selected Orations of Lib ani us II, p. 161, LCL). 31
32
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late Roman magistrate issued a penalty of infamia what that penalty amounted to was a loss or diminution of civil status - with both strictly legal and more "social" effects (such as loss of face, shame and deprivation of honor). The threat of infamia to an individual with rights and property to lose can be seen in Ulpian's reassurance that infamia cannot be inflicted through off-the-cuff comments made during a court hearing, but has to be specifically delivered as part of a magistrate's sentence at the end of a case. 34 It would have been Ulpian's private clients - "the haves" of Roman society - who had the most to fear. By innovating in this area and identifying new activities such as heresy or apostasy as "infamous" the imperial legislators of the fourth and early fifth centuries singled out new groups of individuals as potential social outcasts. 35 Thus on a concrete level, a sentence of infamia fitted neatly with the late Roman legislative rhetoric of excluding heretics from human association. The named heretical groups targeted by sentences of infamia included Manichees, Eunomians, Macedonians, Arians, Apollinarians, Phrygians, Priscillianists, Donatists (alongside "those who profane the holy mysteries by repeating baptism") and Eutychians. 36 Adherents of these sects were variously deprived "under the perpetual brand of just infamy" of the right to make a will or to bequeath any gifts. The Manichees were, of course, the most persecuted and extirpated of all the heresies within imperial legislation; hence the drafter of a 445 constitution shows a rare, if wry, sense of humor in specifying that Manichees are to lose the right to sue for insults (Nov. Val. 18.4). A sentence of infamia could also specify the loss of the right to take an inheritance - the property thus implicated would be appropriated to the resources of the imperial treasury. As well as being a money-spinner for the imperial fisc, a sentence of infamia created manifold complications in terms of socio-legal relations. Manichees, Eunomians and Donatists were deprived of the right to leave legacies or bequests to each other, or to their religious groups or associations: Augustine comments on the confiscation of Donatists' property and also notes: They [the Donatists] bring forward wills. "See" they say "the act by which Gaius Seius made a grant of an estate to the church headed by Faustinus." Of which church was
34 Digest 3.2.13.6, Ulpian ad. ed. Book 6: Quantum ad infamiam pertinet, multum interest, in causa quae agebatur causa cognita aliquid pronuntiatum sit an quaedam extrinsecus sunt elocuta: nam ex his infamia non irrogatur. 35 Compare CTh 4.6.3 (336) against CTh 16.5.36 (399). Infamia as a punishment for apostasy to paganism or the "rites of the Jews" is implied in CTh 16.7.3 (383). 36 See CTh 16.5.7 (381); CTh 16.5.17-18 (389); CTh 16.7.4 (391); CTh 16.5.54 (414); CJ 1.5.8 (455).
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Faustinus bishop? What is this church? "The church over which Faustinus presided," said he. But Faustinus presides not over a church, but over a sect. 37
Augustine explains: Indeed clear laws are to be read, by which the emperors have directed that no persons can dare to possess anything in the name of the church who, being outside the communion of the Catholic Church, usurp to themselves the name of Christians, and are not willing in peace to Worship the author of peace. 38
By the end of the fourth century, moreover, it was possible for any given individual to oppose their father's will (say) or undo any gifts made during his lifetime, simply by arguing that the beneficiary was a Eunomian, a Manichee, a Donatist etc. The case would thus come to court as one concerning inheritance and property, but it would tum on the proof of an accusation of heresy. Inevitably, those who considered themselves to be vulnerable to an accusation of heresy also attempted to exploit loopholes in the imperial legislation, through which they could protect their estates and inheritance strategies. Thus in 415 we find the emperors attempting to close the gaps: No Eunomian shall be permitted to make a testament in favour of a Eunomian; no person of the aforesaid perversity shall receive anything under the testament of an Eunomian; no person shall give to a Eunomian nor any Eunomian receive from a Eunomian the gift of landed estate or house, even if, through an interposed person of another sect or under title offictitious sale, some fraudulent scheme to circumvent the law should be devised. 39
Reading between the lines of this constitution we can surmise that Eunomians were in fact attempting to circumvent the law by "fraudulent schemes": making gifts and legacies over to a third person of a different sect or effecting a fictitious sale. The ingenuity of these Eunomians should remind us that, for certain heretics, stricken with civil disabilities, it was worth spending time and money on dodging the law. Conversely, for some private individuals it also became worth spending time and money to get
37 Augustine, Tractates on the Gospel of John V1.25: Proferunt testamenta hominum. Ecce ubi Gaius Seius donavit fundum ecclesiae, cui praeerat Faustinus. Cuius episcopus erat Faustinus ecclesiae? quid est ecclesia? Ecclesiae, dixit, cui praeerat Faustinus; sed non ecclesiae praeerat Faustinus, sed parti praeerat. 38 Ibid.: Leguntur enim leges manifestae, ubi praeceperunt imperatores eos qui praeter ecclesiae catholicae communionem usurpant sibi nomen Christianum nec volunt in pace colere pacis auctorem nihil nomine ecclesiae audeant possidere. 39 CTh 16.5.58 section 4 (given at Constantinople, November 6, 415): Nulli penitus testari liceat eunomiano in eunomianum, nulli eiusdem perversitatis ex testamento quicquam percipere eunomiani; nemo donet nec eunomianus ab eunomiano liberalitatem praedii vel domus accipiat, etiamsi per interpositam alterius sectae personam vel titulum venditionis imaginariae fraus quaedam legi fuerit excogitata.
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an official denunciation for heresy against an existing or potential opponent in a legal suit. The different rules and regulations concerning who exactly had the civil capacities to do what, became extremely complex - and late Roman legislators were forced to issue more legislation in an attempt to clear up the legal mess. One example from the procedural law of the mid-sixth century will suffice to illustrate the point. Section 1 of Justinian's Novel 45 restates the principle (established in the fifth century) that "heretics" cannot testify when "orthodox" persons are engaged in litigation with each other. The text further specifies that heretics can testify in a case where both parties are heretics, or they can testify where one party is orthodox and the other party is heretical and their testimony is in favor of the orthodox party. However, a problem has arisen with reference to cases where an orthodox individual is seeking a release from their curial obligations; apparently it has been argued in court that heretics cannot testify to an orthodox litigant's civil status, despite the fact that this testimony would be in favor of an orthodox party, as the heretical witness would in fact be testifying against the interests of the. "orthodox" government! The important and general point here is that legislation concerning the civil disabilities of heretics was being implemented in practice, by interested private parties; and that practice had a way of bringing up new issues which in turn demanded new imperial responses. The loss of Roman citizenship rights, either wholesale or in part, thus became a standard legal punishment for deviant religious practice. It is at this point that the concept of Roman citizenship, or rather the threat of losing specific legal capacities, proved especially useful to Christian legislators. Depriving an individual of their rights of citizenship, such as the capacity to make a testament, bequeath a legacy, act as a witness or indeed partake in Roman private law at all, allowed the imperial legislators to carefully nuance the punishment, or more euphemistically the "correction," of specific named heretical groups. It is also worth noting again that some heretics would have had more to lose than others; those with extensive property and a high social status suffered more under a sentence of infamia than those lower down the social ladder. Thus the "deterrence" factor of imperial legislation could be carefully focused on the upper levels of Roman society. Rather than attempting to revolutionize the social order, by enforcing Catholic orthodoxy as a pre-requisite for Roman citizenship, fourth and fifth century legislators employed a tried and tested means of social exclusion. With the application of the penalty of infamia, the rights of citizenship (or rather the lack thereof) were intimately woven in with trials against both Christians and non-Christians on the basis of their religious
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affiliations. In the sixth century the Eastern Emperor Justinian was, of course, more forthcoming about the nitty-gritty details of the relationship between citizenship and religion: one of his first legislative acts was to issue a constitution stating that "heretics cannot be forensic advocates as they are ignorant of the precepts of divine law, which human law makes concrete" (el 1.5.12.8, 527). Divine law was thus equated with orthodox Christian faith, and the purpose of human law was to make that faith concrete. Under Justinian Catholic religious belief became a sine qua non for exercising any legal rights as a Roman citizen. As we have seen, however, the impact of Constantine's religious conversion on Roman citizenship was more subtle and complex than reading backwards from these Justinianic texts would suggest.
Conclusion The criminalization of heresy under the Christian empire was a major innovation, and it carried significant social and economic as well as more narrowly religious implications. We have been exploring some of the legal consequences, as those who were on the receiving end of the new laws sought to protect their interests, and legislators to block their escape routes. Not everything was new: in particular, the connection between Roman citizenship and religious practice was a traditional one, forged well before Christian emperors arrived and began to employ their officials to draft laws which penalized heretics. Late Roman legislators extended the application of the penalty of infamia associated with loss of citizenship to take in new groups of religious offenders. Thus lawyers now had a new arena in which to practice their skills in interpreting the law - or bypassing it. I conclude with the suggestion that, although the "anti-heretical" and "pro-Catholic" rhetoric of the laws is very conspicuous, interest in, or obsession with, the advancement of Catholic orthodoxy cannot be assumed to have been universal among Roman lawyers and legislators. Two quaestors were even capable of applying the term haeresis in a traditional, non-religious sense, to the corporation responsible for shipbuilding. A law of 417 reads as follows: [After other matters] It is our will that the haeresis of shipmasters shall be guarded in all its particulars, so that even if any landholdings whatsoever have been sold up to twenty years before this time in a state auction, and because of a state contract have been separated from this haeresis of shipmasters, and if it should appear that such properties
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were subject to this burden formerly, they shall again be held obligated to the due performance of this service [Etc]. 40
An excerpt from the 423 constitution runs: If no solicitude has recalled any landed estate, in any place whatsoever in African country districts for a period of fifty years, to the performance of the compulsory service of shipmasters, if it should appear that no suit has been brought in this matter at any time within the designated series of years, and if such landed estate has passed the course of the aforesaid years without any legal summons to the haeresis of shipmasters, We do not allow this estate to be disturbed by any solicitude. 41
It is striking, even bizarre, to find haeresis being used as a neutral term approximating to "guild" or (corporate) group in early fifth century Western legislation at a time when heresy as erroneous belief was apparently a major preoccupation of Roman legislators. Around two weeks later, and at the Eastern rather than Western capital (Constantinople as opposed to Ravenna), a quaestor does produce a law against "heresy" in the religious sense, but not without complaining that "listing the names of heretical sects is boring. "42 These texts are a reminder that the attitude of late Roman lawyers to heresy is not to be taken for granted. The more general inference is that in approaching the Roman legislation in question, we must constantly balance any general observations we might be inclined to make on the attitude of late Roman lawyers to heresy against a careful analysis of each individual constitution: we must ask who was responsible for drafting it, what concrete circumstances had prompted its issuing, to whom it was addressed and - most importantly - how it was applied and subverted in practice.
40 CTh 13.6.9 (given at Ravenna, May 14, 417 and addressed to an otherwise unknown Count Sebastius): Post alia: navalem haeresim in omnibus volumus custodiri, ut usque ante viginti annos quaecumque possessiones sub hastaria sorte distractae sunt et propter contractum pUblicum navali fuerant haeresi separatae, si huic oneri ante eas subiacuisse constiterit, rursus ad debitam functionem teneantur obnoxiae. Et cetera. 41 CTh 13.6.lOpr (given at Ravenna, May 18 427 and addressed to the Praetorian Prefect Proculus): Si quod praedium in quolibet africani cespitis loco per quinquaginta annorum curricula ad navalem functionem nulla sollicitudo revocavit nee pulsatum aliquando intra designatam annorum seriem super hac parte constiterit ac praedictae annositatis cursum sine ulla navalis haeresis conventione transcenderit, nullis patimur sollicitudinibus agitari. 42 CTh 16.5.60; noted by Honore, Law in the Crisis of Empire, 109-110.
The Nomen Manichaeorum and Its Uses in Late Antiquity RrCHARDLrM
In 405/6, a certain Secundinus' boldly identified himself in a letter as a Manichaeus. 1 This educated man from Italy was then responding to Augustine's polemical treatise against him, the Contra Secundinum, which in turn was occasioned by a letter he had written earlier. 2 Addressing his correspondent as dominus, Secundinus began by invoking the Trinity, albeit in a self-consciously unorthodox manner: " ... the ineffable God, his First-born, King of all Lights Jesus Christ" and the Holy Spirit, followed by citations from the sayings of Paul the Apostle. 3 In so doing, he aimed to underscore the point that Paul and Mani shared consonant views: "This is what Paul testifies and this is what Manichaeus himself testifies."4 This letter provides us with an interesting starting point for examining the uses of the nomen Manichaeorum in Late Antiquity. At a time when the teachings of Mani had already been proscribed by imperial laws and condemned by ecclesiastical authorities, Secundinus displayed no shyness in declaring his adhesion to the teachings of Mani and, moreover, did so while maintaining a claim to being a Christian, indeed, a Christian of a superior disposition. The "Manichaean name" stood for him as a badge of honor, an honor he bestowed upon himself but refused to concede to Augustine, even to the younger Augustine from the time when the latter was a Manichaean auditor. Indeed Secundinus went so far as to criticize Augustine for never having properly understood - let alone followed - the teachings of Mani and thereby made himself worthy of the nomen Manichaeorum, a position that was diametrically opposite to that of Julian of Eclanum, who contended that Augustine never ceased to be a 1 Secundinus, Ad sanctum Augustinum epistuia, Joseph Zycha, ed., Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum 25.2 (Vienna/Prague/Leipzig 1891), 893-901. On this figure, see Janine Desmulliez et ai., eds., Prosopographie Chretienne du BasEmpire, 1112. Prosopographie de i'Italie Chretienne (Paris/Rome: Ecole Franr;:aise de Rome, 2000), 2008-9, s.v. "Secundinus 2." 2 Augustine, Contra Secundinum Manichaeum, Zycha, ed., CSEL 25.2, 905-47. 3 Secundinus, Ad sanctum Augustinum epistuia, Zycha, ed., CSEL 25.2, 893: "Habeo et ago gratias ineffabili ac sacratissimae maiestati eiusque primogenito omnium luminum regi Iesu Christo, habeo gratias et subplex sancto refero spiritui." The title "King of All Lights" unambiguously refers to the dualistic teachings of Mani. 4 Secundinus, ibid., 894: "hoc Paulus, hoc ipse testatus Manichaeus."
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Manichaean even after he had become a catholic Christian priest and bishop.5 In thus employing the nomen as a term of praise reserved for the "lovers of truth," Secundinus was distinctly in the minority - even close to being unique - among the extant writers of Late Antiquity. For him, to be Manichaean was to think and act as a "rationalist" and a true philosopher. Augustine was for Secundinus not so much a follower of Mani, the purveyor of truth, as that of the ars rhetorica. 6 This invocation of the categorical distinction between sophists and philosophers recalls Jerome's self-accusation of having been a Ciceronian rather than a Christian. As such, the charge appears to stem from the world of the literati and philosophers rather than the rough-and-tumble scene that characterized late antique religious controversies. The cultural snobbery of the Greco-Roman elite and its observed reluctance to admit that Christians constituted a "Third Race" indeed surfaced in Secundinus' suggestion that Augustine, by forsaking the doctrines of Mani, had "gone over to the Jewish tribes with their barbaric customs."7 Should Secundinus' positive construal of the Manichaean name be read as a quaint exception during a time when a variety of public statements, ranging from imperial laws to sermons from the pulpit, portrayed Manichaeans as belonging to an evil and foreign sect? This begs the further question of how the nomen Manichaeorum was more commonly employed in Late Antiquity and to what ends. My paper will examine this question, focusing on the period of the late fourth and fifth centuries when the contestations over the meaning of name remained in flux. See below n. 23. Secundinus, ibid., 895: "uisus enim mihi es - et pro certo sic est - et numquam fuisse Manichaeum nec eius te potuisse arcana incognita secreti cognoscere atque sub Manichaei nominee persequi te Hannibalem atque Mithridatem. (For it seems to me ... that you have never been a Manichaean, and never been able to discover the unknown mysteries of his secret, and that under the name of Manichaeus you are attacking Hannibal or Mithridates)"; English translation in text from lain Gardner and Samuel N.C. Lieu, eds., Manichaean Textsfrom the Roman Empire (Cambridge: CUP, 2004), 138. 7 Secundinus, ibid., 896: "0 utinam a Manichaeo recedens academiam petisses aut Romanorum bella, quia omnia superarunt, interpretatus fuisses! Quam magna ibi, quam egregia conperisses, et non castus homo utique totius pudicitiae et pauperitatis isses ad ludaeorum gentes barbaras moribus. (How much better it would have been if when you left Manichaeus you had joined the Academy or written an exposition of the wars of the Romans who conquered the world. What great and noble achievements you would have found there, and you, a chaste man of absolute modesty and poverty, would not have gone over to the Jewish tribes with their barbaric customs.") Trans. in Manichaean Texts (ed. Gardner and Lieu), 13 9. On the uses of the notion of Christians as the tertium genus, see Judith M. Lieu, Christian Identity in the Jewish and Graeco-Roman World (Oxford: OUP, 2004), 260-65. 5
6
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At first glance, the nomen Manichaeorum belonged generically to the class of sectarian labels that identifies the follower in reference to the founder of the religion or philosophical sect. Insiders often came to embrace terms of abuse by outsiders as sources of positive identity. Such has traditionally been thought to be the case with the nomen christianum. 8 According to the author of Luke-Acts, the citizens of Antioch first coined the Christian name to mock the so-called followers of Christ. 9 This name later turned from an outsiders' term of derision to the self-chosen label of those so derided.lO By the early second century, the religious insiders' identification with the Christian name had become so complete that public persecutions against Christians turned on, and could be made to tum on, whether accused individuals would, of their own volition, assert a form of self-identification with the nomen. Geoffrey de Ste Croix has observed that, "from at least 112 onwards, the normal charge against Christian was simply 'being Christian': they are punished, that is to say 'for the Name,' the nomen Christianum."l1 In Christian acta martyrum, presiding Roman magistrates would typically inquire of those brought before them whether they were Christians or not, and would proceed to punish only those who persisted in replying in the affirmative. Tertullian (Apologeticus tiber) and Minucius Felix (Octavius) were two apologists who challenged those who used the nomen Christianum as the basis for persecuting Christians to justify how they could condemn individuals by associating with a group identity that had itself not been incontrovertibly linked to the commitment of punishable crimes. This last point, that crimes Christians were accused of remain unprove, was indeed confirmed by Pliny the Younger in his letter to Trajan c. CE 111. 8 See, e.g., Elias Bickerman, "The Name of Christians," HTR 42 (1949): 109-24; Harold Mattingly, "The Origin of the Name Christiani," JTS n.s. 9 (1958): 26-37; Orsolino Montevecchi, "Nomen Christianorum," in Paradoxos Politeia: Studi Patristici in onore di Giuseppe Lazzati, Studia Patristica Mediolanensia 10 (ed. Raniero Cantalamessa and Luigi F. Pizzolato; Milan: Pubblicazioni della Universita Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, 1979), 485-500; and Justin Taylor, "Why Were the Disciples First Called 'Christians' at Antioch? (Acts 11,26)," RB 101 (1994): 75-94. 9 Acts 11 :26. 10 See Philippa Townsend's article in this volume, "Who Were the First Christians? Jews, Gentiles and the Christianoi," which argues convincingly that the original usage of the name hoi Christianoi was used to refer to Gentile Christians. 11 Geoffrey E.M. de Ste. Croix, "Why Were the Early Christians Persecuted?" Past and Present 26 (1963): 6-38; esp. 9: "This is quite certain, from what the Christian apologists say in the second and early third centuries, from several accounts of martyrdoms, and from the technical language used by Pliny and Trajan ... " See also Judith M. Lieu,. " 'I am a Christian': Martyrdom and the Beginning of 'Christian Identity,' " in Neither Jew nor Greek: Constructing Early Christianity (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2001), 211-31.
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The growth of the phenomenon of Christian martyrdom turned the Christian name into the privileged possession of those who would follow Christ even unto death in imitation of his passion. 12 Yet we do well to recall that not all "followers of Christ" at the time invested their identities in martyrdom or indeed in the Christian name. Christians who professed docetic beliefs did not think that the "real" Christ was hung on the cross and that he indeed merely appeared to have been crucified; they would have accordingly interpreted the injunction to imitate Christ in a different manner from those who actively sought martyrdom as the path toward the imitatio Christi. 13 These men and women were also less likely to believe that the defense of the Christian name was somehow a core aspect of their religious self-identities. But as many Christians increasingly defined theirs as the church of the martyrs and the Christian name as a badge reserved for those with a commitment to martyrdom, Christians with docetic and gnostic leanings increasingly became marginalized and even categorized as "non-Christians." 14 Labels of religious ethnicity were rarely ones that remained stable over time and their ascribed meanings were often fiercely contested during periods of foment. The meaning of the name of Jew (JudaiosIJudaeus) came to be sharpened on account of the confrontations of certain Jews with the Roman authorities. In the aftermath of the Bar Kochba evolt in 135 CE, the emperors briefly imposed the fiscus judaicus, which converted the traditional contributions that Jews made to the temple cult into a tax paid to the imperial fisc. 15 Jews would then have had the choice to decide whether they wished to pay the tax; if they did not wish to do so they could simply not identify themselves as Jews. By thus increasing the cost of being a self-declared Jew, the authorities arguably caused many Jews to reinvest in their inherited identity with deliberate and meaningful action. In Late Antiquity, Christian and Jewish self-identities came more and more to be associated with their respective religious labels. In contrast, 12 See Daniel Boyarin, Dying for God: Martyrdom and the Making of Christianity and Judaism (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999), esp. 10-21. 13 See, e.g., Jean Doresse, "Le refus de la croix: gnostiques et manicheens," La Table Ronde 102 (1957): 89-97. 14 The seminal work on this topic remains Alain Le Boulluec, La notion d'heresie dans fa litterature grecque, Ir-IIr sieeles, 2 vols (Paris: Etudes Augustiniennes, 1985). There is a copious, burgeoning literature that uses theories of cultural identity to elucidate the process of religious identity-formation. Many of the basic ideas behind this approach are expounded in Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism (rev. ed.; London: Verso, 1991). 15 See Martin Goodman, "Nerva, the Fiscus Judaicus and Jewish Identity," JRS 79 (1989): 40-44. For a fine study of the intricate processes that shaped the formation of a Jewish identity, see Seth Schwartz, Imperialism and Jewish Society, 152 BCE-640 CE (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001).
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"Manichaeans" in the Roman world by and large did not seem to have exhibited a comparable degree of identification with the nomen Manichaeorum. Instead, efforts to turn that name into a meaningful religious label were made mostly by those who would suppress it. Indeed we owe the sense of a distinctive Manichaean identity to the works of catholic/orthodox Christian writers who, in accordance with the tendencies of heresiography and their growing alliance with the Roman state following the reign of Theodosius I, sought to invent the image of an alien Other so as to be able to condemn more efficaciously the specific practices, beliefs and persons. 16 It is a well attested but often overlooked nostrum that people whom we have grown accustomed to calling Manichaeans mainly represented themselves as Christians. Throughout his own writings, Mani invariably styled himself an apostle of Jesus Christ after the fashion of Paul. 17 In the Living Gospel, he introduces himself as "Mannichaeus (sic), apostle of Jesus Christ ... "18 The same reference appears in one of his epistles discovered at Ismant el-Kharab: "Manichaios, apostle of Jesus Christ ... "19 Throughout the Coptic Kephalaia, Mani represents himself as an apostle or phoster who engages in a dialogue with disciples. 20 16 See Samuel N.C. Lieu, "Some Themes in Later Roman Anti-Manichaean Polemics," Bulletin of the Johns Rylands University Library of Manchester 68 (1986): 434-69; rev. version in idem, Manichaeism in Mesopotamia and the Roman East (Leiden: Brill, 1994), 156-202; and Sarah Stroumsa and Gedaliahu A.G. Stroumsa, "Aspects of the Anti-Manichaean Polemics in Late Antiquity and under Early Islam," HTR 81 (1988): 37-58. 17 See Ernst Waldschmidt and Otto Helmut Wolfgang Lentz, Die Stellung Jesu im Manichiiismus, Abhandlungen der preuBischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1926, Phil.-hist. Klasse 4 (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1926); and Eugen Rose, "Die manichaische Christologie," Zeitschrift fur Religions- und Geistesgeschichte 32 (1980): 219-31. The Jesus that Mani invokes is often termed the Iesus Patibilis, a cosmic docetic figure, to distinguish him from the "historical" Jesus. 18 Cologne Mani Codex 65.23-68; ed. cit., 44-5, English translation by Judith M. and Samuel N.C. Lieu, cited in Manichaean Texts (ed. Gardner and Lieu), 156. 19 A critical edition of this text is currently under preparation by lain Gardner and Wolf-Peter Funk. English translation in text from Manichaean Texts (ed. Gardner and Lieu), 167. 20 Carl Schmidt and Hans Jakob Polotsky, "Ein Mani-Fund in Agypten: Originalschriften des Mani und seiner SchUler," Sitzungberichte der preuJ3ischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Phil.-hist. Klasse (Berlin, 1933), 1-90, esp. 20-21. See lain Gardner, The Kephalaia of the Teacher (Leiden: Brill, 1995), 15ff. The Berlin Papyrusbuch also contains this form of self-representation: "Manichaios, der Apostel Jesu Christi"; see Schmidt and Polotsky, "Ein Mani-Fund," 24. This usage of "Manich~ios the Apostle of Jesus Christ ... " appears also in the Acta Archelai, see Hegemonius, Acta Archelai 5.5.22, in Charles Henri Beeson, ed., Die griechischen christlichen Schriftsteller der ersten drei Jahrhunderte 16 (Leipzig, 1906) [= Epiphanius,
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This was such a consistent practice that outsiders took note of it. In the Epistula Fundamenti, preserved in Augustine's Contra Epistulam Fundamenti (396/97) and referred to as one of the most widely read Manichaean texts in Roman North Africa, the same Pauline echoes are evident: "Mani, apostle of Jesus Christ ... "21 Augustine himself regarded this as a common practice in Manichaeans texts. In his Contra Faustum, he said that everyone of Mani's epistles begins this way, with "Mani, Apostle of Jesus Christ. "22 Educated men were well apprised of this practice, so much so that Julian of Ec1anum, in his attack on Augustine's former association with Manichaeans, also took note of this fact in the so-called Letter of Menoch, likely a forgery.23 This epistle begins with these words: Panarion Haer. 6.6, in Karl Holl, Epiphanius III: Panarion haer. 65-80, De Fide, (Berlin, 1933), 25, 14; rev. ed. Jiirgen Dummer, Berlin, 1985]. On this problematical source, see Samuel N.C. Lieu, "Fact and Fiction in the Acta Archelai," in Peter Bryder, ed., Manichaean Studies I, 69-94; and Madeleine Scopello, "Hegemonius, les Acta Archelai et l'histoire de la controverse anti-manicheenne," in Studia Manichaica: IV. Internationaler KongreJ3 zum Manichaismus, Berlin, 14.-18. Juli 1997 (ed. Ronald E. Emmerick, Werner Sundermann and Peter Zieme; Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2000), 52845. 21 Augustine, Contra epistulam Fundamenti 5.10-11, Zycha, ed., CSEL 25.1, 197: "Manichaeus apostolus Iesu Christi." Erich Feldman, Die "Epistula Fundamenti" del' nordafrikanischen Manichaer: Versuch einer Rekonstruktion (Altenberge: CIS Verlag, 1987) discusses this form of self-address as used in North Africa. This Augustinian text is one of the few works in which he uses direct quotations from a work of Mani to structure his polemical treatise, see Madeleine Scopello, "L 'epistula Fundamenti a la lumiere des sources manicheenes du Fayoum," in Augustine and Manichaeism in the Latin West, Proceedings of the Fribourg-Utrecht International Symposium of the lAMS (ed. Johannes Van Oort, Otto Wermelinger and Gregor Wurst; Leiden: Brill, 2001), 20529, esp. 206, 209ff. The formula was well-known and was uttered by Felix in his disputation with Augustine, see Augustine, Contra Felicem 1.1, Zycha, ed., CSEL 25.2, 801. 22 Augustine, Contra Faustum 13.4, Zycha, ed., CSEL 25.1, p. 381: "Omnes tamen eius epistulae ita exordiuntur: Manichaeus apostolus Iesu Christi." See also Aug. De haeresibus 46: "unde se in suis litteris Iesu Christi apostolum dicit." On Augustine'S engagement with this form of address, see Julien Ries, "Jesus sauveur dans la controverse anti-manicheene de saint Augustin," in Augustine and Manichaeism in the Latin West (ed. Van Oort, Wermelinger and Wurst), 185-94. 23 Preserved in Augustine'S Contra Iulianum opus imperfectum, in CSEL 75.1 (Vienna, 1974). English translation by S.N.C. Lieu and Stephen R. Llewelyn, in Manichaean Texts (ed. Gardner and Lieu), 172-74. On the emerging scholarly consensus against the authenticity of this letter, see G.J.D. Aalders, "L'epitre a Menoch, attribuee a Mani," VC 14 (1960): 245--49 and M. Stein, Manichaica Latina, Bd. I, epistula ad Menoch. Abhandlungen der Nordhein-Westfalischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Sonderreihe Papyrologica Coloniensa 2711 (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1998). On the controversy between Augustine and Julian, see Robert A. Markus, "Augustine's Confessions and the Controversy with Julianum of Eclanum: Manicheism Revisited," Augustinianum 41 (1991): 913-25.
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"Manes the apostle of Jesus Christ to Menoch his daughter ... " Generally, the catholic Christian authorities bridled at the thought that Mani might have thought of himself an agent of Christ and the ecclesiastical abjuration formulae required of suspected Manichaeans denounced Mani for "having dared to call him the Paraclete and Apostle of Jesus Christ. "24 If Mani' s preferred self-address blurred the distinction between himself and [other] Christian teachers, his followers likewise did not always mark themselves off as distinct from [other] Christians. Despite Mani's elaborate measures to establish and disseminate his teachings and ecclesial institutions, he had not insisted upon a distinctive name for his church. Mani's contrast of the earlier churches with his own church (ekklsia) comes through in a number of texts, including the Coptic Kephalaia. 25 However, Mani's ekklsia was simply, for him at least, the one true church. When first identified as a distinctive group within the Roman Empire, the so-called Manichaeans were called Akouanitai after Akouas, whom some have equated with Mar Zaku, a noted Manichaean missionary.26 Elsewhere, leaving aside the debates over the ~tymology of the word Mani, it was opponents who likely first devised the term "Manichaios" both as an epithet for the founder of the religion (as one finds in Coptic texts) and his individual follower. 27 Many were indeed fond of stressing the similarity of Mani as well as Manichaios to maneis, "mad," or mania, "madness," in Greek. 28 In the late third century, a Christian bishop from Egypt warned against the false teachers who were the Manichaeans and claimed to have received a Manichaean text, which he refers to as "the document of the madness of the Manichaeans."29 Eusebius of Caesarea calls Mani a "madman" and an Anti -Christ, from whom "the profane name of Manichaean is still commonly on man's lips to this day."30 Polemicists thus took great delight in taunting the followers of Mani by calling their religion the "madness of the Manichaeans (he ton Manichaion mania)." Such a usage became as common as it was to appear (virtually) 24 Waldeschmidt-Lentz, Stellung Iesu, 1 c. 59ff., cited in Schmidt and Polotsky, "Ein Mani-Fund," 26. 25 Schmidt and Polotsky, "Ein Mani-Fund," 42, 43, 45. 26 Epiphanius, Panarion 66.1.1; see discussion in Gedaliahu Stroumsa, "Gnostics and Manichaeans in Byzantine Palestine," Studia Patristica I, Papers of the Ninth International Conference on Patristic Studies, Oxford 1983 (Kalamazoo, 1985),273-78, esp.275. 27 Schmidt and Polotsky, "Ein Mani-Fund," 26 n5. 28 See Lieu, "Some Themes," 160-69. 29 P. Rylands Greek 469.12--42. See Colin H. Robert, Catalogue of Greek and Latin Papyri in the John Rylands Library Manchester, Vol. III: Theological and Literary Texts (Manchester: University Press 1938), 42--43. Cited in Manichaean Texts (ed. Gardner and Lieu), 114-15. 30 Eusebius of Caesarea, Hist. ecc!. 7.31 (J.E.L. Oulton, LCL).
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tautological. A slightly different context obtained in the west where the Latin term Manichaeus. While learned authors such as Augustine who knew Greek and had access to Greek sources were aware of this word play, the same in-built imputation of irrationality did not obtain on a more popular level. 31 Perhaps for this reason it was instead given a negative charge by being associated with particular crimes (of which more later). One group that did much to reify the identity of Manichaeans was the Roman emperors who issued laws that targeted them. In 302, Diocletian famously first persecuted Manichaeans, not Christians, in a rescript sent to Julianus, proconsul of Africa, in which he links Manichaeans with Rome's enemy Persia. 32 That North Africa offers up this evidence occasions little surprise. The same context of official persecution and judicial inquiries that had made the nomen christianum a bone of contention and for a time the cornerstone of official Roman anti-Christian policy greeted the attempts to invoke the Manichaean name. Condemnatory rhetoric issuing from the emperors and orthodox Christian authorities came to include crimina in the bill of indictment against the Manichaeans. 33 In a manner, this repeated the tactic of those earlier critics of Christianity who had, unfairly according to apologists 31 See Augustine, Contra Iulianum 1.5 on his debt to the Cappadocians for the use of certain anti-Manichaean arguments. 32 Collatio Mosaicorum Mosaicorum et Romanorum Legum 15.3-4; in M. Hyamson, ed., Mosaicorum et Romanorum Legum Collectio (Oxford: OUP, 1913), 131-33: "De qui bus sollertia tua serenitati nostrae retulit, Manichaei, audivimus eos nuperime veluti nova et inopinata prodigia in hunc mundum de Persica adversaria nobis gente progress a vel orta esse et multa facinora ibi committere, populos namque quietos perturbare nec non et civitatibus maxima detrimenta inserere: et verendum est, ne forte, ut fieri adsolet, accedenti tempore conentur per execrandas consuetudines et scaevas leges Persarum innocentioris naturae homines, Romanam gentem modestam atque tranquillam et universum orbem nostrum veluti venenis de suis malivolis inficere." English translation from Gardner and Lieu, eds., Manichaean Texts, pp. 117-18: "As regards the Manichaean, concerning whom your carefulness has reported to our serenity, who, in opposition to the older creeds, set up new and unheard-of sects, purposing in their wickedness to cast out the doctrines vouchsafed to us by divine favour in olden times, we have heard that they have but recently advanced or sprung forth, like strange and monstrous portents, from their native homes among the Persians - a nation hostile to us and have settled in this part of the world, where they are perpetrating many evil deed." 33 Generally, see Peter Brown, "The Diffusion of Manichaeism in the Roman Empire," JRS 29 (1969): 92-103. On imperial legislations against "Manichaeans" in particular, see Per Beskow, "The Theodosian Laws against Manichaeism," in Manichaean Studies, Vol. I. Proceedings of the First International Conference on Manichaeism, August 5-7, 1987 (ed. Peter Bryder; Lund, Sweden: Plus Ultra, 1988), Ill. Also Erich-Hans Kaden, "Die Edikte gegen die Manichaer von Diokletian bis Justininan," in Festschrift Hans Lewald bei Vollendung des vierzigstens Amtsjahres als ordentlicher Professor im Oktober 1953 (Basel: Helbing & Lichtenhahn 1953),55-68.
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such as Minucius Felix and Tertullian, previously used the nomen christianum, and an implicit association of the name to crimes, to persecute Christians. In 381 Gratian, Valentinian II and Theodosius, in an edict to Eutropius, praetorian prefect, imposed the penalty of perpetual infamia upon any male or female "Manichaean" by denying him or her the ability to make a binding will, or to pass on or receive property through the Roman laws of inheritance. 34 The emphatic nature of the emperor's displeasure was underscored by the fact that they stipulated that its provisions were to be retroactive, contrary to customary Roman legal usage. This was done knowingly, as the law explains the provision as follows : "We sanction the severity of the present statute not so much as an example of a law that should be established but as one that should be avenged, so that the defense of time also shall not be an advantage to them."35 So extraordinary was this aspect of the anti-Manichaean legislation that a subsequent edict was issued in 383 to limit its retroactive scope. 36 The efficacy of such laws, if they are not strictly to be read as pieces of moral legislation, required first that it be practicable for particular individuals to be definitively labeled as Manichaeans. There were in fact many obstacles in the path of easy "identification." Some of the difficulty arose because the followers of Mani did not generally demonstrate the same commitment to the nomen Manichaeorum that earlier Christians had shown with respect to the nomen christianum. There are few documented 34 CTh 16.5.7; PhalT, ed., p. 451: "If any Manichaean man or woman (Manichaeus Manichaeave), from the date of the law, as previously and originally issued by Our Fathers, has transmitted his own property to any person whatsoever, by the execution of a testament or under any title of liberality whatever or any kind of gift, or if anyone of the aforesaid persons has become enriched by the bestowal, through any form whatever, of an inheritance upon which he has entered, inasmuch as We forthwith deprive the aforesaid persons under the perpetual brand of just infamy of all right to make a will and to live under the Roman law (sub perpetua inustae infamiae nota testandi ac vivendi iure Roma) ... The inheritance of paternal or maternal goods shall be bestowed only upon those children who, although born of Manichaeans, nevertheless are immune from such a crime ... and have dedicated themselves to the pure religion." 35 CTh 16.5.7.1; Pharr, ed., 451. 36 CTh 16.7.3; Pharr, ed., 466: " ... those who at any time prefer to frequent the nefarious retreats and the wicked seclusion of the Manichaeans (Manichaeorum nefanda secreta) shall be pursued constantly and perpetually by that penalty which even Our progenitor Valentini an, of sainted authority, has prescribed and which Our decrees have no less frequently commanded ... But in order that the dead may not be harassed by the perpetual outrage of criminal accusation or that questions of inheritance which have been extinguished through various lapses of many years may not be continually agitated into revived conflicts, We prescribe a time limitation [of five years] for such inquisitions ... " For a discussion of this law, see Caroline Humfress's article in this volume, "Citizens and Heretics: Late Roman Lawyers on Christian Heresy."
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cases from this time in which individuals would actively claim the name when faced with severe sanctions. This is not to say that there were no "Manichaean" equivalents to those Christian martyrs whose literary history we know so very well. It would appear that Diocletian's persecutions against Manichaeans yielded some "martyrs" in Egypt at any rate. 37 But in the cities of the empire, "Manichaeans" appeared but only as shifting and elusive targets. In one instance, the emperors were informed either by their local agents or by catholic Christian leaders that various individuals who had been charged as Manichaeans were in the habit of denying the nomen Manichaeorum. These persons indeed were said to have claimed that they were the followers of other sectae that had not as yet been banned by imperial law. Attempting to end what they saw as an evasive tactic, the emperors revised their ban in the following manner: 38 Now with malignant fraud they should defend themselves under pretence of those fallacious names, by which many, as we have discovered, desire to be called and to be designated as of approved faith and of rather chaste course of life; especially since some of these persons desire themselves to be denominated Encratitans, Apotactitans, Hydroparastatans, or Saccoforians and by a variety of diverse names falsify - as it were the services of their religious profession. For it is not proper that all these persons should be protected by a profession of names, but should be held notorious and execrable by the criminality of their sects.
The textual logic of this imperial law presumes that Manichaeans were in the habit of dissimulating their religious identities to avoid detection and persecution. Such a view was certainly that of the emperors and many of the catholic bishops. But what if we indeed have here a situation in which individuals or groups that really did not regard themselves as Manichaeans were being assigned that name by detractors to serve the latter's agendas? There is certainly ample evidence that the practice of labeling one's religious rivals Manichaeans became a common practice during the later Christological controversies. 39 Wandering ascetics, for example, especially those who followed a vegetarian diet, were routinely called Manichaeans 37 See the Coptic hymns lauding these "Manichaean" martyrs; in A. Allbery, A Manichaean Psalm Book, 142. The author links these martyrs to Mani as well as other well-known Christian martyrs including the apostles and Jesus himself. This material is nicely discussed and set in context in David S. Potter, The Roman Empire at Bay, AD 180-395 (London: Routledge, 2004),320-21. 38 CTh 16.5.7.3: "Nec se sub simulatione fallaci eorum scilicet nominum, quibus plerique, ut cognovimus, probatae fidei et propositi castioris dici ac signari volent, maligna fraude defendant; cum praesertim nonnulli ex his Encratitas, Apotactitas, Hydroparastatas vel Saccoforos nominari se velint et varietate nominum diversorum velut religiosae professionis officia mentiantur. Eos enim omnes convenit non professione defendi nominum, sed notabiles atque execrandos haberi scelere sectarum." 39 See above n. 16.
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by others regardless of whether they themselves participated in a Manichaean self-identity or not. 40 What becomes abundantly clear from the late fourth-century laws is that finding and labeling individual Manichaeans was no straightforward matter. Eventually, the emperors appointed special agents, inquisitores, to look into the matter closely. What did these imperial inquisitores find? There is little in our evidence that what they reported back to the emperors allowed the latter to devise a successful strategy to attach individuals to the Manichaean name. Instead the emperors continued to fire large rhetorical salvoes at the perceived problem. In a 383 law to Postumianus, praetorian prefect, they included "Manichaeans" with several other groups in a list of proscribed heretical sects: 41 All persons whatsoever who are tossed about by the false doctrine of diverse heresies, namely, the Eunomians, the Arians, the Macedonians, the Pneumatomachi, the Manichaeans, the Encratites, the Apotactites, the Saccophori, and the Hydroparastatae, shall not assemble in any groups, shall not collect any multitude, shall not attract any people to themselves, shall not show any walls of private houses after the likenesses of churches, and shall practice nothing publicly or privately which may be detrimental to the Catholic sanctity.
One could argue that, in serially listing all the names that belonged to the growing catalogue of "heresies," the emperors had simply given up on trying to determine the interrelationship of these groups. While two years earlier they had postulated that the ascetic groups called Encratitae, Apotactitae, Saccofori, Hydroparastatae were in fact all "cryptoManichaeans," the new law makes no mention of this link. Instead, all the named groups are cited individually and, moreover, are put together with Eunomians, Arians, Macedonians, and Pneumatomachians, other groups of banned "heretics." What the special imperial inquisitores failed to find out surprisingly also eluded the catholic Christian authorities. While the latter may be seen as the lynchpin in the imperial campaign to suppress the religion of Mani, they were in fact often the most interested parties who had petitioned for 40 For a study of how the enactment of rituals shaped the body and in turn contributed to the construction of "Manichaean" identity in both east and west, see Jason D. BeDuhn, The Manichaean Body in Discipline and Ritual (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000). 41 CTh 16.5.11; English translation in text from Pharr, ed., 452: "Omnino, quoscumque divers arum haeresum error exagitat, id est Eunomiani, Arriani, Macedoniani, Pneumatomachi Manichaei, Encratitae, Apotactitae, Saccofori, Hydroparastatae nullis circulis coeant, null am colligant multitudinem, nullum ad se populum trahant nec ad imaginem ecclesiarum parietes privatos ostendant, nihil vel publice vel privatim, quod catholicae sanctitati officere possit, exerceant."
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the various imperial rescripts in the first case. On the other hand, because of their local network and knowledge, they were also the ones who might be expected to be able to identify Manichaeans. Indeed, none more so than Augustine of Hippo. Yet, his own works at times reveal how challenging this task could be even for those in the know. In De Haeresibus, Augustine discusses how an alleged splinter group from the Manichaeans modified the Christian eucharistic rite by adding human semen to the flour that made up the Host. Some contemporaries regarded these Purifiers, or Catharists, so called because of their alleged concern to liberate Light elements trapped in matter by ingesting human seed, as Manichaeans. Others, however, vehemently denied that these "Purifiers" were Manichaeans at all. Augustine was of the former opinion and tried to persuade his readers that this disavowal of Manichaean identity was just the kind of ruse one would expect from heretics. Indeed, such a notion was popularized by Epiphanius of Salamis who equated heresy to a many-hued snake that seeks to deceive the human eye so as to impart a deadly sting to the unsuspecting. 42 How are modern historians to approach this question? Quite often, scholars' understanding of this and similar situations are heavily reliant upon a master narrative of Manichaeism as both a clearly distinct religious tradition and as one that habitually deceived others regarding its own identity in order to attract gain adherents. 43 Augustine, in one of his letters to a bishop in Mauretania, called attention to the alleged subterfuge of a certain Victorinus, formerly a subdeacon in the church of Malliana. 44 Some time after 395, Victorinus was denounced to Augustine as a "Manichaean" and the latter questioned him before the matter reached the level of a public trial with witnesses. Augustine said: He was so well known that I questioned him before he could be arraigned by witnesses; he could not deny the accusation (negare non posset), for he knew that there were many such to whom he had incautiously given himself away. He would have appeared altogether too bold, not to say out of his mind, if he had tried to deny it. He admitted that he was indeed a Manichaean hearer (auditorem .,. Manichaeorum) but not an elect (non electum).45
Cf. Ambrosiaster, Epistula ad Timotheum. 2.3.6-7. Decret, "bu bon usage du mensonge et du parjure. Manicheens et Priscillianistes face it la persecution dans l'Empire chretien IIVe-Ve siec1es," in Melanges Pierre Leveque I (ed. Marie-Madeleine Mactoux and Evelyne Geny; Paris: Belles lettres, 1990), 111-49. 44 Augustine, Ep. 236; A. Goldbacher. ed., CSEL 57 (Vienna/Leipzig, 1911),523-24. 45 Augustine, Ep. 236.1; CSEL 57, 524; English translation in text from Wilfrid Parsons, ed., St. Augustine. Letters, Vol. 5 (Letters 204-70), Fathers of the Church Series 32 (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1956), 180. 42
43 Fran~ois
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At this point Augustine offers an extensive gloss regarding the activities and beliefs of Manichaean auditors and what they shared (and did not share) with the elect: 46 Those who are called hearers among them eat meat, till the soil, and, if they wish, have wives, but those called elect do none of these things. The hearers kneel before the elect that these may lay a hand on the suppliant, and this is done not only toward their priest or bishops or deacons, but toward any of the elect. Like these, they adore and pray to the sun and moon. Like them, they fast on Sundays; like them, they believe all the blasphemies for which the heresy of the Manichaeans is to be abominated; denying, for example, that Christ was born of a virgin, claiming that his body was not real but apparent, and for this reason insisting that his passion was apparent, too, and that there was no resurrection ...
Note, however, that while Victorinus owned up to being a Manichaean hearer, what someone might understand such a statement to mean has been deftly shaped by Augustine through the insertion of this extensive gloss; Victorinus himself had not stated either that he did or believed in the specific things that are enumerated in Augustine's gloss. After this, Augustine went on to describe the activities that Victorinus was actually alleged to have engaged in and the negotiations that had taken place between the two men: 47 That subdeacon, posing as a Catholic, not only believed those intolerable blasphemies as the Manichaeans do, but he taught them as vigorously as he could. He was discovered by his teachings (docens pate/actus est) when he trusted himself, so to speak, to his pupils. Indeed, he asked me, after he had confessed that he was a Manichaean hearer (Manichaeorum auditorem), to lead him back to the way of truth of the Catholic doctrine, but I confess I was horrified at his duplicity under his clerical guise and I took steps to have him confined and driven from the city.
If this scenario appears unremarkable, it does so because it conforms to our expectations of what Manichaeans tended to do. Here, it seems, we have yet another case of a crypto-Manichaean whose disguise was stripped bare thanks to the vigilance of the catholic Christian authorities. Yet Augustine's own statement of what Victorinus owned up to is suspiciously lacunose. He failed to mention that Victorinus had connected himself with a Manichaean community or with particular electi; the suspected "heretic" was evidently not required to identify individual Manichaeans with whom he had associated, a common enough line of questioning in such proceedings that this particular argumentum e silentio may have some force. Nor was Victorinus condemned in Augustine's narrative for possessing Manichaean books to which the non-elect would not have had ready access to at any rate. 46 47
Augustine, Ep. 236.2; CSEL 57, 524; English in text from Parsons, ed., 180. Augustine, Ep. 236.3; CSEL 57, 525; English in text from Parsons, ed., 181.
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So in what manner was Victorinus a Manichaean? We may surmise that he was denounced as a Manichaean to the authorities for teaching dualistic doctrines of a certain sort. But a propensity for dualistic teachings pervaded the early Christian communities, especially in so-called gnostic and Valentini an circles. Could it be that Victorinus simply regarded himself as a Christian and therefore saw nothing amiss in holding forth on his own views on good and evil while discharging the duties of a lay subdeacon? Augustine was the one who thought the two roles incompatible and did his utmost to make it so for everyone else. A traditional scholarly interpretation would represent Augustine as playing the part of protoinquisitor whose diligent work unmasked Victorinus' subterfuge. And yet if we regard the former's role not so much as a "discoverer" of Manichaeans as the "inventor" of them, we will have instead a case in which the nomen Manichaeorum was invoked principally to serve the agenda of the self-identified orthodox group. Finally, Victorinus' allegedly confessed that he was a Manichaean hearer. Such a term readily invites scholars to place him within the table of organization of the highly structured two-tiered communities with which Manichaeans everywhere were associated. But was he a hearer in that sense? Perhaps this was simply a way for Victorinus to represent himself as someone with an interest in the teachings popularly attributed to Mani? Instead of being seen as a crypto-heretic who in actuality belonged to another church, which was how Augustine represented Victorinus to us, could the man not just as readily be seen as a pious person whose pursuit of truth led him to eclectic (i.e., unorthodox) choices in authoritative texts and ideas? Victorinus' public confession was in any event likely to have been agreed upon in advance. Making such a declaration allowed him to state for the record that he was not a "real" Manichaean, that is, a Manichaean elect; he would also thus be able avoid a public trial and evaded serious consequences such as the demand that he receive re-baptism. In turn, this scripted public performance allowed Augustine to claim to have successfully uncovered a crypto-Manichaean and, through the exercise of episcopal authority and pastoral care, made safe the catholic flock. In the end, Augustine arranged to have Victorinus expelled from the Christian church without the opportunity for rehabilitation; on the other hand, he did not press for more substantial punishments to be imposed upon him. Augustine and other catholic hierarchs could have prosecuted suspected Manichaeans under the authority of the imperial rescripts that associated the nomen Manichaeorum with crimina. The list of these alleged misdeeds instantly recalls the accusations that were made against Christians in the earlier centuries. One crimen associated with the Manichaean name was
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the eating of hosts that had been tainted with human semen. Yet this charge, even if it could be substantiated - and there is little reason to believe that it could be, given its previous history of being directed against Jews and Christians48 - properly condemned only the elect; hearers could at best be accused of having been accomplices by providing them with the offensive "props" for the sacrilegious rite. Catholic Christian priest and bishops such as Augustine in fact took an active role in the circulation of such stories, which, together with imperial rescripts that formally condemned Manichaeans, gave the authorities needed ammunition to exact "confessions" from those whom they suspected of being Manichaeans. Augustine narrates just such a confession (c. 421-8) that Ursus, an imperial functionary holding the office of a tribunus, extracted from a woman named Eusebia. Augustine, in recounting the incident, identifies the woman in question as a female Manichaean elect: 49 Their elect are forced to consume a sort of eucharist sprinkled with human seed in order that the divine substance may be freed even from that, just as it is from other foods of which they partake. However, they deny that they do this, claiming that some others do it, using the name of the Manichaeans; but they were exposed in the church at Carthage, as your know, for you were a deacon there at the time when, under the prosecution of Ursus the tribune, whom was then prefect of the palace, some of them were brought to trial. At this time a girl by the name of Margaret gave evidence of their obscene practices and claimed, though she was not yet twelve years old, that she had been violated in the performance of this criminal rite. Then with difficulty he compelled Eusebia, some kind of Manichaean nun, to admit that she had undergone the same treatment in this regard, though at first, she maintained that she was a virgin and insisted on being examined by a midwife. When she was examined and when her true condition was discovered, she likewise gave information on that whole loathsome business at which flour is sprinkled beneath a couple in sexual intercourse to receive and commingle with their seed. This she had not heard when Margaret gave her testimony, for she had not been present.
According to the text, Eusebia's confession was obtained using the leverage of an earlier "confession" by a twelve-year old girl named Margaret. Historians these days no longer regard "confessions" gathered through inquisitorial techniques as revealing much aside from what the interrogators most wished to hear. 50 The formal proceedings and allowed 48 On similar accusations, see Albert Henrichs, "Pagan Ritual and the Alleged Crimes of the Early Christians," in Kyriakon: Festschrift J. Quasten I (ed. P. Granfield and J. A. Jungmann; Munster: Aschendorff, 1970), 18-35; and Andrew McGowan, "Eating People: Accusations of Cannibalism against Christians in the Second Century," JECS 2 (1994): 413-42. 49 Augustine, De haeresibus 46.9; English translation in text from Manichaean Texts (ed. Gardner and Lieu), 144. 50 On how early modem European inquisitorial records might be used as historical sources contra extreme skeptics, see Carlo Ginzburg, "The Inquisitor as Anthropologist,"
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rules of evidence described above fell far short of the high standards upheld by enlightened imperial governors such as Pliny the Younger, who quite wisely thought little of the truth-value of any confessions obtained under such duress. The ecclesiastical authorities were themselves not above employing similar tactics either. Overt manipulation of the proceedings is clearly evident in Augustine's dealings with a certain Viator who was suspected by some of being a Manichaean. When examined by catholic Christian authorities, Viator confessed that he indeed had knowledge of the practice of eating semen-laden hosts but insisted that it was exclusive to a group that called itself the Catharists. Augustine was not content to allow such a defense to stand and pressed him further. Viator's subsequent admissions raise more questions than they answer, as evidenced by Augustine's reportage of his claims: 51 Nevertheless, though he asserted that there are other groups of the Manichaean sect divided into Mattarii and especially Manichaeans, he could not deny that all of these three forms [that is, Catharists, Mattarii and Manichaeans] were propagated by the same founder and that all of them are, generally speaking, Manichaeans.
What follows in Augustine's account is an elaborate gloss that is as lawyerly in its argumentation as it is suspect: 52 Surely the Manichaean books are unquestionably common to all of them, and in these books are described these dreadful things relating to the transformation of males into females, and of females into males to attract and to loosen through concupiscence the princes of darkness of both sexes so that the divine substance which is imprisoned in them may be set free and escape. This is the source of the obscene practices which some of the Manichaeans refuse to admit pertain to them. For they imagine that they are imitating divine powers to the highest degree and so they attempt to purge a part of their god, which they really believe is held befouled just as much in human seed as it is in all celestial and terrestrial bodies, and in the seeds of all things. And for this reason, it follows that they are just as much obliged to purge it from human seed by eating, as they are in reference to other seed which they consume in their food. This is the reason they are also called Catharists, that is, purifiers; for they are so attentive to purifying this part that they do not refrain even from such horrifying food as this.
At this point we would logically wish to examine how bonafide Manichaeans employed the nomen Manichaeorum when not made to confess to that identity before imperial officials and catholic bishops. in his Clues, Myths and the Historical Method (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989), 156-64. I thank Eduard Iricinschi for this helpful reference. Note, however, that Augustine in the above text presents us with an ex post Jacto third-person narrative and not the verbatim transcript of the proceedings presided over by Ursus. 51 Augustine, De haeresibus 46.9-10. 52 Ibid.; English translation in text from Manichaean Texts (ed. Gardner and Lieu), 145.
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Unfortunately, our sources are reticent on this matter. Indeed, few Manichaean texts refer to the community of the faithful as Manichaeans, preferring, as one might reasonably expect, more metaphorical and scriptural labels such as "the just" or "righteous ones." Evidence that reveals clear "self-identification" with the nomen Manichaeorum is rare. In Mark the Deacon's Life of Porphyry of Gaza, the bishop confronted Julia who "declared that she was Manichaean (hoti Manichaia etugchanen)."53 But Julia's reported self-identification with Mani not only appears within an orthodox religious narrative; in that narrative itself it only arises as a direct response to specific posed question regarding whose teachings she was in fact following. She may therefore be described as a Manichaean in the sense that she followed the teachings of Mani rather than held active membership in a socio-religious institution called the Manichaean "church." Was she essentially a female counterpart to Secundinus then, that is, a Christian who regarded Mani's teachings as a superior, more philosophical brand of the Christian truth? To confuse matters even more, Julia was in fact not identified as a Manichaean electa in the Georgian version of Mark's vita at all but rather as a female philosopher. 54 There exist a number of cases that appear to suggest rather strong personal identifications with the nomen Manichaeorum. Specifically, we know of two instances in which the Manichaean name was invoked within the context of the marking of the body and burial. In the first case, a woman who was buried in Salona (Dalmatia) receiving this following epitaph: "Bassa, virgin [from] Lydia, Manichea."55 What is the date and likely context of this epitaph? The epigraphical style of the inscription suggests a date of late third to early fourth century. There is furthermore a supposition that such a frank and public declaration of one's Manichaean identity was hardly practicable after Diocletian's edict. 56 Yet even if this 53 Mark the Deacon, Life of Porphyry of Gaza 87. Henri Gregoire and Marc-Antoine Kugener, eds., Marc Ie Diacre, Vie de Porphyre, eveque de Gaza (Paris 1930), 68; English translation in text from Manichaean Texts (ed. Gardner and Lieu), 127. 54 See Paul Peters, ed., "La vie georgienne de Saint Porphyre de Gaza," Analaecta Bollandiana 59 (1941): 65-217. 55 "Bassa parthenos Ludia Maniche[aJ"." Text and discussion in Franz Cumont and M.-A. Kugener, Recherches sur Ie Manicheisme II, Extrait de la CXXIIIe Homelie de Severe d'Antioche. III. L'inscription de Salone (Brussels, 1912), 175-77; Franyois Decret, L 'Afrique manicheene (IV" - V" siecles): Etude historique et doctrinale (Paris: Etudes augustiniennes, 1976), II, 96 n.68; and idem, Mani et la tradition manicheene (Paris: Seuil, 1974). 56 Ibid., 176: ". "notre fragment." doit etre place it un moment OU Ie manicheisme jouisssait d'une tolerance assez large pour qU'une profession de foi publique ne constituat pas un danger, peut-etre sous Ie regne de Julien ou sous celui de Constantin ou meme plus anciennement encore, avant Ie premier edit par lequel Dioc1etien ordonna de poursuivre la secte 'venue de Perse.' "
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dating is secure, interpreting such a laconic and atypical inscription poses a considerable challenge. One cannot assume a priori that the term Manichea or Manichaia on the inscription must be translated as "a female Manichaean" because it remains highly unclear whether such a term meant especially given its completely unknown context. The explicit citation of religious affiliation, as opposed to the mention of religious offices held, may be said to be an unusual feature within the corpus of Greco-Roman funerary inscriptions generally. Cumont and Kugener have acknowledged this fact, suggesting that such a usage is in accord with the reference to Lydia, from which Bassa presumably hailed, where we find some of the earliest inscriptions referring to individuals as Christianoi. 57 They go on to suggest that the terms parthenos and Manichea derive from the fact that Bassa was one of the Manichaean electae mentioned in other sources. 58 Still, the evidence does not rule out possibility that the term Manichea on Bassa's epitaph meant much the same as Manichaeus does in Secundinus' writings, that is, as a way to refer to a philosophically inclined Christian who has chosen to follow the superior teachings of Mani. Just as there is little reason to suppose that Secundinus was one of the male elect simply because he called himself a Manichaeus, one cannot assume that Bassa, because she is referred to on the inscription as a parthenos, was a female Manichaean elect. In general, Manichaeans were, according to the teachings established by Mani, not to invest great significance in their own physical bodies. In a monastic text from the Tunhuang Manichaica (the cache of "Manichaean works in Chinese discovered at Dunhuang), corpses of Manichaeans, presumably both elect and hearers, were to be buried without clothes, bodily adornment or any other grave goods. 59 But, at least in one case, we hear of the self-marking of the body as part of "Manichaean" practice in the later fifth century. Victor of Vita, in his history of the Vandal persecution, mentioned that an ascetic named Clementianus had inscribed on his own femur bone the following words: "Manichaeus discipulus Christi Iesu.,,60 Aside from the fact that this reference issues from the See Cumont and Kugener, Recherches sur Ie manicheisme, III, 177. There is also the mysterious Manichaean mythological figure of the parthenos tou photos, see Ernst Artur Voretzsch, "Parthenos tou photos. Archaologisches Material aus Turfan zur Deutung der manichaischen Lichtjungfrau," in Atti dell VII Congresso Internazaionale di Storia della Religioni (Florence, 1956),218-21. 59 Eduard Chavannes and Paul Pelliot, Un traite manicheen retrouve en Chine (Paris, 1913),338,355-56. 60 See Peter Brown, Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), 197-200; and Mark Gustafson, "Inscripta in fronte: Penal Tattooing in Late Antiquity," Classical Antiquity 16 (1997): 79-105, esp. 98. 57 58
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stylus of a hostile critic of things Manichaean, the meaning of the "tattooed" words remains highly ambiguous, perhaps deliberately so. Do the words amount to an unequivocal declaration of the man's own Manichaean religious identity so that they should be translated as follows: "I am a Manichaean, a disciple of Jesus Christ"? Or is it not in fact a restatement of the religious claim that we have encountered so often before, to wit: "Mani[chaeus is a/the] disciple of Jesus Christ"? If the latter, then this tattooed message should be interpreted not as a clear declaration of Manichaean religious self-identity but rather as a forceful declaration of Christian self-identity on the part of those who followed the teachings of Mani. In Arian-ruled Vandal Africa, where the very notion of orthodox Christianity remained an unsettled question during this time, such a claim to Christian identity actually makes a certain sense. 61 But in the broader context of the times, it would have constituted a defiant statement of religious identity given the authorities demanded of suspected "Manichaeans" a public ritual of abjuration in which they must reject the name and teachings of Mani. 62 Unfortunately, we cannot know the impact of sustained persecution on the outlook of individuals thought to have been Manichaeans due to the nature of the sources. It would hardly be surprising, should some "Manichaeans" find in religious oppression the impetus that helped them crystallize their own religious self-identity. But the fact that many persisted in maintaining that they were Christians speaks to the problem of using the nomen Manichaeorum as a straightforward religious label to designate the essential religious identities of such persons. An ancillary question that emerges in the course of these controversies is whether the nomen Manichaeorum ought to be applied to the hearers also, or only to the elect. The Manichaean text from Tebessa clearly shows that the two grades were clearly distinguished even if the relationship between them was intimate. Outsiders did not always perceive the difference clearly and, on the whole, it was to the elect that the term "Manichaean" was mainly applied. Thus a law of 382 describes Manichaeans as solitarii, a Latin translation of hoi monachoi perhaps.63 In Eutychius's description of the life of Timothy of Alexandria (380-85), the 61 On the religious situation of Vandal Africa at the time of Victor of Vita's Historia persecutorum, see Hans-Joachim Diesner, "Religionen, Konfessionen und Haresien im vandalenzeitlichen Nordafrika," Forschungen lind Fortschritte 41 (1967): 88-90. 62 See Samuel N.C. Lieu, "An Early Byzantine Formula for the Renunciation of Manichaeism - the Capita VII contra Manichaeos of
," Jahrbllch fiir Antike lind Christen tum 26 (1983): 152-218; rev. version in idem, Manichaeism in Mesopotamia and the Roman East, 203-305. 63 CTh 16.5.9. Yet other laws (see above) suggest that hearers (who held property and had children) were to be labeled Manichaeans.
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Manichaean name was associated with those who practiced a form of vegetarianism. While this ought only to apply to the elect, the author blurred the distinction by saying that, while initially vegetarians, hearers later took to eating meat when it was feared that their abstemiousness would expose them to persecution by catholic Christians. 64 The self-identity of Manichaean hearers remains an elusive topic for modern scholars. While belief in Mani's teachings played some role to be sure, it was also to a great extent created around the acts of almsgiving and sociability within particular networks of itinerant ascetics and supporters. Augustine was the one Manichaean hearer we know the most about. 65 Yet his evidence, which heavily colors our understanding, may in fact distract more than it enlightens. He, having been repeatedly accused by opponents due to his former association with Manichaeans, was greatly concerned to demarcate the boundaries between catholic Christianity and Manichaeism in his writings. In the disputes with the Italian bishop Julian of Eclanum, a devotee of the teachings of Pelagius, Augustine's relationship with the religion of Mani became a central issue in the early 420s, a time when socalled Manichaeans were being pursued openly in Carthage. In Book One of Contra Iulianum opus imperfectum, Augustine affirmed his wholesale rejection of Manichaean teachings and insisted upon the incompatibility of Manichaean identity and that of a (catholic) Christian: 66 Consider, you who so often accuse us of Manichaeism, if you are alert, whom and what kind of men and what great defenders of the Catholic faith you dare insult with such a detestable charge.
In any event, he claimed that while he was a hearer among the Manichaeans he not only did not know what went on among the elect but 64 Eutychius, Annales, in Michael Breydey ed., Das Annalenwerk des Eutychius von Alexandria, Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium 472, Series Arabica 45 (Louvain: Peeters, 1985), 83. English translation in text by S. Calderini, in Manichaean Texts, (ed. Gardner and Lieu), 122. This text is discussed in Gedaliahu Stroumsa, "The Manichaean Challenge to Egyptian Christianity," in The Roots of Egyptian Christianity (ed. Birger Pearson and J. E. Goehring; Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1986),307-19. 65 J. Kevin Coyle, "What did Augustine Know about Manichaeism when He Wrote his Two Treatises De moribus?" in Augustine and Manichaeism in the Latin West (ed. Van Oort, Wermelinger, and Wurst), 43-56. 66 Augustine, Contra Iulianum 1.3; English translation in text from Matthew A. Schumacher, ed., Saint Augustine. Against Julian, Fathers of the Church 35 (New York, 1957),6-7. On Julian of Eclanum, his own conception as a philosopher and his views on the teachings of Mani, see Peter Brown, Augustine of Hippo: A Biography (Berkeley: U. of California Press, 1967), 370, 386 and 393; Josef Lossl, Julian von Aeclanum: Studien zu seinem Werk, seiner Lehre und ihrer Oberlieferung (Leiden: Brill, 2001), esp. 129-30; and Mathijs Lamberigts, "Was Augustine a Manichaean? The Assessment of Julian of Aeclanum," in Augustine and Manichaeism in the Latin West (ed. Van Oort, Wermelinger, and Wurst), 113-36.
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that he also did not know that he was actually departing from the worship of Christ. Did he even regard himself as a "Manichaean" rather than a Christian? He would naturally consider the two identities as incompatible by his own writings after he became priest and bishop. At the same time he was also quick to point out that the distinction was not so clear to him then. Thus he made the following observation in his Contra Epistulam Fundamenti (396):67 When I was a hearer among you, I frequently asked why it was that the paschal feast of our lord was celebrated with little or no interest, though sometimes there were a few halfhearted worshippers, but no special fast was prescribed for the hearers, - in short, no solemn ceremony, - while great honour is paid to your (feast of the) bema, that is, the day on which Manichaeus was martyred ...
The reply that Augustine reported as having been given was that: [T]he day to observe was the day of the passion of him who really suffered, and that Christ, who was not born, but appeared to human eyes not in real but a semblance of flesh, did not endure but feigned suffering.
If we grant this reportage, it would appear that the local "Manichaean" community was having its cake and eating it too. The interlocutor subscribed to a docetic Christo logy and yet also expressed the wish to commemorate Christ's passio at a time when the passiones of martyrs, those imitators of Christ, were widely celebrated throughout North Africa and elsewhere. There is ample evidence to suggest that many who were called Manichaeans in Late Antiquity regarded themselves quite simply as Christians. This was similarly the case with many who were labeled gnostics. In rejecting the teachings of the Old Testament as the creation of the Demiurge, "Manichaeans" shared a basic outlook with docetic and gnostic Christians. 68 This all contributed to their conceit that they were "superior" Christians who did not subscribe to a carnal or literal understandings of Scriptures that marked the general tendency of the Church catholic in the post-Constantinan era. Such a construction of what the teachings of Mani meant to local individuals in Late Antiquity draws on hints regarding the local understanding of what the teachings meant rather than on a god's eye view of "Manichaeism" as a stand-alone universal religion. In this manner, one could give due consideration to the possibility that not all religious 67 Augustine, Contra epistu/am Fundamenti 8; Zycha, ed., CSEL 25.1, 202; English translation in text from Manichaean Texts (ed. Gardner and Lieu), 237. 68 On the affinity between the so-called Manichaeans and gnostics and their possible conflation in the literary testimonia, see the enlightening study by Gedaliahu G. Stroumsa, "Gnostics and Manichaeans in Byzantine Palestine."
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identities were regarded as exclusive and that being a follower of Mani would have been for many another - indeed a more rigorist - way to follow Christ's teachings. 69
Conclusion Within the Byzantine Empire and medieval west, to accuse someone of being a Manichaean served as a well-known smear tactic. 70 The employment of the label often accompanied the spread of spurious rumors in the manner of urban legends. Thus we learn of a tradition in which two merchants described by the orthodox narrator as Manichaeans confessed to selling the host. 71 The story belongs to the genre of tales of demonic possession and exorcism, since the merchants allegedly found their bodies constrained as if bounded by irons after they sold the host to the Devil in the Fayum (Egypt). The text goes on: Judas sold the lord once; these men, on the other hand, have sold him many times. The Jews crucified the lord once; these men, on the contrary, have crucified the lord many times. In fact these men we have sent to you are Manichaeans, who sell the lord for money.
To the extent that such stories are directly comparable to medieval and early modern blood libels, in which apostate Christians would sell the Host to Jews for ritual desecration, we must exercise due caution in accepting their veracity. Even while I have so far only discussed select cases in the uses the nomen Manichaeorum in Late Antiquity, we can readily see that religious identities were invariably negotiated, debated and prescribed in the process. I shall not go so far as to suggest that there were no "Manichaeans" in Late Antiquity but rather that using the term to label 69 The model of dual, non-exclusive identities existed also in the civic sphere where an individual could be both a citizen of a local city and a citizen of Rome, see Michel Clevenot, "La double citoyennete: situation des chretiens dans l'empire romain," in Melanges Pierre Leveque, 1:107-15. 70 Generally on the deployment of such polemic, see Averil Cameron, "Texts as Weapons: Polemic in the Byzantine Dark Ages," in Literacy and Power in the Ancient World (ed. Alan K. Bowman and Greg Woolf; Cambridge: CUP, 1994), 198-215; and the collected essays in Susanna Elm, Eric Rebillard, and Antonella Romano, eds., Orthodoxie, christianisme, histoire, Collection de l'Ecole Franc;aise de Rome 270 (Rome: Ecole Franc;aise de Rome, 2000). 71 Benjamin of Alexandria, On the Marriage Feast of Can a, in H. de Vies, ed., Homelies copte de fa Vaticane, I (Hauniae, 1922), 80-88; English translation in text from Manichaean Texts (ed. Gardner and Lieu), 123. See Stroumsa, "Manichaean Challenge to Egyptian Christianity," 312.
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individuals and groups in the Roman world is a much more problematic operation than much of the current scholarship on the subject assumes. Cultural theorists have been questioning not just the essential nature but also the stability of identities. Even identities of the subjective self, according to the leading scholars of life writings, are "discursive, provisional, intersectional, and unfixed."72 Part of this process involves externalization or embodiment, whereby a person or members of a group could find reification of their notions of self-identity through interaction with others. Recent works on Jews and Christians have focused on the idea of ethnogenesis to provide a compelling analytical frame to approach to the question of religious identities. Judith Lieu's recent book Christian Identity in the Jewish and Graeco-Roman World offers a fine synopsis of the most pertinent aspects of such an approach. 73 The study of Manichaeism will benefit from the same analytical tools that have been applied with such telling effect there and elsewhere. But the field of Manichaean studies is probably still years away from the turn from objectivist history. Many of its practitioners, admirably skilled and enterprising in their own ways, are still largely focused on the task of legitimation and recovery, issuing publications that have evocative titles such as Emerging from Darkness: Studies in the Recovery of Manichaean Sources. 74 This perhaps parallels the stage through which feminist scholarship passed in the 1970s. But just as the latter has now moved on to more critical reflections on even the premise for "women's history," scholars of Manichaeism might ready themselves to enter the next stage of theoretical sophistication. Critical to such a shift would be a willingness to consider how their own practices in fact contribute to the creation of the very subj ect that is notionally being examined. An even more direct analogy lies in the treatment of Gnosticism and gnostics, which has captured both scholarly and popular imagination for many decades but
72 Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson, Interfaces: Women, Autobiography, Image, Performance (Ann Arbor: U. of Michigan Press, 2002), 10. 73 See Denise K. Buell, Making Christians: Clement of Alexandria and the Rhetoric of Legitimacy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999); eadem, "Race and Universalism in Early Christianity," JECS 10 (2002): 429-68; eadem, "Rethinking the Relevance of Race for Early Christian Self-definition," HTR 94 (2001): 449-76; and also Judith M. Lieu, Christian Identity in the Jewish and Graeco-Roman World (Oxford, 2004). 74 Jason BeDuhn and Paul A. Mirecki, eds., Emerging from Darkness: Studies in the Recovery of Manichaean Sources, Nag Hammadi and Manichaean Studies 43 (Leiden: Brill, 1997).
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which has now been called into question by a growing majority of academic specialists. 75 Most modern studies of Manichaeism and Manichaeans take for granted that both of these "things" existed as meaningfully stable and discernible entities. That ethnogenesis might have played a role in the continual creation and re-creation of the "religion of Mani" seems to be counterintuitive given the prevalent belief that the religion of light was a "designed religion," even the first modern religion. After all, unlike Christianity, with its diverse, uncertain early traditions, the religion of Mani supposedly emerged fully-formed from the mind of its founder, and thereafter spread across the landmass of Eurasia. It should therefore be in possession of a distinctive identity and name for in such a carefully orchestrated religious phenomenon one might expect to find "branding," to use a modern marketing term, a central concern. Mani's well-known insistence on religious syncretism and his embrace of a docetic Christo logy and the idea of a form of religious "knowingness" (gnosis), both of which speak against the stubborn adherence to external forms or labels, might have contributed to this phenomenon. The result was that the religion of Mani seems to have had no singular name and few among its ranks embraced the use of a clear, unmistakable label for self-identification. Instead, most - in the Greco-Roman world at any rate - appeared to have insisted that they were just as much the followers of Christ as of Mani. On their part, modern scholars have devoted themselves to the task of "re-branding" Manichaeism and establishing its place in history as one of the great late antique universal religions. Their lively intellectual and scholarly cooperation takes the form of international enterprises that are every bit as "transnational," if one may use this term, as the Manichaeans were supposed to have been in their heyday. The Corpus Fontium Manichaeorum based in Macquarie University in Australia (directed by Profs. Alo'is Van Tongerloo and Samuel Lieu) includes nine series: Syriaca, Arabica, Coptic a, Dachlaica, Medio-Iranica, Uighurica, Sinica, Latina and Graeca. There can be little question that these texts will provide important scholarly tools for research and yet, by systematically searching out and tagging texts and persons as "Manichaean," Manichaean studies has become surprising analogous to its professed object of study. By insisting on the, identification and recovery of Manichaeans across the centuries and the continents as one of their chief goals, scholars in the field 75 On this revisionist approach as applied to the study of the so-called gnostics and Gnosticism, see Michael A. Williams, Rethinking "Gnosticism": An Argument for Dismantling a Dubious Category (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999); and Karen L. King, What is Gnosticism? (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2003).
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are unwittingly joining forces with the likes of Augustine to create and sustain a master discourse about who and what the Manichaeans were. This is not to say that scholars ignore variations in the local constructions of Manichaeism. Most recognize that Manichaeism had a very different history in the east as it had in the west for instance. In the east, in Central Asia especially, the monastery served as a key feature of Manichaeism and so it was relatively easy, one may think, to identify both Manichaeism and Manichaeans. In contrast, there was less by way of formal institutions in the west to 'go by. William H.C. Frend has suggested: "that Manichaeism failed to survive in the West as an organised religion may be due largely to Augustine's writings controversies in the years 387389."76 Indeed, one may just as easily tum this comment around by suggesting that it was Augustine's writings and others like them that helped to create the seemingly solid edifice we now call the Manichaean church. 77 In Late Antiquity, the nomen Manichaeorum was after all a label used less for making selves than for marking the religious Other.
76 William H.C. Frend, "The Gnostic-Manichaean Tradition in Roman North Africa," JEH 4 (1953): 13-26, esp. 24. 77 On the likely connections between figures such as Augustine of Hippo and the imperial rescripts against Manichaeans, see Scopello, "L 'epistula Fundamenti, "207.
Judea, Rome and the Hellenistic Oikoumene: Emulation and the Reinvention of Communal Identity KEVIN LEE OSTERLOH
Introduction Situating Judean, that is, Palestinian-Jewish, society of the second century BCE within the context of the Hellenistic W orId has come a long way since
the pioneering research of Elias Bickerman (1897-1981), perhaps best expressed in his lifetime by his 1962 From Ezra to the Last of the Maccabees. 1 According to Martha Himmelfarb, Bickerman was interested in the "restructuring of ancient Judaism" during the Hellenistic period (323-31 BCE), i.e. "the adaptation of Greek institutions and practices to Judaism and the consequent changes in Judaism." Himmelfarb continues: Where other scholars attempt to measure how much is Jewish and how much Greek in a particular text, Bickerman concerned himself with the dynamics of the reception of Greek culture by the Jews: he questions how the Jews transformed Hellenism and how, in tum, Judaism was transformed. 2
Due to the efforts of Bickerman and others, assertions such as "Judaism was in some senses a Hellenistic religion," made by Wayne Meeks in 2001,3 are now commonplace. 1 As suggested by Martha Himmelfarb, "Elias Bickerman on Judaism and Hellenism," in The Jewish Past Revisited: Reflections on Modern Jewish Historians (ed. David N. Myers and David B. Ruderman; New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), 199-211. Bickerman's From Ezra to the Last of the Maccabees: Foundations of Post-Biblical Judaism (New York: Schocken, 1962) combines two earlier pieces, The Maccabees: An Account of Their History from the Beginnings to the Fall of the House of the Hasmoneans, published in 1947, and "The Historical Foundations of Postbiblical Judaism," in Louis Finkelstein ed., The Jews: Their History, Culture and Religion, published in 1949 (Himmelfarb, "Elias Bickerman on Judaism," 208, n. 3). His equally insightful The Jews in the Greek Age (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press) was published posthumously in 1988, and unfortunately lacks any accompanying footnotes. 2 Himmelfarb, "Elias Bickerman on Judaism and Hellenism," 200. 3 Wayne Meeks, "Judaism, Hellenism, and the Birth of Christianity," in Paul Beyond the Judaism/Hellenism Divide (ed. T. Engberg-Pedersen; Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001), 17-27; quotation, 25.
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In comparison, our understanding of Rome's impact on Judean society at this time appears somewhat deficient. While nearly all scholars now accept Judea's second century BCE alliance with Rome,4 and some point to Judean political-military emulation of the Romans,5 an in-depth account of Republican Rome's impact on Judean culture and communal identity in this formative period of newly acquired Judean autonomy, i.e. 161-104 BCE,6 remains a desideratum. 7 The primary goal of this paper is to examine just that: the impact of Rome and Romanness on Judean culture and the reinvention of Judean collective identity in the second half of the second century BCE. Before presenting my own analysis, I will first provide a brief, and thus selective, overview of some of the scholarship on Rome's potential effect on eastern Mediterranean, and, more specifically, Judean society of the second century BCE. Morton Smith suggested in his 1978 essay, "Rome and Maccabean Conversions - Notes on I Mace. 8," that the Hasmoneans' expansionist foreign policy, and correlative "compulsory conversion" to Judaism of the Idumeans, and Itureans, was carried out as an "adaptive imitation" of Rome's expansion through Italy, which had become greater Rome via conquest and the extension of Roman citizenship to her Italian allies. 8 It was added manpower, then, that allowed for the successful expansion of 4 Discussion of Roman-Judean relations in the second century BCE tends to center on the debate over the nature and authenticity of the Roman-Judean alliance first established in 161 BCE, the last days of Judah Maccabee. Most scholars presently agree that the text found in 1 Maccabees 8.23-32 is an authentic copy of the treaty. See Erich Gruen, Hf!ritage and Hellenism: The Reinvention of Jewish Tradition (Berkeley: U. of California Press, 1998), 258, n. 53, and his discussion of Roman-Hasmonean relations and RomanJudean alliance and friendship in Erich Gruen, The Hellenistic World and the Coming of . Rome, Appendices II-III (Berkeley: U. of California Press, 1984), esp. 745-51; see also Dov Gera, Judaea and Mediterranean Politics 219 to 161 B.C.E. (Leiden: Brill, 1998), 303-312, and Uriel Rappaport, Sefer Maqabim Aleph: Mavo', Tirgum, u-Ferush [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Yad Yitshaq ben-Tsvi, 2004), 220-31. The primary voice of opposition to this treaty's authenticity remains Jorg-Dieter Gauger, Beitriige zur jiidischen Apologetik: Untersuchungen zur Authentizitiit von Urkunden bei Flavius Josephus und im 1. Makkabiierbuch (Cologne: P. Hanstein, 1977). 5 See my discussion in the remainder of the Introduction, below. 6 From the establishment of Judea's alliance with Rome in 161 and Judah Maccabee's death in 160 to the establishment of the Hasmonean dynasty under his brother Simon, ruled 142-135, and nephew, John Hyrcanus (Simon's son), ruled 135-104. 7 Dov Gera's informative 1998 account, Judaea and Mediterranean Politics 219 to 161 B. C.E., ends where my interests begin and concentrates not on culture and collective identity, but rather the political, diplomatic and military context in the half-century or so leading up to and including the Maccabean Revolt. 8 Morton Smith, "Rome and the Maccabean Conversions - Notes on I Mace. 8," in Donum Gentilicium, New Testament Studies in Honour of David Daube (ed. E. Bammel, C. K. Barret, W. D. Davies; Oxford: OUP, 1978), 1-7.
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the Hasmonean state, just as it had led to the impressive conquests of Rome. The newest members of the polity had good reason to approve of their new status, since, among other benefits, they were able to share in the newfound wealth of conquest: "The new Jews, like the new Romans, found themselves members of a military association for profitable plundering. "9 Following G. F. Moore,lO Smith read the extension of the Judean franchise as "forcible and skin-deep conversions." The intent of Hasmonean "adaptive imitation" of Rome was, in Smith's mind, equally superficial: "these High Priests were using conversion for political, economic, and military ends."11 Emulation, or "adaptive imitation," according to this scenario, does not appear to affect Judean culture, or the ways in which Judeans represent their own traditions, customs, and communal identity. Seth Schwartz repeats Smith's suggestion in his 2001 Imperialism and Jewish Society, briefly considering the success of the Hasmonean expansionist strategy, which appears to mirror the logic of Roman imperialist strategies in Italy and beyond. 12 Shaye Cohen, on the other hand, in his 1999 Beginnings of Jewishness, follows Smith's later 1996 suggestion that Rome was not the political-military role-model for the Hasmoneans' expansionist strategy, but rather the Greek ethnic-religiousmilitary leagues, such as the Aetolian League, per Smith 13 or, for Cohen, the Achaean League, or politeia, which by bringing in new citizen-member poleis from the third-second centuries BCE turned the entire Peloponnesus, in Polybius' words (2.37), into a single Achaean polis without a wall. 14 Smith, "Rome and the Maccabean Conversions," 5-6. G. F. Moore, Judaism in the First Centuries of the Christian Era (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1927),336. 11 Smith, "Rome and the Maccabean Conversions," 6-7. 12 Seth Schwartz, Imperialism and Jewish Society, 200 B.C.E. to 640 C.E. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), 40: "They may have been inspired by the example of their allies and friends the Romans, who had for centuries been successfully expanding their territory by combining exceptionally violent military activity with judicious grants of Roman citizenship to some of the people they conquered." 13 Morton Smith, "The Gentiles in Judaism 125 BCE-AD 66," in The Cult of Yahweh, vol. 1. (ed. Shaye J.D. Cohen; Leiden: E. J. Brill. 1996),263-319, esp. 280, n. 75. 14 Shaye J.D. Cohen, The Beginnings of Jewishness: Boundaries, Varieties, Uncertainties (Berkeley: U. of California Press, 1999), 125-29, 135-39. Despite recognizing, in this case, that the object of emulation, i.e. the Greek Leagues, were much more than mere political alliances - since they constituted an ethnic and religious affiliation, as well as a military association - Smith does not pursue the broader sociocultural implications. The end result, in his mind, was the same as for his earlier 1978 model of "adaptive emulation" of the Romans: "Political and military concerns now became predominant in talk about Ioudaioi, because the military coalition thus put together gave its members a splendid opportunity to rob their neighbors" (Smith, "The Gentiles in Judaism," 281). Cohen, who is indebted to a more direct comparison between Hasmonean Judea and Polybius' description of the Achaean League (Polybius, 2.36ff.), 9
10
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Taking a cue from Bickerman, in the following narrative I will move beyond a discussion of "influence," per se, and the simplistic, dichotomous, Hellenism versus Native Culture (e.g. Judaism) understanding of cultural interaction in which such discussions are grounded. 15 My analysis is invested, rather, in the implications of a shared Seleucid-Judean and pan-eastern Mediterranean discourse, which reflects a common appreciation for Romanness, in whatever way each community may have conceived of it. In sum, the growing political, military and cultural impact of Rome on the East was everywhere apparent in the second century BeE. Our literary and epigraphic sources point to the great extent to which various local elites of the eastern Mediterranean were coming to terms with Romanness as an increasingly significant element of the Hellenistic cultural matrix. In short, Judean elites were not passive recipients of foreign influences, but rather took an active role in the appropriation of Hellenistic and Roman sociopolitical and cultural attributes, as reflected by their interactive role in the shared elite discourse of the Hellenistic Mediterranean. Furthermore, by taking seriously the complex inter-communal relations of the Hellenistic-period Mediterranean, and Rome and Judea's active role within them, we release ourselves of the either-or burden in the analysis of emulation. Coming to terms with Judean emulation of Romanness does not mean that Judeans did not also simultaneously emulate the Greek Leagues and various other communities with whom they actively participated in an intricate web of political-diplomatic, military, socioeconomic, literary and cultural exchange. That is to say, early Morton Smith's (1978) and Seth Schwartz's (2001) suggestion of Rome as the object of Judean emulation need not be cancelled out by later Morton Smith's (1996) and Shaye Cohen's (1999) suggestion that the Greek Leagues were the inspirational qua politeia, closely follows Smith's earlier view: "Political enfranchisement had religious repercussions, to be sure, but a change in politeia was primarily a change in citizenship, public behavior, and politics" (Cohen, Beginnings of Jewishness, 137). 15 Himmelfarb explains that with Bickerman we move beyond discussions of "influence," in particular the influence of Hellenism on Judaism, which originate with the modern founder of the study of the Hellenistic Period, Johann Gustav Droysen (18081884) and are picked up in the twentieth century by, inter alia, Victor Tcherikover and Martin Hengel, both of whose arguments imply that Judaism was a "passive recipient of Greek influence," and also that "inasmuch as Judaism [became] Hellenized, it also [became] less Jewish." ("Elias Bickerman on Judaism and Hellenism," 201-2) In Himmelfarb's view, Bickerman did not pursue "a middle path" between the "Hellenic universalism" of Hengel, the New Testament scholar, and Tcherikover's "Zionist or simply Jewish disapproval of hellenization as assimilation," but rather "an altogether different. one, emphasizing the character of the interaction between Judaism and Hellenism rather than charting the presence and degree of Greek influence on Jews." (Himmelfarb, "Elias Bickerman on Judaism and Hellenism," 202) See also n. 1 above.
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source for the Judean community, nor vice versa. Rather, it is more plausible to assume that Judeans were appropriating and emulating (as well as subverting) a whole array of sociopolitical and cultural forms, stances, and methods simultaneously from a variety of sources. What remains is to move beyond the mere suggestion of Rome's political-military impact in Judea by providing a more detailed analysis of the social and cultural, as well as the political-military, significance of Rome as it was translated and retranslated in the shared elite discourse of the Hellenistic World of the second century BCE.16 It was by actively participating in this Mediterranean-wide discourse that Judean elites engaged in an ongoing project of collective reinvention in order to explain the nature of their own Judean community to themselves and others in a way that both made sense and garnered legitimacy for themselves within the Greek-speaking world. In the rest of this paper, I will offer a preliminary sketch of the reinvention of Judean collective identity that accounts for the significant presence of Rome in the Hellenistic World of the second century BCE. My claim is that Judean elites were not only engaged in a parallel negotiation of communal identity with the Romans on the cultural periphery of the Hellenistic World, but that they actually pursued their reinvention of communal identity, to a degree, in emulation of the elite-constructed image of the Roman body politic. I will pursue this thesis primarily through a comparison of 1 and 2 Maccabees, with the roughly contemporaneous (i.e. slightly earlier) writings and careers of Polybius and Cato. I will use other sources, such as inscriptions, material remains, coins, sculptures, iconic relief, and the testimony of later writers, such as the historian Josephus, the biographer Plutarch, and others, where appropriate. I will first review the nature of Judean elite contacts with, and awareness of, Rome and Romanness in the second century BCE. Second, I will outline the reality of Rome and Judea's integration within broader Hellenistic culture and discuss how Judeans followed Rome's lead in utilizing a re-crafted collective identity, expedited via the cooption and subversion of Greekness, as their entry pass into the Hellenistic World. Third, I will present further evidence for Judean emulation of Rome with respect to two interrelated factors: 1) the ancestral customs and laws, and 16 It is, of course, impossible to divorce the political-military aspect from any discussion of the significance of Romanness for both Romans and non-Romans; see William V. Harris, War and Imperialism in Republican Rome 327-70 R.C. (Oxford: OUP, 1979). However the political-military side of the issue is just the beginning of the discussion. By focusing on this element alone, much of the social-cultural-religious side of Romanness is obscured, in particular with respect to collective identity. Inhabitants of the eastern Mediterranean (see below, Section I), were quite aware of the complex reality of Roman culture and society - notwithstanding the fact that they may not have understood Romanness in the same way a Roman citizen would have.
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2) the harmoniously unified state or body politic. Fourth, and finally, I will take up the question of the significance of collective identity with respect to cultural complexity and cultural integration within the Hellenistic World, or Oikoumene, defined by its self-declared members, such as Polybius, as the civilized, non-barbarian, Greek-literate world. Comparison of Judean and Roman elite society within the context of their common desire to become legitimate members of the Oikoumene can provide an excellent vantage point from which to view the cultural complexity of the time and the nature of culture in general. To situate Judea within the broader context of the Hellenistic World, one must attempt an examination of the total social system that was the Oikoumene. In short, if the simplistic bifurcation: Hellenism versus Judaism has proven untenable, then how can we best describe what is actually going on here?
I. Second-Century BeE Judean and Eastern Mediterranean Contacts with Rome A dialogue on the significance of Rome and Romanness had developed amongst Hellenistic literati by the late third century BCE. In a letter to the citizens of Larissa, dated to 215, Philip V of Macedon urges them to be more like the Romans, who admit manumitted slaves to citizenship and expand the extent of their realm through aggressive colonization (Syll. 3 543).17 Polybius, in turn, relates how roughly half a century later the Seleucid king Antiochus IV (Epiphanes) judged lawsuits while seated in a curule chair like a Roman magistrate (26.1). Emulating the games of the Roman general Aemilius Paullus (victor over Macedonia at the battle of Pydna in 168), Antiochus IV conducted a thirty-day festival, beginning with a procession in which his soldiers marched outfitted in Roman armaments followed by 250 gladiators (30.25-26). As 1 Maccabees 8 illustrates, by the late second century BCE (when 1 Macc was composed), Judean elites had picked up on this conversation, deriving from it their own conspicuously Judean version, which constitutes a striking encomium of the Roman body politic. The Judean encomiast (1 Macc 8.1-16) praises the Romans as a strong and valorous people who rout the Gauls - viewed as the barbarian threat par excellence during the Hellenistic period, conquer Spain, and defeat all kings who come against them. They are just and loyal. They conquered the Greeks, for the Greeks had sought to destroy them, but they are ever faithful to their true friends (read: the Judeans). No Roman is declared king. Instead, 320 senators 17 Sylloge Inscriptionum Graecarum, ed. W. Dittenberger, 4 Vols. (3d. ed., 1915-24).
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govern them, daily deliberating the welfare of the people, while they entrust one man per year to rule over them who acts as lord of the entire land, and all Romans dutifully heed him. Envy and jealousy are consequently absent among the Romans, just as their community is safe from all external threat. 18 Coming at a signal moment in the narrative, in the chapter before the report of Judah Maccabee's death in battle, 19 and occupying the approximate structural mid-way point of an historical text so explicitly balanced in form and content,20 this late-second century BCE Judean encomium of Rome acts as the detailed centerfold portrait revealing volumes about the vital importance of Rome for the text as whole, and the deep impression Rome and Romaness had made upon this history's author and, ostensibly, upon his elite Judean audience as well (see Section III for a detailed analysis). The encomium is immediately followed, at 1 Maccabees 8.17-32, with the report of the Judean-Roman treaty of alliance and friendship, which, at least in this Judean account, regards the Judeans and Romans as equals, just as within the earlier encomium of Rome the virtues exhibited by the noble Roman people were those the panegyrist implies were idealized, and thus shared, by the Judeans as well. The upshot of the alliance and parallel emboldening of Judean communal resolve is clear: domestic tranquility, and communal strength and security. In 8.3132, we read that the Romans wrote to the Seleucid king Demetrius I, warning him not to oppress their friends and allies, the Judeans. As 1 Maccabees 8 clearly demonstrates, Judean appreciation of Rome was based on much more than eastern Mediterranean intellectual speculation; it was forged and reinforced through bonds of friendship and alliance. From Judah Maccabee to John Hyrcanus (early l60's - 104 BCE), at least four, but perhaps five, separate Judean embassies were sent to Rome 21 to create and sustain this relationship, which by the time of Simon 18 According to Walbank, Philip V exaggerated the number of Roman colonies, and did not understand that manumitted slaves were never allowed to hold office; see Frank W. Walbank, The Hellenistic World (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1981), 150. 19 1 Maccabees 9.7-22; see also Smith, "Rome and the Maccabean Conversions," 4. 20 For more on the form and content of 1 Maccabees, see Sections II and III. 21 The four, or five, Judean embassies are detailed in: 1 Maccabees 8.17-32; 12.1-4, 16; 14.16-19, 24; A.J. 13.259-66, and A.J. 14.247-55. The requests of Hyrcanus I's embassy in A.J. 13.259-66 are likely those fulfilled by a senatus consultum (s.c.) reported within a decree of the Pergamenes in A.J. 14.247-55. However, another list of five Judean envoys to Rome is found in this latter Pergamene decree, with only one reoccurrence from the earlier list of A.J. 13.259-66, Apollonius. A.J. 14.247-55 might, then, refer to a second embassy of Hyrcanus I that secured the s.c. requested by the first embassy of A.J. 13.259-66. For more on the Pergamene decree, see Section IV, n. 119.
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(ruled 142-135 BeE) had come to be reified as a brotherhood. 22 These mutual exchanges were not only the result of Judeans coming to the doors of the Curia. Romans were everywhere to be found in the eastern Mediterranean at this time. In 129 BeE the kingdom of Pergamum, ceded to Rome in 133 BeE, became the Roman province of Asia, an official Roman presence on the east coast of the Aegean naturally followed in the wake of this momentous occasion. 23 Even before this time, in Asia Minor, Delos and Rhodes, merchants from Italy had begun to set up communities, where, regardless of their actual citizenship, they eventually came to be identified by themselves and others as Romans. 24 The sight of Roman citizens traveling in the East as legates of the Senate was nothing out of the ordinary; the famous mission of G. Popillius Laenas to Egypt in 168 BeE to personally deliver Rome's ultimatum to the Seleucid king, Antiochus IV, at the head of his invading army, comes instantly to mind. 25 Thus, it is not at all surprising when we read in 2 Maccabees 11.34-38 of an encounter in 164 BeE between a Judean delegation and the Roman envoys Quintus Memmius and Titus Manius, in the Levant, on the road to Antioch. In short, over the latter half of the second century BeE, there were plenty of opportunities and venues throughout the lands of the Mediterranean for Judeans and Romans to meet, converse, and exchange information.
II. Reinventing the Community, the Co-option and Subversion of Greekness Rome was fully engaged culturally as well as politically with the Hellenistic W orId long before the wars with eastern Greek powers that dominated the first half of the second-century BeE. Gruen explains the subtle, long-term process of cultural appropriation through which Romans reused the legends of their Trojan origins "imposed" upon them "as a form 1 Maccabees 14.40. Graham Shipley, The Greek World after Alexander, 323-30 BC (London: Routledge, 2000), 386-93. 24 Gruen, The Hellenistic World and the Coming of Rome, 299-315. Even those Italian merchants who may not have held official Roman citizenship were the direct beneficiaries of Rome's expansion and growing hegemony, and the subsequent extension of elaborate networks of commercial ties. They were also the object of anti-Roman sentiment during the first Mithridatic war (88-85 BeE). 25 According to Polybius 29.27, as Antiochus IV stood before Pelusium with his army, Popillius arrived with the senatus consultum ordering Antiochus to end hostilities against the kingdom of his nephew Ptolemy VI Philometor. Popillius returned no sign of greeting until Antiochus consented to the Senate's demands, and famously drew a circle in the sand around Antiochus, bidding him make up his mind before exiting. 22 23
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of Hellenic cultural imperialism ... to define and convey a Roman cultural identity."26 Romans did not conceive their ancestral association with the enemies of Homer's Achaeans as placing them in the anti-Hellenic camp. On the contrary, remarks Gruen, "The Roman upper classes welcomed incorporation into the cultural legacy of Hellas but preferred to carve out their own niche within it. "27 The actions of Titus Quinctius Flamininus exemplify this description. In a dedication at Delphi in 194 BeE he declared his earlier victory over Philip V (197 BeE at Cynoscephalae) and described himself, qua Roman, as a descendant of the Trojan hero Aeneas. Jewish Palestine, likewise, to quote Hengel, "was no hermetically sealed island in the sea of Hellenistic oriental syncretism. "28 Thus we read, in Josephus' Antiquities (A.J) 14.149-55, of the Judean high priest and ethnarches, Hyrcanus I (ruled 135-104 BeE), being honored by the Athenians in 105 BeE with a gold crown and bronze statue erected in the shrine of the Demos and the Charites due to his "unfailing goodwill toward the [Athenian] people as a whole, and to every individual citizen. "29 His son Aristobulus(ru1ed 104-103 BeE), no doubt, earned the epithet Phi/hellen, as a result of similar overtures (AJ. 13.318). The widespread minting of bronze coinage with bilingual Greek-Hebrew inscriptions by Hyrcanus' son Alexander Yannai (ruled 103-76 BeE), in small denominations meant for local exchange, points to a broad circle of Judeans who agreed with the Hasmoneans on the legitimacy of their body politic as a bona fide member of the Hellenistic Oikoumene. 3o 26 Erich Gruen, Culture and National Identity in Republican Rome (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992), 31. 27 Gruen, Culture and National Identity, 31. 28 Martin Hengel, Judaism and Hellenism: Studies in Their Encounter in Palestine during the Early Hellenistic Period, 2 vols. (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1974),312. 29 A.J. 14.151: OlaTEAEI KOIVij TE Tc{) OTII..IC+l Kal iol<;t TWV lTOAlTWV EKaoTC+l EUVOWV ... See Christian Habicht, Athens from Alexander to Antony (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997),283. According to A.J. 14.150, the honors were voted to Hyrcanus during the archonship of Agathocles (c. 105 BeE), i.e. as elsewhere, Josephus has mistakenly dated a decree relating to Hyrcanus I (135-104 BeE) to the time of Hyrcanus II (63-40 BeE). 30 The minting of coinage, "another practice derived from the cities of Old Greece" (Schwartz, Imperialism and Jewish Society, 35-36, quotation 36) and part of the "peer polity interaction" that marked interstate political and cultural relations in the Hellenistic period (Christopher Howgego, Ancient Hist01Y from Coins, London: Routledge, 1995, 123, 141, n. 2), was begun under Hyrcanus I. See Ya'aqov Meshorer, Ancient Jewish Coinage, volumes I-II (Dix Hills, New York: Amphora Books, 1982), 35-109, plates 424, and his later re-dating of the lfever coins from the time of Hyrcanus II to that of Hyrcanus I, in Ya'aqov Meshorer, "Matbe'ot ha-ij"ashmona'im" [Hebrew], David Amit, Hanan Eshel, eds., Yemei-Beit lfashmona'i, (Jerusalem: Yad Yitsl,1aq ben-Tsvi, 1995) 197-209. See also my Section III, n. 87, below.
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The sentiments of these elite Judeans find expression in the epitome of Jason of Cyrene's five-volume history written in Greek, which comes down to us in the text known as 2 Maccabees. 31 In 2 Maccabees 12.32-35 we encounter the Iliad-esque exploits of the Judean warrior Dositheus, a strong man, one of Bacenor's men, who whilst riding his horse hard into the thick of battle began to carry off Gorgias by main force until a Thracian horsemen sprang upon him, separating him from his arm by a swift blow of the sword. The narrator singles out Dositheus in this episode for selfless bravery in the face of the enemy, a type of bravery once common to the famous Greek heroes of an earlier age, but that had now come to typify the loyal Judean soldiers, fighting to preserve their ancestral customs and norms in the face of Seleucid-Greek oppression. Whereas Lysias, kinsman and guardian of the Seleucid king, is shown, in 2 Maccabees 11.12, attempting to save himself from death in battle through shameful flight,32 and the Seleucid general Nicanor is accused, at 15.2, of a savage and barbarous destructiveness regarding Judean custom,33 the Judean warriors, on the other hand, constitute the epitome of Hellenic courage and fighting spirit, reminiscent of Homer's Achilles or Herodotus' Leonidas. In addition to 31 2 Maccabees consists of the epitome, 2.19-15.39, and two festal letters, 1.1-9 and 1.10-2.18, prefaced to the epitome after it was compiled, and most likely before the complete text, we know as 2 Maccabees, was sent to the Jews of Egypt by Judean elites intent on propagating the Chislev festival marking the Jerusalem temple's rededication in the Jewish Diaspora. I follow Robert Doran, Temple Propaganda: The Purpose and Character of 2 Maccabees (Washington, D.C.: Catholic Biblical Association of America, 1981), esp. 110-13; and Jan Willem van Henten, "2 Maccabees as a History of Liberation," in Jews and Gentiles in the Holy Land in the Days of the Second Temple, the Mishnah and the Talmud (ed. Menahem Mor, et a1.; Jerusalem: Yad Ben-Zvi, 2003), 6386, esp. 83-85, in seeing 2 Maccabees as having been compiled in Judea early in the rule of John Hyrcanus I (135-104 BCE), likely, as Doran assumes, at some point pre-dating 124 BCE, the date given in the first of the two festal letters. I also agree with Doran's view that "source-criticism is of no avail in distinguishing the work of Jason of Cyrene from the epitome" (Temple Propaganda, 84, see also 111, n. 4), and, furthermore, that "the epitome ... must be considered as a whole and analyzed accordingly." (Ibid, 23) In any event, the epitome of 2 Maccabees 2.19-15.39 derives from our anonymous Epitomist whose editorial voice is apparent at several points in the text (e.g. 2.19-32, 6.12-17, 15.38-39), and whose choice it was to include (those sequences of Jason of Cyrene's, and perhaps others', work deemed important to him) and exclude (the majority of Jason's earlier historical work), and to join his selected materials together into a new narrative, with its own particular style and set of messages. 32 KO\ miTos oE 0 Avalos oiaXpws
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Dositheus, we read in 10.35 of twenty young fighters in Judah's ranks who, burning with anger at the blasphemies of the enemy, stormed the walls of the fortress of Gazara, cutting down with savage fury all who crossed their path. 34 Again, at 11.11 we witness Judean infantry hurling themselves like lions (AEOVTT)8ov) against the enemy forces of Lysias, slaying 11,000 foot soldiers and 1600 cavalry, while causing the remainder to flee. Other examples in the text are not hard to find. Furthermore, it was not merely Judah's fighting men whose character was marked by such martial valor. In 2 Maccabees 6.18-31, we come across an elderly leader of the Judean ethnos, Eleazar, one of the foremost scribes - a man marked for his learning as well as his handsome appearance - who intentionally chooses death on the rack over eating the flesh of swine as an explicit act meant to excite public admiration and emulation. With manly courage (av8pElwS), Eleazar decided to show himself worthy of his old age and give up his life as a noble example (tllT68EIY\..la YEvvalov) for the young men on how to die willingly and nobly (lTpoBv\..lwS Kat YEvvalws) for the sake of the revered and holy laws. 35 Strikingly, Eleazar's martyrdom is here construed by the Epitomist as an aggressive act of valor on par with the battlefield heroics of the Judean warriors. Though his persecutors attempted to save his life while fulfilling their orders by means of a stratagem,36 Eleazar would hear none of it, quickly responding to their pseudo-kindness with the stoically laconic reply: "Send me to Hades" (6.23: alTE
TOV !310V TOU I-lEv yTjpws &~IOS
cpavTjoOI-lOl, Tots OE VEOIS UTIOOEIYI-la YEvVatOv KaTaAEAomws Eis TO TIp08ul-lws Kat YEvvalWS UTIEP TWV OEI-lVWV Kat ay(wv VOI-lWV aTIEV8avaTIl;EIV.
36 6.21-22. They were prepared to allow him to eat kosher meat while pretending that he was eating the meat from the altar of pagan sacrifice. The important point for Eleazar is the act of public display (6.24-28). He dared not transgress ancestral custom in public, lest the young Judean men, being led astray by his perceived actions, transgress the laws. 37 Arete denotes "manly excellence/virtue." 6.31: Kat oihos ouv TOUTOV TOV TPOTIOV I-lETTjAAa~Ev ou I-lOVOV TOtS VEOIS, aAAa Kat TOtS TIAEIOTOIS TOU E8vovS TOV EaVTOU 8avaTOV UTIOOEIYI-la YEVVOIOTrlTOS Katl-lVTJl-loOVVOV apETfjs KaTaAmwv.
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between the Judeans and their Seleucid-Greek persecutors. Himmelfarb, in her 1998 article "Judaism and Hellenism in 2 Maccabees," has called attention to the subtle ways in which 2 Maccabees has appropriated categories of Greekness for its Jewish protagonists, describing them as: "beautiful and good" - kalon kai agathon; "noble-minded" - gennaios; "well-born" - eugenes; and, as performing with "manly bravery" andr6d6s. Furthermore, she notes, this process of appropriation does not aim to simply co-opt Greekness; 2 Maccabees rather, "transforms these Greek categories as it integrates them into Judaism."38 She concludes: Despite its claim of opposition between Judaism and Hellenism, 2 Maccabees embodies a far more complex relationship between the two cultures in which defining features of Hellenism undergo a transformation that makes them central aspects of Judaism. 39
The Epitomist thus subverts the superficial binary opposition that he earlier offered between Ioudaismos and Hellenismos (2.21, 4.13): loyal Judeans now demonstrate traditional Greek virtues. They are the defenders of true civilization, while their Seleucid-Greek foes have become barbarians in mind and deed. Strikingly, from the beginning of the text the Seleucid forces are linked with the barbarian hordes whom the Judeans chase from the field of battle (2.19-22). Judeans, on the other hand, are shown naturally associating with Greeks and Greek culture, demonstrating the cultural continuum between Ioudaismos and traditional, virtuous Hellenismos. For example, in 2 Maccabees 4.33-36, we encounter Onias III, the Judean high priest and benefactor (evepYETllS), taking refuge in a pagan shrine. When he was subsequently murdered, we read in 4.36 that the Greeks were outraged by the crime. Again, in 8.19-20, we find Judah Maccabee, in an inspiring prebattle speech, recalling the time when 8000 Judeans came to the aid of 4000 Macedonians hard-pressed in battle against the Galatians. This interesting choice of topic for an inspirational pre-battle speech is more than just another lesson about the Lord's past assistance of the Judeans in the face of overwhelming odds. 40 It reveals in poignant, summary fashion a central theme implicit throughout the text: Judeans are members of a civilized body politic who have joined the ranks of those defending the Oikoumene from the barbarian elements that threaten it from within and without. In this case they join with Macedonian-Greeks to overcome the barbarian scourge par excellence of the Hellenistic Age, the Gauls. It is the Judean force, in fact, that provides the winning margin!
38 Martha Himmelfarb, "Judaism and Hellenism in 2 Maccabees," Poetics Today 19 (1998): 19-40, esp. 33-36; quotation, 19 (in the abstract). 39 Himmelfarb, "Judaism and Hellenism in 2 Maccabees," 38. 40 12,000 Judeans and Macedonians destroyed 120,000 Galatians, i.e. 10: 1 odds.
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In dealing with Greeks and Greekness, Judean elites, it seems, were devising their version of a script already well rehearsed by their Roman friends and allies. Some several decades before the composition of 2 Maccabees, the Achaean-Greek historian Polybius of Megalopolis (c. 200118 BCE) described the appropriation of traditional Greek virtues by the Romans in a similar manner. In 13.3 of his account, we read that contemporary Greeks relied on deceit and secrecy for success in battle, while the Romans alone preserved some remaining elements of ancient Greek martial virtue: they declare war openly before commencing hostilities, only rarely resort to ambush, and always rely upon hand-tohand combat. In fact, to find traditional Greek moderation, magnanimity, and courage (oc.J
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extravagance. The young men at Rome had become infected, says Polybius, by nothing other than "Greek licentiousness (Tf]V TWV 'Ei\i\iJvc.uv ... EuxepElav )," a revealing comment from the mouth of an Achaean-Greek patriot, demonstrating the depth to which he had come to identify with an elite Roman point of view. Appropriately, at this point in the narrative (31.25.4-8), Polybius appends an excerpt from a speech delivered before the Roman demos (people, Latin: plebs) by the Roman statesman Marcus Porcius Cato (234149 BCE) to the effect that they could clearly see the onset of the decline of the Roman politeia (state) when "they find that pretty boys cost more than fields, and jars of pickled fish more than ploughmen."43 It was this same Cato the Elder, who, after scaling the heights of the cursus honorum (consul 195 BCE, censor 184 BCE), was credited by the Roman people for re-establishing proper respect for the mos maiorum (ancestral custom), and was honored by the plebs with a statue in the Temple of Hygieia (Latin: Salus) with the following inscription, "When the Roman politeia was tottering to its fall, he was made censor, and by helpful guidance, wise restraints, and sound teachings, restored it again. "44 Cato's writings and later public acts overlap with Polybius' time in Rome (167-150 BCE). Cato, furthermore, who was fluent in Greek and well read in Greek literature, was apparently also on friendly terms with Polybius. 45 He lobbied the Senate to repatriate the Achaean hostages, citing in that context a piece of Homeric wisdom to Polybius in Greek by way of friendly advice. 46 It is perhaps not surprising then that Cato' s literary works and speeches reveal aspects of collective reinvention similar to what we find in Polybius, evincing similar points of reference and conclusions. 47 What may surprise, however, is that Cato's works were composed in Latin. In other words they were meant solely for Roman 43
(:>Tav TIWAOIJ\lEVOI TIAEIOV EUP\OKWOlV
oi \lEV Ell1TPETIEIS TIa'ioES TWV aypwv, TO:
OE KEpa\lla TOU Tap\xOU TWV SEUYTJAaTwv.
44 As rendered by Plutarch into Greek:
em Tf}V 'Pw\la\wv TIOAlTE\aV EYKEKAI\lEVTJV
Kat pETIOUOaV ETIt TO XElpOV TI\lTJTf}S YEVO\lEVOS XPTJOTa'is aywya'is Kat OWCPPOOlV EeIO\lO'iS Kat OIOaOKaA\atS EiS opeOV aVelS aTIOKaTEOTTJOE
(Life ofCato the Elder 19.3).
45 See Alan E. Astin, Cato the Censor (Oxford: OUP, 1978), 157-81; Gruen, Culture and National Identity, 52-83; and Arthur M. Eckstein, "Physis and Nomos: Polybios, the Romans, and Cato the Elder," in Hellenistic Constructs, Essays in Culture, History, and Historiography (ed. Paul Cartledge, Peter Garnsey, Erich Gruen; Berkeley: U. of California Press, 1997), 175-98. 46 Plutarch, Life ofCato the Elder 9.3. 47 Ancient Sparta, and Spartan heroes and statesmen of old, play an important role in both Polybius's analysis of the constitution of Rome (as compared to Sparta's Lycurgan constitution, 6.10, 48-49), and Cato's portrayal of Roman military valor; while ancient and contemporaneous Hellenistic-period Sparta also factored into Judean foreign relations (see Section III, and n. 78).
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domestic consumption, demonstrating that the process of co-option and subversion of Greekness undertaken by Romans within the Greek idiom was no mere surface level phenomenon useful simply for interaction with curious Greeks, but rather had come to occupy a significant role in the local culture, as Roman elites in their discourse with each other sought to map out the role of their community within the larger Hellenistic W orId. While we note, then, that Cato chose to write his De Agricultura and Origines in Latin not Greek,48 and also apparently sought to stem the intrusion of some types of Greek teaching into Roman society, 49 it is important to remember that his Origines takes its cue, in fact, from Greek historiography. In Origines, 50 the first Latin prose history of Rome, Cato adopts the Greek genre of ktisis (foundation literature) and Greek modes of heroic memorialization, whereby he compares Roman protagonists with the Spartan hero Leonidas. 51 Indeed, Cato models the introduction to Origines in direct emulation of the opening of Xenophon's Symposium (FRH 3.1.2).52 In addition, Plutarch reminds us that Cato admired Pythagorean teachings, emulated Greek heroes of old, and treated Homer as a personal proof-text. 53
48 This represents a deliberate choice on Cato's part with respect to Origines, the first prose history of Rome written in Latin. Cato could very well have followed in the footsteps of his famous Roman predecessor Fabius Pictor (born c. 254 BCE) who chose to write his history on Rome - the first prose history authored by a Roman - in Greek, but decided to innovate by rendering the genre of historiography into Latin instead. 49 We read in Plutarch (Cato the Elder 22.5) of Cato's involvement in the expulsion of the Athenian philosopher-diplomats (Carneades, Diogenes, and company) from Rome in 155 BCE. Pliny the Elder (Natural History 29.14) lists Cato's negative views of Greek literature, medicine, and, in fact, their entire race. 50 Cato's De Agrieultura comes down to us complete, while his Origines only in fragments, ordered and quoted here according to FRH (Die Friihen Romisehen Historiker 1: Von Fabius Pietor bis Cn. Ge llius , Herausgegeben, iibersetzt und kommentiert von Hans Beck und Uwe Walter, Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2001). 51 Christina S. Kraus, "Forging a National Identity: Prose Literature down to the Time of Augustus," in Literature in the Roman World (ed. Oliver Taplin; Oxford: OUP, 2000), 27-51, esp. 44-45. 52 FRH 3.1.2: claro rum hominum atque magnorum non minus otii quam negotii rationem exstare oportere - "The reckoning of leisure ought to stand no less than that of mundane public business for men of fame and greatness." Xenophon Symposium 1.1: aAA' Ellol bOKEI TWV KaAwv Kaya8wv aVbpwv Epya ou 1l0VOV TO: IlETO: OTIOUbf\s TIpaTTOIlEva aSIOIlVTJIlOVEUTa dVal, aAAO: Kal TO: EV TaiS TIalblais - "Of the deeds
undertaken by the 'beautiful and the good' (the noble elites), it seems to me that not only those carried out with zealous exertion (seriousness) are worthy of mention, but also those which are performed in times of leisure (lit. child's play)." See Gruen's discussion, Culture and National Identity, 60-61, and nn. 67-68 (loc. cit.). 53 Plutarch, Cato the Elder 2.3,8.8,9.3.
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On the one hand, then, Cato sought to recreate the Ur-Roman in his own image. De Agricultura calls Romans to return to a simpler, nobler day, to eschew trade and usury and return to work on the ancestral farmstead. "It is from the farming class" - that is, from the type of citizen that Cato claims to embody - "that the bravest men and the best soldiers come."54 On the other hand, the self-image Cato crafted was molded in the likeness of the Greek hero Leonidas as well as the Roman farmer-hero Dentatus. 55 Cato's emulation of Sparta, in fact, drove him not only to imitate Leonidas, Spartan hero of the first battle of Thermopylae (where Persians defeated the valiant Greek defenders in 481 BCE), but to exhibit himself and his fellow Romans as surpassing while subverting that famous Spartan's exploits. The anonymous tribune of Cato's Origines performed more heroically than the renowned Leonidas (see Section III below), and Cato himself, reports Plutarch,56 actually one-upped Leonidas by winning his battle of Thennopylae (where Romans fought Seleucid-Greeks in 191 BCE), thus transferring the honor of the place from vanquished to victor. Leading his men on a mountain path he fortuitously recalled the Persians once took, Cato duplicated their victorious ambush of those holed up in the pass, while encouraging his men to fight with the bold swiftness of lions (leontes), rhetoric surely meant to recall and co-opt the former heroism of Leonidas. In sum, the traditional image of a Greek-hating Roman patriot57 cannot account for Cato's admiration of Greek culture and noble Greek heroes of old. Such binaries stem rather from scholarly categories of identity too simplistically crafted, i.e. Hellenism versus native culture. Here too we see Judeans following the Romans' lead: 1 Maccabees, composed several decades after Cato's death (149 BCE),58 reports the 54 De Agricultura Proem 4: At ex agricolis et viri fortissimi et milites strenuissimi gignuntur ... His De Agricultura is a compendium of practical knowledge on all aspects of running a self-sufficient Roman farm, old-time medicinal remedies, and all-around rustic wisdom. As reflected in his authorship of De Agricultura, Origines (found in FRH), in his extant speeches (collected in ORF, Oratorum Romanorum Fragmenta I collegit, recensuit, prolegomenis illustravit Henrica Malcovati. Torino: G. B.Paravia & Co, 1930), and in his various recorded public acts, Cato sought to portray himself as the living exemplar of the old noble Roman, working the land with his own hands, and thus maintaining the foundations of the Republic from the ground up. 55 Censor and four times consul, the plebeian born novus homo Manius Curius Dentatus (d. 270 BCE) was Cato's personal hero (Plutarch Cato the Elder 2.1-2). 56 The source of Plutarch's report (Cato the Elder 13-14) is likely Cato's Origines. 57 See, for instance, the remarks of Goldstein, I Maccabees, 126. 58 1 Maccabees was originally composed most likely in Hebrew (perhaps Aramaic), late in the reign, or soon after the death of John Hyrcanus I in 104 BCE. General consensus assigns the text to a Judean provenance. At some unknown point after this (perhaps within the next half-century) the text was translated into Greek, the language of our present version. The history ends with Simon's death and the accession of John
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Judeanclaim that they and the Spartans were kinsmen through their common ancestor Abraham! (12.1-23). Both Cato's literary and cultural proj ect and that of the author of 1 Maccabees reflect a particular quasinativist type of appropriation and subversion of Greekness. Their message was for domestic consumption, and was directed toward the recreation of the body-politic as it had existed in an earlier, idealized heroic age, yet it is formulated by taking full advantage of the Hellenic cultural idiom. 59 1 Maccabees emphasizes the biblical Covenant between God and Israel and the Torah as communal symbols, and, from the outset, the narrative places Judeans in an intentionally archaizing biblical context. The Judean ethnos, or Israel, is threatened by lawless (1Tapavo~O\) Israelites who wish to rejoin the ethne, now led by the Greek Kingdom. The evil Seleucid king, Antiochus IV, reciprocates, calling on all his subjects to give up their customs (Ta v6~I~a) and become one people (EiS Aaov Eva). Loyal Israelites are here aligned against their traditional neighboring enemies, alluded to via their biblical monikers, e.g. Idumeans are known as Esau. Style and content re-enforce language: the text was originally written in Hebrew, not Greek, and thus must have been originally directed to a domestic Judean audience. On the one hand, then, form and content have been combined to set up an apparent Judean-Greek dichotomy. However, on the other hand, 1 Maccabees also shows Judeans behaving in a remarkably Hellenic fashion;60 their leaders were "friends of the (Seleucid) king" (10.20, 65); the people rejoice in the honor and record it on bronze tablets (14.27, 3840). The Judeans pass honorific decrees by common vote that partake fully of pan-Hellenistic euergetism rhetoric (14.25-49). They mint local coinage Hyrcanus I, informing us that one might consult the latter's deeds in the "chronicles of his high priesthood" (1 Macc 16.24). The anti-monarchic tone of the work (e.g. 1 Macc 8, the encomium of Rome) would preclude a date (much) after the assumption of the crown by Hyrcanus' son Aristobulus I (reigned 104-103 BCE), making especially doubtful any date after the accession of his brother Alexander Yannai (reigned 103-76 BCE) who firmly established Hasmonean kingship. See Rappaport, Seier Maqabim Aleph, 1-90. 59 Although he demonstrates an impressive familiarity with the Roman Republic, Goldstein nowhere pursues any such comparison of Cato and 1 Maccabees. (Jonathan A. Goldstein, I Maccabees, A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, Anchor Bible Series, Vol. 41, Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1976) Goldstein, who understands cultural reality along the lines of a more simplistic bifurcated construct - either-or, Hellenism versus Native culture - holds the "old-school" view of Cato (the standard line through the 70's) calling him "that stern hater of Greeks," and emphasizing his "condemnation of all Greek philosophy (I Maccabees, 126)." My approach to Cato, on the other hand, follows the initiative of Astin (Cato the Censor, 157-81) and Gruen (Culture and National Identity, 52-83). 60 Schwartz, Imperialism and Jewish Society 32-42; Rappaport, Seier Maqabim Aleph, 55-58.
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(15.6). They seek common lineage with Spartans (12.2, 5-23; 14.16-23). Finally, throughout their struggle, the noble Romans are their staunch friends, allies, and brothers (8; 12.1--4, 16-17; 14.24,40; 15.50-24; see Sections I and III). Neither Cato, nor the author of 1 Maccabees could return to a time before there were Greeks; their societies were "alwaysalready" embedded within the larger Hellenistic cultural construct.
III. Ancestral Custom and Law, and the Harmoniously Unified Body Politic Rome offered Judean elites, then, a legitimate, alternative non-Greek model of communal identity, while Roman domination of the Hellenistic World from the cultural periphery excited both self-identification and envy. Judean emulation of Rome is further marked by two interrelated factors: preoccupation with ancestral customs and laws and the harmoniously unified state or body politic, salient features in the accounts of both 1 and 2 Maccabees as well as Polybius and Cato. From start to finish, 2 Maccabees offers a sustained meditation on the nature of the Judean people, or ethnos, their ancestral politeia, i.e. their traditional public way of life, or statelbody politic,61 and their ancestral customs and laws. Although the term does not occur this way in the sources, this Judean community could be accurately described as an ethnos-politeia; like the Greek Leagues, the Judeans claim the status of an ethnos, which possesses its own particular politeia. 61 The Greek term politeia has its origins in the public organization of the ancient Greek polis, and "the condition and rights of a citizen," or "citizenship," from which it came to denote "the public way of life" in any given polity; see also Cohen, Beginnings of Jewishness, 125-29. It possesses, in Polybius' History, another related semantic range from a type of constitutional form (e.g. kingship, aristocracy, democracy, per Polybius' famous anacyc/osis, or cyclical, model of constitutional development, 6.2-10), to the historical state, or body politic, that exists throughout time, from inception to dissolution, regardless of constitutional form, such as the historical Roman politeia, introduced by Polybius via his concurrent biological model of the birth, growth, acme, decline, and death of politeiai (6.4.11-13, 6.9.10-14, 6.57), and analyzed by him in 6.11-58, where he presents an idealized portrait of the historical Roman body-politic at its height (in his opinion, during the time of the Second Punic War, 218-202 BeE, when the Roman politeia possessed the best constitution: a mix of kingship, aristocracy and democracy). See also Henry-George Liddel and Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, Ninth Edition with a Revised Supplement (Oxford: OUP, 1996), 1434; Frank W. Walbank, A Historical Commentary on Polybius, vol. I (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1957), 635-63; Walbank, Po lyb ius, 130-56; Frank W. Walbank, "The Idea of Decline in Polybios," in Niedergang: Studien zu einem geschichtlichen Thema (ed. Reinhart Koselleck and Paul Widmer; Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1980),41-58, esp. 52.
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2 Maccabees provides us then, among other things, with a detailed study of the Judean ethnos-politeia under extreme duress. The horrified reaction of high priest and people to Heliodorus' attempt on the Temple treasury in Chapter 3 is not due to its sanctity, qua Temple complex, but its inviolability, qua national bank; the people's personal deposits are endangered. The people and their leader - in this episode, the high-priest Onias III - act in unison to stave off the danger, as they do throughout the text. Even the famous martyrologies are inundated with patriotic sentiment. In addition to Eleazar's performance for the sake of the ethnos (outlined in Section II above), we see the Mother and her Seven Sons in 2 Maccabees 7 refusing to transgress ancestral law while speaking in their ancestral tongue as a sign of defiance (7.8, 21, 27). In the same way, Judah, who encourages his men to take up arms against those seeking to destroy their ancestral politeia (8.16-18),62 before the engagement with Gorgias raises the battle cry with hymns in the ancestral tongue (12.37), just as his men, returning triumphant from battle with Nicanor, bless the Lord, again, in the ancestral tongue (15.29). The patriotic portrayals of both martyrs and battlefield heroes are drawn in striking parallel, accentuated by their frequent, conspicuous use of the ancestral language (Tij TIaTplC+>
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E~EAE~aTO - "The Lord did not choose the ethnos on account of the Place (the Temple), but rather the Place on account of the ethnos?"66 The issue is worked out most consistently where the Temple is mentioned along with the laws, the city, the country, and the ancestral commonwealth/way of life as just one of the endangered elements for which the Judeans are fighting (for example, 2 Macc 13.14: TTEpl VO\lCUV, lEPOV, TTOAECUS, TTaTploos, TToA1TElas).67 True, the special relationship between God and the Judeans is indeed central to the text of 2 Maccabees. However, it is important to remember that in 2 Maccabees, as in 1 Maccabees, God is portrayed primarily as the spiritual ally (o\J\l\laxos) of the Judean protagonists, who - even the "martyrs" among them - are depicted as actively defending their ancestral way of life in a most physical, deliberate and aggressive manner, as succinctly summarized by the Epitomist's description in 15.27 of the selfless courage and devout determination of Judah's soldiers in the final battle against Nicanor: They slew at least 35,000 of the enemy, "fighting with their hands, while praying to God in their hearts."68 While scholars rightly regard the glorification of the Hasmonean line to be a primary goal of 1 Maccabees,69 it also reflects contemporary Judean concerns for the community, or ethnos, as a harmoniously united whole, and the intimate relationship of this Judean community with Rome. The previously discussed encomium of Rome in 1 Maccabees 8.1-16 (Section I), so central to the form and function of the history, acts in fact as a
66 It was for this reason, he adds, that the Temple could be defiled by Antiochus, since it shared in the "falling out" experienced by the ethnos, and would also participate in the ethnos' future prosperity (5:20): blD-TTEP KOI mhos 0 TOTTOS OUI.lI.lETOOXWV TWV TOU E8vouS bUOTTETTJI.lCnwV YEVOI.lEVWV UOTEpOV EVEPYETTJI.lOTWV EKOIVWVTJOEV, KOI 0 KOTOAElCp8EIS EV TiJ TOU TTOVTOKPOTOPOS 6PyiJ TTOAIV EV Tfj TOU I.lEyOAOU bWTTOTOU KOTOAAOYiJ I.lETCx TTOOTJS bOSTJS ETTOVwp8w8TJ.
67 E.g. 2.19-23, in the quasi-table of contents laid out by the Epitomist; 8.17, 21, before the first battle against Nicanor; 13.10, 14, (cited in text above) before the battle against Lysias; and 15.17-18, before the final battle against Nicanor. 68
WI ToiS I.lEV XEPOIV aywvll;ol.lEvOI, Tois bE KOpbiolS TTPOS
TOV
8EOV EVX0I.lEVOI. ..
It is important to remember, on the one hand, that 1 Maccabees, which supposedly
provides "a simple practical narrative of the events of the period" (Tcherikover, Hellenistic Civilisation and the Jews, 398), in no way dismisses the reliance of Judah and his army on divine support (see the pre-battle speeches, e.g. 1 Maccabees 3.19, 4.8-11). On the other hand, while 2 Maccabees often states that a battle was won via divine assistance, of the 21 battle sequences related in 2 Maccabees (by my count) there are only 3 occurrences in which some divine manifestation directly intervenes (10.24-31, 11.1-12, 13.9-17). At the same time, the Epitomist continually emphasizes, throughout 2 Maccabees, the bravery and specific actions of Judah and his men, not to mention the praise he reserves for the brave deeds of Eleazar, the Mother and her Seven Sons, Razis, and the l,lbiquitous Judean people (e.g. 4.39-42 vs. Lysimachus). In 2 Maccabees, then, God is more spiritual ally than divine interventionist (it la Homer's Olympians). 69 Goldstein, I Maccabees, 4-26.
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double panegyric. By lavishing praise upon the Roman people, their military victories, policies, and the virtues of their leaders and society, and, of course, their traditional concern for "friends and allies," (i.e. the Judeans), the panegyrist also seeks to demonstrate the similarities between the two societies, to prove the point, as it were, that one can tell a lot by the "friends" one keeps. In short, the virtues of the Romans are the implied virtues of the Judeans, who act as a mini-Rome in the Levant. Whether such half-concealed self-praise is wishful thinking is beside the point. 70 The great strength of the Romans is praised time and again (8.1-4), as are their brave deeds (TaS avopaya8(as) in war, where they are ever victorious (they were strong, very strong: eiatv ouvaTot iaxllI). Such striking military expansion is mirrored, albeit on a much smaller scale, by the rapid growth of Judea under the Hasmoneans. Of major significance is the detailed description of Roman victory over various kings (8.4-8, 913), which echoes the successful Judean struggle against the Seleucid kings and the hope for continued future success. Equally significant is the great emphasis placed on Roman destruction of the Greeks (8.9). Elsewhere in 1 Maccabees the primary enemies of the Judeans are not usually the Greeks, per se, but the ethne, the biblical-period peoples roundabout. 71 The implied connection between Romans and Judeans is made explicit, however, in the subsequent description of the Judean embassy to Rome (8.17-21): the Judeans were sending for aid because the "kingdom of the Greeks was enslaving Israel completely" (8.18),72 Furthermore, in the conclusion to the panegyric (8.14-16) we read that, unlike those many kings they have intimidated, no Roman has ever taken up a crown or worn purple, rather they entrust their rule to a single man, per year (8.16), a clear allusion to Hasmonean leadership, it would seem, before the days of Aristobulus 1's kingship (104-103 BeE), with the exception, that is, of the annual term of the consulship (a fact apparently too well-known to ignore) versus the lifetime office of the individual Hasmonean rulers.73 At the end of the panegyric, we read of 320 Roman 70 My reading of the panegyric expands upon the analysis of Smith, "Rome and the Maccabean Conversions," 1-7; see my Introduction. 71 E.g. 1.42; see Gruen, Heritage and Hellenism, 5-8. 72 chI ElOOV Tilv l3oOlAeiov TWV 'EAATjvwv KOTOOOUAOUI-lEVOUS TOV lapOTJA oouAelc;x. 73 Conspicuously, the Hasmoneans of I Maccabees are not rewarded with the crown of kingship or any royal title (see below). The "mistaken" view of Roman electoral reality, i.e. the description of one consul per year rather than two, perhaps stemmed from the Judean desire to see their single leader as the single Roman consul's parallel (following Smith, "Rome and the Maccabean Conversions," 4). However, it is more probable that Judeans, like most others in the eastern Mediterranean, would have had no reason to assume that two consuls were annually elected, since the consuls were usually sent out to separate spheres of engagement at the outset of the term, and thus, even in
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senators74 daily deliberating on the welfare of the plethos, i.e. the Roman people or populus Romanus, and also that there existed no envy or jealousy among them,75 idealistic praise, indeed, for a truly harmoniously unified body politic that never existed as such in either Rome or Judea, but which the panegyrist is implicitly claiming for both societies. The incorporation of the Judean body politic within this laudatio of Rome is underscored from this point on in the text, where the inclusion of so much diplomatic documentation and narrative description detailing the corporate leadership of the harmoniously unified community serves to demonstrate Judea's similarity to Rome. The senate's daily concern for the populus Romanus, the plethos of 8.15, is echoed five verses later in the statement of the Judean envoys (8.20): they were sent to Rome at the behest of Judas, his brothers, and the Judean plethos, or populus Iudaeus,?6 The treaty itself follows in 8.23-32; it was made between the Romans (or Rome) and the ethnos of the Judeans (8.23, 24-25, 27), apparently equivalent to the Judean people, in toto. The conclusion, in 8.29-30, lists the signatories as the Romans and the Judean demos, the standard Greek rendering for commons/populus,?7 Elsewhere, we see that the mission to Sparta was sent on behalf ofthe.high priest Jonathan, the council/senate of the ethnos (li YEpovota TOU E8vovS), the priests, and the rest of the Judean Rome, it would have been rare for foreign delegations to find both consuls together at the same time. (I owe this last insight to Harriet Flower via personal communication). 74 Although not an egregious error, the Senate actually numbered 300 at the time (Rappaport, Seier Maqabim Aleph, 226).
75 OUK EOTIV
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demos (12.6). Its goal was to demonstrate the ancestral kinship relations between the Spartan and Judean peoples. 78 In the benefaction decree for Simon at 14.25-49, we read of the desire of the Judean demos 79 (14.25; rendered within the decree as Aaos:80 14.28, 35, 46) to repay Simon and his sons for the many benefactions Simon and his brothers had wrought for their ethnos (mentioned seven times in 14.29-37). They made public proclamation of these deeds before the great assembly of the priests, the people (6 AaoS), the rulers of the ethnos, and the elders of the land (14.28), and declared Simon their leader, eternal high-priest,81 governor, and guardian of the sanctuary (14.35, 41-42), and apparently also ethnarches, or "ruler of the ethnos" (14.47, cf. 15.1). Of course, one must keep in mind the admittedly speculative identity of some of these sociopolitical entities, especially since the Greek narrative we possess is ostensibly a translation from the original Hebrew, while the included treaties have apparently passed from an original Greek (of the archive copies) to Hebrew (first publication) and then were translated back into the Greek of our present text. 82 However, regardless of the historical reality of these governing bodies,83 the important literary issue is the multiplicity and frequent use in the text of terms denoting the corporate leadership of a united Judean people, providing a mirror reflection in Jewish Palestine of that unified Roman body-politic, under corporate aristocratic guidance, so enthusiastically lauded in 1 Maccabees 8.1-16. Furthermore, just as the reports of Judean missions to Rome and the Judean-Roman treaties found in 1 Maccabees constitute authentic historical artifacts,84 so also by assembling them and surrounding them with further panegyric of Rome and other complementary narrative details, the text of 1 Maccabees itself serves as an important contemporary artifact demarcating Judean elites' striking emulation of Rome. The treaties made 78 The Judean-Spartan relationship is here construed as an aOEA<poTT]S, a brotherhood, via the biological lineage of Abraham (Kal cST I EiolV EK yevous A!3paall), and at 2 Macc 5.9 as a ouyyevEla, a genealogical/biological kinship (see Section IV). 79 The Judean ofjlloS is also mentioned in Simon's renewal of the treaty with Rome (1 Macc 15.17). 80 The use of Aaos within the decree may indicate an intentionally biblicizing turn; e.g. LXX II Kings (= MT II Samuel) 10.12, where Aaos is the translation for Hebrew 011. 81 I.e. him and his family, a popular decree limited only, in 14.41, by the potential (albeit unlikely) future appearance of "a trustworthy prophet" - EWS TOU avaoTfjVQI lTpO
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by Judah and his successors with Rome were drafted not with any individual leader, notes Gruen,85 but between the Romans and the Judean ethnos. As 1 Maccabees amply demonstrates, the personal prestige of the Hasmonean house, and that of the Judean body politic were intimately intertwined. Hasmonean success amplified the renown of the Judean community, just as ideological talk of the community, doubtless, also served to mask, and thus further benefit, Hasmonean interests. 86 Hyrcanus I issued domestic coinage in his own name and that of the Judean lfever.87 Whether the lfever points to a Judean senate 88 or to some Judean hybrid version of a Greek league 89 mixed with a mini-imperialist Judean Res Publica,90 the point is that, from the time of Judah Maccabee to John Hyrcanus I, a broad circle of Judean elites began to re-envision their society with an obvious eye to those enviable Romans, their friends and allies, and thus accentuated their many mutual communal virtues - the product of undying adherence to ancestral custom and law - and the corporate leadership, at Rome and Judea, of a harmoniously unified body politic under the rule of a primus inter pares. Polybius and Cato can tell us much more about how the Judean elite's preoccupation with ancestral custom and law and the harmoniously united politeia echoed contemporary Roman concerns. Polybius presents the Roman politeia as balanced in its constitution between demos and 85 Gruen, Hellenistic World and the Coming of Rome, 46. 86 For a discussion of elite dominance and the ideological mask (in republican and early imperial Rome, but equally applicable to Hellenistic Judea), see Richard Gordon, "From Republic to Principate: Priesthood, Religion and Ideology," in Pagan Priests: Religion and Power in the Ancient World (ed. Mary Beard and John North; London: Gerald Duckworth & Co. Ltd. 1990), 177-198. 87 Following Smith ("Gentiles in Judaism"), Cohen (Beginnings of Jewishness, 109139) reads League (koinon) as equivalent to the Hebrew /:lever from e.g. coins of John Hyrcanus: Yeho/:lanan ha-Kohen ha-Gadol ve-!fever ha-Yehudim (alternatively: R 'osh !fever ha-Yehudim): 0'1;";' i:Jn1 '1";' 1;');' 1Jm;,' alternatively: 0'1;";' i:Jn IllKi; see Meshorer, Ancient Jewish Coinage, vol 1,35-109, 136-155, Plates 28-54; where he dates this coin type to Hyrcanus II (63-40 BCE). Following Dan Barag, "Jewish Coin in Hellenistic and Roman Time," in A Survey of Numismatic Research, 1985-1990, vol. I (ed. T. Hackens, et. al.; Brussels: International Society of Professional Numismatists, 1991), 106-108, Meshorer (Ya'aqov Meshorer, "Matbe'ot ha-I:Iashmona'im" [Hebrew], in Yemei-Beit !fashmona'i [ed. David Amit and Hanan Eshel; Jerusalem: Yad Yitsl1aq ben-Tsvi, 1995], 197-209) re-dated this coin type to Hyrcanus I (135-104 BCE). 88 Smith, "Rome and the Maccabean Conversions," 4. 89 Cohen, Beginnings of Jewishness, 128; following Smith, "Gentiles in Judaism." 90 Schwartz, Imperialism and Jewish Society, 40, n. 57: "In other words, I am suggesting that Hasmonean imperialism was a small-scale version of Roman imperialism." In my view, the reality of emulation within the shared discourse of the Hellenistic Mediterranean is far more complex than "either-or" scenarios permit; see my Introduction (and for more on Schwartz's view, see my n. 12).
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aristocratia: all classes are united in single-minded purpose to protect and inculcate the traditional customs and laws, the ethe kai nomoi (6.2-18). From the brave centurion, trained to hold his ground and die at his post (6.24.8-9), to the high-born magistrate, willing to execute his own son should he transgress the laws (6.54.5), Polybius' Book 6 analysis of the Roman politeia acts as a movie camera that slowly pans the entirety of the Roman citizen-body in their various public-private functions. The denouement of the docu-drama comes in a section specifically devoted to ancestral Roman ethe kai nomoi, where the united politeia gathers in the Forum to commemorate the passing of a deceased magistrate (6.53-54.5). Led from his home to the Forum in a lavish procession, the recently deceased was escorted in dramatic fashion by actors riding in chariots wearing the masks (eikonas, Latin: imagines) and rank (denoted on the toga) of his long-since-dead ancestors, whose valor had been similarly requited with the reward of office. After the funeral procession, with the body of the deceased displayed on the rostra, the speaker - standing on the rostra before a row of these same "virtual" ancestors, seated on curule chairs - praised the virtues and deeds first of the recently deceased, and then of each of the ancestors, before the demos gathered in the Forum. Through these ceremonies, it happens that the people remembering and grasping the famous deeds-gone-by before their eyes, and not only those who had taken part in the actions, but also those who had had no part in them, become so stricken with commiserative grief that the loss seems to affect not only those who are grieving personally ('(OIOV), but rather the demos in common (KOIVOV). (6.53.3)
While the "reality" behind this event had much to do with the selfaggrandizement of the elites, it is clear that Polybius and his elite Roman interlocutors saw the funeral procession and oration as an event of civic commemoration, in which the valorous deeds of the deceased, his ancestors, and those of the demos who had shared in his glory became the common heritage of all Romans,91 just as the "mixed/balanced" constitution (6.11-18) and the citizen army (6.19-42) guaranteed the tranquility of the politeia, while ensuring that all citizens maintained a share in its success. "For who," Polybius asks, "would not have been inspired by the sight of the images (eikonas) of these men, renowned for their excellence (arete) , all together, as if they were alive and breathing? What spectacle could ever appear more glorious than this?" (6.53.10) Turning to Cato, we find in his Origines perhaps the best summation of this particular image of the reinvented Roman body politic, a community that epitomized the best of the shared traditional virtues common to 91 See Harriet Flower, Ancestor Masks and Aristocratic Power in Roman Culture (Oxford: OUP, 1996), 91-158; Eckstein, "Physis and Nomos," 186-190; and Arnaldo Momigliano, Alien Wisdom: The Limits of Hellenization (Cambridge: CUP, 1975),27.
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Romans and Greeks, while surpassing the best of all Greek states in their proper implementation and commemoration: The immortal gods gave to the military tribune good fortune on account of his courage. For thus it turned out: although he had suffered many wounds on that occasion, nevertheless he had received no blow to the head, and they identified him among the dead, as he was exhausted by his wounds and also because he had lost a lot of blood. They lifted him up, and he came to, and often afterward he offered brave and vigorous assistance to the Republic, and by that deed, because he led away those soldiers, he saved the rest of the army. But this very same service garners a very different response depending on the location where you perform it. Leonidas the Lacedaimonian, who performed a similar deed at Thermopylae, on account of his virtues all of Greece honored his glorious deed and his distinguished service of most famous illustriousness, and through monuments, paintings, statues, inscriptions, stories, and other things made his deed most deserving of gratitude, on the other hand little praise was left for the military tribune in return for his deeds, who had done the very same thing and had saved the Republic. (FRH 3.4.7a)92
Cato is here recounting the action of a small Roman covering force that engaged the Carthaginians on Sicily during the First Punic War (264-241 BeE), thus gaining the escape of the entire Roman army. Per Cato's method, the actual name of the Roman hero who led this doomed brigade is left unmentioned in Origines, in explicit contradistinction from the overt praise that the Greeks reserved for individual heroes, such as Leonidas. What is more important, rather, is the Roman collective, for whom "the military tribune" willingly risked his life in the fulfillment of his patriotic duty, as would any Roman military tribune, so goes the implication, at any time in Rome's history. This Catonian Republic, re-conceptualized over and against notorious Greek individualism had no room for lauding the deeds of the one over that of the many, over the glory of the collective, to which all Romans had pledged their lives.
92 dii immortales tribuno militum fortunam ex virtute eius dedere. nam ita even it: cum saucius multifariam ibi factus esset, tamen vulnus capitis nullum evenit, eumque inter mortuos defetigatum vulneribus atque quod sanguen eius defluxerat, cognovere. eum sustulere isque convaluit, saepeque postilla operam rei publicae fortem atque strenuam perhibuit; iIloque facto, quod illos milites subduxit, exercitum ceterum servavit. sed idem benefactum quo in loco ponas, nimium interest. Leonides Laco quidem simile apud Thermopylas fecit, propter eius virtutes omnis Graecia gloriam atque gratiam praecipu(Jm c1aritudinis inclitissimae decoravere monumentis: sign is, statuis, e/ogiis, historiis alUsque rebus gratissimum id eius factum habuere; at tribuno militum parva laus pro factis relicta, qui idem fecerat atque rem servaverat.
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IV. Identity and Integration in the Hellenistic Oikoumene Although there are still those who describe second century BCE Judea as the battleground for a culture war of Hellenism versus Judaism, this view has come to be rejected by a growing number of scholars as an overly simplistic understanding of the nature of cultural interaction and culture in genera1. 93 The crux of the issue boils down to the fact that our primary sources seem, at certain turns in the narrative, to call for such a bifurcated understanding of identity, while providing a portrayal of cultural reality throughout the rest of the narrative that is anything but two-sided. In sum, there can be no Judean entity that operated outside of the broad cultural fabric of the Hellenistic World, of which the regional Levantine and local Judean cultures were a part. Furthermore, by the late second century BCE, Greekness, and Rome's ongoing encounter with Greekness were pre-existent and ubiquitous aspects of the larger sociopolitical and cultural matrix in which Judean elites found themselves. On the one hand, the Palestinian-Jewish sources examined in this essay, 1 and 2 Maccabees, exhibit Judean elites expressing themselves in terms of reference reflective of the shared elite discourse of the Hellenistic W orId. 94 On the other hand, Judeans were well aware of - and continued to emphasize - distinctions between themselves and Greeks, at the same time that they embraced the opportunity to carve out for themselves a legitimate place within the Hellenistic Oikoumene, and this accounts for the ongoing referral in the literature to distinctions between Judeanness and Greekness. Denying the existence of such explicit distinctions in the texts 95 does not bring us any closer to a solution. Rather, in correcting the overly simplistic dichotomous view, Hellenism versus native culture, we must be careful not to gloss over the complex web of interactions between communities and the consequentially equally complex processes of communal (and individual) identity formation exposed by our source texts, lest we arrive at the equally simplistic answer that Jews really perceived no tension at all, creative or otherwise, between their own way of life and that of other peoples, between their own culture and Greekness. 93 Gruen, Heritage and Hellenism, 1-40; Schwartz, Imperialism and Jewish Society, 22-42. 94 The unproblematic immersion of Palestinian Jews within the greater Hellenistic World preceded the so-called "Hellenizing Reforms," and the Maccabean Revolt, as the book of Ben-Sira (c. 180 BeE) demonstrates nicely. Note chapter 39, where we read that the sage who wishes to better discern the Law of the Most High, will seek out the wisdom of all the ancients, regardless of ethnic-religious background, i.e. he will find employment at the courts of foreign rulers, and take up traveling through foreign lands. 95 As does, for example, Gruen: "And nowhere does 2 Maccabees juxtapose them [judaism and Hellenism] as rival concepts." (Heritage and Hellenism, 3)
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In reality, an emphatic and ongoing concern with the meaning and character of ancestral customs and norms is the central component of Judean collective reinvention. The Sabbath, circumcision, kashrut, the Temple, and the Torah 96 were deemed central to Judean identity, and thus had to be recast in such a way that, by defending them, the Judean protagonists were seen to be defending the true meaning of virtue as it was commonly constructed within the Oikoumene. Strikingly, as demonstrated in Sections II-III (above), in the Hellenistic period, the defense of ancestral custom in Judea, as in Rome, was reused in defense of the claim that Judeans, and Romans, did a much better job of upholding traditional Greek virtues than did contemporary Greeks. Notwithstanding the obvious differences between Hellenistic Rome and Judea, about which I will say more at the end of this section, it was to their Roman friends and allies that Judean elites often turned at this early stage of their renewed autonomy to help them make sense of their own ethnos-politeia within the complex constellation of communities that made up the Hellenistic Oikoumene. In order to better understand Judean integration within the greater Hellenistic World of the second century BeE, one must note not only its cultural complexity, but also its local ethnic diversity. Identity at this time cannot simply be reified into an either-or, bifurcated cultural arrangement of Greek versus Barbarian, or Hellenic culture versus its anti-Hellenic opposite. Local ethnic identity continued to playa significant role in intercommunal relations, just as it had before the time of Alexander the Great. While barbarian communities still lurked about as the uncivilized Other at the now more permeable borders of the ever-expanding sociopolitical and cultural construct known as the Oikoumene, i.e. the "civilized" Greekspeaking world, within the Oikoumene we witness the continuation of an aggregative ethnic arrangement,97 with the ethnos-based Achaean, Aetolian and Boeotian Leagues, Dorian-identifying Rhodes, and the new kingdoms of Asia Minor, in particular Pergamum (see below), wrestling with the traditional power-brokers, the Antigonid, Ptolemaic and Seleucid realms, for political gain and cultural prestige. Contra Hall, I hold that the establishment of syngeneia, or kinship, was no mere diplomatic formality in the Hellenistic period. 98 To be sure, 96
On Temple and Torah, see Schwartz, Imperialism and Jewish Society, 19-99.
97 An "aggregative" ethnic arrangement denotes the process in the Hellenic world whereby communities formed multiple mutual ties reaffirmed by a common aggregate genealogy, which came to symbolize and lend an ethnic component to their mutual sociopolitical, economic and cultural relations, qua Ionians, Dorians, Achaeans, etc. 98 Jonathan M. Hall, Hellenicity: Between Ethnicity and Culture (Chicago: U. of Chicago .Press, 2002), esp. 220-228. In addition to the bifurcated, "oppositional," cultural arrangement of Greeks vs. Barbarians, there persisted within the Hellenistic Oikoumene a robust "aggregative" ethnic arrangement that, contra Hall (Ethnic Identity
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alliances between states, such as between Rome and Lampsacus and Sparta and Judea (see more below), were often bound up with the "rediscovery" of ancestral kinship. But that does not mean that said relationships were not taken seriously. On the contrary, in fact, the classical period witnessed nothing so ethnically oriented as the expanding Achaean League (mid-third to the mid-second centuries BCE). The Hellenistic-period Achaeans constituted no mere League, i.e. koinon, or politeia, but rather an ethnospoliteia, which managed to expand the borders of traditional Achaean territory (the northern Peloponnesus on the Corinthian Gulf) throughout the Peloponnesus by bringing former non-Achaean poleis, such as Dorianidentifying Sicyon, Corinth, and Argos, into their ethnos-politeia behind a newfound Achaean identity, common to all. (Polybius 2.37-45).99 In sum, the intense inter-communal competition within the Hellenistic Oikoumene, combined with more permeable cultural barriers between Greeks and Barbarians, allowed for a good deal of identity slippage, whereby former Barbarian entities such as Rome and Judea might more easily repackage themselves as having always been at the very center of the civilized world. On this score, Rome and Judea were following the lead of former culturally peripheral entities like Pergamum, where, under the guidance of the Attalids (283-133 BCE), Telephus, a Greek epic hero linked to Tegea in the Peloponnesus, was co-opted by Pergamene elites as the founder of the polis and the Attalid dynasty, and, by extension, the forefather of the entire Pergamene community.lOo The Attalids built the Great Altar of Pergamum during the reign of Eumenes II (197-59 BCE) to enhance their legitimacy within the public imagination by commemorating previous victories over the Gauls within a decorative scheme that celebrated the foundation myths
in Greek Antiquity, Cambridge: CUP, 1997; Hellenicity), still grounded claims on the reality of kinship (syngeneia) relationships. For an account of syngeneia and identity that takes seriously the terms of reference used by Hellenistic sources, see Christopher P. Jones, Kinship Diplomacy in the Ancient World (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999). 99 Cohen, in his helpful comparison between Hasmonean Judea and the Achaean League, qua politeiai (Beginning of Jewishness, 125-29, 135-39), does not pursue the significance of Polybius' Achaean League, qua ethnos. Recognizing that the Judean and Achaean polities were in essence both examples of an ethnos-politeia only enriches the comparison, by allowing for the continued importance of ethnicity in the Hellenistic Mediterranean. For Hellenistic Judea, qua ethnos-politeia, see above Section III. 100 According to Huberta Heres, "Der Telephosmythos in Pergamon," in Der Pergamonaltar: Die neue Priisentation nach Restaurierung des Telephosfrieses (ed. Wolf-Dieter Heilmeyer; Berlin and Tiibingen: Ernst Wasmuth Verlag und Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, 1997), 99-120, esp. 99, the association of Telephus with Pergamum is first recorded in an Athenian inscription, c. 200 BCE, honoring Attalus I (ruled 241-197 BCE).
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of the Pergamene community while alluding to events of recent history.l0l The outer walls of the Altar-shrine were decorated with a Gigantomachy in which Hercules played a central role, while upon the walls of the inner courtyard was portrayed the epic life story of Telephus, the Pergamene founder figure, or ktistes, on 74 joined frieze panels.l 02 A brief review of the Telephus myth, confirmed by the extant friezes, is in order. In the heroic age before the Trojan War, Telephus, son of Hercules and Auge, daughter of the legendary Arcadian king Aleus, is abandoned in the wild, while his mother is cast adrift in the Aegean, due to his grandfather Aleus' attempt to avert the prophesied doom, should the boy reach adulthood.103 Telephus is, however, discovered by Hercules who, with the help of various nymphs, guards him till young adulthood. Meanwhile, Auge reaches Asia Minor, and is adopted by Teuthras, king of Mysia, where she founds the cult of Athena, having previously been priestess of Athena at Tegea. 104 Years later, Telephus, as a young man, 101 For an overview of Attalid Pergamum, see Shipley, Greek World after Alexander, 312-19. I am indebted to the 1997 collection of articles edited by Wolf-Dieter Heilmeyer in Der Pergamonaltar. 102 The earliest occurrence of the Telephus myth is in the fragments of the seventh century BCE Cypria (of the Epic (Trojan) Cycle), which reach us via portions of Proclus' second century CE Chrestomathy preserved in the ninth century CE Bibliotecha of the Byzantine patriarch Photius. The Cypria-Telephus fragments deal mainly with the conflict between the Achaeans and Telephus in Mysia, as do fragments of a poem of Archilochus of Paros (c. 680-40 BCE) recently discovered amongst the Oxyrhynchus Papyri (D. Obbink, "4708. Archilochus, Elegies (More of VI 854 and XXX 2507)," in The Oxyrhynchus Papyri, vol. LXIX [ed. N. Gonis, and D. Obbink; London: Egypt Exploration Society, 2005], 18-42), and a fragment from the seventh-sixth century BCE Catalogue of Women by pseudo-Hesiod (Ibid, 19). Other elements of the story, also the subject of a lost play by Euripides (Ibid), can be found in Hellenistic and early imperial period authors, such as Callimachus, Apollodorus, Diodorus Siculus, Plutarch, Pausanius, and Pliny, helpfully summarized in Robert Graves, The Greek Myths (London: Penguin Books, 1955, repr., 1960), vol. 2, sections 141; 160w, x, z; 166i; and 168d. According to Volker Kastner ("The Architecture of the Great Altar of Pergamon," in Pergamon: Citadel of the Gods [ed. Helmut Koester; Harrisburg: Trinity Press International, 1998], 137-61), we have only 47 completely or partially preserved frieze panels from an original 74, thus reconstruction of the remainder "is, properly speaking, rather circumscribed" (Ibid, 154). My synopsis, however, is based on a broad outline of the myth, and is confirmed by the extant Telephus-frieze panels, (see the notes below). 103 Namely, that he would murder two of his mother's maternal uncles; see Graves, Greek Myths, 141b. See also Marina Heilmeyer, "Der Telephosfries, Bestandsanordnung," (Zeichnungen) in Heilmeyer, ed., Der Pergamonaltar, 191-93, esp. panels 2-6. 104 Aleus sought to keep Auge a virgin by making her priestess of Athena at Tegea, where a qrunken Hercules had his way with her. The orphaned Telephus was suckled by a doe on Mt. Parthenius; see Graves, Greek Myths, 141b, d. Hercules at Aleus' court, his discovery of Telephus, the latter being guarded by nymphs and suckled by a doe,
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sails to Asia Minor, is also adopted by Teuthras as his son, and takes up arms in Mysia's defense.lO S Telephus and Auge are subsequently betrothed, but the classic sexual-taboo misadventure is precluded by a last minute, divinely aided, prenuptial recognition that they are actually mother and son. 106 Later, after Telephus resumes his role as prince of Mysia, Homer's navigationally-challenged Achaeans land in Mysia, and sack the city of Teuthras - Telephus' Pergamum - mistaking it for Troy. Telephus gives chase and defeats them on the plain of the nearby river Ca'icus, although Achilles wounds him. Seeking a balm for his festering wound, which according to the oracle could only be cured by that which caused it, Telephus journeys to mainland Greece (apparently Mycenae) to meet the Achaeans. The parties are reconciled and Telephus' wound is healed by the rust of Achilles' spear. 107 Telephus, in turn, agrees to give the Achaeans directions to Troy - the journey to Troy being nearly as difficult as the return (!) - but, significantly, he refuses to ally with them against Priam. 108 The story inscribed in the heart of Pergamum's most famous public shrine tells us much. Pergamum, founded by Telephus, was a legitimate Greek polis, whose authenticity went all the way back to Homeric Age Arcadia, the heart of the Peloponnesus. This kinship connection was further verified by close relations with the contemporary Arcadian polis of Tegea, which had long before co-opted Aleus and Telephus as local heroes,109 and by the supposedly ancient Pergamene cult of Athena, which preparations for Auge's sea journey and her arrival at Mysia are all visible on the extant friezes; see M. Heilmeyer, "Der Telephosfries, Bestandsanordnung," panels 10-12, 7-9. 105 Telephus inquired about his parents at Delphi and was told: "Sail and seek King Teuthras the Mysian;" Graves, Greek Myths, 141e. Telephus' receipt of arms from Auge in Mysia is clearly visible on the panels; see M. Heilmeyer, "Der Telephosfries, Bestandsanordnung," panels 13,32-33, 14-18. 106 A divinely sent serpent separated the two on their marriage bed, causing them to recognize their true identities before violating any sexual taboo; see Graves, Greek Myths, 141f. The betrothal and the divine snake intervention are visible on the panels; see M. Heilmeyer, "Der Telephosfries, Bestandsanordnung," panels 20-21. 107 See Graves, Greek Myths, 160w, z. Mysian battle scenes on the extant friezes are represented, although in fragmentary form; a battle by a river, doubtless the CaYcus, is distinctly visible. The wounding and death of Hiera (Telephus's Amazon wife) is partially portrayed, as are scenes of warriors cast into the river, and the wounding of Telephus by Achilles. The later reconciliation of Telephus with the Achaeans and the healing of his wound are clearly visible in the remaining friezes, and thus confirm the identity of the combatants and the location of the previous battle; see M. Heilmeyer, "Der Telephosfries, Bestandsanordnung," panels 22-24,51,25,28,30-31,1,34-40,42-43. 108 See Graves, Greek Myths, 160z. While Telephus giving directions to the Achaeans is not found in the extant panels, it is certainly suggested by the clearly represented scene of their reconciliation, and, furthermore, is mentioned in nearly all the literary sources. 109 On Pergamum and Tegea, see Heres, "Telephosmythos in Pergamon," 99. Pausanius (8.45.7) reports that on the rear gable of the temple of Athena Alea, built in
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Auge was said to have brought from that same polis. Pergamum, however, also possessed its own distinctive history that set it slightly apart from other Greek communities; it stood upon a non-Hellenic Mysian foundation, and was no enemy of Troy. In fact, its primary friend and ally during the Hellenistic period was that community of powerful, living descendants of the Trojan hero Aeneas - Rome. Moreover, Telephus' victory over the Achaeans at the Ca'icus river, portrayed on the Great Altar panels, was also meant to recall Attalus 1's victory over the Gauls near this same river in the late third century BCE, a telling role reversal where Homer's Achaeans are implicitly equated, in turn, with the barbarian Gauls.1 10 The message is clear: Pergamum could stand on its own as a legitimate entity within the Oikoumene, or join in alliance with others, but on its own terms. For Attalid Pergamum, on its own merit, was the savior of the Greeks from the scourge of the Gauls, premier barbarians of the day, as the Great Altar, and its iconic embellishments made clear. By co-opting the Telephid genealogy, and interweaving it so thoroughly with the much-celebrated defeat of the Gauls, the Attalids did much to enhance their legitimacy and place Pergamene communal identity on a firm footing. The genealogical graft onto Hellenic stock, via Telephus, was no superficial matter. It struck deep roots; hundreds of years later the Pergamenes still referred to themselves as Telephidae, the descendants of Telephus. ll1 Like the Pergamenes, the Romans and the Judeans, through various means of co-option and subversion (Sections II-III), brought themselves in from the cultural periphery to the core of Hellenic tradition and myth, and thus, like the Pergamenes, established a level of cultural parity with the other Hellenic sociopolitical entities in an ongoing competition for prestige and cultural capital. Roman appropriation of the Greek notion of their Troj an origins through Aeneas served them well in their ongoing relationship with Greek states,112 eager to enlist themselves as Roman friends and allies after Rome's impressive victory over the forces of Philip V in the Second Macedonian War (200-197 BCE). An inscription dated to
Tegea in the early fourth century BCE, was depicted the battle of Telephus with Achilles by the Cai'cus river; he also states (1.4.6) that the Pergamenes of his day (the second century CE) claimed to be Arcadian descendants who came from Tegea with Telephus. 110 This double association was further reinforced by the Gigantomachy that wrapped around the outside walls of the complex, which evoked Attalid victories over the Gauls via the defeat of the giants by the Olympian gods and Hercules, the father of Telephus. 111 See Heres, "Telephosmythos in Pergamon," 99; Pergamenes are described as Telephidae in an inscription from 129 BCE, and in an oracle of Apollo of Claros (an oracular shrine located some 60-70 miles south of Pergamum) from the second century CEo Note also Pausanius 1.4.6 (n. 109 above) on the Pergamenes' Arcadian origins. 112 See especially Gruen, Culture and National Identity, 6-51.
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196 BCE from the polis of Lampsacus (Syll.3 591),113 on the Asian coast of the Hellespont, just to the north of IliumJTroy, provides a salient example. It details the efforts of the Lampsacenes through their emissaries Hegesias and his fellow envoys - to inform the Romans of their "rediscovered" ancient kinship, doubtless alluding to shared Trojan ancestry.114 Hegesias and company first traveled to mainland Greece, where they met the Roman naval commander Lucius Quinctius Flamininus (brother of Titus Quinctius Flamininus),115 who agreed on the matter of Roman-Lampsacene kinship. The Lampsacene delegation continued on, first to Massalia,116 and then Rome, where Hegesias clarified the issue of Roman-Lampsacene kinship before the Senate, gaining, in turn, senatorial support for his requests. Clearly, both Romans and Greeks happily partook of this new Roman-Trojan identity, "discovering" new ways to extend the genealogical branches beyond the prevailing Hellenic paradigm to include the Romans amongst the legitimate communities of the Oikoumene. And, as we know from Livy (1.1-2) and Virgil's Aeneid, Rome's selfidentification with the Trojans held up over time as a foundational aSllect of their own communal heritage. Viewed in this light, Judea's kinship association with Sparta, through their common forefather: Abraham (!), should not be lightly dismissed. It may not have persisted for centuries as a communal legacy like Rome's associations with Troy, but it certainly played an important role for some time during the second century BCE. The kinship relationship "reestablished" by Jonathan c. 144 BCE (1 Macc 12.1-23), and renewed upon Simon's accession in 142 BCE (1 Macc 14.16-23), had a much longer history with Judean elites, going back at least to the days of Jason in the 170s BCE (2 Macc 5.9). Throughout this time, Judeans and Romans made the claim that by defending their own interests within the Oikoumene, they were not only defending the best of traditional Greek virtues, they were defending, in fact, the civilized Oikoumene itself against the barbarian tendencies of (some) Greeks from within, and the barbarian hordes from without; like the Pergamenes, the Romans and the Judeans also came face 113 Syl/oge inscriptionum Graecarum, ed. W. Dittenberger, 4 vols. (3d. ed., 1915-24). See also Walbank's treatment, Hellenistic World, 233-36. 114 Lampsacus was allied at the time with the polis of Ilium (Troy) in the regional llian League; see Jones, Kinship Diplomacy in the Ancient World, 96. 115 T. Quinctius Flamininu~ was the general of the Roman army that had just recently defeated Philip V at Cynoscephalae (197 BCE) and the author of the Delphi inscription in 194 BCE describing himself as a descendant of Aeneas; (see beginning of Section II). 116 Hegesias and company went first to Massalia to "renew" the ancient kinship ties between Lampsacus and Massalia (both were colonies of Aeolian Phocaea), and to gain the assistance of the Massaliotes (who were friends and allies of the Romans) as Lampsacene advocates before the Senate, a role which the Massaliotes eagerly took up.
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to face with the threat of the Gauls, and returned victorious, thus ensuring their communal legitimacy.1l7 Of course, Judean elites could not back up their claims with the military might of the Romans, who, after defeating Macedon in 197, saw fit to declare the "freedom of the Greeks" before a jubilant audience at the Isthmian Games (Polybius 18.46), and who, soon after, received homage, qua community, by some Greeks via a new cult to deified Rome. 1l8 Yet, as 1 Maccabees 8 shows, it was through the close observation of Roman relations, as a community, with Greeks and Greekness that Judeans came to formulate a new sense of their own communal identity within the Oikaumene. A decree of the Pergamenes, dating from some point in the rule of John Hyrcanus I (135-104 BeE), provides a final fitting demonstration. Found in Josephus, A.J 14.247-55, the decree contains within it the paraphrase of a Roman senatus cansultum (14.249-51) favoring the Judeans in their struggle with the Seleucids. The presentation by Theodorus, spokesman of the Judean legation, of the senatus cansultum before the Pergamene council and assembly provides the occasion for the decree (14.252). The paraphrase of the senatus cansultum is surrounded by the standard opening and closing formulae of such decrees (at 14.247-48 and 14.252-55), which contain, in this case, much useful information for our interests. 119 117 Pergamene victories over the Gauls were celebrated not only by monumental architecture in Pergamum, but also in donations to other states, such as Athens, and in a famous series of ancient statues depicting dying Gauls, some of which survive to this day in marble copies (see Shipley, Greek World after Alexander, 312-19). Rome's wars with and final victory over the Gauls in Italy (390-222 BeE) are depicted in a long passage in Polybius (2.13-35), culminating in his comparison between Rome's struggle and the brave actions of the Greeks during the Persian wars (490-479 BeE) and the Gauls' invasion of Delphi in 279 BeE, thereby equating the Romans with the earlier Hellenic defenders of the civilized world from the barbarian scourge. The Judean panegyrist of 1 Maccabees 8 also applauded Rome's defeat of the Gauls. While in 2 Maccabees 8.19-20, Judah reports that Judeans had once helped defeat a nearly invincible multitude of Gauls. The preservation of this episode in Judean collective memory only makes sense within the larger Hellenistic context, where victory over the Gauls, the barbarians par excellence of the period, meant saving the entire Oikoumene from its greatest collective foe. 118 "The practice began in the East, a symbolic deification. Roma represented and personified the res publica Romana. So the Greeks not only hailed the western power but conducted official worship in her honor. The city of Smyrna, so it is reported by Tacitus [Annales 4.56.1], was the first to erect a temple to urbs Roma in 195 ... The cult spread elsewhere in subsequent years." (Gruen, Hellenistic World and the Coming of Rome, 178) 119 As elsewhere (see Section II, n. 29), Josephus has transposed this text from the time of Hyrcanus I to that of Hyrcanus II. The senatus consultum (s.c.) contained in the Pergamene decree, allows us to correct Josephus' misread: it orders a Seleucid king Antiochus, son of Antiochus, to stop harming the Judeans, to return their fortresses, harbors and land, and to expel the garrison from Joppa, while calling for the Judeans to have full authority over their own ports (excepting the Ptolemaic Kingdom's exemption
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In the introduction to the decree, after the usual dating formula,120 the Pergamene magistrates declare that the Romans, according to ancestral practice, undertake various dangers "for the common safety of all mankind" (ulTep TTlS KOlVTlS cllTclVTWV av6pwlTwv aocpaAElas), eagerly working toward the goal of peace and happiness for their allies and friends, i.e. the Pergamenes and Judeans (14.247).121 In the closing section of the decree (14.252-55), we learn that the Judean leader Hyrcanus I was "a virtuous and generous man" who "benefits all mankind in common" (KOlVfj lTclVTas EVEpYETEI), and particularly those who approach him seeking aid. 122 The Pergamenes learned this, as they say, from Theodorus, spokesman of the Judean legation, but the important point is that they saw fit to include this complimentary profile in their decree, the language of which is quite similar to the praise they had earlier used to describe the Romans. The Pergamenes then declare that, being allies of the Romans, they would do all in their power to help fulfill the aims of the pro-Judean senatus consultum (14.252-53). They conclude by referring to Theodorus's request that they send a copy of the decree and envoys to Hyrcanus I, informing him of the earnest sentiment of the Pergamene people, and calling on him to safeguard and increase (ostensibly both his and the Judean people's) friendship for them, reminding him that the ancestors of the Pergamenes and the Judeans were also friends in the days of Abraham, the father of all Hebrews, as the public records show! (14.254-55).123 from export duties, due to its traditional alliance with Rome). The s.c. may refer to Antiochus IX Cyzicenus (ruled 114-95 BeE), the son of Antiochus VII Sidetes (ruled 139-129 BeE). However, the context better suits Antiochus VII Sidetes who conducted a successful campaign against Hyrcanus I in 135 BeE (the first year of Hyrcanus 1's rule, A.J. 13.236-48). If so, then either Josephus committed, or the archived copy of the decree contained, an additional error regarding Sidetes' surname, since the king is called Antiochus, son of Antiochus, while Sidetes was the son of Demetrius I (ruled 162-150 BeE). In any event, the Pergamene decree must refer to Hyrcanus I as there is no supportive context for Hyrcanus II's high-priesthood (63-40 BeE), when the Seleucid realm had ceased to exist and the Levant had come under the direct sway of Rome. 120 A.J. 14.247: ~ncplo\-la nEpya\-lTJVwv. ElTtlTPUTO:VEWS KpaTIlTlTOU \-lTJVOS nalOIOU lTPWT1;J yvw\-lTJ OTpaTTJYwv - "Decree of the Pergamenes. In the presidency of Cratippus, on the first of the month Daisios, a motion of the magistrates." 121 AJ. 14.247: ElTEt oi 'Pw\-lalol KaTaKoAou8ouVTES Tfj TWV lTpoyovwv o:ywyfj TOUS UlTEp Tils KOIViis cmo:vTwv av8pwlTwv aocpaAElas KIVOUVOUS avaOEXOVTaI, Kat CPIAOTI\-lOUVTal TOUS OU\-l\-lO:XOUS Kat CPIAOUS EV EUOal\-lOVI<;l Kat [3E[3al<;l KaTaOTiioal EipnV1;J ... 122 AJ. 14.252-53: o:mOESO:\-lE8a OE Kat ElTt TI1V [30UAnv Kat TnV EKKATJOlaV TOV 8EOOWpOV, ... Kat lTOITJOa\-lEVOU \-lETa lTOAAiis olTouoiis aUTou TOUS AOYOUS Kat TnV 'Y pKavou E\-lcpaVIoaVTOS apETnV Kat \-lEyaAmpuXlav,
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Clearly, Judea's interests in the Hellenistic Mediterranean benefited from her close ties to Rome. Judean emulation of Roman interaction within the Greek-speaking world was an intimately inter-related by-product, gaining her new kinsmen, friends, and allies as they remodeled their community in a way that made sense within the shared discourse of the Oikoumene. What is particularly striking about the emergence of Judea and Rome as active interlocutors within the shared, peer-polity discourse of the Oikoumene is that it served to radically expand the cultural borders of the Hellenistic World through the inclusion of communities that, despite their newfound cultural parity, still insisted on a certain innovative nonGreekness, which set them slightly apart; Aeneas was Trojan, not Greek; the Spartans and Judeans were kinsmen, but through the Judean patriarch Abraham. Rome and Judea created legitimate cultural space within the Hellenistic World on their own terms, consequently transforming this world, the Hellenistic Oikoumene, in a very significant 'fashion from the Classical Greek world that had come before. 124 Before concluding, an important analytical caveat remains to be expressed. Throughout this paper I have concentrated on making the case for Judean emulation of Rome with respect to Greek - non-Greek interactions within the Hellenistic Oikoumene. Consequently, I have emphasized the similarities between second century BCE Judea and Rome in their ongoing interactions with Greeks and Greekness, and have downplayed the significant differences between these two communities. From the outset, the figure of Arnaldo Momigliano has loomed large in my mind. Like him, I too have been impressed by the "strong Roman impact on the intellectual relations between Greeks and Jews or Celts or Iranians as soon as Roman power began to be felt outside Italy in the second century B.C."125 Unlike the broad sweep of his 1975 Alien Wisdom, however, I have included only a small number of sources outside of 1 and 2 Maccabees, Polybius and Cato, and I have only briefly mentioned the Celts, and ignored the Iranians entirely. My point has been rather to concentrate on a very brief time period: the mid-late second century BCE, Ti]V TOU nllETEpoU bnllou OTIOUbi]v Kat TIapaKaAEOOVTas OUVT11PEIV TE Kat aUSEIV mhov Ti]V TIPOS nllOs
124 Contra Shipley (Greek World after Alexander, 270), where we read that outside of Alexandria, "Greek paideia," for both Greeks and Hellenizing natives "meant above all the maintenance of Greekness, not the creation of a new hybrid." Shipley's work neglects any serious consideration of either the construction of communal identity in Hellenistic Judea and Rome or the significance of Polybius' Oikoumene: a Hellenistic world that not only included Rome, but existed as such under its stewardship. 125 Momigliano, Alien Wisdom, 6.
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and to isolate a particular project of Judean collective reinvention that was simultaneously tied up with the Judeans' striking emulation of Rome within a common Hellenistic discourse, amply demonstrating Momigliano 's assertion: "The influence of Rome on the minds of those who came into contact with it was quick and strong."126 At this stage of my narrative, I will allow Momigliano to provide us with a useful summary of the main differences between Judea and Rome. What accentuates ... Hellenistic civilization is the special role two foreign groups - Jews and Romans - came to play in it. The Jews basically remained convinced of the superiority of their beliefs and ways of life and fought for them. Yet they continuously compared their own ideas with Greek ideas, [and] made propaganda for their own beliefs, absorbing many Greek notions and customs in the process... The Romans never took their intellectual relations with Hellenism so seriously. They acted from a position of power and effortlessly preserved a strong feeling of their own identity and superiority. They paid the Greeks to teach them their wisdom and often did not even have to pay because they [the Greeks] were their slaves. However, by assimilating and making their own so many Greek gods, literary conventions, artistic forms, philosophical ideas and social customs, they put themselves and the Greeks in a unique reciprocal situation ... [They] made themselves the masters of the Greek-speaking world within two centuries. After that the distinction between Greek and Roman Hellenism remained valid, but there was no political barrier between the two. 127
The political disparity between Rome and Judea, and every other state of the Hellenistic World, after Rome's defeat of Macedon at Pydna in 168 BCE is obvious. Consequently, issues of identity, from the position of such overwhelming political-military dominance, were not as pressing for Rome as for the contemporaneous Judean ethnos-politeia. However, while the size, strength and wealth of Hasmonean Judea were nary a fraction of that created by Rome's imperialistic magnitude, it is precisely because of such patent disparity that we can better understand the Judeans' desire to use the Roman model as a roadmap for imperialist success and as a vehicle for a revamped sense of collective identity in a time before it became clear that Rome would no longer keep faith with its long-standing Levantine ally. Related to, but ultimately more striking than, the power differential itself, are the different approaches evinced in Rome and Judea regarding their respective heritages, qua historical communities. While Aeneas, qua Trojan, granted the Romans a unique place within the Hellenic legacy, he was still very much a part of the Hellenic past, per se, to which Romans willingly attached themselves. 128 The legacy of Abraham, on the other 126 Ibid., 6. 127 Ibid., 10-11. 128 The earliest recorded attempts to recover a sense of Roman mos maiorum - rooted for example, in the selfless patriotism of Cincinnatus and Horatio Coc1es - appear, for the most part, to come after and as a result of Rome's encounter with Greekness.
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hand, allowed Judeans to engage with other Hellenistic period groups, such as the Spartans and the Pergamenes, on co-equal terms, but Abraham also represented a pre-Hellenic, Israelite heritage that gave Judeans pride of place and made them the arbiters of communal authenticity,129 The continued primacy of the Israelite heritage in the eyes of Judean elites, throughout our time period and beyond, fostered the concurrent existence of a Jewish cultural core within the Oikoumene that measured the non-Jewish periphery by its own standards.130 Differences also remained between Roman and Greek Hellenism. But Romans were far less interested than Jews in the policing of cultural boundaries, and rarely failed to wed cultural innovation with military-political success and stabilization. Two centuries later, after the Hellenic-oriented Oikoumene had become the Roman Empire, the consequences, in turn, of Judean defense of their cultural difference via political-military means was to show once more the difference between Judea and Rome. But this is to leap ahead, for this was a Judea and Rome that did not yet exist in the second century BeE, and that, despite the disapproval of modern-day cntlcs of ancient imperialism,131 could not be foreseen by the authors of 1 and 2 Maccabees, caught up in the euphoria of a newly independent Judea and the dynamic reevaluation of communal identity that ensued.
Conclusion It is important to point out that while the particular project of communal reinvention reflected by 1 and 2 Maccabees and other sources did not
speak for all Judean elites of the time,132 it was at the very least a broad, complex sociopolitical and cultural phenomenon in which a wide circle of Judean elites participated, regardless of their particular association with the Hasmonean rulers. The broad-based nature of this project is demonstrated by the fact that 1 and 2 Maccabees emanate from different points along the 129 The Judeans inherited a sense of communal history and custom that indeed proved amenable to reinterpretation in a new environment, but that had first come into being visa-vis the earlier historical communities of the ancient Near East, such as Egypt, Assyria, and Babylon, not to mention the Philistines, Phoenicians, and other Canaanite groups. 130 The Hasmoneans claimed primacy through Abraham, Pinhas, Joshua, David, et al (1 Macc 2.51-60), and even though the Temple is revered and cared for by both Jew and Gentile (2 Maccabees 3.1-3), the Judeans are forbidden from participating in foreign cults: wearing tokens sacred to the Jamnians leads to death in battle (Ibid. 12.39-40). 131 See the pointed critiques of David Flusser, "Malkhut Roma be- 'Einei Beit Hashmona'i uve-Re 'i ha- 'Jsiyim" [Hebrew], Tsiyon 48 (1983): 149-176. 132 The second-century BeE book of Jubilees, for instance, follows a very different path, rejecting any legitimate interaction with non-Jews (see e.g. 15.31-32,22.16-23).
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Judean elite spectrum. While 2 Maccabees is certainly not anti-Hasmonean propaganda, as some claim,133 it does level unflattering remarks against Simon (2 Mace 10.18-23, 14.17), and by logical extension against his son John Hyrcanus and that line of the Hasmoneans, marking a difference of opinion vis-a.-vis the glowing portrait of both these rulers in 1 Maccabees. This should give us pause before we attempt to oversimplify matters about attitudes amongst Judean elites in the mid-late second century BeE. The Hasmoneans could tolerate such a potentially divergent stance reflected in 2 Maccabees since the intent of the circle behind that work still served their purposes admirably. 2 Maccabees has as its subject the glorified and harmoniously unified Judean body politic (the ethnospoliteia) loyal to its customs and laws, and willing to defend them to the death under the founding figure of the new dynasty, Judah Maccabee, whose attendant glorification in the work could only increase the sociopolitical and cultural capital of the Hasmonean house. The first half of 1 Maccabees, in turn, is dominated by Judah Maccabee's outstanding leadership, courage, and self-sacrifice, eulogizing his passing at 9.21 by way of David's lament from 2 Samuel 1.17-27. Judah has become another Jonathan, son of Saul, slain on Israel's heights in defense of his people. Judah Maccabee, as 1 Maccabees 8 tells us, the first of the Judean leaders to establish relations with Rome, is described in the concluding chapter of2 Maccabees (15.17, 30) in glowing terms, his words being "so noble and so effective in arousing one to virtue and awakening manliness in the souls of the young men .... He who had ever remained in body and soul the defender of his fellow citizens, he who had always cherished his youthful goodwill toward his countrymen. "134 Judah Maccabee, the panJudean hero, had come to represent all those Judean elites who, while looking at Rome over their shoulders, burst forth onto the scene of the Oikoumene, to claim their rightful place amongst their civilized peers.
133
Goldstein I Maccabees, 62-89; II Maccabees, 3-27, 71-83. napaKAT]SEVTES oE ("As they were encouraged by") ToTs louoou
134 2 Macc 15.17:
AOYOIS TTClvu KaAoTs Kal OUVal-lEVOIS ETI' apETf]v TIapopl-liiOOl Kal !.VUXas VEWV ETIaVOpWOOl; and 2 Macc 15.30: ... 0 KaS' aTIav OWl-laTI Kal !.VuxiJ TIpunaywvlOTf]S tl1TEP TWV TIOAITWV 0 Tf]V Tiis nAIKlas EuvOIav EiS OI-lOESVETs ("his fellow ethnos members") bla
Where Does Luke's Anti-Judaism Come from? JOHN
G.
GAGER
This paper is really not a paper' at all, but rather a footnote or two to an article published by Lloyd Gaston in a volume entitled Anti-Judaism in Early Christianity. Gaston's essay in this volume carries the title, "AntiJudaism and the Passion Narrative in Luke and Acts."l There are a number of aspects to Gaston's article that make it relevant to ,thy concern for the formation of early Christian identities. One attractive feature of Gaston's essay is that he wants us to look at anti-Judaism in Luke-Acts from the perspective of Lukan community- and identity-formation. When a community-forming story is told, the hearers naturally identify themselves with those characters who help them form their own self-understanding. The identification of friends and enemies of those characters is equally helpful. The enemies are those who define us negatively, what we should not be like and also help us to perceive contemporary threats to our identity.2
In short, Luke-Acts is about the identity-formation of a particular early Christian community. What Gaston does not emphasizeand what is now widely accepted as normativeis that Luke-Acts shows us the very first stage in the process of identity formation of a recognizably Christian community. Here I take two axioms as part of work in our field today: (1) The fact that the term "Christian" appears for the first time in the book of Acts. I realize of course that the term appears also at about the same time in 1 Peter (4: 16), in the letters of Ignatius and in the correspondence between Pliny and the Roman Emperor Trajanall of these to be dated no earlier than the first decades of the second century. My nominalist view here is that before we have the word we can't have the thing. (2) From this it follows that prior to the book of Acts (which I am inclined to date rather late, well into the second century) we are dealing with something that we cannot reasonably label as Christianity. Just to make myself perfectly clearin the Gospels of Mark, Matthew and John; in 1 Peter Richardson with David Granskou, eds., Anti-Judaism in Early Christianity, vol. I, (Waterloo, Ont., Canada: Published for the Canadian Corporation for Studies in Religion by Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1986), 127-153. 2 Lloyd Gaston, "Anti-Judaism and the Passion Narrative in Luke and Acts," in AntiJudaism in Early Christianity (ed. Richardson and Granskou), I, 128.
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the letters of Paul; in the book of Revelation; and in the Letter of James Gust to name the most obvious cases) we encounter forms of literature, practice, community and belief that are best designated as streams within Judaism of the first two centuries of the common era. Deviant perhaps, but Jewish nonetheless. As Lloyd Gaston,3 Anthony Saldarini,4 John W. Marshall, 5 Stanley Stowers, 6 and others have argued, there is no hint or trace of anti-Judaism in any of these texts and no sense of a departure from or a rejecting of Judaism. To be more precise, it is a fundamental category error to convert disputes with (real or imagined) Pharisees into the category of anti-Judaism. But now back to Gaston. His main point, in speaking of the formative moment in the emergence of Christian identity in Luke-Acts is that the key element, the indisputable center is anti-Judaism. Against othersmost notably Jacob JervelFGaston demonstrates that the overarching, or better the final (in both a literary and a religious sense) theme is that the Jews as a people killed Jesus 8 ; that Luke increases Mark's emphasis on the Pharisees as enemies of Jesus 9 ; and that by the end (Gaston sees a clear developmental theme in the two books) the Jewish people have finally been rej ected. Here I must add that Gaston is well aware of and takes full account of passages (especially in the early sections of both books) where the leaders of the Jews are represented as hostile to Jesus and Paul, while the peopleand in some passages the Phariseesare seen as sympathetic. While these passages have been treated by some as counter-evidence to the view of Luke-Acts as decisively anti-Jewish, Gaston deftly integrates them into his overall picture. Speaking in particular of the pro-Pharisaic passages (Luke 15:26 and Acts 23), he describes them as part of Luke's apologetic message. "Just as Josephus can hope to win respect for himself by claiming (falsely) that he had been a Pharisee since his 19 th year (Vita 10-12), so Luke tries to vindicate Paul by claiming that he had been a Pharisee since his youth under Gamaliel and to vindicate Christianity by showing that on occasion Pharisees had defended the truth of its message." "But," he Lloyd Gaston, Paul and the Torah (Vancouver: U. of British Columbia Press, 1987). Anthony Saldarini, Matthew's Christian-Jewish Community (Chicago: U. of Chicago Press 1994). 5 John W. Marshall, Parables of War: Reading John's Jewish Apocalypse (Waterloo, Ont.: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2001). 6 Stanley Stowers, A Rereading of Romans: Justice, Jews, and Gentiles (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994) 7 Jacob Jervell, Luke and the People of God; a New Look at Luke-Acts (Minneapolis: Augsburg Pub. House, 1972). 8 Richardson and Granskou, eds., Anti-Judaism in Early Christianity, I, 129. 9 Ibid., 141. 3
4
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concludes, "if the Pharisees are friends of Paul and the Christians, their enemies are simply the Jews." 10 N ow I would like to come to my footnotes to Gaston's thoroughly convincing argument. And I want to do so by asking a few simple, perhaps even naIve questions. Why is it that Luke's effort at self-definition and legitimation takes the form of anti-Judaism? Why is it that the Jews, and their religion, function as the negative poles in this process, those we should not be like? For the most part the answers to these simple questions have been taken as given. Who else but the Jews could have served as negative role models in the formation of early Christian identity? And so also Gaston: "Luke's predominantly Gentile Christian community finds itself called into question by local Jews who call Paul an apostate from Judaism." And a bit later, "The status of his community as a legitimate people of god is under attack by Jewish neighbors ... "11 Now comes my first question. How can we reconcile the center of Luke's anti-Jewish apologetic (Paul) with Gaston's emphasis on "local Jews" and "Jewish neighbors" as the source or spark for Luke's anti-Jewish, supersessionist scenario? Let me fill in the story here very briefly. The back story to the central role of Paul in the book of Acts is that he was very much up for grabs in the early second century; famously, Tertullian labels him the "apostolus haereticorum" (Adversus Marcionem 3.5.4). It is against this reputation, this contested status, that Luke strives mightily to bring him into his camp. But the question I must ask here is: "Among whom was Paul up for grabs?" In particular, who had an interest in rejecting him as a false apostle, one who had fundamentally misunderstood the gospel of Jesus? Who would have been most interested in resisting Luke's antiJudaism: rejection of the Jerusalem Temple, of the observances in the Mosaic Torah, and finally of the Jews as the chosen people of God? But now I want to come back to my naIve questions. (1) Where, concretely, do we find this cluster of issues and names in the world of Luke and his community? Among Jews and in Jewish texts produced, in Gaston's words, by Jewish neighbors, or somewhere else? (2) Does it perhaps make better sensehere relying on work done in the sociology of conflictto look closer to Luke than to his Jewish neighbors? And (3) would it have been a matter of grave concern for Luke's Jewish neighbors, at this early date, that a tiny group of Gentiles was proclaiming an obscure Galilean prophet as their messiah and redeemer? To the first question, the answer now seems obvious. It is not among "other" Jews, those outside the Jesus-movement, but rather among widespread, well-attested and vigorous groups of Jesus-followers, whom 10 11
Ibid., 136f. Ibid., 137, 139.
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we may callif somewhat anachronisticallyJewish-Christians (Christian Jews?), that we find precisely this cluster of ideas and names: Paul the arch-villain, the illegitimate apostle, who shamefully and mistakenly repudiated Israel and the Torah; Peter, falsely accused of having turned his back on Jesus (Mark) and the observances of the Torah; and those "false" followers of Jesus who reject Israel and the Mosaic commandments and claim that the old Israel has been replaced by Gentiles as the new people of God. This cluster of themes is amply revealed in the letters of Paul, in the gospels of Mark and Matthew, and in the book of Acts itself. From the very beginning of the Jesus-movement and in an unbroken chain across many centuries Paul remained the arch-villain par excellence. And the story in Acts 11 is a transparent effort to claim that Peter abandoned his earlier observance of kashrut, when, as with Paul, the voice of god enters the scene. Here, too, the back story, against which the legend in Acts 11 is directed, must have been a view of Peter as fully observant of the Mosaic commandments, a view abundantly attested in the later PseudoClementines. My favorite text here is a passage from the apocryphal Letter of Peter to James (Hom. 2.3f.), which serves as introduction to the PseudoClementine Homilies: Peter complains angrily to James that "certain people among the Gentiles have sought to reject my Torah-based teaching (kerugma nomimon), accepting instead [in Peter's name] a silly and antiTorah teaching of the enemy [=Paul], as if I myself thought such a thingGod forbid." And immediately "Peter" turns to the standard prooftext for all Torah-observant Jewish-Christians, Matt4ew 5: 17f ("Do not think that I have come to abolish the Torah ... '). Here I can only conclude that this Ps-Clementine text, dating from the late second- or early third century, clearly repudiates the canonical book of Acts and in particular its portraits of Peter and Paul; it holds Acts to be nothing less than a distortion of historical reality and a perversion of the true faith. But my real point here is that we should not look to Jews outside the Jesus-movement as the location of these ideas but rather to early JewishChristians: they repudiated Paul, as we know from his own letters; they claimed the authority of Peter, as we know from Acts and Matthew; they insisted on the continued validity of the commandments, as we know from Matthew 5:17; they held that Gentiles could become followers of Jesus but only by following in the path of Israel; and they wanted no part of Luke's view that Gentiles had replaced Jews as the people of God. Once again, following sociologists of conflict, who tell us always to look closest to home to find the greatest threats to our self-understanding and identity, I wish to argue that it was these early Jewish-Christians who had attackedrepeatedly and energetically - Luke's community and his claims of legitimacy. And as a footnote to this footnote, I would add that Luke's
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Gentile community would have been of little more than passing interest to the well-established and long-standing Jewish communities in the Mediterranean world of the first and second centuries. And if this is the path we should follow, if these are Luke's dangerous neighbors, we can now better understand why it is that his apologetic counter-attack takes the form of anti-Judaism, and how it is that antiJudaism became the center of this earliest expression of Christian identity. Now the dynamic of the counter-attack becomes clear. For it is JewishChristians, within the Jesus-movement, not any Jews outside, whose views are targeted in Luke's apology, whose essential elements are the following: o o o o
Paul is the apostle above all others, called to his mission by God; Paul is converted from Judaism and becomes a Christian apostle; Paul repudiates the Law and the Jewish people; Peter is relegated to a secondary role, no doubt because he was a highly contentious figure and widely seen as an enemy of Paul; o the Jews reject the gospel of Jesus; o Gentile believers are the new people of God.
In other words, Luke seeks to undermine the legitimacy of his JewishChristian opponents and thus to legitimatize his own positionby delegitimizing Judaism and the Jewish people. Or, to put it somewhat differently, while the immediate target of Luke's polemic is JewishChristianity, the ultimate victim is Judaism itself. In broader terms, it is a conflict within the Jesus-movement, an internal dispute between bitterly opposed factions, that generates the ideology of anti-Judaism as the central pillar of Luke's Christian identity. Our most dangerous enemies are always those who stand closest to us. As a final note, I would add that the implications of what I have been arguing are quite far-reaching. For if Luke uses the Jews as a category to think with, using an "external" target to deal with internal conflicts, we must consider the possibility that controversy stories in the other gospels might equally mask hostilities entirely within the circle of Jesus-believing Jews. That is, controversies represented in the gospels as taking place between Jesus and his followers on the one side and various (other) Jewish opponents on the other (Pharisees, scribes, priests, Sadducees) are in fact really disputes internal to the Jesus-movement that have been projected outward. And in later times, too, whether in acts of the martyrs, or the acts of the apostles, or Christian homilies, we may need to re-Iocate the engine of Christian antiJudaism not in any external dialogue between Christians and Jews but rather in those dangerous ones who persistently and persuasively undermined the legitimacy of Gentile Christianity by their refusal to adopt its ideology of anti-Judaism.
Who Were the First Christians? Jews, Gentiles and the Christianoi PHILIPPA TOWNSEND
The earliest extant references to "Christianity" (Christianismos) are in the letters of Ignatius of Antioch, from about 108 CEo Ignatius places this Christianismos in juxtaposition to Ioudaismos, as its superior rival and successor "It is absurd to talk about Jesus Christ and to judaize. For Christianity did not place its faith in Judaism, but Judaism in Christianity" (Ignatius, Letter to the Magnesians X). By the beginning of the second century, it seems, at least some followers of Jesus understood themselves to be part of a movement that was independent of - and superior to Judaism. In this article, I focus on the origin and development of the name "Christian" (Christianos) in the hope that a fresh look at why and how it was coined, and to whom it was applied, may provide some new insights into the complex question of how "Christians" emerged from the interactions of Jews and Gentiles in the first century. Underlying this exploration is the belief that naming is far from a superficial process, and that names do not merely label existing groups, but also sometimes shape new ones. l The issue of how we should understand the relationships between Jews and Christians, or Judaism and Christianity, in the first centuries of our era is the subject of much debate. 2 Questions remain about whether the name 1 I am very grateful to Eduard Iricinschi and Holger Zellentin as well as to the participants in the Princeton workshop and conference on "Making Selves and Marking Others: Heresy and Self-definition in Late Antiquity" for their helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper. John Gager has transformed my understanding of Paul's mission and the origins of Christianity and this paper would not have been written without him; I am particularly happy to have the opportunity to acknowledge such a debt in the year of his retirement. I wish also to thank Elaine Pagels for many fruitful suggestions and discussions on the topic of this paper; and Peter Brown and Susan Wessel for their valuable comments. Most of all, I thank Nasser Zakariya, in conversation with whom many of the ideas in this article were initially developed. 2 For recent and stimulating examples, see John Marshall, Parables of War: Reading John's Jewish Apocalypse, Studies in Christianity and Judaism 10 (Waterloo, Ont.: Wilfred Laurier University Press, 2001); Adam Becker and Annette Yoshiko Reed, eds., The Ways that Never Parted: Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle
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"Christian" has any useful application with respect to the first century CE, since there is no undisputed attestation to it before the second; and relatedly, whether it only makes sense to talk about Christians in distinction from Jews, or whether such formulations as "Jewish Christianity" (or "Christian Judaism") are useful. 3 Recent scholarship has emphasized the need to understand such figures as Jesus, Paul, the author of the Gospel of Matthew and John of Patmos within a Jewish context, rather than against a Jewish background, and has highlighted the continuing interactions between Jews and Christians throughout Late Antiquity that complicate any simple model of separation. 4 However, this necessary correction of perspective should not draw our attention away from the significant role that Gentile identifications played in the formulation of Christian self-conceptions within the first and second century. In fact, we have evidence from very early on of groups of Jesusfollowers, however marginal, who did not consider themselves to be Jews. In this paper, I shall argue that the name "Christians" (Christianoi) was coined in the first century to designate precisely such a subset of Gentile Jesus-followers; it therefore had a limited, but significant, first century application. Only later, I shall argue, did the word come to acquire a normative force, as those who viewed themselves as continuing the tradition of the Christianoi came to dominate the discourse of heresy and orthodoxy. Bringing these first century groups back into focus will help to illuminate aspects of the process by which some Jesus-followers in the early second century could come to talk about Judaism and Christianity as separate and mutually exclusive categories. My focus in this paper is on the identifications of first century Jesusfollowers by themselves and their contemporaries. I do not attempt to categorize them according to the characteristics they display (e.g. observance or non-observance of purity or food laws, messianism, sacrificial practice) Such traits cannot be classified as Jewish or Christian Ages (Tiibingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003); Judith M. Lieu, Christian Identity in the Jewish and Graeco-Roman World (Oxford: OUP, 2004); Daniel Boyarin, Border Lines: The Partition of Judaeo-Christianity (Philadelphia: U. of Pennsylvania Press, 2004). 3 See Marshall, Parables of War, 68 ff. Marshall's discussion of the term "Christian" is part of his overall argument that the New Testament book of Revelation should be understood as a Jewish, rather than a Christian text. Marshall makes a strong case that "the term 'Christian' cannot be universalized for the movements surrounding or merely including Jesus" in the first or early second century, particularly insofar as it implies a distinction from Judaism (ibid.75). While I agree that it is misleading to apply the term indiscriminately to first century Jesus followers, I shall argue that its use is appropriate to designate precisely those groups who were always distinct from Jews. 4 See, for example, Judith Lieu, " 'The Parting of the Ways': Theological Construct or Historical Reality?" JSNT 56 (1994): 101-19; Becker and Reed eds., The Ways that Never Parted.
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independently of the context of meaning within which they were being deployed; nor do they determine self-identification. (The same Scriptures can be either Jewish or Christian in the mind of the person reading them.) Moreover, just as participation in certain practices that we might consider Jewish, for example, does not presuppose a "Jewish" self-identification, so too a "Gentile" self-conception does not exclude extensive interaction with, or influence by, Jews. The author of the Acts of the Apostles informs us that "It was at Antioch that the disciples were first called Christians (Christianoi)" (Acts 11 :26).5 However, despite its apparently eastern provenance, scholars have frequently noted that the word is not Greek in form, but Latinate; the Greek Christianos / Christianoi seems to be transliterated from the Latin Christianus / Christiani. As Elias Bickerman has explained: [The word] is formed by the addition of a Latin loan suffix - ianus. In Latin this suffix produced proper names of the type Marcianus and, on the other hand, derivatives from the name of a person, which referred to his belongings, like fundus Narcissianus, or, by extension, to his adherents, Ciceroniani. 6
Many scholars have sought parallels and patterns that might explain the Latinate "-ianus" ending. Erik Peterson has suggested that it was coined by outsiders on the model of Herodiani.? Bickerman conjectured that the Jesus-followers themselves formed the name after Latinate models they had heard, to express the Semitic idea that they were agents of the anointed king; and further that the reason that the term is found so rarely among very early "Christian" writings is that it was a title directed towards the outside world; among themselves, the believers preferred to address each other as adelphoi, hagioi etc. 8 Baruch Lifshitz, also argued that the name originated within the community itself, when the mission of Barnabas and Paul in Antioch changed the character of the group by including many Gentile converts; the believers at Antioch then found the need to distinguish themselves from the Jews whose law they did not follow, and they chose their distinctive messianism after which to name themselves. 9 5 There is little consensus about the date of Acts, with speculation ranging from the 60s to around 130. I would incline towards the later of those dates, with Marshall Parables of War, 70. 6 Elias Bickerman, "The Name of Christians," HTR 42 (1949): 116. 7 Erik Peterson, "Christianus," Miscellanea Giovanni Mercati, VoLl (Vatican: Biblioteca Vaticana, 1946): 355-72. 8 Bickerman, "The Name of Christians." Bickerman accepts the evidence of Acts as reliable, but emphasizes the official connotations of the verb chrematisai and also argues that it should be translated actively, not passively as it traditionally has been; thus, the passage in Acts should be read as "the disciples first styled themselves / took on the title of Christians at Antioch." 9 Baruch Lifshitz, "L'origine du nom des chretiens," VC 16 (1982): 65-70.
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Justin Taylor, on the other hand, has argued that the original Christiani were messianic Jews, marked out for punishment by the Roman authorities for causing riots in Antioch.lO Harold Mattingly has constructed a specific model for the development of the term, claiming that a hostile pagan population mockingly named the Christiani after Nero's claque of Augustiani. Christiani, he argues, was the name for those who sycophantically sang the praises of "Christos" rather than Nero'! 1 How are we to navigate all these differing interpretations of the evidence? The argument of scholars including Taylor and Peterson that the Latin Christiani was originally coined by the Roman authorities in the Greek-speaking provinces certainly has much to recommend it. Not only is it consonant with the narrative in Acts; it also helps to explain why a Latin term should have entered into Greek Christian discourse and eventually have achieved unrivalled popularity, while no comparable Greek name is attested, as well as the particular association of this name with criminality in the eyes of the government. 12 I suggest however that there is a way of further explaining the precise formulation of the term and the specific circumstances of its development, which have traditionally proved so puzzling. In two of his epistles, Paul uses the term hoi tou christou (lit. "those of the Christ") to describe the people to whom he is writing. In 1 Corinthians 15:23, he describes the resurrection from the dead of hoi tou christou; in Galatians 5 :24 he tells his readers that, as hoi tou christou, they have crucified the flesh. And an interesting parallel occurs at the beginning of 1 Corinthians, where he upbraids his readers for their quarreling: "I mean this, that one of you says, 'I am of Paul,' another, 'I am of Apollos,' another, 'I am of Cephas,' 10 Justin Taylor, "Why Were the Disciples First Called Christians at Antioch?" RB 101 (1994): 75-94. See Peterson, "Christianus"; Glanville Downey, A History of Antioch in Syria (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1961) et al. 11 Harold Mattingly, "The Origin of the Name Christiani," JTS 9 (1958): 26-37; cf. Adolf von Harnack, who also suggests the "Christiani" were named by the pagan population. Tacitus is sometimes cited as attributing the naming to the ordinary people at Rome: " ... quos ... vulgus Christianos appellabat" (Annals XV.44). However, I am convinced by von Harnack's explanation, based on his study of the Tacitus MS., that the original reading here was "Chrestianos." Tacitus' point, then, is that the common people misnamed the sect "Chrestiani, " whereas, as Tacitus goes on to imply, we (the educated) know them to be "Christiani"; Adolf von Harnack, Die Mission und Ausbreitung des Christenturns in den Ersten Drei Jahrhunderten, Erster Band (Leipzig: J.e. Hinrichs, 1906), 347-48. Furthermore, even if the traditional reading of Tacitus is accepted, the passage does not make the claim that the common people at Rome invented the term Christiani, only that they employed it, which need not contradict the narrative of Acts. 12 As Taylor points out ("Why Were the Disciples First Called Christians at Antioch?" 94). Particularly interesting examples are 1 Peter 4:16 and Pliny's Letter 96 to Trajan.
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another, 'I am of Christ' " (ego men eimi paulou, ego de apollo, ego de kepha, ego de christou, 1 Cor 1: 12). Paul had explicitly encouraged his assemblies, then, to think of themselves as hoi tou christou; and the formulation was obviously popular enough, at least among the factious Corinthians, to spawn variants, as members of the assembly there pledged rival allegiances.13 As Bickerman has remarked, Paul's phrase hoi tou christou has similar connotations of dependence or possession to the Latinate Christianoi. Bickerman simply notes this as further evidence for his thesis that the Jesus followers in Antioch named themselves Christianoi to announce to the outside world that "they were agents, representatives of the Messiah."14 However, the implications of the difference in formulation are worth exploring further. What would the formulation hoi tou christou have suggested to outsiders who heard it? This kind of genitive construction in Greek denotes the relation of child to parent, wife to husband or inferior to superior; it implies some relationship of kinship, adherence or dependence. Paul uses a similar formulation just before the passage quoted above to refer to "Chloe's people" (hoi Chloes): presumably her slaves or the members of her household. Its usage in the following sentence is slightly different, apparently denoting adherents or followers of different spiritual leaders, Christ and Paul included. The curious but uninitiated observer - especially one with an eye out for sedition - would quite reasonably perceive people who described themselves as hoi tou christou to be partisans of this Christos .15 And in relaying this information back to the Roman authorities, how would he render their self-descriptive phrase (literally untranslatable into Latin, due to the lack of a definite article)? It is likely that he would use an ending that conveyed the same connotations of slavery, dependence or adherence as the Greek genitive construction. He would call them Christiani. I suggest, then, that the Latin term Christiani, was neither entirely generated from within the community nor simply imposed from the outside. Rather, it was coined by the Roman authorities as a Latin translation of these people's own Greek self-description. In the course of 13 Paul sharply condemns such alternate usage; in his mind, the only acceptable allegiance is the one that unifies the members of the ekklesia under Christ: "Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Were you baptized into the name of Paul?" (1 Cor 1: 13) No; the Corinthians are "of Christ," not "of Paul" or any other apostle. 14 Bickerman "The Name of Christians," 123. 15 No doubt the identification of the individual, Christos, however vague, with a criminal who was executed under Pontius Pilate would also have been common currency, or at least easily established information. Cf. Tacitus, Annales XV.44: "Auctor nominis eius Christus Tiberio imperitante per procuratorem Pontium Pilatum supplicio adfectus erat."
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time, these people re-appropriated the name by which they had become known to others, as a crystallization of their own self-descriptive phrase. I shall return later to a discussion of how this process of naming was related to developments in their sense of identity. First, however, it is important to clarify to whom the term was applied. There are two main theories about this issue in the scholarship. One is that the first Christiani were Jewish Jesus-following messianists. The other is that the term was coined when an infusion of Gentiles into the mainly Jewish Jesus-movement necessitated the invention of a name that would distinguish this sect from the Jewish "mother religion"; this new hybrid community of Jews and Gentiles became fused into a third entity: the Christians. I shall argue that neither theory provides a fully satisfactory explanation of the phenomenon. The most detailed case for the thesis that the original Christiani were Jews is made by Justin Taylor. He argues that the name must have been coined by the Romans to mark out Jewish Jesus-following troublemakers in Antioch, who, according to Taylor, were responsible for the riots among Jews that apparently took place there under Gaius. However, I find his proposition unconvincing. Firstly, the evidence for disturbances among Antiochian Jews in 39/40 does not give any indication that Jesus-followers were involved. Taylor cites the Byzantine chronicler John Malalas as his main source. According to Malalas, trouble began among circus factions and then spread through the city: "The Antiochian Greeks fought in the streets with the Jews who lived there, killed a great many of them and burned down their synagogues."16 Taylor links this passage to a remark in Eusebius' Chronicon that in the same year (the third year of Gaius' reign) Peter, having founded the church at Antioch, left for Rome; and to another remark from Isidore of Seville, according to which the name of the Christians first arose through the preaching of Peter at Antioch. Taking all these passages together, Taylor draws the conclusion that the name Christianoi must have arisen in connection with riots among the Jews in Antioch, which were caused by Christian missionary work there, and which forced the church leaders to leave Antioch for Rome. 17 This argument seems rather tenuous. Even if we were to accept the reports of the sixth-century Malalas as reliable, there is no reason to associate the disturbances between Jews and Greeks with Christian missionary propaganda; unconnected and probably inaccurate references to Peter's leaving Antioch for Rome do not necessarily imply that the
16 Malalas PO XCVII, 373-375, cited in Taylor, "Why Were the Disciples First Called Christians at Antioch?" 87. 17 Taylor, "Why Were the Disciples First Called Christians at Antioch?" 89-91.
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apostles were involved in any kind of trouble in Antioch. 18 The fact that previous scholars have taken Malalas' report to refer to Christians seems to reflect a common tendency to see every reference to first-century Jews as somehow related to Christianity. In fact, there could have been any number of reasons for disturbances among Jews during this time. 19 More significantly, the scenario Taylor depicts, in which Jesusfollowing Jews from outside Antioch came and stirred up messianic, nationalistic fervor among their fellow Jews within the city, would have been unlikely to have prompted the Romans into inventing a name to mark out the troublemakers. When Jews "caused trouble" in the cities of the empire, the Roman authorities did not generally make fine distinctions about which particular sub-sect was responsible. Certainly, "rebellious" or nationalistic behavior among the Jewish community would hardly have been sufficiently unusual or unprecedented to puzzle the provincial elite into the kind of investigations required to single out "Christ-partisans." A famously intriguing line of Suetonius provides some insight into the perspective of the Roman elite with respect to Jewish Jesus-followers in the first century. It refers to the expulsion of the Jews from Rome under Claudius: "Since the Jews constantly made disturbances at the instigation of Chrestus, he expelled them from Rome."20 This passage has generally been taken to refer to disturbances between Jewish Christians and other Jews over the proclamation of Jesus as the Messiah. 21 What is interesting, then, is that we have here an example of exactly what Taylor suggests happened in Antioch: Jewish messianists causing disturbances in the city. And how did the Roman authorities react? Far from seeking out and
18 Taylor himself admits that "the date is too early for Peter himself since he was still in Jerusalem when Agrippa I was ruler of Judea ... (cf. Acts 12.1fO," 90. For a discussion of the problematic nature of Malalas' evidence, see Magnus Zetterholm, The Formation of Christianity in Antioch: A Social-Scientific Approach to the Separation between Judaism and Christianity (London: Routledge, 2003), 114-17. 19 Taylor himself provides two of them: the decision of Gaius to set up his statue in the temple at Jerusalem in 39-40, and the mistreatment of Agrippa I in Alexandria and the following pogrom there (Taylor, 87, citing Downey, A History of Antioch in Syria, 192-5). 20 Iudaeos impulsore Chresto assidue tumultuantes Roma expulit. Suetonius, Divus Claudius 25.4. 21 We should perhaps be cautious about assuming a connection with Jesus followers here, although, considering how frequently Christus and Chrestus seem to be confused by outsiders in ancient sources, it is not unreasonable to imagine that something similar has happened in this case. It seems likely that this is indeed a distorted reference to messianic fervor among Jews in Rome. See H. Dixon Slingerland, Claudian Policymaking and the Early Imperial Repression of Judaism at Rome (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1997),203 ff. for the argument against taking Suetonius' Chrestus as Jesus.
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categorizing a particular sub-sect of the Jews, they expelled the Jews en masse from Rome. Taylor's further point that "the name Christianoi, and the name Christos which it presupposes, cannot be explained apart from a Jewish background of belief in and expectation of the Messiah"22 is in one sense undeniable. However, it does not help to prove his thesis, since we know that Paul and his comrades were tirelessly spreading the doctrine of Jesus as Christos to Gentiles across the empire. In fact, out of 529 instances of the word Christos in the New Testament, 379 occur in the writings of Paul, the "apostle to the Gentiles. "23 However imperfectly these Gentiles may have understood the concept of the Messiah, the term Christos was without doubt central to their conception of their community. In fact, the implications of the hypothesis that the term Christiani emerged as a translation of Pau1's phrase hoi tou christou, suggest that the name was first used to categorize exactly this type of Pauline community in the provinces. And what was distinctive about such communities that might explain why they in particular were marked out by the authorities as a recognizable, and therefore namable, group was precisely that they comprised former "pagans," rather than Jews. In this respect, I agree with von Harnack, who claimed long ago that "The name 'Christians' is the title of the Gentile Christians" since an intra-Jewish movement would not have concerned pagans.24 Specifically, these were not pagans who converted to Judaism (as many Gentile Jesus-followers surely did) nor Gentiles with some interest in synagogue participation on an individual basis; such people would have been recognizable figures in the ancient world. 25
22 Taylor "Why Were the Disciples First Called Christians at Antioch?" 94. 23 Gerhard Kittel and Friedrich Gerhard, eds., Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (trans. G. Bromiley; Grand Rapids: W.B. Eerdmans, 1985),528. 24 Harnack, Mission und Ausbreitung, 346. 25 Note that the Pauline Gentiles would have appeared quite different from most "God-fearers" to the extent that they formed coherent communities, rather than merely involving themselves with synagogues on an individual or occasional basis. There has been much scholarly debate about the extent of Gentile involvement in synagogues in the ancient world, and particularly about the existence and prevalence of "God-fearers." I am somewhat persuaded by Judith Lieu's skepticism regarding the amount of work that this category is made to do in New Testament scholarship. Lieu suggests that "[Scholars] need the God-fearers both to establish continuities leading into the Christian church - it was from this group of synagogue adherents that the earliest Christians were drawn - and to demonstrate the fuzziness of first-century ideas of being a Jew - thus Christian redefinition falls within this internal debate" ("The Parting of the Ways," 17). I agree with her that the success of Paul's mission can be explained without assuming his audience had been "prepared" by previous synagogue attendance; in fact "Paul himself, who notoriously fails to mention the synagogue in his letters, seems to assume that his
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Rather, the evidence of Paul's letters suggests that the assemblies he founded consisted of "pagans" who understood themselves to have been brought into a new relationship with Israel, and with the God of Israel, through the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus. As John Gager and others have argued, Paul believed, in line with certain Jewish apocalyptic traditions, that the righteous among the Gentiles must be brought into justification before the eschaton. Through the death of Christ, the Gentiles had been given their own way to salvation, which supplemented - without replacing - that of the Jews. It was therefore unnecessary for non-Jews to become circumcised and follow laws set in place through God's special covenant with Israel; in fact, it implied a complete misunderstanding of God's plan for the nations. These were the basic teachings on which Paul based his network of convert assemblies. 26 We should not assume that such communities as Paul's were representative of all or even most Jesus-groups in the first century. We know from Galatians, for example, that there were Jesus-following apostles and teachers who believed it was necessary for Gentiles to be circumcised, and perhaps to obey the Jewish law to its full extent if they were to be true disciples of Jesus. We cannot be sure how many adherents they had independently, but we do know that they were attempting to change the practices of Paul's own foundation assemblies in Galatia and perhaps elsewhere. In fact, Paul and his associates were probably in a minority in their understanding of Jesus' role, and its implications for Gentiles Paul's assertion that his gospel comes directly from divine revelation, rather than from men, is a testament to its idiosyncrasy27 and his views brought him into conflict with those who had known Jesus personally when he was alive. Nevertheless, he was persistent in his mISSIOn.
The groups that Paul and his associates established across the Empire would surely have attracted hostile attention from their neighbors and perhaps from the authorities early on. They would (ideally, at least) have ceased to participate in such forms of social interaction as cult meals and pagan sacrifices, and begun to engage instead in exclusive and secretive meetings. If they had been Jews, such behavior would scarcely have served to distinguish them in the eyes of outsiders; after all, Jews already had their own religious gatherings and refrained from pagan cultic activity. But such unusual changes in behavior among Gentiles could not have failed to inspire suspicious curiosity. It makes sense to conjecture, then, that it was Gentile audience are just that, Gentile" ("Parting," 35); see also Judith Lieu, "The Race of the God-fearers," JTS 46 (1995): 483-501. 26 See John Gager, Reinventing Paul (Oxford: OUP, 2000). 27 Galatians 1: 11-12.
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this type of Gentile Jesus-followers that was first marked out by the authorities. Another incident in Rome, mentioned by Suetonius and reported in detail by Tacitus supports this interpretation: the persecution of the Christiani by Nero.28 According to Tacitus, Nero seized on a group unpopular with the people for their "crimes" and "hatred of the human race," and used them as convenient scapegoats for the great fire at Rome. Most discussions of these two events under consecutive emperors Claudius's expulsion of the Jews and the Neronian persecution - pass over the fact that such very different responses were generated by what is assumed to be the same phenomenon, that of "Christianity." But in fact this is a problem that requires explanation. Why did Claudius deal with "Christianity" by driving the Jews out of Rome, and Nero by hunting out the Christiani? I suggest that the two emperors were dealing with different groups of people. Claudius was suppressing messianist Jews, while Nero was harassing Jesus-following Gentiles. John Marshall makes the point that little effort has been put into considering how Christians would have been distinguishable from Jews at the time of the "Neronian persecution."29 It is a problem worth taking seriously, though we do not need to draw Marshall's conclusion that there could have been no way to distinguish them, and that we can therefore dismiss the evidence of both Tacitus and Suetonius as merely "the historians' retrospect." Marshall's implication that the persecution was of Jews (in general) rather than of Christians. However, it seems unlikely that Tacitus would consciously substitute Christians for Jews in his account. If his intention was to embellish the story to illustrate further Nero's cruelty, he would surely not choose the Christiani as its victims, since he obviously shares the general hatred of them; in fact, he has to make a very circuitous argument to show that however bad the sect was, Nero still doesn't deserve any respect for trying to eradicate it. 30 While I agree ultimately with Marshall, then, that the authorities of Nero's day would have little ability, and still less incentive, to distinguish Jesus-following groups within Judaism from other Jews, this insight does not absolve us from engaging with the evidence of the Roman historians.
28 Tacitus, Annales 15; cf. Suetonius, Nero 16. 29 Marshall, Parables of War, 69 ff. 30 Marshall's argument that the references to "Christi ani" in Tacitus, Suetonius and Pliny prove only that the category was familiar to the elite is also unfounded. According to Tacitus, Nero picked on the "Christiani" precisely because they were hated by the populace; and Pliny (Letter 96) writes to Trajan that he is overwhelmed by the number of denunciations of "Christiani" he is receiving from their neighbors, who were presumably mainly common people.
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As far back as the nineteenth century, J. B. Lightfoot made a persuasive case that "It is ... highly improbable that [Tacitus '] account of the persecution of the Christians under Nero is a violent anachronism." 31 However, the convincing reasons for taking Tacitus' account seriously led many historians (including Lightfoot) to conclude that by the time of Nero, the two "religions," Judaism and Christianity, must have been distinct. In the light of more recent scholarship that has demonstrated the inadequacy of such models of a "parting of the ways," it is understandable why Marshall and others want to resist this conclusion, and emphasize instead how unclear the boundaries still were in the first century. In a recent monograph, for example, Magnus Zetterholm attempts to account for the evidence that the Christiani were already distinguishable in Nero's time without positing an early split of Christians from Jews. He suggests that the Christiani constituted the members of a particular synagogue in Rome; their name was simply an intra-Jewish designation that distinguished them from other synagogue communities in the city: " ... Synagogues could be given names according to different principles. That a messianic Jewish community would be given a name by other Jews that manifested this is quite natural and does not imply any break with Judaism - rather the opposite."32 However, this theory still does not explain how a particular synagogue community should have become so distinctive to - and so particularly despised by - non-Jewish Romans. Zetterholm cites Tacitus' comment that the Christiani displayed a "hatred for the human race" as further evidence that they must have been Jews, since this was a common anti-Jewish slur. But I would argue that Tacitus' use of such language actually supports the opposite case; it suggests that this group shared, from the perspective of outsiders, many of the "objectionable" characteristics of Jews; yet in spite of such similarities, they were nevertheless distinguishable. I suggest that it is possible to accept the convincing historical evidence of Tacitus and Suetonius, while at the same time resisting simplistic models of a "split" between Christianity and Judaism, if we take seriously the oft-repeated scholarly truism that there were many different Jesusfollowing groups and individuals in the first century. Accepting the idea 31 J.B. Lightfoot, The Apostolic Fathers, Part II, vol. 1 (New York: MacMillan and Co., 1889-90), 9-10. The reasons he gives in support of his case are numerous. First, Tacitus shows no signs of confusing Jews and Christians; second, the historian uses the past tense (appellabat) when he writes that the populace "called" the group Christians; third, even if Tacitus was just a child when the persecution took place, he would have grown up among people who had witnessed it; fourth, both Tacitus and Suetonius treat Christianity as a new "religion"; and finally, Jews had a powerful advocate at Nero's court in the person of Poppaea. 32 Zetterholm, The Formation ojChristianity in Antioch, 94.
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that some of them may have been distinct from Jews, both from an inside and an outside perspective, does not necessitate positing a decisive "split" between two monolithic "religions." In first-century Rome, there were no doubt various groups and individuals, both Jewish and Gentile, who had some kind of investment in Jesus as Messiah (or teacher, or prophet) and who would have interacted to varying extents, in relationships of friendship, support, rivalry or plain indifference. Within the Jewish community, Jewish Jesus-followers would presumably have met with a range of reactions, depending on the claims they made about Jesus and the implications they drew from those claims. Among the wider population of Rome, however, it is unlikely that they would have attracted much attention - particularly the kind of attention that was apparently focused on the Christiani, with its accusations of misanthropy and bizarre cultic observances, from which Jews in general already suffered in the ancient world. Not so for the Pauline Gentiles, who had turned their backs on the religious life of the city and did not have the unique status of Judaism under which to shelter. Nero's action implies that there was in Rome during his reign a group of Gentiles - former pagans - who formed a recognizable and troubling presence in the city. They exhibited some of the behavior that was typically associated with Jews, and they had close connections to Jews, who were the founders and guides of their community, but they were not themselves converts to Judaism. In fact, we know of precisely such a community - the addressees of Paul's epistle to the Romans. As Stanley Stowers has convincingly demonstrated, Paul's arguments in this letter only make sense if the implied audience is understood to be Gentile. 33 Now as Paul himself makes clear, the ekklesia he writes to in Rome was not founded by him, but it was obviously modeled on similar doctrines as his assemblies in Thessaly, Galatia and elsewhere. 34 It was this group, I suggest, that was known as the Christiani. This hypothesis runs counter not only to the thesis that the word "Christian" originally referred to Jewish messianists, but also to the consensus of the majority of scholars that the term arose when Gentiles began to flood the (Jewish) Jesus-movement and changed its character definitively. According to this latter thesis, the movement then broke away (or was driven away) from Judaism, and the name "Christians" came to be applied indiscriminately to its members. For example, Mattingly states: 33 Stanley Stowers, A Rereading of Romans: Justice, Jews and Gentiles (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994). 34 Perhaps in Rome especially, such a community would have retained a particular sense of distinctiveness, as there may have been few if any Jews in the city between the time of Claudius' edict and its rescinding by Nero at the beginning of his reign.
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Though often Jewish in origin, they [the disciples of Jesus at Antioch] were clearly marked out from the flourishing Jewish community by their separate synagogues and a social life in which surprisingly Jew and Gentile met on equal terms.
Later in the same article he refers to "the followers of Christus who had been clearly disowned by the Jews."35 Similarly Lifshitz: As a result of the mission of Paul and Barnabas at Antioch, the Jewish converts and especially the Gentiles became numerous and the young community was no longer willing or able to be regarded as a Jewish sect.. .. At this time, the new religion received a new name, which would distinguish it from the "mother religion. "36
Or in Downey's formulation: The word [Christianoi] apparently was adopted by the Roman authorities in the city when they found it necessary to have some official description of the group or sect which by now, in Antioch, was becoming distinct from Judaism. 37
The implicit assumptions at work in many such descriptions seem to be, first, that the followers of Jesus formed a fairly monolithic movement in the first century; second, that once Paul's mission took off, Gentiles soon vastly outnumbered Jews in this movement; and third, that as this happened, Jews and Gentiles were fused into a new religion outside Judaism, that is, "Christianity." According to this model, the Jesusmovement is basically a single stream with Judaism as its source, which the influx of Gentiles causes to flow in a new direction. Jewish as well as Gentile Jesus-followers are caught up in it and move inexorably away from the "mother-religion," which can then be viewed merely as "background" or "origin"; thus we frequently have such phrasing as "Christians of Jewish origin" or "converts from Judaism to Christianity." The work of scholars including John Gager, Stanley Stowers and Anthony Saldarini has alerted us to the inadequacy of conceptions of early Jewish Jesus-followers such as Paul and "Matthew." So while I would argue (pace Marshall) that there was a distinguishable group of Christiani (i.e. Jesus-followers who stood outside Judaism) in the first century, as the evidence of Tacitus and others indicates, we should not indiscriminately subsume under that nomenclature all the major figures of the New Testament literature. Paul, Peter, James, John of Patmos, "Matthew" and others no doubt saw themselves, and were seen by others, as Jews their whole lives. Their faith in Jesus did not entail a turning away from, or
35 Mattingly, "The Origin of the Name Christiani," 26,33. Lifshitz, "L'origine du nom des chretiens," 69-70. Downey, A History of Antioch in Syria, 275. C.f. Christine Trevett, A Study of Ignatius of Antioch in Syria and Asia, Studies in the Bible and Early Christianity, vol. 29 (Lewiston/Queenston/Lampeter: The Edwin Mellon Press, 1992), 199-200. 36 37
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standing outside of, Judaism. 38 What the Roman authorities were observing was not a movement of Jews and Gentiles that was breaking away from Judaism, but a movement of Gentiles who had never been part of Judaism. Once again I should emphasize that such a mode of following Jesus was probably not the most common, even among former "pagans." These Pauline-type sectarians may have been the "tip of the iceberg" in terms of Jesus-following movements in the first century. But (as this metaphor suggests) being outside Judaism, they were the most conspicuous to their Gentile neighbors and rulers. I do not wish to suggest by my analysis that the boundaries between Jesus-following Gentiles and Jews were clear-cut and impermeable. Judaism, with or without Jesus, seems to have remained an attractive option for Gentiles, even within the Pauline-type communities. Paul himself seems to be attempting to preserve the integrity of his cherished Gentile churches against the interpenetration that was obviously taking place. Nevertheless, one can see how a distinctive sense of community, closely bound up with the Gentile Jesus-followers' particular vulnerability to persecution by the authorities, could have developed around the use of the word Christianoi. We have very little evidence of its development, but we can imagine the process by which a name originally coined by the Roman authorities as a translation of the term hoi tou christou became reabsorbed into the language of the community, its negative connotations subverted by its re-appropriation - a suggestive parallel might be changes in use and nuance of the word "queer. "39 The name Christiani, coined by the authorities to mark out a group they had identified as deviant, came to be embraced with pride by those originally stigmatized by it. The author of 1 Peter is dealing with precisely this tension in his exhortation to those suffering as Christianoi - he tells them not to be ashamed of the name but to rejoice in it (1 Pet 4:16).40 In the book of Acts, the word Christianoi moves from the designation of a minority sect to that of the mainstream path to salvation. Acts presents 38 This case has been made on an individual basis by various scholars. See Anthony Saldarini, Matthew's Jewish-Christian Community (Chicago: U. of Chicago Press, 1994) on Matthew; Krister Stendahl, Paul among Jews and Gentiles (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1976), Stowers, Rereading of Romans, and Gager, Reinventing Paul, on Paul; or Marshall, Parables of War on John of Patmos. 39 Judith Butler provides a thought-provoking critical context (Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex [London: Routledge, 1993], 232); cf. Lieu, Christian Identity, 239 on naming and re-appropriation. 40 There is no consensus on the dating of 1 Peter, though most scholars place it at the end of the first or beginning of the second century. Marshall suggests a second-century date; Parables of War, 70.
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the narrative of the origin of the word in a characteristic way, eliding any sense of conflict or fracture: "The disciples were first called Christians at Antioch." Not "some of the disciples," "a sect of the disciples" or "the Gentile disciples"; for the author of Acts, there is one set of disciples, and they are the Christianoi. This smooth narrative makes the name synonymous with "true" or "orthodox" Jesus-followers and was no doubt a key factor in ensuring its enduring application to all that is considered authentic in the tradition. Paul, the authors of Revelation and the gospels, thus came to be considered Christians, even though none of them ever use the term themselves; and once "Christian" became the normative name, groups such as the Ebionites or N azarenes could be described as heretical Jewish sects of Christianity. Even now, the term "Christian" is used to confer legitimacy on particular orthodoxies, or to bring formerly "heretical" traditions back into the Christian fold. 41 For Ignatius, as for the author of Acts, the name has a normative force. Being a Christianos is not merely one among many ways of following Jesus; it is the only valid way. Ignatius is intent on establishing - and distinguishing between two seemingly monolithic abstractions: Christianity and Judaism. 42 For Ignatius, Christianismos has suffering at its 41 There are several other potentially relevant attestations to the word Christianoi that I have not discussed in this paper. The reference in Josephus I take (with most scholars) to be a later interpolation. There is a reference in the Didache (xii 4), a document apparently addressing Gentile Christians, though incorporating earlier Jewish material. However it is also probably too late to be useful as evidence for my thesis. There is also an interesting fragment of Tacitus' Histories preserved in Sulpicius Severus (Chron. ii.30.6) in which Tacitus mentions a discussion between Titus and others in which the Christians and the Jews are described as separate and hostile entities, yet "sprung from the same source." As evidence for the first century situation, however, it would seem to be less helpful than the account of the Neronian persecution, which clearly relates to a very public and presumably well-known first century event. 42 As Judith Lieu and others have noted, Ignatius' Christianismos seems to have its linguistic model in Ioudaismos; so even as Ignatius asserts the primacy of Christianity, his very conception of it is patterned after that of Judaism: Judith Lieu, Image and Reality: The Jews in the World of the Christians in the Second Century (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1996). Ignatius presumably had in mind some conception of the practices, values and historicized experience - the culture or way of life, we might say - that bind together a people, on the model of Hellenismos and Ioudaismos; see Martha Himmelfarb, "Judaism and Hellenism in 2 Maccabees," Poetics Today 19.1 (1998): 19--40, for a discussion of the complex ways in which the author of 2 Maccabees formulates his conception of Ioudaismos through opposition to Hellenismos, while simultaneously appropriating and transforming Greek categories. An in-depth comparison with Ignatius' project would no doubt yield interesting conclusions. For a detailed discussion of the changing meanings of Ioudaizein and its cognates see Shaye Cohen, The Beginnings of Jewishness: Boundaries, Varieties, Uncertainties (Berkeley: U. of California Press, 1999), 175 ff.; cf. John Collins, "Cult and Culture: The Limits of Hellenization in Judea,"
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heart; in fact it is defined around precisely those experiences of persecution by the Roman order that first set the Christianoi apart, and helped to shape their sense of communality. The only way to be a true Christian is to undergo martyrdom; his earnest and well-known plea to the Roman Christians is that they will not try to save his life, but will pray that he has the strength to endure the tortures that await him so that he may finally reach Christ: Only pray for me for power, both within and without, that not only may I speak but also will, that not only may I be called a Christian, but also be found one (Ignatius, Letter to the Romans III, [Schoedel]).43
Ignatius' J ewishiChristian dichotomy is not entirely an innovation; it draws on a pre-established sense of the uniquely vulnerable position of the Christianoi and the related connotations of their nomenclature. Nevertheless, with his creation (or deployment)44 of the concept of Christianismos, Ignatius is attempting something quite radical: to re-map the religious universe for his audience and persuade them that they need not - indeed must not - orient themselves with respect to "Judaism," as converts, adherents or even as Gentile Pauline "satellites." For even though the original Christianoi, I have argued, did not consider themselves Jews, their communities had nevertheless been generated within a conceptual context in which Judaism was central. Ignatius attempts to replace this kind of Gentile, Jesus-following experience within a different perspective, by persuading his addressees that they have their own Christian "culture" which is structurally equivalent to Ioudaismos and moreover is its superior replacement: '''Christianism' did not base its faith on Judaism, but Judaism on 'Christianism' .... " Ignatius, To the Magnesians X, [Lake, modified; LCL]).45 No longer should the Christianoi cluster round the edges of Judaism, then. In fact, Ignatius is arguing for a total role reversal: not only must the Christianoi no longer orbit Judaism,
in Hellenism in the Land of Israel (ed. John Collins and Gregory Sterling; Notre Dame: U. of Notre Dame Press, 2001), 31 ff. On Christian ethnic self-definition, see Denise Kimber Buell, Why This New Race: Ethnic Reasoning in Early Christianity (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005). 43 The centrality of martyrdom to Ignatius' understanding of Christianity has been widely discussed; see for example Lieu Image and Reality, 29. Judith Perkins explores the importance of suffering to early Christian self-definition in The Suffering Self: Pain and Narrative Representation in the Early Christian Era (London: Routledge, 1995). 44 We have no way of knowing for sure whether Ignatius was the first to coin the term "Christianismos" though Lieu argues that it is likely Image and Reality, 29. In any case, it is clearly a neologism. 45 Corwin suggests that "Christianity bases its faith on Judaism" was the slogan of Ignatius' opponents; St. Ignatius and Christianity in Antioch, 58.
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Jews who follow Jesus must now adopt "Christianism." They must become Christians. 46 In the light of this interpretation, Ignatius' references to "Judaizers" look rather different. 47 In the Letter to the Philadelphians, Ignatius writes "But if anyone interprets Judaism to you, do not listen to him. For it is better to hear Christianity from a circumcised man than Judaism from an uncircumcised [man]" (Ignatius, To the Philadelphians VI [Lake, LCL D. he uncircumcised men talking of Judaism may be traditional Paulinist Gentiles, who are not themselves circumcised, yet still orient themselves towards Judaism. 48 While I agree with Christine Trevett and others, then, that Ignatius "dealt with these Judaizers very much with a backward glance at the Pauline emphases on faith and justification,"49 we should not necessarily classify his opponents as "anti-Pauline." They apparently remained uncircumcised, just as Paul had taught, and their orientation towards Judaism was certainly more in line with Paul's views than was Ignatius' supercessionist rhetoric. We may be dealing here with two groups
46 The Letters of Ignatius must be understood, then, in the light of an important consequence of Paul's mission: the creation for the first time, of a community of people who self-identified as Gentiles; they accepted the conceptual division of the world into Jews and Gentiles, but consciously remained on the (undifferentiated) Gentile side of the dichotomy. The role of a "Gentile" self-identification in the genealogy of the category "Christian" had profound implications for later Christian attitudes towards ethnicity in general, and Judaism in particular. 47 There has been much scholarly debate about who Ignatius' "judaizing" opponents were. Virginia Corwin attempted to associate them with Essene Judaism (St. Ignatius and Christianity in Antioch, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1960, 61). Lloyd Gaston argued convincingly, in line with some previous scholars, that they were not Jews but judaizing "Asian Gentile Christians" ("Judaism of the Uncircumcised in Ignatius and Related Writers," in Anti-Judaism in Early Christianity, Vol. 2: Separation and Polemic, Studies in Christianity and Judaism No. 2 [ed. Stephen G. Wilson; Waterloo, Ont.: Wilfred Laurier University Press, 1986], 38). Christine Trevett explores possible connections with Matthew's community in Syria and the Asian addressees of John of Patmos (A Study of Ignatius of Antioch in Syria and Asia: 180 ff.). She agrees with Schoedel's thought-provoking insight that "Ignatius' opponents were relatively harmless theologically" (William R. Schoedel, Ignatius of Antioch: A Commentary on the Letters of Ignatius of Antioch [H. Koester, ed.; Hermeneia, Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1985], 209; discussed by Trevett, A Study of Ignatius of Antioch, 176) and that it is rather their stance towards Judaism and their failure to "appreciate the radical newness of Christianity" to which Ignatius objects. 48 While I am focusing in this paper on Ignatius' concept of "Christianism," I am not assuming that, in contrast, he is drawing on a stable, pre-existing category of "Judaism." In fact Daniel Boyarin argues that the concept of Judaism as a religion is created through the dichotomies of the Christian heresiologists ("Semantic Differences," 71; cf. Border Lines, Introduction, 1 ff.); see also Cohen, The Beginnings of Jewishness. 49 See Trevett, 176.
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claiming the authority of Paul for their views, and Ignatius' claim is not obviously the stronger. It is reasonable to conjecture that Paul would have been aghast at the concept of Christianismos, set over-against Ioudaismos. For him, hoi tou christou had been brought into grace by the God of the Jews. They had not replaced Israel; they had become an element in its ultimate salvation (Rom 11 :25-27). Indeed, we can see evidence that even in his time the growing independence (or arrogance, as he saw it) of the Gentile believers was causing anxiety: But if some of the branches were broken off, and you, a wild olive shoot, were grafted in their place to share the richness of the olive tree, do not boast over the branches. If you do boast, remember that it is not you that support the root, but the root that supports you (Rom 11:17-18).
However, Paul had triggered a movement whose trajectory he would not long control. His soft-edged descriptive phrase, hoi tou christou, hardened into a name, hoi Christianoi, with the concomitant crystallization of group coherence that such a process implies. Many explanatory factors could be suggested: a strengthening of defensive boundaries in response to official persecution; the realization that most Jews would never recognize their legitimacy as long as they did not see themselves as subject to the Torah; and perhaps fundamentally, the inevitable human tendency to see oneself at the center of the universe. By the second century, at least some of those who self-identified as Christianoi no longer considered themselves to be Gentile actors in a Jewish cosmic narrative, but were rewriting the script to place themselves center-stage. They began to see themselves not on the margins of Judaism, but rather at the core of a new Christianity. I have argued that instead of viewing "Christian" and "Jew" as originally "compatible identities" that later became artificially differentiated, we should understand "Christian" as an identification that was originally generated as complementary to, rather than compatible with that of "Jew."50 Daniel Boyarin has recently made a powerful case that "texts of the second and third century ... can be construed as engaged in a process of creating a difference between Judaism and Christianity" by means of "an imposed partitioning of what was once a territory without border lines."51 I agree that in the rhetoric of Ignatius and others we can discern a conscious attempt to mark out boundaries I want to draw attention here however to the ways in which border lines include as well as 50 I remain unconvinced by Boyarin's assertion that" 'Christian' and 'Jew' were compatible identities in Paul's formulation as well as for centuries thereafter." Daniel Boyarin, "Semantic Differences; or 'Judaism'I'Christianity,' " in Becker, and Reed, eds., The Ways that Never Parted, 69. 51 Boyarin, Border Lines, 27, 1.
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exclude, enabling their creators to occupy territory that is not selfevidently theirs. We can see examples of this process in the way the author of Acts subsumes all "legitimate" Jesus-followers under the name "Christian," and Ignatius requires Jews to believe not only in Christ, but also in Christianity. To put it another way, the invention of heresy is certainly about "making a difference,"52 but it is also about disguising difference. So when we classify first century Jesus-following Jews such as Paul as "Christians" we are surely playing along with the heresiologists' name game; but perhaps we fall into a similar trap when we more or less consciously classify all first-century Jesus-followers as "Jews." Instead, it is worth recovering and acknowledging, to the extent that we can, the variety and specificity of their own self-conceptions. Tracing the story of the Christianoi, then, will never provide us with a comprehensive understanding of "the early Jesus-movement"; but perhaps it can teach us something about the forces involved in shaping a tradition that would later come to redirect the gaze of history through its own particular perspective.
52 "Making a Difference" is the title of Part 1 of Boyarin's book Border Lines.
The Social History of Satan, Part III: John ofPatmos and Ignatius of Antioch - Contrasting Visions of "God's People" ELAINE PAGELS
At the climactic moment of the cosmic drama in the Book of Revelation, the seer tells how two great portents appeared in heaven, the first a woman "clothed with the sun" (12:1). As in a dream, the scene changes, and he sees her pregnant, "crying out in the agony of giving birth," being menaced by a "great red dragon with seven heads and ten horns, and seven crowns on each of its heads" (12:3); thus the seer pictures Israel in danger, confronting her enemies, the foreign oppressors. At this point John transforms traditional imagery, as he does throughout his prophecy, veering into a startlingly non-traditional direction. John knew, of course, that the imagery he revises here, with echoes from Genesis and the Psalms to 1 Enoch, had been developed especially by Isaiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel to characterize Israel's alien enemies - "the nations" such as Egyptians and Babylonians - as mythological monsters, often dragons like Behemoth and Leviathan, that have fought against God from the beginning of time. l John takes his cues in particular from Isaiah 26:17-27:1, where the prophet depicts Israel as a woman crying out "in the pangs of giving birth" (26: 17), until "that day" when the Lord will come "to punish the inhabitants of the earth" (26:21), and "with his cruel, and great, and strong sword will punish Leviathan, the fleeing serpent, Leviathan the twisting serpent, and he will kill the dragon that is in the sea" (27:1). 1 For discussion and references, see, for example, Adela Yarbro Collins, The Combat Myth in the Book of Revelation (Missoula: Scholars Press, 1976); Neil Forsyth, The Old Enemy: Satan and the Combat Myth (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987), as well as the articles cited in note 6. I regret that the excellent collection of articles just now published, edited by David Barr, was not available while I was writing (except for a then unpublished article which Paul Duff kindly lent after the discussion at the 2005 meeting of Society of Biblical Literature); see now David L. Barr, ed., The Reality of Apocalypse: Rhetoric and Politics in the Book of Revelation, Society of Biblical Literature Symposium Series, no. 39 (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2006).
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Abruptly, however, John breaks with tradition to reveal a new composite - image of evil. Having pictured Leviathan menacing Israel as scene one of the cosmic drama, John suddenly shifts the expected course of the narrative to scene two, the messiah's birth, which signals the outbreak of "war in heaven": Michael and his angels [were] fighting against the dragon. The dragon and his angels fought back, but they were defeated, and there was not longer any place for them in heaven (12:7-9).
But, a traditionalist might object, when was the dragon ever up "in heaven"? And how could the primordial monster have angels as allies? According to tradition well known to John, as he has already shown in his own narrative, God's ancient adversary dwells far below, as "the beast that comes up from the bottomless pit" (11 :7). When he appears, he emerges from the "depths" - from the abyss, or the primordial sea. How, then, could the dragon ever have claimed a "place" for himself and his allies in heaven, or stood at the head of an angelic army, making war against "Michael and his angels"? Is John simply getting his stories scrambled, or is he making what is for him a central point of his revelation? Yet John boldly combines the Satan tradition of the rebellious angelic commander with the Leviathan traditions involving the dragon from the abyss, in order to reveal the great secret: that the one who once held power in heaven, and fell down from there like a star, was actually none other than the great dragon, that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world - he was thrown down to earth, and his angels were thrown down with him. (12:9)
Scholars long have noted that John is the first to identify the serpent of Eden with Satan,2 and the only author of any Jewish or Christian literature of his time to speak of "war in heaven."3 While other scholars have noted these bold innovations and have traced the theological and literary means by which he makes them, what I intend to ask here is for what reasons John does so. What, for example, do these innovations have to do with social history - how does John envision holy war here on earth? What urgent and pressing concerns impel John to make them?
2 See, for example, Forsyth, The Old Enemy, 199-2:57, and David E. Aune, Revelation 6-16, Word Biblical Commentary, 52B (Nashville: Nelson, 1997),696. 3 Forsyth, Old Enemy, 254; Aune, lac. cit., 691-710.
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This article thus continues research published in two previous articles ("The Social History of Satan," parts 1 and 2),4 and makes three suggestions, here sketched in brief. First, I suggest that John's graphic description of "war in heaven" is the key to understanding his practical concerns as a prophet: namely, that he combines the Satan and Leviathan traditions in order to persuade his constituency, God's "holy ones, " that they now have to fight on two fronts at once. What he reveals in Revelation 12 is what he recognizes as the great secret - that the enemy in heaven is none other than God's ancient enemy, the dragon, a.k.a. both "Leviathan" and "Satan." John intends to show that those he identifies as "intimate enemies" among Jesus' followers now have joined forces with hostile outsiders in an unprecedented - and unholy - alliance. Since he takes this to mean that the forces of evil thus have gained overwhelming power, John believes he is impelled to sort out who really does belong to God's people, and who does not. For much as he detests the "beasts," John sees inside enemies as even more dangerous: he says that Jesus praises those who truly are "holy ones," but warns that there are others, lurking among them, whom he "hates," and some in the middle. 5 Thus from the first century to the twenty-first, John's powerful and innovative narrative has offered his readers an example of how to "out" certain insiders by identifying deviants among them as, in effect, secret agents for forces they see rampant in the monstrous culture outside. Second, when asking who are the enemies that John warns against, we probably all would agree about the alien enemies. John gives such obvious clues that we cannot fail to identify them with the Roman forces and their supporters. Much more complicated -and much more contested - is the question of whom he sees as Satan's allies within the "assemblies" he addresses. To what extent, as one scholar puts it, can we locate actual firstcentury followers of Jesus behind John's polemical characterizations?6 No 4 Elaine Pagels, "The Social History of Satan, the 'Intimate Enemy': A Preliminary Sketch," HTR 84/2 (1991): 105-128; and Elaine Pagels, "The Social History of Satan, Part II: Satan in the New Testament Gospels," JAAR 62/1 (1994): 17-58. 5 Paul Duff makes this perceptive suggestion especially in chapter four of Who Rides the Beast? Prophetic Rivalry and the Rhetoric of Crisis in the Churches of the Apocalypse (Oxford: OUP, 2001), 48-60; he also shows there the close relationship between John's vision of the "whore of Babylon" and the prophet he calls "Jezebel." 6 David Frankfurter, "Jews or Not? Reconstructing the 'Other' in Rev 2:9 and 3:9," HTR 94/4 (2001): 403-425; for an incisive discussion, see Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza, The Book of Revelation: Justice and Judgment (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1985); eadem, Revelation: Vision of a Just World (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1991); Adela Yarbro Collins, "Vilification and Self-definition in the Book of Revelation," HTR [Christia.ns among Jews and Gentiles: Essays in Honor of Krister Stendahl on His SixtyFifth Birthday), 79/1-3 (1986): 308-20; A. Thomas Kraabel, "The Roman Diaspora: Six Questionable Assumptions," JJS [G. Vermes and J. Neusner, eds., Essays in Honor of Y.
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doubt the most complicated question, recently addressed again by Paul Duff and David Frankfurter, among others, is whom the prophet has in mind when he denounces "those who say they are Jews and are not, but are the synagogue of Satan"(2:9, 3:9).7 Although we must consider this question, we cannot claim to resolve it here; instead, we only make some observations about the discussion. Traditionally, of course, most commentators have assumed that this polemic is not about insiders at all; instead, it refers to Jews hostile to Christians. So our answer to this question has much to do with the question now engaging heated discussion, of how we envision these Asian groups of Jesus' followers at the end of the first century and, in particular, what we assume about boundaries between Jews and Christians. For the purpose of this article, I agree with those who point out that John, like other Jews devoted to Jesus Christ among his first century followers, sees himself and his fellows not as Christians but as Jews (Paul, of course, called himself an "Israelite") - the "holy ones" who await the return of God's messiah. If John does know the term "Christian," he does not use it, much less apply it to himself, perhaps because, as we shall see, those who coined and used the term in late first- and early second-century Asia most often applied it to Gentile converts. Third, I suggest that we may find some help understanding John's specific concerns with "intimate enemies" when we compare his vision of these Asian assemblies with that of Ignatius, who wrote letters to groups in some of the same towns John had addressed about ten years later. This Syrian believer who called himself "bishop of Antioch," a devoted \ follower of Paul, was the first, so far as we know, to insist that only those who are called "Christians" truly belong to God. In contrast with John, Ignatius is the first to demand that Jesus' followers preach, in his words, only "Christianity - not Judaism." To address these issues, we begin by asking: what do John's characterizations of evil powers show about the way John sees himself and his Yadin] 33 (1982): 445~64; Tina Pippin, Death and Desire: The Rhetoric of Gender in the Apocalypse of John (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1992); Paul B. Duff, "Wolves in Sheep's Clothing: Literary Opposition and Social Tension in the Revelation of John," in Reading the Book of Revelation: A Resource for Students (ed. David L. Barr; Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2004); John W. Marshall, "Collateral Damage: Jesus and Jezebel in the Jewish War," in Violence in the New Testament (ed. Shelly Matthews and E. Leigh Gibson; London: T. & T. Clark, 2005), 35-50. 7 See n. 6; also Paul Duff, '''The Synagogue of Satan': Crisis Mongering and the Apocalypse of John," unpublished paper graciously sent by the author, used by his permission; for earlier discussion, see Adela Collins, "Vilification and Self Definition." See also Shaye J. D. Cohen, "Judaism without Circumcision and 'Judaism' without 'Circumcision' in Ignatius," HTR 95:4 (2002): 395~15.
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fellow saints in relation to specific "enemies on the ground" - both inside and outside of his group? What do his prophetic visions suggest about his own situation, and that of those with whom - and against whom - he identifies? For, in Peter Brown's apt phrase, John and his fellow believers see the story of the fallen angels, like the stories of the archaic chaos dragon, "not as a myth, but as a map on which they plotted the disruptions and tensions of the world around them."8 As is well known, John follows tradition when he identifies Israel's "outside" enemies, whom he sees embodied in the Roman forces, ·as "the great dragon" and his two allies, the "beast from the sea" and the "beast from the land." To appreciate the impact of John's revisionism, let us briefly recall how the gospel writers characterize the cosmic war they see manifest in Jesus' execution. As noted above, in two previous articles we have shown that the New Testament evangelists chose to deal with the question of who embodied evil forces by drawing upon and amplifying, in varying ways, a handful of Biblical stories that came to be associated with "the satan" - an angelic being who defected, so to speak, to the dark side. Genesis 6, for example, tells how the angelic "sons of God," seduced by the beauty of human women, descended to earth where they spawned heroes and warriors, half angel and half human - what the Greeks would call demigods, but who, later commentators declared, generated, in turn, demonic powers and evil spirits.9 The famous folktale in Numbers 22 tells how the foreign prophet Balaam found his way blocked on a journey by an angelic figure, whose obstructiveness hints at his association with "the satan"" (note that the Hebrew verb that describes him, lt1tll, suggests his adversarial role). John of Patmos draws upon this same story to derisively suggest that some insiders follow the teaching of "Balaam," a false prophet whose notorious name suggests that he is a "deceiver of the people."10 Followers of Jesus later connected these passages with others that tell of an angelic accuser who stands before the Lord to accuse humans, a kind of 8 Peter Brown, Society and the Holy in Late Antiquity (Berkeley: U. of California Press, 1982),24. 9 1 Enoch 6-16; Jubilees 5:3; 10:1-14, passim. For discussion, see Elaine Pagels, "The Social History of Satan, the 'Intimate Enemy': A Preliminary Sketch"; for more detailed discussion, see Martha Himmelfarb, Ascent to Heaven in Jewish and Christian Apocalypses (Oxford: OUP, 1993). 10 Revelation 2:14; J. Braverman, "Balaam in Rabbinic and Early Christian Traditions," in Sefer ha-yovel li-khevod Doktor Yehoshu 'a Finkel (ed. Sidney B. Hoenig and Leon D. Stitskin; New York: Jewish Publication Society, 1974),41-50; J. T. Greene, "Balaam: Prophet, Diviner, and Priest in Selected Ancient Israelite and Hellenistic Jewish S.ources," in Society of Biblical Literature Seminar Papers (1989), 57-106; and see the detailed discussion in David Aune, Revelation 1-5, Word Biblical Commentary, 52B (Nashville: Nelson, 1997), 185-188.
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"devil's advocate" (Zech 3: 1f. ; Job 1-3) and with Isaiah's account (14: 7ff) of the luminous heavenly being called "day star, son of the dawn," who, having defied his commander in chief, was cast out of heaven, demoted, and disgraced - a passage that apparently inspired Revelation 12 - and, over a thousand and five hundred years later, inspired Milton's account of Satan's fall in Paradise Lost. 11 In the first article cited above, we noted how the Satan traditions flowered especially in Jewish pseudepigraphic sources from c. 165 BCE to 200 CE, finding their deepest resonances among certain groups of so-called "dissident Jews" ranging from the Qumran sectarians to followers of Jesus of Nazareth. The authors of such works as 1 Enoch and Jubilees amplified and retold such Biblical stories of fallen angels to tell how the angelic "watchers," often called "sons of God," and leaders in the angelic army, rebelled against God, and finally became his enemies. Thus, we suggested, members of certain sectarian Jewish groups adapted such stories to characterize their own situation - above all to interpret their own marginal status, and the apostasy with which they charged the majority of God's holy people. Thus they could explain that just as God's own angels once turned against their commander in chief, so now many of his own people have turned against their God. The moral of the story is that even Israelites, although they are called God's own "sons," they, like the angels themselves, could fall from their rightful place to become, in effect, his enemies - and thus enemies of the "remnant" who remained faithful to God - who, such sectarians explained, in this case were themselves. At first it may seem strange - if not absurd - that the authors of Matthew, Mark, and John sought to blame other Jews for Jesus' death, since it was well known, of course, that Jesus had been sentenced by the Roman governor, and executed by his soldiers on charges of sedition against Rome. Had these evangelists chosen to follow the well-known prophetic tropes they found in the writings of Isaiah, Daniel, and Ezekiel, they could have told the story of Jesus death in a far more traditional and historically plausible - way. They might have told it instead as the story of a righteous man like Daniel, sentenced to death by "the nations," Israel's hated foreign oppressors. Had they done so, they probably would have characterized the powers of evil as Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Daniel had, by retelling stories of Yahweh's battle with the dragon, who embodies the monstrous power of evil - a dragon associated with the sea, the primordial chaos - and thus with Israel'sforeign oppressors. Surprisingly, however, the evangelists ignored such familiar tropes, and drew instead upon the far more peripheral Satan traditions, in order to make the astonishing claim that although Romans crucified Jesus, it was J
11
For discussion, see Forsyth, The Old Enemy, 105-181.
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his Jewish enemies who actually killed him; Luke and John go so far as to identify these diabolical powers explicitly with those they see as Jesus' Jewish enemies. 12 When I asked for what reasons they told the story as they did, I recognized that they did so primarily as a defensive tactic. Writing in the shattering aftermath of the failed Jewish war, themselves known to be followers of a man convicted of sedition against Rome, Jesus' followers fell under suspicion on the same charge. In that dangerous situation, they apparently hoped to deflect outsiders' suspicion and hostility by telling the story of their leader's death in a way calculated to show that even the Roman procurator found Jesus innocent of sedition and to imply the innocence of the rest of his followers. Thus they chose to tell the story of Jesus' death, then, in a way that showed the Romans treating Jesus in the historically implausible, but fair-minded and respectful, way that his followers hoped to be treated themselves, should they come to trial. Luke and Matthew both insist that Pilate not only repeatedly declared Jesus innocent, but resolved several times to release him - before giving in to a shouting mob of hostile Jews. When we turn to John's Revelation, however, we see at once that John of Patmos makes no such defensive moves. While sharing the evangelists' conviction of Jesus' innocence, John makes no attempt to placate Gentile fears and suspicions. Instead of the apologetic charge Luke has Peter address to the "men of Israel" ("you killed the righteous one, and delivered him into the hands of lawless men," Acts 2:23), the author of Revelation clearly indicts Roman forces, whom he sees as the ominous shadow government for those who actually wield power - namely, the supernatural forces of evil that he depicts as the "great dragon" and his allies. Yet hostility toward "the nations" need not - and often does not - preclude hostility toward those identified as "intimate enemies." For while the author of Revelation takes as his dominant theme how monstrous evil powers "war against God," he simultaneously weaves into his narrative the second, more minor theme, showing show fallen angels challenge - and impersonate - divine power, and how, at the same time, intimate enemies infiltrate God's people. For while the prophet says that Jesus "hates" these false insiders, he never makes any charge against them so harsh as the one that dominates the passion narratives - the charge that Jews themselves engineered Jesus' arrest, passion, and death. Instead, John of Patmos adopts the prophets' traditional view: that foreign enemies - in this case, the Romans - had slaughtered the "lamb of God." John of Patmos leaves no doubt that those guilty of killing Jesus, as well as his witness Antipas, and the other martyrs John saw in heaven ( "those who had been slaughtered for the word of 12
For citations and discussion, see my "The Social History of Satan, Part II."
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God," 6:9), are those whom he, following Isaiah, calls "the inhabitants of the earth" (Is 26:21). When John conflates Leviathan with Satan, as we noted, he wants to show that the powers of evil have grown more powerful than ever, now having taken not one but two quite different manifestations - both, however, working toward the same end. In a moment we will ask who John believes these enemies are; but first let us note how ingeniously he relates what he sees as the practical effect of this unprecedented - and unholy alliance. John proceeds to tell how the dragon, having united in himself all the forces of evil, now cast out of heaven and raging with fury, "went off to make war" upon "those who keep the commandments of God and hold the witness of Jesus" (13: 17). To do so, he takes his stand on the seashore, and manifests himself first as the "beast rising from the sea," who combines within one monstrous form the characteristics that Daniel had ascribed to the four beasts who manifest four foreign empires. Now, John says, the "beast from the sea" wields the dragon's irresistible "power, and ... throne, and great authority" (13:2). When John goes on to describe the dragon's second manifestation, his innovations are even more evident. For John goes on to say that "then I saw another beast that rose out of the earth; it had two horns like a lamb, and it spoke like a dragon" (13:11). Thus this form of evil power bears some resemblance to the "lamb" - Jesus the messiah, the "son of man coming with the clouds of heaven" whom John, like Daniel, sees as the antitype of the "beast from the sea"13 - but it speaks "like a dragon." What this beast does is promote the authority of the first, by making them bow down to worship its image, and by forcing everyone to bear the mark of the beast. Although John, like most of his contemporaries, does not definitively separate military and political power from religious authority, he pictures the "beast from the sea" above all as the active evil energy that wields and manipulates "signs and wonders," images, symbols of submission, and its secret identifying number. 14 13 Adela Yarbro Collins, Crisis and Catharsis: The Power of the Apocalypse (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1984), in her influential study suggests that this image refers in particular to wealthy or noble Asians who supported the imperial cult. See S.R.F. Price, Rituals and Power: The Roman Imperial Cult in Asia Minor (Cambridge: CUP, 1984), 101 ff; Leonard L. Thompson, The Book of Revelation: Apocalypse and Empire (Oxford: OUP, 1990); see also the fine discussion in Steven J. Friesen, Imperial Cults and the Apocalypse of John: Reading Revelation Among the Ruins (Oxford: OUP, 2001),25-13l. 14 See especially Richard Bauckham's enormously helpful discussion in The Climax of Prophecy: Studies on the Book of Revelation (Edinburgh: T& T Clark, 1993), 384452.
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No wonder, then, that as John's narrative proceeds to the final battle the Word of God leading his armies into battle against the combined forces of the evil powers - he calls this beast from the land "the false prophet." So, although John says that the "beast from the land" is actually a second manifestation of the dragon, he wields powers traditionally associated with Satan - inverting the powers of God's messiah, and deceiving people into worshipping what is evil. Thus John's portrait of this multiform diabolical usurper is meant to demonstrate how "intimate enemies" are now secretly collaborating with openly hostile outsiders. Christians in later generations, sensing these connections, would conflate John's account of this "beast" and "false prophet" with warnings found in the Johannine letters' against the coming "antichrist. " Intricate as is John's narrative, what he conveys by conflating this powerful imagery speaks clearly to many readers. One message it communicates is that, evil as are the powers that rule the earth, "intimate enemies" are even more dangerous, since some of them, like the beast from the earth, are actually undercover agents working for "the dragon." As Paul Duff has shown from a somewhat different perspective, one of John's primary concerns is to unmask these intimate enemies. 15
The Identity of the "Intimate Enemies" As noted above, the identity of the alien enemies is not in doubt. Besides the well known association of the dragon with Israel's' traditional foes, few readers could miss the allusions to the Roman Empire and its rulers behind John's caustic portrait of the rich and decadent city of "Babylon" enthroned on seven hills beside a river. Probably some in his audience knew, too, that other contemporary Jewish writers also called Rome "Babylon," since the Romans had destroyed the second temple as the Babylonians had destroyed and desecrated the first. And while many have puzzled the riddling "number of the beast," virtually all recognize that it signifies, one way or another, an imperial name. 16 More complicated - and more contested - is who John has in mind when he castigates the intimate enemies whom he implicates along with the "false prophet," and charges with deflecting worship away from God. First of all, I agree with the scholarly consensus, recently well articulated by Steven Friesen, that shows how John associates the "false prophet" with the religious ideology of the Roman Empire - perhaps especially, as Adela
15 16
D~ff, Who Rides the Beast? 31-125; Thompson, The Book of Revelation, passim. Bauckham, The Climax of Prophecy, 348-452.
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Collins has suggested, with officials promoting the imperial CUlt. 17 Second, and more ambiguously, John goes on to implicate certain groups of Jesus' followers, suggesting that these, although ostensibly worshipping God and his Messiah, actually deceive people into worshipping what is evil - which means for John that covertly they lend their support to the demonic powers that lurk behind Rome's gods and rulers. Can we understand whom John has in mind when he castigates insiders? We recall that after opening his "revelation" with a stunning vision of "one like a son of man," John says that this radiant being entrusted him with messages directed to "the seven assemblies (EKKAllO(at) of Asia" (l: 1-11). John addresses the members of these tiny Asian assemblies as "kings and priests of God" !3amAe(av iepelS Trn Bern (l :5-6), echoing the famous words Moses first addressed to God's people Israel at Sinai (cf. Exodus 19:6; Greek: !3amAe(av iep6v, the Septuagint translation for tJ':m:> 3l:>?~~). Yet John' s Jesus warns that nearly all of these assemblies contain a mixed group, some of whom he praises, others whom he "hates," and some, apparently, in the middle. 18 Since "Jesus" addresses these messages to "God's holy ones" to sort out who actually does belong among them and who does not, we are not surprised to see that these messages contain the densest concentration of allusions to Satan in the entire book. While weaving together threats from the inside and from the outside, the prophet's warnings suggest that he regards evil insiders as the most dangerous of all. Thus his letters to the seven assemblies open as "Jesus" praises those in Ephesus because, he says, "you cannot tolerate evildoers" who "say that they are apostles and are not" (2:2). He praises them because they have tested - and rejected - these false apostles, and because "you hate the works of the Nicolitains, which I also hate" (l :6). When John addresses those in Smyrna, where arrests occurred, and those in Pergamon, where one "witness" was killed, the prophet makes sure they know that outside threats, too, come from the Evil One. Thus Jesus warns the former that "the devil is about to throw some of you in prison," and reminds the latter that they live "where Satan lives," apparently referring to the great temple to Zeus or the imperial temple to the augusti, "where Satan's throne is" (2:13).19 John unleashes an even more vehement denunciation upon a rival leader in Thyatira, who "says she is a prophet," but whom he calls "Jezebel," and 17 Steven J. Friesen, Imperial Cults and the Apocalypse of John; Collins, Crisis and Catharsis, 72-107. 18 Duff makes this point well: "The group we might call 'the invisible majority' " is "the group that represents John's primary audience." (Who Rides the Beast? 48) 19 See Aune, Revelation 1-5, 182-184; Price, Rituals and Power, 133-148; Friesen, Imperial Cults and the Revelation of John, 27-32; 107-129.
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accuses of "teaching and seducing my servants to practice fornication and to eat food sacrificed to idols." Shortly before, addressing those in Pergamon, John had accused some people of accepting "the teaching of Balaam" that, he says, encourages the same practices. Of course, the term 7T:opvda has a long history in prophetic literature that suggests consorting with foreign culture, and flirting, so to speak, with foreign gods. Finally, as John addresses the two assemblies in Smyrna and Philadelphia, which Duff identifies specifically as "strongholds of John's loyalists,"20 he bitterly denounces those who "say that they are Jews and are not, but are a synagogue of Satan" (2:9), and who "are lying" (3 :9). We can see, then, that everyone of John's accusations against these various enemies charges that they are subverting God's people internally. Above all, like members of the "synagogue of Satan," some, apparently, pretend to be God's people while actually being Satan's agents. Such charges, as is well known, are familiar among such dissidents as the Qumran sectaries, who apply them to those they regard as apostate. 21 While earlier generations of scholars scrutinized John's rhetoric to delineate specific groups among these detested insiders, more recently, commentators have recognized that at least several of the groups he describes are more likely to be variations on a composite portrait. Many now tend to agree, at least in general, with the scenario described in detail by Paul Duff: that when John indicts the three groups mentioned above, he is challenging followers of Jesus who accommodate more to outside culture than this rigorist prophet would allow - in particular, those who follow Pauline teaching. For when we discount John's polemical vehemence, we can see that the specific accommodations condoned by those he denounces as "false apostles" and "false prophets" look very much like the practices Paul allows to his converts in 1 Corinthians 7-10: eating meat sacrificed to idols, and allowing sexual practices that rigorously observant Jews often prohibited, such as marriage to outsiders.22 I agree with Collins, Duff, and others that John's target includes followers of Jesus who accept Pauline teaching - teaching already widespread in Asia Minor, especially among Gentiles. More difficult, however, and more debated is whether those whom John denounces in Smyrna and Philadelphia, who "say they are Jews, and are not - but a synagogue of Satan" (2:9; 3:9), are to be grouped with the others addressed in such a composite portrait. Are we to take John at his 20 Duff, Who Rides the Beast? 48. 21 For discussion, see Pagels, "The Social History of Satan, The 'Intimate Enemy'." 22 M~ny scholars have observed this connection. For a recent example, see Duff, Who Rides the Beast? 48-60; for more specific suggestions about the practices that may be involved, see Frankfurter, "Jews or Not?"
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word, and assume that these people are not Jews, but Gentiles presumably followers of Jesus, who "say they are Jews, and are not, but are lying" (3:9)? Or are they, as Collins, Duff, and others have assumed, actually not only Jews, like John himself, but outsiders hostile to the Jesus movement?23 Recently David Frankfurter, taking up and modifying what Ferdinand C. Baur and other members of the Tubingen School suggested over a hundred years ago,24 has argued that these, like the other insiders John censures, are predominantly Gentile followers of Jesus who anger John by claiming Israel's legacy while neglecting religious practices incumbent upon devout Jews. 25 Paul Duff, while rightly rejecting often restated tropes about Jewish persecution of Christians, which are based on anachronistic assumptions, recently has offered instead a detailed textual analysis for taking these as Jewish outsiders.26 How we assess their views has much to do with how we envision the first century groups John has in mind. During past decades, most commentators have concluded, with Aune, Schlusser Fiorenza, and Yarbro Collins, to mention a few, that when speaking of "those who say they are Jews and are not," John is drawing the line between himself and his fellow believers and non-Christian Jews in Smyrna and Philadelphia. Many take this as indicating "the parting of the ways"; most have shared the assumption, restated by Paul Duff in his book, that "Judaism and Christianity would probably have been separated by this time."27 David Aune speaks for many, too, when he characterizes John as a "JewishChristian prophet who had moved from Judaism to Christianity at some point in his career. "28 Both Aune and Collins have expressed the widely shared view that John "denies the term Jew to actual Jews of the local synagogues," most likely because they participated in hostile acts against 23 See, for example, Collins, Crisis and Catharsis: "These comments (Rev 2:9 and 3:9) imply great hostility between at least some Christians and Jews of Asia Minor. At the same time, the author of Revelation, perhaps along with other Christians also, claimed the name 'Jew' for himself and his fellow Christians," 75; or "The name 'Jews' is denied to the Jewish community in Smyrna." 85. See also Aune: "[Rev 2:9] implies that Christians are the true Israel" which Aune characterizes as "a widespread Christian view" - as evidence for which - in John's writing - he cites passages from Pauline and Petrine letters, along with the Gospel of John. (Revelation 1-5, 175) 24 See Ferdinand C. Baur, Vorlesungen tiber neutestamentliche Theologie (Leipzig: Fues, L. W. Reisland, 1864), 207-30; Gustav Volkmar, Kommentar zur Offenbarung Johannes (Zurich: Drell, 1862), 80-85. 25 Frankfurter, "Jews or Not?" 26 Paul Duff, "'The Synagogue of Satan'; Crisis Mongering and the Apocalypse of John," unpublished paper used by the author's permission. 27 Duff, Who Rides the Beast? 52; on the supposed "parting of the ways" between Jews and Christians, see, for example, Collins, Crisis and Catharsis, 84-87. 28 Aune, Revelation 1-5, cxxi.
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Christians. Both conclude that John, consequently, denies them the name 'Jews," because he holds that "followers of Jesus are ... the true Jews," which Aune characterizes as "a widespread Christian view. "29 Aune' s view of John's evolution from "Jew" to "Christian" gives rise to his theory of two editions of the Apocalypse that account for what Aune interprets as the author's psychological and theological "development," one that conveniently recapitulates what Christians typically have seen as a progression from Judaism to Christianity.3D Yet this kind of interpretation projects onto John's autobiography, as onto the first century Asian groups he addresses, what Christians in later generations came to see as the course of salvation history. But when we step back from this interpretation and attempt to read what John says in the context of first century history - before the invention of "Christianity," so to speak - we can see that what John writes does not support this view. Instead, as Aune acknowledges, "one of the striking features of Revelation is the virtual absence of the typical features of the polemic between Jews and Christians ... and an absence of the threat of Judaising."31 But Aune somehow takes this as evidence that the prophet himself stands firmly within the "Christian" camp - and goes so far as to conclude that the absence of warnings against "Judaising" indicates that the seer "espoused a 'Pauline' type of inclusivism."32 In this paper, I tend to agree with - and extend - the views of those whose research has led to a very different conclusion: that far from "espousing a kind of 'Pauline' inclusivism," John here again excoriates the groups that do - groups that apparently consist largely of Gentile converts who follow Pauline and neo-Pauline teaching. Especially during the past ten years, many of us have recognized that the traditional discussion often has turned upon anachronistic use of the terms "Jew" and "Christian." For if, indeed, John knows the term "Christian," he never uses it - and certainly never applies it to himself or those he approves - apparently because, as Philippa Townsend persuasively has shown, the term, adapted from a self-designation current among groups of Paul's Gentile converts who followed Paul's lead, and called themselves hoi tou Christou, probably was coined by Roman magistrates to refer in particular to Gentile converts. 33 While we can only sketch her argument here, we 29 For reference, see above, n. 23. 3D Aune, Revelation 1-5, cxx-cxxxiv. For a more current and much more nuanced critical discussion, see Frankfurter, "Jews or Not?" and Cohen, "Judaism without Circumcision," 84-87. 31 Ibid, 165. 32 Ibid. 33 See, in this volume, Philippa Townsend, "Who Were the First Christians? Jews, Gentiles and the Christianoi. "
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note that the author of Luke-Acts associates the first use of the term with Paul and Barnabas' mission to Gentiles in Antioch (Acts 11 :26), and that governor Pliny also uses it apparently to designate Gentiles who have made themselves conspicuous by joining those who "pray to Jesus as a God."34 Perhaps it is no accident that Ignatius, himself a Syrian convert writing possibly ten years after John (depending on how we date his writing) to believers in several of the same Asian towns, is the first, so far as we know, to aggressively identify himself and his fellow believers as "Christians" over against what he sees as the adherents of an inferior and obsolete "Judaism." Furthermore, while we have no indication that John thinks of himself as a "Christian," we have noted that he strongly identifies himself in positive terms as a Jew, specifically as one whose concern with the holiness and purity of God's people impels him to advocate certain practices, and abominate others. Intriguingly, within about a generation of his writing, some of John's earliest commentators assumed that those whom John attacks largely consist of Gentile converts; thus Irenaeus (and later Hipp0 lytus, following his lead) associates those whom the seer calls "Nicolitains" with the figure of Nicolaus, described in the Book of Acts as a Gentile proselyte from Syria. But were they wrong? Paul Duff recently has argued that the structure of the letters to Symrna and Philadelphia, which are, in his words, "strongholds of John's supporters," shows that they lack the structure common to John's addresses to insiders. The latter, Duff says, ... .include both a call for repentance (aimed at some or all of the church members) and a threat from the risen Jesus (directed against the recipients of the letter) if that repentance does not occur. The latter set, on the other hand, includes neither of these elements. 35
Duff makes some incisive points about style. Yet an addressee of either of these letters could hardly avoid hearing "Jesus'" bitter denunciation of "Satan's synagogue" as a serious warning. Who among the group John denounces could miss his threat that when the Son of Man comes back very soon! - he will put such wrongdoers in their place, humiliating them so that they will have to "bow down" before God's own people? If, on the other hand, John's Jesus here addresses Gentile converts, the punishment Jesus threatens would precisely fit the crime against Jews of which such converts apparently were often guilty. Paul himself, writing forty years before John, admits that he had found such attitudes widespread among his own followers, and he repeatedly chastises them for "boasting" of their superiority to "Israelites." Yet Paul acknowledges that many 34 Pliny, Letter to Trajan. 35
Duff, "'The Synagogue of Satan'," 11.
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Gentile converts have taken his own words as encouragement to think of themselves as being, spiritually speaking, the real Jews. Many could have taken that to be his meaning when, for example, in his letter to the Romans he speaks of who the "real Jews" are: For he is not a Jew, who is one externally, nor is circumcision what is external in the flesh; but a person is a Jew who is one inwardly, and circumcision is in the heart, spiritual, not literal (Rom 2:28-29).
In the same letter, of course,_ Paul goes on to say that he grieves continually for "my kinsmen according to the flesh, who are Israelites," since, as he explains, "not all who are from Israel are Israel; not all who are the seed of Abraham are his children," - for the "it is not the children of the flesh who are the children of God, but the children of the promise" (9: 1-8). In his letter to the Galatians, he assures Gentile converts there that "if you belong to Christ, you are Abraham's seed, heirs according to the promise," children of Sarah, "born according to the spirit"; thus, he admonishes his hearers, "you are children of the promise, like Isaac" (Gal 3: 1-4:28) Concluding this letter, Paul proclaims the blessing of peace, upon all who belong, he says, to "the Israel of God"(6: 16). Finally, when Paul writes to converts in Corinth, he compares their experience favorably - to that of "Israel according to the flesh" (1 Cor 10:18).36 Paul's letters, along with the various supersessionist views expressed in such writings as the letter to the Hebrews and the gospel of John, show how widespread such views had become, even around the end of the first century. We need not, then, indulge in elaborate speculation, as scholars often have, about what these "would-be Jews" had done to anger John. For while neglecting the very practices that John believes keep God's people holy - observing the commandments, and strictly maintaining purity these Gentile converts dare to "say they are Jews," when they are not, but even boast of their superiority. If they have, indeed, "blasphemed" by imagining that God no longer loves his people, no wonder the prophet longs for the day when Jesus will come to punish them in a way that perfectly fits their crime: I will make those of the synagogue of Satan, who say they are Jews and are not, but are lying - I will make them come and bow down before your feet, and they wi11learn that I have loved you.
This reading tends to support Frankfurter's observation that 36 See the incisive discussion by Daniel Boyarin in Carnal Israel: Reading Sex in Talmudic Culture (Berkeley: U. of California Press, 1993); and note the "politically corrected" translation now found in the New Revised Standard Version translation of this passage. See also the important discussion by Schlusser Fiorenza, The Book of Revelation, 114-134.
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scholars who have cast John of Patmos as a Christian, as opposed to a Jew, distort his text and obscure a proper understanding of his relationship to Jews who were not devoted to Jesus. "Christian' would imply that his Jesus devotion somehow displaces or preempts his Jewishness. 37
We may not be able to solve entirely the problem of whom John addresses in Rev. 2:9 and 3:9, and, for our present purpose, we need not do so. In any case, Frankfurter makes a perceptive point when he says that for observant Jewish followers of Jesus like John, "the term 'Christian,' of course, is the least useful label, either for denoting separation from Jews as a taxonomic category, or for denoting ancient religious self-definition. "38 In regard to John ofPatmos, we agree. Yet this comment raises another question noted earlier: when, and for whom, did "Christian" become - not the least but the most useful label, even a necessary one? This question points us toward one obvious source - the famous letters written about a decade after John wrote the Book of Revelation, by Ignatius, bishop of Antioch. It is hard to know what to make of the famous statement we noted from the Book of Acts, that "the disciples were called Christians first in Antioch." Yet we cannot help noting that some twenty or thirty years after Luke wrote these words, Ignatius, who calls himself "bishop of Antioch," is the first, so far as we know, not only to insist on calling himself "Christian," but also to define what he calls "Christianity" to separate his own stand from what he calls "Judaism." At the same time, Ignatius insists on separating himself and his fellow "Christians" from Jesus followers who, like John, both apparently are Jews, and proudly claim the name. Like John, of course, Ignatius wrote seven extant letters to groups of Jesus followers in Asia Minor, including groups in three of the same Asian towns that John had addressed, directing them to those whom he, of course, does call Christians and, as noted above, the term as he uses it specifically denotes Gentile converts.
John and Ignatius: Early Diversity among Followers of Jesus Let us compare, then, the rhetorical strategies of John of Patmos and Ignatius of Antioch as each of these two intense, passionate polemicists attempts to circumscribe the boundary of "God's people" against "others" who, each charges, falsely claim a place within that magic circle. Of course we need not assume that the two were in direct communication, or even that Ignatius knew of John's writing, separated as they were by over a decade, and by the distance between Syria and the regional towns near 37 38
"Jews or Not?" 408. Ibid.
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Ephesus in Asia. Yet Christine Trevett finds in Ignatius' writing evidence to show not only that he was familiar with John's writing, but that he intended certain passages of his own letters to Jesus' followers in Philadelphia to challenge some of John's claims and teachings.39 And while keeping in mind that the evidence is too dense and complex to allow us to characterize their respective standpoints as if they were simply diametric opposites - for we acknowledge, indeed, that various groups of Jesus' followers coexisted, and sometimes competed, in Asia Minor at the turn of the first century - the contrasts are intriguing. In the first place, while Ignatius seems to be responding to similar issues, his perception of the EKKAlloia he addresses differ sharply from John's. As we noted, John apparently identifies himself not only as a prophet but also a priest, who stands among a "kingdom of priests," perhaps intending to characterize the whole community of "holy ones" (or, at least, the men among them) as, in effect, a group of priests - words that, as noted above, echo Exodus 19:6, in which the Lord addresses the Israelites through Moses, saying, "You shall be for me a kingdom of priests" (tl'J;'J rdi7~~ '? p;,n tln~'). John envisions each group of saints standing under the leadership of a protecting angel, to whom is entrusted divine revelation mediated through prophets like John. But when it comes to human leaders, John recognizes above all prophets like himself. Despite his elaborately phrased modesty about his own prophetic role, the prayer of the twenty four elders in heaven indicates that he regards the prophets as leaders of the "holy ones," that is, the members of the congregations they address (2:20; 10:7; 16:6; 8:24; 22:6; 22:9). Furthermore, as we have seen, John reserves his bitterest invective for the two prophets he denounces as false - perhaps, as we have seen, because the practical teaching of both
39 Christine Trevett, Montanism: Gender, Authority, and the New Prophecy (Cambridge: CUP, 1995); C. Trevett, "Apocalypse, Ignatius, Montanism: Seeking the Seeds," VC 43/4 (1989): 313-338. See also Henning Paulsen, Studien zur The%gie des Ignatius von Antiochien, Forschungen zur Kirchen- und Dogmengeschichte. Bd. 29 (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1978); William R. Schoedel, Ignatius of Antioch: A Commentary on the Letters of Ignatius of Antioch, edited by Helmut Koester (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1985). On Ignatius' view of apostles, see also Charles E. Hill, "Ignatius and the Apostolate: The Witness of Ignatius to the Emergence of Christian Scripture," in Studia Patristica: Papers Presented at the Thirteenth International Conference on Patristic Studies Held in Oxford, 1999 (ed. Maurice F. Miles and Edward J. Yarnold; Leuven: Peeters, 2001), 226-48. Hill observes, for example, that Ignatius' letters "p~ace the apostles beyond the merely exemplary. The apostles are a definite and closed group which participates in an astonishing triumvirate with Jesus Christ and the Father representing divine authority." (233).
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these "false prophets" echoes that of Paul - and perhaps because one is female. 40 John regards apostles quite differently from Paul- and, as we shall see, very differently from Ignatius, who takes Paul as the primary model for his own life. Occasionally John mentions apostles with some respect - but only those who are dead and safely enshrined in past tradition. Thus John envisions apostles in heaven, praising God's judgment along with the saints and prophets who are already there. But when he designates specific apostles, he mentions only those he calls "the twelve apostles" (21: 14) whom Jesus chose, whose names he envisions inscribed upon the foundations of the twelve gates of the heavenly Jerusalem. Yet among his contemporaries, John seems to regard "apostles" only with suspicion. Thus the Jesus he channels opens his first address to the Ephesians praising those who, in his words, "do not tolerate evildoers," which means, he explains, that "you have tested those who call themselves apostles, but are not, and you found them to be false" (2:2). Did John have in mind, among others, the most famous self-professed apostle, Paul - one whom John never mentions (if, indeed, he knew of him) but whom others among his near contemporaries in Asia called simply "the great apostle"41 and revered even above "the twelve?" Paul himself says, of course, that his missionary work was dogged by charges that he falsely claimed to be an apostle. Note, too, that when Paul himself enumerates those divinely gifted for leadership among the churches, he ranks apostles and prophets in reverse order from John: "God has appointed in the churches first apostles; second, prophets, third, teachers" (1 Corinthians 12:28). Paul's own letters indicate, of course, that "apostles" were prevalent among his groups; and Ignatius, some sixty years later, acknowledges among Pauline groups not only "apostles," but also bishops, presbyters, or deacons. Not surprisingly, then, Ignatius envisions apostles, not prophets, standing as the primary leaders among his churches. Thus Ignatius gives advice to the groups he addresses that is the reverse of John's: Test prophets, not apostles. Although he does not deny that there are some prophets among Jesus' followers - as we shall see, his Letter to the Philadelphians shows that he knows how highly many revered them, 40 Tina Pippin, on the basis of her reading of certain passages in Revelation, claims that John regards only males as members of God's holy community; see her "The Heroine and the Whore: Fantasy and the Female in the Apocalypse of John," Semeia 60/1 (1990): 67-82. While I do not find her reading persuasive, I tend to take John's reference of the holy ones as a "kingdom of priests" as indicating that, as often happens, men form the essential and holy center - and in all likelihood, the only legitimate leaders - of God's people. 41 See, for example, "The Hypostasis of the Archons" 87:4-5, in The Nag Hammadi Library (4th rev. ed.; J.M. Robinson, gen. ed.; Leiden, New York: E.J. Brill, 1996), 162.
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perhaps especially in Asia Minor - Ignatius apparently follows the view expressed in Luke-Acts that bishops, understood as latter-day agents of the apostles, now hold the essential leadership role in the churches (Acts 20: 17-38). Ignatius, of course, takes the suggestions made in Acts 20 to a far more radical and systematic conclusion. Not only does he identify himself as the sole authentic leader of Jesus' followers in Antioch, but he insists that every genuine EKKAlloia must have a bishop, like himself, as leader. "Without the bishop, nothing can be called an EKKAlloia"42 - fighting words, one would imagine, when resonating among groups whose members agreed with John that their assembly was divinely guided by an angel who gives divine direction through prophets. And should such prophets have taught, as John had, that all members of God's people are priests, Ignatius apparently felt compelled to set them straight. For when Ignatius writes to the EKKAlloia at Philadelphia, where only ten to fifteen years before, John of Patmos had written to "a stronghold of (his) loyalists" who lived there, Ignatius at first treads carefully. When he takes up the question of the roles of priest and prophet, far from metaphorically characterizing all of God's people as priests, as John had, Ignatius defines priests as church functionaries specifically authorized and assigned to the second rank of leadership, below the bishop and above the deacons. Thus he defines them as three formal ranks belonging to the KAfjpo$, clergy, by contrast with what he calls the "laity" (Aa6$, the people").43 After admonishing Jesus' followers to obey the bishops, priests, and deacons, Ignatius adds what sounds like a pointed concession: "And also let us love the prophets, because they anticipated the gospel in their preaching, and hoped for and awaited Him, and were saved by believing on him. "44 What John of Patmos had implied about apostles - that the only authoritative ones are people of the past - Ignatius now implies about prophets: those who are genuine are, above all, the classical prophets, long dead and sanctioned by tradition. Yet Ignatius seems to have known that many prophets had been active in Philadelphia, including the four daughters of the apostle Philip, all of them prophets, and the famous woman prophet Ammia, who was active there from around John's time to his own. Apparently because he recognizes Philadelphia's strong tradition of prophetic teaching, when he writes to believers there, Ignatius refrains from challenging their authority. Instead, far from deprecating present day prophets, Ignatius claims that 42 Trallians 3.1. For a fascinating recent discussion of Ignatius' view of episcopacy and church order, see Harry O. Maier, "The Politics of the Silent Bishop: Silence and Persuasion in Ignatius of Antioch," JTS 55/2 (2004): 503-519. 43 Eph. 1.3; 2.2; Trail. 1.1; 3.1; 8.1; Magn. 2.1. 44 Philadelphians 5.2.
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while in Philadelphia he himself proved that he, too, could speak as a prophet. Later, writing to believers there, he reminds them that while he was visiting Philadelphia, he had publicly demonstrated his own prophetic credentials: "I cried out when I was with you; I cried out in a loud voice it was God's voice!" But what Ignatius says he spoke in prophecy turned out to be antithetical to a continuing and active prophetic tradition. Instead, it was what he preached all the time: "Pay attention to the bishop, and to the presbytery, and to the deacons /" Ignatius admits that some who heard him speak this "prophecy" objected, charging that rather than speaking by the spirit's inspiration, the bishop had said these things because he had been tipped off about dissenters among the Philadelphia group. But Ignatius vehemently denies the charge, and swears by God that I did not learn this from any human source. It was the spirit that kept on proclaiming in these words: "Do nothing apart from the bishop ... prize unity; flee schism; imitate Jesus Christ.,,45
Despite his claim to speak as a prophet - and the unconventional message he delivered in that role - Ignatius rejects entirely the premise central to the teaching of John of Patmos, as well as many other prophets and their admirers in Asia among Jesus' followers, including the authors of Didache and the Gospel of Matthew. For each of these authors, in various ways, takes care to demonstrate that his "gospel" - the message of Jesus Christ, as each presents it - is grounded in classical prophecy. John's own oracles, as Prigeant observes, are "literally saturated" with allusions to the oracles of Isaiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, and Zachariah,46 as is the Gospel of Matthew and its predecessors. But Ignatius, on the contrary, hardly ever refers to what he calls the dpxata - that is, to texts from the Hebrew Bible. On the contrary, he insists that what is primary is the gospel message - and not the Hebrew Scriptures. Knowing his own stand to be controversial, he describes to those in Philadelphia: I have heard some people say, "If I don't find it in the dpxa1a, I do not believe in the gospel." And when I say to them, "but it is written," they retorted, "that is precisely the issue." But to me, the dpxa1a are Jesus, and the inviolable dpxa1a are his cross, his death, his resurrection, and the faith that is through him. 47
45 Ibid., 7.1-2. 46 Pierre Prigent, L 'Apocalypse de Saint Jean (Geneva: Labor et Fides, 1988),41. 47 Philadelphians 8.2. On the term ~uaYyEAlov, note the incisive discussion by Helmuth Koester, Ancient Christian Gospels (Philadelphia: Trinity Press International, 1990), 7-8; for another view, see John P. Meier, "Matthew and Ignatius: A Response to William R. Schoedel," in Social History o/the Matthean Community: Cross-Disciplinary Approaches (ed. David L. Balch; Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1991), 178-86. Note, too, C.B. Hill's discussion of Ignatius on the authority of the written sources, in "Ignatius and the Apostolate," 247-8.
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Instead of founding his faith upon the testimonies of the Hebrew Bible, as others do, Ignatius declares that he founds it upon what Paul says are the elementary themes of his preaching (KTlPVYl1a), that is, "Jesus Christ, and him crucified" (l Corinthians 2:2) - that is, "his cross, his death, his resurrection." This, apparently, is what he means when he repeatedly insists that Jesus' followers are to "eat only Christian food." (Are we to infer, here, the eucharist, the "gospel" preaching, or both?). The bishop continues, "I plead with you, do nothing in strife, but according to Christ's teaching." What this means, and what matters most, is to focus on Christianity, not Judaism: "If anyone interprets Judaism to you, do not listen to him. "48 As we might expect of one who helped coin and contrast these two terms, Ignatius does not claim for himself or for those with whom he identifies the term "Jew." Although, he regards himself as a participant in Israel - the "new Israel" - he insists on the clear superiority of "Christianity." Against any like John, who is proud to understand himself a Jew, Ignatius declares that "whoever is not called by this name [Christian] is not of God!" As Philippa Townsend points out, Ignatius argues for a complete reversal of the historical relationship between Jewish tradition and the emerging sects of Jesus' followers. "Not only must the Christianoi no longer orbit' Judaism,' Jews who believe in Jesus must now adopt 'Christianism'; they must become Christians."49 Thus Ignatius radically shifts the boundaries. Unlike John of Patmos or Matthew, who sought to demonstrate the truth about Jesus Christ from the Hebrew Bible, Ignatius goes so far as to accuse those who introduce) lovoa"iol1os of introducing alpEOIS. Yet even having repudiated "Judaism," Ignatius goes on to claim that he and his fellow Christians have taken over the Jews' identity as God's people. Thus this Syrian convert can enjoin Jesus' followers to "give no occasion to the e6vEOIv [that is, to the "nations," to Gentiles]" to slander God's people. Thus he seems to assume that God has disenfranchised the Jews, and that he and his fellow Gentiles have become, in effect, Israel. Let us state, then, our conclusion. First, we agree with the perspective of many colleagues who see John, that fervently Jewish follower of Jesus, attacking, as rival prophets and teachers, followers of Jesus in Asia who follow Pauline teaching. Second, in light of recent discussion of usages of the term XploTlavol, we agree that the latter probably consist primarily of Gentile converts. Third, we want to indicate how this picture fits into current discussion of the emergence of boundaries between "Jews" and "Christians," and, in Ignatius' words, between "Judaism" and "Christianity." Finally, we want to show how John, by conflating two 48
49
Lo~. cit. 6.1. Townsend, "Who Were the First Christians?"
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distinct Biblical traditions of characterizing evil powers - one involving "that old serpent," the chaos dragons and his beastly allies, the other "the satan" and his angelic armies - intends to "out" those "insiders" whom he detests as, in effect, secret allies of the "outside" enemies who threaten and persecute God's people.
If You Got It, Flaunt It Religious Advertising in the Gospel ofPhilip EDUARD IRICINSCHI
This paperl will attempt to analyze the role of the "Hebrews" in the Gospel of Philip. Determined to gain proselytes for his Pauline textual community,2 the author of the Gospel of Philip 3 demotes other rival Pauline groups by calling them "Hebrews," and representing their mission in terms of "Hebrew proselytizing." The ancient author responds to a problem his readers seemed to have faced: How are they to discern between the message of Gas. Phil. group, spread around in wellrecognizable Pauline language, and the messages of its opponents, the "Hebrews" and their "slaves," probably disseminated using th~ same Pauline metaphors? If religious messages look all the same, how is one supposed to distinguish between them, let alone choose the right one? The answer to this conundrum comes from the myth of double names in the world, presented by the Gospel of Philip. Both the community of Gas. Phil. and their opponents use the words "God," "the father," "the son," "the holy spirit," "resurrection," and "the Church." According to the Gospel of Philip, the names used by the "Hebrews" function solely in this world, and cannot approximate their heavenly counterpart. The theory of double names enables the author of Gas. Phil. to find an explanation as to why the discourses of his opponents, in spite of being probably very similar to his own, are irrevocably caught in the net of worldly misunderstandings. Moreover, the theory of double names allows our author to carve a hermeneutic niche in the Pauline dialogue on resurrection, and 1 I would like to express my gratitude to Gregg Gardner, Martha Himmelfarb, Lance Jenott, Elaine Pagels, Philippa Townsend, and Holger Zellentin who read patiently drafts of this paper; their precious advice saved me from many mistakes. I would also like to thank Peter Brown, John Gager, and Karen King for their helpful comments on this paper during the workshop and the colloquium on "Making Selves and Marking Others" (Princeton University, 2005). 2 I follow here Brian Stock's definition of textual communities as "groups of people whose social activities are centered around texts, or, more precisely, around a literary interpreter of them"; see Brian Stock, The Implications of Literacy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983),522. 3 Gospel of Philip (NHC II, 3); in this paper, I will refer to it also as Gos. Phil.
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present several rituals practiced in his community, such as baptism, chrism, and the bridal chamber, in the light of this theory. The very first sentence of the Gospel of Philip introduces the reader to the theme of proselytizing and the limits of conversion: "A Hebrew makes another Hebrew, and such a person is called 'proselyte.' But a proselyte does not make another proselyte. "4 It is not by mere accident that the author placed these lines in the beginning of the Gospel of Philip. The Coptic verb tamio does not mean only "to make," but also "to prepare" and "to create,"5 and as such, it was used to translate Genesis 1: 1 into Coptic, through the rendition of Septuagint's epoiesen. 6 The first line of Gos. Phil. sets the tone for the rest of the writing, and makes clear the author's intention to explore various ways of "creating" proselytes and winning converts from rival parties. In this paper, I will follow the scholarly consensus, according to which Gos. Phil. was probably produced and circulated in Antioch, most likely between the second half of the second century and the end of the third century CEo Words and themes of Syriac origin in the Gospel of Philip (the Holy Spirit as feminine, for instance)? have led scholars to divide their guesswork on the gospel's provenance between Antioch and Edessa, with a preference for the former due to the intense interaction between Jews and Christians at work in this writing. 8 The author of Gos. Phil. focuses on the following questions: Who are we, and who are the "Hebrews"? Why do we call them "Hebrews"? How are we different from other groups? Who is more entitled to proselytize and why? Why would it be better for the reader/hearer of this message to follow us rather than the "Hebrews"? Why is our version of Christian selfdefinition superior to any other?9 The author organizes his answers around 4 Gos. Phil. 51.29-32. I will follow, with some emendations, Wesley W. Isenberg's translation of the Gospel of Philip, "The Gospel According to Philip" in Nag Hammadi Codex II, 2-7, together with XII, 2*, Brit. Lib. Or.4926(1), and P. Oxy. 1, 654,655, vol. I (ed. Bentley Layton; Leiden: Brill, 1989). 5 W.E. Crum, A Coptic Dictionary (Oxford: OUP, 1939), 413. Bentl!!y Layton, A Coptic Grammar with Chrestomathy and Glossary, Sahidic Dialect, 2d ed. (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2004), 457-458. 6 The Bohairic Coptic Version of the LXX reads Gen 1: 1 as follows: "Hen oyarche a phnoyti thamio ntphe nem pkahi. " Cf. Melvin K. H. Peters (ed.), A Critical Edition of the Coptic (Bohairic) Pentateuch, Volume 1, Genesis (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1985), 1. 7 Sebastian P. Brock, "The Holy Spirit as Feminine in Early Syriac Literature," in After Eve: Women, Theology and the Christian Tradition (ed. J. Martin Soskice; London: Collins, 1990), 73-88. 8 Jeffrey S. Siker, "Gnostic Views on Jews and Christians in the Gospel of Philip," NT 31 (1989): 275-88. See the next section of this paper for more on dating Gos. Phil. 9 I use expressions such as "local Christian communities" or "version of Christian self-definition" in order to capture the un-quantifiable character of real-life interactions between early Christian groups and/or individuals in the first three centuries CEo
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several major matters - fundamental for the construction of early Christian identities - in advertising the advantages of his own position. Writing from within a judaizing Christian group, the author of Gos. Phil. sought to inform potential adherents and the members of his community about particular interpretations of their own rituals. More or less common to other local Jewish-Christian groups, these rituals constituted perhaps forms of initiation (mysterion) to which its members had already been exposed. In my analysis of the role of the "Hebrews" in the Gospel of Philip, I follow with some reservation Robert Wilken's helpful distinction between Jewish Christians, "said to be Jews who believe in Jesus yet continue to observe Jewish law," and Judaizing Christians, "thought to be those Christians, usually Gentiles, whose acquaintance with Judaism was mediated through Christianity; who, in contrast to the majority of Christians, adopted certain aspects of Jewish law, even though before becoming Christians they had not observed it. "10 The community affiliated with Gos. Phil. may have included some Jewish Christians, yet its majority was formed of Judaizing Christians; similarly, the groups with whom the author of Gos. Phil. is in polemical dialogue could have been mostly Jewish Christian. ll While scholars have recommended observing certain conceptual borders between proselytizing and apologetic missions,12 the very structure and arguments of Gos. Phil. prompted me to classify the rhetorical devices employed by its author under the label of "religious advertising" instead of using the concept of "religious propaganda," a designation that is definitely more widespread in early Christian studies.13 The Gospel of 10 Robert L. Wilken, John Chrysostom and the Jews: Rhetoric and Reality in the Late 4th Century (Berkeley: U. of California Press, 1983), 69-70. Robert Wilken had initially described "Judaizing Christians" as "Judaeo-Christians"; see Robert L. Wilken and Wayne A. Meeks, Jews and Christians in Antioch in the First Four Centuries of the Common Era (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1987), 20. See now, for more nuanced distinctions, Matt JacksonMccabe, ed., Jewish Christianity Reconsidered: Rethinking Ancient Groups And Texts (Minnesota: Fortress Press, 2007); and Oskar Skarsaune and Reidar Hvalvik, eds., Jewish Believers in Jesus: The Early Centuries (Peabody: Hendrickson Publishers, 2007). 11 My reserve comes from the uneasiness to use only these two categories, which in spite of covering some grey area between the imaginary entities of "Judaism" and "early Christianity," still leave uncharted many forms of ancient Jewish/Christian identities. 12 Martin Goodman, Mission and Conversion: Proselytizing in the Religious History of the Roman Empire (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994),4. 13 Dieter Georgi, Die Gegner des Paulus in 2 Korintherbrief Studien zur ReligiOsen Propaganda in der Spatantike (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1964); rev. and trans. as Dieter Georgi, The Opponents of Paul in Second Corinthians (Philadelphia: Fortress. Press, 1986); Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza, ed., Aspects of Religious Propaganda in Judaism and Early Christianity (Notre Dame and London: U. of Notre Dame Press, 1976); Ramsay MacMullen, Christianizing the Roman Empire A.D. 100-400
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Philip lacks the apologetic overtones present in other second- and thirdcentury Christian writings. Its author assumes from his readership a certain degree of familiarity with Jewish-Christian ideas and practices, and his discourse has already dispensed with any self-introductions for outsiders. Nonetheless, we are still left with the question with questions about the purpose of this writing: Was it intended as mere pulpit advertising, to be used in sermons, for the sole edification of visiting fellow JewishChristians? Or was it meant to circulate in the backpacks of radical wanderers, as a manual, the way some modern scholars assumed the Gospel of Thomas was first put to use? One way to answer these questions is to inquire about the identities of its main characters.
Who Are the "Hebrews" of the Gospel of Philip? There is a consensus among scholars that Gos. Phil. was written in Syria, between the second part of the second century and the end of the third century CEo The same consensus has confidently placed the terminus ante quem of Nag Hammadi Codex II around mid-fourth century.14 As for the place of its composition, some scholars indicated Antioch or Edessa as the sites where Gos. Phil. was written. In doing so, academic authorities on Gos. Phil. guide their guesswork along the following lines: a few Syriac words, but plenty of asceticism and "Valentinian Eastern Gnosticism," (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984), esp. 25--42 on "modes of persuasion" before 312 CE, and 59-73 for "evangelical campaigns and publicity, after 312"; Robin Lane Fox, Pagan and Christians (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1986), esp. 265-335, on the "spread of Christianity"; Lukas Bormann, Kelly Del Tredici, Angela Standhartinger, eds., Religious Propaganda and Missionary Competition in the New Testament World (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1994), see especially articles by A. Thomas Kraabel, Klaus Berger, Harold W. Attridge, and Ron Cameron; Goodman, Mission and Conversion; Pieter W. van der Horst, Maarten J.J. Menken, Joop F.M. Smit, and Geert van Oyden, eds., Persuasion and Dissuasion in Early Christianity, Ancient Judaism, and Hellenism (Leuven: Peeters, 2003). 14 Cf. Isenberg "The Gospel According to Philip," 131, for dating, and 134, for the reasons of this dating. Hans-Martin Schenke establishes a strictly Valentini an terminus ante quem non around mid-second century, when Valentinus flourished, see Hans-Martin Schenke, Das Philippus-Evangelium (Nag-Hammadi-Codex 11,3) (Berlin: Academie Verlag, 1997),4-5. For a terminus ante quem in the second part of the fourth century, see Johannes Leipoldt, "Bine neues Evangelium?" ThLZ 1958, 481--496; and LeipoldtSchenke, Koptisch-gnostische Schriften aus den Papyrus-Codices von Nag Hammadi (Hamburg-Bergstedt: Herbert Reich, Evangelischer Verlag, 1960), 33, for the date of the Nag Hammadi codex II; while for a terminus ante quem, see Luigi Moraldi, "Vangelo di Filipo" in I Vangeli Gnostici: Vangeli di Tomaso, Maria, Verita, Filippo (ed. L. Moraldi; Milano: Adelphi Edizioni, 1984),47-76, 156-211, esp. 157.
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hence Syria; serious references to Hebrews, Jews and Christians, therefore Antioch. 15 While one cannot deny the usefulness of this, nor come up with a better location for Gas. Phil., one can wonder about the literary role played by the "Hebrews" in this text. So, who are the Hebrews, Jews and Gentiles of the Gospel of Philip? There are several clear references to the "Hebraios" in the text of Gas. Phil., describing a group with a common social background, and with an ideology and practices probably similar to those at work in the community of our author. Gas. Phil. 51.29 ("A Hebrew makes another Hebrew, and such a person is called 'proselyte' ") reflects the setting and limits of Jewish-Christian missions to the Gentiles. Similarly, it may as well give us an idea about parallel Jewish proselytizing efforts, possibly in Antioch, some of which were to be later restricted by Constantine's laws protecting "converts from Judaism to Christianity."16 Gas. Phil. 52.22 ("When we were Hebrews, we were orphans and had only our mother, but when we became Christians, we had both father and mother") situates the efforts to present a group-identity distinct from the "Hebrews" within the metaphorical interpretation of family relations. Thus, it uses the social language of family relations to build a JewishChristian group-identity distinct from and superior to that of the "Hebrews." Gas. Phil. 55.24-30 ("Some said, 'Mary conceived by the Holy Spirit.' They are in error. They do not know what they are saying. When did a woman ever conceive by a woman? Mary is the virgin whom no power defiled. She is a great anathema to the Hebrews, who are the apostles and the apostolic men") stresses the Hebrews' efforts to invent a direct genealogy by linking their identity to the main apostolic group. Interestingly enough, in his argument against the "Hebrews," the author of the Gospel of Philip does not seem to be interested in the descent from the 15 Bentley Layton "The Gospel According to Philip," in idem, The Gnostic Scriptures (New York: Doubleday, 1987), 325, conjectures that some of the excerpts in Gos. Phil. "must be the work of a Valentini an theologian of the East," while Fernando Bermejo Rubio looks for linguistic and sociological reasons to place Gos. Phil. in Antioch and Edessa; see Fernando Bermejo Rubio, "Evangelio de Felipo," in Textos gnosticos, Bibioteca de Nag Hammadi II: Evangelios, hechos, cartas (ed. Antonio Pinero, Jose Monserrat Torrents, and Franciscos Garcia Bazan; Madrid: Editorial Trotta, 1999), 1751, esp. 20. Siker, "Gnostic Views on Jews and Christians," 288, does not agree with Edessa as the initial setting of the Gos. Phil., proposing instead second-century Antioch as the ideal place of fruitful interaction between "Jewish, Christian and Gnostic Christian communities." For a useful, albeit short, review of the literature about dating the gospel of Philip, see Christopher R. Matthews, Philip Apostle and Evangelist: Configurations of a Tradition (Leiden: E.J. Brill 2002), 136-140. 16 Wilken, John Chrysostom and the Jews, 51, cf. Codex Theodosianus 16.8.5.
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"apostolic men," possibly a group of Christian Jews, but claims to have the best understanding of Paul's positions on resurrection. Moreover, as Sebastian Brock noticed, the identification of the Holy Spirit as feminine is a sure sign for the Syriac background of the Gospel of Philip. 17 In a symmetrical Pauline discussion about the roles played by faith and love (,'pistis receives, agape gives; nobody will know how to receive without pistis, nobody will know how to give without agape "18) Gos. Phil. 62.6 assumes that "He who has received something other than the Lord is still a Hebrew." The author of Gospel of Philip depicts his rivals as Jews who believe in Jesus, observe some parts of the Jewish law, claim the Palestinian apostles as their ancestors, and search for Gentile adherents in the same pool as the author of our text. To complicate the matter even further, the author of Gos. Phil. does not shy off from using the terms ioudai (the Coptic borrowing for Ioudaios) and hethnikos (Coptic for Gentile). Interestingly enough, in Gos. Phil. ioudai receives more neutral connotations than "hebraios," due perhaps to its association with Judea as geographical location. Take, for instance, Gos. Phil. 62.26-31: "If you say, 'I am a Jew,' no one will be moved. If you say, 'I am a Roman,' no one will be disturbed. If you say, 'I am a Greek, a barbarian, a slave, a free man,' no one will be troubled. If you say, 'I am a Christian,' the [ ... J will tremble." The author inserts "Jew" and "Roman" in a famous Pauline series of identity labels that represented just another late antique way of describing the rugged social map of the GrecoRoman oikoumene: Greek, barbarian, slave, and free man. The exception to this rule, of course, is "Christian," the name the author seemingly contends for with several other Pauline textual communities, the very same name that might have been denied to him, or even worse, associated by his opponents with the label "heretic." Another important occurrence of ioudai in Gos. Phil. belongs to a badly damaged passage, 75.25-76.2. The passage, in Isenberg's version, reads as follows: A horse sires a horse, a man begets man, a god brings forth a god. Compare the bridegroom and the bride. They have come from the [... ]. No Jew [... J has existed. And [... J from the Jews. [... J Christians [... J these [... J are referred to as "The chosen people of [... J," and "The true man" and "Son of Man" and "the seed of the Son of Man."
17
Sebastian P. Brock, "The Holy Spirit as Feminine in Early Syriac Literature," 73-
88. 18 My translation. I choose to translate nasgi (absent from the deteriorated text) by "will know how to receive" instead of Isenberg's "will be able to receive," and respectively nasti by "will know how to give" instead of "will be able to give," in order to stress the Pauline connection between gnosis and agape (77 .25).
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Procreative metaphors about horses, men, and gods build up to a (unfortunately missing) conclusion about Jews and Christians, which further leads to more generative phrases with an apocalyptic charge. Translators, editors, and commentators have taken great advantage of the missing text and filled the blank spaces with predictable theological projections, but have rarely offered an answer to the question about the relations between "Hebrews" and "Jews" in the Gospel of Philip. 19 It seems rather logical to place ioudai and nchristianos in the same series of procreative metaphors as horses', men, and gods stay in the beginning of the saying, but the stumbling block is to determine their relation to each other. Does one generate the other? Does one erode the other's authority? To find an answer, one should notice that the way in which line 31 is reconstructed matters most. Hence, one could choose, with Schenke' s 1960 version, to fill in the blanks with the "Greeks," ebol hn nhe[llen .. .], and put in place the Pauline (dis)connection between "Jew" and "Greek." This is not the only option available. On the other hand, one could follow W.C. Till's critical reconstruction,20 and fill in the missing part with ebol hn
19 The Coptic text does not help the translators at all in this case: Au[so}pe ebol hm pn{. ..}n{. ..}ne. Mn ioudai o{. ..) ebol hn nhe{. ..} soop. Auo an{. ..} ebol hn nioud[ai .. .} nchristianos an{. ..}o aumute aneeima{. ..} pgenos etcotp mpn{. .. } auo paletheinos rrome ayo psere mprome auo psperma mpsere mprome. Isenberg's solution, quoted above, is indeed minimalist, but does not make too much sense of a text altered beyond reconstruction. Other attempts at finding meaning in Gos. Phil. 75.25-76.2 include the following solutions. In 1960 and 1997, Schenke offered two slightly different translations of the same troublesome paragraph. His 1960 version proves to be rather descriptive: "Es gab keinen Juden, [der] den Griechen ent[stammte, solange das Gesetz bestand.] Dnd wir [selbst] ent[stammen] den Juden, [ehe wir] Christen [wurden]"; see Hans-Martin Schenke, "Das Evangelium nach Philippus: Ein Evangelium der Valentinianer aus dem Funde von Nag Hammadi," in Koptisch-gnostische Schriften aus den Papyrus-Codices von Nag Hammadi (ed. Leipoldt-Schenke; Hamburg-Bergstedt: Herbert Reich, Evangelischer Verlag, 1960), 31-65, esp. 57. The French and Italian translators elaborated on Schenke's first, descriptive version, and proposed something I would call a "maximalist" reconstruction. Hence, Menard chooses to fill in a Pauline reading: "11 n 'y avait pas [non plus] de Juif [venant] des [Grecs, tant que la Loi] etait en viguer. Et [nousmeme, nous fumes engendres] des Juifs [avant de devenir] chretiens"; see Jacques E. Menard, L 'evangile selon Philippe, introduction, texte, traduction, commentaire (Paris: Letouze & Ane, 1967), 95. Moraldi fills the blank spaces with theological guesswork: "Fintanto che la legge era in vigore, non c'e stato un ebreo (che sia nato da un Greco). Noi stessi in quanto stirpe cristiana non discendiamo dagli ebrei" ("V angelo di Filipo," 68). Finally, Schenke's 1997 remake of his earlier translation looks more like Isenberg's ] aus den version, and moves along the minimalist line: "Es gab keinen Juden [ Grie[chen ] war. Dnd [ ] aus den Jud[en ] zu Christen" (Das Philippus-Evangelium, 61). 20 W.C. Till, Das Evangelium nach Philippos (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1963).
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he[braiosJ or even with ebol hn he[thnikos].21 I suggest we adopt the latter solution and reconstruct Gas. Phil. 75.31 as opposing Jews and Gentiles irreducibly: Mn ioudai 0[ .. .] ebol hn nhe[thnikosJ soap ("there is not a Jew [ ... J coming into existence from the Gentiles"). In this case, our reconstruction of Gas. Phil. 75.31 enables us to read it as a continuation and further elaboration of the opening paragraph: a proselyte cannot bring another proselyte into being (52.15-24), in the same way a Jew cannot come into existence from the Gentiles (75.30-32). We may now understand these two statements not only as comments on the limits of conversion, but also as a reaction coming from the author of the Gospel of Philip against other Jewish-Christian groups' efforts at proselytizing among the Gentiles of Antioch. For the last time, who are the "Hebrews" of the Gospel of Philip? There are three possible answers to this question. First, the "Hebrews" may have been real-life Christian Jewish propagandists, trying to win proselytes from within the group of Gas. Phil. This answer appears probable, given their direct identification in Gas. Phil. with "the apostles and the apostolic men," to whom Mary is "a great anathema" (55.29-30). Secondly, the "Hebrews" in Gas. Phil. may have been mere "theological phantoms," to use A.T. Kraabel's felicitous turn of phrase. 22 Given the visible efforts of the Gospel of Philip to reach other textual communities by means of Pauline themes, vocabulary, and attitudes, one might even call the "Hebrews" here "Pauline revenants," since the politics of identity in Gas. Phil. appear to have been haunted not least by the cadenced sentence of 2 Corinthians 11 :22. Finally, the "Hebrews" of Gas. Phil. could have been Jewish-Christians who still observed parts of the Jewish law, and justified this by imagining their genealogy directly linked to the Jerusalem "apostolic men." Their proselytism was aimed mainly at the Gentiles of Antioch, and they contended with other Jewish-Christians for these proselytes. Theophilus of Antioch, living at the end of the second century, for instance, could have been one of their proselytes, and he does not seem to make any difference between "Hebrews" and "Jews" (Ad Autolycum, III.9). One may also conjecture that the Jewish-Christian identity of the "Hebrews" was fully integrated in the thick social network of the Gentile, Christian and Jewish
21 Cf. the critical apparatus attached by Bentley Layton to the Coptic text of Gos. Phil. (Nag Hammadi Codex II, 2-7, 194). 22 A.T. Kraabe1, "Synagoga Caeca: Systematic Distortion in Gentile Interpretations of Evidence for Judaism in the Early Christian Period," in To See Ourselves as Others See Us: Christians, Jews, "Others" in Late Antiquity (ed. Jacob Neusner and Ernest S. Frerichs; Chico, Calif.: Scholars Press, 1985),219-246, esp. 219.
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communities in Antioch, as it was described less than a century later by Libanius' letters and orations. Since the Hebrews' claim for direct lineage appears to have been more successful than the authoritative discourse at work in the community of Gos. Phil., it seems reasonable to conjecture that the author of Gos. Phil., employing a minority discourse, riposted with a double offensive. He described his opponents as being intimate with Jewish proselytizing ("a Hebrew makes another Hebrew, and such a person is called 'proselyte' ") and devised his text as an advertising campaign which aims at presenting his local Christian group in a better position regarding matters such as resurrection, connection with father's divine authority, baptism and bridal chamber.
Fathers and Sons, Slaves and Inheritors The main goal of religious advertisement in the Gospel of Philip is to establish a better, more authoritative position for its own community than the one of its opponents. As we mentioned before, the first propagandistic step undertaken by Gas. Phil. consists in describing these Jewish-Christian opponents as "Hebrews" interested in proselytizing (51.29-52.1). The next step projects the tense relations between Gos. Phil. and the "Hebrews" onto the Pauline usage of family metaphors. 23 As we will see throughout this paper, themes and phrases from Paul's letters populate the dialogue between Gos. Phil. and its opponents, and constitute the main avenues of dispute between the two parties. The author goes on by illustrating the opening statement, about "Hebrews" and proselytes, with a discussion of the limited inheritance of a freed slave, who may be entitled to a superior social position, but not to his master's inheritance, usually reserved for the master's sons.24 In doing this, Gos. Phil. launches into the first interpretation of a Pauline passage. Gal. 4.1-7 discusses the successional right of the child (nepios) who remains a
23 See Daniel von Almen's discussion of family metaphors in Romans and Galatians in La Famille de Dieu: La symbolique familiale dans Ie paulinisme (Gotingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1981). 24 Gos. Phil. 52.2-15: "The slave seeks only to be free, but he does not hope to acquire the estate (ousia) of his master. But the son is not only a son but lays claim to the inheritance (kleronomeia) of the father. Those who are heirs to the dead are themselves dead, and they inherit the dead. Those who are heirs to what is living are alive, and they are heirs to both what is living and the dead. The dead are heirs to nothing. For how can he who is dead inherit? If he who is dead inherits what is living he will not die, but he who is dead will live even more."
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"second-degree slave,"25 under the supervision of the manager of the house (oikonomos), until he receives both his freedom and his father's inheritance (4.1-4), while the Spirit of the Son promotes slaves to the status of son and inheritor (kleronomos, 4.6-7). According to the Roman law and customs of manumission, a freed slave was entitled to peculium, a certain amount of money from his master's property, which the slave usually administered before manumission. The fine print of this law included several conditions. Slaves received their peculium only if they were manumitted during their masters' lifetime; if the masters died without indicating specifically that their slaves receive freedom and peculium, the money was lost. Usually, the slaves paid a certain fraction of the peculium back to their masters, as a sort of "thank you" note, or as a way to buy their freedom. Oftentimes, manumission contracts contained an agreement regarding the obsequium, the ex-slave's duty to help his former master in need, and operae, a fixed annual number of workdays slaves were required to do for their former master. 26 For the author of Gos. Phil., the proselytes made by his opponents, the "Hebrews," are not unlike manumitted slaves, in that they can leave the household free and, if lucky, with the peculium (ousia; cf. Lk 15:12-13, ousia as the wasted part of inheritance). On the other hand, through a rather subtle distinction, sons are entitled to their father's inheritance (kleronomeia,· cf. Mat. 21:38, Mk. 12:7, for kleronomia as the proper inheritance, patrimony, share, and possession), once they are out of patria potestas. 27 25 Von Allmen, La Famille de Dieu, 116. 26 The corpus of literature on slavery and manumission in early Christianity is quite large. For the rules on manumission and freedmen, see Jane F. Gardner and Thomas Wiedemann, The Roman Household: A Sourcebook (New York: Routledge, 1991), chapter 7, "Manumission and Freedmen." More primary sources on ancient slavery can be found in Thomas Wiedemann, Greek & Roman Slavery (London: Routledge, 1981), esp. 45-60, for the section on manumission. For an intellectual history of slavery in antiquity, see Peter Garnsey, Ideas of Slavery from Aristotle to Augustine (Cambridge: CUP, 1996). Three other works are worthy mentioning in this context: Dale B. Martin, Slavery as Salvation: The Metaphor of Slavery in Pauline Christianity (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1990); J. Albert Harrill, The Manumission of Slaves in Early Christianity, HUT (Tiibingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1995); and, most recently, J. Albert Harrill, Slaves in the New Testament: Literary, Social, and Moral Dimensions (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2006). For slavery and identity, see also the useful chapter on "Social Hierarchies and Cultural Identities," in Peter Garnsey and Caroline Humfress, The Evolution of the Late Antique World (Cambridge: Orchard Academic, 2001),83-106. 27 Modem scholars have brought too often their understanding of Galatians 4.1-7 and Freudian assumptions to Dionysius of Halicarnassus' discussion of the Roman law on the "reverence and dutifulness of children toward their parents" (Roman Antiquities 2.27.12). According to Dionysius, the father can "make a profit by selling his son as often as three times, thereby giving greater power to the father over his son than to the master
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Gos. Phil. claims its Pauline niche with gusto and attention to detail. The author of the Gospel of Philip assigns the role of "Hebrews" to his opponents, and describes their followers as "slaves," acquainted only with their mother and deprived of any substantial connection to the master/father. After assuming the identity of "Christians" for his community, Gos. Phil. puts a new spin on the Pauline theme of the law and baptism into God's family (Gal. 3.15-4.11). Our text describes the son's right to his father's possessions in terms of their being "heirs to what is living,"28 making it possible to switch from the theme of "who is entitled to proselytize?" to the question "why are we different from other, inferior groups?" The answer announces the first notes of another Pauline theme, resurrection, on which the position of Gos. Phil. differs sharply from those held by its opponents. Religious propaganda (the opposition hebraios/proselytos) makes room for legal discussion (the opposition slave/son); in turn, this enables an interpretation of the theme of lawful paternal inheritance in terms of resurrection. Hence, the supporters of the "Hebrews" must soon realize that they received the possessions of the dead, became dead and inherited death. Meantime the Gos. Phil. group finds itself in the better position of receiving the share of the living, inheriting both death and life. Before exploring how Gos. Phil. turns its peculiar positions on resurrection, ritual, and spiritual marriage into a clear propagandistic advantage within its Pauline community of dialogue, it may be useful to pause for a moment and ask one more question. Besides fitting nicely into a Pauline metaphor of family, what is the role played by fathers, sons, and slaves in the Gospel of Philip? Denise Kimber Buell has recently called attention to the rhetoric of procreative and kinship language in the writings of Clement of
over his slaves. For a slave who has once been sold and has later obtained his liberty is his own master ever after, but a son who had once been sold by his father, if he became free, came again under his father's power, and if he was a second time sold and a second time freed, he was still, as at first, his father's slave; but after the third sale he was freed from his father." (Ant. Rom. 2.27.4); see Dionysius of Halicarnassus, The Roman Antiquities (LCL [Earnest Cary]). Hence, Maurizio Bettini finds that Roman sons submitted willingly to this "archaic pattern of paternal severity" (Anthropology and Roman Culture: Kinship, Time, Images of the Soul [Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991], 6-9). More recently, Richard P. Saller presented the "revisionist argument" that during the Empire the relations between fathers and sons made room for far more nuances than the above classical picture (Richard P. Saller, Patriarchy, Property~ and Death in the Roman Law, Cambridge: CUP, 1994, 73, see esp. chapter 5, "Pietas and Patria Potestas: Obligation and Power in the Roman Household"). 28 Netrkleronomei mpetonh (52.9).
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Alexandria. 29 According to Buell, one way of circumventing the theological opposition between orthodoxy and heresy would be opened by a close analysis of the functions performed by procreative language in early Christian literature, such as authorizing discourses in need of an audience, making room for identity-building processes, creating symbolic and legitimate patrilinear lineages for the transmission of teaching and authority, and naturalizing power. 30 Defined as "heretical" in the twentieth-century, the Gospel of Philip can be better understood as claiming not just an authoritative place in a diverse religious landscape, but the right to compete over proselytes with other rival groups. The metaphor of the Father's inheritance, disputed between sons and slaves, could have been meant to construct a direct patrilineage for Gos. Phil. community, and convey a surplus of authority to its singular conceptions about resurrection and unusual rituals, such as the bridal chamber. In spite of having its so-called "gnostic" rituals and extracanonical sayings of Jesus lavishly scrutinized by great scholars for almost half a century, the Gospel of Philip is still in need of a thorough analysis of its mechanisms of self-definition, striped of any "gnostic," "EastValentinian," or "heretical" academic preconceptions. With three notable exceptions, the theme of slavery will receive constant negative connotations all the way through the end of Gos. Phil. In the first of these exceptions, the slaves, called "the sons of marriage," are promised thorough indemnification in the heaven: "In this world, the slaves serve the free. In the kingdom of heaven, the free will minister to the slaves: the children of the bridal chamber will minister to the children of the marriage (nsere mpgamos)" (72.17-22). The second instance, a clear Pauline allusion (lCar 8.1), "he who is really free through knowledge is a slave because of love" (77.26-7), could be interpreted as showing the way for the slaves to become the "sons of the marriage." The last positive occurrence is the most dramatic of all, announcing that after exposing wickedness and receiving the chrism, an initiatory ritual superior to baptism, probably "the slaves will be free [and] the captives ransomed" (85.28-9). The author of the Gospel of Philip does not hesitate to walk an extra mile with his target readership, just to explain the advantages of joining his community. 29 Denise Kimber Buell, Making Christians: Clement of Alexandria and the Rhetoric of Legitimacy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999). 30 For the matter of by-passing the heresy/orthodoxy puzzle, see especially chapter 5 of Buell's book: " 'Few Are Like Their Fathers': The Rhetoric of Genealogy and IntraChristian Polemic." The author encourages scholars of late antique religions to explore the ways in which early Christians struggled to construct their in-group identity and, in the same time, to inquire on "how and under what conditions scholars adopt as authoritative certain accounts of these struggles and their participants" (182).
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Archons' Doublespeak: What Is in a Double Name? The author of the Gospel of Philip mentions the Hebrew language within a complex discussion of Jesus' double name: "The last name is 'Christ,' the first is 'Jesus,' that in the middle is 'the Nazarene.' 'Messiah' has two meanings, both 'the Christ' and 'the measured.' 'Jesus' in Hebrew is 'the redemption.' [IC mmnthebraios pe psote (Coptic for apolytrosis)] 'Nazara' is 'the Truth'. 'The Nazarene' then, is 'the Truth' " (Gas. Phil. 62.8-14). According to Guy Stroumsa, the speculations on the divine double name in Gas. Phil. join several other mystical Christian texts, which employed Jewish "theologies of the Name" to describe the magical, secret name of Jesus, and its relation with the name of the Father. 31 The noteworthy myth of the origin of double names in this world (53.24 - 54.31) situates the Gospel of Philip to some extent within the context of the remarkably rich mythological features of other Nag Hammadi documents. It also remains crucial, however, for understanding the politics of identity at work in the advertising message of Gas. Phil.: Light and Darkness, life and death, right and left, are brothers of one another. They are inseparable. Because of this neither are the good good, nor evil evil, nor is life life, nor death death. For this reason each one will dissolve into its earliest origin (atefarche gin sorp). But those who are exalted above the world are indissoluble, eternal. (Gos. Phil. 53.14-24)
In this world (peikosmos), opposites are in close relationship to each other, by the mere virtue of their origin, whereas above it they take on Platonic brightness. Despite the stark separation between the function of words in this world (peikosmos) and the primordial language in the heavenly realm (aion), the author can hardly be called a dualist thinker. From the 31 Origen, Cels. 1.6,21,25,27; Gospel of Truth, NHC I, 38.6-39.6, Exc. Theod. 31.3, and Irenaeus of Lyon on Marcus the Magician (Adv. Haer. 1.17-21). See Guy Stroumsa, "A Nameless God: Judaeo-Christian and Gnostic 'Theologies of the Name' " in The Image of the Judaeo-Christians in Ancient Jewish and Christian Literature (ed. Peter J. Tomson and Doris Lamberts-Petry; Tiibingen: Mohr Siebeck), 230-243. A different inquiry, but from a similar perspective, into the Jewish origins of the name "Yaldabaoth" led Joseph Dan to posit a superficial circulation of the Hebrew names of divinity between Hekhalot mystics and the authors of the Christian mystical texts discovered at Nag Hammadi; see Joseph Dan, "Yaldabaoth and the Language of the Gnostics," in Geschichte-Tradition-Reflexion: Feschrift fiir Martin Hengel zum 70. Geburstag (ed. Hubert Cancik, Hermann Lichtenberger, and Peter Schafer; Tiibingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1996), 557-564. The search for "the language which God spoke," has been constantly connected in Late Antiquity to polemical claims of "linguistic and cultural superiority," according. to Milka Rubin's article, "The Language of Creation or the Primordial Language: A Case of Cultural Polemics in Antiquity," in JJS 49.2 (1998): 306-333. I thank Adam H. Becker for this timely reference.
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impossibility of keeping opposites separated in this world, the author of Gas. Phil. infers the limits of language to designate clearly these opposites. This linguistic relativism places him not far from the sophist Hermogenes' positions, in Plato's Cratylus; it could also set him at the fringes of a Middle Platonic school whose positions on logic would have carried a Stoic stamp.32 Names given to the worldly are very deceptive (nounoc mplane), for they divert our thoughts from what is correct to what is incorrect. Thus one who hears the word "God" does not perceive what is correct, but perceives what is incorrect. So also with 'the father" and "the son" and "the holy spirit" and "life" and "light" and "resurrection" and "the Church" (ekklesia) and all the rest - people do not perceive what is correct but they perceive what is incorrect, [unless] they have come to know what is correct. The [names which are heard] are in the world [... deceive. If they] were in the Aeon (eternal realm), they would at no time be used as names in the world. Nor were they set among worldly things. They have an end in the Aeon. (Gos. Phil. 53.24-54.5)
We returned to our initial question about the difficulty to distinguish between two similar advertising messages crafted out of the same Pauline vocabulary. Both the community of Gas. Phil. and their opponents use the words, "God," "the father," "the son," "the holy spirit," "life," "light," "resurrection," and "the Church." As for his opponents' Pauline discourse, the author of Gas. Phil. intimates that their words function as names (neynaranamaze, Gk: anamazein) only in this world (nkasmikan), but cannot find an end (hae) in the eternal realm (aion). The "Hebrews" use them by convention; hence, these words cannot possibly be in true harmony with the divine matters they aim to designate. As in a Neoplatonic dress rehearsal of the Cratylus, the names used by the "Hebrews" will never be able to even approximate their heavenly counterpart. What guarantees then that the author of Gas. Phil. got the very same names quite right? One single name is not uttered in the world, the name which the father gave to the son; it is the name above all things: the name of the father. For the son would not become father unless he wore the name of the father (pran mpeiot). Those who have this name know it, but they do not speak it. But those who do not have it do not know it. (Gos. Phil. 54.513)
Family and generative metaphors about the most precious inheritance a father can leave to his son, namely his name and patria patestas, help the author of Gas. Phil. create the vital illusion of correct patrilineage. His 32 For a non-dualistic perspective in the Gospel of Philip and the role of the names, see Klaus Koschorke, "Die 'Namen' in Philippusevangelium: Beobachtungen zur Auseinandersetzung zwischen gnostischem und Kirchliche Christentum," ZNW 64 (1973) 307-22. In Cratylus, 384d, Hermogenes represents the position according to which "convention and agreement" are decisive in using names correctly.
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privileged knowledge of "the name of the father" is further attested by the origin myth of the deceptive character of words, which may also be read as an inversion of the tower of Babel story (Gen 11). But truth brought names into existence in the world for our sakes because it is not possible to learn it (truth) without these names. Truth is one single thing; it is many things and for our sakes to teach about this one thing in love through many things. The rulers (archon) wanted to deceive man, since they saw that he had a kinship (sugeneia) with those that are truly good. They took the name of those that are good and gave it to those that are not good, so that through the names they might deceive him and bind them to those that are not good. And afterward, what a favor they do for them! They make them be removed from those that are not good and place them among those that are good. These things they knew, for they wanted to take the free man and make him a slave to them forever. (Gos. Phil. 54.13-54.31)
The theme of enslavement to the deceiving archons (a onetime favorite feature of the scholarly construction of "Gnosticism") brings the audience of the Gospel of Philip back into familiar Pauline language, and makes clear the rationale behind their status as "slaves" to the "Hebrews." The author explains how the names became so deceptive, by reversing agency in the tower of Babel story and blaming everything on the evil archons. These linguistic tricksters high-jacked and deviated the good functioning of the names, created in the primordial language. The truth made the names to facilitate the understanding of its own uniqueness in multiple ways (one can even hear echoes of the Platonic discussion on the many and one). The archons realized that the humans belong to the same race (Coptic: sugeneia) as the "truly good" ones, and switched the labels (the names) on everything in this world, making the bad look good and the good look bad. Finally, as a divine favor, they reinstated the good to its initial place and enslaved the free man for eternity. The myth of messiness of common language ends with Jesus delivering food and the Holy Spirit playing a trick on the archons. 33 Before Jesus came to earth, the archons enslaved the humans, limiting their access to the connection between names and the divine. Fortunately, the Holy Spirit deceived the archons, the tricksters themselves, leading them to believe
33 "Before Christ came, there was no bread in the world, just as Paradise, the place were Adam was, had many trees to nourish the animals but no wheat to sustain man. Man used to feed like the animals, but when Christ came, the perfect man, he brought bread from heaven in order that man might be nourished with the food of man. The rulers thought that it was by their own power and will that they were doing what they did, but the Holy Spirit in secret was accomplishing everything through them as it wished. Truth, which existed since the beginning, is sown everywhere. And many see it being sown, but few are they who see it being reaped" (Gos. Phil., 55.5-22).
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that they hold agency of "what they did."34 However, the archons' introduction of duplicity in common language brought the use of double names, such as "Jesus Christ" with its hidden and revealed components. 35 Another example of the schizophrenic nature of language comes from the separation between the "single names" of "father" and "son," which function only in the register of this world, and the "holy spirit" as a "double name," which is active both in this world and in the aion, on the revealed as well as on the hidden levels of discourse (Gas. Phil. 59.12-18).
Resurrection and the Bridal Chamber: The Users' Manual In the origin myth of linguistic confusion, the author of Gas. Phil. charges the archons with creating division among different Pauline communities by falsifying the relation between worldly language and names made in heaven. The archons' mishandling of linguistic labels may be responsible for two other points of dissension between the author of the Gospel of Philip and his opponents: How will we be resurrected? What is a bridal chamber? Through his polemic against other early Christian tenets on resurrection, the author of Gas. Phil. addresses a community of teachers that could be identified as the "Hebrews," the Pauline Jewish Christians. 36 He challenges their opinion about the end of Jesus' earthly life: death followed by resurrection. Employing paradox to distance his textual community from other Christian groups, our author opens the way for a "Philip" understanding of rituals as performing "resurrection" already in this
34 This position of the "tricked trickster" is common in other Nag Hammadi texts. As the religious advertising of the Gospel of Philip goes, after Jesus came, the archons lost power over their slaves (i.e. the slaves were manumitted), the food and the way it was consumed improved (the author uses here food as a metaphor for ritual practices, and conversely), and names recovered their initial match in heaven. 35 Gas. Phil., 56.5-15, quoted in the beginning of this section. This paragraph includes one of the main hints for locating the gospel of Philip in Syria. Jesus' theological "natures" may include "man," "angel," or "Father," but the term mysterion, with ten occurrences in the text (56,15; 64,31; 67,28; 69,33 [textual reconstruction]; 70,9; 71,4; 82,2; 82,6; 84,20; 86,1) rather points to various ways of understanding the first three categories, "man," "angel," and "Father" through sacramental language and practice similar to those circulated by the text of Gas. Phil. 36 "Those who say that the Lord died first and (then) rose up are in error, for he rose up first and (then) died. If one does not first attain the resurrection, he will not die" (Gas. Phil. 56.16-20).
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world. 37 Next, the author of Gos. Phil. approaches other polemical questions, quite important in the heated doctrinal debates of early JewishChristian communities: Is it better to be resurrected naked or clothed? In flesh or in garments? Faced with what appears to be an innocent gloss to Matthew 6:25 the author avoids the dilemma of resurrection with or without the body - two positions apparently held by other teachers involved in this dispute ("you say that" ... and "you say that") - by working out a short correlative interpretation on 1 Cor 15:50 and Jn 6:53. 38 If plain flesh and blood do not inherit the kingdom of God, unless they are naturally mixed with the flesh and blood of the Son of Man, then a more rarefied interpretation of these two sayings leads our author to assume that Jesus' flesh is the Logos and his blood is the Holy Spirit. On this matter, the author of the Gospel of Philip achieves the perfect tuning of worldly words and primordial language: It is the Logos/Flesh that is resurrected. 39 Against three other theological positions ("the bodily flesh will arise," vs. "the spiritual flesh will arise," vs. "the flesh of light will arise"), the author's own solution posits the impossibility of circumventing the Logos. One cannot escape the flesh (read "the Logos"), "for whatever you shall say, you say nothing outside the flesh. It is necessary to rise in this flesh, since everything exists in it" (57.17-19). With this answer, the author of Gos. Phil. claims an original place among other schools of thought on the matter of resurrection. He provokes his opponents: "Tell me what will rise, that we may honor you" (57.12); 37 For opinions similar to the one mentioned above see Schenke, Das PhilippusEvangelium, 225; Menard, L 'evangile selon Philippe, 141; Moraldi, "Vangelo di Fi1ipo," 188. 38 "Some are afraid lest they rise naked. Because of this they wish to rise in the flesh, and they do not know that it is those who wear the flesh who are naked. It is those who [ ... ] to unclothe themselves who are not naked. 'Flesh and blood shall not inherit the kingdom of God' (1 Co 15:50). What is this which will not inherit? This which is on us. But what is this, too, which will inherit? It is that which belongs to Jesus and his blood. Because of this he said 'He who shall not eat my flesh and drink my blood has not life in him' (In 6:53). What is it? His flesh is the word, and his blood is the Holy Spirit. He who has received these has food and he has drink and clothing. I find fault with the others who say that it will not rise. Then both of them are at fault. You say that the flesh will not rise. But tell me what will rise, that we may honor you. You say the Spirit in the flesh, and it is also this light in the flesh. (But) this too is a matter which is in the flesh, for whatever you shall say, you say nothing outside the flesh. It is necessary to rise in this flesh, since everything exists in it. In this world, those who put on garments are better than the garments. In the Kingdom of Heaven, the garments are better than those that put them on" (Gos. Phil. 56, 26 - 57, 22). 39 See Menard, L 'evangile selon Philippe, 142-3, for these two meanings of "flesh" in Gos. Phil.; see also Layton, "The Gospel According to Philip," 333, n2lf.
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perhaps alluding to a certain code of honor, which lent authority and brought more proselytes to the teacher who gave the most adequate answer to the question regarding the resurrection of the body. The last strategic move of the advertising message sent out by the author of Gos. Phil. attempted to convince prospective adherents that resurrection in the Logos is more accessible than the "Hebrews," their local Jewish-Christian opponents, would like them to believe. In Gospel of Philip resurrection begins with baptism, it is enriched by chrism, and brought to the perfection of restoration (apokatastasis) by the ritual of the bridal chamber. I hold that the Gospel of Philip promises resurrection from the very first act of initiation (mysterion). It is possible to imagine that the neophytes begin their initiation with baptism, which is supposed to extract them from death (77.8) and wash them in the immortal colors of God, the mighty dyer (6l.13-19). Common members of Gos. Phil. community considered baptism to be their distinctive mark. However, this could be easily outranked by chrism (74.13-24). I also conjecture that chrism could have been the distinctive mark of senior members in the "Philip" group, since chrism is the specific ritual that builds in-group identity, through the linguistic connection between the names "Christian" and "Christ," and the oil of anointment. This correlation confers strong patrilineal authority and the right to claim apostolic descent for the Gospel of Philip group: The chrism is superior to baptism, for it is from the word "Chrism" that we have been called "Christians," certainly not because of the word "baptism." And it is because of the chrism that "the Christ" has his name. For the Father anointed the Son, and the Son anointed the apostles, and the apostles anointed us. He who has been anointed possesses everything. He possesses the resurrection, the light, the cross, the Holy Spirit. (Gas. Phil, 74.13-24)
Once the new members of the Gospel of Philip group underwent the rituals of baptism and chrism, they could follow these initiatory stages with the mysterion of marriage, the characteristic feature of the next important ritual, the bridal chamber (nymph on ). This ritual remained accessible to those baptized or anointed, but involved difficult requirements. 4o I propose understanding the bridal chamber as involving a superior baptism in pairs, for those married couples who decided to renounce completely sexual activity. I derive the main support for this argument from Gos. Phil. 65.126:
40 "It is from water and fire that the soul and the spirit came into being. It is from water and fire and light that the son of the bridal chamber (came into being). The fire is the chrism, the light is the fire." (Gas. Phil., 67.3-6)
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The forms of evil spirit (pna nakatharton) include male ones and female ones. The males are they that unite with the souls which inhabit a female form, but the females are they which are mingled with those in a male form, though one who was disobedient.
In order to keep their ascetic vows as long as possible, the aspirants to the bridal chamber had to fight the assaults of the male and female impure spirits who would try to break their encratic pledge, and have some sort of intercourse with them. And none shall be able to escape them, since they detain him if he does not receive a male power or a female power, the bridegroom and the bride. One receives them from the mirrored bridal chamber. When the wanton women see a male sitting alone, they leap down on him and play with him and defile him. So also the lecherous men, when they see a beautiful woman sitting alone, they persuade her and compel her, wishing to defile her. But if they see the man and his wife sitting beside one another, the female cannot come into the man, nor can the male come into the woman. So if the image and the angel are united with one another, neither can any venture to go into the man or the woman. (Gos. Phil. 65.1-26)
During the encratic ceremony of the spiritual marriage, the bridegroom was united with the angelic counterpart of his bride, while the bride received the protection of the angelic bridegroom. Their own marital intercourse may have been sublimated to the commerce with the angelic, protective images of each other, in the very same way in which, in the Excerpta ex Theodoto (22.1-7), angels receive the baptism reserved to humans, in order to facilitate the mortals' access to protection through the angelic name. What are the benefits of the bridal chamber? From this advanced vantage point, well-trained in dealing with angelic images, bridegrooms and brides search for the types and images which clothe the truth upon its entering this world. These explorers will then have the chance to identify the right meaning of names in the game of the double name, proceed to resurrection through images, all the way to restoration (apokatastasis) back to the moment in which Eve was not separated from Adam, and change their name from "Christian" into "Christ."41
41 "Truth did not come into the world naked, but it came in types and images. The world will not receive truth in any other way. There is a rebirth and an image of rebirth. It is certainly necessary to be born again through the image. Which one? Resurrection. The image must rise again through the image. The bridal chamber and the image must enter through the image into the truth: this is the restoration. Not only must those who produce the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, do so, but have produced them for you. If one does not acquire them, the name (,Christian') will also be taken from hirp.. But one receives the unction of the [ ... J of the power of the cross. This power the apostles called 'the right and the left.' For this person is no longer a Christian but a Christ." (69.9-27) See also Michael A. Williams, Rethinking "Gnosticism": An
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Conclusion I explored above the ways in which the author of Gas. Phil., writing from within a Jewish-Christian Pauline textual community, developed the "Hebrew" identity of his opponents along the lines of two rich Pauline metaphors, often used by other early Christian authors to describe the intricate social experiment they were a part of, namely "fathers and sons," and "slaves and inheritors."42 Metaphors of patrilinear lineage play an important role in establishing the authority of Gas. Phil. about Paul's position on resurrection, as well as the ritual practice of the bridal chamber. On the other hand, the Pauline metaphors of "slaves and sons as inheritors" help our author keep the doors of his community open to those outsiders who would accept his interpretations. Shortly put, Gas. Phil. uses Pauline family metaphors about patria patestas, sons, and slaves to build a specific religious identity in line with the rituals of his group. Finally, Gas. Phil. makes evident the superior features of his proselytizing message by presenting it as being directly connected to the primordial language of the heavenly realm. Stoic and N eoplatonic theories on the limits of language are subtly ingrained in the Gas. Phil origin myth of the deceptive character of words and double names. This literary device allows the author of Gas. Phil. to promote his own advertising message, by making evident that any other similar Pauline messages, coming from rival parties, represent the false side of the double name. As a result, against all odds, the author manages to manipulate the ethics of spiritual marriage and open the elitist understanding of membership in his community to the largest possible audience.
Argument for Dismantling a Dubious Category (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), 147-9. 42 See Buell, Making Christians; eadem, Why This New Race: Ethnic Reasoning in Early Christianity (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005).
Heresiology and the (Jewish-)Christian Novel Narrativized Polemics in the Pseudo-Clementine Homilies ANNETTE
Y OSHIKO REED
Reading the Homilies as Heresiology In the history of scholarship on the Pseudo-Clementine Homilies and Recognitions, heresiological sources have played a pivotal role. The Homilies and Recognitions offer two different versions of a novel about Clement of Rome, which recounts his conversion, his travels with the apostle Peter, their debates with Simon Magus and his followers, and the providential reunion of Clement's long-lost family. In their redacted forms, the Homilies and Recognitions both date to the fourth century.! Nevertheless, ever since Ferdinand Christian Baur (1792-1860) proposed that this pair of parallel novels preserves elements of "Jewish-Christian" traditions from the church of Peter and James, modem scholars have paid little attention to their literary forms and late antique contexts. 2 Instead,
* Translations of the Homilies are revised from A. Roberts and J. Donaldson, eds., Ante-Nicene Fathers, reprint edition, vol. 8 (Grand Rapids, Mich., 1951), 224-52, 32430, with reference to the Greek text in B. Rehm, Die Pseudoklementinen, I: Homilien (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1969). Grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities (U.S.A.) and the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada provided support for research and writing this article. I would also like warmly to thank the organizers of the Princeton conference for a stimulating event, and the participants and audience for their helpful comments on the oral version of this article. To Christopher Cub itt, Peter Petite, Karl Shuve, Gerard Vallee, Susan Wendel, and Holger Zellentin, I would like to express my gratitude for their help and feedback during the final stages of writing. ! The Homilies are commonly dated ca. 300-320 CEo This version of the PseudoClementine romance of recognitions (see n. 14) is extant in the original Greek and probably of Syrian provenance. To this version are prefaced the Epistle of Peter to James and the Epistle of Clement to James. The Recognitions is commonly dated ca. 360-380 CEo Although originally written in Greek, this version is now extant only in Rufinus' Latin translation (407 CE). 2 Esp. F.C. Baur, "Die Christuspartei in der korinthischen Gemeinde, der Gegensatz des petrinischen and paulischen Christentums in der alten Kirche, der Apostel Petrus in Rom," Tiibinger ZeitschriJt fur Theologie 5 (1831): 61-206. Notably, Baur had assumed a second-century date for these texts; their fourth-century dates were established later in
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research on these texts has been source-critical in orientation, aimed at reconstructing their third-century shared source and at recovering the firstcentury traditions and second-century writings that may have been used by this source. 3 Interestingly, however, it is precisely in the heresiologicalliterature of Late Antiquity that source-critics have found the most tantalizing clues. Most significant in this regard is another text from the fourth century, namely Epiphanius' Panarion. In his comments on the so-called "heresy" of the Ebionites, Epiphanius describes a book which, like the PseudoClementines, concerns the acts and teachings of the apostle Peter and which is attributed to Clement of Rome (Pan. 30.15).4 Later in the same passage (Pan. 30.16), he refers to another book used by the Ebionites, which concerns the apostle James and which bears some similarities to one specific portion of the Pseudo-Clementine Recognitions. 5 the ninetheenth century; see C. Biggs, "The Clementine Homilies," in Studia biblica et ecc/esiastica, vol. 2 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1890), 191-92, 368-69; H. Waitz, Die Pseudoklementinen Homilien und Rekognitionen: Eine quellenkritische Untersuchung, TU 10.4 (Leipzig: J.C. Hinrichs,1904), esp. 372. 3 Since the Homilies and Recognitions share so much material as well as the same basic novelistic structure (albeit with different arrangements, distinctive material in each, and redactional variations that affect the emphasis and overall message of each) scholars speculate about their dependence on a single shared source. This hypothetical source, commonly called the Grundschrift or "Basic Source," is typically dated to the third century CE and situated in Syria. In light of the reference to ten books sent to James in Rec. 3.75, some scholars have speculated about a Kerygmata Petrou that may have been one of its sources (even as others dismiss the reference as merely a literary fiction); small portions of a possibly related text called Kerygma Petrou are quoted, e.g., by Heracleon (apud Origen, on John, 3.17) and Clement of Alexandria (Strom. 1.29.182; 6.5.39; 6.15.128). For other hypothetical sources of the Grundschrift, see notes 4-5 below. For the history of scholarship on these sources, see F. S. Jones, "The Pseudo-Clementines: a History of Research," JECS 2.1 (1982): 14-33; P. Geoltrain, "Le Roman PseudoClementin depuis les recherches d'Oscar Cullman," in Le Judeo-christianisme dans tous ses etats: actes du Colloque de Jerusalem, 6-10juillet 1998 (ed. S.c. Mimouni and F.S. Jones; Paris: Cerf, 2001), 31-38; and for critique of past source-critical research see e.g. J. Wehnert, "Literaturkritik und Sprachanalyse: Kritische Anmerkungen zum gegenwiirtigen Stand der Pseudoklementinen-Forschung," ZNW 74 (1983): 268-301 as well as A.Y. Reed, " 'Jewish Christianity' after the 'Parting of the Ways': Approaches to Historiography and Self-definition in the Pseudo-Clementine Literature," in The Ways that Never Parted: Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (ed. A.H. Becker and A.Y. Reed; Tiibingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003), 197-201,224-31. 4 I.e., Periodoi Petrou, described by Epiphanius as a Clementine pseudepigrapha about Peter that was used by Ebionites; this too is sometimes thought to be a source of the Pseudo-Clementine Grundschrift. 5 I.e., Anabathmoi Jakobou, which may have some relationship to Rec. 1.27-72, a portion of the Recognitions that also happens to be unparalleled in the Homilies and distinctive from the rest of the Recognitions in its language and viewpoints. See further
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Both for Baur and for later scholars like Hans Joachim Schoeps, the connection between the Pseudo-Clementines and the Ebionites seemed obvious. 6 The Pseudo-Clementines were seen to preserve traces of a "Jewish Christianity" widespread in apostolic times. 7 Accordingly, Epiphanius' comments were thought to attest an inevitable development: after Christianity's "Parting of the Ways" with Judaism, those who preserved and developed such traditions would - it was reasoned - surely have become a deviant minority, expelled as Judaizing "heretics" from a now dominant "Gentile-Christian" church. 8 As a result of such views, scholars have tended to treat both the Pseudo-Clementines and the Ebionites as relics of an earlier age, more significant for our knowledge of Christian Origins than for our understanding of Christianity and Judaism in Late Antiquity.9 This approach, however, has been shown to have its limits. Proceeding from these assumptions, it has proved difficult to pinpoint the relationship between the Ebionites, their non-extant books, the witness of Epiphanius, and the extant forms of the Pseudo-Clementines. Even after over a century of methodical investigation into their connections, research on the Homilies and Recognitions largely remains mired in debates over a variety of hypothetical sources and their possible filiations. 10 Elsewhere, I have suggested that this seemingly counter-intuitive focus on hypothetical sources reflects the continued influence of Baur as well as the continued sway of traditional ideas about the so-called "Parting of the F.S. Jones, "The Martyrdom of James in Hegesippus, Clement of Alexandria, and Christian Apocrypha, Including Nag Hammadi: A Study of the Textual Relations," in Society of Biblical Literature Seminar Papers 29 (ed. D. J. Lull; Atlanta, 1990), 322-35; idem, Ancient Jewish-Christian Source; R.E. Van Voorst, The Ascents of James: History and Theology of a Jewish-Christian Community, SBL Dissertation Series 112 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1989). 6 See esp. H.J. Schoeps, Theologie und Geschichte des Judenchristentums (Tiibingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1949); idem, Jewish Christianity: Factional Disputes in the Early Church (trans. D.R.A. Hare; Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1969). Other scholars have been much less optimistic about our ability to reconstruct both the Ebionites and their relationship with the Pseudo-Clementines; see e.g. F.S. Jones, "Ebionites," in Encyclopedia of Early Christianity, Garland Reference Library of the Humanities 846 (ed. E. Ferguson et a1.; New York: Garland, 1990),287-88. 7 Esp. Schoeps, Theologie, 355-60, 457-79. 8 E.g. Schoeps, Jewish Christianity, 12-13, 18-37. 9 See further Reed, "Jewish Christianity," 188-201. 10 So too Jones, "Pseudo-Clementines," 14-33; Geoltrain, "Le Roman PseudoClementin," esp. p. 36; D. Cote, Le theme de I 'opposition entre Pierre et Simon dans les Pseudo-Clementines (Paris: Institut d'Etudes Augustiniennes, 2001), 7-19; E.N. Kelley, "Discursive Competition and the Production of Truth in the Pseudo-Clementine Recognitions" (PhD diss., Harvard University, 2003), esp. 1-35.
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Ways." 11 Behind the scholarly neglect of the final forms of the PseudoClementines, we may also find some tacit acceptance of Epiphanius' judgment of the Ebionites as petty "heretics." Just as the source-critical enterprise has necessitated a large degree of trust in the accuracy of Epiphanius' summaries and quotations, so too have studies of the PseudoClementines tended to treat him as a trustworthy ethnographer of error, taking his comments largely at face value. F. Stanley Jones, for instance, has shown how source-criticism of these texts has been hampered by a preference for the external evidence of heresiologists over internal evidence from the Homilies and Recognitions themselves. 12 Likewise, their association with Epiphanius' marginalized Ebionites may have contributed to the dearth of past research on their fourth-century forms and their late antique contexts. In this inquiry, I hope to help fill this lacuna by means of another approach to the same issues, questions, and connections. Instead of treating the Pseudo-Clementines as "heresy," I will attempt to read them as part of the late antique discourse of heresiology. Epiphanius, then, will here serve us a very different purpose. Rather than appealing to him for evidence about the Ebionites (who mayor may not have had a hand in producing this literature, even if they read it), I will treat his Panarion as a prime example of fourth-century Christian heresiology. Accordingly, my focus will fall less on its content and more on its rhetorics and the assumptions that inform them.13 This and other heresiological writings from Late Antiquity will serve as heuristic points of comparison and contrast with the Pseudo-Clementines - which, I will suggest, achieve many of the same aims, albeit within the framework of a nove1. 14
Reed, "Jewish Christianity." Jones, Ancient Jewish Christian Source, 35-37. 13 Here, I am especially indebted to Averil Cameron's insightful essay, "How to Read Heresiology," JMEMS 33 (2003): 471-92, repr. in The Cultural Turn in Late Ancient Studies: Gender, Asceticism and Historiography (ed. Dale Martin and Patricia Cox Miller; Durham: Duke University Press, 2005). 14 On the Pseudo-Clementines as novel, see B.E. Perry, Ancient Romances: A Literary-Historical Account of their Origins (Berkeley: U. of California Press, 1967), 285-93; T. Hagg, The Novel in Antiquity (Berkeley: U. of California Press, 1983), 15465; M.J. Edwards "The Clementina: A Christian Response to the Pagan Novel," CQ 42 (1992): 459-74; W. Robins, "Romance and Renunciation at the Turn of the Fifth Century," JECS 8 (2000): 531-57; K. Cooper, "Matthidia's Wish: Division, Reunion, and the Early Christian Family in the Pseudo-Clementine Recognitions," in Narrativity in Biblical and Related Texts/La narativite dans la Bible et les textes apparentes (ed. G.J. Brooke and J.-D. Kaestli; Leuven: Peeters, 2000), 243-64; also F.S. Jones, "Eros and Astrology in the Periodoi Petrou: The Sense of the Pseudo-Clementine Novel," Apocrypha 12 (2001): 53-78. 11
12
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This experiment in reading the Pseudo-Clementines as heresiology forms part of my broader attempt to shed light on their fourth-century authors and redactors. 15 It is often assumed that these texts were produced and read only on the margins of Christianity, by the Ebionites and groups like them. But, despite Epiphanius' comments about the Ebionite use of similar writings, our ample evidence for the Nachleben of the novels speaks to their broad circulation and appeal. By the early fifth century, forms of the Pseudo-Clementine novel had been translated from their original Greek into both Latin and Syriac, and epitomes are now extant in Greek, Arabic, Georgian, and Armenian. 16 This data, in turn, may shed doubt on its "heretical" origins, leading us to look more closely at the texts themselves to determine their place within late antique culture. If polemics can, in fact, provide the scholar with a cache of telling clues about religious self-definition and the social realities that shape it, then attention to the polemics (and the rhetorics of polemic) within the PseudoClementines may help us to situate their authors/redactors within the religious landscape of Late Antiquity. In contrast to an imposed dichotomy between so-called "Jewish-Christianity" and so-called "Gentile Christianity," such an approach may aid us in recovering the complex dynamics of reaction, influence, and interaction with the range of late antique traditions - Christian, Jewish, and "pagan" - with which the final forms of these novels seem to be both conversant and conversing. Towards this goal, this investigatory inquiry will focus on the Homilies, the version of the novel in which these dynamics are most evident. I will 15 Reed, "Jewish Christianity"; idem, "Fire, Blood, and Water: Demonology and Halakha in the Pseudo-Clementine Homilies," AAR Annual Meeting, Europe and the Mediterranean in Late Antiquity Group, Atlanta, Georgia, USA, November 23, 2003; idem, "The True Prophet in the Pseudo-Clementines: Prophethood, Apostolic Succession, and the Transmission of Truth," Colloquium on the Late Antique Roots of the Quranic Concept of Prophethood, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, N.J., U.S.A., June 2, 2004. 16 For Rufinus' Latin version, see B. Rehm, Die Pseudoklementinen, vol. 2: Rekognitionen in Rufins Ubersetzung (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1965). The Syriac version includes Rec. 1-4.1 and Hom. 10-12.24, l3-14.12 and is preserved in a manuscript from 411 CE; see W. Frankenberg, Die syrischen Clementinen mit griechischen Paralleltext: Eine Vorarbeit zu dem literargeschichtlichen Problem der Sammlung (Leipzig: J.C. Hinrichs, 1937); F.S. Jones, "Evaluating the Latin and Syriac Translations of the Pseudo-Clementine Recognitions," Apocrypha 3 (1992): 237-57. For the other versions, see A.R.M. Dressel, Clementinorum Epitomae Duae (Leipzig: J.C. Hinrichs, 1859); F. Paschke, Die beiden griechischen Klementinen-Epitomen und ihre Anhange: Uberliejerungsgeschichtliche Vorarbeiten zu einer Neuausgabe der Texte (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1966); c. Renoux, "Fragments armeniens des Recognitiones du Pseudo-Clement," Oriens Christianus 62 (1978): 103-l3; also M. D. Gibson, "Apocrypha Sinaitica," Studia Sinaitica 5 (1896): 15-54.
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begin by exploring some of its rhetorical and ideological continuities with fourth-century Christian heresiology. Then I will consider the place of Judaism and Hellenism within its treatment of "heresy." In conclusion I will speculate about the possibility of discursive continuities and cultural commonalities with Rabbinic Jewish as well as Greco-Roman traditions, in the hopes of opening a new window onto the redacted form of the Homilies and the fourth-century authors/redactors responsible for it.
The Homilies and/as Christian Heresiology Central to the Homilies in its present form is the rivalry between Peter and Simon Magus.17 Much of the dramatic action is motivated by Peter's attempt to draw Simon into public disputation. During the course of the novel, both travel from city to city, spreading their respective beliefs to crowds of curious Gentiles. Not only does the novel claim to record the public debates between apostle and arch-heretic, but its authorslredactors put in the mouth of Peter sermons and statements that serve to situate Simon within a genealogy of error that stretches back to the very beginning of human history. Moreover, as we shall see, they attempt to theorize the place of "heresy" in the cosmic plan of the One God. The Homilies' dramatization of religious disputation and totalizing approach to religious error fit well within the context of fourth-century Christianity.18 This context, moreover, may help us to understand its characterization of Simon Magus. Past research on the pseudo-Clementine depiction of Simon has focused almost wholly on the question of his identity, reading this character as a cipher for some enemy of "JewishChristianity."19 In light of the anti-Paulinism evident in a portion of the 17
For a comprehensive consideration of this theme, see Cote, Theme de l'opposition.
18 See esp. R. Lim, Public Disputation, Power, and Social Order in Late Antiquity (Berkeley: U. of California Press, 1994). 19 Although many aspects of the Pseudo-Clementine characterization of Simon have parallels in other early Christian references to him (e.g., Acts 8:9-24; Justin, 1 Apol. 26; Irenaeus, Adv. haer. 1.23), connections with the apostle Paul and/or Marcion have been cited most often, particularly by those who seek to highlight this literature's "JewishChristian" elements; both figures are associated with an antinomianism from which Jesus, Peter and the apostolic church are pointedly distanced. Consistent with the polemic against philosophy, others have seen him as a pagan, or specifically Neoplatonist, enemy of Christianity, modeled on figures like Celsus (cf. Clement's debate with Appion in Hom. 4-6). See further A. Salles, "Simon Ie magicien ou Marcion?" VC 12 (1958): 197224; D. Cote, "La fonction litteraire de Simon Ie Magicien dans les PseudoClementines," LTP 37 (2001): 513-23; idem, Theme de I 'opposition; Edwards, "Clementina," 462; A. Ferreiro, "Simon Magus: The Patristric-Medieval Traditions and Historiography," Apocrypha 7 (1996): 147-65.
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Recognitions and in an epistle now affixed to the Homilies,2° some scholars have suggested that the arch-heretic Simon here represents the apostle Paul, who is seen as an enemy of Peter by virtue of his supposed role in authoring "Gentile-Christianity."21 Others have suggested that the character is used to represent Paul's most infamously anti-Jewish interpreter, namely Marcion. 22 In his recent work on the disputes between Peter and Simon in the Pseudo-Clementines, Dominique Cote has shown that the anti-Pauline material in this literature is, in fact, rarely associated with Simon. 23 Likewise, as Mark Edwards also notes, the pseudo-Clementine Simon does have many Marcionite traits, but Marcionism does not suffice to explain him.24 He is, in their estimation, a conflate character. In him is combined some features from other traditions about Simon (such as his status as magician and his Samaritan lineage; see esp. Hom. 2.22-32)25 and some features associated with Marcion (such as his hatred of Jews and denial of the goodness of the Creator; see esp. Hom. 5.2) but also a number of other features not easily explained through appeal to a single and simple enemy.26 Cote thus concludes that Simon functions primarily as symbol in the Pseudo-Clementines, providing a literary foil for the characterization and exaltation of the apostle Peter. 27 His argument, in my view, is largely convincing. For our present purposes, however, it proves no less significant that Simon's conflate characterization is also a narrative 20 See esp. Rec. 1.70; Epistle of Peter to James; and discussion in G. Ludemann, Opposition to Paul in Jewish Christianity (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1989), 169-94. 21 So Ludemann, Opposition, 185-90; G. Strecker, Das Judenchristentum in den Pseudoklementinen (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1958), 187; T.V. Smith, Petrine Controversies in Early Christianity: Attitudes towards Peter in Christian Writings of the First Two Centuries, WUNT 2 15 (Tubingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1985), 11, 59-61. For critique see Cote, "Fonction," 514-17. 22 So Salles, "Simon." For critique, see Cote, "Fonction," 514-17. 23 Cote finds only one possible case, namely, Peter's statement to Simon in Hom. 17.14.2 ("You alleged that, on this account, you knew more satisfactorily the doctrines of Jesus than I do, because you heard His words through an apparition"), which some read as a reference to Gal 2:11; Cote, "Fonction," 515-16. 24 Cote, "Fonction," 517-19; Edwards, "Clementina," 462. 25 Simon Magus is depicted as a Samaritan from Gitthi in earlier Christian sources (e.g. Justin, 1 Apol. 26). In the Pseudo-Clementines, however, his Samaritan heritage may take on a special importance; note, for instance, the references to him as "Simon the Samaritan" throughout the Homilies, as well as the more general anti-Samaritan polemics in Rec. 1.54.4-5, 1.57.1 (statements which are, interestingly, made in the context of a discussion how Jesus' followers fit among the Jewish sects). 26 Cote, "Fonction," 517-20; idem, Theme de I 'opposition, 191-96. 27 Cote, "Fonction," 510-22; idem, Theme de I 'opposition, 20-134.
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realization of a common heresiological trope - the view of Simon Magus as the very father of Christian "heresy." This understanding of Simon is made explicit in Hom. 16.21: Peter said to the assembled multitudes: "If Simon can do no other injury to us in regard to God, he at least prevents you from listening to the words that can purify the soul." On Peter saying this, much whispering arose amongst the crowds: "What necessity is there for permitting him to come in here, and utter his blasphemies against God?" Peter heard and said: "If only the word against God for the trial of humankind [ton kata tau theou pros peirasmon anthrapan logon] went no further than Simon! For there will be, as the lord said, false apostles, false prophets, heresies, desires for supremacy [pseudapostoloi, pseudeis prophetai, hairesies, philarchiai] (cf. Matt 24:24) - who, as I conjecture, finding their beginning in Simon, who blasphemes God, will work together in the assertion of the same opinions against God as those of Simon [to ta auta ta Simani kata tau theou legein sunergesousin]."
Strikingly, Jesus' warning in Matt 24:24 ("For false messiahs and false prophets will appear and produce great signs and omens, to lead astray, if possible, even the elect") is here reframed to include "heresies," "false apostles," and "desires for supremacy."28 Furthermore, Peter asserts a radical continuity between Simon and all forms of post-apostolic "heresy." Just as the first-century authors/redactors of the Gospel of Matthew use Jesus' prediction to speak to their own times, so the fourth-century authors/redactors of this Clementine pseudepigraphon use Peter's conjecture to assert that the errors of their own age are the same as those faced by the apostles. Even more relevant are Christian heresiological traditions that depict Simon as the beginning of a line of succession that proceeds in inverse parallel to apostolic succession from Peter. In his survey of traditions about Simon Magus from the book of Acts to medieval literature, A. Ferriero notes that this particular trope is characteristic of the fourth and fifth centuries. 29 This unified depiction of "heresy" represents a shift away from the earlier contrast, by authors like Irenaeus, between the unity of "orthodoxy" and the multiplicity of "heresies."30 Perhaps not surprisingly,
28 Notably, this is one of a number of sayings that the Homilies attribute to Jesus which find no direct counterpart in the New Testament; see further L.L. Kline, The Sayings of Jesus in the Pseudo-Clementine Homilies (Missoula: Scholars Press, 1975). 29 Ferreiro, "Simon Magus," 158-59. See also idem, "Sexual Depravity, Doctrinal Error, and Character Assassination: Jerome against the Priscillianists," Studia Patristica 28 (1993): 29-38; idem, "Jerome's polemic against Priscillian in his Letter to Cetesiphon (133,4)," Revue des Etudes Augustiniennes 39 (1993): 309-32, on Jerome's concept of a female line of succession. 30 E.g. Irenaeus, Haer. 1.10-22; A. Le Boulluec, La notion d'heresie dans la literature grecque Ir-IIr sifxles, Tome I: De Justin a Irenee (Paris: Etudes Augustiniennes, 1985), esp. 233-34; P. Perkins, "Irenaeus and the Gnostics," VC 30
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the development of the trope of "heretical" succession appears to accompany an intensification of interest in apostolic succession, in general, and in the succession of bishops of Rome, in particularY The latter could not be more evident than in the Homilies. On one level, the entire narrative can be read as a defense of Clement of Rome's close connection to the apostle Peter. So too does Simon here serve both as progenitor and as paradigm of "heresy." The notion of "heretical" succession as a false counterpart and pretender to apostolic succession is expressed both by the narrative frame of the Homilies and by the sermons and speeches embedded within it. Peter often speaks of Simon as spreading a false gospel which, if not promptly countered, will inevitably be accepted as the true one; "heresy" is dangerous precisely because of the similarities that mask both its falsehood and the reality of its contrast with true "orthodoxy." And hence of Simon, he laments: Though his deeds are those of one who hates, he is loved; and though he is an enemy, he is received as a friend; and though he is death, he is desired as a savior; and though he is fire, he is esteemed as light; and though he is a deceiver, he is believed as a speaker of truth. (Hom. 2.18)
Likewise, on the level of narrative, Peter and Simon are paralleled in their twin activities of missionary travel, public preaching, and debate. 32 The Jewish Peter and the Samaritan Simon both seek to convert Gentiles away from "pagan" polytheism. In this, each has his own set of disciples. In both cases, these include three prominent Gentile travel companions, two of whom are paired (Aquila, Nicetas, and Clement for Peter; Appion, Annubion, and Athenodorus for Simon). This mirroring of opposites even extends to other elements of the plot, such as the tale of Clement's miraculous recovery of his long-lost family.33 This, moreover, occurs in a series of recognition scenes in which masked identities are revealed, thereby serving as a lesson in the pressing need to recognize truth in a world of misleading appearances. (1976): 195-96; A.Y. Reed, "EYAfTEAION: Orality, Textuality, and the Christian Truth in Irenaeus' Adversus haereses, " VC 56 (2002): 43-46. 31 On the successio haereticorum in Hippolytus' Elenchos and Epiphanius' Panarion, see Gerard Vallee, A Study in Anti-Gnostic Polemics: Irenaeus, Hippolytus, and Epiphanius, Studies in Christianity and Judaism/Etudes sur Ie christianisme et Ie judalsme 1 (Waterloo, Ont.: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1981), esp. 54-56, 70-72. As Vallee notes (p. 55), this approach has its origins already with the Epistle of Jude and is already important in Irenaeus (Adv. haer. 1.23-28), even as it would only be developed in detail in later centuries; by the fourth century, "the tradition of heresy now forms a counterpart to the history of salvation since the beginning of mankind" (71). 32 Cote, Theme de l'opposition. 33 See Edwards, "Clementina," 465, on the place of pairs and twins in the plot of the Pseudo-Clementine novels.
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Theorizing "Heresy" In the Homilies, we also find attempts at a systematic understanding of error that recall - in form and concern, if not wholly in content and aim the tradition of Christian heresiology begun by Justin and Irenaeus and reflected, in its fourth-century form, by Epiphanius. For each, it does not suffice to counter individual "heresies." The concern is "heresy" itself, and its character and origins must be explained in a comprehensive and systematic manner. Following Irenaeus, Epiphanius does so primarily through taxonomy, describing and categorizing each so-called "sect" and tracing their genealogies in meticulous detaip4 By contrast, the Homilies achieve the same goal through narrative, by means of a conflate characterization of Simon Magus as the origins and embodiment of "heresy" who, in effect, contains in potentiate all of the forms that lie in the future of the novel's pseudepigraphical author (i.e., Clement) and in the present of its authors/redactors and readers. Moreover, Epiphanius and the Homilies go even further, seeking the pre-Christian Origins of Christian "heresy." Both trace the evolution of religious error back to the very dawn of human existence, by means of historiographical summaries of the early history of false worship (Pan. 13; Hom. 8-10). Their summaries are strikingly similar. In both cases, for instance, it is asserted that the first human being held no false belief or sectarian difference, such that their "religion" was, in effect, the same as each deems the true apostolic faith (Pan. 2.2.3-7; Hom. 8.10-11, 9.3). All false religion, including magic and astrology, began in the time of Nimrod who is sometimes called Zoroaster (Pan. 3.3.1-3; cf. 1.2; Hom. 9.4-8). Worship of gods originates with the deification of men (Pan. 3.9; Hom. 9.5) and found, early on, its most virulent form among the Egyptians (Pan. 3.11; Hom. 9.6,10.16-18).35 Of course, such similarities need not speak to any close connections between the Panarion and the Homilies. The parallels between their 34 The overarching schema of Epiphanius' taxonomy is the principle that there are eighty total "heresies," as predicted by the reference to eighty concubines in Song of Songs 6:8-9. On this schema as well as his taxonomic and descriptive methods, see Vallee, Study, 65-74, 88-9l. 35 Of course, there are differences too. The Homilies' account is distinguished by its stress on the role of demons in these developments and by its inclusion of a broader variety of non-Christian traditions, such as Persian fire-worship. Moreover, it outlines the conflict between true and false worship, always and everywhere, as a practical contrast between health and disease - a trope that may have some connection with the common metaphor of "heresy" as poison to which "heresiology" is antidote (e.g., as evident in Epiphanius' choice of the title Panarion [medicine box] for his work, on which see Vallee, Study, 66-67), even as it moves well beyond it.
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accounts of error's evolution are readily explained with reference to wellknown traditions about early human history in Jewish pseudepigrapha, Christian apology and chronography, and Hellenistic historiography.36 What proves interesting, in my view, is that the two seem to draw on much the same mix. Despite their use of different literary genres and the differences in their conceptualization of what constitutes "orthodoxy," they seem to be shaped by the same cultural context - and, moreover, they redeploy the same combination of traditions for the same aims. Even more significantly, for .our purposes, both the Panarion and the Homilies go on to integrate the history of pre-Christian error into the genealogy of Christian "heresy." In each their own way, they assert a radical continuity in religious deviance before and after the birth of Jesus. Blurring the earlier lines between apology and heresiology, they label certain pre-Christian and non-Christian traditions as "heresy."37 For Epiphanius, the guiding principle is the assertion that "in Christ Jesus there is neither Barbarian, Scythian, Greek, or Jew" (Pan. 1.1.9; cf. Col 3: 11; Gal 3 :28) - a Pauline saying that he interprets in historiographical and heresiological terms. He thus puts Barbarism, Scythianism, Hellenism, and Judaism at the historical roots of "heresy" (Pan. 1-20),38 outlining their respective developments and tracing their links to later Christian sects (Judaism, for instance, to the Ebionites; Pan. 30). When this principle is put in practice, Hellenism and Judaism loom large (see 8.2.2), while Barbarianism and Scythianism mainly become relegated to primeval times. Interestingly, Samaritanism is added to the list, as a "heretical" off-shoot of Judaism that bears its own branch of "heretical" progeny (Pan. 9-13). Epiphanius is thus able to present the very first Christian "heresy" - the Simonianism founded by the Samaritan Simon Magus - as a direct outgrowth of the most poisonous "heretical" product of an already "heretical" Judaism (Pan. 21). The Homilies also treat pre-Christian and non-Christian traditions as "heresy," but they do so according to a different principle. This is the Law 36 E.g., Jubilees, Josephus, Justin Martyr, Julius Africanus. 37 For instance, both treat Greek philosophy as a natural extension of the early evolution of false worship that plays a role in the birth of "heresy." See Pan. 5-8 and discussion of Homilies below. On Epiphanius' conflation of Judaism and "heresy," see A. Cameron, "Jews and Heretics - A Category Error?" in Becker and Reed, eds., Ways that Never Parted, 345-60. 38 As Vallee notes, however, these traditions are deemed "heretical" inasmuch as they represent a departure or fragmentation of "the primeval truth ... transmitted orally, identical with the natural law which, in its turn, is identical with 'Christianity before Christianity' and ... became manifest with the advent of Christ"; Epiphanius deems Samaritanism, "gnostic" sects, and so on "heretical" in a more narrow sense as well; Study, 77-78.
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of Syzygy (esp. 2.15-18; 3.59),39 a concept central and distinctive to the Homilies. 4o Consistent with the Homilies' overarching concern with apostolic succession and the transmission of true knowledge, this Law serves to explain the place of "heresy" with primary reference to the revelation and transmission of prophetic truth. The Homilies speak of Jesus as the "True Prophet" (esp. 1.19, 2.5-12, 3.11-28),41 at times depicting him as the latest in a line of prophets and at times suggesting that he is an avatar of a single True Prophet who has been sent to earth on multiple occasions (3.20). In all cases, what is stressed is that Jesus proclaims the same message as his predecessors, among whom, most notably, numbers Moses. Likewise, its theory of the origins of error draws on a mirrored concept of succession and stresses the radical continuity between pre-Christian and Christian "heresy." Within the Homilies' salvation-history, God-sent prophets never come alone. Rather, each is preceded by a false counterpart. To each prophet is paired a prophetic pretender, such that the history of salvation always runs parallel to the history of religious error. Accordingly, within the novel, Peter's first explanation of the Law of Syzygy (2.15-18) follows directly from a discourse on the True Prophet (2.5-14). The history of religious error is defined as a continuous line of false "female" prophecy, belonging to this world, which runs alongside the continuous line of true "male" prophecy, which belongs to - and points towards - the World to Come (2.15, 3.23-27).42 This dualistic system is attributed to the one true God,43 who grants the means to learn truth with 39 In light of the polemics against astrology in the Pseudo-Clementines (on which see Jones, "Eros and Astrology," 61-64), it may be significant that "syzygy" is a technical astronomical term (see e.g. Ptol. Aim. 5.1, 10). 40 Although the Recognitions includes brief reference to ten "pairs" (Rec. 4.59, 61: Cain and Abel, giants and Noah, Pharaoh and Abraham, Philistines and Isaac, Esau and Jacob, magicians and Moses, "the tempter" and Jesus, Simon and Peter, "all nations and he who shall be sent to sow the word among the nations," Antichrist and Christ), this concept is nowhere as developed as it is in the Homilies - let alone presented as a cosmic principle. 41 For a general outline of the Pseudo-Clementine concept of the "True Prophet," see L. Cerfaux, "Le vrai prophi:te des Clementines," Recherches de science religieuse 18 (1928): 143-63. On the related yet distinctive depiction of the "True Prophet" in the Recognitions (which, e.g., seems to place more stress on Jesus' singularity), see Kelley, "Discursive Competition," esp. ch. 3. 42 Hom. 2.15: "Since the present world is female, as a mother bringing forth the souls of her children, but the World to Come is male, as a father receiving his children from their mother, therefore into this world there come a succession of prophets, as being sons of the World to Come and having knowledge of men." 43 Consistent with the extreme stress on monotheism throughout the Homilies (esp. 16-19, also 2.42--46,3.30-59), the oneness of the God from which this dualism springs is explicitly asserted in Hom. 2.15: "Hence God, teaching men with respect to the truth of
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one hand but also gives error with the other, as a means of testing faith and teaching discernment. The knowledge of this pattern is thus depicted as epistemologically and soteriologically critical; for, "if men in God-fearing had understood this mystery, they would never have gone astray, but even now they would know that Simon, who now enthralls all men, is a fellowworker of error and deceit" (Hom. 2.15). In private teachings to his followers, Peter then reveals the secrets of the pattern: Now, the doctrine of the prophetic rule [ho de logos tou prophetikou kanonos] is as follows: as in the beginning God, who is one, like a right hand and a left, made the heavens first and then the earth, so also he constituted all the syzygies [tas suzugias] in order. ... Therefore from Adam who was made after the image of God, there sprang first the unrighteous Cain and then the righteous Abel (see also Hom. 3.18-26; Rec. 3.61). Again, from him who amongst you is called Deucalion [i.e., Noah], two forms of spirits were sent forth, the impure and the pure, first the black raven and then the white dove. From Abraham also, the patriarchs of our nation sprang, two first: Ishmael first, then Isaac, who was blessed of God. And from Isaac himself, likewise, there were again two: Esau the profane, and Jacob the pious. So too, first in birth, as the first-born in the world, was the high priest Aaron,44 then the lawgiver Moses. Similarly, the syzygy for Elijah, which was supposed to have come, has been willingly put off to another time, having determined to enjoy it conveniently hereafter. Therefore, also, he who was among those "born of woman" (Matt 11:11) came first [i.e."John the Baptist],45 then he who was among the sons of men [i.e., Jesus] came second. (Hom. 2.16-17)
Peter goes on explicitly to identify Simon and himself as one pair of rivals in this long doubled chain: It is possible, following this order [te taxei], to perceive to which Simon belongs, who
came before me to the Gentiles [ho pro emou eis ta ethne protos elthon], and to which I belong - I who have come after him and have come in on him as light on darkness, as knowledge on ignorance, as healing on disease. (Hom. 2.17)
existing things, being Himself one, has distinguished all principles into pairs and opposites - He Himself being one and sole God from the beginning, having made heaven and earth, day and night, light and fire, sun and moon, life and death. But humankind alone amongst these He made self-controlling, fit to be either righteous or unrighteous. To him also He has exchanged the image of Syzygies, placing before him small things first and great ones afterwards, such as the world and eternity .... " 44 The inclusion of Aaron in the evil line may be related to the polemic against sacrifice that pervades the Pseudo-Clementines; see further Reed, "Jewish Christianity." 45 I.e., the syzygetical counterpart for Elijah is Jesus, following the common equation of Elijah with John the Baptist (Matt 11:14; 17:10-13; Luke 1:17). Notably, the Homilies hold a very negative view of John the Baptist, even depicting Simon Magus as one of his disciples (Hom. 2.23). See also the depiction of John and his followers in Rec. 1.54.
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Just as their rivalry is set against historical background, so it is also placed in eschatological context: Thus, as the True Prophet has told us, a false Gospel must first come from some certain deceiver [proton pseudes dei elthein euangelion]. 46 Then, likewise, after the removal of the Holy Place [meta kathairesin tou hagiou topou; i.e., the Temple], the true Gospel must be secretly sent abroad [euangelion alethes krupha diapemphthevai] for the rectification of the heresies that shall be [eis epanorthosin ton esomenov haireson]. After this, also, towards the End, the Antichrist must first come, and then our Jesus must be revealed to be indeed the Christ. After this, once the eternal light has sprung up, all the things of darkness must disappear. (Hom. 2.17)
That Simon and Peter are both sent to the Gentiles and compete for their souls is further stressed in Hom. 2.33-34. This passage uses Peter to describe his pairing with Simon in a manner consistent with the two-fold salvation-history outlined elsewhere in the Homilies (esp. 8-11), whereby Moses first came to the Jews and Jesus then to the Gentiles, each bearing the same prophetic message. 47 Peter begins with a restatement of the Rule of Syzygy: You must perceive, brethren, the truth of the Rule of Syzygy [les suzugias kanonos], from which he who departs not cannot be misled. For since, as we have said, we see all things in pairs and opposites - and as the night is first and then the day; and first ignorance, then knowledge; first disease, then healing - so the things of error come first into our life, then truth supervenes, like the physician upon the disease. (Hom. 2.33)
He explains its relevance first to the history of Israel and then to the nations: Therefore straightway, when our God-loved nation [tou theophilous hemon ethnous; i.e., Israel] was about to be ransomed from the oppression of the Egyptians [i.e., during the Exodus], first diseases were produced by means of the rod turned into a serpent, which was given to Aaron, and then remedies were brought by the prayers of Moses. Now also - when the Gentiles are about to be ransomed from religious service towards idols [kai nun de ton ethnon mel/onton apo tes kala ta eidola lutrousthai threskeias] wickedness, which reigns over them, has by anticipation sent forth her ally like another serpent: this Simon whom you see, who works wonders [thaumasia] to astonish and deceive, not signs [semeia] of healing to convert and save. (Hom. 2.33)
Likewise, in Hom. 3.59, Peter is used to make further explicit that the travels and debates described in the novel are motivated by the race to counter polytheistic and "heretical" error with monotheistic truth:
46 This statement is sometimes read as a veiled reference to Paul (e.g. LUdemann, Opposition to Paul, 190). 47 For discussion of this salvation-history and its importance for our understanding of the "Jewish Christianity" of the Pseudo-Clementines, see Reed, "Jewish Christianity," 213-24.
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While I am going forth to the nations that say that there are many gods [eis ta ethne ta pollous theous legonta - to teach and to preach that the God who made heaven and earth and all things that are in them is one [keruxai kai didaxai hoti eis estin ho theos hos ouranon ektise kai gen kai ta en autois panta], such that they are able to love Him and be saved - evil has anticipated me, and by the very Law of Syzygy has sent Simon before me, in order that these men, even if they should cease from saying that there are many gods by disowning those that are called [gods] on earth, may think that there are many gods in heaven [en ourano pollous theous], so that, not feeling the excellence of the sale rule [tes monarxias; i.e., of God], they may perish with eternal punishment. What is most dreadful, since true doctrine [alethes logos] has incomparable power, is that he forestalls me with slanders and persuades them to this, not even at first to receive me, lest he who is the slanderer is convicted of being himself in reality a devil, and the true doctrine be received and believed. Therefore I must quickly catch him up, lest the false accusation, through gaining time, wholly get hold of all people! (Hom. 3.59; cf. Rec. 3.65)
As noted above, the Law of Syzygy also serves as an epistemological function; those who know the Law will be able, in the novel's future and the reader's present, to recognize Simon's successors for who and what they really are, even despite what they seem to be (Hom. 16.21). This concern for the gap between reality and appearance is consistent with the epistemology expressed elsewhere in the Homilies, by means of Clement's first-person accounts of his quest for truth (Hom. 1.1-7) and by means of Peter's teachings about the True Prophet as the sole guarantor of truth (e.g. Hom. 2.5-12). In each case, the message is the same: truth and falsehood appear similar and can each be made to sound persuasive, and the difference can only be identified by attention to their messengers and the lines of transmission in which they stand. The same message is also expressed through the narrative into which these teachings have been placed. When read through the Law of Syzygy, for instance, the combination of commonality and contrast in the characters of Peter and Simon makes perfect sense; the two appear similar precisely because they are paired opposites. 48 In addition, much of the overarching story can be read as a narrative embodiment and illustration of the Law. Most striking in this regard is its conclusion, which finds Clement finally reunited with his long-lost family, only to have his father magically blighted with Simon's face (Hom. 20.12). Simon has wrought this magic in order to make a quick escape from his increasingly failed attempts to debate Peter (Hom. 20.14-16). The result, however, is a tragic splintering of the family that had been gradually yet progressively reunited concurrent with Clement's conversion and travels with Peter. The apostle, however, is readily able to recognize the true face of Clement's father even despite the power of Simon's spells (Hom. 48
Cote, Theme de I 'opposition, 29-32.
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20.12). Furthermore, in the end, he is able to use the tricks of "heresy" to spread the truth: he prompts Simon's doppelganger to proclaim publicly his errors in a surprising twist that serves to resolve the long series of debates firmly in Peter's favor (Hom. 20.18-23). Nevertheless, Peter's exposition of the Law of Syzygy makes clear that this is only one in a series of battles between truth and error. This Law, notably, represents the Homilies' unique articulation of the notion of twin lines of apostolic and "heretical" succession - a concern that fits well within a fourth-century context marked by Christian efforts to delineate "orthodoxy" from "heresy" by means of public debates no less than treatises and councils. Whereas Epiphanius stresses the continuity between pre-Christian and Christian error, the Homilies essentially erase the line between them: Jesus is not the first teacher of truth, nor is Simon the first "heretic." Both are part of a broader pattern, stretching far into the past and far into the future.
Hellenism and/as "Heresy" Analysis of each side of the dualistic pattern reveals a theory of Christianity's relationship to other religious traditions that is also distinctive to the Homilies. It suggests, moreover, that its authors/redactors may draw the lines between "orthodoxy" and "heresy" in a manner different from fourth-century ecclesiarchs in the Roman Empire. Like Epiphanius (Pan. 8.2.2), the Homilies read pre-Christian history as defined by the difference between Hellenism and Judaism. Here, however, the lineage of "heresy" is wholly limited to the latter. Just as the Homilies use Peter's speeches to argue against "pagan" polytheism and to persuade Gentiles to monotheism, so they also mount an extended polemic against Hellenistic philosophy. But, whereas polytheism is read as ignorance of the truth, philosophy - like "heresy" - is read as error. It is telling, for instance, that Simon's followers are Greek philosophers and astrologers. 49 He himself is closely associated with Hellenism, in what appears to be a Pseudo-Clementine innovation on the Simon Magus tradition. 50 And, even though our hero Clement was raised a good "pagan" with a proper Hellenistic education (Hom. 1.3, 4.7), the novel begins with his realization of the empty sophistry of philosophy and its inadequacy for addressing ultimate truths such as the fate of the soul (Hom. l.1-4). It is because of this quest for truth that he discovers a different path by means 49 E.g. Appion is an Alexandrian grammarian, Annubion an astrologer, and Athenodorus an Athenian Epicurean (Hom. 4.6). 50 Cote, Theme de /'opposition, 195-96.
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of the True Prophet (Hom. 1.6-22). Thereafter, Clement uses his education precisely to expose the vanity of Hellenistic philosophy. Hom. 1.9-12, for instance, describes how he uses his rhetorical skills to intervene in a debate between Barnabas and a group of Alexandrian philosophers. Likewise, in Homilies 4-6, he takes on the Alexandrian grammarian Appion and exposes the irrational anti-Judaism behind his philosophical veneer. The latter finds no counterpart in the Recognitions,51 and its inclusion in the Homilies speaks to its unique twist on the discourse of "orthodoxy" and "heresy." Appion, we are told, is a follower of Simon Magus but also a family friend of Clement's (Hom. 4.6). He laments that Clement "although equipped with all Greek learning, has been seduced by a certain barbarian called Peter to speak and act after the manner of the Jews ... forsaking the customs of his own country and falling away to those of the barbarians" (Hom. 4.7). In these chapters, Clement responds by exposing the error of Hellenism and defending the truth of Judaism - with no reference at all, in fact, to Jesus. Furthermore, he condemns both Appion and Simon Magus for their rabid anti-Judaism, which he sees as the true motivation for their spread of doctrinal error (Hom. 5.1-29). Here and elsewhere in the Homilies, the battle between "orthodoxy" and "heresy" is presented as an extension of the conflict between Judaism and Hellenism. 52 Peter describes Jesus, himself, and his followers as taking up the fight against polytheism first - and still - fought by Moses and the Jews (Hom. 2.33, 8.5-7, 11.7-16, 16.14). Just as God sought to free the Jews from polytheism by means of the Exodus from Egypt, working through Moses, so He now seeks to free Gentiles from the same error, working through Jesus: following the Exodus, Aaron's idolatry and illness51 Hom. 4-6 is often speculated to have its roots in a separate source, possibly Hellenistic Jewish in origin. For a recent treatment of these chapters, see W. Adler, "Apion's Encomium of Adultery: A Jewish Satire of Greek Paideia in the PseudoClementine Homilies," HUCA 64 (1993): 15-49. 52 Epiphanius' Pan arion is marked by a similarly close connection between "heresy" and Hellenism, the latter of which is likewise defined primarily in terms of philosophy. In Pan. 5-8, Epiphanius describes ancient Greek philosophical schools as "heresies," in an interesting twist on the original meaning of the term hairesis (see the introduction to this volume). Although this connection has some precedent (e.g. Ireneaus, Adv. haer. 2.14), Epiphanius takes it much further than earlier heresiologists, who often marshaled philosophy to articulate and defend their own views of Christianity; yet, in Vallee's words: "Not only is philosophy thereby rejected [i.e., by Epiphanius], but also all links between Christian thought and the ancient philosophical tradition" (Study, 81). In other words, the Homilies' negative take on Hellenism seems to fit within the accepted range of attitudes towards philosophy within "orthodox" Christian circles in the fourth century (in which, indeed, the Greco-Roman heritage of the church was being actively negotiated). One could, indeed, argue that what makes the Homilies' heresiology distinctive is only its extremely positive view of Judaism.
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inducing magic threatened the Jews' return to true monotheism. Aaron, however, was thwarted by Moses' prayer and piety. So too with God's plan to gather the Gentiles to monotheistic piety and purity: Simon's magic now threatens this aim. Peter, however, assures his listeners that he, continuing the tradition of Jesus, will prevail (Hom. 2.33). Interestingly, the authors/redactors' sympathies towards Judaism seem to be matched by some knowledge of the Judaism of their time. As Albert Baumgarten has shown,53 the authors/redactors of the Homilies seem aware of the Rabbinic doctrine of the Oral Torah. For instance, the text presumes the authenticity of a line of Jewish succession, whereby the truth was faithfully transmitted from the time of Moses. 54 In fact, the authors/redactors even use this idea to explain apostolic succession, which is presented as the new Gentile counterpart to the Jewish line. Perhaps most strikingly, neither succession negates the other: Moses' teachings are faithfully kept by the Pharisees, who sit on his seat (Hom. 11.29) - just as Peter sits on the seat of Jesus, as will bishops after him (Hom. 3.70). This doubled succession is consistent with the assertion, in Hom. 8, of the equality and identity of these two faces of the True Prophet: Moses for the Jews and Jesus for the Gentiles. Furthermore, throughout the novel, Jewish belief and practice are cited as examples of the proper piety and worship to which Gentiles should strive (Hom. 4.13,7.4,9.16,11.28,16.14). Jews, in effect, are held up as paradigms for "orthodoxy" and "orthopraxy" among Gentile followers of Jesus. The authors/redactors of the Homilies, in other words, seem to see Christianity and Judaism as allies in the battle of truth against error. Together, the two make up the cause of "orthodoxy," which is defined primarily in terms of monotheism. On the other side are aligned Hellenism and "heresy," along with Samaritanism. Far from functioning as a foil for self-definition, Judaism is forerunner and ally of Christianity in the debate against Hellenism and "heresy" - and in the attempt to persuade "pagans" of prophetic truth.
53 A. Baumgarten, "Literary Evidence for Jewish Christianity in the Galilee," in The Galilee in Late Antiquity (ed. L. Levine; New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America; Cambridge, Mass.: Distributed by Harvard University Press, 1992), esp. 42-43. 54 Note esp. Hom. 3.47: "The Law of God was given by Moses, without writing, to seventy wise men, to be handed down, so that the government might be carried on by succession." See further below.
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Narrativized Polemics in the Homilies We have seen how the treatment of religious error in the Homilies resonates with late antique Christian heresiology, drawing on its tropes and traditions, even as it uses them to present an alternate view of the origins, nature, and enemies of "heresy." By means of conclusion, I would like briefly to speculate about the significance of its narrativization of heresiological tropes, as it may relate to the distinctive view of Judaism and Hellenism thereby voiced. Judaism is clearly not the main concern of the authors/redactors, who seem preoccupied foremost with "paganism" and "heresy." Nevertheless, as we have seen, the attitude towards Jews and Judaism is quite positive. And, as others and I have shown, the cultural context that informs the text does seem shaped by close and continued contacts with contemporary nonChristian Jews. 55 Might we find, then, some parallel with Jewish heresiology? Although there are obvious Christian precedents for the narrativization of religious polemics,56 it remains significant that many, specifically heresiological parallels can be found in Rabbinic sources, such as Bereshit Rabbah, which were redacted around the same time as the Homilies. 57 Most notable is the Rabbinic subgenre of disputation tales: brief stories in which a Sage is approached in public by a "heretic" (min), Samaritan, Gentile, philosopher, or Roman matron, who asks him a leading exegetical question. The questions typically concern cases where Scripture appears to say something that goes against Jewish/Rabbinic belief, and the Sage answers by refuting the exegesis, often (although not always) with another exegesis of the same passage. 58
55 See Baumgarten, "Literary Evidence"; Reed, "Jewish Christianity"; A. Marmorstein, "Judaism and Christianity in the Middle of the Third Century," HUCA 10 (1935): 223-63; J. Bergman, "Les elements juifs dans 1es Pseudo-C1ementines," REJ 46 (1903): 89-98. 56 Interestingly, Christian narrativization of polemics seems especially marked in the contra Iudaeos tradition, consistent with the precedent set by Justin Martyr's Dialogue with Trypho. 57 That some Rabbinic references to minim may refer to "Jewish Christians" makes the parallels of form and content all the more striking, in my view, raising the possibility that influence may have been mediated, at least in part, by contacts in argumentative settings. On cases and places in which minim may refer to Christians, see R. Ka1min, "Christians and Heretics in Rabbinic Literature of Late Antiquity," HTR 87 (1994): 15569. 58 For more on this subgenre and Rabbinic traditions about minim more broadly, see Ka1min, "Christians and Heretics"; N. Janowitz, "Rabbis and their Opponents: The Construction of the 'Min' in Rabbinic Anecdotes," JECS 6 (1998): 449-62.
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Biblical exegesis is also central to the narrativized heresiology of the Homilies. In a manner reminiscent of Rabbinic tales of minim, the Homilies consistently depict Simon as arguing his points from Scripture. In Hom. 3.2, for instance, Peter is described as lamenting this very fact prior to their public debate in Caesarea: Simon today is, as he arranged, prepared to come before everyone and to show from the Scriptures that He who made the heaven and the earth and all things in them is not the supreme God, but that there is another, unknown and supreme, as being in an unspeakable manner God of gods, and that he sent two gods, one of whom is he who made the world [ho men eis estin ho kosmon ktisas] and the other, he who gave the Law [ho de heteros ho ton nomon dous]. These things he contrives to say so that he may dissipate the right faith [ten orthen proeklusei pistin] of those who would worship the one and only God who made heaven and earth ....
This characterization is later confirmed by Simon's own argument during this debate: Why would you [i.e., Peter] lie, and deceive the unlearned multitude standing around you, persuading them that it is unlawful to think that there are gods and to call them so, when the Books that are current among the Jews [tov para Ioudaiois demosion biblOn] say that there are many gods? Now I wish, in the presence of all, to discuss with you from these Books the necessity of thinking that there are gods; first showing with respect to him whom you call God that he is not the supreme and omnipotent being inasmuch as he is without foreknowledge, imperfect, needy, not good, and underlying many and innumerable grievous passions. When this has been shown from the Scriptures, as I say, it follows that there is another [God], not written of [apo ton grapson] , foreknowing, perfect, without want, good, removed froth all grievous passions. He whom you call the Creator [demiourgon] is subject to the opposite evils. Therefore also Adam - the being made at first after his likeness - is created blind and is said not to have knowledge of good or evil and is found a transgressor and is driven out of Paradise and is punished with death. Similarly, He who made him, because He sees not in all places, says with reference to the overthrow of Sodom, Come, and let us go down, and see whether they do according to their cry which comes to me; or ifnot, that I may know (Gen 18 :21). Thus He shows Himself to be ignorant. So too in His saying with respect to Adam, Let us drive him out, lest he put forth his hand and touch the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever (Gen 3 :22) - in saying lest He is ignorant; and in driving him out lest He should eat and live for ever, He is also envious. Whereas it is written that God repented that he had made humankind (Gen 6:6), this implies both repentance and ignorance. 59 For this reflection is a view by which one, through ignorance, wishes to 59 Cf. BerR 27.4: "A certain Gentile asked R. Joshua b. Karhah: 'Do you not maintain that the Holy One, blessed be He, foresees the future?' 'Yes,' he replied. [The Gentile said:] 'But it is written, And God repented that he had made humankind (Gen 6:6)?' 'Has a son ever been born to you?' he inquired. 'Yes' was the answer. 'And what did you do?' 'I rejoiced and made all others rejoice,' he answered. 'Yet did you not know that he would eventually die?' 'Gladness at the time of gladness, and mourning at the time of mourning,' he [i.e., the Gentile] replied. 'So too with the Holy One, blessed be He' was his rejoinder."
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inquire into the result of the things that he wills, or it is the act of one repenting on account of the event not being according to his expectation. Whereas it is written And the Lord smelled a scent of sweetness (Gen 8:21), it is the part of one in need; and His being pleased with the fat of flesh is the part of one who is not good. His tempting, as it is written, And God did tempt Abraham (Gen 22:1) is the part of one who is wicked and who is ignorant of the result of the experiment." (Hom. 3.38)
For the most part, the debates in the Homilies feature such lengthy discourses by Simon and Peter respectively. In some cases, however, we find briefer interchanges, in which the formal parallels with Rabbinic disputation tales are especially clear. One particularly striking example can be found in Hom. 16.11-12: Simon said: "Since I see that you frequently speak of the God who created you, learn from me how you are impious even to him. For there are evidently two who created [hoi plasantes duo phainontai], as Scripture says: And God said, Let us make humankind in our image, after our likeness (Gen 1:26). Now Let us make implies two or more certainly not only one!" Peter answered: "One is He who said to His Wisdom [eis estin ho te autou sophia eipov], Let us make humankind. But His Wisdom was that with which He Himself always rejoiced as with His own spirit (cf. Prov 8:30). It is united as soul to God, but it is extended by Him, as hand, fashioning the universe (cf. Prov 8:22-31).60 On this account, also, one man was made and from him went forth also the female." (cf. Gen 2:21-22)
As in Rabbinic disputation tales, a "heretic" here cites an apparent inconsistency in Scripture, which must then be refuted, lest incorrect exegesis lead to incorrect beliefs. 61 The topic of the contested beliefs is also notable. Particularly within Bereshit Rabbah, we find a number of disputation tales that assert the singularity and goodness of God as Creator. Just as the Homilies' depicts Simon as claiming "two who created," so the interpretation of Genesis 1: 1 in Ber.R. 1.7 occasions fervent contestation of the idea that "two powers created the world": Rabbi Isaac said ... "No person can dispute and maintain that two powers gave the Torah or that two powers created the world [o"lI;'1 nl'\ '1'\1:1 n"'W1 'nw]. For 'And gods spoke [(pI.) 0';'1,1'\ '1:11"]' is not written here, but And God spoke [(s.) 0';'1,1'\ 1:11"; Ex 20:1]; 'In
60 These same verses are cited in Ber.R. 1.1, with Wisdom interpreted as the Torah and said to have been consulted at Creation. 61 As discussed below, the Homilies offers a solution to the problem of scriptural inconsistency that differs both from Rabbinic Jewish and from "orthodox" Christian approaches, namely the doctrine of false pericopes, as described by means of Peter's private conversations with Clement (Hom. 2.38-52, 3.4-6, 9-11, 17-21) as well as in his public debates with Simon (3.37-51, 16.9-14, 18.12-13, 18.18-22).
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the beginning they created [(pI.) 'K1:J Tl'1ZlK1:J]' is not written here, but In the beginning He created [(s.) K1:J MilK1:J; Gen 1:1].,,62
As is well known, classical Rabbinic literature is rife with references to those who "heretically" claim "two powers in heaven.,,63 For our purposes, it also proves significant that, more specifically, the Rabbinic genre of disputation tales is often used to contest dualistic and polytheistic interpretations of those passages in the Torah where God is described in terms that could suggest His plurality. Perhaps most notable are the traditions collected in Ber.R. 8.8-9. Ber.R. 8.8 begins with a striking admission of the problems raised by the plural forms that Genesis uses to describe God: R. Samuel b. Nahman said in the name of R. Y ohanan: When Moses was engaged in writing the Torah, he had to write the work of each day [i.e., of Creation]. When he came to the verse, And God said, Let us make (pI.) humankind, etc. (Gen. 1:27), he said: "Sovereign of the Universe! Why do you furnish an excuse to minim [ ;,~ 11nM 1Tl13 ;'TlK ;-m O'J'~~]?" "Write!" He replied, "Whoever wishes to err may err" [;'17~' Tl1l7~~ ;':!!'i;'].
Using the subgenre of the disputation tale, Ber.R. 8.9 turns to address the specific problems raised by the Torah's use of Elohim, a Hebrew term for God that can be read as either singular or plural: The minim asked R. Simlai: "How many gods [m;"~K] created the world?" "I and you must inquire of the first day," he replied, "as it is written, For ask now of the first days. 'Since the day Elohim created [(pI.) 'K1:J] humankind' is not written here (i.e., in Deut 4:32), but Elohim created [(s.) K1:J]." Then they asked him a second time: "Why is it written, In the beginning Elohim [so or pl.] created?" "In the beginning Elohim created [(pI.) 'Ki:J] is not written here (i.e., in Gen 1:1)," he answered, "but Elohim created [(s.) Ki:J] the heaven and the earth."
The midrash then returns to Gen 1:27, addressing the issue of its use of plural verbal forms and pronominal suffixes when describing God: R. Simlai said: "In every place [i.e., in the Torah] that you find a point supporting the minim [O'J'~~ ;,~ 11nM K:!!'~ ;'TlK1Zl O'j?~ ~:J:J], you find the refutation at its side [ ;'TlK ;":!!:J ;':J'1ZlTl K:!!'~]!" They asked him again: "What is meant by And Elohim said, Let us make [(pI.) ;'1Zl17J] humankind in our image [U~~:!!:J] and our likeness [um~':J]?" "Read what
62 Translations of Bereshit Rabbah are revised from the Soncino edition (H. Freedman, trans., Midrash Rabba, vol. 1, ed. H. Freedman and Maurice Simon; London: Soncino Press, 1939) with reference to J. Theodor with C. Albeck, eds., Midrasch Bereschit Rabbah mit kritischem Apparat und Kommentar, repr. ed. (Jerusalem, 1965). 63 The most extensive treatment of these traditions is still A.F. Segal, Two Powers in Heaven: Early Rabbinic Reports about Christianity and Gnosticism (Leiden: Brill, 1979). On possible Rabbinic references to Simon Magus, see H.J. Schoeps, "Simon Magus in der Haggada?" HUCA 21 (1948): 257-74. See also Burton Visotzky, "Goys '.5I'n't Us Rabbinic Anti-Gentile Polemic in Yerushalmi Berachot 9: 1," in this volume.
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follows," he replied, "And Elohim created [(pI.) 'Ki:J~'] humankind is not written here (i.e., in Gen 1:27), but And Elohim created [(s.) Ki:J~']."
That this explanation does not suffice to explain the problem is made clear by the end of this unit, which features a shift from public to private discourse: When they left, his disciples said to him [i.e., to R. Simlai]: "You dismissed them with a mere makeshift [:1JP; lit. hollow reed]! But how will you answer us?" He said to them: "In the past Adam was created from dust, and Eve was created from Adam, but henceforth it shall be In our image, after our likeness (Gen 1:26): neither man without woman, nor woman without man, and neither of them without the Shekhinah."
Just as the pseudo-Clementine Peter privately reveals teachings to his followers that might be misunderstood by the public,64 R. Simlai is here depicted as offering to his disciples a more nuanced solution to the problem of plural forms used of God in Genesis. This solution, moreover, recalls the admission of the complexity within the unity of the Godhead in Peter's appeal to Wisdom in Hom. 16.12. Here, however, appeal is made to another feminine hypostasis of God, namely the Shekhinah. What is striking about R. Simlai's answer to his disciples, however, is that the Sage never addresses the reason why Scripture contains misleading statements that need to be corrected by other statements beside them; he simply gives another exegesis. As in the tradition attributed to R. Samuel b. Nahman about Moses' complaint to God about the inclusion of the plural divine statement "Let us make humankind" in the Torah (Ber.R. 8.8), the inconsistency is fully admitted but never resolved. The authors/redactors of the Homilies seem to face the same problem, but they offer a very different solution. Perhaps most striking is Peter's response to the litany of scriptural inconsistencies attributed to Simon in Hom. 3.38 (i.e., as quoted above). At first, Peter defends the perfection of God and the characters of biblical heroes by citing additional biblical prooftexts, in a manner reminiscent of the arguments used by Sages in Rabbinic disputation tales: Peter said: "You say that Adam was created blind, which was not so; for He would not have pointed out the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil to a blind man and commanded him not to taste of it (Gen 2: 17)." Then said Simon: "He meant that his mind was blind." Then Peter: "How could he be blind in respect of his mind, who, before tasting of the tree, in harmony with Him who made him, imposed appropriate names on all the animals?" (Gen 2:20) Then Simon: "If Adam had foreknowledge, how did he not foreknow that the serpent would deceive his wife (Gen 3:1-5)?" Then Peter: "If Adam did not have foreknowledge, how did he give names to the sons of men as they were born with reference to their future
64 Esp. the doctrine of false pericopes, on which see n. 58 above and discussion below.
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doings, calling the first Cain, which is interpreted envy, who through envy killed his brother Abel, which is interpreted grief, for his parents grieved over him, the first slain? And if Adam, being the work of God, had foreknowledge, how much more so the God who created him?" (Hom. 3.42-43)
Peter then, however, denies outright any description of God as imperfect or ignorant: And it is false, that which is written that God reflected (Gen 6:6), as if using reasoning on account of ignorance; and that the Lord tempted Abraham, that He might know if he would endure it; and that which is written Let us go down ... (Gen 11 :7). And, not to extend my discourse too far, but whatever sayings ascribe ignorance to Him, or anything else that is evil - being overturned by other sayings that affirm the contrary - are proved to be false! (Hom. 3.43)
At first, the implication of the falsehood of some portions of Scripture is tempered by a return to arguments based on other prooftexts : Because He does indeed foreknow, He says to Abraham, You shall assuredly know that your seed shall be sojourners in a land that is not their own ... (Gen 15: 13). And what? Does not Moses pre-intimate the sins of the people and predict their dispersion among the nations? If He gave foreknowledge to Moses, how can it be that He did not have it Himself? Yet He has it! And if He has it, as we have also shown, it is an extravagant saying that He reflected (Gen 6:6) and that He repented (Gen 6:6) and that He went down to see (Gen 11:5) - and whatever else of this sort. (Hom. 3.43-44)
The resultant problem of scriptural inconsistency is then answered with a solution that is strongly reminiscent of R. Simlai' s dictum whereby scriptural sayings that support "heresy" are always countered by other sayings close beside them (Ber.R. 8.9). Peter very similarly proclaims: Thus the sayings accusatory of the God who made the heaven are both rendered void by the opposite sayings that are alongside of them and are refuted by Creation. (Hom. 3.46)
Unlike R. Simlai, however, Peter does not stop there. Bereshit Rabbah implies that its "heretics" readily accepted the Sage's dictum and that even his disciples were happy to settle for an alternative exegesis of the problematic passage. In the Homilies, however, Peter's battle with his own "heretic" prompts him to push his version of the dictum to its natural conclusion: he proposes that the seemingly "heretical" passages in Scripture are, in fact, not scriptural at all: They were not written by a prophetic hand. Therefore also they appear opposite to the hand of God, who made all things. (Hom. 3.46)
This view reflects another idea distinctive to the Homilies, namely its theory that Scripture contains statements that imply God's multiplicity and
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imperfection only because false pericopes have been inserted therein. 65 This theory is complex in its own right, and its precise connections to other late antique traditions have yet to be adequately explored. 66 For our present purposes, it suffices to note that parallels in heresiology expose the Homilies' surprisingly close connections with Rabbinic tradition - even in the case of a doctrine that might seem, at first sight, to run completely contrary to Rabbinic ideology, namely the Homilies' denial of the perfection of Scripture. Not only does Peter explain this theory in an heresiological context that recalls Rabbinic disputation tales and voice a dictum that recalls the Rabbinic sayings cited therein, but he goes on to explain the history of scriptural interpolation with appeal to the oral transmission of the Torah from Moses to the seventy elders (cf. Numbers 11) and on to their successors (Hom. 2.38, 3.47; cf. m. Avot 1.1).67 In effect, the authors/redactors of the Homilies seem able to assert the imperfection of the Written Torah precisely because they accept the integrity of the Oral Torah. Without further analysis, it is difficult to know the full import of these parallels. Some parallels in heresiological content and strategy, for instance, may reflect the character and argumentative tactics of specific enemies (e.g., Marcionites) shared by the Rabbis and the authors/redactors of the Homilies. Others may result from their common interest in defending the goodness of the Creator and in arguing for monotheism against dualism and polytheism. In my view, however, the formal parallels prove most telling, opening the possibility that similar heresiologies developed due to contacts between the authors/redactors of the Homilies and Rabbinic Jews. In other words, the very continuity and commonality with Judaism that is claimed by the authors/redactors of the Homilies may be evinced in the literary form (as well as the content) of its polemics. Of course, the narrativization of heresiological tropes must also be seen as a result of the authors/redactors' choice of the genre of a Greco-Roman Hom. 2.38-52, 3.4-6,9-11,17-21,3.37-51,16.9-14,18.12-13,18.18-22. For this discussion of the doctrine of the false pericopes, I am indebted to my student Karl Shuve's work locating this doctrine within the context oflate antique Jewish and Christian efforts to grapple with the problems raised by scriptural inconsistencies, esp. with regard to the character of God. On possible Rabbinic awareness of this idea, see Schoeps, Theologie, 176-79, esp. on Sifre Deut. 26 (cf. Lev.R. 31.4; Deut.R. 2.6). 67 Hom. 2.38: " ... after the prophet Moses, by the order of God, gave [paradedokotos] the Law with the explanations [sun tais epi/usesin] to certain chosen men, some seventy in number (cf. Num 11: 16), in order that they also might instruct such of the people as they chose, the Written Law [grapheis ho nomos] had added to it certain falsehoods against the God [pseude kata tou monou] who made the heaven and the earth and all things in 'them - the Wicked One having dared to work this for some righteous purpose." Hom. 3.47 is quoted above in n. 31 and 54. 65
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novel. 68 Interestingly, it is particularly in the Homilies that we find fully exploited the polemical power latent in the adoption of a "pagan" literary form; for, as we have seen, the appropriation of the genre of the novel here serves an extended polemic against Hellenism as "heresy," as expressed both through the words of Peter and Clement and through the story itself. Especially in light of the Homilies' extremely close adherence to the generic conventions of the Greco-Roman novel, the choice of genre could be read as a sign of an intended readership of "pagans" and former "pagans." If so, the polemic proves all the more poignant. The literary form of the Homilies' attack on Hellenism and "Paganism" exposes its authors/redactors' close connections with Greco-Roman culture. A full understanding of these connections too must await further investigation. Nevertheless, it seems plausible that they reflect the cultural context and intended audience of our text - consistent with its characterization of Jesus as the teacher of Gentiles, its depiction of Peter as preaching for the conversion of "pagans," and its characterization of Clement as a former "pagan" who found his philosophical education insufficient to fill his spiritual needs. Consequently, the heresiology of the Homilies may speak to its place at a definitional interface between "Christianity," "Judaism," and "Paganism" in Late Antiquity. Read from this perspective, the novel is an innovative redeployment of the discourse of Christian heresiology, the narrativization of which may draw on the model of Rabbinic tales of disputations with minim - all framed and unified, moreover, by the overarching structure of the Greco-Roman novel. The account of error thereby expressed differs radically from those found in the Christian heresiologies of those whom we now label "orthodox." This raises the possibility that the authors and redactors of the Homilies seek tacitly to counter, not only the "false apostles, false prophets, [and] heresies" predicted by Peter in Hom. 16.21, but also those Christians whose supersessionist and anti-Jewish views are, precisely in the fourth century, just in the process of being ratified by their "desires for supremacy."
68 This choice too has some Jewish parallel, on which see, e.g., Joshua Levinson, "The Tragedy of Romance: A Case of Literary Exile," HTR 89 (1996): 227-44. Although there are also Hellenistic Jewish and early Christian precedents for the integration of novelistic tropes from the Greco-Roman literary tradition, it is notable that the PseudoClementines' wholesale adoption of the genre of the Greco-Roman novel remains distinctive (see sources cited in n. 14 for further discussion).
Goys 'JI'n't Us Rabbinic Anti-Gentile Polemic in Yerushalmi Berachot 9: 1 BURTON L. VISOTZKY
I This article focuses on Rabbinic notions of heresy and self-definition. I wish to limn the differences between the meanings of Rabbinic traditions as we might determine them through source criticism of "original" smaller units and their broader rhetorical meanings within a complete, redacted Rabbinic document. The text under consideration is from the Talmud Yerushalmi, tractate Berachot 9:1. For the sake of this essay, allow me to stipulate a redactional date for this text of approximately 425 CEo I have chosen this passage because of the serious scholarly attention showered upon the Yerushalmi in recent years under the careful aegis of our colleague Peter Schafer, 1 and because the particular text I examine deals with heresy, anti-Christian polemic, and Rabbinic attitudes toward martyrdom in one lengthy Talmudic segment. Thus we may consider a set of topics which have received a fair amount of recent scholarly attention and are entirely apposite to the topic, "Making Selves and Marking Others.,,2 1 This is not the forum to debate the complexities of dating either final editing of Palestinian Rabbinic documents or their individual tractates, chapters, or pericopae. For the range of dating (I am content that it may be anywhere between 350 CE and 450 CE) and other pertinent information on the Yerushalmi see G. Sternberger and H. Strack, Introduction to the Talmud and Midrash (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992), 182-207. The three volumes edited by Schafer (The Talmud Yerushalmi and Graeco-Roman Culture, Tiibingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1998, 2000, 2002), explore diverse aspects of this Talmud. For more detail on the Yerushalmi see the introductions by A. Goldberg, "The Palestinian Talmud," in S. Safrai, ed., The Literature of the Sages I (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1987), 303-322; and, still useful, L. Ginzberg, "The Palestinian Talmud," A Commentary on the Palestinian Talmud, vol. 1 (New York: JTSA, 1941), xiii-lxxii, reprint in A. Corre, ed., Understanding the Talmud (New York: KTAV, 1975),33-54. 2 For anti-Christian Polemic see Burton L. Visotzky, "Overturning the Lamp," JJS (1987): 72-80, reprinted in Idem, Fathers of the World: Essays in Rabbinic and Patristic Literatures (Tiibingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1995), 75-84 (with the survey of secondary literature and bibliography); more recently see Israel Yuval, "Two Nations in Your Womb": Perceptions of Jews and Christians, [Hebrew] (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 2001;
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I also am happy to return to this Yerushalmi text after a period of almost eighteen years.3 It is astonishing how in that period of time I have come to know so much less about Rabbinic literature. I have benefited in this regard by a sea change in methodology on the treatment of Rabbinic literature, away from the verities of writing the history of the Jews and toward the polysemy of analysis of Rabbinic literature and the rhetoric it embodies. 4 When I first wrote about this Yerushalmi text I assumed it represented a three-way conversation among a rabbi, his disciples, and certain heretics who were almost assuredly Christians (or possibly Jewish-Christians) seeking proof-texts in the Old Testament for their triune theology. Along the way, I proposed a methodological principle that attempted to take account of the disparate relative dates of New Testament and Rabbinic Berkeley: U. of California Press [English] 2006), for the post-Talmudic period. For Rabbinic attitudes toward martyrdom see Saul Lieberman, "The Martyrs of Caesarea," Annuaire de L'Institut de Philologie et d'Histoire Orientales et Slaves VII (1939-40): 395-446; Idem, "On The Persecution of Judaism," Salo Baron Jubilee Volume [Hebrew Section] (Jerusalem: American Academy for Jewish Research, 1975), 213-245; Daniel Boyarin, "Martyrdom and the Making of Christianity and Judaism," JECS 6 (1998): 577627; Idem, "On the History of Jewish Martyrdom," in D. Boyarin et al., eds., Ateret Hayyim: Studies in Talmudic and Rabbinic Literature in Honor of Professor Hayyim Zalman Dimitrovsky [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1999), 3-27; Idem, Dying for God: Martyrdom and the Making of Christianity and Judaism (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999); and now Alyssa Gray, "A Contribution to the Study of Martyrdom and Identity in the Palestinian Talmud," JJS 54 (2003): 242-272 (with a full bibliography in her footnote 1). For works on Christian martyrdom see W. H. C. Frend, Orthodoxy, Paganism and Dissent in the Early Christian Centuries: Variorum Collected Studies (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003); Idem, Martyrdom and Persecution in the Early Church (Oxford: Blackwell, 1965); Idem, The Donatist Church: A Movement of Protest in Roman North Africa (Oxford: OUP, 1986 reprint); most recently Elizabeth Castelli, Martyrdom and Memory: Early Christian Culture Making (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004; thanks to Prof. Adam Becker for this reference), and the collections of martyrdom texts by Herbert Musurillo, Acts of the Pagan Martyrs (Oxford: OUP, 1954); Idem, Acts of the Christian Martyrs (Oxford: OUP, 1972). 3 I first considered this text at the Sesquicentennial Celebration of Union Theological Seminary in New York. The paper, delivered April 19, 1987, was published the following year in the Union Seminary Quarterly Review as "Trinitarian Testimonies." See Burton L. Visotzky, "Trinitarian Testimonies," USQR 42 (1988): 73-85, reprinted in Idem, Fathers of the World, 61-74. I do not rehearse here the details of the argument adduced there. 4 See Burton L. Visotzky, "Six Studies in Midrash and Methods," Shofar 10 (1992): 86-96, which reviews, inter alia, Daniel Boyarin, Intertextuality and the Reading of Midrash (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990) and Steven Fraade, From Tradition to Commentary (Albany: SUNY, 1991). I would now add David Stern, Midrash and Theory (Evanston: Northwestern, 1996), to round out the transition from the wissenschaftliche focus on history toward more purely literary concerns.
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literature: when the New Testament and Rabbinic literature seem to have parallel texts, it is much less likely that the Rabbinic literature serves as "background" for the New Testament, and much more likely that the rabbis are not only reacting to the New Testament passage, but most likely that they are reacting to the NT passage as it was used in their own era by contemporary Church Fathers. To state this corollary simply - the proper mode of comparison should be Rabbinics and patristics and not Rabbinics and New Testament in its first-century context. I remain committed to this principle, and would add to it that when comparing Rabbinics with patristics one should determine that there is a true parallel between the texts and not a chimera of twenty-first century scholarly imagination. This second corollary could be called my "smoking gun" rule. In too much of the field, scholars are content to compare somewhat disparate texts under the theory that ideas are "in the air." I contend, however, that our job is to pin down texts as parallels for proper study. I don't see a parallel unless there's a "smoking gun" of a quoted or paraphrased text which assures me that we're really comparing things of like substance. 5 I move on to analysis of the Rabbinic text with but one final corollary: I no longer imagine that this conversation has any basis in historic fact; rather what we study is a piece of rhetoric - polemical to be sure, but directed at INSIDERS in order to mark boundaries of acceptable praxis and belief, rather than intended to refute actually present outsiders, whatever their stripe. So what I had presented 18 years ago as a three-way conversation about the Trinity, I present now as a dialogue (and an imaginary one at that) between a rabbi and his disciples for the purpose of proving "Goys aren't us," through the vehicle of Scriptural exegeses. The redacted text we consider extends beyond the "Trinitarian Testimonies" section 6 of the Talmud Yerushalmi Berachot and includes a series of texts about Roman patronage and its failure to prevent execution/martyrdom. Alas, the extended pericope is very lengthy - so for the sake of this analysis I have broken up the text into sense segments 5 Samuel Sandmel's "Parallelomania," JBL 81 (1962): 1-13 remains a necessary warning. 6 This segment of text was recently considered by Menahem Kister, "Let Us Make Man," in Sugyot BeMehkar HaTalmud: Conference Marking the Fifth Anniversary of the Death of E. E. Urbach [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Israel Academy of Sciences, 2001), 28-65, esp. 55-57. There he unmistakably affirms my contention that the passage discusses Christian Trinitarian doctrine in a polemical context, offering further patristic citations. He disagrees (his n. 105) with my contention that the rabbi in question is citing a passage from I Cor. 11: 11 - mysteriously ignoring the fact that Paul Billerbeck, G. Delling, J. Jervell, M. Smith, M. Boucher, and M. R. D'Angelo each separately also have noted the parallel (see Visotzky, "Overturning the Lamp," nn. 3-5).
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indicated by letters of the English alphabet. 7 I will have some comments on the micro-sections along the way, but our interest here is in the overall rhetorical effect of the macro-text. 8 I begin by briefly examining the "Trinitarian Testimonies" section of the text. It constitutes sections A.-F. in the Appendix.
II In this section the Yerushalmi collects 9 questions on "difficult" biblical texts which each seem to point to the possibility of a plurality, indeed a Trinity, in the Godhead. In these texts, certain Minim are portrayed as playing "ask the rabbi" and offer a series of biblical verses, which through noun forms (and the like) which seem to be plurals, open the possibility of the plurality of God. In each instance the rabbi (or redactor) replies by pointing out that within the immediate context there is a singular verb (or other grammatical) form attesting to the singular unity of GOd.lO This mode of response is summarized by Rabbi Simlai who offers the principle: Every place the Minim rend a verse [from context], the appropriate reply is next to it [viz. in the context of the passage]. First, a word on the term "Minim" as it is used in. our passage. I do not know exactly who is intended by the term. Minim is often used ambiguously for rhetorical effect - it is a classic example of "Them," those 7 The Hebrew text from the Bar Han Responsa CD 9 (apparently ed. Venice) and my own English translation are included below as an Appendix. 8 The distinction between micro- and macro-forms is first suggested by Peter Schafer, ed., Synopse zur Hekhalot-Literatur (Tiibingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1981), and was recently applied to Rabbinic aggadic texts by Michael Fishbane, "Anthological Midrash and Cultural Paideia: The Case of Songs Rabba 1:2," in Textual Reasoning: Jewish Philosophy and Text Study at the End of the Twentieth Century (ed. P. Ochs and N. Levene; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), 32-51, with the response by Steven Fraade, ibid., 52-56. 9 I have changed my opinion from my article, "Trinitarian Testimonies," where I suggested that the Yerushalmi text was the original locus for these traditions. I now think that the Yerushalmi text shows many signs of being a redactional collection of traditions on these textual problems, culled from other earlier and contemporary Rabbinic sources. This is in keeping with the tendency of Palestinian Rabbinic editors to anthologize miscellanies of traditions around common themes. See Marc Hirshman, "The Greek Fathers and the Aggada on Ecclesiastes: Formats of Exegesis in Late Antiquity," HUCA 59 (1988): 137-64; Burton L. Visotzky, Golden Bells and Pomegranates: Studies in Midrash Leviticus Rabbah (Tiibingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003), 31-40; and David Stem, "Anthology and Polysemy in Classical Midrash," in The Anthology in Jewish Literature (ed. D. Stem; Oxford: OUP, 2004), 108-142. 10 See Kister, "Let Us Make Man," passim, for a full discussion of the purported philosophical implications of these passages.
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who disagree with Us, heretics, Others. They could be Rabbinic Jews asking hard questions (we'll return to this in a moment). They could be Christians, not yet wholly separated from Judaism, who are sincerely asking. 11 They could be Jewish-Christians. 12 In any case, these Minim 13 get to raise the question. They serve as an heuristic device allowing the rabbi to offer two levels of response: the first is a surface, grammatical response. The second is a theological response. This second response is posed by having disciples of the rabbi intervene for five of the seven verses discussed. In these cases the students are presented as challenging their master: Those you pushed off with a straw. What will you reply to us? His response varies. In one instance he actually replies by citing 1 Cor. 11: 11 to them in Hebrew. This pithy paraphrase of Paul not only puts the uppity students in their place - for they remain ignorant of the source of the Rabbi's reply - but also takes on the theological implications of a verse of the New Testament which when coupled with Genesis 1:26 was often cited as a proof-text during the Trinitarian debate. 14 In the other instances, the rabbi replies by suggesting that certain threefold terms simply come in triplets; they are synonyms for one and the same thing and do not indicate a Triune God. So he offers the formula: Basileus, Kaisar, Augustus, which was Ubiquitous on Roman imperial statuary. Or: craftsman, builder, architect - who was also ubiquitous during the building boom in the Galilee in the 4th century. This is, of course, a theologically weak answer, and were it actually advanced in a real argument with Trinitarian Christian opponents, their reply might well have been: Q. E. D. But as it happens, our rabbi is not engaged in polemical debate with outsiders. Rather, he is writing for his own; soothing troubled brows by offering both grammatical and ostensibly theological replies to blandishments perhaps being offered to them out of the Hebrew Scriptures by those who believe in the truth of the Trinity. The text is of the nature of 11 See Adam Becker and Annette Reed, eds., The Ways that Never Parted: Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (Tiibingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003), passim. 12 See Burton L. Visotzky, "Prolegomenon to the Study of Jewish Christianities in Rabbinic Literature," AJS Review 14 (1989): 47-70, reprinted in Idem., Fathers of the World, 129-149; and see Simon Mimouni, with F. Stanley Jones, eds., Le Judeochristianisme dans tous ses Etats: Actes du colloque de Jerusalem 6-10 Juillet 1998 (Paris: Cerf, 2001). 13 See now Martin Goodman, "The Function of Minim in Early Rabbinic Judaism," in Geschichte - Tradition - Rejlexion: Festschrift fur Martin Hengel zum 70 Geburstag (ed. H. Conick, H. Lichtenberger, and P. Schafer; Tiibingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1996), 501-510, on the term Minim. 14 See Visotzky, "Trinitarian Testimonies," for full details of this argument.
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a brief course on responding to those Jews for Jesus on campus: If they say to you: X; then you should say back to them: Y. This first section (A.-F.) of our Yerushalmi text fulfills each of my rules of engagement: it is not Jewish background to the New Testament, but instead it replies to a New Testament verse and other contemporary arguments used by the Church Fathers. It contains the smoking gun of a citation of St. Paul, as well as Old Testament verses which were advanced by Church Fathers in 3-5th century Trinitarian debate. IS Finally, it is most likely an exercise in drawing borders: an edited series of rhetorical questions and answers meant to address worrisome questions of biblical interpretation.
III We turn now to the second part of this long Talmudic passage, which brings the section (halachah) of the Yerushalmi to a close. It consists of four segments (G.-J.) in which Rabbi Yudan quotes Rabbi Yitzchak's four approaches to Roman execution, again through the vehicle of Scriptural exegeses. 16 These succinct passages address the inadequacy of a patron to protect one from imperial punishment. In each of the four, a common method of execution is cited: crucifixion, drowning, immolation, and exposure to wild beasts in the arena. There is a further interpolation (in section G.) adding the punishment of beheading. 17 In each, the patron is apparently helpless to withstand the imperial executioner. In each, the patron is contrasted with the Blessed Holy One who is "on record" in the Bible as saving potential Jewish martyrs from the wrath of tyrants. Thus Moses is saved from the (beheading) sword of Pharaoh (G.), Jonah is saved from drowning (H.), Hannaniah, Mishael and Azariah, the three youths in the ook of Daniel, are saved from the flames (r.), and Daniel himself is saved from the wild beasts in the lion's den (J.).
Again, for full detail of this argument see Visotzky, "Trinitarian Testimonies." On the interface of Rabbinic and Christian martyrdom see above, n. 2. 17 For these five methods of execution, inter alia, see the texts quoted in Musurillo, Acts of the Pagan Martyrs and Acts of the Christian Martyrs; and see Eusebius of Caesarea, "History of the Martyrs in Palestine," in Idem., Ecclesiastical History, book VIII; translated in Schaff and Wace, eds., Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers (Second Series) vol. 1, 342-356; and Eusebius, "History of the Martyrs in Palestine" in the Syriac text translated by Wm. Cureton (London: Williams and Norgate, 1861),passim. Rabbinic martyr texts are collected in the post-Talmudic "minor" tractate Semahot 8:8-16; with the English translation and commentary of Dov Zlotnick, The Tractate "Mourning" (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966). IS
16
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These four texts are followed by a series of accounts of the failure of patrons to save their clients or of the whims by which clients are saved (K.-N.). The moral is always the same: the only acceptable patron is the Blessed Holy One, God. This is made explicit by comparing God with the imperial patron of patrons; for even the Cosmocrator only rules the land, while God rules both land and sea (0.). Further, humans tend to be picky about their relations with clients, only drawing near to those with status, such as the philosophus (R.). The blessed Holy One, in contrast, draws near to all Jews. The ending of this passage (R.) hearkens back to the close of the Trinitarian Testimony section (F.), which also closes with a paean to God's immanence. I wish to discuss two important aspects on the micro-level of this text, patronage and martyrdom, before turning to the rhetorical message of the co-joined passages on the macro-level of the redacted Yerushalmi. Throughout this second section of text, the patron is repeatedly raised as an object of comparison with God. Patronage existed on every level of Roman society, from the local villages and their impoverished societies up to the Roman imperial court. 18 Rabbinic literature abounds with images of patronage and the trope of patron/client is common in Rabbinic theological discourse. As early as the so-called Midrash Tannaim to Deuteronomy (32:9), the analogy is offered: What is the matter like? Like a king who has an advent into a city and all advance there with him: hyparchs, dukes, and generals. Some make the hyparch their patron, others make the duke their patron, still others make the general their patron. The wise man notes that each of these is under the power of the king. They cannot overrule him, while he can overrule them. Thus when the Blessed Holy One was revealed at Sinai, the nations chose their gods.
18 On patronage in general see Roger Bagnall, Egypt in Late Antiquity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 214-229; John Elliot, "Patronage and Clientism in Early Christian Society: A Short Reading Guide," Forum 3/4 (1987): 39-48; Ludwig Friedlander, Roman Life and Manners under the Early Empire, vol. 1 (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1907), 98-227; John Gager, Kingdom and Community: The Social World of Early Christianity (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1975), 93-113; Ramsay MacMullen, Roman Social Relations, 50 B.C. to A.D. 284 (New Haven: Yale, 1974); Halvor Moxnes, "Patron-Client Relations and the New Community in Luke-Acts," in The Social World of Luke-Acts (ed. J. Neyrey; Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 1991), 241-68; Richard P. Saller, Personal Patronage under the Early Empire (Cambridge: CUP, 1982); Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, ed., Patronage in Ancient Society (London: Routledge, 1990); with the texts translated in Jo-Ann Shelton, As the Romans Did: A Sourcebook in Roman Social History (Oxford: OUP, 1998), 11-15; and in Roman Civilization Sourcebook II: The Empire (ed. Naphtali Lewis and Meter Reinhold; New York: C9lumbia University Press, 1955), 355-56. On patronage in Rabbinic literature in particular see the materials in Catherine Hezser, The Social Structure of the Rabbinic Movement in Roman Palestine (Tiibingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1997), 153-489, esp. 329-489.
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Contemporary with our Yerushalmi passage, we find "patron" used in regard to God's plan for Joseph in Genesis Rabbah 93:6. Genesis 45:5 is quoted: "It was to save life that God sent me here" and the midrash comments, "as a father, patron, bas ileus , lord, master, sovereign, and ruler." How well the oppressed understand the subtle nuances of hegemony. Equally contemporary Leviticus Rabbah (27:11) makes the metaphor directly of God, wherein Gog recalls that the Jews have a Patron in Heaven, Whom Gog wishes to cozy up to in advance of the apocalypse. 19 One final text from Genesis Rabbah (46: 3 )20 makes God's status as cosmic patron as clear as can be: God said to Abraham, It is sufficient for you that I am your God, it is sufficient for you that I am your patron. And not just for you alone, but it is sufficient for My world that I am its God and it is sufficient for My world that I am its patron.
This last quoted passage seems to oppose God with the Cosmocrator. It is not enough that God is Abraham's God, that is, God of the Jews; but God is the God of the world or as Genesis Rabbah so aptly has God put it, "I am the God of My world, the patron of My world." But here on the micro-level, even before we tum to Rabbinic dismissal of traditional patronage in the face of imperial execution in favor of God's patronage, we have a problem of interpretation. It is entirely possible that the disdain offered in these texts for the useless patron - the Cosmocrator who rules over but a bit of land, and who is ultimately helpless before God - is directed against a king of flesh and blood. Whether he be a pagan or a Christian ruler, the rabbis here could well be disparaging the very human Roman emperor and his pretensions to world hegemony. In the isolated micro-text on patrons, there is no smoking gun necessarily linking this polemic to Christianity. Let's hold that thought while we turn to the counterpoint of these "patron" texts; which is the Rabbinic assessment of the inadequacy of any patron in the face of imperial persecution. Again and again, the rabbis fashion scenarios in which the one who relies on a patron nevertheless finds himself tortured to death while the patron is helpless to effectively intervene. Within our micro-textual environment the message seems to be that if you run afoul of the Roman imperium, put your faith in God. No amount of patronage can save you. Better a meaningful death as a martyr to the King of the king of kings, the Blessed Holy One, than a meaningless death marred by disappointment in the actual powerlessness of your human patron. In this micro-textual analysis, the potential martyr is the Jew, who 19 Genesis Rabbah (ed. Theodor, p. 1160); Leviticus Rabbah (ed. Margulies, p. 646) paralleling Pesiqta DeRab Kahana 9: 11 (ed. Mandelbaum, p. 159). 20 Ed. Theodor, p. 460.
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if not whole-heartedly exhorted, is at least cajoled to put his faith in God. The message is: God as patron, good. Other patrons, bad.
IV But what if we treat these texts on the macro-level of the redacted document? Would the smoke from our "Trinitarian Testimony" gun then waft over the "Patron polemic" and cause us to see it, too, as antiChristian? What would the message be of the anthologized passage in the Yerushalmi? By establishing through the Trinitarian verses that the debate is with Christianity, then those who rely on a useless patron and die anyway are construed to be Christian, as well. In this second passage then, the rabbis recall Christian martyrs and disparage them for putting false hope in Jesus, their helpless patron. The text now in the Y erushalmi' s redactive context seems to say that "they" may hope in Christ, yet they are ignobly executed. This is a daring rhetorical move, for at once the rabbis recall the executions of Christian martyrs long past, while simultaneously denying their witness of Christian faith - instead seeing these deaths as final and fruitless. 21 Only faith in the One God of Israel is efficacious. In the macro-structure, the Cosmocrator who only has narrow hegemony is now Christ-Cosmocrator. The false patron only attends to the philosophus, a term commonly used in the Greek papyri and in Syriac literature 22 to refer to Christian monks. Yet, the Yerushalmi argues, the God of Israel attends to all who call upon Him. The deaths of the Christian martyrs might have been prevented, had they only put their faith in the One True God. The Rabbinic attitude toward martyrdom here must be construed as ambivalent. On the one hand, some in the Rabbinic Jewish world admired the faith of the Christian martyrs and perhaps even imitated martyrological texts.23 On the other hand, the rabbis generally were more hesitant than 21 Dr. Caroline Humfress was kind enough to point out to me that Roman executions such as these had ceased in 325 CE, so at the redactive date of the Yerushalmi, the rabbis are using a form of romantic recollection to summon these images of Christian martyrdom. This nostalgic recollection of Christian martyrs, as Holger Zellentin reminds me, persisted in the Christian world long past Constantine. 22 Greek papyri, see G.H.R. Horsley, New Documents Illustrating Early Christianity (North Ride: Macquarie University Press, 1982) s.v., and for Syriac see J. Payne Smith, A Compendious Syriac Dictionary (Oxford: OUP, 1903) s.v. This meaning of philosophus should also be applied in other Rabbinic polemical passages such as that discussed in Visotzky, "Overturning the Lamp." 23 See Lieberman and Boyarin, op cit.
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Church Fathers to exhort Jews to martyrdom. It seems to me that martyrs were only proclaimed after the fact, and even then, reluctantly.24 On the macro-textual level, where our passage may now be read as part of a broader 4_Sth century anti-Christian polemic, Christian martyrdom might be seen as being disparaged as fruitless death due to hope in the wrong patron. To close, I briefly return to the dialogic character of the first part of our text, the Trinitarian Testimonies. Our rabbi is depicted as engaging at first Minim, heretics who ask him regarding Trinitarian proof-texts, whom he readily refutes. Second, he engages the insiders, his disciples, and explains to them the "proper" theology of the passage. Within the rhetorical context of the Yerushalmi collection, the auditor/reader of the text becomes the insider. By studying the passage the reader knows how readily the outsider is pushed off from a false and ultimately useless theology. But by reading the insider-response given to the rabbi's disciples, the Talmud learner, too, becomes an insider. 25 The secrets of the kingdom, as it were, are now available to any student of the Yerushalmi. Borders marked, self-identity made; Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism have been distinguished on the defining issues of Scriptural interpretation, theological doctrine, and the efficacy of martyrdom.
24 Witness the case of the quintessential Jewish martyr, Rabbi Aqiba, who by the 9 th century is consigned in Rabbinic imagination to a quiet death in his jail cell (Midrash Mishle ch. 9) rather than enduring the torture traditionally associated with his martyrdom. 25 lowe this insight to my student Judith Shulevitz, who offered it during a discussion of Mark 4 on interpreting Jesus' parable of the sower. On the Markan passage see Joel Marcus, Mark 1-8, Anchor Bible vol. 27 (New York: Doubleday, 2000), ad loco
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Appendix Yerushalmi Berachot 9:1 (12d-13b) O'U]:1 nK H~iJ m:1"K :1~:J ~K'~1Zl ~Ji nK "KIZl rJ~~:1 'KiJ ilZlK
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A.
O~J'IZlKi o~~~, KJ 'KIZl ~:J i~KJIZl l'IZlKi:1 OiK nK "KIZl' ,:J, r'K'1Zl onK ~" 1:1' i~K fiK:1 ,17 OiK O~:1'K KiJ ilZlK 0":11~' K'K 1K:J J~n:J rK fiK:1 '17 OiK O~:1'K O~:1'K KiJ n~IZlKiJ J~n:J:1' :1~' 'i~K KiJ K'K J~n:J rK J~n:J 'KiJ ~:J' 1:1' i~K 1i~:!lJ lnJ'lZln rJ~~:1 'j?i~1Zl ZJ1j?~ ':J ~K'~1Zl ~Ji i~K
The Minim asked Rabbi Simlai, How many gods created the world? He answered them, Me you're asking? Go ask Adam, as it is said, "For ask now of the days of yore ... " (Deut. 4:32). "Since the gods created (pI) Adam upon the earth" is not written here, rather "since the day that God (sing.) created (sing.) Adam upon the earth." (ibid.) They said to him, Yet it is written, "When God (pI) began to create" (Gen. 1: 1). He replied, Is "create" (pI) written? Rather "create" (sing.)! Rabbi Simlai said, Every place the Minim rend26 a verse [from context], the appropriate reply is next to it [viz. in the context of the passage].
u~nmi:J U~~':!lJ OiK :11Zl17J J~n:Ji l:1K :1~ ,mK "KIZl' 'iTn B. '~':!lJ 'iK:1 nK '~:1'K KiJ~' K'K 1K:J '~n:J rK O~':!lJ 'iK:1 nK O~:1'K 'KiJ~' 1:1' i~K J~IZl~ :1nK :1~ u, :1Jj?J :1n~ni "K' '~i~~'n " 'i~K IZl~K' ilZl~~K ~K u~nmi:J 'J~~':!lJ l'~K' OiK~ OiK:1 1~ nKiJJ :1,m i~17:1 1~ KiJJ OiK iJ17IZl' 1:1' i~K :1J~:J1Zl K'J l:1~JIZl' ilZl~~K ~K IZl~K K'J :1IZlK' i1Zl~~K ~K' :1IZlK K'J
They returned and asked him, What of this which is written, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness" (Gen. 1:26)? He replied to them, It is not written, "The Gods made (pI.) man in their images," rather "God created (sing.) man in his own image" (Gen. 1:27). His disciples said to him, Those you pushed off with a straw. What will you reply to us? He said to them, In the past Adam was created from the dust and Eve was created from Adam. From Adam onwards, "in our image and after our likeness" (Gen. 1:26). It is not possible that there be man without woman, nor is it possible for there to be woman without man. And it is not possible that the two of them be without God's Presence (Shekhinah). (Cf. I Cor. 11: 11)
17i" K':1 ':1 O~:1'K 'K ':1 O~:1'K 'K J~n:Ji 1:1:1 :1~ m'K "KIZl' 'iTn1 C. J~n:J 17i" K':1 K'K 1K:J J~n:J rK O~17iP 0:11:1' i~K
J~IZl~ :1nK :1~ ,J, :1Jj?J n~ni "K' ~Ji "i~~'n " n~K OmlZlllK iO~j? O''''~OJ i~Ki IZlJ~K:J inK 01Zl lnlZl'1Zl 1:1' i~K
They returned and asked him, What of this which is written, "The Mighty One, God, the Lord! The Mighty One, God, the Lord! He knows" (Josh. 22:22) 26
The Mss all read ij?~ - to set free - which I render accordingly.
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He replied to them, "They know" (pI.) is not written here, rather "He knows." His disciples said to him, Those you pushed off with a straw. What will you reply to us? He said to them, The three are one name, like a man who says: Basi/eus, Kaisar, Augustus.
fiK K"P~' ":l~' ':1 O~:1'K 'K :l~1'1:l' ':1~ ,mK "KW' ,.,m D. fiK K"P~' .,:l, K'K :l~1'1:l rK 1K::> :l~n::> 'K"P~' ''':l~' ~::>, 1:1' "~K :l~W~ :1nK :1~ u" :1JP:l n~m "K' ~:l" '~'~~'n " '''~K 1J!jp!j~::>"K r~J:l 1,m'K "~K' W~J~K::> ,nK ow 1nw,w 1:1' "~K They returned and asked him, What of this which is written, "The Mighty One, God, the Lord, speaks and summons earth" (Ps. 50:1). He said to them, Is it written, "they speak" or "they summon?" Rather he "speaks and summons (sing.) earth." His disciples said to him, Those you pushed off with a straw. What will you reply to us? He said to them, The three are one name, like a man who says: craftsman, builder, architect.
K':1 o~w"P O~:1'K ~::> :l~n::>' ':1~ m'K "KW' ,.,m E. K':1 KJp 'K K':1 K'K 1K::> :l~n::> rK :1~:1 O~W"P 1:1' "~K :l~W~ :1nK :1~ U" :1JP:l :1n~m "K' ~:l" "'~~'n " '''~K mw"p ~J~~ '::>:l w"p pn:!!~ ~:::I" "~K :1W"P:l ':l'W~~' :1W"P:l '''':l~' :1W"P:l ,::>." :1":lP:1 KnK ~:l" OW:l 11'~ ~:l" "~K' :1W11P:::l "~'K' K.,'J O~:1'K :1W"P:l 1lI,.,T M~wn 'll :lW~ O~:1'K :1W11P:l ':lwm W"P:l ~::>,~ ~'K m::>~':1 :1W11P:::l '::>"~:1 1::>'" W"P:l O~:1'K :1W"P:l ,::>." :1W"P:l "~'K' K.,U ,w,p 1I,.,T nK ':1 I']wn :1W11P:l 'lI,.,T M~wn ":l~' O~:1'K :1W"P:l '''':l~' ,w,p KO::> W"P:l .,'KJ :1::>m::> ~~ They returned and asked him, What of this which is written, "He is a holy (pI.) God (pl.)" (Josh. 24:19) He replied to them, "They are holy gods" is not written, rather "He is a jealous (sing.) God (sing.)" (ibid.) His disciples said to him, Those you pushed off with a straw. What will you reply to us? Rabbi Yitzchak said: Holy with all kinds of holiness ...
"'K O~:l'''P O~:1'K " .,WK '11l ~'l ~~ :l~1'1:l' l:1K ':1~ ,mK "KW' ,.,m F. "'K U~K"P '::>:l K'K 1K::> :l~1'1:l l'K O:1~'K U~K"P '::>:l ,r:1'K ':1::> 1:1' "~K :l~W~ :1nK :1~ U, :1JP:l :1n~m "K' ~:l" "'~~'n " '''~K m:l~"p ~J~~ '::>:l :l,.,P 1:1' "~K
They returned and asked him, What of this which is written, "For what great nation that has a God so near (pI.) to it" (Deut. 4:7)? He replied to them, It is not written "Whenever we call upon them," rather "whenever we call upon him" (ibid.).
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His disciples said to him, Those you pushed off with a straw. What will you reply to us? He replied to them, Near in all types of nearness ...
r~'W 17:1'K ;':1 '7.)K jin~' ':I, OW:I 11" ':I, G. 1;,1;1 '7.)K 1,,'1;1 K~" 'I;' ,1;1 "7.)K ,,1;117 O"ji7.) 'JK 1;,1;1 '7.)K In':I p O~nJ ,1;1 "7.)K 1"~tl ,1;1 W' 01' 'W:I 'J"~~ P'K' K';' P';' m717'7 x:g), K';' 'I;' ,1;1 "7.)K ,'1;117 O"ji7.) 'JK ;'17'tl :I,n7.) ;'W7.) nK 1;1'~;1 ;''':lji;1 I;1:1K
Rabbi Yudan quoted Rabbi Yitzchak, offering four approaches: A human being (flesh and blood) has a patron. They told him, one of your clients has been arrested. He said, I will stand by him. They told him, Behold, he is going to be tortured. He said, I will stand by him. They told him, Behold, he is going to be crucified! Where is he and where is his patron? Yet the Blessed Holy One saved Moses from the sword of Pharaoh ... for when Pharaoh arrested Moses he sentenced him to beheading ...
',mK ;'~'W jin~' ':I, OW:I 11" ':I, H. 1,,'1;1 K~" K';' 'I;' ,1;1 "7.)K ,,1;117 o"jin7.) 'JK 'I;' '7.)K In':I p OtlnJ 'I;' ,1;1 "7.)K 1"~~ ,1;1 W' 01' 'W:I 'J,,~tl P';" K';' P';' D'lJ7 77ilJW K';' 'I;' ,1;1 "7.)K ,,1;117 o"jin7.) 'JK 'I;' 1;,1;1 '7.)K ;,n;, '177.)7.) ;')1' nK 1;1'~;, ;,":lji;' I;1:1K
Rabbi Yudan quoted Rabbi Yitzchak, offering another approach: A human being (flesh and blood) has a patron. They told him, one of your clients has been arrested. He said, I will stand by him. They told him, Behold, he is going to be tortured. He said, I will stand by him. They told him, Behold, he is going to be drowned! Where is he and where is his patron? Yet the Blessed Holy One saved Jonah from the belly of the fish ...
',mK ;'~'W:I '7.)K jin~' " OW:I 11" " I. 111'1;1 K~" K';' ,1;1 "7.)K l'nnn o"jin7.) 'J";' 1;,1;1 '7.)K In':I p O~nJ ,1;1 "7.)K 1"~~ ,1;1 W' 0" 'W:I 'I;' m'~~ P';" K';' P';' ilJX7 77ilJW K';' 'I;' ,1;1 "7.)K ,,1;117 o"jin7.) 'J";' '7.)K WK;' 1W:lJ7.) "'T17' I;1KW'7.) ;"JJnl;1l;1'~;, P 'J'K ;,":lji;' I;1:1K
Rabbi Yudan quoted Rabbi Yitzchak, offering another approach: A human being (flesh and blood) has a patron. They told him, one of your clients has been arrested. He said, I will stand by him. They told him, Behold, he is going to be tortured. He said, I will stand by him. They told him, Behold, he is going to be consigned to the flames! Where is he and where is his patron? Yet the Blessed Holy One saved Hannaniah, Mishael, and Azariah from the fiery furnace ...
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... A human (flesh and blood) [king] has a patron who rules one province yet does not rule over a different province. And even were one to say a Cosmocrator- he only rules over the land, but surely not over the sea. Yet the Blessed Holy One rules over the sea as well as over the land. God saves on the seas from the waters and on the land from the flames. It was God Who saved Moses from Pharaoh's sword, Who saved Jonah from the fish's belly, Hannaniah, Mishael, and Azariah from the fiery furnace and Daniel from the lion's pit ...
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Rabbi Abun, Rabbi Aha, and Rabbi Shimeon ben Laqish: A king of flesh and blood, has a client (lit. one who is close). If he is a "philosopher" he says, Let this one draw near to me. Yet the Blessed Holy One calls all Israel to be "near ones" ...
Astrology in the Talmud An Analysis of Bavli Shabbat 156 GREGG GARDNER
I. Introduction 1 The role of astrology in Jewish society in Late Antiquity has been a topic of great interest to scholars over the last century.2 Research was sparked by the discovery of a handful of synagogue mosaic floors that feature the signs of the zodiac side-by-side with representations of the menorah, Abraham and other images associated with the Hebrew Bible - an unexpected juxtaposition of pagan and Jewish motifs. To better understand the meanings and motivations underlying these mosaics, researchers have turned to comparative archaeological evidence, Cairo Geniza fragments and, most notably, Rabbinic literature. 3 1 I would like to thank a number of scholars for their comments and suggestions on this paper: Adam Becker, Adam Gregerman, Martha Himmelfarb, Kevin Osterloh, Peter Schafer, David Stern, Katja Vehlow, Holger Zellentin, and the participants of the Making Selves and Marking Others: Heresy and Self-definition in Late Antiquity workshop and colloquium. I alone am responsible for any remaining errors. This paper is dedicated with love to my parents. 2 We use the term astrology to denote the field that interprets the influence of heavenly bodies on human affairs. 3 Scholars often employ two or even all three types of sources in their work; amongst others, see: Joseph M. Baumgarten, "Art in the Synagogue: Some Talmudic Views," in Jews, Christians, and Polytheists in the Ancient Synagogue: Cultural Interaction During the Greco-Roman Period (ed. Steven Fine; London: Routledge, 1999), 76-78 (= Judaism 19 [1970]: 196-206); James H. Charlesworth, "Jewish Astrology in the Talmud, Pseudepigrapha, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and Early Palestinian Synagogues," HTR 70 (1977): 183-200, rev. version: "Jewish Interest in Astrology During the Hellenistic and Roman Period," ANRW 20.2 (1987): 926-50; Iris Fishof, ed., Written in the Stars: Art and Symbolism of the Zodiac (Jerusalem: The Israel Museum, 2001); Solomon Gandz, "Benediction over the Luminaries," JQR 44:4 (1954): 305-25; Solomon Gandz, "The Origin of the Planetary Week or The Planetary Week in Hebrew Literature," American Academy of Research: Proceedings, Vol. XVIII (1948-49): 213-55; Erwin R. Goodenough, Jewish Symbols in the Greco-Roman Period, 12 vols. (New York: Pantheon Books, 1953-68), esp. 8:167-232, 12:40-49, 12:152-98; J.C. Greenfield and M. Sokoloff, "Astrological and Related Omen Texts in Jewish Palestinian Aramaic," JNES
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Nevertheless, the most prominent Rabbinic text on astrology has heretofore not received full treatment. Babylonian Talmud, tractate Shabbat 156a-b (henceforth "b. Shabo 156" or "our sugya")4 represents the Talmud's locus classicus on astrology, and is the subject of our study. Our objective is to understand b. Shabo 156 as such, without attempting to harmonize it with archaeological finds. Indeed, a thorough understanding of the text on its own terms is a necessary, but often neglected, first step towards gaining a wider appreciation of attitudes towards astrology amongst late antique Jews. s Our examination of b. Shabo 156 reveals a highly sophisticated, composite text that the redactors of the Babylonian Talmud ("Bavli") shaped into a single literary unit. 6 Our sugya consists of a discussion of 48 (1989): 201-14; Rachel Hachlili, "The Zodiac in Ancient Jewish Art: Representation and Significance," BASOR 228 (1977): 61-77, rev. version: "The Zodiac in Ancient Jewish Synagogal Art: A Review," JSQ 9 (2002): 219-58; Reimund Leicht, Astrologumena Judaica (Ph.D. diss., Freie Universitat Berlin, 2003); Jodi Magness, "Helios and the Zodiac Cycle in Ancient Palestinian Synagogues," in Symbiosis, Symbolism, and the Power of the Past: Canaan, Ancient Israel, and Their Neighbors from the Late Bronze Age through Roman Palestina (ed. W.G. Dever and S. Gitin, Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 2003), 363-89; Stuart S. Miller, " 'Epigraphical' Rabbis, Helios, and Psalm 19," JQR 94, 1 (2004): 27-76; Seth Schwartz, Imperialism and Jewish Society, 200 BCE to 640 CE (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), esp. 243-63; Eleazar L. Sukenik, The Ancient Synagogue of Beth Alpha: An Account of the Excavations Conducted on Behalf of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (Jerusalem: The University Press; London: OUP, 1932); Ephraim E. Urbach, "The Rabbinical Laws of Idolatry in the Second and Third Centuries in Light of Archaeological and Historical Facts," IEJ 9 (1959): 149-65, 229-45; Ze'ev Weiss and Ehud Netzer, Promise and Redemption: A Synagogue Mosaic from Sepphoris, 2d ed. (Jerusalem: The Israel Museum, 1998); Ze'ev Weiss, "The Sepphoris Synagogue Mosaic and the Role of Talmudic Literature in Its Iconographic Study," in From Dura to Sepphoris: Studies in Jewish Art and Society in Late Antiquity, JRASup. 40 (ed. L.I. Levine and Z. Weiss; Portsmouth, R.I.: Journal of Roman Archaeology, 2000), 15-30; Ze'ev Weiss, The Sepphoris Synagogue: Deciphering an Ancient Message Through Its Archaeological and Socio-Historical Contexts (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 2005). 4 A sugya (lit. walk, course, practice) is a Talmudic discussion of a given theme. S A comparison of b. Shabo 156 with synagogue zodiac mosaics would entail a number of methodological difficulties, most notably the question of the Bavli redactors' knowledge of Galilean Jewish affairs. To be sure, there are a number of interesting parallels between the issues explored by the redactors of the Bavli in b. Shabo 156 and those reflected in the zodiac mosaics, especially those of the Beth Alpha and Sepphoris synagogues: the association of astrology with some Galilean Jews (b. Shabo 156 §§A-B), the figure of Abraham (§D), and the general chronological framework of the fifthseventh centuries, during which the Babylonian Talmud was redacted and the synagogues with zodiac mosaics floors were constructed. For the synagogue mosaics, see the sources cited in note 3 above. 6 Our' sugya is thematically unrelated to the Gemara immediately preceding it, as well as its mishnah (b. Shabo 155b = m. Shabo 24:3), which concern feeding animals. This
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Israel's relationship to astrology and claims that Israel is immune from the power of the stars - there is no constellation for Israel is the repeated refrain. Rather, the Bavli posits that Israel should busy itself with fulfilling God's commandments.
II. Methodology Our examination of b. Shabo 156 consists of both literary analyses and source cntIcism. Literary analysis focuses on how wordplay, syntax, dialogue, repetition, biblical citations, structural parallels, and other creative uses of language are employed to create meaning. 7 We assume that the text as it stands reflects the editorial polish, culture and concerns of the Stammaim, the anonymous sages who redacted the Babylonian Talmud from the mid-fifth to the mid-seventh centuries of the Common Era. 8 We can uncover additional meaning and nuance in b. Shabo 156 by considering the images and characteristics of the Rabbis mentioned in the text. We assume that the Stammaim intentionally chose to include these particular Rabbis - Joshua b. Levi, Ijanina, Yo1;tanan, etc. - on account of the sayings that are associated with them in earlier Rabbinic works. 9 We employ source criticism when parallel versions of sections of our sugya have also been preserved elsewhere.lO While we do not propose that the traditions drawn upon by the Bavli are identical to the versions passed down to us today in the Rabbinic writings of the Land of (Eretz) Israel such as the Mishnah, Tosefta, Yerushalmi, Genesis Rabbah, etc., we work under the assumption that versions close to those preserved in earlier sources were known to the Stammaim. 11 The differences between the
strongly suggests that our sugya should be read as a distinct literary unit. It is incorporated into b. Shabo chapter twenty-four on account of the formulation of its opening line, which repeats the phraseology found in the preceding section of Gemara: It is written in the notebook of Zeiri (line 17 of the Vilna edition); It is written in the notebook of Levi (line 20); then our sugya begins on line 23: It is written in the notebook of Rabbi Joshua ben Levi. 7 Jeffrey L. Rubenstein, Talmudic Stories: Narrative Art, Composition, and Culture (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999),27. 8 Jeffrey L. Rubenstein, The Culture of the Babylonian Talmud (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003), 1. 9 We make no assertions regarding the historical value of these attributions, i.e. whether or not these sages 'actually' uttered the words associated with them in b. Shabo 156. 10 Rubenstein, Talmudic Stories, 25. 11 ibid., 26; idem, Culture, 5.
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earlier sources and b. Shabo 156 illuminate the culture, concerns and worldview of the Stammaim in fifth-seventh centuries Babylonia. 12
III. Text 13 We divide our sugya into seven sections (§A-G) to facilitate analysis. §A. It is written in the notebook of Rabbi Joshua ben Levi: Behold, one who [is born] on the first [day] of the week, will be a man without one (/:Id') [thing] in him. What is "without one thing in him"?14 [What] if one would say "without one virtue"? But Rav Ashi said: I was [born] on [the] first [day] of the week! Rather, [the text should read] "but without one evil [thing in him]."IS But Rav Ashi said: I and Dimi (dymy) bar Kakuzta (qqwzt')16 were [both born] on the first [day] of the week. I am a king, [yet] he is the head of thieves! Rather [it means that he will be] entirely positive or entirely negative. One who [is born] on the second day of the week will be a quarrelsome man. What is the reason? Because the waters were divided on it [the second day]. One who [is born] on the third day of the week will be a rich man; he will [also] be a fornicating [man]. What is the reason? Because the plants were created on it [the third day]. One who [is born] on the fourth day of the week will be a wise and intelligent (nhyr) man. What is the reason? Because the heavenly lights were suspended on it [the fourth day]. One who [is born] on the fifth day of the week will perform charitable acts. What is the reason? Because the fish and birds were created on it [the fifth day]. One who [is born] on the eve of Sabbath will be a busy man. Said Rabbi Na1;tman bar Yitz1;tak: 17 Busy [fulfilling] commandments.
12 Rubenstein, Talmudic Stories, 2; idem, Culture, 6-9. 13 The text is based on the standard Vilna edition; I have noted significant textual variants. For my translation, I have consulted the following sources: I. Epstein (ed.), The Babylonian Talmud Translated into English with Notes, Glossary, and Indices (London: Soncino Press, 1935-48); Marcus Jastrow, A Dictionary of the Targumim, the Talmud Babli and Yerushalmi, and the Midrashic Literature (New York: G. P. Putnam, 1903; repr. Jerusalem: Horev Press); Ludwig Koehler et. aI., The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament: Study Edition, 2 vo1s. (Leiden: Brill, 2001); Rubenstein, Talmudic Stories; idem, Culture; Michael Sokoloff, A Dictionary of Jewish Babylonian Aramaic of the Talmudic and Geonic Periods (Ramat-Gan, Israel: Bar Ilan University Press, 2002). 14 MS Munich 95, MS Oxford 366, MS Vatican 108. 15 MS Vatican 108. 16 MS Vatican 108: hqnwt'.
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One who [is born] on the Sabbath will die on the Sabbath. Because on his account the great day (ywm' rb') of Sabbath was desecrated. Raba (rb') bar Rav Shila 18 said: He will be called a great holy [man] (qdysh' rb '). §B. Rabbi Banina said to them: Go out [and] tell Bar Levi [i.e. Joshua b. Levi], "The constellation (mzl)19 of the day is not [the] cause, rather the constellation of the hour is the cause." One who [is born under] the sun will be a proud man. He will eat from what belongs to him and drink from what belongs to him; and his secrets will be revealed. If he steals, he will not succeed. One who [is born under] Venus (kwkv nwgh) will be a rich man and will be a fornicating [man]. What is the reason? Because fire 20 was created in him. One who [is born under] Mercury (kwkv)21 will be a bright and wise man, because it is the scribe of the sun. One who [is born under] the moon will be a man [who] suffers illnesses, building and demolishing, demolishing and building; eating from that which is not his, and drinking from that which is not his; and his secrets [are] concealed. Ifhe steals, he succeeds. One who [is born under] Saturn will be a man whose plans are foiled. There are those who say: All plots against him are foiled. One who [is born under] Jupiter ($dq) will be a righteous man ($dqn). Rabbi Nal:tman bar Yitzl:tak said: Righteous in [fulfilling] commandments. One who [is born under] Mars will be a shedder of blood. Rabbi Ashi said: Either [he is] a bloodletter, or a thief, or a butcher, or a circumciser. Rabbah 22 said: I was [born] under Mars [and I am not any of those things]! Abaye said: The master [i.e. Rabbah] punishes and kills too.
§c. It was said [that] Rabbi Banina [had] said: A constellation makes [one] wise, a constellation makes [one] wealthy, and there is a constellation for Israel. Rabbi Yol:tanan said: There is no constellation for Israel Om mzl Iysr '/).23 And Rabbi Y ol:tanan' s approach is consistent [with his view], as Rabbi Y ol:tanan said: From where [do we derive] that there is no constellation for Israel? Because it is said Thus says the Lord: Do not learn the way of the nations, or be dismayed at the signs of the heavens; MS Vatican 108: Rav Nal:tman. MS Munich 95: rbh br rv; MS Oxford 366: rbh br rv shyl'; MS Vatican 108: rb '. 19 Translations of mzl vary: "constellation of the zodiac, planet" (Jastrow, Dictionary, 755); "constellations of the zodiac" (Koehler, Lexicon, 565); Sokoloff translates mzl' as "zodiacal stations, planet, fortune, guardian angel" (Babylonian Aramaic, 653-54). 20 MS Oxford 366: heavenly lights. 21 MS Oxford 366: sun. 22 MS Oxford 366, MS Vatican 108: rv'; MS Munich 95: rv. 23 Translations of this phrase vary: "Israel is not dependent upon planetary nativity" (Jastrow, Dictionary, 755); " 'There is no planet for Israel' i.e. Israel is not dependent on the planets" (Saul Lieberman, Greek in Jewish Palestine [New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1942; repr. 1994], 99); "Israel is immune from planetary influence" (Epstein, Babylonian Talmud: Shabbat, folio 156). 17
18
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[for the nations are dismayed at them] (Jer. 10:2). They [i.e. the nations] are dismayed, but not Israel. §D. And Rab also believes that there is no constellation for Israel, as Rav Yehudah said [that] Rab said: From where [do we derive] that there is no constellation for Israel? As it is said: He [God] brought him [Abraham] outside [and said, "Look toward heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them." Then he said to him, "So shall your descendants be"] (Gen. 15:5). Abraham said before the holy one, blessed be he: Master of the universe! [You have given me no offspring], and so a slave born in my house is to be my heir (Gen. 15:3). He [God] said: Not so. [This man shall not be your heir;] no one but your very own issue [shall be your heir] (Gen. 15:4). He [Abraham] said before him: Master of the universe! I looked at my constellation (b '~.tgnynwt), and I am not fated to have a child. He [God] said to him: Abandon your astrological speculation! For there is no constellation for Israel! What is your disposition? Because Jupiter (~dq) is in the west (bm 'rv)?!24 I will turn it back and I will place it in the east. 25 And it is written: Who has roused a victor (~dq) from the east, summoned him to his service? [He delivers up nations to him, and tramples kings under foot; he makes them like dust with his sword, like driven stubble with his bow] (Isa. 41 :2). §E. And from Shmuel also [we learn that] there is no constellation for Israel. Shmuel and Avlat were sitting, and certain people were going to the lake. Avlat said to Shmuel: That man is going but will not come [back]. A snake will bite him and he will die. Shmuel said to him: If he is an Israelite, he will go and come [back]. While they were sitting, he [the Israelite] went and came [back]. Avlat got up, threw [open] his [the Israelite's] bag, [and] found a snake in it that was cut and strewn into two pieces. Shmuel said to him [the Israelite]: What did you do? He [the Israelite] said to him: Everyday we used to pool our bread together and eat. But once there was one of us who did not have bread, [and] he was ashamed. I said to them: I am going to collect [the bread]. When I reached him, I pretended to take [bread] from him, in order that he will not be ashamed. He [Shmuel] said to him: You have fulfilled a commandment. Shmuel derived from this and expounded: [Treasures gained by wickedness do not profit,] but righteousness (~dqh) delivers from death (Prov. 10:2). And not [only] from an unnatural death, rather from death itself [i.e. from all kinds of death]. §F. And from Rabbi Akiva [we] also [learn that] there is no constellation for Israel.
24 25
MS Oxford 366: east. MS Oxford 366: west.
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Rabbi Akiva had a daughter. Chaldeans [i.e. astrologers] said to him: On the day that she enters the bridal chamber, a snake will bite her and she will die. He [Akiva] was very worried about these words. On that day she took a brooch and stuck it in the wall. 26 It happened [that it] sank into the eye of the snake. In the morning, when she took it [i.e. the brooch] the snake came out trailing after it [the brooch]. Her father said to her: What did you do? She said to him: A poor man came in the evening [and] called at the gate. But everyone was busy at the meal and there were none to heed him. I got up, took out a portion that was given to me, [and] gave it to him. He [Akiva] said to her: You have fulfilled a commandment. Rabbi Akiva derived from this and expounded: [Treasures gained by wickedness do not profit,] but righteousness (:jdqh) delivers from death (Prov. 10:2). And not [only] from an unnatural death, rather from death itself [i.e. from all kinds of death]. §G. And also from Rabbi Na1;lman bar Yitz1;lak [we learn that] there is no constellation for Israel. Chaldeans [i.e. astrologers] told Rabbi Na1;lman bar Yitz1;lak's mother: Your son will be a thief. She did not allow him to uncover his head, saying to him: Cover your head, in order that the fear of heaven will be upon you, and ask for mercy. He did not know why she said [that] to him. One day he was sitting and studying under a palm tree. The covering fell from his head [when] he lifted his eyes to see the palm tree. An evil inclination overcame him: he climbed up [the palm tree] and cut off a cluster [of dates that did not belong to him] with his teeth."
IV. Analysis §A: Literary Analysis Consulting his notebook, Joshua b. Levi emphasizes bd' (one) for the first day - Sunday'S child will lack one trait. 27 Joshua b. Levi's views on astrology can determine only one characteristic of a man. The "science" of astrology is reduced, perhaps mockingly, to a play on words: he who is born on the bd (i.e. first) day of the week will be characterized by his lack of bd' thing. The Stammaim and Rav Ashi demonstrate the ambiguity in Joshua b. Levi's astrology, noting how one thing could be an allencompassing personality trait like virtue or wickedness - leaving MS Oxford 366, MS Vatican 108: crack. We need not hold, as Gandz does, that the actual, historical Joshua b. Levi necessarily authored the astrological traditions attributed to him in the Bavli; cf. Gandz, "Benediction," 321-22. 26 27
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Sunday's child either entirely virtuous or entirely wicked. Ashi's proof is that both he and Dimi bar Kakuzta were born on Sunday, yet these twins are completely opposite in nature: 28 Ashi is a king, that is, the virtuous head of the Rabbinic academy of Sura. 29 However, his twin, Dimi bar Kakuzta, is a leader of thieves, where the obscure qqwzt' may reference Cyzicus, an island city whose inhabitants had a reputation for disloyalty.30 The Stammaim's questions and Ashi's responses lead to are-formulation of the astrological prediction from without one thing to entirely positive or entirely negative. For Monday, and throughout the rest of §A, the Stammaim add creation-based explanations for supposedly constellation-controlled horoscopes. Just as the nativity's quarrelsome man opposes another, so too the sky and sea face opposite each other on the second day of creation (Gen. 1:6-8). Here, the Stammaim argue that the position of the celestial bodies does not affect one's nature; rather, the character of Monday's child is contingent upon the order of the creation of the world31 - as determined by God and set forth in the Torah. Likewise, for Tuesday monetary and reproductive wealth is associated with the vegetation created on the third day ( Gen. 1: 11).32 For Wednesday, the Stammaim play on the two meanings of nhyr - both "clear, intelligent" and "to be bright, light, give shine. "33 The latter definition is linked to the lights created on the fourth day in Gen. 1: 14-16. The reference to this biblical passage may also be a subtle statement regarding astrology's inadequacies, as even the lesser light rules over the stars in Gen. 1: 16. For Thursday, the connection
28 That two people who were born on the same day have different fates was a criticism of astrology that was made frequently in the late antique world (Tamsyn Barton, Ancient Astrology [London: Routledge, 1994], 53-54, 76). Rashi notes the similarities between the two men: they are both leaders or heads (r 'sh), just as Sunday was the first day of creation. 29 Mordecei Margaliyot, Encyclopedia of Sages of the Talmud and the Geonim, 2 vols. [Hebrew] (Tel-Aviv: Yavneh Publishing House, 1998),2:185; in Jewish Babylonian Aramaic, mllch often denotes the head of an academy (Sokoloff, Babylonian Aramaic, 680). For the great esteem in which the Stammaim held the heads of academies, see Rubenstein, Culture, 16-31. 30 Simon Hornblower and Antony Spawforth, eds., The Oxford Classical Dictionary, 3d ed. rev. (Oxford: OUP, 2003), 424. 31 I thank David Stern for this observation. 32 We suggest that 'tyr wzn'y was connected to 'shvym because agriculture was a symbol of productivity and wealth in Late Antiquity. Similarly, Rashi suggests that plants grow quickly like promiscuity and wealth, and that they freely intermingle with other species of plants in the same way that fornicating men and women intermingle. 33 Sokoloff, Babylonian Aramaic, 733.
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between Joshua b. Levi's prediction and the biblical verse is difficult to determine. 34 For Friday, the Stammaim's explanation is replaced by Na1;tman b. Yitz1;tak's dictum. The fourth-century Babylonian Amora's preoccupation with mitzvoth is consistent with the depiction of his character elsewhere in Rabbinic literature. 35 The horoscope for the sixth day of the week may also be an implicit reference to the creation of man on the sixth day in Gen. 1: 2 6-31 - perhaps conveying the message that man was created in order to fulfill God's commandments - and thereby continuing the theme of creation from the previous days. The treatment for Saturday is contingent upon the word d'/:zylw (desecrated), which would portray Sabbath's child in a negative light, but makes little sense. However, d'/:zylw may very well play on the homonym wykhl from Gen. 2:2, where Godfinishes (wykhl) his work on the seventh day.36 That is, Saturday's child will be finished, or perhaps ceased,37 thereby explaining why one who is born on the Sabbath will die on the Sabbath. Here, the Stammaim's masterful control of literary techniques and scripture are on display as they simultaneously reject a possible reading of d'/:zylw as desecrated by proclaiming Saturday's child to be a qdysh' rb' (great holy [man]), offer an exegesis on wyqdsh in Gen. 2:3 (So God blessed the seventh day and hallowed [wyqdsh] it... ),38 maintain the theme of creation running throughout §A, and play on the word rb' as both Raba (b. Shila) and great. The form and language of §A is generally repetitive and attests to the section's literary unity: a nativity from Joshua b. Levi's notebook, followed by What is the reason? and the Stammaim's Genesis-based explanation for the nativity. The Bavli redactors continually and consistently demonstrate that man's nature is not contingent upon astrology and the stars. Rather, one's character is a function of the order of creation, as determined by God and set forth in the Torah. 39
34 Rashi suggests that fish and birds do not make a great effort to acquire food, but rather are given food by the grace of God. We suggest that loving kindness (gwml /:lsdym) is equated with God's blessing for all animals in Gen. 1:22. See also Kocku von Stuckrad, "Jewish and Christian Astrology - A New Approach," Numen 47 (2000): 27. 35 Marga1iyot, Encyclopedia, 2:271. We make no assertions on the beliefs of the actual, historical Na1;tman b. Yitz1;tak. Rather, we are only concerned with how he is portrayed in Rabbinic literature. 36 I thank David Stem for this observation. 37 Koehler, Lexicon, 477. 38 Likewise, Rashi suggests that it is an exegesis of Exod. 20. 39 The domestication of astrology is paralleled in late antique Christian society (Barton, Ancient Astrology, 71).
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§B: Literary Analysis !-Janina was a prominent first-generation (third century) Amora of Eretz Israel. He replaces Joshua b. Levi's day-based nativities with horary horoscopes, where each hour of the day is governed by a particular planet. 40 The horoscopes in §B are followed by Stammaitic explanations that undermine the discipline of astrology with perhaps mocking wordplay, much like in §A. Venus's name (nwgh) is a homonym for "splendor, light,,,41 which is played by the Stammaim as a pun on fire (nwr '). Mercury's proximity to the source of light is played with the Aramaic word nhyr, meaning both "light" and "intelligence."42 Saturn's (shbt') root (shvt) carries the meaning "to be annulled,,,43 a synonym for b,tyl, which is employed in the Stammaim's explanation. 44 Jupiter's name (~dq) is played by NalJ.man b. YitzlJ.ak as ~dqn to emphasize the importance of fulfilling commandments, the same message he gave for Friday in §A. For Mars, Ashi points out the ambiguity of the horoscope by demonstrating how it can be interpreted in diametrically opposite ways (evil thief, yet righteous circumciser), just as was done for Sunday in §A (head of thieves, yet king; entirely positive, yet entirely negative). The third generation Babylonian Amora Rabbah notes that the horoscope was powerless over him, which is answered by Abaye's humorous jab. The natal predictions for those born under the sun and moon lack explanations. However, it is clear that the sun and moon are assigned characteristics that are polar opposites, demonstrating !-Janina's stance that the hour (not the day) determines one's character. The sun illuminates, enabling man's secrets and devious deeds to be seen by all. 45 The moon, however, emerges at night, allowing man to successfully conceal his secrets and theft under the cover of darkness. 46 Literary themes and motifs are also used to bind §B together with §A. Both sections exhibit repetitive form (description of 'scientific' content47) and language (One who [is born] ... ; will be a rich man; What is the reason ?). The protagonists are linked, as earlier traditions suggest that
40 A similar move is made in b. Shabo 129; see Leicht, Astrologumena, 94. 41 Jastrow, Dictionary, 883. 42 Sokoloff, Babylonian Aramaic, 733. 43 ibid., 1107. 44 ibid., 197. 45 Also noted by Rashi. 46 ibid. 47 H. L. Strack and Gunter Sternberger, Introduction to the Talmud and Midrash (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992),52.
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Joshua b. Levi and !-Janina were known to be close associates. 48 Ashi and Nal).man b. Yitzl).ak appear in both sections, playing the same role each time. There is also a general parallelism between the daily and horary horoscopes in §§A-B: Venus and Tuesday both contain the phrase: [he] will be a rich man; he will [also] be a fornicating [man]; Mercury and Wednesday: [he] will be a wise and intelligent man; Jupiter and Friday: Nal).man b. Yitzl).ak on fulfilling commandments; Mars and Saturday: themes of killing and death.49 These common themes, motifs and parallelisms further demonstrate the Stammaim's effort to knit together disparate traditions into a literary whole, a technique that will be further explicated below. §A-B: Source Criticism While it is possible that § §A-B may preserve actual traditions of third century sages from Eretz Israel, we find it unlikely for two reasons. First, the horoscope in §B has striking parallels to non-Rabbinic texts from the Near East which date well into Late Antiquity, if not the Middle Ages. General parallels for the form and content of §A are found in Cairo Geniza fragments. 5o The nativities in b. Shabo 156 resemble those in The Syriac Book of Medicines, as well as a Mandaic text51 - there may even be a common source behind all three texts. 52 Indeed, that Near Eastern astrological texts such as these may have been known to the Bavli is further suggested by the repetition of 'yn ('yn mzllysr'l) in b. Shabo 156, which is also found at the beginning of Syriac omen texts (where it means "if').53 These parallels suggest that §§A-B constitute a received tradition, dating to the days of the Stammaim at the earliest. 54 Second, the type of astrology found in §§A-B is without precedent in earlier Rabbinic 48 Gen. Rab. 78:5; y. Ber. 5:1; y. Shabo 14:4; y. Ta'an. 3:4; Margaliyot, Encyclopedia, 1:133. 49 However, we note that the parallelism is incomplete, due to the lack of correspondence between Thursday and Saturn. 50 Ithamar Gruenwald, "Further Jewish Physiognomic and Chiromantic Fragments," [Hebrew] Tarbiz 40 (1971): 308-11, where the astrological nativities alternate with physiognomic and chiromantic material; Greenfield and Sokoloff, "Astrological," 21011. 51 Ernest A. Wallis Budge, The Syriac Book of Medicines: Syrian Anatomy, Pathology and Therapeutics in the Early Middle Ages, vol. I (London: Philo Press, 1913, repr. 1976), 515 (= vol. II, 615-17); E.S. Dower, The Book of the Zodiac (London: Royal Asiatic Society, 1949),97-98. See also Greenfield and Sokoloff, "Astrological," 212. 52 Greenfield and Sokoloff, "Astrological," 213. 53 ibid., 203 n15. 54 The Syriac Book of Medicines may be as late as the twelfth century; see Adam H. Becker, "Doctoring the Past in the Present: E. A. Wallis Budge, the Discourse on Magic, and the Colonization ofIraq," HR 44 (2005): 183.
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literature. That is, the Rabbinic sources that are chronologically closer to the era of Joshua b. Levi and lJanina (third century) treat a very different type of astrology than that which is found in b. Shabo 156. 55 Therefore, the horoscopes in §§A-B reflect the astrological norms of the times of the Stammaim, centuries after the lives of Joshua b. Levi and lJanina. The Rabbis in §§A-B were purposefully chosen by the Bavli redactors due to their interaction with pagans, association with each other, and lofty standing in the Galilean Rabbinic community. Joshua b. Levi figures prominently in Bavli aggadah and is portrayed in Rabbinic literature as trying understand and serve God, possibly by means of pagan customs. 56 The traditions of lJanina's interactions with Gentiles,57 Babylonian roots,58 beliefs in determinism, 59 and close association with Joshua b. Levi,60 shed light on the Stammaim's decision to include him in this text.
§§A-B: Conclusions The editorial skill of the Stammaim is on full display in §§A-B. Using disparate, received traditions, they weave common themes and motifs throughout §§A-B in order to form coherent, related literary units. The objective is to demonstrate God's dominance over the power of the stars. In §A, this is done by positing creation-based explanations for the horoscopes. That is, the nature of a day, and the person born on that day, is dependent upon the order of the creation of the world, as determined by God and set forth in the Torah. It is not determined by the stars. In §B, the Bavli redactors explain the horoscopes with wordplay, further undermining the power of the stars. For the Stammaim, the stars and astrology are mere window dressing, and should be ignored by Joshua b. Levi and lJanina. Evidence from external sources strongly suggests that the Stammaim utilized horoscope traditions that were circulating in their own days, rather than in the days of Joshua b. Levi and lJanina. The Bavli redactors added 55 See discussion on §C below. 56 Gen. Rab. 78:5; y. Ber. 5:1; b. Ber. 7a; b. Abod. Zar. 4b. Jacob Neusner, ed., Dictionary of Ancient Rabbis: Selections from The Jewish Encyclopedia (Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson Publishers, 2003), 265. Joshua b. Levi may be associated with astrology in one other text, b. Ber. 59; see Solomon Gandz, "Benediction," 322. We agree with Fraenkel that there is not a singular image of Joshua b. Levi that pervades the entire Bavli, and surely not all of Rabbinic literature; see Jonah Fraenkel, The Aggadic Narrative Harmony of Form and Content [Hebrew] (Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 2001),273-94. 57 y. Ber. 5:1;y. Erub. 6:4. 58 Margaliyot, Encyclopedia, 1:133. 59 b. 1ful. 7b. 60 Gen. Rab. 78:5; y. Ber. 5:1; y. Shabo 14:4; y. Ta'an. 3:4; Margaliyot, Encyclopedia, 1:133.
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their own explanations to these horoscopes to undermine the power of the stars and promote Torah and God. §C: Literary Analysis Section C serves as the midpoint of the sugya, situated between the proponents (Joshua b. Levi and !Janina in §§A-B) and opponents (Shmuel, Akiva, and Na~man h. Yitz~ak in §§D-G) of astrology. Section C is linked to §B by the presence of !Janina and the themes of wealth and wisdom. This section also introduces the phrase there is no constellation for Israel, which appears in each of the following sections (§§D-G). That is, the Bavli redactors have integrated §C, which is largely based on a received tradition,61 into our sugya by means of themes and language that are characteristic of b. Shabo 156 as a whole. !Janina and Y o~anan, who have a tradition of disputes in earlier Rabbinic literature,62 face-off in §C, where the consequences of !Janina's and Joshua b. Levi's astrology are brought to the fore. The Babylonianborn !Janina declares that rnzl makes one wise and wealthy. This has two important implications. First, merit and acts of righteousness have no effect on man's wealth or wisdom. 63 Second, astrology is the force that governs man's fate - not the order of creation or any other agent, including God. To emphasize this point, !Janina declares that there is a constellation for Israel- i.e. astral powers indeed hold sway over Israel's fate. Y o~anan counters that there is no constellation for Israel - the stars exercise no influence over Israel. Note that he does not undermine the efficacy of astrology over the Gentiles. Rather, Israel is unique in its immunity from planetary influence. Moreover, Yo~anan's statement that there is no constellation for Israel is made more powerful in light of the earlier Rabbinic traditions that depict him as lenient towards idolatry;64 that is, he knows to draw the line at astrology. The implication of Yo~anan's words is that one's nature is actually determined by adherence to Torah and God. Y o~anan bolsters his position by citing Scripture, which provides decisive proof - as there is no further argument from !Janina. Moreover, Yo~anan establishes a boundary marker: Israel is not subject to astral influences, while those outside of Israel are ruled by the power of the stars.
61 See §C: Source Criticism below. 62
y. Be$ah. 60a; y. Sheb. 38c; Margaliyot, Encyclopedia, 2: 192.
63 Also noted by Rashi. 64 See the sources cited in Baumgarten, "Art in the Synagogue," 76-78.
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§C: Source Criticism Section C has close parallels in earlier Rabbinic writings, indicating that it is indeed a received tradition. By focusing on the differences between these parallel texts, we can better understand the Bavli's unique disposition. The received tradition centers on the use of Jer. 10:2 as an anti-astrological prooftext. The earliest example is Mekhilta Pisha 2:3 (Bo 1), which interprets solar and lunar eclipses as good or bad signs (symn) for all of Israel or the Gentiles: R. Yosiah says: When the constellations (mzlwt) are eclipsed in the east, it is a bad sign (symn) for the inhabitants of the east; in the west, it is a bad sign for the inhabitants of the west. R. Yonatan says: Both these and those [signs] are assigned to the Gentiles, as it is said: Thus said the Lord: Do not learn the ways of the nations, and do not be dismayed by portents in the sky; [let the nations be dismayed by them!] (Jer. 10:2).65
This tradition is also incorporated into Tosefta Sukkah 2:6, which adds: When Israel is occupied with Torah, they do not worry about all of these [signs], as it is said: Thus said the Lord: Do not learn the ways of the nations, and do not be dismayed by portents in the sky; [let the nations be dismayed by them!] (Jer. 10:2).66
The passage in t. Sukk. 2:6 indicates that the redactors of the Tosefta understood augury and Torah to be mutually exclusive; one cannot have both. Reliance on signs in the sky necessitates neglect of Torah and vice versa. The idea that Torah and astrology are irreconcilable forces is drawn upon later in our sugya (§G). While this is not the place to delve into a history of astrology in all of Rabbinic literature, it is important to note that the type of star-gazing found in the Mekhilta and Tosefta is of a very different sort than that found in b. Shabo 156. The earlier writings are concerned with augury, the practice of divination from omens or signs. Consequently, the Mekhilta and Tosefta texts are primarily interested in eclipses. In contrast, b. Shabo 156 is concerned with horoscopy and nativities, which use diagrams of the heavens to show the relative position of planets at the moment of one's birth, thereby determining one's character. Consequently, b. Shabo 156 is
65 H. S. Horovitz, and I. A. Rabin, eds., Mechilta d'Rabbi Ismael (Jerusalem: Bamberger & Wahrmann, 1960), 7, lines 18-20. Translation based on Jacob Lauterbach, Mekilta de-Rabbi Ishmael, 3 vols. (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1933-35), 1:19, and Jacob Neusner, Mekhilta According to Rabbi Ishmael: An Analytical Translation, 2 vols. (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1988), 1: 15. 66 Ed. Saul Lieberman, The Tosefta: According to Codex Vienna, with Variants from Codices Erfurt, London, Genizah MSS. and Editio Princeps (Venice 1521): The Order of Mo 'ed (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1962; repr., 2002), 262. Translation based on Jacob Neusner, The Tosefta: Translated from Hebrew with a New Introduction, 2 vols. (Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 2002), 572.
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concerned with a number of heavenly features, namely all the known planets and their associated days of the week. This seems to be a far more elaborate type of astrology than that found in the Mekhilta and Tosefta, which is little more than eclipse-watching. A second important distinction between earlier and later Rabbinic discussions of astrology concerns those subject to the predictions. In the Mekhilta and Tosefta texts, celestial features govern the fate of large groups: inhabitants of the east, inhabitants of the west, and the whole world. However, b. Shabo 156 is concerned with personal, individual uses of astrology. The signs in the sky are used to predict the nature of the individual born under that sign. The power ofhoroscopy in b. Shabo 156 is far more nuanced, as an array of character traits are predicted. This is much more complex than the astrology that appears in the Mekhilta and Tosefta passages, where omens in the sky are deemed simply "good" or "bad." The exegetical traditions based on Jer. 10:2 continued to be incorporated into discussions on astrology in the Amoraic period, as in the fifth-century work Genesis Rabbah 44:12: In the days of Jeremiah, the Israelites wished to take up this principle [of astrology], but the Holy One, blessed be he, did not permit them. Thus it is written: Thus said the Lord: Do not learn the ways of the nations, and do not be dismayed by portents in the sky; [let the nations be dismayed by them!] (Jer. 10:2).67
It is notable that the Israelites wished to take up this principle [of astrology] is a statement that is included in Gen. Rab. 44:12, but is absent from parallel passages in the earlier, Tannaitic texts Mek. Pisha 2:3 (Bo 1) and t. Sukk. 2:6. This suggests a heightened concern amongst the editors of Genesis Rabbah over a perception that Jews wished to practice astrology. The statement is cleverly retrojected into the biblical period in the days of Jeremiah, which adds weight to the discussion and establishes a precedent for the redactors' anti-astrological position. The prohibition against astrology can be easily derived from the citation of Jer. 10:2 (Thus said the Lord: Do not learn the ways of the nations, and do not be dismayed by portents in the sky let the nations be dismayed by them!) in Mek Pisha 2:3 (Bo 1), t. Sukk. 2:6, and Gen. Rab. 44:12. However, it is significant that the redactors of Genesis Rabbah felt the need to clearly explicate the implications of Jer. 10:2: but the Holy One, blessed be he, did not permit them. This unequivocal statement on the 67 Ed. J. Theodor and Ch. Albeck, Midrash Bereshit Raba: Critical Edition with Notes and Commentary, 3 vols. (Jerusalem: Wahrmann, 1965),433. Translation based on H. Freedman, Midrash Rabbah: Genesis, 3d ed.; 2 vols. (London: Soncino, 1983), 36768; and Jacob Neusner, Genesis Rabbah: The Judaic Commentary to the Book of Genesis, A New American Translation, 3 vols. (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1985), 2: 133-34.
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prohibition of astrological practices is unique to Gen. Rab. 44:12 and adds vigor and urgency to its stance against astrology. This statement, together with the Israelites wished to take up this principle [of astrology], indicates a greater preoccupation with astrology amongst the redactors of Genesis Rabbah than amongst the editors of the Mekhilta and Tosefta. Like Gen. Rab. 44:12, b. Shabo 156 also stakes out a position against astrology, though there is a subtle difference between the two: whereas Genesis Rabbah holds that astrological practices are prohibited; the Bavli is more concerned with demonstrating that astrology is powerless over Israel. The Bavli's position is evident in two passages in §C. The first is Yobanan's statement that there is no constellation for Israel. Israel has no sign of the zodiac and therefore its fate is not controlled by any of the stars or planets in the sky. That the Stammaim considered this idea to be of great importance is suggested by the fact that there is no constellation for Israel is repeated throughout the remainder of our sugya. Following the citation of Jer. 10:2, the Bavli adds that the nations are dismayed, but not Israel. The explications of Jer. 10:2 in b. Shabo 156 and Gen. Rab. 44:12 highlight their different approaches: while Genesis Rabbah seeks to ban astrology ( .. .the Israelites wished to take up this principle [of astrology], but the Holy One, blessed be he, did not permit them), the Bavli argues that the stars are simply powerless over Israel (the nations are dismayed, but not Israel).
§C: Conclusions In §C the Stammaim integrate a received exegetical tradition on Jer. 10:2 into their discussion on astrology. This tradition is also preserved in earlier Rabbinic sources, the Mekhilta, the Tosefta, and Genesis Rabbah. Mek. Pisha 2:3 (Bo 1) holds that the stars rule the fate of the Gentiles,68 a position that is paralleled in, if not drawn upon by, b. Shabo 156. Moreover, the Tosefta's position that Torah study can overcome the power of heavenly bodies is echoed later in our sugya (§G). Our sugya's message is cast in high relief upon comparison with Genesis Rabbah. Whereas Gen. Rab. 44:12 merely prohibits the practice of astrology, b. Shabo 156 holds that the stars are powerless over Israel. The Bavli's slogan there is no constellation for Israel is used in §C for the first time and is prevalent in the following sections of b. Shabo 156; as such, it serves to establish a boundary marker between Israel and the nations.
68 Lieberman, Greek, 99.
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§D: Literary Analysis Section D continues the theme established in §C, that Israel is immune from the power of the stars. Rab, as cited by his student Rav Yehudah, supports Yol).anan's position that Israel is not subject to planetary influence, repeating the slogan there is no constellation for Israel. 69 It is fitting that both Rab and Y ol).anan were active in the third century, the same time period as Joshua b. Levi and Iianina. 70 The prooftexts for Rab' s position center on Abraham, whose dual image as both patriarch and astrologer in Jewish literature makes the selected textual traditions an ideal fit for a sugya on astral influence. The sequence of events as they are presented in the Bavli is crucial. In the biblical account, Abram 71 laments his lack of an heir and God reaffirms his promise to give the patriarch an heir (Gen. 15:3-4); after the lament, God brings Abram outside to count the stars (Gen. 15:5). In b. Shabo 156, it is significant that verse Gen. 15: 5 is cited before Gen. 15: 3-4. That is, in the Bavli, Abram first goes outside to look at the stars, and through their consultation determines that he will not have any heirs. In the Bavli, looking at the stars promotes the patriarch's lament in Gen. 15:3. That astrology lies behind his grievance is made explicit by inserting an extrabiblical tradition: He [Abraham] said before him: Master of the universe! I looked at my constellation, and I am not fated to have a chi/d.72 However, in the biblical account, Abram's disbelief in God's promise causes him to lament, and God takes Abram outside to look at the stars only after the promise is reaffirmed in Gen. 15:4. By placing verse five before verses three-four, and inserting extra-biblical traditions, the Bavli redactors have projected the theme of astrology onto the biblical narrative. That is, the Stammaim have craftily re-arranged the order of Gen. 15:3-5 and interpolated extra-biblical traditions in order to contextualize the verses within a discussion on astrology between the patriarch and God. Abraham is then told to abandon his astrological practices as there is no constellation for Israel - i.e. the stars do not hold sway over Israel, making astrological speculation a fruitless exercise. God then offers to move Jupiter in order to demonstrate his power over celestial bodies. The choice of Jupiter is due to its Hebrew root, ~dq, which also appears in §§B, F-G, serving as another linguistic thread that is 69 In the Bavli, repetitive language frequently serves to bind together smaller sections of a text into a single literary unit (Louis Jacobs, "The Talmudic Sugya as a Literary Unit," JJS 24 (1974): 119-26; Rubenstein, Talmudic Stories, 251-53). 70 Margaliyot, Encyclopedia, 1:133,2:185,192,302. 71 It is notable that the figure is Abraham in the Bavli's reworking of Gen. 15 in b. Shabo 156 §D, though he is Abram in the biblical text. 72 This extra-biblical tradition is also found in b. Ned. 32a.
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woven throughout our sugya. 73 God's dominance over the stars and planets is emphasized by the citation of Isa. 41:2, where ~dq not only means "victor," but also alludes to Jupiter - which is ~dq in §D. The message is that God demonstrates his power over ~dq by rousing it and summoning it to service. Moreover, there is a clever, second play on Isa. 41:2 as a reference to Abraham and his merit - ~dqh - in Gen. 15:6.14 In sum, §D holds that Israel is not influenced by astrology and that God is the true guiding force behind the world.
§D: Source Criticism There are many traditions in Jewish writings that portray Abraham as an astrologer, dating back to the Second Temple period and prevalent throughout Rabbinic literature. 75 Some strands of this tradition treat astrology as magic performed with a special instrument,76 while others as star-gazing. 77 In earlier traditions, Abraham abandons astrology on his own volition. 78 However, in later traditions, Abraham needs some prodding in order to give up his astral ways. 79 We presently investigate the exegetical traditions that utilize Gen. 15:3, 15:5 to associate Abraham with astrology. And Abram said further, "Since You have granted me no offspring [my steward will be my heir''} (Gen. 15:3). R. Shmuel bar Yitzl).ak said: [Abraham said,]80 "My planetary fate (hmzl) oppresses me and says, 'Abram cannot beget a child.' " The Holy One, blessed be he said to him, "That is indeed as you say: Abram and Sarai ('vrm wsry) cannot beget, but Abraham and Sarah ('vrhm wsrh) can beget."
He took him outside [and said: "Look toward heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them." Then he said to him, "So shall your descendants be." (Gen. 15:5)] R. Joshua in the name of R. Levi [said]: Did he bring him outside of the world, that it should say He took him outside? Rather, [it means that] he showed him the open spaces
73 Rashi posits that Jupiter was Abraham's sign. 74 Also noted by Rashi. 75 For sources on Abraham as an astrologer in the Greco-Roman period, see Annette Yoshiko Reed, "Abraham as Chaldean Scientist and Father of the Jews; Josephus, Ant. 1.154-168, and the Greco-Roman Discourse about Astronomy/Astrology," JSJ 35 (2002): 124-27. 76 T.Qidd. 5:17. 77 Jubilees 12:16-18. 78 Jubilees 12:16-18; Philo, On Abraham, 69-71. For an analysis of the Second Temple sources of Abraham as astrologer, see Reed, "Abraham." 79 Gen. Rab. 44:12; b. Ned. 32a; b. Shabo 156. 80 "Abraham said" is suggested by Theodor-Albeck, Midrash, 432, and Freedman, Genesis, 1:367.
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of heaven, in line with this verse: When he had not yet made earth and fields [i.e. open spacesi 1 (Prov. 8:26). R. Judah b. R. Simon [in the name] of R. Yo];mnan said: He raised him [i.e. Abraham] above the vault of heaven, as he says to him "Look toward heaven (Gen. 15:5}," where look [means] only "from above to below" [therefore he looked downward from above the vault of heaven]. Rabbis say: You are a prophet, not an astrologer. As it is said: Now then, return the man's wife; for he is a prophet (Gen. 20:7). In the days of Jeremiah, the Israelites wished to take up this principle [of astrology], but the Holy One, blessed be he, did not permit them. Thus it is written: Thus said the Lord: Do not learn the ways of the nations, and do not be dismayed by portents in the sky; [let the nations be dismayed by them!] (Jer. 10:2). Your father Abraham wanted to take up this principle, but [God] did not allow him (Genesis Rabbah 44:12).82
The link between astrology and Gen. 15:5 is inherent in the text (Look toward heaven and count the stars), though Gen. 15:3's link is less obvious. The two citations from Genesis Rabbah above represent the earliest preserved versions of traditions that link Gen. 15:3 and 15:5 with astrology - constituting an innovation in the exegesis of these verses around the fifth century. Genesis Rabbah's lengthy statement on astrology, Gen. Rab. 44:12, bears important similarities to §D of b. Shabo 156. First, both use Gen. 15:5 to discuss Abraham as astrologer. Second, both champion the same general message, that God, not the stars, governs the fate of Israel. 83 Likewise, Gen. Rab. 44: 10 and b. Shabo 156 bear striking similarities in that they both understand Abraham's lament in Gen. 15: 3 to be a result of his astrological practices. While it is not possible to determine if b. Shab. 156 drew upon these traditions exactly as they are preserved in Genesis Rabbah, at the very least it seems likely that Gen. Rab. 44: 10 and 44: 12 and b. Shabo 156 drew upon a common tradition that links Gen. 15:3, 15:5 with astrology. Moreover, it is probable that Genesis Rabbah preserves the earlier version of this exegetical tradition. A comparison of Genesis Rabbah and b. Shabo 156 texts will highlight the differences in their aims and the methods of their redactors. First, b. Shab. 156 has conflated the astrological exegesis of Gen. 15:3, 15:5 into a single narrative, whereas they are presented as separate units in Gen. Rab. 44:10,44:12. The Bavli also incorporates Gen. 15:4, which has no explicit link to astrology in Genesis Rabbah's exegesis on that verse (Gen. Rab. 81 As suggested by Neusner, Genesis Rabbah, 2:133. 82 Text based on Theodor-Albeck, Midrash, 432-34. I have consulted Freedman, Genesis; Neusner, Genesis Rabbah; and NRSV in my translation. 83 As noted by Neusner in his commentary, Genesis Rabbah, 2: 134.
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44: 11). Furthermore, the Bavli redactors have interpolated extra-biblical quotations, creating a smooth dialogue between Abraham and God. 84 Next, we find that Gen. Rab. 44:12 and b. Shab. 156 have slightly different foci. Gen. Rab. 44: 12 claims that Abraham looked downward and thus he did not look up at the stars as astrologers do. It then cites Gen. 20: 7 to indicate that Abraham is a prophet, not an astrologer - for Gen. Rab. 44:12, the two are incompatible. Thus, Gen. Rab. 44:12 centers on undermining the portrayal of Abraham as an astrologer. In contrast, the redactors of b. Shab. 156 §D do not attempt to deny that Abraham practiced astrology. Instead, they accept the patriarch's image as astrologer and then encourage him to change his ways: Abandon your astrological speculation! for Israel is immune from planetary influence as God is the true motivating force behind the world. There is another important distinction between Gen. Rab. 44: 12 and b. Shab. 156 §D. Both texts hold that astrology rules over the Gentiles but is powerless over Israel. In Gen. Rab. 44: 12 this point is made with Scripture alone, and the line between Israelite and Gentile must be inferred from Jer. 10:2. In the Bavli, however, following its citation of Jer. 10:2, the Stammaim add they [i.e. the nations] are dismayed, but not Israel, an idea further underscored by there is no constellation for Israel. For the Bavli, the establishment of astrology as a boundary marker between Israel and the Gentiles is central to the message of b. Shab. 156. The Stammaim explicate this point with a clarity and forcefulness that is unparalleled in Genesis Rabbah or other earlier Rabbinic sources.
§D: Conclusions Section §D craftily manipulates the Gen. 15 narrative to demonstrate that Israel is not subject to planetary influence, as astrology serves as a boundary marker between Israel and the Gentiles - a similar message to that of §C. Section D, however, goes one step further than §C in demonstrating that God trumps the stars and serves as the true guiding force behind the universe. Section D draws upon preexisting exegetical traditions that link Gen. 15:3, 15:5 to astrology. These traditions are relatively recent, as the earliest preserved versions date back only to Genesis Rabbah. However, whereas Gen. Rab. 44:12 denies that Abraham is an astrologer, b. Shab. 156 §D accepts this and encourages the patriarch to change his ways because astrological practices are useless for Israelites. 84 The extra-biblical dialogue is also found in b. Ned. 32a, which preserves a shorter version of the conversation between God and Abraham. The tradition in b. Ned. 32a lacks the citations of Gen. 15:3-4 and Isa. 41:2, as well as God's offer to move Jupiter. It is situated amidst a collection of traditions about Abraham, and develops into a short discussion on augury (n/:lsh) based around Num. 23:23.
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§E: Literary Analysis
The first-generation Babylonian Amora Shmuel (second-third centuries)85 is associated with astrology elsewhere in the Bavli,86 where he professes knowledge of the planetary week. 87 Section §E begins with there is no constellation for Israel, formally, thematically and linguistically tying it to §§C-D, F-G of b. Shabo 156. The genre, however, has changed from a description of "scientific" content (§§A-B) and exegesis (§§C-D) to narrative in §§E-G. The theme of shame, which is common in the Bavli, is prevalent in §E as the Israelite pretends to collect bread from the one who lacks it in order to spare him from public embarrassment. 88 The editorial hand of the Stammaim is evident with the repetition of key words, as the final line of §E bears the root ~dq, which is also found in §§B, D-F. There is a play on the word for snake: the Bavli uses the Aramaic bywy',89 the equivalent of nlJsh in biblical Hebrew, which is also a homonym for omen. 90 Moreover, not only is the Israelite protected from the snake, but the snake itself dies - a reversal of A vlat' s prediction that the snake would kill the Israelite. Like other sections, §E draws on the theme of astrology as a boundary marker between Jews and Gentiles. Not only is Avlat's prediction wrong, but Shmuel is proven to be correct. Recall Shmuel's prediction: if he is an Israelite, he will go and come [back]. That is, Israelites are immune from planetary influence while Gentiles are not - further emphasizing the sugya's anti-astrological message 91 and indicating why from Shmuel also [we learn that] there is no constellation for Israel. Shmuel's proclamation you fulfilled a commandment is paralleled elsewhere in the sugya by Nal).man b. Yitzl).ak (§§A-B) and Akiva (§F). The link between Israel's immunity from astrology and fulfilling commandments becomes an increasingly important theme. Note Shmuel's assuredness that the astrological prediction will be proven false, even before he learns of the mitzvah that was performed: If he is an Israelite, he will go and come [back]. Two possible interpretations arise: an Israelite's fate is protected against an astrological prediction whether or not he fulfills commandments (i.e. Shmuel did not say: If he is an Israelite and performs commandments he will go and come back). Or Shmuel was confident that as an Israelite, this man would surely fulfill a commandment - that is, 85 Margaliyot, Encyclopedia, 2:327. 86
b. Erub. 56a; b. Shab. 129b; see Leicht, Astrologumena, 94-95.
87 Gandz, "Origin," 223. 88 Rubenstein, Culture, 68-69. 89 90
91
Sokoloff, Babylonian Aramaic, 450. Koehler, Lexicon, 1:690-91. I thank David Stem for this observation.
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satisfying commandments make one an Israelite, which in turn provides protection against the horoscope. §E: Source Criticism
Jerusalem Talmud, Shabbat 6:9, 8d92 Two students of R. Jianina went out to cut wood. A certain astrologer saw them. He said: These two will go out but not return. When they went out they came upon a certain old man. He said to them: Give me alms, for it has been three days since I have tasted anything. They had a loaf of bread. They cut it in half and gave it to him. He ate and prayed for them. He said to them: May your souls be preserved this day just as you have preserved my soul for me this day. They went out safely and came back safely. There were some men there who had heard his [the astrologer's] words. They said to him: Did you not say, "These two will go out but not return"? He said: There is here a man oflies [= me], whose astrology is lies. Even so they went and searched and found a snake, half in this one's load and half in the other's. They said: What good deed did you do today? They told him the deed. He [the astrologer] said: What can I do? For the God of the Jews is appeased by half a loaf.
There are a number of differences between the versions of the story found in the Bavli and Yerushalmi. In y. Shabo 6:9, 8d, the astrologer's prediction is disproved by the actions of two students of Banina - a sage unsuitable for the Bavli's version because of Banina's promotion of astrology earlier in its sugya (§C). Shmuel is a fitting replacement for Banina, as the former is associated elsewhere with astrology and professes knowledge of a planetary week, but does not promote it as intensely as Banina does in §§B-C. 93 The nature of the fulfilled commandment also differs between the texts. In the Yerushalmi, it is a simple act of charity: upon request, the two students give the old man half their loaf of bread. The Bavli, however, takes the mitzvah one step further: the Israelite gives the bread without having been asked. Moreover, the Bavli's Israelite spares the hungry man from the shame of not contributing to the common pool of bread. Indeed, shame is an important theme in the Bavli. 94 The Yerushalmi version seeks to inflict (rather than avoid, as in the Bavli) shame, as it publicly 92 Peter Schafer and Hans-Jiirgen Becker, eds., Synapse zum Talmud Yerushalmi, Band 1111-4 (Tiibingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2001). Translation based on Rubenstein, Culture, 68-69. 93 b. Erub. 56a; b. Shabo 129b; Gandz, "Origin," 223. 94 Rubenstein, Culture, 68-69.
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embarrasses the astrologer. In the Yerushalmi, astrology is nothing but lies; in the Bavli, astrology is a real science that has real use for the Gentiles, but has no influence over Israel, which is consistent with the rest of our sugya. The inclusion of the snake in the astrologer's prediction in the Bavli adds a sense of irony that the Yerushalmi lacks: the astrologer predicts that a snake will kill the Israelite, but in the end, the snake itself is killed. 95 §E: Conclusions Literary and source-critical analyses have highlighted the Bavli's message that Israel is not subject to planetary influence, the theme that permeates the entire sugya. Shmuel's prediction that the Israelite will return unharmed because he is an Israelite reinforces the theme seen elsewhere in our sugya that astrology serves as a boundary marker between Jew and Gentile. Section §E adds a strong emphasis on the fulfillment of commandments, perhaps making it a defining characteristic of an Israelite and a necessary condition for immunity from planetary influence. §F: Literary Analysis There is a great deal of parallelism between §E and §F as both serve as aggadic examples as to why there is no constellation for Israel. In each, the astrologers' predictions are nearly identical and the potential victims are unaware of the proximity of the attacking snake. Moreover, both reverse the astrologer's prediction as the snake is killed instead of the Israelite/Akiva's daughter. Both Shmuel and Akiva ask what did you do upon finding the dead snake. In both stories, the fulfilled commandments involve supplying a man with food. In §F, the banquet distracted others from attending to the beggar. Indeed, elsewhere in the Babylonian Talmud meals often distract people from their moral responsibilities. 96 Both sections end with a sage's interpretation of Provo 10:2, namely that ~dqh, saves not only from an unnatural death, but from death in general. Indeed, the root ~dq is used throughout the sugya, as the Bavli redactors weave a linguistic thread throughout b. Shabo 156. The parallelism between §E and §F demonstrates the Stammaim's editorial skill to formally, thematically, and linguistically bring disparate traditions together into a single literary unit. An important difference arises in the behavior of the sages. In §E Shmuel is confident that the astrologer's prediction will be proven wrong so long as the man is an Israelite. However, in §F Akiva was very worried 95 The use of irony is common in Rabbinic literature; see Rubenstein, Talmudic Stories, 247-48. 96 ibid., 148.
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about the Chaldean's prediction, even though he knows that his daughter is an Israelite. We posit that Akiva is troubled because, at this point in the story, he is unaware that his daughter had performed an act of charity. With Akiva's apprehension, the Bavli redactors raise the importance of righteousness in warding off an evil astrological prediction. Fulfilling commandments somehow defines an Israelite as such, and protects him or her from astrological powers. To sum up, §F promotes the major themes of the sugya - that Israel is immune from planetary influence and that astrology can serve as a boundary marker between Jew and Gentile. Moreover, §F places great emphasis on the fulfillment of mitzvoth and acts of charity, as it is a precondition for immunity from the power of the stars. 97 §G: Literary Analysis
There are a number of motifs and themes in §G that are common to our sugya. In §§E-G, the astrologers do not make their prediction directly to the subject, but rather through an intermediary - Shmuel, Akiva, and Nal;tman b. Yitzl;tak's mother. The astrologer's prediction that Nal;tman b. Yitzl;tak would be a thief is identical to one of Ashi' s four interpretations of one born under Mars in §B. Nal;tman b. Yitzl;tak's transformation from thief in his youth to sage recalls the earlier juxtaposition of the twins Ashi and Dimi, head of an academy and thieves, respectively. The motif of the worried parent appears in both §G with Nal;tman b. Yitzl;tak's mother and §F with Akiva. The term "Chaldeans" is also found in §F and there is no constellation for Israel is found throughout the sugya. Section G differs from §F in an important way, as Nal;tman b. Yitzl;tak's mother tells her son to cover his head, a more active stance than that taken by Akiva, who merely worries about his daughter. The reasoning, to instill the fear of heaven and her instructions to ask for mercy are unprecedented in b. Shabo 156. Indeed, the introduction of these elements may indicate that Nal;tman's mother was more worried about the astrologer's prediction than Akiva in §F, and far more concerned than Shmuel in §E. That is, as we progress through the sugya, the Bavli redactors increase the importance of adherence to God's commandments, adding more conditions in order to gain immunity from planetary influence. In the end, Nal;tman b. Yitzl;tak's distraction from Torah study left him unprotected from the astrologer's prediction. 98 The Rabbis considered We have not found an earlier version of the traditions preserved in §F. While it is possible that the loss of his head covering caused Nal;tman b. Yitzl;tak to succumb to evil inclination, we note that nothing happened to him immediately after his head covering fell. Rather, only after he looked up at the palm tree - thereby interrupting his Torah study - was he overtaken by an evil inclination. 97 98
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Torah study to be one of the greatest mitzvoth,99 and may indeed be one of the defining acts of an Israelite. Moreover, one should avoid any interruptions in Torah study, as any such break could lead to forgetfulness. lOo Indeed, the importance of fulfilling commandments in order to gain immunity from the stars reaches its climax in §G. Whereas §§E-F. hold that fulfilling commandments protects one from the stars, §G demonstrates the counterfactual: the interruption of fulfilling commandments such as Torah study leaves one vulnerable to astrological influence. There is no one better to demonstrate the importance of mitzvoth than NaQ.man b. YitzQ.ak, who earlier in our text (§§A-B) stressed the fulfillment of commandments. 101
V. Conclusion Our analysis of b. Shabo 156 is the first full treatment of the locus classicus of Talmudic discussions on astrology and constitutes a first step towards understanding the Bavli's views on the subject. Our literary and sourcecritical analyses have highlighted the editorial skill and methods of the Bavli redactors. The Stammaim appropriated earlier Galilean Rabbinic traditions on astrology and often changed the focus of these texts. These once-disparate received traditions were woven together into a single literary unit by the Bavli redactors with threads of repetitive language and recurrent themes. It is significant that the text does not deny the efficacy of astrology over the Gentiles. For the Bavli's redactors, astral powers influence the nations but not Israel, and astrology functions as a boundary marker between Israel and the Gentiles. Indeed, the redactors of the Bavli have integrated this boundary marker into the message of b. Shabo 156: the people of Israel are immune from astral influence so long as they fulfill God's commandments. Those who do not busy themselves with God's commandments are subject to the power of the stars like the Gentiles.
99 Rubenstein, Culture, 31-33. 100 Lee Levine, The Rabbinic Class of Roman Palestine (Jerusalem: Yad Izhak BenZvi Press, 1989),45. 101 We have not found an earlier version of the traditions preserved in §G.
Margin of Error Women, Law, and Christianity in Bavli Shabbat l16a-b HOLGER M. ZELLENTIN
'The horse-leech has two daughters: Give, give' (Proverbs 30.15) What is 'Give, give'? Rav Hisda said in the name of Mar 'Ukba: It is the voice of two daughters who scream from the Gehenom to this world: 'Bring, bring.' Who are they? Heresy and the government. - Babylonian Talmud, Avodah Zarah 17a
Introduction In this paper, I argue that the story of Imma Shalom and the philosopher in Bavli Shabbat l16a-b is a nuanced polemic against Christianity, an apology for the Jews' exile and the Christian rule of Palestine, and, at the same time, a defense of Babylonian Rabbinic jurisdiction on inheritance. A clear majority of scholars agreed upon the fact that the story somehow polemicizes against Christianity. Moritz Guedemann, in 1876, was the first to consider Bavli Shabbat l16a-b as a satirical reaction to the Gospel of Matthew, an interpretation that most scholars followed, up to Burton Visotzky's 1995 article. l Hence, the question is not whether the story seeks 1 Moritz Guedemann, Religionsgeschichtliche Studien (Leipzig: Oskar Leiner, 1876), 65-99. Other authors (in chronological order) discussing the passage include Michael Sachs, Beitrage zur Sprach und Altertumsforschung (Berlin: Veit und Comp., 1852); Wilhelm Bacher, Die Agada der Palastinensischen Amoraer (Strasbourg: K.J. Triibner, 1892-99), II, 424n; Gustaf Dalman, Jesus Christ in the Talmud, Midrash, Zohar, and the Liturgy of the Synagogue (New York: Arno Press, 1893, repr., 1973), 69; Robert Travers Herford, Christianity in Talmud and Midrash (London: Williams and Norgate, 1903), 146-155; Edgar Hennecke ed., Handbuch zu den Neutestamentlichen Apokryphen (Tiibingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1904), 70f; George Foot Moore, "The Definition of the Jewish Canon and the Repudiation of Jewish Scriptures," in Essays in Modern Theology and Related .Subjects (ed. Ch. A. Briggs; New York: Scribner's Sons, 1911), 99-125; Hermann L. Strack and Paul Billerbeck, Kommentar zum Neuen Testament aus Talmud und Midrasch (Munich: Beck, 1922), I, 241f; S. Zeitlin, "Jesus in Early Tannaitic
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to ridicule Christianity, but how exactly it does so, and with what aspects of Christianity it is concerned. I will argue that the Christian interpreters of the Gospels, rather than the Gospels themselves, were the Talmud's targets. It seems to me as if the Talmudic author employs the Gospel against its Christian interpreters. Another possible target of the parody includes Jews sympathizing with Christian jurisprudence. Before presenting the story, a few words seem helpful on the general historical background of the rabbis' view of Christianity, as well as on the Talmud's source for the story of Imma Shalom. The Palestinian Rabbinic movement emerged in the second half of the second century CE, approximately at the same time as gentile churches gained momentum. Both parties claimed for themselves the heritage of the Torah, and both claimed God's blessing. For the following two centuries, the relations between Jews and Christians were markedly different within each of the two movements' sub-groups, which in turn were so diverse that they defy classification. In general, the relationships between the wide varieties of Jewish, Christian, and other groups in Palestine were largely determined by their respective stances towards the Roman government, the rulers of Palestine who brought at times death, at times stability. In 313 CE, Gaius Flavius Valerius Aurelius Constantinus, later known as Constantine the Great, saw it fit to secure himself the support of the empire's Christians. He issued the Decree of Milan, granting the freedom of religion. This period of tolerance was real, but short lived. As Constantine and the power structures of the Roman Empire became more and more Christian, all forms of religious practice not conforming to the new imperial cult were branded either as "pagan," "heretical," or "Jewish." This ongoing development went along with a strong effort to Christianize the territory of "Palestine" - the empire's new Holy Land. The emergence of Christianity as the new ruling power in Rome and Palestine dramatically changed the previous relationships between all Literature," in Abhandlungen zur Erinnerung an Hirsch Peres Chajes (Vienna: The Alexander Kohut Memorial Foundation, 1933), 304-307; Joseph Klausner, Jesus of Nazareth: His Life, Times, and Teaching (New York: Macmillan, 1929),44-47 [German pp. 53ff, Hebrew pp. 37ft]; Jacob Zallal Lauterbach, "Jesus in the Talmud," in idem, Rabbinic Essays (Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 1951, post mortem), 473570; Luitpold Wallach, "The Textual History of an Aramaic Proverb (Traces of the Ebionean Gospel)," JBL 60/4 (1941): 403-415; Ephraim E. Urbach, The Sages, Their Concepts and Beliefs (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1975), I, 302f and II, 820, [Hebrew, 268-270]; Burton L. Visotzky, "Overturning the Lamp," in idem, Fathers of the World: Essays in Rabbinic and Patristic Literatures (Tiibingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1995), 75-84. In opposition to the common opinion, cf. Johann Maier, Jiidische Auseinandersetzungen mit dem Christentum in der Antike (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1982), 78-93.
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groups living in Palestine. Christianity became the new cultural and political enemy that created a common interest among Palestine's pagans, Samaritans, Christian "heretics," and Jews. Palestinian Rabbinic writings from the fourth and fifth centuries show an increasing awareness of Christianity, primarily of the Antiochian and Cappadocian Church Fathers.2 This awareness evoked condemnation. Yet, the Palestinian rabbis still perceived Christianity, perhaps through the lenses of Jewish followers of Jesus in Palestine, as something very close to Judaism. "The Kingdom of worshippers of stars and constellations will turn to Minut," they claimed in the Palestinian Talmud, describing imperial gentile Christianity with a term that had previously denoted heresy.3 The rabbis did their best to prevent everything perceived as Christian from entering into Rabbinic Judaism, but in the process of refuting them, they accepted the presuppositions of many Christian topoi into their own culture. Recent scholarship has shown that post-Constantinian rabbis replied to many Christian stories with polemical and apologetic counter-narratives. 4 As a result, in response to Christian attacks, Rabbinic Judaism reshaped a large number of discourses at the very center of its religious identity. Rabbinic teachings concerning the Temple, the Messiah, and even the Torah itself reflected and refuted discourses of post-Constantinian Christian writers. At the same time, the Christians of Palestine, encouraged by imperial attitudes as expressed in the Theodosian Code, started persecuting Jews, a development that intensified until the Muslim conquest put an end to it.
2 On the varying influence of Alexandrian and Antiochian Christianity on the rabbis, see Burton L. Visotzky, "Jots and Tittles: On Scriptural Interpretation in Rabbinic and Patristic Literatures," Prooftexts 8 (1988): 257-270. 3 Yerushalmi Sotah 23b. The respective material in the Mishna (Sotah 9.15), in which Rabbi Eliezer predicts the kingdom's turn to heresy, is a late addition, missing in most manuscripts. The question of what exactly minut means in the fifth century Palestinian or Babylonian Aramaic (Jewish heresy, gentile Christianity, or both) remains open; yet, see the most recent treatment of the material in Daniel Boyarin, Border Lines: The Partition of Judaeo-Christianity (Philadelphia: U. of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), 220-225. 4 Israel Yuval, Two Nations in Your Womb: Perceptions of Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 2000 [Hebrew]; Berkeley: U. of California Press, 2006 [English]). See also, in this volume, the papers by Israel Yuval, "The Other in Us Liturgica, Poetica, Polemica"; and Burton L. Visotzky, "Goys '.5['n't Us: Rabbinic Anti-Gentile Polemic in Yerushalmi Berachot 9:1." See also Peter Schafer, Jesus in the Talmud (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006); E.P. Sanders, ed., Jewish and Christian Self-definition (Philadelphia: Fortress Pres, 1981); Mark G. Hirshmann, A Rivalry of Genius: Jewish and Christian Biblical Interpretation in Late Antiquity. (Albany: SUNY Press, 1996); Adam H. Becker and Annette Yoshiko Reed, eds., The Ways that Never Parted: Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (Tiibingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003).
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The Jewry of Babylonia was in a very different position with regard to the new Roman imperial cult. Looking back to a well-established presence since at least the time of the first exile, the Talmud famously comments on Isaiah 13.6: "Bring my sons from far," R. Huna said, "These are the exiles in Babylon, whose minds are at ease like [those of] sons." "And My daughters from the ends of the earth": "These are the exiles in other lands, whose minds are not at ease, like [those of] daughters." (bMenahot 1l0a).
Drawing on admitted gender inequality, the Talmud's parallel acknowledges the privileged status of the Babylonian Rabbinic community. The Zoroastrian rulers of the Sasanian Empire recognized the Jewish community, and persecution was scarce. 5 Moreover, Christian power and culture were not the same in Sasanian Babylonia and in Palestine. Languages and doctrines of Greek and Syriac Christianity were vastly different, and the political situation of Christians in Babylonia after Constantine was exactly the opposite of that in the Roman Empire. The vast and powerful Sasanian Empire was a match for the Roman Empire; and battles between the two empires were common between 240 and 390. 6 The Christianization of the Roman Empire left Sasanian Christians - who were equally recognized as a community in the Sasanian Empire - in a difficult position. Despite their Syriac identity and resulting tensions with Byzantine Christianity, they shared their enemies' Christian faith. As most recently discussed by Peter Schafer, this led the Sasanian rulers to persecute Christians throughout the fourth and early fifth centuries. 7 Only in the fifth century did the status of Christians begin to improve, until Christians were fully incorporated in the Sasanian Empire by the late sixth century. 8 5 See Klaus Schippman, Grundziige der Geschichte des sassanidischen Reiches (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche BuchgeseUschaft, 1990); Geo Widengren, "The Status of the Jews in the Sassanian Empire," Iranica Antiqua (Leiden: Brill, 1961), I, 128. 6 See Engelbert Winter and Beate Dignas, Rom und das Perserreich: Zwei Weltmiichte zwischen Konfrontation und Koexistenz (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2001); and Lucas van Rompay, "Impetuous Martyrs? The Situation of the Persian Christians in the Last Years of Yazdgard I (419-420)," in Martyrium in Multidisciplinary Perspective: Memorial Louis Reekmans (ed. M. Lamberigts and P. van Deun; Louvain: Leuven University Press, 1995),363-375. 7 In the words of Peter Schafer: "The Christians became suspected of being disloyal to the [Sasanian] state and favoring the enemy, of being Rome's 'fifth column' in the midst of the Sasanian Empire. Large-scale persecutions of the Christians broke out, first under Shapur II (309-379), then under Yazdgard I (399-421), Bahram V (421-439), and Yazdgard II (439-457)," in Jesus in the Talmud, 117. 8 See A. V. Williams, "Zoroastrians and Christians in Sassanian Iran," Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester 78 (1996): 37-53.
Margin of Error.
343
The Talmud's view of Christianity seems to stem from these later periods, corresponding to the persecution of Christians up to the early fifth century, and to the Christians' rise to prominence in Sasanian Babylonia in the later fifth century and thereafter. 9 Schafer argues that, given the continuing persecution of Jews by Christians in Palestine, it seems that Babylonia's Jewish population were not too troubled by the persecution of its Christian neighbors, and at times defamed the Christians publicly perhaps as part of a general anti-Christian attitude in the Sasanian Empire.lO And we can only imagine how the growing Christian political and intellectual influence in the Sasanian Empire in the late fifth and sixth centuries must have troubled the rabbis, likely leading to even fiercer polemics. In literary terms, Peter Schafer's Jesus in the Talmud has confirmed that the Babylonian Talmud defamed Jesus and Christian doctrine on numerous occasions.ll The present article is a further contribution to the Talmud's view of Christianity. Yet, I wish to add that, at the same time, the Talmudic attitude towards things Christian is much more nuanced than that of the Palestinian rabbis. The stable position of the Babylonian rabbis allowed them to venture into Christian thought with less risk for their own identity. These rabbis could more easily adopt explicitly Christian language in order to delineate their own identity more precisely. I want to show in the following that the Babylonian rabbis knew how to differentiate between various Christian writings and forms of Christianity. Whereas their Palestinian colleagues mostly alluded to Christian concepts and writings with general contempt, the situation in Babylonia not only allowed for open criticism without the fear of retaliation - as in the case of Jesus 12 - but also for serious consideration of Christian arguments, appreciation of certain Christian concepts, as well as for tensions in Christian tradition, as between the early Christian writers and some of the Gospels. The Syriac church writers constantly preached, read and edited 9 It is very hard to reconstruct the development of Babylonian Rabbinic culture during and before the fourth century, since the entirety of its literary production was redacted in the Babylonian Talmud later, mainly between the fifth and seventh centuries. See Jeffrey L. Rubenstein, The Culture of the Babylonian Talmud (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003); and Richard Kalmin, The Redaction of the Babylonian Talmud: Amoraic or Saboraic? (Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 1989). 10 See Peter Schafer's nuanced discussion of the Martyrdom of Mar Simon in Jesus in the Talmud, 118ff, and Mgr. Sddai Scher and Abbe Perier, eds., Chronique de Seert, Histoire Nestorienne Inedite (Paris: Perier 1907), 1,297. 11 See Schafer, Jesus in the Talmud. For an exhaustive (and dismissive) discussion of most of the relevant primary and secondary sources cf. Johann Maier, Jesus von Nazareth in del' talmudischen Uberlieferung (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1978). On the pr·oblems of Maier's methodology, see Schafer, Jesus in the Talmud, 5. 12 See Schafer, Jesus in the Talmud.
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the Gospels, turning these late first- (or early second-) century texts into documents of contemporary relevance to the rabbis of the middle of the first millennium. The question that remains unanswered (and probably will remain for a while) is: What Christian texts, if any, did the rabbis know? One of the written collections of gospels that would have been easily accessible to the Rabbis is Tatian's Diatessaron, a gospel harmony composed in Syriac, a dialect very close to Babylonian Jewish Aramaic. Since the gospel passages relevant to our story seemed to have been gleaned from the gospels of Matthew and of Luke, the Diatessaron is a very likely source for the author of the story of Imma Shalom. Another possible venue is the Syriac Peshitta, a translation of each of the Greek Gospels of the New Testament. The Peshitta started replacing the Diatessaron in the fifth century, but this process took over a century. Since Tatian's original is lost, I will quote relevant texts from the Peshitta, yet focus on the Diatessaron and its most important commentator, Ephraem the Syrian (303-373).13
Corruption in the Greco-Roman World In my view, the story of Imma Shalom and the Philosopher is based on a Palestinian Rabbinic story on judges and bribery. Its anti-Christian polemic is artfully weaved into the Babylonian adaptation of this older story. The following story in the Pesikta de Rav Kahana 15.9 (Ekha) stems from a text edited in Palestine in the fourth or fifth century of the Common Era (according to Ms. Oxford 151):14 A story of a woman who "honored" the judge [with] a silver lamp (£']O:l ~1Zl I1nK :1"U~). Her adversary went and honored him with a golden young ass (:J:1r ~1Zl n~~o). On the following day she came and found her judgment overturned She said to him [the judge]: "Master, let my case shine forth (~J~' ":1J~) like that silver lamp." He said to her: "What shall I do for you, since the young ass overturned the lamp?"
A woman bribes a judge with a lamp, but her adversary bribes him with a more valuable item, a donkey. We learn that even a bribe cannot secure favorable judgment, since an adversary could subsequently pay an even 13 For the rabbis' knowledge of these texts, see Schafer's conclusions in Jesus in the Talmud, 122f. The Rabbinic stories about Jesus seem to draw most on the Gospel of John, probably in the form of the Diatessaron. See William L. Petersen, Tatian's Diatessaron: Its Creation, Dissemination, Significance, & History in Scholarship, Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae, 25 (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1994). 14 Bernard Mandelbaum, Pesikta deRab Kahana according to an Oxford Manuscript (New York: The Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1987), 260f.
Margin of Error.
345
higher price. The punch-line is that the judge hides the criminal truth about his court in a blatantly overt, though still encoded, way stating that "the ass overturned the lamp." The sequel to the passage in the Pesikta speaks about Isaiah's condemnation of bribery, and the story itself hints towards the implications of justice as spelled out in Isaiah 51.3-4: "For the LORD will comfort Zion; he will comfort all her waste places, ... My Instruction ('11'1'1'1) shall go out from me, and I will enact my justice (~~Ill~) as a light to the nations."
Isaiah's parallel structure pairs the Torah with Justice and "going out" with being a "light." The Biblical Hebrew term ~~um can denote both procedural and ethical justice in Rabbinic Hebrew as well. When the woman in the Pesikta urges the judge to "let my case shine forth like a lamp," any Rabbinic reader will understand the reference to "justice" and "light" in the passage from Isaiah. The Rabbinic story hence gestures to the Bible's promise of real justice to come. The anecdote in the Pesikta in turn adapts an even older, Tannaitic Palestinian Rabbinic saying. In Sifre Balak 15, a corrupt bid in silver for priesthood is trumped by a bid in gold, with the ensuing moral likewise being that "the ass overturned the lamp."15 The Tannaitic saying does not include a real lamp or an ass as a bribe. The image of the "ass overturning the lamp" (to which I shall return) in Sifre might have been an independent proverb whose meaning was no longer understood in the time of the Pesikta. 16 In any case, the later Rabbinic version of the text in the Pesikta adds to the story the image of a real lamp and of a real ass made of gold, perhaps in an attempt to connect the puzzling proverb to the anecdote it found in Sifre. The Pesikta also adds the character of the judge himself to the Tannaitic saying (in which the recipient of the bribe is only implicit), and we find cognates to such anecdotes in Greco-Roman literature. Similar stories about corruption in legal affairs had been commonplace for a long time. Petronius, for example, in his Satyricon (3.14) condemns a judge, supposedly a Cynic philosopher, who sells his word for money and considers justice to be "public merchandise," implying that it is the highest
15 Sifre Balak 15 is the oldest of the story's other parallels, yYoma 38c and Wayikra Rabbah 21.9. 16 Wallach argues for the development of the story as based on a proverb prior to the Pesikta, even though he seems to have missed the only Tannaitic version we have in Sifre, cf. Luitpold Wallach, "The Textual History of an Aramaic Proverb," 405f. It seems that the closing statement itself may have triggered the unusual commodities used as bribes, the lamp and the young donkey.
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bid that wins the case. I7 I suggest understanding the Pesikta in this cultural framework, even if the text is too elliptic to allow for a meaningful GrecoRoman contextualization. The same holds true for the story's image of the "overturning of the lamp." The expression was a common euphemism for sexual orgies in the Greco-Roman world, and perhaps the Pesikta implicitly draws a parallel between the corruption of legal and sexual morality.I8 The story's use of the "overturned lamp" in the Pesikta might equate bribery with sexual debauchery and immorality in general, yet the reading remains somewhat speculative. As Burton Visotzky has shown, from the second century onwards, the euphemism of "overturning the lamp" developed into an expression specific to standard accusations against Christians who allegedly indulged in such orgies during worship.I9 We cannot discern with any certainty a comment on Christianity in the Pesikta story's general disdain for corrupt judges (even though at the time of the text's final redaction, there certainly where Christian judges in Palestine). Nevertheless, a later Babylonian Rabbinic reader noted how little it took him to read more than one reference to Christian texts into the story.
Bribing a Christian The Babylonian Talmud shifted the focus of the story of the two bribes towards Christianity in fifth- or sixth-century Mesopotamia, when it retold the narrative for a third recorded time in Shabbat 116a-b. The manuscripts of the Talmud transmit the story in two versions, both of which are presented in the following text. The main text follows the Sephardic Ms. Oxford 366 (add. fol. 23), which slightly deviates from the majority reading in a few crucial details. I italicized the manuscript's variants and indicated the maj ority reading on the right side of the text. Rabbi Meir called it ' aven-gilayon C1p~) l'N) Rabbi Johanan called it 'avon-gilayon C1p~) lUI) [1] Imma Shalom, Rabbi Eli'ezer's wife, was the sister of Rabban Gamliel. She had a legal dispute with her brother She went to face him.
[missing] [missing]
17 See Ramsay MacMullen, Corruption and the Decline of Rome (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988). 18 See Burton L. Visotzky, "Overturning the Lamp," in idem, Fathers of the World: Essays in Rabbinic and Patristic Literatures (Tiibingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1995), 75-84. 19 See Burton L. Visotzky, "Overturning the Lamp." For rabbis accusing Christians of sexual debauchery see also Schafer, Jesus in the Talmud, 44, and the references given there.
Margin of Error.
347
[2] And there was a certain philosopher (KtlOK"tl) in her neighborhood, Who had a reputation as a judge who does not accept bribes (K1nlll). [3] One day, he [Rabban Gamlfel} wanted to laugh about him [the philosopher]. [they] They went to him [the philosopher]. Imma Shalom brought him [the philosopher] a golden lamp (K:J;'11 Kl'lll). She said to him: "I want you to divide ('l'tl'J1) the estate of my [late] father's house." He [the philosopher] said: "Divide (m'tl)!" [4] They said to him: [He, i.e. Rabban Gamliel] "It is written in the Torah that he gave us (l' :J;"1 ;",m): 'If there is a son, the daughter does not inherit (r",11).' " [5] He [the philosopher] said: "From the day that you were exiled (l'11"l) from your land, the Torah of Moses (;'1ll~1 K11"'K) was taken away (11"lJJI1'K) from you and the Torah of the 'avon -gilayon (l""llUI1 K11"'K) was given, [missing] and it is written in it: 'Daughter and Son inherit equally (K1n:> 1m,"). '" [6] The next day he [Rabban Gamliel] returned and brought him a Libyan donkey (K'~n). As they came, he [the Philosopher] said to them: "I went down to the end of the 'avongilayon, And it is written in it: 'I am the 'avon-gilayon (l""l lUI), I did not come to reduce (I1ntl'~') the Torah of Moses and not to add ('tlO'K') to the Torah of Moses I came. And it is written in it: 'If there is a son, the daughter does not inherit' " [7] She said [to the philosopher]: "Let your light shine with the lamp (Kl'lll:J T";'J ,,;'J) Examine (r'y) the judgment!" [missing] [8] Rabban Gamliel said to him: "A donkey (K'~n) came and knocked down (;'llllJ:J') the lamp."
We hear now the story of a corrupt philosopher who, like Petronius' cynic, has a good reputation, but does not refrain from accepting a second bribe: he decides in favor of whoever pays more, just as in the Palestinian Rabbinic story that the Talmud retells. The Talmud left the basic structure and the message of the Pesikta's story intact, with the two bribes, the woman's complaint (including the implicit reference to the light and the justice of Isaiah 51), and the punch-line in which the judge hides the criminal truth by stating that "the ass overturned the lamp." The Talmud, however, gives names to all the opponents, spells out the reasoning of the judge, and transfers the final statement from the judge to the winning opponent (i.e. Rabban Gamliel), hence accusing the "philosopher" with the same symbolic language that the Palestinian judge had used to shamelessly explain himself.
Two Versions of Imma Shalom The differences between the cited Ms. Oxford 366 and the majority reading are few, yet consequential. I suggest that the differences between the two versions are intrinsically linked to the Talmud's view of women and their role in religious conflicts. The first important variant of the Oxford manuscript vis-a.-vis the majority reading is that only this manuscripts opens the story by stating
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that Imma Shalom and her brother had a real lawsuit, and that "she went to face him." The second important variant is that according to the Oxford manuscript, Rabban Gamliel plans to "laugh about" the philosopher alone. In most other manuscripts, the two siblings concoct the plot together. This fact strongly suggests that they never had a real pending lawsuit. The third important variant is that in the Oxford manuscript, both siblings together point out to the judge that his first ruling, favoring Imma Shalom's request to divide the heritage, violates Jewish law. In the majority reading, only Rabban Gamliel protests. The fact that in the Oxford manuscript she joins her brother in pointing out the legal problem detrimental to her own interests gives her a more active role in the proceedings. We can see that the two versions tell a genuinely different story. The Oxford manuscript relates that Rabban Gamliel fought his sister in a lawsuit and sought to ridicule the judge, whereas the majority of manuscripts tells us that Rabban Gamliel and Imma Shalom in harmony tried to expose him, inventing a lawsuit. Since Rabban Gamliel wins the lawsuit and exposes the judge in both versions, both stories are internally coherent. Since we cannot determine which story reflects more genuinely the intentions the Talmud's Babylonian redactors, we therefore cannot decide the case based on the two stories themselves. The evidence of the manuscripts is equally not decisive. On the one hand, the sheer quantity of the majority reading seems overwhelming at first, and probably explains why no commentator of the story ever took into consideration the text provided by the Oxford manuscript. On the other hand, Ms. Oxford 366, written in Sephardic square script and dated to the 13 th century, is one of the older witnesses to the tractate Shabbat, and generally is written very carefully.20 Furthermore, a note in the margin of Ms. Munich 95 adds explicitly that the siblings really had a lawsuit in words almost identical to that of the Oxford manuscript. 21 The version of the story in which siblings fight each other, therefore, is also attested in 20 See Ad. Neubauer, Catalogue of the Hebrew Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library and in the College Libraries of Oxford, Including Mss. in Other Languages, which Are Written with Hebrew Characters, or Relating to the Hebrew Language or Literature; and a Few Samaritan Mss. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1886), and R. A. May, ed., Catalogue of the Hebrew Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library; Supplement of Addenda and Corrigenda to Vol. I (A. Neubauer's Catalogue), compiled under the direction of Malachi Beit-Arie (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1994), cf. I. Safrai, The Literature of the Sages, First Part: Oral Tora, Halakha, Mishna, Toefta, Talmud, External Tractates (Assen: Van Gorcum 1987), 355. 21 Folio 27, top. The addition, probably written in Paris in the fourteenth century, reads "she had a legal dispute with Rabban Gamliel." The note does not add that "she went to face him." See William Rosenau, "Book Notices: Hermann L. Strack, Babylonian Talmud according to the Munich Codex Hebraicus 95," AJSLL 29 (1913): 304-306.
Margin of Error
349
medieval Europe. Finally, Ms. Vatican 108, equally written in Sephardic square script and dated to the 13 th century, while following the majority reading otherwise, equally attests that "he," i.e. Rabban Gamliel alone, wanted to fool the philosopher (~17:J), and not that both siblings planned to do so (117:J) , as in the majority reading.22 This fact reveals that the difference between vav and yud changes the entire narrative. The evidence of Ms. Vatican 108 makes clear that there is only one indication that Imma Shalom was involved in the plan to fool the philosopher in the majority of manuscripts. The rest of the narrative gives no indication that she would not really sue her brother. Hence, the evidence for the reading of Ms. Oxford is weighty enough for further consideration. External evidence supports the minority reading. On the one hand, eliminating the lawsuit, sign of an inner-Rabbinic struggle, and portraying the siblings as confronting the (non-Jewish) judge jointly would be an attractive alteration for any editor striving for Rabbinic unity. Living under Sasanian, Muslim, or under Christian rule might favor such a step.23 Adding the lawsuit, on the other hand, and insisting that only Rabban Gamliel, and not both siblings, tried to set up the judge would reversely weaken Rabbinic unity under foreign rule. 24 This is not a very likely venue; hence, it represents an important argument for the version preserved by the Oxford manuscript. 25 I therefore suggest discussing both stories separately when they diverge from each other. I will call the version of the majority reading version A, and that of the Ms. Oxford 366 (supported by Ms. Vatican 108 and by the addition in Ms. Munich 95) version B. Since the Talmud makes use of fourth-century sources, we must place the story's genesis somewhere after that time. The philosopher's aggressive reference to the Jewish exile makes a date before the Sasanian conquest of Palestine in 614 very likely. I will illustrate how each of the versions might have been understood by its primary Rabbinic audience in Sasanian Babylonia in a time when the 22 Folio 57, bottom. 1. Safrai, The Literature of the Sages, 357. 23 My gratitude to Moulie Vidas for this observation. 24 If the story indeed was inspired by the version of the Pesikta (and the proximity of details suggests this), then a real conflict was part of the original story which could likely have been included in the new version. This fact by itself, however, weighs lightly. Even if the Babylonian story adopts most of the details of the earlier Palestinian version, it showed its liberty in making the judge a philosopher and giving the final word to Rabban Gamliel. 25 On the one hand, the addition on the margin of Ms. Munich suggests that the siblings' lawsuit could have been possibly added in medieval Europe. On the other hand, however, not all editors amend their text according to their worldview, and this addition probably occurred because another manuscript equally attested the lawsuit (the addition being almost identical to Ms. Oxford). The evidence therefore is not decisive.
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Byzantine Empire occupied the Land of Israel and suppressed its Jewry. We do not know whether the story was composed in the period when in the Sasanian Empire Christians where persecuted themselves, or afterwards, when Christians started rising to prominence in the Sasanian political system. Yet throughout the centuries, the Babylonian rabbis had reason to distance themselves from Christian law and theology. The following analysis will suggest that the position of the judge on heritage law concerning women is contiguous to that of Christianity, whereas Rabban Gamliel's position is representative of Rabbinic Judaism. Imma Shalom stands in the middle. My conclusion will be that, in both versions of the story, the struggle between Imma Shalom and Rabban Gamliel would lead the Rabbinic audience to reflect on the political realities of Sasanian Jewry, and on their rulings on the inheritance rights of women under Jewish and Christian law respectively. This is the case regardless whether the siblings' practical joke invokes the possibility of such a struggle (version A), or the story assumes it to be a reality (version B). The two versions real difference lies in the question how the story portrays Imma Shalom. Does she go over to the position that Rabbinic law on inheritance is unjust, and does she really seek the help of a Christian judge, leading to her defeat by Rabban Gamliel (B)? Or does she betray her own financial interests, siding with her brother (A)? In both cases, the story employs her in its attempt to silence the tension caused by the jurisprudence it supports, and by accusing anybody who doubts it of nothing short of heresy.
The Context and the Actors Immediately preceding the story of Imma Shalom in bShabbat 116a is a lively discussion of the status of books containing divine names which leads to a consideration of the books of minim, and notably of the Gospels. 26 The discussion finishes with two derogatory puns connecting the Hebrew term gi/ayon, "margin," to the Syriac term for "gospel." First, This corresponds exactly to the Rabbi Meir calls the gospel 'P7~"
,'N.
26 The context in bShabbat 116a, a discussion based on mYad 3.5, mShabb 16.1, and tYad 2.13, is very ambiguous, but portrays a generally negative reading of the heretical books. See Karl Georg Kuhn, "Giljonim und sifre minim," in Judentum, Urchristentum, Kirche: Festschrift fur Joachim Jeremias (ed. Walther Eltester; Berlin: Alfred Topelman, 1960), 24-61. Cf. Johann Maier, Judische Auseinandersetzung mit dem Christentum in der Antike, (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1982), 28-122, for extensive references and again an overly skeptical view; for a more nuanced view, Annette Reed, "Apocrypha, 'Outside Books,' and Pseudepigrapha: Ancient Categories and Modern Perceptions of Parabiblical Literature" (PSCO talk, October 10th 2002, available at http://ccat.sas.upenn. edu/psco/year40/areed 1.html).
Margin of Error
351
Syriac transliteration of the Greek word euangelion, .........~ar<'.27 The Talmud, however, splits the Syriac word, and with a slight change of (implied) vocalization reads it not as [evangelion], but as ['aven gelion], which in Mishnaic Hebrew means "margin" or "message" of "oppression," "wrongness," "falsehood" or "vanity. "28 Then, Rabbi Y ochanan distorts the name of the Gospel further and calls the text 1'~~~" 1'17, which should be read as ['avon gelion], "margin" or "message" of "perversion," "wrong," or "penalty."29 The same spelling of "Gospel" is the one provided by our story, and hence it seems likely the story appears at this place in the Talmud because of this central term, as a third derogatory comment on the term "Gospel." I will henceforth translate 'avon gelion as "Gospel." The Talmud chooses its characters among Rabbinic figures that work well for its purposes. Imma Shalom was the wife of Rabbi Eli'ezer, a rabbi officially accused of Christian heresy according to an older Rabbinic tradition that was still hotly discussed in the Babylonian Talmud. 30 Therefore, she was a suspicious character to begin with. It should also be noted that Rabban Gamliel, elsewhere in the Talmud, opposed women's education (see bEruvin 63a). As a woman educated in Rabbinic law, Imma Shalom would be a suitable character for the challenge against her brother Rabban Gamliel in version B; and her education would also account for her more active role in the proceedings of the judgment in this version. 31 For version A, the proximity to Christianity of Imma Shalom's brother would, in turn, be a good reason to insist on her orthodoxy by showing her willingness to ridicule Christianity, and to assign her a more passive role during the court's proceedings. Rabban Gamliel, even if he is named explicitly as Paul's teacher in the Acts of the Apostles, is not identified in connection to Christian themes 27 See Payne Smith, A Compendious Syriac Dictionary (Oxford: OUP, 1903), 6. This transcription is attested e.g. in Mark 1.1 of the Pehsitta. The more common Syriac term for Gospel is r<8.'i:=>, which is perhaps the reason why none of the previous commentators on the story remarked the Talmud's precise use of the Syriac. 28 See Markus Jastrow, A Dictionary of the Targumim, The Talmud Babli and Yerushalmi, and the Midrashic Literature (New York: Judaica Press, 1903),27. Another possible reading of 1"7') l1N would be ['on gelion], "margin" or "message" of "power" or "possession." (see Jastrow, ibid, 28). The former reading seems more likely in the present context. 29 Jastrow, Dictionary, 1054. 30 On the story of Rabbi Eliezer see most recently Peter Schafer, Jesus in the Talmud, 41-51. In the Babylonian Talmud's often cited story of the Oven of Akhnai (bBaba Metzia 59b), Rabban Gamliel excommunicates Rabbi Eliezer for relying on miracles and the heavenly voice rather than the word of the Torah. In the story's sequel, Imma Shalom appears l:!S faithful to both her husband and her brother. 31 On Imma Shalom, see Tal Ilan, "The Quest for the Historical Beruriah, Rachel, and Imma Shalom," AJS Review 22 (1997), 1-17.
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anywhere in Rabbinic narratives, but he does become a crypto-Christian in the Pseudo-Clementines. 32 The siblings' father, Shimeon ben Gamliel the First, was traditionally seen as a martyr of the Roman War. We do not know how likely it is that he left a material heritage worthwhile of litigation; the rabbis certainly do not mention it. Accordingly, we will see that the "inheritance" in the story is a symbol for the inheritance of the Land of Israel, and ultimately, for the inheritance of God's promises. In its theological, legal, and ethical challenge to Christianity, the Talmud comments on some aspects of the "sister religion" with each detail it adds to the Palestinian story in the Pesikta, and re-interprets most of the elements from the Palestinian version in light of Christianity. In the following I will analyze the story line by line. My focus will be on the Talmud's adaptation of previous Rabbinic literature, its dialogue with Christian law, doctrine and the Gospels, as well as the ways in which the previous two points are played out through references to the Pentateuch and the Prophets. Daughters and the Law To begin with, the Talmudic story changed the judge from the Pesikta into a "philosopher." This term is well attested in the Palestinian Rabbinic literature to describe a stock opponent of the rabbis, and notably of Rabban Gamliel. 33 In the Babylonian Talmud, the term "philosopher" appears only once more, equally when the text depicts a discussion between a pagan philosopher and Rabban Gamlie1. 34 The primary meaning of "philosopher" in the Bavli, hence, is likely the Greek sage. And while Greek philosophers continued to contribute to the intellectual landscape of Late Antiquity, some Syriac as well as Greek Church Fathers positively identified ascetic life with philosophy, referring to each other at times as "philosopher."35 When the story therefore uses the stereotypical situation of Rabban Gamliel defeating a "philosopher," it makes use of an image familiar to its audience. At the same time, it is possible that the story subtly identifies its enemy as the Greek philosophical tradition of the West. Since in the time of the story the Western world is ruled by the Byzantine Empire, the 32
See Recognitions 1.65f.
33 See Genesis Rabbah 1.9, 11.6, and 20.4, yBerakhot 63b. 34 The opponent is attempting here to defend idol worship (bAvodah Zarah 54b). To be precise, the term also appears in the Bavli's citation of the Mishna in bAvodah Zarah 44b. 35 E.g. Gregory of Nazianzen, Oratio 25.6, Justin, Dialogue with Trypho 8.2. For more examples for Christian "philosophers" in Syriac and Greek see J. Payne Smith, A Compendious Syriac Dictionary, 443f; and G.W.H. Lampe, A Patristic Greek Lexicon (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1961), 774. See also, in this volume, Burton L. Visotzky, "Goys '51'n't Us: Rabbinic Anti-Gentile Polemic in Yerushalmi Berachot 9:1," note 22.
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narrative might echo the charges Sasanian officials made against Christians. The Palestinian story of the bribed judge does not specify the law case. The Talmud makes it a dispute of inheritance between Imma Shalom and, her brother, either pretended (A) or real (B): [3A] (One day), they wanted to laugh about him [the philosopher] She brought him a golden lamp And they [the siblings] went to him [the philosopher] [4] She said to him: "I want you to divide the estate of my [late] father." The judge said: "Divide." He [Rabban Gamliel] said to him: "It is written in the Torah that he gave us: 'If there is a son, the daughter does not inherit.' " [3B] One day, he [Rabban Gamliel] wanted to laugh about him [the philosopher] They went to him [the philosopher] Imma Shalom brought him [the philosopher] a golden lamp [4] She said to him: "I want you to divide the estate of my [late] father." The judge said: "Divide." They said to him: "It is written in the Torah that he gave us: 'If there is a son, the daughter does not inherit.' "
Once the judge reaches his verdict after receiving a bribe, either Rabban Gamliel (A) or the two siblings (B) confront the ignorant philosopher with a paraphrase of the Rabbinic objections to Imma Shalom's claim for the inheritance. No matter whether the conflict between the siblings is introduced as pretended or as real, one wonders what the issue could have been between them in the story's economy. The lawsuit must have been credible enough to convince the audience that it could have really occurred (B), or at least that the judge would believe it (A). In order to understand the legal reality the story presupposes, I suggest taking into account the aforementioned legal autonomy that the Sasanian Empire accorded to its citizens. Jews and Christians would typically fall under Jewish and Christian jurisdiction, respectively . We can imagine that this system led at times to ambiguities. And indeed, Christian jurisprudence, in contrast to its Rabbinic counterpart, accorded an inheritance to women who had brothers. For the understanding of our story, it is worth to recall the precise background of the respective traditions. The rabbis took various positions on the story of the daughters of Zelophehad in Numbers 27.5-11, the locus classicus of gender in Biblical inheritance law. According to the Mishna, the second-century Palestinian legal code that forms the basis of the Babylonian Talmud's judicial system, a daughter could not inherit if a son existed: 11:1' tl"v 1:1 (Bava Batra 8.2). Yet, as Johann Maier has pointed out, the ruling led to many problems in
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post-mishnaic times, and our story alludes to these problems. 36 Eventually, the Bavli confirms the mishnaic ruling against daughters (bKetubot 52b), as do (post-Talmudic) Gaonic responsa. 37 The story, however, alludes to much more than to the Rabbinic legal specificity with which Maier portrays the issue. In her study on Rabbinic inheritance law for women, Judith Hauptman has shown how much the Mishna was at odds with most surrounding cultures, especially with the law practiced by the Roman rulers of Palestine, and just how many traces exist of a heated debate over this issue. 38 According to Hauptman, many strands of "feminist impulse" within both Palestinian and Babylonian Rabbinic culture kept challenging the mishnaic ruling that if there was a son, a woman would not inherit. What was true in third-century Palestine became even more poignant with the Christianization of the Roman Empire. The Byzantine rulers maintained the Roman law which gave equal status in matters of inheritance to sons and daughters, while Christian bishops explicitly censured fathers for favoring sons over daughters in their wills. 39 Furthermore, in the Sasanian Empire, Zoroastrian women who had brothers were much more likely to inherit than their Jewish counterparts, adding to the tensions created by the rabbis' ruling.40 Finally, the SyroRoman Law Book, an account of traditional Christian law in the Sasanian Empire from early Islamic times and our best indicator for Christian practice in the Sasanian Empire in the time of the Talmud, makes it clear that Christian sons and daughters inherited equally on intestacy, and had a substantial right to a minimum inheritance in any case. 41 In this respect, 36 In the words of Maier: "Hier liegt also ein in amoraischer Zeit intensiv diskutiertes rechtliches Problem vor, und die Erzahlung in bSabb 116-b schlieBt die damals aktuelle Diskussion ein." (Judische Auseinandersetzungen, 84) See also Maier's references to further literature. 37 Ibid., 85. 38 Judith Hauptman, "Women and Inheritance in Rabbinic Texts: Identifying Elements of a Critical Feminist Impulse," in Introducing Tosefta (ed. Harry Fox and Tirzah Meacham; Hoboken, NJ: Ktav Publishing House, 1999),221-240. 39 Anttie Arjava, Women and Law in Late Antiquity (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), 62. Johann Maier has pointed out that the philosopher decided according to Roman law. Even though he insists that the text is a "spate amoraische Komposition," Maier does not take into account the Christianization of the Roman Empire (Maier, op. cit., 81). 40 See B. Hjerrild, "Ay6ken: Women between Father and Husband in the Sassanian Era," in Medioiranica: Proceedings of the International Colloqium on Middle Iranian Studies, Orientalia Lovaniensia 48 (ed. Wojciech Skalmowski and Alois van Tongerloo; Leuven: Peters, 1993), 79-86; cf. A. Perikhanian, "Iranian Society and Law," in The Cambridge History of Iran, vol. 2, The Median and Achaemenian Periods (ed. Ilya Gershevitch; Cambridge: CUP, 1985), 111,2,646. 41 See the Syro-Roman Law Book, L 1; and Arjava, Women and Law in Late Antiquity,65.
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Christianity must have been very attractive to Jewish women. The Talmudic story acknowledges this fact and evokes the fear of women's legal "emancipation" no matter whether Imma Shalom actually sues l)er brother (version B), or only pretends to do so (A). The story addresses the issue in a typical Talmudic manner: by setting the issue on stage and acting it out. The judge is a Christian who claims to be righteous. When Imma Shalom asks him to divide the heritage, she challenges Rabbinic law (B), or pretends to do so (A). In version B, as in Zoroastrian42 and Christian heresiology43 and in other parts of the Babylonian Talmud, the woman represents the dangerous insider who challenges not only one ruling, but orthodoxy as such. 44 In version A, the Lady complaineth a bit too little. Imma Shalom's orthodox conformity to Rabbinic law and her implicit willingness to give up her heritage, should their father really die (or have died), denies the very choice that was economically most advantageous to the sisters and wives of the rabbis: to go to a non-Jewish court. By silencing any female voice, the text even sharpens the contrast between Rabbinic law on the one side, and the concerns of women on the other side. 42 The aSSOcIatIOn of deviant insiders and women is suggested in a Rivaya (Responsum) based on the Pahlavi Videvdat, which discusses the women who mingle with outsiders in conjunction with the ahrmok, a blasphemous heretic. Potentially, both bring about the destruction of the world. See Kaikhusroo M. Jamaspasa, "On the Heretic and Immoral Woman in Zoroastrianism," in Orientalia: J. Duchesne-Guillemin emerito oblata (Leiden: E J Brill, 1984), 243-266. See also Ketayun H. Gould, "Outside the Discipline, Inside the Experience: Women in Zoroastrianism," in Religion and Women (ed. A. Sharma; Albany: SUNY Press, 1994), 139-182; and Jamsheed K. Choksy, "Woman in the Zoroastrian Book of Primal Creation: Images and Functions within a Religious Tradition," Mankind Quarterly 29 (1988): 73-82. 43 Todd Breyfogle, "Magic, Women, and Heresy in the Late Empire: the Case of the Priscillianists," in Marvin Meyer and Paul Mirecki, eds., Ancient Magic and Ritual Power (Leiden: Brill 1995), 435-454; and Virginia Burrus, "The Heretical Woman as Symbol in Alexander, Athanasius, Epiphanius, and Jerome," HTR 84 (1991): 229-248. 44 See Shulamit Valler, Woman and Womanhood in the Talmud (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1999); Meir Bar-Ilan, "Witches in the Bible and in the Talmud," in Approaches to Ancient Judaism 5 (ed. Jacob Neusner; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1993), 7-32; Simcha Fishbane, "Most Women Engage in Sorcery: an Analysis of Female Sorceresses in the Babylonian Talmud," in Approaches to Ancient Judaism (ed. J. Neusner; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1993), 143-165; and Judith Hauptman, "Images of Women in the Talmud," in Religion and Sexism (ed. Rosemary Radford Ruether; New York: Simon and Schuster, 1974), 184-212; Tal Ilan, " 'Stolen Water is Sweet': Women and Their Stories between Bavli and Yerushalmi," in The Talmud Yerushalmi and Graeco-Roman Culture HI (ed. Peter Schafer; Tiibingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2002), 185-223, and Anne Goldfeld, "Women as Sources of Torah in the Rabbinic Tradition," Judaism 24 (1975): 245-256.
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In both versions, Imma Shalom enacts her request in a way that has even more Christian features than her legal position. A passage from the Diatessaron (28.33) and Peshitta's Gospel of Luke (l2.l3f) illustrates this point. I cite from latter one: Somebody in the crowd said to him [Jesus]: "Teacher, tell my brother to divide (~) the inheritance (o<~o~,--) with me. But he [Jesus] said: "Man, who has set me to be a judge (.6..:\) or divider (~) above you?"
As Guedeman has pointed out, the Talmud uses the language of this passage when Imma Shalom addresses the Christian judge, describing the same situation. 45 I want to add to his observation that the text employs the same Aramaic roots as the Peshitta Gospel for "judge," "division," and "heritage." Jesus, unlike the story's judge, declines jurisdiction. The Syriac interpretation of the story, however, turned the story on its head. Ephraem, for example, in his commentary in the Diatessaron, explains the passage by stating that Jesus pretends not to be a judge to malevolent inquirers, even though he is in effect the judge (3.12). The Talmud with its implicit reference to Luke conveys the tension between the Gospel and its Syriac interpretation: a true follower of Jesus or the gospel would not assume this task. Luke's gospel carries on with a diatribe against the very greed that marks the Talmud's Christian judge and certainly exposes his motives for accepting the office. Abrogation of the Torah To the Rabbinic objections against his ruling in Imma Shalom's favor, the philosopher responds with a supersessionist argument. He connects the exile to the abrogation of the Torah and its replacement with the Gospel, which allegedly states that sons and daughters would inherit equally. [5] The Philosopher said to them: "From the day that you were exiled from your land, the Torah of Moses was taken away from you and [the Torah] of the Gospel was given, and it is written in it: 'Daughter and Son inherit equally. '"
Just as the objection to the first ruling paraphrased rather than cited Rabbinic law, the philosopher paraphrases Christian law rather than citing from the Gospel, which does not contain such a clear statement. 46 The philosopher dismisses Rabban Gamliel' s, or the siblings' reference, to Moritz Guedemann, Religionsgeschichtliche Studien (Leipzig: Leiner, 1876), 75. It has been suggested that one could read the statement that sister and brother inherit equally, or "like one" (N1n:» as application of Galatians 3.28 on the law of inheritance. If there indeed is "neither man nor women," but all are "one in Christ," then it would make more sense in that they also inherit equally, like one. I agree, however, with Kuhn, that the reading is far-fetched (Karl Georg Kuhn, "Giljonim und sifre minim," in Eltester, ed., Judentum, Urchristentum, Kirche, 54. 45
46
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Jewish law and simply declares the abrogation of the Torah following the Jews' exile and the giving of the Gospel, which version B even calls "the Torah of the Gospel. "47 The philosopher invokes a very p~inful issue in Rabbinic identity. The validity of the Torah in Exile was indeed a major topic of contention among the rabbis, and indeed, most of the Torah's agricultural laws were never extended beyond Palestine. 48 The philosopher connects the exile of the Jews with the Gospel, and reinforces his bold claim with a poetic, teasing homonymy of the words Exile and Gospel, l'n'~" and 1"~'''' At this point, the Talmud reflects on longstanding Christian traditions. According to much of Christian lore, the exile was a punishment for the Jews' denial of Jesus as Messiah. Such a claim is already wittily crafted into Jesus' prophecy of the exile in Luke 21.20ff, and exploited in great detail by Eusebius in his Ecclesiastical History.49 Eusebius was well received in the Syriac tradition, and the Talmud puts a teaching like that of Eusebius in the mouth of the philosopher quite accurately when connecting the exile to the introduction of the Gospel. 50
Jesus and the Torah With the philosopher's abrogation of Jewish law, Imma Shalom could have won the case, had her brother Rabban Gamliel not offered a bigger bribe. [6] The next day Rabban Gamliel went back and brought him a Libyan donkey. The philosopher said: "I went down to the end of the Gospel, and it is written in it: 'I am the Gospel,51 I came (~n~n~) not to reduce the Torah of Moses, and not to add to the Torah of Moses I came.' And it is written in it: 'If there is a son, the daughter does not inherit' ."
The Libyan ass seems to be a Talmudic adaptation of the young ass that appears in the Pesikta, the earlier Rabbinic story on which our story is 47 The term can mean either the Torah as such, or the Torah as the Jewish law. See Sokoloff, A Dictionary of Babylonian Jewish Aramaic (Ramat-Gan: Bar Han University Press),95f. 48 Cf. bHagiga 5b on the exile and the end of the rule of Torah. 49 Eusebius connects the death of James with the outbreak of the revolt that led to the temple's destruction (Ecclesiastical History 2.23). See also Luke 19.41-44 and Origen, Against Celsus 4.22. It is interesting to see that none of the Jewish or Christian authors involved, other than Luke, take note of the fact that the exile in 72 only concerned Jerusalem, while the end of the predominantly Jewish political unit did not come until after the Bar Kokhba revolt. See Israel Yuval, Two Nations in Your Womb, 71-81. 50 Sebastian P. Brock, "The Syriac Background," in Archbishop Theodore: Commemorative Studies on his Life and Influence (ed. M. Lapidge; Cambridge: CUP, 1995),30-53. 51 "I am the Gospel" is missing in the Wilna print, yet attested in all other manuscripts.
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based. Its appearance in the Pesikta, in turn, relied on a Greco-Roman Rabbinic context, perhaps a proverb, a proverb which the Talmud probably did not grasp. The story of 1mma Shalom modified the image, yet the donkey's primary function in the story stays the same: it is an item worth more than a golden lamp. The bribe turns the judgment to Rabban Gamliel's favor. On the one hand, the impartial philosopher, justifying his change of mind, shows his own arbitrariness and corruption. On the other hand, he equally exposes a major contradiction between the Syriac Church and the words of Jesus according to the Diatessaron (8.46) or the Gospel of Matthew (5.17), the latter of which reads as follows: Do not think that I have come (~~r<'~) to abolish the law or the prophets, I have not come to abolish but to fulfill. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter of the law shall pass away until all is accomplished.
Just as in the previous case (Luke 12.13f), the Talmud's adaptation pays close attention to wording and structure of the Gospel passage. The Talmud uses the words of Jesus ("I have come") twice, employing the same word as the Peshitta does, and placing them in a similar sentence structure. 52 The story translates Matthew's "the law and the prophets" to "the Torah of Moses." Most importantly, the Talmud portrays the judge's ruling as equivalent to Matthew's implied message, according to which the coming of Jesus did not abrogate the validity of the Torah, and therewith the precedence of sons over daughters. The Christian philosopher first argued that the law was abrogated, whereas part of his own tradition can easily be understood as saying that this was not the case. The fickle judge chooses - according to the highest bid - one of the two options a multivocal tradition offers to him. The passage in the Diatessaron and in Matthew, obviously, was very problematic for supersessionist Christian commentators (and a favorite passage of Christian Jews).53 Ephraem, for example, in his commentary on 52 My gratitude to Peter Schafer for pointing out the importance of the repetition of "I have come" in assessing the Talmud's rendering of Matthew. 53 The clearest reference to Matthew 5.17 is found in the Kerygmata Petrou 2.4. The orthodox tractates against heretics show that this is the passage that the Law-abiding Christians time and again quoted when justifying their belief in both Torah and Messiah. Epiphanius, in his Panarion, reports that the Cerinthians made use of the Gospel of Matthew and observed the law due to this text. Another illuminating intertext might be Epiphanius' use of Deuteronomy 27.26 in an attack against the Nazareans in his Panarion (r.331, lI8.1 in Williams' translation). Here, he cites our passage (Matthew 5), and then mentions that Moses, after having proclaimed the whole law, "came to the end of the book" (TjA8EV ElTl TO TEp\-ta Tiis [3([3AOU) and says: "Cursed be he that does not confirm the words of this law to them." The language of "coming to the end" recalls that of the philosopher in our story, which, interestingly, is preceded by a discussion of the Beit NitzreJe, that has been equated with the NarareanslNarzoreans (see above, note 26).
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the Diatessaron, solves the obvious problem of the passage just by qualifying "the law and the prophets" as "the commandments of the New Testament" (VI.3). The phrase "the commandments of the New Testament" is particularly illuminating in light of the Talmud's phrase "the Torah of the Gospel" in version B, which thereby depicts Ephraem's position quite accurately. Obviously, what the Bavli presents as its Gospel quotation is slightly different from what we find in the Syriac Matthew. While the general message and the sentence structure are very similar to those preserved in Matthew, the Bavli understands Jesus as quoting Deuteronomy 4.1: So now, Israel, give heed to the statues and ordinances that I am teaching you to observe, so that you may live to enter and inherit (OIlIll1") the land that the LORD, the God of your ancestors, is giving you. You must neither add anything to it nor take away anything from it, but keep the commandments of the LORD your God with which I am charging you.
The Talmud reverses the order of the sentence in Deuteronomy, and replaces Matthew's "to abolish" with "to cut away," and "to fulfill" with "to add." Given our lack of knowledge about the Talmud's sources, it is difficult to know whether the Talmud alludes to other Jesus-traditions beyond the Gospels of the Syriac church. 54 When looking at the context of Deuteronomy 4.1, however, we see that the Talmud would have an excellent reason to amend its Gospel rendering with a Deuteronomic quotation. Namely, in Deuteronomy, the inheritance of Palestine is clearly tied to the very issue under discussion, the observance of the commandments. The Talmudic story thereby associates' the siblings' inheritance with that of the Land, currently ruled by Christians who do not abide the law - but potentially should, according to the Talmud's reading of Matthew. The Talmud seems to suggest that Rabban Gamliel' s claim to the inheritance of his father is tantamount to the "keeping of the commandments," which Deuteronomy rewards with the inheritance of the Land of Israel. It would thereby simultaneously prove that the Christians' claim to the land of Israel is unjustified. According to the Talmud, their insistence on the fact that the exile abrogated the Torah, as placed in the The evidence, however, cannot be assessed before we gain a clearer picture of such groups in the Sasanian Empire in the fifth or sixth century. 54 As mentioned in the previous footnote, the Talmudic story appears in the context of the discussion of he "books of the Heretics," and many commentators have succumbed to the temptation to connect theses books with the Gospels used by Jewish Jesus-believers. In lack of any textual evidence, however, I suggest to suspend a decision on this issue until further evidence arises. Yet, we should note that other texts that have been argued as being originally Jewish, such as the "Two Ways" tractate of the Didache (4.13) and Revelation (22.18), explicitly reference Deuteronomy 4.1.
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mouth of the philosopher, is inconsistent with the scriptural promise which ties inheritance of the land to the keeping of the commandments. Within the economy of the story, the judge's moral corruption is exposed after Imma Shalom tries to save her case, and Rabban Gamliel gleefully presents to the philosopher - also to his sister in version B - the shards of a shattered reputation. [7] She said to the judge: "Let your light shine with the lamp! [Examine your judgment!]."55 Rabban Gamliel said to her: "A donkey came and knocked down the lamp."
The Talmud slightly changes the words that the woman in the Pesikta, the earlier Rabbinic version of the story, used. There, she urged the judge to let her "case" (p1) shine forth, in precise reference to Isaiah 51.3f. The Talmud, however, matches Imma Shalom's words to the Diatessaron (8.40) and Matthew (5.l5f), the verse immediately preceding the one that the philosopher in the Talmud uses to justify his new verdict (cited according to the Peshitta): No one after lighting a lamp (~u.), puts it under the bushel (r<)nr<m) , but on the lampstand (r<)nl=), and it illuminates the entire house. Thus let your light shine forth (,CI..:>.imcu im.u) before the people, so that they see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven. (5.15f)
When Imma Shalom gently (A), or not so gently (B), reminds the judge about the bribe, she gives him words derived from Matthew's Jesus in Aramaic: "Let your light shine forth," 1i:";'U .,;'JJ. The Aramaic term for the lamp is also the same as that in the Gospel: shraga, changed from the Hebrew term in the Pesikta in accordance with Matthew. 56 Imma Shalom's call to the philosopher to let his light shine forth is inspired by the Palestinian Pesikta, but at the same time it uses Matthew's writing. The Talmud thereby integrates the paradoxical nature of the corrupt Christian's stance with aspects of its own tradition. Rabban Gamliel's exposure of the corruption represents the satirical climax. Gamliel manages to combine the reference to the second Matthean verse about the light which must not be hidden - with an acknowledgement that 55 Version B adds: "Examine your judgment!" The usage of the term r~lI, a pael from the root l'lI, "to consider watch, guard, meditate, study, speculate" (Jastrow, ibid, 1054), might be yet another play on the Syriac term for "gospel." It is homonymous to the root that appears in 'avon gilayon in our story (cf. above), and perhaps this might be another implicit interpretation of the term. When associated with the previous readings, one could equally read "consider the error". 56 We could even get carried away with Guedeman's proposal that the biblical Hebrew cognate to "bushel" i7:)1n is a homonym for the Aramaic Ki7:)n, "donkey," which would imply a hilarious duplicity of meaning - but at the same time presuppose a Hebrew Matthew (Guedemann, Religionsgeschichtliche Studien, 77).
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he knew about the plot all along, and hence that the judge had no moral justification to his office (and hence Christianity to the land of Israel). Overturning the Lamp The reference to the overturning of the Lamp now sounds somewhat different. As Burton Visotzky convincingly argues, we can safely assume that the Talmudic author was aware of the Greco-Roman image of "overturning the lamp" as a euphemism for sexual orgies. As mentioned before, the image of the lamp. was commonly used in anti -Christian polemics that accused Christians of mixing agape with eros. Contrasting the lamp of the Christian orgies, a symbol for moral corruption, with Jesus' and Isaiah's lamp, serving as a light to the nations, leads to the exposure of the alleged separation between post-Constantinian Christian claims to land and power, and Jesus' actual teachings. The Talmudic author's intimate knowledge of Matthew's gospel led to one of the most artistic Rabbinic polemics with Christianity that I have ever encountered. Justice and Inheritance The Talmud would not be the Talmud if there was no additional room in the story for another meta-text, a biblical passage which it does not cite, but comments on tacitly. In Deuteronomy 16.19f, we read: You must not bend justice (!j!:llZl?J), and you must not be partial, you must not take bribes since a bribe blinds the eye of the wise and subverts the cause of the righteous (C~P~1l1: ~'::J1). Justice, and only justice (p1l1: P1l1:), you shall pursue so that you will live and inherit (nlZl'~') the land that the Lord your God has given you.
(1n1lZl)
Grasping the story's ways of unmasking the gap between its times' Christianity and one of the Christians' sacred texts, we can now understand how the Talmud responded to Christian claims for the Land of Israel. In Deuteronomy, "Justice," ~~)lzm, can again also mean judgment. In "bribes," 1mlZi, there is the same root as in the story's term for bribe, N1nlZi. "The cause of the righteous," tl'v'1:lt ,.,:11, in Deuteronomy also implies the words or cause of those who ought to win the case. The wise man is the false philosopher whose eye is blinded by the siblings' bribes. (Offering a bribe to a judge, as far as I know, is never admonished in the Torah). And if we read in Deuteronomy "Justice, and only justice, you shall pursue so that you will live and inherit (I11Zi.",) the land that the Lord your God has given you," we find again the same root for the story's main theme: inheriting the land. According to the Talmud's apology, even though Christians ruled the land of Israel at the time, the moral corruption and bribery of the Christian philosopher makes it clear that this must be a temporary situation. The Talmud's meta-textual reference of Deuteronomy 16 might also include the knowledge that the earlier Palestinian rabbis had
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interpreted this scriptural text as saying that the appointment of judges guarantees a life in Israel, as we read in Sifre Shoftim I: Another interpretation of "Justice, justice you shall pursue" (j?'~ j?'~, Deuteronomy 16.20) Follow a good court, ... the court ofR. Eli'ezer "So that you wi11live and inherit the land," this teaches that the appointment of judges is good for living in Israel and to inhabit (l:l:PIll':1~') the earth and not to fall by the sword.
With this, we come back to where we started. For the earlier Rabbinic tradition, Rabbi Eli'ezer, Imma Shalom's husband, epitomized the ideal image of a judge, but in the Babylonian Talmud he also stood for those who were dangerously close to Christianity. He was excommunicated ex post facto by the Babylonian Talmud. Version A seeks to salvage at least his sister's reputation by having her participate in Rabban Gamliel's practical joke on the philosopher. Yet Version B brands her as a heretic, and just like her brother was formerly known for a good court, she equally seeks to undermine Rabbinic jurisprudence. Since her ambition to improve the inheritance rights of women dovetails with Christians' handling of inheritance, connecting the two issues provides a perfect target for the defaming all dangerous insiders past and present.
Conclusion We now can see that later editors would have much reason to doubt their eyes if they saw Version B, the version of Ms. Oxford 366 (and Vatican 108). In version B, Imma Shalom and the philosopher stand for Christianity, for the abrogation of the Torah and of Rabbinic rule on women's inheritance; whereas Rabban Gamliel stands for Israel and the Torah's fulfillment. The story in this version would portray a woman as independently negotiating all societal means which would ensure her heritage, and she would not refrain from siding with a representative of the arch-enemy. Changing ayudto a vav, however, from Ms. Vatican 108, and also deleting the reference to a real lawsuit in Ms. Oxford 366, would make the story much less radical. In version A, reversely, the philosopher takes his side alone, opposed by two Rabbinic figures. I cannot imagine a time and place in which a copyist of a Talmud would have changed version B into version A for any reason (other than having another text). And yet, version A tells a coherent story and represents the text of the majority which cannot be dismissed based upon an argument based on a lectio difficilior. While version B portrays Imma Shalom as actively involved in her struggle for "emancipation," version A, in the end, at least acknowledges the importance of occasional
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solidarity between the genders: it acknowledges that a rabbi needs a woman's help in order to defeat a Christian! In both versions, the story stylizes the respective Christian and Rabbinic rulings on heritage - to exclude or include daughters if a son is present - as the question of the rightful inheritance of God, the Torah, and the Land of Israel itself. It is fully aware that the situation of exile is not easily reconciled with this claim, but provides ample argument that the Christians (as perceived by the Talmud) do not deserve the Holy Land, and hence the Torah and God's favor even less. The story of Imma Shalom uses a number of sources from the Christian Gospel tradition and shows that the Syriac Christian interpretation of these texts stands in tension with the Gospels' words of Jesus. Previous scholarship on the discussed Talmudic passage did not fully consider the Palestinian predecessor of the story in the Pesikta; it did not take into account the variant reading of version B; and it was limited to a consideration of the Gospel material alone. My interpretation of the story differentiates between the Gospel and later Christian materials, and tried to assess the story's legal and cultural background in the Sasanian Empire. The analysis offers potential for furthering our understanding of Babylonian Rabbinic culture, and can be summarized as follows. The Babylonian rabbis engaged seriously with Christian intellectual and political challenges, using their mastery of texts as their chief weapon. They knew the Gospels very well, but usually allude to them rather than citing them (confirming the recent findings of Peter Schafer). The rabbis' arguments are sophisticated and use Christian material, yet their implied audience seems to have been exclusively Rabbinic. If my suggested analysis is even remotely correct, it becomes clear that the story's level of discourse and implicitness necessitates familiarity with the Rabbinic, the Christian, and the Biblical tradition. Finally, and most importantly, scholarship on Rabbinic Judaism increasingly comes to terms with history. The alleged Rabbinic isolationism, which still survives in many scholars' attribution of ignorance of the most basic Christian texts to the rabbis, not only runs counter to the political realities of Late Antiquity, but also ignores the Rabbinic genius that allowed them to re-invent their own tradition while reacting to the changing world around them. The story in both versions seems fully aware of the effects of discrimination against women. Version A responds to this awareness by insisting on Imma Shalom's help when it comes to facing the Christian enemy. Version B depicts Imma Shalom as a dangerous insider who can only be conquered with Rabbinic shrewdness and learnedness.
The Other in Us Liturgica, Poetica, Polemica ISRAEL JACOB YUVAL
In this paper I wish to propose a new interpretation of several of the betterknown daily prayers in the Siddur (Jewish Prayer Book). I will argue that reading these prayers in the broader context of Christian liturgy may enable us to uncover their covert meanings, the most important of which being the attempt to compete with a rival Christian alternative. If this is indeed the case, we may find in several of the Jewish prayers, composed during the Byzantine period and thereafter, the echo of an internal Jewish effort to deny a competing element, which both dwells outside the worshipping community and threatens it from within by blurring its own self-identity. Public worship seeks to establish a collective "self," having a broad inner consensus capable of removing and rejecting such a threat. As a rule, we tend to explain the meaning of a liturgical text on three levels. First of all, we ask what was intended by the author of the prayer or by those who introduced it in the liturgical framework. This question is of particular interest to historians who seek to reconstruct the "original" meaning of a given text. Second, we ask how the prayer was understood within the "standard" literature of traditional exegesis, a question concerning researchers in the areas of custom and folklore. Third, there are those who inquire into the meaning of the prayer for the worshippers themselves, in the past and in the present, at different times and places - a question for anthropologists and students of religion. 1 These three categories begin with the assumption that at any given time, in any given society, a prayer has one "interpretation," derived from the overt meaning of the words and their overall context. This interpretation may change over time or in different places, but only one accepted meaning exists at a particular instance and in a specific location. It is clear, however, that like any other text, a poetic composition, such as a prayer, may also have several different meanings within it simultaneously. It is therefore appropriate to apply broader rules of interpretation to such texts, 1 Victor Turner, The Forest of Symbols: Aspects of Ndembu Ritual (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1967), 19--47.
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which will distinguish not only their overt literal contents, but also the cultural context within which they exist. While these broad contexts are no longer clear to today's worshippers, nor were they always clear in the past, they deserve no lesser weight than explicit meaning. My main goal here is to uncover this polyphonic resonance. Hence, this paper is an attempt to argue the existence of a cultural subconscious that is present even without the active knowledge of the worshippers. I would like to solidify these exegetical possibilities by uncovering the meanings of the opening and concluding sections of the daily Morning (or Shaharit) Prayer. These sections were chosen because they were added to the Siddur in the Byzantine period, an era when tension between Judaism and Christianity was particularly intense.
1. Prelude to the Morning Service: Ashrei and Pesukei de-Zimra One of the opening sections of the Jewish Morning Service, known as Pesukei de-Zimra, literally, "Verses of Song," is composed essentially of the last six chapters of the book of Psalms, 145-150. Testimony to the inclusion of psalms within the Prayer Book already appears in the Judean Desert Scrolls.2 During the second century of the Common Era, however, their status was still rather uncertain, as they were not considered an obligatory, normative part of prayer. This is implied by the dictum of Rabbi Y ossi ben Halafta: "May my portion be among those who complete the Hallel every day"3 - indicating that it was not yet considered an obligatory part of the order of prayer. It would seem that the practice of reciting the final six chapters of the Psalter in Pesukei de-Zimra originated as a substitute for the recitation of the entire book of Psalms or substantial parts thereof. This may have been done by the "pious men of old," who, as we shall hear later, waited one hour before praying. 4 A unique status was enjoyed by the first psalm in this group, Psalm 145, which begins with the words, "A Psalm of praise of David." Two additional verses, containing the word '1WN ("happy" or "blessed") three times, were inserted at the beginning of this psalm: 1U7,,n'J 'JW,' '1WN :1'D "":1' ("Happy are they who dwell in Thy house, Forever shall they praise Thee, Selah"; Ps 84: 5), and ":1'N ':1W 017:1 '1WN," :1:l:lW 017:1 '1WN ("Happy the people whose lot is thus, Happy the people whose God is the 2 11 Q PS a; Moshe Weinfeld, Early Jewish Liturgy: From Psalms to the Prayers in Qumran and Rabbinic Literature [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 2004), 173-174. 3 B. Shabbat 118b. 4 See below, n. 16.
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Lord"; Ps 144:15). These verses grew to be so deeply associated with Psalm 145, that the entire psalm became known by the opening word in Hebrew, Ashrei. 5 A third addition was made at the end, from Psalm 115:18: "But we, we will bless the Lord henceforth and forever, Hallelujah!" Later it became customary to recite Ashrei on two additional occasions: at the end of the Morning Prayer and as an introduction to the Afternoon Prayer, Minhah. This triple recitation of the prayer was highly regarded in the Talmud: "Whoever recites 'A Psalm of David' [three times a day] is assured that he shall enjoy a share in the World to Come."6 Let us begin with understanding this collage of verses. The first Ashrei of the three places the words "Forever shall they praise Thee, Selah" at the beginning of the prayer, while Psalm 115: 18, with which it closes, concludes with the word "Hallelujah" ("Praise the Lord!") - a suitable beginning and ending for a hymn of praise to God. This is clear proof that the additions before and after Psalm 145 were intended as a general introduction to Pesukei de-Zimra. 7 The last five hymns of the Psalter (Pss. 146-150) begin and end with the word "Hallelujah," while the book as a whole (and hence this unit) ends with the phrase, "Let all that has breath praise the Lord, Hallelujah!" Thus, Psalm 145 - which itself opens with the words "A Song of Praise, of David" - serves as an introduction to the five hymns of "Hallelujah" that come in its wake, while the additions before and after it constitute a frame for the psalm itself, emphasizing the motif of praise. This is the simple and straightforward literary explanation for the addition of the three Ashrei phrases before Psalm 145 and the verse "And we, we will bless the Lord" thereafter. On the surface, this explanation, which assumes that we are dealing here with a purely internal-Jewish development, should be adequate. However, I would like to suggest that there is an additional layer of hidden or alluded meanings that are highly plausible, even if their presence is not based upon firm and hard facts. In fact, the Talmudic sources already suggest that Ashrei had more farreaching significance: namely, that it expressed an eschatological longing.
5 Thus already in b. Berakhot 4b: "R. Yo han an said: Why is no [verse opening with] nun said in Ashrei?" According to Weinfeld (op cit., n. 61), this statement ofR. Yohanan indicates that the addition of the verse "Ashrei" was already an accomplished fact in his day (third century CE). But in MS Paris 671, R. Yohanan's dictum reads: "Why is no [verse opening with the letter] nun recited in 'A Psalm of David'?" It thus seems reasonable to assume that the reading "Ashrei" reflects a later change. 6 b. Berakhot 4b. 7 Its earliest mention is in b. Shabbat l18b, where Rashi comments that these are "two psalms of praises: 'Praise the Lord from the Heavens' and 'Praise God in His holy place' "- that is, Psalms 148 and 150 alone.
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This is implied by two Talmudic homilies attributed to Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi: 8 Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi said: From whence do we know of the Resurrection of the Dead from the Torah? As it says, "Happy are they who dwell in Thy house, forever shall they praise Thee, Selah." It does not say"",;" "they praised Thee," but rather "";,,, "they shall praise Thee ... " We infer from this that Resurrection of the Dead is implied in the Torah. Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi said [further]: Whoever recites song in this world shall say it in the World to Come, as is said, "Happy are they who dwell in Thy house, Forever shall they praise Thee, Selah."
Both these homilies are based upon the parallelism between the first half of the verse, "Happy are they who dwell in Thy house," phrased in the present tense, and the second half, in the future tense: "forever shall they praise Thee, Selah." Only those who dwell now in the house of God - in the Temple or synagogue or Study House - will have the privilege to praise Him in the future. 9 There is no hint in R. Yehoshua ben Levi's dicta that Ashrei was included within the rubric of Pesukei de-Zimra. Rather, there is the impression that this verse was simply a proof-text to him (asmakhta bealma), and not a liturgical element in common use. Ashrei was probably introduced as a prologue to Psalm 145 at a later date, by which time Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi's homily may have served as background for the verse's eschatological significance. Eschatological references as such are completely absent from Psalm 145 itself. The psalm speaks in the present tense, not in the future tense; and it posits God in contrast to all the creatures of the world. Nor is there any element of religious particularism. The word ?~, "all," is repeated twelve times in this psalm, always in a universal sense: "The Lord is good to all, and His tenderness is over all His works ... Thy kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and Thy dominion is through all generations. Lord, Thou upholdest all the falling, and raisest up all who are bowed down. The eyes of all wait to Thee, and Thou givest them their food in its season" (vv. 9, 13-15), etc. There is a distinction here between those who love God and evildoers, but not one between Israel and the nations. The psalm as a whole is constructed in an alphabetical acrostic. However, in the version of the Masoretic text, the verse beginning with the b. Sanhedrin 91b. Compare another eschatological exegesis of R. Yehoshua ben Levi on the same verse: "R. Yehoshua b. Levi said: Whoever enters synagogues and study houses in this world. shall merit to enter synagogues and study houses in the Future to Come. From whence? As is said, 'Happy are they that dwell in your house; they shall forever praise you, Selah.' " 8
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letter nun is absent. It does, however, appear in the Septuagint as well in the Syriac and in one Hebrew manuscript: "The Lord is faithful in all His words, and gracious in all His deeds." This verse increases the stock of the word "all" by two, and the universal and non-particularistic significance of the psalm is preserved as well. In the third century this psalm underwent a total change in meaning. R. Y ohanan, contemporary of R. Yehoshua ben Levi, tried to explain why the verse beginning with nun was absent from the text: "Because it contains the downfall of the enemies of Israel [a euphemism for Israel itself], as is written, 'Fallen (;"~J), no more to rise, is the virgin Israel' [Amos 5:2]."10 The verse in Amos continues with the words, "forsaken on her land, with none to raise her up." How did our preacher arrive at the strange notion that the missing verse in Psalm 145 was the one in Amos 5 beginning with the letter nun? The answer is based upon the subsequent verse in Psalm 145, which begins with the next Hebrew letter samakh: "Lord, Thou upholdest all the falling ... " Since God supports all those who have fallen, our exegete came to the conclusion that the previous missing verse must have described their falling.ii Thus, Rabbi Yohanan gave a new interpretation both to the verse in Amos and to Psalm 145 as a whole. Amos' prophecy about the ultimate fall of "the virgin of Israel" is seemingly decisive proof for Christianity's claim of the eternal exile of Israel and completely undermines the basis for Jewish messianic faith. If Israel will never rise again after falling down, for whom and for what purpose will Messiah come? A third-century Jew could not accept such an interpretation. The solution was to connect the problematic verse in Amos to Psalm 145, "Lord, Thou upholdest all the falling," and to claim that God will indeed restore the virgin Israel in the future. Our preacher thereby accomplished a threefold goal: 1) explaining why the verse is missing; 2) dealing with the inherent difficulty of Amos 5:2, which seems to imply an eternal exile; and 3) transforming Psalm 145 from a universal hymn into one alluding to the salvation of Israel. The effort to give an eschatological meaning to Psalm 145 sheds new light upon the addition with which that same psalm closes: "And we, we will bless the Lord henceforth and forever, Halleluj ah!" (Ps 115: 18). The words 0"31 131, "forever," also carry a definite eschatological message; this
10 b. Berakhot 4b. 11 This follows from the sequel to the sugya as well, ibid. "In the West [i.e. Palestine] they explained it thus: 'She has fallen, but shall fall no more; rise up, 0 virgin of Israel.' R. Nahman b. Yitzhak said, moreover, David returned and raised them up with his holy spirit, as is said [thereafter] 'the Lord upholds all who are fallen' [Ps 145: 14]."
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was how the addition was understood in the Middle Ages, as follows from the words of the Proven<;al sage Rabbi Asher of Lunel: 12 "Happy are they who dwell in Thy house" - in the synagogues and Study Houses, that are truly the houses of the Lord. "Forever shall they praise Thee, Selah" - they shall continue to sing Your praises for ever, for the word "Selah" refers to that world that shall never cease. And even though it is not part of the psalm, [the Sages] instituted that it [this verse] should be recited at the beginning, because it makes it clear that it is speaking of the future. Similarly at its end they added one verse that speaks of the future, namely, "And we, we will bless the Lord henceforth and forever, Hallelujah." And the main body of the psalm (Ps 145) speaks of the future, "I extol Thee, my God, the King, and evermore would bless Thy name." The word 1111, "forever," indicates a world that shall never end.
The same idea is articulated by Rabbi Eleazar of Worms in his commentary on the Siddur: 13 "Happy are they who dwell in Thy house" - in this world. "Forever shall they praise Thee, Selah" - In the World to Come. "They shall praise Thee, Selah" - the numerical value of its letters [gematria] is equivalent to the phrase N:J;"I 071117 ;"IT, "this is for the World to Come."
Both of these latter sources are from the thirteenth century, indicating that contacts with the Christian environment created an ideological rather than literary exegesis, of the rationale for the collage of verses appended to Psalm 145. The eschatological context described here conveys new meaning upon the entire unit of Pesukei de-Zimra. The Jewish daily Morning Prayer is preceded by the six concluding psalms of the book of Psalms. These include psalms of praise to God and serve almost as an aside statement according to which only the one who praises God in this world will also deserve praising Him in the World to Come. Such a statement may be accepted in its literal sense, and at first glance there is no real reason to assume any underlying hidden intention, so long as the context in which it exists is an internal Jewish one. All this would be true if the liturgical use of the final chapters of the Psalter were a purely internal Jewish event. But this is not the case. The book of Psalms was an important component of Christian ritual from its first days, irrespective of whether the early Christian liturgy drew this practice from ancient Jewish liturgies or not. We may assume with a fair degree of certainty that Jewish worshippers felt rivalry - perhaps even anger and jealousy - towards Christians, who adopted these texts, which were considered so Jewish in Jewish eyes, as their own. Seier ha-Minhagot, fol. 12b-13a. M~she Hershler and Yehudah Hershler, eds., Perushei Siddur ha-Tefillah laRokeah [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Machon ha-Rav Hershler, 1992), I, 139. 12
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Not only did both religions adopt the book of Psalms entirely into their liturgy - in Christianity more so than in Judaism - but they also did it under strikingly similar circumstances. The Christian liturgy of the Hours, observed in monasteries, included a total of eight daily prayers. One of these was the early morning prayer known as Lauds; as its name implies, this was a service of praise and laudatory hymns to GOd. 14 It was given this name because it included the concluding psalms of the book of Psalms 148 to 150 15 - those very same psalms that constituted the heart of Pesukei deZimra. The practice of the Christian monks who rose at dawn was identical to that of the hasidim rishonim, the "pious men of old," who would "wait" one hour before praying. 16 It would appear that the recitation of Pesukei de-Zimra prior to prayer developed from this custom. A similar practice was widespread among Christians during exactly the same time period. Tertullian writes that those diligent in their prayers were also accustomed to add psalms of Hallelujah to their prayers; this almost certainly refers to Psalms 145-150, which conclude the book of Psalms.17 Likewise, the Christian traveler Egeria, in describing the daily prayers customary in Jerusalem, notes that "every day before the cock crows" the monks and even laymen who wished to rise early usually recited hymns and psalms until daybreak. 18 It is noteworthy that the parallel use of Psalms in both Jewish and Christian liturgies is not limited to Lauds. R. Yehoshua ben Levi, who offered the eschatological exegesis to Ashrei, is said to have sung Psalm 91 after reciting the Shema at bedtime. 19 This private prayer concludes the daily prayers and is recited immediately before sleep. A parallel prayer is the Compline, part of the Prayer of the Hours, which also concludes the daily prayer of the monks and is recited just before sleep. As it is attested in the Benedictine Rule, the Compline also consisted of reciting Psalm 91
14 Dom G. Dix, The Shape of the Liturgy (Westminster: Dacre Press, 1945; repr. 1954),330-31; Andrew Hughes, Medieval Manuscripts for Mass and Office: A Guide to Their Organization and Terminology (Toronto: U. of Toronto Press, 1982), 230; Robert Taft, The Liturgy of the Hours in the East and West: The Origins of the Divine Office and Its Meaningfor Today (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1986), 193-209. 15 As mentioned above (n. 7), Rashi in his commentary to the Talmud understood Pesukei de-Zimra as mentioned in the Talmud as being comprised of Pss 148 & 150 alone. 16 M Berakhot 5.1. 17 Tertullian, On Prayer, Chapter 27; Taft (above, n. 14), 18. 18 J. Wilkinson, Egeria's Travels (3d rev. ed.; London: Aris & Phillips, 1999), Chapter 24; Ora Limor, Holy Lands Travels: Christian Pilgrims in Late Antiquity [Hebrew] (Jerusalem, 1998),88; cf. Taft (ibid.), 49. 19 B. Shavuot 15b: "R. Yehoshua b. Levi recited these Scriptures [i.e. Ps 91, before going to sleep] and they protected him."
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(90 in the Vulgate).20 What R. Yehoshua had done privately in the fourth century became a duty for all the monks in the fifth. Clearly, the choice of this chapter by both religions as a prayer of protection from demons of the night is not accidental, as it contains such verses as: "You will not fear the terror of night ... nor the pestilence that stalks in the darkness" (vv. 5-6).21 Jews and Christians shared not only the same fears of night demons, but also the same chapter from Psalms that was recited in order to assuage these fears. Against this background, the· Jewish eschatological meaning given to the declaration of Ashrei, "Happy are they who dwell in Thy house, Forever shall they praise Thee, Selah," takes on far greater significance. The placing of this isolated verse at the beginning of Pesukei de-Zimra derived from literary considerations but more importantly served as an act of distinction from the Christian adoption of psalms within their morning liturgy. While it is true that Christians also give praise to God, this addition was intended to make the statement that they do not "dwell in Thy house"; they do not do so in "the synagogues and study houses," to quote Rabbi Asher of Lune!. Even if they read psalms today in their prayer houses, they will not be worthy of praising God in the future. In other words, the eschatological promise that "they shall praise Thee, Selah" will only be realized among the Jews ("And we, we will bless the Lord"), not among others.22 In order to emphasize that the children of Israel alone shall enjoy this privilege in the future, two other phrases beginning with Ashrei were added: "Happy the people whose lot is thus, Happy the people whose God is the Lord." This is thus an unequivocal declaration of the election of Israel, who alone deserves to praise God and who shall alone merit the kingdom of heaven. According to this interpretation, the addition to Psalm 145 of the three Ashrei phrases was intended to guarantee the exclusive status of Israel, who praises God not only in this world, but also in the 20 Taft, Liturgy of the Hours. 21 Cf. b. Berakhot 5a: "Whoever recites the Shema upon his bed, demons stay away from him." See also: Yuval Harari, "Moses, the Sword, and the Sword of Moses: Between Rabbinical and Magical Traditions," Jewish Studies Quarterly 12 (2005): 304305. 22 Another source indicative of the eschatological significance attributed to Ashrei appears in Seder Eliyahu Zuta, ed. Ish-Shalom. ch. 21, p. 35. The chapter is devoted to a detailed description of the End of Days, during which the nations of the world play an important task in acknowledging the justice of the Torah of Israel: "At that hour, Gehinnom will open its mouth and all the nations will emerge and see the goodness [enjoyed. by] Israel and fall on their faces and say: How pleasant is this Master, how pleasant is this nation, that He loved them greatly, as is said, 'Happy the people whose lot is thus.' "
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World to Come. That is, the collective identity of the worshipping congregation is questioned by the existence of a parallel liturgical text in Christian practice. This confusion of boundaries was only apparent, however. The identity of the truly chosen will be revealed in the future realm of eschatological time. It will become clear that, despite common text and ceremony, one could differentiate between the identities of their recitators. The common cultural and religious background does not assure any cooperation or sharing. To the contrary, it threatens, and creates a need for a renewed self-definition, one that invokes the eschatological future in order to create the present identity boundaries. Confirmation of the theory that either or both of the "Ashrei" verses was intended to have a polemic function, emphasizing the uniqueness of the election of Israel, may be found in a totally different liturgical context. The latter verse closes the piyyut (liturgical poem) Amitz Koah, which depicts the Seder Avodah, the ritual of expiation performed in ancient times on Yom Kippur by the High Priest in the Temple. 23 This liturgical poem was evidently composed in the tenth-century Italy by R. Meshulam b. Kalonymus, and it belongs to the Ashkenazic liturgy for Yom Kippur to this very day. While the piyyut is based primarily upon the mishnah Yoma, its author introduces the description of the sacrificial ritual by depicting the course of history from the Creation of the World until Aaron, the first high priest, thereby lending a cosmological dimension to the Temple worship. This cosmological dimension is further strengthened by its conclusion, which bears an explicitly eschatological character: Drawn to approach His gates with glad songs, And attaining joy and gladness forever. Joyous and celebrating with His Name all day long '" their radiant light will burst through like the dawn. 24
The great solemnity with which the text describes the high priest's service on Yom Kippur in the Jerusalem Temple serves an explicit liturgical purpose. Here, words are a substitution for action. Just as the retelling of the story of the Exodus from Egypt on Passover night is intended to reenact the event itself, or the Eucharist ritual meant to reenact the Last Supper, so is this piyyut intended to recreate the process of atonement performed in the Temple by reconstructing its actions in detail. 23 This verse also appears at the equivalent point in the parallel prose-piyyut recited in the Sephardic-Hasidic rite, Atah konanata, attributed to R. Yossi b. Yossi; what follows applies in equal measure to that piyyut. 24 The Complete ArtScroll Machzor: Yom Kippur, trans. Rabbi Nosson Scherman (Brooklyn, NY: Mesorah Publications, 1986), 569. See also: Michael D. Swartz, "Ritual about Myth about Ritual: Towards an Understanding of the Avodah in the Rabbinic Period," JJTP 6 (1997): 135-155.
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By this, both the poet and the worshipping congregation attempt to compensate for a loss which cannot be undone. In my opinion, this liturgical event seeks, among other things, to confront a weighty and central challenge: What is the suitable religious practice by which one may atone for his sins? Jewish memory had cultivated the Temple sacrificial system as a central ritual. As an answer to this tradition, Christianity held a new and different opinion: the cult of animal sacrifices was replaced by the sacrifice of the Son of God incarnate in human form. In Christian eyes', his passion and crucifixion opened a new era of salvation, from which point on only those who believed in him and in his sacrifice could be saved. Post-Destruction Judaism thus faced a difficult dilemma. The old atonement ritual performed by the high priest on Yom Kippur had disappeared. The substitute proposed - prayer and repentance - might have seemed less attractive comparing to the Eucharist, at whose center was the sacrifice of Jesus. It is against the background of this confrontation that we need to place the words of the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, with the following direct critique of the Temple cult: But into the second [tabernacle] only the high priest goes, and he but once a year, and not without taking blood which he offers for himself and for the errors of the people (Heb 9:7).
The Temple where they offered sacrifices was earthly, made by human hands, and its ritual performed by human beings. By contrast, Jesus' sacrifice seemed far greater and more praiseworthy: But when Christ appears as a high priest of the good things that have come, then through the greater and more perfect tabernacle (not made with hands, that is, not of this creation) (Heb9:11).
The main difference resides in the nature of the sacrifice. In the Temple it was customary to offer animals, while Jesus offered himself: He entered once for all into the Holy Place, taking, not the blood of goats and calves, but his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption" (Heb 9: 12).
According to this, the Temple cult offered only a transient form of atonement, one that constantly required new sacrifices, whereas Jesus was offered only once and thereby brought "eternal redemption" to all mankind. In the medieval world of sin, feelings of guilt, and competition for atonement and salvation, the Jews experienced a sense of inferiority and were forced to confront the competing Christian viewpoint. In FrancoGermany, in particular, there appeared among the Jews the far-reaching solution of martyrdom, of forms of behavior that saw the act of suicide,
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and even that of killing others, as acts of atonement. 25 By this means, Jews sought to say "ours is greater than yours." The present pay tan takes a more moderate track. He prefers to present the recollection of the sacrificial cult practiced in the Temple as a suitable answer, which also guarantees - as stated at the end of our piyyut - an eschatological salvation. It is no coincidence that he begins the description of the Temple ritual with the Creation of the world, thereby attempting to say that the Temple was not "earthly," as implied by the author of Hebrews (op cit., v. 1), but it existed and had been ready since the Six Days of Creation. Against this background we may understand the conclusion of the piyyut with the words, "Happy the people whose lot is thus." For our purposes, it is unimportant whether this sentence was originally inserted by the pay tan himself or was added later. The choice of this specific verse indicates the manner in which it was understood and interpreted. It was chosen in order to give greater force to a principled and forcible declaration: Only those "whose God is the Lord," those "happy people whose lot is thus," are blessed; and only they are guaranteed redemption. 26 Let us now return to the liturgical function fulfilled by the book of Psalms within both Judaism and Christianity. We have seen at least two cases in which Jews and Christians used identical chapters in Psalms for similar acts of worship; we conjectured that this brought discomfort and perhaps even protest among the Jews. Testimony to the confusion and bewilderment elicited by the common use of Psalms in both the Christian and Jewish liturgy appears in the thirteenth-century Seier Hasidim. It tells of a certain Jew who had learned Latin, "and when he was among the Gentiles he would recite psalms in their language in order to fulfill the verse, 'And wisdom shall enliven those 25 This ideology underlies several of the most dramatic stories in the Hebrew chronicles describing the anti-Jewish persecutions of the First Crusade, which involved the fulfillment of not only the halakhic command of "Sanctifying the Name" (Kiddush Hashem), but also of the function of expiatory death. It is in this spirit that I interpreted the story of R. Amnon of Mainz, see 1. Yuval, "The Silence of the Historian and the Ingenuity of the Storyteller: Rabbi Amnon of Mayence and Esther Mina of Worms," Common Knowledge 9 (2003): 229-235. See also my book, Two Nations in Your Womb: Perceptions of Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, Ch. 4.2-3 (Tel Aviv, 2000, [Hebrew]; Berkeley: V. of California Press [English], 2006). 26 This expression also appears in the ancient Palestinean piyyut for Seder ha-Avodah, Az be-ein kol. The joyous cry, "Happy are they ... " is shouted by the Israelites upon seeing the glowing visage of the High Priest; it also carries a messianic expectation: "Happy our forefathers whose eyes beheld this / Happy their children, for what they anticipate." See Joseph Yahalom, Priestly Palestinian Poetry: A Narrative Liturgy for the Day of Atonement [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1996), 138-139. See also his introduction, ibid., 18,47-48.
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who possess it' [Eccl 7: 12]."27 Our author denounces him for this act and suggests a counter verse: "Concerning you it has been said, 'Moreover I gave them statutes that were not good and ordinances by which they could not have life' [Ezek 20:25]." The Jew in the above story thought that "wisdom" (that is to say, knowledge of Latin) would bring life to those who possessed it, but the author of Seier Hasidim makes clear that all those "shall not live therein." Our author uses here relatively moderate language, comparing the behavior of the Jew who learned Latin to that of Rabbi Eliezer ben Hyrcanus, who was suspected of a leaning towards Christianity and who left the hegemon, the Gentile ruler who judged him, with a certain ambiguity when he told him: "The judge is considered reliable by me."28 This was an act that was improper, but not forbidden. More interesting was the behavior of the Jew in question. We do not know the circumstances under which he decided to join the Christian prayer in reciting psalms in Latin. Did he do so while traveling? Did he go into a church? One way or another, this story illustrates the great closeness felt by Jewish worshippers towards those un-christological sections of the Christian liturgy, taken directly from the book of Psalms. Another passage in Seier Hasidim tells of a "good Jew [who] would recite praises in the church, Psalmes in their language, and recite blessings in a loud voice. "29 The author makes use of the Latin term, "Psalmes," rather than the Hebrew Pesukei de-Zimra. The expression "praises" is likewise reminiscent of the term "Lauds," the name of the Christian earlymorning prayer. 30 The suggestion that Ashrei carried on a hidden competition with Christians who read psalms in their prayers brings to mind the possibility that the emphasis on the word Ashrei represents an indirect Jewish answer to the Beatitudes of the Sermon on the Mount. The Christian Ashrei also makes a certain eschatological promise: "Blessed are the pure in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth" 27 Seier Hasidim (Frankfurt am Main: M.A. Vahrmann, 1924), §259. It may be that this homily revolves specifically around Psalms because it is included in the Bible as part of Wisdom literature. 28 B. Avoda Zara 16b. 29 Seier Hasidim, §1369. 30 The description of the incident is cited there under a quotation from the verse, "the exulting of God is in their throats," and the sermon is quite appropriate to those accustomed to reciting praises aloud. The verse is from Psalm 149:6, that is, from the body of Pesukei de-Zimra, and the author infers from it that these praises need to be recited in a loud voice. The homily is also certainly based on the previous verse as well: "let the pi'ous rejoice with glory" and possibly also on the opening verse, "his praise is in the assembly of the pious."
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(Matt 5:3-5). The word Ashrei or "blessed" in the Sermon on the Mount contradicts the idea of the chosenness of the people of Israel, as the promise of salvation is granted to every human being. By contrast, the Jewish prayer emphasizes that the future eschatological promise is reserved exclusively for the chosen Jewish people. True, it is unclear whether these words were in fact said by Jesus - and in any event the Beatitudes are not a total innovation, as similar ideas are known to us from the Judean Desert sect's doctrine of salvation. 31 There too we find promises of redemption to "the sons of light" or "the righteous," as well as the distinction between the righteous and the wicked, rather than between Israel and the nations. But our concern here is not with the original intention of the historical Jesus, but rather with the manner in which his words were interpreted in subsequent generations. After Paul, these words were read as a complete nullification of the election of Israel and as a promise that only those who followed in the path of Jesus would be saved. Against this background, we may better understand why the Jewish prayer emphasizes that the future eschatological promise ("they shall yet praise you, Selah") is reserved for the chosen people of Israel alone, referred to as "those who dwell in your house," and thereafter in the words, "Happy is the people for whom it is thus, happy the people whose God is the Lord" - a double emphasis on the election of the people. 32 While the "Beatitudes" of the Sermon on the Mount did not enter into the Christian liturgy, the sermon as a whole occupied an important position in Jewish consciousness. A section of it (Matt 5:17) is quoted in the Babylonian Talmud, in Shabbat 116a, and it constitutes the only quotation from a non-Jewish source in the whole of Talmudic literature. 33 Epiphanius of Salamis likewise testifies that there was a Hebrew version of Matthew;34 31 Joseph A. Fitzmyer, The Dead Sea Scrolls and Christian Origins (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000), Chapter 6: "A Palestinian Jewish Collection of Beatitudes." 32 In the Middle Ages it was customary among French Jews to recite additional verses beginning with "Ashrei" ("Happy ... "), among then "Happy are those whose way is blameless, who walk in the Torah of the Lord" (Ps 119: 1), that likewise emphasizes that the eschatological promises are reserved only for those that fulfill the Torah. Here too it seems reasonable to assume an anti-Christian polemical context, whose message is that only the one who fulfills the commandments of the Torah as written may be counted among the "blessed." Such a statement explicitly opposes those that turn the commandments of the Torah into an allegory and thereby nullify the obligation to perform them (Mahzor Vitry, 63-64). On the other hand, liturgical use of a series of ten verses beginning with "Ashrei" was practiced also in Fustat, Egypt, in a Muslim environment. See: Ezra Fleischer, Eretz-Israel Prayer and Prayer Rituals [Hebrew], (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1988),283. 33 Cf. Holger Zellentin's paper in this volume, "Margin of Error: Women, Law, and Christianity in Bavli Shabbat 116a-b." 34 Epiphanius of Salamis, Panarion, 30.
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if so, the possibility that Jews were engaged in polemics with Matthew is not unlikely.35
2. Tahanun: "Vehu Rahum" ("And He is Merciful") I shall now tum to three of the concluding sections in the Morning prayer. The first of these is the long prayer called Tahanun, opening with the words, Ve-hu Rahum ("And He is mercifuL .. "). This is recited on Mondays and Thursdays, known as days of Tahanun, or petitionary prayer. The sources of this prayer are extremely ancient, and there are evidently parallels to it in the Qumran literature. 36 The prayer is of a national, public character, and makes no mention of the tension with Christianity. As for its contents, it expresses a longing for the end of the exile and the return to Zion, appropriate for every time and place. But in the eyes of medieval worshippers, the prayer assumed an explicitly anti-Christian significance. Testimony of this may be found in later generations. In his ethnographic book about Jewish customs, the German Hebraist, Paul Kirchner, cites a passage from Vehu Rahum, which reads as follows: "Arouse Your strength and Your zeal against Your enemies; May they be shamed and broken of their strength." Kichner's comments on the passage: "These words were not printed in all their Prayer Books, but were added to the prayer, being directed against the Christians. "37 Kirchner specifically considers the "enemies" of God with whom He conducts the battle to be the Christians; then he places these general words within the narrow and densely theological context of the Jewish-Christian polemic. I allow myself to presume that Kirchner did not invent this interpretation; on the contrary, his reading related to the way in which this prayer was understood by the German Jews of his time, in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. According to this, the Jew praying for victory over Christianity was well aware of Christianity'S counter-claim that saw the humiliation of Israel as decisive proof of its own vindication. This messianic prayer becomes at once an apologetic and an anti-Christian prayer. 35 Sefer Toldot Yeshu presents an inverted Jewish version of the story of the Gospels. One gains the impression that the Christian text known to its authors and which they wished to satirize was that of Matthew. From this, we may conjecture that the Christian "Beatitudes" that appear there were well known to the Jews. 36 Moshe Weinfeld, "Prayer and Liturgical Practice in Qumran Sect," in D. Dimant and U. Rappaport, eds., The Dead Sea Scrolls: Forty Years of Research (Leiden; New York: E.J. Brill; Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1992),248-250. 37 Paui Christian Kirchner, Jiidisches Ceremoniei, oder Beschreibung dererjenigen Gebrauche (Nurenberg, 1734; repr. Hildesheim; New York: Olms, 1974), 67-68.
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Did this prayer have the same significance for other Jewish Diasporas in the lands of Christendom? It would appear that things were understood thus among at least some of them. This assumption finds a certain support in an ancient story that accompanies this prayer and has engaged historians and scholars of popular literature in the Middle Ages. The story uses motifs known as well from the stories of Christian saints - and I will not go here into these parallels or to the details that distinguish among its various versions. 38 The gist of the story is as follows: three Jewish sages, exiled from Jerusalem after the destruction of the Temple, set sail in a ship. They arrive somewhere in Europe, where they are received in a friendly manner by the local ruler. He assists them to settle in his land, and even gives them fields and vineyards. But after a certain time the ruler dies, and another ruler emerges in his place, this will put the three Jewish sages on trial by fire, just like Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah. The three sages pray to God to take mercy on them, each one composing a different prayer. Together, the three prayers constitute the three sections of Vehu rahum. The new, composite prayer is efficacious, the wicked ruler dies, and the three sages ask all the Jewish communities to recite this prayer every Monday and Thursday. Why did the story take form with regard to this specific prayer? Even a superficial look at the prayer's content will reveal the centrality of the Exile theme. Both the story and the prayer share a common concern with the central issue that engaged Jews in Europe in the Middle Ages: How did we get to where we are? The answer to this question was very painful. Jewish settlement in Europe, according to both the prayer and the story that accompanies it, was a result of the Destruction of Jerusalem. This answer likewise dictated the response to the next question elicited by this prayer: What can bring about the end of the exile? The answer proposed by this prayer is that only the arousing of Divine mercy will bring the longawaited redemption. The prayer and its accompanying story thus seek to deal with the most fundamental problem of Jewish existence - the Exile. It is impossible to ignore the environmental context - namely, how the Christian milieu interpreted this existence. In Christian eyes, as well, the destruction of Jerusalem is the fundamental constitutive event for Jewish exile - a point on which there is surprising agreement between the Jewish story and 38 Its various versions were published by Adolf Neubauer, "The Early Settlement of the Jews in Southern Italy," JQR 4 (1893): 616-620. Cf. Megillat Ahimaaz (ed. Benjamin Klar; Jerusalem: Tarshish, 1974), 45-46; Heinrich Gross, Gallia Judaica: Dictionnaire geographique de fa France d'apres les sources rabbiniques (Amsterdam: Philo Press, 1969), 74-75; Hans Lewy, "Imaginary Journeys from Palestine to France," JWI 1.3 (1938): 251-253.
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Christian theology that sees the Jews of Europe as the descendants of those Jews who were exiled from Jerusalem. Some versions of the story explicitly mention Vespasian as the one who exiled the Jews to Europe. It is this background that provides the proper historical significance for the following selection from the prayer: Our father, compassionate father, show us an omen for good, and gather our dispersed from the four corners of the land. Mayall the nations recognize and know that You are the Lord our God ... Have pity on your people, and let not Your inheritance be put to shame, for the nations to dominate them. Why should the peoples say: "Where is their God?"
Of course, it could be argued that these same petitions could have been said by Jews in Muslim lands as well. While this is true, their recitation in a Christian environment against the background of a founding story of this type testifies that, at least in the eyes of medieval Jewish worshippers, this prayer had a definite, concrete context.
3. Psalm 20 (19) Four times in this psalm words based upon the root ~lzr ("save") appear, and it was apparently for that reason that it was chosen to be recited daily in the concluding section of the Morning Service. The crucial verse is the following one: "Now I know that the Lord will help His anointed; He will answer him from His holy heavens, with mighty victories by His right hand" (v. 7). This verse lends the psalm as a whole an eschatological significance. The redemption will come on "a day of trouble" for Israel, which will then be transformed into a day of salvation, and of defeat for the nations of the world, thanks to Israel's adherence to its faith. It is difficult today to reconstruct the significance that accompanied the recitation of this verse in the Middle Ages, but there is a single interesting extant testimony, from a Christian source, about the christological interpretation that was given to this psalm, and the reaction it elicited among the Jews. The document in question was written by Amulo - bishop of Lyon in the ninth century, and successor to Agobard - and takes the form of a letter written in 846 to the leaders of the church, with a request to consider the Jews as heretics and to avoid all contact with them. In this context Amulo relates the following: Et in tantum Domini Jesu Christi odium exarserunt, ut ab Oriente usque in Occidentem, per omnes regiones transmarinas et citramarinas, in quibus Judaei habitant, mandata miserint, ne ullatenus in synagogis suis psalmum nonum decimum, qui sub specie orationis. totus de manifestissimo Salvatoris adventu scriptus est, decantarent. Tulerunt
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igitur psalmum, qui per tot saecula in conventu synagoguae quotidie inter caeteros fuerat decantatus, eumque usque in adventu Christi sui omnimodo silendum esse decreverunt. 39 [And they are aflame with hatred for the Lord Jesus to such an extent that they sent orders to West and to East, to all the places where Jews live, on this side of the sea and on the other, that under no circumstance should they sing in their synagogue Psalm 19 [i.e., 20], in which everything about the coming of the Savior is written in a very open way, in the form of a prayer. Therefore they have taken this chapter, which they had been accustomed to sing among themselves every day, at all times, when they gather in their synagogues, and made an edict to silence it in any manner until their Messiah comes.]
Amulo does not specify in what prayer service the Jews were accustomed to sing this psalm, but from his comments that they had previously been accustomed to singing it "every day" in all their Diasporas it would seem that this refers to the morning service. If this is the case, the testimony in this passage is the earliest evidence of the inclusion of this psalm in Jewish prayer. There seems to be no reason to cast doubt on his claim that this psalm aroused disquiet among the Jews in light of the christological interpretation given to it. Even if the original intention of those who instituted this prayer was different, the very existence of an alternative Christian interpretation sufficed to elicit a Jewish counter-exegesis. Indeed, according to V enetianer, this psalm was "removed" from the Prayer Book until the thirteenth century, although in fact it appears in the twelfth-century Mahzor Vitry.40 If it nevertheless remained in its place in medieval Siddurim, we can speculate that, at a later date, Jewish ears would hear it as an appropriate response to its Christian interpretation.
4. "Uva Ie-Zion" This prayer consists of a melange of Biblical verses, some of them cited in the Aramaic Targum of Pseudo-Jonathan. In the Babylonian Talmud (Sota 49a) this section is referred to as Kedusha de-Sidra ("the Kedusha of the Order") and it is believed to have been composed during the fourth or fifth century CEo What was the rationale for this collage of Biblical verses? According to sources from the ninth century,41 in the distant past it had been customary to conclude the Morning Prayer with a section of study. This included passages from the Torah, the Prophets, and the Oral Law. 39 Migne, Patrologia Latina, CXVI, 146; L. Venetianer, "Notiz. Psalm XX in der synagogalen Liturgie," MGWJ 58 (1914): 113-114; Bernard Blumenkranz, Les auteurs chretiens latins du Moyen Age sur lesjuifs et lejudaisme (Paris: Mouton, 1963), 197. 40 Mahzor Vitry, No. 93, p. 73. 41 Robert Brody, Halachic responsa of R. Natronai Bar Hilai Gaon [Hebrew], (Jerusalem, Hebrew University Dissertation, 1981), §39.
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The study concluded with a collage of verses centered on Isaiah 6:3: "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of Hosts, the whole earth is full of His glory." This fact explains the origin of the name: Kedusha, which is recited in connection with the Sidra, that is, the order of Torah study. Leon Liebreich noted the similarity between this prayer and the blessings following the reading of the Torah. 42 He also observed the important function of two verses: Isaiah 59:20 ("A redeemer shall come to Zion, and to those in Jacob who tum from transgression; it is an utterance of the Lord") and Psalm 22:4 ("Yea, holy art Thou, enthroned amidst the praises of Israel"). This purpose, he concludes, was to provide the worshipper with a sense of consolation by quoting verses with a messianic connotation. Liebreich also cites Louis Ginsberg who states that: "This verse [Romans 11 :26] is quoted by the apostle as proof of the future redemption of Israel. " However, this verse carries even richer baggage. Its Septuagint rendition, which Paul expounds there, reads: "The Deliverer will come from Zion, he will banish ungodliness from Jacob." This version differs from the Masoretic tradition in two substantive respects. It states that the redeemer will come from Zion, not to Zion; and that by his very coming he will remove all iniquity from Jacob. According to the Masoretic version, however, the redeemer will come to Zion only after Jacob has himself removed his own iniquity and repented. These two differences encapsulate the essence of the messianic dispute between Christianity and Judaism. Paul goes on to quote the beginning of the following verse (v. 21), " 'And this will be my covenant with them' - [adding the phrase] 'when I take away their sins,' " but he does not cite the rest of the verse through the end. The Jewish prayer quotes the sequel, As for Me, the Lord has said, this is My covenant with them: My spirit which is upon you and My words which I have put in your mouth shall not depart out of your mouth, nor out of the mouth of your children, nor out of the mouth of your children's children, henceforth and forevermore, the Lord has said.
This addition emphasizes the covenant between the people of Israel and their God, and its unbroken continuity. Hence, we may well understand why Paul did not cite this verse, and why it is included in the Jewish prayer. The verse "And My words which I have put in your mouth" is especially suitable to a prayer that concludes a study session of Oral Torah. As we know from other sources, the Oral Torah was understood as the explicit signifier of Jewish identity and stands on a parallel plane to that of the New Testament in Christianity. In one midrashic source it is even 42 Leon J. Liebreich, "An Analysis ofU-ba' le-ziyyon Prayer in the Liturgy," Hebrew Union College Annual 21 (1948): 176-209.
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referred to as the "mysterium" of Judaism, as opposed to the Written Torah, which is available to all by means of its translation into Greek. 43 The study of Oral Torah at the end of the Morning Prayer thus performs the function of defining a "different" identity. It is in this light that we may understand the citation of the verse from Isaiah 59:21, as a declaration strengthening the sense of Jewish collective distinctiveness and separateness. The verse is a declaration aimed directly at the heart of the Jewish-Christian polemic about the nature of the covenant and the question of verus Israel, whose conclusion asserts that the covenant is eternal and will never be violated. The next verse of this prayer comes from Psalm 22, which served in the Gospels as a source for the description of the crucifixion, and had already been transformed by Justin Martyr into the most important biblical source in Christian polemics. 44 Justin Martyr read the verse ("Yea, holy art Thou, enthroned amidst the praises of Israel") as referring to Jesus, one of whose names was Israel. Hence, Israel is the subject of the sentence: "You, Israel the holy one" - that is, Jesus. By contrast, according to the Masoretic reading the subj ect of the sentence is God, who is sanctified by the praises of Israel. The assumption that this is a prayer that covertly wages battle against Christian views helps explain the continuation of this prayer. We should take particular note of Isaiah 6:4, "Holy, holy, holy" (i.e. the Trishagion) and its use in Christian liturgy as proof of the Holy Trinity. Jewish prayer adds to the language of the Masoretic text the Aramaic Targum of PseudoJonathan, which completely neutralizes any Trinitarian interpretation. 45 One of God's holinesses resides "in the highest supernal heavens" where there is "the house of His Indwelling." A second holiness is "on the earth," while the third one is "forever and ever." The first two holinesses are located along the vertical axis of sacred place, above and below, while the third is located in time and describes God's eternity. David Flusser has noted the similarity between the Aramaic translation of this verse and Luke 2: 14: "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, goodwill among 43 Tanhuma, Ki Tissa, 34. See most recently: Marc Bregman, "The Mishnah as Mysterium" [Hebrew], in Mehqerei Talmud, 111:1 (ed. Yaakov Sussmann and David Rosenthal; Jerusalem, 2005), 101-109. 44 Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho, 97-106. 45 This is the function played by the Targum in medieval Jewish polemical literature. See: Sefer Yosef ha-Meqane, §77. Another form of hidden confrontation with the Christian trinitarian interpretation of the Kedushah is found in the piyyutim of Yannai, which add exegesis to "Holy, Holy, Holy" in various different ways, reminiscent of Kedushah de-Sidra. This point is discussed by M. Zulay, Studies in Jannai, Studies of the Research Institute for Hebrew Poetry, II [Hebrew] (Berlin, 1936),252-253. My thanks to Ofir Muntz-Manor for drawing my attention to this matter.
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men," which opens the Gloria in the Catholic mass. Flusser considered the Aramaic translation to be the earliest version, upon which Luke is based. He saw the verse in Luke as an additional, translated version of the Trishagion, parallel to Targum Pseudo-Jonathan. 46 Flusser's analysis is based upon the assumption that the Aramaic Targum preceded Luke, an assumption that is in itself doubtful. But even if we assume that the Targum reflects a pre-Christian tradition, we are concerned here not with the Targum itself, but with its incorporation within the prayer Uva Ie-Zion, an act clearly much later than the Gospel of Luke. One may conjecture that Jewish worshippers during the Byzantine period utilized early texts that could refute a rival and threatening interpretation. Indirect support for the possibility that these prayers reflect an echo of the rivalry between Judaism and Christianity in the Byzantine period may be found in a vague report that reached Europe in the thirteenth century. Rabbi Eleazar of Worms tells about this in his Commentary on the Prayer Book: 47 We have heard that the evil kingdom made an edict that they should not read the Torah and translate it, and the Sages of that generation established that one should recite the entire psalm beginning "The Lord answer you in the day of trouble" [that is, Psalm 20], and to recite "and one called to another" [Isa 6:3] and "Then the Spirit lifted me up" [Ezek 3:12], and to translate them.
It can be deduced from these remarks that the ruling powers had issued an
edict prohibiting the reading of the Torah and its translation, but not against reading the Prophets. The historical background of this report is not fully clear. Some think that it relates to the novella of Justinian from the year 553 CE that outlawed reading the Torah or giving sermons in Hebrew. However, Justinian did not prohibit the use of the Aramaic Targum, nor did he draw any distinction between the Torah and the Prophets. It is also surprising that there is no mention in this report of the opening verses of this prayer - that is, Isaiah 59 ("A redeemer shall come to Zion") and Psalm 22 ("Yea, holy art Thou are"). The above-quoted report seems to preserve a vague memory according to which both prayers - i.e., Psalm 20 and Uva Ie-Zion - reflect an echo of the strained relations between Jews and Christians. Another central motif of this prayer is the chosenness of Israel. A person called to the reading of the Torah concludes with the blessing: "Blessed be Our God who gave us the Torah of truth, and planted within us eternal life. " This sentence appears in identical form in Uva Ie-Zion. The 46 David Plusser, "Sanktus und Gloria," in Abraham unser Vater: Juden und Christen im Gespriich iiber die Bibel: Festschrift fiir Otto Michel zum 60. Geburtstag (ed. Otto Benz, Martin Hengel, Peter Schmidt; Leiden: Brill, 1963), 151. 47 Perushei (above n. 13), II. 434.
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phrase declares both the truth of the Torah and that its fulfillment is a condition for the salvation of the soul and for life in the W orId to Come. This soteriological declaration concerning the power of the Torah may be read in opposition to the interpretation given by Paul to the Torah in Galatians 3: 10-13: "For all who rely on works of the law are under a curse ... it is evident that no man is justified before God by the law ... but the law does not rest on faith." The possibility is strengthened by the beginning of this sentence, which only appears in our prayer: "Blessed be our God who created us for His glory and separated us from the erring." Flusser thinks that this sentence is a survival from the Second Temple period, and hence interpreted it as relating to the Sadducees. In my opinion, it is far more likely to assume that "the erring" are Christians or Jewish-Christians, who do not have a "Torah of truth" and therefore will not enjoy life of the WorId to Come. 48 Such an interpretation is consistent with an argument that I have developed on another occasion,49 according to which the Mishnah Sanhedrin 10 enumerating those who do not have a portion in the W orId to Come ought to be read as a covert polemic against Paul's soteriological views. From Paul's perspective, only those who believe in Jesus will enjoy the salvation of the soul.
Conclusions The significance of the findings presented here is that we can identity motifs that compete with Christianity in various sections added both before and after the Jewish Morning Service, during the Byzantine period and possibly later. The emerging picture is not one of direct polemic, but rather of hidden denial. Even if those who established the liturgy and the worshippers themselves were not aware of the rival Christian option, this was a threatening and covert presence that required a Jewish alternative. The function of prayer is not to engage in polemics or to deny, but rather to present a focus of alternative, emotional, and ideological identification. Prayer seeks to provide a framework consciously disguised as intimate Jewish poetic discourse, born from the feelings of the heart. It is the historian's function to uncover what influenced these.
48 Of course, the term O'Y1n ("those erring") can have various meanings, according to its historical context and use. Such is, for instance, the interpretation of Rav Natronai Gaon, who names the Karaites as "erring" (Responsa [above n. 40], Orah Hayyim, § 138). 49 I. Yuval, "All Israel Have a Portion in the World to Come," in Redefining FirstCentury Jewish and Christian Identities: Essays in Honor of E.P. Sanders (ed. Fabian E. Udoh, forthcoming).
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I have limited my remarks to a few isolated textual examples, to which one can add further. Many Jewish prayers deal with historical memory and with longings for the future, in which the national element is quite well developed. Are those prayers evoking the memory of the cult of animal sacrifices in the Temple an expression of an inner Jewish memory of a destroyed Temple, or do they also imply a hidden polemic with a rival religion that denied the value of these sacrifices? Many prayers emphasize messianic longings. Do they simply express an inner Jewish wish for the correction or perfection of the world, or is there also implied in them a desire for the rehabilitation of the status of a Judaism struggling with Christianity and Islam? Research has invested a great deal of energy in studying the interreligious encounter at all its visible points of friction; only recently an increasing number of researchers have also begun to explore the hidden transcripts of Jewish culture. Prayer is perhaps the most important of these. If we look, not only at the makeup on the face, but also at the features of the face itself, we will see that it gives a glimpse into the mechanisms of denial and suppression which enabled the Jews to build their own identity as if nobody threatened them at all. Jewish culture needs to be understood as the culture of a minority whose language is both hidden and concealing; a culture where exposure to external "influences" was perceived as a threat, a burden of identity loss. In such a situation, a deep process of turning inwards developed, in order to create that which is presented as an autonomous, closed discourse. In truth, the very nature of Jewish culture as a refuge from the turmoil of the "environment" replicates this environment, fashions itself according to it, and absorbs its scale of values.
List of Contributors WILLIAM ARNAL is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada. His research has focused on social description of ancient Christianity, particularly within the sayings tradition and the Synoptic Gospels (along with Q and Thomas). He is particularly interested in materialist or materialist-influenced approaches to ancient religion, and to the role of religion in expressing or mediating class conflict. AVERIL CAMERON is Professor of Late Antique and Byzantine History at Oxford University. Her field of interest is currently centered on the discourse and enforcement of orthodoxy in Byzantium. It was Averil Cameron's privilege to choose the theme of "Discipline and Diversity" for the Ecclesiastical History Society's speakers in 2005-6. JOHN G. GAGER retired from the Princeton faculty in 2006, after 38 years of service. His scholarly concern is with the religions of the Roman Empire, especially early Christianity and its relations to ancient Judaism. He has also written on the theme of religion and magic, and currently teaches at Harvard University. GREGG GARDNER is a doctoral student in the Department of Religion, at Princeton University, specializing in Jewish literature and history in the Greco-Roman period. His research interests include the relationship between literary and archaeological sources, as well as economic aspects of Jewish society in Late Antiquity. CAROLINE HUMFRESS is Lecturer in Late Antique and Early Medieval History, School of History, Classics and Archaeology, Birkbeck College, University of London. Her research fields include the history of law and legal practice, religion, theology and political thought, focusing primarily on Late Antiquity (c.200-700); with a special interest in the development of ecclesiastical law and forensic procedure. EDUARD IRICINSCHI is a doctoral student in the Department of Religion, at Princeton University, specializing in the history of ancient Christianity. His research interests include the Nag Hammadi literature, codex production and bilingualism in Roman Egypt, aspects of Jewish/Christian relations, as well as methods and theories in the study of religion. KAREN L. KING is Winn Professor of Ecclesiastical History at Harvard Divinity School. Her teaching and research specialties in the history of Christianity lie in women's studies, orthodoxy and heresy, and the Nag Hammadi literature. She has finished a book on the Apocryphon of John for Harvard University Press, and is currently preparing a commentary in the Hermeneia series on The Gospel of Mary.
388
List of Contributors
RICHARD LIM is Associate Professor of History, in the Department of History, at Smith College. His research interests include history and religions of the late antique Mediterranean world. His current research project is on Roman public spectacles and civic transformation in a Christianizing empire. KEVIN L. OSTERLOH is assistant professor of ancient history in the Department of History at Miami University. He recently received his PhD in the Department of Religion and the Program in the Ancient World at Princeton University. His dissertation, The Reinvention of Judean Collective Identity in a Hellenistic World Contending with Rome, demonstrates how Judean elites of the second-century BCE reinvented their communal identity through the appropriation and subversion of Greekness in conscious emulation of contemporary Roman attitudes with respect to Greek culture and communities. YANNIS PAPADOYANNAKIS is AG Leventis Lecturer in Greek Patristics, Oxford University, UK, and works on the Christianization of the Roman Empire, Apologetics, and late antique and Byzantine Greek literature. He is the author of a forthcoming monograph on Theodoret's apologetics against Hellenism. ANNETTE Y. REED is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. Her publications include Fallen Angels and the History of Judaism and Christianity (2005), Heavenly Realms and Earthly Realities in Late Antique Religions (co-edited with R.S. Boustan; 2004); and The Ways that Never Parted: Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (co-edited with Adam H. Becker; 2003). She is presently working on a book about "Jewish-Christianity." PHILIPPA TOWNSEND is a doctoral student in the Department of Religion, at Princeton University, specializing in the history of ancient Christianity. Her research interests include Jewish-Gentile relations among first century Jesus-followers and debates about ethnicity and universalism across late antique religious traditions. BURTON L. VISOTZKY is Appleman Professor of Midrash and Interreligious Studies, Jewish Theological Seminary. Professor Visotzky works in Rabbinic Midrashic textual criticism, exegesis, and history; and writes comparative studies between Rabbinic and patristic literatures. His most recent work is Golden Bells And Pomegranates: Studies in Midrash Leviticus Rabbah (2003). ISRAEL YUVAL is Professor in the Department of Jewish History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the director of Scholion, an interdisciplinary research center in Jewish Studies. His research has focused on Jewish life in the Middle Ages, as well as on various aspects of Judaeo-Christian relations such as the use of calendar, liturgy, and soterology. HOLGER ZELLENTIN is an Assistant Professor of Rabbinics at the Richard S. Dinner Center for Jewish Studies at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley. His dissertation, in the department of Religion at Princeton University, was titled Late Antiquity Upside Down - Rabbinic Parodies of Christian and Jewish Literature.
Modem Author Index Aalders, G. J. D. 148 Adler, W. 289 Albeck, c. 293, 328,331,332 Allbery, A. 152 Allen, P. 113 Almen, D. von 261, 262 Althusser, L. 20 'Amit, D. 176, 191 Anderson, B. 146 Appiah, K. A. 1 Arjava, A. 354 Amal, W. E. 22, 50, 53 Arranz, M. 124 Asad, T. 53, 109 Ascough,R. S. 54,64,68, 70, 77, 78, 79 Astin, A. E. 181 Attridge, H. W. 256 Aune,D.E.232,235,240,242,243 Ayres, L. 6 Bacher, W. 339 Bagnall, R. 305 Baker, D. 102 Barag, D. 191 Barclay, J. M. G. 63 Bardy, G. 116, 124 Bar-Han, M. 355 Barr, D. L. 231, 234 Barnes, T. D. 130 Barthes, R. 29 Barton, T. 321,322 Bauckham, R. 238, 239 Bauer, W. 5-7, 11,22,51 Baumeister, R.F. 2 Baumgarten, A. 290, 291 Baumgarten, J. M. 314,326 Baun, J. 115 Baur,F. c. 242,273, 275 Bazan, F. G. 257 Beard, M. 191 Beatrice, P. F. 110 Beck, H. -182
Becker, A. H. 11,21,32,33,212,274, 283,303,324,341 Becker, H.-J. 335 BeDuhn, J. D. 153, 165 Beeson, C. H. 148 Beit-Arie, M. 348 Bendle, M. F. 2 Benz, O. 383 Berger, K. 256 Berger, P. 1, 107 Bergman, J. 291 Berlinerblau, J. 50, 53, 56, 57, 58, 59, 61 Bermejo Rubio, F. 257 Beskow, P. 150 Bettini, M. 263 Betz, H. D. 51 Bhabha, H. K. 19, 107 Bianchi, U. 6, Bickerman, E. 145, 168, 171,214,216 Biggs, C. 273 Billerbeck, P. 339 Blair, A. 118, 126 Blasi, A. J. 67 Blumenkranz, B. 380 Boon, J. 19 Bormann, L. 256 Bourdieu, P. 7,20,30,53,55,56,57, 58,59,60,61,63,64 Boustan, R. 16,21 Bowersock, G. W. 109 Bowman, A. K. 111, 115, 164 Boyarin, D. 9, 15-16, 19,20, 89,92, 104-07,113,146,213,228,229-30, 245,300,307,341 Brandes, W. 113 Braun, W. 53 Braverman, J. 235 Bregman, M. 382 Breydey, M. 162 Breyfogle, T. 9,355 Brock,S.P.254,258,357 Brody, R. 380
390
Modern Author Index
Brooke, G. J. 276 Brown, P. 9, 16, 102, 109, 111, 122, 125, 150, 161, 162,235 Brubaker, R. 2 Bryder, P. 148, 150 Buell, D. K. 10,20, 103, 165,227,263264,272 Bultmann, R. 51 Burke, K. 12 Burrus, V. 9, 19, 103,355 Butler, J. P. 42, 225 Calderini, S. 162 Calhoun, C, 60 Cameron, A. 5,9,23, 102, 105-06, 111, 113,115-16,125-26,164,276,283 Cameron, R. 256 Cancik, H. 265 Cantalamessa, R. 145 Cartledge, P. 181 Cary, E. 263 Castelli, E. l3, 300 Cenderelli, A. 130 Cerfaux, L. 284 Charlesworth, J. H. 314 Chavannes, E. 160 Choksy, J. K. 355 Christie-Murray, D. 102 Clark, E. A. 17, 108, 112 Clarke, G. 110 Clevenot, M. 164 Cohen, S. J. D. 14-16, 71, 170-71, 185, 191,196,226,234,243 Collier, P. 61 Collins, A. Y. 231, 233-34, 238,242 Conick, H. 303 Cooey, P. M. 42 Cooper, F. 2 Cooper, K. 106,276 Corcoran, S. 129 Corre, A. 299 Corwin, V. 227-28 Cote, D. 275,278-79,281,287-88 Coxe,A. C. 36,39-41,44-46,48 Coyle, J. K. 162 Creekmore, H. 74 Crifo, G. l33 Crossan, J. D. 66, 75, 77-78, 80, 82, 86, 96 Cumont, F. 159-60
Cureton, W. 304 Dagron, G. 119, 125-26 Dalman, G. 339 Dan, J. 265 Davies, W. D. 186 de Andia, I. 40 Decret, F. 154, 159 Delcor, M. 186 de Ste. Croix, G. E. M. 145 de Vies, H. 164 Desmulliez, J. 143 Diesner, H.-J. 161 Dignas, B. 342 Dillon, J. M. l3 Dittenberger, W. 173, 200 Dix, G. 370 Dolger, F. 124 Donaldson, J. 273 Donaldson, T. L. 64 Donovan, M. A. 40 Doran, R. 177, 186 Doresse, J. 146 Doutreleau, L. 36 Downey, G. 215,218,224 Drake, H. A. 110-11 Dressel, A. R. M. 277 Droysen, J. G. 171 Duff, P. 231, 233-34,239-242,244, Duhaime, J. 67 Duliere, W. L. 121 Dummer, J. 148 Durkheim, E. 61 Dzielska, M. 121 Eckstein, A. M. 181, 192 Eddy, B. 12 Edwards, C. 128 Edwards, M. 103-04, 128 Edwards, M. J. 276, 278-79, 281 Eisenbaum, P. 89,93 Eliade, M. 50, 52 Elliot, J. 305 Elliott, N. 80-83,96 Elm, S.9, 18, 108, 164 Eltester, W. 356 Emmerick, R. E. 148 Engberg-Pedersen, T. 89 Epstein, I. 317-18 Erikson, E. 12
Modern Author Index Eshel, H. 176, 191 Esler, P. F. 63, 65, 67 Evans, G. R. 102 Fanon,F.19 Feldman, E. 148 Ferreiro, A. 278, 280 Ferguson,E.102,275 Fine~ S. 314 Finkelstein, L. 168, 186 Fishbane, M. 302 Fishbane, S. 355 Fishof, 1. 314 Fitzmyer, J. A. 376 Fleischer, E. 376 Flower, H. 192 Flusser, D. 205, 383-84 Forsyth, N. 231-32, 236 Foucault, M. 7, 8,29 Fowler, B. 56,61 Fox, H. 354 Fraade, S. 300 Fraenkel, J. 325 Frankenberg, VV. 277 Frankfurter, D. 13,233-34,241-43, 245-46 Freedman, H. 293, 328, 330, 332 Frend, VV. H. C. 102, 167,300 Frerichs, E. S. 11,260 Fried, L. S. 66 Friedlander, L. 305 Friesen, S. J. 238, 240 Funk, F. X. 115 Funk, VV.-P. 147 Fuss, D. 19 Gager, J. G. 24, 76-78, 85, 94, 207, 220,224-25,305 Gandz, S. 314,320,325,334-35 Gardner, G. 21, 26, 314 Gardner, I. 144, 147-50, 157-59, 16264 Gardner, J. F. 262 Garnsey, P. 125-26,128,181,262 Gaston, L. 63, 76-77, 86, 207-09, 228 Gauger, J. D. 169 Gemiinden, P. von 65 Geny, E. 154, 164 Geoltrain, P. 274-75 Georgi, D. 81,86,255
391
Gera, D. 169, 190 Gerhard, F. 219 Gershevitch,1. 354 Gibson, E. L. 234 Gibson, M. D. 277 Giddens, A. 2 Gingrich, A. 12 Ginzburg, C. 158 Ginzberg, L. 299 Glucker, J. 3-4 Goehring, J. E. 36, 162 Goldbacher, A. 154 Goldberg, A. 299 Goldfeld, A. 355 Goldstein, J. A. 184, 186-87,206 Gonis, N. 197 Goodenough, E. R. 314 Goodman,M. 15,53,96,99, 103-104, 146,255-56,303 Gordon, R. 191 Gorss, J. 40 Gould, K. H. 355 Grabar, O. 109 Gradel, 1. 131 Granfield, P. 157 Grafton, A. 103, 118 Granskou, D. 76,207 Graves, R. 197-98 Gray, A. 300 Gray, J. 106 Green, VV. H. 50 Greene, J. T. 235 Greenfield, J. C. 314, 324 Gregoire, H. 159 Gregory, J. 106 Grobel, K. 51 Gross, H. 378 Gruen,E. 169,175-76,181-82,184, 188,190-91,194,198-99,201 Gruenwald, 1. 324 Guedemann, M. 339,356,360 Gustafson, M. 161Habicht, H. 176 Hachlili, R. 315 Hagedorn, D. 128 Hagg, T. 276 Hall, J. M. 195-196 Hanson, K. C. 65 Harari, J. V. 29
392
Modern Author Index
Harari, Y. 371 Harland, P. A. 67-69, 88-89 Harnack, A. von 30, 115, 118, 124,215, 219 Harpham, G. 112 Harrill, J. A. 262 Harrington, D. J. 5 Harris, W. V. 172, Harvey, S. A. 32 Hauptmann, J. 354-55 Hauschild, W.-D. 45 Havelaar, H. W. 110 Heilmeyer, M. 197-98 Heilmeyer, W.-D. 196-97 Heine, R. E. 34 Helle, H. J. 61 Hennecke, E. 339 Hengel, M. 171, 176,383 Henrichs, A. 157 Heres, H. 196, 198-99 Herford, R. T. 339 Hershler, M. 369 Hershler, Y. 369 Hezser, C. 17, 305 Hill, C. E. 247, 250 Himmelfarb, M. 168, 171, 179,226,235 Hirshman, M, 302 Hirshmann, M. G. 341 Hjerrild, B. 354 Hock, R. F. 79 Hodge,C.E.J.88-89,91-94 Hoenig, S. B. 235 Holl, K. 148 Honore, T. 133, 142 Hornblower, S. 321 Horovitz, H. S. 327 Horsley, G. H. R. 307 Horsley, R. A. 76, 80-81, 89,96 Howgego, C. 176 Hughes, A. 370 Humfress, C. 17-18,23, 113, 120, 128, 151,262 Hunter, D. 32 Hurd, J. C. 76 Huskinson, J. 120 Hvalvik, R. 255 Hyamson, M. 150 Han, T. 351, 355 Inglebert, H. 10, 105
Insole, C. J. 109 Iricinschi, E. 25-26 Isenberg, W. W. 254,259 Jacobs, L. 330 Jackson-Mccabe,M.255 Jamaspasa, K. M. 355 Janowitz, N. 15,291 Jastrow, M. 317-18, 323, 351 Jenkins, R. 2 Jervell, J. 208 Jewett, R. 69 Johnson, A. E. 117-18 Johnson, A. P. 13 Johnson, S. 116,121 Johnston, D. 130-31 Jones, A. H. M. 17, 102 Jones, C. P. 121, 196,200 Jones,F. S.274-77,284, 303 Jonas, H. 46-47 Joubert, S. J. 65, 95 Jungmann, J. 157 Kaden, E.-H. 150 Kaegi, W. E. 121 Kaestli, J.-D. 276 Kalmin, R. 15,291,343 Kaser, M. 131 Kastner, V. 197 Keenan, J. G. 128 Kelley, N. 75, 275, 284 Kimelman R. 15 King, K. L. 6, 18-19,20,22,28,30, 32-33,37,51,56, 166 Kippenberg, H. G. 46, 47 Kirchner, P. C. 377 Kister, M. 301-02 Kittel, G. 219 Klar, B. 378 Klausner, J. 340 Kline, L. L. 280 Klingshirn, W. 103 Kloppenborg, J. S. 68, 75 Koehler, L. 317-18, 322, 334 Koester, H. 6,51,81, 197,250 Koschorke, K. 35,266 Koselleck, R. 185 Kraabel, A. T. 78,233, 256, 260 Kraft, R. A. 5 Kraus, C. S. 182
Modern Author Index Krause, M. 35 Krueger, D. 112 Kugener, M.-A. 159-60 Kuhn, K. G. 350, 356 Kurtz, L. R. 16-17 Lambdin, T. O. 254 Lamberigts, M. 162, 342 Lambers-Petry, D. 265 Lambert, M. 102 Lampe, G. W. H. 352 Lampe,P. 33,64,77,99 Lane Fox, R. 256 Lauterbach, J. Z. 340 Layton,B.6,31,254,257,260 Le Boulluec, A. 5,7-9, 11,22,31, 108, 146,280 Leicht, R. 315,323,334 Leipoldt, J. 256, 259 Lentz, O. H. W. 147, 149 Levene, N. 302 Levine, L. 290, 338 Levine, L. I. 315 Levinson, J. 297 Lewis, N. 305 Lewy, H. 378 Lichtenberger, H. 265, 303 Lieberman,S. 300,307,318,327,329 Liebeschuetz, J. H. W. G. 110 Liebreich, L. J. 381 Lieu,J.M. 13-14,103-04,144-45, 147,165,213,219-20,225-27, Lieu, S. N. C. 144, 147-50, 157-59, 161-64 Lifshitz, B. 214, 224 Lightfoot, J. B. 222 Lightstone, J. N. 50 Lim,R. 17,24, 109, 115, 122, 143,278 Limor, O. 370 LiPuma, E. 60 Llewelyn, S. R. 148 Lossl, J. 162 Louth, A. 127 Liidemann, G. 102,278-79,286 Lull, D. J. 275 Lyman, R. 8,51-52, 103, 130 Mack, B. L. 54, 82 MacMullen, R. 47, 255-256, 305, 346 Mactoux, M.-M. 154, 164
Magness, J. 315 Magnou-Nortier, E. 134 Maier, H. O. 18, 65, 249 Maier, J. 340, 343, 350, 353-54 Malcovati, H. 183 Malesevic, S. 1, 11-12 Malina, B. 65 Mandelbaum, B. 344 Marcus, J. 309 Margaliyot, M. 321-26, 330, 334 Markus, R. A. 13, 102-03, 116, 148 Marmorstein, A. 291 Marshall, J. 208,212-14,221,234 Martin, D. 105,262,276 Matthews, C. R. 257 Matthews, S. 234 Mattingly, H. 145,215,224 May, R. A. 348 McClure, J. 134 McCutcheon, R. T. 53 McGowan, A. 157 Meacham, T. 354 Meeks, W. 77,79,89-90,168,255 Meier, J. P. 250 Meissner, H. M. 118 Menard, J. E. 259, 269 Mendelson, A. 13 Menken,M. J. J. 256 Merrills, A. H. 102 Meshorer, Y. 176 Meyer, M. 9, 355 Milbank, J. 109 Miles, K. 103 Miles, M. F. 247 Miles, R. 103 Millar, F. 9, 103, 113, 115, 120 Miller, D. L. C. 130 Miller, P. C. 105,276 Miller, S. S. 315 Milton, J. 236 Mimouni, S. C. 274, 303 Mirecki, P. A. 9, 165,355 Momigliano, A. 192, 203-04 Monserrat Torrents, J. 257 Montevecchi, O. 145 Moore, G. F. 170,339 Moore, R. I. 108 Mor, M. 177 Moraldi, L. 256, 259 Mosetto, F. 125
393
394
Modern Author Index
Moxnes, H. 305 Musurillo, H. 300, 304 Nelson, J. 102 Netzer, E. 315 Neubauer, A. 348,378 Neusner, J. 260,325,327-28,332,355 Neyrey, J. 305 Nice, R. 56 Nicolet, C. 128 Nieder, L. 61 Niehoff, M. 14, Norris, F. W. 5 North, J. 191 Oakman, D. E. 65 Obbink, D. 197 Ochs, P. 302 O'Connell, M. J. 52 Osborn, E. 40 Osterloh, K. L. 21, 24 Oulton, J. E. L. 149 Pagels, E. 6-7, 8,25,35,52, 113,233, 235,237,241 Papadoyannakis, Y. 23, 115-16, 120 Papadopoulos-Kerameus, A. 115 Parsons, W. 155 Paschke, F. 277 Paulsen, H. 247 Pearson, B. A. 76 Pelliot, P. 160 Perier, A. 343 Perikhanian, A. 354 Perkins, J. 227 Perkins, P. 280 Perrone, L. 116 Perry,B.E.276 Peters, M. K. H. 254 Peters, P. 159 Petersen, W. E. 344 Peterson, E. 214 Pickstock, C. 109 Pienkowski, P. 121 Pinero, A. 257 Pippin, T. 234, 248 Pizzolato, L. F. 145 Podossinov, A. 123 Polotsky, H. J. 147, 149 Postone, M. 60
Potter, D. S. 152 Price, S.R.F. 103, 104,238,240 Prigent, P. 250 Quasten, J. 125 Rajak, T. 104, 111 Rappaport, U. 169, 184, 189, 190,377 Rebillard, E. 18, 108, 164 Reed, A. Y. 11,21,26,32-33,212, 273-275,277,280,283,285-86, 291,303,331,341,350 Reed,J.L. 66,75,77-78,80,82,86,96 Rehm, B. 277 Reinhold, M. 305 Reinink, G. J. 115 Reno, R. R. 110 Renoux, C. 277 Richardson, P. 76, 207 Riedweg, C. 115 Ries, J. 148 Rinaldi, G. 119 Robert, C. H. 149 Roberts, A. 273 Robins, W. 276 Robinson, J. M. 51,248 Romano, A. 18,108,164 Rose, E. 147 Rosenau, W. 348 Rosenthal, D. 382 Rousseau, A. 36 Rowe, C. 47 Rowland, C. 103 Rubenstein, J. L. 316-17,321,334-36, 338,343 Rubin, M. 265 Rudolph, K. 46-47, 52 Ruggini, L. C. 110 Russell, J. B. 50,51,53, 102 Rutgers, L. V. 110 Sachs, M. 339 Safrai, S. 299, 348, 349 Sahlins, M. 50 Said, E. 107 Saldarini, A. 208, 224, 225 Saller, R. P. 263, 305 Salles, A. 278-79 Sanders, E. P. 12-13,63, 79, 341 Sandmel, S. 301
Modern Author Index Sandwell, I. 120 SchKfu~P.21,265,299,302-03,335,
341-43,346,351 Schaff, P. 304 Scheid, J. 133 Schenke, H.-M. 256, 259 Scher, S. 343 Scherman, N. 372 Schippman, K. 342 Schmidt, C. 147, 149 Schmidt, P. 383 Schoedel, W. R. 228, 247, 250 Schofield, M. 47 Schoeps,H. J. 275,294,297 Schumacher, M. A. 162 Schussler Fiorenza, E. 233, 242, 245, 255 Schutz, J. H. 86 Schwartz, S. 146,170-71,176,184, 186,191,194-95,315 Scopello, M. 148 Segal, A. F. 6, 13,294 Severus, E. von 123, 124 Sharma, A. 355 Shaw,B. 102,106,109 Shelton, J.-A. 305 Shipley, G. 175, 197,201,203 Sievers, J. 190 Siker, J. S. 254 Simmel, G. 61 Simon, M. 3 Siraisi, N. 118 Skalmowski, W. 354 Skarsaune, O. 255 Slingerland, H. D. 218 Smit, J. F. M. 256 Smith, A. 76, 81 Smith, J. Z. 11-13,21,54-55,82-83, 86,97,98 Smith, M. 31,169,170-71,174,188, 191 Smith, P. 307,351-52 Smith, S. 165 Smith, T. V. 279 Sokoloff, M. 314, 317-18, 321, 323-24, 334,358 Soskice, J. M. 254 Spawforth, A. 321 Staden, H. von 3-4 Standhartinger, A. 256
395
Stanton, G. N. 110 Stein, M. 148 Sternberger, G. 299, 323 Stendahl, K. 63, 76, 225 Stern, D. 300, 302 Stitskin, L. D. 235 Stock, B. 253 Stowers, S. 76, 88-89,91-93,208,223, 224-25 Strack, H. 299, 323, 339 Straw, C. 122 Strecker, G. 5, 279 Streeter, J. 113 Stroumsa, G. G. 110, 147, 149, 162-64, 265 Stroumsa, S. 147 Sukenik, E. L. 315 Sundermann, W. 148 Sussmann, Y. 382 Swain, S. 128 Swartz, D. 56 Swartz, M. D. 372 Tabbernee, W. 34-35 Taft, R. 370 Taplin, O. 182 Taylor J. 145,215,217-19 Taylor, J. E. 32-33 Tcherikover, V. 171, 187 Teugels, L. 110 Theissen, G. 86 Theodor,E.J.328,330,332 Theodor, J. 293 Thomassen, E. 33, 35, 51 Thompson, L. L. 238, 239 Till, W. C. 259 Tomson, P. J. 265 Townsend,P.25,145,243,251 Tredici, K. D. 256 Trevett, C. 34-35,224,228,247 Tubingen School 242 Turcotte, P.-A. 67 Turner, V. 364 Udoh, F. E. 384 Urbach, E. E. 315,3'40 Vallee, G. 137,281-83,289 Valler, S. 355 Van der Horst, P. W. 110,256
396
Modern Author Index
Van Deun, P. 342 Van Henten, J. W. 177 Van Oort, J. 148, 162-63 Van Oyden, G. 256 Van Rompay, L. 342 Vanstiphout, H. L. J. 115 Van Tongerioo, A. 354 Van Voorst, R. E. 275 Vessey, M. 103 Visotzky, B. L. 26, 294, 299, 302-04, 307,340-41,346,352 Vogel, c. 124 Volgers, A. 116 Volkerm W. 6 Volkmar, G. 242 Voretzsch, E. A. 160
White, L. M. 31 Widengren, G. 342 Widmer, P. 185 Wiedemann, T. 262 Wilken, R. L. 124, 255, 257 Wilkinson, J. 370 Williams, A. V. 342 Williams, M. A. 6,32,43,51,166 Williams, R. 51, 106 Wilson, S. G. 68 Wink, W. 46 Winter, E. 342 Wisse, F. 31 Woolf, G. 111, 115, 128, 164 Wolff, H. 128 Wurst, G. 148, 162-63
Wacquant, L. J. D. 56,61 Waitz, H. 274 Walbank, F. W. 174, 180, 185,200 Waldschmidt, E. 147, 149 Wallace-Hadrill, A. 305 Wallach, L. 340, 345 Walter, C. 112 Wan, S.-K. 96 Ward, G. 109 Watson, J. 165 Wehnert, J. 274 Weinfeld, M. 365,377 Weiss, Z. 315 Weissenrieder, A. 65 Wendt, F. 65 Wermelinger, O. 148, 162, 163 Wessel, S. 10 Whitby, M. 113
Yahalom, J. 374 Yarbrough, o. L. 31 Yamold, E. J. 247 Young, F. 47 Yuval,1. 27, 299, 341, 357, 364, 374, 384 Zamagni, C. 116 Zeitlin, S. 339-340 Zellentin, H. 26-27,207,376 Zetterholm, M. 64, 218, 222 Zieme, P. 148 Zimmermann, R. 130 Zito, G. 16,53,62 Zlotnick, D. 304 Zuccotti, F. 134 Zulay, M. 382 Zycha,J. 143,148,163
Subject Index Aaron 285-86,290,372 Abaye 318, 323 Abraham (biblical figure) 66, 91-94, 121,285,292,296,306,314,319, 330-32 Abram see Abraham academy (rabbinic) see schools, rabbinic (academy) Achaean 170,176,180-81,195-96,198 action 34, 50, 54, 62, 86, 135, 146, 372, see also practice activity 68, 71, 75, 77, 79, 86, 89, 100, 105, see also practice Acts, book of23, 74, 96, 98,145,20708,210,214,244,249 - and anti-Judaism 207-11 - and "Christians" 145 - influence of 74 - Paul according to 67 advertising, religious 25, 255-56, 261, 265-66,270,272 agape 258,261 Aemilius Paullus 173 Aetolian 170, 195 Afternoon prayer see Minha Akouanitai, Akouas 149 Alexander the Great 66, 195 Alexander Yannai 176 Alexandria 3-4, 289 ambiguity see indeterminacy Amitz Koah 372 Amora, Amoraic 322-23, 328, 334 Amos 368 Amulo (bishop of Lyon) 380-81 Annubion 281 anointing (with oil) 123, 124 see also chrism Anthemius (Praetorian Prefect) 135 anti-Judaism 207-211, 289 Antioch 120, 145,244 Antiochus IV Epiphanes 173, 175, 184, 187 anti-Paullnism 278 Apelles 116
apologetics 103, 115-16, 118, 126, 145, 208-09,211,377 Appion 281, 289 apocalypticism 80, see also eschatology apokatastasis 270-71 Apollinarius, Apollinarians 133, 138 aporia 117-18 Apotactitae 153 Aquila 281 Arabia 92 Arabic 167,277 Aramaic 323,334,380,382-83 Arcadius (Roman Emperor) 132 Arians 138, 153 Aristobulus Philhellen 176, 188 Armenian 277 Artemis 68 ars rhetorica 144 asceticism 36-37, 112, 152-53, 160, 162,256,271,352 Ashrei23,365-377 Asia Minor 5,68, 75,234,240,242-43, 246-50,252 Asklepios 68 Astrology 26, 282, 314-338 Athenodorus 281 Athens 76 Augustine 139, 143-44, 148, 150, 15458, 162, 167 - Contra Epistulam Fundamenti 148, 163 - Contra Faustum 148 - Contra Iulianum 150, 162-63 - De Haeresibus 154 authority 31,35,48,51,74,81,96,120, 156, 157,210 Avlat 318,334 Azariah (Biblical Figure) 378 Babylon 239 Bacchus 133 Balaam 235, 241
398
Subject Index
baptism 35-36, 38, 41, 43, 46,89,94, 123, 134, 138, 156 barbarian, barbarous, 71, 113, 144,283, 289, - see also ethnicity and foreign, foreigners Bar Kokhba revolt 146 Barnabas 244, 289 Basil 116 basileus 303, 306, 309 Bassa, virgin from Lydia, Manichea 159-160 Beatitudes 375-58 behavior, behavioral 34, 53, 68, 85,336, 373,375 Behemoth 231 Ben Sira 194 belief, believe 32-33, 35, 51, 53, 60, 62, 72, 104, 107, 110-111, 117, 120, 122, 124-26, 132, 134, 141--42, 14647,155,162,208,278,282,290291,293,301, 325, see also faith and practice, action, activity Bereshit Rabbah 291, 293-96 Birth, born 67,84,91,94, 103, 134, 155,163,285,295,317-23,325-26, 328,337 bishop 17, 132, 137, 152, 155, 157, 248-51,281,290 Boeotian League 195 body 36--45, 48, 83,91, 124, 155, 159160 body politic 172-73, 176, 179, 185, 189,191-92,206 bribe, bribery see corruption bridal chamber 25,254,261,264,268, 270-72 Byzantine 111-12, 127,164,364-65, 383-84 Caesarea 292 Cairo Geniza see Geniza canon, canonization 31, 108 Cappadocia, Cappadocian 150,341 Caracalla (Roman Emperor) 128-29 Catharge, Carthaginians 157, 162 Cato (Marcus Porcius) the elder 172, 181-85,191-93,203 Chaldean, Chaldeans 319-20, 337 Christian Origins 5, 7, 275, 282
christianoi 25, 212-230 christianismos, Christianism, [nchristianos] 122,212,226-29, 251,259 Christian Jews, Christian Judaism 2425,213,218,255,268,273-268 Church see Ekklesia, ekklesiai citizen, citizenship 23-24, 54, 67, 77, 83,89-90,96,113,120,128-30, 137, 140--41, 145, 151, 164, 169-73, 175-76,183,185,192,206,353 Claudius 218, 221 Clement of Alexandria 103, 108 Clement of Rome 273-74, 281-282, 286-287, see also PseudoClemen tines Clementianus 160 coconut-girl see Hainuwele Codex Theodosianus see Theodosian Code Codex Iustinianus see Justinian Code commandments see Torah,observance, affirmation of compline 370 Constantine 47,104,110,113,131-32, 141 Constantinople 142 conversion, converts 47, 79-80, 89, 104, 108, 131, 135, 141,211,273, 281,286,288,298 Coptic 6, 147, 149, 166,254,258,265, 267 Corinth 76,89-90 Corpus Fontium Manichaeorum 166-67 corruption, corrupting (bribe, bribery) 27,45,339-64 cosmic drama 230-32 cosmocrator 305-07, 312 cosmology - in Pseudo-Justin, "Quaestiones et responsiones ad orthodoxos" 11517, 123, 126 - in The Secret Revelation of John 45 Cratylus 266 creation, creator 37--42,44,48, 163, 294,296,321-22,325-26,370,37374 crimina 150, 157 crucifixion, crucified 81-84, 90, 149, 164,304,310,373,382
Subject Index Cynegius (Praetorian Prefect) 132 Cynoscephalae 176 Cyril of Alexandria 117 David (biblical figure) 66, 366 Daniel (biblical figure) 231, 236, 238 Daniel, book of236, 304, 311-12 Dead Sea Scrolls see Qumran death 37,39-41,44,47-48,81-84,9091,93-94,98,108,146,281,292, 306-07,319-20,324,336, see also life Delphi 176 Demetrius I 174,202 Deuteronomy, book of 294, 306, 308, 310 determinism 325 Devil (Satan, Yaldabaoth) 31, 37-38, 40,42,46,63,164,231-252,287 Didache 250, 359 Diaspora, Jews in 90,378,380 Diatessaron 344, 356, 358-60 dietary laws see kashrut difference 31-39, 44, 48-49, 67, 72, 86, 104,106-07,162,282-83,287-88, 373,381 - ignoring, dissimulating of 31, 49, see also likeness Diocletian 150, 152, 160 Dionysos 68 disputation, public 150-166,278 Dimi bar Kakuzta 317, 320-21 Docetist, docetic 146, 163, 166 Dorian 195-96 Doxa 22,56-62,64, 70, 73-74, 80, 88, 98-99,111 drowning, drowned, 90, 97, see also execution "Ebionites" 32-33, 274-77, 283 Edessa 254, 256-57 Edict of Milan 110 Egeria 370 Egypt 5, 36, 65, 149, 152, 164,290 Ekklesia, ekklesiai 22,50,54-55,63, 75-79,82,84,86,90-99,149,223, 240,247,249,266 Elijah (biblical figure) 285 emulate, emulation 24, 168-206 Encratitae 153
399
Enoch, Book of231, 236 enslavement see slaves, slavery Ephesus 76, 240, 247 Ephrem 33, 344, 358, 359 Epiphanius of Salamis 32,105,154, 275-77,282,288 - Panarion 137,274,283,288,376 Epistle to the Hebrews 373-55 Epistula Fundamenti 148 Epistula Petri see Pseudo-Clementines erotapokriseis 116-127 error 32, 41, 119, 124,278,280-89, 298,373 eschaton, eschatology 81, 93-94, 117, 220,286,293,366-72,374-76,379 ethe kai nomoi 192 ethnicity, ethnic, ethnic reasoning 10, 14,23,27,54-55,65-73,75,77, 87-99,146,165-66,170,178,184191, 195-6,287, see also barbarians, barbarous and foreign, foreigners Ethnos 65-66, 69, 92-95, 178, 184-206 ethnos-politeia 185-86, 204, 206 Euchari~37,39,41, 154, 157,373 Eunomians 138-39, 153 Eutropius 151 Eutychius 138, 162 Eutychians 162 Eusebia 157 Eusebius of Caesarea, 116, 149 - Ecclesiastical History 149 - Life of Constantine, 47 - Solutiones 117 evil 37-38, 42-43, 45, 156,287,292, 295-296,317,320 exegesis 108, 110, 112, 115-16, 118, 291,293,295-96,322,332,334, 364,369,370,380 Exile 133,339,342,347-49,356-57, 359,363,368,377-79 Exodus 286, 290, 372 Exodus, book of 240, 247 executioner, execution, executed 81-84, 301,304,306-07, see also martyrs, martyrdom, martyrology Ezekiel (biblical figure) 231, 236, 375, 383 Ezekiel, book of236
400
Subject Index
fullh28, 31, 37, 44, 62, 76, 90,92,99, 104, 107, 110, 120, 123, 125, 13233, 141, 152, 163,210,282,285, 292,306-07,368,379,384 see also belief, believe and practice, action, activity false Apostles 240, 248, 280, 296-97 false Prophets 8, 241, 247-48, 280, 284-90,296-98 family metaphors 261, 272 Fiscus Judaicus 96, 146 foreign, foreigner 71, 87, 89, 98, 129, 142, see also barbarian, barbarous and ethnicity, ethnic reasoning Flavius Josephus 75, 208 - Jewish Antiquities 176 - Jewish War 74 - Vita 208 Franco-Germany 373 Galatia, Galatians 179,223 Galerius (Roman Emperor) 129-30 Galilee, Galilean 209, 303, 325, 338 Gaul, Gauls 132, 173, 179, 196, 199, 201 gender 6, 9,38, 74,342,353 Genesis, book of 44,231,293-97,303, 322 Genesis Rabbah (Bereshit Rabbah) 293-97,306,316,328-35,331-39 Geniza 314,324 genos 15,267 gentile 9,25-26,55, 75-77, 79-80, 84, 86,90-98,209-14,217,219-21, 223-29,234,237,241-46,253,25758,260,275,277-79,281,286, 290-91,298-99,325-27,329,33334,336-38,340-41,375,388 Georgian 159,277 Ghost-dance 85-87 "Gnosticism," "gnostic" 6-8, 18,21, 30-32,35,37,43,45-47,51-52,56, 137, 147, 156, 163, 166,254-57, 265,280-83, 194, see also Valentinianism Gloria 383 God-fearers see theosebeis good 37-39, 43, 45, 47-48, 156,279, 292-93,295,297,367 Gospel, Gospels
- as final law 356-360 - false and true 281, 286 - four 35 - gaps in the 123 - Living 147 - number of 28-29 - of Jesus 209, 211 - Paul's 79, 81 - rabbinic knowledge of 301,339-364 - term in Syriac and Greek 350-351 Gospel of John 207, 237 Gospel of Luke 237, 244 - and anti-Judaism 23, 207-12 - prophecy of Exile 357 - on judging 356 - and Targum Pseudo-Jonathan 38283 Gospel of Mark 207-08,210 Gospel of Matthew 27, 120,207,210, 237,250,280 - subject to satire 339-364 Gospel of Philip 253-272 Gospel of Thomas 256 Gratian 151 Greek (ethnicity), Greekness 24, 71, 75, 84,91, 118-123, 172, 179, 180, 182, 184,194,201,203,258-59,277, 283 Greek (language) 108, 116, 149-50, 167,277,307,382 Greece 68, 75 habitus 56 Hagar (biblical figure) 92 Hainuwele (coconut-girl) 83-86 hairesis, haireseis 3-4, 8,280, 286 Halle I 365 Hananiah (Biblical figure) 378 Hasidim rishonim 370 Hasmonean 169-70, 176, 187-91,20406 Hebrew, Hebrews - Bible see Torah - ethnicity 253-72 - language 294, 303, 330-34, 366-68, 375-76,383 - letter to the see Epistle to the Hebrews - Scriptures see Torah
Subject Index
Hellenism 68, 121-22, 126, 168-206, 277,283 - as heresy 288-291,298 Hellenismos 121-122, 179,226 see also Ioudaismos, Christianismos Hermas 33 Herodotus 177 Herodians, Herodiani 214 Hesperius (Praetorian Prefect) 134 Hippolytus 244 Holy Spirit 253-54,257-58,266-70 Homer, Homeric 176-77, 181-82, 19899 Honorius (emperor) 132 household 18,43,47,68,89,216,262 hybridity 106, see also indeterminacy Hydroparastatae 153 Iconoclasm 112 identity see self-definition ideology 81, 96, 103,211,297 idolatry 290, 326 Idumeans 169, 184 Ignatius of Antioch 25, 207, 212, 226231,234,244,246-58 - Letter to the Magnesians 212, 227 - Letter to the Philadelphians 228, 248-50,348 - Letter to the Romans 227 Imma Shalom 339-363 immolation 90 imperialism 100, 176, 191,205 indeterminacy (and ambiguity) 15,320, 323,375, see also hybridity Infamia 137-38, 140, 151 Inheritiance see law, - inheritance inquisitores 153 Insider, insiders 52-53, 59, 145,301, 308, see also outsider, outsiders Internal Enemies - in Acts 211 - in the Book of Revelation 237,23946 Ioudaios, Ioudaioi, ioudai 78, 258-60 Ioudaismos 14, 78, 86, 122, 179,212, 226-27,229,250-51,292, see also Hellenismos and Christianismos IrenaeusofLyons 28-30,35-39,41, 43-44,46-49,108,124,280,282 - Against Heresies 22, 28, 36-48
401
Isaac (biblical figure) 66, 92, 95, 121, 245,285 Isaiah (biblical figure) 231, 236,381-83 Isis 68, 82, 133 Islam 385 Ismant el-Kharab 147 Israel - God of 87,89,307 - land of 340,350-52,359-61,363 - nation, people, assembly of 66, 77, 91-93,210,240,242,286,313,316, 318-20,326-338,367-49,371-72, 376-77,379,381-83 - verus 382 Italy 143 Iturean 169 ius civile see law, - civil ius publicae see law, - public Jacob (biblical figure) 66, 121,285,381 James (apostle) 210,273-74 - letter of 207-08 Jason (High Priest) 200 Jason of Cyrene 177 Jeremiah 236,319,327-28,332-33 Jerome 144 Jerusalem 92, 96,370 - exile from 378-379 Jerusalem Temple 74, 88, 146,209, 367,372-74,385 - destruction of 209, 286, 378 Jewish Christians, Jewish Christianity see Christian Jews, Christian Judaism Jewish War 237 John (apostle) see Secret Revelation of John and Apocryphon of John John (evangelist) see Gospel of John John of Cappadocia (Praetorian Prefect) 135 John Chrysostom 120 John of Damascus 127 John Malalas 217-18 John ofPatmos 25, 231-33,235,23740,243-44,246-252 John the Baptist 285 John HyrcanusI 174,176,191,201-02, 206 Joseph (biblical figure) 306 Josephus see Flavius Josephus
402
Subject Index
Jubilees 236 Judah Maccabee see Maccabees "Judaizers," "Judaizing" 212, 228, 255, 275 Judas 164 Judea, Judean 90, 92-95, 365, see also ioudaios Julian (Roman Emperor) 118 - Contra Galilaeos 128 Julian of Eclanum 143, 148, 162 Julianus (proconsul of Africa) 150 Justin Martyr 8, 104, 108, 115,282 - Dialogue with Trypho 4, 104,382 Justinian 128, 132, 135, 140-141,383 Justinian Code (Codex Iustinianus) 141 Justice 39, 45-48 kashrut (dietary laws) 210 Kedusha de-Sidra 380-81 Kephalaia 147, 149 Kerygma Petrou 274 kingdom of God 269 kingdom of priests 240, 247 kleronomia, kleronomos 262, see also inheritance Laenas (G. Popillius) 175 Last Supper 372 Latin 150, 162, 167,277,374-75 law - civil 66, 130 - criminal 66 - dietary see kashrut - divine, holy 132, 141,292 - inheritance 339-363 - human 44 - Judean 172, 178, 185-93,206 - Jewish see Torah - of the polis 66 - oral see Torah, - oral - public 130-31, 140 - private 140 - rabbinic 339-363,384 - Roman imperial 23, 109, 128-143, 150-53,159,162,257,262-63 - Syro-Roman 354 - written see Torah lawless 184,237 laying of hands 124 "Letter of Menoch" 148
Leonidas 177, 182-83, 193 Leviathan 25, 231-32, 238 Leviticus Rabbah (Wayiqrah Rabbah) 306 Letter to the Hebrews see Epistle to the Hebrews life 38, 40, 42, 44-49, 84, 292, 306, 375,383-84, see also death likeness, similarity - of in- and out-group 31, 36-38, 44, 49,287 - of Jews and Romans 297, -36 - of liturgical practice 370-74 see also difference - to churches 153 - of heresiologies 158, 281-282, 297 - to God 40, 40-48, 292-295, 309 liturgy, liturgica, liturgical text 116, 124-25,364,367,369-66,382,384 liturgy of the hours see prayer of the hours Livy 200 Lucius Quinctius Flamininus 200 Luke (evangelist) see Gospel of Luke Maccabees 174, 178-79, 186-87, 191, 206 Maccabees, books of - 1 Maccabees 23, 168-206 - 2 Maccabees 23, 168-206 Macedonia, Macedonians 79, 138, 153, 173, 179, 199 Mahzor Vitry 380 "magic", "magicians" 69, 115, 117, 282,287,289-90,331 Malliana 154 Mandaic 324 Mani, "Manes," Manichaeans, 118-19, 138-39, 143-67, see also nomen Manichaeorum Marcian (Roman Jurist) 131 Marcion, Marcians, Marcionites 33-34, 105, 116,279,297 Marcus Porcius Cato see Cato Mark the Deacon's Life of Porphyry of Gaza 159 Mark (evangelist) see Gospel of Mark Mar Zaku 149 martyrs, martyrdom, martyrology 3435,39,47-48,82,99,145-46,152,
Subject Index 163,211,299,301,303-08,373 see also persecution and executioner, execution, executed Mary (mother of Jesus) 257, 260 Matthew (evangelist), see Gospel of Matthew Mauretania 154 medical schools see schools Mekhilta deRabbi Ishmael - and astrology 327-29 - Pisha 327 merit 112,326,331,371 Messiah, messianic, messianism 89-90, 209,240,280,368,377,380-81, 385 Middle Platonism 8, 266 Midrash Tannaim 306 min, minim, minut 15, 19,26,292,294, 298,302-03,308-09,341,350 Minha 365 Minucius Felix 151 - Octavius 145 miracles 121, 125 Mishael (Biblical figure) 378 Mishnah 316 - and inheritance law 353 - and women 403-04 - 'Avot 297 - Bava Batra 353 - Sanhedrin 384 - Yoma 372 monotheism 288,290,297 Montanism, Montanists 34-35, 134 morning prayer see shaharit Moses 240, 284-86, 289-90, 294-97, 304,311-12 "mystery cults" 68, 82 "mystery," "mysteries," mysterion 138, 255,270,285,382 Nag Hammadi 6, 19,25,31,36,265, 387 Nag Hammadi Codex II 256 Nazarene, Nazorean, Nazoraeans 226, 265 neighbor, neighborhood 44, 68-69, 87, 209,211 Nero 215, 221-23 "New Prophecy," see Montanism
403
New Testament 129, 300-01, 303-04, 382 Nicetas 281 Nicanor 177, 186-87 Nicolitains 240, 244 Nimrod 282 nomen christianum 145, 150-52 nomen Manichaeorum 143-45, 152, 156-61, 165, 167 see also Mani, Manichaeans notebook 118, 317, 320, 322 Numbers, book of297 obsequium 262 oikonomos 262 oikumene, oikoumene, Oikoumene 24, 87, 129, 168-206 Old Testament see Torah Onias III 179, 186 opinion 3, 15,56-58,61, 108, 116, 125, 280 Oral Torah see Torah, Oral and Written Origen 116 - Origenist controversy 17 orthopraxy 290 "Other," "Others" 11-14, 16,20-21, 27-28,30,28,30,36, 103, 108, 111, 147,167,195,209,246,299,303, 364 Outsiders 33, 75,95, 99, 145, 148, 161, 301,303,308, see also insider, insiders "overturning the lamp" 345-46, 361 paideia 4, 10, 203 Paradise Lost 236 Paraclete 149 "Parting of the Ways" 275 patria potestas 262 patron, patronage 68, 89, 112, 120,301, 305-08,310-11 Paul (apostle) 22, 207, 241, 243, 245 Pauline Epistles - 1 Cor 54,63, 81-82, 84, 91, 97, 99, 215-16,241,245,303 - 2 Cor 63, 86, 88, 96-98 - Gal 63, 76, 79,91-94,98,215,245 - Phil 63, 75, 86, 88, 92, 98 - Phlm 63,86 - Rom 63, 76, 91-94, 96, 124,245
404
Subject Index
- Thess 54, 63, 79, 81, 86, 90-91, 98 Pauline metaphors 263, 272 peculium 262 peer-polity 203 Pelagianism, Pelagian controversy, Pelagius 16, 162 Peloponnesus 179, 196, 198 peregrini dedicitii 128-29 Pergamene, Pergamum 175, 195-202, 205,240-41 persecuting society 108 persecution 47,62-63,92,97-98, 100, 113, 127, 129, 138, 145, 150-52, 160-62, 306, see also violence Persian Empire see Sassanian Empire. Pesukei de-Zimra 23, 365-377 Peshitta 344, 356, 358, 360 Pesikta deRav Kahana 344-47,352, 357-58,360,363 Peter (apostle) 210-11, 273-74, 27881,284-90,292-93,295-99 - 1 Peter 207, 225 Petronius (Satyricon) 345, 347 Pharisees, 208-09, 211, 290 Philadelphia 241,242,244 Philip V of Macedon 173, 176, 199 Philippi 74, 76, 98 Philo of Alexandria 14, 331 philosophy, philosophical, philosopher, philosophus, 3-4, 58, 109-11, 117, 145-45,159-60,288-89,291,298, 305,307,313 see also schools,philosophical phOster 147 Phrygia, Phrygians 35, 138 pistis 258 piyyut 372,374 Pliny the Younger 158,207 polemic, polemics 35, 48, 76, 86, 104, 110-11, 116, 127, 143, 149,211, 273,277,288,291,298-99,301, 303,306-08,364,372,377,382, 384-85 polis 65-66, 69-70, 87-90, 95-96 Polybius (of Megalopolis) 16, 170, 175, 180-81, 185, 189, 196,201,203 Popillius (G. Laenas) 175 Porphyry 118 Porphyry of Gaza 159 postcolonialism 106
postmodemism 103, 108-09, 111, 114 Pneumatomachi 153 practice 30-38, 41, 43, 52, 62-63, 6869, 72, 74, 88, 97, 113, 117-18, 122-126, 129, 140-42, 147-48, 15253, 157-58, 160, 162, 166,208,290, 327-30,332-33,365,369-70,37273 see also belief, believe; faith; action, activity; and ritual practice prayer o/the hours 370 Priscillianists 134, 138 propaganda 14,204,206,217,255, 260-61,263 proselytes, proselytizing 25,244,25355,257,260-64,270,272 Proverbs 339 Psalms, Book 0/27,231,365-71,37475,379-83, Pseudo-Clementine Homilies 25, 27398 Pseudo-Clementine Recognitions 27398 Pseudo-Justin, Quaestiones et responsiones ad orthodoxos 23, 115127 Ptolemaic 3, 195 Public good or interest (utilitas publica) 130-34 Punic War (First) 193 quaestor 133, 135, 141-42 Quintus Memmius 175 Qumran 236,241,365,376-77 Rab 318 Raba bar Rav Shila 318, 322 Rabbah 318, 323 Rabbis, rabbinic (movement) - and Christianity 299-313, 339-363 - and "Christian Judaism", "Jewish Christianity" 291-96 - and martyrdom see martyrdom - and the Pseudo-Clementines 277, 291-96 - dating of 300 - disputation tales 291-95, 302-04 - knowledge of the Gospel see Gospel, - rabbinic knowledge of - self definition see self-definition, rabbinic
Subject Index R. Akiva 319-20,326,334,336-37 Rabbi Asher of Lunel 369 R. Ashi317-18, 320-21, 323-24,337 R. Eleazar of Worms 369, 383 R. Eliezer 339-363,375 R. FJanina 316,318,323-25,330,335 R. Joshua ben Levi 316-18,320-26, 330-32,367-68,370 R. Meir 346, 350 R. Meshulam b. Kalonymus 373 R. Nal;lman bar Yitzl;lak 317-18, 320, 322,324,326,331,365,338 R. Shmuel bar Yitzl;lak 331 R. Simeon ben Gamaliel 352 R. Simlai 302 R. Yehuda 318 R. Yitzchak 304 R. Yohanan (Yol;lanan, Johanan) 294, 316,318,326,329-30,332,368 R. Yudan 304 "Radical Orthodoxy" 109, 114 race 10,25,45,99, 144 Ravenna 142 "religion," religio - and ethnicity 66 - Christian 105, 110, 121-22, l32-33, 140,370-71,385 - Hellenistic 121-22 - heretical, illicit, sectarian l3 5, 141, 150,282 - founder of 145, 149 - freedom of 340 - Jewish 16, 76, 105,209 - late Antique 2,5, 7, 9, 29, 106 - Manichaeism as a universal r. 164, 166 - Roman 66, l33 res sacrae 131 resurrection 39-40, 41, 84, 90-91, 99, 122-23,155,367 Revelation, Book of208, 226, 231 Rhodes 175, 195 Ritual, ritual practice 31, 33, 36, 43,46, 82, 123, 161, 165,369,372-73 see also action, activity and practice Roman Empire 70, 110, 129, 129, l31, 149,168-206,239,240,288 Roman North Africa 148, 150, 163 Roman people 174, 181, 188-89 Roman citizenship see citizenship
405
Rome (city) 5, 33, 34, 66, 72, 74, 83, 87,96,98,99, 128, l30-32, 150, 237,239,240,281 Rufinus 17, 134 Sabbath see Shabbat Saccofori 153 sacrilege, sacrilegious 62, 131, 157 Sadducees 211, 384 Samaria, Samaritan, Samaritans 279, 281,283,290-291 salvation 28,37-38,41-46,281,368, 376,384 2 Samuel 206 Sas[s]anian (Persian) Empire 66, 150 Satan see Devil Satyricon see Petronius schools - Christian 23, 118 - medical3 - middle platonic 266 - philosophical 3-4, 8, 15 - rabbinic (academy) 321, 337 Scripture, scriptures 31-33, 37,112, 116, 117, 123, 129, 164,291-93, 295-97,303,322,326,333 Scythian 283 ~dq, ~dqh 318-20, 323,330-31,334, 336, see also justice and merit "Second Coming" 122 Secret Revelation of John 22, 36-49 - similarities to Irenaeus 38 - differences to Irenaeus 39-49 Secundinus 143-144, 159-60 Sefer Hasidim 374-75 Seleucids 201 self-definition (self-identity) - and heresy 1-27, 62, 100, 102-03 - Christian 28,36,49, 103, 108-09, 145-46,156,246,254 - Hellenistic 168-206 - "heretical" 135 - in the Gospel of Philip 253-272 - in the Pseudo-Clementines 277, 290 - Jewish 88, 146,364,371-73,38183,384-85 - Luke's 207-12 - Maccabean 168-206 - Manichean 147, 150, 153-54, 15962, 165-66
406
Subject Index
- Pauline 54-55,59,63, 76, 84-102 - rabbinic 299-308 - Roman 64-73,89, 101 - through discourse 102, 105 self-identity, see self-definition "Sethianism" 6 Septuagint 77,240,254,368,381 Serapis 68 sexual practices 241 Shabbat (Sabbath) 317, 322 Shaharit 27,365-84 shame, shamed 84, 97,138,211,319, 334-35,377,379, see also infamia Shapur II 342 Shema 370 Shmuel 319, 326, 334-37 Sicily 193 Siddur 364-84 Sifre 345, 362 Simon Magus 273, 278-82, 285-93, 295 Simon (Hasmonean ruler) 174, 190, 200,206 Simonianism 283 similarity see likeness slaves, slavery, enslavement 71,83,9192; 128, 173, 188,204,216,253, 258,261-64,267,272,319 Smyrna 240,241,242,244 "smoking gun" 301 Spain 173 stamma, stammaim 316,320-25,32930,333-34,336,338 succession - "apostolic" 281, 284 - "heretical" 280, 284, 288, 290 - "Jewish" 290 Suetonius 218, 221-22 superceding (Israel), supersession, supersessionist, supersessionism 77, 209-10,245,298,356,358 Sura 321 synagogues 55, 76-79,98,314,367, 369,379-80 syncretism 166 Syria 5, 115,244 Syriac 26, 167,254,256,258,277,307, 324,342-44,350-52,356-59,363, 368 Syriac Book of Medicines 324
Syzygy, the law of 283-88 Tacitus 221-22 Tahanun 27, 377-79 Tannaitic 328, 345, 369 Talmud Bavli (Babylonian Talmud) - and astrology 314- 38 - and Christian literature 339-63 - 'Avodah Zarah 339 - Berakhot 366 - 'Eruvin 351 - Menahot 342 - Sanhedrin 367 - Shabbat26,314-38,339-63,376 - Sotah 380 Talmud Yerushalmi (Palestinian Talmud) - and Christianity 307-08 and Patronage System 304-07 and Trinitarian Testimonies 301-05, 307-08 Berakhot25,299-313 Shabbat335-36 Sotah 341 Targum Pseudo-Jonathan 383 Tatian 116, 344 Tax 66, 96, 146, see also fisc us judaicus Teacher, true and false 40, 149 Tebessa 161 Telephus 196-99 Temple, see Jerusalem Temple Tertullian 129, 151,370 - de praescriptione haereticorum 129 - apologeticus liber 145 - adversus Marcionem 209 theodicy 107 - in Pseudo-Justin, "Quaestiones et responsiones ad orthodoxos" 116 Theodoret of Cyrrhus 117, 120 Theodosius I 17-18, 132, 147, 151 Theodosian Code 131-42, 151-53, 161, 341 Theosebeis (God-fearers) 77-79 Thermopylae 183, 193 Thessalonica 76, 79 Thessaly 223 Thyatira 241 Timothy of Alexandria 162 Titus Quinctius Flamininus 176,200 Titus Manius 175
Subject Index toleration, tolerance 34-35, 38, 97, 110-11, 113-14, 129, 136 Torah, "dpxa1a", "the Law", "Old Testament" 37,92-93, 163,209-11, 250,300,304,314,321-22,367, 380-84 - "abolishment" of 76-77, 210, 35657 - affirmation, observance of 209, 32627,335-36 - and God's plurality 293-94 - Oral and Written 290, 297, 380-82 - study of327, 329, 337-38, 381 Tosefta 316 - and astrology 328-29 - Sukkah 327 Trajan 146,207 trinity, Trinitarian Testimonies 143, 299-313,382 Trishagion 383 Trojan, Troja 175-76, 197, 199-201, 203-04 Tiibingen School 242 Tunhuang Manichaica 160 "two powers in heaven" 294 Ulpian (Roman jurist) 128 Unity - divine 43,295,302 - in Christ 94, 104 - of orthodoxy, 280 - of the church 28,31-34,36,250, 280 - of the city 96 - of the communitylethnos 186 - of the soul and God 293 - rabbinic 349 Universalism, universal 367-68
407
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of Christianity (orthodoxy, protoorthodoxy) 107, 129 - of Manichaeism 163, 166 - Pauline 76, 95-96, 104 - Roman 96,99, 128, 141 Ursus 157 utilitas publica see public good or interest uva Ie-zion 27, 380-84 ve-hu rahum 27,377-79 "Valentinianism," Valentinians, Valentinus, 6, 19,33,35-36, 156, 256,264, Valentini an II (Emperor) 151 Valentinian III (Emperor) 133 Verses of Song see Pesukei de-Zimra Vespasian (Roman Emperor) 379 Victor of Vita 160 Victorinus 154-56 violence 23,35,37,42-43,45-48, 109, 111-14, see also persecution Vulgate 370 wild beasts 121,90,311 Wisdom of ben Sira see Ben Sira World to Come 284,366-67,369,384 Xenophon (Symposium) 182 Yaldabaoth see Devil Yom Kippur 373 Yoke 87 Zacharias of Mytilene 117 zodiac 314, 329 Zoroaster, Zoroastriansism, Zoroastrians 282, 342, 354-55
