Rhetoric and Reality in Early Christianities
Studies in Christianity and Judaism / Études sur le christianisme et le judaïsme : 16 Studies in Christianity and Judaism / Études sur le christianisme et le judaïsme publishes monographs on Christianity and Judaism in the last two centuries before the common era and the first six centuries of the common era, with a special interest in studies of their interrelationship or the cultural and social context in which they developed. GENERAL EDITOR: Stephen G. Wilson
Carleton University
EDITORIAL BOARD: Paula Fredrickson John Gager Olivette Genest Paul-Hubert Poirier Adele Reinhartz
Boston University Princeton University Université de Montréal Université Laval University of Ottawa
Studies in Christianity and Judaism / Études sur le christianisme et le judaïsme : 16
Rhetoric and Reality in Early Christianities WILLI BRAUN,
EDITOR
Published for the Canadian Corporation for Studies in Religion/ Corporation Canadienne des Sciences Religieuses by Wilfrid Laurier University Press 2005
We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program for our publishing activities.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Rhetoric and reality in early Christianities / Willi Braun, editor. (Studies in Christianity and Judaism = Études sur le christianisme et le judaïsme ESCJ ; 16). Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-88920-462-4 1. Persuasion (Rhetoric)—Religious aspects—Christianity—History. 2. Church history—Primitive and early church, ca. 30-600. 3. Rhetoric, Ancient. 4. Persuasion (Rhetoric)—Social aspects—Mediterranean Region. I. Braun, Willi, 1954– II. Canadian Corporation for Studies in Religion III. Series: Studies in Christianity and Judaism ; 16 BR166.R48 2005
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© 2005 Canadian Corporation for Studies in Religion / Corporation Canadienne des Sciences Religieuses Cover design by P.J. Woodland, using an image from Boethius’s Interpretation of Aristotle’s Categories, circa AD 1300, from the British Library. Interior design by Catharine Bonas-Taylor.
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In Memoriam Heinz O. Guenther, John C. Meagher brilliant scholars exemplary teachers kind friends
Contents
Preface / ix Contributors / xi 1 Rhetoric, Rhetoricality, and Discourse Performances / 1 Willi Braun 2 The Rhetoric of Social Construction: Language and Society in the Gospel of Thomas / 27 William E. Arnal 3 Melito of Sardis, the Second Sophistic, and “Israel” / 49 Laurence Broadhurst 4 Early Christian Heroes and Lukan Narrative: Stephen and the Hellenists in Ancient Historiographical Perspective / 75 Todd Penner 5 Can Nympha Rule This House? The Rhetoric of Domesticity in Colossians / 99 Margaret Y. MacDonald 6 “Raised from the Dung”: Hagiography, Liberation, and the Social Subversiveness of Early Medieval Christianity / 121 John Kitchen 7 Philosophical Counsel versus Customary Lament in Fourth-Century Christian Responses to Death / 161 Theodore S. de Bruyn vii
viii
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8 Performativity, Narrative, and Cognition: “Demythologizing” the Roman Cult of Mithras / 187 Luther H. Martin 9 Feeling Persuaded: Christianization as Social Formation / 219 Chad Kile Index / 249
Preface
This volume had its beginning in the form of a seminar held in conjunction with the Congress of the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, which took place at the University of Alberta, Edmonton, in the spring of 2000. The seminar was co-sponsored by the Canadian Society of Biblical Studies and the Canadian Society for the Study of Rhetoric, taking advantage of funds made available by the Federation for cross-disciplinary collaboration. A Conference Grant awarded by the Research Services Office of the University of Alberta provided additional support. Not all the papers presented at the 2000 seminar are published here, nor were all the essays in this volume first presented at the seminar. All articles presented here, however, contribute to the original aim of the seminar to explore the rhetoricality of early Christian discourses and practices around the overarching question of how to account in cogently explanatory terms for the persuasions of and to early Christian groups, ideologies, and practices. Funds in aid toward the publication of this volume were provided in part by the Office of the Vice-President (Research) and the Faculty of Arts at the University of Alberta. I thank Harvey Krahn, the former Associate Dean (Research) in the Faculty of Arts, for his effective role in securing these funds. Additional funds were provided by the Canadian Corporation for Studies in Religion. The preparation of this volume for Studies in Christianity and Judaism/Études sur le christianisme et le judaïsme (ESCJ) was encouraged by Peter Richardson, the former editor
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of the series. Stephen G. Wilson, the current editor of ESCJ, received the manuscript and contributed to its improvement. I am grateful to both of them. Chad Kile provided various kinds of editorial assistance. He also prepared the index.
Contributors
WILLIAM E. ARNAL, Department of Religion, University of Regina, Regina, Saskatchewan WILLI BRAUN, Department of History and Classics and the Interdisciplinary Programme in Religious Studies, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta LAURENCE BROADHURST, Department of Religion, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Manitoba THEODORE S. DE BRUYN, Department of Classics and Religious Studies, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Ontario CHAD KILE, Interdisciplinary Programme in Religious Studies, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta JOHN KITCHEN, Department of History and Classics, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta MARGARET Y. MACDONALD, Department of Religious Studies, St. Francis Xavier University, Antigonish, Nova Scotia LUTHER H. MARTIN, Department of Religion, The University of Vermont, Burlington, Vermont TODD PENNER, Department of Religion and Philosophy, Austin College, Sherman, Texas
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1 Rhetoric, Rhetoricality, and Discourse Performances
The Formalists…are followers of St. John. They believe that “In the beginning was the Word.” But we believe that in the beginning was the deed. The word followed, as its phonetic shadow. (Trotsky 1957: 183)1 Anyone who has sat in church long enough knows how difficult it is to draw conclusions about the social life of parishioners from the message of the preacher. (Sabean 1984: 199)
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t is almost impossible for biblical scholars and, more generally, scholars of early Christianities and other Graeco-Roman religious formations not to begin and end their studies within an envelope that is stuffed with words, word-oriented methods of explanation, and logographic theories of persuasion. The reasons for this are easy to find. Foremost among them is the historical evidence itself. Whatever nonliterary traces of ancient societies and their religious worlds may have found their way into the archive, and however seriously and competently they are given evidentiary value, it is the ancient word record, fossilized in textual form, that is the foundation for nearly all substantive scholarly conclusions about early Christianities and their contemporary ways of being religious (see especially Brett 1990). All the more so is this true for the study of the motives and manners of religious rhetoric in Graeco-Roman antiquity. Because rhetorical critics have little other 1
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territory than the documents they interpret, the temptation to reduce the persuasions and persuasiveness of early Christianities to their textualized verbal discourses and arguments is great—and understandable3—despite the fact that, at least prior to the first Christian scholasticism during the so-called Patristic period, Christians were demonstrably sceptical toward the persuasive efficacy and reliability of words, especially the written word and rhetorical techniques of manipulating words (Alexander 1990; cf. Osborn 1959), and despite the fact that Greek and Roman religiosity was action-centred rather than word/text/doctrine-focussed (Burkert 1985; Henrichs 1998; 2003) and, moreover, despite well-known scholarly reminders that Graeco-Roman cultures generally preferred “live” performances and visual representations to written texts (Thomas 2003). Second, “verbal art forms are so susceptible to treatment as selfcontained, bounded objects separable from their social and cultural contexts of production and reception” (Bauman and Briggs 1990: 72). Grammatical structures, syntax, the logic of arrangement, style, and other inner-textual features are among the most elemental trade interests of biblical scholars. Even when these are absorbed and re-aimed in the recent turn, in biblical studies especially, to rhetorical criticism, even “socio-rhetorical” criticism that, under the productive tutelage of Vernon Robbins, has brought into robust relation text and context in rhetorical analysis, the temptation nonetheless to regard persuasion in terms of a complex inner- to inter-textual game of Scrabble has been compelling.4 Aristotle, Cicero, and Quintilian, along with other ancient rhetorical theorists and compilers of technical handbooks of the “art of rhetoric,” provide not only evidence of the prominence of the formalities of rhetoric in the discourses of ancient Mediterranean cultures, but also determine the theoretical and methodological terms for the modern study of ancient procedures for crafting persuasions by the use and arrangement of words.5 In the recent attempts to associate a good number of biblical texts with “school” settings (e.g., Braun 2004; Henderson 2004; Beavis 2000), where the core curricula stressed training in increasingly formalized grammatical and rhetorical arts, a very close association of persuasion with verbal arts, even textual arts, is given a further nod. It is not, I hasten to add, that the trade practices of biblical and early Christian text-focussed and rhetoric-attentive scholarship have little return to show for all the learned toil; on the contrary, we know more about the “patterns of persuasion” (Mack and Robbins 1989) in early Christian and other contemporary philosophical, moral, and religious literature than ever before. Just the same, however, this knowledge is
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deeply beholden to and in service of the assumption that persuasion is an effect of the convincing force of the right words placed in calculated, correct order and delivered with an appropriate style and tone of pleading.6 This assumption and the temptation derived from it toward a hypervalue on words and texts as “self-contained, bounded objects” is surely in need of inspection when we try to come to grips with the old-butperennial question of just how to account for early Christianities, and other religious associations for that matter, as compelling (persuasive) options for social, intellectual, emotional—in short, self-definitional— affiliation in the multi-cultural and colonial context of the Roman Mediterranean. The first two reasons are firmly sustained by a third, one that I call to attention with an assist from Michel de Certeau’s idea of the “scriptural economy” (1984: xiii–xvi, 131–53) by which modern disciplines constitute themselves, by whose laws disciplinary practices are governed, and which, because of its hegemonic rule in the constitution of Western cultures generally, has been formative not only for a pervasively normative understanding of religion but also for conceptualizing persuasion of and to religion(s) as the result of logographic reasoning. De Certeau contends that the speech act “has been changed by three or four centuries of Western fashioning,” a fashioning achieved by “the installation of the scriptural apparatus” that has “conquered” and “colonized” the human “voice” (1984: 131).7 “Scriptural practice,” he states, “has acquired a mythical value over the past four centuries by gradually reorganizing all domains into which the Occidental ambition to compose its history, and thus to compose history itself, has been extended.…Thus one can read above the portals of modernity such inscriptions as ‘Here, to work is to write,’ or ‘Here only what is written is understood’” (1984: 133–34). “Europe was alphabetized” (Bender and Wellbery 1990: 22). And this “alphabetical liftoff ” (Debray 2004: 59–82) helped to ensure that logos, the communicative process in the widest sense, including its constitutive facets of cogency and persuasion, was re-posed as logismos, a textualized rationality. There is no need here for a remarking on all the contributing forces in this development,8 only to note that the European alphabetization of knowledge and rationality as the superordinate register of what Kant and others called the “free public exercise of reason”9 imposed itself focally on the rationalization of religious and religion’s persuasion and the scholar of religion as a historian, critic, and interpreter of texts (see Asad 1993: 79; LaMothe 2004a; 2004b).
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This conception of the “exercise of reason” was locked to a further myth that emerged as a touchstone of Western modernity, the “notion of the unique, integrated, more-or-less consistent individual” (Sabean 1984: 208), or in the somewhat exaggerated synthetic terms of Clifford Geertz, “the conception of the person as a bounded, unique, more or less integrated motivational and cognitive universe, a dynamic center of awareness, emotion, judgment, and action organized into a distinctive whole and set constrastively both against other such wholes and against its social and natural background” (Geertz 1976: 225). When these two complementaries—(1) persuasion indexed with reference to the values of a scriptural reason, coupled, as it is, with an implicit theory of language as a stable, even static, system of logical semantic relations and stable language-referent relations and (2) the human subject as a self-aware, bounded, “rational” cognitive unit—took root as rather stubborn, incorrigible axioms by which knowledge and discourse came to be defined, we have a powerful set-up for restricting “rhetoric” to a science on the inter-mental influence of words, ideas, propositions, creeds, doctrines. Now, we all have profited from the disciplined analytics fashioned by the scriptural economy—biblical scholarship, modern academic practice generally, this book as well, are inconceivable apart from text-based disciplines. The intention thus is not to throw stones in a glasshouse but to ambiguate the object defined as “rhetoric” that is (at least tacitly) interlinked with, even restrictively posed in terms of, a logographic formalism of the classical (Aristotelian) ars rhetorica. The aim is to put this kind of “rhetoric” in motion and thus to destabilize the habit of seeing the persuasion of and to early Graeco-Roman Christianities as the effect of ideas, which one can put up for inspection and analyze on the model of a stationary, stable text.
I should begin this motion with a “retro”-step, with Gorgias of Leontini, a Sicilian who became one of the superstars of classical Athenian rhetoric in the heyday of the Greek Enlightenment (see Solmsen 1975). He is of special interest because, though he is usually considered the founder of rhetoric’s most splashy, performative branch, namely epideictic,10 he is clearly “predisciplinary” to the developments that resulted in the formalization and technicalization of rhetoric, as Edward Schiappa (1996) has demonstrated. And for this reason his perspective offers aid in re-posing the relation between words and persuasion as part of the larger ques-
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tion of how to theorize persuasion. His Encomium of Helen, devoted to a crafty defence of the notorious Helen of Greek mythology, who was persuaded to abandon her husband Menelaos, king of Sparta, and to elope with Paris of Troy, “is the earliest surviving extended discussion of logos and certainly the most sophisticated of its time” (Schiappa 1996: 81). Though this positions Gorgias as an early voice in a trend toward a perception of the “world as logos-textured” (Mourelatos 1973: 16),11 persuasion by means of logos is only one facet in his theory of how to explain the movement of people to disaffiliate and reaffiliate themselves, whether the transfer of loyalty is in relation to ideas and beliefs or to social groups, a transfer that Gorgias equates with persuasion (peiqw/). Not that logos is ineffectual, in Gorgias’s view. On the contrary, were we to believe in prescience, we should be tempted at first blush to consider him ancestral to the Gospel of John, perhaps even as a prognosticating proto-Protestant European, in his assumption and hypostatization of logos as a powerful ruler able to work god-like deeds of persuasion.12 His view of speech sees logos as a veritable “living organism” (Süss 1975: 22)13 that, as such, asserts its persuasion (peiqw/) by force of a psycho-physical imposition on the auditor’s mind (yuxh/), in some respects apparently quite independently of a speaker’s artful and tactical deployment of logos. Gorgias speaks of logos as “the persuader” (o( pei/saj) and the mind (yuxh/) as “the persuaded” (e)/peisen), and the power relation between speech and psyche as compeller and compelled (12), or as Segal puts it, as “the conquest of a weaker subject by a stronger force” (1962: 122). A range of power-related terms underscore the compelling wallop of logos on the mind: it is a powerful ruler, as already noted (8); god-like in its effects, one must assume for it a superhuman potency (qei/an du/namin) (19); using a pharmacological analogy, Gorgias argues that “the power of logos has the same effect on the condition of the psyche as the power of drugs on the nature of bodies; for just as drugs dispel different humours from the body, and some stop it from being diseased and others stop it from living, so also in the case of logos— some cause pain, others pleasure, some cause fear, others instill courage in the hearers” (14);14 logos acts with a violent force akin to that of a rapist overpowering his victim;15 it stamps or moulds (e)tupw/sato) the psyche as it wishes (13).16 When we ask why logos has such power, Gorgias opts for a set of quasi-scientific explanations that are correlated with different kinds of speech.17 Poetry, which Gorgias simply stipulates as lo/gon e!xonta me/tron, “speech with metre,” impresses itself on the mind with aesthetic
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and emotive appeal: “into those who hear it enters (ei)sh==lqe) fearful shuddering and tearful pity and mournful longing” (9). As importantly, it also performs persuasion in a social sense in that it locutes empathy, sympathy, inter-personal affective links, i.e., it effects and performs the contiguity of self and group, in a manner reminiscent of the Frazerian notion of the effects of contagious magic (see Tambiah 1968: 190): “the psyche, through [poetic] logoi, suffers a suffering of its own at others’ good fortune and ill fortune,” writes Gorgias (9). With a small burst of ingenuity we can make the leap from Gorgias’s description of the effects of “speech with metre” to a more general theory of the power of metonymic speech. Unlike metaphoric speech, which uses “devices of purposive contrast” for the purpose of “development and extension of thought” and thus is constitutive of rhetorics of change by a sleight-of-hand trick of evoking similarity by drawing attention to difference (Paine 1981: 188),18 metonym trades in “the alreadyknown and accepted; its structure is ‘closed’ and always near tautology… Where metonym prevails over metaphor it can be expected that symbols (needing explanation) will relinquish their place to signs that do not need explanation” (Paine 1981: 188–89; italics in original). Metonymic speech—Gorgias’s “speech with metre”—thus is persuasive logos without logismos (ratiocination, rational argument). It evokes shared “knowns” and stabilizes them with speech that is emotive, working its persuasion in a word spectacle (ritual) that relies on the properties of language for solidifying self-in-group recognition and thus the formation of the social body.19 Metonymic rhetoric above all serves the purpose of enculturation;20 it is an ongoing “speech expressive of custom” (Aristotle, Rhet. 1.8)—the Trotskyan “phonetic shadow” of the native, local commonplace. Not all speech is metonymic, however. A second kind of speech includes the disciplinary discourses of science, exemplified by the speeches of astronomers (metewrolo/gwn lo/gouj), compulsory speechifying contests (a)nagkai/ouj dia\ lo/gwn a)gw==naj) in the courts and philosophical debates (filoso/fwn lo/gwn) (13). What interests Gorgias about these genres is not, as one would perhaps expect, to show that they have power to overcome mere opinion (do/ca) by the combination of statements of facts with reasoned arguments. Nor is it that they demonstrate a truth as a solid foundation for belief (pi/stij), for it is entirely possible—though not inevitable, of course—that these kinds of speeches are “not spoken with truth” (ou0k a0lhqei/a| lexqei/j) (13); in fact, Gorgias implies that they, like nasty drugs and dazzling spells, have the capacity
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to achieve reprehensible effects, to “drug and bewitch the mind with an evil (kakh==|) persuasion” (14).21 What does interest him is to point out that these genres represent the addition of a technical reasoning (logismo/j) to logos and that this addition directs and raises the power of speech’s persuasion (13). Astronomers, Gorgias points out, are able to demolish one opinion and replace it with another by making “unbelievable and obscure things apparent”; court advocates are able to please and persuade juries with speeches that are “written with skill” (te/xnh| grafei/j); philosophers are able to change opinion and belief with “quick-wittedness” (gnw/mhj ta/xoj). Why technical logos, or any argumentative speech, has force inheres in the incompleteness and fluctuation of knowledge itself, which makes belief and opinion necessarily “unsteady and unreliable” (sfalera\ kai\ a)be/baioj) (11) and, hence, subject to be toppled and replaced by the persuading influence of skilled (technically dazzling) speech. “If everyone, on every subject, possessed memory of the past and understanding of the present and foreknowledge of the future, speech would not be as powerful,” Gorgias argues (11). Shift and slip in social knowledge may give speech a certain force majeure at a given time and situation, but its force is easier to measure or construe as success in hindsight than as a guarantee in foresight. Despite the incredible power of speech that he has painstakingly argued, Gorgias concludes with an important ramifying hedge: if anyone—he refers to Helen specifically—is persuaded by logos, one must reckon that an element of chance, even misfortune (ei) lo/gw| e)pei/sqh…h)tu/xhsen) (15), is involved. If the Helen is read as a meditation on what persuades people to believe what they believe and do what they do, it is necessary to note, thus, that the powerful Prince of persuasion, speech, cleverly dressed down by Gorgias in the course of his composition, is also only one human mover among others. Gorgias refers to three others, though these are not discussed with the same depth of interest as logos. People find themselves in places, situations, social relationships and affiliations, even assenting to doctrinal beliefs, by accident, that is, neither as foreseen or intended or planned—to translate into my terms Gorgias’s transcendent causes, such as Chance (tu/xh), Necessity (a)na/gkh) or the “purposes of the gods” (qew==n bouleu/masi) (6), which are all rationalizations for the fact that many, if not most, human moves on noetic, moral, or social planes are neither obviously nor necessarily outcomes of preconsideration, hence not the result of beliefmaking or action-producing speech.
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It is also the case, Gorgias observes further, that people end up in life situations and conditions quite involuntarily. He is not speaking of consequences of circumstances beyond an individual’s control, though that would be a reasonable extension of his observation, but about the case of someone who has been seized by force (bi/a| h(rpa/sqe), or who is the victim of unjust hubris (a)di/kwj u(bri/sqh) (7). Finally, one must reckon with the possibility that people are persuaded not by logos, but moved by “compulsions of love” (e)/rwtoj a)na/gkaij) (19) or, now generalizing Gorgias’s affective language, by an attraction that is driven by a sentimental affinity (Lincoln 1989).22 As Bruce Lincoln argues, echoing the social theory of Raymond Williams (1977; see Filmer 2003), often “ideological persuasion has nothing and sentiment evocation everything to do with” attraction to someone or a group (Lincoln 1989: 10), hence also with group formation even where the group may rationalize its groupness with an ideological rhetoric (see Kile on “feeling persuaded,” chap. 9 in this volume). I should immediately add that there is nothing sentimental about the idea of sentiment as a “mover” in social affiliation and group formation. For Williams, sentiments, or “structures of feelings,” to use his terms, are “defined as social experiences in solution, as distinct from other social semantic formations which have been precipitated [by these experiences in solution] and are more evidently and immediately available…and it is primarily to emergent formations (though often in the form of modification or disturbance of older forms) that the structure of feeling, as solution, relates” (1977: 133–34, emphasis added). Williams is trying to get a conceptual grip on what he also calls the rather inchoate moment of “pre-emergence” (1984: 64–65) in the material-social (Williams is a Marxist theorist) formation process, a moment that hovers somewhere “between the privacy of subjective feeling and the publicity of linguistic utterance” (Filmer 2003: 209),23 a moment in which people are dispositionally opened either to filiation or estrangement, and a moment that of course is fluent, on the way to linguistic publication, which is when it becomes visible both for public and scholarly observation—and then often, I would recommend especially with reference to biblical rhetoric, as verbal rhetorics that purport to persuade towards that person or group or stance to which one already has an affinitive affective bent. Although Gorgias insinuates a distaste for what he considers the deceptive, mind-incapacitating compulsion of eros,24 he is surely on to something when he characterizes the persuading force of affect as “coming when it comes…
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not through intentions of mind…[nor through] contrivances of techn¯ e” (19). When, in the light of this rather complex theory of persuasion that includes as its causal forces (ai)ti/aj) any or all or, likely, an inseparable combination of language arts/practices, chance, brute hubris, and power as well as aeolian sentiment, Gorgias nonetheless apparently wagered on the efficacy of his speech-craft, it is with a sense—its face is an ironic smirk—that all bets are off on whether that efficacy can be controlled, directed, or predicted in any way, much less on whether a persuasion achieved by verbal rhetorical means will be stable and enduring in the social theatre of competing rhetorics and influences. At most, it would seem, insofar as speech, in his view, has an immediate effect and insofar, too, as the psyche has an independent mind, so to speak, plastic and impressionable as it may be, the best the rhetor can do is to learn as much as he or she can about logos and psyche so as to be able shrewdly to manipulate the former with a view toward influencing the latter to some extent (Segal 1962: 106–107). This is not nothing, for it is respect for the power in the word and confidence in the efficacy of speechifying that allows Gorgias confidently to say near the beginning of the Helen that he intended “by adding reasoning (logismo/n) to [his] speech (lo/gw|),…to demonstrate (dei==cai/) what is true” (2). At the least (and possibly worst), even the most skilfully crafted speech might make no difference at all, either because its power is overrun by countermanding speeches or knowledge, or because its noise is hardly distinguishable from the babble on the broadband of social discourse, verbal and non-verbal.25 Gorgias seems prepared for this possibility that the persuadability of logos is ambiguous and unreliable, for in the very last words of his composition he states that he wrote the encomium to Helen as a little game, as a contrivance for self-amusement (e)mo\n pai/gnion) and, no doubt, as a (re)marking of himself as a member of the intellectual élite class by means of rhetorical skill—auguring what would become, during the next several centuries and on into the period of emergent Christianities, Judaisms, and other socio-religious formations (such as Mithraism), a widely diffused Graeco-Roman spectator sport in which rhetoric frequently became detached from the philosophical and moral aims of peith¯ o and was put to use as entertainment in the form of highly rule-bound “improv theatre” performances,26 as a cultural commodity with some purchasing power on the market of social positionality, in other words.27
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T HE P ROGRAMME Most interesting, even if most befuddling for theorizing rhetoric and practising rhetorical analysis, is what we might call the “Gorgian middle,” the neither-nor but also the both-and of rhetoric as logismos that is able to demonstrate truth and bring about persuasion and rhetoric as paignion, a word-play that amuses and marks social place but one that has been “amputated from [the] effective, pragmatic, or persuasive dimension” of language.28 In this middle, between the view of speech as a controllable and predictable compeller and the view of speech as so unreliable that it might as well be reduced to a play-puppet, rhetoric is best conceived in the broadest term—as “rhetoricality,” a neologism of whose value I have been persuaded by John Bender and David Wellbery (1990). Although they use the term rather restrictedly to characterize the discourse peculiar to modernism, their elaboration of the connotative features of rhetoricality, as distinct from rhetoric, helps to unfuddle the “Gorgian middle” for the purpose of thinking about the relation of rhetoric and the persuasions of and to early Christianities. Thus, using Bender and Wellbery as a rough guide but re-aiming their insights to clarify the centre of gravity of this volume, “rhetoricality” entails two general observations. Most elementally, first, rhetoricality does not refer to a restricted canon of logographic techniques of argumentation, though such may be subsumed; it is, rather, a bid for an understanding of the general condition of human social life (25; cf. Borch-Jacobsen 1990), in which what counts as knowledge, where the value or “truth”—whether weighed in moral, aesthetic or pragmatic (beneficial, advantageous) terms—assigned to that knowledge, and where the more or less recognized modes of proving or authorizing that knowledge (recall the Gorgian concern for dei==cij) are all subject to fluctuating judgments that are worked out on the run, more often than not in agonistic, even antagonistic discursive improvisation in a given “local” social and cultural context.29 Rhetoricality thus signals a general theoretical orientation on “the social” as an argumentative work in progress, as always subject to labours of persuasion and as a never finally stable effect of persuasion. Recall Gorgias’s insinuated worry that the most spectacularly contrived logos may fall flat, prove untrue in this sense, in the face of a countermanding affect-generated persuasion, or in the face of resistance enabled by brute hubristic power, or in encounter with an auditor whose life reality is sharply disjunctive to the argued point of logos. For example, an argument, however clever, for the inalienability of
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human agency and freedom is likely to be taken quite correctly as “mere spin” by those whose agentive possibilities are restricted by various types of physical, social, and political incarceration.
Rhetoricality does not admit a “rhetorical situation” (Bitzer 1968) in contrast to an implied non-rhetorical situation. Nor does it grant the distinction—as a long-standing dispute, going back at least to Plato’s squabbles with the sophists, would have it—between homo rhetoricus and some other homo who is not rhetoricus (Fish 1995), for all discourse performances are spin performances.30 No “speech situation” is “ideal” in the sense that, say, Habermas longs for: “No force except that of the better argument is exercised;…all motives except that of the cooperative search for truth are excluded” (1975: 107–108).31 Second, within the rhetoricality of the social, rhetoric, now in the classical-technical sense familiar to biblical scholars, may then be thought of as one particular (among others) “art of positionality” (Bender and Wellbery 1990: 7) or “placement” (see Smith 1995), an art that, moreover, utilizes a particular, distinguishable form of verbal action—“rhetorolect,” to use Vernon Robbins’ term (1996b: 355–57; 2002: 65)—to perform its address whose aim is to stake out place and role vis-à-vis and within the local social whole. The procedural implication of this for the study of rhetoric, whether biblical or any other, is then not only to parse the rhetoric in the text so as to see its “discursive architecture and adornment” (Bender and Wellbery 1990: 4), something at which biblical rhetorical critics have been remarkably good. It also means to “see through” the rhetoric so as to situate its positionality with respect to what constitutes “proper” persuasiveness in a cultural context,32 and also within the grid of give-and-take tussle over material and symbolic goods by which a social or socio-religious body strives to constitute itself—something that the general logographic and hermeneutic orientation of scholarship on early Christianities has pursued with lesser enthusiasm.
Synoptically speaking, the studies in this book generally take up the second directive, the category of “seeing through” texts, the rhetorics in texts, and verbally described practices so as to bring into focus as much as possible the jockeying for position by means of verbal and non-verbal discourse performances. The logic of placing these essays in the same book follows the model, recommended by Jonathan Z. Smith (1982: xi–xii) for the study of religion in general, of scholarly probation of
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some exempli gratia in the pursuit of some basic issues and questions related to the persuasive efforts of early Christians in the service of their own ideologies and practices. Since this model does not need to (in fact, should not) impose tight constrictions on the selection of the examples by some rule of topical coherence or close temporal proximity to each other, each exemplum featured in this volume is there because it falls within the expertise of the scholar who adduces it for the purpose of thoughtfully attending to the difficult and multi-layered questions that confront us when we attempt to put into relation terms such as rhetoric, rhetoricality, social reality, and early Christian discourse performances. In chronological terms, therefore, the “for instances” are drawn from the first-century Gospel of Thomas to the early medieval hagiographic literature and temporal points in-between. Topically, the articles range from William Arnal’s examination of the relationship between the use of language, plea for a doctrine of esoteric interpretation, and social stance in the Coptic Gospel of Thomas (chap. 2) to Chad Kile’s exposure, criticism, and rectification of the theory of persuasion that is implicitly contained in the scholarly use of the term “Christianization” (chap. 9). In the middle, two essays, presenting different exempla and taking instructions from different aspects of ancient rhetorical performance, investigate the logographic strategies and deleterious effects of early Christian attempts to raise up their identity by means of humiliating and erasive moves against their most proximate others, Jewish groups, those with priority claims to “Israel.” Laurence Broadhurst (chap. 3) wrestles with Peri Pascha, the rhetorically elegant, but otherwise “distasteful and even offensive” Easter declamation that has earned its author Melito, the second-century bishop from Sardis in Asia Minor, the dishonourable distinction of being the first Christian poet of Jewish deicide. Drawing on what are often considered tawdry tropes and garish stylistic excesses of the rhetorical practices during the so-called Second Sophistic, i.e., the speechifying tastes of the bishop’s day, Broadhurst squints through the fissures of Melito’s text and re-poses him both in relation to the realities of second-century Sardis and within Melitonforschung. Todd Penner (chap. 4) engages in a roughly similar inquisition of a better-known exemplum, the story of Stephen and the Hellenists in Luke’s Acts of the Apostles. Penner demonstrates how the modern understanding of history and the ancient theory and practice of historia have been synonymized and homologized, how modern notions of historical beginnings and mythic desires for origins have been melded together in the historiographical framework that has elevated Stephen and the Hellenists
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as the eponymous founding heroes of a universal Christianity without roots in Judaism. Detailed attention to what ancients meant by historia and its influence on Lukan narration allows Penner to clarify Luke’s positionality and to suspect that a kind of “cult of the saints” mentality exercises considerable motive force in scholarship devoted to Acts and Christianity’s historical beginnings. Margaret MacDonald (chap. 5) goes to work on “the rhetoric of domesticity” of the household code embedded in the Letter to the Colossians. She demonstrates that the code, though it pleads graven-faced for patriarchal rule of the Christian household, is at odds with the reality of (at least) Colossian Christian household practices. Through the cracks in the logographic behaviour of the epistle writer, MacDonald spots Nympha, who “may have known that she could work around the rules” of the code—so demonstrating clearly the soundness of the methodological motto implied in David Sabean’s epigraphical remark at the head of this chapter, or confirming the Gorgian hunch that the force majeure of logos to determine mind and praxis should not be gullibly conceded, especially perhaps in those cases where the force majeure of speech is the very thesis put up for rhetorical proof. Something akin to MacDonald’s interest in finding in a dominant and dominating rhetorical and social situation non-compliant (unpersuaded) positionalities is also epicentric in John Kitchen’s interrogation of the rhetoric on the topic of slavery in the early medieval hagiographies (chap. 6). Reading against the grain of generalizing histories of and specialized medievalist scholarship on the interlinkage between Christian ideologies and slavery, he finds in the hagiographic narratives a subversive rhetoric of emancipation that, he argues, prompts reconsideration of current approaches to understanding early medieval stances toward the realities and urgencies of medieval societies. Theo de Bruyn’s analysis (chap. 7) of two fourth-century Christian modes of responding to death, one he calls “philosophical counsel” (chiefly performed by men) and the other “customary lament” (chiefly performed by women), brings to explicit and extended thought the relationship between rhetoric and ritual as signifying practices, and invites rethinking these two modes as mutually exclusive performatives for managing life, for which death is the most disruptive challenge. Luther Martin’s study (chap. 8) of the Roman Mithras associations for the purpose of testing Harvey Whitehouse’s influential classification of two modes of religiosity (Whitehouse 2000; 2002; 2004), one doctrinal the other imagistic, a classification that relies heavily on cogni-
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tive science-based theories of persuasion, cogently asks to be considered for numerous ramifications that have the potential to bring about elemental revisions not only for theorizing religious persuasion generally but for redescribing the transmissional success of early Christian ideas and practices. It is only a small part of the merit of Martin’s article that it turns our attention to the fact, already vaguely insinuated by Gorgias, that there is a difference between generating persuasion and sustaining it over time and across social and geographical regions (see Debray 2000).
A final note to the contributors and readers of this book… Unlike Gorgias who, at the end of his plea for Helen’s blamelessness for her act of defection, admitted that he wrote the speech as a selfamusing paignion, I admit to no such thing for my construction, by such ingenuity of logismos as is available to me, of a coherence arching over these topically diverse studies. I do urge, however, that my imposition of coherence should not distract, much less prevent, readers from appreciating the wisdom of each essay in its own right, for each study is also a difference-making contribution to the scholarly debates going on in the specialized areas from which each contributor draws her or his exemplum for the general aim of this book.
N OTES 1 Cf. Freud, who, in Totem and Taboo, contrasted “the primitive” with “the neurotic”: “neurotics are above all inhibited in their actions: with them the thought is a complete substitute for the deed. Primitive men, on the other hand, are uninhibited: thought passes directly into action. With them it is rather the deed that is a substitute for thought.…And that is why…it may be safely assumed that ‘in the beginning was the Deed’” (1950: 161, emphasis in original), citing the familiar line from Goethe’s Faust (“Im Anfang war die Tat”). 2 I have purloined the idea of the title “programme notes” from Goldhill (1999b). 3 Cf. Loraux (2002: 60) for a similar temptation among historians and historical anthropologists to objectify ancient societies and city cultures as realities reduced to their depictions in literary remains. 4 “Socio-rhetorical,” by now a familiar term in the lexicon of biblical scholars, was coined by Vernon Robbins (1984), who has also outlined its theoretical foundations (Robbins 1996a, 1996b; 1996c; cf. 1984), applied it in countless textual studies (see the bibliography in the recent volume in his honour [Gowler et al. 2003: 357–63]), and inspired numerous socio-rhetorical studies by others, including a socio-rhetorical commentary series on the writings of the New Testament. The latter is somewhat indicative of this impressive oeuvre, in that
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a broad social theory of persuasion and the extra-textual realities, including the “social,” the “ideological,” or the conditions that contribute to the susceptibility or compliance of those to whom a persuasion is directed, are not at the focal centre of socio-rhetorical criticism. Rather, these matters are infiltrated into texts and are there attended as “textures” of these texts that, at the end of day, are of interest for their classical “scholastic” patterns of argumentation as a way to arrest the meaning of the text. Biblical rhetorical criticism is above all motivated by hermeneutic interests. The production of an increasing number of scholarly handbooks for students of rhetorical criticism is among the reliable indicators of the current status of rhetoric-informed biblical studies. See, for example, the massive handbook (over 900 pages) edited by Stanley Porter (1997). In my mind reverberates the definition of textual practice by Michel de Certeau: “Linguistic fragments or materials are treated (factory-processed, one might say) in this space [the blank page] according to methods that can be made explicit and in such a way as to produce an order. A series of articulated operations (gestural or mental)—that is what writing literally is—traces on the page the trajectories that sketch out words, sentences, and finally a system. In other terms, on the blank page, an itinerant, and regulated practice…composes the artefact of another ‘world’ that is not received but made” (1984: 134–35). He goes on to suggest that the production of texts has become the modern “model of a productive reason,” a reason that is “the fundamental and generalized utopia of the modern West” (1984: 135). For a similar argument, but focussing much more on the how of writing (raw materials, implements, printing technologies) than on its what (topics, genres and the like), see Debray (2000; 2004). De Certeau speaks of “voice” and “orality,” but it is clear that he thinks not exclusively of oral verbal articulation, though that is included. Rather, with reference to the work of Émile Benveniste (Problèmes de linguistique générale [1966]), he has in view the speech act in the widest sense that includes four characteristics: (1) “construction of individual sentences with an established vocabulary and syntax”; (2) it is, however, an act of “enunciation” that “is not reducible to a knowledge of the language”; (3) “appropriation, or reappropriation, of language by its speakers [that] establishes a present relative to time and place”; (4) “it posits a contract with the other (the interlocutor) in a network of places and relations” (1984: xiii, italics in original). Consider the following developments of early modernism that are inseparable from the take-over of cultural discourses by the scriptural apparatus: scriptural production was made possible by the technology of reproduction, the printing press (de Certeau 1984: 131–32; Bender and Wellbery 1990: 22); the emergence of science contributed to the enthronement of scribal discourse; the rise of the nation-state compelled the need for standardized national languages, hence the over-riding of a polyglottal state of affairs by scribal/scriptural means (see Bender and Wellbery 1990: 5–22) and by nation-state apparatuses whose bureaucratic, administrative, and ideological interests are heavily reliant on scribal values, methods, and corpora; all of these contributed to the “general social condition of the progress of reason” (Bourdieu 1975) that placed mythic value on logographic methods and theories of what is persuasive.
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9 “By the public use of one’s own reason I mean that use which anyone may make of it as a man of learning addressing the entire reading public” (Kant 1784: 488, my trans. and emphasis); not even “Caesar is above the grammarian” (Caesar non est supra grammaticos), quipped Kant (489). Cf. Luther’s table-talk bit, roughly a century earlier, that “through it [the printing press] God is intent on making true religion known through the entire earth.” 10 “Gorgias’ great contribution to Greece was this: he was the founder of artistic prose, and with him begins epideictic literature; or the rhetoric of display” (Van Hook 1930: 163); “Begründer und Meister der Epideiktik” (Buchheit 1960: 28); “Gorgias is…the founder, according to tradition, of the epideictic mode of rhetoric, and in that sense he is the quintessentially rhetorical artist, the rhetorician’s rhetorician” (Gumpert 2001: 72). Aristotle (Rhet. 1.3.3) would later sort rhetoric into three genres (tri/a ge/nh): deliberative (sumbouleutiko/n), judicial (dikaniko/n) and demonstrative (e)pideiktiko/n). This classification became canonical in later rhetorical theory (see Kennedy 1997: 45), just as demonstrative, or encomiastic, rhetoric became, by some estimates, “the quasi-obligatory mode for all literary production” well into late antiquity (Fournet 2003: 103), though it reached its gaudiest heights in the Second Sophistic (see Broadhurst, chap. 3 in this volume). 11 On the emerging logos-culture in the Greek Enlightenment see also Poulakos (1995). For example: “Sophistical rhetoric inaugurated a new aristocracy, crowning ‘logos’ as the new master of the polis…Their message underscored neither the primacy of the world nor the primacy of human beings; rather, it emphasized the primacy of logos as the medium circulating between human beings and constituting both human beings and the world. In this sense they can be said to have instituted a new regime whose sympathies and character were neither aristocratic nor democratic but logocratic” (15). 12 Lo/goj duna/sthj me/gaj e)sti/n, o(\j smikrota/tw| sw/mati kai\ a)fanesta/tw| qeio/tata e)/rga a)potelei== (“Speech is a powerful ruler that, though tiny of body and invisible, accomplishes god-like deeds”). All citations from the Helen are from MacDowell’s 1982 edition of the Greek text; translations are mine, though with side-glances at MacDowell. 13 “eines lebenskräftiger Organismusses, als einen gewaltigen Tyrannen, als eines in Ebbe und Flut gleich der Menschenseele hin und her bewegten Lebewesens.” See also Charles Segal who, elucidating Gorgias’s theory of logos, states: “The force of the logoi…works directly upon the psyche; they have an immediate, almost physical impact upon it” (1962: 105). 14 Gorgias may be the inventor of the speech-as-drug simile, which will become a trope that is used for various purposes by orators (e.g., Isocrates 8.39) and philosophers (e.g., Plato Gorgias 464b and elsewhere), then later by numerous Cynic and Stoic moralists (see Braun 1995: 32–33). 15 “So what reason is there against Helen’s also having come under the influence of speech just as much against her will as if she had been seized by violence of violators? For persuasion expelled sense” (12). See Wardy (1996: 42–44) for a suggestion that in the Encomium of Helen “the successful orator performs psychic rape” (43). The Encomium, however, seems to ascribe this capacity to logos, not to the orator per se.
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16 “‘Moulding’ both summons up a mechanical rather than rational model of persuasion and contributes further to the portrayal of the psyche as something entirely passive, since the word suggests that it is worked like wax or clay, taking the impress of logoi without resistance” (Wardy 1996: 44–45), noting also Gorgias’s “wax-like psyche molded by logos” (1996: 48). For an impressive explication of Gorgias’s theory of the psyche see Segal (1962). 17 By “quasi-scientific” I mean that Gorgias, despite his extravagant, even “magical” (de Romilly 1992) regard for the power of speech, does not identify this power in magical or theological terms, nor associate it with the inspiration of the Muses, as the poets of his day would have it. Rather, Helen is remarkable for its description of the effects of speech and for its attempt to explain these effects in rational terms. See especially Schiappa (1996: 81–85): “In the case of Gorgias, the single most important theoretical contribution of the Helen is that it engaged in rational—i.e., systematic, secular, physical—explanation and description…of the workings of logos and the mind” (81). 18 I am speaking categorically, but I allow for admission of the fact that metaphorical (comparative, analogic) speech often is supportive of the status quo, is about stability rather than change. For example, “the emperor is to his slaves as a father is to his son” by analogy extends the value of hierarchical status relation from one domain to another in what amounts to a plea for the stability and universality of such relations. See Tambiah (1973: 211–12); Paine (1981: 187–88). 19 I have in mind J. L. Austin’s notion of “constative utterances” that linguistically describe, but do not aim to change, a state of affairs (Austin 1962), a type of locution that is instructively glossed as “word rituals” by Finnegan (1969) and the “magic of words” by Tambiah (1968). On the “culture of spectacle” in which sophistical rhetoric emerged and flourished see Poulakos (1995: 39–46, and the literature cited there). On rhetoric and ritual as two performatives in relation to the same social fact, see also Theo de Bruyn’s article (chap. 7 in this volume). 20 See Imber (2001) with reference to the pedagogy and performance of Roman declamation as media of enculturation. 21 Speech “not spoken with truth” implies that Gorgias believes in the opposite possibility, but he gives not a hint at what he means by “truth” nor at whether he thinks truth has some kind of sui generis persuading force or, if not, if he has thought about the relationship between speech, truth, and persuasion. Speech in general is for Gorgias a tool of domination: to compel mind both to obey what is said and to approve what is done (12). And because of this he is more worried that speech’s “intercourse with the opinion of the psyche” results in “deviations of the psyche” and “deceived views” (10). He laments: “How many have persuaded and do persuade how many, on how many subjects, by fabricating false speech!” (11). I am thus inclined to think that Gorgias has his tongue pointedly in cheek when he states his aim in Helen: “I wish, by adding reasoning (logismo/n) to my speech (lo/gw|),…to demonstrate (dei==cai/) what is true” (2). 22 Lincoln uses “sentiment” with some trepidation, offering a disclaiming note that is itself instructive: “I am aware, of course, that use of the term sentiment is
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WILLI BRAUN likely to cause some problems, given the almost insuperable difficulty of speaking with precision about the affective dimension of social life; at times I have considered coining a neologism to avoid talk of sentiment, for example, speaking of the sociogravitational forces of attraction and repulsion that can be stimulated by discourse” (1989: 176 n. 9, emphasis added). The idea of the affective, pre-emergent moment in the process of group formation (or sentiments of affinity toward a group) has long fascinated social theorists concerned with explaining formative “moments” in the social formation of a group or society. See, for example, E. P. Thompson who, in The Making of the English Working Class, suggests that a class is “a very loosely defined body of people who share in the same congeries of interests, social experiences, traditions and value-system, who have a disposition to behave as a class, to define themselves…in class ways…Class itself is not a thing, it is a happening” (1968: 939, emphasis added). Gorgias struggles to explain the working of eros by means of several speculative options. He recommends that it transmits itself into the psyche by sight, rather than aurally. It may be a “god with a god’s power,” or it may be a “human malady” (a)nqrw/pinon no/shma) or a “mental ignorance” (yuxh==j a)gno/hma). Whatever it is, it, like speech, imposes itself with irresistible force. The inherent risk of communication generally is the possibility of either not coming to voice or not coming to audition. Cf. this timeless lament: “Everyone babbles the words, but few obtain thereby a stronger faith” (Johann Valentin Andreae 1622, in Sabean 1984: 1). Paradoxically and understandably, it is this detachment of rhetoric from the aims of serious pleading on high-stakes issues, whether intellectual, moral, legal, political, or religious, that would put the “serious” rhetoricians in the quandary of how to distinguish their honourable and noble speech-crafts from those rhetoricians who had usurped the very same techniques for unabashed theatrical performance, for entertaining “spin” and unscrupulous deception that treated the audience as mere gulls. The solution to the quandary was the development of a fiction that consisted of a “spin on spin” or a “rhetoric of anti-rhetoric” (phrase from Valesio 1980: 41–60; on this phenomenon in antiquity see Hesk 1999; 2000: 202–91). Its topoi were various delegitimating charges and antagonistic contrastives in the battle for trustworthiness: the defender in court charges the prosecutor with using dangerous “unholy arts of speech” to deceive the jury (Aeschines 2.56) and vice versa; highly skilled rhetors and intellectual élites present themselves as unskilled speakers in faux-derogatory contrast to the “skilled speaker,” evidently exploiting popular mistrust of rhetorical speech (on this topos see especially Ober 1989: 170–77); pinning on each other the label “sophist,” using characterizing terms from the semantic domain of magic and witchcraft, became common (see Hesk 1999: 211–14); many more examples of anti-rhetorical rhetorical strategies are remarked by Jon Hesk (1999; 2000). Note in this context Paul’s use of this topos when he insists that though “we [Paul] persuade people” (a)nqrw/pouj pei/qomen) (2 Cor 5:11), this persuasion is not by means of logos which is “of no account” (e)couqenhme/noj) (2 Cor 10:10), a charge from his opponents that Paul seems to accept as a virtue. Note as well in early Christian discourses the common
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28 29
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contrast between pagan intellectuals and their logographic learning and the plain and simple message of the Christians (see Braun 2004: 46–47), and the frequent transfer of the burden of persuadability from logographic technologies to the self-evident authority of the speaker, often posed as a manifestation of divine wisdom (see Mack and Robbins 1989: 203–208; Braun 1997): these moves belong to the same anti-rhetorical rhetorical set, which, as Valesio has rightly noted, has a “legion” of other examples from antiquity to modernity that have yet to be analyzed “as part of the future, general, critical history of rhetoric” (1980: 41). It has long been an axiom of sociolinguistic theory that the manner of speaking (e.g., inflection, accent, lexical preferences, etc.)—and “rhetoric” is as much about manner of speaking as about its substance—is an important marker of social class and status. On this for the Hellenistic period see especially Swain (1996: 7–100), but also Morgan’s study (1998) of Hellenistic literate education as in part motivated by the regulatory aims of the élite. Goldhill summarizes: “For the Greek citizen of the Roman Empire…an engagement with culture also meant…a heightened consciousness of linguistic performance as a key to élite identity. The protocols of proper speech are central to a politics of class and status” (1999a: 91). A magnificent modern analogy is presented in Mugglestone’s study (1995) of “talking proper” as a class and status symbol in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century English class contests. The cited phrase is Borch-Jacobsen’s (1990: 130), who uses it in his criticism of “restricted rhetoric,” that is, highly codified and formalized speech-crafting generally glossed as “classical rhetoric.” I do not much care how “local” is defined for the purpose of my point here: kin, group, village, town, regional or transregional special-purpose or interest associations, such as early Christian or Mithraic clubs, may all be included in “local”—as opposed only to the “universal” and the ahistoricality toward which that term bends. My general point is both lexically and substantively indebted to David Warren Sabean’s wonderfully instructive exemplum of “rhetoricality” in 18th-century Beutelsbach, a village in the Württembach District of Schorndorf, where, when its cattle stock was decimated by hoof and mouth disease, the villagers were launched into a complex, multi-layered process of assigning blame, staking out interests, and using a crisis for entrenching or re-placing one’s position in a web of social power relationships. See “The Sins of Belief: A Village Remedy for Hoof and Mouth Disease (1796)” (in Sabean 1984: 174–98). I thank Johannes C. Wolfart (University of Manitoba) for drawing Sabean’s work to my attention. (Readers who wish to see in this statement a boomerang that will return to whack its author are welcome to do so, though they are advised that the author has already seen it.) A note on the term “performance” and my insinuation of rhetoric as performance: Why as? The simplest—at once most general and fundamental—reason is paradigmatically announced by Erving Goffman: “All the world is not of course a stage, but the crucial ways in which it isn’t are not easy to specify” (Goffman 1969: 78). This aphorism condenses Goffman’s entire argument, in his classic The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, of self-presentation, hence self-identification on the social stage—and when is
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self-identification not on the social stage?—as a “theatrical” or “performative” process, a process in which speech is both a production (invention, manipulation, methodical crafting, etc.) and an acting out, a performative, speech literally put into and to practice to vie for hearing, place, status, capital (real and symbolic) on the social stage in the cultural theatre. Although Goffman is speaking about modern Western self-presentation, his argument is incisively relevant to Christian self-presentation in the Graeco-Roman period, and, as this volume tries to demonstrate, relevant to the question of how to think of Christian persuasive performances in the context of ancient Mediterranean “performance cultures” (Goldhill 1999a, 1999b; see especially his resume [1999b] of the recent emergence of “performance studies” as a heterogeneous discipline that coalesces around a shared view of the social, political functioning of language) where speech, especially the art of rhetoric, was not infrequently glossed in visual terms (textual references in Braun 1995: 12 and n. 19) and where speech and speaker are understood as a unified entity consisting of speech itself (lo/goj) and the speaker’s character (h}qoj) and physical deportment (sxh~ma), the latter including a range of physical features, as well as postural and gestural strategies available for physiognomic scrutiny intended to help scope out the reliability and integrity of the speaker and speech (see Hesk 1990: 218–26; Goldhill 1999a: 91–100). On the concept of “discourse” and its relevance for religious language behaviours see profitably Murphy 2000; 2003. 31 Stanley Fish’s wry comment on Habermas’s desire for an “ideal speech situation” deserves to be repeated: “If only we could eliminate from our discourseperformances those intentions that reflect baser goals—the intentions to deceive, to manipulate, to persuade—the ideal speech situation could be approximated” (1995: 219). 32 Any rhetoric’s aim in part is explicitly or by insinuation to establish within the rhetoricality of the domain of social discourse performances its own legitimacy and persuasiveness. Any rhetoric thus is in part more or less anxiously self-referential, and its persuasiveness will depend to a large measure on its success in garnering esteem for its topical concerns, chief values—in the terms of classical rhetoric, the “chief categories” (telika\ kefa/laia) of the right (di/kaion), the honourable or beautiful (kalo/n), and the expedient or useful (sumfe/ron)—and argumentative styles and techniques. Anyone who has perused the corpora of classical rhetoric, for example, cannot help but notice how much labour is invested in establishing its own credibility. One might point to the current turn to self-referential, self-legitimating advocations in the disciplines of the “human sciences” in Canadian universities as a modern illustration of the point. See also n. 26 and 27 above.
R EFERENCES Alexander, Loveday 1990 “The Living Voice: Scepticism Towards the Written Word in Early Christian and Graeco-Roman Texts.” In David J. A. Clines, Stephen E. Fowl and Stanley E. Porter (eds.), The Bible in Three Dimensions: Essays in Cel-
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ebration of Forty Years of Biblical Studies in the University of Sheffield, 221–47. JSOT Supplement Series, 87. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. Asad, Talal 1993 Genealogies of Religion: Disciplines and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Austin, J. L. 1962 How to Do Things with Words. London: Clarendon. Bauman, Richard and Charles L. Briggs 1990 “Poetics and Performance as Critical Perspectives on Language and Social Life.” Annual Review of Anthropology 19: 59–88. Beavis, Mary Ann 2000 “‘Pluck the Rose but Shun the Thorns’: The Ancient School and Christian Origins.” Studies in Religion/Sciences Religieuses 29: 411–23. Bender, John and David E. Wellbery 1990 “Rhetoricality: On the Modernist Return of Rhetoric.” In John Bender and David E. Wellbery (eds.), The Ends of Rhetoric: History, Theory, Practice, 3–39. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Bitzer, L. F. 1968 “The Rhetorical Situation.” Philosophy and Rhetoric 1: 1–14. Borch-Jabobsen, Mikkel 1990 “Analytic Speech: From Restricted to General Rhetoric.” In John Bender and David E. Wellbery (eds.), The Ends of Rhetoric: History, Theory, Practice, 127–39. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Bourdieu, Pierre 1975 “The Specificity of the Scientific Field and the Social Condition of the Progress of Reason.” Social Science Information 14: 19–47. Braun, Willi 1995 Feasting and Social Rhetoric in Luke 14. SNTS Monograph Series, 85. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1997 “Argumentation and the Problem of Authority: Synoptic Rhetoric of Pronouncement in Cultural Context.” In Thomas H. Olbricht and Stanley E. Porter (eds.), The Rhetorical Analysis of Scripture: Essays from the 1995 London Conference, 185–99. JSNT Supplement Series, 146. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. 2004 “The Schooling of a Galilean Jesus Association (The Sayings Gospel Q).” In Ron Cameron and Merrill Miller (eds.), Redescribing Christian Origins, 43–65. Leiden: Brill; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature. Brett, Mark G. 1990 “Four or Five Things to Do with Texts: A Taxonomy of Interpretive Interests.” In David J. A. Clines, Stephen E. Fowl, and Stanley E. Porter (eds.), The Bible in Three Dimensions: Essays in Celebration of Forty Years of Biblical Studies in the University of Sheffield, 357–77. JSOT Supplement Series, 87. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. Buchheit, Vinzenz 1960 Untersuchungen zur Theorie des Genos Epideiktikon von Gorgias bis Aristoteles. Munich: Max Hueber.
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Burkert, Walter 1985 Greek Religion. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Debray, Régis 2000 Transmitting Culture. Trans. Eric Rauth. New York: Columbia University Press. 2004 God: An Itinerary. Trans. Jeffrey Mehlman. London: Verso. de Certeau, Michel 1984 The Practice of Everyday Life. Trans. Steven Rendall. Berkeley: University of California Press. de Romilly, Jacqueline 1992 The Great Sophists in Periclean Athens. Trans. Janet Lloyd. Oxford: Clarendon. Filmer, Paul 2003 “Structures of Feeling and Socio-Cultural Formations: The Significance of Literature and Experience to Raymond Williams’s Sociology of Culture.” British Journal of Sociology 54: 199–219. Finnegan, Ruth 1969 “How to Do Things with Words: Performative Utterances Among the Limba of Sierra Leone.” Man NS 4: 537–52. Fish, Stanley 1995 “Rhetoric.” In Frank Lentricchia and Thomas McLaughlin (eds.), Critical Terms for Literary Studies, 203–22. 2nd edition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Fournet, Jean-Luc 2003 “Between Literary Tradition and Cultural Change.” In Alaisdair A. MacDonald et al. (eds.), Learned Antiquity: Scholarship and Society in the Near-East, the Greco-Roman World, and the Early Medieval West, 101–14. Groningen Studies in Cultural Change, 5. Leuven: Peeters. Freud, Sigmund 1950 [1913] Totem and Taboo: Some Points of Agreement between the Mental Lives of Savages and Neurotics. Trans. James Strachey. New York: W. W. Norton. Geertz, Clifford 1976 “‘From the Native’s Point of View’: On the Nature of Anthropological Understanding.” In Keith H. Basso and Henry A. Selby (eds.), Meaning in Anthropology, 221–37. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. Goffman, Erving 1969 The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Goldhill, Simon 1999a “Body/Politics: Is There a History of Reading?” In Thomas M. Falkner, Nancy Felson, and David Konstan (eds.), Contextualizing Classics: Ideology, Performance, Dialogue, 89–120. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield. 1999b “Programme Notes.” In Simon Goldhill and Robin Osborne (eds.), Performance Culture and Athenian Democracy, 1–29. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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Gowler, David B. 1994 “The Development of Socio-Rhetorical Criticism.” In Vernon K. Robbins, New Boundaries in Old Territory: Form and Social Rhetoric in Mark, 1–36. Ed. and intro. David B. Gowler. Emory Studies in Early Christianity, 3. New York: Peter Lang. Gowler, David B., L. Gregory Bloomquist, and Duane F. Watson, eds. 2003 Fabrics of Discourse: Essays in Honor of Vernon K. Robbins. Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International. Gumpert, Matthew 2001 Grafting Helen: The Abduction of the Classical Past. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Habermas, Jürgen 1975 Legitimation Crisis. Trans. Thomas McCarthy. Boston: Beacon. Henderson, Ian H. 2004 “Christians, ‘Schools’ and Greek Literacy.” In Rory B. Egan and Mark Joyal (eds.), Daimonopylai: Essays in Classics and the Classical Tradition Presented to Edmund G. Berry, 199–208. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Centre for Hellenic Civilization. Henrichs, Albert 1998 “Dromena und Legomena: Zum rituellen Selbstverständnis der Griechen.” In Fritz Graf (ed.), Ansichten griechischer Rituale: GeburtstagsSymposium für Walter Burkert, 33–71. Stuttgart/Leipzig: Teubner. 2003 “Writing Religion: Inscribed Texts, Ritual Authority, and the Religious Discourse of the Polis.” In Harvey Yunis (ed.), Written Texts and the Rise of Literate Culture in Ancient Greece, 38–58. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hesk, Jon 1999 “The Rhetoric of Anti-Rhetoric in Athenian Oratory.” In Simon Goldhill and Robin Osborne (eds.), Performance Culture and Athenian Democracy, 201–30. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2000 Deception and Democracy in Classical Athens. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Imber, Margaret 2001 “Practised Speech: Oral and Written Conventions in Roman Declamation.” In Janet Watson (ed.), Speaking Volumes: Orality and Literacy in the Greek and Roman World, 199–212. Mnemosyne Supplementum, 218. Leiden: Brill. Kant, Immanuel 1784 “Beantwortung der Frage: Was ist Aufklärung?” Berlinische Monatsschrift (Dezember-Heft): 481–94. Kennedy, George A. 1997 “The Genres of Rhetoric.” In Stanley E. Porter (ed.), Handbook of Classical Rhetoric in the Hellenistic Period (330 B.C.–A.D. 400), 43–50. Leiden: Brill. LaMothe, Kimerer Lewis 2004a Between Dancing and Writing: The Practice of Religious Studies. New York: Fordham University Press.
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2004b “Why Dance? Toward a Theory of Religion as Practice and Performance.” Method & Theory in the Study of Religion. (forthcoming) Lincoln, Bruce 1989 Discourse and the Construction of Society: Comparative Studies of Myth, Ritual, and Classification. New York: Oxford University Press. Loraux, Nicole 2002 The Divided City: On Memory and Forgetting in Ancient Athens. Trans. Corinne Pache with Jeff Fort. New York: Zone. MacDowell, D. M., ed. and trans. 1982 Gorgias, Encomium of Helen. Bristol: Bristol Classical Press. Mack, Burton L. and Vernon K. Robbins 1989 Patterns of Persuasions in the Gospels. Foundations & Facets: Literary Facets. Sonoma, CA: Polebridge. Morgan, Teresa 1998 Literate Education in the Hellenistic and Roman Worlds. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mourelatos, Alexander P. D. 1973 “Heraclitus, Parmenides, and the Naive Metaphysics of Things.” In E. N. Lee, A. P. D. Mourelatos and R. M. Rorty (eds.), Exegesis and Argument: Studies in Greek Philosophy Presented to Gregory Vlastos, 16–48. Assen: Van Gorcum. Mugglestone, Lynda 1995 Talking Proper: The Rise of Accent as Social Symbol. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Murphy, Tim 2000 “Discourse.” In Willi Braun and Russell T. McCutcheon (eds.), Guide to the Study of Religion, 396–408. London: Cassell. 2003 “Elements of a Semiotic Theory of Religion.” Method & Theory in the Study of Religion 15: 48–67. Ober, Josiah 1989 Mass and Elite in Democratic Athens: Rhetoric, Ideology, and the Power of the People. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Osborn, E. F. 1959 “Teaching and Writing in the First Chapter of the Stromateis of Clement of Alexandria.” Journal of Theological Studies NS 10: 335–43. Paine, Robert 1981 “The Political Uses of Metaphor and Metonym: An Exploratory Statement.” In Robert Paine (ed.), Politically Speaking: Cross-Cultural Studies of Rhetoric, 187–200. Social and Economic Papers, 10. St. John’s: Institute of Social and Economic Research, Memorial University of Newfoundland. Porter, Stanley E., ed. 1997 Handbook of Classical Rhetoric in the Hellenistic Period (330 B.C.–A.D. 400). Leiden: Brill. Poulakos, John 1995 Sophistical Rhetoric in Classical Greece. Studies in Rhetoric/Communication. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press.
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Robbins, Vernon K. 1984 Jesus the Teacher: A Socio-Rhetorical Interpretation of Mark. Philadelphia: Fortress. 1996a Exploring the Texture of Texts: A Guide to Socio-Rhetorical Interpretation. Valley Forge, PA: Trinity Press International. 1996b “The Dialectical Nature of Early Christian Discourse.” Scriptura 59: 353–62. 1996c The Tapestry of Early Christian Discourse: Rhetoric, Society, and Ideology. London: Routledge. 2002 “Argumentative Textures in Socio-Rhetorical Interpretation.” In Anders Eriksson, Thomas H. Olbricht and Walter Übelacker (eds.), Rhetorical Argumentation in Biblical Texts: Essays from the Lund 2000 Conference, 27–65. Emory Studies in Early Christianity, 8. Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International. Sabean, David Warren 1984 Power in the Blood: Popular Culture and Village Discourse in Early Modern Germany. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schiappa, Edward 1996 “Toward a Predisciplinary Analysis of Gorgias’ Helen.” In Christopher L. Johnstone (ed.), Theory, Text, Context: Issues in Greek Rhetoric and Oratory, 65–86. Albany: State University of New York Press. Segal, Charles P. 1962 “Gorgias and the Psychology of the Logos.” Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 66: 99–155. Smith, Jonathan Z. 1982 Imagining Religion: From Babylon to Jonestown. Chicago Studies in the History of Judaism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1995 “Trading Places.” In Marvin Meyer and Paul Mirecki (eds.), Ancient Magic and Ritual Power, 13–27. Religions in the Graeco-Roman World, 129. Leiden: Brill. Solmsen, Friedrich 1975 Intellectual Experiments of the Greek Enlightenment. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Süss, Wilhelm 1975 [1910] Ethos: Studien zur älteren griechischen Rhetorik. Aalen: Scientia Verlag. Swain, Simon 1996 Hellenism and Empire: Language, Classicism and Power in the Greek World, AD 50–250. Oxford: Clarendon. Tambiah, S. J. 1968 “The Magical Power of Words.” Man NS 3: 175–208. 1973 “Form and Meaning in Magical Arts: A Point of View.” In Robin Horton and Ruth Finnegan (eds.), Modes of Thought: Essays on Thinking in Western and Non-Western Societies, 199–229. London: Faber & Faber. Thomas, Rosalind 2003 “Prose Performance Texts: Epideixis and Written Publication in the Late Fifth and Early Fourth Centuries.” In Harvey Yunis (ed.), Written Texts
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and the Rise of Literate Culture in Ancient Greece, 162–88. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Thompson, E. P. 1968 The Making of the English Working Class. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Trotsky, Leon 1957 [1924] Literature and Revolution. New York: Russell & Russell. Valesio, Paolo 1980 Novantiqua: Rhetorics as Contemporary Theory. Advances in Semiotics. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Van Hook, Larue 1930 Greek Life and Thought: A Portrayal of Greek Civilization. New York: Columbia University Press. Wardy, Robert 1996 The Birth of Rhetoric: Gorgias, Plato and Their Successors. London: Routledge. Whitehouse, Harvey 2000 Arguments and Icons: Divergent Modes of Religiosity. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2002 “Modes of Religiosity: Towards a Cognitive Explanation of the Sociopolitical Dynamics of Religion.” Method & Theory in the Study of Religion 14: 293–315. 2004 Modes of Religiosity: A Cognitive Theory of Religious Transmission. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira. Williams, Raymond 1977 Marxism and Literature. London: Oxford University Press. 1984 Writing in Society. London: Verso.
WILLIAM E. ARNAL
2 The Rhetoric of Social Construction Language and Society in the Gospel of Thomas
L
I NTRODUCTION : L ANGUAGE , S OCIETY, AND R HETORIC
anguage is an eminently social phenomenon—perhaps the eminently social phenomenon. Indeed, at least one explanation for our shared human inability to escape or transcend the perceptual limitations imposed by our social context is our inability to escape or transcend language—the fact that our every expression, idea, and even experience is mediated by and through the filter used to express it.1 Language is the primary tool by which we enter into, define, and facilitate relations with one another, and so is necessarily and predominantly social in its basic motivations and consequences.2 At the same time, it is always already given, its limitations, characteristics, vocabulary, and patterns of signification fixed in an impersonal langue no one of us has created, so that any given parole, even ostensibly expressing the most sublime interiority, is itself a social effect in its very formation.3 Since both the opportunities and constrictions of language are of a social order and socially dictated, we should expect to find a close correspondence between a given text’s social location and attitude, on the one hand, and its doctrine of, use of, and approach to language, on the other. Just as the attitudes a text expresses toward the body show a certain isomorphism with attitudes toward society, however the “society” in question may be defined (see, for example, Brown 1988), so also do attitudes toward the word.4 Thus particular textual or rhetorical practices may allow some insight into the social self-perceptions of those responsible for them.5 27
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Ancient rhetoric properly so called provides an illustration of this correspondence, at least in a general way. The practice of rhetoric is excessively formal. That is, rhetorical skill consists almost entirely in the correct (and elegant) application of a relatively fixed canon of rules to a given situation. A standard argumentative pattern of one sort or another—forensic, deliberative, epideictic, for example—is invested with content as the case dictates, and something akin to a ready-made argument results. The formalized character of ancient rhetoric is perhaps exemplified at its most rigid in the schoolbook exercises of the progymnasmata, where the task assigned to the student is precisely to apply a pattern—say, an elaboration pattern—to this or that thesis: skill consists in knowing what kinds of anecdotes and arguments may be placed in the various slots of the pattern.6 Moreover, rhetorical displays in antiquity typically were delivered with a set of stock non-verbal accompaniments as well—voice modulation, postures, gestures.7 The overall effect of such a display would probably strike modern auditors as painfully contrived.8 What emerges as the key index for the persuasive effect of such ancient rhetoric—at least formal, élite rhetoric—is precisely its appropriateness. Harmony, balance, and, above all, conformity to the expectations of one’s audience marked effective rhetoric.9 Moreover, the persuasive force of such rhetorical skill lies in its illustration of the character of the speaker.10 Ancient rhetorical theorists state as much explicitly: Aristotle claimed h]qov to be the most effective means of persuasion, and Quintillian went so far as to claim that only good people were capable of speaking well.11 An effective rhetor thus is a speaker who reveals himself to be at one with the expectations associated with his class and position; he is, therefore, to be trusted.12 This understanding of speech, and especially of the way in which speech operates to persuade, approximates to a general social self-understanding in antiquity which may be best illustrated by its contrast to that of modernity. As described by Fredric Jameson, style is essentially that which in modern middle-class culture replaces the rhetoric of the classical period. The two categories may be most usefully distinguished through the value and role they assign to the individual personality: for rhetoric is in this sense that ensemble of techniques through which a writer or orator may achieve expressiveness or high style, conceived of as a relatively fixed class standard, as an institution in which the most diverse temperaments are able to participate. Style, on the other hand, is the very element of individ-
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uality itself, that mode through which the individual consciousness seeks to distinguish itself, to affirm its incomparable originality. (1971: 333–34)
The point, then, is that the corporate character of social identity in antiquity—as well as a very high degree of class consciousness (among elites, that is)—is reflected sharply in its approach to rhetoric, just as the individualistic character of our own social self-understanding is likewise reflected in the premium placed on style, innovation, experimentation, and uniqueness in modern literary production. A more precise illustration of the juncture between social and linguistic assumptions may be afforded by some features of Philo of Alexandria’s theoretical treatment of language (as opposed to its more practical treatment in ancient rhetoric). Most famously, of course, Philo’s doctrine of the lo&gov of God establishes the Word as the ultimate grounding of visible reality, as the linkage between divine intention and cosmic order (Rer. Div. Her. 188; see the summary in Kittel 1967: 89). A primary, divine, ordered, rational, and eminently positive entity, Philo’s lo&gov is the vehicle whereby the cosmic order as a whole is a function of the divine Mind, and so represents a perspective on the social order both conservative and optimistic. It is also indicative of a corporatism and elitism in which individual lo&goi are manifestations and expressions of a single—and greater—divine lo&gov. Much more interesting, however, and perhaps even more revealing, is Philo’s commentary on the distinctions that exist between letters. Discussing the special dignity of the number seven, and constructing a bogus etymology for e(pta& as derived from semno/j and sebasmo/j, Philo offers the superiority of vowels, of which there are seven in the Greek alphabet, as evidence for the special excellence of this number: And among the letters in grammar there are seven properly called vowels or “vocals,” since as is obvious they can be sounded by themselves, and when joined with the others can produce articulate sounds; for on the one hand they fill up what is lacking to the “semi-vowels,” rendering the sounds full and complete, and on the other hand they change the nature of the “voiceless” (the consonants) by breathing into them something of their own power, that it may now be possible to pronounce letters before incapable of pronunciation. On these grounds I hold that those who originally fitted names to things, being wise men, called this number “seven” because of the “reverence” (sebasmo/j) which it deserves, and the heavenly “dignity” (semno/thj) pertaining to it. (On the Creation, 126–27)13
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Philo imputes a natural and qualitative hierarchy to the very units of language, and implies that such distinctions are readily discernible by those who are reasonably wise, and as a result they are further reflected in the language used to describe (in this case, to enumerate) those units themselves. Thus the character of language itself, as embodied in the alphabet, reflects an essentialistic intellectual hierarchy that provides a model for social order, both directly (in the act of naming, performed by “wise men” who thus recognize and pronounce upon the essential qualities of things and their relative status) and symbolically (in the characteristics of the letters themselves, with the vowels being fewer, more efficacious, and ultimately more esteemed than the consonants).14
THOMAS’ S D OCTRINE AND U NDERSTANDING OF L ANGUAGE Likewise, it can be shown that the doctrine of language promoted and embodied in the ancient Christian Gospel of Thomas reflects the attitudes toward, and understanding of, society of the person or group responsible for composing this writing. Indeed, at the risk of being somewhat circular, one can go further: insight into Thomas’s understanding of language or interpretation may allow for a greater refinement of our comprehension of the authors’ perception of the world, and of society, around them. An analogous claim to isomorphism between Thomas’s interpretive theories and social organization has been made before, in a rather more modest and specific way. Bruce Lincoln (1977) drew specific attention to Saying 2: “Let the one who seeks not stop seeking until he finds, and when he finds, he will be disturbed. And when he is disturbed, he will marvel, and will reign over everything.”15 Lincoln argues that the process of interpretation outlined in this saying corresponds to the internal structure of the Thomas community, divided between “those who seek” (outsiders), “those who find and are troubled” (novices), “those who are troubled and marvel” (senior members of the community), and finally “those who marvel and reign over the All” (“fully accomplished perfects”) (1977: 69–70). Lincoln further claims that the diffuse character of the text is a result of different sections of the gospel being directed to the different groupings within the community (1977: 70). The argument is reasonable enough in the abstract and poses a provocative and theoretically interesting connection between interpretation and social structure. As a specific reading of Thomas, however, it
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leaves much to be desired. The argument is based on a premise that is probably false, namely the second-century Edessene origin of Thomas, which the author uses to infer a commonality between the structure of a “Thomas community” and other contemporary Edessene groups (Lincoln 1977: 65–67). If Thomas is an earlier document, or was not composed in Edessa, there is no reason to think that a “Thomas-group” organized in the fashion Lincoln describes was responsible for composing this text. While here is not the place to argue the issue, the best recent scholarship puts Thomas solidly in the first century, and has at least called into question an eastern Syrian provenance.16 Moreover, the correspondence posited by Lincoln is not exactly based on Thomas’s overarching theory of language and its synchronic or structural correlation to the social world as a whole. Instead, Lincoln simply points out that Thomas regards a diachronic progression of interpretive penetration to correspond to elevation of the believer’s status. This amounts to little more than saying that Thomas regards hermeneutic proficiency (at least vis-à-vis the sayings of Jesus) to lead to salvation, a point made explicitly in the gospel’s incipit. And, finally, the social perspective dealt with in Lincoln’s article is restricted exclusively to the internal organization of the “Thomas community” rather than the social world at large. Nonetheless, Thomas’s doctrine of interpretation is clearly key to its social stance, if in a slightly less direct way than that proposed by Lincoln. That doctrine is stated at the very beginning of the text; the incipit through Saying 2 reads as follows: (Incipit) These are the secret sayings which the living Jesus spoke and Didymos Judas Thomas wrote down. (1) And he said: “The one who finds the interpretation of these sayings will not taste death.” (2) Jesus said: “Let the one who seeks not stop seeking until he finds, and when he finds, he will be disturbed. And when he is disturbed, he will marvel, and will reign over everything.”
This cluster of sayings, standing at the very opening of the collection, indicates both the rewards and the rules of interpretation. As Koester puts it, “Thomas’s hermeneutical procedure is evident. Not Jesus’ words themselves, but their interpretation gives life, that is, the finding of their hidden truth” (1990: 115), and Ron Cameron stresses the way Saying 2 “underscores the vital importance of effort in the production of meaning” (1999: 251, emphasis added). The matter, however, is not so simple as pointing out Thomas’s tendency toward esotericism, for instance, or toward an elitism rationalized by interpretive proficiency, features shared with Philo. For in the case of
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Thomas, the identity of those who interpret correctly, the way in which interpretation is to take place, the results of that interpretation, and the content of the text’s message are quite at odds with Philo’s understanding. While Philo appears to claim that language—and especially the language of divine revelation—conceals a meaning not immediately or literally present on its surface, but nonetheless fundamentally compatible with it, Thomas views ordinary language as concealing the true meaning of divine revelation: the sayings of Jesus are “secret” or “hidden” (eqhp); and there are not, as in Philo, layers of (compatible) meaning to be ascertained according to the depth of one’s intellect, but rather a meaning, apparently fixed and single, to be found (6e e, 2ine) beneath the text. Thomas speaks of secret revelations, information which explicitly is beyond the ken of human rationality and observation: “Jesus said, ‘I shall give you what no eye has seen, what no ear has heard, what no hand has touched, what has not arisen in the human heart” (Saying 17). And as Paul states outright in connection with his parallel citation of this same saying (1 Cor 2:9; cf. Isa 64:4), such an appeal to otherwise unknowable revelation implies precisely a denigration of human wisdom and an opposition between that wisdom and the wisdom of God: “Among the mature we do speak wisdom, but it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are doomed to perish. But we speak God’s wisdom, secret and hidden, which God decreed before the ages for our glory. None of the rulers of this age understood this” (1 Cor 2: 6–8). The secret knowledge that brings salvation is thus anti-worldly, singular, and lurks as a hidden or disguised entity beneath the surface of language, eluding the gaze of the wise, but nonetheless waiting to be found. As it happens, this conception of meaning corresponds to Thomas’s notions of the Kingdom, which should be understood as a cipher for the Thomas-group itself, or an idealized version thereof (see King 1987: 66–67; Mack 1995: 40–41, 43, 77–78). Thus “the kingdom is spread out upon the earth, and people do not see it” (Saying 113). Likewise, the kingdom of the Father is like a man who had good seed. His enemy came at night and sowed weeds among the good seed. The man did not let them pull up the weeds. He said to them, “lest you go to pull up the weeds and pull up the wheat along with them.” For on the day of the harvest the weeds will be conspicuous, and will be pulled up and burned. (Saying 57)
Just as divine truth can lurk furtively below the surface of ordinary words, so also can the Kingdom be invisible to, and at odds with, the
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larger world in which it resides.17 It is there, but not seen, and, at least for the moment, the “good seed” is visibly indistinguishable from the “bad seed.” And yet, Thomas suggests, the process by which one acquires the knowledge or vision needed to see these hidden realities—whether the Kingdom in the world, or the secret meaning in the sayings of Jesus— begins precisely by looking at the surface of things, at their obvious qualities: “Jesus said, ‘Know what is before your face, and what is hidden from you will be disclosed to you’” (Saying 5). I assume that the mechanism whereby surface appearances are gradually translated into revealed wisdom is precisely what is being described in Saying 2: a movement from seeking to finding to being disturbed to marvelling to reigning. The disturbance that is claimed to accompany such interpretive effort is a function of a depreciation of the world. That is, the result of examining “what is before your face” is that you see how valueless and impoverished it really is, resulting in the “disturbance” that ultimately brings in its train insight into what is truly valuable. Thus: “Jesus said, ‘Whoever has come to know the world has discovered a corpse, and whoever has discovered a corpse, of him the world is not worthy’” (Saying 56).18 It would seem, then, that Thomas’s vision of the kingdom encodes a social vision in which perfection, salvation, the presence of the Father, and the like, is hidden within the world at large, utterly opposed to it, and yet, to the unenlightened, and at the present moment, indistinguishable from it. It can only be attained or even seen for what it is—and for Thomas, these are much the same things—through an extended and (at least mentally and emotionally) strenuous process of which the first major step is the recognition of the valuelessness of the world. This obviously rather anti-social and alienated doctrine is reflected and parallelled in Thomas’s doctrine of interpretation, at least insofar as the word, like the world, is imagined to hide something divine within itself, something which is itself at odds with ordinary human learning and knowledge. One begins to find this hidden divinity first by probing the fleshy surface of the material, written word—Thomas is said, in the incipit, to have recorded Jesus’ sayings, and the document presents itself as that record. But ordinary wisdom is insufficient, and thus, as is expressed in Sayings 3 or 5 or 78, for example, those who might be expected to possess the truth in fact utterly lack it, perhaps precisely because they do not seek it, do not lay themselves open to being “disturbed,” are comfortable in and with this world.
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THOMAS
AND
TAXONOMY
The situation is even more complicated, however, by the fact that Thomas also seems to require the reader to devalue language and its effects as part of the process of enlightenment, just as one is expected to discover the world to be a corpse. More precisely, Thomas seems to be engaged in a deliberate anti-taxonomic process in which dichotomies are consistently evoked and then undermined. The result, of course, is that language, which exists only to encode differences and operates in terms of those differences,19 is shown to be meaningless, since the differences it encodes are illusory. This peculiar orientation is manifested in two key ways, both of which are critical for understanding Thomas’s view of language and its view of social reality. The most obvious way this repudiation of taxonomy takes place is via Thomas’s explicit reflections on a series of privileged categories. I refer to these categories as privileged because they are clearly value-laden dichotomies, with one element representing something obviously “good” and its opposite something obviously “bad.” They are also privileged because Thomas never wholly undermines their cogency; rather, the text explicitly invites the reader to consider the permeability of the boundaries between them. I would include the following binaries in this set of privileged categories: hidden inner dead being eaten being two little female beginning motion body light
vs. vs. vs. vs. vs. vs. vs. vs. vs. vs. vs.
manifest outer living eating being one, a single one big male end rest spirit/soul dark
Thomas’s rhetoric seems to consist in large measure precisely in deconstructing these pairs and their differential valuation, arguing that the two are identical or, more usually, that one may be transformed into the other. The author presents us, in addition, with taxonomic anomalies, descriptions of instances which resist, or go unrecognized by, the very classificatory model being used to frame them,20 thus rendering that particular system of classification suspect.21
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In lieu of a systematic survey of each of these dichotomies, a few examples will have to suffice.22 Take, as perhaps the simplest example, the opposed pair of beginning and end. Thomas Saying 18 both invokes and then annihilates the opposition between these two items: “The disciples said to Jesus, ‘Tell us how our end (6ah) will be.’ Jesus said, ‘Have you discovered the beginning, then, that you are seeking after the end? For where the beginning is, the end will be. Blessed is the one who stands at the beginning: that one will know the end and will not taste death.’” Were this explicit deconstruction not enough, the text then offers, in the saying immediately following, precisely the sort of anomaly that erodes the distinction between beginning and end, or origin and goal: “Jesus said, ‘Blessed is the one who came into being before coming into being’” (Saying 19).23 The binary of male and female is likewise both invoked by the text— as in Saying 114, by the foolish disciples—and then rendered moot. This saying reads, “Simon Peter said to them, ‘Let Mary leave us, for women are not worthy of life.’ Jesus said, ‘Behold, I shall guide her to make her male (6oout), so that she herself may become a living spirit resembling you males.24 For every woman who makes herself male will enter the kingdom of heaven.’” Not content simply to promote the possibility of transformation from the devalued element of the pair to the valued element, thereby making the distinction porous, Thomas elsewhere suggests an outright elimination of the difference: “When you make male and female into a single one, so that the male will not be male nor the female be female…then you will enter the kingdom” (Saying 22). Thomas once again offers us a taxonomic anomaly, this time in the form of the androgyne. The male-female division, the social taxonomy par excellence, is here contrasted with the kingdom, which is represented by the taxonomic anomaly par excellence, androgyny.25 As a final example of this tendency in Thomas, let us consider one of the “privileged” dichotomies that would seem least susceptible to inversion or dissolution, namely, the contrast between living and dead. This pairing, with the expected valuation of each item, is invoked from the very start of the document. The incipit describes Jesus as the living (eton6) Jesus, and the first saying offers as a reward for proper interpretation the promise that the interpreter “will not taste death.” Characterizations of divine or enlightened beings as “living ones” and incitements for the reader to avoid death are scattered throughout the document with considerable frequency.26 Moreover, Saying 11 explicitly reifies and entrenches a distinction which, unlike male and female, for exam-
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ple, seems to be one that under normal circumstances can change over time: “the dead are not alive and the living will not die.” And yet, with all of these consistent usages, and even with this explicit reification of the distinction, Thomas still offers the reader a confusing anomalous instance that calls the distinction into question, and does so in the very same saying (11) that asserted its unchangeability in the first place. After insisting that the dead are not alive and that the living will not die, this saying continues: “During the days when you ate what is dead, you made it alive.” Thus the simple act of eating—apparently eating flesh—constitutes the anomaly whereby an absolute distinction between life and death is rendered incoherent, as the dead flesh of the food is incorporated into the living flesh of the eater.27 Saying 51, similarly, imputes repose (a0na/pausiv, also in places m_ton), the salvific and life-giving goal of the Thomas-Christian, to the dead: in contrast to Saying 60, for example, where the reader is encouraged to find repose while still alive because it is unattainable in death, in Saying 51 this goal is described precisely as “the repose of the dead.” If Thomas explicitly undermines its own value-laden and privileged dichotomies, it does something similar, if rather more subtle, to a number of the metaphors it uses. One of the rarely-noted features of this text is its tendency to self-contradiction on the value or quality of particular metaphoric terms. In some instances, this has caused serious interpretive problems. The metaphor of drunkenness, for instance, is clearly negative in Saying 28, where Jesus laments that the world is filled with drunken people who are not thirsty, but claims that they will repent once “they shake off their wine.” This has led some interpreters to conclude that in Saying 13, quite against the obvious thrust of the saying, Jesus is rebuking Thomas rather than praising him when he says, “because you have drunk, you have become intoxicated from the bubbling stream I have tended” (e.g., Valantasis 1997: 75–76). Such an interpretation, based on fixing an invariably negative value to the image of “drunkenness,” is surely incorrect. Thomas is, in fact, consistently inconsistent in its valuation of metaphors. Once again, here is not the place to explore each instance of this phenomenon in the detail it deserves, but it is worth at least listing such occurrences, if only to demonstrate just how regular and pervasive a phenomenon this is. Thus: • poverty (mn_t6hke) is a bad thing in Sayings 3 and 29, while being poor (6hke) is a good thing in 54;
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• robbers are antagonists in Sayings 21 and 103, but they are the protagonists in 35 and 98; • being drunk is a hindrance to understanding in Saying 28, but is a symptom of understanding in 13; • collecting interest is prohibited in Saying 95, but is offered as a reward in 109; • wealth is unspiritual in Sayings 63–65, but is a metaphor for spirituality and its attainment in 29, 81 and 110; • merchants will not enter the places of the Father in Saying 64, but the Kingdom of the Father is like a merchant in 76; • kings cannot understand the truth according to Saying 78, but the goal of the reader is described as becoming a king (r_ r_ro) in 2 and 81; • the wise man avoids toil (6ise) in Saying 8, but engages in toil in 58 and 107;28 • in Saying 61 being divided (e3ph4) fills one with darkness, and in Saying 72 Jesus denies being a divider (re3pw4e), but in 16 Jesus claims to have come precisely in order to provoke division. There are some other instances of this phenomenon that are too problematic or questionable to consider here.29 But the overall pattern is clear. It is notable that, unlike the privileged dichotomies considered earlier, these inconsistent uses of the same terminology revolve primarily around metaphors drawn from social roles.30 Kings, wealth, merchants, interest payments, poverty, labour, robbers and even social division itself are all invoked, and each one is considered as an image of something positive and as an image of something negative. While this in itself points to a tendency in Thomas to devalue or question social distinctions, it is the potential metaphoricity of each of these images that allows them to be used in opposite ways, or, more specifically, it is the discrepancy between their metaphoric and their literal meanings, and that discrepancy is thus highlighted by the contradiction. Something even more basic than social criticism is going on here. Thomas’s contrary use of images in opposing ways is fundamentally anti-taxonomic: it calls into question the stability of words and the cogency of metaphoric language. Metaphor is also the basis for the kinds of correlations on which social hierarchy as such is based: as right is to left, and up to down, so is man to woman, king to subject, and so on. Thomas more or less explicitly problematizes and repudiates old and young (Saying 4), hand and foot (Saying 22), upper and lower (Sayings 11, 22), in and out (Sayings 22,
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89)—dichotomous categorizations basic to human experience. By actually illustrating and embodying, in its own use of language, both the illusory nature of the dichotomies on which taxa are based and the instability of metaphoric correlations between categories, the author of Thomas may be reflecting a thoroughgoing rejection of classification itself. This implies a rejection of language, whether Thomas intends this or not, and, more distantly but just as surely, a rejection of almost any cohesive and structured form of society.
C ONCLUSION : THOMAS AND S OCIAL A FFILIATION Thomas’s rhetoric fundamentally revolves around the play of dichotomies and their relations to each other. The text may therefore be conceived of as focussing on taxonomy, but it does so in order to repudiate taxonomic structures as such, rather than to encode a particularly favoured organizational scheme or reconfigure an extant one. One might rephrase this in disappointingly banal terms by saying that the Kingdom in Thomas resists linguistic description; it is ineffable. What is imagined by Thomas, however, is much more active than this: the Kingdom is the destruction of linguistic (and other) distinctions, or is the realization that such distinctions are unsustainable and unreal. The project is not fully realized, of course; Thomas maintains a handful of undeconstructed images and evaluations. For instance, the explicit invocation of good versus bad in Sayings 45 and 57 remains intact, and the metaphoric association of Jesus with fire (Sayings 10, 13, 16, 82) is never subverted.31 More significantly, the dichotomy of numerous versus few is never deconstructed. We have instances in which the two are made one, and in which oppositional entities are unified (e.g., Sayings 11, 16, 23, 30), but the contrast between the frequent or common and the exceptional is never undermined. In Saying 23 Jesus says, “I shall choose you, one from a thousand and two from ten thousand, and they will stand as a single one.” One and two are collapsed here into unity, but they still stand apart from the mass of thousands who have not been chosen. Saying 107 presents us with a shepherd who abandons his ninety-nine sheep for the sake of the single, largest sheep, whom he “loves more than the ninety-nine.” Likewise, note again the merchant in Saying 76 who sells all his merchandise in order to acquire an explicitly single pearl (margariths ouwt), and the wise fisherman who effortlessly chooses (a3swtp) the “fine large fish” (ouno2 n_tb_t enanou3) and
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“threw all the little fish back into the sea” (a3nou e n_n_kouei throu n_tbt ebol epesht eqalassa). It is further notable that this contrast between the many and the few is coordinated with, and buttressed by, the value-laden motif of selection,32 as the above examples illustrate, as well as Saying 49: “Blessed are you who are alone and chosen (nmonaxos auw etsotp), for you will find the kingdom.”33 Thomas thus does cling to some minor and residual categorizations, a function of its own inability entirely to escape from the human social order, reflected in language itself, whose consistency it otherwise so emphatically rejects. Thomas-Christians persist, then, in understanding themselves as a social entity (the few, the solitary, the chosen),34 and in drawing distinctions between themselves and the world in which they are immersed, in spite of their general and profound rejection of the distinctions erected by that world, or even the notion of distinction as such. These rather scattered results need to be drawn together and summarized, so that some tentative conclusions may be drawn about the overall shape of the assumptions about the social order held by the people who produced the Gospel of Thomas. Thomas’s general take on language is as something that conceals an inner equality or levelling of distinctions. The surface of language reveals a fragmented, divided, bifurcated and conflictual world, but hidden within language is a secret unity, an equivalence of apparent opposites and a resolution of apparent conflicts. This view of language in fact corresponds for Thomas to the character of reality itself, and hence the reader’s interpretation of language is much the same (and involves much the same process) as interpretation of the “text” of the world itself. If we regard one’s attitude toward language as being a reflection of social positioning,35 we can view in Thomas’s peculiar textual strategies a very critical stance toward its society as corrupt, multiple and conflicted. In the stead of this society, Thomas proposes a fantastic spiritual resolution, which is to be found by discovering a hidden logic of unity lurking beneath corruption and division. That unity, moreover, is embodied by the Thomas group itself, which, in spite of a general rejection of taxonomy, is willing to construct itself as “chosen and alone”—separate from and better than the thousands and tens of thousands who stand outside. Such a perspective is clearly alienated, yet it is anything but revolutionary. The authors of Thomas seek their utopian homogeneity as a secret presence already within the fragmented totality of their own society as it stands, and this utopian homogeneity serves as an imaginary com-
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pensation for that society’s surface features. This secret presence is the unity and reality of the divided world outside, but it is unseen and unimagined except to the “chosen” few. This reality, then, is to be identified with the Thomas group itself, and so Thomas’s anti-linguistic and anti-hierarchical stance is, paradoxically, the document’s gesture of community formation. Its antagonism to taxonomy and hence to social distinctions is precisely how Thomas establishes the difference—the special character and superiority—of its own adherents.36 It is notable, finally, that the persuasive power of this technique depends to a large degree on the reader’s prior consent to the basic premise that meaning is hidden behind superficial incoherence or multiplicity.37 This circularity, similar to that discovered by Wayne Meeks (1972) in the speeches of the Johannine Jesus, tends to confirm the self-perception and experience of these people as unique and elite, and, once again, to retrench the distinctions between the “chosen” and the many. In the end, it is difficult to say precisely who these people were, why they were so alienated, or why they addressed their alienation in this precise fashion. Elsewhere, I have suggested that an early recension of Thomas was generated by rural scribal elements reacting to urbanization and land concentration (Arnal 1995). Here, however, my concern has been the document in its final form, and what the characteristics of that final form may tell us about its social stance. What has been gained from this is not a concrete social description of the Thomas tradents, nor even a clear and tangible sense of how these people organized themselves, or whether they were ascetics, encratites, or gnostics. Nonetheless, what has been illustrated, I think, is the fashion in which Thomas, simply in its treatment of hermeneutics and taxonomy, is itself an act of social intervention. The social world, for our authors, is illegitimately fractured and hierarchical, and its apparent distinctions are dissolved in Thomas’s language. At the same time, this disunity masks a secret unity in which the standard distinctions are irrelevant. This secret unity, unknown by the many, is nonetheless the reality or essence of the world, and exists in the world in the form of the Thomas-Christians and in the form of Thomas itself. This group, representing itself and its definitional gnosis as “the kingdom,” is self-consciously small, nominally “egalitarian” (within the group, that is), and probably powerless (objectively speaking), but represents for its members the secretly unified totality that is society itself.
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N OTES 1 This observation has been repeatedly stressed to me by Darlene Juschka (University of Regina), whose forceful emphasis on the inextricable relation between language and social reality has strongly influenced this article. 2 This is not at all to claim that the purpose of such relations is primarily linguistic or communicative. 3 See the similar claim, though not as specific, by Fredric Jameson: “For the essential characteristic of literary raw material or latent content is precisely that it never really is initially formless, never (unlike the unshaped substances of the other arts) initially contingent, but is rather already meaningful from the outset, being neither more nor less than the very components of our concrete social life itself: words, thoughts, objects, desires, people, places, activities” (1971: 402–403). 4 A direct equivalence is actually made between word and body in the Gospel of John, wherein the Word itself is enfleshed (1:14), with the result that the (divine) word and the (divine) body are quite explicitly a single unit. 5 Note that this is a fairly specific claim for the symbolic correspondence between one’s understanding of language and of society. The argument is not merely that a particular metaphysics or worldview can be translated into comparable or analogous doctrines of language and of society. Quite the contrary, the claim is that theories of language are theories of society. 6 On the progymnasmata see especially Kennedy (2003); Hock and O’Neil (1986; 2002); and Mack (1989: 51–57). Mack qualifies somewhat the rigidity of these forms, however, noting that “the professional ideal was not to adhere woodenly to some required order for the smaller sections of the speech, but to craft an original composition in keeping with sound rhetorical principles” (1989: 63). 7 See, for example, Kennedy (1972: 76–77, 99, 121–23; 1994: 122–23). For ancient comments on delivery, see Rhet. Her. III.xi.19Bxxiv.40 (in Benson and Prosser 1969: 289–99). 8 A wonderful example of the linkage between artificial contrivance in language and class identity is be found in the “Atticizing” fashion of the Second Sophistic (on which see also Broadhurst, chap. 3 in this volume). Swain argues that “classicism was now fundamental in constituting the élite’s identity, as it had not been before, and language was quite literally the clearest way of expressing this” (1998: 27). 9 See Mack and Robbins: “Argumentation rested ultimately upon cultural conventions and traditions that were shared and in force. Orators had to show that their propositions agreed with the values, logic, world-view, historic exemplifications, and literate wisdom of the culture in order for their audiences to confirm them. One of the functions of the pattern of elaboration was to list the topics from which an orator could make just such an appeal to culture as a comprehensive system. Items in the pattern were not invitations to invent a new system of values, but to find strong and convincing figures from the reservoir of commonly accepted truisms” (1989: 195–208).
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10 This attitude is also reflected in the actual content of certain rhetorical forms. See Mack’s comment: “The attribution of a saying to a specific person is also important since a chreia may be analyzed with respect to the speaker’s character (h]qoj), and can function therefore as a rhetorical paradigm in a larger narrative or speech context” (1989: 32). In general see Carruth (1995: especially 98–100). 11 Carruth (1995: 99, citing Aristotle, Rhet. 1.2.4 and Quintillian 2.15.34). See also Isocrates, Antid. 278–80. 12 See the extended and useful discussion of the relation between lo/goj and h]qoj in Mack (1989: 42–44). Mack notes that a primary function of education is precisely the formation of character (an attribute which I understand in terms of conformity to elite standards of behaviour or class-based values, although this is an avenue Mack himself does not pursue) by exposure to the salubrious models of virtuous men of the past. The linkage goes both ways, however, as Mack notes, so that one reveals an education and the other establishes the right to speak, precisely by demonstrating one’s character. And this character is established through speech itself, of course. As Mack states: “Only if the audience was convinced that the speaker had a right to speak (h]qoj) could that speaker then move ahead into issues requiring argumentation (lo/goj) and conclude with appeals to agree with him (pa/qoj). The problem was that if the speaker were not already known to the audience, how could he win from them this right to speak (h]qoj)? The answer was that he could achieve it by the way in which he began to speak, i.e., by careful choice of words and style for entry into the speech situation. ]Hqoj, then, could be established through lo/goj itself ” (1989: 43). 13 Philo supports his etymology with reference to the Latin septem. The absence of an initial “s” from the Greek word is not the problem with his etymology. 14 This same hierarchical and essentialistic understanding of language is also reflected at the practical level in Philo’s allegorical practice of interpretation. A text (and thus language itself, and so also the social order) is essentially subdivided into layers, with a more “common” layer on the surface and more profound and ethereal layers hidden beneath. Such a perspective on the text, in addition, actually generates (and rationalizes) a social division based on (intellectual) ability to penetrate to its more arcane recesses. 15 Coptic text and translation is from Kloppenborg et al. (1990: 125–55), though with some tinkering in the translation on my part. 16 For recent discussions of the date and provenance of Thomas, see Davies (1983; and 1996, arguing, compellingly, that Thomas was used as a source by the Gospel of Mark); Desjardins (1992) who locates the gospel’s composition in Antioch); Fallon and Cameron (1988); Hedrick (1989); Koester (1990: 83–85); Patterson (1993); and Valantasis (1997: 12–21, who, strangely, argues that Thomas should be dated around 100–110 CE, but claims that in that context it would appear anachronistic!). John P. Meier’s effort (1991: 112–41) to show the dependence of Thomas on the canonical gospels is little more than a compendium of poor methodology, reversible arguments, and the standard prejudices about “gnostics.” 17 Cf. also Saying 91. Note the fascinating argument of Cotter (1992), who sees in the Q parables of the mustard seed and leaven a direct reflection of the
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social position of the Q group itself: hidden and subversive, changing society from within. The people responsible for Thomas clearly have a similar self-conception, albeit expressed less deliberately and more subtly. Note, too, that the verb here used for “discovering” the world is precisely the same as that used in the incipit for “discovering” the meaning of Jesus’ sayings: 6e e, as opposed to 2ine, which is equally possible. See Jameson (1972: 15, quoting Saussure, Cours de linguistique général, 166): “Thus for units, entities, substances, are substituted values and relationships: ‘All of which simply means that in language there are only differences.’” See Lincoln (1989: 165): “One can, in fact, define anomaly in rather neutral terms as any entity, the existence of which goes unrecognized under the terms of a given taxonomy.” Likewise Lincoln argues that “anomaly can serve as a (potentially potent) instrument with which opponents of an entrenched sociotaxonomic order may attempt to undermine the latter” (1989: 167). I provide here a list, however, of the sayings in which I see Thomas deconstructing each of these categories: hidden vs. manifest (Sayings 5, 6, 33) inner vs. outer (Sayings 22, 89) dead vs. living (Saying 11) being eaten vs. eating (Sayings 7, 11) being two vs. one, single one (Sayings 11, 16, 23, 30) little vs. big (Sayings 4, 20; but cf. 8, 107) female vs. male (Sayings 22, 114) beginning vs. end (Sayings 18, 19, 51) motion vs. rest (Saying 50) body vs. spirit/soul (Sayings 29, 87, 112) light vs. dark (Sayings 24, 83)
23 Davies (1992) notes this particular theme in Thomas, and accounts for it in terms of the motif of salvation being the rectification of a primal fall, and thus a restoration of paradise. This is surely correct, but does not mitigate the point being made here—Thomas has chosen to express this motif in terms of deliberately paradoxical language. 24 This result clause is rather fascinating grammatically. It appears as though the author (of the Coptic translation, at least) is reflecting the gender-ambiguity of the assertion made here about Mary in the very grammar of the clause. She is, of course, grammatically feminine in the first part of the clause: sna4wpe 6wws (“she herself ”). But the clause continues, describing what it is she will become in grammatically masculine terms (n_oup_na _ _ e3on6 e3eine). In the original Greek of the text, pneu=ma would be neuter; in Coptic, which has no neuter, this noun is rendered in the masculine. Since Coptic oupneuma is grammatically masculine, one expects that words modifying it, like “living” (e3on6) will likewise be masculine. What is peculiar here is that e3eine is masculine too, since it almost certainly does not modify “spirit” (Jesus is not promising here that “living spirits” will resemble males, but that Mary will!) but rather “she.” Thus Mary has been transformed into a male even in the gram-
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28 29
30 31
WILLIAM E. ARNAL mar of the sentence. Of course, it is possible that we are simply dealing here with a sloppy scribe or an erroneous translation of the Greek. On the frequent use of the androgyne as an anti-taxonomic device, see Lincoln (1989: 166–67 and 202 n. 15). I count at least 17 sayings in which “living” and related terms have positive connotations or in which “dead” and related terms have a negative connotation: 3, 4, 18, 19, 37, 52, 56, 58, 59, 60, 61, 70, 80, 85, 101, 111, and 114. Since death vs. life seems to coordinate with being eaten vs. eating (cf. Saying 60), it is worth drawing attention to the peculiar character of Saying 7, which seems to express an idea similar to that of saying 11: the thing consumed becomes part of the consumer. Two peculiar features stand out about this saying. The first is that it describes two situations, one—a man eaten by a lion— apparently unexceptional, and the other—a lion eaten by a man—apparently very much exceptional or, one might say, anomalous. Of those two situations, it is the anomalous one that Thomas regards to be “blessed” (maka/rioj). The other peculiar feature is found in the saying’s structure, which employs balanced opposites in two sentences, each with a concluding result-clause: “blessed is the lion the man will eat” versus “defiled is the man the lion will eat.” One then expects the following result-clauses likewise to be balanced opposites. In fact, however, we are treated to exactly the same result in both opposite instances: the lion becomes human. It would be easy to conclude, as some have (e.g., Guillaumont et al. 1959: 5), that the final line of the saying is corrupt, and should be emended to read something like, “and the man will become a lion.” But given Thomas’s tendency to dissolve oppositions, it seems reasonable enough that this saying was intended to read exactly as it does, suggesting that opposite procedures may have identical results. Thus in both ways, subtly, this saying reinforces Thomas’s interest in anomalies and its rejection of standard taxonomies. The thesis offered by Sayings 7 and 11 also calls into question and inverts purity considerations, which likewise take things consumed to become part of the consumer, but which focus on the effect of the consumed on the consumer, rather than the effect of the consumer on the consumed. And in Saying 97 the foolish woman does not “understand how to toil” (m_peseime e6ise). “You will seek me and you will not find me” (with reference to future) in Saying 38 vs. “seek and you will find” (with reference to past) in 92; mother as negative figure in Saying 101 (and perhaps 105) vs. mother as a positive figure also in 101; being like a child is a bad thing in Saying 21 (depending on one’s interpretation of this passage, a qualification which also applies to the two remaining examples) vs. being like a child is a good thing in 3, 22, 37, 46, and 50; landlords are negative figures in Sayings 64 and 65 vs. landlords as positive figures in 21; tenants are negative figures in Saying 21 vs. tenants as positive figures in 65. The only exception is drunkenness, which, while a social behaviour, is not and does not necessarily imply a specific social role. One might also cite the dichotomy of aged and new in Saying 47, but the pairing of old and young in Saying 4, which is deconstructed, may be a variant of the same distinction.
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32 Various forms of the verb swtp_ appear in Sayings 8, 23, 49 and elsewhere. 33 Note, too, the (mostly) consistent treatment of “kingdom” as another undeconstructed and unequivocally positive metaphor, which, in this saying and elsewhere, is also associated with the few and the chosen. 34 Note the perceptive comments of Valantasis on the community-oriented nature of Thomas: “By its nature, ‘interpretation’ is communal: one person interprets a ‘text’ or a ‘comment’ or something else that comes from some other source, or person, or community….The readers must discover the understandings of these sayings that the community has already articulated: they are not told to interpret, but to find the interpretation. The meaning of these sayings resides in a corporate understanding provided to new readers. The social group formed of those who read and understand these sayings has already provided the interpretive focus, which the readers must uncover, discover, or recover” (1997: 53). 35 As much as, or more than, the body, which, as it happens, is similarly viewed in Thomas as something corrupt and divided but which conceals an inner unity. 36 This is remarkably similar to some aspects of Paul’s rhetoric of community formation, such as in Galatians 3:27–28, where the breakdown of the primary indices of social differentiation—ethnicity, class, and gender—is a function and reflection of baptism, the group entry ritual par excellence. 37 Although to a small degree it is “proven” through the actual use of contradictory language. Even this, however, requires the reader’s ability and willingness to see and understand the contradictions.
R EFERENCES Arnal, William E. 1995 “The Rhetoric of Marginality: Apocalypticism, Gnosticism, and Sayings Gospels.” Harvard Theological Review 88: 471–94. Benson, Thomas W. and Michael H. Prosser, eds. 1969 Readings in Classical Rhetoric. Boston: Allyn & Bacon. Brown, Peter 1988 The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity. New York: Columbia University Press. Cameron, Ron 1999 “Ancient Myths and Modern Theories of the Gospel of Thomas and Christian Origins.” Method & Theory in the Study of Religion 11: 236–57. Carruth, Shawn 1995 “Strategies of Authority: A Rhetorical Study of the Character of the Speaker in Q 6:20–49.” In John S. Kloppenborg (ed.), Conflict and Invention: Literary, Rhetorical, and Social Studies on the Sayings Gospel Q, 98–115. Valley Forge, PA: Trinity Press International. Cotter, Wendy 1992 “The Parables of the Mustard Seed and Leaven: Their Function in the Earliest Stratum of Q.” In John S. Kloppenborg and Leif E. Vaage (eds.), Scriptures and Cultural Conversations: Essays for Heinz Guenther at 65 (Toronto Journal of Theology 8/1), 38–51.
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Davies, Stevan L. 1983 The Gospel of Thomas and Christian Wisdom. New York: Seabury. 1992 “The Christology and Protology of the Gospel of Thomas.” Journal of Biblical Literature 111: 663–82. 1996 “Mark’s Use of the Gospel of Thomas.” Neotestamentica: The Journal of the New Testament Society of South Africa 30: 307–34. Desjardins, Michel 1992 “Where Was the Gospel of Thomas Written?” In John S. Kloppenborg and Leif E. Vaage (eds.), Scriptures and Cultural Conversations: Essays for Heinz Guenther at 65 (Toronto Journal of Theology 8/1): 121–33. Fallon, Francis T. and Ron Cameron 1988 “The Gospel of Thomas: A Forschungsbericht and Analysis.” In Wolfgang Haase and Hildegard Temporini (eds.), Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt. 2.25.6: 4195–251. Guillaumont, A., H.-Ch. Puech, G. Quispel, W. Till, and Yassah ’Abd al Mas§h· 1959 The Gospel According to Thomas. Leiden: Brill. Hedrick, Charles W. 1989 “Thomas and the Synoptics: Aiming at a Consensus.” Second Century 7: 39–56. Hock, Ronald F. and Edward N. O’Neil 1986 The Chreia in Ancient Rhetoric, vol. 1: The Progymnasmata. Atlanta: Scholars Press. 2002 The Chreia in Ancient Rhetoric, vol. 2: Classroom Exercises. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature. Jameson, Fredric 1971 Marxism and Form: Twentieth-Century Dialectical Theories of Literature. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 1972 The Prison-House of Language: A Critical Account of Structuralism and Russian Formalism. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Kennedy, George A. 1972 The Art of Rhetoric in the Roman World, 300 BC – AD 300. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 1994 A New History of Classical Rhetoric. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 2003 Progymnasmata: Greek Textbooks of Prose Composition and Rhetoric. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature; Leiden: Brill. King, Karen 1987 “Kingdom in the Gospel of Thomas.” Forum 3: 48–97. Kittel, Gerhard 1967 “le/gw, lo/goj, r9h=ma, lale/w.” Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, vol. 4, 89. Ed. Gerhard Kittel; trans. Geoffrey W. Bromiley. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans. Kloppenborg, John S., Marvin W. Meyer, Stephen J. Patterson and Michael G. Steinhauser 1990 Q-Thomas Reader. Sonoma, CA: Polebridge.
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Koester, Helmut 1990 Ancient Christian Gospels: Their History and Development. Philadelphia: Trinity Press International. Lincoln, Bruce 1989 Discourse and the Construction of Society: Comparative Studies of Myth, Ritual, and Classification. New York: Oxford University Press. Lincoln, Bruce 1977 “Thomas-Gospel and Thomas-Community: A New Approach to a Familiar Text.” Novum Testamentum 19: 65–76. Mack, Burton L. 1989 “Elaboration of the Chreia in the Hellenistic School.” In Burton L. Mack and Vernon K. Robbins, Patterns of Persuasion in the Gospels, 31–67. Sonoma, CA: Polebridge. 1995 Who Wrote the New Testament? The Making of the Christian Myth. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco. Mack, Burton L. and Vernon K. Robbins 1989 “Conclusion.” In Burton L. Mack and Vernon K. Robbins, Patterns of Persuasion in the Gospels, 195–208. Sonoma, CA: Polebridge. Meeks, Wayne A. 1972 “The Man from Heaven in Johannine Sectarianism.” Journal of Biblical Literature 91: 44–72. Meier, John P. 1991 A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus, vol. 1: The Roots of the Problem and the Person. New York: Doubleday. Patterson, Stephen 1993 The Gospel of Thomas and Jesus. Sonoma, CA: Polebridge. Swain, Simon 1998 Hellenism and Empire: Language, Classicism, and Power in the Greek World, AD 50–250. Oxford: Clarendon. Valantasis, Richard 1997 The Gospel of Thomas. London/New York: Routledge.
LAURENCE BROADHURST
3 Melito of Sardis, the Second Sophistic, and “Israel”
T
here are a number of ironies associated with Melito, bishop of Sardis in Asia Minor in the middle of the second century CE.1 On the one hand, Eusebius, our principal (and really only) source for biographical details on Melito’s life, enumerates nearly a score of works by Melito (Hist. eccl. 4.26), and Jerome, quoting Tertullian, mentions Melito’s “elegant and declamatory style” (Vir. ill. 24).2 On the other hand, until about the middle of the twentieth century nothing of Melito’s sizable corpus survived intact. There are several excerpts of works by Melito in Eusebius, but all are terribly incomplete. Because Melito was never branded a heretic (and remains canonized in the Catholic Church today), the disappearance of so many of his works, many of them apparently overtly theological,3 is unexpected and unfortunate. This disappointment is reinforced by the discovery of his homily on the Pascha (Peri Pascha [PP]) in the late 1930s. There are certainly many parts of the PP that are now very distasteful and even offensive, but no one can deny the elegance of the text. In fact, if one thing binds together the variety of studies on Melito and his homily, it is their universal tendency, without exception, to quote the PP at length, to revel in its eloquence and to let that eloquence speak for itself. If Melito indeed did write the PP,4 the loss of his other works is truly regrettable. There are other ironic features of the Melito story. One of the few details on Melito provided by Eusebius—and one that rings true—is that Melito was a Quartodeciman bishop5 and known as such.6 His sit-
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uation in time (mid-second century CE) and place (Asia Minor) alone would suggest that Eusebius is correct here. How serendipitous, then, that the one full-length piece of Melito that now survives should be a homily, or sermon, on the very topic of the Pascha. The text does not use the word “Quartodeciman” (nor, for that matter, does Eusebius) and does not explicitly address the question of the sequence of the events and dates of Jesus’s passion and resurrection, but it is certainly pre-occupied with the Pascha, with the story of the Exodus and with the imagery of the paschal lamb in Exodus 12, as well as with the story of Jesus’s last hours.7 What is explicit about the PP is the way it turns this paschal meditation into its now-infamous condemnation of the Jews: “the God has been murdered; the King of Israel has been put to death by an Israelite right hand” (ll. 715–16).8 This is most frequently cited as the first clear articulation of the conviction of the Jews for killing Jesus and therefore murdering their God. In fact, if he has a moniker, Melito is known most now as the “first poet of deicide” (following Werner 1966). While it is probably premature to speak of Melitonforschung, the corpus of scholarship on Melito, initially only thin, has expanded steadily since Stuart Hall’s 1979 English edition of the PP9 and has recently even bloomed.10 The topics of discussion on Melito are, for the most part, limited to the PP—usually avoiding, or only briefly treating, the number of fragmentary texts—and even then only to a few themes. In particular, four issues are front and centre: (1) Melito’s theology; (2) Melito’s Quartodecimanism; (3) Melito’s sources; and (4) Melito’s ire. It is the final of these that is also the issue here. There are a number of sub-issues in this category. In addition to addressing the general question of how or what could possibly explain Melito’s invective, the following types of questions are also within earshot: How do we envision Melito’s community? How would his congregation have received the homily? Why is there no Jewish response? Is Melito’s anger real or somehow feigned? Is he countering dissent within or without his community? Is it the position of a radical theologian such as Marcion that is under fire? This group of queries may be epitomized by noting the pivotal question: To what extent does Melito employ the term “Israel” as descriptive of his contemporary Jews in Sardis in the latter half of the second century CE? In other words, when Melito says “Israel,” could he mean “Sardian Jew”? These debates have been invigorated lately by the publication of a number of full studies of Jewish-Christian relations in this time period. None discuss Melito exclusively, but all are unable to avoid him, and for some he is even a centrepiece. Representing two very different but not
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unrelated approaches to this topic, Miriam Taylor’s Anti-Judaism and Early Christian Identity (1995) and Judith Lieu’s Image and Reality (1996) are both particularly relevant and important. Taylor’s book is a lengthy bombardment of virtually all scholarship on the topic before her, and Lieu’s work a tome that covers a number of familiar texts in a new light, using a new vocabulary.
M IRIAM TAYLOR’ S “C RITIQUE OF S CHOLARLY C ONSENSUS ”
THE
Taylor’s explicit purpose is the examination not of “the formation and development of Christian teaching on Judaism,” but of “the consensus view of the patterns of Jewish-Christian interaction in the early patristic period, and the hypotheses that this view has generated about the sources of and motivations for anti-Judaism within the church” (1995: 1). Specifically, her proposal is “to challenge the current approach adopted by modern scholars on historical, hermeneutical and theological grounds” (1995: 1, emphasis added). The consensus, as she sees it, is based almost exclusively on Marcel Simon’s Verus Israel (1986). It is Simon who is responsible for a historical and hermeneutical model that Taylor calls the “conflict theory” (1995: 2). Taylor uses Simon’s own pat on his back as the locus of her “challenge”: to contest “Simon’s main premise, Jewish vitality, and his central thesis, Jewish-Christian conflict as a source of Christian anti-Judaism” (1995: 2).11 Simon’s model was designed and constructed, on the one hand, to oppose outrightly Harnack’s portrayal of second- and third-century Judaism as “moribund” and, on the other, to refine Harnack’s portrayal of the earlier “success” of Judaism. That is, whereas Harnack argued for a decline in the proselytizing success of Judaism coinciding with the destruction of the temple, Simon countered that Judaism continued to be “successful” (i.e., to proselytize) despite the destruction (Taylor 1995: 2, 8–9). Quick to point out the clear theological presumptions of Harnack (Christianity’s rise is directly related to Judaism’s decline), Taylor also notes the less obvious theological presumptions of Simon: that Jews proselytized; that “proselytizing is a ‘natural religious instinct’”; and the definition of what makes a religion superior (1995: 10).12 Faced with the imposing task of classifying scholarship on JewishChristian relations since Simon, Taylor divides her book in four, presenting a list of four “typologies,” i.e., ways of explaining the anti-Judaism of the early Christian literature. The first three typologies encapsulate the
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varieties of social (or even psycho-social, as Taylor puts it) explanations for the anti-Judaism of these texts that together form the “scholarly consensus.” These typologies are not meant to be mutually exclusive (and, in fact, many of the “conflict theorists” are addressed in more than one typology), but are meant to portray the perspective, in Taylor’s view, of particular details of the conflict theory. This construction of typologies is not at all uncomplicated. Taylor’s conviction is that this consensus fails at three levels. Historically, it founders because it refuses to relinquish the assumptions about the nature and attitude of second- and third-century Judaism. Against the consensus, Taylor argues that the image of “a proselytizing movement, and a rival to the church,” one with an occasional hostile streak, is without historical basis (1995: 79).13 Hermeneutically, the consensus is naive: they make a number of presumptions and they refuse to make “interpretive choices.” For example, the consensus assumes that the “Judaism” or “Jews” or “Israel” of the adversus Iudaeos literature are terms that deliver historically accurate depictions and not ones with more exclusively rhetorical functions (1995: 87, 91, 95). Theologically, the consensus is a galley of slaves to the deconfessional impulse, unwilling to embrace or even explore theological options (1995: 151–52). The final typology is Taylor’s own contribution to the discussion: her defence of the theological/symbolic position. Its explanation for the antiJudaism of the adversus Iudaeos literature is not a new one: the argument that the “Jews” and “Judaism” in these texts are used as theological abstractions has been made more than once before. In particular, three people have recently articulated it: two scholars in Taylor’s “consensus” group, David Efroymson (1979, 1980) and Stephen Wilson (1985, 1986, 1995), have presented this argument as one option among others;14 the third scholar, Rosemary Ruether, whom one would expect to fall outside the “consensus,” has become famous for her claim that “Christian scriptural teaching and preaching per se is based on a method in which antiJudaic polemic exists as the left hand of its christological hermeneutic” (1974: 121).15 What is new about Taylor’s position is its exclusivity: To the extent that the Judaism portrayed by the church fathers is recognized as a figurative entity which emerges out of Christian theorizing about Christianity, it cannot simultaneously be interpreted as referring to a living Judaism from which useful information can be gleaned about Jewish-Christian interaction. Unfortunately, though, most scholars seem oblivious of the need to make interpretive choices of this kind. (1995: 141)
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The reason Taylor suggests for this oblivion is a double failure: the conflict theorists fail first and specifically because, ironically, they are a product of modern scholarship’s deconfessional stance and as such shun the theological at every opportunity; and they fail second and generally because of a trend in modern sociological theory toward “sophisticated theories of conflict” (1995: 151–53). Taylor uses Melito’s homily and the synagogue at Sardis as her example par excellence of the conflict theorists’ misreadings. In her discussion of “reactive anti-Judaism” she notes Kraabel’s well-known suggestion that jealousy of the affluent synagogue offers an explanation for Melito’s wrath.16 To this she adds Kraabel’s further point, developed by Stephen Wilson, that Melito’s status as a Quartodeciman perhaps also explains his antagonism: vulnerable to a charge of judaizing, Melito engaged in damning discourse to create distance. Taylor attacks this in three waves. First, as Kraabel himself admits (1983), the dating is not a snug fit. From Eusebius we can date Melito’s death to about 180 CE (see Hall 1979: xi–xiii). Kraabel’s (1983) and Seager’s (1972) final chronology of the evolution of the Sardis synagogue building has the Jews in possession of it only certainly after 270. The gap of nearly one hundred years is difficult to explain away. Second, this theory assumes that the relative social status of the Christian community is significantly lower, something that cannot be proven. Third, there is a damaging assumption that “sociopolitical conditions inevitably and unquestioningly determine social perceptions and attitudes”; this strikes Taylor “not only as historically irresponsible but as frightening in its sociological implications” (1995: 61). Taylor’s conclusion is again forcefully stated: Surely we do more justice to our understanding of Melito, by any standards, if we remain agnostic where the evidence will not allow us to proceed further, rather than launching into highly speculative theories built upon escalating presuppositions, all in the name of a supposed sensitivity to the social setting of the ancient texts. (1995: 63)
Taylor’s argument, taken as a whole, is that the PP presents a coherent theological argument for the supercessionist position, that is, Judaism (“Israel”) has, according to the homilist, been surpassed by Christianity. The conflict theory, she argues, “fails not only in its claims to illuminate the anti-Judaic texts, but fails, more importantly, to explain the continuing impact through the Christian centuries of the ideas these texts have perpetuated” (1995: 196). This is a very serious characterization and accusation, one that certainly requires further examination. If Taylor is
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in fact correct, a huge body of scholarship has been put under question. But before taking another, different look at Melito’s “rhetoric,” the important work of Judith Lieu has a number of contributions to make.
J UDITH L IEU ’ S I MAGES
AND
R EALITIES
Lieu’s Image and Reality: The Jews in the World of the Christians of the Second Century is an entirely different endeavour. Whereas Taylor’s is principally a meta-study, Lieu’s focus is on primary material. Lieu does not set out to critique a scholarly “consensus”—although she seems to think there is one (e.g., 1996: 3, 6). Rather, she embarks on a mission to examine a limited body of texts—second-century Christian texts from Asia Minor that refer somehow to Jews (1996: 3–11). Her analysis is focussed by means of three questions: What is the rhetorical function of Jews and Judaism in the early texts, after those of the New Testament but before the increasingly stereotypical polemic and diatribe of third- and fourth-century authors? How does this rhetorical function relate to the historical, theological and social frameworks within which these texts arose and functioned? How, in turn, did they help constitute the framework for later texts? (1996: ix)
Lieu’s investigation centres on Ignatius’s letters, the Martyrdom of Polycarp, Justin’s Dialogue, the Apologists (especially Aristides, Justin, and Melito), and Melito’s homily. She consistently notes that each of these texts images its own brand of Judaism,17 while now and again subtly presenting the option that “Jews” and “Judaism” in these texts are rhetorical figures. Though keen to use the adjective “rhetorical,” Lieu nonetheless is not really conducting a rhetorical examination of any rigour. Hers is a very basic, accessible definition of “rhetorical.” When she describes the “rhetorical function” of the Jews in, say, The Martyrdom of Polycarp, she means simply that “Jews” are characters being manipulated by the particular author (1996: 59–70).18 Typically, the conclusion is that “Jews” are “foils” of some kind for Christian protagonists (1996: 278; cf. Taylor 1995: 166). The important distinction between this claim and Taylor’s theological, symbolic claim is that Lieu sees a certain commensurableness, even if complex, between rhetorical “image” and “reality.” She suggests a type of dialectic relationship: “Throughout these explorations we have continued to speak of ‘image’ and ‘reality,’ while recognising that ‘image’ does not belong to the literary world alone, and ‘reality’ to the external; neither has it been possible to maintain a simple contrast
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between these, for each helps construct the other” (1996: 279). On balance, Lieu tends to think that behind the literary competition is a “real encounter, positive and creative as well as passive or hostile” (1996: 286). For Lieu, the picture is not a simple one and it becomes “impossible to separate the threads which make up the construction of the image from the real context in which it was formed” (1996: 287).19 In her chapter on Melito’s homily, Lieu, in agreement with Taylor, is quick to note the hastiness of the conclusion that the archaeological excavations of Sardis indicate a wealthy, perhaps socially influential Jewish group, one that overshadows a weaker, poorer Christian one (1996: 207). In fact, she argues that the sophistication of Melito’s rhetoric more likely speaks of a thoroughly educated man. Wondering about the genre of this text, she offers the common suggestion of “homily”20 and notes some of the rhetorical features of the homily: graphic description, the elaborate antitheses, the doxologies, the sophisticated treatment of “type,” the litanies, and the accusatory questions, to name a few (1996: 209–14). Lieu offers the straightforward but significant observation that the bulk of these homiletic-rhetorical strategies build in a “crescendo” to the infamous “tirade” against Israel, the “length and vehemence [of which]…stand out with stark bluntness even in the midst of all his highly wrought rhetoric” (1996: 214). In other words, the sophisticated, florid rhetoric, while contributing to the intensity of the effect of the deicide accusation, also lays it bare. The common suggestion that Melito never uses the words “Jews” or “Judaism” and restricts himself to “Israel”—and (apparently) the Israel of first-century Palestine—Lieu answers with an enhanced version of Wilson’s counter-suggestion: not only would one expect the audience to connect the past with the present, but Melito’s occasional apostrophes (“O …”) act as “repeated hints [which] bring this implied ‘defendant’ out from the past to be identified with an Israel today who shares the same failure and same responsibility as those of Jesus’s time” (1996: 217).21 This train of argument leads Lieu to the conclusion that the image here must be reflective somehow of the reality (1996: 220). Finally, reiterating her opening point about the hastiness of scholarship’s conclusion that a successful Jewish community specifically in Sardis is the motivation for Melito, leader of an unsuccessful congregation, Lieu makes a rare venture into more technical rhetorical terrain. Accepting her own suggestion that there might be a “Semitic stylistic influence” on Melito’s rhetoric, she concludes: “Melito probably belongs to the contemporary rhetorical traditions of the Second Sophistic char-
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acteristic of Asiatic writers of his time, perhaps even having been formally trained within it. His readers (or first hearers) no doubt would have been more familiar with the style and have found it less overblown than many modern readers” (1996: 230–31). Her two conclusions here, one about the Second Sophistic and the other about Melito’s education, are more than casual conclusions among several others, and I will return to them. As noted, what is most interesting and challenging about Taylor’s work is her attempted taxonomy. In her scheme, the discussion of the conflict theorists’ assessment of the PP falls under the rubric of “reactive antiJudaism.” For these conflict theorists, “the relative social inferiority of the church vis-à-vis the synagogue…is thought to have fuelled Christian hostilities against the Jews” (1995: 52). It is over and against this model of social competition that Taylor will eventually place her symbolic, theological option. Lieu’s argument stands somewhere between the two positions, abutting the conflict theory but with Taylor’s symbolism/theology within view.
T HE R HETORIC
OF THE
S ECOND S OPHISTIC
Studies on the rhetoric of Melito’s homily have been content with Wifstrand’s quick description of those features of the PP that parallel Asiatic rhetoric, and have gone along with his suggestion that it is “not too hazardous to assume that the early Christians, in this point as in others, have followed the customs of the Hellenized synagogue. From these they have got this style of oratory” (1948: 219). It has been noted, however, as Lieu has done, that the more probable rhetorical context for the PP is the Second Sophistic of Asia Minor in the late second century CE. There are two reasons for this claim: the particularly ornamental style of the homily and its (usually) assumed situation in a major city of Asia Minor. What has not been done, however, is an investigation of just what it means to claim for Melito a rhetorical style associated with the Second Sophistic. Just how well does the Second Sophistic shoe fit Melito? And if it does fit, what are the implications? Before answering these questions, some discussion of the traits of this rhetorical movement are in order, for any discussion of the Second Sophistic is accompanied by a number of problems. One of these is the issue of definition. The term itself was coined by Philostratus in his Lives of the Sophists (early third century CE) with reference to a particular period and place of rhetoric:
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Now ancient sophistic (a)rxai/a sofistikh/), even when it propounded philosophical themes, used to discuss them diffusely and at length; for it discoursed on courage, it discoursed on justice, on the heroes and gods, and how the universe has been fashioned into its present shape. But the sophistic that followed it, which we must not call “new” (ne/an), for it is old (a)rxai/a), but rather “second” (deute/ran), sketched the types of the poor man and the rich, of princes and tyrants, and handled arguments that are concerned with definite and special themes for which history shows the way. Gorgias of Leontini founded the older type in Thessaly and Aeschines, son of Atrometus, founded the second, after he had been exiled from political life at Athens and had taken up his abode in Caria and Rhodes; and the followers of Aeschines handled their themes according to the rules of art, while the followers of Gorgias handled theirs as they pleased. (Vit. soph. 481; trans. Wright 1968)
What exactly is the Second Sophistic? What are the temporal and geographic boundaries to this category?22 A further problem is the question of texts. While we do have many surviving speeches by important Greek sophists in the Roman period,23 we still have the problem of estimating the theoretical material that we know only second-hand from Philostratus. And Philostratus’s own characterizations of the Second Sophistic are not rigorous; his descriptions of the characteristics of any one sophist’s oratory are imprecise;24 it is also notoriously difficult to judge Philostratus’s work itself.25 Can we trust him? To what extent is his Lives an attempt at history (see G. Anderson 1993: 126–29)? How much license is he likely to have taken both with general comments and with the individual “lives”? Philostratus’s reliability traditionally has been regarded as suspect, to the extent that some scholars avoided the “Second Sophistic” altogether as a useful or historical category.26 This has changed. The Second Sophistic is now being taken seriously as a rhetorical movement and as a cultural phenomenon. Several significant studies of this phenomenon have been undertaken (Bowersock 1969; Reardon 1971; G. Anderson 1993; cf. Sandy 1997) which treat Philostratus critically but not dismissively. This scholarship has yielded a general agreement on the identifying characteristics of the Second Sophistic. Specifically on the subject of its rhetoric, these characteristics include: (1) an emphasis on ornamentation to the point of distraction; (2) a conspicuous use of philosophical themes and figures; (3) a determined appeal to history and historical figures; (4) a reverence for Atticism; and (5) a fondness for disputatious reaction.
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Even the briefest reference to the Second Sophistic will mention its penchant for elaborate ornamentation. It is often suggested that in the Second Sophistic rhetoric is increasingly removed from the realm of forensics and into the domain of theatrics. That is, the rhetor becomes less interested in proof and persuasion than in entertainment (Reardon 1971: 107; Barnes 1971: 211). Ornamentation becomes an end in itself, at the cost of clarity, strength of argument, and quality of prose. Among the favourite Second Sophistic figures and tropes one finds parison, antithesis, homoioteleuton, paronomasia, alliteration, comparison, hyperbole, oxymoron/paradox and ecphrasis (Ameringer 1921: 11–19; see also Campbell 1922; Burns 1930; Maat 1944). All these abound in the PP, as we shall see. The fact that the Second Sophistic is intricately connected to and dependent on philosophy is a less common but important observation (see especially G. Anderson 1993: 133–44; Barnes 1971: 211–32). This is why Graham Anderson calls the Second Sophistic a “cultural phenomenon”; it is not simply a movement in pursuit of rhetorical élan. Although no single philosophical stance dominates—in fact, pluralism is apparently rampant (G. Anderson 1993: 135)—an engagement with the philosophical tradition is common, and an important, perhaps even crucial, characteristic of the Second Sophistic; it is displayed, for example, in the common technique of an orator to communicate with ancient figures in dream encounters or even simply to address them directly. Frequently, however, the Second Sophistic takes a depreciatory stance toward the older philosophical tradition.27 History, in particular ancient Greek history, enjoyed a similar status in the Second Sophistic (G. Anderson 1993: 101–14; Campbell 1922: 15–16). Anything before and up to Alexander carried great authority. Certain figures seemed to enjoy a special rank, including Homer, Alexander, the dramatists, the historians, and, of course, the philosophers. The deferral to the “classics” is so ubiquitous in Philostratus’s Lives and other surviving sophistic texts that the Second Sophistic has more than once been referred to as a “cult of the past” (Bowie 1974; cf. G. Anderson 1993: 15 [“cult of personality”]). “Among the sophistic authors themselves,” argues Graham Anderson, “the past could look still more immediate: the sensation of keeping in direct touch with remote antiquity, and in particular its literary canon, is obvious and real” (1993: 102–103). A fondness for the Attic goes hand-in-hand with the nostalgia for the past. The more careful and skilled the deployment of an Atticism, the more immediate the elevation to master sophist. Aristides is a good
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example of someone whom Philostratus regards as a pillar in the Second Sophistic, in part because of his celebrated faculty for Atticism (Vit. soph. 582–85). Graham Anderson contends that “of all the Atticists we are able to test he turns out indeed to be the most conspicuously ‘purist’” (1993: 89). Finally, there is the fondness for quarrelling, whether on lofty, important topics or on mundane, petty matters.28 Evidence of the disputatiousness is scattered throughout the Lives and other Second Sophistic texts. In the Lives, for example, Philostratus devotes considerable space to demonstrate his characterization of Polemo the sophist as “so arrogant that he conversed with cities as his inferiors, Emperors as not his superiors, and the gods as his equals” (Vit. soph. 535). Lucian of Samosata is another example who proves the rule. In The Mistaken Critic Lucian has his critic make a mistake in order that you might become more notorious than a Scythian for being absolutely uneducated and ignorant of these obvious matters of common knowledge… I do not believe that anyone exists who still is ignorant of your brazen performances and of the sins that you, an old man, have committed against yourself… One thing only is prudent in you, your grey hairs, and that you no longer dye them, so that you can have them cloak your iniquity. Spare them, in Heaven’s name in this point also, and particularly your beard, too; do not defile or mistreat it any longer. (Pseudol. 2, 3, 31; trans. Harmon et al. 1913–67)
Whether the intensely personal nature of the invective suggests that Lucian was addressing an abstract, impersonal opponent or a real one, one Lucian perhaps hoped to count among his audience, need not be of concern here. In either case, Lucian demonstrates well the quarrelsome, invective-slinging style of a Second Sophist.
M ELITO’ S R HETORIC In his review of the Greek literature of the second and third centuries CE, B. P. Reardon makes the following comments on Melito: Autre indication, finalement, de l’influence stylistique de la sophistique: un sermon sur la Pâque, récemment décourvert, de Méliton, évêque de Sardes au milieu du IIe siècle. Jérôme traite Méliton d’«elegans et declamatorium ingenium» et dit que Tertullien se moque de
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Parallel phrasing and homoioteleuton are abundantly evident in the PP. From the opening lines (“how the sheep is sacrificed and how the people are saved and how Pharaoh is scourged”) to the closing doxology (ou{to/v [e0stin] “he is” repeated nine times), the homily is deeply encoded with parallel constructions. Homoioteleuton and epistrophe (and their companions, alliteration and anaphora), as well as assonance and consonance, dominate.29 But one can observe many more rhetorical figures. First, the PP appears to be designed around the figures oxymoron, paradox, and antithesis—a favourite trio in the Second Sophistic. The bulk of Melito’s explanation of the “mystery of the Pascha” consists of paradoxes: it is old but new (ll. 11–12), temporary but eternal (ll. 13–14), perishable but imperishable (ll. 15–16), mortal but immortal (ll. 17–18). Furthermore, with Jesus slaughter becomes salvation (l. 200) and death life (l. 201). Even Israel’s crime is depicted in these terms: it dishonours the honouring (l. 520) and disgraces the glorifying (l. 521). In a similar vein, the moments of the passion are set up in opposition to the merrymaking of Israel (ll. 565–81). From the streams of details to the climactic deicide charge that notes the irony of the “King of Israel” executed by “an Israelite right hand” (o9 basileu_v tou~ 0 Israh\l a)nh|/rhtai u(po\ decia~v 0 Israhli/tidov, l. 716), the sermon revels in things apparently antithetical.30 Second, hyperbole—“an elegant straining of the truth” (Quintilian Inst. 8.6.67)—abounds. In two passages Melito elaborates on the contrast between the suffering of the Lord (ku&riov) and the feasting of Israel.31 He paints an elaborate and exaggerated picture: Jesus starving, thirsting, being condemned, and so on at the very moments Israel is feasting, quaffing, and making music (§80). All these moments of joy become bitter (pikroi/, §93). By inflating Israel’s ignorance early on, Melito inflates its guilt later. Third, the figure that is used especially conspicuously in the PP is ecphrasis. Ecphrasis, another favourite among Second Sophistic types, is the elaborate description of a subject for the purposes of emotional engagement.32 In Melito’s homily, we can notice an instance of ecphrasis that is clearly intended to overwhelm his audience (see Hawthorne 1969: 282; Halton 1970: 252). It is the long description (§17–30) of the devastation inflicted by the angel of death on the Egypt of Exodus 12.
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Note the appeals to the audience’s eyes, ears, noses, and nerves: And it was a strange sight to see, people beating themselves here, and wailing there, and in between grief-stricken Pharaoh seated on sack-cloth and ashes, clothed with the darkness that could be grasped as a mourning cloak wearing all Egypt like a tunic of mourning. For Egypt was surrounding Pharaoh like a robe of wailing. Such was the tunic woven for the tyrant’s body; with such a garment did the angel of justice clothe harsh Pharaoh: bitter grief and darkness that could be grasped and strange bereavement of her firstborn. (§19–20) There was a howling and noise of grief at the loss of the men, at the loss of the firstborn dead. For all Egypt stank with the unburied bodies. It was a terrible spectacle to watch, Egyptian mothers with hair undone, fathers with minds undone, dreadfully wailing in the Egyptian language: “By evil fate we are in one moment bereft of our firstborn offspring.” And they were beating on their breasts, striking blows with their hands for the dancing of the dead. (§28–29)33
The sophists would frequently employ drawn-out figures such as ecphrasis in mocking style, using it to belittle their opponent. This is not the case with Melito. Melito is setting up the horrors of the final plague in opposition (again) to the safety of Israel (§30). There is, then, more than sufficient evidence in the PP of a reasonably sophisticated rhetor at work and play, deploying a rather conventional Sophistic can(n)on of figures. But Melito’s debt to the Second Sophistic does not end here. The second characteristic noted above was a conspicuous debt to philosophy and even direct appeal to philosophers. If there is Greek philosophy in the PP, it is not overt. Certainly no Greek philosopher is named. Nonetheless, it is not difficult to notice that Melito’s long digression, in sections 34–45, on this “novel mystery” (to\ kaino\n musth/rion, l. 213) with a “force” (du/namiv, l. 216) has a particular Platonic flavour to it. As Melito expounds on the mystery by presenting a theory of “sketch” (proke/nthma, l. 218) and “prefiguration” (protu/pwsiv, l. 221), he strongly echoes Plato’s theory of forms and even employs heavily the language of “type” (tu/pov) and “reality”
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(a)lh/qeia), even as he plays more loosely with the language of “sketch.”34 Moreover, it is possible to understand Melito as supplementing or even supplanting a repertoire of Greek philosophy with a repertoire of Hebrew Scriptures and especially figures from Scripture.35 That is, Melito might be turning to and depending on the philosophical/theological systems, the stories and even the dominant characters of the Septuagint in a manoeuvre that effectively relies on and defers to history. Melito’s employment of the characters and themes of the Scriptures may be labelled “sophistic” at least in use.36 Similar to the Sophists, Melito’s appeal to history is both total and crucial not only to his overall argument, in which he needs to show that “Israel” has let its own history pass it by, but also to our attempt to understand both his perception of Judaism and his opinion of the Hebrew Scriptures.37 Melito promotes the supercessive position, i.e., that Israel has forfeited its claim to its Scriptures and past. By ignorantly not only allowing but committing the execution of the very one who was in Israel’s Scripture (§69–72), “ungrateful Israel” (a)xa&riste 0Israh/l, l. 634) has lost its history. Israel’s loss is Melito’s gain; he simply expropriates Israel’s history.38 The Second Sophistic’s use of Atticisms, too, has its counterpart in Melito. Although others have noted this,39 one should point out an unnoticed feature. If the Second Sophistic favoured Atticisms in the service of archaizing (appealing by inference to antiquity), if, that is, Atticizing is part and parcel of a reverence for and exploitation of things antique, one can wonder specifically about Melito’s use of the possibly archaic term “Israel.” In many ways, the debates on the nature of Melito’s opponents pivot on how this term is understood. If we argue with Rengstorf and von Kortzfleisch (1968) and Taylor that Melito’s use of “Israel,” combined with his refusal to use the words “Jew” or “Judaism,”40 indicates that Melito has in mind not his contemporaries but a distant, even abstracted past group, then “Israel” is simply an archaism that says nothing about Melito’s attitude toward Jews in Sardis. If, on the other hand, we argue with Wilson and Lieu that the situation was more complex, we can suppose that “Israel” would evoke in Melito’s audience the Jewish community in Sardis. Melito might have used “Israel” as a deliberately non-contemporary term, in keeping with a Sophistic rhetorical technique which he had assimilated, but knowing full well that he was, in the very employment of the term, making a winking nod in the direction of the Sardis synagogue, hoping that his audience would not miss the wink.
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This point can be further refined. Thomas Halton suggested decades ago that according to Melito the “precise sin [of Israel] is that they have failed to live up to their name ‘Israel’” (1969: 173). With this in mind, we can read Melito’s use of an archaic, elevated or “official” title as loaded: his emphasis on this very title (combined with a possibly deliberate refusal to use another name) becomes a sarcastic accusation in itself. Much more recently, Lynn Cohick has arrived at a similar conclusion. Appealing to the etymology of “Israel” at section 82 (deriving from “see God”; on the etymology see Hall 1979: 45 n. 50) Cohick suggests “that the author of PP hoped to create tension by using ‘Israel’ in a sarcastic way: some identify themselves as ‘Israel,’ but they have forfeited all rights to that name” (1998: 363). If this is persuasive, the archaism in Melito’s employment of this designation “Israel” is laced with the flavour of faux-antiquity that merely obfuscates Melito’s judgment on the Jewish group in Sardis. Finally, I noted that the sophists were infamous squabblers. The rejoinder regularly would take the form of the rhetorical figure of apostrophe,41 i.e., the direct address to the subject.42 Frequently words (often their own) would be placed in the opponent’s mouth. Although the sophists often apostrophized distant or dead people, they did the same to living, perhaps even proximate persons. Similar rhetorical moves are made in the PP. Not only is Israel hailed several times (see Wifstrand 1948: 214), after the pivotal section 72 the bulk of the remainder of the homily is a sustained apostrophe. At section 72 Melito shifts from the long section on the mystery of the Pascha and the description of the Christ as pre-existent to an accusation: “It is he that has been murdered. And where has he been murdered? In the middle of Jerusalem. By whom? By Israel” (ll. 505–7). Then follows a long apostrophe of Israel. It is relentless. Repeatedly Melito interrogates Israel: “What strange crime, Israel, have you committed?” (l. 519) “What have you done, Israel?” (l. 525) Not only does he use the apostrophic strategy of giving his subject a voice (“I did,” says Israel, “kill the Lord. Why? Because he had to die” [ll. 528–29]), but also he sets this against the cry that “they should have made to God” (l. 537)—meaning that if indeed Jesus had to suffer, it should be at the hands of foreigners. Melito takes it one step further: he challenges Israel to respond. “Ungrateful Israel,” he beckons, “come and take issue with me about your ingratitude” (ll. 634–45). Coupled with the earlier instance (§76) of Melito supplying possible and appropriate responses to his accusations, the absence of a reply from “Israel” here is not only rhetorically effective but perhaps indica-
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tive of a real opponent in Melito’s mind. It is also possible that this is another example of Melito using his opponents’ self-designation against them; perhaps Melito’s contemporaries have taken to calling themselves “Israel.” A final observation about the protracted apostrophe: in the one section (§94) of the homily that does not address Israel directly, Melito uses another sophistic ploy; after he re-poses his question about the identity of the murderer, he prefaces his response by saying, “I am ashamed to say and I am obliged to tell (l. 700)…Who is this? To say is hard, and not to say is too terrible” (l. 709). Not unlike Aristides’ reluctant criticism of Plato, Melito here coyly feigns reluctance to name the accused, though of course he has already clearly done so earlier.
C ONCLUSION : M ELITO’ S R EALITY The second book of Philostratus’s Lives opens with a long section on Herodes the Athenian (545–66). Herodes, according to Philostratus, was a singular rhetorical combatant. Among a litany of battling episodes is the narrative of Herodes offending the Athenians. “What sort of relation existed between the freedmen and Herodes,” writes Philostratus, “may be plainly seen in the invective which he composed against them. For in it he shot forth at them every weapon that his tongue could command” (549). Herodes’ rhetoric is, in Philostratus’s mind, indicative of his true feelings for the freedmen. Rhetoric need not at all be divorced from reality once we recognize the nature of the rhetorical moves made and figures used. Reading Melito’s homily with a knowledge of the rhetorical culture of the Second Sophistic, a culture that Melito appears to have assimilated, it is possible, even likely, that the use of “Israel” in the PP is a rhetorically-couched reaction to a real opponent, to people in Melito’s Sardis. If the provenance of this homily is late second-century Sardis, the most obvious opponent was a (perhaps prominent) Jewish community in Sardis. Taylor’s argument that “Israel” is purely symbolic and, therefore, that the anti-Judaic rhetoric in the paschal homily is completely divorced from reality is unconvincing once we understand Melito’s use of rhetorical figures in the general mode of the Second Sophistic. At the same time, because the rhetorical strategies popular among sophists of his day provided him with great rhetorical license to manipulate the characterization of his opponent, gleaning any specific and reliable historical information about Melito’s target from the PP is risky business.
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As Lieu has pointed out, Melito’s homily presents an idiosyncratic, rhetorically-obfuscated version of “Israel.” Nonetheless, we should assume that the rancour of Melito’s attack indicates that his target was one he feared, though for reasons not clearly evident, and that he therefore goes on the attack with a sophistic pugilism that pulled no punches, no matter how important or powerful the opponent. That is, it is entirely reasonable that in the PP Melito was denouncing a Jewish group of some importance in Sardis. The city of Sardis is mentioned only briefly and insignificantly in Philostratus (Vit. soph. 524–25). Its neighbour, Smyrna, fares much better. It is given special status as a centre of the Second Sophistic and is connected with three of its giants: Nicetes of Smyrna (Vit. soph. 511–12), Polemo, who established a school in Smyrna (531–35), and Aristides, who pleaded to the Emperor on behalf of Smyrna when it was ruined by an earthquake (582–83). Cities in close proximity to Sardis appear throughout the Lives and one would certainly count Sardis as within the Second Sophistic region. Melito thus “lived in the womb of Greek oratory” (Hawthorne 1969: 277), and his homily makes good sense in this context. Returning to Taylor, is her condemnation of the so-called conflict theorists’ reading of Melito fair? Taylor repeatedly identifies the errors of the conflict theory with its “Christianizing presuppositions.” Is it not possible to toss this back to her? What betrays more investment in Christian theology, a theory that connects (reduces, to use Taylor’s term) furious anti-Judaism to a combination of social, political, and religious competitions in an agonistic world, or a theory that reduces irate antiJudaism to a complicated, theological, abstract, intra muros debate about the nature of a saviour and an inherited tradition? From a Christian perspective, which one is less unpleasant? Both may be motivated by “Christianizing presuppositions.” If the overt anti-Judaism of early Christianity is portrayed as “social” we can then imply that it was a by-product of ordinary life in the eastern Empire and thus render it, if not as less offensive, then at least as unintentional, as not culpable. If it is regarded as “theological,” on the other hand, then we have also effected a disconnection from real people and once more culpability is not assignable. In other words, we can then imply that it was not meant as invective directed at real opponents and, therefore, that the invective is not to be seen as a powerful motivator for real manifestations of anti-Judaism. Taylor’s sweeping charge of a deep-seated Christianizing is then both unfair and ineffective.
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While Melito and the PP are crucial to Taylor’s complaints and they are similarly key and prominent in any discussions of early Christianity’s attitudes toward its Jewish heritage—whether by “conflict theorists” or others—they are not generally exceptional. That is, the invariable attention to the PP is not a function of the uniqueness of the contents of the text so much as a function of its silver-tongued expressions. Melito’s precise, beguiling articulation of a charge of deicide may be distinctive but the sentiment is not: the extant second-century texts of Christianity are replete with similar attitudes: Barnabas, Justin, and Marcion had shared it, and soon Tertullian and Hippolytus would join them. Therefore, a sophisticated understanding of the relationship between the florid rhetoric of the PP and the rhetorical situation, the reality, that occasioned it are crucial not just to our comprehension of the social situation of Sardis in the 170s but to the emerging Christian attitude in broad terms. So, the endless discussions of the “parting(s) of the ways” among these Christians and Jews depend on Melito for specific insight into these broader, contextual problems. I note a final irony about Melito and his homily. Taylor’s and Lieu’s suggestions, from different perspectives and for different reasons, that Melito’s use of “Israel” is best read “rhetorically” are useful. If, however, a “rhetorical” reading of Melito is pursued diligently, giving proper due to the influence of his “rhetorical context,” we come up with the likelihood that Melito’s “Israel” was in fact a real opponent, close at hand. Precisely because Melito is a product of his rhetorical context, he employs “Israel” in a particular way and with a particular tone. Melito’s tirade thus is “rhetorical,” of course, but not therefore any less heartfelt or effective in persuading his audience to share his stance.
N OTES 1 I am very grateful for the opportunity afforded me by Professors Harold Remus and Michel Desjardins to discuss an early version of this paper with the University of Waterloo/Wilfrid Laurier University Biblical Colloquium. The colloquium was inquisitive, critical, and careful, offering several suggestions that I have attempted to incorporate. This article originated as a contribution to the Religious Rivalries seminar of the Canadian Society of Biblical Studies. I learned a great deal from the seminar, in particular from the formal response by Tim Hegedus of Wilfrid Laurier University. 2 Studies on Melito typically mention this quotation in passing without noting that Jerome in fact indicates that Tertullian “derides” Melito for his overblown style. This is further evidence, as we shall see below, that Melito was very much an Asian orator and writer.
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3 Eusebius cites works such as “The Lord’s Day,” “The Faith of Man” and “The Devil” (Hist. eccl. 4.26). 4 That Melito is in fact the author of the PP is by no means certain. Lynn Cohick (1998; 2000) has issued a very important challenge to this authorship claim, one that has yet to be answered. If Melito did not write the PP, a number of theories begin to crumble. Most damaged would be the specific association of the PP and the city of Sardis. It would certainly remain even likely that the provenance for the text is second-century Asia Minor—the Quartodeciman features alone would push toward this conclusion; the rhetorical features would support this and it is likely that a city such as Smyrna would be offered as a strong possibility—but the specificity of Sardis and especially this text’s connection to the apparently prominent Jewish community would become only a possibility at best. 5 That is, following the Fourth Gospel’s arrangement where Jesus is killed on the day of preparation for the Passover, 14 Nisan (hence “Quartodeciman”), just as the lambs for the Passover meal are. 6 To be fair, there is some controversy over the Quartodecimanism of the PP (especially by Cohick 2000), although no one disputes Melito’s own Quartodecimanism. This is part and parcel of the authorship question. 7 More to the point, the PP seems especially influenced by the Johannine chronology of Jesus’s death. 8 I use Hall’s 1979 edition and translation throughout. 9 In addition to Hall’s Greek/English edition, now out of print, the other editions are the initial Greek/English edition (Bonner 1940), two English translations (Hawthorne’s 1969 dissertation; White 1976); two German editions (Lohse 1958, Greek with German notes; Blank 1963, German without Greek); and two Greek/French editions (Testuz 1960; Perler 1966). Alistair StewartSykes’s edition (2001, English translation only) is now the most recent. 10 Two recent dissertations have been published by Stewart-Sykes (1998) and Cohick (2000). Melito is consistently able to command attention in any discussion of formative Christian anti-Judaism, as well as more general discussions of Christian-Jewish relations and more specific discussions of Sardis and synagogues. 11 “Almost no one, as far as I know, has contested the validity of my central thesis, that Judaism, very far as yet from having completed its withdrawal, was throughout the period I have dealt with a real, active, and often successful competitor with Christianity” (from the post-script to the 1964 edition of Verus Israel [1986: 385]). 12 In fact, Taylor argues (1995: 9) that Simon has deftly imported Harnack’s presumptions. 13 Only rarely does Taylor offer her own portrait of Judaism of the period. In general, her opinion is that “the balance of forces as it is portrayed in the Christian texts reveals more about Christian perceptions than it does about the habits of the Jews” (1995: 88); “it would be inappropriate to try and situate the Jews negated in the Christian writings chronologically either in the present or the past. ‘Judaism,’ in as far as it was opposed by the fathers of the church, was the theological representation of the reverse side of Christianity.
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16 17 18 19
20
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LAURENCE BROADHURST It represented that aspect of scriptural history and tradition which the church had abandoned or rejected or disowned. It was, in the real sense of the word, a theological foil for Christian self-affirmation” (1995: 166). Elsewhere, her position is somewhat tempered: “The allusions to Jewish aggression against the church in the early Christian texts are not pure literary reminiscences, but neither are they responses to actual contact with living Jews. They are best interpreted, rather, as statements of theological principle that draw on the past to describe the Christian vision of the present” (1995: 94). They also share Taylor’s discussion of it in the context of the church’s problem with Marcionism. In fact, Taylor in the end does lump Ruether with the conflict theorists: “to the extent that Ruether does make passing allusions to the historical causes of anti-Judaism, she is in full agreement with the consensus view of Jewish-Christian relations” (1995: 150). Also: “Ruether herself seems to confuse the social and theological dimensions of the church’s negation of the synagogue” (1995: 193 n. 2). The suggestion is made in several places, sometimes with some hesitation; see Kraabel (1968; 1971; 1983 [here he notes the problems with chronology]; 1992). For example, “Trypho’s Judaism” in Justin’s Dialogue (Lieu 1996: 40) and the many different Judaisms of the apologists (1996: 188). The same is true of Taylor’s use of “rhetorical” (see, for example, Taylor 1995: 181–87). Taylor would be tempted to lump Lieu with the conflict consensus. While Taylor’s work is noted by Lieu, it is only peripherally so, most often in endnotes, something that is likely due to the chronology of publication. Though Lieu might have used Taylor’s dissertation (1991), only the edited monograph appears in her bibliography and, with a date of 1995 only edging ahead of Image and Reality’s 1996 publication date, one can understand the minor attention to Taylor. Furthermore, Lieu notes that the bulk of her own work was done in 1989–90 (1996: x). Elsewhere, however, she also suggests “liturgical interpretation” (1996: 15). The question of the genre of the PP is a difficult and important one. “Homily” or “sermon” seems appropriate, especially to the modern reader, given Melito’s references to the fact that Scripture has just been read (ll. 1–2, 67) and his detailed exegesis of a particular scriptural passage (Exodus 12). Siegert has called the PP a “panegyrical sermon,” and very definitely not a “homily” (1997: 422). In direct contrast, McDonald (1975) thinks that “homily” is a fitting label. Lieu does not use the rhetorical term “apostrophe.” Again, hers is not a technical rhetorical critique. For example, while Philostratus continues to discuss Second Sophists of the first and second centuries CE, Aeschines was exiled in 330 BCE (Kennedy 1994: 230). Also, the sophists discussed in the Lives cover roughly the first through the early third centuries CE; the movement itself outlived Philostratus by a least another century and a half (G. Anderson 1993: 13). See appendices I and II in Bowersock (1974b) for lists of names and extant texts.
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24 See, as just one example, the section on Herodes the Athenian, where Philostratus says he will “describe also the eloquence of Herodes and proceed to the main characteristics of his oratory” (Vit. soph. 564–66), but his descriptions are vague at best. See also G. Anderson (1993: 16–18). It is perhaps possible to find helpful material that testifies against Philostratus’ estimation of the eloquence of Second Sophistic rhetoric; note in this regard Quintilian (34–100), who bemoans the decline of rhetoric early in this period: “The result of over-attention to the niceties of style is the deterioration of our eloquence. The main reason for this is that those words are best which are least far-fetched and give the impression of simplicity and reality” (Inst. 8.Pref.23, and throughout this preface). 25 For a summary of the problems, see Swain (1991) and Jones (1974). On the dubious reliability of Philostratus generally, see Kennedy (1994: 237); G. Anderson (1993: 13–21); Bowersock (1974a). 26 See Reardon (1971: 80–96) for an outline and further discussion of the early debate, and G. Anderson (1993: 240–42) for various scholarly “verdicts” on the Second Sophistic. 27 For example, there are Aristides’ two responses to Plato (in Behr 1981–86), one to combat the negative characterization of rhetoric in the Gorgias (To Plato: In Defence of Oratory), the other to rebut the depiction of Miltiades, Themistocles, Pericles, and Cimon in the same dialogue (To Plato: In Defence of the Four). Particularly in the defence of oratory, we can see Aristides reluctantly struggling with the task of impugning such a giant (e.g., 1.12, 2.465) yet nonetheless not only addressing Plato directly (e.g., 1.154, 2.331), but also employing the strategy of volleying his subject’s words back to him (e.g., 1.50–52, 271). 28 See Bowersock (1969: 89–100) on “professional quarrels”; G. Anderson suggests a wide range of the “sources of friction,” i.e., the sophists seem to make a business of quarrelling, whether with one another, philosophers, officials (even emperors), or their own or others’ cities (1993: 35). 29 Examples: §9, ll. 55–62; §16, ll. 92–104; §24, ll. 156–60; §38, ll. 242–44; §59, ll. 417–21; §69–71, ll. 479–504; §73, ll. 519–24; §75, ll. 532–35; more examples are in Wifstrand (1948). 30 Hawthorne even notes that “Melito had a striking predilection for words in alpha-privative” (1969: 194). 31 There are interesting source-critical issues there that concern the possibility that Melito is here dependent on the Gospel of Peter. Melito speaks of Israel preparing “for him sharp nails” (l. 555) and the various other accoutrements associated with the crucifixion. In the Gospel of Peter (21), a similar charge is made: “and then they drew the nails from the hands of the Lord and laid him on the earth” (quoting Mara’s 1973 edition). It is in particular the word “nails” (h[loi) that excites the source critics who posit Melito’s debt to the Gospel of Peter. It is perhaps less a tenuous dependency on this gospel than simple creativity that explains the shared use of h[loi: it is not too difficult to imagine Melito, in the course of designing a figure, independently settling on this term. See Remus (1983: 61 and notes) for other independent references to the “nails” of crucifixions.
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32 The famous description of Achilles’ shield in the 18th book of the Iliad is cited as the great example of ecphrasis. One might contest this definition of ecphrasis and in particular delineate a distinction between ecphrasis (e1kfrasiv) and diatyposis (diatu&pwsiv), the former mere static, elaborate description, the latter with more of an aim toward moral engagement. Diatyposis, then, is perhaps a more precise description of Melito’s deployment here. Nonetheless, the two figures are closely related and it is ecphrasis generally and simply that is connected with the Second Sophists. See R. D. Anderson (2000: s.v. e1kfrasiv and diatu&pwsiv.) 33 Italics from Hall’s edition, indicating Septuagint echoes. This meditation on the details of the tenth plague is not unlike Philo’s description of the same event in the Life of Moses (1.134–39). Philo’s use of a similar rhetorical strategy is not surprising, given Philo’s debt to sophistry. See G. Anderson (1993: 203–205); Winter (1997). 34 “proke/nthma” (“sketch”) is not used by Plato. He prefers language of “corruption” and “changeability.” See especially The Republic throughout, but perhaps most similar to Melito here in the discussion of art in Book 10. 35 See Hawthorne’s list of persons and places from “Old and New Testament history” (1969: 206 n. 2). 36 Note that Eusebius remarks on Melito’s visit to the East, expressly to establish the books of the old covenant (Hist. eccl. 4.26.14). Even more, the fragment of Melito’s apology to the emperor preserved in Eusebius defends Christianity as a “philosophy” (filosofi/a) (Hist. eccl. 4.26.7). 37 Considerable work has been done on the use of Scripture in the PP (see, e.g., Smit Sibinga 1970: 83–84; Manis 1987; and most recently and thoroughly Cohick 1996. Cohick notes that despite Melito’s situation in a thoroughly Greek part of the world, he is possibly more familiar with the Hebrew text than the Septuagint). 38 Reardon describes the second century as “proud of its museum” and notes especially that there is a “coexistence of the old and the new” that characterizes the age (1984: 36–37). Melito’s use of history matches this description well. 39 See the thorough work of Smit Sibinga (1970), who has several times counted the syllables of the whole homily, and also Hawthorne’s excellent discussion of the vocabulary of the PP (1969: 189–211). Hawthorne thinks that “Melito was not an Atticist. Yet on occasion he used classical forms and constructions” (1969: 211). 40 Melito uses either 0Israh/l (“Israel”) or o9 lao/v (“the people”) throughout. 41 See Quintilian (Inst. 9.2.38–39 and 9.3.24) where he categorizes apostrophe as a figure. 42 An excellent, extended example is in Lucian’s The Ignorant Book Collector, 19: “I have never yet been able to discover why you have shown so much zeal in the purchase of books. Nobody who knows you in the least would think that you do it on account of their helpfulness, or use, any more than a bald man would buy a comb, or a blind man a mirror, or a deaf-mute a flute-player, or an eunuch a concubine, or a landsman an oar, or a seaman a plough. But perhaps you regard the matter as a display of wealth and wish to show everyone that out of your vast surplus you spend money even for things of no use to you?” (Ind. 19; trans. Harmon et al. 1913–67).
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R EFERENCES Ameringer, Thomas E. 1921 The Stylistic Influence of the Second Sophistic on the Panegyrical Sermons of St. John Chrysostom: A Study in Greek Rhetoric. Washington: Catholic University of America. Anderson, Graham 1993 The Second Sophistic: A Cultural Phenomenon in the Roman Empire. London: Routledge. Anderson, R. Dean 2000 Glossary of Greek Rhetorical Terms Connected to Methods of Argumentation: Figures and Tropes from Anaximenes to Quintilian. Contributions to Biblical Exegesis and Theology, 24. Leuven: Peeters. Barnes, Timothy David 1971 Tertullian: A Historical and Literary Study. Oxford: Clarendon. Behr, Charles A., ed. 1981– P. Aelius Aristides: The Complete Works. Leiden: Brill. Blank, J. 1963 Meliton von Sardes Vom Passa: Die älteste christliche Osterpredigt. Sophia, 3. Freiburg i.B.: Lambertus. Bonner, Campbell 1940 The Homily on the Passion by Melito Bishop of Sardis and Some Fragments of the Apocryphal Ezekiel. London: Christophers. Bowersock, G. W. 1969 Greek Sophists in the Roman Empire. Oxford: Clarendon. 1974a “Introduction: The Greek Renaissance.” In G. W. Bowersock (ed.), Approaches to the Second Sophistic: Papers Presented at the 105th Annual Meeting of The American Philological Association, 1–3. Ephrata, PA: Science Press. 1974b (ed.) Approaches to the Second Sophistic: Papers Presented at the 105th Annual Meeting of The American Philological Association. Ephrata, PA: Science Press. Bowie, E. L. 1974 “Greeks and Their Past in the Second Sophistic.” Past & Present 46: 3–41. Burns, Mary Albania 1930 St. John Chrysostom’s Homilies on the Statues: A Study of Their Rhetorical Qualities and Form. Catholic University of America Patristic Studies, 22. Washington: Catholic University of America Press. Campbell, James Marshall 1922 The Influence of the Second Sophistic on the Style of the Sermons of St. Basil the Great. Catholic University of America Patristic Studies, 2. Washington: Catholic University of America Press. Cohick, Lynn H. 1996 “Re-Assessing the Use of Scriptural Material and Interpretations in the PERI PASXA Attributed to Melito of Sardis.” PhD dissertation, University of Pennsylvania. 1998 “Melito of Sardis’s PERI PASXA and its ‘Israel’.” Harvard Theological Review 91: 351–72.
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The Peri Pascha Attributed to Melito of Sardis: Setting, Purpose, and Sources. Brown Judaic Studies, 327. Providence, RI: Brown Judaic Studies. Efroymson, David P. 1979 “The Patristic Connection.” In Alan T. Davies (ed.), Antisemitism and the Foundations of Christianity, 98–117. New York: Paulist Press. 1980 “Tertullian’s Anti-Jewish Rhetoric: Guilt by Association.” Union Seminary Quarterly Review 36: 25–37. Hall, Stuart G., ed. 1979 Melito of Sardis: On Pascha and Fragments. Oxford: Clarendon. Halton, Thomas 1969 “The Death of Death in Melito, Peri Pascha.” Irish Theological Quarterly 36: 169–73. 1970 “Stylistic Device in Melito, PERI PASXA.” In Patrick Granfield and Josef A. Jungmann (eds.), Kyriakon: Festschrift Johannes Quasten, 249–55. Münster: Aschendorff. Harmon, A. M. et al., eds. and trans. 1913– Lucian. 8 vols. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Hawthorne, Gerald F. 1969 “Melito of Sardis: His Rhetoric and Theology.” PhD dissertation, University of Chicago. Jones, C. P. 1974 “The Reliability of Philostratus.” In G. W. Bowersock (ed.), Approaches to the Second Sophistic: Papers Presented at the 105th Annual Meeting of the American Philological Association, 11–16. Ephrata, PA: Science Press. Kennedy, George A. 1994 A New History of Classical Rhetoric. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Kraabel, A. Thomas 1968 “Judaism in Western Asia Minor under the Roman Empire, with a Preliminary Study of the Jewish Community at Sardis, Lydia.” ThD dissertation, Harvard University. 1971 “Melito the Bishop and the Synagogue at Sardis: Text and Context.” In David Gordon Mitten et al. (eds.), Studies Presented to George M. A. Hanfmann, 77–85. Mainz: Philipp von Zabern. 1983 “The Impact of the Discovery of the Sardis Synagogue.” In George M. A. Hanfmann (ed.), Sardis from Prehistoric to Roman Times, 178–91. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 1992 “Melito the Bishop and the Synagogue at Sardis: Text and Context.” In J. Andrew Overman and Robert S. MacLennan (eds.), Diaspora Jews and Judaism: Essays in Honor Of, and Dialogue With, A. Thomas Kraabel, 197–207. Atlanta: Scholars Press. Lieu, Judith M. 1996 Image and Reality: The Jews in the World of Christians in the Second Century. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark.
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Lohse, Bernhard, ed. 1958 Die Passa-Homilie des Bischofs Meliton von Sardes. Leiden: Brill. Maat, William A. 1944 A Rhetorical Study of St. John Chrysostom’s De Sacerdotio. Catholic University of America Patristic Studies, 71. Washington: Catholic University of America Press. Manis, Andrew Michael 1987 “Melito of Sardis: Hermeneutic and Context.” Greek Orthodox Theological Review 32: 387–401. Mara, M. G., ed. 1973 Évangile de Pierre. Paris: Cerf. McDonald, J. I. H. 1975 “Some Comments on the Form of Melito’s Paschal Homily.” Studia Patristica 12: 104–12. Perler, Othmar 1966 Méliton de Sardes: Sur la Pâque. Paris: Cerf. Reardon, B. P. 1971 Courants littéraires grecs des IIe et IIIe siècles après J.-C. Paris: Belles Lettres. 1984 “The Second Sophistic.” In W. Treadgold (ed.), Renaissance Before the Renaissance: Cultural Revivals of Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, 23–41. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Remus, Harold 1983 Pagan-Christian Conflict over Miracle in the Second Century. Patristic Monograph Series, 10. Cambridge, MA: Philadelphia Patristic Foundation. Rengstorf, Karl Heinrich and Siegfried von Kortzfleisch 1968 “Melito von Sardes und die »Gottesmörder«.” Kirche und Synagoge: Handbuch zür Geschichte von Christen und Juden. Darstellung mit Quellen, 72–74. Stuttgart: Ernst Klett. Ruether, Rosemary Radford 1974 Faith and Fratricide: The Theological Roots of Anti-Semitism. New York: Seabury. Sandy, Gerald 1997 The Greek World of Apuleius: Apuleius and the Second Sophistic. Mnemosyne Supplementum, 174. Leiden: Brill. Seager, Andrew R. 1972 “The Building History of the Sardis Synagogue.” American Journal of Archaeology 76: 425–35. Siegert, Folker 1997 “Homily and Panegyrical Sermon.” In Stanley E. Porter (ed.), Handbook of Classical Rhetoric in the Hellenistic Period (330 B.C.–A.D. 400), 421–43. Leiden: Brill. Simon, Marcel 1986 [1948] Verus Israel: A Study of the Relations between Christians and Jews in the Roman Empire (135–425). Trans. H. McKeating. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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Smit, Sibinga J. 1970 “Melito of Sardis: The Artist and His Text.” Vigiliae Christianae 24: 81–104. Stewart-Sykes, Alistair 1998 The Lamb’s High Feast: Melito, Peri Pascha, and the Quartodeciman Paschal Liturgy at Sardis. Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae, 42. Leiden: Brill. 2001 On Pascha: With the Fragments of Melito and Other Material Related to the Quartodecimans. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press. Swain, Simon 1991 “The Reliability of Philostratus’s Lives of the Sophists.” Classical Antiquity 10: 148–63. Taylor, Miriam S. 1995 Antijudaism and Early Christianity: A Critique of the Scholarly Consensus. Studia Post-Biblica, 46. Leiden: Brill. Testuz, Michel 1960 Papyrus Bodmer XIII: Méliton de Sardes Homélie sur la Pâque. Manuscrit du IIIe siècle. Cologne/Geneva: Bodmer. Werner, Eric 1966 “Melito of Sardes, the First Poet of Deicide.” Hebrew Union College Annual 37: 191–210. White, Richard C. 1976 Melito of Sardis: Sermon “On the Passover.” Lexington: Lexington Theological Seminary Library. Wifstrand, A. 1948 “The Homily of Melito on the Passion.” Vigiliae Christianae 2: 201–23. Wilson, Stephen G. 1985 “Passover, Easter, and Antijudaism: Melito of Sardis and Others.” In Jacob Neusner and Ernest S. Frerichs (eds.), “To See Ourselves as Others See Us”: Christians, Jews, “Others” in Late Antiquity, 337–55. Chico, CA: Scholars Press. 1986 “Melito and Israel.” In Stephen G. Wilson (ed.), Anti-Judaism in Early Christianity, vol. 2: Separation and Polemic, 81–102. Studies in Christianity and Judaism/Études sur le christianisme et le judaïsme, 2. Waterloo: Canadian Corporation for Studies in Religion/Corporation canadienne des sciences religieuses by Wilfrid Laurier University Press. 1995 Related Strangers: Jews and Christians 70–170 C.E. Minneapolis: Fortress. Winter, Bruce W. 1997 Philo and Paul among the Sophists. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wright, Wilmer Cave, ed. and trans. 1968 Philostratus and Eunapius: The Lives of the Sophists. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
TODD PENNER
4 Early Christian Heroes and Lukan Narrative Stephen and the Hellenists in Ancient Historiographical Perspective1
T
H ISTORY
AND THE
H ISTORY
OF
S CHOLARSHIP
hinking and talking and writing about history, particularly Christian history, can be risky. The aftermath following the publication of Gerd Luedemann’s now infamous “Letter to Jesus” offers a good example of the problems that can arise for contemporary critics when they openly challenge established paradigms. Although his predecessors at the University of Göttingen—scholars such as Wilhelm Bousset (1865–1920, Wilhelm Heitmüller (1869–1926), and William Wrede (1859–1906)—themselves could be perceived as quite radical in their historical orientation, when Luedemann states clearly and emphatically his own position vis-à-vis the historical realities and truths related to the central figure of Christianity there is much at stake for all involved.2 Like it or not, the truth of Christianity is frequently bound up with the reliability and historical accuracy of the accounts that have come down to us. Whether we are discussing the Jesus of the Gospels, James the brother of Jesus (as constructed in Eusebius’s Ecclesiastical History), or the Paul of the letters and/or the book of Acts, the history of early Christianity is the history of real, concrete figures—often larger than life—who have left their unmistakable imprint on the canonical texts and traditions (see Penner 2004b: 246–49). It is perhaps not surprising, then, that within a theological heritage that places so much emphasis on “incarnation,” scholars of the Christian tradition should so easily find themselves susceptible to hero-worship. 75
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The Hellenists of Acts 6, and one thinks here especially of that famous first martyr of the “Jerusalem community,” Stephen, are prime examples of this fascination with the heroes of the incipient Christian movement: individuals who grip the imagination and inspire faith.3 It is no secret that one of the founding fathers of modern historical criticism, Ferdinand Christian Baur (1792–1860), was very much taken with the historical Stephen (Baur 1873–75: especially 1.39–62). Baur understood that history itself consisted not so much of events, but of individuals who were able to grasp that (by now) baptized Hegelian Spirit, seizing the moment in order to help manifest the coming to consciousness of God’s plan for humanity (Hodgson 1966: 162, 187; regarding Baur’s connection to Hegelian philosophy, see the important nuancing of this oft-cited position in Berger 1986). Stephen was not singularly unique in terms of the whole of early Christian history—after all, there was Jesus and Paul was “yet to come”—but he was unsurpassed in his particular historical moment. And what was it that made Stephen a hero? He saw that the “tabernacle of witness,” free, movable, wandering from place to place, bound to no particular spot, and therefore keeping the worship connected with it in constant motion, fulfilled much better the aim of a spiritual service of God, than the massive, stationary Temple, with its stern fixed worship—in which the real, external, material phenomena were so much more predominant, because they were no longer kept down and penetrated by the invisible Ideal—the Heavenly “Form” which Moses had seen…That the essence of true religion did not consist in outward ceremonials, connected with a temple service confined to an appointed spot, was the one great idea, through which, at that time, Judaism saw itself superseded by Christianity. (Baur 1873–75: 1.49–50, 59)
Much history of Protestant scholarship from the Enlightenment onward is succinctly summarized in this brief statement in which Baur articulates the main contribution of Stephen to the Christian supersession from Judaism.4 In this framework Stephen forms the bridge between Jesus and Paul, perceiving God at work where Peter and the Jerusalem apostles clearly could and did not. This articulation was so fundamental for Protestant thought that the account of Stephen and the Hellenists in Acts 6:1–8:1 came to be regarded as the bedrock historical tradition in the book of Acts. Even scholars such as Ernst Haenchen, who would regard much of Acts as pious Lukan fiction, could not let the historical reality of Stephen and what he stood for be so easily dismissed: Stephen’s
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hold on the historical imagination of New Testament scholars has indeed been formidable (Haenchen 1971: 266, 273; similarly Conzelmann 1987: 44, 57). The history of scholarship on Stephen and the Hellenists essentially retains the broad outline set forth by Baur. The writer of Acts, like a good historian, has placed a speech in the mouth of Stephen.5 Nevertheless, for Baur, the essence of Stephen’s speech in Acts 7—particularly those elements that confirm the charges of Acts 6:11, 14 (i.e., that Stephen spoke against the temple)—reflects the views of the historical figure himself. In Baur’s analysis, the Sanhedrin trial is a fabrication by the writer of Acts; it provides a forum for the expression of Stephen’s particular Hellenist views and is included because Luke is modelling this episode on the trial of Jesus in his gospel. Baur’s “indisputably…best established fact,” however, is that Stephen’s words against temple worship prompted a “tumultuous insurrection,” leading to his stoning. Sorting out the work of the creative historian from the historical kernel behind the present narrative, Baur suggests that the charges and the parallel confirmation in the speech provide the surest access to the historical event. From this standpoint it is but a short step to the reconstruction of the dispute in Acts 6:1–6, wherein the Hellenist widows are understood to be “neglected” by the Hebrews. Although the motivation is never stated in the text, in light of the prior established nature of Stephen’s theology, it was clear to Baur and subsequent scholars that the “real” reason for the lapse in daily distribution was due to the Hebrew conservative reaction to the more liberal Hellenist theology. From this basic outline scholarship took off in ever more creative directions of historical reconstruction. Since the pivotal identification of the Hellenists as the first church liberals—as the first Christian supersessionists from Judaism—was the principal beginning assumption, it is not surprising to observe the Hellenists taking on an increasing role in the development of Christianity as depicted in the formulations of modern New Testament scholars. In subsequent scholarship the Hellenists not only come to found the church of Antioch (see most recently Kraus 1999: 61–65), but they write down their own account of early Christian history, which later becomes Luke’s Antiochian source (e.g., Harnack 1909: 170–75). Further, the Hellenists are the first to admit Gentiles into their worship services, not only in Antioch (Haenchen 1971: 266–68), but earlier in Jerusalem as well (Esler 1987: 158–59). The Hellenists provide Paul with the broad outlines of his theological program, having established the
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theology of the church at Antioch (Grundmann 1939: 45–73). The Hellenists are also retrojected back into the ministry of Jesus. They sit at Jesus’s feet, record his sayings and carry his purse (Vouga 1994: 45–46; Rau 1994: 116). Sayings of the Jesus tradition that bear an allegedly anti-law sentiment are transmitted by the Hellenists (Walter 1989: 74–76; Berger 1995: 168) and they are the first to translate the message of Jesus into the “saving-medium” of the Greek language (Hengel 1983: 26–28). At times the Johannine literature is also connected with this “circle” (Cullmann 1975: 44–56). When one includes connections with Jesus, the Gospels of Luke and Mark, the theology of Paul, and the Johannine tradition, it is evident that the Hellenists were indeed a busy bunch. If the Hellenists did not historically exist, it would be necessary to invent them.6 This panoply of ever-expanding “roles” for the Hellenists represents Baur’s enduring legacy, which is affirmed by this recent summary of the “consensus” position with respect to the Hellenists: Thus, it is now thought that it was this community of Christian Hellenists who accelerated the transferal of the Jesus tradition from Aramaic into Greek, who helped bring Christian theology fully into the realm of Greek thought freed from Aramaic pre-acculturation, who were instrumental in moving Christianity from its Palestinian setting into the urban culture of the larger Empire, who first saw the implications of Jesus’ resurrection for a Law-free Gospel for the gentiles (and for Jews), and who were the bridge between Jesus and Paul. These Christian Hellenists were the founders of Christian mission outside Palestine, and a theological tradition capable of articulating a gospel for the Greco-Roman world.7
The views of Baur and of subsequent scholars in this trajectory have been “canonized” more recently in the works of Martin Hengel. While his massive work Judaism and Hellenism (Hengel 1974) has so often been praised for its ground-breaking achievement of destabilizing the earlier distinction between liberal Hellenistic Diaspora Judaism and a conservative, law-abiding Palestinian Judaism, the general tenor of his work goes much further to establish the more problematic positions of previous Protestant scholarship. In effect, the argument of Judaism and Hellenism is that the Jews of Palestine and the Jews of the Diaspora both closed their religious and cultural ranks due to the impetus and at times onslaught of Hellenism. All forms of Jewish identity in the first century CE are therefore conservative in Hengel’s formulation. This shift clears the way for early Christianity to provide the “way out” that was previously associated with Hellenistic Judaism in the analyses of the religions-
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geschichtliche Schule. The critique of a particularistic and nationalistic religion focussed on Torah is thus undertaken from within Judaism by the early Christians. It is precisely their prophetic, spirit-inspired message that undermines the closed and narrow system of the Judaism of the period as it is configured in the framework established by Hengel. It is thus no coincidence that Hengel’s book on Judaism and Hellenism should end with reference to the Hellenists in Jerusalem: [The] revolutionary consequences [of the Christian message] were recognized above all by the group of “Hellenists” in Jerusalem who were familiar with the self-contradictory nature of the Jewish mission—the protective attitude of Judaism over against its environment, which had been developed in the controversy with Hellenism and was most strongly expressed by the absolutized place of the Torah, was shattered in pieces. Christology took the place of “Torah ontology” as an expression of the free and sovereign saving revelation of God in history, which no longer recognized national or historically conditioned limitations. (Hengel 1974: 1.313–14)
Through the Hellenists, Hengel is able to move the most significant developments of early Christianity into Jerusalem in the formative period of Christian development. The association of the Hellenists with Hellenistic Judaism goes back to Baur and is obviously not new. Hengel has taken the position one step further, however, arguing that the Hellenists did not borrow their “torah-critique” from Hellenistic Judaism but came up with it themselves under the influence of the message of Jesus: they were the progenitors of the Christian view of the Jewish law. As Hengel states, “the criticism of law and temple is connected with the eschatological enthusiasm of the Hellenists, inspired by the spirit” (1983: 23; cf. Kraus 1999: 67–81). The innovative notions advanced in Acts 6:1–8:3 thus originate with the early Christians, sharply distinguishing this Jewish sect from its religious heritage. Indeed, the Hellenists not only break with Judaism, they also provide the way forward out of the more conservative, “back-woods,” Aramaic-speaking church of Jerusalem, with its penchant for being, of all things, Jewish (Hengel 1983: 25–26).8 As with Baur before him, Hengel operates under the premise that there was strong diversity within early Christianity.9 Craig Hill’s (1992, 1996) work on the Hellenists, frequently portrayed as undermining the Baur-Hengel approach in toto, criticizes Hengel on this one basic point: the early church is at once both more diverse and more unified than Hengel is willing to admit. Hill believes that the Baur trajectory has
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oversimplified the diversity by breaking down the movement into two opposing camps with respect to theology, whereas Hill maintains that there actually seemed to be general cohesion in basic theological affirmations. Interpreted in this manner, the Hellenists and Stephen in Acts must be read in a non-oppositional manner with respect to theology. Hill thus essentially views the narrative of Stephen’s accusation, speech, and subsequent martyrdom as largely Lukan fictions (1992: 101). Luke’s hand is evidenced throughout (relying here on Richard 1978: 278, 307). Hill takes this approach because of the importance the Baur-Hengel trajectory had placed on the charges, the speech, and the notice of the outbreak of persecution against the early church in 8:1. In order to underscore unity in the early church, then, Hill throws out as historically unreliable those features that have been used to argue for the opposite. On the other hand, when it comes to the resolution of the dispute between the Hellenist widows and the Hebrews in Acts 6:1–6, Hill is very much on the side of viewing these events as historical: here he argues that one witnesses what the church everywhere at all times has done—come to the aid of those in need (Hill 1992: 25–26).10 Thus, the model of Christian origins one assumes determines where one comes down on what is historical and what is not with respect to Acts 6:1–8:3.11 It is worth noting, however, that in all cases the basic issue of what constitutes historia for the writer of Acts is never raised.12 While scholars continue to debate specific interpretations and relegate certain features of a narrative to Lukan redaction and others to the historical bedrock tradition, infrequently do they raise the even more fundamental issue as to whether it is possible to make this move to begin with. Whether one is examining the different approaches to the Hellenists by Hengel or Hill, one must first and foremost address if it is even possible to penetrate behind the narrative of Acts to access a more primary historical substrate. Ought we to approach Acts in this way? Can we?
T HE PAST
FOR THE
P RESENT
My contention in this section is straightforward: if one analyzes LukeActs within its ancient historiographical, literary, and cultural environments, it becomes evident that, our own predilections aside, the narrative of Acts represents the material that we designate by the term historia, rather than simply being a vehicle or medium that contains or transmits historia. This framework for understanding historical composition in antiquity is illustrated by ancient perceptions of historia, wherein essen-
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tial to ancient historiographical theory is the premise that history must be useful for the reader, producing profit through delight.13 As opposed to flatterers who pander to those in power, the historian is to be a friend: someone who speaks the truth, who does not lie, and who is concerned for the future benefit and well-being of the reader. Given the civic context of historical composition (Penner 2003a: 72–78), the historian frequently found himself in a position of having to relate events in such a way so as to exemplify and model generally shared values, assumptions, and practices through the composition of his historia.14 Ancient history was thus first and foremost pedagogical and moral in nature. It did not simply relate discrete events; it presented the material so as to shape the future of the polis. Precisely for this reason, the historian ought to model for the reader the various possibilities of action and their concrete outcomes in the narrative. While not necessarily deciding on one right course of action per se, the historian was to demonstrate the diversity of experiences reflected in the polis, establishing a broad-based narrative that details the array of options for the future of its citizens. Further, insofar as history was paideia, it was also in equal measure parrhesia: the civic act of boldly declaring the “truth” of events and their outcomes in order to mould the reader as they ought to be.15 Within this larger framework of ancient historiography, then, the fundamental focus rests squarely on the narrative as the means for achieving this end. Cicero’s oft-cited comments on history bear reiterating in this context: These foundations (fundamenta) are, of course, familiar to everyone. The actual superstructure (exaedificatio) is a matter of content and words. The treatment of content demands chronological arrangement and topographical description. Also (since readers, in the case of great and memorable events, first expect plans, then actions, and after that, the outcome), it requires the author to indicate what he thinks was good about the plans, to show, in his treatment of the events, not only what was done or said, but also how, and, in speaking about the outcome, to give an account of all its causes, whether they were a matter of chance or sound judgment or recklessness. And he must describe not merely the deeds of the participants, but for all those of outstanding glory and fame, also their lives and characters. (On the Ideal Orator 2.63; trans. May and Wisse 2001)
The evident overlap with rhetorical understandings of narratio are clear when one compares Cicero’s comments on oratory elsewhere: “The narrative is an exposition of events that have occurred or are supposed to
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have occurred” (On Invention 1.27). Such a narrative will be clear if events flow naturally from one to another (1.29), and plausible if it seems to embody characteristics which are accustomed to appear in real life; if the proper qualities of the character are maintained, if the reasons for their actions are plain, if there seems to have been ability to do the deed, if it can be shown that the time was opportune, the space sufficient and the place suitable for the events to be narrated; if the story fits in with the nature of the actors in it, the habits of ordinary people and the beliefs of the audience. (On Invention 1.29; cf. Rhetorica ad Herennium 1.16)
Here Cicero makes an explicit connection between plausibility and verisimilitude in the narratio. Its success rests on its appropriateness to the occasion and the actors (the source of its persuasiveness) and on its ability to demonstrate the interrelationship of actors and events (the source of its usefulness). For Cicero, one of the most important elements in historical and oratorical composition is this capacity of the writer to develop complete narratives of action and consequences. Cicero is reflecting the general belief with respect to ancient history: historia is the creation of a narrative that connects events, generates explanations, and fully details the consequences of actions, producing accuracy in description.16 While most scholars are willing to accept this connection between history and rhetoric more generally, the implications are still, I believe, strongly resisted. Historia is not a subsidiary feature of narrative, it is the narrative in toto, providing the universal outlook on events. Lucian uses a particularly apt illustration to highlight this point: he refers to the historian as one who provides the perspective of “Homer’s Zeus” (On How to Write History, 49). As Aristotle notes, “we ascribe to the gods the capacity to see all” (Poetics 1454b). Thus, the historian in Lucian’s framework creates that perspective that eludes particular mortals caught up in concrete events. The historian is the one who sees or produces the perspective of the gods and this universal point of view is substantiated through the narrative. More importantly, it is paramount that the historian not only present this universal perspective, but that it is done in a persuasive manner so that others will find it probable and thereby profitable. Since historia is written persuasively, the plausibility of the narrative rests in its ability to reflect the geographical, political, and social realities known to the readers. In some sense, then, the standard of plausibility in history is more exact and higher than in oratory, and this is why historians pay so much attention to establishing the various boundaries
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for the setting of an action. In other words, failure to describe accurately a geographical region or battle formation would greatly undermine the plausibility of the narrative for those with a more accurate knowledge of the situation. When plausibility breaks down, then the entire structural goal of the narrative falls apart with it.17 In tandem with this emphasis on plausibility and establishing a complete and full narrative, one also finds stress placed on appropriateness in narrative composition. Polybius, Dionysius, and Lucian are all concerned with the suitability or appropriateness of the narrative—especially with respect to context and character. If one thinks of the rhetorical dimension of plausibility in terms of making an argument, it becomes clear that within a particular socio-cultural context certain topoi and typescenes will resonate with readers more so than others (see further Penner 2003a, 2003c). If the projected “ideal” goal of historical narrative is to benefit the reader, then one must present narratives that correspond with the values and cultural assumptions of a given audience. This emphasis means, as Lucian himself states, that when a historian comes to depict a general dying by his own hand, use will be made of a javelin or sword to do the job, not a shard of glass (“As if there were no dagger, no javelin to be found to bring him a manly and heroic death!” [On How to Write History 25]). In other words, when historians such as Polybius and Lucian criticize the historical narratives of their competitors, they usually fault those writers such as Timaeus or Phylarchus for creating implausible narratives that misconstrue the real, fundamental issues at stake (from the perspective of the cultural and ideological civic framework of the élite critics). In most cases when historians denounce another historical account, they do not question the historical facts of the case per se, but argue that the utility of a particular account breaks down because a writer has been excessive in his description, inappropriate in the ascription of an action, or has focussed on the wrong facet of an event.18 Historicity is generally not the issue; rather, in view is the effectiveness of historia as narratio. Thus, when Plutarch criticizes Herodotus for being malicious, he actually implicitly ends up noting the realistic quality of Herodotus’s narrative, which is, in some respects, problematic precisely because it is too true to life. Herodotus describes a world with which we are familiar: prophetesses who lie, Athenians who are treacherous; but this world does not match the civic and cultural ideals of Plutarch’s prescribed arena for political action (On the Malice of Herodotus 860D). The more Herodotus tells the truth, in these instances, the more of a liar he actually is.19 Arius Dydimus’s statement on false-
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hood illuminates the broader cultural context of the historiographical reflections: “it is said that the wise man does not lie, but tells the truth in all cases. For lying does not occur in telling a falsehood, but in telling the falsehood in a false way and for the deception of one’s neighbors” (11m; trans. Pomeroy 1999). This conception of “truth” and “falsehood” corresponds closely with Plutarch’s criticism of Herodotus, wherein motivation and the reflection of the shared value system are the pre-eminent concerns.
H ELLENISTS
AND
LUKAN HISTORIA
From this brief discussion it appears that ancient historians viewed historia as consisting predominantly of the narratio of their respective work. If this is the case—that historia is the narrative, not just a submerged aspect of it—then the Hellenists in Acts must be reconsidered in this light. Before moving on to an analysis of the historical core or fundament of the Acts passage, then, one must first answer this important question: in what way does the account of the Hellenists function as historia for Luke? I will briefly outline four narrative considerations regarding the Hellenists that may aid in reorienting the understanding and assessment of this text as Lukan historia. First, Acts 6:1–7, the story of the Hellenist and Hebrew problem followed by its resolution, has almost unanimously been considered the bedrock historical tradition in Acts. Such a problem, regardless of its actual cause, must have “really happened,” or so the argument goes. I would point out for consideration, however, one frequently overlooked point: the problem concerns widows, and Luke, more so than any other gospel writer, has a keen and demonstrable interest in widows,20 regularly highlighting the response of his characters to these outcasts. The reason, as noted by other scholars, is that the response of the prophet and the people of the prophet to widows and other outsiders validates such ones as envoys of God (Johnson 1977: 22). Moreover, as one finds in historians such as Dionysius, stasis in the formation of the politeia followed by subsequent resolution serves to accentuate the true character of the founders: when conflict is resolved or avoided (generally through the appointment of overseers) this achievement is to be praised. In Acts one observes that koinonia and concord result through democratic means, demonstrating that philanthropia and philos stand as the principal virtues of the Jerusalem community; this manifestation represents a major praiseworthy feature in the narrative (Balch 1995b: 221–26, 232; Plümacher 1999: 263–66).21
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Second, it is evident from the very beginning of the Hellenist narrative that Luke is concerned to highlight the exemplary features of the founding of the Christian politeia. In the Hellenist narrative, for instance, one meets the counterpart to the famous “seven wise men” known throughout the ancient world, who, in the Christian community, are characterized not only by their wisdom, but also by their religious power.22 Moreover, not by coincidence one finds the figure of Stephen living up to his name: receiving his “crown” for the congruence of his words and deeds and for his imitation of the life and death of Jesus.23 The ideal portrait of Stephen is configured to stress both the power of the individual and the image of martyrdom as the ultimate form of self-mastery (Smith 1999), blatantly exhibiting this manly performance before the audience (Penner and Vander Stichele 2004). Third, the Greek character of the Hellenist community is evident by their names, as is its role in forming a bridge in the narrative between the Jerusalem apostles and the gentile ministry of Paul. One of the key features in this representation is the early Christian openness to foreigners (Balch 1989: 354–60; Robbins 1991: 218–19).24 Luke intends to demonstrate that this new politeia not only progressively opens itself up to outsiders (under the direction and mandate of the divine will of God), but also that in the process this new community remains consonant with its Jewish heritage.25 The Greek character of the Hellenists is an important aspect as the community in Jerusalem, just prior to its expansion to Gentiles, contains in its essential constitution “all Israel”: Palestinian Jews, Greek-speaking Diaspora Jews, and proselytes. The conversion of Jews after Peter’s speech in Acts 2 establishes the moment of Christianity’s inception as inclusive, which provides a precedent for the imminent expansion of the movement to the Gentiles. The fact that the Greekspeaking Hellenists form the narrative bridge to the stories of Paul and the Gentiles should make us aware that the link has been, from the beginning, a Lukan one, which demonstrates further the philanthropia of the Christian community (Balch 1995a).26 Fourth, the opponents of Stephen represent the secondary narrative thread, establishing a foil for extolling the virtues of the newly founded/formed movement by comparison or synkrisis with a narrative counterpart.27 In essence, the opposition to Stephen represents an invective-like characterization, which has the characters evidencing in narrative form the basic theme of rejection exhibited in Stephen’s speech. Aside from proffering false accusations, itself a major sign of misanthropia and injustice, the opponents also exhibit a cardinal transgression
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of both the Greek and biblical traditions: killing a righteous individual. Further, the full pathos of the event is evident in the portrayal of that act as fratricide: Stephen is killed by his “brothers and fathers” (Acts 7:2). The movement from orderly trial to disorder, followed by the seeking of vengeance on all members of the community (8:1), futher delineates the base and excessive nature of the narrative opponents as depicted by Luke.28 In the final analysis, however, Luke is not out to attack Judaism per se, but to use his portrayal of Stephen’s opponents in the narrative to heighten the praiseworthy presentation of the formation/founding of the incipient Christian community in Jerusalem and beyond. The Hellenists and Stephen are thus critical components of the Lukan historiographical argument unfolding in the larger narrative—they represent a major feature of the Lukan historia. Did they really exist? Did the events described really happen? My guess is that Luke, writing at the end of the first century or somewhere between the beginning to first third of the second, knew very little himself about the events and characters surrounding the veiled past of Christian origins. In the end, however, these answers themselves are irrelevant for an evaluation and appreciation of the Lukan historia. The end result may be that the hero-worship we are so prone to perform may in fact not be the consequence of the power of real historical personages after all, but the product of the persuasive force of Lukan narrative—it is the legacy of Luke’s projection of Christian origins. Knowing this possibility frees scholars (and perhaps even Christianity itself) from the constraints of historicity and the tyranny of those interpretations of Christian origins that, based on this model, would, have, and continue to reverse and relive the exclusion and fratricide imbedded in the text. Moreover, it also helps us rethink those “blondhaired, blue-eyed” versions of Christianity that have a penchant for expunging all significant traces of Judaism from the historical fabric of early Christianity, leaving the spirit-inspired message of the heroic Hellenists as the surest historical datum of the New Testament. Luke’s own historia would seem to belie not only this method of historical excavation, but also its ideological and cultural consequences: a Christianity devoid of deep and lasting roots in the Jewish faith.
N OTES 1 This essay is based on material and research in Penner 2004a. 2 The letter is now included in Luedemann’s The Great Deception: And What Jesus Really Said and Did (1999).
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3 F. Bovon’s recent treatment of Stephen (2003), despite its reflection of erudite learning, curiously seeks to use later hagiographical material associated with the rise of the cult of the saints to evaluate the data related to Stephen’s death in Acts, including a search for the precise location (285). Bovon’s approach appears itself to evidence a “cult of the saints” that continues to function in modern scholarship, unbeknownst, perhaps, to many of those actually practising it. 4 Baur’s observations are clearly harsh on this matter: “This inevitable rending asunder of Christianity from Judaism, whereby Judaism would be rendered negative as an absolute religion, and by which its final extinction was threatened, had been realized by Stephen; the high, liberal standpoint which he assumed, fostered in him the energetic zeal with which he laboured in the cause of Jesus” (1873–75: 1.59). In this framework, the “ingratitude and disobedience” of the people was understood to be “their truest and most characteristic nature”—an “innate and natural passion” (1.51)—and thus in Bauer’s view, the real point of Stephen’s speech in Acts 7 was to establish that the Jews were “not capable of receiving the Messianic salvation” (1.62). See the assessments by Tyson (1999: 19–20); and especially Kelley (2002: 66–80). 5 While there is some debate still whether or not the speeches represent Lukan invention or refer (in some way) to the ideas of the “real” individuals in Acts, overall it seems most likely that Luke has created the speeches following the ancient rhetorical practice of prosopopoiia. Porter (1990) favours the traditional position that the speeches reflect historical realities, but see by contrast Soards (1994) and Johnson (2002). 6 Cf. F. Vouga (1994: 42): “die Entwicklungsgeschichte des Frühchristentums ohne eigenständige Gruppen von griechischsprechenden und hellenistisch gebildeten Anhängern [ist] Jesus nicht verständlich….” Similarly, with respect to the similarities between Jesus and Paul, A. J. M. Wedderburn (1988: 167) claims: “the Hellenists may not be the ‘bridge,’ but a ‘bridge’ there must be, even if it has been submerged without trace beneath the onrushing stream of past history.” 7 Martin (1992: 136). Recent scholarship has been challenging this conventional formulation more systematically, which is the trend in which this current study is to be situated. N. H. Taylor (2003), for instance, offers a more moderate position on the “assured” data related to the Hellenists. Christopher R. Matthews (2003) goes even further in his recent essay on the Hellenists, arguing that they represent a Lukan invention in order to link the founding of the Antioch church with Jerusalem. Luke as a “Hellenist” himself thus creates a fictive lineage for his own community. Matthews establishes this position over and against the view of Martin Bodinger (1997), who similarly argues that the Hellenists represent a Lukan invention, but with the purpose of legitimizing the Gentile mission. Cf. Sterling (1999), who reads Stephen’s speech as promoting the same agenda that Bodinger has identified for the narrative. See now the most recent study by Shelly Matthews (2005). 8 Hengel’s appeal to the theological differences between the Hellenists and Hebrews is surprising and somewhat contradictory, given his broader aim to unify Hellenistic and Palestinian Judaisms (cf. Hengel 1979: 73–74, where he
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TODD PENNER states that the Aramaic Christians were more restrained and conservative in their attitude toward the law). Overall, however, the function of his broader argument allows him to construct a scenario in which the shift in the Hellenist position is brought about because of the Spirit, not their commitment to Hellenistic Judaism, which Hengel portrays as consisting of primarily religiously and culturally conservative elements (after all, they are in Jerusalem in obedience to Jewish law/custom; 1983: 18). What in previous scholarship was viewed as the distinctive contribution of Hellenistic Judaism now becomes the distinctive contribution of the “Christian” Hellenists, who in many respects represent “ground zero” in the origins of Christianity. Hengel is a major proponent of Baur’s Tendenz approach to the New Testament (see especially Hengel 1987), which linked particular theological themes with concrete historical persons and groups and saw much of the early Christian literature as arising from both the conflict and the accommodation that resulted in and through the process of this theological interaction and development. For a brief summary of Baur’s approach, see Hodgson (1966: 196–201, 207–11). Cf. Baur’s own apt summary: “the Pauline doctrine was so severely repressed that it could only maintain itself through a concession, which modified the hardness and bluntness of its opposition to the law and Judaism, and by this means put itself into a position as far as possible harmonizing the antagonistic views of the powerful Jewish-Christian party opposed to him” (1873–75: 1.12). N. Hyldahl (1997: 171–76) follows a similar line, taking the position one step further on the basis of the earlier suggestions of Billerbeck: the “Hebrews” are not Jewish Christians but Jews, and the early church thus responds to the failure of the Jews in Jerusalem to support Hellenistic Jewish widows. There is thus, as with Hill, no underlying theological conflict between Hebrews and Hellenists; indeed, the original Hellenists and Hebrews are Jews not Christians. Hyldahl’s position demonstrates the more recent movement away from the earlier assessment of the appointment narrative (Acts 6:1–6) as evidence for a theological rift in a way not that dissimilar to Hill’s approach. This captivity to the models that frame the interpretation of the data and our basic articulation of the essential issues related to reconstructing history from ancient texts has been noted by past scholarship on early Christianity (e.g., Mack 2001) and Judaism (e.g., Lightstone 1997), including the tendency to replicate the ideological constructions of the text under study (on the use of Acts in shaping ancient chronological ideology, see esp. Mount 2002; Cameron 1994). In general, the models we utilize tend towards simplicity, mapping linear development and binary opposition at the expense of complexity, multiplicity, and ambiguity (see further Penner 2003b; 2004b). Seeking the meaning of historia for the writer of Luke-Acts should be distinguished from the frequent but rather simplistic suggestion that Lukan historia is actually the “bedrock” tradition of the narrative. This position may be appealing to the modern reader and historian, but does not necessarily reflect the literary and socio-cultural ethos of the ancient counterpart. Cf. Hemer 1990: 94–99; Riesner 1998: 332–33; both reduce the entire issue of Luke’s credibility as a historian to his “accuracy” in historical details. See also Hengel’s elaboration on his methodology: the “feeling for historical realities” is the
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primary task in the attempt to separate “tendency” from historia (1983: 134 n. 7; cf. Hill 1992: 25–26). This assessment represents a remarkable claim in that one can really only understand Luke-Acts if one is able to separate out “naturally” the reality from the fiction. What this principle lacks in rigorous historiographical method it certainly gains in the form of historical “piety” or “divination.” See especially Walbank (1990: 253–66). The connection of the two is most aptly stated by Aristotle: “since learning and admiring are pleasant, all things connected with them must also be pleasant; for instance, a work of imitation, such as painting, sculpture, poetry, and all that is well imitated, even if the object of imitation is not pleasant; for it is not this that causes pleasure or the reverse, but the inference that the imitation and the object imitated are identical, so that the result is that we learn something” (1.11.23–25). One thinks here of statements such as one finds in Livy: “What chiefly makes the study of history wholesome and profitable is this, that you behold the lessons of every kind of experience set forth as on a conspicuous moment; from these you may choose yourself and for your own state what to imitate, from these mark for avoidance what is shameful in the conception and shameful in the result” (Preface 9); and Diodorus Siculus: history “contributes to the power of speech, and a nobler thing than that may not easily be found. For it is this that makes the Greeks superior to the barbarians, and the educated to the uneducated…urging men to justice, denouncing those who are evil, lauding the good, laying up, in a word, for its readers a mighty store of experience” (1.2.5–8). Diodorus: “the frank language (parrhsi/a) of history should of set purpose be employed for the improvement of society” (31.15.1; cf. 15.1.1). Cf. Dionysius’s emphasis on the necessity of narrating a “complete” action: “as my subject requires not only that a full account of the way the battle was fought should be given, but also that the subsequent tragic events, which resemble the sudden reversals of fortune seen upon the stage, should be related in no perfunctory manner. I shall endeavour…to give an accurate account of every incident” (3.18.1; cf. 1.5.2B4). Elsewhere he outlines the historian’s task thus: “to examine the hidden reasons for actions and the motives of their agents, and the feelings in their hearts…and to reveal all the mysteries of apparent virtue and undetected vice” (Letter to Gnaeus Pompeius 6). Polybius offers some excellent examples of criticism in this vein. In his discussion of Callisthenes (12.17–22) Polybius lists numerous errors and implausibilities with respect to the descriptions of battle alignments. Polybius disparages Callisthenes’ lack of military knowledge and experience, which, Polybius argues, results in poorly conceived and inaccurate narratives (cf. his criticisms of Ephorus in 12.25f.1–7). If history is intended to educate in the art of warfare, then such flaws undermine this utilitarian function (cf. similar comments with respect to the lack of experience of Phylarchus 2.62.2–3). In his discussion of Hannibal’s crossing of the Alps (3.47.6–49.4), Polybius similarly rails against those historians who use deities to account for Hannibal’s successful crossing or who overplay the physical and topological difficulties of the arduous journey. While Polybius does make reference to his own investigation of the area (3.48.12), his real concern lies elsewhere: any appeal to miraculous
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deliverance or exaggeration of the nature of the hardships takes away from the reality or verisimilitudic quality of the event, which, in turn, undermines the utility of the narrative for future readership. These historians whom Polybius despises turn, in his view, a useful narrative of a capable and admirable general—who examined the lay of the land and executed a well-planned march through the mountains with “sound practical sense” (3.48.11)—into a pleasing narrative, appealing to the crass and vulgar sensibilities of the masses. The usefulness of the narrative is bound up with the portrayal of Hannibal. If he were an “imprudent” and “incompetent” leader (3.48.1), then the value of this narrative for demonstrating the critical qualities of leadership and the subtle praise of the vision of a great individual are thwarted. At stake here is not the historicity of the event per se, but the value of the narrative surrounding the event: pleasure for the present versus profit for the future. It is thus no coincidence that Polybius includes a manual on being an effective general as the culminating feature of his treatment of the leader (9.12.1–21.1). 18 For instance, Polybius points out that Timaeus’s attack on a notable historical figure such as the Greek orator Demochares, whom Timaeus characterizes as “impure,” evidences, from Polybius’s perspective, a complete lack of appropriate civic comportment, reflecting less character than “inmates of a brothel” (12.13.1–3). Polybius “knows” that Timaeus is deceiving his readers since “everyone knows” (as a cultural datum) that the Greek orator had good breeding, being a nephew of Demosthenes and having been honoured by the Athenians, whom, incidentally, Timaeus is also viewed as attacking since belittling the object of honour is, by association, to do the same to those bestowing the honour (12.13.4–6). Polybius goes on to castigate Timaeus for being motivated by petty jealousies and for his failure to master his material and style— i.e., being excessive and controlled by his passions (12.14.5; 12.25.5–7; 12.25c.1–5). Timaeus is thus deficient in the quintessential Greek quality: moderation in all things (e.g., his treatment of king Agathocles lacks balance in 12.15.7–9). One is reminded in this context of the humorous “advice” that Lucian offers to the would-be orator, mocking in the process some of the excesses and improbabilities that Polybius here accuses Timaeus of embodying: “Take no pains at all that the first thing, just because it really is first, shall be said at the appropriate time…but say first what ever occurs to you first…If you are speaking of a case of assault or adultery in Athens, mention instances in India or Ecbatana. Cap everything with references to Marathon and Cynegeirus, without which you cannot succeed at all. Unendingly let Athos be crossed in ships and the Hellespont afoot…over everything let those few words of yours run riot and bloom, and let ‘sundry’ and ‘forsooth’ be incessant, even if there is no need for them; for they are ornamental even when uttered at random” (A Professor of Public Speaking 19). 19 Plutarch’s sharp rebuttal reveals his contempt for the latter’s contradictory treatments of Greek history: “Herodotus knows the truth, while everybody else, everyone who has ever heard of the Greeks, has been deceived by the tradition which represents these events as magnificent achievements?…We must not be tricked into accepting unworthy and false notions about the greatest and best cities and men of Greece” (On the Malice of Herodotus 874A–C).
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20 For fuller discussion, see Spencer (1994); cf. Luke 2:37; 4:25, 26; 7:12; 18:3, 5; 20:47; 21:2, 3; Acts 6:1; 9:39, 41. 21 Cf. Dionysius’s comments: “For if there is anything about the Roman commonwealth that is worthy of great praise and deserving imitation by all mankind, or, rather, anything that surpasses in its lustre all the many things which deserve our admiration, it is…that neither the plebeians in contempt of the patricians took up arms against them…nor…the men in positions of dignity…destroyed all the plebeians…but conferring together about what was fair and just, like brothers with brothers or children with their parents in a well-governed family, they settled their controversies by persuasion and reason and never allowed themselves to commit any irreparable or wicked deeds against one another” (Roman Antiquities 7.65.5). 22 On the “seven wise men” see esp. Diodorus (9.1.2; 9.3.3; 9.7:1; 9.28:1; 10.10.1; cf. Acts 6:3); Plutarch’s Dinner of the Seven Wise Men; and the story of the “seven Persians” in Herodotus (3.70–3.84). See further Martin (1998: 108–28). 23 Cf. especially Acts 7:59/Luke 23:46 and Acts 7:60/Luke 23:34 (in favour of this latter text’s originality to the Gospel of Luke, see the discussion by Crump 1999: 79–85). 24 This theme is consonant with the emphasis on early Christian responses to outsiders (here “aliens”; Deut 24:17–21; 27:19; cf. Lev 19:10, 33–34; 23:22; cf. Balch 1999; 2003a). 25 In this configuration, if customs are changed or challenged in the process then the implicit argument is that it is God who instigated it (i.e., the apologetic of divine providence; see further Squires 1993: 60–61; and especially Balch 2003b: 180–83; Rothschild 2004: 185–212). 26 Cf. Diodorus (13.26.3), where he states that the Athenians are honoured and praised for sparing the life of any who sought refuge with them (i.e., foreigners), and this extension of protection to outsiders is a prima facie demonstration of their philanthropia. 27 In Theon’s Progymnasmata, synkrisis is defined as a “speech which shows what is better or what is worse” (10.1). Theon states that such comparisons are made on the basis of what is similar and in dispute, rather than between disparate objects or characters lacking any real basis of similarity. In comparison of characters, then, one “will first set side by side their noble birth, their education, their children, their public offices, their reputation, their bodily health” (10.13–15; trans. Butts 1986). This is followed by setting their respective actions side by side. On synkrisis in Acts, see Smith (1999: 101–102); Lentz (1993: 91–101); Marguerat (1999: 70–74); and esp. Clark (2001). 28 Stephen’s opponents demonstrate several inappropriate modes of behaviour in the narrative, failing to respect law and tradition in that they produce false testimony and kill a righteous man (i.e., they lack civilis). Moreover, the characters clearly fail to achieve moderation in their response to Stephen. With respect to the latter, Cicero comments that punishment should not issue forth out of anger, malice, or be controlled by the passions, otherwise it will result in injustice (On Duties 1.89). Further, orderly decorum ought to be maintained in all aspects of life (1.142). Excess and disorder thus go hand in hand
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TODD PENNER in the Stephen narrative. Just as Stephen fulfills the sequence of cardinal virtues, the opponents similarly achieve the cardinal vices, “namely, what is unjust, cowardly, disorderly and unwise” (Diogenes Laertius 7.100). Aside from these features, the contrast of respective behaviour in Acts 8:1, 3 and 8:2 is also apparent: while the community demonstrates appropriate acts of pietas towards its dead martyr (8:2), the opponents (here including Paul) seek to exterminate the members (8:1, 3). This emphasis represents a development of the theme of excess. As Diodorus notes, wreaking vengeance on the vanquished represents an offence against human frailty (13.24.4–5), and lacks the virtues of compassion, leniency, and mercy (cf. Corbeill 1997: 101–104, who notes the connection of the theme of excess to effeminizing characterization, which may well be foregrounding the Lukan portrayal of Stephen’s opponents. At the very least, they are depicted as acting like barbarians [cf. Briant 2002]).
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Berger, Klaus 1986 Exegese und Philosophie. Stuttgarter Bibelstudien 123/124. Stuttgart: Katholisches Bibelwerk. 1995 Theologiegeschichte des Urchristentums. 2nd edition. Tübingen: Francke. Bodinger, Martin 1997 “Les ‘Hébreux’ et les ‘Héllenistes’ dans le livre des Actes des Apôtres.” Henoch 19: 39–58. Bovon, François 2003 “The Dossier on Stephen, the First Martyr.” Harvard Theological Review 96: 279–315. Briant, Pierre 2002 “History and Ideology: The Greeks and ‘Persian Decadence.’” In T. Harrison (ed.), Greeks and Barbarians, 193–210. New York: Routledge. Butts, J. R. 1986 “The Progymnasmata of Theon: A New Text with Translation and Commentary.” PhD dissertation, Claremont Graduate School (California). Cameron, Ron 1994 “Alternate Beginnings—Different Ends: Eusebius, Thomas, and the Construction of Christian Origins.” In Lukas Bormann, Kelly Del Tredici, and Angela Standhartinger (eds.), Religious Propaganda and Missionary Competition in the New Testament World: Essays Honoring Dieter Georgi, 501–25. Novum Testamentum Supplement, 74. Leiden: Brill. Clark, A. C. 2001 Parallel Lives: The Relation of Paul to the Apostles in the Lucan Perspective. Carlisle: Paternoster. Conzelmann, Hans 1987 [1963] Acts of the Apostles. Trans. James Limburg et al.; ed. Eldon J. Epp and Christopher R. Matthews. Hermeneia. Philadelphia: Fortress. Corbeill, Anthony 1997 “Dining Deviants in Roman Political Invective.” In Judith P. Hallett and Marilyn B. Skinner (eds.), Roman Sexualities, 99–128. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Crump, David 1999 [1992] Jesus the Intercessor: Prayer and Christology in Luke-Acts. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker. Cullmann, Oscar 1975 “Von Jesus zum Stephanuskreis und zum Johannesevangelium.” In E. Earle Ellis and Erich Grässer (eds.), Jesus und Paulus: Festschrift für Werner Georg Kümmel zum 70. Geburtstag, 44–56. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. Esler, Philip F. 1987 Community and Gospel in Luke-Acts: The Social and Political Motivations of Lucan Theology. Society for New Testament Studies Monograph Series, 57. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Grundmann, Walter 1939 “Das Problem des hellenistischen Christentums innerhalb der Jerusalemer Urgemeinde.” Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft 38: 45–73.
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Haenchen, Ernst 1971 [1965] The Acts of the Apostles: A Commentary. Trans. Robert Mcl. Wilson. Philadelphia: Westminster. Harnack, Adolf von 1909 New Testament Studies, vol. 3: The Acts of the Apostles. Trans. John R. Wilkinson. New York: Williams & Norgate. Hemer, Colin J. 1990 The Book of Acts in the Setting of Hellenistic History. Ed. Conrad H. Gempf. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns. Hengel, Martin 1974 [1969] Judaism and Hellenism: Studies in Their Encounter in Palestine during the Hellenistic Period. 2 Vols. Trans. John Bowden. Philadelphia: Fortress. 1979 Acts and the History of Earliest Christianity. Trans. John Bowden. London: SCM. 1983 “Between Jesus and Paul: The ‘Hellenists’, the ‘Seven’ and Stephen (Acts 6:1–15, 7:54–8:3).” In Between Jesus and Paul: Studies in the Earliest History of Christianity, 1–29. Trans. John Bowden. Philadelphia: Fortress. 1987 “Der Jakobusbrief als antipaulinische Polemik.” In Gerald F. Hawthorne and Otto Betz (eds.), Tradition and Interpretation in the New Testament: Essays in Honor of E. Earle Ellis for His 60th Birthday, 248–78. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans. Hill, Craig C. 1992 Hellenists and Hebrews: Reappraising Division within the Early Church. Minneapolis: Fortress. 1996 “Acts 6.1–8.4: Division or Diversity?” In Ben Witherington III (ed.), History, Literature and Society in the Book of Acts, 129–53. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hodgson, Peter C. 1966 The Formation of Historical Theology: A Study of Ferdinand Christian Baur. New York: Harper & Row. Hyldahl, Niels 1997 The History of Early Christianity. Arbeiten zur Religion und Geschichte des Urchristentums, 3. Trans. E. M. Arevad and H. Dyrbye. Frankfurt a.M.: Peter Lang. Johnson, Luke T. 1977 The Literary Function of Possessions in Luke–Acts. SBL Dissertation Series, 39. Missoula, MT: Scholars Press. 2002 Septuagintal Midrash in the Speeches of Acts. Milwaukee: Marquette University Press. Kelley, Shawn 2002 Racializing Jesus: Race, Ideology and the Formation of Biblical Scholarship. New York: Routledge. Kraus, Wolfgang 1999 Zwischen Jerusalem und Antiochia: Die ‘Hellenisten’, Paulus und die Aufnahme der Heiden in das endzeitliche Gottesvolk. Stuttgarter Bibelstudien, 179. Stuttgart: Katholisches Bibelwerk.
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Lentz, John Clayton 1993 Luke’s Portrait of Paul. Society for New Testament Studies Monograph Series, 77. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lightstone, Jack N. 1997 “Whence the Rabbis? From Coherent Description to Fragmented Reconstruction.” Studies in Religion/Sciences Religieuses 26: 275–95. Luedemann, Gerd 1999 The Great Deception: And What Jesus Really Said and Did. Amherst: Prometheus. Mack, Burton L. 2001 [1996] “On Redescribing Christian Origins.” In The Christian Myth: Origins, Logic, and Legacy, 59–80. New York: Continuum. Marguerat, Daniel 1999 “Luc-Actes: Une unité à construire.” In Joseph Verheyden (ed.), The Unity of Luke-Acts, 57–81. Bibliotheca Ephemeridum Theologicarum Lovaniensium, 142. Leuven: Leuven University Press. Martin, Richard P. 1998 “The Seven Sages as Performers of Wisdom.” In Carol Dougherty and Leslie Kurke (eds.), Cultural Poetics in Archaic Greece: Cult, Performance, Politics, 108–28. New York: Oxford University Press. Martin, Thomas W. 1992 “Hellenists.” In David Noel Freedman et al. (eds.), Anchor Bible Dictionary, vol. 3: 135–36. New York: Doubleday. Matthews, Christopher R. 2003 “Luke the Hellenist.” In David H. Warren, Ann Graham Brock, and David W. Pao (eds.), Early Christian Voices: In Texts, Traditions and Symbols; Essays in Honor of François Bovon, 99–107. Biblical Interpretation Series, 66. Leiden: Brill. Matthews, Shelly 2005 “The Need for the Stoning of Stephen.” In Shelly Matthews and E. Leigh Gibson (eds.), Violence in the New Testament: Jesus Followers and Other Jews under Empire. New York: T. & T. Clark. May, James M. and Jakob Wisse 2001 Cicero: On the Ideal Orator. New York: Oxford University Press. Mount, Christopher 2002 Pauline Christianity: Luke–Acts and the Legacy of Paul. Novum Testamentum Supplement, 104. Leiden: Brill. Penner, Todd 2003a “Civilizing Discourse: Acts, Declamation, and the Rhetoric of the Polis.” In Todd Penner and Caroline Vander Stichele (eds.), Contextualizing Acts: Lukan Narrative and Greco–Roman Discourse, 65–104. SBL Symposium Series, 20. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature. Leiden: Brill. 2003b “Contextualizing Acts.” In Todd Penner and Caroline Vander Stichele (eds.), Contextualizing Acts: Lukan Narrative and Greco–Roman Discourse, 1–21. SBL Symposium Series, 20. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature. Leiden: Brill.
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2003c “Reconfiguring the Rhetorical Study of Acts: Reflections on the Method in and Learning of a Progymnastic Poetics.” Perspectives in Religious Studies 30: 425–39. 2004a In Praise of Christian Origins: Stephen and the Hellenists in Lukan Apologetic Historiography. Emory Studies in Early Christianity, 10. New York: T. & T. Clark. 2004b “Madness in the Method?: The Acts of the Apostles in Current Study.” Currents in Biblical Research 2: 223–93. Penner, Todd and Caroline Vander Stichele 2004 “Gendering Violence: Patterns of Power and Constructs of Masculinity in the Acts of the Apostles.” In A.-J. Levine and M. Blickenstaff (eds.), Feminist Companion to Acts. Feminist Companion to the New Testament and Early Christian Writings. New York: Continuum/Pilgrim. Plümacher, Eckhard 1999 “The Mission Speeches in Acts and Dionysius of Halicarnassus.” In David P. Moessner (ed.), Jesus and the Heritage of Israel: Luke’s Narrative Claim upon Israel’s Legacy, 251–66. Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International. Pomeroy, Arthur John, ed. and trans. 1999 Arius Didymus: Epitome of Stoic Ethics. SBL Texts and Translations, 44. Atlanta: Scholars Press. Porter, Stanley E. 1990 “Thucydides 1.22.1 and Speeches in Acts: Is There a Thucydidean View?” Novum Testamentum 32: 121–42. Rau, Eckhard 1994 Von Jesus zu Paulus: Entwicklung und Rezeption der antiochenischen Theologie im Urchristentum. Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer. Richard, Earl 1978 Acts 6:1–8:4: The Author’s Method of Composition. SBL Dissertation Series, 41. Missoula, MT: Scholars Press. Riesner, Rainer 1998 [1994] Paul’s Early Period: Chronology, Mission Strategy, Theology. Trans. Doug Stott. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. Robbins, Vernon K. 1991 “Luke-Acts: A Mixed Population Seeks a Home in the Roman Empire.” In Loveday Alexander (ed.), Images of Empire, 202–21. Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement Series, 122. Sheffield: JSOT Press. Rothschild, Clare 2004 Luke-Acts and the Rhetoric of History: An Investigation of Early Christian Historiography. Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament, 2.175. Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck). Schmidt, Daryl D. 1999 “Rhetorical Influences and Genre: Luke’s Preface and the Rhetoric of Hellenistic Historiography.” In David P. Moessner (ed.), Jesus and the Heritage of Israel: Luke’s Narrative Claim upon Israel’s Legacy, 27–60.
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Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International. Smith, Abraham 1999 “‘Full of Spirit and Wisdom’: Luke’s Portrait of Stephen (Acts 6:1–8:1a) as a Man of Self-Mastery.” In Leif E. Vaage and Vincent L. Wimbush (eds.), Asceticism and the New Testament, 97–114. New York: Routledge, 1999. Soards, Marion 1994 The Speeches in Acts: Their Content, Context, and Concerns. Louisville: Westminster/John Knox. Spencer, F. Scott 1994 “Neglected Widows in Acts 6:1–7.” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 56: 715–33. Squires, John T. 1993 The Plan of God in Luke-Acts. Society for New Testament Monograph Series, 76. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sterling, Gregory E. 1999 “‘Opening the Scriptures:’ The Legitimation of the Jewish Diaspora and the Early Christian Mission.” In David P. Moessner (ed.), Jesus and the Heritage of Israel: Luke’s Narrative Claim upon Israel’s Legacy, 199–225. Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International. Taylor, N. H. 2003 “Stephen, the Temple, and Early Christian Eschatology.” Revue Biblique 110: 62–85. Tyson, Joseph B. 1999 Luke, Judaism, and the Scholars: Critical Approaches to Luke-Acts. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1999. Vouga, François 1994 Geschichte des frühen Christentums. Tübingen: Francke. Walbank, Frank W. 1990 “Profit or Amusement: Some Thoughts on the Motives of Hellenistic Historians.” In H. Verdin, G. Schepens, and E. De Keyser (eds.), Purposes of History: Studies in Greek Historiography from the 4th to the 2nd Centuries B.C.: Proceedings of the International Colloquium, Leuven, 24–26 May, 1988, 253–66. Studia Hellenistica, 30. Leuven: Orientaliste. Walter, Nikolaus 1989 “Paul and the Early Christian Jesus-Tradition.” In A. J. M. Wedderburn (ed.), Paul and Jesus: Collected Essays, 51–80. Journal for the Study of the New Testament Supplement Series, 37. Sheffield: JSOT Press. Wedderburn, A. J. M. 1988 “Paul and Jesus: Similarity and Continuity.” New Testament Studies 34: 161–82; repr. in A. J. M. Wedderburn (ed.), Paul and Jesus: Collected Essays. Journal for the Study of the New Testament Supplement Series, 37. Sheffield: JSOT Press.
MARGARET Y. MACDONALD
5 Can Nympha Rule This House? The Rhetoric of Domesticity in Colossians
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he role of the Colossian household code (Col 3:18–4:1) within the broader concerns of the letter is by no means immediately apparent. The text appears to be a self-contained unit with little immediate relationship to what comes immediately before and after it in Colossians. At first glance it seems that the text was inserted into the letter rather abruptly. This impression is compounded by the similarity between the code and Graeco-Roman ethical teaching. David L. Balch has illustrated that New Testament household codes draw their origin from the traditional topos “concerning household management,” the classical expression of which is found in Aristotle’s Politics (I.1253b 1–14), but which is also clearly attested in Roman (e.g., Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Ant. Rom. I.9–II.29) and Jewish sources (e.g., Josephus, Ap. II.199–216) of the first century CE (Balch 1981: 34–59, especially 34–35).1 The impression of reliance on earlier traditional teaching persists despite efforts to “Christianize” the material by means of the use of such motivational clauses as “in the Lord” (3:20).2 What we have before us seems to be traditional teaching embraced by early church authors that took on a characteristic structure in the church (for no ancient parallels to date reveal precisely the same structure as the New Testament household codes3), but that was also deeply rooted in the moral and philosophical teachings of the Roman Empire. In his commentary on Colossians, James Dunn confronts the probability of the strong influence of traditional material upon the Colossian household code and asks whether “this was simply a dollop of standard teaching inserted here (like an old
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sermon being ‘rerun’) or whether it had any particular relation to the situation in Colossae” (1996: 242–43). The Colossian household code may have been simply, as Dunn puts it, “a dollop of standard teaching,” but from a feminist perspective its presence in Colossians has been judged to be of paramount importance. The household code, with its explicitly patriarchal ethos, is introduced into early Christian literature via Colossians. Ephesians (5:22–6:9), which is probably dependent on Colossians, contains a very similar code—with the characteristic form of address, instruction and motivation—as does 1 Peter (2:18–3:7). Although the structures of the codes are somewhat more fluid, similar household teaching also occurs in 1 Timothy (2:8–15; 6:1–2), Titus (2:1–10) and in various works understood as forming part of the collection known as the Apostolic Fathers (Did. 4:9–11; Barn. 19:5–7; 1 Clem. 21:6–9; Ign. Pol. 4:1–5:2; Pol. Phil. 4:2–3). With Colossians 3:18–4:1 we have the beginning of what must be considered a trend in early Christian literature of the latter half of the first century and the early decades of the second century CE: the tendency to instruct subordinate members of the household to be subject to the paterfamilias (the husband, father, and master of slaves) and to instruct the paterfamilias to be benevolent in ruling his household as fitting for life in the Lord. While the existence of early Christian texts such as the Acts of Paul and Thecla—which may represent a competing voice in Pauline Christianity—should prevent us from seeing household codes as normative in this period of early Christianity, it is clear that, beginning with Colossians, hierarchical household rules were proclaimed in several early Christian circles. Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza has said the following about the impact of the Colossian household code: “In taking over the Graeco-Roman ethic of the patriarchal household code, Colossians not only ‘spiritualizes’ and moralizes the baptismal community’s understanding expressed in Gal 3:28, but also makes this Graeco-Roman household ethic a part of the ‘Christian’ social ethic” (1983: 253). Fiorenza is struck especially by the presence of the household code, which, in a document that otherwise propounds a “theology of exaltation,” seems so deliberately concerned with earth-bound household existence, encouraging believers to think of themselves as exalted already, sharing in the resurrection of Christ (e.g., Col 3:1–3). She notes that “Colossians shows how a socalled ‘enthusiastic’ realized eschatological perspective can produce an insistence on patriarchal behaviour as well as an acceptance of the established political-social status quo of inequality and exploitation in the
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name of Jesus Christ” (1983: 254). Similarly, Mary Rose D’Angelo has described Colossians as a “step toward a Christianity that became increasingly restrictive and even abusive for women, children and slaves; the authority of the Household Codes long endorsed both slavery and battering, and Colossians’ theology helped christianize social patterns of domination and subordination” (1993: 323). In describing the great impact of the introduction of household codes into early Christian literature, feminist interpreters have highlighted the importance of further investigation of the place of these codes within early Christian texts and of their functions within early church communities. From a historical perspective, it seems especially important to grapple with the reasons for the author of Colossians’ explicit appropriation of conventional Graeco-Roman ethics. The explicit use of conventional ethics is in fact somewhat surprising, given that the author of Colossians speaks of the defeat of cosmic powers with symbolism that prepares the way for a questioning of the structures of society (e.g., 2:15; see D’Angelo 1993: 320, 322; and my discussion below). Why were household ethics being articulated in a new way in Colossians? To return to Dunn’s earlier question, is it possible to discover any particular relation between Colossians 3:18–4:1 and the situation in Colossae? Can the text of Colossians itself help us to answer these questions, or are we left with a piece of traditional teaching that fits awkwardly at best within the epistle, but which nevertheless was echoed by subsequent early Christian authors and played no small part in creating a legacy of oppression? In seeking to understand the place of the household code within Colossians, two observations have sparked my curiosity. First, the apparent incongruity between such a deliberately conventional ethical stance and symbolism proclaiming heavenly exaltation and triumph over the powers that enslave suggests a cautious approach in exploring the relationship between rhetoric and the social arrangements of community life. I will discuss this further below. Second, the reference to the woman, Nympha (4:15), is surprising in an epistle that includes such deliberate efforts to ensure the subordinate behaviour of women. This apparent incongruity also requires careful reflection.
N YMPHA
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The Paul of Colossians sends greetings to the brothers in Laodicea and to Nympha and the church in her house in 4:15. Dunn sees no contradiction here between the obvious support of a woman’s ministry and
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the instruction for wives to be subject to their husbands in Colossians 3:18: It is important to note that it is not women generally who are in view (as also in 1 Cor 14:34). Women who were single, widowed, or divorced and of independent means could evidently function as heads of their own households, as in the case of Lydia (Acts 16:14–15), Phoebe, the first named “deacon” in Christian history and patron of the church at Cenchrae (Rom 16:1–2), Chloe (1 Cor 1:11), and presumably Nympha in Colossae itself. (Dunn 1996: 246)
According to Dunn’s interpretation, the instructions concerning Nympha reflect the autonomous lives of single women, which should be distinguished from the situation of married believing women who were subject to the rules of the household codes. But even if Nympha’s role can be attributed in part to being unattached, perhaps as a widow, it remains striking that the work which introduces an explicit patriarchal ethic into church life contains the only unambiguous reference in the Pauline letters to the leadership of a house church by a woman. The home of Lydia is described as the site for church meetings in Acts (16:14–15, 40; cf. 12:12), but there is no mention of Lydia in Paul’s letters. Phoebe is described as a deacon (dia/konoj) of the church in Cenchrae in Romans 16:1–2, and her relationship with Paul and others is presented in terms of patronage, suggesting that she may well have been the leader of a house church. But this is not stated explicitly. The reference to “Chloe’s people” in 1 Corinthians 1:11 does not necessarily mean that Chloe was herself a believer and, by implication, the leader of a house church; Chloe’s people may have members of the household of a non–believing woman of means who was well known in the community. Apart from the questions raised by the textual variants of Colossians 4:15, however, the reference to a woman leader of a house church is indisputable. In fact, the scandal this created for later readers and copyists is most likely responsible for the attempts to masculinize the text in the manuscript tradition.4 Although it is clear that Colossians 4:15 aims to present a woman as head of a house church, the disputed nature of Colossians inevitably raises the question of whether Nympha was a real historical person. The personal notes and greetings of Colossians 4:7–18 have figured prominently in the debates concerning the authorship of Colossians, with particular attention being given to the overlap between this text and Philemon 23–24. The close relationship between these texts has played a key role in arguments in favour of deutero-Pauline authorship. Lohse, for example, argues the following: “In using Phlm’s list of greetings and
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making it more vivid, he ensures that his letter will gain a hearing as a message from Paul” (1971: 177). Nympha herself is not mentioned in Philemon, but Lohse’s theory invites the question of whether the mention of Nympha, presented as a woman leader of a house church, could have been inspired by a desire to bolster the authority of the epistle as a true message from Paul, whose mission included such important women as Phoebe and Prisca among his fellow workers. Here it is interesting to consider the association between Paul and the “leading women” of Acts (see 16:11–15; 17:4, 12; cf. 17: 33–34). Recently scholars have raised questions about the historical reliability of the depiction of the conversion of a household led by Lydia, the dealer in purple dyed garments (Acts 16:11–15). Judith Lieu, for example, has drawn attention to points in common between Acts and second–century Greek and Jewish novels that appear to exaggerate the social influence of women. Moreover, the attraction of powerful women to early Christianity is a theme developed by the author of Acts in an effort to communicate the respectability and independence of early Christianity.5 The latter point is more directly relevant to the interpretation of Colossians. If it is correct to understand the patronage of a house church by a well-to-do woman— in Nympha’s case apparently independent and wealthy enough to act as hostess to a church community—as largely in keeping with conventional expectations about the operation of a successful enterprise, then this would fit very well with an apologetic function for the household code in Colossians 3:18–4:1.6 Like the household teaching of Colossians 3:18–4:1, the greeting to Nympha conveys Paul’s blessings upon a type of household arrangement that would have been well known and widely accepted.7 In evaluating the significance of the greeting to Nympha in Colossians, however, it is also important to consider the weight attached to the closing greetings of the epistle by those arguing in favour of its authenticity. The fact that the closing remarks of Colossians are so personal and speak to concrete community concerns (e.g., 4:17) has been understood to be one of the strongest arguments in favour of Paul’s authorship. The reference to Onesimus in 4:9 and the overlap between Colossians 4:7–18 and Philemon 23–24 have led to the widely-held conviction that Onesimus and his master Philemon (strangely, his name is absent from Colossians!) were from Colossae and that both documents were composed at roughly the same time. Yet, as I have argued elsewhere (MacDonald 2000: 6–10, 184–88), it is possible to maintain that the closing greetings of Colossians reflect a real historical situation and to hold also that the
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epistle is deutero-Pauline; in this case, the epistle would have been composed in Paul’s name during his imprisonment or very shortly after his death, and Nympha would have been a prominent woman in the Pauline circle at this time.8 It is not entirely clear whether the house church associated with Nympha was part of the broader community in Laodicea that included other house churches or whether Nympha was hostess to the whole community in Laodicea.9 That the house church was in either Hierapolis (cf. 4:13) or even Colossae itself is not beyond the realm of possibility. What is clear, however, is that Nympha is presented as playing a key role in the churches of the Lycus valley. On balance, that Nympha was a real historical person seems most likely. But reference to her has been judged to be of little significance in comparison to the patriarchal tenor of the household codes.10 As is also the case with Ephesians and the Pastoral Epistles, Colossians lacks the more detailed references to the ministerial activities of women found in the undisputed letters of Paul (e.g., Rom 16:1–2; Phil 4:2–3). But particularly with respect to Colossians, a short epistle probably written at the end of Paul’s career, one must remain cautious about reading too much into this absence. Moreover, it is important not to read back into Colossians the agenda of the Pastorals, which may have been composed as much as a half-century later, and where household ethics work in conjunction with an attempt to impose limits on the ministerial efforts of women (e.g.,1 Tim 2:8–15; 1 Tim 5:1–6:2; see Wagner 1994). Though the Colossian household code may prepare the way for such restrictions, the social world of Colossians is much closer to the social world of Paul’s letters than to that of the post-Pauline Pastoral Epistles. The reference to Nympha is in line with the references to the collaborators mentioned in Paul’s letters who offered their houses for meetings and as a base for the Christian mission. The reference to Nympha should not be downplayed, for patronage of a house church was arguably the most important leadership role for men or women in the Pauline churches. The reference should be compared, for example, to the reference to Gaius (Rom 16:23) who is described as the “host to Paul and to the whole church.” To be able to control and offer such an important resource must have created many leadership opportunities. As discussed above, in assessing the impact of the reference to Nympha, it is also important to recognize that the roles undertaken by women in the Pauline mission in many respects represented a continuation of the roles they had as Jewish or pagan women before they entered the Pauline churches. The reinforcement of Nympha’s leadership of a
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house church was in keeping with common practices and leadership opportunities for prominent women in society at large. Yet, scholars have also observed that the greater visibility of women in public in the Roman Empire was accompanied by expressions of conservative social ideology calling for women to be more closely associated with the home (see Corley 1993: 25; Torjesen 1993: 113). Groups that were socially suspect were subject to scrutiny with respect to female propriety even if the women were behaving in a manner that was usually acceptable in the society of their day.11 The household code of Colossians 3:18–4:1 may well have been articulated in response to increasing public scrutiny (see the discussion of Col 4:5–6 below). Read against a background of rising tension between church and society, the reference to Nympha takes on a certain boldness—even if her leadership of the house church was in keeping with the activities of prominent women in the Empire. The greetings to Nympha were by no means incompatible with the hierarchical domestic code; they might even have functioned on some level to reinforce it by contributing to the prestige of the church group as supported by prominent female heads of households. But Nympha’s leadership role in Pauline Christianity also meant that she was particularly vulnerable to attack for forsaking womanly virtues and, ironically, abandoning the household life that was so central to the rise of early Christianity. Nympha’s influence was presumably important enough, and her power was exercised in a domestic setting through structures that were conventional enough, that it was worth the risks of endorsing a publicly visible hostess (possibly unmarried) of a group falling increasingly under suspicion. The reference to Nympha in Colossians reminds us that the adoption of traditional ethics in church groups did not negate all avenues for women’s influence. Though it is contrary to what one might first expect, individual women continued to be named even in second-century texts that also contain household codes. The works of Ignatius of Antioch, for example, contain both household code teaching (Ign. Pol. 4:1–5:2) and references to prominent women, such as Tavia, the wife of Epitropus, and Alce (Ign. Smyrn. 13.2; Ign. Pol. 8:2–3). Even conventional appeals for Christian wives to be subject to their husbands, which are at the heart of household codes, reveal indirect acknowledgments of the influence of these women in the growth and development of the movement. The household code teaching of 1 Peter 3:1–6 envisions a situation where the wife of a non-believing husband might eventually “win” her husband; one wonders whether her continued presence in the house
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of the unbeliever may have fostered opportunities for “conversions” of other members of the household as well. She is presented as a perfect, modest, and discreet mediator between the church and the non–believing world. She is obedient to her husband, but in her allegiance to an illegitimate group she most definitely challenges societal expectations concerning the prerogatives of the paterfamilias in determining the religion of the household.12 Ephesians does not address the scenario of mixed marriage within its household code (Eph 5:21–33), but nevertheless pays detailed attention to the symbolic significance of marriage for community life (see Barclay 1997: 76–77). The Ephesian household code is immediately preceded by a full articulation of the distinction between the Christian community and “the sons of disobedience” (5:6–7) in non-compromising terms (4:17–5:20). The obedient wife becomes the symbol par excellence of group identity, the purest expression of the “children of light” (5:8). In these texts, women’s lives are subject to restrictions and control but, ironically, adhesion to conventional norms can sometimes lead to new patterns of defiance in a household-based movement. In seeking to understand the prescriptive power of the household codes within their specific contexts, it is important to be aware of the possibility of overly simplistic explanations that posit direct correlations between ethical exhortations and social life. With respect to Colossians in particular, reflection on the significance of the author’s endorsement of Nympha and the church that meets in her house (both in relation to the household code and to the patterns of leadership for women revealed in other Pauline works) raises questions about the intention and impact of the rhetoric of domesticity articulated in the epistle. There can be no doubt that the Colossian household code prepares the way for more restrictions on the lives of women, and its presence in Scripture has allowed for the possibility of biblical sanctions for oppression. But when dealing with the specific situation underlying Colossians, one should be cautious about assuming that the code would have, or was primarily intended to have, significantly increased restrictions on the lives of women (or slaves, as discussed below) in comparison to earlier church times. This is not to suggest that we are immediately to conclude that Colossians 3:18–4:1 had no direct application to the situation in Colossae. Rather, in seeking to understand the purpose of the Colossian code within the wider context of the letter and community, it is important to remain open to discovering functions for the code that lie beyond the obvious attempt to lay out regulations for particular groups in the church.
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Moreover, it is important to keep in mind that such teaching may have broad consequences rather than, or in addition to, specific applications in relation to community concerns. For example, the code may be less about applying new restrictions to a particular group such as wives or slaves and more about general community orientation and identity, and the face one presents to the world outside.
S LAVES , S YMBOLS OF S LAVERY, AND THE P URPOSE OF THE H OUSEHOLD C ODE The purpose of the household code in Colossians has proven to be only a slightly less thorny issue than the identity of the Colossian “errorists.”13 Attaching special significance to the longer exhortation to slaves in the household code, it has been suggested that the code represents a reaction against enthusiasts who appealed to baptismal slogans, such as Galatians 3:28, that stimulated social unrest among slaves.14 But the text of Colossians will not allow us to accept this thesis easily because of its propensity for presenting, even celebrating, incongruities. For example, the author of Colossians not only presents the household code, but also quotes a version of a traditional baptismal saying (3:11) that includes a proclamation of the unity of slave and free and relativizes their status in the Lord. Moreover, the presence of the household code in Colossians cannot be taken as an indication that slaves were prohibited from exerting influence and exercising leadership roles in the church community. The list of fellow workers includes people from a variety of social strata, including Onesimus, evidently the runaway slave about whom Paul writes to Philemon (cf. Phlm 10). In Colossians he is presented as carrying out an important service for the church (in conjunction with Tychicus, named metaphorically as the “fellow-slave”) and is described as one of the Colossians (4:9).15 While the author of Colossians does seem to be especially concerned with exhorting slaves, this by no means necessarily indicates that a general problem existed with slaves seeking their freedom. New studies of the situation of slaves in the ancient world, including that by J. Albert Harrill (1995), have alerted New Testament scholars to the fact that the question of the circumstances and desire for manumission of slaves is more complex than one might first imagine. The difficulties in determining the purpose of the Colossian household code are related to the attempt to move directly from the text of Colossians 3:18–4:1 to particular historical issues of community life, such as social unrest among slaves. Correlations must remain cautious and
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informed by the broader context of Colossians. At the outset, it is essential to examine points of contact between the ethical exhortations of the code and teaching found elsewhere in the epistle. It is valuable, for example, to explore the relationship between Colossians 3:18–4:1 and the response to false teaching in 2:8–23 (leaving to one side for the purpose of this chapter the thorny issue of the identity of the opponents, on which see n. 13 above). The condemnation of false teaching in Colossians 2:8–23 focusses on rituals and ascetic measures that served as physical markers of identity in the ancient world. These seem to have included fasting (2:16, 18, 21) and probably other ascetic measures (2:18, 21, 23), the observance of festivals (2:16), and rituals designed to induce visions (2:18).16 The false teaching included various practices that would make believers visible in society at large. To counter the false teaching, the author reminded believers that they had been raised with Christ and ultimately belonged with him in the heavenly realm (3:1–4; cf. 2:12–15). Fleshly or earthly measures recommended by the opponents were simply denounced as irrelevant. In light of such argumentation, it is interesting to consider the impact of the instruction in Colossians 3:22 for slaves to obey in everything their masters according to the “flesh.” This is the last of eight references to flesh (sa/rc) in the epistle. Four of these are found in the condemnation of the false teaching found in Colossians 2:8–23 (2:11, 13, 18, 23; cf. 1:22, 24; 2:1). Together the first two instances use “flesh” as a means of describing sinful earthly existence overcome by baptism, that which is essentially a spiritual transformation leaving no physical mark—“the circumcision made without hands” (2:11, 13). But in the third, found in 2:18, after making reference to the specific practices of the Colossian errorists, the author of Colossians condemns them as “vainly puffed up by [their] fleshly minds.” The expression “fleshly mind” refers to purely physical existence; this existence is dominated by the senses and is ultimately worldly. Throughout the response to the opponents, the author of Colossians highlights practices and rituals used to induce “otherworldly” experiences and to confirm heavenly status, and labels them as definitely “this-worldly” (cf. 2:8, 2:23). In the text of Colossians 2:23, which is notoriously difficult to translate, the practices of the false teachers are described as being “of no value against the indulgence of the flesh.”17 Given that the author of Colossians has already described baptism (spiritual circumcision) as leading to the removal of the body of flesh (2:11), it is likely that both the author of Colossians and the pro-
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ponents of the false teaching strive to contain the indulgence of the flesh. But the author of Colossians disagrees with the opponents with respect to how such indulgence should be prevented. According to the author, it is through acceptance of the gospel and baptism that the dangers of the flesh will be held at bay. The measures recommended by the opponents are of no value whatsoever in checking the indulgence of the flesh. How then should we understand the command for slaves to obey their masters according the flesh in Colossians 3:22? The expression “masters according to the flesh” might be translated less literally as “earthly masters,” and obviously one is not meant to conclude that these believing masters are still in the sinful existence of their pre–Christian lives; sa/rc does not have the same purely negative connotations that we see in the condemnation of the false teaching. But, in my view, the command nevertheless must be read against what is a sustained interest in condemning and/or transforming what is purely fleshly and worldly in Colossians. Slaves are told in the following verse that it is really not their earthly masters they serve; their service is “for the Lord and not for human beings” (3:23). It is interesting to note that actions for the sake of what is purely human are presented as central features of the false teaching, described as “philosophy” and “empty deceit according to human tradition” (2:8), and whose content is identified with “human injunctions and teachings” (2:22). The contrast between the heavenly and earthly realms is central to the conflict at Colossae. This distinction similarly shapes the household teaching of Colossians 3:18–4:1 and is at the heart of the rhetorical strategy being adopted by the author in relation to the institution of slavery: both slaves and masters are reminded of the distinction between the master (lord) according to the flesh and the master (Lord) in heaven. Slaves and masters ultimately serve the same Lord and may experience the reward of the inheritance or the punishments of final judgment. Being a master gives one earthly authority, but for the author of Colossians at least—and I acknowledge that this is a very dangerous argument—it is no exaggeration to say that this earthly authority has no ultimate or lasting significance. In addition to points of contact between the household code and the response to false teaching, it is also valuable to explore correlations between the code and religious symbolism in Colossians more generally. In keeping with earlier Pauline works, Colossians reveals a metaphorical usage of the term “slave.” In 1:7 Epaphras is described as “our beloved fellow slave” and in 4:12 he is depicted as “a slave of Jesus Christ.” Similarly, Tychicus is described in 4:7 as “fellow slave in the
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Lord.” Scholars are increasingly convinced that the metaphorical use of slavery in Pauline Christianity (for example, Rom 1:1; Rom 6:18, 22; 7:22) needs to be understood in relation to the complex ways in which the institution of slavery functioned in the Graeco-Roman world. In keeping with the fact that being a slave of a prominent person could serve as a vehicle for upward mobility, to be a slave of Christ meant participation in the supremacy of Christ. Paul uses the expression “slave of Jesus Christ” to describe his own ministry and in conjunction with efforts to assert his apostolic authority (Rom 1:1; cf. Gal 1:10; Phil 1:1). But in his letters Paul also uses slavery language to describe his own selfabasement and in a manner that recalls the language employed by ancient leaders to reinforce solidarity with the masses by means of their “enslavement” to their followers (cf. 1 Cor 9: 19–23).18 We may detect some of these connotations of self-abasement in the exhortations concerning Epaphras, who is described as going to extraordinary lengths to foster the growth of the community and who has a special bond with the community (Col 1:6–8; 4:12–13; cf. Phlm 23, where Epaphras is described as Paul’s “fellow prisoner in Christ Jesus”). Given the teaching directed at real slaves, there seems little doubt that the metaphorical use of the term “slave” to refer to prominent fellow-workers would have contributed to a sense of solidarity between those who experienced first hand the conditions of slavery and those who did not. As I noted above, Colossians reveals a striking tension between symbolism that calls for the ultimate rejection of the standards and priorities of society and domestic teaching that clearly mirrors the standards and priorities of society. Mary Rose D’Angelo (1993) has noted the potential for a message of empowerment in the baptismal imagery of Colossians. She points to the putting off of the fleshly body described in 2:11 and to the references to the cancelling of a debtor’s bond in 2:14— perhaps especially meaningful to slave members of the community who would have stood really under a debtor’s bond. A particularly graphic image of liberation is found in 2:15, which speaks of stripping the “rulers and authorities” (the evil forces that rule the cosmos), making a public example of them by boldly triumphing over them (cf. 2 Cor 2:14). The verb “to triumph over” (qriambeu/w) recalls the triumphal procession of military leaders displaying the spoils of war that often included slaves, women and children—the subordinate members of the household called to be obedient by the Colossian household code. But the author of Colossians employs imagery associated with public disgrace and applies it to a type of “cosmic” conquest. The powers, and not the enslaved peo-
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ples, have been placed in a position of humiliation and it is God who plays the role of triumphal victor. Given the presence of the household code in the epistle, D’Angelo concludes that “these images are likely to have encouraged double consciousness in women and slaves, demanding that they deny their subjected status in the religious realm while submitting to it in the social world” (1993: 320). D’Angelo’s identification of a type of “double consciousness” invites us to think about how a certain pattern of Christian identity is becoming embedded within the Roman world. The household code sustains the patriarchal order of society, but the religious symbolism and the very language used to describe key members of the Pauline circle points to a particular type of dislocation and rejection of this world of flesh.19 There are indications both within the text of Colossians itself and within other early Christian texts with similar household teaching that the code may have served as a strategy for survival in an increasingly hostile environment. David L. Balch has argued that the function of the household code in 1 Peter was apologetic, and many scholars have taken up his views and applied them to other household codes (cf. Philo, Apology for the Jews [= Hypoth.] 7.3, 5; Josephus, C. Ap. II.199–216; Dionysus of Halicarnassus, Ant. Rom. I.9–II.29; see Balch 1981). In 1 Peter the household teaching (2:18–3:7) makes explicit mention of the impression made on the non-believing head of the household (3:1–2), and the community is evidently experiencing slander, suffering at the hands of outsiders (e.g., 2:15; 3:15–16). The apologetic function of the Colossian household code is not as immediately apparent. However, in assessing the degree of apologetic interest of a given early Christian text, it is misleading always to think of apologetic literature in antiquity as actually being intended to be read or directly responded to by outsiders. As Michael White puts it, “most apologetic literature was really addressed to insiders who were looking toward that margin with the larger society as the arena of acculturation and self-definition” (1995: 259). The household code of Colossians may be serving an apologetic function even though it makes no specific mention of interactions with outsiders. Moreover, the internal focus of the Colossian household code does not rule out the possibility that, in addressing subordinate members, the code spoke to members of pagan households (though they are not explicitly identified as such) and, hence, is particularly vulnerable to the hostile reactions of outsiders. New Testament household codes reflect ethical ideals and may have spoken to quite complicated and diverse family arrangements.
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An examination of the points of contact between the ethical exhortations of the Colossian household code and teaching found elsewhere in the epistle suggests that the code was broad both in scope and in purpose. As discussed above, the text of Colossians itself, coupled with a growing appreciation of the complex situation of slaves in antiquity, raises serious difficulties with the thesis that the comparatively longer exhortation to slaves in Colossians 3:18–4:1 should be taken as a response to social unrest among slaves. On the basis of this comparatively longer exhortation, it is probably safe to assume that slaves formed a significant portion of the community. But the argument that the code responds primarily to a particular problem with them is more tenuous. More attention may have been given to the slave-master pairing than to the other pairings because it served the author well in illustrating the dichotomous relationship between heavenly existence and earthly existence that was central not only to the debate with the opponents but also to the community’s self-definition. In seeking to understand the function of the code in relation to family life, it is best to keep in mind the apologetic interests of similar teaching in Jewish, Christian, and pagan literature and to locate its impact in a general community orientation in relation to the outside world. The notion that Colossians 3:18–4:1 looks toward the margin with the larger society is supported by 4:5–6, which contains one of the few explicit exhortations in Pauline literature concerning how believers should interact with non-believers and may well reflect tension between the two groups (cf. 1 Thess 4:11–12).20 It may be that suspicion concerning the active recruitment of slaves (or the wives and children of pagan householders) was fuelling general suspicion about an illegitimate new group. But it is also possible that an apologetic response was triggered not so much by explicitly “revolutionary” behaviour on the part of subordinate members of the church as by their simple visibility in a society looking to label new religious groups as corrupters of household and state (MacDonald 2000: 159–69). The Colossian false teaching focusses on rituals and physical markers of identity—precisely the type of practices that would make members of the church visible in society at large. Those drawn to the false teaching in the community believed that various ascetic and ritual practices were visible signs of identity, indicators of transformation. But in Colossians 2:8–15 the author argues that baptism alone is what transforms the individual and creates identity in Christ. The author invites believers to come together as the spiritual body of Christ; they are to live in a manner that allows this body to become integrated within household quar-
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ters—probably even houses where non-believers live. It is important always to remember that the visible boundaries of early Christian groups of this period were the boundaries of domestic life—believers meeting together in a house, seeking to build believing homes, or struggling to preserve Christian allegiance in the house of a pagan paterfamilias. The household codes functioned to protect and to reinforce the infrastructure of early Christian meetings in an era of growing competition and tension between groups. The rhetoric of domesticity in Colossians is a rhetoric of conventionality for a community flirting with scandal. The combination of conventional ethics with expressions of dislocation is a fascinating feature of Colossians. When the text is considered as a whole, however, the initial impression of dissonance gives way to an awareness of a pattern of Christian identity which thrived in some early Christian circles in the latter decades of the first century and early second century CE. For the author of Colossians, baptism meant renewal in the image of the creator and that social distinctions, such as slave and free, had new meaning (3:11). But whereas in other communities known to these believers, and quite probably among the proponents of the “philosophy,” such a transformation meant the adoption of ascetic measures such as the rejection of marriage,21 the household code of Colossians 3:18–4:1 left no room for this. No matter how powerfully renewed one felt, if one followed the direction of that code, one would be embracing a way of life that would very much resemble the life of one’s neighbours. Even the prominent Nympha, perhaps herself resolute in remaining unmarried, exercised her leadership through structures that were largely conventional and in keeping with societal expectations for prominent women. But the apologetic function of the household code alerts us to her vulnerability—visible on the boundary between church and world, ready to exert her influence, but subject to the impact of increasingly conservative ethics as the church became perceived as a social irritant.22 The author of Colossians was not alone in recommending an ethos that allowed one to live in the world conventionally, but nevertheless with deep convictions of heavenly citizenship (3:1–4). The emphasis on heavenly withdrawal in Ephesians (e.g., 2:6) is even less restrained than in Colossians. Displaying no explicit interests in the local arrangement of meeting, and referring always to a universal church, Ephesians nevertheless includes a household code in 5:22–6:9 and describes believers as “fellow-citizens with the saints and members of the household of God” (2:19). In the literature of this period, however, it is the Epistle to Diognetus that most clearly expresses this sentiment. According to Dio-
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gnetus, Christians do not withdraw from society and erect “some strange place of their own…while living in Greek and barbarian cities, according as each obtained his lot, and following the local customs, both in clothing and food and in the rest of life, they show forth the wonderful and confessedly strange character of the constitution of their own citizenship” (Diogn. 5.2–4).
C ONCLUSION The Colossian household code is by no means simply a “rerun” sermon within the text of the epistle. Despite the appearance of an abrupt insertion of traditional material into the letter, it is clear that the household code plays a vital function within the text as a whole. Failure to appreciate the full impact of the code within the context of Colossians may well be due to the limitations of the historical method as described by Vernon Robbins. As exemplified especially by the search for the correct label to attach to the opponents, there has been a preoccupation with the historical world of Colossians to the exclusion of the content of the text itself. As Robbins observes: “In the context of much historical-critical interpretation, the value of New Testament writings lies in what they ‘document’ in the world outside the text, not in what they contain as texts, as written discourse that has its own inner nature and meanings” (1996: 15). Interpretation of Colossians is most fruitful when the world outside the text is considered in relation to the inner nature of the text and, indeed, to the world created by the text. With respect to Colossians 3:18–4:1, this means an examination of the interplay between the text and household teaching in other ancient sources, the content of the letter as a whole, and the social world of a community concerned with such issues as the integration of its members and the drawing of boundaries between itself and the wider society. When Colossians 3:18–4:1 is considered in this manner, the household code emerges not as a small unit of ethical teaching, but as a central expression of a rhetoric of domesticity that functions within an even broader “integrated rhetoric of God, community and individual” (Cameron 1991: 69). To appreciate the impact of this “integrated rhetoric of God, community and individual,” it is useful to imagine the performative impact of the text, read aloud, in Nympha’s house. By the time one heard the proclamation of the household code, one would already have been reminded of heavenly exaltation with Christ (Col 3:1–4) and membership in a spiritual body ruled by Christ at its head (e.g., Col
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1:18–20; 2:9–10, 19; 3:15). Hierarchical principles linking God, the cosmos, and the e0kklhsi/a prepared the way for hierarchical rules governing human relations. The majestic hymn of Colossians 1:15–20 no doubt would have seemed especially meaningful. The hymn articulates its message with reference to polarities (earthly–heavenly, invisible–visible) and presents Christ somewhat ironically as the image of the invisible God (1:15). In imitation of Christ, believers experience the irony of their predicament: living on earth while at the same time experiencing a strong sense of heavenly citizenship. Hearing one’s social group addressed directly, as a master, wife, slave, or child, the irony of present existence would have been reinforced by rules that call for the maintenance of conventional existence while at the same time promising the reward of inheritance from a God who shows no partiality. But there must have been many in the group for whom such an “invisible” loyalty seemed to be a woefully inadequate reflection of baptism.23 Those who demanded to live out their commitment by means of visible rituals and physical signs were labelled by the epistle as living according to mere “human injunctions and teachings”—things that “have the reputation of wisdom,” but are merely empty and useless physical measures, devoid of any real value against “the indulgence of the flesh” (2:22–23). According to the author of Colossians, the house of Nympha offered the perfect space for the performance of this text (4:15–16). Colossians 4:16 calls for a public reading of Paul’s letter in the church of Laodicea that in all likelihood met in Nympha’s house. Here it is the modern interpreter who encounters irony. We are to imagine patriarchal teaching calling for the subjugation of wives to husbands proclaimed in a space ruled by a woman. Nympha’s status as a widowed (?), well-to-do woman may have rendered her largely exempt from the impact of the restrictions. Her house and status in the wider community may have offered the church a semblance of protection and respectability—suitable sanctuary for an ethos that relativized the rubrics of household and citizenship within the confines of an invisible spiritual body. We cannot hear her own voice, but in the world of emerging Christianity Nympha herself may have viewed such ethical teaching as obvious and prudent. Or, like many women throughout history who have been confronted with hierarchical authority structures, she may have known that she could work around the rules.
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N OTES 1 Balch’s work (1981) on the origin of the household code has been widely accepted by New Testament scholars. 2 It is important to note that scholars differ with respect to the weight they attach to “in the Lord” (3:20; cf. 4:7, 17). Some have largely understood the phrase as an addition designed to “Christianize” the current social ethic (see, for example, Fiorenza 1983: 253). Others assign much more weight to the phrase. Lohse, for example, views it as an indication that “the entire life, thought, and conduct of believers is subordinated to the lordship of the Kyrios” (1971: 156). 3 It should be noted, however, that in displaying concern for weaker members in the pairing and in their form, the early Christian household codes reveal significant points in common with Jewish teaching (e.g., Sir 3:1–16) (see Dunn 1996: 244). 4 For textual variants and discussion of problems of translation see MacDonald (2000: 182–83). 5 See Lieu (1998: 16–17). On the difficulty of drawing conclusions about the real historical situation underlying Acts 16 see also White (1995: 234–61). 6 See my further discussion below. There is evidence of the substantial involvement of prominent women in the public life of the Empire. See, for example, MacMullen (1990a: 162–68, 1990b: 169–76); also the discussion in White (1995: 258); and Osiek and Balch (1997: 58–60). 7 This may strike some as reading too much into a brief greeting, but it is important to note that taken together with 1:6–8, Colossians 4:7–18 reflects strong efforts to reinforce the authority of Paul’s co-workers. The contribution of co-workers is highly praised and sometimes presented in almost formal terms (e.g., 4:13) (see MacDonald 2000: 42–45, 186–87). 8 See also Dunn’s arguments (1996: 37–41, 269) in favour of Colossians being a type of “bridge document” between the undisputed letters of Paul and the later post-Pauline works of Ephesians and the Pastorals. 9 In the latter case “and” (Col 4:15) would mean “and specifically” (cf. Rom 16:23); see Barth and Blanke (1994: 486). 10 For example, Mary Rose D’Angelo seems to play down the significance of the reference to Nympha by stating that “the only leadership role Colossians affirms for women is patronage of a house-church” (1993: 323). 11 I argue (in MacDonald 1996) that this took place in the public reaction to the rise of Christianity and its counter-reaction. 12 See, for example, Apuleius, Met. 9.14, and discussion in MacDonald (1996: 67–73; 2003: 175–81). 13 If one conducts a survey of the scholarly literature on Colossians, the question of the identity of the false teachers emerges as the most frequently discussed issue, perhaps rivalled only by the question of the epistle’s authorship. Over the past few decades there have been an amazing array of theories and no consensus. It has been argued that the Colossian “philosophy” was a product of Judaism, mystery religions, gnosticism, various philosophical traditions including Stoicism, Pythagoreanism, and Cynicism. A minority of scholars
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have questioned whether there really were false teachers in Colossae at all. The Colossian “philosophy” has often been viewed as a syncretistic movement that combined Jewish elements with aspects of paganism. Such is the case, for example, in the recent valuable work by Clinton Arnold (1995) who has argued that the Colossian “philosophy” was a combination of Phrygian folk belief, local folk Judaism, and Christianity. But even considering Arnold’s advances, one is still left with the problem of making the elements of the false teaching “fit” with any known single group from antiquity. It may be, as has sometimes been argued, that Colossians actually responded to more than one group with similar characteristics. For various theories concerning the identity of false teachers in Colossae see MacDonald (2000: 10–11). See Crouch (1972: 126). Crouch’s study on the purpose of the Colossian household code remains the most detailed and frequently cited study on the subject. See MacDonald (2000: 179, 188). The possible pseudonymous character of Colossians invites the question of whether the mention of Onesimus and others in the epistle refers to a “real” situation being addressed in Colossians. For reasons outlined above with respect to Nympha, I believe that the greetings at the end of the epistle should be taken as speaking to the real circumstances of the individuals named in the epistle. The practices of the false teachers are being described here in very general terms. There is significant debate on the precise meaning of the exhortations and many complicated issues related to translation and interpretation of 2:16–23; see full discussion in MacDonald (2000: 109–26). An alternate translation, “are of no value, serving only to indulge the flesh,” is also possible (for full discussion see MacDonald 2000: 118). See the important work on the metaphorical use of slavery language by Dale B. Martin (1990, especially 117–35); see also Theissen (1999); and Glancy (2002). See William Arnal’s article (chap. 2 in this volume) on an analogous, though more thorough-going attempt, in the Gospel of Thomas, to subvert the real social world and the language that encodes it. I argue (MacDonald 2000: 170–77) that Colossians 4:5–6 reflects tension between believers and non-believers and, along with the absence of Paul and the Colossian “philosophy,” constitutes a significant aspect of the social setting of Colossians. Like Galatians 3:28, Colossians 3:11 may well reflect an ancient baptismal saying found also in extra-canonical sources and sometimes attributed to Jesus (e.g., Clement of Alexandria, Strom. 3.13.92; 2 Clem. 12:2; Gos. Thom. 37, 21a, 22b). See the study by MacDonald (1987). Note that Sarah Tanzer (1993) has argued that the Christian household codes reflect very conservative expectations in relation to what was actually being lived out by women in Graeco-Roman society in this period. Increasingly scholars are understanding baptism as central to the conflict at Colossae; see, for example, Attridge (1994).
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R EFERENCES Arnold, Clinton 1995 The Colossian Syncretism: The Interface Between Christianity and Folk Belief at Colossae. Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament, 2/77. Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck). Attridge, Harold A. 1994 “On Becoming an Angel: Rival Baptismal Theologies at Colossae.” In Lukas Bornmann, Kelly Del Tredici, and Angela Standhartinger (eds.), Religious Propaganda and Missionary Competition in the New Testament World: Essays Honoring Dieter Georgi, 481–98. Leiden: Brill. Balch, David L. 1981 Let Wives be Submissive: The Domestic Code in 1 Peter. SBL Monograph Series, 26. Chico, CA: Scholars Press. Barclay, John M. G. 1997 “The Family as the Bearer of Religion in Judaism and Early Christianity.” In Halvor Moxnes (ed.), Constructing Early Christian Families: Family as Social Reality and Metaphor, 66–80. London/New York: Routledge. Barth, Markus and Helmut Blanke 1994 Colossians: A New Translation and Commentary. New York: Doubleday. Cameron, Averil 1991 Christianity and the Rhetoric of Empire: The Development of Christian Discourse. Berkeley: University of California Press. Corley, Kathleen E. 1993 Private Women, Public Meals: Social Conflict in the Synoptic Tradition. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson. Crouch, James E. 1972 The Origin and Intention of the Colossian Haustafel. Forschungen zur Religion und Literatur des Alten und Neuen Testaments, 109. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. D’Angelo, Mary Rose 1993 “Colossians.” In Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza (ed.), Searching the Scriptures, vol. 2: A Feminist Commentary, 313–23. New York: Crossroad. Dunn, James D. G. 1996 The Epistles to the Colossians and to Philemon: A Commentary on the Greek Text. New International Greek Commentary. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans; Carlyle, UK: Paternoster. Fiorenza, Elisabeth Schüssler 1983 In Memory of Her: A Feminist Theological Reconstruction of Christian Origins. New York: Crossroad; London: SCM. Glancy, Jennifer 2002 Slavery in Early Christianity. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press. Harrill, J. Albert 1995 The Manumission of Slaves in Early Christianity. Hermeneutische Untersuchungen zur Theologie, 32. Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck).
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Lieu, Judith 1998 “The Attraction of Women in/to Early Judaism and Christianity: Gender and the Politics of Conversion.” Journal for the Study of the New Testament 72: 5–22. Lohse, Eduard 1971 Colossians and Philemon: A Commentary on the Epistles to the Colossians and to Philemon. Trans. William R. Poehlmann and Robert J. Karris; ed. Helmut Koester. Hermeneia—A Critical and Historical Commentary on the Bible. Philadelphia: Fortress. MacDonald, Dennis Ronald 1987 There is No Male and Female: The Fate of a Dominical Saying in Paul and Gnosticism. Philadelphia: Fortress. MacDonald, Margaret Y. 1996 Early Christian Women and Pagan Opinion: The Power of the Hysterical Woman. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2000 Colossians and Ephesians. Pagina Sacra. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press. 2003 “Was Celsus Right? The Role of Women in the Expansion of Early Christianity.” In David L. Balch and Carolyn Osiek (eds.), Early Christian Families in Context: An Interdisciplinary Dialogue, 157–84. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans. MacMullen, Ramsay 1990a [1980] “Women in Public in the Roman Empire.” In Changes in the Roman Empire: Essays on the Ordinary, 162–68. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 1990b [1986] “Women’s Power in the Principate.” In Changes in the Roman Empire: Essays on the Ordinary, 169–76. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Martin, Dale B. 1990 Slavery as Salvation: The Metaphor of Slavery in Pauline Christianity. New Haven: Yale University Press. Osiek, Carolyn and David L. Balch 1997 Families in the New Testament World: Households and House Churches. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox. Robbins, Vernon K. 1996 The Tapestry of Early Christian Discourse: Rhetoric, Society, and Ideology. London: Routledge. Tanzer, Sarah 1993 “Ephesians.” In Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza (ed.), Searching the Scriptures, vol. 2: A Feminist Commentary, 325–48. New York: Crossroad. Theissen, Gerd 1999 “Sklaverei im Urchristentum als Realität und als Metapher” [Nachwort]. In Henneke Gülzow, Christentum und Sklaverei in den ersten drei Jahrhunderten, 213–43. Münster: LIT. Torjesen, Karen Jo 1993 When Women Were Priests: Women’s Leadership in the Early Church and the Scandal of Their Subordination in the Rise of Christianity. San Francisco: Harper & Row.
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Wagner, Ulrike 1994 Die Ordnung des “Hauses Gottes”: Der Ort von Frauen in der Ekklesiologie und Ethik der Pastoralbriefe. Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament, 2/65. Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck). White, L. Michael 1995 “Visualizing the ‘Real’ World of Acts 16: Toward Construction of a Social Index.” In L. Michael White and O. Larry Yarbrough (eds.), The Social World of the First Christians: Essays in Honor of Wayne A. Meeks, 234–61. Philadelphia: Fortress.
JOHN KITCHEN
6 “Raised from the Dung” Hagiography, Liberation, and the Social Subversiveness of Early Medieval Christianity
Slavery and freedom are intimately connected.…Contrary to our atomistic prejudices it is indeed reasonable that those who most denied freedom, as well as those to whom it was most denied, were the very persons most alive to it. (Orlando Patterson 1982)
B
y skilfully comparing virtually the whole range of slave-holding societies from antiquity to modernity, Orlando Patterson, the sociologist of slavery, has called our attention not only to the ubiquitousness of this institution throughout time but also to slavery’s intimate connection “with the most profoundly cherished ideals and beliefs in the Western tradition” (Patterson 1982: viii). As he suggests, our reason for wanting to think that slavery is “peculiar” stems from our “tendency to eschew what seems too paradoxical” (1982: viii)— namely, that slavery thrived, at times dramatically increased, in the great centres of Western culture. We must also acknowledge—and perhaps this is another reason for our reluctance to recognize slavery’s pervasiveness in our cultural heritage—that, regardless of the well-known Pauline declaration of “neither slave nor free” (Gal 3:28), slave societies are especially prominent during “critical periods” in the development of medieval European societies, including those in which Christianity flourished. Whether in Merovingian France or early Renaissance Venice and Genoa, the institution of slavery left its mark. And not only did it thrive in pre-modern Christian Europe, a form of medieval slavery is the not-too-distant ancestor of the plantation system of the United States.1
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Especially important when considering slavery’s place in medieval Christian societies is the fact that Patterson explores the development of slavery not simply in terms of a social phenomenon but also as a mentality interacting with the symbolic structures of societies. The epigraph at the beginning of this chapter underscores how the existence of slavery entails an acute awareness of freedom, an awareness on the part of the master as well as the slave. We see this awareness, with its social and intellectual implications, addressed in Patterson’s treatment of early Christian attitudes and their relationship to the belief system flourishing in the modern Protestant plantations of the American South.
T HE T WO P OLES Significantly, Patterson has stressed how deeply the symbolic structure of Christianity reflects the experience of slavery, an experience that, as several scholars claim, marked the lives of the religion’s first converts (Patterson 1982: 70). The whole soteriological system of Pauline theology, according to Patterson (and the research on which he relies), is permeated with the “metaphors” of the slave experience. Redemption, for instance, “quite literally means release from enslavement,” and other key terms, such as “justification and atonement,” also resonate with the experience of slavery.2 Patterson’s provocative argument, which connects the “eschatological dissonance” of Pauline theology with the mentalities of slaves and masters in the United States, is arresting, especially in light of what a leading historian of the early Middle Ages observes when treating the church’s attitude toward social issues. The Czech medievalist František Graus, in a lengthy, penetrating article (1961) on hagiographic depictions of prison-freeings, offers an overview of the patristic and early medieval attitudes toward freedom, slavery, and captivity. Like Patterson, Graus also recognizes the importance of the Pauline letters in creating the socio-religious “contradictions” that characterize early medieval Christianity’s teaching on social questions. Indeed, Graus has identified in the early medieval literature the same “internal contradiction” (inneren Widerspruch) that, Patterson claims, symbolically sustained the slave system of the modern American South. This is an extraordinary coincidence. Neither knew the other’s work and yet each reached the same conclusions in spite of methodological differences. Let us consider their arguments. In unravelling Christianity’s contradiction, Patterson succinctly articulates how the belief system both reflected and conditioned the social real-
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ity of slavery: “Slavery, which on the level of secular symbolism was social death, became on the level of sacred symbolism spiritual death” (1982: 71). He then presents the heart of the early Christian message by identifying the conflicting tendencies in Paul’s interpretation of the central Christian event, the death and resurrection of Christ. For early Christians the redemption freed humanity from the spiritual slavery into which it had fallen because of original sin. However, the meaning of this redemption receives “two fundamentally different symbolic interpretations” in the writings of Paul. One interpretation has “profoundly conservative spiritual and social implications.” This understanding of the redemption stresses not freedom from sin but enslavement to Christ. With the redeemer saving “his followers by paying with his own life…the sinner, strictly speaking, was not emancipated, but died anew in Christ, who became his new master. Spiritual freedom was divine enslavement” (1982: 71).3 Paul’s other interpretation of the crucifixion, Patterson claims, is more spiritually and socially “liberating.” In this view, redemption fundamentally changes the social and existential status of the believer, whose freedom is won by Christ’s sacrifice, a sacrifice that restored humanity to its pre-lapsarian condition of freedom. The radical consequences of this view appear starkly when Patterson situates this second understanding of the redemption within the social context of the slave’s terrible choice: The slave, it will be recalled, was someone who by choosing physical life had given up his freedom. Although he could, of course, have kept his freedom and died, man lacked the courage to make such a choice. Jesus, “his savior,” by his death made this choice for him. It is this feature that was completely new in the religious behavior and death of Jesus. What is meant in symbolic terms was that Jesus did not redeem mankind by making mankind his slave in the manner of the old pagan religions. Rather, he annulled the condition of slavery in which man existed by returning to the original point of enslavement and, on behalf of the sinner about to fall, gave his own life so that the sinner might live and be free. (Patterson 1982: 71)
The conflicting social meanings of these two interpretations are striking. On the one hand we have a change of masters, on the other an emancipated humanity. Following Maurice Goguel, Patterson claims that “Paul tried to hold both these positions at the same time” (see Goguel 1964: 425–55). When considered in this light, the historical issue now becomes a matter of reconstructing how succeeding Chris-
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tians will work out the Pauline contradiction. Their critical task, the outcome of which accentuates that tight inter-connectedness of medieval biblical hermeneutics and the construction of social values, will have profound, long-lasting repercussions on the socio-religious development of medieval Europe. As we anxiously sense from Patterson’s precise delineation of the situation, this is a crucial juncture in the making of the West, for the post-Pauline church is now in a position of resolving the contradiction by choosing to emphasize one or the other of the conflicting tendencies. The church can either appropriate the “liberating” interpretation of the crucifixion, which on the social level would make Christianity incompatible with slave societies, or it can “canonize the essentially pre-Christian interpretation of salvation as reenslavement to a god,” in which case Christianity would provide the intellectual and institutional support for social bondage. We all know what happened. The church adopted the latter position, thus authoritatively legitimizing “the advanced slave systems of medieval Europe” (Patterson 1982: 72). To put the matter starkly, but in keeping with the sharp analysis Patterson has compellingly offered, the possibility of a socially transforming Christianity is abandoned in favour of the church’s accommodation to worldly power, an accommodation that will mar its history from the time of Constantine to the present. By highlighting the Pauline ethical dualism, Patterson is able to offer an explanation for the complex question concerning how both masters and slaves of the American South sustained themselves through a strong commitment to Christianity. His answer, the validity of which cannot be addressed here, is that the Christian fundamentalism of the plantations restored the full tension of the Pauline contradiction, which allowed both parties engaged in the slave system to shift “from one ethical and symbolic pole to another.” He thus correlates the religious change of the nineteenth-century South, from “classical Protestantism to revivalist fundamentalism,” with “the emergence of a full-fledged slave system” so advanced that nothing had rivalled it since the time of the Romans (Patterson 1982: 76). In other words, the fundamentalism of the Southern plantations could perform its “contradictory roles” because the religion maintained the doctrinal contradiction at the heart of a belief system that both masters and slaves could claim as their own. What is significant for our purposes is the fact that Patterson obviously views the South’s return to the original ethical dualism as a major change from the way the Pauline dissonance was resolved in the Middle Ages.
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Unlike nineteenth-century Southern fundamentalism, which apparently “provided release and relief from the agonies of thralldom” while also legitimizing the master’s authority, medieval Christianity eliminated the “liberating” interpretation of the crucifixion that would bring such satisfaction to the fundamentalist American slaves. As already suggested, the medieval solution to the Pauline contradiction was to reject the theology of emancipation by “emphasizing the ethic of judgement and obedience” (Patterson 1982: 74). However, to subvert the emancipating interpretation of redemption, Christianity still had to offer a solution to the contradiction of “marginality and integration” arising from the existence of slavery. On the religious level, the slave is part of the Christian community in which all are equal (integration) but on the social level he is a non-person (marginality), or to put it in Patterson’s terms, “the archetypical outsider, the eternal enemy within” (Patterson 1982: 72). The formulation of the conservative solution to the Pauline dualism comes with Augustine’s vision of two cities, one divine and the other human. As Patterson explains, with medieval Christianity we find the articulation of two distinct cultural spheres to maintain the slave’s position as a member of the city of God and as a social outsider: The contradiction between marginality and integration, which slavery created, was apparently resolved by relegating each to a separate domain of cultural existence. But this theological solution on the part of a monotheistic slave-holder class works only where there is hegemonic imposition of a rigid dualism in the socioreligious ideology. This was exactly what happened in medieval Christendom under the conservative spell of Saint Augustine. (Patterson 1982: 72)4
We must note that Patterson’s understanding of Christianity’s involvement with slavery reflects a deep awareness of the theological, historical, and theoretical literature, which he synthesizes to create a coherent picture that reveals how religion interacts with the social and mental world of slave systems. In fact, his position appears even more compelling when we realize that it finds support not only in the general scholarship surveying medieval slavery, politics, and economics, but also in the more specialized research of one of the leading figures studying the religious documents of the early Middle Ages.5 The views of František Graus coincide exactly with those of Patterson. In heavily annotated pages where he cites an abundance of supporting textual evidence, Graus asserts that Christian authors of the early Middle Ages undoubtedly accepted slavery, along with the varying degrees of servitude and bondage that were part of the period’s social structure. Significantly, he mentions
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the role of rhetoric, specifically in the form of biblical interpretation and preaching, as means of maintaining the hegemony of social inequality. As Patterson recognizes and Graus meticulously shows, in defining its position on and relation to worldly power, institutionalized Christianity endorsed, with a theological rationale rooted in Scripture, the divisions of a class society. Indeed, what else would we expect ecclesiastical representatives to do but support the existing order, since the churchmen themselves were, shortly after Christianity’s establishment, the leading land and slave owners of European society? Such observations on the church’s attitude toward worldly power and social inequality deserve to be quoted, for Graus’s comments are engaging and provocative, succinctly identifying the socio-religious context in which the church’s position emerged. In considering his observations, notice that he cites precisely the Pauline texts that, in Patterson’s view, represent the conservative pole of Paul’s ethical dualism. And not only has Graus identified the crucial role of a biblical hermeneutics that rejects the emancipating interpretation of the redemption; he has also sensed the church’s role in maintaining the contradiction between marginality and integration through its use of excommunication. As Graus recognizes, within the threat of excommunication is the implicit understanding of the slave as a “non-person” (Patterson’s term) in society. In fact, this punishment replicates on the religious level what occurs on the social level, for those who advocate, on religious grounds, resistence to masters will suffer ecclesiastically what the slave experiences socially—exclusion from the community: Since the time the church became official, it naturally had to sanction the existing order; it had to present the inequality and bondage of persons as something quite natural, God-given. The so-called apostolic letters [citing Eph 6:5; 1 Pet 2:13; Rom 13] already theoretically made this possible. These letters preached the submission “to worldly power.” In different ways, the church fathers and their followers had, therefore, to explain the origin of bondage and turned against every initiative of the slave to better his lot. The position was actually canonized in the first half of the fourth century at the Council of Gangra, which ordered that anyone who, under the pretext of piety, taught a slave to disregard his master, to avoid service, to refuse to serve the master willingly and with honour, ought to be excommunicated. All these facts are known and were often cited in the literature. The church, which soon had a large possession of both landed property and slaves, could naturally not preach the absolute freedom of persons. (Graus 1961: 85)6
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As he continues, important qualifications are added. For instance, Graus eloquently identifies the points of dissonance that characterized the church’s social teaching and function in society. Especially significant, given what Patterson claims regarding the importance of the crucifixion’s interpretation, is how Graus highlights the Dilemma facing the medieval church as it grapples with the liberating significance of Christ’s sacrifice: “On the one hand, the clergy taught that Christ had suffered death on the cross for all people, that all people are equal before God. On the other hand, the social and legal differences of society were solemnly sanctioned.” As a result, throughout the history of medieval Christianity “two tendencies,” as Graus describes them, “constantly meet, mix and fight: the one which stresses the equality of people, shows the limits of power, regards birth as unimportant…and the other which supports the dominating social differences with all the weapons of theological learning” (Graus 1961: 85–86).7 While acknowledging this “internal contradiction,” it is clear that Graus regards the latter tendency—that is, the one supporting social stratification—as the dominant view of the medieval church, with the more egalitarian positions susceptible to the charge of heresy.8 In the final analysis, then, the medievalist Graus, on the basis of his historicalcritical examination, and the sociologist Patterson, on the basis of his theoretical understanding of Pauline soteriology, come to precisely the same conclusion: the medieval church functioned as one of the major institutional supports for slavery. Medieval Christianity abandoned the liberating interpretation of the redemption. Whatever was liberating in the religion’s original teachings, it was rejected by the time of the Constantinian church’s establishment. I want to examine their conclusion in light of the textual evidence provided by the hagiographic material, a literature that Graus has extensively treated, and for this reason his research deserves special attention. Graus’s work in hagiographic studies may be regarded as groundbreaking, for he is among the first modern researchers to investigate hagiographic literature as a rich source for understanding the early medieval church’s attitude toward worldly power (see Graus 1965 and 1974); and his is the most extensive contribution to this subject from within a Marxist framework. Even though the articulation of his critique of early medieval religion and society may sound outdated to some—references to “the ruling class,” “the economic basis of power,” and the church as “the era’s ideologue” perhaps reflect a Marxism that is now out of fashion—his contextualization of this literature from the
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perspective of class and social power still highlights an aspect of hagiography, and its relation to the history of Christian social teaching, that has not received adequate attention. In addition, the abundance of evidence he has so painstakingly gathered and analyzed to support his critique of medieval Christianity’s social function makes previous studies on the subject appear simplistic or so biassed in favour of the church that they are virtually obsolete.9 With respect to the question of slavery, the most compelling evidence reveals that the hagiographic authors—let us assume also the larger audience of clerics and lay people who read and heard this literature—have no moral reservations when mentioning saints with slaves. Hence, in most cases, there is no sense of slavery as a condition worthy of moral indignation. The fact that several hagiographers mention this social condition merely in passing, and without condemnation, may be regarded as evidence of slavery’s general acceptance (Graus 1961: 88). Indeed, certain saints from the Frankish period are praised not only for leaving behind their material possessions to pursue the ascetic quest toward Christian perfection; they are also extolled because they take with them, along with holy books and saintly relics, just a few pueri— slave-boys to tend to their needs.10 We even have evidence of a slave complaining about the ascetic routine she is expected to keep with the saint she serves, a complaint the author attributes to demonic influence (Gregory of Tours, Liber vitae patrum 19.1 [MGH SRM 1.2: 737]). Apparently, the holy woman Monegund required her slave-girl to live on the frugal diet preferred by the saint, and for this reason the servant flees, claiming that she wants worldly enjoyment, especially the abundant consumption of food and drink.11 Clearly, the attitude toward slavery reflected in such stories coincides with the early medieval church’s social teaching and political philosophy: the social order is divinely ordained; the poor and powerless should be patient and obedient; bondage is completely natural (Graus 1961: 88). In short, such episodes, along with the general theological acceptance of and justification for a class society, suggest that slavery received virtually no opposition from the early medieval church, that the presence of slaves was accepted by the Christianity of this time. On the basis of such evidence, we are compelled to concur with Graus, who sees the hagiographic literature reflecting not only the church’s general acceptance of social inequality but also its positive attitude toward worldly power. Furthermore, as previously observed, Graus’s particular study of these social issues reflected in the sources finds powerful support
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in the theoretically informed, comparatively based, social-scientific analysis offered by Patterson. However, in light of more recent, innovative trends in the scholarship on hagiography and medieval religion in general,12 which bring to light previously overlooked nuances in the interaction between church and society, theology and politics, a reconsideration of the issues raised by Graus and Patterson is in order, especially since one aspect of Christianity’s “inner contradiction,” its “liberating” tendency, seems (inexplicably) unexplored in these discussions of medieval religion. In particular, the possibly subversive aspect of the hagiographic literature receives no sustained treatment in Graus’s study.
A CKNOWLEDGING THE P OSSIBILITY OF S UBVERSIVENESS Undoubtedly, the suggestion that hagiographic material may reflect a socially subversive aspect in the belief system of early medieval Christianity is one that will not be accepted readily, given that some of the most penetrating analyses of these sources have underscored the literature’s intimate connection with the aristocracy, especially the Gallo-Roman bishops whose high social status and political function hagiographers routinely celebrated (see Collins 1981: 105–31; Prinz 1967: 529–44, 1973: 17–37; 1975: 153–65; Heinzelmann 1976: 237). Yet it is worth mentioning a challenging observation offered by Judith Herrin, whose words may prove to be, if not a valuable corrective to Graus and Patterson, at least a thoughtful admonishment, warning historians against accepting too readily the view that there is actually an early medieval consensus on social and religious matters. In her introduction to The Formation of Christendom (1987), Herrin offers a view of medieval religion that serves as the guiding presupposition of the present inquiry: Medieval religion is sometimes conceived, and criticised, as the chief support of an unchanging and fixed social order. While beliefs certainly did unite and restrict medieval Christendom, they seem to me infinitely more complex than they are often thought. There are a great many subversive aspects to belief, and medieval culture was more varied than ecclesiastical leaders cared to admit. (Herrin 1987: 7)
With Herrin’s comment in mind, I shall examine the rhetorical strategies utilized by certain hagiographers who describe episodes of liberation from oppressive social conditions. But before turning to the actual sources, brief preliminary observations are required to clarify the general purpose of, approach to, and need for the present inquiry.
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T HE S OURCES We must first acknowledge the critical distinctions that have been made when treating the social categories under our consideration, especially in light of Graus’s extensive treatment (which this chapter not only relies on but also challenges). Although Graus outlines the legal, theological and political issues broadly related to the social conditions of early medieval society, his treatment eventually focuses on hagiographic depictions of “prison-freeings” (Gefangenenbefreiungen), which he painstakingly classifies on the basis of their literary characteristics. In treating the scenes describing saints delivering people from imprisonment, he emphasizes the crucial difference between those jailed for an offence or captured as prisoners of war and those whose unfree status was socially acceptable. The distinction is drawn on the basis of the apparently divergent attitudes toward these conditions reflected in the sources. While there is ample hagiographic evidence of slavery’s wide acceptance, the literature portrays imprisonment—at this time a temporary holding place rather than an institution for correction—as a categorically oppressive social condition.13 Based on such evidence, Graus suggests that the threat of imprisonment or captivity loomed over all segments of society. The sources from the fifth and sixth centuries show that an invading army or the capriciousness of a ruler could lead to large numbers of free people suddenly being subjected to captivity and drastic, previously unexperienced enslavement (Graus 1961: 75–77). Under such circumstances, a master could one day find himself in a position that was the same, or even worse, than that of the slaves he once owned. Abduction leading to captivity or enslavement was not, then, regarded as “natural” (Graus 1961: 91). Hence a pervasive fear of such occurrences conditioned hagiographers’ universal condemnation of this oppressive social condition resulting from a sudden catastrophe, while the bondage associated with hereditary status, abject dependence on and service to a master in perpetuity— what may be termed “institutionalized” slavery—was normally and widely regarded as a natural part of social organization.14 In fact, some of the most compelling evidence indicating the wide acceptance of this institutionalized condition comes from the period’s sermons, which denounce not slavery but the cruelty of masters, who are repeatedly urged to treat their servi mercifully (Graus 1961: 88–89). While I do not dispute that, on the social level, such distinctions in the sources accurately reflect the historical conditions, at the level of the hagiography’s rhetoric and religious ideas, I must resist the tendency to regard imprisonment, captivity, and slavery as separate categories.
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The reason for resisting the legitimate distinguishing of these admittedly different social statuses is related to my method and goal in this chapter, as well as to the nature of the (too often overlooked) theological (or ideological) content of the sources that will be examined. With respect to method and goal, I intend first to analyze the rhetorical strategies that characterize accounts of various types of change in social status. The purpose of such an analysis is to discover how certain religious ideas are utilized in constructing a collective meaning of the specific social conditions documented in the literature, a meaning that would have been readily discernible to the community of early medieval believers in which hagiographic narratives circulated. Then, after treating the texts representing the different types of change in social status, I will be in a position to discover the common characteristics in the rhetoric and mentality describing freedom from imprisonment, captivity, and slavery. The significance of these salient features, as I shall argue, does not lie in the social, political, and legal distinctions that historians have detected in texts describing “criminals” in prison, captives of war, and slaves, but in the layered meaning conveyed by the consistently similar narratological structure and worldview that mark the various stories about saints. If, as we shall see shortly, the rhetorical and religious stylization of the texts blurs the historical distinctions between these various conditions, then an explanation for their rhetorical and theological homogeneity is required. To offer such an explanation, I propose to take into account the broader hagiographic context in which stories of liberation occur, a context that brings to light one of the overlooked “subversive aspects” to the belief system of early medieval Christianity. One other preliminary observation must be made. Hagiographic accounts describing change in social status are often (frustratingly) limited with respect to the kind of information usually sought by historians who utilize historical-critical techniques to investigate this literature.15 In instances involving slaves, for example, often it is not possible to determine the nature or the degree of servitude involved (though it is not necessary to do so, given my interests here). In the previously mentioned examples describing certain saints who left behind nearly all of their worldly possessions, the person accompanying them to attend to their needs is simply described as a puer or puella. Whether such “boys” were slaves bonded from birth or sold or placed into (temporary) servitude at a later time cannot be determined. Furthermore, in the cases involving people incarcerated by the order of a municipal magistrate, no information is normally given regarding the reason why the imprisonment
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occurred. In fact, the omission of such information is one reason for assuming that the state of incarceration may have been generally regarded as an unacceptable condition that deserved to be denounced. The hagiographers normally make no distinction between a person justly detained for a vicious crime or one who is cruelly jailed for failing to pay a debt. Instead, the captivity itself is presented as unwarranted and harsh (quite unlike the previously mentioned episodes involving ascetic saints with their pueri). So, in accounts describing slavery and imprisonment, the possibility of reconstructing particular historical details is usually foreclosed by the reticence of the sources.
S OCIAL S TATUSES
AS
T HEOLOGICAL C ATEGORIES
We turn first, then, to representative texts describing freedom from imprisonment and captivity, for such passages succinctly reveal how a religious worldview conditions the understanding of social categories. Venantius Fortunatus (ca. 530-ca. 610), one of the most prolific authors of the Merovingian period, offers a number of instances that involve saints delivering people from prisons. The prisons themselves are described as subterranean enclosures holding a throng of crowded condemned clamouring for release, especially when a holy person passes by (Fortunatus, Vita sanctae Radegundis 11. 38 [MGH SRM 2: 368]). Consider what is undoubtedly the most rhetorically significant, and theologically resonant, aspect of such scenes: jails resemble tombs; a release from such a place is a “salvation,” a deliverance from darkness into light.16 In short, the social transformation from a state of incarceration to one of liberation is described typologically as a passing from death to life. The release usually occurs after a saint, most often a bishop, prays for the prisoners’ release, and such incidents are generally portrayed as a holy person’s remarkable deed of power (virtus), with the barriers of the prison suddenly removed either miraculously or through the sheer force of prisoners inspired by their holy protector. The explicit religious significance of such scenes is vividly revealed in Fortunatus’s Life of Saint Albinus, which evokes the imagery of resurrection when recounting an escape. The interconnectedness of a changed social status and a redemptive religion strikingly emerges when the moribund incarcerati break out, supported by the prayers of Albinus, who encourages their release. With the word salutem used to describe their newly acquired freedom, the author leaves no doubt that the deliverance from prison typifies the salvific release from death to life: “Having gone out from there alive, as
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if from a tomb, they give thanks to Lord Albinus at the church of Saint Maurilius, falling at his feet because he had caused those under suspicion to return from death to salvation.”17 Clearly the richness of such passages derives from the blurred distinction between the social and religious meanings of incarceration and freedom. The fact that the released in the account from Albinus’s Vita go directly to a church after breaking free and fall at the feet of the saint indicates that the change in social status assumes a religious (perhaps also ritual) dimension: that the condemned have literally gone from a dark underworld to the light of salvation. To be freed is to be saved. The articulation of these experiences thus reflects a mentality that constructs the meaning of social conditions through the theological rhetoric of Christian redemption, the literal buying back of freedom, whether from imprisonment or sin. Moreover, the saint is often depicted in such scenes as the continuator of the salvific plan, the holy liberator whose social intervention and miraculous power go hand in hand. Consider this dramatic account from Fortunatus’s Vita Sancti Germani, in which the saint functions as the motivation for a defiant escape from jail. Again the hagiographer will conclude the episode by designating it as an experience of salvation: No material resisted the blessed man [Germanus], since wood, rock and iron dissolved before him, and one day in Paris it happened that he said a prayer at the door of the prison, on the following night a light appeared to those cast in jail. He seemed to urge them to dig so that they might come out. They said to one another that they have seen Lord Germanus, and they each told the signs. When a rib from a herding animal was found, the prisoners moved a stone by digging and they ran in to the aforementioned friend of God at the church that morning, when he was returning for a rest. In this way, the image of the bishop was the cause of salvation for many.18
Such a description suggests that a theological rationale underlies the hagiographer’s understanding of freedom from captivity. The imagery of light and darkness, references to death and life, and the explicit designation of these episodes as experiences of salvation indicate that the meaning of deliverance from this social condition was constructed by Fortunatus along the lines of the Christian understanding of redemption. That interpretation finds additional and explicit support in the literature describing the life of Saint Caesarius, Bishop of Arles, whose biography was composed shortly after his death in 542 (see Klingshirn 1985: 187–89; 1994). Here we notice that the justification for freedom from
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captivity is expressed explicitly in theological terms. The context of the passage under our consideration concerns the right of Caesarius as bishop to sell church property, especially sacred vessels made of precious metals, in order to buy back prisoners who have been captured by a besieging army. Significantly, the social redemption—the buying back of prisoners—is justified on the basis of Christ’s redemption, by which humankind was bought back from bondage. In justifying his decision to sell church property so that the release of prisoners could be purchased, Caesarius is reported to have said: “I do not believe it contrary to God, who gave himself up for the redemption of humanity, that redemption be given from one of his ministers.”19 In the quotation from Caesarius’s Vita, the theological significance of social liberation is explicitly based on the example of Christian redemption, so that the act of freeing prisoners typifies Christ’s buying back of humanity from the state of sin. Thus, a theological dimension characterizes the depictions of freedom from imprisonment or captivity in the passages examined so far. And this feature is not limited to Fortunatus’s hagiographic corpus or the Life of Caesarius; a similar tendency is observable in the literature before and after the Merovingian period, on the continent as well as in England.20 Now that we have seen how the release from the oppressive social conditions of captivity and imprisonment reflect the “myth of salvation” at the heart of Christianity, we are compelled to ask the Pattersonian question: once the people described in the documents have been freed (and here I bracket the outmoded issue of factual veracity), does their freedom entail the annulment of their condition or are they now “reenslaved to a god”? Our texts suggest that the latter is the case. In the instances from the hagiography of Fortunatus, the prisoners run, as noted above, not home but to the church where their redeemer resides. Both instances show the released greeting their “Lord,” that is, in Patterson’s terms, their new master. Indeed, Albinus’s Life explicitly depicts the freed falling at the feet of the domino. Moreover, with respect to the situation depicted in Caesarius’s Life, Klingshirn has shown that, while Caesarius himself may not have required repayment for freeing prisoners, there is nonetheless sufficient evidence suggesting that, in cases involving other bishops, released captives “repay[ed] their ransom in the form of labour services.” The extent to which the freed owed such services to the bishop is not a matter that can be easily settled (the sources do not tell us such particulars), but it is clear that the released were “in relations of economic dependence with the bishops who redeemed them”
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(Klingshirn 1985: 201). Especially telling is the fact that even when captives were freed as an act of charity (elemosyma), and did not owe any repayment in the form of labour services, bishops as patrones of the redeemed “could expect certain non-economic, but nonetheless tangible officia” from those bought back, as if the redeemed were now clientales along the Roman model (Klingshirn 1985: 202). We have also a remarkable specific example that illustrates precisely the point Patterson has made in general terms regarding the “profoundly conservative spiritual and social implications” associated with the interpretation of the redemption. The prolific Gregory of Tours, Fortunatus’s companion, recounts what occurred to a slave named Veranus, who belonged to the priest Symon. Close attention needs to be paid to the language of the passage. Patterson has emphasized how the symbolic structure of earliest Christianity was permeated by metaphors of slavery (cf. Martin 1990). When we turn to this sixth-century document describing Veranus, we notice that even in this later period of Christianity’s development in the Frankish world the references to lord (dominus) blur the distinction between a worldly master and a spiritual one. Not only do we have interchanging terminology, we can also detect an awareness on the author’s part of how the change in social status from slave to free resonates with the Christian meaning of redemption. Veranus becomes terribly sick with debilitating gout. His lord, the priest Symon, “grieves over the end of his faithful vernaculi,” literally a home-born slave [dominus eius, dolens exitum fidelis vernaculi]. Symon then orders the sick slave to be taken to the tomb of Saint Martin of Tours. In light of what we observed earlier regarding the prisoners running to Albinus and Germanus, the next development in the story is significant. Veranus is placed “at the feet” (ad pedes) of Martin who is then addressed as “Lord.” With the sick slave at the feet of the entombed saint, the earthly master makes a vow to the spiritual master: “Most blessed Lord Martin, if you restore him to health, on that day he will be freed from the bond of my slavery, [and] tonsured, he will be entrusted to your slavery” [Si eum reddideris sanitati, piissime domne Martine, in illa die absolutus a meis servitiis vinculo, humiliatis capillis tuo servitio delegetur].21 After making the vow, once again the author mentions the sick slave’s place at the feet of “most precious Lord Martin,” where he stays for five days until, on the sixth, he falls into a deep sleep and awakens cured. Now we come exactly to the situation that Patterson so astutely describes when speaking of early Christianity. The master does free Veranus. However, his freedom entails servitude as a monk of “Lord Mar-
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tin.”22 The sentence describing this transfer of social and spiritual status from the earthly lord to the heavenly one explicitly associates social freedom with the acquiring of a new master: “with his head tonsured [and] his freedom received, he now devoutly serves the needs of blessed Lord [Martin] [tunsorato capite, accepta libertate, beati domni usibus nunc deservit]. Such an example supports Patterson’s contention that Christianity adopted an interpretation of the redemption that viewed humanity’s salvation as a “sale to a god.” Of course, our analysis adds another dimension to his observations, for what Patterson notices in Paul’s understanding of Christ’s salvation during the period of Christianity’s beginning resurfaces during the early Middle Ages in the hagiographer’s expression of the salvation myth. Perhaps with the rise of the cult of the saints, then, the notion of enslavement to Christ, the redeemer of humanity, is being extended to the saint, the imitator Christi par excellence, who, as healer and liberator of the stricken assumes, by that very fact, the role of master over those who receive his aid. The attribution of the salvific function to the saint is explicit in what Gregory immediately says after mentioning Veranus’s entrustment to the slavery of Martin. When we reach this point of the narrative, we see that the whole idea of Christian salvation is working not just at the level of Christ’s redemptive sacrifice but also at the social level of saints as healers and liberators. The story Gregory tells leads to an exclamatory conclusion in which Martin emerges not simply as the one who has bought back a slave (significantly, the intercessor needs no money) but also—and this is extraordinary—as the saint who redeems sin: “How stunning is the redemption [achieved by] the blessed man! Who will ever achieve such a redemption for a thousand talents in the way this present intercessor for our sins does? With a single blow, in a single moment and without a gold coin, he freed [Veranus’s] body from illness and his status from the burden [of servitude].”23 From what we have examined so far, Patterson’s assessment of early Christianity corresponds with what we find at the beginning of the Middle Ages, with the important addition that the enslavement is not simply to Christ but to the saint. What we have detected, then, is a hagiographic development of the “conservative pole” in the original Pauline dualism. Specifically, we have discovered that the early Christian symbolic structure resonating with the metaphors of slavery appears also in the later hagiography that describes freedom from this condition as a redemptive experience entailing the transference of the slave or
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prisoner from an earthly master to a divine one. In other words, it appears that we have uncovered in medieval hagiography the replication of the socially “conservative” aspect in the early Christian understanding of salvation. However, while the enslavement-to-a-god mentality is clearly apparent, we may also detect signs of the liberating pole’s presence, which Patterson claims had been eliminated by the “socioreligious ideology” of Augustine, who died more than a century before Gregory.
S LAVERY
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S ICKNESS
If we look at Gregory’s concluding remark again, we are compelled to ask what specific “faults” require the intervention of Lord Martin the redeemer? Indeed, the fact that Gregory refers to crimina—a strong word denoting legally punishable offences—at the end of a story about a slave’s liberation is telling. Is he including slavery among the “crimes” that require humanity’s need for Martin’s salvific intervention? That is in fact the case, for Gregory has explicitly associated slavery with sickness, which in hagiography is often attributed to sin or moral failing.24 The association is especially apparent at the end of the episode. Recall that at the beginning of the account the author shows no moral reservation when mentioning the fact that his fellow-priest has a slave. At this point, the attitude is no different from the ascetic saints with slaves noticed earlier in our discussion. However, as the narrative unfolds, we find that the master makes a bargain with Martin, so that the healing of Veranus will require the owner’s payment—giving up the slave. Hence it is the master, not the languishing servant, who is now bound. While there may not be sufficient textual evidence for saying that the master’s motivation to make such a pact is “guilt,” there is unambiguous support for maintaining that slavery is here regarded as unnatural, for the cure Veranus receives is physical as well as social. The point that the cure is twofold is emphatically made in the last line: Veranus is freed not only from bodily sickness (corpus a debilitate) but also from the burdensome yoke of slavery (conditionem absolvit ab onere). Significantly, Gregory commonly associates healing with freedom from slavery, and that fact presents a challenge to the (in many ways compelling) argument of Graus and Patterson. Our discussion of the hagiography so far gives the impression that the accounts describing freedom from slavery, imprisonment, or captivity are the kinds of stories that we most frequently find. That, however, is not the case. The social condition that is described with greater frequency in the early
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hagiography is sickness. In the massive documentation Gregory provides on visitors to Saint Martin’s tomb during the sixth century, most pilgrims go there seeking cures for medical conditions (blindness is the most common but there is a wide array of disorders represented, ranging from stomach aches to alcoholism).25 More social-scientifically oriented research has emphasized that the miraculous healings represent the integration of the sick persons back into their communities, a way of restoring them to the state of original health, which includes resettlement into society and family (Van Dam 1994: 89). The meaning of miraculous healings and their social significance may help us gain a better perspective on how to interpret attitudes toward slavery. If stories of manumission appear alongside those of cures, then clearly there are grounds for saying that slavery, and other forms of bondage and captivity, are being regarded as social defects in need of a remedy. Thus, despite the passing descriptions of saints with their pueri, we cannot say that the hagiography reflects a mentality categorically condoning human servitude. If miracles leading to freedom from illness and from slavery represent a restoration of the person to health, either physical or social, then the hagiography clearly does not see such conditions as natural, at not least when it specifically treats them in the context of miracles. The general thrust of Graus’s argument, then, deserves to be challenged on these grounds. While Graus correctly asserts that we do not find in the hagiography a condemnation of bondage itself, his position rests on viewing the literature from the point of view of what is absent rather than the meaning of what is present; and what is present, as we have seen from the texts, is the expression of an ideal. The ideal finds its purest articulation in the late antique romance narratives on desert saints, especially when the holy person, often on the wedding night, departs for the desert to lead a life of perfection (see the perceptive study of Elliot 1987). These are eschatological accounts of paradise regained, and they offer a key to interpreting the later works we have considered. Stories of liberation, insofar as they articulate social experiences of redemption, are the critical expressions of those subversive aspects to belief mentioned by Herrin, aspects by which believers themselves could test the legitimacy of a fixed social order against the saint’s actualization of the idealized Christian life. In light of these observations, then, we have grounds for asserting that the argument of Graus and Patterson too quickly assumes that a homogeneous interpretation of the redemption is in place by the time of
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Constantine and fixed for the rest of the Middle Ages thanks to the “conservative spell” cast by Augustine. Their position is too simplistic; it does not account for the evidence of a liberation mentality reflected in the early medieval literature after Augustine (whose works may not have been read by the main hagiographers of our period [Goffart 1988: 202]). Additional challenging evidence appears when we again look closely at the symbolic pattern of Gregory’s story of Veranus, with its rhetoric revealing the author’s consciousness of the “liberating pole.” There is another salvation myth working here that undercuts the idea of redemption as re-enslavement to a god. Recall that, after a period of intense suffering, which puts the slave at the point of death (exitum), Veranus sleeps beside the saint’s tomb until he is suddenly “awakened” (expergefactus) and “resurrected” (surrexit). The complete cure, the wiping away of “all sickness” (sanus ab omni debilitate) entails breaking the bond of servitude, with the former slave’s transformation from death to life replicated in a social status that changes from a slave to an integrated member of the community. Thus the transformation from near death to full life, from servant to monk, clearly reflects an understanding of the redemption that presupposes the promise of bodily resurrection as the mark of a redeemed humanity (Van Dam 1994: 111–12). And in fact, miracles of raising the dead appear throughout medieval hagiographic literature (Ward 1982: 18). While their observations are astute and their mastery of the material remarkable, Patterson and Graus have ignored the social implications of the resurrection in the understanding of redemption. This oversight vitiates their treatment of Christianity. Frankly, the theme of redemption as resurrection appears too prominently and frequently in the literature to be overlooked. It strikingly marks, for example, the previously discussed episodes of prisoners breaking out of subterranean jails, for here we have explicit references to the condemned coming out of a deathly “tomb” into the light of salvation. Such redemptive experiences are thus presented as instantiations of social resurrection. Also important is the fact that many of the cures Gregory describes take place over three days (Veranus’s six is an exception), and the author especially notes the importance of such miracles when they occur at the time of Easter. In this respect, the account Gregory gives of prisoners in both Tours and Poitiers miraculously freed at the time of “the Lord’s resurrection” is of obvious significance.26 To summarize, while Graus and Patterson have accurately underscored the inherent contradiction in the church’s teaching on slavery, they
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have also too quickly passed over the meaning of evidence that shows the survival of the liberating aspect in the teaching on redemption. In short, the texts we have examined support the view that what Patterson calls the original Pauline dualism lasted at least a century after Augustine (and I suspect it continued throughout the Middle Ages). That the dualism survived makes sense when we consider the social class and literary productions of a person like Gregory. His fellow-priest Symon owned a slave and we can be sure that Gregory, the Gallo-Roman Bishop of Tours who came from one of the leading families and lived during a period in which the material wealth of the Frankish church dramatically increased, owned slaves.27 At the same time, his description of the pilgrims coming to the tomb of Saint Martin is revealing for what it suggests about the function of religion in the lives of people from all segments of sixth-century society. While Martin’s cult seems slow in starting after his death in 397, by the time we observe it as represented on the pages of Gregory’s massive corpus of miracle stories we have a full-blown pilgrimage site, Gaul’s leading religious centre. Thus Gregory can hardly be said to have manufactured devotion to Martin. Instead, what we sense in his often nondescript stories of miracles is an observer’s sheer piling up of documentation recording the Saint’s deeds of power (virtutes), which transform the poor and the sick and bring justice to the imprisoned and the enslaved. In other words, at least with respect to how the early medieval belief system sustained rich and poor, masters and slaves, the Christianity of the nineteenth-century Southern plantations and that of sixth-century Gaul may have far more in common with respect to maintaining the dual understanding of salvation than Patterson ever imagined. There are two other points worth raising that, although they in no way will demonstrate the validity of the assertion just made, will nonetheless offer a foundation on which exploring such issues may be based. There is no doubt that we can see evidence of the “conservative pole” in the literature so far examined. That was apparent from the very beginning when we saw ascetic saints casually keeping slaves. I have also argued that both interpretations of the redemption can be detected in the passage describing Veranus’s experience. Now I wish to see if there is evidence of what may be regarded as an emphatically liberating interpretation of the redemption in early medieval hagiography, that is, an understanding of the redemption not so embedded in the ambiguity of the two poles, one that is also not mixed with the slave’s cure from illness; an interpretation in which the idea of “re-enslavement to a god” is also eclipsed by an instantiation of human freedom and fulfilment.
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Then, by way of conclusion, I return briefly to the question of whether the dual interpretation of redemption continued during this period, but in doing so the focus will not be on how saints and their miracles are portrayed. Instead, I wish to bring to light, in its early medieval context, exactly the image Patterson thinks “dominated the theology” of the modern Southern slaves: the crucified Christ.
L IBERATION T HEOLOGY
À LA MÉROVINGIENNE
I turn, then, to a hagiographic document that is perhaps one of the most dramatic accounts of slavery we shall find in the earlier medieval literature. The story is found in Gregory of Tours’s collection of saintly narratives known as the Liber vitae patrum, somewhat cumbersomely translated into English as The Book of the Life of the Fathers (on the significance of the title see Heffernan 1988: 7). The rhetorical strategy working in this text is similar to the one we noticed in Fortunatus’s depiction of prison-freeings. The imagery of light and darkness, imprisonment and deliverance, may be termed typological; that is, the social liberation from jail typifies, and resonates with, the Christian understanding of salvation. In this understanding, incarceration is a form of death, freedom from prison a form of salvation. Indeed, the brief passage from Caesarius indicates that the same words bear both social and religious connotations in the context we have been examining. Although rarely studied as such, this kind of hagiographic rhetoric clearly reflects an underlying theological premise, an assumption that a God is still intervening in history, particularly through saints, who provide access to the redemptive experience of deliverance by their power (and in the case of holy bishops, we may assume that this power is exercised in the social, political, and religious spheres). But this typology, along with the theological premise assumed by its use, also has another dimension that needs to be recognized as we turn to the text of Gregory’s Liber vitae patrum. This whole way of expressing thoughts through the articulation of types comes from the influence the Bible has on the rhetorical strategies of early medieval hagiographers (see Van Uytfanghe 1987). For the writers of saints’ lives routinely describe the activities and character of saints by relating them to biblical models. So a saint may be called a “new Moses,” when he miraculously produces water from a rock to quench thirst (Fortunatus, Vita sancti Macalli 8 [MGH AA 4.2: 35]). One literary critic regards such a strategy as a “revolutionary form of thought and rhetoric” (Frye 1982:
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82–83). As I have noted elsewhere, such a description aptly characterizes the story of Saint Portianus, for here is “an instance in which freedom from an oppressive social structure becomes, when presented typologically, a foreshadowing of an even greater stage of liberation to occur in the future” (Kitchen 1998: 82). In short, the writings of Gregory—and really those of all hagiographers I have read—attempt to present a God intervening in human affairs through saints who bring about the fulfilment of the divine plan. This linear view of human development, the belief, that is, in a God who acts in the world to bring about the completion of a divine purpose, is commonly called “salvation history” (Heilsgeschichte). The salvation-historical perspective, then, assumes that Scripture continues to be fulfilled as part of the progress leading toward the great eschatological event of final judgment. As Cohn’s research (1970) on millenarian and apocalyptic movements persistently emphasizes, the salvation-historical understanding of human progress has obvious social implications. Not simply social oppression but also resistance to it may be accounted for by this theology of history. If the hagiographer believes that God acts in history, then social change can be legitimately regarded as the work of that divine justice proclaimed by Scripture. Thus, as the liberation theologians of Latin America have long realized, and as our early medieval hagiographers also understood, there are theological and scriptural grounds for challenging an unjust social order. With such a rationale in place, resistance to poverty and slavery may be divinely sanctioned. When presented typologically and from the perspective of salvation history, such resistence leading to freedom and justice may be viewed eschatologically, as a type of liberation foreshadowing the ultimate liberation to come. An instance of liberation on earth, in other words, corresponds with the future experience of a heavenly liberation. This experience of heaven, when achieved, in turn becomes the “antitype,” the fullest expression of the transformed social status. Likewise, the divine punishment received by the oppressors on earth is a type of the everlasting punishment awaiting them after death. Such is the typological pattern of Portianus’s Vita, in which we have vignettes of biblical stories situated within the larger story of the saint’s life. Freedom from slavery, then, assumes this salvation-historical dimension, with Gregory legitimizing his account of a runaway slave by directly inserting numerous biblical texts to justify change in social status. He thus underscores a particular aspect of salvation-history’s progress. For Gre-
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gory, the fulfilment of the redemptive plan includes the poor, represented in both the Old and New Testament record. The radicalness of typology and salvation history in Gregory’s introduction cannot be overemphasized. The biblical quotations and Gregory’s rhetoric unambiguously assert that the social hierarchy may be overturned in this life and will be in the next. For in the next life the lowly will fulfill the divine plan when they enter that paradise from which the rich and powerful have been excluded: What indulgences almighty God grants to those dedicated to his name, and how much he rewards them with the riches of his benevolence for their faithful service! For he certainly promises that he is going to give them great things in heaven, but he generally shows in this world what they are going to receive. For he causes slaves to become free and the free to become glorious, just as the Psalmist said: “He lifts up the needy from the dirt and raises the poor from the dung, that he may place him with the princes of his people” (Ps 113:7–8). About this, Anna, the wife of Elkanah, also spoke: “Those who were once full have hired themselves out for bread, and those who were hungry [now] are full” (1 Sam 2:5). On this, the mother of our Redeemer, the Virgin Mary herself, said: “He cast down the mighty from their seat and exalted the lowly” (Luke 1:52). In this way, the Lord himself spoke in the Gospel: “The first will be last and the last will be first” (Matt 20:16). Therefore in his love he entices the hearts of the poor with divine mercy, so that he may establish the small as great and make the lowliest the co-heirs with the Only Begotten. For out of this world’s poverty he has made those who are in charge in heaven, where worldly rule has not been able to ascend, so that the peasant may go to that place to which the one clad in purple did not deserve to go.28
We must keep in mind the nature of Christian typological thinking to understand the implications of the passage. The salvation-history of the poor is still in progress in Gregory’s own time, for the author introduces the saint immediately after mentioning how “worldly rule” has been excluded from paradise. According to Gregory, Saint Portianus experiences salvation in both its typical form on earth and in its antitypical fulfilment in heaven: “Such is the case now with the blessed abbot Portianus, whom [the Lord] not only saved from the burden of worldly servitude, but also raised by great deeds of power and laid to eternal rest, after [he passed from] the world and the afflictions of this age. He placed him among the choirs of angels from which the earthly lord has been excluded.”29
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The account following the preface describes the circumstances surrounding the saintly slave’s conflict with his master. Portianus has repeatedly tried to flee from his owner. During such attempts he seeks refuge in a monastery, where his master eventually comes to retrieve his slave. The benevolent abbot is willing to hand the slave over but, before doing so, he insists that the master grant the runaway a pardon. Now comes the dramatic turn of events. After insultingly accusing the abbot of inciting the slave to run, the master is blinded the moment he goes to take his slave home. Part of the cure for this blindness entails the slave’s manumission. In addition, the abbot, who recognizes the slave’s holiness and power, pleads with the saint to relieve the painful blindness of his master. Putting his hands over his owner, Portianus makes the sign of the cross and heals the master. This healing, of course, is of a moral nature. The master’s blindness is slavery. His real cure comes when he manumits his slave, who then enters the monastic life (see Graus 1961: 90 on the prohibition against slaves entering monastic and clerical life). Thus, “the holy and the wicked receive on earth a sampling of their respective rewards and punishments to come.” Here we should note two important correspondences between the depiction of prison-freeings previously examined and this scene of manumission just discussed. First, Fortunatus depicts magistrates who refuse to release prisoners as condemned, as deserving the very punishment they inflicted. Thus in both an account of freedom from slavery and from imprisonment, the oppressors are punished. Whatever historical differences there may be between these two conditions, we can at least say that there is evidence suggesting that moral condemnation was brought on both. Second, it is clear that, on the level of rhetoric and religious understanding, the hagiographers are presenting the various conditions similarly—they all conform to a redemptive pattern. Deliverance from a municipal jail, from captivity as a prisoner of war, or from a slavemaster are all portrayed as redemptive episodes in which the deliverance is stylized theologically, as an experience typifying salvation. As discussed previously, Fortunatus also gives accounts of liberation. The difference between the two is that in the Life of Portianus Gregory suggests how such an incident ought to be interpreted. In the preface, he articulates a theology of liberation—and I think it is warranted to use this terminology—rooted in Scripture and developed typologically so that the miraculous intervention of God on behalf of a particular contemporary saint imparts a meaning beyond the event itself. In short, to be freed from servitude typifies another, greater liberation to come. Here, then,
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is an instance supporting the claim that typology is a revolutionary form of rhetoric. We must still, however, ask once again the Pattersonian question: Did Portianus simply become re-enslaved to a god when he received his manumission? To answer that question, the Preface is worth recalling. Not only do we have carefully selected biblical texts justifying the subversion of a class society, but we also see a special status attained by the oppressed. The relationship the lower classes have with the “all-powerful God” (omnipotens Deus) is based not on obedience, but on the love and mercy that draws the needy to their redeemer in heaven. Through this love and mercy the social roles are reversed: those once poor and enslaved now reign in a paradise that the representatives of worldly power are not worthy to enter. Again, the language dramatically links the experience of a changed social status to a specific understanding of salvation. With the redemption, the powerless gain access to the divine mercy (divina misericordia), through which they themselves are made divine, for, as we can clearly see, the lowly who are redeemed do not become enslaved to a God; rather they become like God: with the “only begotten son” they are the “co-heirs” of the heavenly kingdom. Again, too, the influence of the resurrectional aspect of the redemption may be faintly detected. The poor’s change in status mirrors the pattern of the salvific event, with its death and descent followed by rise and the attainment of a god’s everlasting glory. The language and structure of Gregory’s sentence support this interpretation. There is a movement from one status to another. Implicit in that movement is the notion that the poor, in rising from the dung, are like Christ in rising from the grave, and for this reason they are the “co-heirs.” The impoverished go from little to great (de pavis magnos), from the lowliest to the highest—divine sharers of their saviour’s kingdom (de infimis Unigeniti sui faciat coheredes). Of course, the argument may be made that such rhetoric could easily be dismissed as a pious platitude, which actually encourages the oppressed to stay in their place since their misfortune will be compensated on the day of judgment. But that position cannot be maintained, for the passage prefaces the story of a runaway slave who did not wait until after death before undergoing his change in social status. There is no doubt, therefore, that our context here is not “other-worldly” but the social conditions of Gregory’s present, so the passage cannot be dismissed as opiate. Rather, we are compelled to view it as an instance of (to use Herrin’s term) that complex and subversive aspect in early medieval belief.
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In an important way, the story also departs from the depictions of prison-freeings described in the hagiography of Fortunatus. To highlight the difference, we need to examine the dialogue of the scene and what happens to Portianus after he is liberated. When the master tries to leave with his slave, he is blinded. The pain is so great that he calls to the abbot, asking him to “plead to the Lord on my behalf, I beg you, and take this slave into his worship: perhaps I will then deserve to recover the light which I have lost.” The abbot now must persuade the slave to heal his master. The scene is especially telling because both master and abbott, that is the people of higher status, are beseeching the person of lower status, the slave. In fact, the slave at first refuses the request: Then the abbot called the blessed Portianus and said to him, “I beg you, place your hands on the eyes of this man.” And though he refused, he nevertheless was overcome by the abbot’s entreaties, [and so] he placed the sign of the blessed cross over the eyes of his master; and immediately the darkness was dissolved, and the pain appeased, and he was restored to his original health.30
After this scene there is no falling at the feet of the abbot, who had secured the pardon in the first place. In fact, what is especially important throughout the episode is the slave’s authoritativeness. When the abbot is insulted, the slave is asked what he “wishes” the abbot to do (Quid vis, ut faciam). The response is unflinching, coming as it does in the imperative: “Make me pardoned” (Redde…me excusatum)! More important is what Gregory tells us immediately after the episode has been recounted. As soon as the abbot dies, Portianus succeeds him as head of the monastery. Here, then, is an example of a pure liberation, in which the freed person does not become re-enslaved to a god. Of course, the reason why Portianus is not portrayed falling at the feet of “a lord” after deliverance is because the liberated person in this story, unlike the prisoners or even Veranus, has attained the status of a holy person. He has, in other words, gained his own freedom by his divine power. There is more to note in this story. Notice how we have the explicit claim that the master was restored to his “original health” (praestinae… sanitati) by the former slave. As was the case in the story of Veranus, the cure is both physical and social. Here, however, the master is actually punished for wanting to keep a slave who is a holy man. The fact that Gregory calls the cure a restoration to original health suggests that, at least in this instance, freedom, not slavery, is the natural condition of humanity. Much has been said by scholars claiming that an Augustinian notion of a fallen world contributed to the Christian legitimation of slavery.
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Gregory’s story of the runaway slave suggests that there was an alternative to Augustinian conservativism. There is not simply a fall but a repair of that condition with the salvific activity of a saviour, whose redemption continues in the activities of saints. The understanding of salvation reflected in the narrative on Portianus implies that there is a social consequence of this ongoing redemption—the restoration of freedom, humanity’s original condition. This social consequence of the redemption as a restoration of original freedom that breaks the bonds of slavery and sin receives its fullest expression in Gregory’s story of Wiliachar, a priest suspected of conspiring against King Chlothar. The cleric is to appear before the king “covered with iron chains.” However, after appealing to Martin, Wiliachar’s iron bonds are broken. Gregory’s description of what happens next is of great significance when we recall what Patterson has said about the “liberating” interpretation of the redemption. In that understanding, the slave is brought back through the sacrifice of Christ to the original moment of enslavement, at which point the redeemer chooses to die so that the slave may be free. This is the pure emancipation that does not entail re-enslavement to a god. It is the return of freedom that shatters the bonds of sin and enslavement. Both ideas of restoration and obliteration of the previous bondage are conveyed as Gregory concludes his story of the chained priest. Not only is the association of slavery with sin again explicit; Gregory’s personal plea at the end also expresses a notion of redemption that ultimately is not re-enslavement but liberation: [Wiliachar] was not released from his bonds until he called upon that most sacred name, but once he invoked it, all his bonds were released. Then King Chlothar realized through a penetrating insight that the power of Saint Martin was at work here; so he released Wiliachar from the burden of his chains and restored him to his original freedom.…If only the blessed confessor might deign to show such power to me, so that he might release the bonds of my sins just as he crumbled those massive heavy chains on top of Wiliachar!31
The social implications of the redemption as reflected in the hagiography suggest that both aspects of the Pauline interpretation can be detected. If that is the case, then the position of Patterson and Graus cannot be maintained. Another way to approach the matter is by considering the visual rhetoric that also reflects an understanding of the redemption’s significance in early medieval society. On this point, Patterson’s work is again useful for the way it calls our attention to how symbolic structures interact with the mentality of slavery. One of his most
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provocative and emphatic points concerns the aspect of the Christian myth that Patterson claims most resonated with the slaves of the southern United States. Contrary to what several scholars argue, the central image for the slave was not, according to Patterson, the Exodus story but the suffering of Christ. That is the religious image with which the slave most identified. That fact has implications for our discussion on the early medieval understanding of redemption. Dominic Janes has recently demonstrated how the power symbols of Roman late antiquity entered into the “visual rhetoric” of Christianity, especially its depiction of Christ. Rather than a crucified Jew, the iconographic displays of the Christian saviour show a God clad in imperial purple, adorned with a jewelled halo and triumphantly set against the brilliant background of gold tesserae. This is the kind of God that not only emperors but also slave masters would find especially useful for maintaining the divisions of a class society. Of course, the great contribution of Janes’s work is that it neither defends nor denounces the church’s vast accumulation of wealth at this time but attempts to understand it by studying the religious imagery. For Christianity to be received into the culture of late antiquity, the church appropriated the symbols of triumph and power—hence the representations of Christ in purple and gold in the apses of early medieval churches such as Ravenna’s San Vitale. However, Janes also finds evidence of resistance to the notion of an imperial god. Those who resisted the church’s accommodation with the world could retreat into the desert. Even more challenging than desert asceticism was an act of worldly renunciation performed within the setting of an urbanized and hierarchically structured church staffed by ambitious bishops allied completely with the ruling class. Significantly, as an example of such a challenge to the wealth of the church, Janes cites the Life of Saint Martin by Sulpicius Severus. He focusses on the account of Martin cutting his cloak in two so that a naked beggar could be clothed. What happens next is of enormous significance in light of what Patterson has said regarding the image of Christ among the slaves of the South. That night Martin dreams of Christ who appears to him not in purple and gold but proudly wearing the poor man’s portion of the cloak and extolling the saint’s charity in the words of Matthew 25:40 (“whatsoever you do…”). Martin’s vision of Christ as pauper is arresting; it is also jarring when compared to the images of imperial Jesus that would have decorated late antique churches. Even more subversive than a poor Christ is
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Sulpicius’s description of what the devil wears when appearing to Martin. The devil, claiming that he is Christ, comes to Martin in purple and gold but the saint easily recognizes him. He claims that his saviour would not appear to him adorned as an emperor crowned with a jewelled diadem but would come bearing the wounds of the passion and the clothing he wore on the cross.32 The description of the diabolical imposter in Sulpicius’s narrative coincides exactly with the magnificent mosaics of Christ during that time. Janes calls such instances “strikingly subversive,” of “enormous symbolic daring.” To explain the dissonance between Sulpicius’s representation of Christ poor and crucified and Christ lavishly displayed as an imperial figure, Janes posits (but does not elaborate much on) “two systems,” presumably one of accommodation and another of subversive renunciation.33
C ONCLUSIONS Clearly, what accounts for the existence of these two symbolic systems is the dual interpretation of the redemption. Martin’s Christ is precisely the kind of image that Patterson claims “dominated the theology” of the black slaves.34 Opposite that image is the other one corresponding with the conservative pole, namely the depiction of the saviour as powerful ruler and judge. Thus late antique Christian iconography and the images of Christ in Sulpicius’s hagiography reflect precisely the dual interpretations of the redemption that Patterson sees abandoned by the post-Pauline church but restored in the revivalist fundamentalism of the Southern plantations. Hence the two tendencies that Janes has detected in the art history and visual rhetoric of the late antique church is another reason to challenge the conclusion of Patterson and Graus. Of course, Janes stresses how exceptional Martin’s Christ is, and he also insists that very few Christians resisted early medieval Christianity’s worldly accommodation (Janes 1998: 159). However, like Graus and Patterson, Janes too quickly passes over the “subversive” evidence. On this point, Gregory’s Life of Portianus (not mentioned by Janes) and Sulpicius’s account of Martin share a common understanding of the redemption. Recall that Gregory explicitly states that the ruler “clad in purple” does not enter the paradise enjoyed by the poor. In the Life of Saint Martin, the one dressed in purple is the devil. This correspondence between Gregory’s depiction of the ruler and Martin’s diabolical foe, along with the other evidence we have been considering, suggests that there are more dissenting voices expressing deep resistance to the conservative interpreta-
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tion of the redemption than have been acknowledged by scholars studying the socioreligious conditions of the early middle ages. In making that claim, we may begin to understand not simply the significance of uncovering the still neglected “subversive” elements in the era’s belief system, but also the importance of recognizing, as a methodological premise, the fundamental interconnectedness of medieval religion and society. In short, my analysis here suggests that the social implications of the belief in redemption have not been adequately understood.35 If the hagiographic literature discussed here is any indication of what we are likely to find in the other sources, then our current approach to understanding early medieval Christianity and its relation to society needs to be dramatically revised, for we can no longer just ask how the church maintained and supported an oppressive social order; now we must also ask how that order was resisted and subverted by a religion whose meaning informed the experience of the poor, imprisoned and enslaved.
N OTES 1 “The institution rose again to major significance in late medieval Spain.…Slaves constituted such a large proportion of the Florentine population during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries that they significantly transformed the appearance of the indigenous Tuscan population. Late medieval and Early Renaissance Venice and Genoa were extremely dependent on slave labour, and the Italian colonies of the Mediterranean during the late middle ages not only were largescale plantation slave systems but, as Charles Verlinden has shown, were the models upon which the advanced plantation systems of the Iberian Atlantic colonies were based. These, in turn, were the testing grounds for the capitalistic slave systems of the modern Americas” (Patterson 1982: viii). On the (elusive) distinction between feudal and slave societies in the Middle Ages, see Bloch (1970: 260-74); see also, in general, Bloch (1975); Heers (1981). 2 “The most cursory examination of ‘the three terms which are the keywords’ of the Apostle Paul’s theology…immediately reveals the extraordinary role of the slave experience as a metaphoric source. These key words are redemption, justification, and reconciliation. Redemption quite literally means release from enslavement. Through Christ the believer is emancipated from sin. Justification means that the believer has been judged and found not guilty, in much the manner as the slave who has received the most perfect of manumissions, the restoration of his natality with the legal fiction that he had been wrongfully enslaved. ‘Reconciliation or Atonement means the bringing together of those who have been separated,’ in much the same way that the manumitted slave is reborn as a member of a community. Paul in fact went so far as to use the idea of adoption to describe the relationship between redeemed man and God. ‘Redeemed, justified, reconciled, man is elevated from the status of
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slave to that of son, and becomes ‘an heir through God’ of the promised salvation’” (Patterson 1982: viii). For research discussing this aspect of Paul’s writings see: Donini (1951: 57-60); Troeltsch (1931); Nock (1957); Davis (1966); Martin (1990); Combes (1998); Williams (1999: chap. 5); Glancy (2002); and Byron (2003); cf. Fitzgerald (2000: chap. 4); and MacDonald (chap. 5 in this volume). This interpretation is traced to the “confluence of two old ideas: the Near Eastern and Delphic notion of freedom through sale to a god, and the Judaic idea of the suffering servant and sacrificial lamb. It was not a very tidy symbolic statement, and it accounts in part for the occasional impenetrability of Paul’s theology. He had this interpretation in mind, for example, when he made remarks such as the following: ‘The death that he died, he died unto sin once: but the life that he liveth, he liveth unto God’” (Patterson 1982: 71). Note how persistent and different from other religions Augustine’s solution was: “But Judaism and Islam were too this-worldly and too strongly monistic for such an interpretation to be taken seriously. And the rise of Protestantism dealt a death blow to the neat symbolic compromise of the Middle Ages. Augustinian dualism lingered in the symbolic representation of Latin American slavery; hence the apparent anomaly that has baffled so many Anglo-American historians, that of a Catholic church stoutly declaring slavery a sin, yet condoning the institution to the point where it was itself among the largest of slaveholders” (Patterson 1982: 72). On Augustine’s social and political thought see Figgis (1921). For general surveys of these issues see Carlyle (1903: esp. 111-24); Wergeland (1916); Verlinden (1955); Karras (1988); and Bonnassie (1991). “Seitdem die Kirche ‘offiziell’ geworden war, musste sie natürlich die bestehende Ordnung sanktionieren, sie musste die Ungleichheit und Unfreiheit der Menschen als etwas ganz Natürliches, Gottgewolltes hinstellen. Dies ermöglichten ihr theoretisch bereits die sogenannten Apostelbriefe, die die Unterwerfung unter die ‘weltliche Macht’ predigten. Auf verschiedene Art und Weise suchten darum die Kirchenväter und ihre Nachfolger den Ursprung der Unfreiheit zu erklären und wandten sich gegen jede Initiative der Sklaven, selbst ihr Los zu verbessern. Geradezu wurde dann dieser Standpunkt in der ersten Hälfte des 4. Jahrhunderts auf dem Konzil zu Gangra kanonisiert, das verordnete, dass jeder, der unter dem Vorwand der Frömmigkeit einem Sklaven lehrt, seinen Herrn zu missachten, sich dem Dienst zu entziehen und dem Herrn night willig und mit Ehren zu dienen, exkommuniziert werden sollte. All diese Tatsachen sind bekannt und oft in der Literatur angeführt worden. Die Kirche, die bald grosse Besitze sowohl an Grund und Boden als auch Sklaven besass, konnte natürlich nicht die unumschränkte Freiheit des Menschen predigen.” (Unless stated otherwise the translations are my own.) “Einerseits wurde gelehrt, dass Christus für alle Menschen am Kreuze den Tod erlitten hatte, dass alle Menschen vor Gott gleich seien, andererseits wurden die sozialen und rechtlichen Unterschiede der Gesellschaft feierlich sanktioniert. Gewiss, es war möglich, dieses Dilemma theoretisch zur lösen, indem man ‘diese Welt’ mit all ihren Unterschieden als irrelevant abtat; die Grundlinien dieses Lösungsversuches sind allgemein bekannt. Die Folge jedoch war,
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dass verschiedene ‘Häresien’ gegen diese Stellungnahme auftraten, ja dass in dem ganzen mittelalterlichen—auch streng orthodoxen—Schrifttum sich ununterbrochen zwei Strömungen begegnen, vermischen und bekämpfen: die eine, die die Gleichheit der Menschen betont, die Grenzen der Macht der Herrschenden aufweist, die Herkunft als nebensächlich ansieht usw., und die andere, die die jeweils herrschenden gesellschaftlichen Unterschiede mit all ihrem Rüstwerk theologischer Gelehrsamkeit verteidigt.” On expressions and movements of egalitarianism in the history of Christianity, the observations of Norman Cohn (1970: 187-280) are still useful. On the charge of heresy being made against those promoting social equality, see Janes (1998: 156-57). The study of Paul Allard (1974) is too biassed in favour of the church to be of value; though useful, the study of Sara Hansell MacGonagle (1936) is not rigorously critical enough. Vita Bertuini episcopi 4 (MGH SRM 7.1: 179): “[Saint] Bertuinus retained nothing except only canonical books, relics of the saints and boys, who were in his service” [Nihil secum retinuit nisi tantum libros canonicos et reliquias sanctorum et pueros, qui in eius aderant obsequium]; Vita Landiberti episcopi 5 (MGH SRM 6: 358): “No more than two boys remained in his [Saint Landibert’s] service” [nec amplius in obsequium eius remanserunt quam duo pueri]. However, notice that out of all the captivi Saint Richarius redeemed (Vita Richarii sacerdotis 7 [MGH SRM 7.2: 448]), “he kept no one over whom he had power in servitude”[nullum, de quo sua fuit potestas, in servitio reliquit]. Gregory of Tours, Liber vitae patrum 19.1 (MGH SRM 1.2: 737): “I shall not be able to endure these things with a mistress who keeps such abstinence. Instead, I shall enjoy the world, consuming food and drink in abundance.” [Non potero ego cum haec domina permanere, quae in tali abstenentia commoratur, sed potius utar saeculum ac cibum potumque in abundantia sumam.] Regarding the innovative trends in recent scholarship on medieval hagiography and religion, I have the following studies in mind: Brown (1981); Van Dam (1993); Abou-El-Haj (1997); Heffernan (1988); Wyschogrod (1990); Bynum (1987; 1995); Russell (1994); Burton-Christie (1993); Flint (1991); Bestul (1996). According to Edward M. Peters (1995: 25): “We know little else about the people liberated from prison by Frankish saints, but it seems that many were the powerless, those who had run afoul not of public law and public authority but of private holders of public authority who used imprisonment as a means of coercing the weak, of obtaining ransoms, and of punishing personal enemies.” See also Sellin (1976: 30-42). Admittedly, it is not easy to separate the two conditions if we consider that the main source for supplies of slaves for several pre-modern societies, including European, originally was prisoners of war; see Patterson (1982: 44, 106-20). On hagiography viewed as “ecclesiastical-swindling literature,” see Van Uytfanghe (1977: 639-71). Fortunatus, Vita sancti Germani 30 (MGH SRM 7.1: 390): “the light of day is returned to the prison, the condemned go forth from darkness into light” [dies in carcerem reducitur, damnati de tenebris in lucem procedunt].
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17 Fortunatus, Vita sancti Albini 16 (MGH AA 4.2: 31): “Hinc egressi quasi de sepulchro viventes, in basilica sancti Maurilii domino Albino gratias referentes, se ad vestigia eius prostraverunt, eo quod suspectos de funere redire fecerat ad salutem.” 18 Fortunatus, Vita sancti Germani 66 (MGH SRM 7.1: 412): “Et quia beato viro nullum obstitit metallum, cum ligna, saxa, ferramenta ante ipsum soluta sunt, accidit una dierum Parisius orationem cum daret ad ostium carceris, sequenti nocte trusis apparet lumen in carcere. Visus est eis, ut admoneret, quod foderent, ut foris procederent. Qui dicentes ad invicem domnum Germanum vidisse, et signa singuli referent. Inventa costa de pecude, fodientes amovent lapidem et praedicto amico Dei occurrunt ad ecclesiam matutino tempore, cum rediret ad requiem. Sic multis causa salutis fuit imago pontificis.” I briefly discuss such escapes in Kitchen (1998: 39-40). 19 Cyprian of Toulon et al., Vita sancti Caesarii espiscopi Arelatiensis 1.24 (PL 67, 1013): “Non credo contrarium esse Deo de ministerio suo redemptionem dari, qui seipsum pro hominis redemptione tradit.” 20 See in general Graus’s 1961 article, for it contains the most extensive references to the wide range of sources reporting miraculous freeings from late antiquity to the Carolingian era. 21 Gregory, De virtutibus sancti Martini 2.5 (MGH SRM 1.2: 611). I have followed the variant mei servicii for meis servitiis. I prefer here to keep to a literal rendition so as to bring out more explicitly the key issues that I am addressing. 22 Gregory, De virtutibus sancti Martini 2.13 (MGH SRM 1.2: 613), with Corbett (1981: 10). 23 Gregory, De virtutibus sancti Martini 2.5 (MGH SRM 1.2: 611): “O admirabilem beati viri redemptionem! Quis umquam de mille talentis sic redimet sicut praesens nostrorum criminum suffragator? Qui uno ictu unoque momento sine numismate auri et corpus a debilitate et conditionem absolvit ab onere.” 24 For example, Fortunatus, Vita Sancti Paterni 15 (MGH AA 4.2: 36), in which a person is blinded for not giving money promised to the poor; according to Van Dam (1993: 85), “illnesses were closely linked with guilt for sins.” 25 On this as in all other matters hagiographic, I am enormously indebted to my former teacher, John Corbett; see especially Corbett (1981). 26 Gregory, De virtutibus sancti Martini 4.16 (MGH SRM 1.2: 654); Van Dam (1994: 113-14) comments: “Each ritual of healing was a reenactment of the original Easter, and the Easter festivals that Gregory and his congregation celebrated often included both healings and releases from captivity. Gregory had debated with his priest about the possibility of resurrection probably during the Lenten season of 590. An appropriate miracle then occurred during the celebration of precisely that Easter. As a prisoner was being transported across the Loire, he was released by the power of Saint Martin.” 27 On the enormous material growth and wealth of the Merovingian church, see Lesne (1910: 227-51). 28 Gregory of Tours, Liber vitae patrum 5, pref. (MGH SRM 1.2: 677): “Quanta omnipotens Deus suo dicatis nomine indulgeat, quantaque eisdem pro fideli servitio benignitatis ope conpenset, magna quidem se pollicetur redditurum in caelo, sed quae accepturi sunt plerumque hoc declarat in saeculo. Nam saepius
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33 34
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de servis liberos, de liberis efficit gloriosos iuxta illud psalmographi dictum: Suscitans a terra inopem et de stercore erigens pauperem, ut collocet eum cum principibus populi sui. De hoc et Anna, uxor Helcanae, ait: Saturati prius pro pane se locaverunt, et familici saturati sunt. Ex hoc et ipsa Redemptoris nostri genetrix virgo Maria dicebat: Deposuit potentes de sede et exaltavit humiles. Sic et ipse Dominus in euangelio ait: Erunt primi novissimi et novissimi primi. Inlicet ergo amore suo divina misericordia corda inopum, ut de parvis magnos statuat ac de infimis Unigeniti sui faciat coheredes. Praefecit enim de hac mundana aegestate in caelo, quo scandere non potuit terrenum imperium; ut accedat illuc rusticus, quo accedere non meruit purpuratus.” Gregory of Tours, Liber vitae patrum 5, pref. (MGH SRM 1.2: 677): “Sic nunc de beato Portiano abbate, quem non modo de onere mundani servitii eruit, verum etiam magnis virtutibus sublimavit atque post mundum et praessuras saeculi in requie aeterna constituit; locavitque eum inter angelorum choros, de quibus exclusus est dominus ille terrenus.” Gregory, Liber vitae patrum 5.2 (MGH SRM 1.2: 678): “Tunc abba, vocatum beatum, ait: ‘Inpone, quaeso, manus tuas super oculos eius.’ Cumque ille refutaret, tandem abbatis devictus precibus, super oculos domini sui signum beatae crucis inposuit, statimque, disrupta caligine, sedato dolore, praestinae redditus est sanitati.” I have slightly modified the translation of James 1985: 49; for comments on the episode, especially the fact that the master is a “barbarian” (barbari), see Graus 1965: 138. Gregory, De virtutibus sancti Martini 1.23 (MGH SRM 1.2: 600): “Hoc tantum erat in spatiis, ut non solveretur a vinculo, quoadusque nomen illud sacratissimum invocasset; invocato autem, omnia solvebantur. Tunc rex altioris ingenii videns virtutem sancti Martini ibidem operari, et absolvit eum ab onere vinculi et pristinae restituit libertati.…Utinam se mihi in tali virtute dignaretur manifestare beatus confessor, ut sic absolveret meorum ligamenta peccaminum, sicut super eum contrivit vasta pondera catenarum!” (trans. Van Dam 1994: 219) Sulpicius Severus, Vita Martini 24.4 (ed. Halm 1866): “‘non se,’ inquit, ‘Iesus Dominus purpuratum nec diademate renidentem uenturum esse praedixit. Ego, Christum, nisi in eo habitu formaque qua passus est, nisi crucis stigmata praeferentem uenisse non credam.’” Janes (1998: 159): “Yet the two systems coexisted. Renunciation would have lost its social power if everyone had been doing it.” See, in general, Moyd (1961); Thompson (1972); Smith (1972). I suspect that the same identification with the redemptive sacrifice underlies Latin American liberation theologies, as suggested by the prominent passion scene on the cover of Gustavo Gutiérrez’s A Theology of Liberation (1988). In a more extensive study I plan to produce a fuller picture, which will emerge after considering this issue in light of what can be gleaned from the period’s biblical commentaries, liturgical texts, epigraphical evidence, ecclesiastical legislation, iconography, and, of course, abundant saints’ lives, along with the comparable documentation showing Christianity’s role in modern slave societies. See now also the work of McCormick (2001; 2003), which came to my attention after this article was completed.
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R EFERENCES Abou-El-Haj, Barbara 1997 The Medieval Cult of Saints: Formations and Transformations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Allard, Paul 1974 Les esclaves chrétiens depuis les premiers temps de l’Église jusque à la fin de la domination romaine en Occidant. Hildesheim: Georg Olms. Bestul, Thomas H. 1996 Texts of the Passion: Latin Devotional Literature and Medieval Society. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Bloch, Marc 1970 Feudal Society, vol. 1, The Growth of Ties of Dependence. Trans. L. A. Manyon. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1975 Slavery and Serfdom in the Middle Ages. Trans. William R. Beer. Berkeley: University of California Press. Bonnassie, Pierre 1991 From Slavery to Feudalism in South-Western Europe. Trans. Jean Birrell. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Brown, Peter 1981 The Cult of the Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity. The Haskell Lectures on the History of Religion, NS 2. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Burton-Christie, Douglass 1993 The Word in the Desert: Scripture and the Quest for Holiness in Early Christian Monasticism. New York: Oxford University Press. Bynum, Caroline Walker 1987 Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women. Berkeley: University of California Press. 1995 The Resurrection of the Body in Western Christendom, 200–1336. New York: Columbia University Press. Byron, John 2003 Slavery Metaphors in Early Judaism and Pauline Christianity: A TraditioHistorical and Exegetical Examination. Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament, 2.162. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck. Carlyle, A. J. 1903 A History of Medieval Political Theory in the West, vol. 1, The Second Century to the Ninth. New York/Edinburgh and London: G. P. Putnam’s Sons; William Blackwell and Sons. Cohn, Norman 1970 The Pursuit of the Millennium: Revolutionary Millenarians and Mystical Anarchists of the Middle Ages. Rev. and expanded edition. New York: Oxford University Press. Collins, Richard 1981 “Observations on the Form, Language and Public of the Prose Biographies of Venantius Fortunatus and the Hagiography of Merovingian Gaul.” In H. B. Clarke and Mary Brennan (eds.), Columbanus and Merovingian Monasticism, 105–31. Oxford: BAR.
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Combes, I. A. H. 1998 The Metaphor of Slavery in the Writings of the Early Church: From the New Testament to the Beginning of the Fifth Century. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. Corbett, John H. 1981 “The Saint as Patron in the Work of Gregory of Tours.” Journal of Medieval History 7: 1–14. Davis, David B. 1966 The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Donini, Ambrogio 1951 “The Myth of Salvation in Ancient Slave Society.” Science and Society 15: 57–60. Elliot, Alison Goddard 1987 Roads to Paradise: Reading the Lives of the Early Saints. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England. Figgis, J. N. 1921 The Political Aspects of St. Augustine’s City of God. London: Longmans. Fitzgerald, William 2000 Slavery and the Roman Literary Imagination: Roman Literature and Its Contexts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Flint, Valerie I. J. 1991 The Rise of Magic in Early Medieval Europe. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Frye, Northrop 1982 The Great Code: The Bible and Literature. New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich. Glancy, Jennifer 2002 Slavery in Early Christianity. New York: Oxford University Press. Goffart, Walter 1988 The Narrators of Barbarian History (A.D. 550–800): Jordanes, Gregory of Tours, Bede and Paul the Deacon. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Goguel, Maurice 1964 The Primitive Church. Trans. H. C. Snape. London: Allen & Unwin. Graus, František 1961 “Die Gewalt bei den Anfängen des Feudalismus und die ‘Gefangenenbefreiung’ der merowingischen Hagiographie.” Jahrbuch für Wirtschaftsgeschichte 1: 61–156. 1965 Volk, Herrscher und Heiliger im Reich der Merowinger: Studien zur Hagiographie der Merowingerzeit. Prague: Nakladatelství Ceskoslovenské Akádemie. 1974 “Socialgeschichtliche Aspekte der Hagiographie der Merowinger- und Karolingerzeit: Die Viten der Heiligen des südalemannischenen Raumes und die sogenannten Adelsheiligen.” In Arno Borst (ed.), Mönchtum, Episcopat und Adel zur Gründungszeit des Klosters Reichenau, 131–76. Sigmaringen: J. Thorbecke.
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Gutiérrez, Gustavo 1988 A Theology of Liberation: History, Politics and Salvation. Revised ed. with a new introduction. New York: Orbis. Heers, Jacques 1981 Esclaves et domestiques au Moyen Age dans le monde méditerranéen. Paris: Arthème Fayard. Heffernan, Thomas 1988 Sacred Biography: Saints and Their Biographers in the Middle Ages. New York: Oxford University Press. Herrin, Judith 1987 The Formation of Christendom. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Heinzelmann, Martin 1976 Bischofsherrschaft in Gallien. Zur Kontinuität römischer Führungsschichten vom 4. bis zum 7. Jahrhundert: Soziale, prosopographische und bildungsgeschichtliche Aspekte. Zurich: Artemis. James, Edward 1985 Gregory of Tours: Life of the Fathers. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. Janes, Dominic 1998 God and Gold in Late Antiquity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Karras, Ruth Mazo 1988 Slavery and Society in Medieval Scandinavia. New Haven: Yale University Press. Kitchen, John 1998 Saints’ Lives and the Rhetoric of Gender: Male and Female in Merovingian Hagiography. New York: Oxford University Press. Klingshirn, William 1985 “Charity and Power: Caesarius of Arles and the Ransoming of Captives in Sub-Roman Gaul.” Journal of Roman Studies 75: 183–203. 1994 Caesarius of Arles: The Making of a Christian Community in Late Antique Gaul. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lesne, Émile 1910 Histoire de la propriété ecclésiastique en France, vol. 1, Epoques romaine et merovingienne. Lille/Paris: R. Giard/H. Champion. McCormick, Michael 2001 Origins of the European Economy: Communications and Commerce, A.D. 300–900. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2002 “New Light on the ‘Dark Ages’: How the Slave Trade Fueled the Carolingian Economy.” Past and Present 177: 17–54. MacGonagle, Sara Hansell 1936 “The Poor in Gregory of Tours: A Study of the Attitude of Merovingian Society Towards the Poor, as Reflected in the Literature of the Time.” PhD Dissertation, Columbia University. Martin, Dale B. 1990 Slavery as Salvation: The Metaphor of Slavery in Pauline Christianity. New Haven: Yale University Press.
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Moyd, Olin P. 1961 Redemption in Black Theology. Valley Forge, PA: Judson. Nock, A. D. 1957 Early Gentile Christianity and Its Hellenistic Background. New York: Harper Torchbooks. Patterson, Orlando 1982 Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Peters, Edward M. 1995 “Prison before the Prison: The Ancient and Medieval Worlds.” In Norval Morris and David J. Rothman (eds.), The Oxford History of the Prison: The Practice of Punishment in Western Society, 3–47. New York: Oxford University Press. Prinz, Friedrich 1967 “Heiligenkult und Adelsherrschaft im Spiegel merowingischer Hagiographie.” Historische Zeitschrift 204: 529–44. 1973 “Gesellschaftgeschichtliche Aspekte frühmittelalterlicher Hagiographie.” Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik 3: 17–37. 1975 “Aristocracy and Christianity in Merovingian Gaul.” In Karl Bosl (ed.), Gesellschaft–Kultur–Literatur: Rezeption und Originalität im Wachsen einer europäischen Literatur und Geistigkeit, 153–65. Monographien zur Geschichte des Mittelalter, 11. Stuttgart: Anton Hiersemann. Russell, James C. 1994 The Germanization of Early Medieval Christianity: A Sociohistorical Approach to Religious Transformation. New York: Oxford University Press. Sellin, J. Thorsten 1976 Slavery and the Penal System. New York: Elsevier. Smith, H. Sheldon 1972 In His Image, But…: Racism in Southern Religion, 1780–1910. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Thompson, Edgar T. 1972 “God and the Southern Plantation System.” In Samuel S. Hill (ed.), Religion and the Solid South. Nashville: Abingdon. Troeltsch, Ernst 1931 The Social Teachings of the Christian Churches. 2 vols. Trans. Olive Wyon. London: Allen & Unwin. Van Dam, Raymond 1994 Saints and Their Miracles in Late Antique Gaul. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Van Uytfanghe, Marc 1977 “Les avatars contemporains de l’‘hagiologie’: A propos d’un ouvrage récent sur saint Séverin du Norique.” Francia 5: 639–71. 1987 Stylisation biblique et condition humaine dans l’hagiographie mérovingienne 600–750. Verhandelingen van de Koninklijke Academie voor Wetenschappen, Letteren en Schone Kunsten van België, 120. Brussels: Koninklijke Academie voor Wetenschappen.
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Verlinden, Charles 1955 L’esclavage dans l’Europe médiévale, vol. 1, Péninsule ibérique-France. Bruges: De Temple. Ward, Benedicta 1982 Miracles and the Medieval Mind: Theory, Record and Event, 1000–1215. London: Scolar. Wergeland, A. M. 1916 Slavery in Germanic Society During the Middle Ages. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Williams, David J. 1999 Metaphors: Their Context and Character. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson. Wyschogrod, Edith 1990 Saints and Postmodernism: Revisioning Moral Philosophy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
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7 Philosophical Counsel versus Customary Lament in Fourth-Century Christian Responses to Death1
T
T HE R ITUAL OF L AMENT AND THE R HETORIC OF C ONSOLATION
he lament for the dead was an integral part of death rituals in Graeco-Roman antiquity from archaic times to the Byzantine era and beyond (Alexiou 1974: 4–51). It was conducted chiefly by women, although men would be present and might participate. A mourner—a kinswoman or a hired singer—would lead the group in a dialogue with the deceased. This dialogue was antiphonal in structure: the surrounding mourners would punctuate the song of the singer with cries and sobs of their own. The lament would be accompanied by dramatic gestures: tearing one’s hair, scratching one’s face and beating one’s breast. These actions were especially prominent during the wake, but might also accompany the funeral procession and the burial. They could generate intense emotions that verged on the ecstatic. From time to time authorities tried to restrain what they regarded as excesses in funerals, including the conduct of women mourners (Garland 1989). Christian authorities were no exception. Admonitions against customary laments begin to emerge in Christian treatises in the third century, and become a regular motif of Christian letters and sermons in the fourth century (Rush 1941: 174–86; Alexiou 1974: 27–31). Viewing customary laments through the lens of the tradition of philosophical consolation, highly educated bishops such as Basil of Caesarea and John Chrysostom saw lament as an expression of “womanly” weakness, over against which they set “manly” fortitude prized by philosophy.2 161
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One example from Basil of Caesarea will suffice. In a sermon justifying the counsel of the apostle Paul to rejoice always (1 Thess 5:16), Basil argues that while it is permissible for Christians to weep quietly and decorously at funerals, they may not roar and wail, tear their clothes and dust themselves with ashes. Such “excesses” betray weakness of character and lack of faith in God. While this behaviour may be acceptable among those who are ignorant of “heavenly things,” those who have been purified by divine instruction will, through the fortification of right reason, repel such passions (Basil, Homily on Giving Thanks 6, PG 31: 229–32).3 Such philosophical fortitude did not come easily. It required a steady exercise of reason and virtue (see Hadot 1995), a practice which was articulated in a variety of writings, quintessentially in letters of condolence. The typical form of these letters consisted of “a proem, offering some explanation of how the misfortune came to the author’s notice, and how [the author] has been affected by the news; a section of the letter constituted by eulogistic remarks and periodic lamentations; a series of consolatory arguments, often bolstered by tales of the conduct of celebrated victims of misfortune, and concluding prayerful petitions or bits of advice to the person addressed about how his or her travail might best be borne” (Gregg 1975: 58). This form was in fact derived from the eulogy pronounced after the burial (epitaphios logos), which placed a heroic construction on death in order to counter the tide of lament (Alexiou 1974: 31; Seremetakis 1991: 169–71; Holst-Warhaft 1992: 114–26). In effect, among the élite the rhetoric of consolation displaced—or aimed to displace—the ritual of lament as an expression of identity and community in the face of death.4 As two practices, two ways of responding to death, philosophical consolation and customary lament invite comparison. However, attempts to do so run into problems common to the study of antiquity: limited and skewed sources. The literate élite were both advocates of the philosophical tradition of consolation (they were the writers of most of the extant letters of condolence) and critics of public displays of mourning. Consequently, descriptions of customary lament are few in number and limited in detail; they are usually reported from the perspective of a critic; and they are shaped by philosophical notions of grief and consolation. However, the difficulties inherent in the evidence are not insurmountable, given the resources of multidisciplinary inquiry. In this chapter I resort to two strategies. First, to supplement the fragmentary information we have about practices in antiquity, I turn to twentieth-century
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ethnographic studies of customary lament in rural Greece (CaraveliChaves 1980; Danforth 1982; Caraveli 1986; Holst-Warhaft 1992: 40–97; Seremetakis 1990; 1991). Although one must be cautious about inferring past practices from present ones, the historical evidence suggests considerable continuity between the two in the Mediterranean (Lawson 1964: 345–49; Alexiou 1974: 108–28, esp. 122–28; Holst-Warhaft 1992: 97). Second, to establish an analytical framework independent of the tradition that dominates the literary evidence in antiquity (see Smith 1994), I turn to Roy Rappaport’s theory of ritual as expounded in Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity (1999).5 A major recent contribution to the theory of ritual, this book treats aspects of social practice that are relevant to the subject of this chapter. These include the process of adaptation or change in social behaviour, the role of the unchanging and the changing in ritual, and the difference between rhetoric and ritual as vehicles for symbolic expression. In comparing philosophical consolation and customary lament, I focus on letters of condolence and accounts of laments by a group of fourth-century Greek Christian writers and bishops who were marked both by their debt to the philosophical tradition of consolation and by their opposition to what they regarded as the excesses of customary lament: the so-called Cappadocians—Basil of Caesarea, his brother Gregory of Nyssa, and their friend Gregory of Nazianzus—and John Chrysostom.
R APPAPORT ’ S T HEORY
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R ITUAL
In Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity, Roy Rappaport analyzes the contribution of ritual to the adaptive processes of human development. For him, adaptation “designates the processes through which living systems of all sorts…maintain themselves in the face of perturbations continuously threatening them with disruption, death or extinction” (1999: 6; all references in the remainder of this section are to this book). Human systems are distinguished by their ability to construct symbolically a culture of values, norms, rules and so on, largely as a result of the imaginative and generative capabilities of language (3–11). For the same reason, however, human systems are vulnerable to uncertainty and deception, since it is always possible to imagine a different culture than the one that exists. In Rappaport’s words: Although the problem of certainty may have become increasingly serious, problematic and even desperate as humanity has evolved socially and culturally, I take it to be intrinsic to the human condition,
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that is, the condition of a species that lives, and can only live, by meanings and understandings it itself must construct in a world devoid of intrinsic meaning but subject to causal laws, not all of which are known. It is, further, a world in which the lie is ubiquitous, and in which the “reality” or “truth” of key elements, like gods and values and social orders, not only have to be invented but maintained in the face of increasing threats, posed by ever-burgeoning possibilities, to falsify them. (21; Rappaport’s emphasis)
According to Rappaport, ritual has been instrumental in creating the degree of symbolic certainty and collective consent that is essential for human development. More precisely, the structure of ritual has served to invest the conventions of a given society with the degree of truth required for the society to act on the basis of those conventions, while at the same time providing openings for variation sufficient for members of the society to identify with the ritual, consent to its conventions and act upon them (3). The greater part of Rappaport’s book (chapters 2–12) is given to a detailed analysis of ritual. I offer only a partial summary here, and refer to other aspects of Rappaport’s analysis when required later in the chapter. Rappaport defines ritual as “the performance of more or less invariant sequences of formal acts and utterances not entirely encoded by the performers” (24). He uses the term “canonical” to refer to invariant sequences that are already encoded for the performers, and the term “self-referential” to refer to variable sequences that the performers may modulate to convey information about themselves and to themselves. These two dimensions of ritual are mutually dependent; it is the interaction between them that gives ritual its power. In the performance of a ritual, it is the invariant sequences, accepted as given, that invest the substance of the ritual, including the substance of any variable sequences, with force and certainty. For their part, the variable sequences mediate the meaning of the ritual for particular performers in a specific time and place (52–58). By performing a ritual, the participants indicate their acceptance of whatever the ritual represents (119). This acceptance does not necessarily entail belief or obedience,6 but does create an obligation to abide by the terms of the ritual, regardless of one’s private thoughts, feelings, or disposition (118–24). Ritual, in Rappaport’s words, is “the basic social act” (138); participation in and of itself establishes the participants’ acceptance of the conventions expressed in the ritual, even if in fact they do not live in accordance with the conventions. As Rappaport explains:
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The orders of societies, like the order of the universe in general, tend to degenerate into disorder. Their material elements disintegrate or decay into non-functioning fragments if they are not maintained, and their meaningful elements, including conventional understandings and rules, dissolve into error, nonsense, ambiguity, vagueness, hypocrisy and meaninglessness unless continually clarified, corrected and re-established. Far from clarifying and reasserting conventions, the vagaries of practice may tend to erode them. It is therefore necessary to establish at least some conventions in a manner which protects them from dissolution in the variations of day-to-day behavior and the violations in which history abounds. Liturgy does not simply remind people of the orders which usage—behavior and history—violates and dissolves. It establishes and ever again reestablishes those orders. Liturgy preserves the conventions it encodes inviolate in defiance of the vagaries of ordinary practice, thereby providing them with existence independent of, and insulated against, the statistical averages which characterize behavior. That “everyone does it” exonerates no one. For people of the Book adultery would remain a sin even if every married person indulged in it (129–30; Rappaport’s emphasis).
The conventions established by ritual range in a hierarchy from postulates concerning the existence and nature of the divine, axioms concerning the structure of the cosmos, specific rules governing the relations of people within the cosmos, and indices of prevailing conditions in the world (263–68). The postulates at the apex of this hierarchy, which Rappaport calls Ultimate Sacred Postulates, are the least specific and least mutable of the conventions established by ritual; they are typically expressed in the invariant sequences of a ritual, whose very invariance invests these postulates with their inherent truth and intrinsic sacredness. From these postulates, accepted as true and sacred, more specific conventions are derived, which guide social relations in the absence of genetic specification of behaviour. These more specific conventions, which Rappaport calls sacred expressions, include such things as myths, cosmological axioms, rules ordaining ritual performances and constituting taboos, socially transforming factive acts and utterances (such as rites of passage), privileged exegesis, prophecies, auguries, divination and oracles, acts and utterances mobilizing occult efficacy to achieve physical effects, social directives, taxonomies which may define rank, organize thought, and direct action, expressions establishing authorities, and more (320–21). This analysis of the structure of ritual and its role in investing the conventions of society with truth suggests a number of questions for our com-
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parison of philosophical consolation and customary lament. How do these two practices, by modulating a pre-existing tradition, achieve their respective responses to death? What is different and what is similar in the responses they achieve, as well as in the resources upon which they draw to achieve those responses? What light might answers to these questions shed on the tension expressed by the élite between philosophical consolation and customary lament as responses to death?
P HILOSOPHICAL C ONSOLATION Discourse between those of like minds is a consolation for every grief. (Basil of Caesarea, Letter 184.6–8; Courtonne 1961: 118)
The Christian tradition of philosophical consolation was hugely indebted to its classical counterpart. It is appropriate, therefore, to begin with what, according to Rappaport, is “the fundamental question to ask about any evolutionary change… ‘What does this change maintain unchanged?’” (7; Rappaport’s emphasis). Several generations of scholars have in fact explored the relationship of Christian consolation to classical consolation, considering both the form and the content of the genre. For the most part, these studies have been driven more by the question of what changed as a result of the writer’s Christian devotion than by the question of what remained unchanged.7 The two questions clearly are related and each presents a worthwhile line of inquiry. But it is the second, the question of what remained unchanged, that exposes the invariant dimension of the philosophical tradition’s attitude toward mourning. Robert Gregg gives this question considered attention in his study of the consolation philosophy of the Cappadocians (1975: 81–123, 219–64). He focusses on the tension, which the Cappadocians inherited from Hellenistic philosophy, between the place given to metriopatheia (controlled passion) in bereavement and the place given to apatheia (absence of passion) in human development. Although the Cappadocians allow for metriopatheia in their consolatory writings, elsewhere they regard apatheia (undisturbed contemplation of God) to be the goal of human development and the end of human salvation. Gregg argues (1975: 240–42) that in their consolatory writings the Cappadocians have all of humankind in view, and not just those who are advanced in the contemplation of God; consequently they admit the experience of grief and counsel its moderation. Even so, the hierarchy of a philosophical over an unreflective approach to adversity, and of reason over grief, persists. The outpourings of grief are subjected to the deliberations of reason, and freedom
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from any passion that would detract from the contemplation of God remains the ultimate goal. This invariant dimension of the tradition is not simply expressed in the substance of consolatory rhetoric. It is also manifested in its structure. This is especially evident in Basil of Caesarea’s letters of condolence, which follow the typical form of the genre (Gregg 1975: 51–79; Mitchell 1968: 300–304). Basil usually moves from sympathetic allowance for grief to arguments encouraging its restraint. This movement hinges on a central rhetorical turn—a turn (or return) to considered reflection in the midst of grief. Letter 300, written to a father whose son had died in the flower of youth,8 affords an elaborate example of this transition: But although such [sorrowful] thoughts moved us at first as a human being, and we poured forth hasty tears, and uttered an unaffected groan from the bottom of our heart, when grief suddenly, like a cloud, enveloped our reason, yet when we came to our senses and with the mind’s eye looked closely into the nature of the human condition, we made apologies to the Lord for the attitude which our soul had recklessly taken towards what had happened, and we admonished ourselves to bear these things temperately, as having by the ancient decree of God been allotted to the life of humankind (Letter 300.15–24, Courtonne 1966: 175; trans. Deferrari 1926–34, 4: 221, revised).9
The turn to considered reflection is then followed by a variety of consolatory exhortations. Of course, there is room for variation within this basic structure. Gregory of Nazianzus is considerably freer with the conventions of the genre than Basil, dwelling in one letter on the present misfortune, in another on the virtues of the deceased, and in a third on the assurances of the faith.10 John Chrysostom’s letters proceed quickly to consolation and exhortation, only briefly acknowledging the sorrow of the occasion.11 Nevertheless, all of these writers commend a process of considered reflection that restrains grief and mitigates loss in the face of death.12 Their letters are examples of what Samellas calls the therapy of the word, a therapy which makes one aware of, and prepares the way for, the therapy of reason (2002: 84–105).13 Although these letters of condolence retain the structure of classical consolatory discourse and its assumptions about the value of metriopatheia and apatheia, it is nevertheless true, as scholars have observed, that their writers inform the discourse with new meaning. When Basil of Caesarea or Gregory of Nazianzus refers to the recipients of their consolations as practitioners of “philosophy,” they understand them to be committed to a specifically Christian approach to the intellectual and
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ethical progress toward the contemplation of God (Malingrey 1961: 207–61; cf. Gregg 1975: 219–58).14 Accordingly, they combine commonplaces of the classical consolatory tradition with arguments derived from Christian tradition (Gregg 1975: 152–214). Thus the injunction to moderate one’s grief is frequently expressed in the words of 1 Thessalonians 4:13, “that you not grieve as others do who have no hope.” Biblical characters, such as Job and David, replace classical ones as exemplars of the sage. Martyrdom becomes the quintessential instance of heroic endurance. Classical consolations—all things are subject to corruption, everyone born of a mortal is mortal, those who die young are spared the inevitable misfortunes of life, the dead have gone to a better place, providence guides everything—are supplemented or superseded by Christian ones. Chief among these is a belief in the resurrection, the hope that the faithful continue to live in the presence of God, where they and those whom they have left will eventually be reunited (cf. Smith 2000: 51–58). There are also assertions, reinforced by Scripture, that God is provident, coupled with injunctions not to rebel against what God ordains, however obscure the divine purpose might be. In short, classical warrants have been transposed into or juxtaposed with Christian ones in the service of Christian “philosophy.” These warrants, I would argue, are analogous to sacred expressions in ritual. They are construed as givens by the rhetoric that articulates them, just as sacred expressions are construed as givens by the ritual that establishes them. Some of the warrants have a greater degree of sacredness than others. The counsel of 1 Thessalonians 4:13, the belief in the resurrection, the assertion that God is provident—these are taken to be inviolable warrants for prescriptions concerning the attitude and behaviour of Christians in bereavement. Other warrants are adjusted to suit the recipient, varying according to status and gender.15 But all of the warrants, no matter their degree of inviolability, are presented rhetorically in a way that assumes acceptance. Consolatory discourse is a “discourse between those of like minds” (Basil, Letter 184, Courtonne 1961: 118). That phrase, used by Basil to encourage Eustathius, bishop of Himmeria, to write to him following the death of Eustathius’s father, epitomizes the shared ethos which the discourse assumes and, by assuming, establishes. In the discourse, the interlocutors are united with one another, as well as distinguished from the rest of society, by their common adherence to a (Christian) philosophical way of life.16 This common adherence is both the grounds for and the outcome of the hortatory mode of the discourse, which places the interlocutors—both writer and audience—under obligation to accept the
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conventions of the discourse. As the passage from Basil’s Letter 300 attests (cited above at note 9), the writer is himself practising the philosophical way of life while recommending it to his audience. However, this community “of like minds” is a discursive construct: it is generated by the conventions of discourse. As such, it is a community threatened by uncertainty or contradiction, by other ways of interpreting death and responding to it (including, as we shall see, customary lament). This is manifest in the consolatory exhortations themselves, which subsume alternative interpretations and responses under those they commend. When Basil urges Nectarius, for instance, “not to fall under the weight of your grief, nor yet to lose your courage, having assurance that even if the reasons for God’s ordinances elude us, yet surely that which is ordained by Him who is wise and who loves us must be accepted, even if it is painful” (Letter 5.2.14–19, Courtonne 1957: 17–18; trans. Deferrari 1926–34: 1.37), his rhetoric acknowledges that it is possible that one might lose courage and doubt providence. There are other, more direct indications that the philosophically minded (Christian or not) did not invariably achieve the ideal of restrained grief. Libanius, for example, scolds Aristaenetus for his excessive mourning and continued despondency, which are out of keeping with his character and upbringing, and inappropriate for a devotee of Plato (Letter 414, Foerster 1963: 409; Letter 430.1, Foerster 1963: 418; cf. Letter 405.1–3, Foerster 1963: 398–99). Gregory of Nazianzus, less constrained by epistolary convention than Basil, occasionally bursts out in despair (Letter 70, Gallay 1964: 103). Persons who in one literary context are cast as exemplars of philosophical reflection are in another context the beneficiaries of philosophical counsel: while Gregory of Nazianzus casts Gregory of Nyssa as a model of philosophy (Letter 76.2 and 4, Gallay 1964: 94), Gregory of Nyssa himself recounts how he was in tears at the memory of Basil and in need of the counsel of Macrina (Life of Saint Macrina 17.17–20, Maraval 1971: 198; cf. note 14 above). Such disclosures indicate that the philosophical attitude toward death needed cultivation and support. They attest to the reality that philosophical consolation was indeed, in Pierre Hadot’s phrase (1995), a “spiritual exercise.” In other words, consolatory discourse achieves effects that are similar though not equivalent to the effects of ritual. Consolatory discourse assumes acceptance by its interlocutors, just as ritual assumes acceptance by its participants (cf. Rappaport 1999: 119). It places obligations on its interlocutors, as does ritual on its participants (cf. Rappaport 1999: 113–19). It establishes a form of community between writer and
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recipient, analogous to the community ritual establishes between participants (cf. Rappaport 1999: 218–20, 378–81). Its utterances are addressed as much (if not more so) to the writer as to the recipient; likewise, participants in a ritual are addressing themselves as much as (if not more so than) others (cf. Rappaport 1999: 51). And, finally, its utterances are subject to uncertainty and require repeated confirmation, as are the conventions established by ritual. How, then, do the effects of ritual, and the resources used to achieve those effects, differ from those of discourse? Or, to put the question more specifically in terms of the subject of this chapter, how do the effects of customary lament (as ritual), and the resources used to achieve those effects, differ from those of philosophical consolation (as discourse)?
C USTOMARY L AMENT I puff myself up because I have no possibility of coming to you to lament and weep with you. Perhaps then I would have been relieved. (P. Rainer Cent. 70, Chapa 1998: 88)
With customary lament, as with philosophical consolation, there was a tradition that preceded the practice in late antiquity. Our knowledge of customary lament in the archaic and classical periods is derived from depictions of funerals in Greek art and pottery and literary forms of lament in Greek poetry and drama (Rush 1941: 163–66; Alexiou 1974; Vermeule 1979: 11–23; Shapiro 1991). In later periods we are forced to rely on the remarks of philosophers, moralists, and preachers (Rush 1941: 176–84; Alexiou 1974: 24–35). Over all this time—more than a millennium—there were changes to the practice. Scholars have noted, for instance, a shift from private to public funerals for war dead in classical Athens, a shift which circumscribed the role of women in lamenting the dead (Shapiro 1991: 644–46). As well, distinctions between different forms of lament (thrênos, goos, and kommos) diminished and the roles of various categories of mourners (kin, relations by marriage, non-kin, and hired mourners) changed (Alexiou 1974: 10–14, 102–103). Nevertheless, some aspects of the lament persisted over time. We may begin our consideration of customary lament in late antiquity, therefore, with the same question that opened our consideration of philosophical consolation: What remained unchanged in all the change? Several features of customary lament appear to have persisted throughout antiquity and beyond:
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First, gender. Women were central to the performance of laments. While men appear to have participated more in antiquity than in some twentieth-century Greek communities,17 women were nevertheless the chief performers of laments, a role which elicited specific censure from civic and ecclesiastical authorities (cf. Samellas 2002: 79–81). Second, locus. The lament began immediately after death and continued during the wake around the laid-out body. The gathering of mourners around the body was the primary locus of lament. Wailing and lamentation also accompanied the funeral procession and the burial, despite sporadic efforts by authorities to curtail public display and disruption. Third, structure. This, of course, varied from lament to lament. But two structural features appear to have been relatively constant: antiphony and dialogue (Alexiou 1974: 131–50). Ancient laments, as far as we can determine from the literary evidence, were often a dialogue between the mourner and the dead, in which the singer addressed, reproached, interrogated, or petitioned the dead. And the performance was antiphonal; those in attendance responded to the song of the lead mourner or mourners with interjected sighs, cries, or refrains. Fourth, gestures. These are attested throughout antiquity, from the depictions of funerals in classical Greek art to the denunciations of late antique bishops: women (and sometimes men) striking their heads, tearing out their hair, beating their breasts, scratching their cheeks, and rolling in the dust. Finally, themes. Although each lament would be specific to the individual being mourned, it usually played on several standard themes (Alexiou 1974: 165–84). It would contrast the past, when the deceased was alive, with the present, and the state of the mourner, who has been left behind, with the state of the deceased. The prevailing sense was one of absence and loss, as John Chrysostom attests in his synopsis of the substance of lament: “‘I shall never see you again, I shall never regain you’” (Homilies on the Gospel of John 62.4, PG 59: 347). This could lead, not to resignation and acceptance, but to reproaches and curses (cf. Samellas 2002: 81–82). These enduring features of customary lament were what Rappaport would call the conventions of the ritual. Even though the information we have about laments in late antiquity is limited, we can nevertheless observe how these features distinguished customary lament as ritual from philosophical consolation as discourse. Viewed in terms of Rappaport’s analysis of ritual, laments were participatory events that employed
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the body of the deceased and the bodies of the mourners to mediate relations between the deceased, the mourners, and the wider community through means that exceeded the significatory capacity of discourse. In what follows I enlarge upon this summary statement with reference to descriptions of laments by Gregory of Nyssa and John Chrysostom, drawing in addition on the insights of ethnographic studies of modern Greek laments. Laments were participatory events…According to Rappaport, participation is what distinguishes ritual performances from other kinds of performances (1999: 37–46). And customary laments, with their antiphony between lead singer and surrounding mourners, were inherently participatory. One of the chief contributions of Nadia Seremetakis’s study of modern laments in the Maniat region in the southern Peleponnese has been to elucidate the role of antiphony in customary laments. Antiphony is not only a structure of participation; it is also a means of affirmation. The cries and sighs of the gathered mourners, far from being peripheral to the lament, augment its affective and juridical power by affirming the truth of the lead mourner’s song (Seremetakis 1991: 99–125). Through such participatory actions, the mourners communicate to themselves and to others in attendance the significance of the death. This is vividly displayed in Gregory of Nyssa’s account of the death of his sister Macrina.18 Gregory describes how, immediately after he closed the eyes of Macrina, “a piercing, unrestrained cry broke out all at once” among the “virgins” of the community (Life of Saint Macrina 26.1–3 and 9–12, Maraval 1971: 228, 230).19 Gregory, overwhelmed by the torrent of grief, gives himself over to lamentation, adding that the impetus for the grief of the women seemed—erroneously20—somehow just and reasonable (26.12–17, Maraval 1971: 230). Despite the evaluative and literary character of Gregory’s rendering of the lament (cf. Maraval 1971: 31), it is apparent that the lament was primarily an expression of loss (26.23–29, Maraval 1971: 230–32). Gregory notes that the grief of the girls adopted by Macrina during the famine of 368–69 was especially intense (26.29–34, Maraval 1971: 232).21 Then, echoing the central rhetorical turn of consolatory writing (discussed above), Gregory recovers himself by focussing his gaze on Macrina (27.1–3, Maraval 1971: 232). Appealing to Macrina’s ordinance that weeping should occur only during prayer, he shouts over the noise, telling the virgins to exchange the wailing of lament for the accord of psalmody (27.1–11, Maraval 1971: 232).22 Gregory is only partly successful. As Macrina’s
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body is prepared, psalmody mixed with wailing resounds about the place (33.1–3, Maraval 1971: 246–48). The noise draws in people from the surrounding countryside, who disrupt the psalmody of the community with their wailing (33.4–10, Maraval 1971: 248). Despite his consternation, Gregory recognizes that such participation is integral to the funeral (33.10–13, Maraval 1971: 248), so he does not silence the crowd, but instead restores antiphonal psalmody by placing the women among the virgins of the community and the men among the monks (33.13–19, Maraval 1971: 248). …that employed the body of the deceased and the bodies of the mourners…As a result of the seminal studies of Arnold van Gennep (1960) and Robert Hertz (1960), it is now widely recognized that death is not a momentary event but an extended process. Both deceased and mourners acquire a liminal status between the living and the dead for a period that extends between an initial stage of separation and a final stage of reincorporation (cf. Danforth 1982: 35–69). Death rituals, including laments, give this status reality. To this end, material display and physical acts are indispensable, for, as Rappaport argues (1999: 141–47), material display is necessary to substantiate the immaterial, and physical acts serve to define the performers of ritual to themselves and to others. In lament, the mourners enact their liminal status, as well as that of the deceased, by their relation to the body of the deceased and by the actions of their own bodies. The role of the body—both that of the deceased and those of the mourners—in “substantiating” the liminal stage of death is evident in Gregory’s account of the wake for Macrina. The psalmody and wailing of the community creates, in effect, an acoustic space that centres on Macrina. Within that space, as we have seen, Gregory appeals to the presence of Macrina to control the lament of the mourners (Life of Saint Macrina 27.4–11, Maraval 1971: 232). Then, in a narrative framed by their psalmody and wailing (27 and 33), Gregory dwells at length on the preparation of Macrina’s body (28–32). Through a series of heroic and hagiographic devices, he demarcates Macrina’s status as well as the status of those who prepare her body. Gregory himself performs the required tasks, as Macrina herself directed (29.28–29, Maraval 1971: 238). He is attended by two women of higher social standing within the community, Vetiana, the daughter of a senator, and Lampadion, a deaconness in charge of the virgins (28.1–10 and 29.1–4, Maraval 1971: 234 and 236). Since Macrina’s wardrobe is quite modest, Gregory clothes Macrina in a garment of fine linen that he had reserved for his own burial
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(29.12–23, Maraval 1971: 236–38), so that she appears “dressed as a bride” (32.1–4, Maraval 1971: 246).23 Gregory takes pains to justify this manifest departure from the monastic habit (29.23–29, Maraval 1971: 238), and later Lampadion suggests that they hide it from the virgins of the community by covering Macrina with her mother’s sombre-coloured coat (32.1–7, Maraval 1971: 246).24 Between them, Gregory and Lampadion divide two amulets that were “always on [Macrina’s] heart,” an iron cross and an iron ring engraved with a cross and containing what is believed to be a piece of the original cross of Christ (30.1–21, Maraval 1971: 238–42).25 Lampadion calls Gregory’s attention to a scar that is the legacy of a miracle, the site of a memory that defines the identity of the saint (31, Maraval 1971: 242–46).26 And, finally, Macrina’s body glows despite being covered by her mother’s coat (32.8–12, Maraval 1971: 246). The light is a sign, anticipated in a premonition received by Gregory in a dream (15.12–22, Maraval 1971: 192), that Macrina is the equivalent of a martyr (Maraval 1997: 137–38). In this narrative those closest to the body of Macrina mediate the memory and the significance of the saint. And Gregory is the one who shapes that narrative just as he is the one who regulates, or attempts to regulate, the lament of the mourners. We have already noted that he was only partly successful in the later role. From John Chrysostom we hear further of the difficulty that the church had in displacing customary forms of lament with the ecclesiastical practice of singing psalms. John is affronted that the presbyter and singers of the church should be greeted with the sound and action of lament when they arrive at the house of the deceased (Homilies on Hebrews 4.7, PG 63: 44). According to John such conduct—wailing, tearing one’s hair, baring one’s arms, beating one’s breast, scratching one’s face—not only misrepresents the meaning of death but also transgresses the norms of public behaviour (Homilies on the Gospel of John 62.4, PG 59: 346–47). He denounces both the women who are hired as mourners and the men who hire them (Homilies on the Gospel of Matthew 31.4, PG 57: 374; Homilies on the Gospel of John 62.4, PG 59: 346–47; Homilies on the Letter to the Philippians 3.24, PG 62: 203; Homilies on Hebrews 4.8, PG 63: 44). But in so doing he inadvertently attests to the acoustic and gestural alteration of space brought about through the bodies of the women in lament. Such alteration of space—and altercation over space—has persisted to this day. Seremetakis observes how proximity to the body among the Maniat in fact creates a liminal space for women mourners and gives them a voice otherwise denied them in village society. At the centre of the
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space is the lead mourner who caresses the body as she speaks to the deceased. On the periphery are the men or others who observe the lament. This arrangement reverses the social organization of centre and periphery that normally obtains in village affairs (Seremetakis 1991: 95–98). The reversal persists for the duration of the lament, ending only when the priest arrives to begin the funeral liturgy. The priest displaces the women around the body, and the polyphony of lament gives way to the monody of Byzantine chant. But the monody of the liturgy is impermanent as well; it in turn gives way to the polyphony of lament when the priest finishes the liturgy and the coffin is borne to the cemetery (Seremetakis 1991: 161–67). From that point on, Seremetakis remarks, “[t]here is a continuous, almost agonistic interplay between the two ritual domains, each connected with the other by a magnetic repulsion” (1991: 166). …to mediate relations between the deceased, the mourners, and the wider community through means that exceeded the significatory capacity of discourse. At the core of this alteration of space and altercation over space is an ordering of relations. In her studies of modern Greek laments, Anna Caraveli describes how in the performance of laments women mediate relations between women and men in their separate and complementary realms, between the living and the dead, among people through time and across generational lines (Caraveli-Chaves 1980: 143–57; cf. Caraveli 1986: 178). In their lament around the deceased the women establish an extraordinary state of association grounded in their shared “pain” (ponos) as mothers and labourers in a male-dominated society (Caraveli 1986: 171–76; Seremetakis 1991: 112–16). The women achieve this state of association through the gestures and sounds of the lament: the women loosen their head scarves and pull out their hair; the singer modulates her lament with melodic conventions, poetic devices, and stylized gestures; the surrounding women respond with their cries and sighs. All of this is required to achieve the experience of “pain” that is the essence of lament and the basis of association among the women (cf. Danforth 1982: 141–45; Holst-Warhaft 1992: 63–74; Seremetakis 1991: 112–16). The process empowers the singer to articulate a view of the world that is often an expression of protest, voicing grievances about the fate of the deceased, the plight of the mourner, the evils of natural disasters and human violence, and the workings of social institutions, including the church (Caraveli 1986: 180–85). Such “truth-telling” cannot be extricated from the ritual as a whole. As Seremetakis observes with regard to Maniat laments, “[t]he truth claims that arise from the
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ritual…depend on the emotional force of pain and the jural force of antiphonic confirmation” (1991: 120). This analysis of the relations established in modern laments prompts two observations about the relationship in late antiquity between the liturgy endorsed by the church and the lament practised by women mourners. First, the analysis suggests that the scene described by John Chrysostom, where the presbyter and singers of the church are greeted with the sounds and gestures of lament, represents a contest between two ways of mediating relations between the deceased, the mourners, and the wider community. It is a contest about the agents of mediation: on the one hand, the women mourners; on the other, the presbyter and singers. It is a contest about the relations established in the ritual: ties with kin and with the surrounding community expressed in the lament of the women; ties with the church, the community of believers (living and dead) and God expressed in the liturgy. It is a contest about the significance of death: the lament of the women focussing on their sense of loss and despair, probably in terms that pre-date Christian notions of afterlife (cf. Caraveli 1986: 184); the liturgy of the church construing the response of the mourners as a prayer of thanksgiving to God (Gregory of Nyssa, Life of Saint Macrina 27.4–11 and 22.3–6, Maraval 1971: 232 and 212; cf. Maraval 1971: 71–74 and Krueger 2000: 497–98, 501–502, and 504–10). In sum—to draw on Catherine Bell’s analysis of the power of ritualization (1992: 204–18)—it is a contest between the power of the women mourners and the power of the church’s liturgists to construe the social and cosmic order, as well as the participants’ sense of self within that order, through ritual. Within that contest the control of the liturgist is limited by the consent, qualification, or contradiction of the participants, as Gregory of Nyssa’s mixed success in displacing wailing with psalmody around the body of Macrina shows, or as John Chrysostom attests when he threatens Christians who hire women mourners with ecclesiastical discipline and the women mourners themselves with a “fitting” punishment (Homilies on Hebrews 4.8, PG 63: 44). Second, the centrality of bodily acts in creating the experience of “pain,” establishing an association among the mourners and vesting their lament with “truth,” points to an essential difference between the capacity of ritual and the capacity of discourse to instill a response to death. As Rappaport argues, bodily acts convey, more than mere hearing of speech can, acceptance of the order embodied by ritual (1999: 146–47). Moreover, through bodily acts ritual can convey messages that are difficult and perhaps impossible for language alone to convey, pointing
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through a combination of sensory experiences to multiple significata simultaneously (Rappaport 1999: 251–52). Furthermore, the state of association achieved in ritual is itself the result of the simultaneous experience of multiple significata (Rappaport 1999: 257–62). In their own way, the bishops of the church were alert to the significatory capacity of ritual acts. John Chrysostom complains, for instance, that the wailing and groaning of Christians in lament are taken by others as a more authentic index of their beliefs than his preaching. When Christians enact the gestures of lament, his “philosophizing” on the resurrection is of no avail. From his perspective, their gestures are tantamount to a denial of the resurrection. In other words, according to John, the practices of customary lament undermine what Rappaport would deem to be sacred postulates established by the liturgy of the church. For John, these two ritual orders are mutually exclusive. If he had his way, Christians who continued the practice of customary lament would be barred entry to the church for a long time. He rules out the suggestion that their lament means not that they disbelieve the resurrection, but only that they miss the company of the departed (Homilies on Hebrews 4.7, PG 63: 42–43).
C ONTINUITY AND C HANGE IN O RIENTING THE E XPERIENCE OF D EATH Death is an inherently disruptive event. It is also an obscure event. It needs to be managed and interpreted, somehow. Philosophical consolation and customary lament did this, each in its own way. But they were fundamentally at odds in their approach. Customary lament was in fact the foil, the point of departure, for philosophical consolation. Structurally, customary lament heightened the liminal status of the mourners and the deceased, whereas philosophical consolation moved toward their reincorporation into the usual order of things after death. Whereas customary lament was a medium for expressing loss and desolation, philosophical consolation sought to mitigate such an experience of death. What was essential to the former (emotional intensity) was the contrary of what was essential to the latter (rational control). While the one required public and vocal affirmation of pain, the other played on a personal and social ethic of self-restraint. What was empowering to the one was dis-empowering to the other, and vice versa. Despite these differences, however, the two approaches are similar in several important ways. To begin with, they both derive their validity from a pre-existing tradition. It is this pre-existing tradition that gives
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them “sanctity” (to use Rappaport’s term) as responses to death. Ironically, the bishops who were so vigilant of the excesses of lament (their own as well as others’) were largely oblivious to the extent to which the ethos they prized owed more to the inherited assumptions of Hellenistic ethics than to beliefs and norms that were uniquely Christian. Thus, while they work to displace the wailing, beating and other gestures of customary lament because they consider them to be inconsistent with Christian identity, they articulate their critique of lament according to the structure and terms of a tradition that likewise preceded the advent of Christianity. We can hear in their strictures an echo, for instance, of Plutarch commending his wife for her sober conduct after the death of their young daughter (Consolation to his Wife 2, 4, 6–7, De Lacy and Einarson 1959: 580–82, 584–86, 590–94). Moreover, by working in a pre-existing tradition, the two approaches are not merely appropriating a certain perspective on death. In addition, and more profoundly, they are achieving a sense of relational identity. The interlocutors in consolatory discourse and the performers in customary lament were, both of them, communicating a sense of self to themselves and to others. In the process they were achieving a form of association, in the one case the community of those who, in the words of an anonymous woman correspondent (P. Rainer Cent. 70, cited above), find relief in weeping, in the other case the community of those who, in the words of Basil of Caesarea, find solace in the discourse of like minds. Neither approach to death can achieve this sense of identity and association apart from its pre-existing tradition. For the interlocutors in philosophical consolation, it is their appropriation of the conventions of the philosophical tradition that distinguishes them from “the rest” and unites them together as “philosophical.” Likewise, for participants in customary lament, it is their bodily participation in the antiphonal structure and physical movements of lament that unites them in the experience of “pain” while others remain at the periphery of that experience. However, neither of these means of achieving relational identity is beyond qualification, contradiction or other kinds of limits on their effects. Some of these limits are disclosed obliquely in the ancient texts considered in this chapter. When Gregory of Nyssa writes that he succumbed to the torrent of grief released by the lament at Macrina’s death, he indicates that the boundary between customary lament and philosophical consolation was more permeable than the terms of his discourse, oscillating between the poles of reason and passion, would imply (Life of Saint Macrina 26.9–15, Maraval 1971: 230). Similarly, when
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John Chrysostom denounces Christians who do not perceive their participation in Christian liturgies and in customary lament to be mutually exclusive and who do not interpret the practice of customary lament as a denial of the Christian belief in the resurrection, he inadvertently attests to the ambiguity of identity established in ritual (Homilies on Hebrews 4.7, PG 63: 42–44). In other words, the discourse of philosophical consolation and the ritual of customary lament are, each of them, interpretative practices that admit of “slippage” by virtue of the gap between symbolism and appropriation. In the end, customary lament proved to be a durable ritual. It resisted the church’s efforts to displace it both at a theoretical level (with a Christian tradition of consolation) and at a practical level (with the Christian liturgy for the dead). What might account for this? I would suggest a number of reasons. An unlamented death was a social death, a death deprived of social recognition. A society based on a system of patrons and clients, as the society of late antiquity was, would not easily abandon the social recognition achieved in funeral rituals, as Gregory of Nyssa’s account of the funeral procession of Macrina (Life of Saint Macrina 34.1–14, Maraval 1971: 250–52) and John Chrysostom’s criticism of the display, love of honour, and vain-glory of public laments (Homilies on the Letter to the Philippians 3.24, PG 62: 203) both indicate. In addition, participation in lament afforded the mourners, and particularly women mourners, a privileged moment of association and “truth-telling”— something they would not readily relinquish to the male leadership and set texts of the Christian liturgy. Finally, customary lament attested to death in a way that the church’s liturgy did not: it gave greater expression and therefore greater value to the sense of disruption and loss experienced when someone dies. The ritual of customary lament confirmed the reality of death as experienced in this life—a reality more immediate and more certain than any hoped-for afterlife, however that afterlife might be construed (cf. Samellas 2002: 11–69, 114–15).
N OTES 1 I wish to thank Willi Braun for the invitation to participate in the seminar, sponsored by the Canadian Society of Biblical Studies and the Canadian Society for the Study of Rhetoric in 2000, at which an early draft of this paper was first presented. Other portions of the paper were subsequently presented at meetings of the Eastern International Region of the American Academy of Religion and the Canadian Society of Patristic Studies in 2001. I am grateful for the comments I received on these occasions. The paper was completed in 2001, prior to the publication of Antigone Samellas’s study of the transfor-
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mation of practices associated with death in the eastern Mediterranean in late antiquity (2002). I have incorporated observations from Samellas’s book into my paper, but the argument I make and the evidence I adduce were arrived at independently. On the conflation of aristocratic and Christian values in these bishops’ critique of customary lament, see Samellas (2002: 72–79). In references to ancient texts, I include line or section numbers as they are listed in the editions used. For the sermons of John Chrysostom, I follow the divisions of the translations published in Schaff (1978). The abbreviation “PG” refers to the series of Greek patristic texts, Patrologia Graeca, edited by J.-P. Migne (1857–). The designation “élite” is not merely a present-day observation on the social status of the exponents of the philosophical tradition. In their own eyes, adherence to the philosophical tradition distinguished them from “the vulgar” or “the crowd” (Basil of Caesaria, Letter 206.22–23, Courtonne 1961: 183; Gregory Nazianzus, Letter 31.2, Gallay 1964: 39; Letter 222.6, Gallay 1967: 114; Letter 223.7, Gallay 1967: 115–16). My approach is the obverse of Ochs (1993), who analyzed ancient funeral rituals in terms of modern rhetorical theory. On this point, see Catherine Bell’s discussion of the nature of the relationship between ritual and belief (1992: 182–87). The position she attributes (186) to Rappaport, based on his earlier work, does not correspond to Rappaport’s position here. The late-nineteenth-century surveys by Martha and Buresch of the ancient consolatory tradition devoted only a few pages to Christian exponents (Martha 1883: 188–89; Buresch 1886: 120–21). Several substantial studies of the funeral orations of Gregory of Nyssa, Gregory of Nazianzus and Ambrose followed in the early decades of the twentieth century (see Scourfield 1993: 26–27 and n. 125). These focussed rather narrowly on formal correspondence between the funeral orations and the types of funeral speech set out in Menander’s fourth-century manual of rhetoric. Favez (1937; cf. 1930 and 1944) approached the question of influences and debts more broadly in his study of the Latin Christian consolatory literature, in order to identify the specifically Christian aspects of these works. He concluded (as did Martha) that while Christian writers used the established forms of the genre (some more freely than others) and appropriated phrases, ideas, and examples from classical writers, the Christian imprint on their writings was more significant than the classical debt. Duval (1977) went further in a subsequent paper on Ambrose’s funeral orations. He argued that Ambrose’s orations were shaped by the Bible in form as well as content, thereby not only countering those who had earlier tried to fit the orations to Menander’s categories but also expanding Favez’s estimate of the Christian aspects of Ambrose’s orations. Most recently, Scourfield (1993: 23–33) undertook a review of the literature in order to situate Jerome’s Letter 60 in the consolatory tradition. He concluded that the letter is unique in the way it combines both classical and Biblical sources, transforming “an originally pagan genre” in accordance with the author’s “thoroughly Christian perspective” (1993: 33). Greek Christian consolatory literature has not received
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a comprehensive treatment like Favez’s, but Gregg’s (1975) detailed study of the consolatory writings of the Cappadocians focusses on the formal and intellectual aspects of their debt to the classical and Christian traditions. Because of its scale, Gregg’s study eclipsed an earlier paper by Mitchell (1968), which nevertheless offers astute comparative observations. Samellas (2002) relates the Christian appropriation of the consolatory tradition to a broader set of practices that aimed to reform people’s response to grief and death. Her study expands on the connection, already established by Gregg, between consolatory philosophy and ascetic practice. On the circumstances of the letter, see Pouchet (1992: 644–45). Cf. Basil of Caesarea, Letter 5.2.1–4 (Courtonne 1957: 17); Letter 6.2.31–33 (Courtonne 1957: 21); Letter 269.1.12–17 (Courtonne 1966: 139); Letter 301.19–23 (Courtonne 1966: 177). Gregory Nazianzus, Letter 76.1–3 (Gallay 1964: 93–94); Letter 197.5–7 (Gallay 1967: 89); Letter 222.23–25 (Gallay 1967: 113–14). John Chrysotom, Letter 71 (PG 52: 647–48); Letter 192 (PG 52: 719); Letter 197 (PG 52: 721–22). Basil of Caesarea, Letter 5.2.14–20 (Courtonne 1957: 17–18); Letter 101.42–43 (Courtonne 1961: 2); Letter 206.22–23 (Courtonne 1961: 183.22–32); Letter 301 (Courtonne 1966: 177–78); Gregory Nazianzus, Letter 76.4 (Gallay 1964: 94); Letter 197.2 (Gallay 1967: 88); Letter 223.11–12 (Gallay 1967: 116); John Chrysotom, Letter 71 (PG 52: 647–48); Letter 192 (PG 52: 719); Letter 197 (PG 52: 721–22). In her consideration of Christian material, Samellas draws mainly on sermons and funeral orations, not on letters of condolence. We are offered a detailed exposition of Christian consolatory “philosophy” as it pertains to grief in Gregory of Nyssa’s On the Soul and the Resurrection, a dialogue between Gregory and his sister Macrina after the death of Basil. The dialogue, which follows the structure of consolation, is a companion piece to Gregory’s Life of Saint Macrina. In both works Macrina is presented as a model of restraint in grief and as a counselor to her family in times of bereavement (cf. Life of Saint Macrina 10, Maraval 1971: 172–74). The dialogue begins with Gregory overwhelmed by grief over his brother’s death (cf. Life of Saint Macrina 17.17–20, Maraval 1971: 198). Macrina lets Gregory be swept along for a time by the violence of his grief. Then she reminds him that Christians are enjoined (at 1 Thess 4:13) not to grieve as those who have no hope. When Gregory replies that such an attitude is impossible, or at best accepted only in submission to God’s command and not on the basis of reasoning, Macrina develops a series of arguments to persuade him. She combines speculative or philosophical reasoning with practical or ethical reasoning. The former establishes the possibility that in the resurrection the soul may be reunited with the same body it inhabited in this life; the second explains how the ordering of the passions and the achievement of virtue advances by degrees, in this life and the next, to an unobstructed likeness to God. Together these arguments provide the basis both for believing in the resurrection and for responding to death without succumbing to grief (apatheia). For a detailed exposition of the structure and argument of the dialogue, on which the above summary is based,
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see Meissner (1991); cf. also Smith (2000), who, however, is unaware of Meissner’s study. The question of who “Macrina” (as well as “Gregory”) represents in the dialogue is discussed by Giannarelli (1980: 18–25), Meissner (1991: 382–94), Clark (1998a: 23–30; 1998b: 426–29) and most recently and provocatively by Burrus (2000: 112–22). When the recipients of Basil’s exhortations are women, he expresses concern that the gentleness of their character will incline them to be overwhelmed by grief (Letter 6.1.9–12, Courtonne 1957: 19; Letter 269.17–22, Courtonne 1966: 140–41; Letter 302.6–13, Courtonne 1966: 179). He counsels them to give thought to the family members who depend on them for comfort (Letter 6.2.35–38, Courtonne 1957: 35–38; Letter 269.30–32, Courtonne 1966: 141; cf. Letter 302.41–43, Courtonne 1966: 180), and he invokes divine aid to inspire consoling reflections (Letter 6.2.38–43, Courtonne 1957: 21; cf. Letter 302.51–52, Courtonne 1966: 181). By contrast, when addressing a fellow bishop, Basil is more direct and demanding. God, he says, expects more from “us” than from “ordinary” men, since “they” behave according to habit, but “we” follow the commands of God and the examples of courageous men (Letter 206.22–32, Courtonne 1961: 183). Or, to mention one final variant, when Basil is addressing a nobleman of high standing, whose deceased wife was known among the faithful but whose own connection to the church was seemingly less prominent, he dwells at length on themes common to Hellenistic consolation and makes fewer Christian references (Letter 300.48–50, Courtonne 1966: 176). Basil of Caesarea, Letter 6.1.6–9 (Courtonne 1957: 19); Letter 206.16–24 (Courtonne 1961: 182–83); Letter 301.27–30 (Courtonne 1966: 177–78); Gregory of Nazianzus, Letter 76.2 and 4 (Gallay 1964: 4); Letter 197.2 and 7 (Gallay 1967: 88–89); Letter 222.1 (Gallay 1967: 113); Letter 223.2 (Gallay 1967: 114–15); John Chrysostom, Letter 192 (PG 52: 719); Letter 197 (PG 52: 721–22). According to John Chrysostom, both men and women perform actions of mourning: “he tears his hair, and she shrieks violently” (Homilies on Hebrews 4.7, PG 63: 43). On the early life of Macrina and her development as an ascetic or “virgin of God,” see Elm (1994: 39–47 and 78–102). On the clamour that customarily accompanied the closing of the eyes of the deceased, see Maraval (1971: 80–81). The term “virgin” denotes a woman devoted to an ascetic way of life, irrespective of her prior physical condition or marital status; see Elm (1994: 94–95). See Smith (2000: 49–50) for Gregory’s view that uncontrolled grief is a result of errant judgment. On the social status of the women in Macrina’s community, including those adopted in the famine of 368–369, see Elm (1994: 92–96); cf. Maraval (1971: 184 n. 1). For Gregory, the responsive singing of the psalms, which he associates with harmony and order (Life of Saint Macrina 33.17–19 and 34.23–31, Maraval 1971: 248 and 252–54), is instrumental in leading toward philosophical contemplation. On Gregory’s usage of psalmos and related words, see Ferguson
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(1990: esp. 93–94). On the role of psalm-singing in the progress toward contemplation, see Malingrey (1961: 252–53). Elm (1994: 98) remarks: “Macrina, Emmelia, and consequently all virgins wore a distinctive dress, consisting of ‘a coat, a veil, and shoes’, the coat being ‘of sombre colour’. In close adherence to Matt 10: 9–10 Macrina owned only one set of these clothes; they continued to emphasize her femininity, however, as well as her status as a ‘virgin widow’. Only on her death-bed, once she had (presumably) risen to the everlasting kingdom of heaven, was Macrina clad in a white robe; only then did she wear the robes of the virginal bride awaiting the heavenly spouse.” Maraval (1971: 82–84) observes that while it is possible to see in this an attempt to disguise the richness of Macrina’s dress from the poorer members of the community, it was also customary in monastic circles to clothe the dead in a garment of some predeceased saint. On this passage, and on cross-shaped pendants and pieces of the cross as Christian amulets, see Dölger (1975). For a reading of the narrative that relates this episode to the discovery of Odysseus’s scar, see Frank (2000).
R EFERENCES Alexiou, Margaret 1974 The Ritual Lament in Greek Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bell, Catherine 1992 Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice. New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press. Buresch, Carolus 1886 Consolationum a graecis romanisque scriptarum historia critica. Leipzig: S. Hirzel. Burrus, Virginia 2000 “Begotten, Not Made”: Conceiving Manhood in Late Antiquity. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Caraveli, Anna 1986 “The Bitter Wounding: The Lament as Social Protest.” In Jill Dubisch (ed.), Gender and Power in Rural Greece, 169–94. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Caraveli-Chaves, Anna 1980 “Bridge Between Worlds: The Greek Women’s Lament as Communicative Event.” Journal of American Folklore 93: 129–57. Chapa, Juan 1998 Letters of Condolence in Greek Papyri. Papyrologica Florentina, 29. Florence: Gonnelli. Clark, Elizabeth A. 1998a “The Lady Vanishes: Dilemmas of a Feminist Historian after the ‘Linguistic Turn.’” Church History 67: 1–31.
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1998b “Holy Women, Holy Words: Early Christian Women, Social History, and the ‘Linguistic Turn.’” Journal of Early Christian Studies 3: 413–30. Courtonne, Yves, ed. and trans. 1957 Saint Basile. Lettres. Vol. 1. Paris: Société d’édition «Les Belles Lettres». 1961 Saint Basile. Lettres. Vol. 2. Paris: Société d’édition «Les Belles Lettres». 1966 Saint Basile. Lettres. Vol. 3. Paris: Société d’édition «Les Belles Lettres». Danforth, Loring M. 1982 The Death Rituals of Rural Greece. Photographs by Alexander Tsiaras. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Deferrari, Roy J., trans. 1926– Saint Basil. The Letters. Loeb Classical Library. 4 vols. London/Cam1934 bridge, MA: William Heinemann/Harvard University Press. De Lacey, Phillip H. and Benedict Einarson, trans. 1959 Plutarch. Moralia. Loeb Classical Library. Vol. 7. London/Cambridge, MA: William Heinemann/Harvard University Press. Dölger, Franz Joseph 1975 [1932] “Das Anhängekreuzchen der hl. Makrina und ihr Ring mit der Kreuzpartikel.” In Antike und Christentum: Kultur- und religionsgeschichtliche Studien, 2nd ed., 3: 81–116. Münster: Aschendorff. Duval, Yves-Marie 1977 “Formes profanes et formes bibliques dans les oraisons funèbres de saint Ambroise.” In Manfred Fuhrmann (ed.), Christianisme et formes littéraires de l’antiquité tardive en occident, 235–301. Geneva: Fondation Hardt. Elm, Susanna 1994 ‘Virgins of God’: The Making of Asceticism in Late Antiquity. Oxford: Clarendon. Favez, Charles 1930 “L’inspiration chrétienne dans les consolationes de saint Ambroise.” Revue des études latines 8: 82–91. 1937 La consolation latine chrétienne. Paris: J. Vrin. 1944 “Les Epistulae 92, 259 et 263 de saint Augustin.” Museum Helveticum 1: 65–68. Ferguson, Everett 1990 “Words from the YAL-Root in Gregory of Nyssa.” In Hubertus R. Drobner and Christoph Klock (eds.), Studien zu Gregor von Nyssa und der christlichen Spätantike, 57–68. Leiden: Brill. Foerster, Richard, ed. 1963 [1921–22] Libanii Opera. Vols. 10–11. Hildesheim: Georg Olms. Frank, Georgia 2000 “Macrina’s Scar: Homeric Allusion and Heroic Identity in Gregory of Nyssa’s Life of Macrina.” Journal of Early Christian Studies 8: 511–30. Gallay, Paul, ed. and trans. 1964 Saint Grégoire de Nazianze. Lettres. Vol. 1. Paris: Société d’édition «Les Belles Lettres». 1967 Saint Grégoire de Nazianze. Lettres. Vol. 2. Paris: Société d’édition «Les Belles Lettres».
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Garland, Robert 1989 “The Well-Ordered Corpse: An Investigation into the Motives Behind Greek Funerary Legislation.” Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies 36: 1–15. Giannarelli, Elena 1980 La tipologia femminile nella biografia e nell’autobiografia cristiana del IVo secolo. Rome: Istituto storico italiano per il Medio Evo. Gregg, Robert C. 1975 Consolation Philosophy: Greek and Christian Paideia in Basil and the Two Gregories. Philadelphia: Philadelphia Patristic Foundation. Hadot, Pierre 1995 [1987] Philosophy as a Way of Life: Spiritual Exercises from Socrates to Foucault. Ed. Arnold I. Davidson. Trans. Michael Chase. London: Blackwell. Hertz, Robert 1960 [1907] “A Contribution to the Study of the Collective Representation of Death.” In Death and the Right Hand, 25–86. Trans. Rodney and Claudia Needham, with an introduction by E. E. Evans-Pritchard. Aberdeen: Cohen & West. Holst-Warhaft, Gail 1992 Dangerous Voices: Women’s Laments and Greek Literature. London/New York: Routledge. Krueger, Derek 2000 “Writing and the Liturgy of Memory in Gregory of Nyssa’s Life of Macrina.” Journal of Early Christian Studies 8: 484–510. Lawson, John Cuthbert 1964 [1910] Modern Greek Folklore and Ancient Greek Religion: A Study in Survivals. New Hyde Park: University Books. Malingrey, Anne-Marie 1961 ‘Philosophia’: Étude d’un groupe de mots dans la littérature grecque, des Présocratiques au IVe siècle après J.-C. Paris: C. Klincksieck. Maraval, Pierre, ed. and trans. 1971 Grégoire de Nysse. Vie de sainte Macrine. Sources chrétiennes 178. Paris: Cerf. 1997 “La Vie de sainte Macrine de Grégoire de Nysse: continuité et nouveauté d’un genre littéraire.” In Gérard Freyburger and Laurent Pernot (eds.), Du héros païen au saint chrétien: Actes du colloque organisé par le Centre d’Analyse des Rhétoriques Religieuses de l’Antiquité (C.A.R.R.A.), Strasbourg, 1er-2 décembre 1995, 133–38. Paris: Institut d’Études Augustiniennes. Martha, Constant 1883 “Les consolations dans l’antiquité.” In Études morales sur l’antiquité, 135–89. Paris: Hachette. Meissner, Henriette M. 1991 Rhetorik und Theologie: Der Dialog Gregors von Nyssa De anima et resurrectione. Frankfurt a.M.: Peter Lang. Migne, Jean-Paul, ed. 1857– Patrologia Graeca. 162 vols. Paris: Garnier.
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Mitchell, Jane F. 1968 “Consolatory Letters in Basil and Gregory Nazianzen.” Hermes 96: 299–318. Ochs, Donovan J. 1993 Consolatory Rhetoric: Grief, Symbol, and Ritual in the Greco-Roman Era. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press. Pouchet, Robert 1992 Basile le grand et son univers d’amis d’après sa correspondance: Une stratégie de communion. Rome: Institutum Patristicum «Augustinianum». Rappaport, Roy A. 1999 Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rush, Alfred C. 1941 Death and Burial in Christian Antiquity. Washington: Catholic University of America Press. Samellas, Antigone 2002 Death in the Eastern Mediterranean (50–600 A.D.). The Christianization of the East: An Interpretation. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck. Schaff, Philip, ed. 1978 [1889] A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, vols 9–14. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans. Scourfield, J. H. D. 1993 Consoling Heliodorus: A Commentary on Jerome, Letter 60. Oxford: Clarendon. Seremetakis, C. Nadia 1990 “The Ethics of Antiphony: The Social Construction of Pain, Gender, and Power in the Southern Peleponnese.” Ethos 18: 481–511. 1991 The Last Word: Women, Death, and Divination in Inner Mani. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Shapiro, H. A. 1991 “The Iconography of Mourning in Athenian Art.” American Journal of Archaeology 95: 629–56. Smith, J. Warren 2000 “Macrina, Tamer of Horses and Healer of Souls: Grief and the Therapy of Hope in Gregory of Nyssa’s De anima et resurrectione.” Journal of Theological Studies NS 52: 37–60. Smith, Jonathan Z. 1994 [1990] Drudgery Divine: On the Comparison of Early Christianities and the Religions of Late Antiquity. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. van Gennep, Arnold 1960 [1909] The Rites of Passage. Trans. M. Vicedom and S. Kimball. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Vermeule, Emily 1979 Aspects of Death in Early Greek Art and Poetry. Berkeley: University of California Press.
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8 Performativity, Narrativity, and Cognition “Demythologizing” the Roman Cult of Mithras1
Mithraism is and will remain a subject with a very close and serious bearing upon the history of religious evolution. (John M. Robertson 1889)
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erformativity, whether discursive or non-discursive, is now generally accepted as contributing to the regulation of bodies, both individual and social. While descriptions of the relationship between strategies of regulation and that which is regulated have been offered, little attention has been paid to theoretical explanation(s) for the mechanisms whereby such strategies are efficacious (Bell 1998: 208–11; Boyer 2001: 257). Since all forms of performance involve cognition (Slone 2004: 50), it is proposed here that cognitive processes offer such an explanation, specifically, that differing modes of performativity activate differing systems of memory that, in turn, have implications for sociopolitical association and thereby for the social construction of self and even of consciousness.2 Following the suggestion of the anthropologist Fredrik Barth (1975: 207–14, apud Bateson 1972: 372–74, 411–25), performativity may be understood cognitively as a non-verbal or “analogic” coding of knowledge to be remembered and transmitted (Barth 1987: 69–70, 75). Together with iconic representation, “performativity” can be contrasted with “narrativity,” a “digital” coding of knowledge which involves a serial processing and organization of data according to some implicit logic, as in “a computer program or, largely, a language” that can be transmitted as an appropriate and easily remembered story, myth, or collection of doctrine (Barth 1975: 207; Whitehouse 2000: 64).3 As 187
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Barth concludes: “The code in which a body of knowledge is cast will tend to entail a definition of the nature of the object of knowledge, and will influence the kind of knowledge that is produced” (1987: 75).4 The validity of a cognition-based hypothesis will be tested against the data of Hellenistic religions, especially the Roman cult of Mithras, a project which, in turn, raises the theoretical question of the utility of employing a cognition-based social-scientific model in historical research generally.
R OMAN M ITHRAISM AND THE H ISTORICAL P ROBLEM The Roman cult of Mithras, documented from the end of the first century CE, spread widely throughout the Roman empire over the next three hundred years. Whereas a profusion of archaeological remains from this cult—primarily mithraic sanctuaries and cult images—has been, and continues to be, discovered,5 no corpus of Mithraic doctrine or mythic narrative survives. Consequently, research on the Roman cult once focussed largely on reconstructing a presumed Mithraic myth by proposing transformations in transmitted versions of the ancient Persian myth of Mithras in ways that might conform to the Western iconographic evidence. More recent research, however, has focussed on deciphering that iconography itself (Beck 1984), especially its apparent astronomical/astrological allusions (Beck 1988; Ulansey 1989)—still, however, with a view towards reconstructing a Mithraic myth which, in turn, might be “demythologized” to reveal a theological system assumed to be encoded therein (Martin 1994a; Clauss 2000: 11). As this assumption was formulated already in the nineteenth century, “there is no doubt but that…[Mithraic imagery], if it could be interpreted, would be found to contain a complete summary of the Mithraic creed” (King 1866: 340). But what if Mithraism had no more or less commonly held and transmitted creed, or even a common myth, to be reconstructed (Burkert 1987: 69), a possibility recently suggested for Roman religions generally (Beard et al. 1998: 1.158)? In 1990 I suggested an approach to the study of Mithraism that would not assume a lost Mithraic myth to be reconstructed, or any common set of precepts encoded in Mithraic iconography, but, rather, an approach that would focus solely upon the evident character of Mithraism as an iconic tradition. I suggested, for example, that the ubiquitous tauroctonous image, the central portrayal of Mithras slaying a bull, might
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not represent a climactic scene from a narrative cycle of Mithraic myth but serve, rather, as an “apt formalization and focalization” for “the shared orientation” of a Mithraic culture (Martin 1994a: 219, 224).6 In the same year that I made my suggestion, Manfred Clauss published his book Mithras: Kult und Mysterien (Clauss 1990; English trans. 2000) in which he contends that Mithraism is “an example of the primacy of images in the ancient world” (Clauss 2000: 17). Scholars of such religions, he argues, “tend to understand [such] mythological and religious images primarily as allegorical guises for conceptual claims. But in ancient religion images, or rather the ways in which people perceived images, were based upon a quite different psychology. They were apprehended directly….In all likelihood, such images did not need to be explained conceptually” (Clauss 2000: 11–12).7 Despite this important insight, Clauss nevertheless retained the view that “the Mithraic cultreliefs depict a sacred narrative” (Clauss 2000: xx),8 for which he ventures a rather detailed reconstruction (Clauss 2000: 62–101).9 Clauss’s claim about the imagistic character of Mithraism, and about that of ancient religions in general, especially his suggestion that the perception of images in such contexts was based upon “quite a different psychology” than that of conceptual explanation, is particularly intriguing in light of a cognitive theory of alternative “modes of religiosity,” an imagistic and a doctrinal mode, recently proposed by the British anthropologist Harvey Whitehouse to explain certain tendencies of “codification, transmission, cognitive processing, and political association” among the Mali Baining with whom he lived in East New Britain, Papua New Guinea, for 20 months between 1987 and 1989 (Whitehouse 2000: 1; 1995: 193–221; elaborated in Whitehouse 2000; 2002; 2004). Whitehouse characterizes the “imagistic mode of religiosity,” which he modelled on a ritualistic revival group among the Baining settlements of Dadul and Maranagi, as a diversity of precepts and practices that are based on the local exegesis associated with small-scale, face-to-face groups and that are transmitted episodically, through infrequently performed rituals—traits of social organization, ritual practice and local knowledge that seem to be associated with what is known of Mithraism.10 He distinguishes this “imagistic mode of religiosity” from a “doctrinal mode” which is associated with the widespread affirmation and transmission of a commonly held set of beliefs that are narratively expressed and cogently argued. The often complex set of beliefs and teachings characteristic of this mode are authorized by a centralized authority and controlled through frequently repeated verbal practices such as instruc-
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tion, sermonizing, exegetical study, etc. These two modes of religiosity, according to Whitehouse, rely on and are constrained cognitively by differential systems of memory in terms of which religious knowledge is transmitted. The doctrinal mode of religiosity was modelled by Whitehouse on the Pomio Kivung—a relatively stable cargo cult, which has elected representatives to the national assembly. This is especially characteristic of those groups in Papua New Guinea that were influenced by Western missionaries, that mode of religiosity with which Western scholars are most familiar from their own cultural context. This familiarity has tended to bias Western scholars toward understanding all religion as types of belief systems, as seems to have been the case in attempts to comprehend the non-Christian Hellenistic religions.11 On the basis of my earlier suggestions about the non-doctrinal character of Mithraism, I shall argue that Roman Mithraism is better understood as representative of an “imagistic” mode of religiosity, as that modality has been described by Whitehouse.12
M ITHRAIC P RACTICES Although the frequency and character of ritual practice stands at the centre of Whitehouse’s theory of modes of religiosity, we know relatively little about the ritual practices of Mithraism except that admission to the group involved initiation rites (mysteria) and that this membership seemingly participated in communal meals, apparently in commemoration of their initiation (Clauss 2000: 113). We can presume, on the basis of the triclinia (dining couches) along the two side walls of virtually every mithraeum,13 and from the iconography showing Sol and Mithras sharing such a meal while sitting on the hide of a bull14 (presumably the bull that is portrayed as being slain in the tauroctonous scene15), as well as from scenes portraying members of the community sharing a similar meal,16 that the communal meal was a repeated ritual associated with group maintenance (Clauss 2000: 61; Martin 2004b: 253–56). Initiation into membership, on the other hand, was by definition performed but once by any initiate (or once upon his17 initiation into each of any differentiated grades of initiation). In contrast to rituals that are frequently repeated and which tend, consequently, to become routinized (Freud 1907), infrequently performed rituals are typically characterized by a high degree of pageantry and sensory arousal. These rituals, which in some contexts are associated with literally life-threatening ordeals
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(Whitehouse 2000: 23), are termed by Whitehouse “rites of terror” (Whitehouse 2000: 18–33), precisely the term that has been used to characterize Mithraic initiation by commentators, both ancient18 and modern (Boyle 1987: 70).19 The presumed scenes of initiation in the Mithraeum of Capua Vetere in Southern Italy give some idea of the dramatic ordeals with which Mithraic initiates were threatened (Vermaseren 1971: 24–42). In the first of these scenes an initiate is portrayed as bound and naked, as menaced by sword and fire, and as undergoing a symbolic death (Vermaseren 1963: 132) or execution (Clauss 2000: 103). Similarly, in an initiatory scene on a cup discovered in a mithraeum in Mainz (Horn 1994), the initiating Father is aiming an arrow from his drawn bow directly at the initiate who is portrayed as smaller, naked and vulnerable (Beck 2000: plate XIII). Such scenes recall Tertullian’s description of Mithraic initiation as a mimicus martyrii, “mimicry of martyrdom” (De Cor. 15.4). As my-, the root of mystai (initiate), having the sense of closed or shut eyes, suggests, the initiate is depicted as blindfolded throughout these ordeals (Vermaseren 1971: plates XXI and XXII),20 as were initiates into the Eleusinian mysteries (Bianchi 1976: 47, 49–50) and into those of Dionysus (Nilsson 1957: figs. 11, 12, 18), the latter of which were also portrayed as naked (Nilsson 1957: figs. 12, 13).21 The third and fourth panels of the Capua Vetere scenes of initiation are damaged and the scenes portrayed there obliterated (Vermaseren 1971: 34, plate XXIII), but the final panel of these scenes shows the initiate with his blindfold removed (Vermaseren 1971: plate XXV). This ritualized emergence into light out of the ordeals of initiatory darkness recalls the epitome of Eleusinian initiation by the fourth-century philosopher Themistius. At first, he writes, the initiate wanders “through the dark as one uninitiated: then come all the terrors before the final initiation, shuddering, trembling, sweating, amazement: then one is struck with a marvelous light, one is received into pure regions and meadows, with voices and dances and the majesty of holy sounds and shapes” (Stobaeus 4; cited by Mylonas 1961: 264–65; compare Apuleius [Met. 11.23] on Isiac initiation).22 The sensory disorientation wrought by a sudden emergence from darkness into light, by the “holy sounds” of the cult ritual, the sudden sounding of a gong by the Hierophant of Eleusis in summons of Kore (Clinton 1992: 86 and n. 128), for example, or the rattling of sistras by Isiac initiates, together with the unfamiliar and exotic “shapes” of the cult iconography would have rendered initiates more susceptible to reception of novel cult precepts (Turcan 1996: 112, 108).
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Although charges of brandings (Tertullian, De praescr. haeret. 40), and worse,23 were made of Mithraic initiation practices by Christian apologists, the actuality of such extreme ordeals has been questioned (Beskow 1979).24 In any case, according to a suggestion by Aristotle, it was the psychological effects consequent upon the anticipation of terrifying ordeals, not necessarily their actual enactment, that characterized initiation into the mysteries (Arist. frag. 15, and apud Synesios, Orat. 48; see Burkert 1987: 69, 89). Perhaps portrayals of rites of terror, as in the Capua Vetere Mithraeum or on the Mainz Mithraic cup, do not depict actual rites but were, rather, a technique intended to heighten the psychological effects of an initiate’s impending initiation (Buckley 2001: 176). As Zaidman and Pantel conclude of the Eleusinian rites, “initiation in the Mysteries…apparently did not involve instruction of a dogmatic nature, but was rather a process of internal transformation, founded upon the emotional experiences of what was taken to be a direct encounter with the divine” (Zaidman and Pantel 1992: 139). It is the cognitive effects of initiation and not so much the various acts associated with their performance—and certainly not any purported teachings—that allows us to relate Mithraic initiation practices to those of others, to those of the Eleusinian mysteries, for example, as well as to those of the contemporary cults in Papua New Guinea described by Whitehouse. In all of these cases, a “clearly defined social group” is constituted by passage through shared initiatory “rites of terror” rather than by any instruction in and adherence to a set of beliefs held in common (Allen 1967: 5–6). As Donald Tuzin, drawing upon social-psychological studies of attitude change among contemporary victims of terrorism, concludes of initiation rites among the Ilahita Arapesh of Papua New Guinea: Under certain conditions the victim of extreme terror…experiences love and gratitude toward, and deep identification with, his persecutors. During the ordeal, of course, the novice’s attitudes are at best highly labile; but immediately following it, the initiators drop their razors, spears, cudgels, or what have you, and comfort the boys with lavish displays of tender emotion. What resentment the latter may have been harbouring instantly dissipates, replaced by a palpable warmth and affection for the men who, moments before, had been seemingly bent on their destruction. As their confidence recovers itself, the novices become giddy with the realization that they have surmounted the ordeal. If there is an element of identification disclosed in this remarkable transformation…then the terror component may well be essential if the cult, and indeed the society itself, is
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to continue in its present form. (Tuzin 1980: 77–78, cited by Whitehouse 2000: 29).
Initiatory “rites of terror” establish, in other words, “an expression and an experience of solidarity” unlike that produced, or even articulatable, by any discursive practice (Whitehouse 1995: 112, 126). It is the trenchant memories of such shared rites that forge a particular collective identity and provide the basis for its maintenance and transmission.
I NITIATION , M EMORY, AND S OCIAL M AINTENANCE At the beginning of the last century, Maurice Halbwachs argued that collective memory is central to the identity and maintenance of any group (Halbwachs 1980; 1992). His work contributed to a number of studies that explored how ideologically shaped images of identity are employed in the construction of a commemorated past. But how do the mental functions of memory themselves contribute to and constrain the construction of identity-formation and its contingent ideology? Whitehouse’s theory turns on these cognitive functions of memory itself—on how the “universal features of human memory, activated in different ways, might be said to mould political organization and ideology” (Whitehouse 2000: 5, 11). Since the work of Halbwachs, psychologists have described a complex system of human memory in which short-term or working memory is distinguished from long-term memory, which is, of course, key to the maintenance and transmission of any collective identity. Long-term memory, in turn, is divided into procedural memory, a learned but relatively unconscious sort of memory associated with, for example, riding the proverbial bicycle, and an explicit memory of learned materials that are subject to more or less ready recall. Explicit memory is further differentiated into semantic or encyclopaedic memory and episodic or autobiographical memory (Tulving 1972; for a good overview of recent research on memory, see Schacter 1996; but see Edelman 1992: esp. 238). Semantic memory refers to mental representations of a general, propositional nature that are learned and reinforced through repetition, while episodic memory refers to mental representations of personally experienced events, especially momentous events that become conceptualized as unique experiences in one’s life in which the time and place of encoding, together with the identity of co-participants in the event, become part of the representation (Whitehouse 2000: 5, 113, apud Tulving 1972). In
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contrast to semantic memory, associated with repeated and routinized learning, it is this episodic memory system that is activated by the sorts of portentous initiation rites documented by anthropologists working in Papua New Guinea and, apparently, by Mithraic rites. A particularly salient type of episodic memory, often referred to as “flashbulb” memory, i.e., a memory that results from participation in some particularly vivid or catastrophic event (Brown and Kulik 1982; Whitehouse 2000: 119–21; McCauley and Lawson 2002), seems to be associated especially with the abrupt and overwhelming sentience that is characteristic of many initiation rites. From among the Hellenistic mysteries, for example, one recalls such ritually contrived analogues to a literal sense of the “flashbulb” metaphor as Apuleius’s literary report of Isiac initiates witnessing “in the middle of the night…the sun flashing with bright light” (Met. 11.23), or Plutarch’s reference to initiates being startled on the night of the mysteries by the Eleusinian hierophant’s sudden appearance out of the darkness of the Telesterion in a brilliant light (Mor. 81E; also Hippolytus, Haer. 5.8.40). Isiac initiation was further described by Apuleius as preceded by a period of fasting (Met. 11.23), as was participation in the Eleusinian night of the mysteries (Mylonas 1961: 258–59)—a somatic deprivation common to initiation rites which would heighten the sensory effects of the initiation and contribute to its “episodic” character. And although there is no direct evidence of preparatory fasting in Mithraism, some scholars assume such was the case (Cumont 1956: 160; Vermaseren 1963: 136). Similarly, the employment of masks during their repeated communal meals, documented from some Mithraic communities,25 apparently with reference to grades of initiation (Kane 1975: 344), would also recall and heighten the episodic character of Mithraic initiations and, through the sensory effects of its pageantry,26 evoke and reinforce initiatory solidarity.27 The “cognitive shocks” produced by initiatory “rites of terror” and subsequently commemorated in analogous and emotionally heightened practices during celebratory rituals establish, Whitehouse concludes, those “enduring episodic memories upon which solidarity and enduring face-to-face relationships” are maintained (Whitehouse 2000: 12; also Atran 2002: 164).
S OCIO -P OLITICAL F EATURES
OF
M ITHRAISM
Because of the number of mithraea that have been discovered, along with a profusion of inscriptions, mostly dedicatory (Beck 2000: 178 n.
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158; Clauss 2000: xxi), more is known of the socio-political features of Mithraism than is known of its practices. With few exceptions (e.g., the mithraeum beneath the Baths of Caracalla [CIMRM 457]), mithraea are small, able to accommodate no more than 20 to 30 people. This, together with the relatively large estimates of still undiscovered sites, presumably with similar proportions (Martin 1989: 2–6, apud Coarelli 1979), suggests that Mithraism originated and remained organized as relatively small, face-to-face groups (Clauss 2000: 105). Such closely bonded, exclusivistic communities, most often structured by claims of fictive kinship (Martin 1997; for Mithraism, Vermaseren 1963: 129),28 are typically resistant to rapid and widespread diffusion, as are actual kin-groups. Among the Graeco-Roman initiatory cults, the mysteries of Demeter, for example, presumably originated as an Eleusinian family cult (Rohde 1925: 221) and remained securely situated in Eleusis despite early Athenian hegemony in the area (Martin 1986) and despite attempts to establish rival celebrations elsewhere (Martin 1990). When such communities do spread, they do so slowly and inefficiently by means of contagion (Mensching 1976: 101), by which one group comes into contact with some other group and that with another and so forth in a “chainlike process of transmission between contiguous populations” (Whitehouse 2000: 49, 77; see Sperber 1996: 1–7, 25–27, 57–61; Boyer 2001: 46–47).29 In other words, it is suggested that the dissemination of such groups was through “strings of contact” rather than through verbally or textually articulated “strings of logically connected dogma” (Whitehouse 2000: 14, 36, 37; see n. 16 above).30 In fact, as is often the case with traditional systems of initiation, there are “strict taboos (backed by formidable sanctions) against the verbalization of religious revelations” (Whitehouse 2000: 54). Such “prohibitions on idle chatter about sacred cult activities amount to something rather different from what is usually meant by the term ‘secrecy’” (Whitehouse 2000: 92; see Martin 1995: esp. 109 with respect to the trials of Aeschylus [Aristophanes, En. 3.1; Plutarch, Vit. Alc. 22.3] and Alcibiades [Thucydides, 6.28, 61; Plutarch, Vit. Alc. 19] for “profaning,” i.e., publicizing the Eleusinian mysteries).31 Rather, “restricting access of exegetical discussion,” Whitehouse concludes, “has the effect of insulating the intense, autobiographical quality of imagistic revelations from the ‘noise’ or ‘interference’ of everyday discourse” (Whitehouse 2000: 92). Although Mithraism was characterized by a widespread dissemination throughout the Roman Empire, its spread can be attributed to sociopolitical factors other than the “religious” character of the Mithraic
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groups themselves. Even as the mobility of Egyptian merchants and immigrants facilitated the spread of the Isis cult (Heyob 1975: 10–12), so the mobile character of the Roman military and of its civil servants, both of which dominated the demography of Mithraic membership, provided the “strings of contagion” for the spread of Mithraism (White 1990: 56, and literature cited in n. 117), a spread facilitated more by militarily and politically motivated “acts of patronage and benefaction than on patterns of conversion or recruitment” (White 1990: 57).32 Maps portraying the density of distributed Mithraic finds, and their overlap with the deployment of the Roman military and consequent Roman bureaucratic outposts, more resemble epidemiological maps of the spread of disease than they do didactic deployments of religious doctrine.33 By contrast, religious traditions characterized by the doctrinal modality are exemplified by noncontiguous communities founded by individual missionaries who disseminated their religious teachings or beliefs wherever they had opportunity to travel (compare the maps of Paul’s missionary journeys, for example), or even through their writings in the complete absence of face-to-face contact (e.g., Paul, Rom 1:13, 15). For Mithraism, in other words, as for Graeco-Roman religions in general, there were no roving apostles or missionaries who represented and transmitted an approved or orthodox set of beliefs: authority “inhered in the collective act rather than in the words of the leader” whose role was more of an iconic figurehead than one of “dynamic social strategist” (Whitehouse 1995: 153). Although a common story would certainly be shared within any particular Mithraic cohort and some regional homogeneities may have developed among contiguous Mithraic groups (Clauss 2000: 16, 48, 71, 76), it is nevertheless unlikely that any standardized accounts of Mithraic myth or teachings circulated widely.34 As Whitehouse concludes, “even when a set of non-verbal ritual images” does spread widely, as was the case with Mithraism, their “verbal accounts…may not” (Whitehouse 2000: 49).35
T HE “C ANONICAL” I MAGE
OF
M ITHRAISM
In addition to the architecture of the mithraea themselves, their cave-like structure in simulation of the cosmos (Porphyry, De Antr. Nymph. 5–6) and with their parallel triclinia (discussed above), the only element common to all Mithraic cells was the tauroctonous image of sacrifice, a dramatic and strikingly memorable image which was, as its ubiquitous
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presence evinces, readily transmitted and before which initiation into the Mithraic cohort most certainly occurred. From an art historical perspective, it is composed, moreover, of Graeco-Roman artistic clichés—of sacrifice, for example (Cumont 1956: 209–10); it is memorable, however, precisely because conventional expectations associated with these clichés are violated (Boyer 2001: 80–82); the sacrificer (Mithras) is depicted astride and looking away from the sacrifice (the bull, a domesticated animal), for example, and extraneous creatures, both domestic and wild, intrude into the act: a dog and serpent feed together on the sacrificial blood flowing from the fatal wound and a scorpion is attached to the testicles of the bull while grains of wheat spring from the tip of its tail (Martin 1994a: 222–24). These unexpected elements represent, of course, signs of the zodiac and the whole composition is structured, like the architecture of the mithraeum itself, according to astrological principles (Gordon 1976: 176; Beck 1984: 2079). Apart from its ubiquitous presence at every Mithraic initiation, what is significant about this image is its dramatic construction of a common Graeco-Roman ritual act according to the “celestial templates” that were such a central feature of the Graeco-Roman mentalité (Cumont 1960: 32; Beck 1998: 125). As Lévi-Strauss has emphasized of symbolic representations, however, meaning does not and cannot reside in its isolated elements but, rather, in the way those elements are combined (LéviStrauss 1967: 206). As Dan Sperber has argued, however, no symbol has implicit meaning which might be decoded; rather all symbols are viewed as meaningful on the basis of locally improvised interpretation (Sperber 1975: xi, 85). The contents of such a construction, i.e., any mythic or doctrinal contents associated with this icon, were, in other words, the result of local exegesis,36 as the “endless minor alterations” to the icon itself, the diverse and varying side panels of the tauroctony, where they exist, and the collateral iconography and statuary of the various mithraea suggest (Campbell 1968: 4; Gordon 1976: 169; 1980; White 1990: 58; Martin 1994a: 218–19; Clauss 2000: 55, 76).37 The various elements of the Mithraic tauroctony constitute, in other words, an iconic lexicon from which local meanings might be constructed according to a common Graeco-Roman celestial template shared by Mithraic culture. In addition to providing Mithraic initiates with a cosmically “patterned screen of representations and feelings” against which local meanings might be projected (Whitehouse 2000: 30), the ubiquitous presence of the Mithraic tauroctony also provided Mithraists a mnemonic icon for
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their own initiatory sacrifices. Even the effects associated with vivid flashbulb memories are prone to fading and decaying over time (Schacter 1996: 198). Such images are typically cast in an analogic code which evokes “multivocal and multivalent meanings” that are “simultaneously affective, sensual, and conceptual” (Whitehouse 2000: 88–89, apud Barth 1975, 1987; Wagner 1992). In contrast to the digital coding of mental representations in semantic memory as data sequentially organized according to some implicit logic, analogically encoded mental representations tend to “stack up in memory” to be organized by the rememberer autobiographically in accordance with such memorable episodes as his or her participation in ritual initiations (Malley 2001: 6), especially when presented with persons and/or images associated with that initiation. Intense social cohesion among those who shared in that initiation is, thereby, mnemonically reinforced.38 This mnemonic representation of loyalty was shared not only by initiates in a particular Mithraic association but was “projected” as a wider “Mithraic culture” (which, Whitehouse [2000: 14] predicts, may occur under certain conditions, e.g., those of war), that extended, finally, to the empire itself (Martin 1994a: 219; Merkelbach 1984: 153–88). Beyond structural observations, little or no general content can be assumed for or assigned to the central tauroctonous image of Roman Mithraism. Mnemonic rehearsals of Mithraic loyalty by the exclusivistic membership of Mithraic cohorts would contribute rather to the construction and solidification of local Mithraic meanings. For, having no regulatory hierarchy or orthodoxy, inventions and mutations in the “revelatory” content associated with the tauroctonous focalization would certainly have occurred in its transmission from one group to another (Clauss 2000: 171), even as “endless minor alterations” characterized the transmission of the “canonical” image itself (Gordon 1976: 169). For doctrinal religions such as Christianity, by contrast, no “ritual, no painting, no hymn, no statue, no altar, no posture…can be adequately understood without reference to a body of ideas codified in language” (Whitehouse 2000: 35).
M ITHRAISM
AND
C HRISTIANITY
Mithraism has been compared to Christianity since the second century, by Justin Martyr (1 Apol. 66; Dial. 70, 78), by Tertullian (De Bapt. 5; De Cor. 15; Adv. Marc. 1.13; De praescr. haeret. 40; Apol. 8), and by Origen (Cels. 1.9; 6.21). Modern comparisons include the famous judgment by
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Ernst Renan in the nineteenth century that had “the growth of Christianity…been arrested by some mortal malady, the world would have been Mithraic” (1882: 579), and the current pronouncement by David Ulansey of Mithras as “the other Christ” (forthcoming). However, Mithraism, as other non-Christian Hellenistic religions, effectively came to an end with the political embrace of Christianity by Rome during the fourth century. This political ratification of Christianity does not adequately explain, however, the basis for its broad-based popular appeal and its acceptance as an alternative to existing Graeco-Roman religions and philosophies in the first place (see Lease 1980).39 The rather rapid transmission of Christianity throughout the Roman Empire may be explained by the adoption by some of the early Christianities of what Whitehouse terms the “doctrinal” mode of religiosity which it shared, in the Hellenistic context, only with some forms of Judaism, the proselytizing transmission of which was, however, incapacitated by Roman suppression of the revolts of 66–70 and 132–35 CE.40 The foundation for what later developed as the Christian mode of doctrinal orthodoxy was first articulated by Paul with his insistence that salvation is not to be obtained through ritual practices but by faith (Rom 1: 16, 17; 3: 26, 28, 30; etc.). The “doctrinal” character of this programmatic faith is nowhere more clearly expressed than in Paul’s opposition to the “charismatic” exercises of the Christian community in Corinth (1 Cor 12). Paul insisted that such spiritual practices, and especially glossolalia, be regulated by reasoned interpretation (1 Cor 14: 5, 13–15).41 And he leaves little doubt that it is his own authority which is the criterion for a correct, universal interpretation to which local revelations associated with such practices as glossolalia should yield; for his teachings are, he avers, themselves “a command of the Lord” (1 Cor 14: 37). “If any one does not recognize this,” he concludes, “he is not recognized” (1 Cor 14: 38; see also Gal 1: 6–9). The universalistic and authorized strategy advocated by Paul “only made sense once the capacity for conceptualizing large anonymous communities had been established” (Whitehouse 2000: 41). As is characteristic of the doctrinal mode of religions generally, the dynamic and centralized leadership advocated by Paul tended to suppress alternative imagistic modes of Hellenistic religiosity, both Christian and non-Christian, by de-emphasizing the importance of local exegesis and ritual fervour (Whitehouse 2000: 2).42 Such uniformity of doctrine is maintained by frequent review and repetition, expressed in language, whether orally or in writing43—just those traits typically associated with the transmis-
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sive advantages of such proselytizing communities as those associated with the Pauline (and Lukan) traditions and with their stable and enduring but imagined or anonymous continuities (Whitehouse 2000: 9; on anonymous communities, see Anderson 1991: 6; see also the claim to exclusivity in Mark 13:6).
C ONCLUSION Whitehouse’s cognition-based theory of two “modes of religiosity” predicts that religious transmissions will select for differential relationships between discursive and non-discursive types of ritual practice, between the particular memory systems activated by these differing types of performance, and a consequent differential patterning of socio-political association. This theoretical prediction is historically instantiated by the parallel rise of Mithraism and Christianity, which were cognitively encoded and transmitted in just these contrasting ways. The early successes of Christianity with respect to Mithraism can, in other words, be explained more on the basis of its selected mode of representation and strategy of transmission than by the content of its message (Whitehouse 2000: 80). The latter is, after all, largely shared with Mithraism as well as with many features of the mystery cults in general—the product of a common cultural context and contemporaneous cultural concerns (for example, J. Z. Smith 1990)—as has been observed throughout the ages. As Whitehouse contends, “control of the social conditions of transmission is always more important than determining the range of textual materials that should be regarded as authoritative” (Whitehouse 2000: 177). This conclusion was demonstrated, of course, by the growing power of a centralized “orthodox” Christianity and its condemnation of “deviant” forms of Christianity as heretical—whether those forms were characterized by imagistic practice and/or by doctrinal nonconformity (Martin 2004a). The historical case of Mithraism also supports the suggestion that cognitive models, such as that proposed by Whitehouse, provide a valid social-scientific heuristic for the (re)construction of historical knowledge. Given the incomplete data that survive from Roman Mithraism, like that from the historical or archaeological record generally, the sociologist Rodney Stark has suggested that well-articulated social-scientific models—“including formal rational choice theory, [economic] theories of the firm, the role of social networks and interpersonal attachments in conversion, dynamic population models, social epidemiology, and modes
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of religious economies”—might be employed to “fill in the blanks” of what we know about the religions of antiquity (Stark 1996: xii, 23). The question, of course—and it is raised by Stark of his own proposals as well as by his critics44—is to what extent “it is possible…to apply propositions developed in one time and place to other eras and cultures” (Stark 1996: 21).45 The appealing feature of Whitehouse’s model is that it incorporates but goes beyond the familiar metaphors, typologies and sets of concepts previously developed on the basis of ethnographic, historical, and sociological descriptions (Whitehouse 1995: 203–17; 2000: 3–4) to advance a theoretical explanation grounded in common features of human cognition and that offers, thereby, a transcultural and trans-historical premise for the organization, interpretation, and explanation of all human products and their historical remains (Whitehouse 2000: 11; see Stark 1996: 25–26).
N OTES 1 Portions of early drafts of this paper were presented at the Society of Biblical Literature International Meeting in Rome, Italy, July 2001, at the GraecoRoman Religions Section of the Society of Biblical Literature Annual Meeting in Denver, Colorado, November 2001, at the University of Helsinki, Finland, October 2003, and at McDaniel College, April 2004. 2 In his evolutionary and relentlessly “bottom-up” theory of mind, the neuroscientist Gerald Edelman has presented a complex but compelling argument that consciousness is “a special set of relationships between perception, concept formation, and memory” (Edelman 1992: 149). 3 Language per se can, of course, convey analogic meanings as, for example, with paratactic constructions in which signifiers are juxtaposed asyntactically in ways that loosen constraints upon the possible signifieds. 4 Barth suggested the cognitive process of “analogic coding” in his reflections on the initiation systems he encountered in his fieldwork among the Baktaman of inner New Guinea in 1969 (Barth 1975: 207–14, 227; see also Atran 2002: 40–41). Analogical thinking is, of course, also a possible consequence of digital coding; in fact, it has been argued that such thinking constitutes the very core of all human cognition (Hofstadter 2001; on analogical thinking generally, see Gentner et al. 2001). However, the possibilities for analogical thinking are maximized if the encoding of source information is itself analogical, i.e., if it stresses relational or structural features. Equally important is whether the retrieval cue for that information also stresses relational or structural features (Dunbar 2001: 324–29). The corpus of knowledge transmitted in many initiation rites, such as those described by Barth, is, of course, structural, i.e., procedural, involving knowledge about the ritual itself rather than any specific content or meaning (see also Humphrey and Laidlaw 1994 on the Jain puja; and Martin 1995 on the Hellenistic mystery cults).
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5 An important new mithraeum was recently (2000) discovered in the excavations of the Crypta Balbi (Via delle Botteghe Oscure, 31) in the very centre of urban Rome near the foot of the Capitoline Hill itself. Founded in an insula in approximately 200 CE, this mithraeum was in use until the end of the fourth century. The excavations are still underway (Gordon 2001). 6 My paper “Reflections on the Mithraic Tauroctony as a Cult Scene” (Martin 1994a) was presented to the panel on Mithraism organized on the occasion of the XVIth Congress of the International Association for the History of Religion, Rome, September 1990. The suggestion of a “focalization” for some “shared orientation” is from Sperber (1975: 136–37). 7 In his innovative investigations into the world of early Christianity, Keith Hopkins has a contemporary time-traveller take note of the imagistic quality of everyday life in the Roman empire and the performative character of its religion by opining that “[t]here is no justification for privileging informants who intellectualise religions” (Hopkins 1999: 24). This latter point has been argued by Humphrey and Laidlaw with respect to ritual: “one of the distinctive features of ritual is the consistent displacement of intentional meaning” (Humphrey and Laidlaw 1994: 260, contra, in the case of Mithraic ritual, Beck 2000: 156). Even where religion is textually documented in the Roman context, “stories, not analysis,” Hopkins concludes, “were the stuff of religious persuasion” (1999: 4). 8 This phrase from the “Foreword” of the English translation does not appear in the “Einleitung” of the German edition. 9 “Sacred narrative” in the English translation of Clauss has greater resonance with some currents of religionsgeschichtliche theory than does the “MithrasLegende” of the German edition (Clauss 1990: 71). 10 “First world” religious practices, such as those described by Whitehouse, have long been familiar to historians of religion as “sites” for thinking about religion generally (J. Z. Smith 2001), including those of the Graeco-Roman world. Some 75 years ago, for example, Raffaele Pettazzoni noted morphological parallels between the initiation rites of the Greek mystery cults and those of some Australian tribes (Pettazzoni 1997: 21–44; I am indebted to Giovanni Casadio for this reference), and 40 years ago, Maarten Vermaseren, one of the great scholars of Mithraism, suggested that certain features of Mithraism might be found among what he then termed “the primitive peoples of Australia, Africa and America today” (Vermaseren 1963: 129). Neither Pettazzoni nor Vermaseren, however, offered any theoretical basis or justification for these ethnographic analogies. 11 Whitehouse aptly cites W. Robertson Smith’s observation that: “the study of religion [in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and, we might add, in the twentieth] has meant mainly the study of Christian beliefs, and instruction in religion has habitually begun with the creed, religious duties being presented to the learner as flowing from the dogmatic truths he is taught to accept. All this seems to us so much a matter of course that, when we approach some new or antique religion, we naturally assume that here also our first business is to search for a creed, and find in it the key to ritual and practice…But in ancient religion…practice preceded doctrinal theory. Men form general rules of con-
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duct before they begin to express general principles in words” (W. R. Smith 1972: 16, 20; cited by Whitehouse 2000: 186). 12 The distinction between an imagistic and a doctrinal mode of religiosity was anticipated for Graeco-Roman religions by A. D. Nock, who differentiated, on descriptive grounds, between religions in which “the essential element is…practice” and those in which “reason is all-important and the practice flows from it and is in a sense secondary” (Nock 1933: 3). Whitehouse’s model was anticipated theoretically by the medievalist Brian Stock (1983: 12–92). 13 As the name implies, the triclinium (Greek, tri/klinoj) was an arrangement of three couches along three walls of a dining room, the fourth wall being broken by a door, and with a table in the centre. According to Plutarch, “different peoples hold different places in honour” according to the position upon these couches assigned or accorded them with reference to the door or entrance (Davidson 1997: 44): “the Persians the most central place, occupied by the king; the Greeks the first place; the Romans the last place on the middle couch…; and some of the Greeks who dwell around the Pontus…contrariwise the first place of the middle couch” (Mor. 619 B). Such concerns with the designations of social rank was also a protocol characteristic of sacrificial meals (Rundin 1996: 188). In the architectural iconography of the Mithraeum, the cult-niche with its dominating image of Mithras was always situated on the back wall of the mithraeum between the two benches or couches, occupying, thereby, the place that was for Persians the place of royal or highest honour. As Clauss concludes, the Persian god Mithras “himself was always the host” of the Mithraic communal meal (Clauss 2000: 113). If the culinary conventions of the Greek symposium were followed in the mithraeum, a not unlikely influence given the Sophistic revival in Rome that was contemporaneous with the spread of Mithraism, participants would recline on their left sides, reserving their right hands for communal eating and drinking (Davidson 1997: 22–23). In the mithraeum, those reclining on the left bench would be arrayed in a manner opposite but complementary to those reclining on the right bench with their bodies aligned in a clockwise manner. The figure of Mithras in the central tauroctonous image on the posterior wall of the mithraeum not only positioned Mithras as honoured guest, but always precisely according to the arrangement of the classical symposium, i.e., facing towards the right, clockwise arrangement of repose, even as he glances over his shoulder towards those to his left. The glance to the left may indicate the counter-clockwise circulation of eating, drinking and/or conversation that was characteristic of the classical symposium. James Davidson’s conclusions about the physical array of these symposia well corresponds with what we know of the mithraea and the practices therein. They “occupied a space perfectly commensurate with the walls. The atmosphere was correspondingly intense and intimate. Nothing takes place behind the drinkers; the whole visual space is constructed to make sight lines converge and to ensure reciprocity. The sympotic space conspired with the effect of alcohol to create a sense of entering a separate reality…[This] severing of ties to the extramural world was effected with a repertoire of images and discourse peculiar to itself ”(Davidson 1997: 44). In Graeco-Roman iconography, including that of architectural decor, the
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triclinium represented “the aristocratic life and ideal” generally (Dentzer 1971: 254); this ideal may suggest something of a social status, alternative to that of the initiate’s everyday station, to which Mithraic participants aspired (Gordon 1972). As Whitehouse concludes, the “revelations” of exclusivistic communities generally involve “the violation of semantic [learned] knowledge” (Whitehouse 2000: 51) so that initiates are “capable of conceptualizing the social world, and their place within it, in a radically new way” (Whitehouse 2000: 39). Cf. Arnal’s article (chap. 2 in this volume). CIMRM 42,13; 49; 483; 835,2; 966,C5; 988; 1036,2; 1084,2; passim. A reciprocal but non-discursive relationship between the sacrifice of the bull (associated with initiation) and the celebration of a shared meal while sitting on the hide of the bull (membership) is suggested in Mithraic imagery, especially by the reversible reliefs which feature a representation of the tauroctony on one side and that of the meal on its opposite (see, e.g., CIMRM 397; 641; 1083; 1137; 1896; etc.). CIMRM 390r5; 693a; 782; 1175, etc. Mithraic membership seems to have been restricted to males, but see Porphyry, Abst. 4.16. Lamprocles, Com. 9: “It is usual [in the initiatory rites of Mithraism] for something to be said, or feigned to be done for the purpose of causing terror” [quum illic aliguid ad speciem timoris vel dici vel fingi solent]. A leader of a contemporary initiatory group has perceptively summarized this point: “Historians often forget ceremonies must be impressive if they are to stir the deepest waters of the soul. To depend on the oratory or presence of a single person in all temples to Mithras would have been suicidal….It was imperative the ceremonies be impressive” (Cooper 1996: 27–28). Compare the observation by an anonymous fourth-century commentator that “they are deceived in the cave when they have their eyes blindfolded” (Quaestiones veteris et novi testamenti 113.11; cited by Clauss 2000: 103). Depictions of blindfolded initiates may, of course, not reflect actual practices but may analogically represent the setting of initiation in a dark room or dim chamber. Depending upon intensity and duration of prior exposure to light, the human eye’s adaptation to dark proceeds relatively slowly, up to an hour in the extreme situation in which one is plunged from a very bright environment into total darkness, but from fifteen to twenty minutes under less extreme conditions. Seeing in dim light depends upon the transformation of light into patterns of neural activity by the retinal rod cells which are highly sensitive to light and movement but which give a very poor visual acuity; retinal cone cells, by contrast, provide the basis for colour discrimination and, being clustered about the fovea, for visual acuity. Further, the dilation of the pupil under conditions of low levels of illumination increases saturation of the peripheral rod cells and decreases that of the cone cells. Under these conditions, the visual field is quite unstable and various illusions and entoptic phenomena may occur (Verplanck 1949; Green 2000), producing a cognitive state of ambiguity that is quite congenial to the manipulation of initiatory revelations, especially in the presence of dramatically illuminated analogic representations (Vermaseren 1963: 67; Clauss 2002: 52; especially the pierced reliefs and
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altars behind which light could be placed, e.g., from the Housesteads and Carrawburgh mithraea in the area of Hadrian’s Wall, the pierced lead plaque with the Sungod’s head from the S. Prisca mithraeum in Rome, or the white marble statue of Mithras as bull-killer in the Terme di Mitra in Ostia, stunningly illuminated by natural light from above; see Maré 2002: 253). Initiation into the Eleusinian mysteries has also been described, by ancient as by modern authors, as involving rites of “fear and terror” (Clinton 1992: 85; for Clinton’s reconstruction of the non-narrative but experiential and visual character of Eleusinian initiation, see 84–90). See, in the sixth century, Nonnus, In Julianium Imperatorem invectivæ duæ (PG 36: 989), and in the eighth century, Cosmas of Jerusalem (PG 38: 506). Most of the specific references to Mithraic initiation are often from late and always from polemical sources. The character of these sources should not, for these reasons alone, preclude their possible relevance. After all, analogies to aspects of alleged Mithraic initiation rites, e.g., oaths of secrecy administered to blindfolded initiates under the threat of death and mutilation by sword or knife and followed by the removal of the blindfold and admission into the brotherhood of light, are employed by such modern groups as Freemasons and related groups (Knight 1984: 316–17; Buckley 2001: 166–67). Such psychological similarities are so great that some writers have argued for historical continuity between Mithraic rite and modern ceremony (e.g., King 1887: 420–22; Heckethorn 1897: vol. 2; Wynne-Tyson 1972: 185–90 [following King]; Cooper 1996: chap. 2). Although similarities between Mithraism (and ancient “mysteries” generally) and such modern groups as Freemasonry are often exaggerated by those unconstrained by the evidential requirements of modern scholarship, analogies between such groups, when viewed from a cognitive perspective, may well prove insightful in the face of an absence of adequate historical information from antiquity. See n. 19 above. Konjica (CIMRM 1896), Dura-Europos (CIMRM 42), the Aventine in Rome (Vermaseren and van Essen 1965: 155–60, 167–72). An anonymous fourth-century Christian apologist ridicules but nevertheless captures something of the ebullient character of the masked commemorations celebrated by the Mithraists when he observes that “some like birds flap their wings imitating the raven’s cry; others roar like lions” (Quæstiones veteris et novi testamenti 113: 11 [PL 2214], cited from Gedden 1925: 65). In addition to cult meals, mnemonic celebratory rituals would include, of course, participation by members of Mithraic groups in the induction rites of new initiates. As Scott Atran concludes of such rites, accurate recall of details by those undergoing terrifying initiations requires two broad sets of conditions: “if mood-dependent or emotionally arousing aspects of the original situation reoccur, so that a person feels compelled to better recall in order to cope with it; or if a socially secure environment…is convincingly provided so that the person feels better able to integrate adversity and overcome it. For religious initiates, the ceremonial repetitition of situations that bring to mind their own initiations—witnessed as part of a congregation rather than suffered as individuals—seems to fulfill both conditions” (Atran 2002: 163–64).
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28 Mithraic groups were apparently led by a pater and members referred to one another as frater (but see Gordon 1972: 101 and n. 49). Although structured internally by kinship claims, such religious groups in the Roman Empire were often publically organized as “a corporation with the right of holding property and the right to administer its funds according to certain rules” (Clauss 2000: 139; see Beck 1996). 29 Stephen Knight (1984: 124–25) has shown anecdotally that Freemasonry recruits by friendship links rather than by theology, and some modern “secret societies” invite potential members to attend their “private rituals” along with initiate members (Bryan 2001: 3). On social-scientific grounds, Rodney Stark contends that conversion to new groups generally “tends to proceed along social networks formed by interpersonal attachments” and is “not about seeking or embracing an ideology” (Stark 1996: 17, 18; see Lofland and Stark 1965). Stark has developed his theory with data from new religious movements in the United States, primarily the Unification Church (Moonies) and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Mormons), and has applied this theory productively to early Christianity. The Mithraic reversible reliefs (see n. 15 above), found only along the Roman limes, prime sites for the induction of mercenaries into the Roman legions (Martin 1994a: 222–24), might offer a clue to the recruitment techniques of the Mithraists. Since the Mithraic meal was apparently a repeated ritual, and since repeated rituals are generally non-exclusivistic—in contrast to such non-repeated rituals as initiation (McCauley and Lawson 2002)—might the table-fellowship of the Mithraic meal have provided not only a reaffirmation of membership for initiates but also a social occasion for Mithraic recruitment? The question can be posed, in other words, as to which is to be considered the anterior side of the reversible reliefs and which the posterior? Because of the ubiquity and centrality of the tauroctonous scene in the mithraea, scholars who are concerned to (re)construct a Mithraic myth have simply assumed that this scene is the primary scene and the meal consumed while sitting on the hide of the bull is secondary, that is, sequential to the slaying of the bull (e.g., Beck 2000: 146). By this logic, initiation of new members into the Mithraic group would follow upon the meal while the tauroctonous scene, with its presumed analogical connection to initiation, would be the posterior. From a performative perspective, however, these two scenes would represent non-sequentially ordered ritual analogues to great acts held (locally? regionally?) to have been performed by Mithras. 30 An “epidemiological” model of cultural transmission was first elaborated by Dan Sperber (1996). As summarized by McCauley and Lawson, Sperber argued that the study of macro-phenomena such as culture must be explained by micro-level processes; specifically, “the nature of the human cognitive system differentially encourages the acquisition or recollection of some cultural representations as opposed to others and, therefore, that these cognitive considerations constitute selection pressures on cultural representations and, indirectly, on the cultural forms for which they are responsible” (McCauley and Lawson 2002: 40). 31 Although participation in Mithraic groups was closed to non-initiates, the location of such mithraea as those of Crypta Balbi (n. 5 above), San Clemente
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(CIMRM 338–48; Boyle 1987) and Santa Prisca (Vermaseren and van Essen 1965) in central Rome and the Walbrook Mithraeum in central London (Shepherd 1998), the mithraeum of Casa di Diana in a crowded, urban insula in Ostia (CIMRM 216–23) and in such public places as the Terme di Caracalla (CIMRM 457) or the Mithraeum of Caesarea (Hopfe and Lease 1975), supports the contention that neither the existence of the cult nor its membership were “secret.” Merkelbach has even argued that the Mithraic procession depicted on the wall of the Santa Prisca mithraeum represented an actual procession in public (Merkelbach 1984: 180–82; see n. 26 above). The Hellenistic mystery cults generally were characterized by public as well as private aspects. The former were transformed into the latter through initiation (Martin 1987: 59). See the compelling scenario offered by Roger Beck for the spread of Mithraism by the military and civilian followers of the Commagenian royal house in the highly mobile context of the Judean and Civil Wars (Beck 1998: esp. 121–22). Studies of contemporary religious subgroups suggest that high in-group cohesion and commitment is correlate with support of the dominant society’s political polity, including its enforcement through military action (Atran 2002: 120–21). In the large-scale empires of antiquity as in the modern industrialized world, such groups may, in part, be reactions to institutionalized social mobility (Martin 1994b: 125; Atran 2002: 121). Chronologically sequenced maps of Mithraic distribution would, of course, be more helpful in establishing this point than are the available synchronic maps of Mithraic finds. Apparent deviations from the epidemiological model of Mithraic dispersion—for example, the isolated Mithraic remains on the Greek island of Andros—are explained by the transfer there of a military unit already composed of Mithraic initiates (Clauss 2000: 37). By this view, the recently discovered fragment of a “Mithraic Catechism” from Egypt (Brashear 1992) would represent an example of Mithraic tradition that has been codified at the local level. The content of any such “doctrinal” developments would be, in any case, accessory to and mitigated by the dominant “imagistic” character of Mithraic communities and, like the content of Hellenistic mystery legomena generally, be, in and of itself, at best trivial and at worse incomprehensible (Martin 1995: 108–12). On the appeal of the mystery cults to the Roman citizenry, see Martin (2003–2004). Clauss concludes that people of antiquity “did not feel bound by fixed credos and confessions which had to be consistent to the last detail: in the area of religion, a truly blessed anarchy held sway” (Clauss 2000: 148). Even the sevenfold structure of the initiatory grades—a doctrinal centrepiece in most reconstructions of a “normative” Mithraism—has been questioned for the cult apart from its Roman-Ostian examples (Francis 1975: 441–42; White 1990: 58 n. 134; but see Beck 2000: 149, 171–72, and n. 118). Similarly, among the Nkanu of Angola and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, for example, another group of people who traditionally encode their cultural knowledge analogically and who transmit this knowledge over a several-month period of initiation, some of the artefacts produced during the period of initiation are retained and displayed to the community by new ini-
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tiates during a one-to-two-year reintegration period (Eickel 2001; van Damme 2002). For a plausible mathematically-based explanation for the rapid growth of Christianity and estimate of the Christian population of the Roman Empire by the time of Constantine, see Stark (1996: 4–13). The Greek philosophical “schools” must be counted among the contributors to the beginnings of a doctrinal mode of religiosity in the Hellenistic world, although they were never “centralized” and “routinized” in the sense described by Whitehouse. On the philosophical “schools” see Frischer 1982; Braun 2004. In 1 Corinthians 14 alone, Paul contrasts pneu/ma (“spirit”; representative insights and feelings characteristic of one’s inner life) and “charismatic practice” of glw/ssaij lalw=n (uninterpreted “speaking in tongues”) with nou=j (the “thinking mind” or “intellect”), diermhnei/a (“interpretation” or “explanation”), oi0kodomh/ (“edification”) and kathxh/sij (“instruction” by word of mouth)—precisely the sorts of features characteristic of diverging tendencies towards the “imagistic” and “doctrinal” modes of religiosity predicted by Whitehouse’s theory. Indications that other pre- or non-Pauline Christian groups may have shared an imagistic mode of religiosity with their Hellenistic religious context are the collections of local “aphorisms” and “picturesque images” ascribed to Jesus in Q and in the Gospel of Thomas (Mack 1993: 105; on the “local” character of these sayings, see Arnal 2001)—one of which becomes incorporated into the more “orthodox” gospel narratives, the other becoming judged as “gnostic” and thereby “heretical,” or the vividly imagistic but non-doctrinal character of “gnostic” myth generally (Irenaeus, Adv. haer. 1.18.1). The archaeological evidence for pre-Constantinian Christianity collected by Snyder (2003) supports the continuing existence of an imagistic modality, alternative to the written/doctrinal tradition, among many Christian groups into the early fourth century (and beyond) when the doctrinal tradition achieved authoritative status as the dominant mode of Christian self-understanding and hegemonic expression. Eastern Orthodox Christianity, rooted in Hellenic culture, continues to exhibit a strong imagistic tendency as do popular traditions in Roman Catholicism. In literate cultures, writing, a mnemonic aid for semantic memory, is associated with the doctrinal mode. Jewish groups, for example, had long employed writing to preserve their epic narratives and their doctrinal propositions. Some groups in the literate cultural context of the Graeco-Roman world may have retained a largely imagistic mode of representation, however, by adopting texts into their practices as iconic objects rather than as media for the transmission of doctrine, e.g., the “books written with unknown characters” that were displayed during Isiac initiation rites (Apuleius, Met. 11.22) or the often nonsensical but visually patterned incantations familiar from the GraecoRoman magical texts. Since episodic and semantic memory are both universal capacities of primate, including human, cognition—in the sense that physiology is common to a particular species—such “mixed-modes” of religiosity are more often to be expected than more or less ideal instantiations of either. As Whitehouse has warned: “Even the most iconoclastic doctrinal traditions
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incorporate certain properties of the imagistic mode and vice-versa, not least because doctrines themselves may evoke multivocal imagery and because ritual symbolism is often crucially augmented by doctrine-like discourse” (Whitehouse 2000: 1, extended discussion, 147–85). 44 For example, Hock (1986), cited and responded to by Stark (1996: 21–22); see also McCutcheon (1999). 45 As summarized by Wayne Meeks: “The perceptions and attitudes about change which we take for granted in modern industrial societies are in almost every case inappropriate to the conditions of Greco-Roman society. Neither the extreme individualism that is the presupposition of the lore and practice of personal advancement in industrial democracies nor the class structure essential to conventional Marxist analysis has a place in the ancient Mediterranean world” (1983: 20; see also Kiser and Hechter 1991).
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“Roman Mithraism and Christianity.” Numen 36: 2–15. “Greek Goddesses and Grain: The Sicilian Connection.” Helios 17: 251–61. 1994a “Reflections on the Mithraic Tauroctony as Cult Scene.” In John R. Hinnells (ed.), Studies in Mithraism, 217–24. Manchester: Manchester University Press; Rome: Bretschneider. 1994b “The Anti-Individualistic Ideology of Hellenistic Culture.” Numen 41: 117–40. 1995 “Secrecy in Hellenistic Religious Communities.” In Hans G. Kippenberg and G. Stroumsa (eds.), Secrecy and Concealment: Studies in the History of Mediterranean and Near Eastern Religions, 101–21. Leiden: Brill. 1997 “Akin to the Gods or Simply One to Another? Comparison with Respect to Religions in Antiquity.” In H.-J. Klimkeit (ed.), Vergleichen und Verstehen in der Religionswissenschaft, 147–59. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. 2003– “History, Cognitive Science, and the Probelmatic Study of Folk Reli2004 gions: The Case of the Eleusinian Mysteries of Demeter.” Temenos 39–40: 81–89. 2004a “Redescribing Christian Origins: Historiography or Exegesis?” In Ron Cameron and Merrill Miller (eds.), Redescribing Christian Origins, 475–81. SBL Symposium Series. Atlanta: Scholars Press; Leiden: Brill. 2004b “Ritual Competence and Mithraic Ritual.” In Timothy Light and Brian C. Wilson (eds.), Religion as a Human Capacity: A Festschrift in Honor of E. Thomas Lawson, 245–63. Leiden: Brill. McCauley, Robert N. and E. Thomas Lawson 2002 Bringing Ritual to Mind: Psychological Foundations of Cultural Forms. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. McCutcheon, Russell T. 1999 “A Symposium on Rodney Stark’s The Rise of Christianity, with Willi Braun, Burton Mack and Randall Collins.” Religious Studies Review 25: 127–39. Meeks, Wayne A. 1983 The First Urban Christians: The Social World of the Apostle Paul. New Haven: Yale University Press. Mensching, Gustav 1976 Structures and Patterns of Religion. Trans. H. F. Klimkeit and V. Srinivasa Sarma. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass. Merkelbach, Reinhold 1984 Mithras. Königstein/Ts.: Hain. Mylonas, George E. 1961 Eleusis and the Eleusinian Mysteries. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Nilsson, Martin P. 1957 The Dionysiac Mysteries of the Hellenistic and Roman Age. New York: Arno. Nock, A. D. 1933 Conversion: The Old and the New in Religion from Alexander the Great to Augustine of Hippo. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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Pettazzoni, Raffaele 1997 [1924] I Misteri: Saggio de una theoria storico-religiosa. Cosenza: Lionello Giordano. PG J-P. Migne (ed.), Patrologiae Cursus, series Graeca. Paris: J-P. Migne, 1857–66. PL J-P. Migne (ed.), Patrologiae Cursus, series Latina. Paris: J-P. Migne, 1844–65. Renan, Ernst 1882 Marc-Aurèle et la fin du monde antique. Paris: Calmann Levy. Robertson, John M. 1889 “Mithraism.” Religious Systems of the World: A Contribution to the Study of Comparative Religion, 194–215. 9th edition 1908. London: Swan Sonnenschein. Rohde, Erwin 1925 Psyche: The Cult of Souls and Belief in Immortality Among the Greeks. Trans. W. B. Hillis. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co. Rundin, John 1996 “A Politics of Eating: Feasting in Early Greek Society.” American Journal of Philology 117: 179–215. Schacter, Daniel L. 1996 Searching for Memory: The Brain, the Mind, and the Past. New York: Basic Books. Shepherd, John 1998 The Temple of Mithras London: Excavations by W. F. Grimes and A. Williams at the Walbrook. Archaeological Report, 12. London: English Heritage. Slone, D. Jason 2004 Theological Incorrectness: Why Religious People Believe What They Shouldn’t. New York: Oxford University Press. Smith, Jonathan Z. 1990 Drudgery Divine: On the Comparison of Early Christianities and the Religions of Late Antiquity. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 2001 “Re: The Corinthians.” Paper presented to the Society of Biblical Literature Seminar on “Ancient Myths and Modern Theories of Christian Origins.” Denver, November 2001. Smith, W. Robertson 1972 [1894] The Religion of the Semites. New York: Schocken. Snyder, Graydon R. 2003 Ante Pacem: Archaeological Evidence of Church Life Before Constantine, 2nd edition. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press. Sperber, Dan 1975 Rethinking Symbolism. Trans. A. L. Morton. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1996 Explaining Culture: A Naturalistic Approach. Oxford: Blackwell.
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Stark, Rodney 1996 The Rise of Christianity: A Sociologist Reconsiders History. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Stock, Brian 1983 The Implications of Literacy: Written Language and Models of Interpretation in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Tulving, Endel 1972 “Episodic and Semantic Memory.” In Endel Tulving and Wayne Donaldson (eds.), Organization of Memory, 381–403. New York: Academic Press. Turcan, Robert 1996 The Cults of the Roman Empire. Trans. A. Nevill. Oxford: Blackwell. Tuzin, Donald F. 1980 The Voice of the Tambaran: Truth and Illusion in Ilahita Arapesh Religion. Berkeley: University of California Press. Ulansey, David 1989 The Origins of the Mithraic Mysteries: Cosmology and Salvation in the Ancient World. New York: Oxford University Press. Forth. The Other Christ: The Mysteries of Mithras and the Origins of Christianity. New York: Oxford University Press. van Damme, Annemiecke 2002 Spectacular Display: The Art of Nkanu Initiation Rituals. Washington: Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of African Art. Vermaseren, Maarten J. 1963 Mithras, The Secret God. Trans. T. and V. Megaw. New York: Barnes & Noble. 1971 Mithriaca I: The Mithraeum at S. Maria Capua Vetere. Leiden: Brill. Vermaseren, Maarten J. and C. C. van Essen 1965 Excavations in the Mithraeum of the Church of Santa Prisca in Rome. Leiden: Brill. Verplanck, William S. 1949 “Night Vision: The Terminal Visual Thresholds.” In Conrad Barens (ed.), The Eye and Its Diseases, 203–209. 2nd edition. Philadelphia: W. B. Saunders. Wagner, Roy 1992 “The Imagery Keeps Its Scale: An Obviation Model of the Yafar Yangis.” In B. Juillerat (ed.), Shooting the Sun: Ritual and Meaning in West Sepik, 206–13. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press. White, L. Michael 1990 Building God’s House in the Roman World: Architectural Adaptation Among Pagans, Jews, and Christians. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Whitehouse, Harvey 1995 Inside the Cult: Religious Innovation and Transmission in Papua New Guinea. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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Arguments and Icons: Divergent Modes of Religiosity. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2002 “Modes of Religiosity: Towards a Cognitive Explanation of the Sociopolitical Dynamics of Religion.” Method & Theory in the Study of Religion 14: 293–315. 2004 Modes of Religiosity: A Cognitive Theory of Religious Transmission. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira. Wynne-Tyson, Esmé 1972 Mithras: The Fellow in the Cap. New York: Barnes & Noble. Zaidman, Louise Bruit and Pauline Schmitt Pantel 1992 Religion in the Ancient Greek City. Trans. P. Cartledge. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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9 Feeling Persuaded Christianization as Social Formation
I
f scholars have found it difficult to draw a history of Christianization in the early centuries, it is because they continue to be pestered by inadequate, but resiliently enduring conceptual frameworks. Though they are now less likely to speak of “pagan survivals,” or of cultural “borrowings” or “corruptions,” the problems posed by such notions continue to trouble attempts to define precisely what is entailed by our use of the term “Christianization.” Some historians have recognized that bold narratives of Christianity’s rise from its humble origin to its victory as the official imperial religion, then to its eventual corruption or distortion thereafter, are not adequate to describe the complexity of religious history as it appears in the record. Instead, they have come to consider these “facilitating narrative[s]” as the attempts of early authors to imagine their collective past and come to terms with the ambiguities of their present history (Brown 1997: 4).1 Consequently, they have also come to question the sufficiency of the terms and categories by which they think the process of Christianization.2 Despite the cautions and critical challenges posed by these thinkers, ideas formulated by previous generations of historians continue to instruct the way many historians imagine Christianization. This is most evident in the tenacity with which they hold to the notion that Christianity is, in its origin and essence, a religion of doctrine. In such instances, doctrine defines the parameters of what may be called “Christian,” so that ideas and practices which cannot be unequivocally aligned with Christian “belief ” (especially as articulated in the canonical biblical texts) are
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thereby classified as “not Christian.” Consider the following statement by Bernard Hamilton, for example, and the certainty with which Christianity is set apart from, and situated against, pagan religions: “Although on a rational level people in the medieval west accepted the Christian account of the nature of the universe and of man’s place in it, older concepts, derived from the pagan religions of the west, lingered in their consciousness and helped to shape their attitudes in ways which were not Christian at all” (Hamilton 1986: 96). Such a state of affairs was made possible, he continues, because “there were seldom enough priests to instruct new converts in the practice of the faith, and a network of churches was established only very slowly. Consequently in many parts of Europe paganism was practised alongside a nominal form of Christianity” (1986: 99). Note that it is the qualification of a “nominal” (that is, “not fully Christian”) status that enables the practice of paganism “alongside.” In another instance, James C. Russell asserts that the “unique characteristics of Christianity are to be located…in the belief in individual redemption through the suffering and death of Jesus Christ” (1994: 35), and so he attempts to measure the success of efforts at Christianization among the Germanic peoples by determining “the extent to which the distinctive soteriological-eschatological core of Christianity is consciously accepted” (1994: 36). That he is finally unable to discern this conscious acceptance, Russell explains, comes as a result of “accommodation” or “deliberate inculturation of Germanic religiocultural attitudes within Christianity by Christian missionaries” (1994: 39), an initial mission policy adopted on the assumption that “more rigorous ethical and doctrinal formation would soon follow and eliminate incompatible Germanic ideological elements” (1994: 209). Again, it is a lack of proper instruction in doctrinal propositions that led to a failure of Christianization. The problem with such representations is not that they emphasize the importance of explicit educational policies as a means of inculcating Christian ideas, beliefs, and values. The problem is, rather, that they assume the complete and exclusive acceptance of such to be the proper end of the process of Christianization. Their ahistorical insistence on an extra-historical Christian essence as the motivating factor in Christian affiliation thus makes Christian adherence primarily a matter of ideological consent and places the burden of understanding the process of (effective) Christianization on the successful transmission of doctrinal material through persuasion at the level of ideas, concepts, and creeds. In so doing, it also marginalizes the variety of religious practices that are
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so characteristic of the early Christian traditions, and thus further obscures the diversity and complexity that characterize religious formation and social change. Here, I will treat elements of social formation and discourse theory, as well as cognitive theory concerning emotion, memory, and the production of social identity, to suggest an alternative to models of Christianization that are premised primarily on notions of ideological persuasion.
S OCIAL N ETWORKING As a first step towards challenging the primacy of the notion ideological persuasion, I turn to sociologist Rodney Stark. In his study of The Rise of Christianity (1996) in the Roman Empire, Stark challenges a number of long-standing assumptions about the means of its transmission and expansion. The first chapter of his work is devoted to the question, “Did Christianity grow so rapidly that mass conversions must have taken place—as Acts attests and every historian from Eusebius to Ramsay MacMullen has believed?” (1996: 3). On the basis of sociological studies of new religious movements, Stark concludes that it did not. He demonstrates that assuming a standard arithmetical growth of 40 percent per decade (roughly the same rate of growth recorded for the Mormon movement) is enough to account for Christianity’s growth in its first three centuries (1996: 4–13). Rather than relying on notions of mass conversion effected by doctrinal persuasion or miraculous divine inspiration, Stark describes how Christian growth can be accounted for through “social networking,” or growth “through a structure of direct and intimate interpersonal attachments” (1996: 20). What is most interesting about Stark’s discussion of social networking is how he positions the matter of doctrine in relation to group membership. To illustrate his position, he turns to an example drawn from his (and fellow sociologist John Lofland’s) own fieldwork with the Unification Church. In the course of interviewing converts to the movement, they found that when these members “retrospectively describe[d] their conversions, they tend[ed] to put stress on theology,” by which they “implied (and often stated) that their path to conversion was the end product of a search for faith” (1996: 19). Having known these individuals beforehand, however, Stark and Lofland knew that this was not the case, and that these same individuals had previously expressed little or no interest in doctrines or in a quest for faith, and had even “regarded the religious beliefs of their new set of friends as quite odd” (1996: 19). Most
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critical to their conversion was not the fact of their theological persuasion or doctrinal conviction, but the development of interpersonal attachments with members of the group. In fact, the persuasiveness of the group’s doctrine followed from these converts having established relationships with members of the group. This observation, Stark states, is consistent with the findings of “modern social science,” which “relegates doctrinal appeal to a very secondary role, claiming that most people do not really become very attached to the doctrines of their new faith until after their conversion” (1996: 14–15; emphasis in original). In spite of his early emphasis on social networking and the “very secondary role” of doctrine, there remain certain “ambiguities and unclarities in Stark’s position on the ideational dimensions in the formation and attractiveness of the early Christian movement” (Braun 1999: 131 n. 3).3 In his concluding chapter, for instance, he reaffirms the primacy of Christian doctrine in accounting for Christianity’s expansion when he “confront[s] what appears…to be the ultimate factor in the rise of Christianity,” namely, that the “central doctrines of Christianity prompted and sustained attractive, liberating, and effective social relations and organizations” (Stark 1996: 211; emphasis in original). The success of Christianity, then, is best understood as the end result of a doctrine that motivated adherents to seek out more positive and productive relationships. Such a perspective is problematic to conceiving the process of Christianization, if simply for the fact that doctrinal concerns were not evenly or consistently applied throughout this period (if ever).4 Not all who called themselves Christian subscribed to the same doctrinal set.5 Nor did all those who called themselves Christian always understand the substance of a given doctrine, even when it was coherently and systematically arranged. On this, Ramsay MacMullen describes a “‘spectrum’ of beliefs” among the Christians of late antiquity. “At the one end” of this spectrum, he explains, “was the very most authoritative, best thoughtout Christianity, formed of long education in ecclesiastical traditions and literature, while at the other end lay the most careless and illinformed” (1997: 144). Between the “world of those who delivered sermons” and that of those “who seldom or never heard one or understood it” (1997: 158) were a whole host of individuals who, however deeply or superficially educated in the complex of Christian doctrine, identified themselves as Christian. In short, Christian society was composed of more than the well-spoken, well-educated members of the official Christian establishment. If a description of Christianization is to include the
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whole spectrum of Christian participation, it should also be able to account for why those with very little doctrinal exposure or ideological commitment should wish to count themselves (and why others should count them) as part of Christian society.
T HE C ULT
OF THE
S AINTS
The cult of the saints, for example, is one of those phenomena that are problematic to understanding Christianization, especially as this phenomenon appears to be a curious mixture of Christian concepts and symbols with elements of pagan religious practice.6 In aspect and technique, these practices seem more akin to pagan forms of religiosity, especially as they involved the use of potions and amulets, the veneration of images, and an excessively superstitious belief in the miraculous power of relics and holy persons. When such activities and ideas are associated with the cult of saints, they are most often described as “popular” expressions of Christianity, connected as they are to local and traditional approaches to religious practice. But under both titles, pagan and popular, it has been a model of the persistence of age-old forces of thoughtless superstition in the face of a doctrinally grounded Christian religion that has characterized descriptions of the cult of saints. We see it, for instance, when Hippolyte Delehaye examines (with reference to Greek hero-worship) the accusation that the cult of saints is nothing but a “prolongation of idolatrous paganism” (1962: 126). Delehaye maintains that, although there are certain “parallels” between heroworship and the cult of the saints, they are only “alike in their outward manifestation” (1962: 126). And though he concedes that certain practices may have done “harm to the spirit of religion” (1962: 131), he assures his readers that “it is not the religious element at work in such cases” (1962: 143). What is at work is the “popular propensity for material and tangible things” (1962: 131), the “mass mind” which is “narrow, unable to deal with several ideas at once, or even with a single idea if it be at all complex, unable to follow any chain of reasoning that is close or subtle,” and which operates at the “intellectual level…of a child” whose “memories and thought are all indissolubly bound up with concrete material things” (1962: 28). Any similarity between the two religious practices is merely superficial, a matter of form or style demanded by the predilections and limitations of popular intellect, and happens quite apart from the “theological basis” that separates the two religions (1962: 130).7
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Ernest Brehaut makes a similar point when he says of the bishop Gregory of Tours that “under the externals of Christianity Gregory was almost as superstitious as a savage. His superstition came to him straight from his father and mother and from his whole social environment” (1916: xi). Clearly, Brehaut discerns something of a contradiction in the thought of the learned Christian bishop who, despite his education, still manages to be superstitious. But Gregory lived in an age where superstition was endemic, in “a primitive society with a primitive interpretation of life and the universe” (1916: xviii), where religion was characterized by a “system of superstition [not] calculated to nourish delicate moral sensibilities. Life had gone too far back to the primitive” (1916: xxi).8 Thus, Gregory’s “conception of religion…seems most explicable, not by the creed he thrusts at us or by any traditional elements interpreted in a traditional sense, but by the living attitude toward the supernatural which he held” (1916: xix), for this system of superstition…is the greater and more real part of Gregory’s religion. There was the right mystery and the wrong mystery; and both were of a low order; men had to deal with capricious saints and malignant demons. It was a real, live, local religion comparable with that of savages. By the side of this and intertwined with it the elements of traditional Christianity in a more or less formalized and ritualized shape were retained. Here the great stress was laid on the creed, not, however, that it amounted to anything in Gregory’s mind as a creed. He was no theologian. His acceptance of it and insistence on it was ritualistic. (Brehaut 1916: xxi)
If there are “incongruities” (Brehaut 1916: xviii) in Gregory’s thought, it is because he is appealing to ideas derived, not (as we might expect of a bishop) from “traditional Christianity,” but from a social environment that had reverted, according to Brehaut, to a more archaic, less delicate, less sensible condition. Where Delehaye contrasts the “spirit of religion” with the intellect of the “mass mind,” Brehaut contrasts the moral “creed” of traditional Christianity with the superstition and primitive ritualism of Gregory’s social environment. When A. D. Nock takes up this distinction, it is to show that early Christianity was distinctive among the religions of its age in that it (like other “prophetic” religions and like the philosophical schools) was devoted to intellectual constructions of universal order and to the moral and ethical implications for behaviour that follow from such devotion. By contrast, cult in antiquity was oriented around ritual practice, not creed; it was “independent of ideas, which were
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always fluid” (1998: 11) and so, like other “primitive religions” (1998: 1 ff.), was concerned mainly with the static transmission of cultic traditions. Nock takes this position in order to demonstrate that Christianity was a religion that demanded conversion—“the reorientation of the soul of an individual, his deliberate turning from indifference or from an earlier form of piety to another, a turning which implies a consciousness that a great change is involved, that the old was wrong and the new is right” (1998: 7)—and “exclusiveness” (1998: 6) of religious allegiance, rather than mere “adhesion,” which was the manner of religious change across the cults of antiquity. In this, he follows in the general distinction made between a “Christianity” that is essentially intellectual, doctrinal and creedal, and other ancient religions which are primal, tactile, and ritualistic.9 The end result of such accounts is that, while Christianity is set apart by its cogent and forceful application of principle, the “popular” or “pagan” continues to persist only as “a monotonous continuity” (Brown 1981: 19), or as a culture of “passivity and ignorance” (Frankfurter 2003: 340). Thomas Tentler criticizes this tendency in his examination of the search for “two religious cultures” in the Middle Ages: Clergy versus laity—urban versus rural—docti versus rudes—élites versus the folk: at the lower end of these antipodes is “popular religion,” the underbelly of European society. As it is used, popular religion is generally taken to mean the belief system of most medieval Europeans, which is ancient, pagan or semi-Christian, and resistant to change. It is often presented as the ideology of exploited segments of society. Evidence of it is usually indirect, and it is most often seen as the “other” in religious practice and belief. If religious authorities embark on a campaign of education, the assumption is that people resist indoctrination because they cling to contrary beliefs. But the content of that other system is elusive and protean. (1985: 254)
The problem, he continues, is that “we accept the language of opposition (the sources often speak it anyway) and we do not look for variety and complexity in what we hold to be the simple beliefs of simple people,” even while we imply “monolithic coherency at the top” (Tentler 1985: 254). We accept that “belief ” is what separates the two, and that we are dealing with “belief ” at a systemic level. Thus, as Brown observes, the process of Christianization “has tended to be presented largely in terms of the impact of a formidable body on the inert and static mass of ancient paganism” (Brown 1997: 6): the one, a system organized around and for an articulate, integrated body of doctrine; the other, inarticulate
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(to the point of near silence) and possessing theological ideas so variegated that its only common features are its unsophisticated and superstitious (that is, unreasoned or even irrational) attitude toward the supernatural and (consequently) its penchant for the dogmatic vagaries of a religion oriented around ritual practice. Thus the tendency to conceive of Christianization as a movement toward “belief ” in Christian doctrine and away from customs not generated (directly and unambiguously) from it—customs that Brown describes as “modes of thinking and worshipping that are best intelligible in terms of a failure to be something else” (Brown 1981: 19). We should be wary, however, in applying such a representation, especially insofar as it draws on language employed by the authors of the period themselves: “From listening to the dialogue, historians sometimes conclude that here were two systems of belief at odds with each other, one to be called of ‘the people,’ the other of ‘the learned’” (MacMullen 1997: 144). Of course, it is true that this dialogue (available to us in the form of texts) is the product of a learned sector. But we should also recognize that this material represents, in most instances, the discourse of a fairly specific group of persons, namely, sanctioned members of an official Christian establishment, who styled themselves as the authority in matters of a religious nature—and, increasingly, in political matters as well (Markus 1990; Brown 1982). As persons “formed of a long education in ecclesiastical traditions and literature” (Brown 1997: 144), we should expect these individuals to have had a distinct interest in maintaining a certain consistency with creed and canon (and with one another; see note 13 below). But it is an interest that need not have been shared by everyone else. Thus, firm distinctions between paganism and Christianity, or between élite and popular Christianities, constructed along doctrinal lines, may more accurately represent the rhetorical strategy of a select group of intellectuals, who had an interest in defining certain, select systems of allegiance, thought and conduct, than it does the interests of those outside that select group. As we have seen, however, even such prominent figures as the bishop Gregory of Tours were vigorously involved in “popular” customs. Some, “including those in the highest positions,” were even as “active in the old faith [that is, paganism] as in the new” (MacMullen 1997: 146). Such contingencies make it even more difficult to maintain that there “existed in any deep, sharp sense” two distinct forms of Christianity, one for the élite and another for the masses. It is for this reason that the cult of the saints has proven to be so provocative, since it was one point where
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the interests of “the church” and interests of “the populus” seemed to meet, and where we see the blurring of lines (both theirs and ours) between “religion” and “culture,” between the “sacred” and the “secular” (see Markus 1990: 1–17), where our notions of Christianization as the meeting of two self-contained, mutually exclusive systems of belief are called into question.
S OCIAL F ORMATION
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P ERSUASIVE D ISCOURSE
Recent theoretical discussion concerning discourse and the processes of social formation takes a different approach to the relationship between ideology and society, and so to conceptualizing the process of Christianization. I begin with the notion of “social formation,” relying on the definition of Burton Mack. “Social formation,” he writes, refers to a concept of society as a collective human construct. It differs from the less specific term, “society,” by emphasizing the complex interplay of many human interests that develop systems of signs and patterns of practice, as well as institutions for their communication, maintenance and reproduction. The term social formation refers to the process by which various configurations of these systems of practice are created and relate to one another in the formation of a given society. The term is also used to refer to the resulting structure of a society formed by such a process. It is a highly abstract concept with specific connotations for social theory. (2000: 283)
Among the most important of these connotations is the way that the concept focuses attention on processes of social construction, on the “inordinate amounts of curiosity, delight, intellectual labor, experimentation and elaboration [that] have been invested in the fragile craft and work required to live together in social units” (Mack 2000: 288).10 Instead of analyzing how such societal elements as myth and ritual (also, kinship, law, political and economic institutions, and so on) “exhibit, “manifest” or “reflect” the inherent, essential structure of a particular society, emphasis is given to the ways in which these elements are organized, manipulated and utilized in the very construction of that social structure.11 The social-formation approach arose in critical response to a theoretical tendency—and, in the historiography of early Christianities, a theological predilection—that privileges “systems of meaning” over “systems of practice,” whereby the latter (especially formalized practices, such as ritual) come to be construed as “symbolic action—that is, as visible behavioral form requiring decoding” (Asad 1993: 77). Accompany-
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ing this response is the recognition that there is often a disjuncture or “difference between the imaginary world” of thought and the “social world” of actual human relations and practice (Mack 2000: 291). Any presumption, therefore, that we can translate or interpret society as if it were “a text that communicates itself to the skilled reader” (Asad 1993: 187) is thereby made problematic. This is not to say that thought and practice are oppositional, or that they ought to be considered exclusive of one another. Rather, the move toward theories of social formation acknowledges that thinking about the world is part of living in it, even while it admits that “the world is under no obligation to correspond to the categories by which it is thought” (Sahlins 2000: 290). It resists essentialisms and the static and determinative relationships between thought and practice that result from them. Instead, it seeks out the specific historical locations at which thought and discourse are articulated and asks, “who is writing for whom…what is the point, what was at stake, and what might have been the consequences if the audience had said yes?” (Mack 1999: 134). In doing so, it draws attention away from the supposed substance of ideologies and concepts (what they mean) toward a description of how such discursive elements are utilized in social practice (what they do). Thus discourse becomes less an implicit “expression” of what society is and what its members do think, than it is a description of or an argument for what society should be and what should be thought. This strategy carries at least two implications. First is the recognition that our own construal of what we (i.e., those who study societies) consider to be “a society” is itself an imaginative construction. Whenever we delimit a certain social formation as a society, our selection of its constituent elements is always, to some extent, arbitrary and artificial, since a real society is a constantly shifting ensemble of characteristics and persons. The “social borders” we draw around a society are, as Bruce Lincoln observes, “imaginary lines that distinguish one group of persons from another” (1989: 9; emphasis added). In social life as it is lived, these borders are never as clear-cut and never as stable or impermeable as we may be able to imagine them for descriptive or analytic purposes. The second implication, thus, is the recognition that societies are constantly in the process of constructing, deconstructing, reconstructing themselves. Society is neither static nor homogeneous nor monolithic. Nor is it to be equated with the “established structures of society, for society is far broader and more complex than its official structures and institutions alone” (Lincoln 1989: 7; emphasis in original). Every society is
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composed of numerous sub-societies or sub-groups, each of which possesses its own interests in and designs for the social order (Lincoln 1989: 10); members within a society will have their own ideas about where social borders should be drawn, but not all members will have the same ideas. Consequently, this range of interested parties is always, to some extent, in competition with each other over whose interests get heard, whose interests get recognized, whose interests get implemented. Far from passively acting out the determinations of some pre-existing structural order, then, members of society are continually (and actively) contesting and negotiating the very terms and conditions by which society will be ordered, and by which boundaries will be drawn between tradition and novelty, between what is acceptable and what is not, between who may participate and who may not. Nancy Jay engages this matter in her discussion of “logical structures” and their relationship to ritual practice. Grounding her argument is the observation that the basic logical structures by which humans classify and organize the world are arranged according to polarized, binary distinctions that humans make between things (for example, between what is pure or impure, what is sacred or profane, which sorts of people may be part of a social group and which may not). What we must recognize, she argues, is that such “A/Not-A dichotomies” are also to be “found nowhere in nature”; rather, they are conceptual categories which are socially constructed and socially maintained (1992: 20). This is not to say, of course, that because these logical structures do not occur naturally, they do not take on the appearance of seeming natural. Such distinctions do seem to be natural (and therefore it seems natural that we live by them), but only because we continue to live by them. The distinctions of a logical structure gain their power less from the fact of their reference to any naturally occurring distinctions than to the fact that they continue to be employed toward the ordering of society. They are among “those impeccably real social fictions produced and reproduced by the magic of social belief ” (Bourdieu 1987: 9). As long as certain items continue to be treated as pure or impure, or as long as certain people are included in society and others excluded, the logical structure will continue to function as if naturally. This being said, we must recognize that logical structures do not come to us by default but “must be taught and learned. They are social constructions, not supported by any natural order, and as such, continual work is required to maintain them” (Jay 1992: 21).12 Because they are constructions, and because changing social and historical conditions
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or challenges from advocates of alternative logical structures can effectively undermine the “naturalness” of an existing logical structure (by changing the conditions for its actualization in social practice as well as the terms of its expression), the structural characteristics of a society must always be contingent and provisional. Its very contingency, however, is what opens this structure to the possibility of change. It is also this contingency that offers us another possibility for situating the ideological (doctrinal, theological, etc.) aspects of society. Specifically, conceiving of ideology as a social construct “implies that all the tensions, contradictions, superficial stability, and potential fluidity of any given society as a whole are present within the full range of thought and discourse that circulates at any given moment” (Lincoln 1989: 7; emphasis in original). This entails a move away from deterministic notions of underlying structures which demand strict correspondence within and between thought and practice, instead allowing for a wide range of possible configurations of thought and practice, even as it recognizes potential constraints to them.13 It recognizes that “words can make things and, by joining in the objectivized symbolization of the group they designate, they can, if only for a time, make exist as groups collectives which already existed, but only in a potential state” (Bourdieu 1987: 16; emphasis in original). What matters most in the social context is how (and which) certain, select elements of thought and discourse are effectively employed as instruments of mobilization for change or continuity. What are the mechanisms of this mobilization? Lincoln proposes two (1989: 3–5, 1994: 4–6). One is to resort to coercion, the use of physical force, or threats of it, to silence contrary, subversive, or dissenting discourses and to impose and enforce another.14 The other strategy (and the one in which I am interested here) is to win others over by means of persuasion. This is where Lincoln’s scheme is most provocative, for he posits that the persuasive force of discourse does not reside as much in its conceptual, logical, or ideational content as in its ability to evoke a sentimental response in its hearers. He asserts that, in many instances, “ideological persuasion has nothing and sentiment evocation everything to do with” establishing a sense of solidarity between individuals (1989: 10). In terms of social formation—and with reference to the proximal metaphor of social borders—the sentimental response that is evoked is one of “affinity” or of “estrangement.” In using these terms, Lincoln means to include “on the one hand, all feelings of likeness, common belonging, mutual attachment, and solidarity—whatever their intensity,
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affective tone, and degree of consciousness—and, on the other hand, those corresponding feelings of distance, separation, otherness, and alienation” (Lincoln 1989: 10). People identify themselves with certain societies/social formations and not with others because they share a feeling of affinity for one another that they do not feel for others. Of course, since people will always be involved, or potentially involved, in a range of different social formations, sentiments of affinity can be constructed along several lines, even simultaneously. Persuasion, then, results from the effective manipulation of discourse to evoke this sense of affinity toward participation in the common interests of a particular social formation. In his examination of the uses of relics in the Middle Ages, Patrick Geary comments on the variety of potential resources available to medieval Christians for arranging their religious practice: At any given moment…the continuing Christian tradition contained elements of belief, practice and custom which were, in effect, fossils of an earlier age. The practices surrounding the cult of the saints are not exceptions, and throughout the Middle Ages Christian society had at its disposal a multitude of symbolic rites, practices, and formulae, both “official” and “popular,” that could be reemployed and rearranged to meet new circumstances in which relics might be used. Thus there is little that is entirely new in the roles of relics in the Middle Ages: almost every custom, even the most bizarre, can be traced to early Christian or pre-Christian precedents. But lack of originality does not indicate lack of innovation or evolution. (1978: 18–19)
Problematic as this description may be, for Geary’s project—the examination of the role, the “function,” of relics in their own historical context—such classifications as he mentions here are not important, neither are questions of from where such practices derive or originate. Though he employs the distinction between the “official” and the “popular,” or between “practices that may seem archaic or remarkably advanced” (1978: 18), Geary insinuates that the two are actually drawing on the same pool of conceptual and practical resources. Put another way, the cult of the saints appears as the merging of a variety of elements which can be emphasized or underplayed as may be required. Doctrinal and theological rationalizations concerning healing and exorcism, objects for protection or power, the veneration of images, and so on, are certainly evident, but are themselves matters of deep controversy and are only variously understood, and so do not provide a clear basis for understanding them as grounds for a sense of social soli-
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darity. What is clear is that people, in relatively large numbers and of all social standings, are participating in the cult of saints. Whatever the reason for their initial attraction to the cult—promises of healing, protection or power, possible business advantages, forced participation, friendship, political expediency, family obligation, curiosity—it is the fact of their shared participation, I argue, that grounds their sense of affinity for one another. This being the case, the terms, concepts, images, and so forth that are associated with the cult can become powerful and persuasive discursive instruments for invoking those sentiments.
C OGNITION , E MOTION , M EMORY, AND F ORMATION OF S OCIAL B ONDS
THE
Coalitional Dynamics Lincoln admits that the “use of the term sentiment is likely to cause some problems, given the almost insuperable difficulty of speaking with precision about the affective dimension of social life” (1989: 176 n. 9). But his determination to use the category “sentiment” nonetheless is critical. Even if it does not allow for the same “precision” we might expect to be able to achieve through the analysis and comparison of conceptual thought, the affective and emotional remains an important aspect of human cognition. Humans, universally, are hard-wired to feel and express emotion, which, as cognitive researchers have noted, plays a substantial role for humans in their interaction with their world and with others around them. Recent research also demonstrates that emotion is integral to the formation and cohesion of social relationships. According to Steven Pinker, “our most ardent emotions are evoked…by other people. Some emotions, such as anger, make us want to harm people: others, such as love, sympathy and gratitude, make us want to help them” (1997: 396–97). That is, how we feel toward others will, in part, determine how we treat them. Pinker categorically opposes the common distinction made between emotions, which “come from nature and live in the body,” and the intellect, which “comes from civilization and lives in the mind”—a false classification that he traces to the Romantic movement (1997: 369–70). In fact, he argues, both the intellect and the emotions are evolutionarily adapted features of human cognition, and both are “indispensable to the functioning of the whole mind” (1997: 370).15 Pinker’s goal is to show that our emotions are fundamentally tied to the successful transmission of genetic material.
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But, in doing so, he also shows how emotions are integral to the establishment and maintenance of social relationships. Most compelling is Pinker’s brief explication of “coalitional psychology,” the human tendency toward group behaviour. On the evidence of numerous laboratory experiments, he describes how subjects can be induced (with relatively little incentive) to cooperate with fellow group members and to compete with other groups. In these experiments, subjects are divided into groups according to divisions based on some “trivial criterion” (artistic preferences, for instance). What researchers have found is that subjects exhibit an “instant ethnocentrism”; members of “each group will instantly dislike and think worse of the people in the other group, and act to withhold rewards from them even if doing so is costly to their own group” (1997: 513). Even when groups are chosen entirely at random (that is, when there is no criterion, and therefore no substantial “reason” for their distribution), and even when subjects are fully aware of this fact, they still will readily identify themselves with their own group and oppose the other. It seems that humans, under these experimental conditions at least, require very little reason to identify their own interests with that of a group.16 “Jingoism is alarmingly easy to evoke,” as Pinker puts it (1997: 513). The subject of coalitional behaviour is also addressed by Pascal Boyer. He provides a more precise definition of the “coalitional dynamic,” asserting that “coalitions are a very special form of association…[that presuppose] an activity in which joining is (presumably) voluntary, defection is possible, benefits accrue with cooperation and there is a notable cost in being a cooperator when others defect” (2001: 126). Among the key features of coalitional behaviour, Boyer includes the following: member activity is directed toward the benefit of one’s own group and not others; members will generalize about the characteristics and motives of their own (evaluated positively) and other (evaluated negatively) groups; extreme concern about the loyalty of fellow members (2001: 126–27). Boyer admits that “discussion in terms of cost and benefit, cooperation and defection, may seem very abstract” and claims that we “tend to think we just have ‘feelings’ about such situations.” Having these feelings is important, however, as they are the “most salient reactions we are aware of,” “the outcome of complex calculations that specialized systems in our minds carry out in precise terms” (2001: 128).17 In other words, our response to others in the coalitional context—positive evaluation and favourable treatment of fellow group members, negative evaluation and
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treatment of other groups—is the natural response of a mind adapted to the complex social behaviour of human beings. Boyer, adding to his discussion of the coalitional dynamic with reference to the experimental evidence, describes how, in the formation of these experimental groups, fellow group members quickly develop an affinity for one another and form a set of shared group conceptions. Within a “very short time,” he explains, “people are better disposed toward members of their group than toward others. They also begin to perceive a difference, naturally in their group’s favor, in terms of attractiveness, honesty or intelligence” (2001: 287–88). What these findings suggest is not only that humans display a strong “propensity towards group solidarity,” but also that such solidarities can easily “trigger essentialist understandings of groups, and even [cause] those understandings to translate into actual behavior in the context of a coalition” (2001: 288; emphasis in original).18 Thus the concepts they come to use to describe themselves (essentialist qualities of the group) against others are secondary to the intuitive affinity that actually forms the basis for their solidarity. These concepts, therefore, can be employed to effect cooperative or competitive behaviour in others.
Memory and Modes of Religiosity Harvey Whitehouse provides further support for the inclusion of the affective dimensions of social behaviour into social theory with his discussion of how emotion relates to human memory and to the codification and transmission of religion. His specific concern is to account for the formation of religious societies, a problem he states in this way: “If we are to understand the various ways in which people come to feel united or to regard themselves as sharing a common identity, we are obliged to make certain assumptions about human memory” (2000: 4–5). His approach, he suggests, inverts standard avenues of inquiry: instead of focussing on the question of “how political organization and ideology help to mould people’s memories” he asks “whether universal features of human memory, activated in different ways, might be said to mould political organization and ideology” (2000: 5). For Whitehouse, the ideological content of social discourse gains much of its form, and its solidifying force, from the means of its transmission and codification. Whitehouse distinguishes between two “modes of religiosity,” which he calls the “imagistic” and “doctrinal.” The key features of each mode are established according to cognitive principles of human memory, and thus “are not types of religion but organizing principles for religious
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experience and action” (2002: 309). The “doctrinal” mode of religiosity he ties to the employment of semantic memory, which depends on the development of cognitive “schemas” that establish patterns for thought and behaviour. These schemas, like Jay’s logical structures, consist of generally applied and relatively stable patterns of thought that serve to organize information and standardize behaviour. Usually, they will display a certain degree of complexity and maintain rigid logical connections between ideas and practices. This being the case, these patterns or structures require a relatively high degree of repetition and routinization to be established firmly enough for people to be able to remember them and recall their significance; literacy and the utilization of textual resources are often crucial to doctrinal stability and transmission. As Whitehouse asserts, “the implicational logic of doctrinal systems, expressed in language (sacred text, sermons, theological debates and so on), can only exercise a continuous and stable influence on people’s attitudes, beliefs and actions if it is frequently reviewed” (2000: 9). Despite these difficulties, the fact that doctrinal systems are arranged according to a logical structure enables their broad application and can allow for a wide diversity of persons to subscribe to them. For this reason, the doctrinal mode is very effective in establishing “universal” types of religion, admitting innumerable individuals into its community. The imagistic mode operates differently. Whitehouse connects it to certain aspects of the episodic memory, that part of human memory that deals with remembering unique, novel, or unusual experiences. He is most interested in how memories are formed in contexts that are both novel and involve high emotional arousal—conditions that seem to foster exceptionally vivid forms of recall. Many rituals of initiation, for instance, fit this category, since they involve infrequent (often singular) events of high emotional arousal.19 Imagistic practices are also very localized: the number of participants is limited and the ideological, symbolic, and conceptual elements involved are often particular to the event of the ritual. Frequently there is little or no elaboration or explication of these elements. The intensity of the ritual ensures that its details will readily be remembered: the conjunction of symbolic elements and of other participants is powerfully recalled. This, in fact, is one of the primary features of the imagistic mode, that it effects a powerful sense of solidarity among fellow participants. As Whitehouse explains, “common identity among religious adherents…is fundamentally particularistic, based on lasting episodic memories of
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undergoing the traumatic lows and ecstatic highs of sacred events together with a specifiable group of individuals. The longevity and intensity of such memories corresponds to the strength and inviolability of the cohesion which they engender” (2000: 10). Imagistic practice, in other words, stimulates both a potent and enduring sense of social identity. The doctrinal and imagistic modes, it should be noted, are in no way incompatible with each other; elements of both may be evident in any given tradition. Whitehouse separates them for theoretical and heuristic purposes, in order to show how they relate to aspects of human memory. But he is able to show how different sorts of practices can engender, by different means, feelings of social solidarity between individuals. The doctrinal mode allows for a broad sense of community since it engages a general set of logical principles that can be understood and shared by many. Imagistic modes, on the other hand, allow for a sense of solidarity and community without requiring that individuals consciously share explicit doctrinal principles.20 It allows for a tightly knit community to share meaning and identity without elaborate conceptual explication.
Cognition and Sentiment The findings and conclusions of these cognitive researchers provide convincing support for Lincoln’s application of the term “sentiment” in describing how discourse can effectively be employed in constructing society.21 In the first place, they demonstrate that emotional responses are an important factor in establishing solidarity. They also show that social solidarity can be instilled with relatively little provocation, and suggest that the more intense the emotional response evoked when group members interact—from simple division into groups for Pinker, to collaborative work for Boyer, to imagistic ritual for Whitehouse—the more powerful and lasting will be their sentiments of affinity for one another. What is more, these findings suggest—as Rodney Stark proposes, though ambivalently—that the propositional, ideological, or conceptual content of discourse employed by a social group is subordinate to the affective connection felt between its members. Boyer even suggests that the concepts with which we characterize the essential features of our group are actually “the concepts we spontaneously use to describe intuitions that are in fact not about categories but about coalitions” (2001: 288; emphasis in original).22 In other words, the categories by which we differentiate groups are convincing precisely because they refer to the affective connections felt between members, not because they refer to any
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real state of affairs in the world. Thus, people’s adherence to a group is motivated, in the first instance, by their sense of affinity for one another, rather than by their consent to ideological schemas. Lincoln’s cautious, self-conscious use of the term “sentiment” thus deserves a place in theorizing group formation, for it allows us to imagine the process of Christianization as something other than a program of (first, foremost, or only) theological persuasion. It allows us to begin to account for the diversity of Christian practice in the early medieval period without having to resort to notions of miscarried mission strategies of accommodation or of varied religious practice being an exercise in contradiction.
Exorcism An example should help my argument. Here, I will focus briefly on Peter Brown’s discussion of exorcism to introduce a possible point where sentiments of Christian affinity might be built. Exorcism, according to Brown, was “possibly the most highly rated activity of the early Christian church” (1981: 108).23 The terms he uses to describe it are consistent with the sort of practice that would lend itself to being understood along the lines of Whitehouse’s imagistic mode of religiosity. Exorcism was “a noisy and disturbing phenomenon,” “mysterious and terrifying” (quoted in Brown 1981: 107), a “drama,” “spasmodic” and “flamboyant” (1981: 110).24 For onlookers, the contest of exorcism could be extremely exciting, serving (it is said) to confirm for those who believed, and to convince those who did not, the Christian claims about the real presence and power of the supernatural characters involved.25 Gregory of Tours, for instance, proclaims that the howls of the possessed, who would regularly gather at the tombs of the saints, would “bring home the presence of the saints of God to human minds, that there should be no doubt that the saints are present at their tombs” (quoted in Brown 1981: 109). Exorcism was more than a spectacle, however. Brown observes that “the evidence from sixth-century Gaul suggests that not all the possessed came to the shrines already in a state of extreme disturbance” (1981: 111). That their erratic behaviour only started after their arrival suggests that their possession was voluntary, that they may have “come in order to be possessed” and be “implicated” in the drama of exorcism (1981: 111). Thus the dramatic, emotional, possibly traumatic experience of possession and the subsequent exorcism were something to be sought after. In this, Brown discerns that exorcism could have important social impli-
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cations (beyond the strictly curative). Insofar as the ritual of exorcism was carried out in the presence and with the participation of others, he describes it as “a drama of reintegration,” in which the possessed (and therefore liminal) “human being who had been swept far away from the human community was solemnly reinstated among the warm mass of his fellows” (1981: 112). Looked at differently, the ritual could serve as a drama of integration, at least coalition (Boyer 2001; Pinker 1997), whereby both the possessed and those who took part in the ritual gained a sense of their solidarity. Rather than emphasizing the “imaginative importance of the great prayers of exorcism that maintained and articulated, in liturgical form, the expectations of the group at the shrine” (Brown 1981: 112), we might emphasize the practical importance—to the formation of a Christian society—of individuals participating together in an emotionally evocative ritual. Participation in the cult of the saints, in rituals of exorcism for example, might require little prior explicit knowledge of Christian doctrine, yet could still pay dividends for social attraction and cohesion.26 It could serve to introduce individuals to elements of a Christian discourse (concepts, characters, stories, songs, images) in a context that would foster a powerful identification with those elements and with the other individuals who shared in the practice. However much or little participants understood the theological or ideological implications of their practice, the fact of their association would establish a bond of sentimental affinity that could be invoked toward the construction of a Christian society. At the same time, however, we might also emphasize (as Brown does in the context of “therapeutic systems” [1981: 113–18]) that people of late antiquity were making choices between alternatives, none of which constituted the “final authority” in religious matters. A convergence of interests does not, after all, entail an assimilation or homogeneity of interests.
C ONCLUSIONS Directing our attention to processes of social formation has important implications for the study of Christianization. In the first place it recognizes, however imprecise the term “social formation” may be (Mack 2000: 288), that social living always entails an array of (sometimes competing, sometimes compatible) interests in and for society. Acknowledging this push-and-pull of interests, and the often tenuous relationships between thought and practice that result, social formation theory empha-
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sizes the provisional and experimental nature of the social arrangements in which these interests are negotiated, and directs our attention to the effective consequences of thought and discourse when they are employed in the interests of social change or continuity. In this, the social formations approach suggests a means to reconcile the often-explicit opposition of church leaders to paganisms of all sorts, and their seeming “accommodation” of those same elements. As Peter Brown suggests, “far from describing a grudging or politic concession to the mindless force of habits formed among the ‘common herd,’ we have met a group of impresarios, taking initiatives, making choices, and, in so doing, coining a public language that would last through western Europe deep into the middle ages” (1981: 48–49). We see them wrestling with the ambiguities of their world, marshalling the materials at hand, drawing their own conclusions, and constructing narratives and arguments for how others should respond. This, in turn, allows us to imagine early Christianities as something other than a combination of distinctly “Christian” ideological and symbolic elements with superstitious, ritualistic “pagan” elements, or as an essentially doctrinal Christianity encrusted with ritualistic pagan survivals. On the contrary, such ritual practices, rather than being corrosive, corruptive, or even peripheral to the formation of a Christian society, were integral sites for establishing the sentiments of affinity on which a Christian society was built. Thinking of Christianization as a process of social formation enables us to account for the growing number of people who simultaneously identified themselves with Christianity and with other religious alternatives without minding things that worry modern scholars, that is, notions of intellectual persuasion, cogency or inconsistency, or “reversion” to paganisms. It allows for conceiving of the process of Christianization other than as a process of partial or failed attempts at ideological persuasion, or of “nominal” or “superficial” conversion by recognizing the broad range of interests that could draw a person to Christianity and by providing a basis for understanding its continued appeal, without depending on the success of explicit, ongoing educational strategies.
N OTES 1 Peter Brown describes how Augustine “contributed decisively to the notion of Christianisation with which we ourselves still live” (1997: 22) by his “historical explanation” of how the church had come to be “tainted” by the “towering force of religious habits taken directly from the non-Christian past” (1997:
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23). Robert Markus examines the “vanishing of a clear line of demarcation between the church and secular society in the roman world [as] the major problem that confronted church historians after Eusebius” (1975: 7), and also how the “unbroken chain of the ecclesiastical history linking their age with that of the apostolic church” fostered a “strong sense of continuity” (1975: 17) for the inheritors of a Christian Empire. Ron Cameron explores Eusebius’s historical “legacy” (1994: 507), especially as it relates to our imagination of pristine Christian origins and of the primitive apostolic age: “Extending Luke’s creative efforts, Eusebius provides a narrative of opposition and resistance to the eternal truth of the gospel, which would triumph uncorrupted and unchanged, by faithful adherence to the apostolic witness enshrined in privileged accounts of pristine origins” (1994: 508). 2 See, for instance, David Frankfurter’s critique of conversionary models and his call for the rectification of the notion of “syncretism” (2003: 342–44). Jonathan Z. Smith (1990) provides an important reappraisal of the project of “the comparison of early Christianities and the religions of late antiquity.” Here he examines notions of “borrowing” and “corruption” as conceptual tools utilized in “Protestant anti-Catholic apologetics” (1990: 34), where the invocation of claims to Christianity’s uniqueness serve to defy attempts at comparison. 3 That is, Stark seems unable to locate precisely how these doctrinal elements function. Braun continues: “On the one hand, he claims they are ‘very secondary’ and functional only as retrospective rationalizations of an individual’s conversion (14–15). On the other, he tries to demonstrate ‘that ideas are often critical factors in determining not only individual behavior but, indeed, the path of history’ (79), that ‘the contents of Christian and pagan beliefs were different in ways that greatly determined not only their explanatory capacities but also their relative capacities to mobilize human resources’ (79), and that, therefore, ‘issues of doctrine must be addressed’ (86). Stark goes so far as to state a ‘thesis’ that the ‘ultimate factor’ in Christianity’s success ‘was the religion’s particular doctrines’ (211), although in this statement ‘doctrine’ appears to be synonymous with ‘virtue’ (212). My purpose is not to point out an unresolved logical inconsistency, for I suspect that both statements on the ‘doctrine’ factor are right; rather, it is that each statement does not get much beyond explaining obscurum per obcurius” (1999: 131 n. 3; emphasis in original). 4 There are other problems as well. For instance, though Christian communities may have “submerged” ethnicity, “prompted liberating social relations between the sexes and within the family” and “modulated class differences” (Stark 1996: 213–14), Christians could also organize and commit violence against their neighbours along different lines, specifically along lines drawn according to religious affiliation. See MacMullen (1997: esp. 11–31), who provides a brief history of Christian “persecution” of other religious communities (Jews, heretics, and particularly pagans) in the latter part of the early centuries. MacMullen (1990) also raises questions as to whether such changes in “social relations and organization” were all that prevalent in the Christian communities, and also whether such changes as did occur were not part of more general shifts in the Roman Empire rather than resulting from Christian influence.
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5 That “Stark assumes the traditional, monolinear development of Christianity” is the first “issue of importance for questions of theory and method” on which Burton Mack faults The Rise of Christianity. From the very beginning, in fact, “Christianity” was composed of “many different configurations of groups and movements that appealed to Jesus as their founder. We now refer to the Jesus schools, the Christ cults, the Pauline churches, Thomas Christianity, the Johannine enclaves, Jewish-Christian communities, Gnostic Christian groups, the Pauline school, and others as distinct and particular configurations of social experimentation in the first centuries” (Mack 1999: 133). See also Rebecca Lyman, who addresses the longstanding problem of “integrat[ing] the historical evidence of a multiplicity of ancient Christianities into a coherent narrative concerning ‘orthodoxy’ and ‘heresy’ or Christianity and Hellenism” (2003: 210). 6 For a general introduction to the cult of the saints see Wilson (1983: esp. 1–53), with an extensive annotated bibliography. Peter Brown’s landmark work, The Cult of the Saints (1981), provides an examination of the cult’s development in late antiquity and a discussion of its treatment in scholarly literature. Geary (1996) also examines more recent issues and problems in the study of hagiography and of saints and their social environments, especially on the problem of contextualizing the textual material. 7 Consider also the terms of the contrast between Christianity and its cultural environment involved in the following passages: “But it would have been very surprising if the Church, seeking to spread her faith amidst the Graeco-Roman civilization, had chosen to address the people in entirely novel terms, systematically rejecting everything that up till then had been used to give expression to religious feeling” (1962: 120); and, “at the same time we do not deny the survival among Christian peoples of a number of usages, of very ancient origin, which are point-blank opposed to Christian beliefs or morality. Most of these superstitions are a legacy from our heathen ancestors, and the Church has never ceased to fight against them, varying her tactics with different degrees of success” (1962: 125). 8 Brehaut frames this turn to the “primitive” as part of a general “reversion” from all aspects of high Roman culture, not only in religion. 9 Smith provides a salient example of this tendency when he says that “the most frequent distinction drawn in modern scholarship between the early Christian ‘sacraments’ (especially the Pauline) and those of the ‘mystery cults’ is that the latter exhibit a notion of ritual as ex opere operato” (1990: 34). 10 Such an appeal to “the social” is not, of course, unproblematic. As Mack suggests: “It may well be that a theory of the human enterprise as a human construct will have to reduce the many practical interests involved to a profound and complex tautology. At first, the interests involved in the formation and function of the many practices and systems of signs that support social existence may appear to be disparate and unrelated, perhaps even matters best explained as forms of personal desire. One can imagine a large range of frequently acknowledged interests that come to mind when thinking about the investments humans make in their activities. But in the final analysis, it may well be that involvement in each and every practice is a form of taking interest in the con-
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ception, construction, maintenance and manipulation of a social formation itself. Thus the tautology at the highest level of abstraction: the interests that humans invest in social practices, and the interests humans take in all manner of activities, are derivative modes of collective interest in the processes of social formation” (2000: 288). On the difficulties surrounding the variety of uses of the term “structure,” see Jensen (2000). Here I use it, in the second instance, in the sense of “an empirical and observable order of relations” (Jensen 2000: 326), both in and between thought and social practice, within a social formation. For Jay, this “work” refers to the maintenance of logical structures through ritual practice. The production of myth can also serve this purpose. As Russell McCutcheon (2000), among others, contends, it is the very object of the mythmaking enterprise to make contingent and mundane social values, norms, logics, and so forth seem eternal, extraordinary, inevitable, universal, and/or natural. As Frankfurter similarly suggests in his application of Bourdieu’s “notion of habitus or habit-memory to the study of the process of religious syncretism, one is not proposing immutable religious structures but rather focusing on what structures or traditions constrain religious practice, innovation and synthesis in such historical situations” (2003: 347; emphasis in original). Discussion on how thought and discourse might be constrained by, for instance, tradition and canon, see Murphy (2003) and Smith (1982). This strategy is most often attributed to those in positions of authority. The application of force is always a delicate matter, since it might serve to incite resistance, which is (in the case of the established institutions) counter-productive to the project of maintaining hegemony (Lincoln, 1989: 3–4, 1994: 4–6). George Lakoff and Mark Johnson make the same argument, though they trace a longer lineage. They dispute the notion of autonomous reason on the grounds that thought is subject to all aspects of human cognitive function: “Real human reason is embodied, mostly imaginative and metaphorical, largely unconscious, and emotionally engaged” (1999: 536). Also, Ridley (1998: 188): “The fact that people form emotional attachments to groups, even arbitrary ones, such as randomly selected school sports teams…proves that people have a very sensitive awareness of where their individual interests lie—with which group.” Again, Lakoff and Johnson’s argument for the “embodied mind” supports the position that these “calculations” are largely unconscious: “Our unconscious conceptual system functions like a ‘hidden hand’ that shapes how we conceptualize all aspects of our experience. This hidden hand gives form to the metaphysics that is built into our ordinary conceptual systems. It creates the entities that inhabit the cognitive unconscious—abstract entities like friendships, bargains, failures, and lies—that we use in ordinary unconscious reasoning. It thus shapes how we automatically and unconsciously comprehend what we experience. It constitutes our unreflective common sense” (1999: 13). Matt Ridley uses the term “groupishness” to describe the human propensity for cooperative social behaviour, which is unequalled in the animal world. For more on the tendency toward essentialisms drawn according to social groupings and their consequences, see particularly his discussions on “tribal
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thinking” (1998: 151–69) and on the group prejudice and intergroup competition which constitute the “dark side of groupishness” (1998: 173–93). See Luther Martin (chap. 8 in this volume) for an extended discussion of Mithraic initiation as a case in point. As Whitehouse explains, “it is precisely within those populations that lack access to the authoritative corpus of religious teachings, and so cannot be motivated by those teachings, that we find the greatest profusion of imagistic practices. Elitist discourses would have us believe that the prominence of the imagistic mode among the uneducated and dispossessed is symptomatic of ignorance. Expressed more precisely, and less snobbishly, routinized religious rituals that lack a persuasive justification in dogma (i.e., learned via instruction) will die out unless they are motivated by forms of religious experience and understanding that are, at least to some significant extent, internally generated” (2002: 310). And also, perhaps, for Mack’s complex “tautology” (see n. 10 above). Such concepts are perhaps most apparent in language about that which is “seen as the ‘other’ in religious practice and belief ” (Tentler 1985: 254), where the ascription of otherness hinges on the suggestion of “an ontological cleavage rather than an anthropological distinction” (Smith 1992) between categories of persons. In the present case, the “other” in question is the “pagan,” “a derogatory term designating a person who is not a member of a dominant religion such as Christianity or Judaism, usually connoting negative personal and cultural qualities” (Smith 1995: 826), such that these negative qualities are held to be innate to the pagan “them” but not to the Christian “us.” This classification relies on a supposition of difference more imagined, or supposed, than real, for the “pagan-Christian dichotomy was neither natural nor obvious.” It did, however, allow “the creation of a cognitive frontier in which the unacceptable other and thus acceptable Christianity could be defined” (Rothaus 1996: 305). A similar example is that provided by Gregory of Tours’ reverentia/rusticitas classification (Brown 1982; Wallace-Hadrill 1962). Exorcism is most often mentioned in relation to its use as a cure for the ills and ails associated with possession by maleficent spirits (Frankfurter 1999). Horden (1993) qualifies exorcism as being only one (and not the most common) strategy among many for the cure of insanity and possession in the early Byzantine world. Such vivid terminology is consistent with descriptions of certain exorcistic performances, especially those which demanded “some dramatic action at the demon’s departure (a motif of the literary accounts and certainly a technique in effective performance)” (Frankfurter 1999: 439). Examples include: Minucius Felix, Octavius, XXVII.1–8 (1931: 401–403); Tertullian, Apologeticus, XXIII.15–17 (1931: 129–31); Athanasius, Life of St. Antony, 17 (Stouck 1999: 77–78); Paulinus, Life of St. Ambrose, 43 (1952: 59–60); Sulpicius Severus, Third Dialogue, 6 (1949: 233–34), 15 (1949: 246–47); Sulpicius Severus, Life of St. Martin, 17 (1949: 125–26); Gregory of Tours, Life of the Fathers, VIII.4 (1985: 69); Gregory of Tours, History of the Franks, VII.43 (Brehaut 1916: 185–86). On the display of violent behaviour as an aspect of effective exorcism, see Bonner (1943).
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25 “To the late-Roman man the drama of exorcism was the one demonstration of the power of God that carried unanswerable authority. In the healing of the possessed, the praesentia of the saint was held to be registered with unfailing accuracy, and their ideal power, their potentia, shown most fully and in the most reassuring manner” (Brown 1981: 107). There is at least some question, though, as to how useful exorcism was as a means of achieving converts. On the one hand, “to believe that Christians were fully won by the sight of a wonder or an exorcism is to shorten a long process and ultimately to misjudge the extreme canniness of Mediterranean men. These events might awaken their interest, but why should they accept that the God behind them was the only god and that all their previous gods were false?” (Fox 1987: 330). On the other hand, it does appear that Christian “ideological focus on the ritual expulsion of demons…made Christianity attractive to many peoples as its missionaries moved into new regions” (Frankfurter 1999: 440). Note that both these positions focus on the ideological dimensions of exorcistic practice in terms of “interest” and “attraction.” If the drama of exorcism “carried unanswerable authority” for certain late-Roman people, others could still answer through rejection, indifference, or experimentation. 26 See Trout (1996) on Paulinus of Nola and the activities surrounding the feast day of St. Felix for a discussion on how such activities contributed to the formation of a Christian community at Nola.
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“Modes of Religiosity: Towards a Cognitive Explanation of the Sociopolitical Dynamics of Religion.” Method & Theory in the Study of Religion 14: 293–315. Wilson, Stephen, ed. 1983 Saints and their Cults: Studies in Religious Sociology, Folklore and History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Index
Arius Dydimus 83–84 Arnal, William E. 12, 40, 208n42 Arnold, Clinton 117n13 ascetic, ascetics, asceticism 40, 108, 112, 113, 128, 132, 136, 140, 148, 181n7, 182n18, 182n19 Atran, Scott 194, 201n4, 205n27, 207n32 Atticism 58–59, 62 attraction, social 8, 18n22, 103, 232, 238, 244n25 Augustine 125, 137, 139, 140, 149, 151n4, 239n1 Austin, J. L. 17n19
Abou-El-Haj, Barbara 152n12 accommodation 124, 148–49, 220, 239 Acts of the Apostles 75–86, 87n5, 88n11–12, 91n20, 91nn22–23, 91n27, 91–92n28, 103, 116n5 Acts of Paul and Thecla 100 Aeschines 18n26, 57, 68n22 affect, in social affiliation 6, 8, 18n23, 200 Alexiou, Margaret 161, 162, 163, 170, 171 Allard, Paul 152n9 Anderson, Benedict 200 Anderson, Graham 57, 58, 59, 68n22, 69n24, 69n25, 69n26, 69n28, 70n33 Anderson, R. Dean 70n32 androgyny 35, 44n25 anti-Judaism 51–56, 60–66, 67n10, 67n13, 68n15, 86, 87n4 antiphony 171, 172–73, 180 anti-rhetoric 18–19n26 apatheia 166, 167, 181n14 apostrophe 63–64, 68n21 Apuleius 116n12, 191, 194 Aristides, Aelius 59, 65, 69n27 Aristophanes 195 Aristotle 2, 6, 16n10, 28, 42n11, 82, 89n13, 101, 192
Balch, David L. 84, 85, 99, 111, 116n1 baptism 45n36, 100, 107, 108, 109, 110, 112, 113–15, 117n21, 117n23 Barth, Fredrik 187–88, 198, 201n4 Basil of Caesarea 161–62, 163, 166, 167, 168, 169, 180n4, 181n9, 181n12, 181n14, 182n15, 182n16 Baur, Ferdinand Christian 76–79, 80, 87n4, 88n9 Beck, Roger 188, 191, 194, 197, 202n7, 206n29, 207n32, 207n37 Bell, Catherine 176, 180n6, 187 Bender, John 3, 10, 11, 15n8 Bloch, Marc 150n1
249
250 Bodinger, Martin 87n7 body 5, 27, 34, 41n4, 43n22, 45n36, 109, 171, 172, 173, 174–78, 181n14, 232, 180, 189 Borch-Jacobsen, Mikkel 19n28 Bourdieu, Pierre 16n9, 229, 230, 242n13 Bovon, François 87n3 Bowersock, G. W. 57, 68n23, 69n25, 69n28 Boyer, Pascal 187, 195, 197, 233–34, 236–37, 238 Braun, Willi 2, 179n1, 208n40, 222, 240n3 Brehaut, Ernest 224, 241n8, 243n24 Broadhurst, Laurence 12, 16n10, 41n8 Brown, Peter 27, 152n12, 219, 225–26, 237–39, 239n1, 241n6, 243n22, 244n25 Buresch, Carolus 180n7 Burrus, Virginia 182n14 Burton-Christie, Douglass 152n12 Bynum, Caroline Walker 152n12 Byron, John 150n2 Caesarius of Arles 133–34, 141 Cameron, Ron 31, 42n16, 88n11, 240n1 canon, canonical 10, 16n10, 28, 42n16, 49, 75, 78, 124, 126, 164, 196, 198, 219, 226, 242n13 Cappadocians 163, 166, 181n7 Caraveli, Anna 163, 175 Caraveli-Chavez: see Caraveli cargo cult 190 Carlyle, A. J. 151n5 Carruth, Shawn 42n10, 42n11 Christianity: as doctrinal 199–202, 208n42, 219–23, 226, 234–35, 239, 240n3; early spread of 3, 11, 12, 78, 79–80, 85, 87n8, 198–200, 208n39, 208n42, 219, 224–27, 240n4, 240n5, 241n7 Christianization 12, 99, 116n2, 219–21, 222–23, 226–27, 237, 239–40
Index Chrysostom, John 161, 163, 167, 171, 174, 176, 177, 179, 181n11, 181n12, 182n16, 182n17 Cicero 2, 81–82, 91n28 Clark, A. C. 91n27 Clark, Elizabeth A. 182n14 class identity 9, 18n23, 19n27, 28–29, 41n8, 125, 126, 127, 128, 145, 148, 209n45, 240n4 classification 13, 34, 37–38, 243n22 Clauss, Manfred 188, 189, 190, 191, 195, 196, 197, 198, 202n8, 202n9, 203n13, 204n20, 204n21, 206n28, 207n33, 207n36 Clinton, Kevin 191, 205n22 coalitional dynamics 232–35, 236, 238 cognition 187–88, 189–90, 191, 193– 94, 200, 201n4, 206n30, 208n43, 232–37 cognitive shock 194 Cohick, Lynn 63, 67n4, 67n6, 67n10, 70n37 Cohn, Norman 142, 152n8 Colossians 99–117 Combes, I. A. H. 151n2 conflict theory 51–53, 56, 65, 66, 68n15 convention, conventional 101, 103, 105, 106, 113, 115, 164–66, 167, 169, 170, 171 conversion 85, 103, 106, 196, 200, 206n29, 221–22, 225, 239, 240n2, 240n3, 246n25 Corinthians, First 32, 102, 199, 208n41 Corinthians, Second 18n26, 110 Cotter, Wendy 42n17 creed 4, 188, 202n11, 207n36, 220, 224–26 Crouch, James E. 117n14 Crump, David 91n23 cult of the saints 13, 87n3, 136, 140, 223–27, 231–32, 238, 241n6 D’Angelo, Mary Rose 101, 110–11, 116n10
Index Davidson, James 203n13 Davies, Stevan L. 42n16, 43n23 Davis, David B. 151n2 death: as disruptive event 177; and life 132–33; perspective on 178; responses to 162, 166, 169; and resurrection 123; significance of 172, 176; social 122–23, 179; spiritual 122–23; unlamented 179 Debray, Régis 3, 14, 15n6 de Bruyn, Theodore 13, 17n19 de Certeau, Michel 3, 15n6, 15n7, 15n8 deicide 12, 50, 55, 60, 66 Delehaye, Hippolyte 223–24, 241n7 Diatyposis 70n32 Diodorus Siculus 89n14, 89n15, 91n22, 91n26, 91–92n28 Diodorus 85, 86, 91n16, 92–93n21 discourse 2, 6, 9, 10, 11, 12, 15n8, 18n22, 20n30, 20n31, 20n32, 166, 167, 168–70, 172, 175, 176, 193, 221 doctrinal mode of religiosity 13, 189–90, 196, 198, 199–201, 202n11, 203n12, 207n34, 208n40, 208n41, 208n42, 208n43, 234–36 doctrine 4, 196, 199–201, 202n11, 220–21, 221–23, 225, 231–32, 238– 39, 240n3 Dölger, Franz Joseph 183n25 Donini, Ambrogio 151n2 Dunn, James D. G. 99–100, 101–102, 116n3, 116n8 Duval, Yves-Marie 180n7 ecphrasis 58, 60–61, 70n32 Edelman, Gerald 201n2 Efroymson, David P. 52 Eleusinian mysteries 191–92, 194, 195, 196, 205n22 élite 9, 18n26, 18n27, 28, 29, 40, 41n8, 42n12, 83, 162, 166, 180n4, 225, 226, 228, 245n20 Elm, Susanna 182n18, 182n19, 182n21, 183n23
251 emotion: see also feelings 6, 161, 177, 194, 232–33, 235, 237–39, 242n16 Encomiastic rhetoric 16n10 Ephesians 100, 104, 106, 113–14, 116n8 Epideictic rhetoric 4, 16n10 epidemiology 197, 202, 208n30, 209n33 Epistle to Diognetus 113–14 Eros 8, 18n24 essentialism 228, 234, 242n18 Eusebius 49–50, 51, 67n3, 70n36, 75, 221, 240n1 exorcism 237–39, 243n23, 243n24, 244n25 Favez, Charles 180–81n7 feelings: see also emotions 8, 164, 197, 231–32 feminist perspective 100, 101 Figgis, J. N. 151n4 Finnegan, Ruth 17n19 Fiorenza, Elisabeth Schüssler 100–101, 116n2 Fish, Stanley 11, 20n31 Fitzgerald, William 151n2 Flint, Valerie J. 152n12 Fortunatus, Venantius 132–34, 141, 144, 146, 152n16, 153n17, 153n18, 153n24 Fox, Robin Lane 244n25 Frank, Georgia 183n26 Frankfurter, David 225, 240n2, 242n13, 243n23, 243n24, 244n25 Freemasonry 205n24, 206n29 Freud, Sigmund 14n1, 190 Galatians 45n36, 100, 107, 117n21, Geary, Patrick J. 231, 241n6 Geertz, Clifford 4 Gorgias of Leontini 4–10, 14, 16n10, 16n12, 16n13, 16n14, 16n15, 17n16, 17n17, 17n21, 18n24, 57 Giannarelli, Elena 182n14 Glancy, Jennifer 117n18, 151n2 Goffman, Erving 19n30
252 Goguel, Maurice 123 Goldhill, Simon 14n2, 19n27, 20n30 Graeco-Roman household ethic 99, 101, 105, 115 Graeco-Roman religions 1, 9, 196, 197, 199, 202n10, 203n12, 208n43 Graus, František 122, 125–129, 130, 137, 138, 139, 144, 147, 49, 153n20, 154n30 Gregg, Robert C. 162, 166–67, 181n7 Gregory of Nazianzus 163, 167–69, 180n, 181n10, 181n12, 182n16 Gregory of Nyssa 163, 169, 172–74, 178–79, 180n7, 181n14, 182n20, 182n22 Gregory of Tours 128, 135–47, 149, 152n11, 153n21, 153n22, 153n23, 153n26, 153n28, 154n29, 154n30, 154n31, 224, 226, 237, 243n22, 243n24 grief: see also lament 166–67, 169, 181n14 Gutiérrez, Gustavo 154n34 Habermas, Jürgen 11, 20n31 Hadot, Pierre 162, 169 Haenchen, Ernst 76, 77 hagiography 87n3, 121–50, 127–29, 241n6; “prison-freeings” in 120, 128–35; redemptive pattern of 144; subversive aspects in 129, 131, 138, 145, 148–50 Halbwachs, Maurice 193 Hall, Stewart 50, 53, 63, 67n8, 67n9, 70n33 Halton, Thomas 60, 63 Hamilton, Bernard 220 Harrill, J. Albert 107 Harnack, Adolf 51, 67n12, 77 Hawthorne, Gerald F. 60, 65, 67n9, 69n30, 70n35, 70n39 Hedrick, Charles W. 42n16 Heers, Jacques 150n1 Heffernan, Thomas 141, 152n12 Hellenists 75–80, 84–86, 87n4 Hemer, Colin J. 88n12
Index Hengel, Martin 78–80, 87n8, 88n9, 88n12 Herodes the Athenian 64, 69n24 Herodotus 83–84, 90n19, 91n22 Herrin, Judith 129, 138, 145 Hertz, Robert 173 Hesk, Jon 18n26, 20n30 Hill, Craig C. 79–80, 88n10 Hippolytus 66, 194 historia 12–13, 80–83, 84–86, 88n12, 89n14, 89n15 historiography 80, 81–82, 84, 89n16 Hock, Ronald F. 41n6, 209n44 Hodgson, Peter C. 76, 88n9 homoioteleuton 58, 60 Hopkins, Keith 202n7 Horden, Peregrine 243n23 household codes 100–17, 116n3 Humphrey, Caroline 201n4, 202n7 Hyldahl, Niels 88n10 hyperbole 58, 60 ideology 8, 12, 193, 206n29, 220, 227–29, 230, 234, 235, 236–37, 239–40, 244n25 identity 19–20n30, 107, 111, 193; ambiguity of 179; social 234, 235– 36; élite 41n8; relational 178; and ritual 112, 162 image 37, 54–55; in ancient world 189; as narrative 188–89; tauroctonous 188–89, 190, 196–98, 203n13, 206n29; cult iconography 193; veneration 223 imagistic mode of religiosity 13, 189–90, 199, 208n42, 208n43, 235–36, 237, 243n20 Imber, Margaret 17n20 imprisonment 130, 131–32, 144 initiation (rites) 190–93, 197–99, 202n10, 204n15, 204n21, 205n22, 205n27, 206n31, 207n38, 235 interests (social) 229, 231, 239–40, 241n10, 244n25 interpretation 30–33, 39, 44n35 Isiac mysteries 191, 194, 196, 208n43
Index Isocrates 16n14, 42n11 “Israel” 55, 60–61, 62–66 Jameson, Fredric 28–29, 41n3, 43n19 Janes, Dominic 149–50, 152n8, 154n 33 Jay, Nancy 229–31, 235, 242n12 Jensen, Jeppe Sinding 242n11 Jerome 49, 67n2, 180n7 Jerusalem community 75–76, 84–86 Jewish-Christian relations 50–54, 67n10, 67n11, 68n15 Johnson, Luke T. 87n5 Jones, C. P. 69n25 Judaisms 49–52, 67n13, 68n17, 78–80 Justin 54, 66, 68n17, 198 Kant, Immanuel 3, 16n9 Karras, Ruth Mazo 151n7 Kelley, Shawn 87n4 Kennedy, George A. 16n10, 41n6, 41n7, 68n22, 69n25 Kile, Chad 12 Kingdom (Gospel of Thomas) 32–33, 38, 40, 44n33 Kitchen, John 13, 142, 153n18 Klingshirn, William 133–35 Kloppenborg, John S. 42n15 Knight, Stephen 206n29 knowledge 2–4, 7, 10, 32–33, 187–89, 201n4, 207n38 Koester, Helmut 31, 42n16 Kraabel, A. Thomas 53, 68n16 Lakoff, George 242n15, 242n17 lament: see also grief 161, 171, 174–75, 177, 178 Lamprocles 204n18 language 27, 30–32, 34, 38, 39, 40, 41n5, 41n8, 43n19, 163 Lentz, John Clayton 91n27 Lesne, Émile 153n27 Lévi-Strauss, Claude 197 Libanius 169 liberation 123, 131, 141, 142–44, 154n34
253 Lieu, Judith M. 51, 54–56, 62, 64, 66, 68n19, 68n21, 103, 116n5 liminality 173, 174–75, 177 Lincoln, Bruce 8, 17n22, 30–31, 43n20, 43n21, 43n25, 230–31, 232, 236–37, 242n14 Livy 89n14 Lofland, John 221 logical structures 195, 229–30, 235, 242n12 logos 3, 5–10, 16n11, 16n13, 16n15, 29 logismos 3, 6, 10, 14 logographic methods 3, 4, 10, 15n8 Lohse, Eduard 102–103, 116n2 Loraux, Nicole 14n3 Lucian of Samosata 59, 70n42, 82, 83, 90n18 Luedemann, Gerd 75, 86n2 Lukan fiction 76, 87n5, 87n7 Luke, Gospel of 77–80, 84–86, 87n5, 87n7, 88n12, 91n20, 91n28 Lyman, Rebecca 241n5 McCormick, Michael 154n35 McCutcheon, Russell T. 209n44, 242n12 MacDonald, Dennis Ronald 117n21 McDonald, J. I. H. 68n20 MacDonald, Margaret Y. 13, 116n4, 116n11, 116n12, 116n13, 117n15, 117n16, 117n20 MacDowell, D. M. 16n12 MacGonagle, Sarah Hansell 152n9 Mack, Burton L. 41n6, 41n10, 42n12, 227–28, 241n5, 241n10, 243n21 MacMullen, Ramsay 116n6, 222, 226, 240n4 Macrina, Saint 169, 172–74, 178–79, 181n14, 183n23, 183n24 Maniat region 172, 174–75 Maravel, Pierre 82n19, 182n21, 183n24 Marcion 50, 66, 68n14 Marguerat, M. Daniel 91n27 Markus, Robert A. 240n1
254 Martha, Constant 180n7 Martin, Dale B. 115n18, 151n2 Martin, Luther H. 13–14, 189, 195, 197, 198, 200, 201n4, 202n6, 206n29, 207n31, 207n32, 207n34, 207n35, 243n19 Martin, Saint of Tours 135–38, 140, 147–49, 243n24 martyr 91n28, 174 martyrdom 85, 168, 191 Martyrdom of Polycarp 54 Marxism 127–28, 209n45 Matthews, Christopher R. 87n7 Matthews, Shelly 87n7 meaning 32–33, 37, 131, 133, 164, 197, 198, 202n7, 227–28, 236 Meeks, Wayne A. 40, 209n45 Meier, John P. 42n16 Meissner, Henriette M. 181n14 Melito of Sardis 49–66, 66n2, 67n4, 67n6, 67n10, 69n30, 69n31, 70n32 memory 187, 190, 193–94, 197–98, 200, 201n2, 208n43, 234–36 Menander 180n7 Merkelbach, Reinhold 207n31 metaphor 6, 36–38, 109–10, 117n18, 122, 135, 136–79, 150n2 metonym 6 metriopatheia 166 Minucius Felix 243n24 mission to Gentiles 78, 87n7 Mithraism 198–200; architecture 196–97; myth 189, 196, 206n29; iconography 189, 190, 197–99, 204n15; theological system 188, 207n34, 207n37; absence of creed 188, 202n11, 207n36; as iconic tradition 188–89; initiation 190–93, 205n24; socio-political factors 195–96; spread of 195–96, 207n32; demography 196; and Christianity 198–200; communal meals 190, 203n13, 204n15, 206n29 modernism/modernity 3, 4, 10, 15n8, 28–29 modes of religiosity 13–14, 189–90, 198–200, 202n12, 208n41, 208n43,
Index 234–36; doctrinal mode 189–90, 198, 199–201, 208n43, 235; imagistic mode 189–90, 199, 208n42, 208n43, 235–36, 237, 243n20 Morgan, Teresa 19n27 mnemonics 197–99, 205n27 Moyd, Olin P. 154n34 Mugglestone, Lynda 19n27 Murphy, Tim 20n30, 242n13 mystery cults 207n34, 207n35, 191–92, 194, 195, 196, 205n22, 208n43, 241n9 narratio 81–83, 84, 89n17, 90n18 narrative, narrativity 81–82, 187 Nicetes of Smyrna 65 Nock, A. D. 151n2, 203n12, 224–25 Nonnus 205n23 Nympha 101–107, 114–15, 116n10 Ochs, Donovan J. 180n5 Onesimus 103, 107, 117n15 Origen 198 orthodoxy 196, 198, 199, 200, 208n42, 241n5 Osiek, Carolyn 116n6 pagan, paganism 18n26, 116n13, 199, 219, 220, 223–25, 239, 243n22 pain 175, 176, 177, 178 Paine, Robert 17n18 Papua New Guinea 189–90, 192 paradox 18n26, 40, 43n32, 58, 60, 121 paterfamilias 100, 106, 113 patronage 102, 103, 104, 116n10, 196 patriarchy 100, 102, 104, 111, 115 Patterson, Orlando 122–29, 134–37, 139–41, 147–49, 150n1, 151n2, 151n3, 151n4, 152n14 Patterson, Stephen J. 42n16 Paul of Tarsus 18–19n26, 32, 45n37, 78, 85, 101–105, 109–10, 116n8, 122–26, 147, 150n2, 151n3, 199–200, 208n41 Pauline ethical dualism 122–25, 127, 136, 140–41, 146–47, 149–50 Paulinus of Nola 243n24, 244n26
Index Penner, Todd 12–13, 75, 80–81, 83, 85, 86n1, 88n11 performance 19–20n30; verbal/nonverbal 11; of text 114–15; of ritual 164–65 performance culture 20n30 performativity 187, 202n7 Peri Pascha 49–66, 67n4, 67n6, 67n7, 68n20 persuasion 28, 84, 90n21, 220–21, 230–32; theories of 1–4, 5–7, 8–11, 12, 14–15n4, 20n32; religious 202n7; ideological 221, 237, 239 persuasive performance 19–20n30 Peter, First Letter of 100, 105–106, 111 Peter, Gospel of 69n31 Peters, Edward M. 152n13 Pettazoni, Raffaele 202n10 Philemon 102, 103, 107 Philo of Alexandria 29–30, 32, 42n13, 42n14, 70n33 philosophical consolation 161–63, 166–70, 177–79, 180n7 Philostratus 56–59, 64, 65, 68n22, 69n24, 69n25 Phylarchus 83, 89n17 Pinker, Steven 232–33, 236, 238 Plato 11, 16n14, 60–61, 69n27, 70n34, 83–84, 90n19, 169, 194, 203n13 Plutarch 84, 90n19, 91n22, 178, 194, 195, 203n13 Polemo 59, 65 Polybius 83, 89n17, 90n18 poor and powerless 128, 142–43, 145 popular religion 208n42, 223, 225–27 Porter, Stanley E. 15n5, 87n5 Pouchet, Robert 181n8 Poulakis, John 16n11 practice 165, 202n11, 202n12, 226, 227–29, 230, 221, 237 prison-freeing 122, 130–37 proselytization 51, 199–200 Protestant scholarship 76, 78 psyche 5–6, 9, 16n13, 17n16, 17n21, 18n24 Pueri 128, 131, 132
255 Q, Sayings Gospel 116n8 Quartodeciman 49, 53, 67n5, 67n6 Quintilian 2, 28, 42n11, 60, 69n24, 70n41 Rappaport, Roy A. 163–65, 169–70, 171–72, 173, 176–77, 180n6 reality 14n3, 14–15n4, 39–40, 54–55, 64, 66, 86, 88, 88n12, 116n5, 164, 179 Reardon, B. P. 59–60, 69n26, 70n38 reason 202n12, 226, 242n15, 242n17; exercise of 3–4, 162; and grief 166–67; progress of 15n8; and passion 162, 178–79; therapy of 167 reasoning 3, 7, 223 redemption 122, 123, 125, 132–36, 138–39, 147, 149–50, 150n2, 220 re-enslavement to a god 123, 124, 134, 135–36, 139, 140–41, 145, 146 relics 223, 231 Remus, Harold 69n31 Renan, Ernst 198 rhetoric 9, 17n19, 19n27, 20n32, 52, 64, 66, 69n27; ancient 28; antirhetorical 18–19n26; appropriateness 28; Asiatic 56; biblical 8; character 28, 41–42n10, 42n12; consolatory 162, 167; effeminizing characterization 91n28; encomiastic/demonstrative 16n10; epideictic 4, 16n10; formal 28; history of 18–19n26; as logismos 10; as means to hegemony 125–26; as opiate 145; place of 57; religious 1–2, 4; and ritual 163; skill and social class 9, 18–19n26; and the social 27–28; strategy 109, 129, 131, 226; and social arrangements 103; style 28–29, 42n12; technical terminology 55–56, 68n21; theological premise of 141; visual 147–49 rhetoricality 10–12 Ridley, Matt 242n16, 242n18 Riesner, Rainer 89n12 rites of terror 190–93, 194, 205n27 ritual 108, 115, 163–77, 189–194, 199, 202n7, 202n11, 224–25, 226,
256 227, 239; defined 164; Roy Rappaport’s theory of 163–66, 169–70, 171–72, 173, 176–77; as a social act 164; structure of 165–66; and belief 180n6; and identity 112 Robbins, Vernon K. 2, 11, 14n4, 114 Romans 102 Ruether, Rosemary Radford 52, 68n15 Russell, James C. 152n12, 220 Sabean, David Warren 13, 19n29 saints 128, 132–50, 223, 237 sale to a god 135–36, 151n3 Samellas, Antigone 167, 179n1, 180n2, 180n7, 181n13 Schaff, Philip 180n3 Schiappa, Edward 4–5, 17n17 science, discourse of 6–7 Scourfield, J. H. D. 180n7 Seager, Andrew R. 53 Segal, Charles 5, 16n13, 16n16 Second Sophistic 16n10, 56–64, 69n24 self-definition 3, 113, 114 self-presentation 19–20n30 sensory arousal 177, 190, 198 sentiment 8, 17–18n22, 18n23, 230–32, 236–37, 238 Septuagint 70n33, 70n37 Seremetakis, C. Nadia 172, 174–76 “Seven wise men” 84–85, 91n22 sickness 137–41 Siegert, Folker 68n20 Simon, Marcel 51, 67n12 slavery 121–150, 150n1; acceptance of in hagiography 128–29, 130; American system of 121, 122, 124, 147–48, 149; and medieval social structure 125; metaphors of 109–10, 117n18, 122, 135, 136–37, 150n2; as natural 130; Patristic and early medieval attitudes 122; as sickness 137–41; spiritual 123; as unnatural 137 slaves 107–12, 121–50 Smith, Abraham 91n27 Smith, H. Sheldon 154n34
Index Smith, J. Warren 181n14, 182n20 Smith, Jonathan Z. 11–12, 240n2, 241n9, 242n13 Smith, W. Robertson 202n11 Smyrna 63 Snyder, Graydon R. 208n42 Soards, Marion 87n5 social 10, 65, 241n10; body 6; borders 228–29, 230; categories 132; competition 56; construction 228–29; construction of consciousness 187, 201n2; construction of self 187; discourse 9; division 42n14; formation 221, 227–32, 238–39; hierarchy 37, 40, 45n37; identity 29; networking 206n29, 221–22; self-understanding in antiquity 28–29; solidarity 194, 198, 230–32, 234, 235, 236, 238; status: change in 131, 132, 135, 142, 145; as theological category 132–37; stratification 127; structure 227, 230 socio-rhetorical criticism 2, 14–15n4 speech 5–7, 19–20n30, 28 speech act 15n7 speech-as-drug simile 16n14 Spencer, F. Scott 90n20 Sperber, Dan 197, 202n6, 206n30 Stark, Rodney 200–201, 206n29, 208n39, 209n44, 221–22, 236, 240n3, 240n4, 241n5 Stephen 75–77, 79–80, 85–86, 87n3, 87n4, 91n28 Sterling, Gregory E. 87n7 Stewart-Sykes, Alistair 67n9, 67n10 Stock, Brian 203n12 structure 227, 242n11, 242n13 Sulpicius Severus 148–49, 152n10 154n32, 243n24 supercessionism 53, 62, 78, 79, 87n4 superstition 223–24, 239 Swain, Simon 19n27, 41n8, 69n25 symbolism: of exaltation and triumph 101; religious 109–10; sacred 122–23 symbolic action 227–28 symbolic representations 197 symbolic structures 122
Index symposium 203n13 syncretism 116n13, 240n2, 242n13 synkrisis 85, 91n27
257 Tuzin, Donald F. 192–93 Tyson, Joseph B. 87n4 Ulansey, David 188, 199
Tambiah, Stanley 17n18, 17n19 Tanzer, Sarah 117n22 Taylor, Miriam S. 51–54, 55, 56, 62, 64, 65–66, 67n12, 67–68n13, 68n14, 68n15, 68n18, 68n19 Taylor, N. H. 87n7 taxonomy 34–38, 43n20, 43n21, 44n25, 44n27 Tentler, Thomas 225 Tertullian 66, 66–67n2, 191, 198, 243n24 text 1–4, 11, 14–15n4, 27–28, 39, 42n14; and social self-perception 27–28; performance of 114–15; society as 228; world outside the 105, 112 textual arts 2 textual practice 15n6 textualized rationality 3 Theissen, Gerd 117n18 Themistius 191 theology 52, 53, 56, 65, 100, 131, 134, 223–24 Theon of Alexandria 91n27 theory of mind 201n2 theory of language 30–31 Thomas, Gospel of 30–40, 42n16, 42n17, 42–43n18, 43n22, 3n23, 43n24, 43–44n26, 44n27, 44n28, 44n29, 44n30, 44n31, 45n32, 45n33, 45n35, 45n36, 208n42 Thompson, E. P. 18n23 Thompson, Edgar T. 154n34 Thucydides 195 Timaeus83, 90n18 transmission189, 193, 199, 200, 201n4, 220, 225, 234 triclinium 196, 203n13 Troeltsch, Ernst 151n2 Trotsky, Leon 1, 6 Trout, Dennis 244n26
Valantasis, Richard 42n16, 45n34 Valesio, Paolo 18–19n26 Van Dam, Raymond 138, 139, 152n12, 153n24, 153n26, 154n31 van Damme, Annemiecke 207n38 van Gennep, Arnold 173 Verlinden, Charles 150n1, 151n6 Vermaseren, Maarten J. 202n10 Vouga François 87n6 Walbank, F. W. 88n13 Wardy, Robert 16n15, 17n16 Wergeland, A. M. 151n5 White, L. Michael 111, 116n5, 116n6 Whitehouse, Harvey13, 189–91, 193, 194, 198, 199–201, 202n10, 202n11, 203n13, 208n40, 208n41, 208n43, 234–36, 237, 243n20 Wifstrand, A. 56, 69n29 Williams, David J. 151n2 Williams, Raymond 8 Wilson, Stephen G. 52, 55, 62, 241n6 wives 105, 106, 115 women 101–15, 182n15, 182n21; as leaders of house church 102–103; social influence of 103, 105, 115, 116n6; propriety 105; traditional roles 104–105; conversion through 105–106; restrictions on 106; and lament 161, 170–71, 175, 176 words 1–4, 9 word rituals 17n19 Wrede, William 75 writing 208n43 Wyschogrod, Edith 152n12 Zaidman, Louise Bruit 192
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